We hold that the ordered universe, in its material mass, has existed for ever and will for ever endure : but simply to refer this perdurance to the Will of God, however true an explanation, is utterly inadequate.
The elements of this sphere change ; the living beings of earth pass away ; only the Ideal-form (the species) persists : possibly a similar process obtains in the All.
The Will of God is able to cope with the ceaseless flux and escape of body stuff by ceaselessly reintroducing the known forms in new sub- stances, thus ensuring perpetuity not to the particular item but to the unity of idea : now, seeing that objects of this realm possess no more than duration of form, why should celestial objects, and the celestial system itself, be distinguished by duration of the particular entity ?
Let us suppose this persistence to be the result of the all-inclusiveness of the celestial and universal — with its consequence, the absence of any outlying matter into which change could take place or which could break in and destroy.
This explanation would, no doubt, safeguard the integrity of the Whole, of the All ; but our sun and the individual being of the other heavenly bodies would not on these terms be secured in perpetuity : they are parts ; no one of them is in itself the whole, the all ; it would still be probable that theirs is no more than that duration in form which belongs to fire and such entities.
This would apply even to the entire ordered universe itself. For it is very possible that this too, though not in process of destruction from
outside, might have only formal duration ; its parts may be so wearing each other down as to keep it in a continuous decay while, amid the ceaseless flux of the Kind constituting its base, an outside power cease- lessly restores the form : in this way the living All may lie under the same conditions as man and horse and the rest — man and horse persisting but not the individual of the type.
With this, we would have no longer the distinction of one order, the heavenly system, stable for ever, and another, the earthly, in process of decay : all would be alike except in the point of time ; the celestial would merely be longer lasting. If, then, we accepted this duration of type alone as a true account of the All equally with its partial members, our difficulties would be eased — or indeed we should have no further problem — once the Will of God were shown to be capable, under these conditions and by such communication, of sustaining the Universe.
But if we are obliged to allow individual persistence to any definite entity within the Kosmos then, firstly, we must show that the Divine Will is adequate to make it so ; secondly, we have to face the question, Wdiat accounts for some things having individual persistence and others only the persistence of type ? and, thirdly, we ask how the partial entities of the celestial system hold a real duration which would thus appear possible to all partial things.
Supposing we accept this view and hold that, while things below the moon’s orb have merely type-persistence, the celestial realm and all its several members possess individual eternity ; it remains to show how this strict permanence of the individual identity — the actual item eternally unchangeable — can belong to what is certainly corporeal, seeing that bodily substance is characteristically a thing of flux.
The theory of bodily flux is held by Plato no less than by the other philosophers who have dealt with physical matters, and is applied not only to ordinary bodies but to those, also, of the heavenly sphere.
“ How,” he asks, “ can these corporeal and visible entities continue eternally unchanged in identity ? ” — evidently agreeing, in this matter
Ii. 1.3]
also, with Herakleitos who maintained that even the sun is perpetually coming anew into being. To Aristotle there would be no problem ; it is only accepting his theories of a fifth-substance.
But to those who reject Aristotle’s Quintessence and hold the material mass of the heavens to consist of the elements underlying the living things of this sphere, how is individual permanence possible ? And the difficulty is still greater for the parts (than for the whole), for the sun and the heavenly bodies (than for the celestial sphere as a unit) .
Every living thing is a combination of soul and body-kind : the celestial sphere, therefore, if it is to be everlasting as an individual entity must be so in virtue either of both these constituents or of one of them, by the combination of soul and body or by soul only or by body only.
Of course anyone that holds body to be incorruptible secures the desired permanence at once ; no need, then, to call on a soul or on any perdurable conjunction to account for the continued maintenance of a living being.
But the case is different when one holds that body is, of itself, perishable and that Soul is the principle of permanence : this view obliges us to the proof that the character of body is not in itself fatal either to the coherence or to the lasting stability which are imperative : it must be shown that the two elements of the union envisaged are not inevitably hostile, but that on the contrary (in the heavens) even Matter must conduce to the scheme of the standing result.
We have to ask, that is, how Matter, this entity of ceaseless flux constituting the physical mass of the universe, could serve towards the immortality of the Kosmos.
And our answer is “ Because the flux is not outgoing ” : where there is motion within but not outwards and the total remains unchanged, there is neither growth nor decline, and thus the Kosmos never ages.
We have a parallel in our earth, constant from eternity to pattern and to mass ; the air, too, never fails ; and there is always water : all
the changes of these elements leave unchanged the Principle of the total living thing, our world. In our own constitution, again, there is a ceaseless shifting of particles — and that with outgoing loss — and yet the individual persists for a long time : where (as in the case of the All) there is no ques- tion of an outside region, the body-principle cannot clash with soul as against the identity and endless duration of the living thing.
