What the Universe Is Like*
By C. E. M. Joan.
Fnom the standpoint of the sciences there are roughly three views which it is possible to take about the nature of the
universe. Life exists—the fact is obvious ; so, apparently, does matter. Either, then, life is an illusion, or matter is an illusion, or neither is illusory and both are real. Let us consider the first and second possibilities.
According to the first, the potentiality for life was present in the particles of matter of which this planet is composed
from the outset, as wetness- is potentially- present - in the particles of hydrogen and oxygen. Life is not fundamental in the scheme of things ; it is an emanation from matter which appears under suitable material conditions. On every side the alien and the brutal condition the friendly and the spiritual, and life travels an unwanted passenger across a fundamentally• hostile environment, a passenger who, when the material conditions suitable to his transit cease to obtain, will finish his pointless journey with as little stir and significance as in the person of the amoeba he began it.
. There is, secondly, the view that the material world is in some sense an illusion. This, the idealist view, is derived partly from theory of knowledge—there are well-known grounds for supposing that whatever we know is in some sense either an event in our minds or an aspect of some all-embracing- structure of Mind—partly from reflection on those expe- riences which, enjoyed pre-eminently by the mystics, are on occasion shared by most human beings, when to the eye quickened by spiritual vision the whole world of matter falls away and reveals a fundamental spiritual reality with which, while the moment of vision lasts, the seer is united.
Now Sir Francis Younghusband's real view is, I cannot help thinking, the. mystic's. As one who has lived much in the East—his life since boyhood, he tells us, has been almost, equally divided between East and West—he lays great store by the experiences of the Hindu mystics. He has himself on three separate occasions enjoyed what. he takes to be the mystical experience.. Sufficiently a-Westerner to be unable to contemplate the supersession of his individuality with equa- nimity, he fought, he tells us, against the oncoming of the expe- rience. Uselessly, for " the power came all over him, till he was filled with it. It took absolute possession of him and he could only submit." Slight though the experience was, it yet sufficed to give him an insight into the world view -of the great mystics. When, summing up the implications of Ramakrishna's experience, he tells us that -" the soul was lost in Self. Dualism was blotted out. Finite and infinite space were as one. Beyond word, beyond thought, he had attained Brahma," he is using words which,. meaningless perhaps to the ordinary reader, convey, it -is obvious, a clear meaning to himself. The trouble about mysticism from the point of view of an expositor is that the conviction upon which it rests is a purely private and personal affair ; as private and as personal as the toothache. • Although you can convince me that you have the toothache, you cannot convey to me what having the toothache is like, unless I to have " enjoyed." the experience. Hence, while we are prepared to listen respectfully when Sir Francis Young- husband assures us that there are experiences which reveal the whole world as spiritual through and through, " An ocean of the Spirit, _boundless and dazzling," beautiful and supremely- excellent, in which, during the experience, the soul of the seer is completely merged, from which it should never have been parted and to which it yearns ever to return, it is only our emotions that respond ; our reasons
*The Living Universe. By Sir Francis Younghusband. (dolor Murray. 10s. 6d.) remain unconvinced. For what, reason asks, is it that parts the soul from reality We are not told, and the question apparently must not be pressed.
But it is not the world view of the mystic and the idealist which • Sir Francis Younghusband is chiefly concerned to maintain, but the third view which interprets the universe in terms of a principle of life or Mind, operating in and through this material world that science explores. " Mind," he tells us, "is operative throughout, always and everywhere."
The first half of his book is devoted to a refutation of materialism. The scientists, he points out, .tell us that the physical world is like a clock that is running down. One day, they warn us, the clock will cease to work, and the universe will reach a dead end in which all energy is evenly distributed in a changeless coma of cool radiation. But this, he insists,: cannot,, 0e the whole story, for how, if it Were, could we explain the fact that " in defiance of the law of thermo-dynamics, this earth in dying brought forth life. From somewhere, - somehow it was enabled to bring forth something which could fly in the face of that omnipotent second law " [of thermodynamics] " and in place of death produce life and love and beauty." The necessary grouping of atoms could not, he thinks, have occurred by chance— and we are bound, therefore, to deduce the operations of a directive Mind. This Mind he rather surprisingly places out- side the solar system : " We must assume that it was from the universe outside the solar system that there came the influence that produced these marvels " ; although why, if the mind be not material, it should be assumed to require a spatial habitat, is not .clear. The general conclusions are familiar enough. The individual spirit is immortal and survives. The destruction of this world, even if the scientists are right, does not necessitate the end of life. Spirit informs and dominates matter in varying degrees and the object of existence is to increase the degree of its realization.
If spirit and matter are both real, and if this universe of living organisms is one which bears witness to the operations of a spiritual principle , informing a material mould, how, it may be asked, is their interaction to be envisaged ? Inter- action , between substances of the same order presents no difficulty ; hence, the appeal of a thoroughgoing materialism or of, a thoroughgoing idealism. But the dualism -which Sir Francis Younghusband, except when he is in his mystical vein, seems to embrace is generally regarded as inaccept- able because of. the difficulty of conceiving how spirit, which has none of. the characteristics of matter, can.possibly estab- lish a point of contact with material, substance.. The argument for the underlying goodness at ,the heart of things is equally suspect. Sir Francis. Younghusband makes play with the notion of man as a microcosm reflecting the. macrocosm, of the universe. Man is spiritual and he has noble aspirations for disinterested ends ; the universe, too, must, therefore, be spiritual. But man is also evil, capable of unbelievable brutality - and cruelty. Is the universe, then, also evil ? The conclusion seems ines capable ; nevertheless, it, is , not drawn. The evil and the ugliness of things are brushed aside as. things .which will one day, disappear. Perhaps the strongest piece of evidence for. Sir Francis Young-
husband's point of view is the heroic persistence of this attempt .
to explain, in the sense of explaining away, the things, which repel and disgust us. Is not, we may ask, the persistence of this very ,attempt on the part of the human mind evidence, of
the Univeise'sown repugnance to those aspects which it con- . .
tains as it were in its own despite ? For my part, I hope rather than believe that Sir Francis Younghusband is right. -,
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