STUDY XVIII. HUMAN LIFE. Personality, Individuality, Speciality. "Between two worlds life hovers, like a star, "Twixt night and morn, upon the horizon's verge : SHALL we soil our hands with the earths, be concerned about heat, light, electricity, the precious metals, the diamond, and there stop? Shall we condescend to that derogatory part of our nature, that offensive condition in which we acknowledge brotherhood with the sea-jelly, and animalculæ of a stream or pool; and not ascend the heights of life which are specially our praise? We are bound, if only to save endless wanderings in a wrong direction, to ascertain whether the lofty soul and god-like intellect are signs of a potential fellowship with spirits noble and glorious; whether they are the title-deeds of a brighter world; or false lights and mocking delusions? They can hardly be delusions, for if all our priests were drowned to-day, and the Bible burned to-morrow, an irrepressible consciousness of things unseen would again call for the prophet and consecrate the priest. Religion is not for the great events of life only, it is for the small. Bright with gladness to the pure in heart, a familiar friend in the family circle, it is very welcome. In hours of thoughtful solitude men rest in faith and give God thanks. The monitions of eternal truth, whispered in their infant ears, and pondered in after-days, are no dread fore-doom, but comfortable assurances concerning that life in which the weary rest and the good are happy ever more. Our Study is of Human Life. We are told “Life and Mind are not substances, but the dynamical results of an organism's statical conditions. Mind is only one of the forms of Life; and Life is not an entity, but an abstraction expressing the generalities of organic phenomena." The assertion is not strictly true; for organism and function are not the cause of life, but are themselves caused by life. The initial fact, without which could be no organism, is life it is a theorem worked out by the organism. It is asserted-"We come into the world with a heritage of organised form and definite tendencies representing ancestral experiences and adaptations. In like manner, the mind is built up of assimilated experiences: its perceptions and conceptions being shaped out of pre-perceptions and pre-conceptions." Life is, however, something more than the synthesis of ancestral experiences-being, indeed, all that the faculty of living encloses; and mind is something more than an aggregate of past and present perceptions—we must add the potential existence of a Cognitive Faculty, without which could be no mind. Life builds up the organism, and mysteriously inhabits it; so, whether you call mind an entity or not, it certainly looks through the organism at the outer world, has views of an inner world, and strangely enough, by means of these outer and inner, can detect relations which are obscure to Sense, and relations inaccessible to Sense: the supra-sensible being got at analytically by analysis of analysis. It is manifestly impossible that we can know the exact conditions in which organic life began. We can do little more than guess at its nature and origin. Of this, however, we may be sure-our life is not merely sensations of colours, of sounds, of tastes, of smells: for it is evident that sensations are the product or act of life, not life itself. Those who think to explain it by descending from organism to organism, quantitatively and qualitatively, going down from organic to inorganic, from masses to atoms, forget that the atoms are only the masses writ small"—that the mystery remains. The chemist analyses water into its constituent gases; and then, by synthesis under certain conditions, reconstructs the water: but not so with life, nor the substance in which life is mani fested. The substance, so far as we know, can only be made by life; and without it organism is not possible. Herein lies a whole world of mystery. This seems to be forgotten by those who would slay religion: they clutch at the dagger, but, like that which hovered before Macbeth's imagination, it refuses to be grasped: the "gouts of blood" upon its "blade and dudgeon" no eye but their own can see ; man lives, moves, and has his being in God. Mr Herbert Spencer, finding fault with various definitions of life, says "Life is the definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with external co-existences and sequences." Mr G. H. Lewes states-"Life is the co-ordination of actions, both of structure and composition, which take place within an individual without destroying its identity." The larger formula, "Life is the definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with external co-existences and sequences"-may be approved by some. Others choose, as simpler, "Life-including intelligence as the highest known manifestation of life-is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations." Bearing in mind that life is the cause of organism, not itself caused by organism; and raises for itself many-chambered habitations of manifold structure and function; we may speak of it after the manner of Descartes in "Traite de l'homme," -The vital spirit is like a subtle fluid, or pure