God the Known and God the Unknown
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Samuel Butler >> God the Known and God the Unknown
No man does well so to kick against the pricks as to set himself
against tendencies of such depth, strength, and permanence as
this. If he is to be in harmony with the dominant opinion of his
own and of many past ages, he will see a single God-impregnate
substance as having been the parent from which all living forms
have sprung. One spirit, and one form capable of such
modification as its directing spirit shall think fit; one soul
and one body, one God and one Life.
For the time has come when the two unities so painfully arrived
at must be joined together as body and soul, and be seen not as
two, but one. There is no living organism untenanted by the
Spirit of God, nor any Spirit of God perceivable by man apart
from organism embodying and expressing it. God and the Life of
the World are like a mountain, which will present different
aspects as we look at it from different sides, but which, when we
have gone all round it, proves to be one only. God is the animal
and vegetable world, and the animal and vegetable world is God.
I have repeatedly said that we ought to see all animal and
vegetable life as uniting to form a single personality. I should
perhaps explain this more fully, for the idea of a compound
person is one which at first is not very easy to grasp, inasmuch
as we are not conscious of any but our more superficial aspects,
and have therefore until lately failed to understand that we are
ourselves compound persons. I may perhaps be allowed to quote
from an earlier work.
"Each cell in the human body is now admitted by physiologists to
be a person with an intelligent soul, differing from our own more
complex soul in degree and not in kind, and, like ourselves,
being born, living, and dying. It would appear, then, as though
'we,' 'our souls,' or 'selves,' or 'personalities,' or by
whatever name we may prefer to be called, are but the
consensus and full- flowing stream of countless sensations
and impulses on the part of our tributary souls or 'selves,' who
probably no more know that we exist, and that they exist as a
part of us, than a microscopic insect knows the results of
spectrum analysis, or than an agricultural labourer [sic] knows
the working of the British Constitution; and of whom we know no
more than we do of the habits and feelings of some class widely
separated from our own."-("Life and Habit," p. 110.)
After which it became natural to ask the following question :-
"Is it possible to avoid imagining that we may be ourselves
atoms, undesignedly combining to form some vaster being, though
we are utterly incapable of perceiving this being as a single
individual, or of realising [sic] the scheme and scope of our own
combination? And this, too, not a spiritual being, which, without
matter or what we think matter of some sort, is as complete
nonsense to us as though men bade us love and lean upon an
intelligent vacuum, but a being with what is virtually flesh and
blood and bones, with organs, senses, dimensions in some way
analogous to our own, into some other part of which being at the
time of our great change we must infallibly re-enter, starting
clean anew, with bygones bygones, and no more ache for ever from
age or antecedents.
"'An organic being,' writes Mr. Darwin, 'is a microcosm, a little
universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms
inconceivably minute and numerous as the stars in Heaven.' As
these myriads of smaller organisms are parts and processes of us,
so are we parts and processes of life at large."
A tree is composed of a multitude of subordinate trees, each bud
being a distinct individual. So coral polypes [sic] form a tree-
like growth of animal life, with branches from which spring
individual polypes [sic] that are connected by a common tissue
and supported by a common skeleton. We have no difficulty in
seeing a unity in multitude, and a multitude in unity here,
because we can observe the wood and the gelatinous tissue
connecting together all the individuals which compose either the
tree or the mass of polypes [sic]. Yet the skeleton, whether of
tree or of polype [sic], is inanimate; and the tissue, whether of
bark or gelatine [sic], is only the matted roots of the
individual buds; so that the outward and striking connection
between the individuals is more delusive than real. The true
connection is one which cannot be seen, and consists in the
animation of each bud by a like spirit-in the community of soul,
in "the voice of the Lord which maketh men to be of one mind in
an house"-"to dwell together in unity"-to take what are
practically identical views of things, and express themselves in
concert under all circumstances. Provided this-the true unifier
of organism-can be shown to exist, the absence of gross outward
and visible but inanimate common skeleton is no bar to oneness of
personality.
