The Riddle of the Universe

The close of the nineteenth century offers one of the most remarkable spectacles to the thoughtful observer. All educated people are agreed that it has in many respects immeasurably outstripped its predecessors, and has achieved tasks that were deemed impracticable at its commencement. An entirely new character has been given to the whole of our modern civilization, not only by our astounding theoretical progress in sound knowledge of nature, but also by the remarkably fertile practical application of that knowledge in technical science, industry, commerce, and so forth. On the other hand, however, we have made little or no progress in moral and social life, in comparison with earlier centuries; at times there has been serious reaction. And from this obvious conflict there have arisen, not only an uneasy sense of dismemberment and falseness, but even the danger of grave catastrophes in the political and social world. It is, then, not merely the right, but the sacred duty, of every honorable and humanitarian thinker to devote himself conscientiously to the settlement of that conflict, and to warding off the dangers that it brings in its train. In our conviction this can only be done by a courageous effort to attain the truth, and by the formation of a clear view of the world—a view that shall be based on truth and conformity to reality.

Nothing seems to me better adapted than this magnificent cosmological perspective to give us the proper standard and the broad outlook which we need in the solution of the vast enigmas that surround us. It not only clearly indicates the true place of man in nature, but it dissipates the prevalent illusion of man’s supreme importance, and the arrogance with which he sets himself apart from the illimitable universe, and exalts himself to the position of its most valuable element. This boundless presumption of conceited man has misled him into making himself “the image of God,” claiming an “eternal life” for his ephemeral personality, and imagining that he possesses unlimited “freedom of will.” The ridiculous imperial folly of Caligula is but a special form of man’s arrogant assumption of divinity. Only when we have abandoned this untenable illusion, and taken up the correct cosmological perspective, can we hope to reach the solution of the “riddles of the universe.”

by a study of the bodies of the animals which most closely resembled man, especially the apes; they were all, indeed, comparative anatomists.

The triumph of Christianity and its mystic theories meant retrogression to anatomy, as it did to all the other sciences. The popes were resolved above all things to detain humanity in ignorance; they rightly deemed a knowledge of the human organism to be a dangerous source of enlightenment as to our true nature. During the long period of thirteen centuries the writings of Galen were almost the only source of human anatomy, just as the works of Aristotle were for the whole of natural history. It was not until the sixteenth century, when the spiritual tyranny of the papacy was broken by the Reformation, and the geocentric theory, so intimately connected with papal doctrine, was destroyed by the new cosmic system of Copernicus, that the knowledge of the human frame entered upon a new period of progress. The great anatomists, Vesalius (of Brussels), and Eustachius and Fallopius (of Modena), advanced the knowledge of our bodily structure so much by their own thorough investigations that little remained for their numerous followers to do, with regard to the more obvious phenomena, except the substantiation of details. Andreas Vesalius, as courageous as he was talented and indefatigable, was the pioneer of the movement; he completed in his twenty-eighth year (1543) that great

Closely connected with the preformation theory, and as a logical consequence of it, there arose in the last century a further theory which keenly interested all thoughtful biologists—the curious “theory of scatulation.” As it was thought that the outline of the entire organism, with all its parts, was present in the egg, the ovary of the embryo had to be supposed to contain the ova of the following generation; these, again, the ova of the next, and so on in infinitum! On that basis the distinguished physiologist Haller calculated that God had created together, 6000 years ago—on the sixth day of his creatorial labors—the germs of 200,000,000,000 men, and ingeniously packed them all in the ovary of our venerable mother Eve. Even the gifted philosopher Leibnitz fully accepted this conclusion, and embodied it in his monadist theory; and as, on his theory, soul and body are in eternal, inseparable companionship, the consequence had to be accepted for the soul; “the souls of men have existed in organized bodies in their ancestors from Adam downward—that is, from the very beginning of things.”

Man’s “emotional craving” clings to the belief on immortality for two main reasons: firstly, in the hope of better conditions of life beyond the grave; and, secondly, in the hope of seeing once more the dear and loved ones whom death has torn from us. As for the first hope, it corresponds to a natural feeling of the justice of compensation, which is quite correct subjectively, but has no objective validity whatever. We make our claim for an indemnity for the unnumbered defects and sorrows of our earthly existence, without the slightest real prospect or guarantee of receiving it. We long for an eternal life in which we shall meet no sadness and no pain, but an unbounded peace and joy. The pictures that most men form of this blissful existence are extremely curious; the immaterial soul is placed in the midst of grossly material pleasures. The imagination of each believer paints the enduring splendor according to his personal taste. The American Indian, whose athanatism Schiller has so well depicted, trusts to find in his Paradise the finest hunting-grounds with innumerable hordes of buffaloes and bears; the Eskimo looks forward to sun-tipped icebergs with an inexhaustible supply of bears, seals, and other polar animals; the effeminate Cingalese frames his Paradise on the wonderful island-paradise of Ceylon with its noble gardens and forests—adding that there will be unlimited supplies of rice and curry, of cocoanuts and other fruit, always at hand; the Mohammedan Arab believes it will be a place of shady gardens of flowers, watered by cool springs, and filled with lovely maidens; the Catholic fisherman of Sicily looks forward to a daily superabundance of the most valuable fishes and the finest macaroni, and eternal absolution