despair, men turned to the facts which they had neglected; and said--We
are weary of philosophy: we will study you, and you alone. As for God,
who can find Him? And they have worked at the facts like gallant and
honest men; and their work, like all good work, has produced, in the last
fifty years, results more enormous than they even dreamed. But what are
they finding, more and more, below their facts, below all phenomena which
the scalpel and the microscope can show? A something nameless,
invisible, imponderable, yet seemingly omnipresent and omnipotent,
retreating before them deeper and deeper, the deeper they delve: namely,
the life which shapes and makes; that which the old schoolmen called
"forma formativa," which they call vital force and what not--metaphors
all, or rather counters to mark an unknown quantity, as if they should
call it _x_ or _y_. One says--It is all vibrations: but his reason,
unsatisfied, asks--And what makes the vibrations vibrate? Another--It is
all physiological units: but his reason asks--What is the "physis," the
nature and innate tendency of the units? A third--It may be all caused
by infinitely numerous "gemmules:" but his reason asks him--What puts
infinite order into these gemmules, instead of infinite anarchy? I
mention these theories not to laugh at them. I have all due respect for
those who have put them forth. Nor would it interfere with my
theological creed, if any or all of them were proven to be true
to-morrow. I mention them only to show that beneath all these theories,
true or false, still lies that unknown _x_. Scientific men are becoming
more and more aware of it; I had almost said, ready to worship it. More
and more the noblest-minded of them are engrossed by the mystery of that
unknown and truly miraculous element in Nature, which is always escaping
them, though they cannot escape it. How should they escape it? Was it
not written of old--"Whither shall I go from Thy presence, or whither
shall I flee from Thy Spirit?"