and vivid flame. It is ever regenerated in the heart, and ascends. to the brain. Hence it passes into the nerves, is distributed to the muscles, and causes contraction or relaxation. This spirit not only fills the cavities of the brain, it enters the pores of its substance, and is the means of all motion and emotion. As in the groves and fountains of royal gardens, water issuing from the reservoir moves various machines, makes them play instruments and even pronounce words; so the vital spirit, lodged in the machine of an animal body, enthrones itself in the brain; or takes the engineer's seat to guide the mechanism; and thence increases or slackens, changes or suspends, motion and function. Again, the body has been called an engine, of which food is the fuel, and blood the life-oil; but a body may have food in the stomach, blood in the veins, and nevertheless be dead. Living substances, when dead, can be converted into carbonic acid, water, and ammonia; but it is impossible so to bring them together that they give rise to the living substance. Our organization transmits impressions from without into sensation within but life is not the organism, nor impression, nor sensation, it is the master principle or secret of all—" an original, specific, self-propagating endowment."1 Physical energy is correlative to vital acts, but they are not of identical nature. Heat, electricity, light, air, are materials and agents by which vital processes are educed; but life is not a mere aggregation or resultant of these conditions, materials, and powers. The living egg may be quickened by heat, and become a growing bird; but who can hatch a dead egg? As certain bodies in solution assume definite crystal forms, every form after its kind; and metals-gold, silver, copper, possess individuality, called "life;" so other bodies-agglomerating into organic form and exhibiting the properties of lifehave their own special life: yet we know not the how nor the why; nor do impressions from without, though they may determine the occurrence of sensation, reveal the secret how motion is converted into sensation. The mystery of life is still hidden; nor is all life the same life; there is one life of fish, another of bird, another of animal, another of man; and man's life is threefold, corporis vita and mentis vita, life of the body and life of the mind: one spirit pervading each for the safety of both. Everything possessing consciousness, perception, and voluntary motion, may possibly have an immaterial personal principle wholly distinct from animal tissues. There is in every animal not only a plant life, a system of organs used only for assimilation and reproduction; but, even in the lowest, a life by which it merits to be classed apart as an intelligence using organs. The immaterial principle of the beast seems to be used up in the necessary expenditure of its natural life-it goeth downward. A much greater distinction. 1 "Winds of Doctrine: " Chas. Elam, M.D. The Physician's View. 1 329 exists between the natural life and personal life of the human being-which goeth upward. Our natural life is that into which we are born, it includes body, soul and spirit: "soul is the external aspect of the spirit, and spirit the internal aspect of the soul." Personal life is the centre or identity of our being in every stage and condition of growth. It is the ego, capable of introspection, to apprehend and comprehend the interests of our existence in self-representation, common to all men as men, and elevating us above plants and beasts. We are not merely plants-with life indeed, but no soul; not merely animals-with soul indeed, but no spirit; but men-with life indeed, soul indeed, and spirit indeed. Mechanical self-adjustment, or automatism, does not explain all the actions of brutes, it is less able to define human conduct. Some of our acts, which at first required attention and skill, become automatic; but this only reveals the fact that mental states have no resemblance to the physical states causing them. Life cannot be weighed in a balance, nor measured by scale, nor tested in crucible, nor seen by microscope. Our sensations, volitions, consciousness, power, are not wholly from animal organs. Everybody knows that brain is inseparably connected with the operation of thinking, and that the nerves are correlated to our sensations; but thought is not explained by the hard word "cerebration;" nor is any new light cast on sensation by calling it "an affection of sensory ganglia." We are wholly incompetent to understand the connection between molecular processes and the phenomena of consciousness. Very different kinds of emanations, vibrations, and powerful agencies, act in and around us; tastes are brought into alliance with thoughts; sensual things are relieved, ennobled, and graced by intermixture with ideas of beauty and order; so that our bodies are a point of contact for two worlds-mind and matter: in both of which worlds our volition counts for something, and we have duties to perform. Embodied, our mind is educated: its peremptory and efficacious impulses to put moral and "Bible Psychology," p. 179: Prof. Delitzsch. "Bible Psychology," pp. 180, 476: Prof. Delitzsch. 1 |