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Wherein they Differ.
CHARLES WATTS
Editor of “ Secular Thought/’
f th or of “ Teachilu/s of Secularisin Compared with Orthodox Christutn ityf'
**- F&dntum ami. Special Creatim^'1' Seeidarism: Ctn^tpuchiveand L>estmG^'e,” u Glori[^<jf Unbelieff “ Saints and Sinners: Which?"
J^ible 'Morality,’
Chrinanity: J ts Origin, Nature and;
- ii^lumtcef “ Agrwsticjgm and' Christian Theism: Which. is
the Metre Reasonable
“ Reply ta Father La'tnbert,"
- • ■
‘■‘■The Superstitionof the Christian Sunday: A
, i'iti ,' .■ Plea for Liberty wyd J> nd ice, ’ ‘fc The JSeprors
WfU,. d- ~ • of the French Rerohiidm," ttec., <£•«.<
■ t.
_
CO^EJ^S.
The Potency of Scienge.
The Bible and Science.
The Bible and Creation.
The Origin of Man..
Creation/, Time and* Mate
rial^ •
6. The BubEb Account
TTONg.
Soropto :
“ SECULAR THOUGHT ” OFFICE, *
'5 Adelaide,- St. East?
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of the
Qrigin of Death.
7. The I&ble Deluge.
8-. The Mosaic Account of the
FlooI) : Scientific Obj ec-’
15 CENTS.
��SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE:
WHEREIN. THEY DIFFER.
—BY—
CHARLES WATTS
Editor of “ Secular Thought.”
Author of “ Teachings of Secularism Compared with Orthodox Christianity,”
“ Evolution and Special Creation,” “ Secularism: Constructive and De
structive,” “ Glory of Unbelief,” “ Saints and Sinners : Which?”
“ Bible Morality,” “ Christianity: Its Origin, Nature and
Influence," “ Agnosticism and Christian Theism : Which is
the More Reasonable ? ” “ Reply to Father Lambert,"
“ The Superstition of the Christian Sunday: A
Plea for Liberty and Justice,''’ “ The Horrors
of the French Revolution,” de., de.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
CONTENTS:
Science.
6. The Bible Account
The Potency of
The Bible and Science.
The Bible and Creation.
The Origin of Man.
Creation: Time and Mate
rial.
ofthk
Origin of Death.
7. The Bible Deluge.
8. The Mosaic Account of the
Flood : Scientific Objec
tions.
TORONTO :
“ SECULAR THOUGHT ” OFFICE,
31 Adelaide St. East.
PRICE
15 CENTS.
A
��SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE:
WHEREIN THEY DIFFER.
The Potency of Science.—The distinguishing characteristic of this
age is science; it is essentially an age of invention, experiment
and discovery. Knowledge is pushed into the field of physical
nature on all hands to such an extent that each day brings to light
something both new and unforeseen. We are ever on the alert for
wonders in the field of discovery which will not amaze, simply
because they are not unusual. All thought to-day is more or
less influenced by natural science. Old opinions, not only in the
domain of the material, but also in the intellectual and moral,
have to be remoulded or abolished in obedience to the dictates
of the higher knowledge that we have attained of the workings
of natural law. That which cannot reconcile itself to science
must disappear as out of harmony with the genius of the epoch.
We do not, of course, allege that physical science covers the
entire field of knowledge, but we do contend that there is no
phase of thought that is not very largely moulded by modern
discoveries. Scientific truth can no longer be successfully op
posed, even by the most dogmatic theologian, and it is now too
powerful and too widely known to allow itself to be even
ignored. Hence, whatever opinions are advocated, the pretence
put forward in their favour usually is that they are in harmony
with science. The difficulty too often lies in making good this
claim.
Science may be defined as being an investigation into the
phenomena of nature, and the best application of the lessons de
rived thereby to the requirements of life. It may be further
described as meaning facts reduced to a system ; not a fixed,
cramped, and exclusive system, but one which expands with the
acquirement of additional knowledge. “■ Science is the enemy
of fear and credulity. It invites investigation, challenges the
�4
SCIENCE AND THE BIRLE:
reason, stimulates inquiry, and welcomes the unbeliever. It
seeks to give food and shelter, and raiment, education and liberty
to the human race. It welcomes every fact and every truth. It
has furnished a foundation for morals, a philosophy for the
guidance of man......................... It has taught man that he cannot
walk beyond the horizon—that the questions of origin and
destiny cannot be answered—that an infinite personality cannot
be comprehended by a finite being, and that the truth of any
system of religion based on the supernatural cannot by any
possibility be established—such a religion not being within the
domain of evidence. And, above all. it teaches that all our duties
are here—-that all our obligations are to sentient beings; that
intelligence, guided by kindness, is the highest possible wisdom
and that ‘ man believes not what he would, but what he can.’ ”
It has been said that we can have no complete system of science.
To some extent this is true ; for no science is perfect, if by per
fection is meant that all that is knowable is known. But
sufficient information of a positive character has been obtained
in many fields of enquiry to justify conclusions that may be re
garded as reliable. Science has stamped its valuable impress on
the history of the world. By its aid man is enabled to explore
hitherto unknown regions; by its aid we can descend into the
depths of the earth, and discover truths which destroy theological
errors that have too long held captive the human mind; by its
aid we can not only avert many of the diseases which “ flesh is
heir to,” but can even bid the messenger of death pause in its
gloomy and desolating march. Science has conferred its mani
fold benefits upon the king and the peasant, the weak and the
strong, the healthy and the decrepit. It has transformed nations
from a state of barbarism to partial civilisation, and stimulated
man to emancipate himself from the curse of degrading super
stitions. That which was hidden from the gaze of the ancient
world has, by the magic wand of science, been exhibited to us
in all its pleasing aspects. To-day, though separated by the
broad and swelling ocean, we can in a few moments of time com
municate with our European friends by that cable which connects
nation with nation. By the mighty propelling power of steam
�WHEREIN THEY DIFFER.
5
we can, in a comparatively brief period, penetrate the very
length and breadth of the land. As the late Prince Consort of
England said in 1855 : “No human pursuits make any material
progress until science is brought to bear upon them............. Look
at the transformation which has gone on around us since the
laws of gravitation, electricity, magnetism, and the expansive
power of heat have become known to us. It has altered the
whole state of existence—one might say, the whole face of the
globe. We owe this to science, and to science alone.” While
■contemplating the glorious achievements thus won, it is sadden
ing to remember how their progress has been retarded. In ages
long gone, never we hope to return, whenever a scientific truth
was manifested, it was sought to be crushed, or its infantine
purity was corrupted, either by despotic blindness or ignorant
misrepresentation. The history of science has been one continual
conflict with religious fanaticism and priestly intolerance. Too
frequently its usefulness has been impaired, and its exponents
have been tortured, and made to deny the evidences of their own
senses. True, from a theological standpoint we could not expect
aught else. A study of the histories of orthodox Bible believers
will scarcely justify the supposition that they would assist in
those discoveries which show so unmistakably the errors of their
faith.
The potency of science over the influence of theology was
never better presented than in the following eloquent language
by Col. Ingersoll : “ Science, thou art the great magician ! Thou
alone performest the true miracles. Thou alone workest the
real wonders. Fire is thy servant, lightning is thy messenger.
The waves obey thee, and thou knowest the circuits of the wind.
Thou art the great philanthropist! Thou hast freed the slave
and civilised the master. Thou hast taught men to chain not
his fellow-man, but the forces of nature—forces that have no
backs to be scarred, no limbs for chains to chill and eat—forces
that never know fatigue, that shed no tears—forces that have
no hearts to break. Thou gavest man the plough, the reaper and
the loom—thou hast fed and clothed the world ! Thou art the
great physician ! Thy touch hath given sight. Thou hast made
�6
SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE:
the lame to leap, the dumb to speak, aud in the pallid cheek thy
hand hath set the rose of health. ‘ Thou hast given thy beloved
sleep’—a sleep that wraps in happy dreams the throbbing
nerves of pain. Thou art the perpetual providence of man—
preserver of light and love ! Thou art the teacher of every
virtue, the enemy of every vice. Thou hast discovered the true
basis of morals—the origin and office of conscience—and hast
revealed the nature and measure of obligation. Thou hast
taught that love is justice in its highest form, and that even
self-love, guided by wisdom, embraces with loving arms the
human race. Thou hast slain the monsters of the past. Thou
hast discovered the one inspired book. Thou hast read the
records of the rocks, written by wind and wave, by frost and
flame—records that even priestcraft cannot change—and in thy
wondrous scales thou hast weighed the atoms and the stars.
Thou art the founder of the only true religion. Thou art the
very Christ, the only saviour of mankind. Theology has always
been in the way of the advance of the human race. There is
this difference between science and theology—science is modest
and merciful, while theology is arrogant and cruel. The hope
of science is the perfection of the human race. The hope of
theology is the salvation of a few and the damnation of almost
everybody.”
Notwithstanding the value, potency and grandeur of science
it is only of comparatively recent date that its usefulness has
been fairly acknowledged and its power duly appreciated.
Formerly new discoveries were tested by the Bible and encour
aged or discouraged according to their agreement or disagreement
therewith. Fortunately, the Bible test is no longer accepted as
the standard of appeal but the question of utility has taken its
plaqe. Science now holds its undisputed sway although many
of its revelations contradict the teaching both of the Hebrew and
Christian Records.
The Bible and Science.—The Bible has hitherto occupied
in the world a very exceptional position, and there is still
claimed for it “ divine authority and unerring accuracy.” In
�WHEREIN THEY DIFFER.
7
the multiplicity of tests to which its claims might be sub
jected, the one above all others which it must face to-day, isthat of science. By this it must stand or fall. If true, it
should not fear this mode of examination, but whether it does
or not it must submit to this tribunal.
That modern science has demonstrated as fallacies much that
the Bible contains is now recognised by many professing Chris
tians, hence they assert that the Bible does not pretend to teach
science. Such a statement, however, is unfortunate for the or
thodox position, inasmuch that the Bible, which is supposed to
contain all that is necessary for mankind, ought to inculcate
that which has proved the greatest benefit to their general im
provement. The national and individual condition of society
would be lamentable indeed without the advantages of science..
For Christians, therefore, to assert that the Bible ignores science,
is to charge their God with being neglectful of the principal
wants and requirements of mankind. A book which professes to*
have been written under divine inspiration for the guidance and.
instruction of the human race, should not only teach science, butshould expound its truths in such a concise and practical manner,,
that while harmonising with the facts of nature, it should also
commend itself to the judgment and intellect of the humblest
of the land. But it is not sufficient to say that the object of the
book was not to teach science ; that it had a far higher and5
nobler purpose. There might be some weight in such an allega
tion if all its teachings were confined to regions that lie outside
the domain of modern research, though even then such teachingscould not escape being tested by the influence which science hasexerted over every form of thought, indirect if not direct. Un
fortunately, however, for those who take this view, the Bible
does refer to scientific subjects, and deals quite largely with
matters that fall within the region in which science reigns
supreme. This being so, we are certainly justified in ascertain
ing whether or not the two are in harmony. That such subjects
are.dealt with no one can doubt who is at all acquainted with
the teachings of the book. Kalisch says, “ The Bible is not silent
upon the creation ; it attempts indeed to furnish its history \
�8
SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE:
but iii this account it expresses as facts that which the researches
of science cannot sanction.” But the subject of creation is not
the only topic upon which the book states the very opposite to
what is correct. Surely when, and how, man was made, the
phenomena of the solar system, and the mode by which disease
and death entered the world, are scientific questions. These,
with other similar subjects, are dwelt upon in the Bible, and a
reference to its statements thereon will show that science and
the Bible are not on the most friendly terms. The fact is there
have been but few discoveries of any magnitude in science that
have not exhibited in some way the fallacy of portions of the
Bible. That which in the days of Moses might have been con
sidered right, and in accordance with the laws of nature, science
has since proved to be incorrect, and what Christ taught as
natural laws, subsequent experience has shown to be in opposition
to scientific discoveries. The antiquity of man has been proved
to be considerably greater than Moses alleges; geology has
demonstrated that the world existed thousands of years before
the time of creation stated in the Jewish account; the theory that
all mankind descended from one primeval pair is now given up
as unreliable ; the astronomy of the Bible has long been exploded ;
the universal flood mentioned in Genesis finds no scientific sup
porters ; the possession of devils by the human body, as believed
in by Christ, is regarded as an exploded superstition; the teach
ing of the New Testament that the world and its contents are to
be destroyed by fire, has but few believers ; a burning hell for
the “ wicked souls of the departed ” is deemed too revolting and
absurd to be regarded as more than a fiction ; hence science has
practically killed the belief in the devil and firmly closed for
ever his supposed illuminated habitation. The Bible teaches
that mankind has degenerated from a state of perfection;
science, on the contrary, indicates that the career of man has
been progressive, and that each age, profiting by experience, has
been superior to its predecessor. The Bible affirms that at a
certain command the sun and moon stood still; science declares
that such an event could never have happened. The Bible asserts
that all the kingdoms of the world were exhibited from a cer-
�WHEREIN THEY DIFFER.
9
tain high mountain; geography teaches that there are many
parts of the world totally invisible from any one elevation. The
Bible says that an iron axe floated on the surface of the water;
experience proves this to be impossible. In almost every field
the “ sacred writings ” appear to be the very antithesis of the
teachings of science.
The entire account of man’s early history as given in the
Bible is flatly contradicted by scientific research. Many attempts,
indeed, have been made to harmonise the two, but without suc
cess. Sophistry, equivocation, denunciation, all the engines, in
short, of polemical warfare, have been brought forward to dis
prove the well-attested facts of science; while those who have
been honest enough to restrict themselves to argument have
usually ended by accepting the facts and giving up the theory.
The great strength of a scientific theory lies in the cumulative
proof of which, if it be a scientific theory, it becomes capable ;
while a fact of science may be attested in many ways. For in
stance, while the geologists have bden at work tracing the
history of the earth from its earliest beginnings, and in so doing
have discovered evidence of the co-existence of man with many
of the extinct animals, of whose remote antiquity there can be no
doubt, the archaeologists have been busy in another field of en
quiry, and proving the same fact in another way. When the
same fact is thus arrived at by independent enquirers, and
different sciences force the mind to the same conclusion, the evi
dence of its truth is such as to be irresistible. Now the very
converse is the case with the orthodox defenders of the Bible.
Working in the same field, on the same subject-matter, they
arrive at various conclusions, and the best we have is a number
of conflicting theories, and if they were to be accepted a means
of harmonising the harmonisers must be found. Of course they
serve their purpose for a time by deceiving the uninformed and
misleading the unenquiring. But for the intelligent and logical
enquirer a study of the Hebrew Records themselves is quite
sufficient to discredit theology, and to show beyond all reason
able doubt that the Bible and science do not agree ; the one is
stationary, the other is progressive ; the first is bound by the
�10
SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE :
ignorance of the past, the second is guided by the knowledge of
the present. Modern thought has neither hesitation nor regrets
in giving up the Bible as a monitor in the practical duties of life,,
for we have science remaining, and its light will shine with an
ever increasing brightness as the years roll on, until theological
ignorance and folly shall be replaced by a knowledge of natural
forces and a wisdom based on the experiences of a more un
fettered intellectual development.
The Bible and Creation.—The supposed creation of theworld and the origin of man as narrated in the Bible fur
nish striking evidence of the contradictory nature of the
teachings of that book to the revelations of science. If wo
accept the chronology of the Hebrew records as being correct,
there is no difficulty in ascertaining how long it is according
to the Bible since the world and man were created. For in
stance, in Genesis, we read that when Adam was 130 years old
his son Seth was born; when Seth was 105, Enos was born;
when Enos was 90, Cainsn was born; when Cainan was 70,
Mahalaleel was born ; when Mahalaleel was 65, Jared was born ;
when Jared was 162, Enoch was born; when Enoch was 65,
Methuselah was born ; when Methuselah was 187, Lamech was
born; when Lamech was 182, Noah was born. Adding these
dates up, we have from the birth of Adam to that of Noah. 1056yearr; 600 years after this the flood appears, making from the
creation of man to the flood, 1656 years. Then reckoning from
the flood to the birth of Christ, 2501, and from Christ to the
present time, 1890, we have a total of 6047 years since man first
appeared on the earth. Now in Exodus 20 it is said that “ in
six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that
in them is,” and in Genesis 1 we read that “ God created man on
the sixth day.” Thus, it is asserted, man was made six days
after the creation of the heavens and earth began. Is not this
adequate proof that the Bible teaches that "the world and man
have existed only a little over six thousand years ? This was
really admitted by the Rev. G. Rawlinson, Professor at Oxford,,
who, in his famous lecture on “ The Alleged Historical Difficulties
�WHEREIN THEY DIFFER.
11
of the Old and New Testaments,” delivered on behalf of the
Christian Evidence Society, said :—“ The first difficulty, really
historical, which meets us when we open the volume of Scripture
is the shortness of the time into which all history is (or at any
rate appears to be) compressed by the chronological statements,
especially those of Genesis. The exodus of the Jews is fixed by
many considerations to about the fifteenth or sixteenth century
before our era. The period between the flood and the exodus,
according to the numbers of our English version, but a very little
exceeds a thousand years. Consequently, it has been usual to
regard Scripture as authoritatively laying it down that all man
kind sprang from a single pair within twenty-five or twenty-six
centuries of the Christian era ; and, therefore, that all history,
and not only so, but all the changes by which the various races
of men were formed, by which languages developed into their
numerous and diverse types, by which civilisation and art
emerged and gradually perfected themselves, are shut up within
the narrow space of 2,500 or 2,600 years before the birth of our
Lord. Now, this time is said, with reason, to be quite insuffi
cient. Egypt and Babylonia have histories, as settled kingdoms,
which reach back (according to the most moderate of modern
critical historians) to about the time at which the numbers of
our English Bible place the deluge. Considerable diversities of
language can be proved to have existed at that date; markedly
different physical types appeared not much subsequently ; civili
sation in Egypt had, about the pyramid period, which few now
place later than B.c. 2450, an advanced character; the arts existed
in the shape in which they were known in the country at its
most flourishing period. Clearly, a considerable space is wanted
anterior to the pyramid age, for the gradual development of
Egyptian life into the condition which the monuments show
to have been then reached. This space the numbers of our
English Bible do not allow ”
Turning to the great book of nature, and reading the geo
logical lessons inscribed therein, we find, in the words of Babbage
—a Christian writer—that “ the mass of evidence which com
bines to prove the great antiquity of the earth itself is so irre-
�12
sciteNcfe
and the bible
:
Sistible and so unshaken by any opposing facts, that none but
those who ate alike incapable of observing the facts and appre■ciating the reasoning can for a momeut conceive the present
state of its surface to have been the result of only 6,000 years of
existence. Those observers and philosophers, who have spent
their lives in the study of geology, have arrived at the conclu
sion that there exists irresistible evidence that the date of the
-earth’s first formation is far anterior to the epoch supposed to
be assigned to it by Moses; and it is now admitted by all com
petent persons that the formation even of those strata which are
nearest the surface must have occupied vast periods, probably
millions of years, in arriving at their present state.” In reply to
this, two different theories have been put forth in defence of the
Bible records with a view of bringing them into harmony with
science. The first theory is that a long period—countless ages,
in fact—elapsed between the time referred to in the 1st and 2nd
verses of Genesis, and that the creation spoken of in the first
two chapters of that book was only a re-adaptation of the chaos
of a previous world. If this were so, how is it no allusion is
made to animals or plants as being in existence before the time
referred to by Moses ? Is it not said by this writer that light
was created on the first of. the six days, and the sun on the
fourth ? Admit this to be true, and then, previous to that time,
there was no light nor heat, a condition of existence which
science pronounces an impossibility. Besides, have not geological
investigations discovered that the remains of animals and plants
found in the strata correspond with species now existing on the
-earth, indicating thereby that no new creation took place 6,000
years ago ? Clearly theie was and could be no such break in
the continuity of the chain of geological events as this theory
assumes. The remains of animals and plants found in the tertiary
are identical with those living to-day, and there was, therefore,
no new creation of fauna and flora at the time at which the
writer of Genesis declares the origin of the whole to have taken
place. If such had occurred evidences of it would be found in
those old records written in stone, which cannot err as docu
ments may do that have been produced by human fingers.
�WHEREIN THEY DIFFER.
13‘
Besides, does it not look very much like a childish work of
supererogation to create by a special supernatural act a new set
of plants and animals, exactly like those already existing, who
would, as a matter of course, have propagated their species in
the ordinary natural way as they had been doing for generations
before ? Nor is there the slightest intimation in the book that
any sort of an interval of long duration occurred between the
. creation described in the first verse and that enumerated in the
subsequent account. It is evidently one continuous record, the
whole extending over just six days. The second theory is that
the days mentioned in Genesis are not literal days, but long
periods extending probably over millions of years. This is the
more popular of the two theories amongst orthodox Christians
at the present time. But, like the other, it is beset with insur
mountable difficulties. The light and the darkness are stated to
be synonymous with day and night, which alternate regularly
with each other. Epochs of light and equally long epochs of
darkness we know did not occur, for such darkness would have
been fatal to the vegetation which existed. Then the keeping
of the Sabbath day is enjoined on the principle that God worked
for six days and rested on the seventh, leaving the inference
conclusive that the days in the one case were the same as those
in the other. The most fatal objection, however, of all to the entire
theory is that the order of creation as described in Genesis and
that discovered by geological science are not at all the same. The
vegetable kingdom was not in its origin separated by millions of
years from the beginnings of animal life, as this theory would
make it appear to have been, one entire day or epoch coming
between them ; neither did the higher and lower forms of land
animals make their appearance at the same time. From any
point of view, no reconciliation between the Bible and science
appears to us possible, at least upon this point.
The Origin of Man.—Whatever lack of information may
exist as to the precise time when man first appeared on
the earth, it is as certain as anything can be that the
human family have been in existence much longer than
�14
SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE :
the time stated in the Bible. Professor Huxley writes:—
Sufficient grounds exist for the assumption that man co
existed with the animals found in the diluvium, and many a
barbarous race may, before all historical time, have disappeared
together with the animals of the ancient world.” Sir Charles
Lyell supports the statement, that “ North America was peopled
more than a thousand centuries ago by the human race.” Dr.
Bennett Dowler claims for a human skeleton discovered in the
delta of the Mississippi no less than 57,600 years. Baron Bunsen
■claims an antiquity for the human race of at least 20,000 years
prior to the Christian era, and traces in Egypt a double Empire
■of hereditary kings to 5413 B.C. “ It is now generally conceded,”
observe Nott and Gliddon, “ that there exists no data by which
we can approximate the date of man’s first appearance upon
•earth; and, for aught we yet know, it may be thousands or
millions of years.beyond our reach. The spurious systems of
Archbishop Usher on the Hebrew text, and of Dr. Hales on the
Septuagint, being entirely broken down, we turn, unshackled by
prejudice, to the monumental records of Egypt as our best guide.
Even these soon lose themselves, not in the primitive state of
man, but in his middle, or perhaps modern, ages ; for the Egyptian
Empire first presents itself to view, about 4,000 years before
'Christ, as that of a mighty nation, in full tide of civilisation, and
surrounded by other realms and races already emerging from
the barbarous stage...........These authorities, in support of the
extreme age of the geological era to which man belongs, though
startling to the unscientific, are not simply the opinions of a
few; but such conclusions are substantially adopted by the
leading geologists everywhere. And, although antiquity so ex
treme for man’s existence on earth may shock some preconceived
opinions, it is none the less certain that the rapid accumulation
of new facts is fast familiarising the minds of the scientific
world to this conviction. The monuments of Egypt have alreadycarried us far beyond all chronologies heretofore adopted ; and
when these barriers are once overleaped, it is in vain for us to
attempt to approximate even the epoch of man’s creation. This
•conclusion is not based merely on the researches of such arch-ae-
�WHEREIN THEY DIFFER.
15
ologists as Lepsius, Bunsen, Birch, De Longperier, Humboldt,
etc., but on those of also strictly orthodox writers, Kenrick,
Hincks, Osburn, and, we may add, of all theologians who have
really mastered the monuments of Egypt. Nor do these monu
ments reveal to us only a single race at this early epoch, in full
tide of civilisation, but they exhibit faithful portraits of the
same African and Asiatic races, in all their diversity, which hold
intercourse with Egypt at the present day.......... In short, we
know that in the days of the earliest Pharaohs, the Delta, as it
now exists, was covered with ancient cities, and filled with a
dense population, whose civilisation must have required a period
going back far beyond any date that has yet been assigned to
the deluge of Noah, or even to the creation of the world.” The
two magnificent works of Nott and Gliddon, entitled “ Types of
. Mankind ” and “ Indigenous Races,” are too little read at the
present time. They contain some few errors, no doubt, but on
the whole they abound in erudition and furnish overwhelming
evidence both of man’s early appearance on the earth and of the
impossibility of supposing all the races to have had the same
origin. The Adam and Eve theory is shattered into fragments
by the facts produced in such abundance. No answer to these
books has been put forth, and we fail to see that any is possible.
“ The theory,” say Nott and Gliddon,“that all nations are made
of one blood, is entirely exploded.” Besides, if it were correct that
all mankind emanated from the “ transgressors in the Garden of
Eden,” it would be right to expect that the nearer we could
trace back to the original stock, the less diversity of race distincion characteristics would be found. Such, however, is not the
case. “We know,” observe Nott and Gliddon, “ of no archae
ologist of respectable authority at the present day, who will aver
that the races now found throughout the valley of the Nile, and
scattered over a considerable portion of Asia, were not as dis
tinctly and broadly contrasted at least 3,500 years ago as at this
moment. The Egyptians, Canaanites, Nubians, Tartars, Negroes,
Arabs, and other types, are as faithfully delineated on the monu
ments, of the seventeenth and eighteenth dynasties, as if the
paintings had been executed by an artist of our present age.
�16
SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE :
Hence, nothing short of a miracle could have evolved all the
multifarious Caucasian forms out of one primitive stock ; because
the Canaanites, the Arabs, the Tartars, and the Egyptians were
absolutely as distinct from each other in primeval times as they
are now; just as they all were then from co-existent Negroes.
Such a miracle, indeed, has been invented, and dogmatically
defended ; but it is a bare postulate, and positively refuted by
scientific facts. If then the teachings of science be true, there
must have been many centres of creation, even for Caucasian
races, instead of one centre for all the types of humanity.” Dr.
Samuel Morton states “ that recent discoveries in Egypt prove
beyond all question that the Caucasian and the Negro races
were as perfectly distinct in that country upwards of 3,000 years
ago as they are now. If, then, the difference which we find ex
isting between the Negro and the Caucasian has been produced
by external causes, such change must have been effected accord
ing to Bible chronology in about 1,000 years. This theory is
decidedly contradicted by science and experience.” Now, no
external causes are known that are capable of producing all
the varieties of mankind as we see them to-day. They appear
to be separated from each other by broad lines of demarcation
which nothing that we are at present acquainted with can bridge
over. No consideration of the influence of sun, climate, or geo
graphical position will aid us in solving the problem. If man
kind all sprang from the same stock, which of course is very
questionable, it must have been tens of thousands of years before
the time at which Adam is supposed to have lived. For, as Pro
fessor Draper observes :—“ So far as investigations have gone
they indisputably refer the existence of man to a date remote
from us by many hundreds of thousands of years......... We are
thus carried back immeasurably beyond the six thousand years
of Patristic chronology. It is difficult to assign a shorter date
for the last glaciation of Europe than a quarter of a million of
years, and human existence antedates that. But not only is it
that this grand fact confronts us, we have to admit also a primi
tive animalised state and a slow and gradual development. But
this forlorn, this savage condition of humanity is in strong con-
�WHEREIN THEY DIFFER.
17
trast to the Paradisiacal happiness of the Garden of Eden, and
what is far more serious, it is inconsistent with the theory of
the Fall.” [“ Science and Religion,” pp. 199-200.] It is evident,
therefore, that the Bible is at fault in reference to man’s origin,
and no sophistry of explanation will make it agree with the
records of science.
Creation: Time and Material.—The’ disagreement between
the Bible and science as to the time occupied in the al
leged creation of the world is exceedingly clear. According
to the account in the Bible, this event occurred in six days.
There it is distinctly stated that the heavens and the earth and
all that in them is, were created in six days (Ex. 20 : 11). “For
in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that
in them is, and rested the seventh day ; wherefore the Lord
blessed the seventh day and hallowedit.” The Jews understood
the word “day” as embracing a common day of twenty-four
hours. From the 20th of Exodus it is perfectly certain that it
is to be understood literally. God commands the Jews to “ Re
member the Sabbath-day to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou
labour, and do all thy work ; but the seventh day is the Sabbath
of the Lord thy God ; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou,.
nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant nor thy maid
servant, nor thy ’cattle, nor the stranger that is within thy gates.”
Why ? Because—“ For in six’ days the Lord made heaven andi
earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh
day ; wherdfore the Lord blessed the Sabbath-day and hallowed
it.” “ Now,” remarks S. J. Finney, “ if the word ‘ day ’ is an in
definite word, embracing a long and indefinite period of time,
how could the Jews know when to work or when to rest, and
how do we know when to keep the Sabbath at all ? If it means,
according to Dr. John Pye Smith, many thousands or even
millions of years, the Sabbath has not yet begun; men are fooling
away one seventh of their time on a false notion that it is
‘ holy.’ ” But it has already been shown that the epoch theory
entirely breaks down when tested by facts. Mr. Priaulx says
“ that in reviewing this creation we are struck by its division
�18
SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE:
into days. These days, though several of them are undetermined
hy any revolution of the earth round the sun, were, nevertheless,
no doubt, meant and understood to be natural days of twentyfour hours each.” Dr. Chalmers and Dr. Pye Smith represent
the creation recorded in Genesis as begun and completed in six
natural days, but as cut off from a previously-existing creation
by a chaotic period. Geologists, on the conti ary, declare that
■the various early strata of the earth have occupied enormous
periods of time during their formation, and that even in the
■vegetable and animal kingdoms the extinction and creation of
species have been, and are, the result of a slow and gradual
■change in the organic world.
Equally at fault is the Bible with reference to the sequence of
events. So diverse, in fact, are the accounts as furnished by
the Bible and by science up©« this zpoint that all attempts to
reconcile them must prove to be time wasted and labour thrown
away. Many years ago Dr. Sexton, who although now a Chris
tian is still & scientist, and would find some difficulty in replying
to his early writings, wrote as follows in his “ Concessions of
Theology to Science ” :—“ The greatest objection, and one which
is insurmountable to the understanding the term day in the first
chapter of Genesis as a long period, and therefore the six days
as including all the ages that have passed away, during which
those innumerable species of plants and animals have made their
appearance on our earth whose remains are embedded in the
rocks, will be found in the fact that the order of creation is not
the same in the two cases. According to geology, there is a
gradual progression from the lowest to the highest, plants and
animals running pari passu side by side, the simplest being
found in the early rocks, and the most complex in those more
recently formed. In Genesis, on the other hand, the whole of
the vegetable kingdom makes its appearance in one epoch, all
the inhabitants of the waters in another—the two separated
from each other by a long period, in which nothing was created
but the sun—and the land animals in a third. Moreover, the
organisms created in the last epoch include animals as low as
creeping things, and as high as man,, which certainly does not
�WHEREIN THEY DIFFER.
19
accord with the facts disclosed by geology; and whales, which
are mammals, and therefore considerably high in the scale of
existence, are represented as having made their appearance with
the fishes, and long before the creeping things, which is also
contrary to fact. The sun, too, does not exist till the epoch after
the creation of plants, so that an enormous vegetation—such as
the immense forests which form the present coal-beds—must
have flourished in the absence of the rays of sunlight, which is
a perfect impossibility. Nor is the difficulty got over by the
theory that light had been previously formed, and that there
fore the sun was not requisite, since the actinic part of the sun’s
rays is equally as indispensable to vegetation as the luminous
portion that we call light.”
The Bible statement of the material from which man was
made differs from the facts discovered by scientific investigation.
We read irt Genesis that man was made from the dust of the
earth ; chemical analysis, on the other hand, has proved that
dust does not contain the elements found in the human organ
ism. The late Dr. Herapath, one of the leading chemists of
the day, wrote thus boldly upon this subject:—“ From our days
of boyhood it has been most assiduously taught us ‘ that man
was made out of the dust of the earth ; ’ and, ‘ as dust thou
art, so to dust thou shalt return.’ Now, this opinion, if literally
true, would necessitate the existence of alumina as one of the
elements of organised structure, for no soil or earthy material
capable of being employed by agriculturists can be found with
out alumina existing largely in its constitution, and clay cannot
be found without it. Therefore, chemistry as loudly protests
against accepting the Mosaic record in a strictly literal sense, as
geology, geography, astronomy, or any other of the physical
sciences so absurdly dogmatised upon weekly from the pulpits
by those who have neglected the study of true science, but still
profess to teach us that which is beyond all knowledge. That
man is not made out of the dust of the earth, but from organic
material or vegetable matter, properly digested and assimilated
by other organised beings, chemical science everywhere proves
to us incontestably.” Prof. Carpenter asserts that two-thirds of
�20
SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE :
the human body by weight is water. Such a proportion of this
fluid certainly cannot be found in dust, for we only apply that
ter<n to earth that is dry. Dust mixed with twice its own weight
of water would cease to be described as dust. Yet there is no
escape from the statement made in the Bible that of such ma
terial as dust man was formed. The literal reading of the ori
ginal, as all scholars agree, is “ dust from the ground,” that is,
ordinary dust such as we meet with on the ground. Now, it is
certain man was not made from any such material, and by no
legitimate stretch of language can it with anything like accu
racy or truth be said that he was. The principal elementary
. substances to be found in human bodies are oxygen, hydrogen,
nitrogen and carbon, but these are not to be found in ordinary
dust, with the exception of a very trifling modicum of oxygen.
Silicon, one of the main ingredients of dust, can hardly be de
tected in the human organism. The Lamaic creed supposes man
is the production of water. Priaulx suggests that, had the writer
of Genesis adopted this theory, he would have been somewhat
nearer the truth.
The Bible Account of the Origin of Death.—The Bible
alleges that “by one man sin entered into the world, and
death by sin; ” that is, that through the supposed disobedi
ence of Adam, death was introduced as a punishment for the
alleged offence. In the first place, death, so far from being a
punishment, i« to many “a consummation devoutly to be
wished.” Epictetus wrote : “ It would be a curse upon ears of
corn not to be reaped, and we ought to know that it would be a
curse upon man not to die. Are there not thousands who suffer
a life-long state of physical pain, who have not the strength or
opportunity to obtain sufficient food to satisfy the wants of
nature ? To such persons as these would not death be indeed a
welcome messenger ? Besides, upon the Christian hypothesis,
how can death possibly be a punishment ? To be ushered into
realms of bliss, and there to enjoy everlasting happiness, instead
of remaining in this “ vale of tears, ought certainly to be
accepted by the Christian as an improvement upon his condition.
�WHERMN THEY DIFFER.
21
But this theory of Adam being the cause of the introduction of
death involves many difficulties. If death had not been intro
duced, could the world contain its ever-increasing inhabitants ?
And would it have been capable of producing provisions sufficient
to support such an immense multitude ? Suppose the serpent
had not played its “little game,” could a man who had no know
ledge of swimming have fallen into the water without the
chance of being drowned ? Or could a person have remained in
a furnace and not be burned to death ? Or if he were in a coal
mine during an explosion, would he escape unhurt ? Further,
did the lower animals incur death through the act of Adam ?
If yes, did Christ give them immortality ? Because we read,
“ As in Adam all died, so in Christ shall all be made alive.” If,
however, they did not incur death, it may be asked why one of
theij; kind took a prominent part in what is termed “ the fall of
man ? ” The fact is, by our nature we must cease to live. Death
is a necessity, regardless of what Adam did or did not, and man
cannot but experience it while he is what he is. Change is an
universal law of existence, and we are no exception to that law.
As soon as we enter upon the stage of life we become subject to
that change until we progress to a given point; then our organ
isation begins to lose its vitality, and we slowly but surely
•exhaust life’s power, and death ensues as certainly as a fire will
cease to burn when no longer supplied with fuel. This condition
•of things has always existed so far as science can discover. But
the Bible says no ; before Adam’s “ transgression ” death was not
.a necessary consequence of life. Here, then, are antagonistic
statements. Which is reliable ? If Adam were constituted
similar to us, he must have been liable to death. If, on the con
trary, his organisation were of an entirely different structure,
how could he have been our first parent ? Children do not differ
in their nature from those whose offspring they are. Certain it
is that man’s constitution is such that he cannot avoid the
liability to death. He is so organised that all the influences
operating upon him, while for a time and under certain condi
tions they afford him sustenance and support, may yet, diverted
from their normal purpose, cause him to cease to live. Indeed,
�22
SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE :
it is impossible even to conceive of a human body which is pos
sessed of immortality. The phrase is used glibly enough, but let
one reflect upon it, and ask himself what is the meaning that he
attaches to the expression “immortal man.” A human being lives
by taking food, and that very food diverted from its proper pur
pose may cause death; anyhow, its absence will produce that
effect. Excretions of a poisonous character are continually being
eliminated, and should the glandular organ whose function it is
to remove these deleterious substances cease to act, then the
result is as fatal as though a poison had been swallowed. If it
be said that this would not occur because there would be no
disease, we reply that there is still the impossibility of supposing
an organism, whose existence is dependent on something outside
itself, being at the same time independent of all else.
Then there is the important fact that death was in the ^orld
millions of ages before the supposed existence of Adam and
Eve. There are, indeed, few persons of any education now who
can doubt that at least the lower animals died long before man
was created. Geology has brought to light their fossil remainsentombed in the various rocks which go to make up the crust
of the earth. They came into existence, played their brief part
on life’s stage, and passed away, not simply individually, but
in whole races, long before the era dawned which gave man bis
birth. They preyed on one another then as now, the carnivora
devouring the less ferocious tribes ; and both together becoming’
buried in the earth, their remains were preserved to tell their
history to future generations of men. Race followed race in long
succession, each to pass away as its predecessor bad done whilst
as yet man had not made his appearance upon the scene.
But it was not simply the lower animals that died before the
time assigned to the creation of Adam, It is now demonstrated
beyond the shadow of a doubt that man had shared the same
fate ages before. If our fabled first parents resided in the Gar
den of Eden six thousand years ago, they came far too late in
the history of the world to be the progenitors of the whole
human family. Whole races had flourished and had passed
away long before that time. Death had existed whilst the per-
�WHEREIN THEY DIFFER.
petrator of original sin was not yet born. In no sense, there
fore, can it be a fact that Adam’s sin was the cause of death.
The Fall itself involves contradictions to science. Take, for in
stance, the curses pronounced on the ground, the woman, and
the serpent : the merest tyro in science knows that all these
are simply non-existent. Thorns and thistles are not accursed ,
on the contrary, they are highly useful plants. Moreover, they
were in existence long before the time at which the Fall is said
to have occurred. And they most unquestionably made their
first appearance, not as the result of any curse of God, but by
the ordinary laws of nature. Then the so-called curse on woman
is by no means universal. The pains referred to occur in their
severe form only amongst civilised peoples, and always as a re
sult'of artificial modes of living and the violation of natural
laws. Savage women are almost exempt from such pains, and
suffer no more than do the lower animals. The curse upon the
serpent is still more absurd : “ On thy belly shalt thou go,” as
though serpents ever practised locomotion in any other way.
Nor were serpents changed in their organisation at this time—
as some have suggested—for the remains of those found in
geological strata, whose existence dates back to a period pro
bably a million years before man appeared, show precisely the
same kind of organisation as their modern descendants. Thesecurses are, to say the least, very childish, and place the charac
ter of the Being who is said to have uttered them in a very
contemptible and degrading light. Fortunately, however, ac
cording to science, the whole story is regarded as fiction, not as
fact.
The Bible Deluge.—Modern researches have unmistakeably
established the fact that between science and the Mosaic ac
count of the flood there is an absolute antagonism.
