God the Known and God the Unknown | Page 5

meeting the smallest change
with a corresponding modification so far as is found convenient; or it
must put off change as long as possible, and then make larger and more
sweeping changes.
Both these courses are the same in principle, the difference being only
one of scale, and the one being a miniature of the other, as a ripple is an
Atlantic wave in little; both have their advantages and disadvantages,
so that most organisms will take the one course for one set of things
and the other for another. They will deal promptly with things which
they can get at easily, and which lie more upon the surface; those,
however, which are more troublesome to reach, and lie deeper, will be
handled upon more cataclysmic principles, being allowed longer
periods of repose followed by short periods of greater activity.
Animals breathe and circulate their blood by a little action many times
a minute; but they feed, some of them, only two or three times a day,
and breed for the most part not more than once a year, their breeding
season being much their busiest time. It is on the first principle that the
modification of animal forms has proceeded mainly; but it may be
questioned whether what is called a sport is not the organic expression
of discontent which has been long felt, but which has not been attended
to, nor been met step by step by as much small remedial modification
as was found practicable: so that when a change does come it comes by
way of revolution. Or, again (only that it comes to much the same
thing), a sport may be compared to one of those happy thoughts which

sometimes come to us unbidden after we have been thinking for a long
time what to do, or how to arrange our ideas, and have yet been unable
to arrive at any conclusion.
So with politics, the smaller the matter the prompter, as a general rule,
the settlement; on the other hand, the more sweeping the change that is
felt to be necessary, the longer it will be deferred.
The advantages of dealing with the larger questions by more
cataclysmic methods are obvious. For, in the first place, all composite
things must have a system, or arrangement of parts, so that some parts
shall depend upon and be grouped round others, as in the articulation of
a skeleton and the arrangement of muscles, nerves, tendons, etc., which
are attached to it. To meddle with the skeleton is like taking up the
street, or the flooring of one's house; it so upsets our arrangements that
we put it off till whatever else is found wanted, or whatever else seems
likely to be wanted for a long time hence, can be done at the same time.
Another advantage is in the rest which is given to the attention during
the long hollows, so to speak, of the waves between the periods of
resettlement. Passion and prejudice have time to calm down, and when
attention is next directed to the same question, it is a refreshed and
invigorated attention-an attention, moreover, which may be given with
the help of new lights derived from other quarters that were not
luminous when the question was last considered. Thirdly, it is more
easy and safer to make such alterations as experience has proved to be
necessary than to forecast what is going to be wanted. Reformers are
like paymasters, of whom there are only two bad kinds, those who pay
too soon, and those who do not pay at all.


CHAPTER II
COMMON GROUND
I HAVE now, perhaps, sufficiently proved my sympathy with the
reluctance felt by many to tolerate discussion upon such a subject as the
existence and nature of God. I trust that I may have made the reader
feel that he need fear no sarcasm or levity in my treatment of the

subject which I have chosen. I will, therefore, proceed to sketch out a
plan of what I hope to establish, and this in no doubtful or unnatural
sense, but by attaching the same meanings to words as those which we
usually attach to them, and with the same certainty, precision, and
clearness as anything else is established which is commonly called
known.
As to what God is, beyond the fact that he is the Spirit and the Life
which creates, governs, and upholds all living things, I can say nothing.
I cannot pretend that I can show more than others have done in what
Spirit and the Life consists, which governs living things and animates
them. I cannot show the connection between consciousness and the will,
and the organ, much less can I tear away the veil from the face of God,
so as to show wherein