Tyndall - Address at Belfast

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Title: Address delivered before the British association assembled at

Belfast.

Author: Tyndall, John, 1820-1893.

Publisher: New York, : D. Appleton and company, 1874.

ADDRESS

DELIVERED BEFORE

THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION

ASSEMBLED AT BELFAST.

BY

JOHN TYNDALL, F. R. S.,

PRESIDE N T.

REVISED, WITH ADDITIONS BY THE AUTHOR, SIN(E

THE DELIVERY.

NEW YORK:

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,

549 BROADWAY.

1874.

"There is one God supreme over all gods, diviner than mortals,

Whose form is not like unto man's, and as unlike his nature;

But vain mortals imagine that gods like themselves are begotten,

With human sensations and voice and corporeal members;

So, if oxen or lions had hands and could work in man's fashion,

And trace out with chisel or brush their conception of Godhead,

Then would horses depict gods like horses, and oxen like oxen,

Each kind the divine with its own form and nature endowing."

XENOPHANES of Colophon (six centuries B. c.), " Supernatural Religion,"

Vol. I., p. 76.

" It were better to have no opinion of God at all, than such

an opinion as is unworthy of him; for the one is unbelief, the

other is contumely." BACON.

## p. 3 (#9)

PREFACE.

AT the request of my publishers, strengthened by the

expressed desire of many correspondents, I reprint, with a

few slight alterations, this Address.

It was written under some disadvantages this year in

the Alps, and sent by installments to the printer. When

read subsequently it proved too long for its purpose, and

several of its passages were accordingly struck out. Some

of them are here restored.

It has provoked an unexpected amount of criticism.

This, in due time, will subside; and I confidently look

forward to a calmer future for a verdict, founded not on

imaginary sins, but on the real facts of the case.

Of the numberless strictures and accusations, some of

them exceeding fierce, of which I have been, and continue

to be, the object, I refrain from speaking at any length.

To one or two of them, however, out of respect for their

sources, I would ask permission briefly to refer.

An evening paper of the first rank, after the ascription

of various more or less questionable aims and motives,

proceeds to the imputation that I permitted the cheers of

my audience to " stimulate " me to the utterance of words

which no right-minded man, without a sense of the gravest

responsibility, could employ. I trust the author of this

charge will allow me in all courtesy to assure him that the words ascribed by him to the spur of the moment were

written in Switzerland; that they stood in the printed copy

of the Address from which I read; that they evoked no

"cheers," but a silence far more impressive than cheers;

and that, finally, as regards both approbation and the

reverse, my course had been thought over and decided

long before I ventured to address a Belfast audience.

A writer in a most able theological journal represents

me as " patting religion on the back." The thought of

doing so is certainly his, not mine. The facts of religious

feeling are to me as certain as the facts of physics. But

the world, I hold, will have to distinguish between the

feeling and its forms, and to vary the latter in accordance

with the intellectual condition of the age.

I am unwilling to dwell upon statements ascribed to

eminent men, which may be imperfectly/reported in the

newspapers, and I therefore pass over a recent sermon attributed to the Bishop of Manchester with the remark,

that one engaged so much as he is in busy and, I doubt

not on the whole, beneficent outward life, is not likely to

be among the earliest to discern the more inward and

spiritual signs of the times, or to prepare for the condition

which they foreshadow.

In a recent speech at Dewsbury, the Dean of Manchester is reported to have expressed himself thus: "The

professor" (myself) "ended a most remarkable and eloquent speech by terming himself a material atheist." My

attention was drawn to Dean Cowie's statement by a

correspondent, who described it as standing " conspicuous

among the strange calumnies " with which my words have

been assailed. For myself I use no language which could

imply that I am hurt by such attack-. They have lost

their power to wound or injure. So likewise as regards

a resolution recently passed by the Presbytery of Belfast,

in which Prof. Huxley and myself are spoken of as

"ignoring the existence of God, and advocating pure and

simple materialism;" had the possessive pronoun "our"

preceded " God," and had the words "what we consider"

preceded "pure," this statement would have been objectively true; but to make it so this qualification is required.

Cardinal Cullen, I am told, is also actively engaged in

erecting spiritual barriers against the intrusion of "infidelity" into Ireland. His eminence, I believe, has reason to suspect that the Catholic youth around him are not

proof to the seductions of science. Strong as he is, I

believe him to be impotent here. The youth of Ireland

will imbibe science, however slowly; they will be leavened by it, however gradually. And to its inward modifying power among Catholics themselves, rather than to

any Protestant propagandism, or other external influence,

I look for the abatement of various incongruities; among

them, of those mediaeval proceedings which, to the scandal and amazement of our nineteenth-century intelligence,

have been revived among us during the last two years.

In connection with the charge of atheism, I would

make one remark. Christian men are proved by their

writings to have their hours of weakness and of doubt, as

well as their hours of strength and of conviction; and

men like myself share, in their own way, these variations

of mood and tense. Were the religious views of many of

my assailants the only alternative ones, I do not know

how strong the claims of the doctrine of " material atheism " upon my allegiance might be. Probably they would

be very strong. But, as it is, I have noticed during years

of self-observation that it is not in hours of clearness and

vigor that this doctrine commends itself to my mind; that

in the presence of stronger and healthier thought it ever

dissolves and disappears, as offering no solution of the

mystery in which we dwell, and of which we form a part.

To coarser attacks and denunciations I pay no attention; nor have I any real reason to complain of revilings

addressed to me, which professing Christians, as could

readily be proved, do not scruple to use toward each other.

The more agreeable task remains to me of thanking those

who have tried, however hopelessly, to keep accusation

within the bounds of justice, and who, privately, and at

some risk in public, have honored me with the expression

of their sympathy and approval.

JOHN TYNDALL.

ATHENAEUM CLUB,

September 15, 1874.

ADDRESS.

AN impulse inherent in primeval man turned his

thoughts and questionings betimes toward the sources of

natural phenomena. The same impulse, inherited and intensified, is the spur of scientific action to-day. Determined by it, by a process of abstraction from experience

we form physical theories which lie beyond the pale of experience, but which satisfy the desire of the mind to see

every natural occurrence resting upon a cause. In forming their notions of the origin of things, our earliest historic (and doubtless, we might add, our prehistoric) ancestors pursued, as far as their intelligence permitted, the

same course. They also fell back upon experience, but

with this difference-that the particular experiences which

furnished the weft and woof of their theories were drawn,

not from the study of Nature, but from what lay much

closer to them, the observation of men. Their theories

accordingly took an anthropomorphic form. To supersensual beings, which, "however potent and invisible, were

nothing but a species of human creatures, perhaps raised

from among mankind, and retaining all human passions

and appetites," 1 (1 Hume, "Natural History of Religion.") were handed over the rule and governance of natural phenomena.

Tested by observation and reflection, these early notions failed in the long-run to satisfy the more penetrating intellects of our race. Far in the depths of history we

find men of exceptional power differentiating themselves

from the crowd, rejecting these anthropomorphic notions,

and seeking to connect natural phenomena with their physical principles. But long prior to these purer efforts of

the understanding the merchant had been abroad, and

rendered the philosopher possible; commerce had been

developed, wealth amassed, leisure for travel and speculation secured, while races educated under different conditions, and therefore differently informed and endowed,

had been stimulated and sharpened by mutual contact.

In those regions where the commercial aristocracy of ancient Greece mingled with its Eastern neighbors, the

sciences were born, being nurtured and developed by freethinking and courageous men. The state of things to be

displaced may be gathered from a passage of Euripides

quoted by Hume: "There is nothing in the world; no

glory, no prosperity. The gods toss all into confusion;

mix every thing with its reverse, that all of us, from our

ignorance and uncertainty, may pay them the more worship and reverence." Now, as science demands the radical extirpation of caprice and the absolute reliance upon

law in Nature, there grew with the growth of scientific

notions a desire and determination to sweep from the field

oft theory this mob of gods and demons, and to place

natural phenomena on a basis more congruent with themselves.

The problem which had been previously approached

from above was now attacked from below; theoretic effort

passed from the super- to the sub-sensible. It was felt

that to construct the universe in idea it was necessary to

have some notion of its constituent parts-of what Lucretius subsequently called the "First Beginnings." Abstracting again from experience, the leaders of scientific

speculation reached at length the pregnant doctrine of

atoms and molecules, the latest developments of which

were set forth with such power and clearness at the last

meeting of the British Association. Thought, no doubt,

had long hovered about this doctrine before it attained

the precision and completeness which it assumed in the

mind of Democritus,' a philosopher who may well for a

moment arrest our attention. "Few great men," says

Lange, a non-materialist, in his excellent "History of

Materialism," to the spirit and to the letter of which I am

equally indebted, "have been so despitefully used by history as Democritus. In the distorted images sent down

to us through unscientific traditions there remains of him

almost nothing but the name of 'the laughing philosopher,' while figures of immeasurably smaller significance

spread themselves out at full length before us." Lange

speaks of Bacon's high appreciation of Democritus-for

ample illustrations of which I am indebted to my excellent

friend Mr. Spedding, the learned editor and biographer of

Bacon. It is evident, indeed, that Bacon considered

Democritus to be a man of weightier metal than either

Plato or Aristotle, though their philosophy "was noised

and celebrated in the schools, amid the din and pomp of

professors." It was not they, but Genseric and Attila and

the barbarians, who destroyed the atomic philosophy.

"For, at a time when all human learning had suffered shipwreck, these planks of Aristotelian and Platonic philosophy,

as being of a lighter and more inflated substance, were

preserved and came down to us, while things more solid

sank and almost passed into oblivion."

The son of a wealthy father, Democritus devoted the

whole of his inherited fortune to the culture of his mind.

He traveled everywhere; visited Athens when Socrates

and Plato were there, but quitted the city without making

himself known. Indeed, the dialectic strife in which Socrates so much delighted had no charms for Democritus,

who held that " the man who readily contradicts and uses

many words is unfit to learn any thing truly right." He

is said to have discovered and educated Protagoras the

sophist, being struck as much by the manner in which he,

being a hewer of wood, tied up his fagots, as by the

sagacity of his conversation. Democritus returned poor

from his travels, was supported by his brother, and at

length wrote his great work entitled " Diakosmos," which

he read publicly before the people of his native town.

He was honored by his countrymen in various ways, and

died serenely at a great age.

The principles enunciated by Democritus reveal his

uncompromising antagonism to those who deduced the

phenomena of Nature from the caprices of the gods. They

are briefly these: 1. From nothing comes nothing.

Nothing that exists can be destroyed. All changes are

due to the combination and separation of molecules. 2.

Nothing happens by chance. Every occurrence has its

cause from which it follows by necessity. 3. The only

existing things are the atoms and empty space; all else

is mere opinion. 4. The atoms are infinite in number and

infinitely various in form; they strike together, and the

lateral motion and whirlings which thus arise are the beginnings of worlds. 5. The varieties of all things depend

upon the varieties of their atoms, in number, size, and aggregation. 6. The soul consists of fine, smooth, round

atoms, like those of fire. These are the most mobile of all.

They interpenetrate the whole body, and in their motions

the phenomena of life arise. The first five propositions

are a fair general statement of the atomic philosophy, as

now held. As regards the sixth, Democritus made his

fine smooth atoms do duty for the nervous system, whose

functions were then unknown. The atoms of Democritus

are individually without sensation; they combine in obedience to mechanical laws; and not only organic forms, but

the phenomena of sensation and thought, are the result of

their combination.

That great enigma, "the exquisite adaptation of one

part of an organism to another part, and to the conditions

of life," more especially the construction of the human

body, Democritus made no attempt to solve. Empedocles,

a man of more fiery and poetic nature, introduced the notion of love and hate among the atoms to account for

their combination and separation. Noticing this gap in

the doctrine of Democritus, he struck in with the penetrating thought, linked, however, with some wild speculation, that it lay in the very nature of those combinations

which were suited to their ends (in other words, in harmony with their environment) to maintain themselves, while

unfit combinations, having no proper habitat, must rapidly

disappear. Thus more than two thousand years ago the

doctrine of the " survival of the fittest," which in our day,

not on the basis of vague conjecture, but of positive knowledge, has been raised to such extraordinary significance,

had received at all events partial enunciation.'

Epicurus,' said to be the son of a poor school-master at

Samos, is the next dominant figure in the history of the

atomic philosophy. He mastered the writings of Democritus, heard lectures in Athens, went back to Saros, and

subsequently wandered through various countries. He

finally returned to Athens, where he bought a garden, and

surrounded himself by pupils, in the midst of whom he

lived a pure and serene life, and died a peaceful death.

