is that One Power related to its many masks ? Is it indiffe-
rently related to all, but like none of them ? or are the phases
not on equal footing, but consecutive ? and if so, is the lowest
or the highest to be held the oldest ? Three answers may be
given. At present we can only refer to Martineau's most
close discussion of each. It is needless to say what im-
portant consequences are implied in the answer that may be
chosen.
Next, we cannot help inquiring, What is this Power ? But
Science cannot tell us, for it cannot discern Power ! To find
out its nature, we must look within ourselves. What makes
THE POTENCY OF MATTER. 101
us at the sight of phenomena ask for a power? It is the
active side of our own nature. We are conscious that we our-
selves exercise power. This is the one thing that we imme >A/
diately know. We call this exercise of power living Will. /
Our whole idea of Power is identical with that of Will, or
deduced from it. So by a mental postulate we recognize
causality in Nature. The law of causality in its intuitive form
is this phenomena are the expression of living energy. Till
this intuition is disproved, the One Power stands as the
Universal Will. (If you take away this from dynamic con-
ceptions, you are again reduced to co-existences and succes-
sions.) Nor is this notion so repugnant to all scientific men as
it is to some at present. Herschel says that ( it is our own
immediate consciousness of effort when we exert force to put
matter into motion, or to oppose and neutralize force, which
gives us this internal conviction of power and causation, so far
as it refers to the material world, and compels us to believe
that whenever we see material objects put in motion ... or
deflected if already in motion, it is in consequence of such an
effort somehow exerted, though not accompanied with our
consciousness,' x and others speak to the same effect.
In a later article, 2 not referred to by Martineau, Herschel
has worked out the same thought more fully
( In that peculiar mental sensation, clear to the apprehension
of every one who has ever performed a voluntary act, which is
present at the instant when the determination to do a thing is
carried out into the act of doing it (a sensation which, in
default of a term more specifically appropriated to it, we may
call that of effort) we have a consciousness of immediate and
personal causation which cannot be disputed or ignored. And
when we see the same kind of act performed by another, we
never hesitate in assuming for him that consciousness which we
recognize in ourselves.'
1 ' Treatise on Astronomy,' chap, vii., 370. 1833.
2 * On the Origin of Force ' in ' Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects, 1
p. 461. By Sir John Herschel. 1873.
102 THE ATOMIC THEORY OF LUCRETIUS.
The next step in the way of generalization, Herschel con-
tinues, is ( a flight rather than a step/ yet it is ' one that forces
itself on our thoughts with ever-increasing cogency.' What-
ever event takes place in the material world,, we either find to
be ultimately resolvable into some change occurring in material
substance, or we endeavour to trace it to this. ' In every such
change we recognize the action of Force. And in the only
case in which we are admitted into any personal knowledge of
the origin of force, we find it connected (possibly by inter-
mediate links untraceable by our faculties, but yet indisputably
connected) with volition, and by inevitable consequence with
motive, with intellect, and with all those attributes of mind in
which personality consists.'
We have elsewhere quoted (p. 116) from the same article
another most suggestive passage as to the method in which we
may suppose Will to act on Matter. 1
HerschePs paper greatly supplements Martineau's treatment
of this point, which, we cannot help thinking, is somewhat
hasty. 2 Yet the thought is clear namely, it is a mental postu-
late to refer Power to Will.- Any causal power other than
Will, is, he says, f absolutely out of the sphere of thought.'
To this point we shall return. But here we cannot help
quoting one other passage, referring to the relation between
God and the world.
Martineau suggests that inorganic matter and lower animal
life represent as it were the habits of the universe, habits
carried on somewhat in the way that men do certain acts
mechanically while the Indwelling Mind concentrates its aim
on the natures that resemble itself. It is in planning new
1 In the same article (pp. 468-73) Herschel discusses the question, How
does the scientific principle known as the ' Conservation of Energy ' bear
on this question of Will and its power to originate Force ? Does that
principle ' stand opposed to any, even the smallest amount of arbitrary
change in the total of " force " existing in the universe ? '
