LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

      mental energy to think for themselves, to cry out that finality has

      already been attained, and that any further search into the matter must

      end in the destruction of Truth. But in raising such an outcry they

      betray their ignorance of the very nature of Truth, which is that it can

      never be destroyed: the very fact that Truth is Truth makes this

      impossible. And again they exhibit their ignorance of the first

      principle of Life--namely, the Law of Growth, which throughout the

      universe perpetually pushes forward into more and more vivid forms of

      expression, having expansion everywhere and finality nowhere.

      Such ignorant objections need not, therefore, alarm us; and we should

      endeavour to show those who make them that what they fear is the only

      natural order of the Divine Life, which is "over all, and through all,

      and in all." But we must do this gently, and not by forcibly thrusting

      upon them the object of their terror, and so repelling them from all

      study of the subject. We should endeavour gradually to lead them to see

      that there is something interior to what they have hitherto held to be

      ultimate Truth, and to realise that the sensation of emptiness and

      dissatisfaction, which from time to time will persist in making itself

      felt in their hearts, is nothing else than the pressing forward of the

      spirit within to declare that inner side of things which alone can

      satisfactorily account for what we observe on the exterior, and without

      the knowledge of which we can never perceive the true nature of our

      inheritance in the Universal Life which is the Life Everlasting.

      What, then, is this central principle which is at the root of all

      things? It is Life. But not life as we recognise it in particular forms

      of manifestation; it is something more interior and concentrated than

      that. It is that "unity of the spirit" which _is_ unity, simply because

      it has not yet passed into diversity. Perhaps this is not an easy idea

      to grasp, but it is the root of all scientific conception of spirit; for

      without it there is no common principle to which we can refer the

      innumerable forms of manifestation that spirit assumes.

      It is the conception of Life as the sum-total of all its undistributed

      powers, being as yet none of these in particular, but all of them in

      potentiality. This is, no doubt, a highly abstract idea, but it is

      essentially that of the centre from which growth takes place by

      expansion in every direction. This is that last residuum which defies

      all our powers of analysis. This is truly "the unknowable," not in the

      sense of the unthinkable but of the unanalysable. It is the subject of

      perception, not of knowledge, if by knowledge we mean that faculty which

      estimates the _relations_ between things, because here we have passed

      beyond any questions of relations, and are face to face with the

      absolute.

      This innermost of all is absolute Spirit. It is Life as yet not

      differentiated into any specific mode; it is the universal Life which

      pervades all things and is at the heart of all appearances.

      To come into the knowledge of this is to come into the secret of power,

      and to enter into the secret place of Living Spirit. Is it illogical

      first to call this the unknowable, and then to speak of coming into the

      knowledge of it? Perhaps so; but no less a writer than St. Paul has set

      the example; for does he not speak of the final result of all searchings

      into the heights and depths and lengths and breadths of the inner side

      of things as being, to attain the knowledge of that Love which passeth

      knowledge. If he is thus boldly illogical in phrase, though not in fact,

      may we not also speak of knowing "the unknowable"? We may, for this

      knowledge is the root of all other knowledge.

      The presence of this undifferentiated universal life-power is the final

      axiomatic fact to which all our analysis must ultimately conduct us. On

      whatever plane we make our analysis it must always abut upon pure

      essence, pure energy, pure being; that which knows itself and recognises

      itself, but which cannot dissect itself because it is not built up of

      parts, but is ultimately integral: it is pure Unity. But analysis which

      does not lead to synthesis is merely destructive: it is the child

      wantonly pulling the flower to pieces and throwing away the fragments;

      not the botanist, also pulling the flower to pieces, but building up in

      his mind from those carefully studied fragments a vast synthesis of the

      constructive power of Nature, embracing the laws of the formation of all

      flower-forms. The value of analysis is to lead us to the original

      starting-point of that which we analyse, and so to teach us the laws by

      which its final form springs from this centre.

      Knowing the law of its construction, we turn our analysis into a

      synthesis, and we thus gain a power of building up which must always be

      beyond the reach of those who regard "the unknowable" as one with

      "not-being."

      _This_ idea of the unknowable is the root of all materialism; and yet no

      scientific man, however materialistic his proclivities, treats the

      unanalysable residuum thus when he meets it in the experiments of his

      laboratory. On the contrary, he makes this final unanalysable fact the

      basis of his synthesis. He finds that in the last resort it is energy of

      some kind, whether as heat or as motion; but he does not throw up his

      scientific pursuits because he cannot analyse it further. He adopts the

      precisely opposite course, and realises that the conservation of energy,

      its indestructibility, and the impossibility of adding to or detracting

      from the sum-total of energy in the world, is the one solid and

      unchanging fact on which alone the edifice of physical science can be

      built up. He bases all his knowledge upon his knowledge of "the

      unknowable." And rightly so, for if he could analyse this energy into

      yet further factors, then the same problem of "the unknowable" would

Скачать книгу