TOE SUNDAY Oil EG ONI AX, PORTLAND, MARCH 2G, 1016.
SCIENTIFIC THEORIES AND RELIGIOUS BELIEF LINKED
Rev. William G. Eliot Declares That Life Has Practically Only Two Goals, Maternity Hospital and Cemetery Perplexity Blamed to Confused Ideas.
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BY WILUAU O. ELIOT, JR.,
Pastor of the Church of Our Father1.
'. Text: When T consider thy heavens, the
work of thy fingers, the moon and the
stars, which thou hast ordained; what is
man. that thou art mindful of him? And
the son of man. that thou visltest him?
For thou hast made him but little lower
than the angels, and crownest him with
Klory and honor. Psalm vlli:3.
WHAT we think about human
nature will Influence our char
acter and conduct. Much of our
present-day perplexity concerning both
personal and social problems is due to
confused ideas of what we human be
ings really are. me p
confusion arises out
of the conflict be- t
tween two ways of
thin kins, two in
terpretations of the
facts as known. 5
The first of these ,.
two tendencies'
claims to be more f '
scientific and tOi t
Record better with S 3
scientific d i s c o v
eries. The second
Is rather the classic
or established view.
I will attempt to
describe these two
views in rough out
line and, if possible. Rev. W. G. Eliot. Jr.
to clear the confusion.
I. According to the exclusively sci
entific way of thinking, man is a very
small part of a very vast universe. He
is an inhabitant of the planet .t.artn.
The nearest fixed star is distant about
7000 times the distance light could
travel in a year of 31,000,000 seconds
at the rate of 186 miles per second.
According to this way of thinking.
therefore, man is a very small part of
a very vast universe!
But. furthermore, the time that has
thus far elapsed in the history of the
universe presents a fact that is Just
as stupendous and staggering. Suffice
it only to mention that quite apart
from the history of the universe at
large, and quite aside from the his
tory of this planet before the appear
ance of man," man, by discovered rec
ords, is known to have been an inhab
itant of the earth for over 300,000
years. The known story of his oV
ganization, ideas and progress, his his
tory in the ordinary sense, is not much
more than 6000 years; and the average
life on earth of a single individual is
easily included in a single century.
Population Is Vast.
At the present time there are more
than 1,500,000.000 people on the planet.
One person is a very small portion of
this great number, but a yet smaller
portion of the total number of Human
beings that have inhabited the earth
during the past 300.000 years.
Thus an individual man is a very
email part of a very great universe;
occupies a very small portion of all
time; is one of a very great number
of creatures like himself.
But if to complete our view we turn
to a closer examination of man's physi
cal constitution, the human body, we
shall discover facts that are quite as
amazing!
The human body is a system of cells.
They are so arranged as to make up
the different parts and organs of the
body. But those which form bone,
muscle, arteries, glands, etc., are very
different from those which make up
the nervous system. These are. some of
them, a yard or more in length, and
there are by estimate about 9,000,000,
000 in or terminating in the cerebral
cortex, a little patch of brain at the
back of the head.
Vitality I. Ie In Tissues.
Cell-tissue is breaking down all the
time and has to be replaced by new
cell tissue; hence the digestive and
nutritive systems. These and other
systems must be kept in position and
in connection with each other; hence
the supporting tissues. The motor sys
tems are for the requirements of mo
tion and locomotion, and so on. With
man, as with other animals, in the face
of the universal fact of physical de
cease, the race is perpetuated by sexual
reproduction, and the individual is sao
riticed or wasted that the race may per
sist. And these sex functions are again
carried forward by the action of living
cells, the essential parts of which are
known as chromosomes.
One other fact discovered concern
ing the human body remains to be men
tioned, and then we shall have touched
the present bounds of our knowledge,
namely, the several glandular systems
and especially those glands like the
thyroid, which appear to supply cer
tain mysterious fluids whose existence
and proper quality and quantity affect
the life of the individual profoundly.
It would seem, then, from the ordi
nary scientific point of view and way
of thinking, that any further real
knowledge about man's nature would
be found by further penetration into
the neurones, or nerve cells, centering
in the cerebral cortex; into the chro
mosomes, essential and determinative
in reproduction; and into the hormones,
or fluids just mentioned.
