But if this is so, and if also the congeries of all the living forms
in the world must be regarded as a single person, throughout their long
growth from the primordial cell onwards to the present day, then, by
parity of reasoning, the person thus compounded-that is to say, Life or
God-should have already passed through a growth analogous to that which
we find he has taken upon this earth on an infinite number of past
occasions; and the development of each class of life, with its
culmination in the vertebrate animals and in man, should be due to
recollection by God of his having passed through the same stages, or
nearly so, in worlds and universes, which we know of from personal
recollection, as evidenced in the growth and structure of our bodies,
but concerning which we have no other knowledge whatsoever.
So small a space remains to me that I cannot pursue further the
reflections which suggest themselves. A few concluding considerations
are here alone possible.
We know of three great concentric phases of life, and we are not without
reason to suspect a fourth. If there are so many there are very likely
more, but we do not know whether there are or not. The innermost sphere
of life we know of is that of our own cells. These people live in a
world of their own, knowing nothing of us, nor being known by ourselves
until very recently. Yet they can be seen under a microscope; they can
be taken out of us, and may then be watched going here and there in
perturbation of mind, endeavouring [sic] to find something in their
new environment that will suit them, and then dying on finding how
hopelessly different it is from any to which they have been accustomed.
They live in us, and make us up into the single person which we conceive
ourselves to form; we are to them a world comprising an organic and an
inorganic kingdom, of which they consider themselves to be the organic,
and whatever is not very like themselves to be the inorganic. Whether
they are composed of subordinate personalities or not we do not know,
but we have no reason to think that they are, and if we touch ground, so
to speak, with life in the units of which our own bodies are composed,
it is likely that there is a limit also in an upward direction,
though we have nothing whatever to guide us as to where it is, nor any
certainty that there is a limit at all.
We are ourselves the second concentric sphere of life, we being the
constituent cells which unite to form the body of God. Of the third
sphere we know a single member only-the God of this world; but we see
also the stars in heaven, and know their multitude. Analogy points
irresistibly in the direction of thinking that these other worlds are
like our own, begodded and full of life; it also bids us believe that
the God of their world is begotten of one more or less like himself,
and that his growth has followed the same course as that of all other
growths we know of.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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