THE ECLECTIC MAGAZINE Vol. 148. APRIL, 1907. W'en de Sto❜hk Flew.* Hit am pow'ful spooky, in de black bayou Lak hit done kotched hits breaf-skeered fit ter kill; W'en his spell fotch dem down ter de black bayou. *Copyright, 1907, by Eclectic Magazine Printing and Publishing Company. No. 4. He folded he wings, en he drap wif a swoop En w'at do yo' reckon hit wuz Ah foun'? Mah ha❜ht stopped thumpin'-one luk eroun' En Ah sneaked to yo' mammy en tol' her de truf, En de bun'le-Lawd a Massey! Lak ter rais' de roof! Doan' yo' know yit, honey? W'y, 'twuz sho'ly you Dat yo' daddy stole-a-huntin' in dat black bayou! The Concrete Soul. By WILLIAM HEMSTREET. B OTH biogenesis and abiogenesis are true, with qualifications. The former is a claim that there cannot be a living body except as the product of another living body; the latter that there can be. Simply and popularly stated, established phenomena say there is mind without a physical body; that they are generically two different things. But whether there be no living body without a preceding living body, there certainly can be no mind without a preceding mind. The materialists say the human body makes and precedes the mind. According to that absurdam the mindless body has made itself with all its wonderful and adaptative machinery; then it makes within itself mind to intelligently govern itself, and then it unmakes that mind and decays. Although the question of biogenesis is of no more importance than the North Pole, it may be asked in passing, How came the first body, because the planet was, in its creation, a mass of fire wherein no body could exist? The question now is one of mere discovery, for in the bottom of the sea and in the ooze of swamps beginnings of species may be going on now all the time, for all we know, just the same as in the Creation immediately after the planet was rounded up and cooled off. Deeper and usefuler questions are, whether matter, here now, can of itself make life; whether the life that is found in the body came to it from the outside, and whether that mind-or life-exists after bodily death as it did before bodily life. Mind and life are one. The two antithetical differentiations-mind and matter-do really exist here in alloy, but which was first or was neither first, like the snail and its shell? Go back a bit. The first chapter of Genesis is intuitively scientific. The first Intelligent Cause created all living things, each with its own seed, "finished" its work and "rested." Perhaps then and there was ended spontaneous generation on this earth. But this self-seeding is the marvelous proof of intelligent design preceding the organism. We must appreciate the great fact that outside of this planet and its organisms there was and is an illimit able Universe of life and mind, of intelligent and executed purpose. To move matter, mind must itself be matter (Zeno), and so the conclusion is that universal mind was embodied in the universal protyle, or ether, which differentiated itself upon this planet in various forms called organisms, selecting and composing them in the first seed or cell from their various elements. Now as that creative power, that has been proved by its effects to be intelligent, existed before and independent of bodily life, for it is plain to us that in continue to exist after and independent of bodily life, for it is plain to us that in the cosmic fountain of creative law some worlds are older than ours, some are dead, and some are not yet made. There was no cut-off or vacuum between this planet and the rest of the universe. Living bodies were commenced here, as elsewhere, by that universal intelligent force. Neither is it necessary to assume that "germs of life crossed the spaces hither," for this creative spirit was everywhere, even in fire, and was ready here to organize as soon as chemistry was ready for organisms. The postulate that mind precedes and is independent of body is shown by the fact that there was a nebulous universe with an intelligent design in all its cosmic formation, then afterwards the advent of our organisms which are flimsy and ephemeral. From the smallest microscopic animalcule with its full complement of intelligent faculties, and some even with the human visage, all the way up through glorious vistas of suns, for billions of miles, we see one connected plan and planner. Cell and sun are brothers. Soul is abroad and man's mind here is a part of it. We can see by common phenomena right before our eyes that this creative intelligence is always in operation and present. Breathe upon a wintry pane, or spray water upon a cold flagstone, there instantly appear, before the eye can detect the change, vegetable forms. A tiny sphere of quicksilver, struck by the finger tip, flies, by its inherent living force, instantly into many lesser perfect spheres before the eye can see the process. ("Oh, God in the atom!"-T. D. Talmage.) All material energy and motion originate in mind. A natural intellect cannot conceive of force and action without a will power back of them, for, inductively, all we know of them in organic manifestation comes from preceding design and plan involving a designer and planner. Most minds say there cannot be any harmonious design, such as we see in all nature, but as coming from mind. But some minds refuse to cross that pons asinorum. Don't beat the animal; give him time; he shall evolve. We look upon a palace and its garnishment. The preceding intelligence and will of man brought it out from the mines and forests; so we naturally want to see the architect. We see an artificial flower and we inquire for the genius who exe cuted it. So when we see a natural living rose with its ambrosial breath and self-propagation, some of us acknowledge a maker of that also, although some do not. There could not have been any Cosmos at all without mind, for mindless chance would have broken the orderly continuity of growth, and the germ of the lily might have produced a rhinoceros, or the cell of the tadpole an oak. There would be just as much sense in saying the palace made the architect, or the cells make the sap of a tree, or the magnet makes its attractive power, as there is for saying brain cells make mind and the directive force within themselves. The brain cells are only the medium of reception and expression for the original mind-substance within their nuclei. A man can make a horseshoe magnet, but the life force within it, that is without germs, cells or corpuscles, is beyond him and the magnet, too. Why may not composite matter, as well as ether, make mind? Because it is transitory and secondary. The ether is primal and permanent. Now occurs the question, What is the substance of this unatomized, mental creative force, super-physical, that precedes the Cosmos and that has shown itself to be All-wise, All-powerful, All-present? Mind must have matter for its expression, its entity, its location, its personality. A conjectured or metaphysical soul, and a conjectured or metaphysical God are fallacious. We must have either a concrete soul or no soul at all, and a concrete God or no God at all. A soul is a continuing mind after the dissolution of its atomic body. As the mind of man here must have a body, so, in the oneness of law, the universal mind must have a body. The luminiferous ether is the body of the Omnipresent God. There is a divine duality of mind and matter united, as there is a human. duality of mind and matter united. We know scientifically that there is an elemental ether out of which all physical substance was made. Says Professor Baskerville, "The difference between the atoms of physical matter is the difference between the orbital motions of ether corpuscles." Who is causing these orbital motions to form systematic and purposeful atoms with which to build up the marvelous Universe? According to mental law the materialist cannot conceive of dead ether moving itself; there must be mind in the ether as there is in the physiology. From the simple fact of a body walking around with a mind in it is an easy intellectual step to the concept of the ether, which made the body, containing mind also. Our living, mindcontaining body is made up of the atoms of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous and sulphur, the atoms of which, whether organic or inorganic, all come from the parent ether. But we cannot combine them |