THE PEAK IN DARIEN.* WHEN Miss Cobbe took this rather
fanciful title for her essays, she must, of course, have been thinking of the dose of Keats's _
* The Peak in Darien, with Some Other Inquiries touching Comma of the Soul ana the Body. By Frances Power Oobbo. London ; Williams and Norgato.
sonnet, On First Looking into Chapman's 'Homer,'" an experience which he compares to the sight of a new and un- suspected ocean :— "Then felt I like some watcher of the skies, When a new planet swims into his ken ; Or like stout Cortez, when, with eagle eyes, • He stared at the /1E1,0ft—end all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise, Silent, upon a peak in Darien."
Only the new ocean to which Miss Cobbe refers, and which the most sceptical of human watchers will regard not, we think, "with a wild surmise," but rather with a gentle self-reproach for their want of faith in having doubted it before, is not the mere ocean of a new world of poetry, but the ocean of eternal life itself. The Peale in, Darien is an essay on "the riddle of Death," Miss Cobbe endeavouring to show, not without very- tangible success, that even earthly watchers who do not accept the evidence for Christ's revelation on the subject, not un- frequently catch a glimpse of the other side of the gulf as they gaze at those who are passing from our side to theirs. Miss Cobbe gives succinctly an account which, if it is really an independent story, curiously confirms one which has been given in these columns since our last reference to her book, by Mr.. Hensleigh Wedgwood. Miss Colsbe's story is as follows :— "Another incident of a very striking character was deseribedyas having occurred in a family, united very closely by affection. A dying lady, exhibiting the aspect of joyful surprise to which we have so often referred, spoke of seeing, one after another, throe of her brothers who had long been dead, and then apparently recognised last of all a fourth brother, who was believed by the bystanders to be still living in India. The coupling of his name with that of his dead brothers excited such awe and horror in the mind of one of the persons present, that she rushed from the room. In due course of time, letters were received announcing the death of the brother in India, which had occurred some time before his dying sister seemed to recognise him."
Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood, who states that the incident which he narrates happened on "the death of a near connec- tion of his own," gave us in the Spectator of August L1th an exactly similar story, only that the three figures first seen were sisters, and not brothers, the dying girl giving their names as "Susan, Jane, and Ellen," and then adding, after a short pause, "And Edward, too," thus naming a brother then supposed to be alive and well in India, but who was reaily dead, as the next mail proved. "This was told to me," says Mr, Wedgwood, "by an elder sister, who nursed the dying girl, and was present at the bedside at the time of the apparent vision." We should like to know whether Miss Cobbe's story is an incorrectly given version of Mr, Wedgsvood's, or one quite independent of it, and which would, therefore, in that case, be strong evidence, not, indeed, of the individual truth of the other story, but that the assumption, which so many people would be disposed to make, that the event, even if it happened, rested on pure accidental coincidence, was founded on true perception, for of course the explanation of coincidence- which might be good for one such narrative, would become more and more inadequate as an explanation, in proportion as the number of such incidents to be thus accounted for increased. We should be very glad, therefore, to know whether these two stories are copies of the same original, or independent of each other. It is obvious that they belong to a very different class from Miss Cobbe's other stories of the same kind, since the unexpected vision of a brother supposed to be living, but really dead at the moment, renders it very much less likely that the other visions were the creation of an exalted imagination. We wonder, however, that Miss Cobbe, whose rationalism always seems to us, if we may allow ourselves this criticism on the character of an intellect which we profoundly respect, rather arbitrary in its selection of the evidence which seems to her un- worthy of any credence and of the evidence of the same kind which she deems worthy of credence, has restricted her analysis of the phenomena of death to the cases in which only visions visible to the dying are concerned. The evidence as to the apparitions of the dying person, visible to others at a distance who are not aware even of the illness of the persons thus appearing to them, is not less common, and supported on evidence quite as good. And the two classes of phenomena should certainly be taken together, the latter class tending to prove that the near approach of death seems to set at liberty some spiritual element which has then the power of making its existence visible to others at a distance, just as the former class tends to prove that the approach of death seems to open the vision to presences not discernible by us in our ordinary
condition. The one class of phenomena indicate that the approach of death, so far from straitening the active powers of the spirit, increases them ; the other class of phenomena indi- cate that the approach of death, so far from straitening the percipient powers of the spirit, increases it ; and clearly, there- fore, the two classes of phenomena, taken together,-sustain and supplement each other. •
But if Miss Cobbe's rationalism appears 'to' us to assert itself in odd places, and to break down somewhat arbitrarily,—though, as we quite admit, not unfrequently just where spiritual faith turns the scale against intellectual incredulity,—we have nothing but the heartiest sympathy to give to the positive drift of this essay. In the following note, for instance, we have a fine reply to what has always seemed to us an argument absolutely without impressiveness except for those many people in -whom "the wish to believe" produces an absolute incapacity to satisfy the wish :— " 'There is an argument which, I believe, now influences more or less consciously the minds of many intelligent persons against the belief in the Immortal Life. It amounts to this : Granted that there is a God, and that he is absolutely benevolently disposed towards mankind—it does not follow (as commonly assumed) that he will bestow Immortality on man, because it is quite possible that there may be an inherent absurdity and contradiction in the idea of an Dr:mortal Finite creature,—it may, in short, be no more within the scope of Divine power to create an Immortal bran, than to make a triangle with the properties of a circle. If we could be first assured that