Let us picture to our minds a tree of which all the woody fibre
[sic] shall be invisible, the buds and leaves seeming to stand in
mid-air unsupported and unconnected with one another, so that
there is nothing but a certain tree- like collocation of foliage
to suggest any common principle of growth uniting the leaves.
Three or four leaves of different ages stand living together at
the place in the air where the end of each bough should be; of
these the youngest are still tender and in the bud, while the
older ones are turning yellow and on the point of falling.
Between these leaves a sort of twig-like growth can be detected
if they are looked at in certain lights, but it is hard to see,
except perhaps when a bud is on the point of coming out. Then
there does appear to be a connection which might be called
branch-like.
The separate tufts are very different from one another, so that
oak leaves, ash leaves, horse-chestnut leaves, etc., are each
represented, but there is one species only at the end of each
bough.
Though the trunk and all the inner boughs and leaves have
disappeared, yet there hang here and there fossil leaves, also in
mid-air; they appear to have been petrified, without method or
selection, by what we call the caprices of nature; they hang in
the path which the boughs and twigs would have taken, and they
seem to indicate that if the tree could have been seen a million
years earlier, before it had grown near its present size, the
leaves standing at the end of each bough would have been found
very different from what they are now. Let us suppose that all
the leaves at the end of all the invisible boughs, no matter how
different they now are from one another, were found in earliest
budhood to be absolutely indistinguishable, and afterwards to
develop towards each differentiation through stages which were
indicated by the fossil leaves. Lastly, let us suppose that
though the boughs which seem wanted to connect all the living
forms of leaves with the fossil leaves, and with countless forms
of which all trace has disappeared, and also with a single root-
have become invisible, yet that there is irrefragable evidence to
show that they once actually existed, and indeed are existing at
this moment, in a condition as real though as invisible to the
eye as air or electricity. Should we, I ask, under these
circumstances hesitate to call our imaginary plant or tree by a
single name, and to think of it as one person, merely upon the
score that the woody fibre [sic] was invisible? Should we not
esteem the common soul, memories and principles of growth which
are preserved between all the buds, no matter how widely they
differ in detail, as a more living bond of union than a framework
of wood would be, which, though it were visible to the eye, would
still be inanimate?
The mistletoe appears as closely connected with the tree on which
it grows as any of the buds of the tree itself; it is fed upon
the same sap as the other buds are, which sap-however much it may
modify it at the last moment-it draws through the same fibres
[sic] as do its foster-brothers-why then do we at once feel that
the mistletoe is no part of the apple tree? Not from any want of
manifest continuity, but from the spiritual difference-from the
profoundly different views of life and things which are taken by
the parasite and the tree on which it grows-the two are
now different because they think differently-as long as
they thought alike they were alike-that is to say they were
protoplasm-they and we and all that lives meeting in this common
substance.
We ought therefore to regard our supposed tufts of leaves as a
tree, that is to say, as a compound existence, each one of whose
component items is compounded of others which are also in their
turn compounded. But the tree above described is no imaginary
parallel to the condition of life upon the globe; it is perhaps
as accurate a description of the Tree of Life as can be put into
so small a compass. The most sure proof of a man's identity is
the power to remember that such and such things happened, which
none but he can know; the most sure proof of his remembering is
the power to react his part in the original drama, whatever it
may have been; if a man can repeat a performance with consummate
truth, and can stand any amount of cross-questioning about it, he
is the performer of the original performance, whatever it was.
The memories which all living forms prove by their actions that
they possess-the memories of their common identity with a single
person in whom they meet-this is incontestable proof of their
being animated by a common soul. It is certain, therefore, that
all living forms, whether animal or vegetable, are in reality one
animal; we and the mosses being part of the same vast person in
no figurative sense, but with as much bona fide literal
truth as when we say that a man's finger-nails and his eyes are
parts of the same man.
It is in this Person that we may see the Body of God-and in the
evolution of this Person, the mystery of His Incarnation.