Of these material elements — for example — fire, the keen and swift, co-operates by its upward tendency as earth by its lingering below ; for we must not imagine that the fire, once it finds itself at the point where its ascent must stop, settles down as in its appropriate place, no longer seeking, like all the rest, to expand in both directions. No : but higher is not possible ; lower is repugnant to its Kind ; all that remains for it is to be tractable and, answering to a need of its nature, to be drawn by the Soul to the activity of life, and so to move — to move in a glorious place, in the Soul. Anyone that dreads its falling may take heart ; the circuit of the Soul provides against any declination, embracing, sustain- ing ; and since fire has of itself no downward tendency it accepts that guiding without resistance. The partial elements constituting our persons do not suffice for their own cohesion ; once they are brought to human shape, they must borrow elsewhere if the organism is to be maintained : but in the upper spheres since there can be no loss by flux no such replenishment is needed.
Suppose such loss, suppose fire extinguished there, then a new fire must be kindled ; so also if such loss by flux could occur in some of the superiors from which the celestial fire depends, that too must be replaced : but with such transmutations, while there might be something con- tinuously similar, there would be, no longer, a Living All abidingly self- identical.
But matters are involved here which demand specific investigation and cannot be treated as incidental merely to our present problem. We are faced with several questions : Is the heavenly system exposed to any such flux as would occasion the need of some restoration correspond-
Ii. 1.4]
ing to nourishment ; or do its members, once set in their due places, suffer no loss of substance, permanent by Kind ? Does it consist of fire only, or is it mainly of fire with the other elements, as well, taken up and carried in the circuit by the dominant Principle ?
(For the present we may say that) Our doctrine of the immortality of the heavenly system rests on the firmest foundation once we have cited the sovereign agent, the soul, and considered, besides, the peculiar excellence of the bodily substance constituting the stars, a material so pure, so entirely the noblest, and chosen by the soul as, in all living beings, the determining principle appropriates to itself the choicest among their characteristic parts. No doubt Aristotle is right in speaking of flame as a turmoil, fire insolently rioting ; but the celestial fire is equable, placid, docile to the purposes of the stars.
Still, the great argument remains, the Soul, moving in its marvellous might second only to the very loftiest Existents : how could anything once placed within this Soul break away from it into non-being ? No one that understands this principle, the support of all things, can fail to see that, sprung from God, it is a stronger stay than any bonds.
And is it conceivable that the Soul, valid to sustain for a certain space of time, could not so sustain for ever ? This would be to assume that it holds things together by violence ; that there is a “ natural course ” at variance with what actually exists in the nature of the universe and in these exquisitely ordered beings ; and that there is some power able to storm the established system and destroy its ordered coherence, some kingdom or dominion that may shatter the order founded by the Soul.
Further : The Kosmos has had no beginning — the impossibility has been shown elsewhere — and this is warrant for its continued existence. Why should there be in the future a change that has not yet occurred ? The elements there are not worn away like beams and rafters : they hold sound for ever, and so the All holds sound. And even supposing these elements to be in ceaseless transmutation, yet the All persists : the ground of all the change must itself be changeless.
As to any alteration of purpose in the Soul (such as might lead it to
bring the Kosmos to an end) we have already shown the emptiness of that fancy : the administration of the universe entails neither labour nor loss ; and, even supposing the possibility of annihilating all that is material, the Soul would be no whit the better or the worse.
But how explain the permanence There, while the content of this sphere — its elements and its living things alike— are passing ?
The reason is given by Plato ; the celestial order is from God, the living things of earth from the gods sprung from God ; and it is law that the offspring of God endures.
In other words, the celestial soul — and our souls with it — springs directly next from the Creator, while the animal life of this earth is produced by an image which goes forth from that celestial soul and may be said to flow downwards from it.
A soul, then, of the minor degree — reproducing, indeed, that of the Divine sphere but lacking in power inasmuch as it must exercise its creative act upon inferior stuff in an inferior region — the substances taken up into the fabric being of themselves repugnant to duration ; with such an origin the living things of this realm cannot be of strength to last for ever ; the material constituents are not as firmly held and con- trolled as if they were ruled immediately by a Principle of higher potency.
The heavens, on the contrary, must have persistence as a whole, and this entails the persistence of the parts, of the stars they contain : we could not imagine that whole to endure with the parts in flux — though, of course, we must distinguish things sub-celestial from the heavens themselves whose region does not in fact extend so low as to the moon.