Democritus looked to the soul as the ennobling part of

man; even beauty without understanding partook of animalism. Epicurus also rated the spirit above the body;

the p!easure of the body was that of the moment, while

the spirit could draw upon the future and the past. His

philosophy was almost identical with that of Democritus;

but he never quoted either friend or foe. One mai*n object

of Epicurus was to free the world from superstition and

the fear of death. Death he treated with indifference. It

merely robs us of sensation. As long as we are, death is

not; and, when death is, we are not. Life has no more

evil for him who has made up his mind that it is no evil

not to live. He adored the gods, but not in the ordinary

fashion. The idea of divine power, properly purified, he

thought an elevating one. Still he taught, " Not he is

godless who rejects the gods of the crowd, but rather he

who accepts them." The gods were to him eternal and

immortal beings, whose blessedness excluded every thought

of care or occupation of any kind. Nature pursues her

course in accordance with everlasting laws, the gods never

interfering. They haunt and becoming, as our capacities widen, more abstract and

sublime. On one great point the mind of Epicurus was

at peace He neither sought nor expected, here or hereafter, any personal profit from his relation to the gods.

And it is assuredly a fact that loftiness and serenity of

thought may be promoted by conceptions which involve

no idea of profit of this kind. ' Did I not believe," said

a great man to me once, " that an Intelligence is at the

heart of things, my life on earth would be intolerable."

Lange, second edition, p. 23. a Born 342 n. c.

"The lucid interspace of world and world

Where never creeps a cloud or moves a wind,

Nor ever falls the least white star of snow,

Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans,

Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar

Their sacred everlasting calm."'

Lange considers the relation of Epicurus to the gods

subjective; the indication probably of an ethical requirement of his own nature. We cannot read history with

open eyes, or study human nature to its depths, and fail to

discern such a requirement. Man never has been, and

he never will be, satisfied with the operations and products

of the understanding alone; hence physical science cannot cover all the demands of his nature. But the history

of the efforts made to satisfy these demands might be

broadly described as a history of errors-the error, in great

part, consisting in ascribing fixity to that which is fluent,

which varies as we vary, being gross when we are gross,

1 Tennyson's " Lucretius."

The utterer of these words is not, in my opinion, rendered less noble but more noble by the fact that it was the

need of ethical harmony here, and not the thought of personal profit hereafter, that prompted his observation.

There are persons, not belonging to the highetL intellectual zone, nor yet to the lowest, to whom perfect clearness of exposition suggests want of depth. They find

comfort and edification in an abstract and learned phraseology. To some such people Epicurus, who spared no

pains to rid his style of every trace of haze and turbidity,

appeared, on this very account, superficial. HIe had, however, a disciple who thought it no unworthy occupation to

spend his days and nights in the effort to reach the clearness of his master, and to whom the Greek philosopher is

mainly indebted for the extension and perpetuation of his

fame. A century and a half after the death of Epicurus,

Lucretius ' wrote his great poem, "On the Nature of

Things," in which he, a Roman, developed with extraordinary ardor thie philosophy of his Greek predecessor. He

wishes to win over his friend Memnius to the school of

Epicurus; and, although he has no rewards in a future life

to offer, although his object appears to be a purely negative one, he addresses his friend with the heat of an apostle. His object, like that'of his great forerunner, is the

destruction of superstition; and considering that men

(1 Born 99 B. c.)

trembled before every natural event as a direct monition

from the gods, and that everlasting torture was also in

prospect, the freedom aimed at by Lucretius might perhaps be deemed a positive good. "This terror," he says,

" and darkness of mind must be dispelled, not by the rays

of the sun and glittering shafts of day, but by the aspect

and the law of Nature." Ile refutes the notion that any

thing can come out of nothing, or that that which is once

begotten can be recalled to nothing. The first beginnings,

the atoms, are indestructible, and into them all things can

be resolved at last. Bodies are partly atoms, and partly

combinations of atoms; but the atoms nothing can quench.

They are strong in solid singleness, and by their denser

combination all things can be closely packed and exhibit

enduring strength, He denies that matter is infinitely

divisible. We come at length to the atoms, without which,

as an imperishable substratum, all order in the generation

and development of things would be destroyed.

The mechanical shock of the atoms being in his view

the all-sufficient cause of things, he combats the notion

that the constitution of Nature has been in any way determined by intelligent design. The interaction of the

atoms throughout infinite time rendered all manner of

combinations possible. Of these the 'fit ones persisted,

while the unfit ones disappeared. Not after sage deliberation did the atoms station themselves in their right places,

nor did they bargain what motions they should assume.

From all eternity they have been driven together, and,

after trying motions and unions of every kind, they fell at

length into the arrangements out of which this system of

t!hings has been formed. "'If you will apprehend and

keep in mind these things, Nature, free at once, and rid of

her haughty lords, is seen to do all things spontaneously

of herself, without the meddling of the go(d.^"

1 Monro's translation. In his criticism of this work, Contemporary

To meet the objection that his atoms cannot be seen,

Lucretius describes a violent storm, and shows that the

invisible particles of air act in the same way as the visible

particles of water. We perceive, moreover, the different

smells of things, yet never see them coming to our nostrils. Again, clothes hung up on a shore which waves

break upon become moist, and then get dry if spread out

in the sun, though no eye can see either the approach or

the escape of the water-particles. A ring, worn long on

the finger, becomes thinner; a water-drop hollows out a

stone; the ploughshare is rubbed away in the field; the

street-pavement is worn by the feet; but the particles that

disappear at any moment we cannot see. Nature acts

through invisible particles. That Lucretius had a strong

scientific imagination the foregoing references prove. A

fine illustration of his power in this respect is his explanation of the apparent rest of bodies whose atoms are in

motion. He employs the image of a flook of sheep with

skipping lambs, which, seen from a distance, presents

simply a white patch upon the green hill, the jumping of

the individual lambs being quite invisibl,.

His vaguely-grand conception of the atoms falling eternally through space suggested the nebular hypothesis to

Kant, its first propounder. Far beyond the limits of our

visible world are to be found atoms innumerable, which

have never been united to form bodies, or which, if once

united, have been again dispersed, falling silently through

immeasurable intervals of time and space. As everywhere

throughout the All the same conditions are repeated, so

must the phenomena be repeated also. Above us, below

us, beside us, therefore, are worlds without end; and this,

when considered, must dissipate every thought of a deflecReview, 1867, Dr. Hayman does not appear to be aware of the really

sound and subtile observations on which the reasoning of Lucretius,

though erroneous, sometimes rests.

16

tion of the universe by the gods. The worlds come and go,

attracting new atoms out of limitless space, or dispersing

their own particles. The reputed death of Lucretius, which

forms the basis of Mr. Tennyson's noble poem, is in strict

accordance with his philosophy, which was severe and pure.

During the centuries lying between the first of these

three philosophers and the last, the human intellect was

active in other fields than theirs. The sophists had run

through their career. At Athens had appeared Socrates,

Plato, and Aristotle, who ruined the sophists, and whose

yoke remains to some extent unbroken to the present

hour. Within this period also the School of Alexandria

was founded, Euclid wrote his " Elements," and made some

advance in optics. Archimedes had propounded the theory

of the lever and the principles of hydrostatics. Pythagoras had made his experiments on the harmonic intervals,

while astronomy was immensely enriched by the discoveries

of Hipparchus, who was followed by the historically more

celebrated Ptolemy. Anatomy had been made the basis of

scientific medicine; and it is said by Draper that vivisection then began. In fact, the science of ancient Greece had

already cleared the world of the fantastic images of divinities

operating capriciously through natural phenomena. It had

shaken itself free from that fruitless scrutiny " by the internal light of the mind alone," which had vainly sought

to transcend experience and reach a knowledge of ultimate

causes. Instead of accidental observation, it had introduced observation with a purpose; instruments were employed to aid the senses; and scientific method was

rendered in a great measure complete by the union of Induction and Experiment.

What, then, stopped its victorious advance? Why was

the scientific intellect compelled, like an exhausted soil, to

1" History of the Intellectual Development of Europe," p. 295.

lie fallow for nearly two millenniums before it could regather the elements necessary to its fertility and strength?

Bacon has already let us know one cause; Whewell ascribes this stationary period to four causes-obscurity of

thought, servility, intolerance of disposition, enthusiasm of

temper-and he gives striking examples of each.1 But

these characteristics must have had their antecedents in

the circumstances of the time. Rome and the other cities

of the empire had fallen into moral putrefaction. Christianity had appeared, offering the gospel to the poor, and, by

moderation if not asceticism of life, practically protesting

against the profligacy of the age. The sufferings of the

early Christians, and the extraordinary exaltation of mind

which enabled them to triumph over the diabolical tortures

to which they were subjected,' must have left traces not

easily effaced. They scorned the earth, in view of that

" building of God, that house not made with hands, eternal

in the heavens." The Scriptures which ministered to their

spiritual needs were also the measure of their science.

When, for example, the celebrated question of antipodes

came to be discussed, the Bible was with many the ultimate

court of appeal. Augustin, who flourished A. D. 400, would

not deny the rotundity of the earth; but he would deny

the possible existence of inhabitants at the other side, "because no such race is recorded in Scripture among the

descendants of Adam." Archbishop Boniface was shocked

at the assumption of a " world of human beings out of the

reach of the means of salvation." Thus reined in, Science

was not likely to make much progress. Later on, the

political and theological strife between the Church and civil

governments, so powerfully depicted by Draper, must have

dlone much to stifle investigation.

Whewell makes many wise and brave remarks regard1 " History of the Inductive Sciences," vol. i.

2 Depicted with terrible vividness in Renan's " Antichrist."

ing the spirit of the middle ages. It was a menial spirit.

The seekers after natural knowledge had forsaken that

fountain of living waters, the direct appeal to Nature by

observation and experiment, and had given themselves up

to the remanipulation of the notions of their predecessors.

It was a time when thought had become abject, and when

the acceptance of mere authority led, as it always does in

science, to intellectual death. Natural events, instead of

being traced to physical, were referred to moral causes;

while an exercise of the fantasy, almost as degrading as

the spiritualism of the present day, took the place of scientific speculation. Then came the mysticism of the middle

ages, magic, alchemy, the Neoplatonic philosophy, with

its visionary though sublime abstractions, which caused men

to look with shame upon their own bodies as hindrances to

the absorption of the creature in the blessedness of the

Creator. Finally came the scholastic philosophy, a fusion,

according to Lange, of the least-mature notions of Aristotle

with the Christianity of the West. Intellectual immobility

was the result. As a traveler without a compass in a fog

may wander long, imagining he is making way, and find

himself after hours of toil at his starting-point, so the

schoolmen, having "tied and untied the same knots and

formed and dissipated the same clouds," found themselves

at the end of centuries in their old position.

With regard to the influence wielded by Aristotle in

the middle ages, and which, though to a less extent, he

still wields, I would ask permission to make one remark.

When the human mind has achieved greatness and given

evidence of extraordinary power in any domain, there is a

tendency to credit it with similar power in all other

domains. Thus theologians have found comfort and assurance in the thought that Newton dealt with the question of revelation, forgetful oi tiue fact that the very devotion of his powers, through all the best years of his life,

to a totally different class of ideas, not to speak of any

natural disqualification, tended to render him less instead of

more competent to deal with theological and historic questions. Goethe, starting from his established greatness as a

poet, and indeed from his positive discoveries in natural

history, produced a profound impression among the painters

of Germany when he published his " Farbenlehre," in which

he endeavored to overthrow Newton's theory of colors.

This theory he deemed so obviously absurd that he considered its author a charlatan, and attacked him with a

corresponding vehemence of language. In the domain of

natural history Goethe had made really considerable discoveries; and we have high authority for assuming that,

had he devoted himself wholly to that side of science, he

might have reached in it an eminence comparable with

that which he attained as a poet. In sharpness of observation, in the detection of analogies, however apparently

remote, in the classification and organization of facts according to the analogies discerned, Goethe possessed extraordinary powers. These elements of scientific inquiry

fall in with the discipline of the poet. But, on the other

hand, a mind thus richly endowed in the direction of natural

history may be almost shorn of endowment as regards

the more strictly-called physical and mechanical sciences.

Goethe was in this condition. He could not formulate

distinct mechanical conceptions; he could not see the force

of mechanical reasoning; and in regions where such reasoning reigns supreme he became a mere ignis fatuus to

those who followed him.