the thing were possible, then arguments derived from the justice and goodness of the Deity might be valuable, as affording us ground for believing that he will do that possible thing. But while it remains an open question whether we are not talking actual nonsense when we speak of an 'over-living created being, such reflections on the moral attributes of God are beside the mark. No justice or gOodness can be involved in doing that which, in the nature of things, is im- possible. Now, of coarse, there is a little confusion here between a future life—a mere post-mortent addition of so many years, or cen- turies, to this mortal existence—and an imatortat life, which it is assumed will continue either in a series of births and deaths, or in one unbroken life, for ever and ever. In the former idea no one can find any self-contradiction. It is only the latter notion of immor- tality, strictly so described, which is suspected of involving a contra- -diction. Practically, however, the two ideas must stand or fall together, for almost every argument for the survival of the soul after death beam with double force against its extinction at any subsequent epoch of its existence. Taking, then' the Future Life of a man as to all intents and purposes the Immortal Life, we are bound to confront the difficulty,—' What right have we to assume that immortality and creattirehood are compatible the one with the other ?' A priori argument on shah a matter is altogether futile. We know and can reason literally nothing about it. For anything we could urge ante- cedent to the observation of dawn's actual state, it was apparently just as probable that he could not be made immortal, as that he could be made so by any conceivable Power in the universe. But we are not quite in the position of lacking all such a posteriori assist- ance to our judgment. We can see how God has actually constituted the human race, and the problem is consequently modified to this :- 'Are there any signs or tokens that Man is meant for something more than a mere mundane existence ?' It is obvious that if im- mortality were an attribute which in the nature of things he could never share, nothing in his mental or moral constitution would have been made with any reference to such an unattainable destiny. If, on the other hand, there be in his nature evidences of a purpose ex- tending beyond the scope of this life, and stretching out into the limitless perspective of eternity, then we are authorised to draw the inference that the Author of his being planned for him a future ex- istence, and of course, knew that he might enjoy that divine heritage. Here, then, the argument lies in manageable shape before us. It is true we only see a small portion of humanity, as it has yet been drawn out ; but just as mathematicians can determine, from any three given points, the nature of the carve to which they belong, so we have enough indications to guide Us to a conclusion respecting the character of our race. In every department of our nature, save our perishable bodies, we find something, which seems to paint beyond our threescore years and ten —something inconsistent with the hypo- thesia that those years complete our intended existence. Our busy intellect, persistently wrestling with the mysteries of eternity ; our human affections, craving for undying love; our sense of Justice— born of no past experience of a reign of Aetrea, but resolutely pro- pheaying, in spite of experience, a perfect judgment hereafter ; the measureless meaning which moral distinctions carry to our con- sciences ; the unutterable longing of our spirits for union (not wholly unattained even here) with the living God, the Father of spirits—all these things seem to show that we are built, so to speak, on a larger scale than that of our earthly life. The foundations are too deep and wide, the corner-stones are by far too massive if nothing but the Tabernacle of a day be the design of the Architect. In brief, then, we may admit freely that, for aught we know, God could not give to a triangle the properties of a circle ;' and yet, nevertheless, hold our faith undisturbed, since we And that the line which His hand has actually drawn is a CURVE alreacly,—a few degrees of the circum- ference of a stupendous circle."
We do not think, by the way, that mathematicians could do what is here attributed to them ; but that is a trivial detail. It is more important to observe that we could not admit quite as much to the persons who urgel this argu- ment as Miss Cobbe admits. Infinitude, in the sense in which the word is generally used,—that is, the absence of all limits on our powers,—has just as little to do with immortality, as the power of moving to a fixed star, if we wished it, has to do with the power of describing any course that we please on the earth's surface. You might just as well say that because a geometrical straight line cannot fill all space, it cannot be infinite in its course through space. We could not admit that, "froth anything we could urge antecedent to the observation of a "man's actual state, it was apparently just as probable that he could not be made immortal, as that he could be made so, by any conceivable power in the universe." On the contrary, we should admit only that till we had evidence of creation, any creation would seem a simply impossible notion ; but that so soon as we had been convinced that creation actually takes place, the presumption would be very strong that any power capable of producing such a thing 48 life is capable of sus-
taining it when produced. Certainly, any power capable of producing a progressive being, even granting that the progress, as observed, only goes up to a certain point, can hardly be sup- posed incapable of continuing that progressive life, if he wishes to do so, or of continuing so " much of it as he wishes to con- tinue, and so much as is in itself capable of continuation. The notion of finiteness of area and capacity does not in the least suggest the notion of exhaustibility, any more than the limited quantity of the waters of a spring, suggests the notion of its ceasing to flow. The exhaustibility of any life depends not in the least ()lithe variety and magnitude of its phenomena, but on the intrinsic continuity and progressiveness of its vitality. And if love and aspiration for that which is higher be one of its intrinsic qualities, then adaptation for immortality appears to be one of its intrinsic qualities too.
We have dwelt eliclusively on one of these interesting essays. But those on "Magnanimous Atheism" and "Pessimism and Schopenhauer," are at least as valuable as the one we have singled out for notice, while that on "Sacrificial Medicine" is a very curious study in the morbid anatomy of superstition. Again, the essay on " Zoophily " is valuahle and just.
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