Science explains, and, in explaining, dissipates the pseudo-mysteries by which man, in his myth-making stage, when conception of the order of the universe was yet unborn, accounted for everything. But she may borrow the Apostle's words, "Behold! I show you a mystery," and give to them a profounder meaning as she confesses that the origin and ultimate destiny of matter and motion; the causes which determine the behaviour of atoms, whether they are arranged in the lovely and varying forms which mark their crystals, or whether they are quivering with the life which is common to the amoeba and the man; the conversion of the inorganic into the organic by the green plant, and the relation between nerve-changes and consciousness; are all impenetrable mysteries.
In his speech on the commemoration of the jubilee of his Professorship in the University of Glasgow last year, Lord Kelvin said, "I know no more of electric and magnetic force, or of the relation between ether, electricity, and ponderable matter, or of chemical affinity than I knew and tried to teach my students of natural philosophy fifty years ago in my first session as professor."
This recognition of limitations will content those who seek not "after a sign". For others, that search will continue to have encouragement not only from the theologian, but from the pseudo-scientific who have travelled some distance with the Pioneers of Evolution, but who refuse to follow them further. In each of these there is present the "theological bias" whose varied forms are skilfully analyzed by Mr. Spencer in his chapter under that heading in the Study of Sociology. This explains the attitude of various groups which are severally represented by Mr. St. George Mivart, and the late Dr. W. B. Carpenter; by Professor Sir Geo. G. Stokes, and Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace. The first-named is a Roman Catholic; the second was a Unitarian; the third is an orthodox Churchman, and the fourth, as already seen, is a Spiritualist. In his Genesis of Species, Mr. Mivart contends that "man's body was evolved from pre-existing material (symbolised by the term 'dust of the earth'), and was therefore only derivatively created, i. e., by the operation of secondary laws," but that "his soul, on the other hand, was created in quite a different way ... by the direct action of the Almighty (symbolised by the term breathing)," p. 325. In his Mental Physiology, Dr. Carpenter postulates an Ego or Will which presides over, without sharing in, the causally determined action of the other mental functions and their correlated bodily processes; "an entity which does not depend for its existence on any play of physical or vital forces, but which makes these forces subservient to its determinations" (p. 27). Professor Mivart actually cites St. Augustine and Cardinal Newman as authorities in support of his theory of the special creation of the soul. He might with equal effect subpoena Dr. Joseph Parker or General Booth as authorities. Dr. Carpenter argued as became a good Unitarian. In his Gifford Lectures on Natural Theology, Professor Stokes asserts, drawing "on sources of information which lie beyond man's natural powers," in other words, appealing to the Bible, that God made man immortal and upright, and endowed him with freedom of the will. As, without the exercise of this, man would have been as a mere automaton, he was exposed to the temptation of the devil, and fell. Thereby he became "subject to death like the lower animals," and by the "natural effect of heredity," transmitted the taint of sin to his offspring. The eternal life thus forfeited was restored by the voluntary sacrifice of Christ, but can be secured only to those who have faith in him. This doctrine, which is no novel one, is known as "conditional immortality." Professor Stokes attaches "no value to the belief in a future life by metaphysical arguments founded on the supposed nature of the soul itself," and he admits that the purely psychic theory which would discard the body altogether in regard to the process of thought is beset by very great difficulties. So he once more has recourse to "sources of information which lie beyond man's natural powers." Following up certain distinctions between "soul" and "spirit" drawn by the Apostle Paul in his tripartite division of man, Professor Stokes, somewhat in keeping with Dr. Carpenter, assumes an "Ego, which, on the one hand, is not to be identified with thought, which may exist while thought is in abeyance, and which may, with the future body of which the Christian religion speaks, be the medium of continuity of thought....