I have sometimes permitted myself to compare Aristotle with Goethe, to credit the Stagirite with an almost

superhuman power of amassing and systematizing facts, but

to consider him fatally defective on that side of the mind

in respect to which incompleteness has been just ascribed

to Goethe. Whewell refers the errors of Aristotle, not to a neglect of facts, but to a " neglect of the idea appropriate

to the facts; the idea of mechanical cause, which is force,

and the substitution of vague or inapplicable noticns, involvilfg only relations of space or emotions of wonder."

This is doubtless true; but the word " neglect " implies mere

intellectual misdirection, whereas in Aristotle, as in Goethe,

it was not, I believe, misdirection, but sheer natural incapacity which lay at the root of his mistakes. As a physicist,

Aristotle displayed what we should consider some of the

worst attributes of a modern physical investigator-indis-.

tinctness, of ideas, confusion of mind, and a confident use of

language, which led to the delusive notion that he had

really mastered his subject, while he had as yet failed to

grasp even the elements of it. He put words in the place

of things, subject in the place of object. He preached induction without practising it, inverting the true order of

inquiry by passing from the general to the particular instead of from the particular to the general. He made of the

universe a closed sphere, in the centre of which he fixed

the earth, proving from general principles, to his own satisfaction and to that of the world for near two thousand years,

that no other universe was possible. His notions of motion

were entirely unphysical. It was natural or unnatural,

better or worse, calm or violent âno real mechanical

conception regarding it lying at the bottom of his mind.

He affirmed that a vacuum could not exist, and proved that

if it did exist motion in it would be impossible. He determined a priori how many species of animals must exist,

and shows on general principles why animals must have

such and such parts. When an eminent contemporary

philosopher, who is far removed from errors of this kind,

remembers these abuses of the a priori method, he will be

able to make allowance for the jealousy of physicists as to

the acceptance of so-called a priori truths. Aristotle's

errors of detail, as shown by Eucken and Lange, were grave and numerous. He affirmed that only in man we had the

beating of the heart, that the left side of the body wvas

colder than the right, that men have more teeth than

women, and that there is an empty space at the back of

every man's head.

There is one essential quality in physical conceptions

which is entirely wanting in those of Aristotle and his followers. I wish it could be expressed by a word untainted

by its associations; it signifies a capability of being placed

as a coherent picture before the mind. The Germans express the act of picturing by the word vorstellen, and the

picture they call a Vorstellung. We have no word in English which comes nearer to our requirements than imayination, and, taken with its proper limitations, the word

answers very well; but, as just intimated, it is tainted

by its associations, and therefore objectionable to some

minds. Compare, with reference to this capacity of mental presentation, the case of the Aristotelian who refers

the ascent of water ill a pump to Nature's abhorrence of a

vacuum, with that of Pascal when he proposed to solve the

question of atmospheric pressure by the ascent of the

Puy de D~me. In the one case the terms of the explanation refuse to fall into place as a physical image; in the

other the image is distinct, the fall and rise of the barometer being clearly figured as the balancing of two varying

and opposing pressures.

During the drought of the middle ages in Christendom, the Arabian intellect, as forcibly shown by Draper,

was active. With the intrusion of the Moors into Spain,

he says, order, learning, and refinement, took the place of

their opposites. When smitten with disease, the Christian

peasant resorted to a shrine, the Moorish one to an instructed physician. The Arabs encouraged translations

from the Greek philosophers, but not from the Greek poets.

They turned in disgust " from the lewdness of our classical

mythology, and denounced as an unpardonable blasphemy

all connection between the impure Olympian Jove and the

Most High God;" Draper traces still further than Whewell the Arab elements in our scientific terms, and points

out that the under-garment of ladies retains to this hour

its Arab name. He gives examples of what Arabian men

of science accomplished, dwelling particularly on Alhazan,

who was the first to correct the Platonic notion that rays

of light are emitted by the eye. He discovered atmospheric refraction, and points out that we see the sun and

the moon after they have set. He explains the enlargement of the sun and moon, and the shortening of the vertical diameters of both these bodies, when near the horizon.

He is aware that the atmosphere decreases in density with

increase of elevation, and actually fixes its height at fiftyeight and a half miles. In the " Book of the Balance Wisdom," he sets forth the connection between the weight of

the atmosphere and its increasing density. He shows that

a body will weigh differently in a rare and dense atmosphere; he considers the force with which plunged bodies

rise through heavier media. He understands the doctrine

of the centre of gravity, and applies it to the investigation

of balances and steelyards. He recognizes gravity as a

force, though he falls into the error of making it diminish

simply as the distance increased, and of making it purely

terrestrial. He knows the relation between the velocities,

spaces, and times of falling bodies, and has distinct ideas

of capillary attraction. He improved the hydrometer. The

determination of the densities of bodies as given by Alhazan

approaches very closely to our own. " I join," says Draper,

" in the pious prayer of Alhazan, 'that in the day of judgment the All-Merciful will take pity on the soul of AburRaihan, because he was the first of the race of men to construct a table of specific gravities." If all this be historic

truth (and I have entire confidence in Dr. Draper), well may

he " deplore the systematic manner in which the literature

of Europe has contrived to put out of sight our scientific

obligations to the Mohammedans." 1

The strain upon the mind during the stationary period

toward ultra-terrestrial things, to the neglect of problems

close at hand, was sure to provoke reaction. But the reaction was gradual; for the ground was dangerous, a power

being -at hand competent to crush the critic who went too

far. To elude this power and still allow opportunity for the

expression of opinion, the doctrine of " twofold truth " was

invented, according to which an opinion might be held " theologically" and the opposite opinion "philosophically."'

Thus in the thirteenth century the creation of the world in

six days, and the unchangeableness of the individual soul,

which had been so distinctly affirmed by St. Thomas

Aquinas, were both denied philosophically, but admitted

to be true as articles of the Catholic faith. When Protagoras uttered the maxim which brought upon him so much

vituperation, that " opposite assertions are equally true," he

sinliply i meant that human beings differed so much from each

other that what was subjectively true to the one might be

subjectively untrue to the other. The great sophist never

meant to play fast and loose with the truth by saying that

one of two opposite assertions, made by the same individual, could possibly escape being a lie. It was not "sophistry," but the dread of theologic vengeance, that generated

this double dealing with conviction; and it is astonishing

to notice what lengths were possible to men who were

adroit in the use of artifices of this kind.

Toward the close of the stationary period a word-weariness, if I may so express it, took more and more possession

of men's minds. Christendom had become sick of the

school philosophy and its verbal wastes, which led to no

1" Intellectual Development of Europe," p. 359.

2Lange, second edition, pp. 181, 182.

issue, but left the intellect in everlasting haze. Here and

there he heard the voice of one impatiently crying in the

wilderness4'tNot unto Aristotle, not unto subtile hypothesis, not unto Church, Bible, or blind tradition, must we turn

for a knowledge of the universe, but to the direct investigation of Nature by observation and experiment." In

1543 the epoch-making work of Copernicus on the paths

of the heavenly bcdies appeared. The total crash of Aristotle's closed universe with the earth at its centre followed

as a consequence, and " the earth moves!" became a kind

of watchword among intellectual freemen. Copernicus

was canon of the Church of Frauenburg, in the diocese of

Ermeland. For three-and-thirty years he had withdrawn

himself from the world and devoted himself to the consolidation of his great scheme of the solar system. He made

its blocks eternal; and even to those who feared it and desired its overthrow it was so obviously strong that they refrained for a time from meddling with it. In the last year

of the life of Copernicus his book appeared: it is said that

the old man received a copy of it a few days before his

death, and then departed in peace.

The Italian philosopher, Giordano Bruno, was one cf

the earliest converts to the new astronomy. Taking Lucretius as his exemplar, be revived the notion of the infinity

of worlds; and, combining. with it the doctrine of Copernicus, reached the sublime generalization that the fixed

stars are suns, scattered numberless through space and accompanied by satellites, which bear the same relation to

them that our earth does to our sun, or our moon to our

earth. This was an expansion of transcendent import; but

Bruno came closer than this to our present line of thought.

Struck with the problem of the generation and maintenance

of organisms, and duly pondering it, he came to the conclusion that Nature in her productions does not imitate the

technic of man. Her process is one of unraveling and un

folding. The infinity of forms under which matter appears

was not imposed upon it by an external artificer; by its

o\-wn intrinsic force and virtue it brings these forms forth.

AMatter is not the mere naked, empty capacity which philosophers have pictured her to be, but the universal mother

who brings forth all things as the fruit of her own womb.

This outspoken man was originally a Dominican monk.

He was accused of heresy and had to fly, seeking refuge in

Geneva, Paris, England, and Germany. In 1592 he fell

into the hands of the Inquisition at Venice. Hie was imprisoned for many years, tried, degraded, excommunicated,

and handed over to the civil power, with the request that

he should be treated gently and "without the shedding of

blood." This meant that he was to be burnt; and burnt

accordingly he was, on the 16th of February, 1600. To

escape a similar fate, Galileo, thirty-three years afterward, abjured, upon his knees, and with his hands upon the

holy gospels, the heliocentric doctrine which he knew to be

true. After Galileo came Kepler, who from his German

home defied the power beyond the Alps. He traced out

from preexisting observations the laws of planetary motion.

Materials were thus prepared for Newton, who bound thdse

empirical laws together by the principle of gravitation.

In the seventeenth century Bacon and Descartes, the

restorers of philosophy, appeared in succession. Differently

educated and endowed, their philosophic tendencies were

different. Bacon held fast to Induction, believing firmly in

the existence of an external world, and making collected

experiences the basis of all knowledge. The mathematical

studies of Descartes gave him a bias toward Deduction;

and his fundamental principle was much the same as that

of Protagoras, who made the individual man the measure

of all things. "I think, therefore I am," said Descartes.

Only his own identity was sure to him; and the development of this system would have led to an idealism in which

the outer world would be resolved into a mere phenomenon

of consciousness. Gassendi, one of Descartes's contemporaries, of whom we shall hear more presently, quickly pointed

out that the fact of personal existence would be proved as

well by reference to any other act as to the act of thinking.

I eat, therefore I am; or, I love, therefore I am, would be

quite as conclusive. Lichtenberg showed that the very

thing to be proved was inevitably postulated in the first

two words, " I think;" and that no inference from the postulate could by any possibility be stronger than the postulate itself.

But Descartes deviated strangely from the idealism implied in his fundamental principle. He was the first to

reduce, in a manner eminently capable of bearing the test

of mental presentation, vital phenomena to purely mechanical principles. Through fear or love, Descartes was a good

churchman; he accordingly rejects the notion of an atom,

because it was absurd to suppose that God, if he so pleased,

could not divide an atom; he puts in the place of the atoms

small round particles and light splinters, out of which he

builds the organism. He sketches with marvelous physical

insight a machine, with water for its motive power, which

shall illustrate vital actions. He has made clear to his

mind that such a machine would be competent to carry on

the processes of digestion, nutrition, growth, respiration,

and the beating of the heart. It would be competent to

accept impressions from the external sense, to store them

up in imagination and memory, to go through the internal

movements of the appetites and passions, the external

movement of limbs. He deduces these functions of his

machine from the mere arrangement of its organs, as the

movement of a clock or other automaton is deduced from

its weights and wheels. "As far as these functions are

concerned," he says, " it is not necessary to conceive any

other vegetative or sensitive soul, nor any other principle of

motion or of life, than the blood and the spirits agitated by

the fire which burns continually in the heart, and which is

in no wise different from the fires which exist in inanimate

bodies." Had Descartes been acquainted with the steamengine, he would have taken it, instead of a fall of water,

as his motive power, and shown the perfect analogy which

exists between the oxidation of the food in the body and

that of the coal in the furnace. He would assuredly have

anticipated Mayer in calling the blood which the heart diffuses " the oil of the lamp of life; " deducing all animal

motions from the combustion of this oil, as the motions

of a steam-engine are deduced from the combustion of

its coal. As the matter stands, however, and considering

the circumstances of the time, the boldness, clearness,

and precision with which he grasped the problem of vital

dynamics constitute a marvelous illustration of intellectual

power.1

During the middle ages the doctrine of atoms had to

all appearance vanished from discussion. In all probability

it held its ground among sober-minded and thoughtful men,

though neither the Church nor the world was prepared to

hear of it with tolerance. Once, in the year 1348, it received distinct expression. But retractation by compulsion

immediately followed, and, thus discouraged, it slumbered

till the seventeenth century, when it was revived by a contemporary and friend of Hobbes and Malmesbury, the orthodox Catholic provost of Digne, Gassendi. But, before stating his relation to the Epicurean doctrine, it will be well

to say a few words on the effect, as regards science, of the

general introduction of monotheism among European nations.