2 He states the same position more fully in his 'Essays,' vol. ii., pp. 185-9.
THE POTENCY OF MATTER. 103
methods of work, he says, that the human mind exercises its
highest functions. When it has established a definite method
of working, the strain is relaxed : a habit is formed that can
almost execute itself, so that the mind can press on to new
schemes, while still at the same time the same mind carries on
the old usages
e Does anything forbid us to conceive similarly of the kos-
mical development ; that it started from the freedom of indefi-
nite possibilities and the ubiquity of universal consciousness ;
that as intellectual exclusions narrowed the field, and traced
the definite lines of admitted movement, the tension of purpose,
less needed on these, left them as the habits of the universe,
and operated rather for higher and ever higher ends not yet
provided for ; that the more mechanical, therefore, a natural
law may be, the further is it from its source ; and that the in-
organic and unconscious portion of the world, instead of being
the potentiality of the organic and conscious, is rather its
residual precipitate, formed as the Indwelling Mind of all con-
centrates an intenser aim on the upper margin of the ordered
whole, and especially on the inner life of natures that can
resemble Him.'
The track we are following has brought us here to a point
from which a noble prospect bursts into view. These words
open up a whole new range of thought that surprises us
like a glimpse 'from magic casement' into some untrodden
land.
Tyndall's theory of e organic matter,' which with its sup-
posed results Martineau has throughout been combating,
points plainly to but one ultimate result, nor does Tyndall
shrink from stating this. ' From this point of view,' he says,
' all three worlds (the inorganic, the vegetable, and the animal)
constitute a unity in which I picture life as immanent every-
where ; ' and this life, he says, may possibly be but e a sub-
ordinate part and function of a higher life.'' This is indeed a
sublime conception, says Martineau. We have no scale of
life, higher than human, in the world. Scale of height above
104 THE ATOMIC THEORY OF LUCRETIUS.
this is only in degrees of the intellectual and the moral. So if
that ( higher life ' exist at all, we must think of it as transcen-
dent Mind and Will. Yet to his so-called ( higher life ' Tyndall
dares not give the predicate ( Mind,' or apply the pronoun of
personality. On what scale then, asks Martineau, is it ' higher ' ?
If not on the intellectual and moral, then there is in man what
rises above it, f for the power of attaining truth and goodness is
ideally supreme. If Tyndall can reveal to us something
higher than Mind and free Causality, let us by all means
accept and assign it to God. But to profess this, one would
have, I think, to be something more than human. Else how
could one grasp its conception ? how look higher up than the
level of Reason. If that " higher life " speak to us in idea at
all, it can only be as Perfect Reason and Righteous Will.
Those who find this type of conception not good enough, do they
succeed in struggling upwards to a letter ? . . . . Rather, I
should fear, they droop and sink into the alternative faith of
blind force?
Scientific thought seems at present to move strongly in the
direction which Tyndall has stated, namely, Life is immanent
in Matter, and no Directive Power can act from without on the
world of Matter. We have shown already that bare and naked
atheism is not the only possible result of such a theory. One
solution of the difficulty, and a very natural one, is offered in
the essay entitled, ' The Mystery of Matter,' by Mr. Picton, 1
a writer who has met scientific discovery with the frankest
welcome, while he holds its philosophical and religious
bearings with a very different grasp from Professor Tyndall's.
Mr. Picton endeavours to show that the ordinary conception
of atoms, as indivisible particles which occupy space exclu-
sively, is untenable. If this opinion be accepted, how can
' two substances like oxygen and hydrogen produce a third
so utterly unlike both as water ?' Why not rather think of
1 * The Mystery of Matter,' by J. A. Picton. Second edition. 1878.
THE POTENCY OF MATTER. 105
the atoms as others do of the interspaces between them, and
regard them as the mere 'phenomena of force/ Picton sees
* strong reasons for believing ' that matter is but accumulated
' centres of force.' ' We may suppose these centres capable of
interpenetrating one another, and of thus producing an entirely
new mode of force, or, in common language, a new substance.'
The Atomic theory, pure and simple, f first denies and then is
compelled to assert the dissociation of matter and force.' The
ordinary conception of dead atoms, of an f unliving substance '
called matter, Picton utterly rejects. c The notion of a
dead substance, foreign to and incommensurable with spiritual
being,' is a mere e spectre ' which is ' entirely the creation of
false inference.' We are certain of only one thing, namely,
the existence of life, our own or another mode of life. f We
know that life is, but we do not know that anything else is.'