The
Bible statement is, that less than five thousand years ago, God
discovered “ that the wickedness of man was great in the
earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart
was only evil continually.” Not two thousand years before
this, so the book relates, God had made man pure and
�24
SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE :
morally upright; had given him the advantage of divine super
intendence, and subsequently the edification of the preaching of
Noah. These precautions, however, did not, according to the
Hebrew narrative, prevent mankind from degenerating so rapidly
that the Lord repented “ that he had made man, and it grieved
him at his heart.” God possessed, it is .-aid, infinite power, wis
dom, and goodness, yet he either could not, or would not, devise
a plan of reformation for the human race, but resolved instead
upon wholesale destruction, and so drowned them all except one
family. This was a terrible resolve, opposed to every sentiment
of justice and to every feeling of benevolence. No being with a
spark of humanity in his nature would be guilty of voluntarily
exposing millions of creatures, men, women, and children, to the
agonies and struggles of a watery grave. Surely an omnipotent
God could have found other means to correct the work of his
own hands without bringing “ a flood of waters upon the earth,
to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under
heaven.” Besides, as a remedy and a warning, the cold water pro
cess proved a failure. The people are reported as being no better
after the deluge than they were before it.
If this deluge were a fact, what can be said of the God who
was the chief actor in it, and who was entirely responsible for
the great calamity—an event so fearfully cruel and so revolting
that one “ cannot think of it without horror nor contemplate it
without dismay.” How can we reconcile the drowning of a
whole world with the justice and goodness of the Almighty
One ? Say that the wickedne-s of man was great upon the
earth, was that any reason for destroying any chance of repent
ance ? What should we say of an earthly despot who acted in
a like manner ? The cruelty and supreme wickedness of the
action thus attributed to God has never been paralleled or even
approached by the greatest monster the world has ever seen ;
and on the part of infinite power the action mu-t partake of the
character of the actor and become infinite in its utter depravity.
Say that men were wicked, was it therefore just to overwhelm
in a common destruction the son with the sire, the little child
who had not yet learned to sin with those who were the real
�WHEREIN THEY DIFFER.
25
sinners ? In the presence of this narrative, we can only say
that, if men were wicked, the being who destroyed them was
more wicked still.
Again, according to the orthodox version of this fearful
tragedy, man had fallen, Adam for his sin had been cast out of
Eden, and the redemption of man was impossible through any
efforts of his own. The Redeemer who was necessary had not
yet been sent. How, then, could it be consistent with infinite
goodness to punish for wickedness which was unavoidable, to
destroy man that he was sinful when he could not by any possi
bility be otherwise ? Moreover, be it observed that this narra
tion is a libel upon the character of God in other ways. By
this universal deluge a great change was effected, but no im
provement. The new generations were as wicked as those which
had gone before ; nay, the very man Noah, who had found grace
in the sight of God, was drunk in his tent immediately, and his
son Canaan, another of the saved ones, maketh shame of his
father. In the 9 th chapter of Genesis the whole disgusting ac
count may be found. The God who drowned the world to cure
the evil in it with no better results than this could not be a God
of any foreknowledge. Or, if it be said that he knew this
would be so, then the utter malignity of the drowning becomes
only proportionately increased.
Our present object, however, is not to dwell upon the inhuman
character of the flood, but rather to show that the account in
Genesis is utterly contrary to the result of modern investigations
and the revelations of science. This fact has become so palp
able that leading theologians, with a view to save the credit of
the Bible story, are driven to assert that the Noachian flood was
only partial. Were this assertion correct, the Bible would be in
error, inasmuch as it clearly teaches the universality of the
deluge, as shown by the following extracts from Genesis, ch. 6
and 7 : “ And the Lord said, I will destroy man, whom I have
created, from the face of the earth; both man and beast, and
the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air ; for it repenteth me
that I have made them'” “ And, behold, I, even I, do bring a
flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is
�26
SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE :
the breath of life, from under heaven ; and everything that is
in the earth shall die.” “ Every living substance that I havemade will I destroy from off the face of the earth.” “ And all
flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle,
and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the
earth, and every man. All in whose nostrils was the breath of
life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And every living
substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground,
both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of
the heaven ; and they were destroyed from the earth; and Noah
only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.”
Bishop Colenso says that the Flood described in Genesis, whether
it be regarded as a universal or a partial deluge, is equally in
credible and impossible. And the Rev. Paxton Hood, in his
work, “The Villages of the Bible,” remarks: “I am aware that
Dr. Pye Smith and some other distinguished scholars have
doubted the universality of the deluge......... I need not refer
more at length to this matter than to say it seems quite unphilosophical to maintain the possibility of such a partial flood ; this
seems to me even more astonishing than the universal.” Pro
fessor Hitchcock observes: “ I am willing to acknowledge that
the language of the Bible on this subject seems at first view to
teach the universality of the flood unequivocally.” Upon the
supposition that the flood was partial, it would be interesting to
know what prevented the water from finding its level. More
over, where was the necessity of drowning the innocent portion
of the local inhabitants ? It cannot reasonably be supposed that
no pure-minded women and guiltless children were to be found.
Besides, it was folly building the ark and collecting the animals
if this partial hypothesis were true; as Noah and his family,
together with “ two of every sort,” could have emigrated to
those parts which the deluge was not intended to visit.
In speaking of this flood, “ Julian,” one of the ablest Biblical
scholars in England at the present day, in his excellent .work,
“ Bible Words : Human, Not Divine,” has the following valuable
remarks upon the account as given in Genesis chapters 6, 7,.
and 8 :
�WHEREIN THEY DIFFER.
27
“ Two of Evtry Sort.—Chapter 6 is Eloistic: the word ‘God’
is used. In verses 19, 20, we read: And God said to Noah he
was to take into the ark ‘two of every sort,’ to keep the race
alive; the two were to be a male and its female : ‘ Of fowls after
their kind, and of cattle after their kind; of every creeping
thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come
unto thee. And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten,,
which thou shalt gather together for thee and them.’’
“ This writer evidently supposed that wild beasts and birds of
prey could feed on hay and eat ‘ straw like an ox ; ’ that the
number of animals was so small that two of every sort could be
stalled in an ordinary-sized church ; and that four men would
suffice to feed all the animals and remove the filth from the ark.
Why, a small travelling menagerie requires more attendants to
feed the collection and keep the place clean.
“ The writer supposed that wild beasts would consort with
their lawful prey—serpents with doves, hawks with sparrows,
owls with mice, and insectivorous birds with insects ; for, though*
daily food was to be taken into the ark, only two of every
sort of animal were to be saved, just enough to keep the race
alive.
“ Seven of Clean Animals and Birds.—‘ Two of every sort,’
Elohim says, and repeats the injunction—two of every sort,
remember; only two, and no more ; one male and one female of
each species of beast, bird, and reptile. The-next chapter (7) is
a Jehovistic one; for, instead of God, we read ‘Lord,’ or the
‘ Lord God ; ’ and here a distinction is made between clean and
unclean beasts, and between quadrupedsand birds. Mark what
is said : ‘ Of every clean beast (7 : 2, 3) thou shalt take to theeby sevens, the male and the female; and of beasts that are not
clean by two, the male and his female. Of fowls of the air by
sevens, the male and the female.’
“Here the direction is seven clean beasts and seven of all
species of birds, ‘ a male and its female.’ Now, as seven is an
odd number, it was plainly impossible to pair seven animals ; sothe writer must have meant seven pairs, or fourteen of every
clean beast and every fowl of the air. This, of course, would
�38
SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE:
require a much larger ark, and would greatly increase the daily
labour of Noah and his family.
“ This wise and sagacious writer saw plainly that birds and
beasts of prey could not live upon seed, so he increases the num
ber of animals for food. He also wanted Noah to offer sacrifice
after the Flood ; -and, had he killed one of his two clean beasts,
he would have extirpated the race ; so he makes Jehovah coun
termand the order of Elohim, and tell Noah that Elohim made a
mistake ; that he did not mean ‘ two of every sort of beast and
bird and creeping thing,’ but only of unclean beasts. All clean
beasts and all birds wTere to be collected by sevens (a sacred
number); but why seven pairs of eagles, vultures, condors,
toucans, parrots, lyre-birds, mocking-birds, cranes, owls, and so
on, is a mystery of mysteries.”
<
Scientific Objections to the Mosaic Account of the Flood.—
Among the many scientific objections to the account of the
Flood as given in the Bible are the following :
1. Geological. The study of this science proves to demonstra
tion that the present diluvian deposits found in the earth are the
result of time going back far beyond the Noachian period. The
evolutions in sea and on land, that for ages have been progress
ing, and are still in process, evidently extend in their connection
to the pre-Adamite antiquity. “ This conclusion,” says the Bev.
Alfred Barry, M.A., “ is the more undoubted, because so many
leading geologists, Buckland, Sedgwick, &c, who once referred
the diluvium to the one period of the historic deluge, have now
publicly, withdrawn that opinion.” Hugh Miller, in his “Testi
mony of the Rocks,” says: “ In various parts of the world, such
as Auvergne, in Central France, and along the flanks of Etna,
there are cones of long extinct or long slumbering volcanoes,
which, though of at least triple the antiquity of the Noachian
deluge, and though composed of the ordinary incoherent ma-'
terials, exhibit no marks of denudation. According to the calcu
lations of Sir Charles Lyell, no devastating flood could have
passed over the forest zone of Etna during the last twelve
thousand years.” Alluding to the remains to be found in certain
�WHEREIN THEY DIFFER.
29
provinces of France, Kalisth, in his Genesis, observes: “Distinct
mineral formations, and an abundance of petrified vegetable and
animal life, bespeak an epoch far anterior to the present condition
of our planet.......... That extraordinary region contains rocks,
consisting of laminated formations of silicious deposits; one of
the rocks is sixty feet in thickness ; and a moderate calculation
shows that at least 18,000 years were required to produce that
single pile. All these formations, therefore, are far more remote
than the date of the Noachian flood ; they show not the slightest
trace of having been affected or disturbed by any general deluge;
their progress has been slow, but uninterrupted.” Thus geology
irrefragably demonstrates that, while the earth has been subject
to many floods, it has never been visited by such an one as that
described in the Bible.
The evidences of the Flood that have been sometimes quoted
are really funny. Not long ago Talmage declared that the flood
was proved beyond the possibility of contradiction by the fact
that sea shells and other remains of marine animals were often
found on the summit of the highest mountains. He forgot to
mention that the Flood was said to have been caused by fresh
water, and that consequently marine animals could have had no
place in its waters. These remans found on mountain tops are
due to other and well known causes. Geologically there is not
only no evidence that such a flood occurred as that described in
the Bible, but there is a mass of undoubted evidence to the con
trary. “ Julian ” observes : “ Such a cataclysm as the Flood
must have left its marks on the earth ; but geologists have not
succeeded in finding a single trace—no confusion of animal
relics, no huge water gullies, no stratum of alluvial earth, which
such a sweep of water would produce. We find relics of marine
animals inland, it is true, and on the tops of high mountains;
but these fossils are all in order, each in its own stratum. There
is no confusion of animals in these rocks, as if a world had been
stamped out in forty days.”
2. The Scarcity of Water. The account says: “And the
waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth, and all the high
i
�30
SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE :
thills that were under the whole heavens were covered.” Further,
“ the mountains were covered.” Now, the height of Mount
Ararat is put down at 17,000 feet; the quantity of water, there
fore, required to cover this mountain would be, in the estimation
■of Dr. Pye Smith, Professor Hitchcock, and many other eminent
writers, eight times greater than what already existed. From
whence then came the tremendous mass of water required to
produce the Flood, and what became of it afterwards ? These
.are questions which Biblical students should answer or con
fess their inability to do so and admit the absurdity of the
.record.
3. The Size of the Ark. This vessel is alleged to have been
not more than 600 feet long, 100 feet broad, and 60 feet high ;
yet it is said to have held not only Noah and his family, but
“ two of every living thing of all flesh.” According to Hugh
Miller, there are 1,658 known species of mammalia, 6,266 of
birds, 642 of reptiles, and 550,000 of insects. Is it credible that
so small a vessel as the Ark is described to have been could have
furnished accommodation for this vast congregation ? Space,
too, must have been provided for food for the occupants of the
Ark. Under such crowded conditions how did ventilation ob
tain ? The atmosphere must have been fatal, at least, to some
forms of life. And whence was obtained the food to sustain for
so long a period the carnivorous and herbivorous animals—the
swallows, ant-eaters, spiders, and flies ? The Black Hole of Cal
cutta would have been a paradise to it. It is monstrous folly to
suppose all the animals of the earth, by twos and sevens, could
be squeezed into such a space. It is no less folly to suppose that
they would not all have been suffocated before one day had
passed. There is a little difficulty also about the light. There
were, it appears, three storeys in the Ark, and but one window.
Now, where was the window positioned ? In the upper storey ?
Possibly, then, the dwellers in the other two storeys of the Ark
were in the dark, where many of those have since been who
have relied on the Bible instead of profiting by the lessons of
science.
�WHEREIN THEY DIFFER.
31
4. The Collecting the Animals. The difficulties attending the
narrative of collecting the live stock into one happy family are
thus aptly put by the Rev. T. R. Stebbing, M.A.: “ To achieve it
he (Noah) must have gone in person, or sent expeditions, to
Australia for the kangaroo and the wombat, to the frozen North
for the Polar bear, to Africa for the gorilla and the chimpanzee ;
the hippopotamus of the Nile, the elk, the bison, the dodo, the
apteryz, the emeu, and the cassowary must have been brought
together by vast efforts from distant quarters....... Sheep, game,
caterpillars, beasts of prey, snails, eagles, fleas and titmice must
all have their share of attention. Unusual pains must be em
ployed to secure them uninjured. They must be fed and cared
for during a journey, perhaps of thousands of miles, till they
reach the ark ; they must be hindered from devouring one ano
ther while the search is continued for rats, and bats, and vipers
and toads, and scorpions, and other animals which a patriarch,
specially singled out as just and upright, and a lover of peace,
would naturally wish and naturally be selected to transmit as a
boon to his favoured descendants.”
5. Atmospheric and Botanical. The Bible assures us that,
after the waters began to subside, the inhabitants of the Ark
existed for nearly eight months in the temperature prevailing at
a spot “ 3,000 feet above the region of perpetual snow.” It surely
will not be contended that this statement harmonises with sci
ence any more than does the reeord of an olive tree retaining its
life after being under the pressure of several tons’ weight of
water for nearly three-quarters of a year. “ Naturalists tell us
that sun and air are needful for vegetable life; but neither sun
nor air could get to trees buried seven miles deep in water. And
even supposing the trees to have been in leaf, a wind sufficiently
high to dry up seven miles of water in 110 days would certainly
have stripped the trees, if it had not rooted them up altogether.’
Colenso says :—“ The difficulty, that so long an immersion in
deep water would kill the olive, had, no doubt, never occurred
to the writer, who may have observed that trees survived ordin
ary partial floods, and inferred that they would just as well be
�32
SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE :
able to sustain the deluge to which his imagination subjected
them.” Kalisch observes : “ It is agreed by all botanical autho
rities, that, though partial inundations of rivers do not long or
materially change the vegetation of a region, the infusion of
great quantities of salt water destroys it entirely for long
periods. But the earth produced the olive and the vine imme
diately after the cessation of the Deluge.”
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Science and the Bible : wherein they differ
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THE
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.
OCTOBER, 1873.
SILK-WORMS AND SERICULTURE.1
By A. DE QUATBEFAGES.
TRANSLATED
BY
ELIZA
A.
YOUMANS.
ENTLEMEN : When your honorable director invited me to
speak before you, I felt much embarrassed. I desired both to
interest and instruct you, but the subjects with which I am occupied
are of too abstract a nature to offer you much interest. In entering
upon them I run the risk of tiring you, and, as people who are tired
are little instructed, my aim would be doubly missed.
However, among the animals I have studied, there is one which, I
think, will awaken your attention. I mean the silk-worm. Its history
is full of serious instruction. It teaches us not to despise a being be
cause, at first, it seems useless ; it proves that creatures, in ap
pearance the most humble, may play a part of great importance to the
world ; it shows us that the most useful things are often slow to attract
public attention, but that sooner or later their day of justice arrives.
It teaches us, consequently, not to despair when valuable ideas or
practical inventions are not at first welcomed as they should be, for,
though their triumph is delayed, it is not less sure.
Perhaps, also, in choosing this subject, I have yielded a little to
national egotism. I was born in that province which was the first in
France to understand the importance of the silk-worm ; which owes to
this industry, fertilized by study and management, a prosperity rarely
equalled, and which, of late cruelly smitten, bears its misfortunes with
a firmness worthy of imitation.
We are to speak, then, of industry, of studious care, of perseverance,
of courage ; I am certain that you will be interested.
Pemit me, at first, to make a supposition—what we call an hypoth
esis : what would you say if a traveller, coming from some distant
G
1 A lecture delivered at the Imperial Asylum at Vincennes.
vol. hi.—42
�658
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
country, or a philosopher, who had found in some old book forgotten
facts, should tell you, “ There exists, in a country three or four thou
sand leagues from here, in the south of Asia, a tree and a caterpillar.
The tree produces nothing but leaves which nourish the caterpillar.”
To a certainty, most of you would say at first, “What of it?”
If the traveller or the man of learning should go on to say: “ But
this caterpillar is good for something; it produces a species of cocoon,
which the inhabitants know how to spin, and which they weave into
beautiful and durable fabrics. Would you not like to enter upon the
manufacture?” You would infallibly reply: “Have we not wool
from which to weave our winter vestments, and hemp, flax, and cotton,
for our summer clothing? Why should we cultivate this caterpillar'
and its cocoons ? ”
But suppose that the traveller or philosopher, insisting, should add:
“We should have to acclimate this tree and this caterpillar. The
tree, it is true, bears no fruit, and we must plant thousands of them,
for their leaves are to nourish the caterpillar, and it is necessary to
raise these caterpillars by the millions. To this end we must build
houses expressly for them, enlist and pay men to take care of them—
to feed them, watch them, and gather by hand the leaves on which
they live. The rooms where these insects are kept must be warmed
and ventilated with the greatest care. Well-paid laborers will pre
pare and serve their repasts, at regular hours. When the moment
arrives for the animal to spin his cocoon, he must have a sort of bower
of heather (Fig. 1), or branches of some other kind, properly prepared.
Sprigs of Heather
arranged so that the
Silk-worm
may mount into them.
And then, at the last day of its life, we must, with the minutest care
and the greatest pains, assure its reproduction.” Would you not
shrug your shoulders and say, “ Who, then, is such a madman as to
spend so much care and money to raise—what ?—some caterpillars ! ”
Finally, if your interlocutor should add—“ We will gather the co
coons spun by these caterpillars, and then the manufacture which spins
them will arise, which will call out all the resources of mechanics.
Still another new industry would employ this thread in fabricating
stuffs. The value of this thread, of these tissues, would be counted by
hundreds of millions for France alone; millions that would benefit
�SILK-WORMS AND SERICULTURE.
659
agriculture, industry, commerce; the producer and the artisan, the
laborer in the fields, and the laborer in towns. Our caterpillar and
its products will find a place in the elaborate treatises of states
men; and a time will come when France will think herself happy
that the sovereign of a distant empire, some four thousand leagues
away, had been pleased to permit her to buy in his states, and pay
very dear for, the eggs of this caterpillar ”—you would abruptly
turn your back and say, “ This man is a fool.” And you would
not be alone: agriculturists, manufacturers, bankers, and officials,
could not find sarcasms enough for this poor dreamer.
And yet it is the dreamer who is in the right. He has not
traced a picture of fancy. The caterpillar exists, and I do not ex
aggerate the importance of this humble insect, which plays a part
so superior to what seemed to have fallen to it. It is this of which
I wish to give you the history.
Let us first rapidly observe this animal, within and without. We
call it a silk-worm, but I have told you it was a caterpillar. (Fig. 7.)
I add that it has nothing marked in its appearance. It is larger
than the caterpillars that habitually prey upon our fruit-trees, but
smaller than the magnificent pearl-blue caterpillar so easy to find in
the potato-field. Like all caterpillars, it is is transformed into a but
terfly. To know the history of this species is to know the history of
all others.
Here in these bottles are some adult silk-worms, but here also
are some large pictures, where you will more easily follow the de
tails that I shall point out, beginning with the exterior.
At one of the extremities of its long, almost cylindrical body
(Fig. 7), we find the small head, provided with two jaws. These jaws
do not move up and down, as in man and most animals that surround
us, but laterally. All insects present the same arrangement.
The body is divided into rings, and you see some little black points
placed on the side of each of these rings ; these are the orifices of res
piration. The air enters by these openings, and penetrates the canals
that we shall presently find.
The silk-worm has ten pairs of feet. The three first pairs are
called the true feet, or scaly feet; the five last, placed behind, are the
false feet, or the membranous feet. These are destined to disappear
at length.
Let us pass to the interior of the body. Here we find, at first, the
digestive tube, which extends from one extremity to the other. It
commences at the oesophagus, that which you call the throat. Below
you remark an enormous cylindrical sac; it is the stomach, which is
followed by the very short intestine. These canals, slendei* and tor
tuous, placed on the side, represent, at the same time, the liver and
kidneys. This great yellow cord is the very important organ in which
is secreted the silky material (Fig. 2). In proportion as the animal
�66o
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
grows, this organ is filled with a liquid which, in passing through
the spinners, the orifice of which you see, dries in the air, and forms
a thread. This thread constitutes the silk.
The nervous system of the animal, placed below the digestive tube,
is with insects, as with all animals, of the highest importance. It is
the nervous system which seems to animate all the other organs, and
particularly the muscles. The latter are what we call flesh or meat.
They are in reality the organs of movement, with our caterpillar as
with man himself. Each of them is formed of elementary fibres that
have the property of contracting and relaxing; that is to say, of
shortening and lengthening under the influence of the will and of the
nervous system. Upon this property depend all the movements exe
cuted by any animal whatever.
Fig. 3.
Silk-secreting Apparatus of One Side of a Silk-worm. A, B, C, the part nearest the tail of
the worm.where the silk-matter is formed. D, E, enlarged portion—reservoir of silky matter.
E. F. capillary tubes proceeding from the two glands, and uniting in one single short canal F,
which opens in the mouth of the worm, at its under lip. Two silk threads are therefore
united together, and come out through the orifice with the appearance of a single thread.
I wish you to remark, d propos of the caterpillar—of this insect
that when crushed seems to be only a formless pulp—that its muscular
system is admirably organized. It is superior to that of man himself,
at least, in relation to the multiplicity of organs. We count in man
529 muscles; the caterpillar has 1,647, without counting those of the
feet and head, which give 1,118 more.
In us, as in most animals, there exists a nourishing liquid par ex
cellence that we know under the name of blood. This liquid, set in mo
tion by a heart, is carried into all parts of the body by arteries, and
�SILK-WORMS AND SERICULTURE.
661
comes back to the heart by veins. In making this circuit it finds on
its route the lungs filled with air by means of respiration.
In our caterpillar we also find blood and a species of heart, but it
has neither arteries nor veins. The blood is diffused throughout the
body and bathes the organs in all directions. However, it ought to
respire. Here step in the openings of which I have spoken. They
lead to a system of ramified canals, of which the last divisions pene
trate everywhere, and carry everywhere the air—that fluid essential
to the existence of all living beings. In our bodies the air and blood
are brought together. In insects the air seeks the blood in all parts
of the body.
I have sketched for you a caterpillar when it is full grown. But
you well know that living beings are not born in this state. The
general law is, small at birth, growth, and death. The caterpillar
passes through all these phases.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 4.
Egg and First Age, lasting five days. (An
age is the interval between two moultings.)
Second Age, lasting six days.
I pass around among you some samples of what we call seeds of
the silk-worm. These so-called seeds are in reality eggs. The cater
pillar comes out of the egg very small ; its length at birth is about
one-twentieth of an inch. Look at these samples, and you will see how
Fig. 6.
Fourth Age, lasting six days.
Fig. 7.
Fifth Age, lasting nine days. The mature worm near the end of its career, and at the time of
its greatest voracity.
great is the difference of size between the worm at birth and the fullgrown specimens I have shown you. This difference is much greater
than in man. A man weighs about forty times as much as the new
�66 2
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
born infant; the caterpillar, when perfectly developed, is 72,000 times
heavier than when it first came from the egg.
In every thing that relates to the body, there is between men and
animals more resemblance than is ordinarily believed. We also come
from an egg which essentially resembles all others. That this egg
may become a man, it must undergo very great changes, many meta
morphoses. But all these changes, all these metamorphoses occur in
the bosom of the mother, as they are accomplished within the shell for
the chicken. For insects in general, and consequently for the silk-worm
a part of these metamorphoses occur in the open day. Hence they
have drawn the attention, excited the curiosity, and provoked for a
long time the study of naturalists. Let us say a few words about them.
Scarcely is the caterpillar born than it begins to eat. It has no
time to lose in gaining a volume 72,000 times greater than it had at
first; so it acquits itself conscientiously of its task, and does nothing
but eat, diges|, and sleep. At the end of some days this devouring
appetite ceases ; the little worm becomes almost motionless, hangs
itself by the hind-feet, raising and holding a little inclined the ante
rior of its body.
This repose lasts 24, 36, and even 48 hours, according to the tem
perature ; then the dried-up skin splits open behind the head, and
soon along the length of the body. The caterpillar comes out with a
new skin, which is formed during this species of sleep.
This singular crisis, during which the animal changes his skin as
we change our shirt, is called moulting, when it is a question of cater
pillars in general. For the silk-worm, we designate it under the name
of sickness. It is, in fact, for the silk-worm, a grave period, during
which it often succumbs, if its health is not perfect.
Fig. 8.
Head of Silk-worm during Moulting ;
swollen, and skin wrinkled.
Fig. 9.
Position of Silk-worm while Moulting.—It
remains at rest for from 12 to 24 hours, fast
ing, but begins to eat an hour after the crisis
in which it escapes from the old skin.
The silk-worms change their skin four times. After the fourth
moulting comes a redoubled appetite, which permits them to attain
their full size in a few days. Then other phenomena appear. The
caterpillar ceases to eat, and empties itself entirely ; it seems uneasy,
wanders here and there, and seeks to climb. Warned by these symp
toms, the breeder constructs for it with branches a cradle or bower, into
which it mounts. It chooses a convenient place, hangs itself by the hind
feet, and soon, through the spinner of which I have spoken (Fig. 2),
�SILK-WORMS AND SERICULTURE.
663
we see come out a thread of silk. This is at first cast out in any di
rection, and forms a collection of cords destined to fix the cocoon that
is to be spun. Soon the work becomes regular, and the form of the
cocoon is outlined. For some hours we can see the worker performing
his task across the transparent gauze with which he surrounds him
self. By little and little, this gauze thickens, and grows opaque and
firm; finally it becomes a cocoon like these I place before you. At
the end of about 72 hours the work is done.
Once it has given out its first bit of silk, a worm in good health
never stops, and the thread continues without interruption from one
end to the other. You see that the cocoon is in reality a ball wound
from the outside inward. The thread which forms this ball is 11 miles
in length; its thickness is only
of an inch. It is so light that 28
miles of it weigh only 15^ grains. So that 2| lbs. of silk is more
than 2,700 miles long.
Let me insist a moment on the prodigious activity of the silk-worm
while weaving his cocoon. To dispose of its silk when spinning, it
moves its head in all directions, and each movement is about one-sixth
of an inch. As we know the length of the thread, we can calculate
how many movements are made in disposing of the silk in 72 hours.
We find in this way that a silk-worm makes nearly 300,000 motions
in 24 hours, or 4,166 an hour, or 69 per minute. You see that our in
sect yields not in activity to any weaver ; but we must add that it is
beaten by the marvellous machines that the industry of our day has
produced.
Fig. 10.
Spherical Cocoon or Bombyx Mori.
Fig. 11.
Cocoon drawn in toward the Middle.
All cocoons are not alike. There exist, in fact, different races of
silk-worms, as we have different races of dogs. These differences are
less obvious in the animals themselves ; they are best seen in the co
coons, which may be either white, yellow, green, or gray; some are
round, others oval or depressed in the middle (Figs. 10 and 11).
The silk of one is very fine and very strong, that of others is coarse
and easily broken. Hence their very different values.
All I have said applies to the silk-worm properly so called—to the
silk-worm which feeds on the leaves of the mulberry-tree, the Bombyx
mori of naturalists. But, some years since, there were introduced
into France new species of caterpillars that produce cocoons, and
�664
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
that live upon other leaves than the mulberry. Among these new im
portations, the two principal ones are the yama-mai worm, which
comes from Japan, and feeds upon the leaves of the oak, and the
ailanthus worm. The first gives a very beautiful and very fine silk,
while that of the second is dull and coarse. But the ailanthus grows
very well in unproductive soils, and hence the caterpillar which it
nourishes renders an important service.
But let us return to our mulberry caterpillar, or the silk-worm
properly so called. We left it at the moment when it disappeared
from our eyes enveloped in its cocoon. There, in its 'mysterious re
treat, it becomes torpid once more. It now shortens itself, changes
form, and submits to a fifth moulting. But the animal which emerges
from the old skin is no longer a caterpillar. It is in some sort a new
being; it is what we call a chrysalis. This chrysalis scarcely reminds
us of the silk-worm. The body is entirely swaddled ; we no longer
see either head or feet (Fig. 14). The color is changed, and has be
come a golden yellow. Only by certain obscure movements of the
posterior part do we know that it is not a dead body.
This apparent torpor in reality conceals a strange activity in all
the organs and all the tissues, which ends in the transformation of the
entire being.
In fifteen or seventeen days, according to the temperature, this
work is accomplished, and the last crisis arrives. The skin splits on
the back; the animal moults for the last time, but the creature that
now appears is no longer a caterpillar or a chrysalis ; it is a butterfly
(Fig. 12).
Fig. 12.
Silk-worm Moth (Male).
Is it needful to explain the details of this wonderful metamorpho
sis ? The body, before almost all alike, presents now three distinct
regions: the head, the chest (thorax)^ the belly (abdomen). Wings,
of which there was not the least vestige, are now developed. In com
pensation, the hind-feet have disappeared. The fore-feet persist, but
you would not know them, they have become so slender, and a fine
down covers all the parts.
In the interior, the transformation is also complete. The oesopha
gus (throat) is no longer a simple reversed funnel ; it is a narrow,
lengthened tube, with an aerial vessel attached, of which the caterpil
lar offers no trace. The stomach is strangely shortened. The intes
�SILK-WORMS AND SERICULTURE.
665
tine is elongated, and its different parts, that we found so difficult to
distinguish, are very much changed. If we examine in detail all the
organs just now indicated, even to the nervous system, we shall find
modifications not less striking.
But these are not the strangest changes that have occurred. There
are others which still more arrest our attention; they are those which
relate to the production of a new generation.
All caterpillars are neuters—that is to say, there are no males orfe
males among them. They have no apparatus of reproduction. These
organs are developed during the period that follows the formation of
the chrysalis while the animal is motionless, and seemingly dead.
Marriages occur at the coming out from the cocoon, and, immediately
after, the female lays her eggs, averaging about 500 (Fig. 13). This
Fig. 13.
done, she dies, the male ordinarily dying first. It is a general law for
insects; the butterfly of the silk-worm does not escape it. It is even
more rigorous for him than for his brethren that we see flying from
flower to flower. From the moment of entering the cocoon, the silk
worm takes no nourishment. When it becomes a butterfly, and has
assured the perpetuity of the species, its task is accomplished; there
is nothing more but to die.
Such, briefly, is the natural history of the silk-worm. It remains
to trace rapidly its industrial history.
Whence came this insect ? What is its country and that of the
mulberry for the tree and the animal seem to have always travelled
side by side? Every thing seems to indicate that China—Northern
China is its point of departure. Chinese annals establish the exist
ence of industries connected with it from those remote and semifabulous times when the emperors of the Celestial Empire had, it is
said, the head of a tiger, the body of a dragon, and the horns of
cattle. They attribute to the Emperor Fo-IIi, 3,400 years before our
era, the merit of employing silk in a musical instrument of his own
�666
TIIE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
invention. This date carries us back 5,265 years. They are said to
have employed the silk of wild caterpillars, and to have spun a sort
of floss. At that time they knew nothing of raising the worm or of
winding the cocoon into skeins.
This double industry appears to have arisen 2,650 years before our
era, or 4,515 years ago, through the efforts of an empress named Siling-Chi. To her is attributed the invention of silk stuffs. You will
not be surprised to see that the fabrication of silks should have a
woman as its inventor.
Si-ling-Chi, in creating this industry, which was to be so immense
ly developed, enriched her country. Her countrymen seem to have
understood the extent of the benefit, and to have been not ungrateful.
They placed her among their deities, under the name of Sein-Thsan,
two words that, according to M. Stanislas Julien, signify the first who
raised the silk-worm. And still, in our time, the empresses of China,
with their maids-of-honor, on an appointed day, offer solemn sacrifices
to Sien-Thsan. They lay aside their brilliant dress, renounce their
sewing, their embroidery, and their habitual work, and devote them
selves to raising the silk-worm. In their sphere they imitate the Em
peror of China, who, on his part, descends once a year from his throne
to trace a furrow with the plough.
The Chinese are an eminently practical race. No sooner did they
understand that silk would be to them a source of wealth, than they
strove to obtain a monopoly of it. They established guards along
their frontier—true custom-house officers—with orders to prevent the
going qut of seeds of the mulberry or of the silk-worm. Death was
pronounced against him who attempted to transport from the country
these precious elements which enriched the empire. So, during more
than twenty centuries, we were completely ignorant of the source of
these marvellous goods—the brilliant tissues manufactured from silk.
For a long time we believed them to be a sort of cotton; some sup
posed even that they were gathered in the fields, and were the webs
of certain gigantic spiders. The price of silk continued so high that
the Emperor Aurelian, after his victories in the Orient, refused his
jvife a silken robe, as being an object of immoderate luxury, even for
a Roman empress.
A monopoly founded on a secret ought necessarily to come to an
end, particularly when the secret is known by several millions of men.
But, to export the industry of Si-ling-Chi, it was needful to risk life in
deceiving the custom-house officer. It was a woman who undertook
this fine contraband stroke. Toward the year* 140 before our era, a
princess of the dynasty of Han, affianced to a King of Khokan,
learned that the country in which she was destined to live had neither
the mulberry nor the silk-worm. To renounce the worship of SeinThsan, and doubtless also to do without the beautiful stuffs, so dear to
the coquette, appeared to hei' impossible. So she did not hesitate to use
�SILK-WORMS AND SERICULTURE.
66?
the privileges of her rank to violate the laws of the empire. On ap
proaching the frontier, the princess concealed in her hair some mul
berry-seed and eggs of the butterfly. The guards dared not put their
hands on the head of a “ Princess of Heaven ; ” eggs and seeds passed
the officer without disturbance, and prospered well in Khokan, situated
near the middle of Asia.
And so commenced that journey which was not to be arrested till
the entire world possessed the mulberry and the silk-worm ; but it
was accomplished slowly and with long halts. That which had oc
curred in China occurred everywhere, each new state that obtained
the precious seeds attempting prohibition.
The silk-worm and mulberry got to Europe in 552, under Justinian.
At this time two monks of the order of St. Basil delivered to this em.peror the seeds, said to have come from the heart of Asia. To smug
gle them, they had taken still greater precautions than the Chinese
princess, for they hollowed out their walking-sticks, and filled the in
terior with the precious material. The Emperor Justinian did not
imitate the Asiatic potentates, but sought to propagate and extend
the silk-manufacture. Morea, Sicily, and Italy, were the first Euro
pean countries that accepted and cultivated the new products.
It was not till the twelfth or thirteenth century that the silk-worm
penetrated into France. Louis XI. planted mulberry-trees around his
Château of Plessis les-Tours. Besides, he called a Calabrian named
Francis to initiate the neighboring population in raising this precious
insect, and developing the several industries that are connected with it.
Under Henry IV., sericulture received a great impulse, thanks chiefly,
perhaps, to a simple gardener of Nîmes named François Traucat. It
is always said that this nurseryman distributed throughout the neigh
boring country more than four million mulberry-sprouts. In enrich
ing the country, Traucat acquired a considerable fortune ; but he lost
it foolishly. He had heard of treasures buried near a great castle
which commanded the town of Nîmes, and which is called the Castle
of Magne. He wished to increase the money he had nobly and use
fully gained, by this imaginary gold ; he bought the great castle and
neighboring ground, and dug the earth, which brought him nothing,
till he ruined himself.
The minister of Louis XIV., Colbert, sought also to propagate the
mulberry. Sully with reluctance had done the same, and sent trees
to various parts of the kingdom, some of which were still living when
I was a child. They were called by the name of this minister, and I
remember to have seen two of them in my father’s grounds, which no
longer bore leaves, but were piously preserved as souvenirs of their
origin.
To lead in the development of sericulture, a man was needed who
would not hesitate to set an example, and to make considerable sacri
fices. This man, I am proud to say, was a modest officer, Captain
�668
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
François de Carles, my grandfather. Returning from a campaign in
Italy, where he had seen how much the culture of the mulberry en.
nched the population, he resolved to transplant this industry into the
heart of Cévennes, where were his estates. He proceeded in this way :
He made plantations, and, in order to extend them, he did not hesitate
to uproot the chestnuts, those old nourishers of the ancient Cévennols.
Fig. 14.
Larva, Pupa, Cocoon,
and
Moth, of Silk-worm.
To water the mulberries, he constructed ditches and aqueducts ; then
efoiced, so to say, the peasants to take these improved lands at
their own price and on their own conditions. In this way he alienated
almost all his land, and singularly diminished his fortune ; but he en
riched the country. The results speak too distinctly to be misunder
stood. You shall judge by the figures.
�SILK-WORMS AND SERICULTURE.
66g
The little valley where Captain Carles made his experiments, and
where I was born, belongs to the Commune of Valleraugue. At the
time of which I speak, they harvested scarcely 4,400 lbs. of very poor
cocoons, that sold for very little. Recently there were produced, before
the malady of which I shall presently speak, 440,000 lbs. of excellent
quality, valued on an average at 2| or 2| francs per pound. At this
price, a million of silver money found its way each year into this little
commune of not more than 4,000 inhabitants.
Let me remark that this money went not alone to the rich. The
small proprietors, the day-laborers, those even who owned not the
least land, had the greatest part. In fact, most of the easy proprie
tors did not raise their own silk-worms; they contracted for them in
this way: The laborer received a certain quantity of eggs of the silk
worm on the condition of giving a fifth of the cocoons for an ounce
of eggs ; they received, besides, enough mulberry-leaves to nourish
all the worms from these eggs, plus a certain quantity to boot. All
the cocoons above this constituted the wages or gain of the raiser.
You see, we had resolved in our mountains this problem, so often
encountered and still unsettled, of the association of capital and labor;
and resolved it in the best possible way for both. The interest of the
proprietor was, in this case, identical with that of the rearer, and re
ciprocally ; for the success of a good workman would equally benefit
both parties, and the poor workman could profit only according to his
work.
Now, this labor was in reality of little account. Until after the
fourth moulting, when the silk-worm is preparing to make his cocoon,
the rearing of the worms can be performed by the women and chil
dren while the father pursues his ordinary occupation. Only after the
fourth moult is he obliged to interrupt his work, and occupy himself,
in his turn, in the gathering of leaves. The rearing ended, an indus
trious family—and such are not rare with us—will have, on an average,
from 250 to 500 francs of profit. This bright silver, added to the re
sources of the year, this profit obtained without the investment of
capital, seconded by the wise conduct of our mountaineer Cevennols,
leads rapidly to competency. At the end of a few years, the laborer,
who had nothing, possesses a little capital to buy some corner of rock,
which, by his intelligent industry, he quickly transforms into fertile
soil, and in his turn becomes a proprietor.
What I am telling you is not fancy. I speak of facts that have
occurred under my own eyes, and that I well know. In the country,
and particularly on the soil of our old mountains, people are not
strangers to each other, as in our great cities. Between the gentle
man and the peasant there are not the same barriers as between the
citizen and the laborer in towns. When a child, I played with all my
little neighbors; I knew the most secret nooks of the eight or ten
houses composing the modest hamlet which bordered the place where
�670
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
I was born; I saluted by their names the members of all the families
of the valley. And now, when I go to the country, it is always a
great pleasure to visit these houses, one by one, and take by the hand
those from whom I have been so long separated. But this happiness
is always mingled with sorrow; the number of those I knew dimin
ishes with each visit, and those who have come since cannot replace
them for me.
