God the Known and God the Unknown [13]
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
"'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