Our notion of matter as a dead substance apparently comes
from our experience of the f physical laws which bound the
efforts of our will.' We naturally conceive of force, whether
put forth by ourselves or in nature, as effort. We observe that
these laws act in sequences, and since these sequences occur
with s certainty and unfeeling regularity,' this appears to us
ground for excluding from them ' the immediate action of will
or conscious purpose.' We abstract these and there remains
the ' really irrational conception of unliving effort.' But mere
force will never prove a solution of the mystery of matter.
' Both forces and forms, far from lending themselves to " gross
materialism," rather fascinate us with their shadowed hints of
a mystery behind them both, far mightier than our will, and I
will dare to add, more keenly living than our life} This is why
landscape has the power to touch us so deeply.
Mr. Picton is willing to concede to Professor Huxley that
e force is as much a function of matter as motion is.' But at
the same time, as he remarks, ( the whole significance of the
concession depends upon the meaning that we attach to the
106 THE ATOMIC THEORY OF LUCRETIUS.
word " matter." ' And then he propounds with elaborate
illustration the theory that matter ( is in its ultimate essence
spiritual.' Matter is the ' elementary phenomenal definition,'
such as our consciousness apprehends, ' of a universal spiritual
Power.'
Thus he claims to have ( gone right through materialism,
and come out at the other side, where it merges into pure
spiritualism.'
However mistaken his final conclusions may be, Mr. Picton's
theory of Matter is at least a grand poetic dream. Not a few
passages of his book intoxicate the reader. We cannot here
analyze the argument by which he defends his view of Matter,
but we may remark that the question of Mind and Matter
cannot be quite so simply settled as Mr. Picton appears to
believe. His dilemma is not close enough. The world might
be conceived, instead of being the ( elementary and phenome-
nal,' to be the partial and imperfect * manifestation ' of the One
Power a side-stream returning into, but ever flowing apart
from, its source, and which it is possible for us to know only
while it is separated from that source, somewhat like men
dwelling where they can see only a side channel, but never the
great river from which its waters come. If this were possible,
Matter and Mind need not be viewed as two utterly discordant
substances. Poetically beautiful, morally earnest, and in many
respects most truly religious as Picton's form of Pantheism is,
and it can be such only because there is much of truth mixed
with it, yet in reference to this subject in trying to realize
the relation of the world to God we shall find something far
more helpful, far closer to fact, in Martineau's suggestion that
inorganic matter and lower animal life may represent, as it
were, 6 the habits of the universe ' carried on f mechanically.'
Thus we complain that Nature is unsympathetic and heedless
and we feel that an infinitely deeper Divine communion is
possible through the voice speaking within than through the
THE POTENCY OF MATTER. 107
world outside, because 'the Indwelling Mind of all concen-
;rates an intenser aim on the upper margin of the ordered
whole, and especially on the inner life of natures that can
resemble Him.'
We have now surveyed the controversy of Matter over all
the disputed ground, and what is the result ? Is it that the
whole world has become disenchanted and dead ? or do not the
consequences far rather tend the other way, and has not the
earth our dwelling-place, with all its mysteries of life and
growth, become more wonderful than we before thought it ? Is
not the working of the One Power on Matter something more
strange and beautiful than we were wont to think ? Matter in
every shape from' the dead mass, throbbing with countless
inseen movements which mind can barely imagine, to the
ittle company of snowdrops hanging their heads where a
month before was bare black ground is yet more mysterious
han before.
CHAPTER VI.
EPICUREAN PSYCHOLOGY.
ONE sometimes wonders how any man who lives and feels
his own life keenly can ever believe that a number of
atoms, even granting countless ages and the usual formula,
could of themselves produce human beings. An acute living
thinker says emphatically that nobody ever actually and really
believed such a thing. If he once tried to realize it, all he
means by such a profession is that no one can get any further
than this in the way of explaining the problem. Probably this
is true. At the same time Lucretius did come very near to so
believing ; he schooled his mind so deliberately into this
habitual attitude that he felt quite convinced logically that
atoms in motion were amply potent to produce the world and
man. At the same time, we think it possible that some men
now living are really still nearer this than Lucretius, only they
are not so outspoken, not so sternly uncompromising in ex-
pressing their convictions as he was. One cannot help being
curious to know by what reasoning Lucretius actually recon-
ciled himself to such a belief, and how he accounted for the
purely atomic origin of rirmsmmjpTipsft. In considering his
attitude we may find it more than once inconsistent ; but in
examining it at all, the only way worth while is to let him
paint himself as he is. Singularly enough, and if so in the
sheerest self-contradiction, we may find even him compelled at
last to admit the existence of something more than Matter.