"Were men," says Hume, " led into the apprehension

of invisible intelligent power by contemplation of the

1 See Huxley's admirable essay on Descartes, " Lay Sermons," pp. 364,

365.

works of Nature, they could never possibly entertain any

conception but of one single being, who bestowed existence and order on this vast machine, and adjusted all its

parts to one regular system." Referring to the condition

of the heathen, who sees a god behind every natural event,

thus peopling the world with thousands of beings whose

caprices are incalculable, Lange shows the impossibility of

any compromise between such notions and those of science,

which proceeds on the assumption of never-changing law

and causality. "But," he continues, with characteristic

penetration, " when the great thought of one God, acting

as a unit upon the universe, has been seized, the connection of things in accordance with the law of cause and

effect is not only thinkable, but it is a necessary consequence of the assumption. For when I see ten thousand

wheels in motion, and know, or believe, that they are all

driven by one, then I know that I have before me a

mechanism the action of every part of which is determined

by the plan of the whole. So much being assumed, it

follows that I may investigate the structure of that machine, and the various motions of its parts. For the time

being, therefore, this conception renders scientific action

free." In other words, were a capricious God at the circumference of every wheel and at the end of every lever,

the action of the machine would be incalculable by the

methods of science. But the action of all its parts being

rigidly determined by their connections and relations,

and these being brought into play by a single self-acting

driving-wheel, then, though this last prime mover may

elude me, I am still able to comprehend the machinery

which it sets in motion. We have here a conception of

the relation of Nature to its Author which seems perfectly

acceptable to some minds, but perfectly intolerable to

others. Newton and Boyle lived and worked happily

under the influence of this conception; Goethe rejected it

with vehemence, and the same repugnance to accepting it

is manifest in Carlyle.'

The analytic alnd synthetic tendencies of the human

mind exhibit themselves throughout history, great writers

ranging themselves sometimes on the one side, sometimes

on the other. Men of warm feelings and minds open to the

elevating impressions produced by Nature as a whole, whose

satisfaction, therefore, is rather ethical than logical, lean

to the synthetic side; while the analytic harmonizes best

with the more precise and more mechanical bias which

seeks the satisfaction of the understanding. Some form

of pantheism was usually adopted by the one, while a detached Creator, working more or less after the manner of

men, was often assumed by the other. Gassendi is hardly

to be ranked with either. Having formally acknowledged

God as the great first cause, he immediately dropped the

idea, applied the known laws of mechanics to the atons,

deducing thence all vital phenomena. He defended Epicurus, and dwelt upon his purity, both of doctrine and of

life. True he was a heathen, but so was Aristotle. He

assailed superstition and religion, and rightly, because he

did not know the true religion. He thought that the gods

neither rewarded nor punished, and adored them purely in

consequence of their completeness; here we see, says

Gassendi, the reverence of the child instead of the fear of

the slave. The errors of Epicurus shall be corrected, the

body of his truth retained; and then Gassendi proceeds,

as any heathen might do, to build up the world, and all

that therein is, of atoms and molecules. God, who created

earth and water, plants and animals, produced in the first

1 Boyle's model of the universe was the Strasbourg clock with an outside artificer. Goethe, on the other hand, sang" Ihm ziemt's die Welt im Innern zu bewegen,

Natur in sich, sich in Natur zu hegen."

See also Carlyle, "Past and Present," chapter v.

place a definite number of atoms, which constituted the

seed of all things. Then began that series of combinations and decompositions which goes on at present, and

which will continue in future. The principle of every

change resides in matter. In artificial productions the

moving principle is different from the material worked

upon; but in Nature the agent works within, being the

most active and mobile part of the material itself. Thus,

this bold ecclesiastic, without incurring the censure of the

Church or the world, contrives to outstrip Mr. Darwin.

The same cast of mind which caused him to detach the

Creator from his universe led him also to detach the soul

from the body, though to the body he ascribes an influence so large as to render the soul almost unnecessary.

The aberrations of reason were in his view an affair of the

material brain. Mental disease is brain-disease; but then

the immortal reason sits apart, and cannot be touched by

the disease. The errors of madness are efrrors of the instrument, not of the performer.

It may be more than a mere result of education, connecting itself probably with the deeper mental structure

of the two men, that the idea of Gassendi above enunciated

is substantially the same as that expressed by Prof.

Clerk Maxwell at the close of the very able lecture delivered by him at Bradford last year. According to both

philosophers, the atoms, if I understand aright, are the

prepared materials which, formed by the skill of the highest, produce by their subsequent interaction all the phenomena of the material world. There seems to be this

difference, however, between Gassendi and Maxwell: the

one postulates, the other infers his first cause. In his

"manufactured articles," as he calls the atoms, Prof. Maxwell finds the basis of an induction which enables him to

scale philosophic heights considered inaccessible by Kant,

and to take the logical step from the atoms to their Maker.

Accepting here the leadership of Kant, I doubt the

legitimacy of Maxwell's logic; but it is impossible not to

feel the ethic glow with which his lecture concludes.

There is, moreover, a very noble strain of eloquence in his

description of the steadfastness of the atoms: "Natural

causes, as we know, are at work, which tend to modify, if

they do not at length destroy, all the arrangements and

dimensions of the earth and the whole solar system. But

though in the course of ages catastrophes have occurred

and may yet occur in the heavens, though ancient systems

may be dissolved and new systems evolved out of their

ruins, the molecules out of which these systems are builtthe foundation-stones of the material universe-remain unbroken and unworn."

The atomic doctrine, in whole or in part, was entertained by Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Newton, Boyle,

and their successors, until the chemical law of multiple

proportions enabled Dalton to confer upon it an entirely

new significance. In our day there are secessions from the

theory, but it still stands firm. Loschmidt, Stoney, and

Sir William Thomson, have sought to determine the sizes

of the atoms, or, rather, to fix the limits between which

their sizes lie; while only last year the discourses of

Williamson and Maxwell illustrate the present hold of the

doctriae upon the foremost scientific minds. In fact, it

may be doubted whether, wanting this fundamental conception, a theory of the material universe is capable of

scientific statement.

Ninety years subsequent to Gassendi the doctrine of

bodily instruments, as it may be called, assumed immense

importance in the hands of Bishop Butler, who, in his

famous " Analogy of Religion," developed, from his own

point of view, and with consummate sagacity, a similar

idea. The bishop still influences superior minds; and it

will repay us to dwell for a moment on his views. He

draws the sharpest distinction between our real selves and

our bodily instruments. He does not, as far as I remember, use the word soul, possibly because the term was so

hackneyed in his day as it had been for many generations

previously. But-he speaks of " living powers," "perceiving" or "percipient powers," " moving agents," "ourselves," in the same sense as we should employ the term soul.

He dwells upon the fact that limbs may be removed, and

mortal diseases assail the body, the mind, almost up to

the moment of death, remaining clear. He refers to

sleep and to swoon, where the " living powers" are suspended, but not destroyed. Hle considers it quite as easy

to conceive of existence out of our bodies as in them:

that we may animate a succession of bodies, the dissolution of all of them having no more tendency to dissolve

our real selves, or " deprive us of living faculties-the

faculties of perception and action-than the dissolution of

any foreign matter which we are capable of receiving

impressions from, or making use of for the common occasi:eis of life." This is the key of the bishop's position;

i" our organized bodies are no more a part of ourselves

than any other matter around us." In proof of this he

calls attention to the use of glasses, which "prepare objects4' for the " percipient power " exactly as the eye does.

The eye itself is no more percipient than the glass; is

quite as much the instrument of the true self, and also as

foreign to the true self, as the glass is. "And if we see

with our eyes only in the same manner as we do with

glasses, the like may justly be concluded from analogy of

all our senses."

Lucretius, as you are aware, reached a precisely opposite conclusion; and it certainly would be interesting,

if not profitable, to us all, to hear what he would or could

urge in opposition to the reasoning of the bishop. As a

brief discussion of the point will enable us to see the

bearings of an important question, I will here permit a

disciple of Lucretius to try the strength of the bishop's

position, and then allow the bishop to retaliate, with the

view of rolling back, if he can, the difficulty upon Lucretius.

The argument might proceed in this fashion:

"Subjected to the test of mental presentation ( Vorstellung), your views, most honored prelate, would present

to miany minds a great, if not an insuperable, difficulty.

-You speak of 'living powers,' 'percipient or perceiving

powers,' and 'ourselves;' but can you form a mental

picture of any one of these apart from the organism

through which it is supposed to act? Test yourself

honestly, and see whether you possess any faculty that

would enable you to form such a conception. The true

self has a local habitation in each of us; thus localized,

must it not possess a form? If so, what form? Have

you ever for a moment realized it? When a leg is amputated the body is divided into two parts; is the true self

in both of them or in one? Thomas Aquinas might say in

both; but not you, for you appeal to the consciousness

associated with one of the two parts to prove that the

other is foreign matter. Is consciousness, then, a necessary element of the true self? If so, What do you say to

the case of the whole body being deprived of consciousness? If not, then on what grounds do you deny any

portion of the true self to the severed limb? It seems

very singular that, from the beginning to the end of your

admirable book (and no one admires its sober strength

more than I do), you never once mention the brain or

nervous system. You begin at one end of the body, and

show that is parts may be removed without prejudice to

the perceiving power. What if you begin at the other

end, and remove, instead of the leg, the brain? The

body, as before, is divided into two parts; but both are

now in the same predicament, and neither can be appealed

to to prove that the other is foreign matter. Or, instead

of going so far as to remove the brain itself, let a certain

portion of its bony covering be removed, and let a

rhythmic series of pressures and relaxations of pressure

be applied to the soft substance. At every pressure 'the

faculties of perception and of action' vanish; at every

relaxation of pressure they are restored. Where, during

the intervals of pressure, is the perceiving power? I

once had the discharge of a large Leyden battery passed

unexpectedly through me: I felt nothing, but was simply

blotted out of conscious existence for a sensible interval.

Where was my true self during that interval? Men who

have recovered from lightning-stroke have been much

longer in the same state; and, indeed, in cases of ordinary

concussion of the brain, days may elapse during which no

experience is registered in consciousness. Where is the

man himself during the period of insensibility? You

may say that I beg the question when I assume the man

to have been unconscious, that he was really conscious all

the time, and has simply forgotten what had occurred to

him. In reply to this, I can only say that no one need

shrink from the worst tortures that superstition ever lnvented if only so felt and so remembered. I do not think

your theory of instruments goes at all to the bottom of

the matter. A telegraph-operator has his instruments, by

means of which he converses with the world; our bodies

possess a nervous system, which plays a similar part between the perceiving power and external things. Cut theQ

wires of the operator, break his battery, demagnetize his

needle: by this means you certainly sever his connection

with the world; but, inasmuch as these ari real instruments, their destruction does not touch the man who uses

them. The operator survives, and he knows that he sur

vives. What is it, I would ask, in the human system that

answers to this conscious survival of the operator when

the battery of the brain is so disturbed as to produce

insensibility, or when it is destroyed altogether?

"Another consideration, which you may consider

slight, presses upon me with some force. The brain may

change from health to disease, and through such a change

the most exemplary man may be converted into a debauchee or a murderer. My very noble and approved good

master had, as you know, threatenings of lewdness intro duced into his brain by his jealous wife's philter; and,

sooner than permit himself to run even the risk of yielding

to these base promptings, he slew himself. How could

the hand of Lucretius have been thus turned against himself if the real Lucretius remained as before? Can the

brain or can it not act in this distempered way without

the intervention of the immortal reason? If it can, then

it is a prime mover which requires only healthy regulation

to render it reasonably self-acting, and there is no apparent

need of your immortal reason at all. If it cannot, then

the immortal reason, by its mischievous activity in operating upon a broken instrument, must have the credit i'.

committing every imaginable extravagance and crime. I

think, if you will allow me to say so, that the gravest consequences are likely to flow from your estimate of the

body. To regard the brain as you would a staff or an eyeglass-to shut your eyes to all its mystery, to the perfect

correlation of its condition and our consciousness, to the

fact that a slight excess or defect of blood in it produces

the very swoon to which you refer, and that in relation to

it our meat and drink and air and exercise have a perfectly transcendental value and significance-to forget all

this, does, I think, open a way to innumerable errors in our

habits of life, and may possibly in some cases initiate and

foster that very disease, and consequent mental ruin,

36

which a wiser appreciation of this mysterious organ would

have avoided."