Analysis of Body Made.
And especially does the scientific man
take hope of further discoveries and
solutions, and especially does he pin
his faith in further knowledge exclu
sively to this way of thinking because
the observable actions of the cells and
fluids of the body appear to be essen
tially physical or chemical that i3 to
say, in the last analysis, mechanical,
and thus to conform to the laws of the
vast universe of which that human
body is so small a fraction.
The philosopher's long dream of
unity is the scientist's goal, and to the
scientist with these facts about man's
nature now discovered the goal seems
almost in sight. For, to go one step
further, it seems to many scientists
practically proven that there is no
separateness whatever between the self
and the body, that cerebral cortex and
personality are one and the same and
their origin and destiny identical.
II. Such at any rate is the conclusion
reached by many scientific thinkers;
and it is the view which I would con
trast with the established or classic
view, which is: That-the body and
soul are essentially separable; that
they are not measured by the same sort
of units of measurement; that the con
nection between is not permanent, but
temporary; that the connection is for
purposes of existence in the world of
space and time and not therefore either
absolute or final; and that, above all.
the body and the soul are not identical.
Theories Are Separated.
And as we turn now to this second
way of thinking it is necessary to dis
tinguish between the facts discovered
concerning our bodies and the infer
ences to be drawn from them. What
ever may be our' prejudices, we shall
err if we are disposed to deny any
single demonstrable fact upon any ex
cuse whatsoever. We may, however,
and as I believe, should doubt if the
facts discovered are the only kind of
facts to be considered; we may rightly
question the adequacy of methods
that confine themselves to wUat is
visible, tangible and accurately meas
urable, and we may properly investi
gate those inferences that follow from
the exclusively scientific method and
point of approach. Back of anything
that can be observed in outward evi
dence is the conscious side of memory,
thought, feeling, will. When you add
the sense of moral, affectional, spirit
ual values; when you add to these
the miracle of creative impulse, with
the power to project ideals, and to
this, creative imagination whereby the
future is invaded and made, you have
a group of facts that would seem to
justify the conclusion that the human
life and experience is something more
than a cerebral cortex, which a can
nibal could fry and eat for his break
fast. Naive Arguments Cited.
Are not many of the arguments for
identifying the soul and the body al
most as naive as arguments might be
which attempted to identify telegraph
wire and ticker with the message and
its sender?
Moreover, I know of no scientist who
would say that any definite piece or
portion of the cerebral cortex is a
thought, or a feeling, or a memory, or
a hope. But does it not seem anoma
lous to contend that that which could
not be a thought could forsooth be
the thinker?
That the cerebral cortex Is quite as
truly the instrument by means of
which we forget is quite as true, with
Bergson, as that it is the instrument
with which we remember!
Again, even if we grant that our
bodies and nervous systems are the
BROTHER OF MEMBER
OF HOUSE IS INVOLVED
Dr. J. Van Pelt Oglesby Said to Have Used Income From Property Belong
ing to Insane Wife. ,
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WJd. 0g2eshy.
A LIVELY family controversy
which has got into the courts
involves a brother of W. R.
Oglesby, Representative in Congress
from New York. He married a mem
ber of an Oglesby family in Georgia
no blood relation of the New York
Oglesby. Dr. J. Van Pelt Oglesby mar
ried another of the Georgia family.
Sometime ago Mrs. (Dr.) Oglesby
was sent to the State Hospital for the
Insanse, a charitable institution, while
her husband drew the income from her
property, amounting to more than
$60,000. The Georgia family are try
ing to have Mrs. Oglesby's property
taken from the husband on the ground
that she was insane when she made
certain transfer to him.
necessary Instruments for life in this
world and especially that the nervous
system is requisite and necessary for
receiving and conveying ordinary
communications, still is nothing to
be gained by looking into the lim
itations of our bodily and nervous
capacity? Do we not by reflection
perceive in our affectional and moral
consciousness that which would be too
big for such limited possibilities of
intercommunication as we have, and
which could be fully satisfied only
by what goes beyond all such instru
ments entirely? The window is the
means whereby we see out doors and
whereby out door light shines in. But
is the window anything more than
an aperture in a wall that shuts out
more than the aperture reveals? '
Test for Scientists Given.