[In "Unconscious Memory," Chapter V, Butler wrote: "In the
articles above alluded to ("God the Known and God the Unknown") I
separated the organic from the inorganic, but when I came to
rewrite them I found that this could not be done, and that I must
reconstruct what I had written." This reconstruction never having
been effected, it may be well to quote further from "Unconscious
Memory" (concluding chapter): "At parting, therefore, I would
recommend the reader to see every atom in the universe as living
and able to feel and remember, but in a humble way. He must have
life eternal as well as matter eternal; and the life and the
matter must be joined together inseparably as body and soul to
one another. Thus he will see God everywhere, not as those who
repeat phrases conventionally, but as people who would have their
words taken according to their most natural and legitimate
meaning; and he will feel that the main difference between him
and many of those who oppose him lies in the fact that whereas
both he and they use the same language, his opponents only half
mean what they say, while he means it entirely... We shall
endeavour [sic] to see the so-called inorganic as living, in
respect of the qualities it has in common with the organic,
rather than the organic as non- living in respect of the
qualities it has in common with the inorganic."]
CHAPTER VII
THE LIKENESS OF GOD
In my last chapter I endeavoured [sic] to show that each living
being, whether animal or plant, throughout the world is a
component item of a single personality, in the same way as each
individual citizen of a community is a member of one state, or as
each cell of our own bodies is a separate person, or each bud of
a tree a separate plant. We must therefore see the whole varied
congeries of living things as a single very ancient Being,
of inconceivable vastness, and animated by one Spirit.
We call the octogenarian one person with the embryo of a few days
old from which he has developed. An oak or yew tree may be two
thousand years old, but we call it one plant with the seed from
which it has grown. Millions of individual buds have come and
gone, to the yearly wasting and repairing of its substance; but
the tree still lives and thrives, and the dead leaves have life
therein. So the Tree of Life still lives and thrives as a single
person, no matter how many new features it has acquired during
its development, nor, again, how many of its individual leaves
fall yellow to the ground daily. The spirit or soul of this
person is the Spirit of God, and its body-for we know of no soul
or spirit without a body, nor of any living body without a spirit
or soul, and if there is a God at all there must be a body of
God-is the many-membered outgrowth of protoplasm, the
ensemble of animal and vegetable life.
To repeat. The Theologian of to-day tells us that there is a God,
but is horrified at the idea of that God having a body. We say
that we believe in God, but that our minds refuse to realise
[sic] an intelligent Being who has no bodily person. "Where
then," says the Theologian, " is the body of your God?" We have
answered, "In the living forms upon the earth, which, though they
look many, are, when we regard them by the light of their history
and of true analogies, one person only." The spiritual connection
between them is a more real bond of union than the visible
discontinuity of material parts is ground for separating them in
our thoughts.
Let the reader look at a case of moths in the shop-window of a
naturalist, and note the unspeakable delicacy, beauty, and yet
serviceableness of their wings; or let him look at a case of
humming-birds, and remember how infinitely small a part of Nature
is the whole group of the animals he may be considering, and how
infinitely small a part of that group is the case that he is
looking at. Let him bear in mind that he is looking on the dead
husks only of what was inconceivably more marvellous [sic] when
the moths or humming-birds were alive. Let him think of the
vastness of the earth, and of the activity by day and night
through countless ages of such countless forms of animal and
vegetable life as that no human mind can form the faintest
approach to anything that can be called a conception of their
multitude, and let him remember that all these forms have touched
and touched and touched other living beings till they meet back
on a common substance in which they are rooted, and from which
they all branch forth so as to be one animal. Will he not in this
real and tangible existence find a God who is as much more worthy
of admiration than the God of the ordinary Theologian-as He is
also more easy of comprehension?
For the Theologian dreams of a God sitting above the clouds among
the cherubim, who blow their loud uplifted angel trumpets before
Him, and humour [sic] Him as though He were some despot in an
Oriental tale; but we enthrone Him upon the wings of birds, on
the petals of flowers, on the faces of our friends, and upon
whatever we most delight in of all that lives upon the earth. We
then can not only love Him, but we can do that without which love
has neither power nor sweetness, but is a phantom only, an
impersonal person, a vain stretching forth of arms towards
something that can never fill them-we can express our love and
have it expressed to us in return. And this not in the uprearing
of stone temples-for the Lord dwelleth [sic] in temples made with
other organs than hands-nor yet in the cleansing of our hearts,
but in the caress bestowed upon horse and dog, and kisses upon
the lips of those we love.