Permit me to give you the history of one of these families. It
occurs to me first, as it contrasted with all the others by its miserable
dwelling. This was a little thatch-built cottage, standing by itself at
the foot of an irregular slope of perfectly bare rocks. It consisted of
a single story, with only one room, scarcely larger than one of our
bedrooms ; the wall, built without mortar, was any thing but regular;
the roof consisted of flags of stone, retaining, as well as they were
able, a mass of straw and branches. Between the rocks that sup
ported this house and the wall, there was a little place where was
kept a pig, the ordinary resource of all Cevennol house-keeping.
This cottage was occupied, when I was eleven or twelve years old,
by a man with his wife and four children. The father and mother
worked in the field ; the eldest child, scarcely of my age, had begun to
be useful, particularly in the time of gathering the mulberry-leaves ;
the smaller ones drove the pig along the road, where it grew and fat
tened, the best it could, without any expense.
After an absence of ten years, I returned to my mountains, and the
first thing was to call upon my old neighbors, those of whom I have
spoken among the rest. In approaching, I scarcely knew the place. The
rocks that supported the house had disappeared to make way for those
traversiers of which I shall tell you presently; the house had been re
built, it had gained a story, and was of double its former extent; its
walls were laid in mortar; its roof covered with beautiful slate. The
master of the house was absent, but his wife welcomed me with a glass
of wine from a neat walnut table. Then she showed me, with proper
pride, a room with two beds at the farther end, the first portion being
devoted to the rearing of silk-worms; and, above all, the favorite ar
ticle of furniture of all good Cevennol housekeeping—an immense
cupboard of walnut, crammed with clothing, dresses, and raiment
of all sorts. At the same time she gave me news of all the family :
the eldest son was a soldier; a daughter was married ; the eldest re
maining children attended to the business, and, as of old, the younger
ones ran about watching the pig. I clasped with pleasure the hand
of this brave woman, because this competence was the fruit of good
conduct, of industry, of perseverance, and of economy. And what
the silk-worm did in ten years for one family it has been doing for
nearly a century for the whole region of Cevennes, because among
them you generally find the same elements of success.
That you may better understand me, I wish to give you some idea
�671
SILK-WORMS AND SERICULTURE.
of these valleys. Let me sketch for you the one I know best, the one
in which I was born. It is composed of ascents so steep that, when
two neighboring houses are placed one above the other, the cellar of
the upper one is on the same level as the garret of the lower one.
There is not much earth on these declivities, and the rocks stick out
everywhere. But it is, as it were, from the rocks themselves that
our mountaineers make their mulberry-plantations. They proceed
in this way: They first break up the rocks, and with the larger
Fig. 15.
Sheets of Papeb, with Rows
of
Cocoons
prepared for the
fob laying Eggs.
Exit
of the
Moths
designed
stones so obtained they raise a wall; then, with the smaller pieces,
they fill up the interval between the wall and the mountain. This
done, they bring upon their backs, from the bottom of the valley, soil
and manure enough entirely to fill the space. This is what is called
a traversier, and it is in this soil that most of the mulberry-trees are
planted. I have seen a bridge built across a mountain-stream ex
pressly to give foothold for two or three of these precious trees. To
pay for all this preparation the produce should be very great. The
following figures give the average value of ground planted to mulber
ries for 20 years:
Traversiers not watered
Fields watered
Meadows planted with mulberries
1 acre,
1 acre,
1 acre,
9,800 francs.
12,000 “
12,400 “
and even then the money yielded five per cent. This price, which
some would not believe when I told them, has been officially confirmed
by M. de Lavergne, in his remarkable writings upon French agricul
ture. This value of land, and the way it has been obtained, explain
the nature of our country’s wealth. With the exception of some fami
lies recently enriched by the silk-manufacture and the silk-trade, the
level of this wealth, although very high, is more of the nature of gen
eral competence than of great fortunes. Industry and economy have
�672
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
produced general well-being, without the growth of offensive differ
ences. I cannot say how it is now, but in my childhood there were
no paupers in our commune, except two infirm people who were sup
ported in their misfortunes by voluntary aid.
Fig. 16.
These striking results could not fail to affect the neighboring
country. This example of the culture of the mulberry was imitated
throughout the south of France, and adopted more or less in other
departments. You can judge of the progress made in this culture by
the following figures, giving the quantity of cocoons produced an
nually :
From 1821 to 1830
44
1831 44 1840
44
1841 44 1845
44
1846 44 1852
44
1853
.
.
.
.
22,000,000 pounds.
44
31,000,000
37,000,000 44
46,000,000 44
56,000,000 44
These 56,000,000 lbs. of cocoons sold at from 2^ to 2$ francs per
lb., representing a value of about 130,000,000 francs. Now, these
millions all went to agriculture, to the first producer; and so they
added to the national wealth at its most vital source. If this progress
had continued, in a few years we should have been able to supply our own
manufactures, and relieve ourselves of the tribute of 60 or 65,000,000
francs that we pay to foreign countries. But, unhappily, at the moment
when this culture was most prosperous, when mulberry-plantations
were springing up on all sides, fed by the nurseries which were each
day more numerous, all this prosperity disappeared before the terrible
scourge to which I alluded in the beginning of my discourse.
Like all our domestic animals, the silk-worm is subject to various
maladies. One, called the muscardlne, that for a long time was the
terror of breeders, is caused by a species of mould or microscopic
mushroom. This mushroom invades the interior of the body of the
insect. After affecting all the tissues, this vegetal parasite sometimes
�SILK-WORMS AND SERICULTURE.
&73
suddenly appears upon the outside of the body in the form of a white
powder. Each grain of this powder, falling upon a silk-worm, plants
the seed of this formidable mushroom, the ravages of which will
destroy all the worms of a rearing-chamber in a few hours. Happily,
science has found the means of killing these seeds, and of completely
disinfecting the locality. At the very moment when this victory was
announced, another yet more terrible scourge, the pebrine, appeared.
The muscardine caused isolated disaster; it had never been so wide
spread as seriously to injure the general business. Not so this other
malady. It is a true epidemic, which attacks life at its very source in
an inexplicable fashion. It is a pestilence like the cholera. Under
the influence of this scourge, the chambers of the silk-worm no longer
thrive; most of the worms die without producing silk. Those that
survive as butterflies give infected eggs, and the next generation is
worse than the first. To get healthy eggs, we had to go to the neigh
boring countries; but other countries have been invaded in their turn.
To-day we have to get them in Japan. Even when the egg is healthy,
the epidemic bears equally on its product; a great part of the worms
always succumb, and when the breeder gets half a crop he is very
happy. Upon the whole, the great majority of breeders have worked
at a loss since the invasion of this disease.
You understand the consequences of such a state of things, con
tinued since 1849. The people make nothing ; they lose, and yet
VOL. III.—43
�674
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
they have to live and cultivate their ground. In this business the
profits melt away rapidly, and particularly where the mulberry was
the only crop, as at Cevennes, misery has taken the place of comfort.
Those who once called themselves rich are to-day scarcely able to get
food to eat. Those who used to hire day-laborers to gather their har
vest have become day-laborers, and the laborers of former times have
emigrated. This will give you an idea of the extremities to which
they are reduced, for to uproot a mountaineer of Cevennes he must be
dying of hunger.
To escape a fatality so heavy, these people have displayed perse
verance and courage of the highest kind. . They have undertaken dis
tant journeys to get non-infected eggs. More than one has not come
back from these journeys, where it was needful to struggle against
great fatigue in inhospitable countries. Although they fell not on a
field of battle, struck by ball or bullet, they were true soldiers; and,
although they did not carry arms, they died in the service of the
country.
Fig. 18.
Fig. 19.
Square Net.
Lozenge-shaped Net.
Nets used to separate the worms from their faded and withered leaves. Fresh leaves are spread
on these nets, and the worms leave the old food to get on to the new leaves.
During seventeen years this exhaustion has been most aggravated
in places chiefly devoted to sericulture. But, if these local sufferings
merit all our sympathy, their general consequences still more demand
our attention. Confidence in the culture of the silk-worm has dimin
ished wherever it was not the exclusive occupation. Where other
crops could replace it, that of the mulberry was easily discouraged.
In many countries they have destroyed the tree so lately known as
the tree of gold.
As the foregoing interesting discourse was delivered in 1866, the
following statement of Prof. Huxley regarding the p'ebrine malady,
made in 1870, in his address before the British Association, will be in
teresting.—[Editor.
�SILK-WORMS AND SERICULTURE.
12122110
675
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,
“ The Italian naturalist, Filippi, discovered, in the blood of silk
worms affected by this strange disease, p'ebrine, a multitude of cylin
drical corpuscles, each of about -g-gVtr of an inch long. These have been
carefully studied by Lebert, and named by him Panhistophyton ; for
the reason that", in subjects in which the disease is strongly developed,
the corpuscles swarm in every tissue and organ of the body, and even
pass into the undeveloped eggs of the female moth. The French Gov
ernment, alarmed by the continued ravages of the malady and the in
efficiency of the remedies which had been suggested, dispatched M.
Pasteur to study it, and the question has received its final settlement.
It is now certain that this devastating, cholera-like p'ebrine is the effect
of the growth and multiplication of the Panhistophyton in the silk
worm. It is contagious and infectious, because the corpuscles of the
Panhistophyton pass away from the bodies of the diseased caterpillars,
directly or indirectly, to the alimentary canal of healthy silk-worms in
their neighborhood; it is hereditary, because the corpuscles enter into
the egg. There is not a single one of all the apparently capricious
and unaccountable phenomena presented by the plbrine, but has re
ceived its explanation from the fact that the disease is the result of the
presence of the microscopic organism Panhistophyton. M. Pasteur
has devised a method of extirpating the disease, which has proved to
be completely successful when properly carried out.”
MENTAL SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY.
By HERBERT SPENCER.
ROBABLY astonishment would make the reporters drop their
pencils, were any member of Parliament to enunciate a psycho
logical principle as justifying his opposition to a proposed measure.
That some law of association of ideas, or some trait in emotional de
velopment, should be deliberately set forth as a sufficient ground for
saying “ ay” or “no” to a motion for second reading, would doubt
less be too much for the gravity of legislators. And along with
laughter from many there would come from a few cries of “ question: ”
the entire irrelevancy to the matter in hand being conspicuous. It is
true that during debates the possible behavior of citizens under the
suggested arrangements is described. Evasions of this or that pro
vision, difficulties in carrying it out, probabilities of resistance, con
nivance, corruption, etc., are urged; and these tacitly assert that the
mind of man has certain characters, and under the conditions named
is likely to act in certain ways. In other words, there is an implied
recognition of the truth that the effects of a law will depend on the
-L
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677
manner in which human intelligence and human feeling are influenced
by it. Experiences of men’s conduct which the legislator has gath
ered, and which lie partially sorted in his memory, furnish him with
empirical notions that guide his judgment on each question raised;
and he would think it folly to ignore all this unsystematized knowl
edge about people’s characters and actions. But, at the same time,
he regards as foolish the proposal to proceed, not on vaguely-gen
eralized facts, but on facts accurately generalized; and, as still more
foolish, the proposal to merge these minor definite generalizations in
generalizations expressing the ultimate laws of Mind. Guidance by
intuition seems to him much more rational.
Of course, I do not mean to say that his intuition is of small
value. How should I say this, remembering the immense accumula
tion of experiences by which his thoughts have been moulded into
harmony with things ? We all know that when the successful man of
business is urged by wife and daughters to get into Parliament, that
they may attain a higher social standing, he always replies that his
occupations through life have left him no leisure to prepare himself,
by collecting and digesting the voluminous evidence respecting the
effects of institutions and policies, and that he fears he might do mis
chief. If the heir to some large estate, or scion of a noble house
powerful in the locality, receives a deputation asking him to stand for
the county, we constantly read that he pleads inadequate knowledge
as a reason for declining : perhaps hinting that, after ten years spent
in the needful studies, he may have courage to undertake the heavy
responsibilities proposed to him. So, too, we have the familiar fact
that, when, at length, men who have gathered vast stores of political
information gain the confidence of voters who know how carefully
they have thus fitted themselves, it still perpetually happens that after
election they find they have entered on their work prematurely. It is
true that beforehand they had sought anxiously through the records
of the past, that they might avoid legislative errors of multitudinous
kinds, like those committed in early times. Nevertheless, when acts
are proposed referring to matters dealt with in past generations by
acts long since cancelled or obsolete, immense inquiries open before
them. Even limiting themselves to the 1,126 acts repealed in 1823-’29,
and the further 770 repealed in 1861, they find that to learn what
these aimed at, how they worked, why they failed, and whence^ arose
the mischiefs they wrought, is an arduous task, which yet they feel
bound to undertake lest they should reinflict these mischiefs; and
hence the reason why so many break down under the effort, and retire
with health destroyed. Nay, more—on those with constitutions vig
orous enough to carry them through such inquiries, there continually
presses the duty of making yet further inquiries. Besides tracing the
results of abandoned laws in other societies, there is at home, year by
year, more futile law-making to be investigated and lessons to be
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drawn from it; as, for example, from the 134 public acts passed in
1856-’57, of which all but 68 are wholly or partially repealed. And
thus it happens that, as every autumn shows us, even the strongest
men, finding their lives during the recess overtaxed with the needful
study, are obliged so to locate themselves that by an occasional day’s
hard riding after the hounds, or a long walk over the moors with gun
in hand, they may be enabled to bear the excessive strain on their ner
vous systems. Of course, therefore, I am not so unreasonable as to
deny that judgments, even empirical, which are guided by such care
fully-amassed experiences, must be of much worth.
But, fully recognizing the vast amount of information which the
legislator has laboriously gathered from the accounts of institutions
and laws, past and present, here and elsewhere, and admitting that,
before thus instructing himself, he would no more think of enforcing a
new law than would a medical student think of plunging an operating
knife into the human body before learning where the arteries ran, the
remarkable anomaly here demanding our attention is, that he objects
to any thing like analysis of these phenomena he has so diligently
collected, and has no faith in conclusions drawn from the ensemble of
them. Not discriminating very correctly between the word “gen
eral ” and the word “ abstract,” and regarding as abstract principles
what are in nearly all cases general principles, he speaks contemptu
ously of these as belonging to the region of theory, and as not con
cerning the law-maker. Any wide truth that is insisted upon as being
implied in many narrow truths, seems to him remote from reality and
unimportant for guidance. The results of recent experiments in legis
lation he thinks worth attending to; and, if any one reminds him of
the experiments he has read so much about, that were made in other
times and other places, he regards these also, separately taken, as de
serving of consideration. But, if, instead of studying special classes
of legislative experiments, some one compares many classes together,
generalizes the results, and proposes to be guided by the generaliza
tion, he shakes his head skeptically. And his skepticism passes into
ridicule if it is proposed to affiliate such generalized results on the
laws of Mind. To prescribe for society on the strength of countless
unclassified observations, appears to him a sensible course ; but, to
colligate and systematize the observations so as to educe tendencies
of human behavior displayed throughout cases of numerous kinds, to
trace these tendencies to their sources in the mental natures of men,
and thence to draw conclusions for guidance, appears to him a vision
ary course.
Let us look at some of the fundamental facts he ignores, and at
the results of ignoring them.
Rational legislation, based as it can only be on a true theory of
conduct, which is derivable only from a true theory of mind, must
�MENTAL SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY.
679
recognize as a datum the direct connection of action with feeling.
That feeling and action bear a constant ratio, is a statement needing
qualification ; for at the one extreme there are automatic actions which
take place without feeling, and at the other extreme there are feelings so
intense that, by deranging the vital functions, they impede or arrest
action. But, speaking of those activities which life in general pre
sents, it is a law tacitly recognized by all, though not distinctly formu
lated, that action and feeling vary together in their amounts. Pas
sivity and absence of facial expression, both implying rest of the mus
cles, are held to show that there is being experienced neither much
sensation nor much emotion, while the degree of external demon
stration, be it in movements that rise finally to spasms and contor
tions, or be it in sounds that end in laughter, and shrieks, and groans,
is habitually accepted as a measure of the pleasure or pain, sensa
tional or emotional. And so, too, where continued expenditure of
energy is seen, be it in a violent struggle to escape, or be it in the
persevering pursuit of an object, the quantity of effort is held to show
the quantity of feeling.
This truth, undeniable in its generality, whatever qualifications
secondary truths make in it, must be joined with the truth that cog
nition does not produce action. If I tread on a pin, or unawares dip
my hand into very hot water, I start: the strong sensation produces
motion without any thought intervening. Conversely, the proposition
that a pin pricks, or that hot water scalds, leaves me quite unmoved.
True, if to one of these propositions is joined the idea that a pin is
about to pierce my skin, or to the other the idea that some hot water
will fall on it, there results a tendency, more or less decided, to shrink.
But that which causes shrinking is the ideal pain. The statement that
the pin will hurt or the water scald produces no effect, so long as there
is nothing beyond a recognition of its meaning : it produces an effect
only when the pain verbally asserted becomes a pain actually con
ceived as impending—only when there rises in consciousness a repre
sentation of the pain, which is a faint form of the pain as before felt.
That is to say, the cause of movement here, as in other cases, is a feel
ing and not a cognition. What we see even in these simplest actions,
runs through actions of all degrees of complexity. It is never the
knowledge which is the moving agent in conduct, but it is always the
feeling which goes along with that knowledge, or is excited by it.
Though the drunkard knows that after to-day’s debauch will come to
morrow’s headache, yet he is not deterred by consciousness of this
truth, unless the penalty is distinctly represented—unless there rises
in his consciousness a vivid idea of the misery to be borne—unless
there is excited in him an adequate amount of feeling antagonistic to
his desire for drink. Similarly with improvidence in general. If com
ing evils are imagined with clearness and the threatened sufferings
ideally felt, there is a due check on the tendency to take immediate
*
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
gratifications without stint; but, in the absence of that consciousness
of future ills which is constituted by the ideas of pains, distinct or
vague, the passing desire is not opposed effectually. The truth that
recklessness brings distress, fully acknowledged though it may be, re
mains inoperative. The mere cognition does not affect conduct—con
duct is affected only when the cognition passes out of that intellectual
form in which the idea of distress is little more than verbal, into a form
in which this term of the proposition is developed into a vivid imagi
nation of distress—a mass of painful feeling. It is thus with conduct
of every kind. See this group of persons clustered at the river-side.
A boat has upset, and some one is in danger of drowning. The fact,
that, in the absence of aid, the youth in the water will shortly die, is
known to them all. That by swimming to his assistance his life may
be saved, is a proposition denied by none of them. The duty of help
ing fellow-creatures who are in difficulties, they have been taught all
their lives ; and they will severally admit that running a risk to pre
vent a death is praiseworthy. Nevertheless, though sundry of them
can swim, they do nothing beyond shouting for assistance or giving
advice. But now here comes one who, tearing off his coat, plunges in
to the rescue. In what does he differ from the others ? Not in knowl
edge. Their cognitions are equally clear with his. They know as
well as he does that death is impending, and know, too, how it
may be prevented. In him, however, these cognitions arouse certain
correlative emotions more strongly than they are aroused in the
rest. Groups of feelings are excited in all; but, whereas in the
others the deterrent feelings of fear, etc., preponderate, in him
there is a surplus of the feelings excited by sympathy, joined, it
may be, with others not of so high a kind. In each case, however,
the behavior is not determined by knowledge, but by emotion. Ob
viously, change in the actions of these passive spectators is not to be
effected by making their cognitions clearer, but by making their higher
feelings stronger.
Have we not here, then, a cardinal psychological truth, to which
any rational system of human discipline must conform ? Is it not mani
fest that a legislation which ignores it and tacitly assumes its opposite
will inevitably fail ? Yet much of our legislation does this ; and we
are at present, legislature and nation together, eagerly pushing for
ward schemes which proceed on the postulate that conduct is deter
mined not by feelings, but by cognitions.
For what else is the assumption underlying this anxious urging-on
of organizations for teaching ? What is the root-notion common to
Secularists and Denominational!sts, but the notion that spread of
knowledge is the one thing needful for bettering behavior ? Having
both swallowed certain statistical fallacies, there has grown up in them
the belief that State-education will check ill-doing. In newspapers,
�MENTAL SCIENCE ANN SOCIOLOGY.
681
they have often met with comparisons between the numbers of crimi
nals who can read and write and the numbers who cannot; and, find
ing the numbers who cannot greatly exceed the numbers who can,
they accept the inference that ignorance is the cause of crime. It does
not occur to them to ask whether other statistics, similarly drawn up,
would not prove with like conclusiveness that crime is caused by ab
sence of ablutions, or by lack of clean linen, or by bad ventilation, or
by want of a separate bedroom. Go through any jail, and ascertain
how many prisoners had been in the habit of taking a morning bath,
and you would find that criminality habitually went with dirtiness of
skin. Count up those who had possessed a second suit of clothes, and
a comparison of the figures would show you that but a small percent
age of criminals were habitually able to change their garments. In
quire whether they had lived in main streets or down courts, and you
would discover that nearly all urban crime comes from holes and
corners. Similarly, a fanatical advocate of total abstinence or of sani
tary improvement could get equally strong statistical justifications
for his belief. But, if, not accepting the random inference presented
to you, that ignorance and crime are cause and effect, you consider, as
above, whether crime may not with equal reason be ascribed to various
other causes, you are led to see that it is really connected with an in
ferior mode of life, itself usually consequent on original inferiority of
nature ; and you are led to see that ignorance is simply one of the
concomitants, no more to be held the cause of crime than various
other concomitants.
But this obvious criticism, and the obvious counter-conclusion it
implies, are not simply overlooked, but, when insisted on, seem pow
erless to affect the belief which has taken possession of men. Disap
pointment alone will now affect it. A wave of opinion, reaching a cer
tain height, cannot be changed by any evidence or argument, but has
to spend itself in the gradual course of things before a reaction of
opinion can arise. Otherwise it would be incomprehensible that this
confidence in the curative effects of teaching, which men have care
lessly allowed to be generated in them by the reiterations of doctrinaire
politicians, should survive the direct disproofs yielded by daily ex
perience. Is it not the trouble of every mother and every governess,
that perpetual insisting on the right and denouncing the wrong do not
suffice ? Is it not the constant complaint that on many natures reason
ing and explanation and the clear demonstration of consequences are
scarcely at all operative; that where they are operative there is a more
or less marked difference of emotional nature ; and that where, having
before failed, they begin to succeed, change of feeling rather than differ
ence of apprehension is the cause ? Do we not similarly hear from
every house-keeper that servants usually pay but little attention to re
proofs ; that they go on perversely in old habits, regardless of clear
evidence of their foolishness; and that their actions are to be altered
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not by explanations and reasonings, but by either the fear of penalties
or the experience of penalties—that is, by the emotions awakened in
them ? When we turn from domestic life to the life of the outer world,
do not like disproofs everywhere meet us ? Are not fraudulent bank
rupts educated people, and getters-up of bubble-companies, and makers
of adulterated goods, and users of false trade-marks, and retailers who
have light weights, and owners of unseaworthy ships, and those who
cheat insurance-companies, and those who carry on turf-chicaneries,
and the great majority of gamblers ? Or, to take a more extreme
form of turpitude—is there not, among those who have committed
murder by poison within our memories, a considerable number of the
educated—a number bearing as large a ratio to the educated classes
as does the total number of murderers to the total population ?
This belief in the moralizing effects of intellectual culture, flatly
contradicted by facts, is absurd a priori. What imaginable connection
is there between the learning that certain clusters of marks on paper
stand for certain words and the getting a higher sense of duty ? What
possible effect can acquirement of facility in making written signs of
sounds have in strengthening the desire to do right? How does
knowledge of the multiplication-table, or quickness in adding and
dividing, so increase the sympathies as to restrain the tendency to
trespass against fellow-creatures ? In what way can th? attainment
of accuracy in spelling and parsing, etc., make the sentiment of justice
more powerful than it was; or why from stores of geographical in
formation, perseveringly gained, is there likely to come increased re
gard for truth ? The irrelation between such causes and such effects
is almost as great as that between exercise of the fingers and strength
ening of the legs. One who should by lessons in Latin hope to give
a knowledge of geometry, or one who should expect practice in draw
ing to be followed by expressive rendering of a sonata, would be
thought fit for an asylum; and yet he would be scarcely more irra
tional than are those who by discipline of the intellectual faculties ex
pect to produce better feelings.
This faith in lesson-books and readings is one of the superstitions
of the age. Even as appliances to intellectual culture, books are
greatly over-estimated. Instead of second-hand knowledge being re
garded as of less value than first-hand knowledge, and as a knowledge
to be sought only where first-hand knowledge cannot be had, it is
actually regarded as of greater value. Something gathered from
printed pages is supposed to enter into a course of education; but,
if gathered by observation of Life and Nature, is supposed not thus
to enter. Reading is seeing by proxy—is learning indirectly through
another man’s faculties, instead of directly through one’s own facul
ties ; and such is the prevailing bias that the indirect learning is
thought preferable to the direct learning, and usurps the name of
cultivation! We smile when told that savages consider writing as
�MENTAL SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY.
683
a kind of magic: and we laugh at the story of the negro who hid a
letter under a stone, that it might not inform against him when he
devoured the fruit he was sent with. Yet the current notions about
printed information betray a kindred delusion: a kind of magical
efficacy is ascribed to ideas gained through artificial appliances, as
compared with ideas otherwise gained. And this delusion, injurious
in its effects even on intellectual culture, produces effects still more
injurious on moral culture, by generating the assumption that this,
too, can be got by reading and the repeating of lessons.
It will, I know, be said that not from intellectual teaching, but
from moral teaching, are improvement of conduct and diminution of
crime looked for. While, unquestionably, many of those who urge on
educational schemes believe in the moralizing effects of knowledge
in general, it must be admitted that some hold general knowledge to
be inadequate, and contend that rules of right conduct must be
taught. Already, however, reasons have been given why the expec
tations even of these are illusory; proceeding, as they do, on the as
sumption that the intellectual acceptance of moral precepts will pro
duce conformity to them. Plenty more reasons are forthcoming. I
will not dwell on the contradictions to this assumption furnished by
the Chinese, to all of whom the high ethical maxims of Confucius are
taught, and who yet fail to show us a conduct proportionately exem
plary. Nor will I enlarge on the lesson to be derived from the United
States, the school-system of which brings up the whole population
under the daily influence of chapters which set forth principles of right
conduct, and which nevertheless in its political life, and by many of
its social occurrences, shows us that conformity to these principles is
any thing but complete. It will suffice if I limit myself to evidence
supplied by our own society, past and present, which negatives, very
decisively, these sanguine expectations. For, what have we been do
ing all these many centuries by our religious agencies, but preaching
right principles to old and young? What has been the aim of ser
vices in our ten thousand churches, week after week, but to enforce a
code of good conduct by promised rewards and threatened penalties ?
—the whole population having been for many generations compelled
to listen. What have Dissenting chapels, more numerous still, been
used for, unless as places where pursuance of right and desistance from
wrong have been unceasingly commended to all from childhood up
ward ? And if now it is held that something more must be done—
if, notwithstanding perpetual explanations and denunciations and ex
hortations, the misconduct is so great that society is endangered,
why, after all this insistance has failed, is it expected that more insistance will succeed ? See here the proposals and the implied beliefs.
Teaching by clergymen not having had the desired effect, let us try
teaching by school-masters. Bible-reading from a pulpit, with the ac
companiment of imposing architecture, painted windows, tombs, and
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
“ dim religious light,” having proved inadequate, suppose we try bible
reading in rooms with bare walls, relieved only by maps and drawings
of animals. Commands and interdicts, uttered by a surpliced priest
to minds prepared by chant and organ-peal, not having been obeyed,
let us see whether they will be obeyed when mechanically repeated
in school-boy sing-song to a threadbare usher, amid the buzz of lesson
learning and clatter of slates. No very hopeful proposals, one would
say; proceeding, as they do, upon one or other of the beliefs, that a
moral precept will be effective in proportion as it is received without
emotional accompaniment, and that its effectiveness will increase in
proportion to the number of times it is repeated. Both these beliefs
are directly at variance with the results of psychological analysis and
of daily experience. Certainly, such influence as may be gained by
addressing moral truths to the intellect, is made greater if the ac
companiments arouse an appropriate emotional excitement, as a re
ligious service does; while, conversely, there can be no more effectual
way of divesting such moral truths of their impressiveness, than as
sociating them with the prosaic and vulgarizing sounds and sights
and smells coming from crowded children. And no less certain is it
that precepts, often heard and little regarded, lose by repetition the
small influence they had. What do public-schools show us ?—are
the boys rendered merciful to one another by listening to religious
injunctions every morning? What do universities show us?—have
perpetual chapels habitually made undergraduates behave better than
the average of young men ? What do cathedral-towns show us ?—
is there in them a moral tone above that of other towns, or must we
from the common saying, “ the nearer the church,” etc., infer a per
vading impression to the contrary ? What do clergymen’s sons show
us?—has constant insistance on right conduct made them conspicu
ously superior, or do we not rather hear it whispered that something
like an opposite effect seems produced. Or, to take one more case,
what do religious newspapers show us ?—is it that the precepts of
Christianity, more familiar to their writers than to other writers, are
more clearly to be traced in their articles, or has there not ever been
displayed a want of charity in their dealings with opponents, and is
it not still displayed? Nowhere do we find that repetition of rules
of right, already known but disregarded, produces regard for them;
but we find that, contrariwise, it makes the regard for them less than
before.
The prevailing assumption is, indeed, as much disproved by analy
sis as it is contradicted by familiar facts. Already we have seen that
the connection is between action and feeling ; and hence the corollary,
that only by a frequent passing of feeling into action is the tendency
to such action strengthened. Just as two ideas often repeated in a
certain'order become coherent in that order; and just as muscular
motions, at first difficult to combine properly with one another and
�MENTAL SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY.
685
with guiding perceptions, become by practice facile, and at length au
tomatic ; so the recurring production of any conduct by its prompting
emotion makes that conduct relatively easy. Not by precept, though
heard daily; not by example, unless it is followed; but only by action,
often caused by the related feeling, can a moral habit be formed. And
yet this truth, which Mental Science clearly teaches, and which is in
harmony with familiar sayings, is a truth wholly ignored in current
educational fanaticisms.
There is ignored, too, the correlative truth; and ignoring it threat
ens results still more disastrous. While we see an expectation of ben
efits which the means used cannot achieve, we see no consciousness of
injuries which will be entailed by these means. As usually happens
with those absorbed in the eager pursuit of some good by govern
mental action, there is a blindness to the evil reaction on the natures
of citizens. Already the natures of citizens have suffered from kin
dred reactions, due to actions set up centuries ago ; and now the mis
chievous effects are to be increased by further such reactions.
The English people are complained of as improvident. Very few
of them lay by in anticipation of times when work is slack; and the
general testimony is that higher wages commonly result only in more
extravagant living or in drinking to greater excess. As we saw a
while since, they neglect opportunities of becoming shareholders in
the companies they are engaged under; and those who are most anx
ious for their welfare despair on finding how little they do to raise
themselves when they have the means. This tendency to seize imme
diate gratification regardless of future penalty is commented on as
characteristic of the English people ; and, contrasts between them and
their Continental neighbors having been drawn, surprise is expressed
that such contrasts should exist. Improvidence is spoken of as an in
explicable trait of the race—no regard being paid to the fact that
races with which it is compared are allied in blood. The people of
Norway are economical and extremely prudent. The Danes, too, are
thrifty; and Defoe, commenting on the extravagance of his countrymen,
says that a Dutchman gets rich on wages out of which an Englishman
but just lives. So, too, if we take the modern Germans. Alike by
the complaints of the Americans, that the Germans are ousting them
from their own businesses by working hard and living cheaply, and by
the success here of German traders and the preference shown for Ger
man waiters, we are taught that in other divisions of the Teutonic race
there is nothing like this lack of self-control. Nor can we ascribe to
such portion of Norman blood as exists among us this peculiar trait: de
scendants of the Normans in France are industrious and saving. Why,
then, should the English people be improvident ? If we seek explana
tion in their remote lineage, we find none; but, if we seek it in the
social conditions to which they have been subject, we find a sufficient
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
explanation. The English are improvident because they have been
for ages disciplined in improvidence. Extravagance has been made
habitual by shielding them from the sharp penalties extravagance
brings. Carefulness has been discouraged by continually showing to
the careful that those who were careless did as well as, or better than,
themselves. Nay, there have been positive penalties on carefulness.
Laborers working hard and paying their way have constantly found
themselves called on to help in supporting the idle around them ; have
had their goods taken under distress-warrants that paupers might be
fed; and eventually have found themselves and their children reduced
also to pauperism. Well-conducted poor women, supporting them
selves without aid or encouragement, have seen the ill-conducted re
ceiving parish-pay for their illegitimate children. Nay, to such ex
tremes has the process gone, that women with many illegitimate
children, getting from the rates a weekly sum for each, have been
chosen as wives by men who wanted the sums thus derived ! Genera
tion after generation the honest and independent, not marrying till
they had means, and striving to bring up their families without assist
ance, have been saddled with extra burdens, and hindered from leav
ing a desirable posterity; while the dissolute and the idle, especially
when given to that lying and servility by which those in authority are
deluded, have been helped to produce and to rear progeny, charac
terized, like themselves, by absence of the mental traits needed for
good citizenship. And then, after centuries during which we have
been breeding the race as much as possible from the improvident, and
repressing the multiplication of the provident, we lift our hands and
exclaim at the recklessness our people exhibit! If men, who, for a
score of generations, had by preference bred from their worst-tem
pered horses and their least-sagacious dogs, were then to wonder be
cause their horses were vicious and their dogs stupid, we should think
the absurdity of their policy paralleled only by the absurdity of their
astonishment; but human beings instead of inferior animals being in
question, no absurdity is seen either in the policy or in the astonish
ment.
And now something more serious happens than the overlooking of
these evils wrought on men’s natures by centuries of demoralizing in
fluences. We are deliberately establishing further such influences.
Having, as much as we could, suspended the civilizing discipline of
an industrial life so carried on as to achieve self-maintenance without in
jury to others, we now proceed to suspend that civilizing discipline in
another direction. Having in successive generations done our best to
diminish the sense of responsibility, by warding off evils which disre
gard of responsibility brings, we now carry the policy further by re
lieving parents from certain other responsibilities which, in the order
of Nature, fall on them. By way of checking recklessness, and dis
couraging improvident marriages, and raising the conception of duty,
�MENTAL SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY.
687
we are diffusing the belief that it is not the concern of parents to fit
their children for the business of life; but that the nation is bound to
do this. Everywhere there is a tacit enunciation of the marvellous
doctrine that citizens are not responsible individually for the bringing
up each of his own children, but that these same citizens, incorporated
into a society, are each of them responsible for the bringing up of
everybody else’s children I The obligation does not fall upon A in
his capacity of father to rear the minds as well as the bodies of his
offspring; but in his capacity of citizen there does fall on him the ob
ligation of mentally rearing the offspring of B, C, D, and the rest, who
similarly have their direct parental obligations made secondary to
their indirect obligations to children not their own ! Already it is
estimated that, as matters are now being arranged, parents will soon
pay in school-fees for their own children only one-sixth of the amount
which is paid by them through taxes, rates, and voluntary contribu
tions, for children at large: in terms of money, the claims of children
at large to their care will be taken as six times the claim of their own
children 1 And, if, looking back forty years, we observe the growth
of the public claim versus the private claim, we may infer that the
private claim will presently be absorbed wholly. Already the correl
ative theory is becoming so definite and positive that you meet with
the notion, uttered as though it were an unquestionable truth, that
criminals are “ society’s failures.” Presently it will be seen that, since
good bodily development, as well as good mental development, is a
prerequisite to good citizenship (for without it the citizen cannot main
tain himself, and so avoid wrong-doing), society is responsible also for
the proper feeding and clothing of children : indeed, in school-board
discussions, there is already an occasional admission that no logicallydefensible halting-place can be found between the two. And so we
are progressing toward the wonderful notion, here and there finding
tacit expression, that people are to marry when they feel inclined, and
other people are to take the consequences !
And this is thought to be the policy conducive to improvement of
behavior. Men who have been made improvident by shielding them
from many of the evil results of improvidence are now to be made
more provident by further shielding them from the evil results of im
providence. Having had their self-control decreased by social ar
rangements which lessened the need for self-control, other social ar
rangements are devised which will make self-control still less needful:
and it is hoped so to make self-control greater. This expectation is
absolutely at variance with the whole order of things. Life of every
kind, human included, proceeds on an exactly-opposite principle. All
lower types of beings show us that the rearing of offspring affords the
highest discipline for the faculties. The. parental instinct is every
where that which calls out the energies most persistently, and in the
greatest degree exercises the intelligence. The self-sacrifice and the
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sagacity which inferior creatures display in the care of their young
are often commented upon; and every one may see that parenthood
produces a mental exaltation not otherwise producible. That it is so
among mankind is daily proved. Continually we remark that men
who were random grow steady when they have children to provide
for; and vain, thoughtless girls, becoming mothers, begin to show
higher feelings, and capacities that were not before drawn out. In
both there is a daily discipline in unselfishness, in industry, in fore
sight. The parental relation strengthens from hour to hour the habit
of postponing immediate ease and egoistic pleasure to the altruistic
pleasure obtained by furthering the welfare of offspring. There is a
frequent subordination of the claims of self to the claims of fellow
beings ; and by no other agency can the practice of this subordination
be so effectually secured. Not, then, by a decreased, but by an in
creased, sense of parental responsibility is self-control to be made
greater and recklessness to be checked. And yet the policy now so
earnestly and undoubtingly pursued is one which will inevitably di
minish the sense of parental responsibility. This all-important dis
cipline of parents’ emotions is to be weakened that children may get
reading, and grammar, and geography, more generally than they would
otherwise do. A superficial intellectualization is to be secured at the
cost of a deep-seated demoralization.
Few, I suppose, will deliberately assert that information is impor
tant and character relatively unimportant. Every one observes from
time to time how much more valuable to himself and others is the
workman who, though unable to read, is diligent, sober, and honest,
than is the well-taught workman who breaks his engagements, spends
days in drinking, and neglects his family. And, comparing members
of the upper classes, no one doubts that the spendthrift or the gam
bler, however good his intellectual training, is inferior as a social unit
to the man who, not having passed through the approved curriculum,
nevertheless prospers by performing well the work he undertakes, and
provides for his children instead of leaving them in poverty to the
care of relatives. That is to say, looking at the matter in the con
crete, all see that, for social welfare, good character is more important
than much knowledge. And yet the manifest corollary is not drawn.
What effect will be produced on character by artificial appliances for
spreading knowledge is not asked. Of the ends to be kept in view by
the legislator, all are unimportant compared with the end of char
acter-making; and yet character-making is an end wholly unrecog
nized.
Let it be seen that the future of a nation depends on the natures
of its units ; that their natures are inevitably modified in adaptation
to the conditions in which they are placed; that the feelings called
into play by these conditions will strengthen, while those which have
diminished demands on them will dwindle; and it will be seen that
�A NATIONAL UNIVERSITY.
689
the bettering of conduct can be effected, not by insisting on maxims
of good conduct, still less by mere intellectual culture, but only by
that daily exercise of the higher sentiments and repression of the
lower, which results from keeping men subordinate to the requirements
of orderly social life—letting them suffer the inevitable penalties of
breaking these requirements, and reap the benefits of conforming to
them. This alone is national education.
A NATIONAL UNIVERSITY.1
By CHARLES W. ELIOT,
PRESIDENT OF HARVARD
COLLEGE.
TURN next to my third topic, the true policy of our government
as regards university instruction. In almost all the writings about
a nation’s university, and of course in the two Senate bills now under
discussion, there will be found the implication, if not the express as
sertion, that it is somehow the duty of our government to maintain a
magnificent university. This assumption is the foundation upon which
rest the ambitious projects before us, and many similar schemes. Let
me try to demonstrate that the foundation is itself unsound.