I can imagine the bishop thoughtful after hearing this

argument. He was not the man to allow anger to mingle

with the consideration of a point of this kind. After due

reflection, and having strengthened himself by that honest

contemplation of the facts which was habitual with him,

and which includes the desire to give even adverse facts

their due weight, I can suppose the bishop to proceed

thus: "You will remember that in the ' Analogy of Religion,' of which you have so kindly spoken, I did not

profess to prove any thing absolutely, and that I over and

over again acknowledged and insisted on the smallness of

our knowledge, or rather the depth of our ignorance, as

regards the whole system of the universe. My object was

to show my deistical friends, who set forth so eloquently

the beauty and beneficence of Nature and the Ruler thereof,

while they had nothing but scorn for the so-called absurdities of the Christian scheme, that they were in no better

condition than we were, and that, for every difficulty found

upon our side, quite as great a difficulty was to be found

upon theirs. I will now, w "1 your permission, adopt a

similar line of argument. You are a Lucretian, and from

the combination and separation of insensate atoms deduce

all terrestrial things, including organic forms and their

phenomena. Let me tell you, in the first instance, how far

I am prepared to go with you. I admit that you can build

crystalline forms out of this play of molecular force; that

the diamond, amethyst, and snow-star, are truly wonderful

structures which are thus produced. I will go further and

acknowledge that even a tree or flower might in this way

be organized. Nay, if you can show nme an animal without

sensation, I will concede to you that it also might be put

together by the suitable play of molecular force.

" Thus far our way is clear; but now comes my diffi

37

culty. i our atoms are individually without sensation,

much more are they without intelligence. Maly I ask you,

then, to try your hand upon this problem? Take your dead

hydrogen-atoms, your dead oxygen-atoms, your dead carbon-atoms, your dead nitrogen-atoms, your dead phosphorusatoms, and all the other atoms, dead as grains of shot, of

which the brain is formed. Imagine them separate and

sensationless, observe them running together and forming

all imaginable combinations. This, as a purely mechanical

process, is seeable by the mind. But can you see, or dream,

or in any way imagine, how out of that mechanical act, and

from these individually dead atoms, sensation, thought, and

emotion, are to arise? Are you likely to extract Homer out

of the rattling of dice, or the Differential Calculus out of

the clash of billiard-balls? I am not all bereft of this Vorstellungskraft of which you speak, nor am I, like so many

of my brethren,'a mere vacuum as regards scientific knowledge. I can follow a particle of musk until it reaches the

olfactory nerve; I can follow the waves of sound until their

tremors reach the water of the labyrinth and set the otoliths

and Corti's fibres in motion; I can also visualize the waves

of ether as they cross the eye and hit the retina. Nay,

more, I am able to pursue to the central organ the motion

thus imparted at the periphery, and to see in idea the very

molecules of the brain thrown into tremors. My insight is

not baffled by these physical processes. What baffles

and bewilders me, is the notion that from those physical

tremors things so utterly incongruous with tlhm as sensation, thought, and emotion, can be derived. You may say,

or think,, that this issue of consciousness from the clash of

atoms is not more incongruous than the flash of light from

the union of oxygen and hydrogen. But I beg to say that

it is. For such incongruity as the flash possesses is that

s l ich I now force upon your attention. The flash is an

affair of consciousness, the objective counterpart of which

38

is a vibration. it is a flash only by your interpretation.

You are the cause of the apparent incongruity, and you

are the thing that puzzles me. I need not remind you that

the great Leibnitz felt the difficulty which I feel, and that

to get rid of this monstrous deduction of life from death

he displaced your atoms by his monads, which were more

or less perfect mirrors of the universe, and out of the summation and integration of which he supposed all the phenomena of life-sentient, intellectual, and emotional-to

arise.. I

"Your difficulty, then, a~s ] see you are ready to admit,

is quite as great as mine. *You cannot satisfy the human

understanding in its demand for logical continuity between

molecular processes and the phenomrena of consciousness.

This is a rock on which materialism must inevitably split

whenever it pretends to beac~pmptete philosophy of life.

What is the moral, my Luceetian? You and I are not

likely to indulge in ill-temper in the discussion of these

great topics, where we see so much room for honest differences of opinion. But there are people of less wit or more

bigotry (I say it with humility) on both sides, who are ever

ready to mingle anger and vituperation with such discussions. There are, for example, writers of note and influence at the present day who are not ashamed to assume

the 'deep personal sin' of a great logician to be the cause

of his unbelief in a theologic dogma. And there are others

who hold that we, who cherish our noble Bible, wrought as

it has been into the constitution of our forefathers, and by

inheritance into us, must necessarily be hypocritical and

insincere. Let us disavow and discountenance such people,

cherishing the unswerving faith that what is good and true

in both our arguments will be preserved for the benefit of

humanity, while all that is bad or false will disappenar."

I hold the bishop's reasoning to be unanswerable, and

his liberality to be worthy of imitation.

39

It is worth remarking that in one respect the bishop

was a product of his age. Long previous to his day the

nature of the soul had been so favorite and general a topic

of discussion, that, when the students of the University of

Paris wished to know the leanings of a new professor, they

at once requested him to lecture upon the soul. About

the time of Bishop Butler the question was not only agitated, but extended. It was seen by the clear-witted men

who entered this arena that many of their best arguments

applied equally to brutes and men. The bishop's arguments were of this character. He saw it, admitted it,

accepted the consequences, and boldly embraced the whole

animal world in his scheme of immortality.

Bishop Butler accepted with unIwavering trust the

chronology of the Old Testament, describing it as "confirmed by the natural and civil history of the world, collected from common historians, from the state of the earth,

and from the late inventions of arts and sciences." These

words mark progress; and they must seem somewhat hoary

to the bishop's successors of to-dayl. It is hardly necessary to inform you that since his time the domain of the

naturalist has been immensely extended-the whole science

of geology, with its astounding revelations regarding the

life of the ancient earth, having been created. The rigidity

of old conceptions has been relaxed, the public mind being

rendered gradually tolerant of the idea that not for six thousand, nor for sixty thousand, nor for six thousand thousand

thousand, but for aeons embracing untold millions of years,

this earth has been the theatre of life and death. The riddle of the rocks has been read by the geologist and paleontologist, from the subcambrian depths to the deposits thickening over the sea-bottoms of to-day. And upon the leaves

Only to some; for there are dignitaries who even now speak of the

earth's rocky crust as so much building-material prepared for man at the

Creation. Surely it is time that this loose language should cease.

40

of that stone book are, as you know, stamped the characters, plainer and surer than those formed by the ink of history, which carry the mind back into abysses of past time

compared with which the periods which satisfied Bishop

Butler cease to have a visual angle.

The lode of discovery once struck, those petrified forms

in which life was at one time active increased to multitudes

and demanded classification. They were grouped in genera,

species, and varieties, according to the degree of similarity

subsisting between them. Thus confusion was avoided,

each object being found in the pigeon-hole appropriated to

it and to its fellows of similar morphological or physiological character. The general fact soon became evident that

none but the simplest forms of life lie lowest down, that, as

we climb higher among the superimposed strata, more perfect forms appear. The change, however, from form to

form, was not continuous, but by steps-some small, some

great. "A section," says Mr. Huxley, "a hundred feet

thick will exhibit at different heights a dozen species of

ammonite, none of which passes beyond its particular zone

of limestone, of clay, into the zone below it, or into that

above it.' In the presence of such facts it was not possible to avoid the question: Have these forms, showing,

though in broken stages and with many irregularities, this

unmistakable general advance, been subjected to no continuous law of growth or variation? Had our.education been

purely scientific, or had it been sufficiently detached from

influences which, however ennobling in another domain,

have always proved hinderances and delusions when introduced as factors into the domain of physics, the scientific

mind never could have swerved from the search for a law

of growth, or allowed itself to accept the anthropomorphism which regarded each successive stratum as a kind of

mechanic's bench for the manufacture of new species out of

all relation to the old.

41

Biased, however, by their previous education, the

great majority of naturalists invoked a special creative act

to account for the appearance of each new group of organisms. Doubtless there were numbers who were clearheaded enough to see that this was no explanation at all;

that in point of fact it was an attempt, by the introduction

of a greater difficulty, to account for a less. But, having

nothing to offer in the way of explanation, they for the most

part held their peace. Still the thoughts of reflecting men

naturailly and necessarily simmered round the question.

De Maillet, a contemporary of Newton, has been brought

into notice by Prof. Huxley as one who " had a notion of

the modifiability of living forms." In my frequent conversations with him, the late Sir Benjamin Brodie, a man of

highly-philosophic mind, often drew my attention to the

fact that, as early as 1794, Charles Dtrwin's grandfather

was the pioneer of Charles Darwin.' In 1801, and in subsequent years, the celebrated Lamarck, who produced so

profound an impression on the public mind through the

vigorous exposition of his views by the author of the " Vestiges of Creation," endeavored to show the development

of species out of changes of habit and external condition.

In 1813 Dr. Wells, the founder of our present theory of

dew, read before the Royal Society a paper in which, to

use the words of Mr. Darwin, "he distinctly recognizes

the principle of natural selection; and this is the first recognition that has been indicated." The thoroughness and

skill with which Wells pursued his work, and the obvious

independence of his character, rendered him long ago a

favorite with me; and it gave me the liveliest pleasure to

aliflht upon this additional testimony to his penetration.

i,,f. Grant, Mr. Patrick Matthew, Von Buch, the author

of the " Vestiges," D'Halloy, and others,' by the enuncia1 "Zoonomia" vol. i., pp. 500-510.

2 In 1855 Mr. Herbert Spencer (" Principles of Psychology," second

42

tion of opinions more or less clear and correct, showed that

the question had been fermenting long prior to the year

1858, when Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace simultaneously,

but independently, placed their closely concurrent views

upon the subject before the Linnsean Society.

These papers were followed in 1859 by the publication

of the first edition of " The Origin of Species." All great

things come slowly to the birth. Copernicus, as I informed

you, pondered his great work for thirty-three years. Newton for nearly twenty years kept the idea of gravitation

before his mind; for twenty years also he dwelt upon his

discovery of fluxions, and doubtless would have continued

to make it the object of his private thought had he not

found that Leibnitz was upon his track. Darwin for twoand-twenty years pondered the problem of the origin of

species, and doubtless be would have continued to do so

had he not found Wallace upon his track.' A concentrated

but full and powerful epitome of his labors was the consequence. The book was by no means an easy one; and

probably not one in every score of those who then attacked

it had read its pages through, or were competent to grasp

their significance if they had. I do not say this merely to discredit them; for there were in those days some

really eminent scientific men, entirely raised above the

heat of popular prejudice, willing to accept any conclusion

that science had to offer, provided it was duly backed by

fact and argument, and who entirely mistook Mr. Darwin's

views. In fact, the work needed an expounder; and it

found one in Mr. Huxley. I know nothing more admirable

in the way of scientific exposition than those early articles

edition, vol. i., p. 465) expressed " the belief that life under all its forms

has arisen by an unbroken evolution, and through the instrumentality of

what are called natural causes."

1 The behavior of Mr. Wallace in relation to thiss subject has been

dignified in the highest degree.

43

of his on the origin of species. He swept the curve of discussion through the really significant points of the subject,

enriched his exposition with profound original remarks and

reflections, often summing up in a single pithy sentence an

argument which a less compact mind would have spread

over pages. But there is an impression made by the book

itself which no exposition of it, however luminous, can convey; and that is the impression of the vast amount of labor, both of observation and of thodght, implied in its production. Let us glance at its principles.

It is conceded on all hands that what are called varieties are continually produced. The rule is probably without exception. No chick and no child is in all respects

and particulars the counterpart of its brother and sister;

and in such differences we have " variety " incipient. No

naturalist could tell how far this variation could be carried;

but the great mass of them held that never by any amount

of internal or external change, nor by the mixture of both,

could the offspring of the same progenitor so far deviate

from each other as to constitute different species. The

function of the experimental philosopher is to combine the

conditions of Nature and to produce her results; and this

was the method of'Darwin.' He made himself acquainted

with what could, without any manner of doubt, be done in

the way of producing variation. He associated himself

with pigeon-fanciers-bought, begged, kept, and observed

every breed that he could obtain. Though derived from a

common stock, the diversities of these pigeons were such

that " a score of them might be chosen which, if shown to

an ornithologist, and he were told that they were wild

birds, would certainly be ranked by. him as well-defined

1 The first step only toward experimental demonstration has been

taken. Experiments now begun might, a couple of centuries hence,

furnish data of incalculable value, which ought to be supplied to the

science of the future.