Wide, however, as is the difference between the orthodox
Theologian and ourselves, it is not more remarkable than the
number of the points on which we can agree with him, and on
which, moreover, we can make his meaning clearer to himself than
it can have ever hitherto been. He, for example, says that man
has been made in the image of God, but he cannot mean what he
says, unless his God has a material body; we, on the other hand,
do not indeed believe that the body of God-the incorporation of
all life-is like the body of a man, more than we believe each one
of our own cells or subordinate personalities to be like a man in
miniature; but we nevertheless hold that each of our tributary
selves is so far made after the likeness of the body corporate
that it possesses all our main and essential characteristics-that
is to say, that it can waste and repair itself; can feel, move,
and remember. To this extent, also, we-who stand in mean
proportional between our tributary personalities and God-are made
in the likeness of God; for we, and God, and our subordinate
cells alike possess the essential characteristics of life which
have been above recited. It is more true, therefore, for us to
say that we are made in the likeness of God than for the orthodox
Theologian to do so.
Nor, again, do we find difficulty in adopting such an expression
as that "God has taken our nature upon Him." We hold this as
firmly, and much more so, than Christians can do, but we say that
this is no new thing for Him to do, for that He has taken flesh
and dwelt among us from the day that He first assumed our shape,
some millions of years ago, until now. God cannot become man more
especially than He can become other living forms, any more than
we can be our eyes more especially than any other of our
organs. We may develop larger eyes, so that our eyes may come to
occupy a still more important place in our economy than they do
at present; and in a similar way the human race may become a more
predominant part of God than it now is-but we cannot admit that
one living form is more like God than another; we must hold all
equally like Him, inasmuch as they "keep ever," as Buffon says,
"the same fundamental unity, in spite of differences of detail-
nutrition, development, reproduction" (and, I would add,
"memory") "being the common traits of all organic bodies." The
utmost we can admit is, that some embodiments of the Spirit of
Life may be more important than others to the welfare of Life as
a whole, in the same way as some of our organs are more important
than others to ourselves.
But the above resemblances between the language which we can
adopt intelligently and that which Theologians use vaguely, seem
to reduce the differences of opinion between the two contending
parties to disputes about detail. For even those who believe
their ideas to be the most definite, and who picture to
themselves a God as anthropomorphic as He was represented by
Raffaelle, are yet not prepared to stand by their ideas if they
are hard pressed in the same way as we are by ours. Those who say
that God became man and took flesh upon Him, and that He is now
perfect God and perfect man of a reasonable soul and human flesh
subsisting, will yet not mean that Christ has a heart, blood, a
stomach, etc., like man's, which, if he has not, it is idle to
speak of him as "perfect man." I am persuaded that they do not
mean this, nor wish to mean it; but that they have been led into
saying it by a series of steps which it is very easy to
understand and sympathise [sic] with, if they are considered with
any diligence.
For our forefathers, though they might and did feel the existence
of a Personal God in the world, yet could not demonstrate this
existence, and made mistakes in their endeavour [sic] to persuade
themselves that they understood thoroughly a truth which they had
as yet perceived only from a long distance. Hence all the
dogmatism and theology of many centuries. It was impossible for
them to form a clear or definite conception concerning God until
they had studied His works more deeply, so as to grasp the idea
of many animals of different kinds and with no apparent
connection between them, being yet truly parts of one and the
same animal which comprised them in the same way as a tree
comprises all its buds. They might speak of this by a figure of
speech, but they could not see it as a fact. Before this could be
intended literally, Evolution must be grasped, and not Evolution
as taught in what is now commonly called Darwinism, but the old
teleological Darwinism of eighty years ago. Nor is this again
sufficient, for it must be supplemented by a perception of the
oneness of personality between parents and offspring, the
persistence of memory through all generations, the latency of
this memory until rekindled by the recurrence of the associated
ideas, and the unconsciousness with which repeated acts come to
be performed. These are modern ideas which might be caught sight
of now and again by prophets in time past, but which are even now
mastered and held firmly only by the few.