The general notion that a beneficent government should provide
and control an elaborate organization for teaching, just as it maintains
an army, a navy, or a post-office, is of European origin, being a legiti
mate corollary to the theory of government by divine right. It is
said that the state is a person having a conscience and a moral respon
sibility ; that the government is the visible representative of a peo
ple’s civilization, and the guardian of its honor and its morals, and
should be the embodiment of all that is high and good in the people’s
character and aspirations. This moral person, this corporate repre
sentative of a Christian nation, has high duties and functions com
mensurate with its great powers, and none more imperative than that
of diffusing knowledge and advancing science.
I desire to state this argument for the conduct of high educational
institutions by government, as a matter of abstract duty, with all the
force which belongs to it; for, under an endless variety of thin dis
guises, and with all sorts of amplifications and dilutions, it is a staple
commodity with writers upon the relation of government to educa
tion. The conception of government upon which this argument is
I
1 Closing argument of a report by President Eliot to the National Educational Asso
ciation at its recent session in Elmira. The first part of the report gives an account of
what had been done by the Association about the project of a national university since
1869 ; and the second part examines the two bills on the subject which were brought
before Congress in 1872.
vol. hi.—44
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based is obsolescent everywhere. In a free community the govern
ment does not hold this parental, or patriarchal—I should better say
godlike—position. Our government is a group of servants appointed
to do certain difficult and important work. It is not the guardian of
the nation’s morals ; it does not necessarily represent the best virtue
of the republic, and is not responsible for the national character, being
itself one of the products of that character. The doctrine of state
personality and conscience, and the whole argument of the dignity
and moral elevation of a Christian nation’s government as the basis
of government duties, are natural enough under grace-of-God gov
ernments, but they find no ground of practical application to modern
republican confederations; they have no bearing on governments con
sidered as purely human agencies with defined powers and limited re
sponsibilities. Moreover, for most Americans these arguments prove
a great deal too much ; for, if they have the least tendency to persuade
us that government should direct any part of secular education, with
how much greater force do they apply to the conduct by government
of the religious education of the people ! These propositions are, in
deed, the main arguments for an established church. Religion is the
supreme human interest, government is the supreme human organiza
tion ; therefore, government ought to take care for religion, and a
Christian government should maintain distinctively Christian religious
institutions. This is not theory alone ; it is the practice of all Christen
dom, except in America and Switzerland. Now, we do not admit it
to be our duty to establish a national church. We believe not only
that our people are more religious than many nations which have es
tablished churches, but also that they are far more religious under
their own voluntary system than they would be under any government
establishment of religion. We do not admit for a moment that estab
lishment or no establishment is synonymous with national piety or
impiety. Now, if a beneficent Christian government may rightly
leave the jfeople to provide themselves with religious institutions,
surely it may leave them to provide suitable universities for the edu
cation of their youth. And here again the question of national uni
versity or no national university is by no means synonymous with the
question, Shall the country have good university education or not?
The only question is, Shall we have a university supported and con
trolled by government, or shall we continue to rely upon universities
supported and controlled by other agencies ?
There is, then, no foundation whatever for the assumption that it
is the duty of our government to establish a national university. I
venture to state one broad reason why our government should not es
tablish and maintain a university. If the people of the United States
have any special destiny, any peculiar function in the world, it is to
try to work out under extraordinarily favorable circumstances the
problem of free institutions for a heterogeneous, rich, multitudinous
�A NATIONAL UNIVERSITY.
691
population, spread over a vast territory. We, indeed, want to breed
scholars, artists, poets, historians, novelists, engineers, physicians,
jurists, theologians, and orators; but, first of all, we want to breed a
race of independent, self-reliant freemen, capable of helping, guiding,
and governing themselves. Now, the habit of being helped by the
government, even if it be to things good in themselves—to churches,
universities, and railroads—is a most insidious and irresistible enemy
of republicanism ; for the very essence of republicanism is self-reliance.
With the Continental nations of Europe it is an axiom that the gov
ernment is to do every thing, and is responsible for every thing. The
French have no word for “ public spirit,” for the reason that the sen
timent is unknown to them. This abject dependence on the govern
ment is an accursed inheritance from the days of the divine right of
kings. Americans, on the contrary, maintain precisely the opposite
theory—namely, that government is to do nothing not expressly as
signed it to do, that it is to perform no function which any private
agency can perform as well, and that it is not to do a public good
even, unless that good be otherwise unattainable. It is hardly too
much to say that this doctrine is the foundation of our public liberty.
So long as the people are really free they will maintain it in theory
and in practice. During the war of the rebellion we got accustomed
to seeing the government spend vast sums of money and put forth
vast efforts, and we asked ourselves, Why should not some of these
great resources and powers be applied to works of peace, to creation
as well as to destruction? So we subsidized railroads and steamship
companies, and agricultural colleges, and now it is proposed to sub
sidize a university. The fatal objection to this subsidizing process is
that it saps the foundations of public liberty. The only adequate se
curities of public liberty are the national habits, traditions, and char
acter, acquired and accumulated in the practice of liberty and self
control. Interrupt these traditions, break up these habits or cultivate
the opposite ones, or poison that national character, and public liberty
will suddenly be found defenceless. We deceive ourselves danger
ously when we think or speak as if education, whether primary or
university, could guarantee republican institutions. Education can
do no such thing. A republican people should, indeed, be educated
and intelligent; but it by no means follows that an educated and in
telligent people will be republican. Do I seem to conjure up imaginary
evils to follow from this beneficent establishment of a superb national
university? We teachers should be the last people to forget the
sound advice—obsta principiis. A drop of water will put out a spark
which otherwise would have kindled a conflagration that rivers could
not quench.
Let us cling fast to the genuine American method—the old Massachu
setts method—in the matter of public instruction. The essential feat
ures of that system are local taxes for universal elementary education
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voted by the citizens themselves, local elective boards to spend the money
raised by taxation and control the schools, and for the higher grades
of instruction permanent endowments administered by incorporated
bodies of trustees. This is the American voluntary system, in sharp
contrast with the military, despotic organization of public instruction
which prevails in Prussia and most other states of Continental Europe.
Both systems have peculiar advantages, the crowning advantage of
the American method being that it breeds freemen. Our ancestors
well understood the principle that, to make a people free and self-re
liant, it is necessary to let them take care of themselves, even if they
do not take quite as good care of themselves as some superior power
might.
And now, finally, let us ask what should make a university at the
capital of the United States, established and supported by the Gen
eral Government, more national than any other American university.
It might be larger and richer than any other, and it might not be;
but certainly it could not have a monopoly of patriotism or of catho
licity, or of literary or scientific enthusiasm. There are an attractive
comprehensiveness and a suggestion of public spirit and love of coun
try in the term “ national; ” but, after all, the adjective only narrows
and belittles the noble conception contained in the word “ university.”
Letters, science, art, philosophy, medicine, law, and theology, are
larger and more enduring than nations. There is something childish
in this uneasy hankering for a big university in America, as there is
also in that impatient longing for a distinctive American literature
which we so often hear expressed. As American life grows more
various and richer in sentiment, passion, thought, and accumulated ex
perience, American literature will become richer and more abounding,
and in that better day let us hope that there will be found several
universities in America, though by no means one in each State, as free,
liberal, rich, national, and glorious, as the warmest advocate of a
single crowning university at the national capital could imagine his
desired institution to become.
AGASSIZ AND DARWINISM.
By JOHN FISKE,
BEOENTLY LECTITBER ON PHILOSOPHY AT HABVABD UNIVERSITY.
NE Friday morning, a few weeks ago, as I was looking over the
Nation, my eye fell upon an advertisement, inserted by the
proprietors of the New-York Tribune, announcing the final destruc
tion of Darwinism. What especially riveted my attention was the pe
culiar style of the announcement: “ The Darwinian Theory utterly de
O
�AGASSIZ AND DARWINISM.
693
molished ” (or words to that effect) “ by Agassiz Himself ! ” Whether
from accident or design, the type-setter’s choice of Roman capitals
was very happy. Upon many readers the effect must have been tre
mendous ; and quite possibly there may be some who, without further
investigation, will carry to their dying day the opinion that it is all
over with the Darwinian theory, since “ Agassiz Himself” has re
futed it.
Upon me the effect was such as to make me lay down my paper
and ask myself: Can it be that we have, after all, a sort of scientific
pope among us ? Has it come to this, that the dicta of some one
“servant and interpreter of Nature” are to be accepted as final, even
against the better judgment of the majority of his compeers ? In
short, who is Agassiz himself, that he should thus single-handed
have demolished the stoutest edifice which observation and deduc
tion have reared since the day when Newton built to such good pur
pose ?
Prof. Agassiz is a naturalist who is justly world-renowned for his
achievements. His contributions to geology, to paleontology, and to
systematic zoology, have been such as to place him in a very high rank
among contemporary naturalists. Not quite in the highest place, I
should say; for, apart from all questions of theory, it is probable that
Mr. Darwin’s gigantic industry, his wonderful thoroughness and ac
curacy as an observer, and his unrivalled fertility of suggestion, will
cause him in the future to be ranked along with Aristotle, Linnaeus,
and Cuvier; and upon this high level we cannot place Prof. Agassiz.
Leaving Mr. Darwin out of the account, we may say that Prof. Agas
siz stands in the first rank of contemporary naturalists. But any ex
ceptional supremacy in this first rank can by no means be claimed for
him. Both for learning and for sagacity, the names of Gray, Wyman,
Huxley, Hooker, Wallace, Lubbock, Lyell, Vogt, Haeckel, and Gegenbaur, are quite as illustrious as the name of Agassiz; and we may
note, in passing, that these are the names of men who openly indorse
and defend the Darwinian theory.
Possibly, however, there are some who will not be inclined to ac
cept the estimates made in the foregoing paragraph. No doubt there
are many people in this country who have long accustomed themselves
to regard Prof. Agassiz not simply as one among a dozen or twenty
living naturalists of the highest rank, but as occupying a solitary po
sition as the greatest of all living naturalists—as a kind of second
Cuvier, for example. There is, to the popular eye, a halo about the
name of Agassiz which there is not about the name of Gray; though,
if there is any man now living in America, of whom America might,
justly boast as her chief ornament and pride, so far as science is con
cerned, that man is unquestionably Prof. Asa Gray. Now, this
greater popular fame of Agassiz is due to the fact that he is a Euro
pean who cast in his lot with us at a time when we were wont to over-
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rate foreign importations of whatever sort. As a European, there
fore, he outshines such men as Profs. Gray and Wyman, and, as a man
whom we know, he outshines other Europeans, like Haeckel and Gegenbaur, whose acquaintance we happen not to have made; just as
Rubinstein, whose fame has filled the American newspapers, outshines
Bulow (probably his equal as a pianist), who has not yet visited this
country. In this way Prof. Agassiz has acquired a reputation in
America which is greater than his reputation in Europe, and which is
greater than his achievements—admirable as they are—would be able,
on trial, to sustain.
And now I come to my first point. Admitting for Prof. Agassiz
all the wonderful greatness as a naturalist with which the vague
sentiments of the uneducated multitude in this country would accredit
him ; admitting, in other words, that he is the greatest of naturalists,
and not one among a dozen or twenty equals; it must still be asked,
why should his rejection of Darwinism be regarded as conclusively
fatal to the Darwinian theory ? The history of science supplies us
with many an instance in which a new and unpopular theory has been
vehemently opposed by those whom one would at first suppose most
competent to judge of its merits, and has nevertheless gained the vic
tory. Dr. Draper brings a terrible indictment against Bacon for re
jecting the Copernican theory, and refusing to profit by the discov
eries of Gilbert in magnetism. This should not be allowed to detract
from Bacon’s real greatness, any more than the rejection of Darwinism
should be allowed to detract from the real merit of Agassiz. Great men
must be measured by their positive achievements rather than by their
negative shortcomings, otherwise they might all have to step down from
their pedestals. Leibnitz rejected Newton’s law of gravitation ; Harvey
saw nothing but foolishness in Aselli’s discovery of the lacteals ; Magen
die ridiculed the great work in which the younger Geoffroy Saint-IIilaire
began to investigate the conditions of nutrition which determine the
birth of monsters ; and when Young, Fresnel, and Malus, completed
the demonstration of that undulatory theory of light which has made
their names immortal, Laplace, nevertheless, the greatest mathemati
cian of the age, persisted until his dying day in heaping contumely
upon these eminent men and upon their arguments. Nay, even Cu
vier—the teacher whom Prof. Agassiz so justly reveres—did not Cuvier
adhere to the last to the grotesque theory of “ pre-formation,” and reject
the true theory of “ epigenesis,” which C. F. Wolff, even before Baer,
had placed upon a scientific basis ? Supposing, then, that the Dar
winian theory is rejected by Agassiz, this fact is no more decisive
against the Darwinian theory than the rejection of Fresnel’s theory
by Laplace was decisive against Fresnel’s theory.
For the facts just cited show that even the wisest and most learned
men are not infallible, and that it will not do to have a papacy where
scientific questions are concerned. Strange as it may at first seem,
�AGASSIZ AND DARWINISM.
695
nothing is more certain than that a man’s opinion may be eminently
fallible, even with reference to matters which might appear to come
directly within the range of his own specialty. Many people, I pre
sume, think that, because Prof. Agassiz has made a specialty of the
study of extinct and living organisms, because he has devoted a long
and industrious life to this study, therefore his opinion with reference
to the relations of present life upon the globe to past life ought to be
at once conclusive. The fallacy of this inference becomes apparent as
soon as we recollect that Profs. Gray, Wyman, Huxley, and Haeckel,
who are equally well qualified to have an opinion on such matters, have
agreed in forming an opinion diametrically opposite to that of Prof.
Agassiz. But the fallacy may be shown independently of any such com
parison. Even if all the foundations of certainty seem to be shaking
beneath us when we say that an expert is not always the best judge of
matters pertaining to his own specialty, we must still say it, for facts
will bear us out in saying it. I have known excellent mathematicians
and astronomers who had not the first word to say about the Nebular
Hypothesis : they had never felt interested in it, had never studied it,
and consequently did not understand it, and could hardly state it cor
rectly. After a while one ceases to be surprised at such things. It is
quite possible for one to study the structure of echinoderms and fishes
during a long life, and yet remain unable to offer a satisfactory opin
ion upon any subject connected with zoology, for the proper treatment
of which there are required some power of generalization and some fa
miliarity with large considerations. Indeed, there are many admirable
experts in natural history, as well as in other studies, who never pay
the slightest heed to questions involving wide-reaching considera
tions ; and who, with all their amazing minuteness of memory con
cerning the metamorphoses of insects and the changes which the em
bryo of a white-fish undergoes from fecundation to maturity, are nev
ertheless unable to see the evidentiary value of the great general facts
of geological succession and geographical distribution, even when it
is thrust directly before their eyes. To such persons, “ science ” means
the collecting of polyps, the dissecting of mollusks, the vivisection of
frogs, the registration of innumerable facts of detail, without regard
to the connected story which all these facts, when put together, have
it in their powei’ to tell. And all putting together of facts, with a
view to elicit this connected story, they are too apt to brand as unsci
entific speculation; forgetting that if Newton had merely occupied
himself with taking observations and measuring celestial distances, in
stead of propounding an audacious hypothesis, and then patiently
verifying it, the law of gravitation might never have been discovered.
Herein lies the explanation of the twice-repeated rejection of Mr.
Darwin’s name by the French Academy of Sciences. The lamentable
decline of science in France since the beginning of the Second Empire
has been most conspicuously marked by the tendency of scientific
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inquirers to occupy themselves exclusively with matters of detail, to
the neglect of wide-reaching generalizations. And the rejection of
Mr. Darwin’s name was justified upon the ground, not that he had
made unscientific generalizations, but that he had been a mere (!) generalizer, instead of a collector of facts. The allegation was, indeed,
incorrect; since Mr. Darwin is as eminent for his industry in collect
ing facts as for his boldness in generalizing. But the form of the
allegation well illustrates the truth of what I have been seeking to
show—that familiarity with the details of a subject does not enable
one to deal with it in the grand style, and elicit new truth from old
facts, unless one also possesses some faculty for penetrating into the
hidden implications of the facts ; or, in other words, some faculty for
philosophizing.
Now, I am far from saying of Prof. Agassiz that he is a mere col
lector of echinoderms and dissector of fishes, with no tact whatever
in philosophizing. He does not stand in the position of those who
think that the end of scientific research is attained when we have
carefully ticketed a few thousand specimens of corals and butterflies,
in much the same spirit as that in which a school-girl collects and clas
sifies autographs or postage-stamps. Along with his indefatigable in
dustry as a collector and observer, Prof. Agassiz has a decided inclina
tion toward general views. However lamentably deficient we may
think him in his ability to discern the hidden implications of facts,
there can be no question that his facts are of little importance to him
save as items in a philosophic scheme. He knows very well—perhaps
almost too well—that the value of facts lies in the conclusions to which
they point. And, accordingly, lack of philosophizing is the last short
coming with which, as a scientific writer, he can be charged. If he
errs on a great scientific question, lying within his own range of inves
tigation, it is not because he refrains steadfastly from all general con
siderations, but because he philosophizes—and philosophizes on un
sound principles. It is because his philosophizing is not a natural
outgrowth from the facts of Nature which lie at his disposal, but is
made up out of sundry traditions of his youth, which, by dint of play
ing upon the associations of ideas which are grouped around certain
combinations of words, have come to usurp the place of observed facts
as a basis for forming conclusions. It is not because he abstains from
generalizing that Prof. Agassiz is unable to appreciate the arguments
by which Mr. Darwin has established his theory, but it is because he
long ago brought his mind to acquiesce in various generalizations, of a
thoroughly unscientific or non-scientific character, with the further
maintenance of which the acceptance of the Darwinian theory is (or
seems to Prof. Agassiz to be) incompatible.
The generalizations which have thus preoccupied Prof. Agassiz’s
mind are purely theological or mythological in their nature. In esti
mating the probable soundness of his opinion upon any scientific ques-
�AGASSIZ AND DARWINISM.
697
tion, it must always be remembered that he is, above all things, a dev
otee of what J's called “ natural theology.” In his discussions concern
ing the character of the relationships between the various members of
the animal kingdom, the foreground of his consciousness is always
completely occupied by theological considerations, to such an extent
that the evidentiary value of scientific facts cannot always get a foot
ing there, and is, consequently, pushed away into the background.
One feels, in reading his writings, that, except when he is narrating
facts with the pure joyfulness of a specialist exulting in the exposition
of his subject (and, when in this mood, he often narrates facts with
which his inferences are wholly incompatible), he never makes a point
without some regard to its bearings upon theological propositions which
his early training has led him to place paramount to all facts of obser
vation whatever. In virtue of this peculiarity of disposition, Prof.
Agassiz has become the welcome ally of those zealous but narrow
minded theologians, in whom the rapid progress of the Darwinian
theory has awakened the easily explicable but totally groundless fear
that the necessary foundations of true religion, or true Christianity,
are imperilled. It is not many years since these very persons re
garded Prof. Agassiz with dread and abhorrence, because of his flat
contradiction of the Bible in his theory of the multiple origin of the
human race. But, now that the doctrine of Evolution has come to be
the unclean thing above all others to be dreaded and abhorred, this
comparatively slight iniquity of Prof. Agassiz has been condoned or
forgotten, and, as the great antagonist of Evolution, he is welcomed
as the defender of the true Church against her foes.
This preference of theological over scientific considerations once
led Prof. Agassiz (if my memory serves me rightly) to use language
very unbecoming in a professed student of Nature. Some seven years
ago he delivered a course of lectures at the Cooper Union, and in one
of these lectures he observed that he preferred the theory which makes
man out a fallen angel to the theory which makes him out an improved
monkey—a remark which was quite naturally greeted with laughter
and applause. But the applause was ill-bestowed, for the remark was
one of the most degrading which a scientific lecturer could make. A
scientific inquirer has no business to have “ preferences.” Such things
are fit only for silly women of society, or for young children who play
with facts, instead of making sober use of them. What matters it
whether we are pleased with the notion of a monkey-ancestry or not ?
The end of scientific research is the discovery of truth, and not the
satisfaction of our whims or fancies, or even of what we are pleased to
call our finer feelings. The proper reason for refusing to accept any
doctrine is, that it is inconsistent with observed facts, or with some
other doctrine which has been firmly established on a basis of fact.
The refusal to entertain a theory because it seems disagreeable or de
grading, is a mark of intellectual cowardice and insincerity. In mat
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ters of scientific inquiry, it is as grave an offence as the letting one’s
note go to protest is in matters of business. In saying these things, I
do not mean to charge Prof. Agassiz with intellectual cowardice and
insincerity, for the remark which I criticise so sharply was not worthy
of him, it did not comport with his real character as a student of sci
ence, and to judge of him by this utterance alone would be to do him
injustice.
It was with the hope of finding some more legitimate objections to
the Darwinian theory that I procured the Tribune's lecture-sheet con
taining Prof. Agassiz’s twelve lectures on the natural foundations of
organic affinity, and diligently searched it from beginning to end. I
believe I am truthful in saying that a good staggering objection would
have been quite welcome to me, just for the sake of the intellectual
stimulus implied in dealing with it, for on this subject my mind was
so thoroughly made up thirteen years ago, that the discussion of it,
as ordinarily conducted, has long since ceased to have any interest for
me. I am just as firmly convinced that the human race is descended
from lower animal forms, as I am that the earth revolves in an elliptical
orbit about the sun. So completely, indeed, is this proposition wrought
in with my whole mental structure, that the negation of it seems to me
utterly nonsensical and void of meaning, and I doubt if my mind is ca
pable of shaping such a negation into a proposition which I could intel
ligently state. To have such deeply-rooted convictions shaken once in
a while is, I believe, a very useful and wdiolesome experiment in men
tal hygiene. That rigidity of mind which prevents the thorough re
vising of our opinions is sure, sooner or later, to come upon all of us ;
but we ought to dread it, as we dread the stagnation of old age or
death. For some such reasons as these, I am sure that I should have
been glad to find, in the course of Prof. Agassiz’s lectures, at least one
powerful argument against the interpretation of organic affinities
which Mr. Darwin has done so much to establish. I should have
been still more glad to find some alternative interpretation proposed
which could deserve to be entertained as scientific in character. I am
sure no task could be more delightful, or more quickening to one’s
energies, than that of comparing two alternative theories upon this
subject, upon which, thus far, only one has ever been propounded
which possesses the marks of a scientific hypothesis. But no such
pleasure or profit is in store for any one who studies these twelve lect
ures of Prof. Agassiz. In all these lectures, there is not a single al
lusion to Mr. Darwin’s name, save once in a citation from another
author; there is not the remotest allusion to any of the arguments by
which Mr. Darwin has contributed most largely to tlie establishment
of the development theory; nay, there is not a single sentence from
which one could learn that Mr. Darwin’s books had ever been written,
or that the theories which they expound had ever taken shape in the
mind of any thinking man. I do not doubt that Prof. Agassiz has, at
�AGASSIZ AND DARWINISM.
699
some time read, or looked over, the “ Origin of Species
but there is
not a word in these lectures which might not have been written by
one who had never heard of that book, or of the arguments which
made the publication of it the beginning of a new epoch in the history
of science.
Not only is it that Prof. Agassiz does not attack the Darwinian
theory in these lectures; it is also that, until the ninth lecture, he does
not allude to the doctrine of Evolution in any way. TIis first eight
lectures consist mostly in an account of the development of the embryo
in various animals; and in this we have a pure description of facts
with which no one certainly will feel like quarrelling, so far as theories
are concerned. He goes to work, very much as Max Müller does, in
lecturing about the science of language, when he gives you a maximum
of interesting etymologies and a minimum of real philosophizing which
goes to the bottom of things. But Prof. Agassiz is not so interesting
or so stimulating in his discourse as Max, Müller. He does not lead us
into pleasant fields of illustration, where we would fain tarry longer,
forgetting the main purpose of the discussion in our delight at the un
essential matters which occupy our attention. On the contrary, it
seems to me that Prof. Agassiz’s explanation of the development of
eggs is rather tedious and dry, and by no means richly fraught with
novel suggestions. The exposition is a commonplace one, such as is
good for students in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, who are
beginning to study embryology, but there are no features which make
it especially interesting or instructive to any one who has already
served an apprenticeship in these matters.
In his ninth lecture, Prof. Agassiz begins to make some allusion
to the development theory—not to the development theory as it now
stands since the publication of the “ Origin of Species,” but to the de
velopment theory as it stood in the days when Prof. Agassiz was a
young student, when Cuvier and the elder Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
waged fierce warfare in the French Academy, and when the aged
Goethe, sanest and wisest of men, foresaw in the issue of that battle
the speedy triumph of the development theory. Beyond this point, I
will venture to say, Prof. Agassiz has never travelled. The doctrine
of Evolution is still, to him, what it was in those early days ; and all
the discoveries and reasonings of Mr. Darwin have passed by him un
heeded and unnoticed. He arrived too early at that rigidity of mind
which prevents us from properly comprehending new theories, and
which we should all of us dread.
What, now, is the doctrine which Prof. Agassiz begins to attack,
in his ninth lecture, and what is the doctrine which he would propose
as a substitute ? The doctrine which he attacks is simply this—that
all organic beings have come into existence through some natural pro
cess of causation ; and the doctrine which he defends is just this—that
all organic beings, as classed in species, have come into existence at
�700
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
the outset by means of some act of which our ordinary notions of cause
and effect can give no account whatever. For every one of the indi
viduals of which a species is made up, he will admit the adequacy of
the ordinary process of generation ; but for the species as a whole, this
process seems to him inadequate, and he flies at once to that refuge
of inconsequent and timid minds—miracle !
This is really just what Prof. Agassiz’s theory of the origin of spe
cific forms amounts to, and this is the reason why, in spite of grave
heresy on minor points, he is now regarded by the evangelical Church
as one of its chief champions. Instead of the natural process of gen
eration—which is the only process by which we have ever known or
ganic beings to be produced—he would fain set up some unknown mys
terious process, the nature of which he is careful not to define, but for
which he endeavors to persuade us that we have a fair equivalent in
sonorous phrases concerning “ creative will,” “ free action of an intel
ligent mind,” and so on. In thus postponing considerations of pure
science to considerations of “ natural theology,” I have no doubt Prof.
Agassiz is actuated by a praiseworthy desire to do something for the
glory of that Power of which the phenomenal universe is the perpetual
but ever-changing manifestation. But how futile is such an attempt
as this I How contrary to common-sense it is to say that a species is
produced, not by the action of blind natural forces, but by an intelli
gent will! For, although this most prominent of all facts seems to be
oftenest overlooked by theologians and others whom it most especially
concerns, we are all the time, day by day and year by year, in each
and every event of our lives, having experience of the workings of
that Divine Power which, whether we attribute to it “ intelligent will ”
or not, is unquestionably the one active agent in all the dynamic phe
nomena of Nature. Little as we know of the intrinsic nature of this
Omnipresent Power, which, in our poor human talk, we call God,
we do at least know, by daily and hourly experience, what is the char
acter of its working. The whole experience of our lives teaches us
that this Power works after a method which, in our scholastic expression,
we call the method of cause and effect, or the method of natural law.
Traditions of a barbarous and uncultivated age, in which mere gro
tesque associations of thoughts were mistaken for facts, have told us
that this Power has, at various times in the past, worked in a different
way—causing effects to appear without cognizable antecedents, even
as Aladdin’s palace rose in all its wondrous magnificence, without
sound of carpenter’s hammer or mason’s chisel, in a single night. But
about such modes of divine action we know nothing whatever from
experience; and the awakening of literary criticism, in modern times,
has taught us to distrust all such accounts of divine action which con
flict with the lessons we learn from what is ever going on round
about us. So far as we know aught concerning the works of God,
which are being performed in us, through us, and around us, during
�AGASSIZ AND DARWINISM.
701
every moment of that conscious intelligence which enables us to bear
witness to them, we know they are works from which the essential re
lation of a given effect to its adequate cause is never absent. And for
this reason, if we view the matter in pure accordance with experience,
we are led to maintain that the antagonism or contrariety which seems
to exist in Prof. Agassiz’s mind between the action of God and the
action of natural forces is nothing but a figment of that ancestral im
agination from which the lessons which shaped Prof. Agassiz’s ways
of thinking were derived. So far as experience can tell us any thing,
it tells us that divine action is the action of natural forces; for, if we
refuse to accept this conclusion, what have we to do but retreat to the
confession that we have no experience of divine action whatever, and
that the works of God have been made manifest only to those who
lived in that unknown time when Aladdin’s palaces were built, and
when species were created, in a single night, without the intervention
of any natural process ?
Trusting, then, in this universal teaching of experience, let us for
a moment face fairly the problem which the existence of men upon the
earth presents to us. Here is actually existing a group of organisms,
which we call the human race. Either it has existed eternally, or
some combination of circumstances has determined its coming into
existence. The first alternative is maintained by no one, and our
astronomical knowledge of the past career of our planet is sufficient
decisively to exclude it. There is no doubt that at some time in the
past the human race did not exist, and that its gradual or sudden
coming into existence was determined by some combination of circum
stances. Now, when Prof. Agassiz asks us to see, in this origination
of mankind, the working of a Divine Power, we acquiesce in all rever
ence. But when he asks us to see in this origination of mankind the
working of a Divine Power, instead of the working of natural causes,
we do not acquiesce, because, so far as experience has taught us any
thing, it has taught us that Divine Power never works except by the
way of natural causation. Experience tells us that God causes Alad
din’s palaces to come into existence gradually, through the coopera
tion of countless minute antecedents. And it tells us, most emphati
cally, that such structures do not come into existence without an
adequate array of antecedents, no matter what the Arabian Nights
may tell us to the contrary.
Now, when Prof. Agassiz asks us to believe that species have come
into existence by means of a special creative fiat, and not through
the operation of what are called natural causes, we reply that his
request is mere inanity and nonsense. We have no reason to suppose
that any creature like a man, or any other vertebrate, or articulate, or
mollusk, ever came into existence by any other process than the
familar process of physical generation. To ask us to believe in any
other process is to ask us to abandon the experience which we have
�702
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
for the chimeras which we had best not seek to acquire. But Prof.
Agassiz does not even suggest any other process for our acceptance.
He simply retreats upon his empty phrases, “ creative will,” the “ free
workings of an intelligent mind,” and so on. Now, in his second
course of lectures, I hope he will proceed to tell us, not necessarily how
“ creative will ” actually operated in bringing forth a new species, but
how it may conceivably have operated, save through the process of
physical generation, which we know. In his “ Essay on Classifica
tion,” I remember a passage in which he rightly rejects the notion that
any species has arisen from a single pair of parents, and propounds the
formula : “ Pines have originated in forests, heaths in heather, grasses
in prairies, bees in hives, herrings in shoals, buffaloes in herds, men in
nations.” Now, when Prof. Agassiz asserts that men originated in
nations, by some other process than that of physical generation, what
does he mean ? Does he mean that men dropped down from the sky ?
Does he mean that the untold millions of organic particles which make
up a man all rushed together from the four quarters of the compass,
and proceeded, spontaneously or by virtue of some divine sorcery, to
aggregate themselves into the infinitely complex organs and tissues
of the human body, with all their wondrous and well-defined apti
tudes ? It is time that this question should be faced, by Prof. Agassiz
and those who agree with him, without further shirking. Instead of
grandiloquent phrases about the “ free action of an intelligent mind,”
let us have something like a candid suggestion of some process, other
than that of physical generation, by which a creature like man can
even be imagined to have come into existence. When the time comes
for answering this question, we shall find that even Prof. Agassiz
is utterly dumb and helpless. The sonorous phrase “ special creation,”
in which he has so long taken refuge, is nothing but a synthesis of
vocal sounds which covers and, to some minds, conceals a thoroughly
idiotic absence of sense or significance. To say that “ Abracadabra
is not a genial corkscrew,” is to make a statement quite as full of mean
ing as the statement that species have originated by “ special crea
tion.”
The purely theological (or theologico-metaphysical and at all
events unscientific) character of Prof. Agassiz’s objections to the de
velopment theory is sufficiently shown by the fact that, in the fore
going paragraphs, I have considered whatever of any account there is
in his lectures which can be regarded as an objection. Arguments
against the development theory such objections cannot be called : they
are, at their very best, nothing but expressions of fear and dislike.
The only remark which I have been able to find, worthy of being
dignified as an argument, is the following: “We see that fishes are
lowest, that reptiles are higher, that birds have a superior organization
to both, and that mammals, with man at their head, are highest. The
phases of development which a quadruped undergoes, in his embryonic
�AGASSIZ AND DARWINISM.
7°3
growth, recall this gradation. He has a fish-like, a reptile-like stage
before he shows unmistakable mammal-like features. We do not on
this account suppose a quadruped grows out of a fish in our time, for
this simple reason, that we live among quadrupeds and fishes, and we
know that no such thing takes place. But resemblances of the same
kind, separated by geological ages, allow play for the imagination, and
for inference unchecked by observation.”
I do not believe that Prof. Agassiz’s worst enemy—if he ever had
an enemy—could have been so hard-hearted as to wish for* him the
direful catastrophe into which this wonderful piece of argument has
plunged him irretrievably. For the question must at once suggest
itself to every reader at all familiar with the subject, If Prof. Agassiz
supposes that the development theory, as held nowadays, implies that
a quadruped was ever the direct issue of a fish, of what possible value
can his opinion be as regards the development theory in any way ?
If I may speak frankly, as I have indeed been doing from the out
set, I will say that, as regards the Darwinian theory, Prof. Agassiz
seems to me to be hopelessly behind the age. I have never yet come
across the first indication that he knows what the Darwinian theory is.
Against the development theory, as it was taught him by the discus
sions of forty years ago, he is fond of uttering, I will not say argu
ments, but expressions of dislike. With the modern development
theory, with the circumstances of variation, heredity, and natural se
lection, he never, in any of his writings, betrays the slightest acquaint
ance. Against a mere man of straw of his own devising, he indus
triously hurls anathemas of a quasi-theological character. But any
thing like a scientific examination of the character and limits of the
agency of natural selection in modifying the appearance and structure
of a species, any thing like such an examination as is to be found in
the interesting work of Mr. St. George Mivart, he has never yet
brought forth.
Now, when Prof. Agassiz fairly comes to an issue, if he ever does, and
undertakes to refute the Darwinian theory, these are some of the ques
tions which he will have to answer: 1. If all organisms are not asso
ciated through the bonds of common descent, why is it that the facts
of classification are just such as they would have been had they been
due to such a common descent ? 2. Why does a mammal always
begin to develop as if it were going to become a fish, and then, chang
ing its tactics, proceed as if it were going to become a reptile or bird,
and only after great delay and circumlocution take the direct road
toward mammality ? In answer to this, we do not care to be told that
a mammal never was the son of a fish, because we know that already ;
nor do we care to hear any more about the “ free manifestations of an
intelligent mind,” because we have had quite enough of metaphysical
phrases which do not contain a description of some actual or imagi
nable process. We want to know how this state of things can be sci-
�7°4
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
entifically interpreted save on the hypothesis of a common ultimate
origin for mammals, birds, reptiles, and fishes. 3. What is the mean
ing of such facts as the homologies which exist between corresponding
parts of organisms constructed on the same type ? Why does the
black salamander retain fully-developed gills which he never uses, and
what is the significance of rudimentary and aborted organs in gen
eral ? Again I say, we do not want to hear about “ uniformity of de
sign ” and “ reminiscences of a plan,” and so on, but we wish to know
how this* state of things was physically brought about, save by com
munity of descent. 4. Why is it that the facts of geological succes
sion and geographical distribution so clearly indicate community of
descent, unless there has actually been community of descent? Why
have marsupials in Australia followed after other marsupials, and
edentata in South America followed after other edentata, with such
remarkable regularity, unless the bond which unites present with past
ages be the well-known, the only known, and the only imaginable bond
of physical generation ? Why are the fauna and flora of each geologic
epoch in general intermediate in character between the flora and fauna
of the epochs immediately preceding and succeeding? And, 5. What
are we to do with the great fact of extinction if we reject Mr. Dar
win’s explanations ? When a race is extinguished, is it because of a
universal deluge, or because of the “ free manifestations of an intelli
gent mind ? ” For surely Prof. Agassiz will not attribute such a sol
emn result to such ignoble causes as insufficiency of food or any other
of the thousand causes, “ blindly mechanical,” which conspire to make
a species succumb in the struggle for life.
And here the phrase, “ struggle for life,” reminds me of yet an
other difficult task which Prof. Agassiz will have before him when he
comes to undertake the refutation of Darwinism in earnest. He will
have to explain away the enormous multitude of facts which show that
there is a struggle for life in which the fittest survive ; or he will at
any rate have to show in what imaginable way an organic type can
remain constant in all its features through countless ages under the
influence of such circumstances, unless by taking into the account the
Darwinian interpretation of persistent types offered by Prof. Huxley.
But I will desist from further enumeration of the difficulties which
surround this task which Prof. Agassiz has not undertaken, and is
not likely ever to undertake. For the direct grappling with that com
plicated array of theorems which the genius of such men as Darwin
and Spencer and their companions has established on a firm basis of
observation and deduction, Prof. Agassiz seems in these lectures hardly
better qualified than a child is qualified for improving the methods of
the integral calculus. These questions have begun to occupy earnest
thinkers since the period when his mind acquired that rigidity which
prevents the revising of one’s opinions. The marvellous flexibility of
thought with which Sir Charles Lyell so gracefully abandoned his an-
�PRIMARY CONCEPTS OF MODERN SCIENCE.
705
tiquated position, Prof. Agassiz is never likely to show. This is
largely because Lyell has always been a thinker of purely scientific
habit, while Agassiz has long been accustomed to making profoundly
dark metaphysical phrases do the work which properly belongs to
observation and deduction. But, however we may best account for
these idiosyncrasies, it remains most probable among those facts which
are still future, that Prof. Agassiz will never advance any more crush
ing refutation of the Darwinian theory than the simple expression of
his personal dislike for “ mechanical agencies,” and his belief in the
“ free manifestations of an intelligent mind.” Were he only to be left
to himself, such expressions of personal preference could not mar the
pleasure with which we often read his exposition of purely scientific
truths. But when he is brought before the public as the destroyer of
a theory, the elements of which he has never yet given any sign of
having mastered, he is placed in a false position, which would be lu
dicrous could he be supposed to have sought it, and which is, at all
events, unworthy of his eminent fame.
m-n-TT. nuTWAuv nnYPPPTR OF MODERN PHYSICAL
ERRATUM.
Page 710, line 32, for “impenetrability,” read “ compenetrability.”
Lierman
ULuraxinvn au«
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--------- . .
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_
Du Bois-Reymond, one of the most noted physicists of the age.
“Natural science,” says Du Bois-Reymond,1 “is a reduction of the
changes in the material world to motions of atoms caused by central
forces independent of time, or a resolution of the phenomena of Na
ture into atomic mechanics. . . . The resolution of all changes in the
material world into motions of atoms caused by their constant central
forces would be the completion of natural science.”
Obviously, the proposition thus enounced assigns to physical sci1 “ Ueber die Grenzen des Naturerkennens. Ein Vortrag in der zweiten öffentlichen
Sitzung der 45. Versammlung deutscher Naturforscher und Aerzte zu Leipzig am 14.
August 1872, gehalten von Emil Du Bois-Reymond.” Leipzig, Veit & Comp., 1872.
VOL. in.—45
�7o6
•
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
enee limits so narrow that all attempts to bring the characteristic
phenomena of organic life (not to speak of mental action) within them
are utterly hopeless. Nevertheless, it is asserted that organic phe
nomena are the product of ordinary physical forces alone, and that
the assumption of vital agencies, as distinct from the forces of inor
ganic Nature, is wholly inadmissible. In view of this, it seems strange
that the validity of the proposition above referred to has never, so far
as I know, been questioned, except in the interest of some metaphysi
cal or theological system. It is my purpose in the following essays
to offer a few suggestions in this behalf, in order to ascertain, if pos
sible, whether the prevailing primary notions of physical science can
stand, or are in need of revision.
One of the prime postulates of the mechanical theory is the atomic
constitution of matter. A discussion of this theory, therefore, at
once leads to an examination of the grounds upon which the assump
tion of atoms, as the ultimate constituents of the physical world,
rests.