Let scientists who confine, their
thinking exclusively to the methods of
natural science turn for a moment
from the study of the apertures and
attempt to realize what the wall shuts
out. Let such scientists turn -from
what they can see with the micro
scope in the light of the sun to what
they may see by the mind's eye in
that consciousness which receives the
report of the 'microscope and judges
it in the light of reason. Does any
one suppose that for normal beings
an existence would be impossible that
would be as much more highly
equipped than we are now, as we are
more highly equipped than Helen Kel
ler? And is there any conceivable
limit to the benefits of enlarging the
windows, if we could, until there were
no walls at all? Do the apertures
measure the light? Do the senses
measure the soul's capacity? Is the
brain a soul's limit? Is it not rather
the soul's limitation?
Or again, if the microscope could
see and think and answer man's
searching eyes, I think it would see
back through eye and optic nerve and
cerebral cortex and discern an eye
capable of ten times more vision if
the microscope were ten times more
powerful; of ten times more capacity
if the optic nerve were not limited to
certain colors of the spectrum; of ten
time nay of 10,000 times, more ca
pacity for the practising of everything
deep within the soul of knowledge,
pity, love, duty. if the instrument, the
cerebral cortex, were not, with all its
marvels and intricacies after all the
poor limited thing it is.
Moreover, what has the exclusively
scientific way of thinking to say to
human sorrow, or to the pathetic but
sometimes helpless pain of a parent
for an erring child? We have the
scientific way of thinking itself to
thank for the certainty that no least
motion in all the universe is really
Inconsequential or ends in nothing.
And, if so, it would seem that all af
fectionate longings (if by any stretch
of "imagination we can call these mo
tions at all) and all sorrow for loss
and all grief over the sin and weak
ness of loved ones must have conse
quences, logical consequences, morally
consistent consequences, consequences
in kind, somewhere or somehow!
By all these considerations, partial
hints they are, we seem to come to a
sense of something deeper in our hu
man nature than is likely ever to be
fully discovered, if discovered at all,
by any amount of physical dissection,
experiment and analysis. All that any
knife or metrotome can ever expose is
a fresh surface, a fresh face of things,
to the edge of the blade, as it were,
creating a new surface in front of
itself wherever it moves. All that
chemistry can do is to take apart
and put together things and rearrange
forces moving in space and time. The
thinker's thought must penetrate into
something else than things. The think
er's thought must penetrate Into
thought itself.
Whatever, then, has been or ever
will be discovered concerning the
minute intricacies of physical processes,
however far these facts may be
analyzed into chemical reactions of
carbohydrates and electrons and what
not, it would seem to me that thought
and thinker are still unreached, and
still impossible of interpretation by
means of anything smaller and less val
uable than themselves. Give me
triumphantly the final finding of the
physical laboratory, I would still turn
to the laboratory of human values,
to human history. I confront the
mteroscopist and the chemist with
Homer, Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides;
with Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. I con
front the scientific thinker with I-,a
Marcke, Darwin. Mendel, De Vries,
Weismann and a host of other brave
and original thinkers I confront the
scientist with himself. I confront him
with personalities; with Jesus, Paul,
St. Francis, Abraham Lincoln with his
own friends, parents, children, in earth
or in heaven. I confront him with
miracles of moral conversion and
courage for conscience sake; with
i WOMAN AT 85 SEES FIRST
DONKEY ENGINE IN OP-
t ERATION. ' t
t " It
I - K . ,1 t
wonders of poetic Insight and visions
of supernal beauty; .with heavenly
song and haunting strains that strings
and reeds and tubes can only partly
utter.
There is an inherent fallacy In val
uing man by the fraction which his
body is of the vast universe and by
the fraction which his lifetime on
earth is of all past time; for space,
however big, and time, however long,
cannot consider me, and I can con
sider them!
