The Creator, and what we may know of the method of creationDallinger, W. H. (William Henry)
Religion
The Creator, and what we may know of the method of creation
Dallinger, W. H. (William Henry)
Creation; Evolution; God; Religion and science
Not only is there consciousness and thought, memory and prevision,
power and volition; but the person, the identity that is conscious and
thinks, that remembers and anticipates, that is able and that wills, is
an inextinguishable factor of being. And for this there is no provision
in the formula of the Spencerian Philosophy.
True, as we have seen, it is fain to admit, outside its formula, the
existence of a permanent somewhat lying beneath and outlasting all the
flow of mental states; that it has always existed, that it must exist
for evermore; that it is a ‘power’ sometimes identified with ‘force;’
but it is contended that this is infinitely and for ever unknowable.
With this we cannot be concerned; in practice it is an abstraction
equal to nothing. But it is no element of our analysis; it is no
factor of the formula which contained the only data required by this
philosophy to construct the universe. We cannot assume that this power
was the cause of matter, or the cause of motion; for we are shown that
we can know nothing concerning it. But this also is of no moment; for
matter, motion, and the combinations they bring about, over countless
millenniums of time, clearly understood, and fully interpreted, are
supposed to contain in themselves, the explanation of all that is. But
surely the promise of this philosophy is unfulfilled, its pledge is
broken; it left its formula at the very outset of its career, and has
employed structural principles, which to _it_ are absolutely alien.
Then to affirm that mind does not exist is impossible; to affirm
that matter gave origin to mind is a contradiction. There is but one
alternative: it is, that in the beginning, mind, acting through and in
matter, by immutable and perfect modes, through unmeasured time, caused
matter to assume its forms and display its phenomena; and, being mind,
imparted mind to the universe wherever it is found: crowning all, in
the moral and intellectual nature of man.
Thus the ultimate demand of thought, of reason, and of consciousness,
is that when we are unravelling the modes of phenomena, pushing our
inquiries into the conditions of all existences, generalizing vast
areas of knowledge, expressing in formula of geometry and numbers
the splendid rhythm and order of all things in heaven and earth,
we are simply finding, and expressing, the thoughts of an Infinite
Intelligence; discovering the modes by which His immutable perfections
were caused to take form in matter and mind.
It is science alone that can discover and express the _mode_ of action;
it is theology alone that must strive reverently to lead the mind up
from the mode, not to the _conception_, but to the inevitable existence
and thought of the Creator.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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