The doctrine that an exhaustive analysis of a material body into
its real elements, if it could be practically effected, would yield an ag
gregate of indivisible and indestructible particles, is almost coeval
with human speculation, and has held its ground more persistently
than any other tenet of science or philosophy. It is true that the
atomic theory, since its first promulgation by the early Greek philoso
phers, and its elaborate statement by Lucretius, has been modified and
refined. There is probably no one, at this day, who invests the atoms
with hooks and loops, or (Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, ii., 398, et seq.)
accounts for the bitter taste of wormwood by the raggedness, and for
the sweetness of honey by the smooth roundness of the constituent
atoms. But the “ atom ” of modern science is still of determinate
weight, if not of determinate figure, and stands for something more
than an abstract unit, even in the view of those who, like Boscovich,
Faraday, Ampère, or Fechner, profess to regard it as a mere centre of
force. And there is no difficulty in stating the atomic doctrine in
terms applicable alike to all the acceptations in which it is now held by
scientific men. Whatever diversity of opinion may prevail as to the
form, size, etc., of the atoms, all who advance the atomic hypothesis,
in any of its varieties, as a physical theory, agree in three propositions,
which may be stated as follows :
1. Atoms are absolutely simple, unchangeable, indestructible ; they
are physically, if not mathematically, indivisible.
2. Matter consists of discrete parts, the constituent atoms being
separated by void interstitial spaces. In contrast to the continuity of
space stands the discontinuity of matter. The expansion of a body
is simply an increase, its contraction a lessening of the spatial inter
vals between the atoms.
3. The atoms composing the different chemical elements are of de-
�PRIMARY CONCEPTS OF MODERN SCIENCE.
7q7
terminate specific weights, corresponding to their equivalents of com
bination.1
Confessedly the atomic theory is hut an hypothesis. This in itself
is not decisive against its value; all physical theories properly so
called are hypotheses whose eventual recognition as truths depends
upon their consistency with themselves, upon their agreement with
the canons of logic, upon their congruence with the facts which they
serve to connect and explain, upon their conformity with the ascer
tained order of Nature, upon the extent to which they approve them
selves as reliable anticipations or previsions of facts verified by subse
quent observation or experiment, and finally upon their simplicity, or
rather their reducing power. The merits of the atomic theory, too,
are to be determined by seeing whether or not it satisfactorily and
simply accounts for the phenomena as the explanation of which it is
propounded, and whether or not it is in harmony with itself and with
the known laws of Reason and of Nature.
For what facts, then, is the atomic hypothesis meant to account,
and to what degree is the account it offers satisfactory?
It is claimed that the first of the three propositions above enu
merated (the proposition which asserts the persistent integrity of
atoms, or their unchangeability both in weight and volume) accounts
for the indestructibility and impenetrability of matter; that the sec
ond of these propositions (relating to the discontinuity of matter) is
an indispensable postulate for the explanation of certain physical phe
nomena, such as the dispersion and polarization of light; and that the
third proposition (according to which the atoms composing the chem
ical elements are of determinate specific gravities) is the necessary
general expression of the laws of definite constitution, equivalent pro
portion, and multiple combination, in chemistry.
In discussing these claims, it is important, first, to verify the facts
and to reduce the statements of these facts to exact expression, and
then to see how far they are fused by the theory:
1. The indestructibility of matter is an unquestionable truth. But
in what sense, and upon what grounds, is this indestructibility predi
cated of matter ? The unanimous answer of the atomists is: Expe
rience teaches that all the changes to which matter is subject are but
variations of form, and that amid these variations there is an unvary
ing constant—the mass or quantity of matter. The constancy of the
mass is attested by the balance, which shows that neither fusion nor
sublimation, neither generation nor corruption, can add to or detract
from the weight of a body subjected to experiment. When a pound
of carbon is burned, the balance demonstrates the continuing exist1 To avoid confusion, I purposely ignore the distinction between molecules as the ulti
mate products of the physical division of matter, and atoms as the ultimate products of
its chemical decomposition, preferring to use the word atoms in the sense of the least
particles into which bodies are divisible or reducible by any means.
�708
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
ence of this pound in the carbonic acid, which is the product of com
bustion, and from which the original weight of carbon may be re
covered. The quantity of matter is measured by its weight, and this
weight is unchangeable.
Such is the fact, familiar to every one, and its interpretation, equally
familiar. To test the correctness of this interpretation, we may be
permitted slightly to vary the method of verifying it. Instead of
burning the pound of carbon, let us simply carry it to the summit of a
mountain, or remove it to a lower latitude; is its weight still the same ?
Relatively it is; it will still balance the original counterpoise. But
the absolute weight is no longer the same. This appears at once, if
we give to the balance another form, taking a pendulum instead of a
pair of scales. The pendulum on the mountain or near the equator
vibrates more slowly than at the foot of the mountain or near the
pole, for the reason that it has become specifically lighter by being
farther removed from the centre of the earth’s attraction, in conformity
to the law that the attractions of bodies vary inversely as the squares
of their distances.
It is thus evident that the constancy, upon the observation of which
the assertion of the indestructibility of matter is based, is simply the
constancy of a relation, and that the ordinary statement of the fact is
crude and inadequate. Indeed, while it is true that the weight of a
body is a measure of its mass, this is but a single case of the more
general fact that the masses of bodies are inversely as the velocities
imparted to them by the action of the same force, or, more generally
still, inversely as the accelerations produced in them by the same force.
In the case of gravity, the forces of attraction are directly propor
tional to the masses, so that the action of the forces (weight) is the
simplest measure of the relation between any two masses as such;
but, in any inquiry relating to the validity of the atomic theory, it is
necessary to bear in mind that this weight is not the equivalent, or
rather presentation, of an absolute substantive entity in one of the
bodies (the body weighed), but the mere expression of a relation be
tween two bodies mutually attracting each other. And it is further
necessary to remember that this weight may be indefinitely reduced,
without any diminution in the mass of the body weighed, by a mere
change of its position in reference to the body between which and the
body weighed the relation subsists.1
1 The thoughtlessness with which it is assumed by some of the most eminent mathe
maticians and physicists that matter is composed of particles which have an absolute
primordial weight persisting in all positions, and under all circumstances, is one of the
most remarkable facts in the history of science. To cite but one instance : Prof. Rettenbacher, one of the ablest analysts of his day, in his “ Dynamidensystem ” (Mannheim,
Bassermann, 1857), p. 14, says, “The absolute weight of atoms is unknown”—his
meaning being, as is evident from the context and from the whole tenor of his discus
sion, that our ignorance of this absolute weight is due solely to the practical impossi
bility of insulating an atom, and of contriving instruments delicate enough to weigh it.
�PRIMARY CONCEPTS OF MODERN SCIENCE.
709
Masses find their true and only measure in the action of forces, and
the quantitative persistence of the effect of this action is the simple
and accurate expression of the fact which is ordinarily described as
the indestructibility of matter. It is obvious that this persistence is
in no sense explained or accounted for by the atomic hypothesis. It
may be that such persistence is an attribute of the minute, insensible
particles which are supposed to constitute matter, as well as of sen
sible masses ; but, surely, the hypothetical recurrence of a fact in the
atom is no explanation of the actual occurrence of the same fact in
the conglomerate mass. Whatever mystery is involved in the phe
nomenon is as great in the case of the atom as in that of a solar or
planetary sphere. Breaking a magnet into fragments, and showing
that each fragment is endowed with the magnetic polarity of the in
teger magnet, is no explanation of the phenomenon of magnetism. A
phenomenon is not explained by being dwarfed. A fact is not trans
formed into a theory by being looked at through an inverted telescope.
The hypothesis of ultimate indestructible atoms is not a necessary im
plication of the persistence of weight, and can at best account for the
indestructibility of matter if it can be shown that there is an absolute
limit to the compressibility of matter—in other words, that there is
an absolutely least volume for every determinate mass. This brings
us to the consideration of that general property of matter which prob
ably, in the minds of most men, most urgently requires the assump
tion of atoms—its impenetrability.
“ Two bodies cannot occupy the same space ”—such is the familiar
statement of the fact in question. Like the indestructibility of matter,
it is claimed to be a datum of experience. “ Corpora omnia impenotrabilla esse” says Sir Isaac Newton (Phil. Nat. Prine. Math., lib.
iii., reg. 3), “ non ratione sed sensu colligimus.” Let us see in what
sense and to what extent this claim is legitimate.
The proposition, according to which a space occupied by one body
cannot be occupied by another, implies the assumption that space is
an absolute, self-measuring entity—an assumption which I may have
occasion to examine hereafter—and the further assumption that there
is a least space which a given body will absolutely fill so as to exclude
any other body. A verification of this proposition by experience,
therefore, must amount to proof that there is an absolute limit to the
compressibility of all matter whatsoever. Now, does experience au
thorize us to assign such a limit ? Assuredly not. It is true that in
the case of solids and liquids there are practical limits beyond which
compression by the mechanical means at our command is impossible ;
but even here we are met by the fact that the volumes of fluids, which
effectually resist all efforts at further reduction by external pressure,
are readily reduced by mere mixture. Thus, sulphuric acid and water
at ordinary temperatures do not sensibly yield to pressure; but, when
they are mixed, the resulting volume is materially less than the aggre
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gate volumes of the liquids mixed. But, waiving this, as well as the
phenomena which emerge in the processes of solution and chemical ac
tion, it must be said that experience does not in any manner vouch
for the impenetrability of matter as such in all its states of aggrega
tion. When gases are subjected to pressure, the result is simply an
increase of the expansive force in proportion to the pressure exerted,
according to the law of Boyle and Mariotte (the modifications of and
apparent exceptions to which, as exhibited in the experimental results
obtained by Regnault and others, need not here be stated, because
they do not affect the argument). A definite experimental limit, is
reached in the case of those gases only in which the pressure produces
liquefaction or solidification. The most significant phenomenon, how
ever, which experience contributes to the testimony on this subject is
the diffusion of gases. Whenever two or more gases which do not act
upon each other chemically are introduced into a given space, each gas
diffuses itself in this space as though it were alone present there; or,
as Dalton, the reputed father of the modern atomic theory, expresses
it, “ Gases are mutually passive, and pass into each other as into
vacua.”
Whatever reality may correspond to the notion of the impenetra
bility of matter, this impenetrability is not, in the sense of the atomists, a datum of experience.
Upon the whole, it would seem that the validity of the first propo
sition of the atomic theory is not sustained by the facts. Even if the
assumed unchangeability of the supposed ultimate constituent particles
of matter presented itself, upon its own showing, as more than a bare
reproduction of an observed fact in the form of an hypothesis, and
could be dignified with the name of a generalization or of a theory,
it would still be obnoxious to the criticism that it is a generalization
from facts crudely observed and imperfectly apprehended.
In this connection it may be observed that the atomic theory has
become next to valueless as an explanation of the impenetrability
of matter, since it has been pressed into the service of the undulatory
theory of light, heat, etc., and assumed the form in which it is now
held by the majority of physicists, as we shall presently see. Ac
cording to this form of the theory, the atoms are either mere points,
wholly without extension, or their dimensions are infinitely small as
compared with the distances between them, whatever be the state
aggregation of the substances into which they enter. In this view
the resistance which a body, i. e., a system of atoms, offers to the in
trusion of another body is due, not to the rigidity or unchangeability
of volume of the individual atoms, but to the relation between the
attractive and repulsive forces with which they are supposed to be
endowed. There are physicists holding this view who are of opinion
that the atomic constitution of matter is consistent with its impene
trability among them M. Cauchy, who, in his Sept Lemons de Phy-
�PRIMARY CONCEPTS OF MODERN SCIENCE.
7n
sique Genérale (ed. Moigno, Paris, 1868, p. 38), after defining atoms
as “ material points without extension,” uses this language: “ Thus,
this property of matter which we call impenetrability is explained,
when we consider the atoms as material points exerting on each other
attractions and repulsions which vary with the distances that separate
them. . . . From this it follows that, if it pleased the author of Na
ture simply to modify the laws according to which the atoms attract
or repel each other, we might instantly see the hardest bodies pene
trate each other ” (that we might see), “ the smallest particles of matter
occupy immense spaces, or the largest masses reduce themselves to
the smallest volumes, the entire universe concentrating itself, as it
were, in a single point.”
2. The second fundamental proposition of the modern atomic
theory avouches the essential discontinuity of matter. The advocates
of the theory affirm that there is a series of physical phenomena
which are inexplicable, unless we assume that the constituent par
ticles of matter are separated by void interspaces. The most notable
among these phenomena are the dispersion and polarization of light.
The grounds upon which the assumption of a discrete molecular
structure of matter is deemed indispensable for the explanation of
these phenomena may be stated in a few words.
According to the undulatory theory, the dispersion of light, or its
separation into spectral colors, by means of refraction, is a conse
quence of the unequal retardation experienced by the different waves,
which produce the different colors, in their transmission through the
refracting medium. This unequal retardation presupposes differences
in the velocities with which the various-colored rays are transmitted
through any medium whatever, and a dependence of these velocities
upon the lengths of the waves. But, according to a well-established
mechanical theorem, the velocities with which undulations are prop
agated through a continuous medium depend solely upon the elasticity
of the medium as compared with its inertia, and are wholly indepen
dent of the length and form of the waves. The correctness of this the
orem is attested by experience in the case of sound. Sounds of every
pitch travel with the same velocity. If it were otherwise, music heard
at a distance would evidently become chaotic; differences of velocity
in the propagation of sound would entail a distortion of the rhythm,
and, in many cases, a reversal of the order of succession. Now, differ
ences of color are analogous to differences of pitch in sound, both re
ducing themselves to differences of wave-length. The lengths of the
waves increase as we descend the scale of sounds from those of a higher
to those of a lower pitch; and similarly, the length of a luminar undu
lation increases as we descend the spectral scale, from violet to red. It
follows, then, that the rays of different color, like the sounds of differ
ent pitch, should be propagated with equal velocities, and be equally
refracted; that, therefore, no dispersion of light should take place.
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
This theoretical impossibility of dispersion has always been recog
nized as one of the most formidable difficulties of the undulatory
theory. In order to obviate it, Cauchy, at the suggestion of his friend
Coriolis, entered upon a series of analytical investigations, in which he
succeeded in showing that the velocities with which the various colored
rays are propagated may vary according to the wave-lengths, if it be
assumed that the ethereal medium of propagation, instead of being
continuous, consists of particles separated by sensible distances.
By means of a similar assumption, Fresnel has sought to remove
the difficulties presented by the phenomena of polarization. In ordi
nary light, the different undulations are supposed to take place in dif
ferent directions, all transverse to the course or line of propagation,
while in polarized light the vibrations, though still transverse to the
ray, are parallelized, so as to occur in the same plane. Soon after this
hypothesis had been expanded into an elaborate theory of polarization,
Poisson observed that, at any considerable distance from the source
of the light, all transverse vibrations in a continuous elastic medium
must become longitudinal. As in the case of dispersion, this objection
was met by the hypothesis of the existence of “definite intervals”
between the ethereal particles.
These are the considerations, succinctly stated, which theoretical
physics are supposed to bring to the support of the atomic theory. In
reference to the cogency of the argument founded upon them, it is to
be said, generally, that evidence of the discrete molecular arrangement
of matter is by no means proof of the alternation of unchangeable and
indivisible atoms with absolute spatial voids. But it is to be feared
that the argument in question is not only formally, but also materially,
fallacious. It is very questionable whether the assumption of definite
intervals between the particles of the luminiferous ether is competent
to relieve the undulatory theory of light from its embarrassments.
This subject, in one of its aspects, has been thoroughly discussed by E.
B. Hunt, in an article on the dispersion of light (SiUimari8 Journal,
vol. vii., 2d series, p. 364, et seq.), and the suggestions there made ap
pear to me worthy of serious attention. They are briefly these:
M. Cauchy brings the phenomena of dispersion within the do
minion of the undulatory theory, by deducing the differences in the
velocities of the several chromatic rays from the differences in the cor
responding wave-lengths by means of the hypothesis of definite inter
vals between the particles of the light-bearing medium. He takes it
for granted, therefore, that these chromatic rays are propagated with
different velocities. But is this the fact ? Astronomy affords the
means to answer this question.
We experience the sensation of white light, when all the chromatic
rays of which it is composed strike the eye simultaneously. The light
proceeding from a luminous body will appear colorless, even if the
component rays move with unequal velocities, provided all the colored
�PRIMARY CONCEPTS OF MODERN SCIENCE.
713
rays, which together make up white light, concur in their action on
the retina at a given moment; in ordinary cases it is immaterial
whether these rays have left the luminous body successively or together.
But it is otherwise when a luminous body becomes visible suddenly,
as in the case of the satellites of Jupiter, or Saturn, after their eclipses.
At certain periods, more than 49 minutes are requisite for the trans
mission of light from Jupiter to the earth. Now, at the moment when
one of Jupiter’s satellites, which has been eclipsed by that planet,
emerges from the shadow, the red rays, if their velocity were the great
est, would evidently reach the eye first, the orange next, and so on
through the chromatic scale, until finally the complement of colors
would be filled by the arrival of the violet ray, whose velocity is
supposed to be the least. The satellite, immediately after its emersion,
would appear red, and gradually, in proportion to the arrival of the
other rays, pass into white. Conversely, at the beginning of the
eclipse, the violet rays would continue to arrive after the red and
other intervening rays, and the satellite, up to the moment of its total
disappearance, will gradually shade into violet.
Unfortunately for Cauchy’s hypothesis, the most careful observation
of the eclipses in question has failed to reveal any such variations of
color, either before immersion, or after emersion, the transition between
light and darkness taking place instantaneously, and without chro
matic gradations.
If it be said that these chromatic gradations escape our vision by
reason of the inappreciability of the differences under discussion, as
tronomy points to other phenomena no less subversive of the doctrine
of unequal velocities in the movements of the chromatic undulations.
Fixed stars beyond the parallactic limit, whose light must travel more
than three years before it reaches us, are subject to great periodical
variations of splendor; and yet these variations are unaccompanied
by variations of color. Again, the assumption of different velocities
for the different chromatic rays is discountenanced by the theory of
aberration. Aberration is due to the fact that, in all cases where the
orbit of the planet, on which the observer is stationed, forms an angle
with the direction of the luminar ray, a composition takes place be
tween the motion of the light and the motion of the planet, so that
the direction in which the light meets the eye is a resultant of the two
component directions—the direction of the ray and that of the ob
server’s motion. If the several rays of color moved with different
velocities there would evidently be several resultants, and each star
would appear as a colored spectrum longitudinally parallel to the
direction of the earth’s motion.
The alleged dependence of the velocity of the undulatory move
ments, which correspond to, or produce, the different colors, upon the
length of the waves, is thus at variance with observed fact. The
hypothesis of definite intervals is unavailable as a supplement to the
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
undulatory theory ; other methods will have to be resorted to in order
to free this theory from its difficulties.1
3. The third proposition of the atomic hypothesis assigns to the
atoms, which are said to compose the different chemical elements, de
terminate weights corresponding to their equivalents of combination,
and is supposed to be necessary to account for the facts whose enumeration and theory constitute the science of chemistry. The proper
verification of these facts is of great difficulty, because they have gen
erally been observed through the lenses of the atomic theory, and
stated in its doctrinal terms. Thus the differentiation and integration
of bodies are invariably described as decomposition and composition ;
the equivalents of combination are designated as atomic weights or
volumes, and the greater part of chemical nomenclature is a system
atic reproduction of the assumptions of atomism. Nearly all the facts
to be verified are in need of preparatory enucleation from the envelops
of this theory.
The phenomena usually described as chemical composition and de
composition present themselves to observation thus: A number of
heterogeneous bodies concur in definite proportions of weight or vol
ume; they interact; they disappear, and give rise to a new body pos
sessing properties which are neither the sum nor the mean of the prop
erties of the bodies concurring and interacting (excepting the weight
which is the aggregate of the weights of the interacting bodies), and
this conversion of several bodies into one is accompanied, in most
cases, by changes of volume, and in all cases by the evolution or in
volution of heat, or light, or of both. Conversely, a single homogeneous
body gives rise to heterogeneous bodies, between which and the body
out of which they originate the persistence of weight is the only re
lation of identity.
For the sake of convenience, these phenomena may be distributed
into three classes, of which the first embraces the persistence of weight
and the combination in definite proportions ; the second, the changes
of volume and the evolution of light and heat; and the third, the
emergence of a wholly new complement of chemical properties.
Obviously, the atomic hypothesis is in no sense an explanation of
the phenomena of the second class. It is clearly and confessedly in
1 Cauchy’s theory of dispersion is subject to another difficulty, of which no note is
taken by Hunt: it does not account for the different refracting powers of different, sub
stances. Indeed, according to Cauchy’s formula) (whose terms are expressive simply of
the distances between the ethereal particles and their hypothetical forces of attraction
and repulsion), the refracting powers of all substances whatever must be the same, un
less each substance is provided with a peculiar ether of its own. If this be the case, the
assemblage of atoms in a given body is certainly a very motley affair, especially if it be
true, as W. A. Norton and several other physicists assert, that there is an electric ether
distinct from the luminiferous ether. Rettenbacher (“Dynamidensystem,” p. 130, et seq.)
attempts to overcome the difficulty by the hypothesis of mutual action between the cor
puscular and ethereal atoms.
�PRIMARY CONCEPTS OF MODERN SCIENCE.
715
competent to account for changes of volume or of temperature. And,
with the phenomena of the third class, it is apparently incompatible.
For, in the light of the atomic hypothesis, chemical compositions and
decompositions are in their nature nothing more than aggregations
and segregations of masses whose integrity remains inviolate. But
the radical change of chemical properties, which is the result of all
true chemical action, and serves to distinguish it from mere mechani
cal mixture or separation, evinces a thorough destruction of that in
tegrity. It may be that the appearance of this incompatibility can be
obliterated by the device of ancillary hypotheses; but that leads to
an abandonment of the simplicity of the atomic hypothesis itself, and
thus to a surrender of its claims to merit as a theory.
At best, then, the hypothesis of atoms of definite and different
weights can be offered as an explanation of the phenomena of the first
class. Does it explain them in the sense of generalizing them, of re
ducing many facts to one? Not at all; it accounts for them, as it
professed to account for the indestructibility and impenetrability of
matter, by simply iterating the observed fact in the form of an hy
pothesis. It is another case (to borrow a scholastic phrase) of illus
trating idem per idem. It says: The large masses combine in definitely-proportionate weights because the small masses, the atoms of
which they are multiples, are of definitely-proportionate weight. It
pulverizes the fact, and claims thereby to have sublimated it into a
theory.
Upon closer examination, moreover, the assumption of atoms of
different specific gravities proves to be, not only futile, but absurd.
Its manifest theoretical ineptitude is found to mask the most fatal
inconsistencies. According to the mechanical conception which un
derlies the whole atomic hypothesis, differences of weight are differ
ences of density; and differences of density are differences of distance
between the particles contained in a given space. Now, in the atom
there is no multiplicity of particles, and no void space; hence dif
ferences of density or weight Are impossible in the case of atoms.
It is to be observed that the attribution of different weights to dif
ferent atoms is an indispensable feature of the atomic theory in chem
istry, especially in view of the combination of gases in simple ratios
of volume, so as to give rise to gaseous products bearing a simple
ratio to the volumes of its constituents, and in view of the law of
Ampere and Clausius, according to which all gases, of whatever nature
or weight, contain equal numbers of molecules in equal volumes.
The inadequacy of the atomic hypothesis as a theory of chemical
changes has been repeatedly pointed out by men of the highest scien
tific authority, such as Grove (Correlation of Physical Forces, in
Youmans’s “Correlation and Conservation of Forces,” p. 164, et seqf
and is becoming more apparent from day to day. I shall have occa
sion to inquire, hereafter, what promise there is, in the present state
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
of chemical science, of a true generalization of the phenomena of com
bination in definite proportions, both of weight and volume, which is
independent of the atomic doctrine, and will serve to connect a num
ber of concomitant facts for which this doctrine is utterly incompetent
to account.
It is not infrequently asserted by the advocates of the atomic
theory that there is a number of other phenomena, in addition to
those of combination in definite proportions, which are strongly indica
tive of the truth of the atomic theory. Among these phenomena are
isomerism, polymerism, and allotropy. But it is very doubtful whether
this theory is countenanced by the phenomena in question. The exist
ence of different allotropic states, in an elementary body said to con
sist of but one kind of atoms, is explicable by the atomic hypothesis
in no other way than by deducing these different states from diversi
ties in the grouping of the different atoms. But this explanation ap
plies to solids only, and fails in the cases of liquids and gases. The
same remark applies to isomerism and polymerism.
From the foregoing considerations, I take it to be clear that the
atomic hypothesis mistakes many of the facts which it seeks to ex
plain ; that it accounts imperfectly or not at all for a number of other
facts which are correctly apprehended; and that there are cases in
which it appears to be in irreconcilable conflict with the data of expe
rience. As a physical theory, it is barren and useless, inasmuch as it
lacks the first requisite of a true theory—that of being a generaliza
tion, a reduction of several facts to one; it is essentially one of those
spurious figments of the brain, based upon an ever-increasing multiplicatio ent turn praeter necessitatem, which are characteristic of the prescientific epochs of human intelligence, and against which the whole
spirit of modern science is an emphatic protest. Moreover, in its
logical and psychological aspect, as we shall hereafter see more
clearly, it is the clumsiest attempt ever made to transcend the sphere
of relations in which all objective reality, as well as all thought,
has its being, and to grasp the absolute “ ens per sese, jinitum, reale,
totumP
I do not speak here of a number of other difficulties which emerge
upon a minute examination of the atomic hypothesis in its two prin
cipal varieties, the atoms being regarded by some physicists as ex
tended and figured masses, and by others as mere centres of force.
In the former case the assumption of physical indivisibility becomes
gratuitous, and that of mathematical indivisibility absurd; while in
the latter case the whole basis of the relation between force and mass,
or rather force and inertia, without which the conception of either
term of the relation is impossible, is destroyed. Some of these diffi
culties are frankly admitted by leading men of science—for instance,
by Du Bois-Reymond, in the lecture above cited. Nevertheless, it is
asserted that the atomic, or at least molecular, constitution of matter
�FINDING THE WAY AT SEA.
7*7
is the only form of material existence which can be realized in thought.
In what sense, and to what extent, this assertion is well founded, will
be my next subject of examination.
FINDING THE WAY AT SEA.
By E. A. PEOCTOE.
IHE wreck of the Atlantic, followed closely by that of the City of
JL Washington nearly on the same spot, has led many to inquire
into the circumstances on which depends a captain’s knowledge of the
position of his ship. In each case, though not in the same way, the
ship was supposed to be far from land, when in reality quite close to
it. In each case, in fact, the ship had oversailed her reckoning. A
slight exaggeration of what travellers so much desire—a rapid pas
sage—proved the destruction of the ship, and in one case occasioned
a fearful loss of life. And, although such events are fortunately infre
quent in Atlantic voyages, yet the bare possibility that, besides or
dinary sea-risks, a ship is exposed to danger from simply losing her
way, suggests unpleasant apprehensions as to the general reliability
of the methods in use for determining where a ship is, and her prog
ress from day to day.
I propose to give a brief sketch of the methods in use for finding
the way at sea, in order that the general principles on which safety
depends may be recognized by the general reader.
It is known, of course, to every one, that a ship’s course and rate
of sailing are carefully noted throughout her voyage. Every change
of her course is taken account of, as well as every change in her rate
of advance, whether under sail or steam, or both combined. If all
this could be quite accurately managed, the position of the ship at
any hour could be known, because it would be easy to mark down on
a chart the successive stages of her journey, from the moment when
she left port. But a variety of circumstances renders this impossible.
To begin with: the exact course of a ship cannot be known, be
cause there is only the ship’s compass to determine her course by, and
a ship’s compass is not an instrument affording perfectly exact indica
tions. Let any one on a sea-voyage observe the compass for a short
time, being careful not to break the good old rule which forbids speech
to the “ man at the wheel,” and he will presently become aware of
the fact that the ship is not kept rigidly to one course, even for a short
time. The steersman keeps her as near as he can to a particular
course, but she is continually deviating, now a little on one side, now
a little on the other, of the intended direction; and even the general
accuracy with which that course is followed is a matter of estimation,
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
and depends on the skill of the individual steersman. Looking at
the compass-card, in steady weather, a course may seem very closely
followed; perhaps the needle’s end may not be a hundredth part of
an inch (on the average) from the position it should have. But a hun
dredth part of an inch on the circumference of the compass-card
would correspond to a considerable deviation in the course of a run
of twenty or thirty knots ; and there is nothing to prevent the errors
so arising from accumulating in a long journey until a ship might be
thirty or forty miles from her estimated place. To this may be added
the circumstance that the direction of the needle is different in differ
ent parts of the earth. In some places it points to the east of the
north, in others to the west. And, although the actual “ variation of
the compass,” as this peculiarity is called, is known in a general way
for all parts of the earth, yet such knowledge has no claim to actual
exactness. There is also an important danger, as recent instances
have shown, in the possible change of the position of the ship’s com
pass, on account of iron in her cargo.
But a far more important cause of error, in determinations merely
depending on the log-book, is that arising from uncertainty as to the
ship’s rate of progress. The log-line gives only a rough idea of the
4 ship’s rate at the time when the log is cast;1 and, of course, a ship’s
rate does not remain constant, even when she is under steam alone.
Then, again, currents carry the ship along sometimes with consider
able rapidity; and the log-line affords no indication of their action:
while no reliance can be placed on the estimated rates, even of known
currents. Thus the distance made on any course may differ consider
ably from the estimated distance; and, when several days’ sailing are
dealt with, an error of large amount may readily accumulate.
For these and other reasons, a ship’s captain places little reliance
on what is called “ the day’s work ”—that is, the change in the ship’s
position from noon to noon as estimated from the compass-courses en
tered in the log-book, and the distances supposed to be run on these
courses. It is absolutely essential that such estimates should be careful
ly made, because, under favorable conditions of weather, there may be
no other means of guessing at the ship’s position. But the only really
reliable way of determining a ship’s place is- by astronomical observa
tions. It is on this account that the almanac published by the Ad
miralty, in which the position and apparent motions of the celestial
bodies are indicated, four or five years in advance, is called, par excel1 The log is a flat piece of wood of quadrantal shape, so loaded at the rim as to float
with the point (that is, the centre of the quadrant) uppermost. To this a line about
300 yards long is fastened. The log is thrown overboard, and comes almost immediately
to rest on the surface of the sea, the line being suffered to run freely out. By marks on
the log-line divided into equal spaces, called knots, of known length, and by observing
how many of these run out, while the sand in a half-minute hour-glass is running, the
ship’s rate of motion is roughly inferred. The whole process is necessarily rough, since
the line cannot even be straightened.
�FINDING THE WAY AT SEA.
719
fence, the Nautical Almanac. The astronomer, in his fixed observa
tory, finds this almanac essential to the prosecution of his observa
tions ; the student of theoretical astronomy has continual occasion to
refer to it; but, to the sea-captain, the Nautical Almanac has a far
more important use. The lives of sailors and passengers are depend
ent upon its accuracy. It is, again, chiefly for the sailor that our
great nautical observatories have been erected, and that our astron
omer-royal and his officers are engaged. What other work they
may do is subsidiary, and, as it were, incidental. Their chief work is
to time this great clock, our earth, and so to trace the motions of
those celestial indices, which afford our fundamental time-measures,
as to insure as far as possible the safety of our navy, royal and mer
cantile.1
Let us see how this is brought about, not, indeed, by inquiring into
the processes by which, at the Greenwich Observatory, the elements
of safety are obtained, but by considering the method by which a sea
man makes use of these elements.
In the measures heretofore considered, the captain of a ship in
reality relies on terrestrial measurements. He reasons that, being on
such and such a day in a given place, and having in the interval sailed
so many miles in such and such directions, he must at the time being
be in such and such a place. This is called “ navigation.” In the
processes next to be considered, which constitute a part of the science
of nautical astronomy, the seaman trusts to celestial observations in
dependently of all terrestrial measurements.
The points to be determined by the voyager are his latitude and
longitude. The latitude is the distance north or south of the equa
tor, and is measured always from the equator in degrees, the distance
from equator to pole being divided into ninety equal parts, each of
which is a degree.3 The longitude is the distance east or west of
Greenwich (in English usage, but other nations employ a different
starting-point for measuring longitudes from). Longitude is not meas
ured in miles, but in degrees. The way of measuring is not very
1 This consideration has been altogether lost sight of in certain recent propositions
for extending government aid to astronomical inquiries of another sort. It may be a
most desirable thing that government should find means for inquiring into the physical
condition of sun and moon, planets and comets, stars and all the various orders of star
clusters. But, if such matters are to be studied at government expense, it should be un
derstood that the inquiry is undertaken with the sole purpose of advancing our knowl
edge of these interesting subjects, and should not be brought into comparison with the
utilitarian labors for which our Royal Observatory was founded.
2 Throughout this explanation all minuter details are neglected. In reality, in conse
quence of the flattening of the earth’s globe, the degrees of latitude are not equal, being
larger the farther we go from the equator. Moreover, strictly speaking, it is incorrect
to speak of distances being divided into degrees, or to say that a degree of latitude or
longitude contains so many miles ; yet it is so exceedingly inconvenient to employ any
other way of speaking in popular description, that I trust any astronomers or mathema
ticians who may read this article will forgive the solecism.
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
readily explained without a globe or diagrams, but may be thus indi
cated : Suppose a circle to run completely round the earth, through
Greenwich and both the poles; now, if this circle be supposed free to
turn upon the polar axis, or on the poles as pivots, and the half which
crosses Greenwich be carried (the nearest way round) till it crosses
some other station, then the arc through which it is carried is called
the longitude of the station, and the longitude is easterly or westerly
according as this half-circle has to be shifted toward the east or west.
A complete half-turn is 180°, and, by taking such a half-turn either
eastwardly or westwardly, the whole surface of the earth is included.
Points which are 180° east of Greenwich are thus also 180° west of
Greenwich.
So much is premised in the way of explanation to make the present
paper complete ; but ten minutes’ inspection of an ordinary terrestrial
globe will show the true meaning of latitude and longitude more
clearly (to those who happen to have forgotten what they learned at
school on these points) than any verbal description.
Now, it is sufficiently easy for a sea-captain in fine weather to de
termine his latitude. For places in different latitudes have different
celestial scenery, if one may so describe the aspect of the stellar heav
ens by night and the course traversed by the sun by day. The height
of the pole-star above the horizon, for instance, at once indicates the
latitude very closely, and would indicate the latitude exactly if the
pole-star were exactly at the pole instead of being merely close to it.
But the height of any known star when due south also gives the lati
tude. For, at every place in a given latitude, a star rises to a given
greatest height when due south; if we travel farther south, the star
will be higher when due south ; if we travel farther north, it will be
lower; and thus its observed height shows just how far north of the
equator any northerly station is, while, if the traveller is in the South
ern Hemisphere, corresponding observations show how far to the south
of the equator he is.
But commonly the seaman trusts to observation of the sun to give
him his latitude. The observation is made at noon, when the sun is
highest above the horizon. The actual height is determined by means
of the instrument called the sextant. This instrument need not be
here described; but thus much may be mentioned to explain that pro
cess of taking the sun’s meridian altitude which, no doubt, every one
has witnessed who has taken a long sea-journey. The sextant is so
devised that the observer can see two objects at once, one directly and
the other after reflection of its light; and the amount by which he has
to move a certain bar carrying the reflecting arrangement, in order to
bring the two objects into view in the same direction, shows him the
real divergence of lines drawn from his eye to the two objects. To
take the sun’s altitude, then, with this instrument, the observer takes
the sun as one object and the horizon directly below the sun as the
�FINDING THE WAY AT SEA.
721
other: he brings them into view together, and then, looking at the
sextant to see how much he has had to move the swinging arm which
carries the reflecting glasses, he learns how high the sun is. This being
done at noon, with proper arrangements to insure that the greatest
height then reached by the sun is observed, at once indicates the lati
tude of the observer. Suppose, for example, he finds the sun to be
40° above the horizon, and the Nautical Almanac tells him that, at
the time the sun is 10° north of the celestial equator, then he knows
that the celestial equator is 30° above the southern horizon. The pole
of the heavens is, therefore, 60° above the northern horizon, and the
voyager is in 60° north latitude. Of course, in all ordinary cases, the
number of degrees is not exact, as I have here for simplicity sup
posed, and there are some niceties of observation which would have
to be taken into account in real work. But the principle of the method
is sufficiently indicated by what has been said, and no useful purpose
could be served by considering minutiae.
Unfortunately, the longitude is not determined so readily. The
very circumstance which makes the determination of the latitude so
simple introduces the great difficulty which exists in finding the lon
gitude. I have said that all places in the same latitude have the same
celestial scenery; and precisely for this reason it is difficult to dis
tinguish one such place from another, that is, to find on what part of
its particular latitude-circle any place may lie.
If we consider, however, how longitude is measured, and what it
really means, we shall readily see where a solution of the difficulty is
to be sought. The latitude of a station means how far toward either
pole the station is; its longitude means how far round the station is
from some fixed longitude. But it is by turning round on her axis
that the earth causes the changes which we call day and night; and
therefore these must happen at different times in places at different
distances round. For example, it is clear that, if it is noon at one sta
tion, it must be midnight at a station half-way round from the former.
And if any one at one station could telegraph to a person at another,
“ It is exactly noon here,” while this latter person knew from his clock
or watch that it was exactly midnight where he was, then he would
know that he was half-way round exactly. He would, in fact, know
his longitude from the other station. And so with smaller differences.
The earth turns, we know, from west to east—that is, a place lying due
west of another is so carried as presently to occupy the place which*
its easterly neighbor had before occupied, while this last place has
gone farther east yet. Let us suppose an hour is the time required to
carry a westerly station to the position which had been occupied by a
station to the east of it. Then manifestly every celestial phenomenon
depending on the earth’s turning will occur an hour later at the west
erly station. Sunrise and sunset are phenomena of this kind. If I
telegraph to a friend at some station far to the west, but in the same
vol. ni.—46
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
latitude, “ The sun is rising here,” and he finds that he has to wait ex
actly an hour before the sun rises there, then he knows that he is one
hour west of me in longitude, a most inexact yet very convenient and
unmistakable way of speaking. As there are twenty-four hours in the
day, while a complete circle running through my station and his (and
everywhere in the same latitude) is supposed to be divided into 360°,
he is 15° (a 24th part of 360) west of me; and, if my station is Green
wich, he is in what we, in England, call 15° west longitude.1
But what is true of sunrise and sunset in the same latitudes and
different longitudes, is true of noon whatever the latitude may be.
And of course it is true of the southing of any known star. Only un
fortunately one cannot tell the exact instant when either the sun or a
star is due south or at its highest above the horizon. Still, speaking
generally, and for the moment limiting our attention to noon, every
station toward the west has noon later, while every station toward
the east has noon earlier, than Greenwich (or whatever reference sta
tion is employed).
I shall presently return to the question how the longitude is to be
determined with sufficient exactness for safety in sea-voyages. But
I may digress here to note what happens in sea-voyages where the
longitude changes. If a voyage is made toward the west, as from
England to America, it is manifest that a watch set to Greenwich
time will be in advance of the local time as the ship proceeds west
ward, and will be more and more in advance the farther the ship trav
els in that direction. For instance, suppose a watch shows Greenwich
time ; then when it is noon at Greenwich the watch will point to
twelve, but it will be an hour before noon at a place 15° west of
Greenwich, two hours before noon at a place 30° west, and so on :
that is, the watch will point to twelve when it is only eleven
o’clock, ten o’clock, and so on, of local time. On arrival at New
York, the traveller would find that his watch was nearly five
hours fast. Of course the reverse happens in a voyage toward the
east. For instance, a watch set to New-York time would be found
to be nearly five hours slow, for Greenwich time, when the traveller
arrived in England.