After having thoroughly proved to his own satisfaction the
existence of the atoms, their indestructibility and eternal
EPICUREAN PSYCHOLOGY. 109
motion, Lucretius next endeavours with much emphasis and
ardour to demonstrate that these atoms are utterly dead. 1
They are not living like weak flesh and^ blood, for living things
are necessarily perishable, but not so the atoms. Moreover,
life implies interjiaj motions of pleasure and pain, but the
atoms are perfectly hard and solid, as has been proved ; there
is no room in them for such movements. Besides, if the atoms
possess_Jife, how can many living atoms form a single body
with_one vital sense ?
How then does Lucretius account for these little par-
ticles^producing living beings ? He commences to answer
this by explaining that it is a mere prejudice to suppose
that life can come only from life. We think that Matter
cannot produce life, and_Jjiat is natural, because wejbhink
6f_Matter as we__see it every day in the shape of masses
of stone and logs of wood, and these substances indeed could
never produce life, however much they were to be jumbled
together. But the fine minute atoms can mix together in a
very different way. Matter in this shape is quite competent to
do all that he claims. Then, of course, he repeats his formula
of evolution, f It matters much with what others and in what
position the same atoms are held together,' and so on. To pro-
duce living things as distinguished from dead
onlv^require to be specially minute, of s^eciaL shapes, and to
have fallen into special arrangements and mutual motions. 2
1 ii. 865-1022.
nimirum lapides et ligna et terra quod una
mixta tamen nequeunt vitalem reddere sensum.
illud in his igitur rebus meminisse decebit,
non ex omnibus omnino, quaecumque creant res,
sensile et extemplo me gigni dicere sensus,
sed magni referre ea primum quantula constent,
sensile quae faciunt, et qua sint praedita forma,
motibus, ordinibus, posituris denique quae sint.
quarum nil rerum in lignis glaebisque videmus. ii. 889-97.
110 THE ATOMIC THEORY OF LUCRETIUS.
Pleasure is but an orderly motion of the atoms, pain is felt
when they move in disorder. Life is bi^ ft (
on the part of the atoms. This stipulated order in their
arrangements and motions is indeed important. Lucretius in-
sists upon it : you cannot have life without it, but it implies no
arranging Intellect. The existence of life as distinct from
death means merely that a multitude of little pa.rtipjes_havfl
changed their position. So we see the earth after rains pro-
duce numbers of creeping things, just because its particles
have fallen out of their old combinations, resulting in dead
matter, into the new ones necessary to produce life. 1 In the
same way a strong enough cause can in a momentstop these
motions of the atoms, and then death takes place. The diffi-
culty of the origin of sensation he hardly realizes. Body and
soul cannot, he says, feel apart from each other^bnt their
mutual motions ( kindle ' sensation which ' bursts up like a
flame * 2 between them. Again, he asks, feeling plainly that
he has got a very strong instance in confirmation of his
theory, What of a man in a swoon ? if activity of the .senses
and consciousness is a proof that a principle of life exists apart
from the body, how is it, when a man receives a heavy blow,
that for a, time he loses consciousness jind then returns_to_Hfe ?
Where was the true self during that interval ? It made no
sign. Did it die and come to life again when the man re-
covered ? And he gives what he feels to be a very plausible
explanation. Life is but_a_certain orderly motion of the atoms ;
1 et tamen haec, cum sunt quasi putrefacta per imbres,
vermiculos pariunt, quia corpora material,
antiquis ex ordinibus permota, nova re
conciliantur ita ut debent animalia gigni. ii. 899-901.
nee congressa [sc. materies] modo vitalis convenienti
contulit inter se motus, quibus omnituentes
accensi sensus animante in quaque cientur. ii. 941-3.
This comparison of sensation to a fire-flash between flesh and soul is
found also at iii. 335-6, and iv. 927-8.