44

species." The simple principle which guides the pigeonfancier, as it does the cattle-breeder, is the selection of

some variety that strikes his fancy, and the propagation

of this variety by inheritance. With his eye still directed

to the particular appearance which he wishes to exaggerate, he selects it as it reappears in successive broods, and

thus adds increment to increment until an astonishing

amount of divergence from the parent type is effected.

The breeder in this case does not produce the elements

of the variation. He simply observes them, and by selection adds them together until the required result has been

obtained. "No man," says Mr. Darwin, "would ever try

to make a fantail till he saw a pigeon with a tail developed

in some slight degree in an unusual manner, or a pouter

until he saw a pigeon with a crop of unusual size." Thus

Nature gives the hint, man acts upon it, and by the law of

inheritance exaggerates the deviation.

Having thus satisfied himself by indubitable facts that

the organization of an animal or of a plant (for precisely

the same treatment applies to plants) is to some extent

plastic, he passes from variation under domestication to

variation under Nature. Hitherto we have dealt with the

adding together of small changes by the conscious selection of man. Can Nature thus select? Mr. Darwin's

answer is, "Assuredly she can." The number of living

things produced is far in excess of the number that can be

supported; hence at some period or other of their lives

there must be a struggle for existence; and what is the

infallible result? If one organism were a perfect copy

of the other in regard to strength, skill, and agility, external conditions would decide. But this is not the case.

Here we have the fact of variety offering itself to Nature,

as in the former instance it offered itself to man; and

those Farieties which are least competent to cope with

surrounding conditions will infallibly give way to those

45

that are most competent. To use a familiar proverb, the

wcakest comnes to the wall. But the triumphant fraction

again breeds to over-production, transmitting the qualities

which secured its maintenance, but transmitting them in

different degrees. The struggle for food again supervenes,

and those to whom the favorable quality has been transmitted

in excess will assuredly triumph. It is easy to see that we

have here the addition of increments favorable to the individual still more rigorously carried out than in the case of

domestication; for not only are unfavorable specimens not

selected by Nature, but they are destroyed. This is what

Mr. Darwin calls " Natural Selection," which " acts by the

preservation and accumulation of small inherited modifications, each profitable to the preserved being." With this

idea he interpenetrates and leavens the vast store of facts

that he and others have collected. We cannot, without

shutting our eyes through fear or prejudice, fail to see that

Darwin is here dealing, not with imaginary, but with true

causes; nor can we fail to discern what vast modifications

may be produced by natural selection in periods sufficiently long. Each individual increment may resemble

what mathematicians call a " differential" (a quantity

indefinitely small); but definite and great changes may

obviously be produced by the integration of these infinitesimal quantities through practically infinite time.

If Darwin, like Bruno, rejects the notion of creative

power acting after human fashion, it certainly is not because he is unacquainted with the numberless exquisite

adaptations on which this notion of a supernatural artificer

has been founded. His book is a repository of the most

startling facts of this description. Take the marvelous

observation which he cites from D)r. Cruger, where a bucket

with an aperture, serving as a spout, is formed in an

orchid. Bees visit the f.i1wer: in eager search of material

for their combs they push each otlher into the bucket, the

46

drenched ones escaping from their involuntary bath by the

spout. Here they rub their backs against the viscid stigma

of the flower and obtain glue; then against the pollenmasses, which are thus stuck to the back of the bee and

carried away. " When the bee, so provided, flies to another

flower, or to the same flower a second time, and is pushed

by its comrades into the bucket, and then crawls out by the

passage, the pollen-mass upon its back necessarily comes

first into contact with the viscid stigma," which takes up

the pollen; and this is how that orchid is fertilized. Or

take this other case of the catasetum. " Bees visit these

flowers in order to gnaw the labellum; in doing this they

inevitably touch a long, tapering, sensitive projection.

This, when touched, transmits a sensation of vibration to

a certain membrane, which is instantly ruptured, setting

free a spring, by which the pollen-mass is shot forth like

an arrow in the right direction, and adheres by its viscid

extremity to the back of the bee." In this way the fertilizing pollen is spread abroad.

It is the mind thus stored with the choicest materials

of the teleologist that rejects teleology, seeking to refer

these wonders to natural causes. They illustrate, according

to him, the method of Nature, not the " technic " of a manlike artificer. Trie beauty of flowers is due to natural selection. Those that distinguish themselves by vividly contrasting colors from the surrounding green leaves are most

readily seen, most frequently visited by insects, most often

fertilized, and hence most favored by natural selection.

Colored berries also readily attract the attention of birds

and beasts, which feed upon them, spread their manured

seeds abroad, thus giving trees and shrubs possessing such

berries a greater chance in the struggle for existence.

With profound analytic and synthetic skill, Mr. Darwin

investigates the cell-making instinct of the hive-bee. His

method of dealing with it is representative. He falls back

47

from the more perfectly to the less perfectly developed

instinct-from the hive-bee to the humble-bee, which uses

its own cocoon as a comb, and to classes of bees of intermediate skill, endeavoring to show how the passage might

be gradually made from the lowest to the highest. The

saving of wax is the most important point in the economy

of bees. Twelve to fifteen pounds of dry sugar are said to

be needed for the secretion of a single pound of wax. The

quantities of nectar necessary for the wax must therefore be

vast; and every improvement of constructive instinct which

results in the saving of wax is a direct profit to the insect's

life. The time that would otherwise be devoted to the

making of wax is now devoted to the gathering and storing

of honey for winter food. He passes from the humble-bee

with its rude cells, through the Melipona with its more

artistic cells, to the hive-bee with its astonishing architecture. The bees place themselves at equal distances apart

upon the wax, sweep and excavate equal spheres round the

selected points. The spheres intersect, and the plapes of

intersection are built up with thin laminae. Hexagonal

cells are thus formed. This mode of treating such questions is, as I have said, representative. He habitually

retires from the more perfect and complex to the less perfect and simple, and carries you with him through stages

of perfecting, adds increment to increment of infinitesimal

change, and in this way gradually breaks down your reluctance to admit that the exquisite climax of the whole could

be a result of natural selection.

NMr. Darwin shirks no difficulty; and, saturated as the

subject was with his own thought, he must have known

better than his critics the weakness as well as the strength

of his theory. This of course would be of little avail were

his object a temporary dialectic victory instead of the establishment of a truth which he means to be everlasting. But

he takes no pains to disguise the weakness he has discerned;

48

nay, he takes every pains to bring it into the strongest

light. His vast resources enable him to cope with objections started by himself and others, so as to leave the final

impression upon the reader's mind that, if they be not completely answered, they certainly are not fatal. Their negative force being thus destroyed, you are free to be influenced by the vast positive mass of evidence he is able to

bring before you. This largeness of knowledge and readiness of resource render Mr. Darwin the most terrible of antagonists. Accomplished naturalists have leveled heavy

and sustained criticisms against him-not always with the

view of fairly weighing his theory, but with the express

intention of exposing its weak points only. This does not

irritate him. He treats every objection with a soberness

and thoroughness which even Bishop Butler might be proud

to imitate, surrounding each fact with its appropriate detail,

placing it in its proper relations, and usually giving it a significance which, as long as it was kept isolated, failed to

appear. This is done without a trace of ill temper. He

moves over the subject with the passionless strength of a

glacier; and the grinding of the rocks is not always without a counterpart in the logical pulverization of the objector.

3But though in handling this mighty theme all passion

has been stilled, there is an emotion of the intellect incident

to the discernment of new truth which often colors and

warms the pages of Mr. Darwin. His success has been

great; and this implies not only the solidity of his work,

but the preparedness of the public mind for such a revelation. On this head a remark of Agatssiz impressed me more

than any thing else. Sprung from a race of theologians,

this celebrated man combated to the last the theory of

natural selection. One of the many times I had the pleasure of meeting him in the United States was at Mr. Winthrop's beautiful residence at Brookline, near Boston. Ris

49

ing from luncheon, we all halted as if by a common impulse

in front of a window, and continued there a discussion which

had been started at table. The maple was in its autumn

glory; and the exquisite beauty of the scene outside seemed,

in my case, to interpenetrate without disturbance the intellectual action. Earnestly, almost sadly, Agassiz turned, and

said to the gentlemen standing round, -' I confess I was not

prepared to see this theory received as it has been by the

best intellects of our time. Its success is greater than I

could have thought possible."

In our day grand gencralizations have been reached.

The theory of the origin of species is but one of them. Another, of still wider grasp and more radical significance, is

the doctrine of the Conscrvr;tion of En-ertv, the ultimate

philosophical issues of whiclh arc as y)ct but dimly seenthat doctrine which " binds Nature fast in fate " to an extent not hitherto recognized, exacting from every antecedent its equivalent consequent, from every consequent its

equivalent antecedent, and bringing vital as well as physical

phenomena under the dominion of that law of causal connection which, so far as the human understanding has yet

pierced, asserts itself everywhere in Nature. Long in advance of all definite experiment upon the subject, the constancy and indestructibility of matter had been affirmed;

and all subsequent experience justified the affirmation.

Later researches extended the attribute of indestructibility

to force. This idea, applied in the first instance to inorganic, rapidly embraced organic Nature. The vegetable

world, though drawing almost all its nutriment from invisible sources, was proved incompetent to generate anew

either matter or force. Its matter is for the most part

transmuted gas; its force transformed solar force. The

animal world was proved to be equally uncreative, all its

motive energies being referred to the combustion of its food.

The activity of each animal as a whole was proved to be

50

the transferred activity of its molecules. The museles were

shown to be stores of mechanical force, potential until unlocked by the nerves, and then resulting in muscular ccntractions. The speed at which messages fly to and fro along

the nerves was determined, and found to be, not, as had

been previously supposed, equal to that of light or electricity, but less than the speed of a flying eagle.

This was the work of the physicist: then came the conquests of the comparative anatomist and physiologist, revealing the structure of every animal, and the function of

every organ in the whole biological series, from the lowest

zoophyte up to man. The nervous system had been made

the object of profound and continued study, the wonderful

and, at bottom, entirely mysterious, controlling power which

it exercises over. the whole organism, physical and mental,

being recognized more and more. Thought could not Le

kept back from a subject so profoundly suggestive. Besides the physical life dealt with by Mr. Darwin, there is a

psychical life presenting similar gradations, and asking

equally for a solution,. Ilow are the different grades and

orders of mind to be accounted for? What is the principle

of growth of that mysterious power which on our planet

culminates in reasco '~ These are questions which, though

not thrusting thcimsclves so forcibly upon the attention of

the general public, had not only occupied many reflecting

minds, but had been formerly breached by one of them before " The Origin of Species " appeared.

With the mass of materials furnished by the physicist

and physiologist in his hands, A.r. Herbert Spencer,

twenty years ago, sought to graft upon this basis a

system of psychology; and two years ago a second and

greatly amplified edition of his work appeared. Those

who have occupied themselves with the beautiful ex1periments of Plateau will remember that, when two

spherules of olive-oil, suspended in a mixture of alcohol

51

and-water of the same density as the oil, are brought

together, they do not immediately unite. Something like

a pellicle appears to be formed around the drops, the rupture of which is immediately followed by the coalescence

of the globules into one. There are organisms whose

vital actions are almost as purely physical as that of

these drops of oil. They come into contact and fuse

themselves tlius together. From such organisms to

others a shade higher, and from these to others a shade

higher still, and on through an ever-ascending series, Mr.

Spencer conducts his argument. There are two obvious

factors to be here taken into account-the creature and

the medium in which it lives, or, as it is often expressed,

the organism and its environment. MA. Spencer's fundamental principle is that btweeen these two factors there is

incessant interaction. T'ie organism is played upon by

the environment, and is modified to meet the requirements

of the environment. Life he defines to be "a continuous

adtjil clilnt of internal relations to external relatiotm-.

in, the lowest organisms we have a kind (, tictual

sense diffused over. the entire body; then, through impressions from without and their corresponding adjustments, special portions of the surface become more

responsive to stimuli than otfeirs. The senses are nascent,

the basis of all cf them being that simple tactual sense

which the sage DemDcritus recognized twenty-three hundred years ago as their common progenitor. The action of

light, in the first instance, appears to be a mere disturbance

of the chemical processes in the animal organism, similar to

that which occurs in the leaves of plants. iBy degrees the

action becomes localized in a few pigment-cells, more

sensitive to light than the surrounding tissue. The eye

is here incipient. At first it is merely capable of revealing differences of light and shade produced by bodies

close at hand. Followed as the interception of the light

52

is in almost all cases by the contact of the closely adjacent

opaque body, sight in this condition becomes a kind of

" anticipatory touch." The adjustment continues; a slight

bulging out of the epidermis over the pigment-granules

supervenes. A lens is incipient, and, through the operation of infinite adjustments, at length reaches the perfection that it displays in the hawk and eagle. So of the

other senses; they are special differentiations of a tissue

which was originally vaguely sensitive all over.