In the following passage these effects are humorously illustrated
by Mark Twain:
“ Young Mr. Blucher, who is from the Far West, and on his first
yoyage” (from New York to Europe) “was a good deal worried by
the constantly-changing ‘ ship-time.’ He was proud of his new watch
at first, and used to drag it out promptly when eight bells struck at
noon, but he came to look after a while as if he were losing confi1 In this case, he is “ at sea ” (which, I trust, will not be the case with the reader),
and, we may suppose, connected with Greenwich by submarine telegraph in course of
being laid. In fact, the position of the Great Eastern throughout her cable-laying jour
neys, was determined by a method analogous to that sketched above.
�FINDING THE WAY AT SEA.
723
dence in it. Seven days out from New York he came on deck, and
said with great decision, ‘This thing’s a swindle ! ’ ‘ What’s a swin
dle?’ ‘Why, this watch. I bought her out in Illinois—gave $150
for her, and I thought she was good. And, by George, she is good
on shore, but somehow she don’t keep up her lick here on the water—
gets sea-sick, may be. She skips ; she runs along regular enough, till
half-past eleven, and then all of a sudden she lets down. I’ve set that
old regulator up faster and faster, till I’ve shoved it clear round, but
it don’t do any good; she just distances every watch in the ship,1 and
clatters along in a way that’s astonishing till it’s noon, but them “ eight
bells ” always gets in about ten minutes ahead of her any way. I don’t
know what to do with her now. She’s doing all she can; she’s going
her best gait, but it won’t save her. Now, don’t you know there ain’t
a watch in the ship that’s making better time than she is ; but what
does it signify ? When you hear them “ eight bells,” you’ll find her
just ten minutes short of her score—sure.’ The ship was gaining a
full hour every three days, and this fellow was trying to make his
watch go fast enough to keep up to her. But, as he had said, he had
pushed the regulator up as far as it would go, and the watch was
‘ on its best gait,’ and so nothing was left him but to fold his hands
and see the ship beat in the race. We sent him to the captain, and
he explained to him the mystery of ‘ ship-time,’ and set his troubled
mind at rest. This young man,” proceeds Mr. Clemens, d propos
des bottes, “ had asked a great many questions about sea-sickness be
fore we left, and wanted to know what its characteristics were, and how
he was to tell when he had it. He found out.”
I cannot leave Mark Twain’s narrative, however, without gently
criticising a passage in which he has allowed his imagination to invent
effects of longitude which assuredly were never perceived in any voy
age since the ship Argo set out after the Golden Fleece. “We had
the phenomenon of a full moon,” he says, “ located just in the same
spot in the heavens, at the same hour every night. The reason of this
singular conduct on the part of the moon did not occur to us at first,
but it did afterward, when we reflected that we were gaining about
twenty minutes every day ; because we were going east so fast, we
gained just about enough every day to keep along with the moon. It
was becoming an old moon to the friends we had left behind us, but
to us Joshuas it stood still in the same place, and remained always the
same.” O Mr. Clemens, Mr. Clemens! In a work of imagination
(as the “Innocents Abroad” must, I suppose, be to a great extent
considered), a mistake such as that here made is perhaps not a very
serious matter; but, suppose some unfortunate compiler of astronomi
cal works should happen to remember this passage, and to state (as a
1 Because set to go “ fast.” Of course, the other watches on board would be left to
go at their usual rate, and simply put forward at noon each day by so many minutes as
corresponded to the run eastward since the preceding noon.
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
compiler would be tolerably sure to do, unless he had a mathematical
friend at his elbow) that, by voyaging eastward at such and such a
rate, a traveller can always have the moon “ full ” at night, in what an
unpleasant predicament would the mistake have placed him ’ Such
things happen, unfortunately ; nay, I have even seen works, in which
precisely such mistakes have been made, in use positively as text-books
for examinations. On this account, our fiction writers must be careful
in introducing science details, lest peradventure science-teachers (save
the mark !) be led astray.
It need scarcely be said that no amount of eastwardly voyaging
would cause the moon to remain always “ full ” as seen by the voyager.
The moon’s phase is the same from whatever part of the earth she may
be seen, and she will become “ new,” that is, pass between the earth
and the sun, no matter what voyages may be undertaken by the in
habitants of earth. Mr. Clemens has confounded the monthly motion
of the moon with her daily motion. A traveller who could only go
fast enough eastward might keep the moon always due south. To do
this he would have to travel completely round the earth in a day and
(roughly) about 50| minutes. If he continued this for a whole month,
the moon would never leave the southern heavens ; but she would not
continue “ full.” In fact, we see that the hour of the day (local time)
would be continually changing—since the traveller would not go round
once in twenty-four hours (which would be following the sun, and
would cause the hour of the day to remain always the same), but in
twenty-four hours and the best part of another hour; so that the day
would seem to pass on, though very slowly, lasting a lunar month in
stead of a common day.
Every one who makes a long sea-voyage must have noted the im
portance attached to moon observations; and many are misled into
the supposition that these observations are directly intended for the
determination of the longitude (or, which is the same thing in effect,
for determining true ship-time). This, however, is a mistake. The
latitude can be determined at noon, as we have seen. A rough ap
proximation to the local time can be obtained also, and is commonly
obtained, by noting when the sun begins to dip after reaching the
highest part of his course above the horizon. But this is necessarily
only a rough approximation, and quite unsuited for determining the
ship’s longitude. For the sun’s elevation changes very slowly at
noon, and no dip can be certainly recognized, even from terrafirrna, far
less from a ship, within a few minutes of true noon. A determination
of time effected in this way serves very well for the ship’s “ watches,”
and accordingly when the sun, so observed, begins to dip, they strike
“ eight bells ” and “ make it noon.” But it would be a serious matter
for the crew if that was made the noon for working the ship’s place;
for an error of many miles would be inevitable.
The following passage from “Foul Play” illustrates the way in
�FINDING THE WAY AT SEA.
725
which mistakes have arisen on this point: The hero, who, being a cler
gyman and a university man, is, of course, a master of every branch
of science, is about to distinguish himself before the heroine by work
ing out the position of the ship Proserpine, whose captain is senseless
ly drunk. After ten days’ murky weather, “ the sky suddenly cleared,
and a rare opportunity occurred to take an observation. Hazel sug
gested to Wylie, the mate, the propriety of taking advantage of the
moment, as the fog-bank out of which they had just emerged would
soon envelop them again, and they had not more than an hour or so
of such observation available. The man gave a shuffling answer.
So he sought the captain in his cabin. He found him in bed. He
was dead drunk. On a shelf lay the instruments. These Hazel
took, and then looked round for the chronometers. They were safely
locked in their cases. He carried the instruments on deck, together
with a book of tables, and quietly began to make preparations, at
which Wylie, arresting his walk, gazed with utter astonishment ” (as
well he might).
“ ‘ Now, Mr. Wylie, I want the key of the chronometer-cases.’
“ ‘ Here is a chronometer, Mr. Hazel,’ said Helen, very innocently,
‘ if that is all you want.’
“ Hazel smiled, and explained that a ship’s clock is made to keep
the most exact time; that he did not require the time of the spot
where they were, but Greenwich time. He took the watch, however.
It was a large one for a lady to carry; but it was one of Frodsham’s
masterpieces.
“ ‘ Why, Miss Rolleston,’ said he, ‘ this watch must be two hours
slow. It marks ten o’clock; it is now nearly mid-day. Ah, I see,’ he
added, with a smile, ‘you have wound it regularly every day, but you
have forgotten to set it daily. Indeed, you may be right; it would be
a useless trouble, since we change our longitude hourly. Well, let us
suppose that this watch shows the exact time at Sydney, as I presume
it does, I can work the ship’s reckoning from that meridian, instead of
that of Greenwich.’ And he set about doing it.” Wylie, after some
angry words with Hazel, brings the chronometers and the charts.
Hazel “ verified Miss Rolleston’s chronometer, and, allowing for differ
ence of time, found it to be accurate. He returned it to her, and pro
ceeded to work on the chart. The men looked on; so did Wylie.
After a few moments, Hazel read as follows: ‘West longitude 146°
53' 18”. South latitude 35° 24'. The island of Oparo 1 and the Four
Crowns distant 420 miles on the N. N. E.,’ ” and so on. And, of course,
“ Miss Rolleston fixed her large, soft eyes on the young clergyman
with the undisguised admiration a woman is apt to feel for what she
does not understand.”
1 The island fixes the longitude at about It?0, otherwise I should have thought the 4
was a misprint for 7. In longitude 177° west, Sydney time would be about 2 hours slow,
but about 4 hours slow in longitude 147° west.
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
The scene here described corresponds pretty closely, I have little
doubt, with one actually witnessed by the novelist, except only that
the captain or chief officer made the observations, and that either
there had not been ten days’ murky weather, or else that in the fore
noon, several hours at least before noon, an observation of the sun had
been made. The noon observation would give the latitude, and com
bined with a forenoon observation, would give the longitude, but
alone would be practically useless for that purpose. It is curious that
the novelist sets the longitude as assigned much more closely than the
latitude, and the value given would imply that the ship’s time was
known within less than a second. This would in any case be imprac
ticable ; but, from noon observations, the time could not be learned
within a minute at the least. The real fact is, that, to determine true
time, the seaman selects, not noon, as is commonly supposed, but a
time when the sun is nearly due east or due west. For then the sun’s
elevation changes most rapidly, and so gives the surest means of de
termining the time. The reader can easily see the rationale of this by
considering the case of an ordinary clock-hand. Suppose our only
means of telling the time was by noting how high the end of the min
ute-hand was: then, clearly, we should be apt to make a greater mistake in estimating the time, when the hand was near XII., than at any
other time, because then its end changes very slowly in height, and a
minute more or less makes very little difference. On the contrary,
when the hand was near III. and IX., we could in a very few seconds
note any change of the height of its extremity. In one case we could
not tell the time within a minute or two; in the other, we could tell it
within a few seconds.
But the noon observation would be wanted to complete the deter
mination of the longitude ; for, until the latitude was known, the cap
tain would not be aware what apparent path the sun was describing
in the heavens, and therefore would not know the time corresponding
to any particular solar observation. So that a passenger, curious in
watching the captain’s work, would be apt to infer that the noon ob
servations gave the longitude, since he would perceive that from them
the captain worked out both the longitude and the latitude.
It is curious that another and critical portion of the same enter
taining novel is affected by the mistake of the novelist on this subject.
After the scuttling of the Proserpine, and other events, Hazel and Miss
Rolleston are alone on an island in the Pacific. Hazel seeks to deter
mine their position, as one step toward escape. Now, “ you must
know that Hazel, as he lay on his back in the boat, had often, in a
half-drowsy way, watched the effect of the sun upon the boat’s mast:
it now stood, a bare pole, and at certain hours acted like the needle of
a dial by casting a shadow on the sands. Above all, he could see
pretty well, by means of this pole and its shadow, when the sun at
tained its greatest elevation. He now asked Miss Rolleston to assist
�FINDING THE WAY AT SEA.
7*7
him in making this observation exactly. She obeyed his instructions,
and, the moment the shadow reached its highest angle and showed the
minutest symptom of declension, she said ‘Now,’ and Hazel called out
in a loud voice ” (why did he do that ?) “ ‘ Noon ! ’ ‘ And forty nine
minutes past eight at Sydney,’ said Helen, holding out her chronome
ter ; for she had been sharp enough to get it ready of her own accord.
Hazel looked at her and at the watch with amazement and incredulity.
‘ What ? ’ said he. ‘ Impossible 1 You can’t have kept Sydney time
all this while.’ ‘ And pray why not ? ’ said Helen. ‘ Have you forgot
ten that some one praised me for keeping Sydney time ? it helped you
somehow or other to know where we were.’ ” After some discussion,
in which she shows how natural it was that she should have wound up
her watch every night, even when “ neither of them expected to see
the morning,” she asks to be praised. “ ‘ Praised ! ’ cried Hazel, ex
citedly, ‘ worshipped, you mean. Why, we have got the longitude by
means of your chronometer. It is wonderful ! It is providential. It
is the finger of Heaven. Pen and ink, and let me work it out.’ ” He
was “ soon busy calculating the longitude of Godsend Island.” What
follows is even more curiously erroneous. “ ‘ There,’ said he. ‘Now,
the latitude I must guess at by certain combinations. In the first
place the slight variation in the length of the days. Then I must try
and make a rough calculation of the sun’s parallax.’ ” (It would have
been equally to the purpose to have calculated how many cows’ tails
would reach to the moon.) “ ‘ And then my botany will help me a
little ; spices furnish a clew ; there are one or two that will not grow
outside the tropic,’ ” and so on. He finally sets the latitude between
the 26th and 33d parallels, a range of nearly 500 miles. The longi
tude, however, which is much more closely assigned, is wrong alto
gether, being set at 3 O3-J-0 west, as the rest of the story requires. For
Godsend Island is within not many days’ sail of Valparaiso. The
mistake has probably arisen from setting Sydney in west longitude in
stead of east longitude, 151° 14' ; for the difference of time, 3h. 11m.,
corresponds within a minute to the difference of longitude between
151° 14' west and 103-£° west.
Mere mistakes of calculation, however, matter little in such cases.
They do not affect the interest of a story even in such extreme cases
as in “Ivanhoe,” where a full century is dropped in such sort that
one of Richard I.’s knights holds converse with a contemporary of
the Conqueror, who, if my memory deceives me not, was Cœur de
Lion’s great-great-grandfather. It is a pity, however, that a nov
elist or indeed any writer should attempt to sketch scientific methods
with which he is not familiar. No discredit can attach to any per
son, not an astronomer, who does not understand the astronomical
processes for determining latitude and longitude, any more than to
one who, not being a lawyer, is unfamiliar with the rules of convey
ancing. But, when an attempt is made by a writer of fiction to give
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an exact description of any technical matter, it is as well to secure
correctness by submitting the description to some friend acquainted
with the principles of the subject. For, singularly enough, people pay
much more attention to these descriptions when met with in novels,
than when given in text-books of science, and they thus come to re
member thoroughly well precisely what they ought to forget. I think
for instance, that it may not improbably have been some recollection
of “ Foul Play” which led Mr. Lockyer to make the surprising state
ment that longitude is determined at sea by comparing chronometer
time with local time, which is found “ at noon by observing, with the
aid of a sextant, when the sun is at the highest point of its path.”
Our novelists really must not lead the students of astronomy astray in
this manner.
It will be clear to the reader, by this time, that the great point
in determining the longitude is, to have the true time of Greenwich
or some other reference station, in order that, by comparing this time
with ship-time, the longitude east or west of the reference station may
be ascertained. Ship-time can always be determined by a morning
or afternoon observation of the sun, or by observing a known star
when toward the east or west, at which time the diurnal motion
raises or depresses it most rapidly. The latitude being known, the
time of day (any given day) at which the sun or a star should have
any particular altitude is known also, and, therefore, conversely, when
the altitude of the sun or a star has been noted, the seaman has learned
the time of day. But to find Greenwich time is another matter;
and, without Greenwich time, ship-time teaches nothing as to the lon
gitude. How is the voyager at sea or in desert places to know the
exact time at Greenwich or some other fixed station? We have seen
that chronometers are used for this purpose; and chronometers are
now made so marvellously perfect in construction that they can be
trusted to show true time within a few seconds, under ordinary con
ditions. But it must not be overlooked that in long voyages a chro
nometer, however perfect its construction, is more liable to get wrong
than at a fixed station. That it is continually tossed and shaken is
something, but is not the chief trial to which it is exposed. The
great changes of temperature endured, when a ship passes from the
temperate latitudes across the torrid zone to the temperate zone
again, try a chronometer far more severely than any ordinary form of
motion. And then it is to be noted that a very insignificant time
error corresponds to a difference of longitude quite sufficient to occa
sion a serious error in the ship’s estimated position. For this reason
and for others, it is desirable to have some means of determining
Greenwich time independently of chronometers.
This, in fact, is the famous problem for the solution of which such
high rewards were offered and have been given.1 It was to solve this
1 For invention of the chronometer, Harrison (a Yorkshire carpenter, and the son of
�FINDING THE WAY AT SEA.
77D
problem that Whiston, the same who fondly imagined Newton was
afraid of him,1 suggested the use of bombs and mortars ; for which
Hogarth pilloried him in the celebrated mad-house scene of the Rake’s
Progress. Of course Whiston had perceived the essential feature of
all methods intended for determining the longitude. Any signal
which is recognizable, no matter by eye or ear, or in whatsoever way,
at both stations, the reference station and the station whose longitude
is required, must necessarily suffice to convey the time of one station
to the other. The absurdity of Whiston’s scheme lay in the implied
supposition that any form of ordnance could propel rocket-signals far
enough to be seen or heard in mid-ocean. Manifestly the only signals
available, when telegraphic communication is impossible, are signals
in the celestial spaces, for these alone can be discerned simultaneously
from widely-distant parts of the earth. It has been to such signals,
then, that men of science have turned for the required means of de
termining longitude.
Galileo was the first to point out that the satellites of Jupiter sup
ply a series of signals which might serve to determine the longitude.
When one of these bodies is eclipsed in Jupiter’s shadow, or passes
out of sight behind Jupiter’s disk, or reappears from eclipse or occul
tation, the phenomenon is one which can be seen from a whole hemi
sphere of the earth’s surface. It is as truly a signal as the appear
ance or disappearance of a light in ordinary night-signalling. If it
can be calculated beforehand that one of these events will take place
at any given hour of Greenwich time, then, from whatever spot the
phenomenon is observed, it is known there that the Greenwich hour
is that indicated. Theoretically, this is a solution of the famous
problem ; and Galileo, the discoverer of Jupiter’s four satellites,
thought he had found the means of determining the longitude with
great accuracy. Unfortunately, these hopes have not been realized.
At sea, indeed, except in the calmest weather, it is impossible to ob
serve the phenomena of Jupiter’s satellites, simply because the tele
scope cannot be directed steadily upon the planet. But even on land
Jupiter’s satellites afford but imperfect means of guessing at the
longitude. For, at present, their motions have not been thoroughly
mastered by astronomers, and though the Nautical Almanac gives
the estimated epochs for the various phenomena of the four satellites,
a carpenter) received £20,000. This sum had been offered for a marine chronometer
which would stand the test of two voyages of assigned length. Harrison labored fifty
years before he succeeded in meeting the required condition.
1 Newton, for excellent reasons, had opposed Whiston’s election to the Royal Society.
Like most small men, Whiston was eager to secure a distinction which, unless sponta
neously offered to him, could have conferred no real honor. Accordingly he was amusingly
indignant with Newton for opposing him. “ Newton perceived,” he wrote, “ that I could
not do as his other darling friends did, that is, learn of him without contradicting him
when I differed in opinion from him : he could not in his old age bear such contradiction,
and so he was afraid of me the last thirteen years of his life.”
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yet, owing to the imperfection of the tables, these epochs are often
found to be appreciably in error. There is yet another difficulty.
The satellites are not mere points, but, being in reality also as large
as or larger than our moon, they have disks of appreciable though
small dimensions. Accordingly, they do not vanish or reappear in
stantaneously, but gradually, the process lasting in reality several
seconds (a longer or shorter time, according to the particular satellites
considered), and the estimated moment of the phenomenon thus comes
to depend on the power of the telescope employed, or the skill or the
visual powers of the observer, or the condition of the atmosphere, and
so on. Accordingly, very little reliance could be placed on such ob
servations as a mean for determining the longitude with any consid
erable degree of exactness.
No other celestial phenomena present themselves except those
depending on the moon’s motions.1 All the planets, as well as the
sun and moon, traverse at various rates and in different paths the
sphere of the fixed stars. But the moon alone moves with sufficient
1 If but one star or a few would periodically (and quite regularly) “ go out ” for a few
moments, the intervals between such vanishings being long enough to insure that one
would not be mistaken in point of time for the next or following one, then it would be pos
sible to determine Greenwich or other reference time with great exactness. And here
one cannot but recognize an argument against the singular theory that the stars were in
tended simply as lights to adorn our heavens and to be of use to mankind. The ideolo
gists who have adopted this strange view can hardly show how the theory is consistent
with the fact that quite readily the stars (or a few of them) might have been so contrived
as to give man the means of travelling with much more security over the length and
breadth of his domain than is at present possible. In this connection I venture to quote
a passage in which Sir John Herschel has touched on the usefulness of the stars, in terms
which, were they not corrected by other and better-known passages in his writings,
might suggest that he had adopted the theory I have just mentioned: “The stars,” he
said, in an address to the Astronomical Society, in 1827, “ are landmarks of the universe;
and, amid the endless and complicated fluctuations of our system, seem placed by its
Creator as guides and records, not merely to elevate our minds by the contemplation
of what is vast, but to teach us to direct our actions by reference to what is immutable
in his works. It is indeed hardly possible to over-appreciate their value in this point
of view. Every well-determined star, from the moment its place is registered, becomes
to the astronomer, the geographer, the navigator, the surveyor, a point of departure
which can never deceive or fail him—the same forever and in all places, of a delicacy
so extreme as to be a test for every instrument yet invented by man, yet equally adapted
for the most ordinary purposes; as available for regulating a town-clock as for con
ducting a navy to the Indies; as effective for mapping down the intricacies of a petty
barony as for adjusting the boundaries of transatlantic empires. When once its place
has been thoroughly ascertained, and carefblly recorded, the brazen circle with which
the useful work was done may moulder, the marble pillar may totter on its base, and
the astronomer himself survive only in the gratitude of posterity; but the record remains,
and transfuses all its own exactness into every determination which takes it for a
groundwork, giving to inferior instruments, nay, even to temporary contrivances, and
to the observations of a few weeks or days, all the precision attained originally at the
cost of so much time, labor, and expense.” It is only necessary, as a corrective to the
erroneous ideas which might otherwise be suggested by this somewhat high-flown pas
sage, to quote the following remarks from the work which represented Sir John Her-
�FINDING THE WAY AT SEA.
731
rapidity to act as a time indicator for terrestrial voyagers. It is hardly
necessary to explain why rapidity of motion is important; but the
following illustration may be given for the purpose. The hour-hand
of a clock does in reality indicate the minute as well as the hour;
yet, owing to the slowness of its motion, we regard the hour-hand as
an unsatisfactory time-indicator, and only consider it as showing what
hour is in progress. So with the more slowly-moving celestial bodies.
They would serve well enough, at least some among them would, to
show the day of the year, if we could only imagine that such informa
tion were ever required from celestial bodies. But it would be hope
less to attempt to ascertain the true time with any degree of accuracy
from their motions. Now, the moon really moves with considerable
rapidity among the stars.1 She completes the circuit of the celestial
sphere in 27£ days (a period less than the common lunation), so that
in one day she traverses about 13°, or her own diameter (which is
rather more than half a degree), in about an hour. This, astronomi
cally speaking, is very rapid motion; and, as it can be detected in a
few seconds by telescopic comparison of the moon’s place with that
of some fixed star, it serves to show the time within a few seconds,
which is precisely what is required by the seaman. Theoretically, all
he has to do is, to take the moon’s apparent distance from a known
star, and also her height and the star’s height above the horizon.
Thence he can calculate what would be the moon’s distance from the
star at the moment of observation, if the observer were at the earth’s
centre. But the Nautical Almanac informs him of the precise instant
of Greenwich time corresponding to this calculated distance. So he
has, what he requires, the true Greenwich time.
It will be manifest that all methods of finding the way at sea,
except the rough processes depending on the log and compass, re
quire that the celestial bodies, or some of them, should be seen.
Hence it is that cloudy weather, for any considerable length of time,
occasions danger, and sometimes leads to shipwreck and loss of life.
Of course the captain of a ship proceeds with extreme caution when
the weather has long been cloudy, especially if, according to his reck
oning, he is drawing near shore. Then the lead comes into play, that
by soundings, if possible, the approach to shore may be indicated,
schel’s more matured views, his well-known “ Outlines of Astronomy:” “For what
purpose are we to suppose such magnificent bodies scattered through the abyss of
space ? Surely not to illuminate our nights, which an additional moon of the thousandth
part of the size of our own world would do much better; nor to sparkle as a pageant
void of meaning and reality, and bewilder us among vain conjectures. Useful, it is
true, they are to man as points of exact and permanent reference, but he must have
studied astronomy to little purpose, who can suppose man to be the only object of his
Creator’s care; or who does not see, in the vast and wonderful apparatus around us,
provision for other races of animated beings.”
1 It was this doubtless which led to the distinction recognized in the book of Job,
where the moon is described as “ walking in brightness.”
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
Then, also, by day and night, a careful watch is kept for the signs of
land. But it sometimes happens that, despite all such precautions, a
ship is lost; for there are conditions of weather which, occurring when
a ship is nearing shore, render the most careful lookout futile. These
conditions may be regarded as included among ordinary sea-risks, by
which term are understood all such dangers as would leave a captain
blameless if shipwreck occurred. It would be well if no ships were
ever lost save from ordinary sea-risks; but, unfortunately, ships are
sometimes cast ashore for want of care ; either in maintaining due
watch as the shore is approached, or taking advantage of oppor
tunities, which may be few and far between, for observing sun, or
moon, or stars, as the voyage proceeds. It may safely be said that
the greater number of avoidable shipwrecks have been occasioned by
the neglect of due care in finding the way at sea.
SECULAR PROPHECY.
LTHOUGH prophecy is usually supposed to be the special gift
of inspiration, nothing comes more glibly from secular pens.
Half of the leading articles in the daily newspapers are more or less
disguised predictions. The prophecies of the Times are more numer
ous, more confident, and more explicit, than those of Jeremiah or Isaiah.
“ Secular Prophecy fulfilled” would be a good title for a book written
after the model of those old and half-educated divines who zealously
looked through Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, and the Apocalypse, for
shadowy hints that Hildebrand would enforce celibacy on the clergy
of the Latin Church ; that Luther would cut up the Christianity of the
West into two sections; that Cromwell would sign the death-warrant
of Charles I.; and that the Stuarts would become wanderers over the
face of the earth. There are still, we believe, devout, mystical, and
studious sectaries, who find such events as the disestablishment of
the Irish Church and the meeting of the Vatican Council plainly fore
told in the book of Revelation. They also find Mr. Gladstone’s name
written in letters of fire by inspired pens that left their record while
the captivity of Babylon was a recent memory, or while Nero was the
scourge of the Church. Nay, Dr. Cumming, who is as different from
those mystical interpreters as a smart Yankee trader is from Parson
Adams, sees that the Prophet Daniel and St. John had a still more
minute acquaintance with the home and Continental politics of these
latter days. But “ Secular Prophecy fulfilled ” would show a much
more wonderful series of glimpses into the future than we find in the
interpretations of Dr. Cumming, and it would certainly bring together
a strange set of soothsayers.
�SECULAR PROPHECY.
733
Arthur Young, Lord Chesterfield, and William Cobbett, are not
exactly the kind of men whom we should expect to find among the
prophets. Arthur Young was a shrewd traveller, with a keen eye for
leading facts, and a remarkable power of describing what he saw in
plain, homely words. Chesterfield was a literary and philosophical
dandy, who, richly furnished with the small coin of wisdom, and fear
ing nothing so much as indecorum, would have been a great teacher
if the earth had been a drawing-room. Cobbett was a coarse, rough
English farmer, with an extraordinary power of reasoning at the dic
tate of his prejudices, and with such a faculty of writing racy, vigorous
English as excites the admiration and the despair of scholars. It seems
almost ludicrous to speak of such men as prophets. And yet Arthur
Young foretold the coming of the French Revolution at a time when
the foremost men of France did not dream that the greatest of political
convulsions was soon to lay low the proudest of monarchies. And the
dandified morality of Lord Chesterfield did not prevent him from
making a similar prediction. Cobbett made a guess which was still
more notable ; for, at the beginning of the present century, he foretold
the secession of the Southern States. But the most remarkable of all
the secular prophets who have spoken to our time is Heine. He might
seem indeed to have been a living irony on the very name of prophet,
for he read backward all the sanctities of religion and all the com
mands of the moral law. Essentially a humorist, to whom life seemed
now the saddest of mysteries, and now the most laughable of jokes, he
made sport of every thing that he touched. His most fervid English
devotee, Mr. Matthew Arnold, is forced to admit that he was pro
foundly disrespectable. He quarrelled with his best friends for frivo
lously petty reasons, and he repaid their kindness by writing lampoons
which are masterpieces at once of literary skill and of malignity.
Neither Voltaire nor Pope scattered calumnies with such a lack of scru
ple, and Byron himself was not a more persistent or more systematic
voluptuary. Yet Heine was so true a prophet that his predictions
might have been accounted the work of inspiration if he had been as
famed for piety or purity as he was notorious for irreligion and profli
gacy. He predicted that Germany and France would fight, and that
France would be utterly put down. He predicted that the line of for
tifications which M. Thiers was then building round Paris would draw
to the capital a great hostile army, and that they would crush the
city as if they were a contracting iron shroud. He predicted that the
Communists would some day get the upper hand in Paris, that they
would strike in a spirit of fiendish rage at the statues, the beautiful
buildings, and all the other tangible marks of the civilization which
they sought to destroy; that they would throw down the Vendome
Column in their hate of the man who had made France the foe of
every other people ; and that they would further show their execration
for his memory by taking his ashes from the Invalides and flinging
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
them into the Seine. All these predictions, save the last, have been
fulfilled to the letter, and it would need a bolder prophet than even
Heine himself to say that the last will not be verified also. For
nothing is more remarkable in France than the success with which the
International is teaching the artisans that the first as well as the third
Napoleon was the worst enemy of their class. Although they still
regard his achievements with pride, they fervently believe that he was
the foe of their order, and the acts of the Commune showed their
eagerness to insult his name. And there may be another Commune.
Intrepid prophets would say that there certainly will be another. If
that should happen, it is quite possible that the fanatics of the In
ternational may fling the ashes of the great soldier into the Seine to
mark their abhorrence of military glory.
Prevost-Paradol was as different from Heine as a gifted voluptuary
can be from a polished, fastidious, and decorous gentleman. Yet the
refined, reserved, satirical Orleanist, who seemed to be uncomfortable
when his hands were not encased in kid gloves, and who was a mas
ter of all the literary resources of innuendo, would be as much out of
place among the Hebrew prophets as Heine himself. He would find
a place, nevertheless, in “ Secular Prophecy fulfilled,” by reason of
the startling exactness with which he foretold the outbreak of the
war between his own country and Germany. In a passage which
promises to become classic, he said that the two nations were like
two trains which, starting from opposite points, and placed on the
same line of rails, were driven toward each other at full speed.
There must be a collision. The only doubt was, where it would
happen, and when, and with what results. De Tocqueville better
fulfilled the traditionary idea of a prophet, and there is a startling
accuracy in some of the predictions as to the future of France which
he flung forth in talking with his friends, and of which we find a
partial record in the journal of Mr. Nassau Senior. Eighteen years
before the fall of the empire, he predicted that it would wreck itself
“ in some extravagant foreign enterprise.” “ War,” he added, “ would
assuredly be its death, but its death would perhaps cost dear.” M.
Renan also aspires to a place among the prophets, and he has made
a prediction which may be a subject of some curiosity when the next
pope shall be elected. The Church of Rome will not, he says, be
split up by disputes about doctrine. But he does look for a schism,
and it will come, he thinks, when some papal election shall be deemed
invalid; when there shall be two competing pontiffs, and Europe
shall see a renewal of the strife between Rome and Avignon.
It may be said, no doubt, that the verified predictions which we
have cited are only stray hits; that the oracles make still more re
markable misses; and that, since guesses about the future are shot off
every hour of the day, it would be a marvel if the bull’s-eye were not
struck sometimes. Such a theory might suffice to account for the hits,
�SECULAR PROPHECY.
735
if the prophecies were let off in the dark and at random ; but that is
not the case. It is easy to trace the path along which the mind of
Heine or De Tocqueville travelled to the results of the future, and.
their predictions betray nothing more wonderful than a rare power of
drawing correct inferences from confused facts. A set of general rules
might be laid down as a guide to prophecy. In the first place, we
might give the negative caution that the analogy of past events is mis
leading, because the same set of conditions does not appear at two
different times, and an almost unseen element might suffice to deter
mine an all-important event. Forgetting this fact, Archbishop Man
ning has ventured into the field of prophecy with the argument that
Catholics should not be made uneasy because the pope has lost his
temporal power, for they should remember that he has again and
again suffered worse calamities, and has then won back all his old au
thority. Between 1378 and 1418 the Church witnessed the scandal of
a schism, in which there were rival popes, and in which Rome and
Avignon competed for the mastery. That calamity is worse than any
which has come to the Church in our days, yet the Papacy regained
its old power and glory. So late as within the present century the
temporal power was reduced to nullity by the first Napoleon, and
Pius TX. himself had to flee from Rome in the beginning of his reign.
Why, then, should not the robber-band of Victor Emmanuel be
paralyzed in turn, and the Papacy once more regain its old splendor ?
Not being ambitious to play the part of prophets, we do not undertake
to say whether the Papacy will or will not again climb or be flung into
its ancient place, but it is not the less certain that Archbishop Man
ning’s prophecy is a conspicuous example of a false inference. When
he argues that a pope in the nineteenth century will again be the tem
poral ruler of Rome because a pope triumphed over the schism of
Avignon in the fifteenth, he forgets that the lapse of centuries has
wrought a vast change of conditions. At the end of the fourteenth
century a keen onlooker, a Heine or a De Tocqueville, might have con
fidently foretold that a pope of unquestioned authority would soon
govern the historic city of the Papacy, because the political and the
social interests of Europe, no less than the piety or superstition of the
times, required that the pope should be powerful and free. The cur
rent of the age, if we may use the philosophical slang, was running
from Avignon to Rome in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and
now the current of the age is not less distinctly running against the
temporal power. The very reasons which would have led a prophet
in 1400 to predict that Rome would again be the unquestioned seat of
the Papacy would lead the same soothsayer to affirm in 1873 that the
temporal power has been shattered forever.
It is in general causes that we find the guide of prophecy. Mr.
Buckle attached so much importance to the physical conditions of a
country, the food of a people, the air they breathe, the occupations
�736
I HE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
which they are forced to follow, and the habits of thought which they
display, that he undertook to tell the end of a nation from the begin
ning. Spain was no mystery to him when he remembered that it had
originally been a country of volcanoes ; that the people had conse
quently been filled with a dread of the unseen and inscrutable power
which reveals itself in convulsions of the earth; that their diseased
fear of shadowy influences made them resent the teachings of science,
and hence left them an easy prey to the Holy Office and Ignatius
Loyola when Luther, Calvin, and Zwingle, drew away from sacerdotal
ism all the Christianity of Northern Europe. There can be no doubt
that Buckle’s theory did rest on a basis of truth, and that it erred
simply by trying to account for every thing. In fact, it is not spe
cially his doctrine, but simply the rigid and systematized application
of a principle which is as old as speculative curiosity. We apply it
every day of our lives. If a family go into a badly-drained house,
we say the chances are that they will have typhus, diarrhoea, or chol
era. If a rich and foolish young man bets largely on the turf, the prob
ability is that he will be ruined. And the statistician comes to help
us with a set of tables which throw uncomfortable light on the me
chanical character of those mental and moral processes which might
seem to be determined by the unprompted bidding of our own wills.
Mr. Buckle was no doubt beguiled by a mere dream when he fancied
that we could account for every turn and winding in the history of a
country if we had only a large knowledge of its general conditions,
such as the temperature of the land, the qualities of the soil, the food
of the people, and their relations to their neighbors. He paid too
little heed to subtle qualities of race, and he did not make sufficient
allowance for the disturbing force of men gifted with extraordinary
power of brain and will. Still it is a mere truism that the more cor
rectly and fully we know the general condition of a country, the more
does mystery vanish from its history, and the successive events tend
to take their place in orderly sequence.
It is impossible, however, to prophesy by rule, and such system
mongers as Mr. Buckle would be the most treacherous of all ora<?les.
Their hard and fast canons will not bend into the subtle crevices of
human life. Men who are so ostentatiously logical that they cannot
do a bit of thinking without the aid of a huge apparatus of sharplycut principles always lack a keen scent for truth. They blunder by
rule when less showy people find their way by mother-wit. Hence
they are the worst of all prophets. It was not by counting up how
many things tell in one way, and how many tell in another, that Heine
and De Tocqueville were able to guess correctly what was coming, but
by watching the chief currents of the age, or, as more homely folk
would say, by finding out which way the wind was blowing. They
had to decide which among many social, religious, or political forces
were the strongest, and which would be the most lasting. They had
�SYMPATHETIC VIBRATIONS IN MACHINERY. 737
to give a correct decision as to the stability of particular institutions
and the strength of popular passions. General rules could not be of
much avail, and they had to rely on their knowledge of human nature,
their acquaintance with the forces which have been at work in history,
and their own sagacity. Most likely Heine could not have given such
an explanation of the grounds on which he made his predictions as
would have satisfied any average jury of historical students. But he
could have said that he knew the working-men of Paris; that his
power of poetic sympathy enabled him to see how their minds veered
toward socialism, and he also knew what forces were on the side of
order; and that a mental comparison of the two made him look with
certainty to a ferocious outbreak of democratic passion. Being thus
sure that the storm would come, he had next to ask himself which
points the lightning would strike, and he looked for the most promi
nent symbols of kingship, wealth, refinement, and military glory. The
Tuileries would be a mark for the fury of the mob, because that was
the palace of the man who had destroyed the populace. The public
offices must go, because they represented what the bourgeois called order
and the workmen called tyranny. The Louvre must go, for the mere
sake of maddening rich people who took a delight in art. And the
Vendóme Column must go, because it glorified a man who was the in
carnation of the w ar-spirit, and who was consequently the w’orst foe
of the working-classes. To a select committee of the House of Com
mons such reasons would have seemed the dreams of a moon-struck
visionary, and they certainly did not admit of being logically defended.
No prophecy does. The power of predicting events is the power of
guessing, and those guess best who are least dependent on rules, and
most gifted with the mother-wit which works with the quietude and
unconsciousness of instinct.—Saturday Review.
4«»
SYMPATHETIC VIBRATIONS IN MACHINERY.*
By Pbof. J. LOVEEING,
.
OF HARVARD COLLEGE.
T the meeting of this Association in Burlington, I showed some
experiments in illustration of the optical method of making sen
sible the vibrations of the column of air in an organ-pipe. At the
Chicago meeting I demonstrated the way in which the vibrations of
strings could be studied by the eye in place of the ear, when these
strings were attached to tuning-forks with which they could vibrate in
sympathy; substituting for the small forks, originally used by Melde,
A
1 From the Proceedings of the Twenty-first Meeting of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science.
—47
vol. hi.
�738
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
a colossal tuning-fork, the prongs of which were placed between the
poles of a powerful electro-magnet. This fork, which interrupted
the battery current, at the proper time, by its own motion, was
able to put a heavy cord, thirty feet in length, in the most ener
getic vibration, and for an indefinite time. I propose, at the present
time, to speak of those sympathetic vibrations which are pitched so
low as not to come within the limits of human ears, but which are
felt rather than heard, and to show how they may be seen as well
as felt.
All structures, large or small, simple or complex, have a definite
rate of vibration, depending on their materials, size, and shape, and as
fixed as the fundamental note of a musical cord. They may also vi
brate in parts, as the cord does, and thus be capable of various increas
ing rates of vibration, which constitute their harmonics. If one body
vibrates, all others in the neighborhood will respond, if the rate of
vibration in the first agrees with their own principal or secondary
rates of vibration, even when no more substantial bond than the air
unites a body with its neighbors. In this way, mechanical disturb
ances, harmless in their origin, assume a troublesome and perhaps a
dangerous character, when they enter bodies all too ready to move at
the required rate, and sometimes beyond the sphere of their stability.
When the bridge at Colebrooke Dale (the first iron bridge in the
world) was building, a fiddler came along and said to the workmen
that he could fiddle their bridge down. The builders thought this
boast a fiddle-de-dee, and invited the itinerant musician to fiddle away
to his heart’s content. One note after another was struck upon the
strings until one was found with which the bridge was in sympathy.
When the bridge began to shake violently, the incredulous workmen
were alarmed at the unexpected result, and ordered the fiddler to stop.