Let me, in conclusion, make myself
clear. I am not reproaching science
or scientific methods or the facts got
by these methods. I am differing only
with the assumption that such methods
are adequate to our problem and with
such appraisal of our human nature
as does not go beyond the tangible
material facts. I deny none of the
scientist's facts; I profoundly doubt
interpretations that stop with those
facts. I find no hope in identifying
the soul and the body no significance
in human experience, no significance in
social progress; I see no adequate
meaning in personal or social life un
less I am permitted to see with my
mind the things of the mind as well as
with my eye the things of the eye, and
to i-eport what I see in a world which,
in its values and possibilities, goes
beyond the motions of force in space
and clock-time goes beyond, and
validates our affections and moral
strivings and vindicates our sorrows
and heroisms. I see a line of cleav
age running through all our confusions
in political, educational and religious
theory, depending upon the view men
take of human nature. The most crit
ical and vital issues before the world
today are wrapped up in this funda
mental issue. Upon its decision the
course of future history turns. Wa
are the victims of the things of space
and time, at once prisoners and prison
in a three-dimension universe and ths
two goals of life are the maternity hos
pital and the cemetery; or else eternity
is our true home and we know or may
know a transcendent order whereby
we poetize the temporal, sacramentalize
the literal and live lives increasingly
capable of education, service and
blessedness live lives increasingly re
deemed from the surface of things into
the invisible and immortal realities of
heaven.
MOTHER GETS VERDICT
Mrs. Sarah Nowell.
COTTAGE GROVE, Or.. March
25. (Special.) Although she
lives within half a mile from a
lumber camp. Mrs. Sarah Nowell.
of London, the mother of 12 chil
dren, had never seen a donkey
engine at work in the woods until
she was 85 years of age. Re-
cently, with her two daughters,
she made a trip to the camp and
watched the engine in operation.
At 85 she is still in possession
of her faculties and has quite a
local reputation as a seamstress.
She has never had occasion to
wear glasses. Since her hus
band's death, in 1900, she has
made her home with her daugh
ters, Mrs. M. H. Brasher and Mrs.
E. R. Thordenberg, of London.
Others of her children living are
Frank C. Nowell, Los Angeles;
Howard W. Nowell, San Fran
cisco, and Willis E. Nowell, Cot
tage Grove.
Woman Twice Mother of Triplets
Gets $5000 From Hospital.
NEW YORK. March 20. Mrs. Kath
rine Horan, twice mother of triplets,
won a verdict of $5000 yesterday in
damage action brought before Justice
Hotchkiss and a jury in the Supreme
Court because of the death of her hus
band, Michael Horan. He had been
taken to Bellevue Hospital and placed
in the alcoholic ward after falling
from a truck which he had been driv
ing on the pier at Thirtieth street and
the Hudson River. An hour after he
had been placed under treatment for
drunkenness he died of a fractured
skull.
Albert H. Hastorf, owner of the pier,
was defendant in the action, on the
ground that one of the wheels of the
truck had fallen through a fissure of
the pier, throwing Horan from his seat.
Several internes of Bellevue testified
that Horan appeared to have been
drinking heavily, but admitted on cross
examination that the cold weather of
January, 1914, might have been respon
sible for the flushed face of the truck
man. Only two of Mrs. Horan's child
ren are now living.
FIRST HALF OF FLORAL ALPHABET FOR BRIDE'S LINEjNT SHOWN
iv5 '44
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80 many requests oontlnua to oome In for this floral alphabet that an
other one Is printed, different In design from the one vrs published .before,
but fully as attractive.
Those initials are essentially suitable for delieate markinK of all house
hold linens and lingerie. A satin stitch or a combination of satin, outline,
and buttonhole give exoellent results. Detail drawings show method of
working. In using the printed design from the paper the directions are as
.follows: If the material is sheer, the easiest way Is to lay It over the design,
whloh will show through plainly, and draw over each line with a hard,
sharp lead penoil. If your linen is heavy, buy a pleoe of Impression paper
the kind that does not rub off lay it on your material, place the design
over it, and trace with a hard penoil. Tou will find the design neatly transferred.
OUT-J A , YE LET
AMD BUTTOM-HOLf. jSTtCHES