Science and the Infinite; or, Through a Window in the Blank WallKlein, Sydney T. (Sydney Turner)
Religion
Science and the Infinite; or, Through a Window in the Blank Wall
Klein, Sydney T. (Sydney Turner)
Religion and science
The earliest forms of Life, the unicellular "Beings," whether animal
or vegetable--for both divisions, if they can be said to be divided,
have the same protoplasmic cell as basis of life--were, and are still,
immortal except for accidents; they are not subject to natural death
as we know it; they multiply by fission and not by "budding." It was
only with the building up of cell upon cell into communities, and the
advent of polycellular beings of greater and greater complexity of
structure, that the "Wisdom" behind natural laws introduced death as
an _adaptation_, to prevent monstrosities in the shape of mutilated
specimens being perpetuated on the earth. Life is purely physical and,
in conformity with the modes under which our physical senses act, has
the appearance of tri-unity. As white light is seen to be composed of
but three primary colours, as Music is based on the Triad, as Space is
known to us in three dimensions only, and Geometry, "the Head of all
Learning," is based upon the Circle, Square, and Triangle, so may we
see life in its three primary aspects: the Animal, Vegetable, and
Material. The last-mentioned aspect, though long suspected, from the
investigation of Crystallography, to have in some mysterious way a
common basis with the animal and vegetable, was not fully grasped
until, in the last few years, we have been able to study in our
laboratories the actual evolution, or more correctly devolution, of
matter from one form to another; and as all plants and animals are
found to be built up of the same identical protoplasmic cells, so are
we now able to break down and analyse not only these cells but even
the very structure of matter, and find that all substances are built
up of exactly the same bricks, the different forms known to us as
Elements being the _designs_ of the great Architect upon which each
structure has been built; and these completed designs again are used
and become the "ashlars" of the higher forms of plant and animal
structure. As Evolution in the Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms has
given us Species, so in the Material it has developed Elements. The
structures of animal and vegetable life are of comparatively recent
formation, and are still apparently progressing in the direction of
complexity, whereas the structures of matter appear to have long
passed the stage of highest complexity, and the elements are now
undergoing the retrograde process of being transformed, by
radio-activity, from the more complex into simpler elements of lower
atomic denominations--namely, having fewer bricks in each atom.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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