Preexistence

“ Not only have the two one law,— (mind is only in so far realized [65] as nature is expressed through it, and the actuality of nature is its expression in mind) but both are, in fact, one, the succession in their development on the earth being a succession only in relation to the earth, and for us in this respect. Although to our notion of time, thousands of millions of years lie between the two, their [Pg 147] separation does not represent a second for the universe and its eternity, for the comprehension of which it must be disregarded. ”

“ Thus the circumstantial evidence absolutely negatives the conception of the eternity of the present condition of things. We can say, with certainty, that the present condition of things has existed for a comparatively short period; and that, so far as animal and vegetable nature are concerned, it has been preceded by a different condition. We can pursue this evidence until we reach the lowest of the stratified rocks, in which we lose the indications of life altogether. The hypothesis of the eternity of the present state of nature may therefore be put out of court. ”

“ But this would be saying too much, for we must not forget that, just as evolution has continued in the past from eternity, so will it continue in the future to eternity; and who can tell to what heights the human mind may soar in the future? ”

“ So all have birth and perishable frame, Thus the whole nature of the world itself Must be conceived as perishable too. For, verily, those things of which we see The parts and members to have birth in time And perishable shapes, those same we mark To be invariably born in time And born to die. And therefore when I see The mightiest members and the parts of this Our world consumed and begot again, 'Tis mine to know that also sky above And earth beneath began of old in time And shall in time go under to disaster. ”

“ If, as we saw reason to think, there is an alternation of Evolution and Dissolution in the totality of things,—if, as we are obliged to infer from the Persistence of Force, the arrival at either limit of this vast rhythm brings about the conditions under which a counter-movement commences, [218] —if we are hence compelled to entertain the conception of Evolutions that have filled an immeasurable past, and Evolutions that will fill an immeasurable future,—we can no longer contemplate the visible creation as having a definite beginning or end, or as being isolated. ”

“ And into these must each thing be resolved, When comes its supreme hour, that thus there be At hand the stuff for plenishing the world. So primal germs have solid singleness Nor otherwise could they have been conserved Through aeons and infinity of time For the replenishment of wasted worlds. Once more, if nature had given a scope for things To be forever broken more and more, By now the bodies of matter would have been So far reduced by breakings in old days That from them nothing could, at season fixed, Be born, and arrive its prime and top of life. ”

“ Double that period, and you come to the far distant moment when the present aspect of this world was called, by creation, out of the formless void in which it was before.
Modern science has raised us to a pinnacle of thought beyond even this. It has commanded us to think of countless ages in which that formless void existed before it put on the aspect of its present creation. Millions of years before God called the light day, and the darkness night, there was, if science speaks true, creation after creation called into existence, and buried in its own ruins upon the surface of this earth. ”

“ All creation, man included, was but the result of one undeviating, unceasing, eternal, all-pervading law, and the state of the universe at any given moment was the state of evolution which that universe exhibited. ”

“ That "the organic phenomena which precede apparent death can not of themselves be distinguished from those which precede real death, and that for a certain time it will be difficult to decide, scientifically, whether life be suspended, or extinct" ”

“ Modern science teaches us the doctrine of the persistence of matter; in Sir Oliver Lodge’s words, ‘a really existing thing never perishes, but only changes its form’—in the case of our complex human constitution, that change of form is what we call death. ”

“ And what begins from non-existence, and can be conceived not to exist, and unless it subsists through something else, returns to non-existence; and what has a past existence, which is no longer, or a future existence, which is not yet, --this does not properly and absolutely exist. ”

“ But the question is, Does this continuity terminate now in the living series, and is there then a break—a sharp, clear discontinuity, and beyond, another realm immeasurably less endowed, known as the realm of not-life? or Does what has been taken for the clear-cut boundary of the vital area, when more deeply searched, reveal the presence of a force at present unknown, which changes not-living into the living, and thus makes all nature an unbroken sequence and a continuous whole? ”

“ In other words, the questions of birth and death, of extinction or immortality, are merely the incidental results of the peculiarity of our conceptions of time, the peculiarity that the time of our conceptions is irreversible, flows continuously at a uniform rate in the same direction from the past to the future. ”

“ The conceived relations of Past, Present, and Future in the real world of common-sense metaphysics, appear indeed, at first sight, vastly to transcend anything that we ourselves have ever observed in our inner experience. The infinite and irrevocable past that no longer is, the expected infinite future that has as yet no existence, how remote these ideal constructions, supposed to be valid for all gods and men and things, seem at first sight from the brief and significant series of successive events that occur within the brief span of our actual human consciousness. ”

“ I will do so by showing that, though past and future coexist, time has not been entirely done away with; the full meaning of Eternity, and therefore of Completeness, has not been attained. Even if past and future are equally real with the present and with each other, does it follow that there is no distinction between the past and the future? Does it follow that what we call the completion of a process is in no wise different from what we call its beginning? ”

“ But if you ask me, how it is possible that Nature, the Effect and Creature of God, can be Eternal without beginning? I will desire you to answer me first, how a Creature can be Eternal without end, as, for example. Supernatural Spirits are, and then I will answer you, how a Creature can be Eternal without beginning; For Eternity consists herein, that it has neither beginning nor end; and if it be easie for God to make a Being without end, it is not difficult for Him to make a Being without beginning. ”