With the development of the senses the adjustments

between the organism and its environment gradually extend in space, a multiplication of experiences and a corresponding modification of conduct being the result. The

adjustments also extend in time, covering continually

greater intervals. Along with this extension in space and

time the adjustments also increase in specialty and complexity, passing through the various grades of brute-life,

and prolonging themselves into the domain of reason.

Very striking are Mr. Spencer's remarks regarding the

influence of the sense of touch upon the development of

intelligence. This is, so to say, the mother-tongue of all

the senses, into which they must be translated to be of

service to the organism. Hence its importance. The

parrot is the most intelligent of birds, and its tactual

power is also greatest. From this sense it gets knowledge unattainable by birds which cannot employ their

feet as hands. The elephant is the most sagacious of

quadrupdds-its tactual range and skill, and the consequent multiplication of experiences, which it owes to its

wonderfully adaptable trunk, being the basis of its sagacity. Feline animals, for a similar cause, are more

sagacious than hoofed animals-atonement being to some

extent made, in the case of the horse, by the possession

of sensitive prehensile lips. In the Primates the evolution of intellect and the evolution of tactual appendages

## p. 53 (#59)

go hand-in-hand. In the most intelligent anthropoid-apcs

we find the tactual range and delicacy greatly augmented,

new avenues of knowledge being thus open to the animal.

Man crowns the edifice here, not only in virtue of his own

manipulatory power, but through the enormous extension

of his range of experience, by the invention of instruments of precision, which serve as supplemental senses

and supplemental limbs. The reciprocal action of these

is finely described and illustrated. That chastened intellectual emotion to which I have referred in connection

with Mr. Darwin is not absent in Mr. Spencer. His illustrations possess at times exceeding vividness and force;

and from his style on such occasions it is to be inferred

that the ganglia of this Apostle of the Understanding are

sometimes the seat of a nascent poetic thrill.

It is a fact of supreme importance that actions the

performance of which at first requires even painful effort

and deliberation may by habit be rendered automatic.,Witness the slow learning of its letters by a child, and

the subsequent facility of reading in a man, when each

group of letters which forms a word is instantly, and

without effort, fused to a single perception. Instance the

billiard-player, whose muscles of hand and eye, when he

reaches the perfection of his art, are unconsciously coordinated. Instance the musician, who, by practice, is enabled

to fuse a multitude of arrangements, auditory, tactual, and

muscular, into a process of automatic manipulation. Combining such facts with the doctrine of hereditary transmission, we reach a theory of instinct. A chick, after coming

out of the egg, balances itself correctly, runs about, picks

up food, thus showing that it possesses a power of directing its movements to definite ends. How did the chick

learn this very complex coordination of eye, muscles, and

beak? It has not been individually taught; its personal

experience is nil; but it has the benefit of ancestral ex

54

periellr, In its inherited organization are registered all

the 1) 'wXrs which it displays at birth. So also as regards

the instinct of the hive-bee, already referred to. The distance at which the insects stand apart when they sweep

their hemispheres and build their cells is " organically rememberedl."

Mal also carries with him the physical texture of his

ancestry, as well as the inherited intellect bound up with

it. The defects of intelligence during infancy and youth

are probably less due to a lack of individual experience

than to the fact that in early life the cerebral organization

is still incomplete. The period necessary for completion

varies with the race and with the individual. As a round

shot outstrips a rifled one on quitting the muzzle of the

gun, so the lower race in childhood may outstrip the

higher. But the higher eventually overtakes the lower,

and surpasses it in range. As regards individuals, we do

not always find the precocity of youth prolonged to mental

power in maturity; while the dullness of boyhood is sometimes strikingly contrasted with the intellectual energy of

after-years. Newton, when a boy, was weakly, and he

showed no particular aptitude at school; but in his

eighteenth year he went to Cambridge, and soon afterward astonished his teachers by his power of dealing with

geometrical problems. During his quiet youth his brain

was slowly preparing itself to be the organ of those

energies which he subsequently displayed.

By myriad blows (to use a Lucretian phrase) the image

and superscription of the external world are stamped as

states of consciousness upon the organism, the depth of

the impression depending upon the number of the blows.

When two or more phenomena occur in the environment

invariably together, they are stamped to the same depth

or to the same relief, and indissolubly connected. And

here we come to the threshold of a great question. Seeing

55

that he could in no way rid himself of the consciousness

of Space and Time, Kant assumed them to be necessary

"forms of intuition," the moulds and shapes into which

our intuitions are thrown, belonging to ourselves solely,

and without objective existence. With unexpected power

and success Mr. Spencer brings the hereditary experience

theory, as he holds it, to bear upon this question. "If

there exist certain external relations which are experienced

by all organisms at all instants of their waking lives-relations which are absolutely constant and universal-there

will be established answering internal relations that are

absolutely constant and universal. Such relations we have

in those of Space and Time. As the substrata of all

other relations of the Non-Ego, they must be responded to

by conceptions that are the substrata of all other relations

in the Ego. Being the constant and infinitely-repeated

elements of thought, they must become the automatic

elements of thought-the elements of thought which it is

impossible to get rid of-the 'forms of intuition.'"

Throughout this application and extension of the " Law

of Inseparable Association," Mr. Spencer stands upon his

own ground, invoking, instead of the experiences of the

individual, the registered experiences of the race. His

overthrow of the restriction of experience to the individual

is, I think, complete. That restriction ignores the power

of organizing experience furnished at the outset to each

individual; it ignores the different degrees of this power

possessed by differeont races and by different individuals of

the same race. Were there not in the human brain a potency antecedent to all experience, a dog or cat ought to

be as capable of education as a man. These predetermined

internal relations are independent of the experiences of the

individual. Tiic human brain is the " organized register of

infinitely numerous experiences received during the evoltltion of life, or rather during the evolution of that series of

'56

organisms through which the human organism has been

reached. The effects of the most uniform and frequent of

these experiences have been successively bequeathed, prin.

cipal and interest, and have slowly mounted to that high

intelligence which lies latent in the brain of the infant.

Thus it happens that the European inherits from twenty to

thirty cubic inches more of brain than the Papuan. Thus

it happens that faculties, as of music, which scarcely exist

in some inferior races, become congenital in-superior ones.

Thus it happens that out of savages unable to count up to

the number of their fingers, and speaking a language containing only nouns and verbs, arise at length our Newtons

and Shakespeares."

At the outset of this Address it was stated that physical theories which lie beyond experience are derived by a

process of abstraction from experience. It is instructive to

note from this point of view the successive introduction of

new conceptions. The idea of the attraction of gravitation

was preceded by the observation of the attraction of iron

by a magnet, and of light bodies by rubbed amber. The

polarity of magnetism and electricity appealed to the

senses, and thus became the substratum of the conception

that atoms and molecules are endowed with definite, attractive, and repellent poles, by the play of which definite forms

of crystalline architecture are produced. Thus molecular

force becomes structural. It requires no great boldness of

thought to extend its play into organic Nature, and to

recognize in molecular force the agency by which both

plants and animals are built up. In this way out of experience arise conceptions which are wholly ultra-experiential. None of the atomists of antiquity had any notion of this play of molecular polar force, but they had experience of gravity as manifested by falling bodies. Abstracting from this, they permitted their atoms to fall eter

57

nally through empty space. Democritus assumed that the

larger atoms moved more rapidly than the smaller ones,

which they therefore could overtake, and with which they

could combine. Epicurus, holding that empty space could

offer no resistance to motion, ascribed to all the atoms the

same velocity; but he seems to have overlooked the consequence that under such circumstances the atoms could

never combine. Lucretius cut the knot by quitting the

domain of physics altogether, and causing the atoms to move

together by a kind of volition.

Was the instinct utterly at fault which caused Lucretius

thus to swerve from his own principles? Diminishing

gradually the number of progenitors, Mr. Darwin comnes at

length to one " primordial form; " but he does not say, as

far as I remember, how he supposes this form to have been

introduced. He quotes with satisfaction the words of a

celebrated author and divine who had " gradually learned

to see that it is just as noble a conception of the Deity to

believe He created a few original forms, capable of selfdevelopment into other and needful forms, as to believe

that Hle required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids

caused by the action of his laws." What Mr. Dn-linwi

thinks of this view of the introduction of life I do not 1 itw.

But the anthropomorphism, which it seemed his object to

set aside, is as firmly associated with the creation of a

few forms as with the creation of a multitude. We need

clearness and thoroughness here. Two courses, and two

only, are possible. Either let us open our doors freely to

the conception of creative acts, or, abandoning them, let us

radically change our notions of matter. If we look at matter as pictured by Democritus, and as defined for generations in our scientific text-books, the notion of any form of

life whatever coming out of it is utterly unimaginable.

The argument placed in the mouth of Bishop Butler suffices, in my opinion, to crush all such materialism as this.

58

But those who framed these definitions of matter were not

biologists, but mathematicians, whose labors referred only

to such accidents and properties of matter as could be expressed in their formulae. The very intentness with which

they pursued mechanical science turned their thoughts

aside from the science of life. May not their imperfect

definitions be the real cause of our present dread? Let us

reverently, but honestly, look the question in the face, T)i

vorced from matter, where is life to be found? Whatever

our faith may say, our knowledge shows them to be indissolubly joined. Every meal we eat, and every cup we

drink, illustrates the mysterious control of mind by matter.

t tce the line of life backward, and see it approaching

more and more to what we call the purely physical conditio n. We come at length to those organisms which I have

colm-pared to drops of oil suspended in a mixture of alcoholand-water. We reach the protogenes of Hackel, in which

we have "a type distinguishable from a fragment of albumen only by its finely - granular character." Can we

pause here? We break a magnet and find two poles in

each of its fragments. \Ve continue the process of breaking, but, however small the parts, each carries with it,

though enfeebled, the polarity of the whole. And, when

we can break no longer, we prolong the intellectual vision

to the polar molecules. Are we not urged to do something

similar in the case of life? Is there not a temptation to

close to some extent with Lucretius, when he affirms that

" Nature is seen to do all things spontaneously of herself,

without the meddling of the gods'?" or with Bruno, when

he declares that Matter is not " that mere empty capacity

which philosophers have pictured her to be, but the universal mother who brings forth all things as the fruit of her

own womb? " Believing as I do in the continuity of Nature, I cannot stop abruptly where our microscopes cease to

59

be of use. Here the vision of the mind authoritatively supplements the vision of the eye. By an intellectual necessity I cross the boundary of the experimental evidence, and

discern in that matter which we, in our ignorance of its

latent powers, and notwithstanding our professed reverence

for its creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the

promise and potency of all terrestrial life.

If you ask me whether there exists the least evidence

to prove that any form of life can be developed out of matter, without demonstrable antecedent life, my reply is that

evidence considered perfectly conclusive by many has been

adduced; and that were some of us who have pondered this

question to follow a very common example, and accept testimony because it falls in with our belief, we also should

eagerly close with the evidence referred to. But there is

in the true man of science a wish stronger than the wish to

have his beliefs upheld; namely, the wish to have them

true. And this stronger wish causes him to reject the most

plausible support if he has reason to suspect that it is vitiated by error. Those to whom I refer as having studied

this question, believing the evidence offered in favor of

"spontaneous generation" to be thus vitiated, cannot accept it. They know full well that the chemist now prepares from inorganic matter a vast array of substances

which were some time ago regarded as the sole products of

vitality. They are intimately acquainted with the structural power of matter as evidenced in the phenomena of crystallization. They can justify scientifically their belief in its

potency, under the proper conditions, to produce organisms.

But in reply to your question they will frankly admit their

inability to point to any satisfactory experimental proof

that life can be developed save from demonstrable antecedent litf As already indicated, they draw the line from

the hig-iiest organisms through lower ones down to the lowest, and it is the prolongation of this line by the intellect

60

beyond the range of the senses that leads them to the conclusion which Bruno so boldly enunciated.'