At one time, considerable annoyance was experienced in one of
the mills in Lowell, because the walls of the building and the floors
were violently shaken by the machinery: so much so that, on certain
days, a pail of water would be nearly emptied of its contents, while on
other days all was quiet. Upon investigation it appeared that the
building shook in response to the motion of the machinery only when
that moved at a particular rate, coinciding with one of the harmoriics
of the structure ; and the simple remedy for the trouble consisted in
making the machinery move at a little more or a little less speed, so
as to put it out of time with the building.
We can easily believe that, in many cases, these violent vibrations
will loosen the cement and derange the parts of a building, so that it
may afterward fall under the pressure of a weight which otherwise
it was fully able to bear, and at a time, possibly, when the machinery
is not in motion; and this may have something to do with such acci
dents as that which happened to the Pemberton Mills in Lawrence.
Large trees are uprooted in powerful gales, because the wind comes in
�SYMPATHETIC VIBRATIONS IN MACHINERY,
gusts; and, if these gusts happen to be timed in accordance with the
natural swing of the tree, the effect is irresistible. The slow vibra
tions which proceed from the largest pipes of a large organ, and
which are below the range of musical sounds, are able to shake the
walls and floors of a building so as to be felt, if not heard, thereby
furnishing a background of noise on which the true musical sounds
may be projected.
We have here the reason of the rule observed by marching ar
mies when they cross a bridge; viz., to stop the music, break step,
and open column, lest the measured cadence of a condensed mass of
men should urge the bridge to vibrate beyond its sphere of cohesion.
A neglect of this rule has led to serious accidents. The Broughton
bridge, near Manchester, gave way beneath the measured tread of
only sixty men who were marching over it. The celebrated engineer,
Robert Stephenson, has remarked 1 that there is not so much danger
to a bridge, when it is crowded with men or cattle, or if cavalry are
passing over it, as when men go over it in marching order. A
chain-bridge crosses the river Dordogne on the road to Bordeaux.
One of the Stephensons passed over it in 1845, and was so much struck
with its defects, although it had been recently erected, that he noti
fied the authorities in regard to them. A few years afterward it
gave way when troops were marching over it.’
A few years ago, a terrible disaster befell a battalion of French
infantry, while crossing the suspension-bridge at Angers, in France.
Reiterated warnings were given to the troops to break into sections,
as is usually done. But the rain was falling heavily, and, in the hurry
of the moment, the orders were disregarded. The bridge, which was
only twelve years old, and which had been repaired the year before at
a cost of $7,000, fell, and 280 dead bodies were found, besides many
who were wounded. Among the killed or drowned were the chief of
battalion and four other officers. Many of the guns were bent double,
and one musket pierced completely through the body of a soldier.
The wholesale slaughter at the bridge of Beresina, in Russia, when
Napoleon was retreating from Moscow, in 1812, and his troops crowded
upon the bridge and broke it, furnishes a fitting parallel to this great
calamity.
When Galileo set a pendulum in strong vibration by blowing on it
whenever it was moving away from his mouth, he gave a good illus
tration of the way in which small but regularly-repeated disturbances
grow into consequence. Tyndall tells us that the Swiss muleteers tie
up the bells of the mules, for fear that the tinkle should bring an
avalanche down. The breaking of a drinking-glass by the human
voice, when its fundamental note is sounded, is a well-authenticated
feat; and Chladni mentions an innkeeper who frequently repeated the
1 Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, vol. v., p. 255.
• Smiles’s “ Life of Stephenson,” p. 390.
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
experiment for the entertainment of his guests and his own profit.
The nightingale is said to kill by the power of its notes. The bark of
a dog is able to call forth a response from certain strings of the piano.
And a curious passage has been pointed out in the Talmud, which dis
cusses the indemnity to be claimed when a vessel is broken by the
voice of a domestic animal. If we enter the domain of music, there
is no end to the illustrations which might be given of these sympathetic
vibrations. They play a conspicuous part in most musical instru
ments, and the sounds which these instruments produce would be
meagre and ineffective without them.
In the case of vibrations which are simply mechanical, without
being audible, or at any rate musical, the following ocular demonstra
tion may be given: A train of wheels, set in motion by a strong
spring wound up in a drum, causes an horizontal spindle to revolve
with great velocity. Two pieces of apparatus like this are placed at
the opposite sides of a room. On the ends of the spindles which face
one another are attached buttons about an inch in diameter, The two
ends of a piece of white tape are fastened to the rims of these buttons.
When the spindles, with the attached buttons, revolve, the two ends of
the tape revolve, and in such directions as to prevent the tape from twistunless the velocities are different. Even if the two trains of wheels
move with unequal velocities, when independent of each other, the
motions tend to uniformity when the two spindles are connected by
the tape. Now, by moving slightly the apparatus at one end of the
room, the tape may be tightened or loosened. If the tape is tight
ened, its rate of vibration is increased, and, at the same time, the ve
locity of the spindles is diminished on account of the greater resist
ance. If the tape is slackened, its rate of vibration is less, and the
velocity of the spindles is greater. By this change we can readily
bring the fundamental vibi’ation of the tape into unison with the machinery, and then the tape responds by a vibration of great amplitude,
visible to all beholders. If we begin gradually to loosen the tape, it
soon ceases to respond, on account of the twofold effect already de
scribed, until the time comes when the velocity of the machinery ac
cords with the first harmonic of the tape, and the latter divides beau
tifully into two vibrating segments with a node at the middle. As
the tension slowly diminishes, the different harmonics are successively
developed, until finally the tape is broken up into numerous segments
only an inch or two in length. The eye is as much delighted by this
visible music as the ear could be if the vibrations were audible; and
the optical demonstration has this advantage, that all may see, while
few have musical ears. A tape is preferred to a cord in this experi
ment, because it is better seen, and any accidental twist it may ac
quire is less troublesome.
�SPECULATION IN SCIENCE.
741
SPECULATION IN SCIENCE.1
By Pbof. J. LAWRENCE SMITH.
NOW pass to the second part of my discourse. It is in reference
to the methods of modern science—the caution to be observed in
pursuing it, if we do not wish to pervert its end by too confident as
sertions and deductions.
It is a very common attempt, nowadays, for scientists to transcend
the limits of their legitimate studies, and in doing this they run into
speculations apparently the most unphilosophical, wild, and absurd;
quitting the true basis of inductive philosophy, and building up the
most curious theories on little else than assertion; speculating upon
the merest analogy; adopting the curious views of some metaphysi
cians, as Edward von Hartmann; striving to work out speculative
results by the inductive method of natural science.
And such an example as this is of great value to the reflective
mind, teaching caution, and demonstrating the fact that, while the
rules by which we are guided in scientific research are far in advance
of those of ancient days, we must not conclude that they are perfect
by any means. In our modern method of investigation how many
conspicuous examples of deception we have had in pursuing even the
best method of investigation ! Take, for instance, the science of ge
ology, from the time of Werner to the present day. While we always
thought we had the true interpretation of the structural phenomena
of the globe, as we progressed from year to year, yet how vastly dif
ferent are our interpretations of the present day from what they were
in the time of Werner! In chemistry, the same thing is true. How
clearly were all things explained to the chemist of the last century by
Phlogiston, which, in the present century, receive no credence, and
chemical phenomena are now viewed in an entirely different light!
Lavoisier, in the latter part of the last century, elucidated the phe
nomena of respiration and the production of animal heat by one of the
most beautiful theories, based, to all appearances, upon well-observed
facts; yet, at the present day, more delicate observations, and the
discovery of the want of balance between the inhaled oxygen and ex
haled carbonic acid, subverted that beautiful theory, and we are left
entirely without one. It is true we have collated a number of facts
in regard to respiration, molecular changes in the tissues, etc., all of
which are recognized as having something to do with animal heat;
still it is acknowledged that we are incapable of giving any concrete
expression to the phenomena of respiration and animal heat as La
voisier did eighty or ninety years ago.
I
1 Abstract of the address before the American Association for the Advancement of
Science, at its late meeting in Portland, Me., by the retiring president.
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
Electricity is the same now as it has ever been, yet it was once
spoken of as a fluid, then as a force, now as an energy readily con
vertible into caloric or mechanical energy; and in what light it will
be considered fifty years hence no one can predict.
Now, what I desire to enforce here is, that amid all these changes
and revolutions of theories, so called, it is simply man, the inter
preter, that has erred, and not Nature; her laws are the same; we
simply have not been able to read them correctly, and perhaps never
will be.
AVhat, it may be asked, are we to do, then ? Must we cease
theorizing ? Not at all. The lesson to be learned from this is to be
more modest in our generalizations; to generalize as far as our carefully-made-out facts will permit us, and no further; check the imagina
tion, and let it not run riot and shipwreck us upon some metaphysical
quicksand.
The fact is, it becomes a question whether there is such a thing as
pure theory in science. No true scientific theory deserves the name
that is not based on verified hypothesis; in fact, it is but a concise in
terpretation of the deductions of scientific facts. Dumas has well said
that theories are like crutches, the strength of them is, to be tested
by attempting to walk with them. And I might further add, that very
often scientists, who are without sure-footed facts to carry them along,
take to these crutches.
It is common to speak of the theory of gravitation, when there is
nothing purely hypothetical in connection with the manner in which it
was studied; in it we only see a clear generalization of observed laws
which govern the mutual attraction of bodies. If at any time New
ton did assume an hypothesis, it was only for the purpose of facilitat
ing his calculations: “Newton’s passage from the falling of an apple
to the falling of a moon was at the outset a leap of the imagination; ”
but it was this hypothesis, verified by mathematics, which gave to the
so-called theory of gravitation its present status.
In regard to light, we are in the habit of connecting with it a pure
hypothesis, viz., the impressions of light being produced by emission
from luminous bodies, or by the undulation of an all-pervading, at
tenuated medium; and these hypotheses are to be regarded as probable
so long as the phenomena of light are explained by them, and no
longer. The failure to explain one single well-observed fact is suffi
cient to cast doubt upon or subvert any pure hypothesis, as has been
the case with the emission theory of light, and may be the fate of the
undulatory theory, which, however, up to the present time, serves in
all cases.
It is not my object to criticise the speculations of any one or more
of the modern scientists who have carried their investigations into
the world of the imagination; in fact, it could not be done in a dis
course so limited as this, and one only intended as a prologue to the
�SPECULATION IN SCIENCE.
743
present meeting. But, in order to illustrate this subject of method
more fully, I will refer to Darwin, whose name has become synonymous
with progressive development and natural selection, which we had
thought had died out with Lamarck fifty years ago. In Darwin we
have one of those philosophers whose great knowledge of animal and
vegetable life is only transcended by his imagination. In fact, he is
to be regarded more as a metaphysician with a highly-wrought im
agination than as a scientist, although a man having a most wonderful
knowledge of the facts of natural history. In England and America
we find scientific men of the profoundest intellects differing completely
in regard to his logic, analogies, and deductions; and in Germany and
France the same thing—in the former of these countries some specu
lators saying that “his theory is our starting-point,” and in France
many of her best scientific men not ranking the labors of Darwin with
those of pure science. Darwin takes up the law of life, and runs it
into progressive development. In doing this, he seems to me to in
crease the embarrassment which surrounds us on looking into the mys
teries of creation. He is not satisfied to leave the laws of life where
he finds them, or to pursue their study by logical and inductive rea
soning. His method of reasoning will not allow him to remain at
rest; he must be moving onward in his unification of the universe.
He started with the lower order of animals, and brought them through
their various stages of progressive development until he supposed he
had touched the confines of man ; he then seems to have recoiled, and
hesitated to pass the boundary which separated man from the lower
order of animals ; but he saw that all his previous logic was bad if he
stopped there, so man was made from the ape (with which no one can
find fault, if the descent be legitimate). This stubborn logic pushes
him still further, and he must find some connecting link between that
most remarkable property of the human face called expression; so his
ingenuity has given us a very curious and readable treatise on that
subject. Yet still another step must be taken in this linking together
man and the lower order of animals ; it is in connection with language;
and before long it is not unreasonable to expect another production
from that most wonderful and ingenious intellect on the connection be
tween the language of man and the brute creation.
Let us see for a moment what this reasoning from analogy would
lead us to. The chemist has as much right to revel in the imaginary
formation of sodium from potassium, or iodine and bromine from
chlorine, by a process of development, and call it science, as for the
naturalist to revel in many of his wild speculations, or for the physicist
who studies the stellar space to imagine it permeated by mind as well
as light—mind such as has formed the poet, the statesman, or the
philosopher. Yet any chemist who would quit his method of investi
gation, of marking every foot of his advance by some indelible im
print, and go back to the speculations of Albertus Magnus, Roger
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
Bacon, and other alchemists of former ages, would soon he dropped
from the list of chemists and ranked with dreamers and speculators.
What I have said is, in my humble opinion, warranted by the de
parture Darwin and others have made from true science in their purely
speculative studies; and neither he nor any other searcher after truth
expects to hazard great and startling opinions without at the same
time courting and desiring criticism; yet dissension from his views in
no way proves him wrong—it only shows how his ideas impress the
minds of other men. And just here let me contrast the daring of
Darwin with the position assumed by one of the great French natural
ists of the present day, Prof. Quatrefages, in a recent discourse of his
on the physical character of the human race. In referring to the ques
tion of the first origin of man, he says distinctly that, in his opinion,
it is one that belongs not to science; these questions are treated
by theologians and philosophers: “Neither here nor at the Museum
am I, nor do I wish to be, either a theologian or a philosopher. I
am simply a man of science; and it is in the name of comparative
physiology, of botanical and zoological geography, of geology and
paleontology, in the name of the laws which govern man as well as
animals and plants, that I have always spoken.” And, studying man
as a scientist, he goes on to say: “ It is established that man has two
grand faculties, of which we find not even a trace among animals. He
alone has the moral sentiment of good and evil; he alone believes in
a future existence succeeding this natural life; he alone believes in
beings superior to himself, that he has never seen, and that are capable
of influencing his life for good or evil; in other words, man alone is
endowed with morality and religion.” Our own distinguished nat
uralist and associate, Prof. Agassiz, reverts to this theory of evolution
in the same positive manner, and with such earnestness and warmth
as to call forth severe editorial criticisms, by his speaking of it as a
“ mere mine of assertions,” and the “ danger of stretching inferences
from a few observations to a wide field; ” and he is called upon to col
lect 11 real observations to disprove the evolution hypothesis.” I
would here remark, in defence of my distinguished friend, that scien
tific investigation will assume a curious phase when its votaries are
required to occupy time in looking up facts, and seriously attempting
to disprove any and every hypothesis based upon proof, some of it
not even rising to the dignity of circumstantial evidence.
I now come to the last point to which I wish to call the attention
of the members of the Association in the pursuit of their investiga
tions, and the speculations that these give rise to in their minds. Ref
erence has already been made to the tendency of quitting the physical
to revel in the metaphysical, which, however, is not peculiar to this
age, for it belonged as well to the times of Plato and Aristotle as it
does to ours. More special reference will be made here to the pro
clivity of the present epoch among philosophers and theologians to be
�SPECULATION IN SCIENCE.
745
parading science and religion side by side, talking of reconciling sci
ence and religion, as if they have ever been unreconciled. Scientists
and theologians may have quarrelled, but never science and religion.
At dinners they are toasted in the same breath, and calls made on cler
gymen to respond, who, for fear of giving offence, or lacking the fire
and firmness of St. Paul, utter a vast amount of platitudes about the
beauty of science and the truth of religion, trembling in theii* shoes
all the time, fearing that science falsely so called may take away their
professional calling, instead of uttering in a voice of thunder, like the
Boanerges of the Gospel, that the “ world by wisdom knew not God.”
And it never will. Our religion is made so plain by the light of faith
that the wayfaring man, though a fool, cannot err therein.
No, gentlemen, I firmly believe that there is less connection be
tween science and religion than there is between jurisprudence and
astronomy, and the sooner this is understood the better it will be for
both. Religion is based upon revelations as given to us in a book, the
contents of which are never changed, and of which there have been no
revised or corrected editions since it was first given, except so far as
man has interpolated; a book more or less perfectly understood by
mankind, but clear and unequivocal in all essential points concerning
the relation of man to his Creator; a book that affords practical di
rections, but no theory; a book of facts, and not of arguments ; a book
that has been damaged more by theologians than by all the panthe
ists and atheists that have ever lived and turned their invectives
against it—and no one source of mischief on the part of theologians is
greater than that of admitting the profound mystery of many parts
of it, and almost in the next breath attempting some sort of explana
tion of these mysteries. The book is just what Richard Whately says
it is, viz., “ Not the philosophy of the human mind, nor yet the philos
ophy of the divine nature in itself, but (that which is properly religion)
the relation and connection of the two beings—what God is to us,
what he has done and will do for us, and what we are to be in regard
to him.” . . . Let us stick to science, pure, unadulterated science, and
leave to religion things which pertain to it; for science and religion
are like two mighty rivers flowing toward the same ocean, and, before
reaching it, they will meet and mingle their pure streams, and flow
together into that vast ocean of truth which encircles the throne
of the great Author of all truth, whether pertaining to science or
to religion. And I will here, in defence of science, assert that there
is a greater proportion of its votaries who now revere and honor re
ligion in its broadest sense, as understood by the Christian world, than
that of any other of the learned secular pursuits.
But, before concluding, I cannot refrain from referring to one great
event in the history of American science during the past year, as it
will doubtless mark an epoch in the development of science in this
country. I refer to the noble gift of a noble foreigner to encourage
�746
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
the pool* but worthy student of pure science in this country. It is
needless for me to insist on the estimation in which Prof. John Tyndall
is held among us. We know him to be a man whose heart is as large
as his head, both contributing to the cause of science. We regard
him as one of the ablest physicists of the time, and one of the most
level-headed philosophers that England has ever produced—a man
whose intellect is as symmetrical as the circle, with its every point
equidistant from the centre. We have been the recipient of former
endowments from that land which, we thank God, was our mother
country, for from it we have drawn our language, our liberty, our
laws, our literature, our science, and our energy, and without whose
wealth our material development would not be what it is at the pres
ent day. Count Rumford, the founder of the Royal Society of Lon
don, in earlier years endowed a scientific chair in one of our larger
universities, and Smithson transferred his fortune to our shores to
promote the diffusion of science. Now, while these are noble gifts,
yet Count Rumford was giving to his own countrymen—for he was
an American—and they were posthumous gifts from men of large for
tune. But the one I now refer to was from a man who ranks not with
the wealthy, and he laid his offering upon the altar of science in this
country with his own hands; and it has been both consecrated and
blest by noble words from his own lips; all of which makes the gift a
rich treasure to American science; and I think we can assure him that,
as the same Anglo-Saxon blood flows in our veins as does in his (tem
pered, ’tis true, with the Celtic, Teutonic, Latin, etc.), he may expect
much from the American student in pure science as the offspring of his
gift and his example.
THE GLACIERS AND THEIR INVESTIGATORS.
By Prof. JOHN TYNDALL.
OON after my return from America, I learned with great concern
that a little book of mine, published prior to my departure, had
given grave offence to some of the friends and relatives of the late
Principal Forbes; and I was specially grieved when informed that the
chastisement considered due to this offence was to be administered by
gentlemen between whom and myself I had hoped mutual respect and
amity would forever reign. We had, it is true, met in conflict on an
other field; but hostilities had honorably ceased, old wounds had, to
all appearance, been healed, and I had no misgiving as to the per
manence of the peace established between us.
The genesis of the book referred to is this: At Christmas, 1871, it
fell to my lot to give the brief course of “ Juvenile Lectures ” to which
S
�THE GLACIERS AND THEIR INVESTIGATORS.
Faraday for many years before his death lent such an inexpressible
charm. The subject of glaciers, which I had never previously treated
in a course of lectures, might, it was thought, be rendered pleasant
and profitable to a youthful audience. The sight of young people
wandering over the glaciers of the Alps with closed eyes, desiring
knowledge, but not always finding it, had been a familiar one to me,
and I thought it no unworthy task to respond to this desire, and to
give such of my young hearers as might visit the Alps an intelligent
interest in glacier phenomena.
The course was, therefore, resolved upon; and, to render its value
more permanent, I wrote out copious “Notes,” had them bound to
gether, and distributed among the boys and girls. Knowing the
damage which elementary books, wearily and confusedly written, had
done to my own young mind, I tried, to the best of my ability, to
confer upon these “ Notes ” clearness, thoroughness, and life. It was
my particular desire that the imaginary pupil chosen for my com
panion in the Alps, and for whom, odd as it may sound, I entertained
a real affection, should rise from the study of the “ Notes ” with no
other feeling than one of attachment and respect for those who had
worked upon the glaciers. I therefore avoided all allusion to those
sore personal dissensions which, to the detriment of science and of
men, had begun fifteen years prior to my connection with the glaciers,
and which have been unhappily continued to the present time.
Prof. Youmans, of New York, was then in London, organizing the
“ International Scientific Series,” with which his name and energy are
identified. To prove my sympathy for his work, I had given him per
mission to use my name as one of his probable contributors, the date
of my contribution being understood to belong to the distant, and in
deed indefinite, future. He, however, read the “ Notes,” liked them,
urged me to expand them a little, and to permit him to publish them
as the first volume of his series. His request was aided by that of an
other friend, and I acceded to it—hence the little book, entitled the
“Forms of Water,” which the friends and relatives of Principal
Forbes have read with so much discontent.
That modest volume has, we are informed, caused an uncontem
plated addition to be made to the Life of Principal Forbes, lately
published under the triple auspices of Principal Shairp, the successor
of Principal Forbes in the College of St. Andrew’s, Mr. AdamsReilly, and Prof. Tait. “ It had been our hope,” says Principal Shairp,
in his preface, “ that we might have been allowed to tell our story
without reverting to controversies which, we had thought, had been
long since extinguished. But, after most of these sheets were in press,
a book appeared, in which many of the old charges against Principal
Forbes in the matter of the glaciers were, if not openly repeated, not
obscurely indicated. Neither the interests of truth, nor justice to the
dead, could suffer such remarks to pass unchallenged. How it has
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
been thought best for the present to meet them, I must leave my friend
and fellow-laborer, Prof. Tait, to tell.”
The book here referred to is the unpretending volume whose blame
less advent I have just described.
I have not the honor of knowing Principal Shairp personally, but
he will, I trust, permit me to assure him of two things : Firstly, that,
in writing my book, I had no notion of rekindling an extinct fire, or
of treating with any thing but tenderness the memory of his friend.
Secondly, that, had such been my intention, the negative attribute,
“ not obscure,” is hardly the one which he would have chosen to de
scribe the words that I should have employed. But the fact is, the fire
was not extinct : the anger of former combats, which I thought spent,
was still potential, and my little book was but the finger which pulled
the trigger of an already-loaded gun.
Let the book speak for itself. I reproduce here in extenso the ref
erences to Principal Forbes, which have been translated into “ charges ”
against him by Principal Shairp. Having, in section 20, mentioned
the early measurements of glaciers made by Hugi and Agassiz, I con
tinue thus :
“ We now approach an epoch in the scientific history of glaciers. Had the
first observers been practically acquainted with the instruments of precision
used in surveying, accurate measurements of the motion of glaciers would
probably have been earlier executed. We are now on the point of seeing such
instruments introduced almost simultaneously by Al. Agassiz on the glacier of
the Unteraar, and by Prof. Forbes on the Aler de Glace. Attempts had been
made by Af. Escher de la Linth to determine the motion of a series of wooden
stakes driven into the Aletsch Glacier, but the melting was so rapid that the
stakes soon fell. To remedy this, Af. Agassiz, in 1841, undertook the great
labor of carrying boring-tools to his ‘hotel,’ and piercing the Unteraar Glacier
at six different places to a depth of ten feet, in a straight line across the glacier.
Into the holes six piles were so firmly driven that they remained in the glacier
for a year, and, in 1842, the displacements of all six were determined. They
were found to be 160 feet, 225 feet, 269 feet, 245 feet, 210 feet, and 125 feet, re
spectively.
“ A great step is here gained. You notice that the middle numbers are the
largest. They correspond to the central portion of the glacier. Hence, these
measurements conclusively establish, not only the fact of glacier motion, but
that the centre of the glacier, like that of a river, moves more rapidly than the
sides.
“ With the aid of trained engineers, AT. Agassiz followed up these measure
ments in subsequent years. His researches are recorded in a work entitled
‘ Système Glaciaire,’ which is accompanied by a very noble Atlas of the Glacier
of the Unteraar, published in 1847.
“ These determinations were made by means of a theodolite, of which I will
give you some notion immediately. The same instrument was employed the
same year by the late Principal Forbes upon the Afer de Glace. He established
independently the greater central motion. He showed, moreover, that it is not
necessary to wait a year, or even a week, to determine the motion of a glacier ;
with a correctly-adjusted theodolite he was able to determine the motion of va
rious points of the Afer de Glace from day to day. He affirmed, and with truth,
that the motion of the glacier might be determined from hour to hour. We
shall prove this farther on. Prof. Forbes also triangulated the Afer de Glace,
and laid down an excellent map of it. His first observations and his survey
are recorded in a celebrated book published in 1843, and entitled ‘ Travels in
the Alps.’
�THE GLACIERS AND THEIR INVESTIGATORS.
“ These observations were also followed up in subsequent years, the results
being recorded in a series of detached letters and essays of great interest. These
were subsequently collected in a volume entitled ‘ Occasional Papers on the
Theory of Glaciers,’ published in 1859. The labors of Agassiz and Forbes are
the two chief sources of our knowledge of glacier phenomena.”
It would be difficult for an unbiassed person to find in these words
any semblance of a “ charge ” against Principal Forbes. His friends
and relatives may be dissatisfied to see the name of M. Agassiz placed
first in relation to the question of the quicker central flow of glaciers ;
but in giving it this position I was guided by the printed data which
are open to any writer upon this subject.
I have checked this brief historic statement by consulting again
the proper authorities, and this is the result: In 1841 Principal Forbes
became the guest of M. Agassiz on the glacier of the Aar; and in a
very able article, published some time subsequently in the Edinburgh
Review, he speaks of “ the noble ardor, the generous friendship, the
unvarying good temper, the true hospitality ” of his host. In order
to explain the subsequent action of Principal Forbes, it is necessary to
say that the kindly feeling implied in the foregoing words did not
continue long to subsist between him and M. Agassiz. I am dealing,
however, for the moment with scientific facts, not with personal dif
ferences ; and, as a matter of indisputable fact, M. Agassiz did, in
1841, incur the labor of boring six holes in a straight line across the
glacier of the Aar, of fixing in these holes a series of piles, and of
measuring, in 1842, the distance through which the motion of the
glacier had carried them. This measurement was made on July 20th ;
some results of it were communicated to the Academy of Science in
Paris on August 1st, and they stand in the “ Comptes Rendus ” of the
Academy as an unquestionable record, from which date can be taken.
But the friends quarrelled. Who was to blame I will not venture
here to intimate; but the assumption that M. Agassiz was wholly in
the wrong would, I am bound to say, be required to justify the sub
sequent conduct of Principal Forbes. He was, I gather from the Life,
acquainted with the use of surveying instruments; and knowing
roughly the annual rate of glacier-motion, he would also know that
through the precision attainable with a theodolite, a single day’s—
probably a single hour’s motion—especially in summer, must be dis
cernible. With such knowledge in his possession, as early as June,
1842, and without deeming it necessary to give his host of the Aar
any notice of his intention, Principal Forbes repaired to the Mer de
Glace, made in the first instance a few rapid measurements at the
Montanvert, and in a letter dated from Courmayeur, on July 4th, com
municated them to the editor of the Edinburgh New Philosophical
Journal.
He did not at that time give any numbers expressing the ratio of
the side to the central motion of the glacier, but contented himself
with announcing the result in these terms: “ The central portion of
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
the Mer de Glace moves past the edges in a very considerable pro
portion, quite contrary to the opinion generally entertained.” This
communication, as I have said, bears the date of July 4th; but it was
first published in the October number of the journal to which it was
addressed. My reason, therefore, for mentioning Agassiz first in the
“Forms of Water” is, that, apart from all personal complications,
his experiment was begun ten months prior to that of his rival, and
that he had also two months’ priority of publication.
Neither in his “ Travels in the Alps,” nor in his “ Occasional Pa
pers,” does Principal Forbes, to my knowledge, make any reference
to this communication of Agassiz. I am far from charging him with
conscious wrong, or doubting that he justified this reticence to his
own mind. But my duty at present lies with objective facts, and not
with subjective judgments. And the fact is that, for eighteen years
subsequent to this campaign of 1842, Agassiz, as far as the glaciers
are concerned, was practically extinguished in England. The labors
of the following years failed to gain for him any recognition. His
early mistake regarding the quicker motion of the sides of a glacier,
and other weaknesses, were duly kept in view; but his positive meas
urements, and his Atlas, which prove the observations upon the glacier
of the Aar to be far more complete than those made upon any other
glacier, were never permitted to yield the slightest credit to their au
thor. I am no partisan of Agassiz, but I desire to be just.
Here, then, my case ends as regards the first reference to Principal
Forbes, in section 20 of the “Forms of Water.”
In section 48 I describe the dirt-bands of the Mer de Glace, and
ascribe the discovery of them to Principal Forbes. There can be no
thought of a “ charge ” here.
The next reference that has any bearing upon this discussion oc
curs in sections 59 and 60 of the “ Forms of Water.” I quote it fully:
By none of these writers is the property of viscosity or plasticity ascribed
to glacier-ice; the appearances of many glaciers are, however, so suggestive of
this idea that we may be sure it would have found more frequent expression
were it not in such apparent contradiction with our every-day experience of ice.
“ Still the idea found its advocates. In a little book, published in 1773, and
entitled ‘Picturesque Journey to the Glaciers of Savoy,’Bordier, of Geneva,
wrote thus: ‘ It is now time to look at all these objects with the eyes of reason;
to study, in the first place, the position and the progression of glaciers, and to
seek the solution of their principal phenomena. At the first aspect of the ice
mountains an observation presents itself, which appears sufficient to explain all.
It is that the entire mass of ice is connected together, and presses from above
downward after the manner of fluids. Let us, then, regard the ice, not as a
mass entirely rigid and immobile, but as a heap of coagulated matter, or as
softened wax, flexible and ductile to a certain point.’ Here probably for the
hrst^time the quality of plasticity is ascribed to the ice of glaciers.
To us, familiar with the aspect of the glaciers, it must seem strange that
this idea once expressed did not at once receive recognition and development,
those early days explorers were few, and the ‘Picturesque Journey’
Pr°t>ably but little known, so that the notion of plasticity lay dormant for more
t an half a century. But Bordier was at length succeeded by a man of far
greater scientific grasp and insight than himself. This was Rendu, a Catholic
�THE GLACIERS AND THEIR INVESTIGATORS. 751
priest and canon when he wrote, and afterward Bishop of Annecy. In 1841
Rendu laid before the Academy of Sciences of Savoy his 4 Theory of the Gla
ciers of Savoy,’ a contribution forever memorable in relation to this subject.
“Rendu seized the idea of glacier plasticity with great power and clearness,
and followed it resolutely to its consequences. It is not known that he had
ever seen the work of Bordier; probably not, as he never mentions it. Let me
quote for you some of Rendu’s expressions, which, however, fail to give an ade
quate idea of his insight and precision of thought: 4 Between the Mer de Glace
and a river there is a resemblance so complete that it is impossible to find in
the glacier a circumstance which does not exist in the river. In currents of
water the motion is not uniform, either throughout their width or throughout
their depth. The friction of the bottom and of the sides, with the action of
local hindrances, causes the motion to vary, and only toward the middle of the
surface do we obtain the full motion.’
“ This reads like a prediction of what has since been established by meas
urement. Looking at the glacier of Mont Dolent, which resembles a sheaf in
form, wide at both ends and narrow in the middle, and reflecting that the upper
wide part had become narrow, and the narrow middle part again wide, Rendu
observes: 4 There is a multitude of facts which seem to necessitate the belief
that glacier-ice enjoys a kind of ductility, which enables it to mould itself to its
locality, to thin out, to swell, and to contract, as if it were a soft paste.’
“ To fully test his conclusions, Rendu required the accurate measurement
of glacier motion. Had he added to his other endowments the practical skill
of a land-surveyor, he would now be regarded as the prince of glacialists. As
it was, he was obliged to be content with imperfect measurements. In one of
his excursions he examined the guides regarding the successive positions of a
vast rock which he found upon the ice close to the side of the glacier. The
mean of five years gave him a motion for this block of forty feet a year.
44 Another block, the transport of which he subsequently measured more
accurately, gave him a velocity of 400 feet a year. Note his explanation of this
discrepancy: 4 The enormous difference of these two observations arises from
the fact that one block stood near the centre of the glacier, which moves most
rapidly, while the other stood near the side, where the ice is held back by fric
tion.’ So clear and definite were Rendu’s ideas of the plastic motion of gla
ciers, that, had the question of curvature occurred to him, I entertain no doubt
that he would have enunciated beforehand the shifting of the point of maximum
motion from side to side across the axis of the glacier (§ 25).
44 It is right that you should know that scientific men do not always agree
in their estimates of the comparative value of facts and ideas ; and it is espe
cially right that you should know that your present tutor attaches a very high
value to ideas when they spring from the profound and persistent pondering of
superior minds, and are not, as is too often the case, thrown out without the
warrant of either deep thought or natural capacity. It is because I believe
Rendu’s labors fulfil this condition that I ascribe to them so high a value. But,
when you become older and better informed, you may differ from me; and I
write these words lest you should too readily accept my opinion of Rendu.
Judge me, if you care to do so, when your knowledge is matured. I certainly
shall not fear your verdict.
44 But, much as I prize the prompting idea, and thoroughly as I believe that
often in it the force of genius mainly lies, it would, in my opinion, be an error
of omission of the gravest kind, and which, if habitual, would insure the ulti
mate decay of natural knowledge, to neglect verifying our ideas, and giving them
outward reality and substance when the means of doing so are at hand. In
science, thought, as far as possible, ought to be wedded to fact. This was at
tempted by Rendu, and in great part accomplished by Agassiz and Forbes.
“ Here, indeed, the merits of the distinguished glacialist last named rise con
spicuously to view. From the able and earnest advocacy of Prof. Forbes, the
public knowledge of this doctrine of glacial plasticity is almost wholly derived.
He gave the doctrine a more distinctive form ; he first applied the term viscous
to glacier-ice, and sought to found upon precise measurements a ‘viscous
theory ’ of glacier-motion.
44 I am here obliged to state facts in their historic sequence. Prof. Forbes,
�752
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
when he began his investigations, was acquainted with the labors of Rendu. In
his earliest works upon the Alps he refers to those labors in terms of flattering
recognition. But, though, as a matter of fact, Rendu’s ideas were there to
prompt him, it would be too much to say that he needed their inspiration.
Had Rendu not preceded him, he might none the less have grasped the idea of
viscosity, executing his measurements, and applying his knowledge to maintain
it. Be that as it may, the appearance of Prof. Forbes on the Unteraar Glacier
in 1841, and on the Her de Glace in 1842, and his labors then and subse
quently, have given him a name not to be forgotten in the scientific history of
glaciers.”
Here, again, I have to declare that, in writing thus, I had no no
tion of “raking up” an old controversy. My object was to render
my account historically continuous, and there is not a single word to
intimate that I took exception to Principal Forbes’s treatment of
Rendu. Nay, while placing the bishop in the position he merited, I
went out of my way to point out that, in all probability, Principal
Forbes required no such antecedent. So desirous was I that no un
kind or disparaging word should escape me regarding Principal Forbes,
that, had a reasonable objection to the phraseology here used been
communicated to me by his friends, I should have altered the whole
edition of the work sooner than allow the objectionable matter to ap
pear in it............
My final reference to Principal Forbes was in § 67 of the “ Forms
of Water,” where the veined structure of glacier-ice is dealt with. Its
description by Guyot, who first observed it, is so brief and appropriate
that I quoted his account of it. But this was certainly not with a
view of damaging the originality of Principal Forbes. In paragraph
474 of my book the observation of the structure upon the glacier of
the Aar is thus spoken of: “The blue veins were observed indepen
dently three years after M. Guyot had first described them. I say in
dependently, because M. Guyot’s description, though written in 1838,
remained unprinted, and was unknown in 1841 to the observers on the
Aar. These were M. Agassiz and Prof. Forbes. To the question of
structure, Prof. Forbes subsequently devoted much attention, and it
was mainly his observations and reasonings that gave it the important
position now assigned to it in glacier phenomena.”
This is the account of Guyot’s observation given by Principal
Forbes himself. But it may be objected that I am not correct in class
ing him and Agassiz thus together, and that to Principal Forbes alone
belongs the credit of observing the veined structure upon the Aar
Glacier. This may be true, but would an impartial writer be justified
in ignoring the indignant protests of M. Agassiz and his companions ?
With regard to the development of the subject, I felt perfectly sure
of the merits of Principal Forbes, and did not hesitate to give him
the benefit of my conviction.
Such, then, are the grounds of Principal Shairp’s complaint quoted
at the outset—such the “charges ” that I have made “against Prin
cipal Forbes,” and which the “ interests of truth” and “justice to the
�THE GLACIERS AND THEIR INVESTIGATORS. 753
dead” could not “suffer to pass unchallenged. ” There is, I submit,
no color of reason in such a complaint, and it would never, I am per
suaded, have been made had not Principal Shairp and his colleagues
found themselves in possession of a document which, though pub
lished a dozen years ago by Principal Forbes, was never answered by
me, and which, in the belief that I am unable to answer it, is now re
produced for my confutation.
The document here referred to appeared soon after the publication
of the “ Glaciers of the Alps ” in 1860. It is entitled “ Reply to Pro
fessor Tyndall’s Remarks in his Work on the ‘ Glaciers of the Alps,
relating to Rendu’s ‘ Theorie des Glaciers.’ ” It was obviously written
under feelings of great irritation, and, longing for peace, the only
public notice I took of it at the time was to say that “ I have ab
stained from answering my distinguished censor, not from inability to
do so, but because I thought, and think, that within the limits of the
case it is better to submit to misconception than to make science the
arena of personal controversy.” My critics, however, do not seem to
understand that, for the sake of higher occupations, statements may
be allowed to pass unchallenged which, were their refutation worth
the necessary time, might be blown in shreds to the winds. Of this
precise character, I apprehend, are the accusations contained in the
republished essay of Principal Forbes, which his friends, professing to
know what he would have done were he alive, now challenge me to
meet. I accept the challenge, and throw upon them the responsibility
of my answer, . . ?
Having thus disposed of the two really serious allegations in the
reply, I am unwilling to follow it through its minor details, or to spend
time in refuting the various intimations of littleness on my part con
tained in it. The whole reply betrays a state of mental exacerbation
which I willingly left to the softening influence of time, and to which,
unless forced to it, I shall not recur.
The biographer who has revived this subject speaks of “ the numer
ous controversies into which he” (Principal Forbes) “was dragged.”
I hardly think the passive verb the appropriate one here. The fol
lowing momentary glimpse of Principal Forbes’s character points to a
truer theory of his controversies than that which would refer them to
a “ drag ” external to himself :
“ The hasty glance,” says this biographer, “ which I have been able
to bestow upon his less scientific letters has shown me that Forbes at
tached great importance to mere honorary distinctions, as well as the
opinion of others regarding the value of his discoveries. It has opened
up a view of a, to me, totally unexpected feature of his character.”
This is honest, but that the revelation should be “unexpected” is to
me surprising. The “ love of approbation ” here glanced at was in
Principal Forbes so strong that he could not bear the least criticism
1 We omit this portion of the discussion, for lack of space.—Editor.
vol. hi.—4S
�754
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
of his work without resenting it as personal. I well remember the
late excellent William Hopkins describing to me his astonishment
when, at the meeting of the British Association at York, a purely sci
entific remark of his on Forbes’s glacier theory was turned, with sud
den acerbity, into a personal matter. It is of a discussion arising out
of this remark that Principal Forbes writes thus : “We had a post
poned discussion on glaciers on Saturday morning, when Hopkins and
I did battle, and I am sorry to say I felt it exceedingly; it discomposed
my nerves and made me very uncomfortable indeed, until I was soothed
by the minster-service yesterday.” 1
But no amount of “ minster-service ” could cope with so strong a
natural bias, and many a bitter drop fell from the pen of Principal
Forbes into the lives of those whom he opposed subsequent to this
service at York. On hearing of the paper presented by Mr. Huxley
and myself to the Royal Society, he at once jumped to the conclusion
that the glaciers were to be made a “ regular party question.” “ All
I can do,” he says, “ is to sit still till the indictment is made out; and
I cordially wish my enemy to write a book and print it speedily, as
any thing is better than innuendo and suspense.”9 What he meant
by “ indictment ” I do not know; and, with regard to “ innuendo,”
neither of the writers of the paper would be likely to resort to it in
preference to plain speaking. The words of a witty philosopher at
the time here referred to are significant: “ Tyndall,” he said, “ is be
ginning with ice, but he will end in hot water.” He knew the circum
stances, and was able to predict the course of events with the cer
tainty of physical prevision.
