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HPB-SB-10-341: Difference between revisions
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{{Style P-HPB SB. Title continued |A Voice from Laodicea|10-339}} | {{Style P-HPB SB. Title continued |A Voice from Laodicea|10-339}} | ||
... | {{Style P-No indent|because we have never discovered any instance to contradict them, never having at any time or anywhere seen two straight hedges surround a field, or two straight walls a prison make. Here again, we can see that whilst it is true to say that men’s minds are now so constituted as to be unable to conceive the contrary of these geometrical axioms, that constitution is itself the product of experience, a compendium of all the wisdom of our ancestors. And the belief that two straight lines cannot enclose a space would seem to be founded on just the same evidence, and to be no more necessarily and absolutely true, than the belief that the sun will rise to-morrow. However probable, either is incapable of proof. And strange to say the discoveries of the last few years have gone far to disprove the former belief, once held to be a “necessary” truth, founded in the very nature of things. It has been shown that there may be space, possibly that this very universe in which we live is of such a nature, that all lines drawn in it must be curved, while to our senses straight as the path of a steamer to New York we know by our reason only to be an arc of a large circle. In such space there could be more than one straight line drawn between two points; of two straight lines parallel to each other, one might be parallel and the other not, to a third straight line; the three angles of a triangle might be greater or less than two right angles. Our so-called necessary conceptions are on this view purely adventitious; we do not even know whether or not they correspond to the actual universe in which we live; if they do so correspond, it is by a happy accident.}} | ||
There are two points to be noticed here: first, that the dictates of the moral or geometrical sense have just the validity which is conferred on them by the whole of human experience,—this much and no more. We learn, also, that though these instincts may be proved to be in any particular instance inadequate or misleading, it is still almost impossible to disobey them. It is sometimes justifiable or necessary to kill a man in cold blood, but no one can do such a deed without revolting against his whole moral nature. Few men, I imagine, perhaps not even Lobatchewsky himself, though he may prove it to be true, believe that if I wanted to get from here to the other end of this room, I could accomplish my object by walking away in the opposite direction through the void of space. Now the scientific sense is strictly comparable to these other intuitions, in so far as it is an organised register of all past experience. It is Hume’s law of evidence written in the fleshy tablets of the brain. Or to put it the other way, Hume’s law, that no evidence is sufficient to prove a miracle, is not a logical, but a psychological law. His assertion simply amounts to this: “the conformation of my brain is perfect, that of yours is imperfect. I find that I can’t believe in miracles: you, who say that you can, ought not to:” just as a parent may tell a child that he must not tell a lie, because it is wrong to do so. This explains how it is that belief appears not to depend upon the rules of logic. It does indeed so depend, but in its syllogism the conclusion is drawn from premises which are but half stated, or not stated at all. Ask a well-educated, well-born Englishman, why he believes the Earth to go round the Sun, and not ''vice versa''. He will probably answer, because he was told so as a child, and has since repeatedly heard the statement on indisputable authority. He may go on to say that he believes it, because he can prove it from his knowledge of celestial mechanics; but these are only subsidiary reasons for his belief; the true premises are not stated. He believes in it, because it was fully demonstrated to his ancestor in the 15th, or assuming him to have been a little behind his age, the 16th century, and the descendants of that ancestor in each successive generation have gone on believing it ever since. | |||
Belief, then, is not a specific act, but a state. A man may even believe a thing without knowing it, as another man may talk prose all his life without knowing it. Belief may be compared to a physiological function. A man can no more believe a statement by mere act of will, than he can by a similar act of will enable his liver to secrete gastric juice, or his eye to perceive four primary colours. But the moral intuitions differ but slightly in men of the same race and so presumably do the geometrical. This scientific sense, however, is found in every stage of developement amongst individuals similarly situated. And as Aristotle said that the man over whom the social instincts had so little influence that he could bear to live alone, must be either an ape or an angel, so it would seem that he in whom the intellectual intuitions are so feebly developed that he can believe in space of a constant curvature, or in spirits communicating with men, must be one of two things, a philosopher or a fool. For whilst most men inherit so much of their intellectual furniture from their fathers, that they have very little room left for any fresh acquisitions of their own, there are others whose inheritance is of such a poor description that it would have been almost better for them to have been cut off with a shilling figuratively speaking, had that been possible. But it is not possible, for this species of property is of all the most strictly entailed. And there are yet others, who entering upon a well furnished house, enlarge and add to it richly themselves. Spiritualists hold that the ordinary man of science belongs to the first of those categories. He has a rich intellectual legacy, but not sufficient of the creative faculty to increase his stores, except in the way marked out for him. His mind may be compared to a country which has sunk the greater part of its wealth in railways, and now feels somewhat at a loss for a little circulating capital to go on with. It is perfectly true that you can get from London to Edinburgh much quicker by the Great Northern than in your private carriage, and that probably in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred that is the preferable mode of conveyance. Still the man who never travels but by rail must forego all acquaintance with out-of-the-way nooks and corners, and be content to know no more of his native land than he can see from his carriage windows. Such an one says truly that the facts of Spiritualism possess no interest for him. | |||
<center>(''To be Continued''.)</center> | |||
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