The Unseen Universe: Physical Speculations on a Future State

236 Pages·2010·7.79 MB·English

by  Balfour Stewart

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Religion
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of scholarship and publishing, dominated in the English-speaking world
by the work of Protestant Christians. Enlightenment philosophy and
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The Unseen Universe
In 1875, the geophysicist Balfour Stewart and the mathematician P. G. Tait
published the second edition of The Unseen Universe. The book’s aim had
been ‘to overthrow materialism by a purely scientific argument’, and its
initial success, and the controversy it aroused, prompted this revised edition.
The treatise suggests that science and religion could be reconciled, and that
by using science, it could be proved that the soul survives after death. The
book begins with a historical account of the beliefs about the after-life of
ancient Egypt, the Greeks, Buddhism and Christianity. The authors then
refine a Ptolemaic vision of the universe in which the material universe
is surrounded by concentric, invisible universes. The Unseen Universe
discusses the nature of matter and ether, Newton’s laws, and the idea that,
through electromagnetism, the soul upon death transfers molecularly from
the visible to the invisible universe.
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The Unseen Universe
Physical Speculations on a Future State
Balfour Stewart
Peter Guthrie Tait
CamBrIDGE UNIvErSITy PrESS
Cambridge, New york, melbourne, madrid, Cape Town, Singapore,
São Paolo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo
Published in the United States of america by Cambridge University Press, New york
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108004541
© in this compilation Cambridge University Press 2009
This edition first published 1875
This digitally printed version 2009
ISBN 978-1-108-00454-1 Paperback
This book reproduces the text of the original edition. The content and language reflect
the beliefs, practices and terminology of their time, and have not been updated.
Cambridge University Press wishes to make clear that the book, unless originally published
by Cambridge, is not being republished by, in association or collaboration with, or
with the endorsement or approval of, the original publisher or its successors in title.
THE UKSEEN UNIVEESE.
. . . . /J.r} <TKOTro{pTtiii> Tjfi&v ret jSXeiri/tera, dXXd TO firj J3\eir6tieva' ret, ykp
@\eir&fieira, ivpbiiK.ai.pa.' ret 5k fir] /3\e5r6iuera, aiuivia, Itpbs Kopivffiovs, B'. 6'.
Animula ! vagula, blandula,
Hospes comesque corporis,
Quae nunc abibis in loca,—
Pallidula, rigida, nudula . . .
HADRIAN.
" God hath endowed us with different faculties, suitable and proportional to the dif-
ferent objects that engage them. We discover sensible things by our senses, rational
things by our reason, things intellectual by understanding ; but divine and celestial things
he has reserved for the exercise of our faith, which is a kind of divine and superior sense
in the soul. Our reason and understanding may at some times snatch a glimpse, but
cannot take a steady and adequate prospect of things so far above their reach and sphere.
Thus, by the help of natural reason, I may know there is a God, the first cause and
original of all things ; but his essence, attributes, and will, are hid within the vail of
inaccessible light, and cannot be discerned by us but through faith in his divine revela-
tion. He that walks without this light, walks in darkness, though he may strike out
some faint and glimmering sparkles of his own. And he that, out of the gross and
wooden dictates of his natural reason, carves out a religion to himself, is but a more
refined idolater than those who worship stocks and stones, hammering an idol out of his
fancy, and adoring the works of his own imagination. For this reason God is nowhere
said to be jealous, but upon the account of his worship."—Pilgrim's Progress, Part III.
THE
UNSEEN UNIVERSE
OE
PHYSICAL SPECULATIONS
ON A
FUTURE STATE
the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are
not seen are eternal.
SECOND EDITION.
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1875.
[All Rights reserved.]

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
As a preface to our Second Edition, we cannot do better
than record the experience derived from our first. It is
indeed gratifying to find a wonderful want of unanimity
among the critics who assail us, and it is probably owing to
this cause that we have been able to preserve a kind of
kinetic stability, just as a man does in consequence of being
equally belaboured on all sides by the myriad petty impacts
of little particles of air.
Some call us infidels, while others represent us as very
much too orthodoxly credulous ; some call us pantheists,
some materialists, others spiritualists. As we cannot belong
at once to all these varied categories, the presumption is
that we belong to none of them. This, by the way, is our
own opinion.
Venturing to classify our critics, we would divide them
into three groups :—
(1.) There are those who have doubtless faith in revela-
tion; but more especially, sometimes solely, in
their own method of interpreting it; none, how-
ever, in the method according to which really
scientific men with a wonderful unanimity have
b