When once, however, these ideas have been accepted, the chief
difference between the orthodox God and the God who can be seen
of all men is, that the first is supposed to have existed from
all time, while the second has only lived for more millions of
years than our minds can reckon intelligently; the first is
omnipresent in all space, while the second is only present in the
living forms upon this earth-that is to say, is only more widely
present than our minds can intelligently embrace. The first is
omnipotent and all-wise; the second is only quasi-omnipotent and
quasi all-wise. It is true, then, that we deprive God of that
infinity which orthodox Theologians have ascribed to Him, but the
bounds we leave Him are of such incalculable extent that nothing
can be imagined more glorious or vaster; and in return for the
limitations we have assigned to Him, we render it possible for
men to believe in Him , and love Him, not with their lips only,
but with their hearts and lives.
Which, I may now venture to ask my readers, is the true God-the
God of the Theologian, or He whom we may see around us, and in
whose presence we stand each hour and moment of our lives?
CHAPTER VIII
THE LIFE EVERLASTING
Let us now consider the life which we can look forward to with
certainty after death, and the moral government of the world here
on earth.
If we could hear the leaves complaining to one another that they
must die, and commiserating the hardness of their lot in having
ever been induced to bud forth, we should, I imagine, despise
them for their peevishness more than we should pity them. We
should tell them that though we could not see reason for thinking
that they would ever hang again upon the same-or any at all
similar-bough as the same individual leaves, after they had once
faded and fallen off, yet that as they had been changing
personalities without feeling it during the whole of their
leafhood, so they would on death continue to do this selfsame
thing by entering into new phases of life. True, death will
deprive them of conscious memory concerning their now current
life; but, though they die as leaves, they live in the tree whom
they have helped to vivify, and whose growth and continued well-
being is due solely to this life and death of its component
personalities.
We consider the cells which are born and die within us yearly to
have been sufficiently honoured [sic] in having contributed their
quotum to our life; why should we have such difficulty in seeing
that a healthy enjoyment and employment of our life will give us
a sufficient reward in that growth of God wherein we may live
more truly and effectually after death than we have lived when we
were conscious of existence? Is Handel dead when he influences
and sets in motion more human beings in three months now than
during the whole, probably, of the years in which he thought that
he was alive? What is being alive if the power to draw men for
many miles in order that they may put themselves en
rapport with him is not being so? True, Handel no longer
knows the power which he has over us, but this is a small matter;
he no longer animates six feet of flesh and blood, but he lives
in us as the dead leaf lives in the tree. He is with God, and God
knows him though he knows himself no more.
This should suffice, and I observe in practice does suffice, for
all reasonable persons. It may be said that one day the tree
itself must die, and the leaves no longer live therein; and so,
also, that the very God or Life of the World will one day perish,
as all that is born must surely in the end die. But they who fret
upon such grounds as this must be in so much want of a grievance
that it were a cruelty to rob them of one: if a man who is fond
of music tortures himself on the ground that one day all possible
combinations and permutations of sounds will have been exhausted
so that there can be no more new tunes, the only thing we can do
with him is to pity him and leave him; nor is there any better
course than this to take with those idle people who worry them
selves and others on the score that they will one day be unable
to remember the small balance of their lives that they have not
already forgotten as unimportant to them-that they will one day
die to the balance of what they have not already died to. I never
knew a well-bred or amiable person who complained seriously of
the fact that he would have to die. Granted we must all some
times find ourselves feeling sorry that we cannot remain for ever
at our present age, and that we may die so much sooner than we
like; but these regrets are passing with well-disposed people,
and are a sine qua non for the existence of life at all.
For if people could live for ever so as to suffer from no such
regret, there would be no growth nor development in life; if, on
the other hand, there were no unwillingness to die, people would
commit suicide upon the smallest contradiction, and the race
would end in a twelvemonth.