The " materialism " here professed lmay be vastly different from what you suppose, and I therefore crave your gracious patience to the end. "The question of an external

world," says Mr. J. S. Mill, "is the great battle-ground of

metaphysics." 2 Mr. Mill himself reduces external phenomena to " possibilities of sensation." Kant, as we have

seen, made time and space " forms" of our own intuitions.

Fichte, having first by the inexorable logic of his understanding proved himself to be a mere link in that chain of

eternal causation which holds so rigidly in Nature, violently

broke the chain by making Nature, and all that it inherits,

an apparition of his own mind.3 And it is by no means

easy to combat such notions. For when I say I see you,

and that I have not the least doubt about it, the reply is

that what I am really conscious of is an affection of my own

retina. And if I urge that I can check my sight of you by

touching you, the retort would be that I am equally transgressing the limits of fact; for what I am really conscious

of is, not that you are there, but that the nerves of my hand

have undergone a change. All we hear, and see, and touch,

and taste, and smell, are, it would be urged, mere variations of our own condition, beyond which, -:en to the extent of a hair's breadth, we cannot go. Thiat any thing answering to our impressions exists outside of ourselves is not

a fact, but an inference, to which all validity would be denied by an idealist like Berkeley, or by a skeptic like Hume.

Mr. Spencer takes another line. With him, as with the

uneducated man, there is no doubt or question as to the

existence of an external world. But he differs from the

uneducated, who think that the world really is what con1 Bruno was a "pantheist," not an " atheist" or a " materialist."

2 "Examination of Hamilton," p. 154.

3 " Bestimmung des Menschen."

61

sciousness represents it to be. Our states of consciousness

are mere symbols of an outside entity which produces them

and determines the order of their succession, but the real

nature of which we can never know.1 In fact, the whole

process of evolution is the manifestation of a power absolutely inscrutable to the intellect of man. As little in our

day as in the days of Job can man by searching find this

power out. Considered fundamentally, then, it is by the

operation of an insoluble mystery that life on earth is

evolved, species differentiated, and mind unfolded from their

prepotent elements in the immeasurable past. There is,

you will observe, no very rank materialism here.

The strength of the doctrine of evolution consists, not

in an experimental demonstration (for the subject is hardly

accessible to this mode of proof), but in its general harmony with scientific thought. From contrast, moreover,

it derives enormous relative strength. On the one side we

have a theory (if it could with any propriety be so called)

derived, as were the theories referred to at the beginning

of this Address, not from the study of Nature, but from the

observation of men-a theory which converts the power

whose garment is seen in the visible universe into an artifiIn a paper, at once popular and profound, entitled "Recent Progress in

the Theory of Vision," contained in the volume of lectures by Helmholtz,

published by Longmans, this symbolism of our states of consciousness is

also dwelt upon. The impressions of sense are the mere signs of external

things. In this paper Helmholtz contends strongly against the view that

the consciousness of space is inborn; and he evidently doubts the power

of the chick to pick Ap grains of corn without preliminary lessons. On

this point, he says, further experiments are needed. Such experiments

have been since made by Mr. Spalding, aided, I believe, in some of his

observations, by the accomplished and deeply-lamented Lady Amberly;

and they seem to prove conclusively that the chick does not need a single

moment's tuition to enable it to stand, run, govern the muscles of its ees,

and to peck. Helmholtz, however, is contending against the notion of

preestablished harmony; and I am not aware of his views as to the organization of experiences of race or breed.

62

cer, fashioned after the human model, and acting by broken

efforts as man is seen to act. On the other side we have

the conception that all we see around us, and all we feel

within us-the phenomena of physical Nature as well as

those of the human mind-have their unsearchable roots in

a cosmical life, if I dare apply the term, an infinitesimal span

of which is offered to the investigation of man. And even

this span is only knowable in part. We can trace the development of a nervous system, and correlate with it the

parallel phenomena of sensation and thought. WVe see

with undoubting certainty that they go hand-in-hand. But

we try to soar in a vacuum the moment we seek to comprehend the connection between them. An Archimedean fulcrum is here required which the human mind cannot command; and the effort to solve the problem, to borrow a

comparison from an illustrious friend of mine, is like the

effort of a man trying to lift himself by his own waistband.

All that has been here said is to be taken in connection

with this fundamental truth. When " nascent senses" are

spoken of, when "the differentiation of a tissue at first

vaguely sensitive all over" is spoken of, and when these

processes are associated with " the modification of an

organism by its environment," the same parallelism, without contact, or even approach to contact, is implied. Mlan

the object is separated by an impassable gulf from man the

sudject. There is no motor energy in intellect to carry it

without logical rupture from the one to the other.

Further, the doctrine -of evolution derives ilman in his

totality from the interaction of organism and environment

through countless ages past. The human understanding,

for example-that faculty which Mr. Spencer has turned so

skillfully round upon its own antecedents-is itself a result

of the play between organism and environment through

cosmic ranges of time. Never surely did prescription

plead so irresistible a claim. But then it comes to pass

63

that, over and above his understanding, there are many

other things appertaining to man whose perspective rights

are quite as strong as those of the understanding itself.

It is a result, for example, of the play of organism and environment that sugar is sweet, and that aloes are bitter,

that the smell of henbane differs from the perfume of a rose.

Such facts of consciousness (for which, by-the-way, no adequate reason has yet been rendered) are quite as old as

the understanding; and many other things can boast an

equally ancient origin. Mr. Spencer at one place refers to

that most powerful of passions-the amatory passion-as

one which, when it first occurs, is antecedent to all relative

experience whatever; and we may pass its claim as being

at le atst as ancient and valid as that of the understanding.

T.i( i tliere are some things woven into the texture of man,

as the feeling of awe, reverence, wonder-and not alone

the sexual love just referred to, but the love of the beautiful, physical, and moral, in Nature, poetry, and art. There

is also that deep-set feeling which, since the earliest dawn

of history, and probably for ages prior to all history, incorporated itself in the religions of the world. You who have

escaped from these religions into the high-and-dry light of

the intellect may deride them; but in so doing you deride

accidents of form merely, and fail to touch the immovable

basis of the religious sentiment in the nature of man. To

yield this sentiment reasonable satisfaction is the problem

of problems at the present hour. And grotesque in relation

to scientific culture as many of the religions of the world

have been and are-dangerous, nay, destructive, to the dearest privileges of freemen as some of them undoubtedly have

been, and would, if they could, be again-it will be wise to

recognize them as the forms of a force, mischievous, if permitted to intrude on the region of knowledge, over which it

holds no command, but capable of being guided to noble

64

issues in the region of emotion, which is its proper and elevated sphere.

All religious theories, schemes, and systems, which embrace notions of cosmogony, or which otherwise reach into

the domain of science, must, in so far as they do this, submit to the control of science, and relinquish all thought of

controlling it. Acting otherwise proved disastrous in the

past, and it is simply fatuous to-day. Every system which

would escape the fate of an organism too rigid to adjust

itself to its environment must be plastic to the extent that

the growth of knowledge demands. When this truth has

been thoroughly taken in, rigidity will be relaxed, exclusiveness diminished, things now deemed essential will be

dropped, and elements now rejected will be assimilated.

The lifting of the life is the essential point; and as long

as dogmatism, fanaticism, and intolerance, are kept out,

various modes of leverage may be employed to raise life

to a higher level. Science itself not unfrequently derives

motive power from an ultra-scientific source. Whewell

speaks of enthusiasm of temper as a hinderance to science;

but he means the enthusiasm of weak heads. There is a

strong and resolute enthusiam in which science finds an

ally; and it is to the lowering of this fire, rather than to

the diminution of intellectual insight, that the lessening

productiveness of men of science in their mature years is

to be ascribed. Mr. Buckle sought to detach intellectual

achievement from moral force. He gravely erred; for,

without moral force to whip it into action, the achievements of the intellect would be poor indeed.

it has been said that science divorces itself from literature; but the statement, like so many others, arises from

lack of knowledge. A glance at the less technical writings

of its leaders-of its Helmholtz, its Huxley, and its Du

Bois-Reymond-would show what breadth of literary cult

65

ure they command. Where among modern writers can

you find their superiors in clearness and vigor of literary

style? Science desires not isolation, but freely combines

with every effort toward the bettering of man's estate.

Single-handed, and supported not by outward sympathy,

but by inward force, it has built at least one great wing of

the many-mansioned home which man in his totality demands. I And if rough walls and protruding rafter-ends

indicate that on one side the edifice is still incomplete, it

is only by wise combination of the parts required with those

already irrevocably built that we can hope for completeness. There is no necessary incongruity between what

has been accomplished and what remains to be done. The

moral glow of Socrates, which we all feel by ignition, has

in it nothing incompatible with the physics of Anaxagoras

which he so much scorned, but which he would hardly

scorn to-day.

And here I am reminded of one among us, hoary, but

still strong, whose prophet-voice some thirty years ago, far

more than any other of this age, unlocked whatever of life

and nobleness lay latent in its most gifted minds-one fit

to stand beside Socrates or the Maccabean Eleazar, and to

dare and suffer all that they suffered and dared-fit, as he

once said of Fichte, "to have been the teacher of the Stoa,

and to have discoursed of beauty and virtue in the groves

of Academe." With a capacity to grasp physical principles which his friend Goethe did not possess, and which

even total lack of exercise has not been able to reduce to

atrophy, it is the world's loss that he, in the vigor of his

years, did not open his mind and sympathies to science,

and make its conclusions a portion of his message to mankind. Marvelously endowed as he was-equally equipped

on the side of the heart and of the understanding-he

might have done much toward teaching us how to recon

66

cile the claims of both, and to enable them in coming

times to dwell together in unity of spirit and in the bond

of peace.

And now the end is come. With more time, or greater

strength and knowledge, what has been here said might

have been better said, while worthy matters here omitted

might have received fit expression. But there would have

been no material deviation from the views set forth. As

regards myself, they are not the growth of a day; and as

regards you, I thought you ought to know the environment which, with or without your consent, is rapidly surrounding you, and in relation to which some adjustment

on your part may be necessary. A hint of Hamlet's, however, teaches us all how the troubles of common life may

be ended; and it is perfectly possible for you and me to

purchase intellectual peace at the price of intellectual

death. The world is not without refuges of this description; nor is it wanting in persons who seek their shelter

and try to persuade others to do the same. The unstable

and the weak will yield to this persuasion, and they to

whom repose is sweeter than the truth. But I would exhort you to refuse the offered shelter and to scorn the base

repose-to accept, if the choice be forced upon you, commotion before stagnation, the leap of the torrent before

the stillness of the swamp.

In the course of this address I have touched on debatable,questions and led you over what will be deemed dangerous ground-and this partly with the view of telling

you that as regards these questions science claims unrestricted right to search. It is not to the point to say that

the views of Lucretius and Bruno, of Darwin and Spencer,

may be wrong. Here I'should agree with you, deeming it

indeed certain that these views will undergo modification.

But the point is, that, whether right or wrong, we ask the

67

freedom to discuss them. For science, however, no exclusive claim is here made; you are not urged to erect it into

an idol. The inexorable advance of man's understanding

in the path of knowledge, and those unquenchable claims

of his moral and emotional nature which the understanding

can never satisfy, are here equally set forth. The world

embraces not only a Newton, but a Shakespeare-not only

a Boyle, but a Raphael-not only a Kant, but a Beethoven

-not only a Darwin, but a Carlyle. Not in each of these,

but in all, is human nature whole. They are not opposed,

but supplementary-not mutually exclusive, but reconcilable. And if, unsatisfied with them all, the human mind,

with the yearning of a pilgrim for his distant home, will

turn to the mystery from which it has emerged, seeking so

to fashion it as to give unity to thought and faith; so long

as this is done, not only without intolerance or bigotry of

any kind, but with the enlightened recognition that ult imate fixity of conception is here unattainable, and that

each succeeding age must be held free to fashion the

mystery in accordance with its own needs-then, casting

aside all the restrictions of materialism, I would affirm this

to be a field for the noblest exercise of what, in contrast

with the knowing faculties, may be called the creative

faculties of man.

"Fill thy heart with it," said Goethe, "and then name

it as thou wilt." Goethe himself did this in untranslatable language.1 Wordsworth did it in words known to all

Englishmen, and which may be regarded as a forecast and

religious vitalization of the latest and deepest scientific

truth:

"For I have learned

To look on Nature; not as in the hour

Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes

The still, sad music of humanity,

1 Proemium to " Gott und Welt."

68

Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power

To chasten and subdue. And Ihave felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean, and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things." I

1 Tintern Abbey."

THE END.