“ Here we are dealing with the finite, not with the infinite, and nothing that is [229] finite can lie beyond the boundaries of investigation, however long it may take to reach it. The question of the existence of spirits, for instance,—that much mooted problem of the immortality, or at least of the future existence, of man, which forms so prominent an element in modern religion,—dwells within the possible reach of science, and the attempt to deal with it by scientific evidence may reasonably be made. ”

“ Pre-existence is in harmony with the teachings of Jesus, reason and eternal life. The animated body comes into existence through transformation from pre-existence. If that quality, to present, to consider, to decide, exists it must be a transformation of some kind of pre-existence. ”

“ This is an important question and in my estimation there is nothing absurd or unreasonable in the least degree, in believing that that personage that we call the intelligent spirit, which can exist between death and the resurrection, separate and distinct from the body, could also have had an existence before the body was formed, that is, a pre-existence. This is a Scriptural doctrine, for there are many passages in Scripture which, in my estimation, prove that man had a pre-existence. ”

“ Does it reason, imagine, apprehend, without those ideas which sensation alone can communicate? If we have not existed before birth; if, at the period when the parts of our nature on which thought and life depend, seem to be woven together; if there are no reasons to suppose that we have existed before that period at which our existence apparently commences, then there are no grounds for supposition that we shall continue to exist after our existence has apparently ceased. ”

“ Pre-existence, once admitted as regards the past, logically implies a succession of future [269] existences for all souls that have not yet attained to the goal and that have imperfections and defilements from which to be cleansed. In order to enter the circle of happiness and leave the circle of wanderings, one must be pure. ”

“ Or even that it exhibited laws of which we have no experience now, such as would admit of a 'natural' development of life out of what is not living? All these, and many more questions, appear to be so completely open that, granted the general theory of continuous evolution as against special creation, hardly anything as regards the factors or causes of evolution can be said to be scientifically settled. ”

“ But the nature of our own limited powers teaches us that there may be powers that are as far above ours as the heavens are above the earth, as the endless realms of space stretch beyond and forever beyond any measurable distance, as eternity stretches beyond and forever beyond all measurable time. At all events, the postulate of an infinite God is the one common starting-point for the scientists of the evolution school and those who accept their doctrine, and for those who dissent from it. ”

“ Add to this, that in tracing an eternal succession of objects, it seems absurd to inquire for a general cause or first author. How can any thing, that exists from eternity, have a cause, since that relation implies a priority in time, and a beginning of existence? ”

“ If the mind, or that part of our individuality which we call the soul, is in its origin and nature nothing but what the evolution theory supposes, what was there to be informed of immortality, or of anything else? The possibility and certainty of an existence after the death of the body is a conviction that must exercise great influence over the conduct of men in this life. ”

“ We are led into the remote past where night and chaos reigned and asked to believe that by the conflict of the elements and "the fortuitous concourse of atoms," through ages of ages, the process of evolution began. We are led through an infinite labyrinth of attractions and repulsions, of conflicts and changes, of survivals and destructions, of hereditary tendencies, and we are asked to accept these as the origin and cause of life, when not one of these powers belong to matter. ”

“ One of the first results of these discoveries will be to completely upset the theory as to the succession of ages, as I may call it, which is given and accepted at the present time, and also the estimation of the various civilizations that have passed from the earth and left no trace except in the inner constitution of ourselves—for it is held that we are those very persons, now in different bodies, who so long ago lived and loved and died upon the planet. ”

“ How marvellous then are those laws by which even the humblest types of organic existence are preserved, though born amidst the sources of their destruction, and by which a species of immortality is given to generations, floating, as it were, like evanescent bubbles on a stream raised from the deepest caverns of the earth, and instantly losing what may be called its spirit in the atmosphere! ”

“ In this sense people, however wrongly, are in the habit of fancying even the being of God as essentially a temporal existence, only differenced from our transient life of the senses, hemmed in betwixt birth and death, by lasting from forever in the past to forever in the future. ”

“ We find, in fact, that men of Science who have no prepossessions whatever against Evolution, and would willingly accept the Law of Continuity at all points, if only evidence were forthcoming, find here not only an unsolved problem, but one even more difficult than the Origin of Life itself. ”

“ In other words, may not these "fixed laws," and that "necessity" of which you admit the existence, represent the perpetual pressure of the Creator's hand, or will, upon the Universe?
By Evolution is meant that all results are evolved from immediate causes, which are evolved from distant causes, which are themselves evolved from more distant causes; and so on. In old times, men believed that God made the world by a number of isolated acts. ”

“ Is it not a wonder which, so far from destroying our hopes of immortality, can establish that doctrine on a train of inferences and inductions more firmly established and more connected with each other than the former belief can be, as soon as we have proved that matter is not perishable, but is only liable to successive combinations and decombinations.
“Can we look farther back one way into the first origin of matter than we can look forward the other way into the last developments of mind? ”

“ For the processes called evolution, though everywhere operative, affect, each of them, only parts of the infinite Evolution and Decay applicable only to Parts, not to the Whole. whole of things; and experience cannot possibly afford any justification for supposing that they affect the Universe itself. Thus, the matter or energy of which we think we consist, was in existence, every atom of it, and every element of force, before we were born, and will survive our apparent death. ”

“ Yet to our limited vision, the origin of life fades « 170 » away in the almost illimitable depths of past time, and we are ready to despair of ever reaching, by any process of discovery, to its first steps of progress. At what time did life begin? In what form did dead matter first assume or receive those mysterious functions of growth, reproduction and sensation? ”