EPICUREAN PSYCHOLOGY. Ill
when this motion is greatly disordered by a blow 7 life almost
passes away ; but the remnant of the proper vital motion pre-
vails over the disorder and recalls the atoms to their proper
motion, and so the return to consciousness takes place. If life
departs because this motion is disturbed, and returns when it
is restored, then life is nothing more than a certain motion of
the jitoms. In this way, as he says, Nature 'produces living
bodies from Matter in the shape of food, much in the same way
as she turns wood into fire. 1 * Nature ' (by this meaning the
habits of the atoms) is little more here than a figure of speech,
though, as we have seen, it is easy to find a modern parallel
to the statement that living bodies are only the product of
1 Matter and Nature,' that is, of ( Matter and the habits of
Matter.' At present we may only remark that Lucretius has
strong reasons for labouring so eagerly as he does to prove
Matter to be ( utterly dead.' 2 He must have seen one weak
point in his system, or probably he cannot be said to have seen
but only to have felt its presence, and though his present argu-
ment is entirely powerless to answer the objection, it is pro-
bably aimed towards it. But this will become more clear
afterwards. Plainly, Lucretius's theory of Matter is such that
henceforth no more divine agents were needed to create living
things, or to act in anyway on Nature from without. ( Nature/
he says, 'is jseen to do everything alone and entirely of her
own accord '
Quae bene cognita si teneas, natura videtur,
libera continue, dominis privata superbis,
ipsa sua per se sponte omnia das agere expers.
ergo omnes natura cibos in corpora viva
vertit et nine sensus animantum procreat omnes,
non alia longe ratione adque arida ligna
explicat in flammas et in ignis omnia versat. ii. 879-82.
seminibus carentibus undique sensu. ii. 99O.
haut igitur debent esse ullo praedita sensu (sc. primordia).
ii. 972.
112 THE ATOMIC THEORY OF LUCRETIUS.
Pursuing his aim, the deliverance of mankind from super-
stition and fear, Lucretius proceeds in his Third Book to explain
the nature of the soul, and to show that it perishes along with
the body. Thus the fear of torments after death is to bft drmp
away with. The soul is material, for without touch how can it
direct and act on the body? It is closely united to the body;
just as it is hard to separate the odour from a lump of frank-
incense without destroying it, so it is impossible to part soul
and body without destroying both. The soul does not live ' in a
den of its own.' l but is spread all over the body. It^_grpws along
with Jjj_body, together with its members, within the, very
blood.' 2 The atoms forming it are vastly different Jrom those
composing flesh and bone. They are ( exceedingly small,
smooth and round ' : 3 how much Epicurus thinks to be implied
in such special fineness of atomic composition, we have seen
already. 4 The soul-atoms are also fewer and at far greater
intervals than those of the body. 5 The bulk of the soul is
exceedingly small compared with that of thebody. As Gas-
sendi 6 expresses it, following Lucretius, ' If you can conceive
velut in cavea per se vivere solam. iii. 684.
Lucretius is here refuting the notion that the soul enters into the body
after the latter is fully formed, at the instant of birth, instead of growing
along with it from the first. In the former case, he says, the soul must
of necessity dwell by itself in a distinct part of the body,
uti cum corpore et una
cum membris videatur in ipso sanguine cresse. iii. 682-3.
Compare iii. 445-58.
3 iii. 203-5. According to Philoponus, De An. c. 6, Democritus con-
sidered the round atoms to be the smallest. We may regard it as certain
that Epicurus did the same.
4 See p. 59.
5 nam cum multo sunt animae elementa minora
quam quibus e corpus nobis et viscera constant,
turn numero quoque concedunt et rara per artus
dissita sunt dumtaxat. iii. 374-7. Compare 11. 276-8.
6 ' Adeo proinde, ut punctum sit prope loculusve exilissimus in quern
recipi possit anima, si totum fingas conglomerari.' ' Epicuri Philosophia,'
Leyden, 1675, vol. i., p. 404. Lucretius himself says,
EPICUREAN PSYCHOLOGY. 113
the whole of the soul to be gathered into one mass it would
occupy a mere point almost, or the very tiniest space.' ]
The anima, the soul and life (in which Lucretius often in-
cludes the mind, animus ), is composed of four different sub-
stances, wind, heat, calm air, and a fourth substance. 2 Xhe
soul is anirna, formed of the first three only J while the mind
(animus} is composed of these and of the fourth substance as
we IU This is f entirely without name ' quite beyond defini-
tion. It is the finest and most nimble of existing things, and
nothing else is formed of such small and smooth atoms,, for