The quality referred to by his biographer, and the tendency arising
from it to look at things in a personal light, caused his intellect to run
rapidly into hypotheses of moral action which had no counterpart in
real life. I read with simple amazement his explanation to his friend
Mr. Wills of the postponement of the publication of the “ Glaciers of
the Alps.” Some of his supporters in the Council of the Royal So
ciety had proposed him for the Copley Medal, but without success.
Had the rules of good taste been observed, he would have known
nothing of these discussions ; and, knowing them, he ought to have
ignored them. But he writes to his friend : “ I believe the effect of
the struggle, though unsuccessful in its immediate object, will be to
render Tyndall and Huxley and their friends more cautious in their
further proceedings. For instance, Tyndall’s book, again withdrawn
from Murray’s ‘ immediate ’ list, will probably be infinitely more care
fully worded relative to Rendu than he first intended.” 8
I should be exceedingly sorry to apply to Principal Forbes the
noun-substantive which Byron, in “ Childe Harold,” applied to Rous
seau, but the adjective “ self-torturing” is, I fear, only too applicable.
His quick imagination suggested chimerical causes for events, but
1 Life, p. 165.
9 Ibid., p. 369.
8 Ibid., p. 387.
�THE GLACIERS AND THEIR INVESTIGATORS. 755
never any thing more chimerical than that here assigned for the post
ponement of my book and its probable improvement. The “ struggle ”
in the council had no influence upon me, for this good reason, if for
no other, that I knew absolutely nothing of the character of the strug
gle. In Naiure, for May 22, 1873, Prof. Huxley has effectually dis
posed of this hypothesis ;1 and those who care to look at the opening
sentences of a paper of mine in Mr. Francis Galton’s “ Vacation Tour
ists for 1860,” will find there indicated another reason for the delay.
I may add, that the only part I ever took in relation to Principal
Forbes and a medal was to go on one occasion to the Royal Society
with the express intention of recommending that he should have one.
The features of character partly revealed by his biographer also
explain that tendency on the part of Principal Forbes to bring his
own labors into relief, to the manifest danger of toning down the
labors of others. This is illustrated by the foot-note appended to page
419. It is also illustrated by his references to Rendu, which, frequent
and flattering as they are, left no abiding impression upon the reader’s
mind. By some qualifying phrase the quotation in each case is de
prived of weight; while practical extinction for eighteen years was,
as already intimated, the fate of the “ generous ” and “ hospitable ”
Agassiz.
Toward the close of the “ Life ” his biographer, while admitting
that “ to say that Forbes thoroughly explained the behavior of gla
ciers would be an exaggeration,” claims for him that he must “ ever
stand forward in the history of the question as one of its most effective
and scientific promoters.” This meed of praise I should be the last
to deny him, for I believe it to be perfectly just. To secure it, how
ever, no bitterness of controversy, no depreciation of the services of
others, was necessary. One point here needs a moment’s clearing up.
The word.“ theory,” as regards glaciers, slides incessantly, and with
out warning, from one into the other of two different senses. It means
sometimes the purely physical theory of their formation, structure, and
motion, with which the name of Principal Forbes is so largely iden
tified. But it has a wider sense where it embraces the geological
action of glaciers on the surface of the globe. For a long time “ gla
cier theory ” had reference mainly to the geological phenomena ; it was
in this sense that the words were employed by Principal Forbes in his
article in the Edinburgh Review, published in 1842. It is in this
sense that they are now habitually applied by M. Agassiz, and in rela
tion to the theory thus defined it is no more than natural for his sup
porters to assign to M. Agassiz the highest place. I mention this to
abolish the mystification which threatens to surround a question which
this simple statement will render clear.
I trust I may be permitted to end here. Strong reasons may cause
1 The words “ drift of ray statement,” employed in Prof. Huxley’6 letter, ought to
be draft of my statement.
�756
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
me to revert to this question, but they must be very strong. I would
only warn my readers against the assumption that, if I do not reply
to further attack, I am unable to reply to it. The present rejoinder
furnishes sufficient proof of the doubtfulness of such a conclusion.
There is one darkly-expressed passage in the “Life of Principal
Forbes” which may cover something requiring notice. We are in
formed that he preserved and carefully docketed all letters written to
him, and that he retained copies of all his own. It is with regard to
this correspondence that his biographer writes thus : “ Many extracts,
and even entire letters, may be selected which are free from contro
versy, yet in general these would give but an imperfect notion of the
import of the whole. Others again cannot be published at present, be
cause the writers supply him with details of that mysterious wire
pulling which seems to be inseparable from every transaction involving
honors (scientific, in common with all others, it is humiliating to con
fess). The value of this unique series is, however, so great, and its
preservation so complete, that it is to be hoped it may be safely de
posited (under seal) in the care of some scientific society or institution,
to be opened only when all the actors have passed from the scene.”
These undignified allusions to “ wire-pulling ” are perfectly dark
to me; but if the letter addressed to Mr. Wills may be taken as a
specimen of the entire “series,” here referred to, then I agree with the
biographer in pronouncing it “ unique.” Would it not, however, be a
manlier course, and a fairer one to those who, writing without arrièrepensée, retain no copies of what they write, to let them know, while
they are here to take care of themselves, how their reputations are
affected by these letters of Principal Forbes ? For my own personal
part I am prepared to challenge the production of this correspondence
now.— Contemporary Review.
THE MOON.
JJR satellite holds a somewhat anomalous position in the liter.
ature of astronomy. The most beautiful object in the heavens,
the orb which telescopists study under the most favorable conditions,
and the planet—for a planet she is—which has afforded the most im
portant information respecting the economy of the universe, she never
theless has not received that attention from descriptive writers which
she really merits. The cause is, perhaps, not far to seek. The beauty
of the moon can scarcely be described in words, and cannot be pict1 “ The Moon : her Motions, Aspect, Scenery, and Physical Condition.” By Richard
A. Pïoctor, B. A., Cambridge (England), Honorary Secretary of the Royal Astronomical
Society of London ; author of the “ Sun,” “ Saturn,” “ Other Worlds,” etc. New York :
D. Appleton & Co. Price, $4.50.
�THE HO ON.
757
ured by the most skilful artist; the information conveyed by the
telescope is too definite to permit of speculation as with the other
planets, yet not definite enough to solve the questions about which
the students of astronomical works take most interest; and the infor
mation which astronomers have obtained from the moon’s motions can
only be appreciated when those motions are thoroughly analyzed, and
it has not been found easy to simplify this analysis, that the general
reader might fairly be expected to take interest in the matter.
The work before us is intended to remove this long-recognized
want in the literature of astronomy. The time has come when this is
practicable. The splendid photographs of Rutherford, of New York,
and De La Rue, in England, supply the means of exhibiting truthfully
the real nature of our satellite’s surface. Mr. Proctor has been for
tunate in obtaining from Mr. Rutherford permission to use three of his
most effective photographs of the moon to illustrate the present work.
Recent researches, ¿gain, into the processes which are going on withiu
the solar system (so long mistakenly supposed to be unchanging in
condition), suggest considerations respecting the past condition of
the moon, at once bringing her within the range of speculation and
theory. Telescopic observations, also more scrutinizing than those
made of yore, and applied more persistently, begin to indicate the
possibility at least of recognizing the signs of change, and perhaps of
showing that our moon is not the dead and arid waste which astron
omers have hitherto supposed her to be. The heat measurements of
Lord Rosse also throw important light on the question of her present
condition. And then, as respects those points which constitute the
main scientific interest of our satellite, her motions under the varying
influences to which she is subjected, Mr. Proctor has devoted here his
full energies and the results of a long experience, to the endeavor to
make clear, even to those who are not mathematicians, the consider
ations which, weighed and analyzed in the wonderful brain of Newton,
supplied the means of demonstrating the theory of the universe.
On this important department of his subject, Mr. Proctor makes
the following remarks in his preface : “In Chapter II. I have given a
very full account of the peculiarities of the moon’s motions ; and, not
withstanding the acknowledged difficulty of the subject, I think my
account is sufficiently clear and simple to be understood by any one,
even though not acquainted with the elements of mathematics, who
will be at the pains to read it attentively through. I have sought to
make the subject clear to a far wider range of readers than the class
for which Sir G. Airy’s treatise on ‘ Gravitation ’ was written, while
yet not omitting any essential points in the argument. In order to
combine independence of treatment with exactness and completeness,
I first wrote the chapter without consulting any other work. Then I
went through it afresh, carefully comparing each section with the cor
responding part of Sir G. Airy’s ‘Gravitation,’ and Sir J. Herschel’s
�758
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
chapters on the lunar motions in his ‘ Outlines of Astronomy.’ I was
thus able to correct any errors in my own work, while in turn I de
tected a few (mentioned in the notes) in the works referred to. I have
adopted a much more complete and exact system of illustration in
dealing with the moon’s motions than either of my predecessors in
the explanation of this subject. I attach great importance to this feat
ure of my explanation, experience having satisfied me not only that
such matters should be very freely illustrated, but that the illustra
tions should aim at correctness of detail, and (wherevei- practicable) of
scale also. Some features, as the advance of the perigee and the retreat
of the nodes, have, I believe, never before been illustrated at all.”
In Chapter III. Mr. Proctor gives, among other matters, a full
explanation of the effects due to the strange balancing motion called
the lunar librations. He says: “ I have been surprised to find how
imperfectly this interesting and important subject has been dealt with
hitherto. In fact, I have sought in vain for any discussion of the
subject with which to compare my own results. I have, however, in
various ways sufficiently tested these results.”
But probably, to the greater number of readers, the main interest
of the book will be found in the chapters relating to the condition of
the moon’s surface—the mountains, craters, hills, valleys, which diver
sify its strange varieties of brightness, color, and tone, and the changes
of appearance which are noted as the illumination varies, and as the
lunar librations change the position of different regions. It is, bythe-way, to be noted that the moon, which we regard as of silvery
whiteness, is in reality more nearly black than white, a fact which will
recall to many of our readers a remark of Prof. Tyndall’s in the first
lecture of the course recently delivered here.
“ The moon appears to us,” he said, “ as if
‘ Clothed in white samite, mystic, beautiful,’1
but, were she covered with the blackest velvet, she would still hang in
the heavens as a white orb, shining upon the world substantially as
she does now.”
Mr. Proctor discusses also the phenomena presented to lunarians,
if such there be. The extreme rarity of the lunar atmosphere ren
ders the idea of existence on the moon rather strange to our concep
tions, but, as Sir J. Herschel has said in a similar case, “ we should do
wrong to judge of the fitness or unfitness of” the condition of luna
rians “ from what we see around us, when perhaps the very combina
tions which convey to our minds only images of horror may be, in
reality, theatres of the most striking and glorious displays of benefi
cent contrivance.” Speaking of the appearances presented by lunar
landscapes, two of which we borrow from his work, Mr. Proctor remarks
1 We quote Tyndall.
Tennyson wrote :
“ Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful.”
�THE MO OX.
739
that “ we know far too little respecting the real details of lunar scenery
to form any satisfactory opinion on the subject. If a landscape-painter
were invited to draw a picture presenting his conceptions of the
scenery of a region which he had only viewed from a distance of a hun
dred miles, he would be under no greater difficulties than the astrono
mer who undertakes to draw a lunar landscape, as it would actually
appear to any one placed on the surface of the moon. We know cer
tain facts—we know that there are striking forms of irregularity, that
the shadows must be much darker as well during the lunar day as
during an earth-lit lunar light, than on our own earth in sunlight or
moonlight, and we know that, whatever features of our own land
scapes are certainly due to the action of water in river, rain, or flood,
to the action of wind and weather, or to the growth of forms of vege
tation with which we are familiar, ought assuredly not to be shown in
any lunar landscape. But a multitude of details absolutely necessary
for the due presentation of lunar scenery are absolutely unknown to
us. Nor is it so easy as many imagine to draw a landscape which
shall be correct even as respects the circumstances known to us. For
instance, though I have seen many pictures called lunar landscapes, I
have never seen one in which there have not been features manifestly
due to weathering and to the action of running water. The shadows,
again, are never shown as they would be actually seen if regions of the
indicated configuration were illuminated by a sun, but not by a sky
of light. Again, aerial perspective is never totally abandoned, as it
ought to be in any delineation of lunar scenery. I do not profess to
have done better myself in the accompanying lunar landscapes. I
have, in fact, cared rather to indicate the celestial than the lunarian
features shown in these drawings. Still, I have selected a class of
lunar objects which may be regarded as, on the whole, more charac
teristic than the mountain-scenery usually exhibited. And, by pictu
ring the greater part of the landscape as at a considerable distance, I
have been freer to reproduce what the telescope actually reveals. In
looking at one of these views, the observer must suppose himself sta
tioned at the summit of some very lofty peak, and that the view shows
only a very small portion of what would really be seen under such cir
cumstances in any particular direction. The portion of the sky shown
in either picture extends only a few degrees from the horizon, as is
manifest from the dimensions of the earth’s disk; and thus it is shown
that only a few degrees of the horizon are included in the landscape.
Our author then pictures the aspect of the lunar heavens by night
and by day. We have space but for a few passages from this descrip
tion : • “ To an observer stationed upon a summit of the lunar Apen
nines on the evening of November 1, 1872, a scene was presented un
like any known to the inhabitants of earth. It was near the middle
of the long lunar night. On a sky of inky blackness stars innu
merable were spread, among which the orbs forming our constella-
�760
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
tions could be recognized by their superior lustre, but yet were almost
lost amid myriads of stars unseen by the inhabitants of earth.
Nearly overhead shone the Pleiades, closely girt round by hundreds
of lesser lights. From them toward Aldebaran and the clustering
Hyades, and onward to the belted Orion, streams and convolutions of
stars, interwoven as in fantastic garlands, marked the presence of that
mysterious branch-like extension of the Milky-Way which the ob
server on earth can, with unaided vision, trace no farther than the
winged foot of Perseus. High overhead, and toward the north, the
Milky-Way shone resplendent, like a vast inclined arch, full ‘ thick in
laid with patines of bright gold.’ Instead of that faint, cloud-like
zone known to terrestrial astronomers, the galaxy presented itself as
an infinitely complicated star-region—
‘ With isles of light and silvery streams,
And gloomy griefs of mystic shade.’
“ On all sides, this mighty star-belt spread its outlying bands of
stars, far away on the one hand toward Lyra and Bobtes, where on
earth we see no traces of milky lustre, and on the other toward the
Twins and the clustering glories of Cancer—the ‘ dark constellation ’
of the ancients, but full of telescopic splendors. Most marvellous,
too, appeared the great dark gap which lies between the Milky-Way
and Taurus ; here, in the very heart of the richest region of the heavens—with Orion and the Hyades and Pleiades blazing on one side, and
on the other the splendid stream laving the feet of the Twins—there
lay a deep, black gulf which seemed like an opening through our star
system into starless depths beyond.
Yet, though the sky was thus aglow with starlight, though stars
far fainter than the least we see on the clearest and darkest night were
shining in countless myriads, an orb was above the horizon whose
light would pale the lustre of our brightest stars. This orb occupied
a space on the heavens more than twelve times larger than is occupied
by the full moon as we see her. Its light, unlike the moon’s, was
tinted with beautiful and well-marked colors. . . .
“ The globe which thus adorned the lunar sky, and illuminated the
lunar lands with a light far exceeding that of the full moon, was our
earth. The scene was not unlike that shown to Satan when Uriel—
* One of the seven
Who in God’s presence, nearest to the throne,
Stand ready at command ”—
pointing earthward from his station amid the splendor of the sun,
said to the arch-fiend:
‘ Look downward on that globe whose hither side
AX ith light from hence, though but reflected, shines:
That place is earth, the seat of man ; that light
His day, which else, as th’ other hemisphere,
Night would invade.’
�THE MOON.
761
“ In all other respects the scene presented to the spectator on the
moon was similar; but, as seen from the lunar Apennines, the glorious
orb of earth shone high in the heavens; and the sun, source of the
light then bathing her oceans and continents, lay far down below the
level of the lunar horizon. . . .
“ Infinitely more wonderful, however, and transcending in sublimity
all that the heavens display to the contemplation of the inhabitants
of earth, was the scene presented when the sun himself had risen. I
shall venture here to borrow some passages from an essay entitled ‘ A
Voyage to the Sun,’ in which a friend of mine has described the aspect
of the sun as seen from a station outside that atmosphere of ours
which veils the chief glories of the luminary of day: ‘ The sun’s
orb was more brilliantly white than when seen through the air, but
close scrutiny revealed a diminution of brilliancy toward the edge of
the disk, which, when fully recognized, presented him at once as the
globe he really is. On this globe could be distinguished the spots
and the bright streaks called faculse. This globe was surrounded with
the most amazingly complex halo of glory. Close around the bright
whiteness of the disk, and shining far more beautiful by contrast with
that whiteness than as seen against the black disk of the moon in
total eclipses, stood the colored region called the chromatosphere, not
red, as it appears during eclipses, but gleaming with a mixed lustre
of pink and green, through which, from time to time, passed the most
startlingly brilliant coruscations of orange and golden yellow light.
Above this delicate circle of color towered tall prominences and mul
titudes of smaller ones. These, like the chromatosphere, were not red,
but beautifully variegated. . . .’
“Much more might be said on this inviting subject, only that the
requirements of space forbid, obliging me to remember that the
moon and not the sun is the subject of this treatise. The reader,
therefore, must picture to himself the advance of the sun with his
splendid and complicated surroundings toward the earth, suspended
almost unchangingly in the heavens, but assuming gradually the cres
cent form as the sun drew slowly near, lie must imagine also how,
in the mean time, the star-sphere was slowly moving westward, the
constellations of the ecliptic in orderly succession passing behind the
earth at a rate slightly exceeding that of the 6un’s approach, so that
he, like the earth, only more slowly, was moving eastward, so far as
the star-sphere was concerned, even while the moon’s slow diurnal ro
tation was carrying him westward toward the earth.”
In the last chapter the physical condition of the moon’s surface is
treated, and the processes by which she probably reached her present
condition are discussed at considerable length.
�THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,
EDITOR’S TABLE.
ing many excellent suggestions, was not
conformed to the better type of such
HE twenty-second meeting of the productions. It is the custom of the
American Association for the Ad eminent scientific men who are honored
vancement of Science, which com with the office but once in their lives
menced at Portland, Me., August 20th, to devote the occasion, either to a gen
was fairly attended by the members, eral review of recent scientific work,
and presented very good results in the or to some special subject with which
way of scientific work. In estimating they are most familiar, and upon which
its contributions, we must not over they can speak with the force of au
look the fact that, while the numbers thority. Dr. Smith has been favorably
of those in this country who are at known in the world of science as a
liberty to pursue original investigations chemist who has made valuable con
untrammelled, is not large, on the other tributions in its inorganic department.
hand we have two national associations, The great activity in chemical inquiries
through which the moderate amount of at the present time, and the impor
original research that takes place is pub tant transition through which chemical
lished to the world. While the Ameri theory is now passing, would certainly
can Association was the only organiza have afforded the president a most per
tion of national scope for the publication tinent and instructive theme, but he
of new scientific results, its papers were preferred to employ the occasion in
creditable both in number and quality, considering certain aspects of science
and it compared favorably with its pro that are now prominent in public atten
totype, the British Association for the tion, and upon which the scientific
Advancement of Science. But, when, world is in much disagreement. The
a few years ago, a considerable number leading feature of the address was an
of its ablest members joined in the or attack on the Darwinians, and this
ganization of the National Academy portion of it we publish; and, as the
of Sciences, having substantially the question is thus reopened officially, it
same object in view as the American becomes a proper subject of comment.
The predecessor of President Smith,
Association, but exclusive in its mem
bership, and under government patron Dr. Asa Gray, of Harvard College, had
age, the necessary effect was greatly to followed the better usage of presid
weaken the older organization. The ing officers in his address at Dubuque
National Academy meets twice a year, last year, and discussed some of the
and draws closely upon the original larger problems of botany in the light
work of its associates. If, therefore, of the derivation theory. The most
the numbers in attendance upon the eminent of American botanists, an old
Association and the grade of scientific and untiring student of the subject, a
contributions might seem to indicate a man of philosophic grasp, and with a
decline in American science, the cir candor and sincerity of conviction that
cumstances here referred to will suffi commanded the highest respect, after
long and thorough study of the ques
ciently qualify the conclusion.
tion, Prof. Gray did not hesitate to
The address of the retiring presi give the weight of his authority to that
dent, J. Lawrence Smith, while contain view of the origin and diversities of
AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION—
PRESIDENT SMITH'S ADDRESS.
�EDITOR'S TADLE.
living forms of which Mr. Darwin is
now the leading representative. And
although in the field of biology large
numbers of its most eminent students,
who are of all men most competent to
decide upon it, have accepted that doc
trine as representing the truth of Na
ture more perfectly than any other, and
as of immense value in their researches
into the laws of life, yet Dr. Smith, as
our readers will see, denounces it as a
groundless hypothesis due to a riotous
imagination, and, in the language of
Agassiz, a “mere mire of assertions.”
His declarations have called forth the
applause of the press—always so can
did, and intelligent, and independent,
on such matters—who seize the occa
sion to preach new sermons on the “ va
garies of science,” and declare that they
“take sides with the angels against the
monkeys,” and are “ with the Creator
against Darwin.”
The course of the president was
not commended even by his own
party. Dr. Newberry, an eminent
student of biology and geology, is re
ported as having spoken in the follow
ing decided way : “ Prof. Newberry,
after a handsome allusion to the re
tiring president, Prof. J. Lawrence
Smith, protested against the opposition
to the development theory as ex
pounded in that gentleman's address.
Prof. Newberry said he was not him
self a Darwinian, but he recognized
the value of the evolution theory in
science. You cannot measure its value
as you can the work of an astronomer,
measured by definite ratios of space
and time; but he considered the hy
pothesis one of the most important con
tributions ever made to a knowledge
of Nature. Most men and women are
partisans, and some are willing to sup
pose that the hypothesis is sufficient to
account for all the phenomena of the
animal kingdom, while, on the other
hand, there are those who see in it
nothing but failure and deficiency. Let
us assume a judicial position, and al
763
low the tests of time and truth to settle
the questions involved. Go, however,
in whatever direction the facts may lead,
and throw prejudice to the winds. Rec
ollect that all truth is consistent with
itself.”
Dr. Smith can hardly be said to
have argued the question of Darwinism.
He gave us his own opinion of it, and
quoted, to sustain it, two distinguished
authorities in natural history. But he
gave the influence of his name and po
sition to the charge that it transcends
the legitimate limits of inductive in
quiry, and is only a wild and absurd
speculation. While the technical and
difficult questions of natural history by
which the truth or falsity of the doc
trine must be determined are beyond
the reach of unscientific readers, and
belong to the biologists to decide, the
question here raised as to whether
the investigation, as conducted, is le
gitimately scientific or not, is one of
which all intelligent persons ought to
be capable of forming a judgment.
We have repeatedly considered thi3
point in the pages of The Populae Sci
ence Monthly, and have endeavored
to show that the present attitude of
the doctrine of evolution is precisely
the attitude which all the great es
tablished theories and laws of science
had to take at their first promulgation.
It is familiar to all who know any thing
of the progress of science, that astrono
my and geology, in their early stages,
passed through precisely the same or
deal that biology is passing through
now; their leading doctrines were rep
robated as false science, and the wild
dreams of distempered imaginations.
Let us now take another case, in the
department of pure physics, and see
how scientific history repeats itself:
The undulatory theory of light is
now a firmly established principle in
physics. Dr. Smith says that “the
failure to explain one single well-ob
served fact is sufficient to cast doubt
upon, or subvert, any pure hypothesis,”
�764
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
and, he adds, in reference to the undulatory theory, that, “ op to the present
time, it serves in all cases.” In order
that this theory, now so perfect, should
be adopted, it had, of course, to be first
propounded. The conception of an
ethereal medium to explain the phe
nomena of light was suggested by Huyghens and Euler, but they did not ex
perimentally demonstrate it, and their
authority was overborne by that of
Newton,who maintained the emission or
corpuscular theory. The true founder
of the undulatory hypothesis of light
was Dr. Thomas Young, Professor of
Natural Philosophy in the Royal Insti
tution of Great Britain, and whom
Prof. Tyndall regards as the greatest
physicist who has appeared since New
ton. Dr. Young is thus estimated by
the German Helmholtz: “ His was one
of the most profound minds that the
world has ever seen; but he had the
misfortune to be in advance of his age.
He excited the wonder of his contem
poraries, who, however, were unable
to follow him to the heights at which
his daring intellect was accustomed to
soar. His most important ideas lay,
therefore, buried and forgotten in the
folios of the Royal Society, until a new
generation gradually and painfully
made the same discoveries, and proved
the exactness of his assertions, and the
truth of his demonstrations.”
Now, in this case, there was no
monkey in the question, and no capital
of public prejudice that could be made
available in the discussion, to repress
obnoxious opinions. The hypothesis
was certainly innocent enough, and its
truth or falsehood was a matter of sim
ple determination by experiment. Dr.
Young made the experiments which es
tablished it—the Royal Society recog
nized the value of the experiments,
and, in 1801, assigned to their author
the distinguished honor of delivering
the Bakerian lecture, in which his ex
periments were described, and their con
clusions demonstrated. Yet, with the
Royal Society to back him, and with
his views capable of proof before all
men, Dr. Young was crushed, and that
by outside influences appealing to the
public, on the ground that his hypothe
sis was spurious science—mere wild ab
surdity of the imagination.
We ask attention to the similarity of
the present ground of attack upon Dar
win, and the ground of attack upon Dr.
Young three-quarters of a century ago.
Dr. Smith prefaces his strictures upon
Darwinism with the following declara
tion : “It is a very common attempt
nowadays for scientists to transcend the
limits of their legitimate studies, and,
in doing this, they run into speculations
apparently the most unphilosophical,
wild, and absurd; quitting the true
basis of inductive philosophy, and
building up the most curious theories
on little else than assertion.”
Henry Brougham, afterward LordChancellor of England, writing in the
second number of the Edinburgh Re
view concerning Young’s Bakerian lect
ure, said: “We have of late observed
in the physical world a most unac
countable predilection for vague hy
potheses daily gaining ground ; and we
are mortified to see that the Royal So
ciety, forgetful of those improvements
in science to which it owes its origin,
and neglecting the precepts of its most
illustrious members, is now, by the pub
lication of such papers, giving the
countenance of its highest authority to
dangerous relaxations in the principles
of physical logic. We wish to raise
our feeble voice against innovations
that can have no other effect than to
check the progress of science, and re
new all those wild phantoms of the
imagination which Bacon and Newton
put to flight from her temple. . . .
Has the Royal Society degraded its
publications into bulletins of new and
fashionable theories for the ladies of
the Royal Institution ? Prohpudor ! 1
Let the professor continue to amuse his
audience with an endless variety of
For shame!
�EDITOR'S TABLE.
such harmless trifles, but, in the name
of science, let them not find admittance
into that venerable repository which
contains the works of Newton and
Boyle. . . . The making of an hy
pothesis is not the discovery of a truth.
It is a mere sporting with the subject ;
it is a sham-fight which may amuse in
the moment of idleness and relaxation,
but will neither gain victories over pre
judice and error, nor extend the em
pire of science. A mere theory is in
truth destitute of merit of every kind,
except that of a warm and misguided
imagination.” Dr. Young’s theory
“ teaches no truth, reconciles no con
tradictions, arranges no anomalous
facts, suggests no new experiments,
and leads to no new inquiries. It has
not even the pitiful merit of affording
an agreeable play to the fancy. It is
infinitely more useless, and less ingen
ious, than the Indian theory of the
elephant and tortoise. It may be
ranked in the same class with that
stupid invention of metaphysical the
ology. ... We cannot conclude our
review of these articles without en
treating for a moment the attention
of that illustrious body which has ad
mitted of late years so many paltry
and unsubstantial papers into its trans
actions. ... We implore the coun
cil, if they will deign to cast their
eyes upon our humble page, to prevent
a degradation of the institution which
has so long held the first rank among
scientific bodies.”
For the second time Dr. Young was
selected by the Royal Society to give
the Bakerian lecture, and he again
chose for its subject “Experiments and
Calculations relative to Physical Op
tics,” and again the Edinburgh Review
came down upon him as follows : “ The
paper which stands first is another Ba
kerian lecture, containing more fan
cies, more blunders, more unfounded
hypotheses, more gratuitous fictions,
all upon the same field on which New
ton trode, and all from the fertile yet
7^5
fruitless brain of the same eternal Dr.
Young.” The reviewer thus winds up
the controversy: “We now dismiss, for
the present, the feeble lucubrations of
this author, in which we have searched
without success for some traces of
learning, acuteness, and ingenuity, that
might compensate his evident defi
ciency in the powers of solid thinking,
calm and patient investigation, and
successful development of the laws of
Nature, by steady and modest observa
tion of her operations. We came to
the examination with no other preju
dice than the very allowable prepos
session against vague hypothesis, by
which all true lovers of science have
for above a century and a half been
swayed. We pursued it, both on the
present and on a former occasion, with
out any feelings except those of regret
at the abuse of that time and oppor
tunity which no greater share of tal
ents than Dr. Young’s are sufficient to
render fruitful by mere diligence and
moderation. From us, however, he
cannot claim any portion of respect,
until he shall alter his mode of pro
ceeding, or change the subject of his
lucubrations; and we feel ourselves
more particularly called upon to ex
press our disapprobation, because, as
distinction has been unwarily bestowed
on his labors by the most illustrious
of scientific bodies, it is the more ne
cessary that a free protest should be
recorded before the more humble tri
bunals of literature.”
The reader will perceive that this
strain is not unfamiliar. Young was
denounced as Darwin is now de
nounced, professedly in the interest
of science; but the pretext was as
false then as it is now. In the former
case the animus of the assault was
mere personal spite: Brougham’s in
ordinate vanity having been wounded
by some very moderate criticisms of
Dr. Young upon his mathematical
works. But a man who did not un
derstand the subject, appealing to a
�766
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
tribunal which knew nothing about it,
against wild speculations degrading to
science, was able to depreciate and
suppress for a quarter of a century one
of the most solid and perfect theories
of natural phenomena that modern re
search has produced. And, strange as
it may seem, the work was effectually
done; for, although Young made a
masterly reply, but a single copy was
sold, and, as Tyndall remarks, “for
twenty years this man of genius was
quenched—hidden from the apprecia
tive intellect of his countrymen —
deemed, in fact, a dreamer through
the vigorous sarcasm of a writer who
had then possession of the public ear.”
Happily, the time is past when the
investigators of Nature can be thus
crushed out; but still the old tactics
are imitated, and not without evil
effect for the time. The men of sci
ence, to whom the question belongs,
are not left to pursue it in peace. The
press and the pulpit, with such scientific
help as it is not difficult to get, stir up
such a clamor of popular opprobrium
that biological students who hold to
evolution as the fact and law of Na
ture, and guide their researches by
its light, do not choose to have it pub
licly known that they are adherents
of the doctrine. We are behind Eng
land in fair and tolerant treatment
of the Darwinian question, but may
expect the same improvement in this
respect that Huxley tells us has taken
place with the English. In a recent
article he remarks: “The gradual lapse
of time has now separated us by more
than a decade from the date of the pub
lication of the ‘ Origin of Species; ’ and
whatever may be thought or said about
Mr. Darwin’s doctrines, or the manner
in which he has propounded them, this
much is certain, that, in a dozen years,
the ‘ Origin of Species’ has worked as
complete a revolution in biological sci
ence as the ‘ Principia ’ did in astrono
my—and it has done so, because, in
the words of Helmholtz, it contains
‘ an essentially new creative thought.’
And, as time has slipped by, a happy
change has come over Mr. Darwin’s
critics. The mixture of ignorance and
insolence which, at first, characterized
a large proportion of the attacks with
which he was assailed, is no longer the
sad distinction of anti-Darwinian criti
cism. Instead of abusive nonsense,
which merely discredited its writers,
we read essays, which are, at worst,
more or less intelligent and apprecia
tive ; while, sometimes, like that which
appeared in the North British Review
for 1867, they have a real and perma
nent value.”
THE EDUCATIONAL CONVENTION AT
ELIIIRA.
The national educational associa
tion recently held at Elmira, N. Y.,
was of unusual interest, and evinced a
marked progress in the public method
of dealing with educational subjects.
We have for some years refrained from
attendance upon teachers’ conventions,
having been wearied ■with the narrow
technical range and pedantic pettiness
of the discussions. But the recent
meeting showed that educators are be
ginning to outgrow their old profes
sional limitations, and to consider the
various questions that come before them
in the light of broad principles, and in
the spirit of radical and rational im
provement. Many men of ability, presi
dents of leading colleges, eminent pro
fessors, principals of high-schools, and
State and city superintendents, were
present, contributing valuable papers,
and giving strength and character to
the debates which followed them.
President McCosh delivered an able
address on the higher education, and
maintained that the national Govern
ment should not give the balance of its
lands to the agricultural colleges, nor
yet to other collegiate institutions, but
should appropriate them for the benefit
of high-schools and academies through
�EDITOR'S TABLE.
767
out the country. Dr. McCosh thus old scholastic culture which took its
stated his main position :
shape at a period when popular educa
“ I don’t propose that any portion of this tion was not thought of, and culture
$90,000,000 should be given to colleges. We was confined to the professional classes.
cannot aid all, and to select a few would be These institutions are not holding their
injurious. In regard to elementary educa own at the present time. Their stu
tion, the Northern, the Middle, and the dents are falling off, for the reason that
Western States, are able and willing to do there is a decline in the academies by
their duty. I venture to propose that in
these the unappropriated lands be devoted which the colleges are fed; that is, as
to the encouragement of secondary schools. Dr. McCosh says, “ the grand difficulty
Let each State obtain its share, and the which colleges have to contend against
money handed over to it under certain rigid arises from there being so few schools
rules and restrictions to prevent the abuse fitted to prepare young men for them.”
of the public money. In particular, to se
But the cause of the decline of the
cure that upper schools be endowed only
where needed, I suggest that money be allo academies is the rivalry of the newlycated only when a district, or, it may be, a instituted high-schools, and these are
combination of two or more districts, has the outgrowth and now an essential
raised a certain portion, say one-half, of the part of the common - school system.
necessary funds. By this means the money
The modern idea of universal educa
may be made to stimulate the erection
of high-schools all over America. These tion has become organized in such a
schools would aid colleges far more power way as to antagonize the old college
fully than a direct grant to them, as, in fact, system. The common schools are not
the grand difficulty which colleges have to constructed upon the scholastic pattern;
contend against ariseB from there being so they aim to give to all a useful practical
few schools fitted to prepare young men for
education, that shall be available in
them with their rising standard of excellence.
the common work of life. It was
But I plead for these schools, not merely as
a means of feeding colleges, but as compe found that they did not go far enough
tent to give a high education in varied in this direction for the wants of many,
branches, literary and scientific, to a far and so high-schools were organized in
greater number who do not go on to any thing which the pupils of the common schools
higher. These schools, like the elementary
schools, should be open to all children, of might graduate into the working world
the poor as well as the rich. They should with a better preparation than the
be set up, like the German gymnasium, in lower schools can furnish. It was stated
convenient localities, so that all the popula in the discussion that but one in fif
tion may have access to them. They should teen hundred of the population passes
embrace every useful branch suited to young through college, while it is left for
men and women under sixteen and eighteen
years of age—English composition, English the common and high schools to edu
language, history, classics, modern language, cate the rest of the people. As the
and elementary science. The best scholars old academies disappear, therefore,
in our primary schools would be drafted up the colleges seek to get control of
to these higher schools, and thus the young the high-schools, to be used as feeders
talent of the country would be turned to
for themselves; and this, of course, ne
good account, while the teachers in the com
mon schools would be encouraged by seeing cessitates a high-school curriculum fit
ted to prepare young men for college.
their best pupils advance.” «
This is the point at which the two sys
The discussion that followed this tems are unconformable, and is to be
speech brought out difficulties which the point of conflict in the future.
the doctor had not considered, and, in What shall be the course of study in
fact, opened the way to the most vital the high-schools? Shall it be a sequel
problem of American education. The to the common schools, or a prelude to
colleges of the country represent the the colleges, for these are different
�768
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
things? Already in some of them we
have two distinct systems of education.
A principal of one of these institutions
in the West said to the writer: “We
are working under the disadvantages
of a double curriculum. We have a
scheme of studies, scientific and practi
cal, drawn with reference to the larger
number of our pupils who come from
the common schools, and who close their
studies with us. We take them through
an English course, with mathematics,
book-keeping, political economy, phys
ics, chemistry, botany, and physiology.
And we have also a classical course for
a small number of students who are
preparing for college. But the exac
tions of Latin and Greek are so great
upon these that they get hardly a smat
tering of the subjects pursued by the
other students.” The tactics of Dr.
McCosh were admirable. To keep the
proceeds of the public lands from going
to the agricultural colleges and scien
tific institutions, he is willing to resign
all claim upon them for the benefit of
the classical colleges ; at the same time,
if the money is expended for the ex
tension of high-schools, as the doctor
says, “ these schools would aid colleges
far more powerfully than a direct grant
to them.” Yet, as long as the two sys
tems of education remain so diverse that
the regular high-school graduation is
not accepted as preparation for college,
there will be conflict for the control of
these establishments. Only as the col
lege curriculum becomes more broad,
modern, and scientific, and the classical
studies are restricted to the special
classes who have need of them, can
American education become harmon
ized in its elements and unified in its
system.
Tne report of President Eliot, of
Harvard, on a national university, was
a strong document. We publish the
last portion of it, which deals with the
main question, and ask attention to the
high grounds on which he bases his de
mand for the non-interference of gov
ernment with the system of higher edu
cation. His paper started a warm
debate on the broad and important
question of the proper relations of gov
ernment to the work of instruction,
and, of course, his views met with
vigorous opposition. It was maintained
that there is no break in the logic by
which government action is prescribed;
and that, admitting the propriety of
state action in primary education, there
is no halting-place until the govern
ment takes charge of the entire school
machinery of the country. And such
is the overshadowing influence of poli
tics, and so profound the superstition
regarding government omnipotence,
that this view found its urgent advo
cates, who seem blind to the conse
quences that are certain to follow when
the people shirk the responsibilities of
attending directly to the education of
the young, and shoulder it off upon a
mass of politicians holding the offices
of government. The friends of state
education certainly pressed their case
to its extreme conclusions. Govern
ment contributes money to support
common schools, and appoints officers
to regulate them; therefore let it
appropriate $20,000,000 to establish
a national university at Washington,
with $1,000,000 a year to be divided
among the congressional appointees,
who will hold the professorships. Dr.
McCosh suggested that recent congres
sional experiences were hardly calcu
lated to inspire confidence in the action
of that body, and asked what guarantee
we should have against a university
ring and systematic educational job
bing ; and it was objected by others
that the class of men who congregate
in the capital, and the whole spirit of
the place, would make it more unfit
than any other in the country for such
an institution. Prof. Eichards, of
Washington, came to the rescue of the
reputation of his town, and asked, em
�EDITOR'S TABLE.
phatically, “Where do its knaves and
rascals come from? We do not make
them; you send them to us from all
parts of the nation.” But the argu
ment was not helped by the retort, for
it is quite immaterial whether Wash
ington breeds its scoundrels or imports
them. If our republican system is one
that sifts out its most venal and un
scrupulous intriguers and sharpers, and
gathers them into one place, it is ques
tionable whether that place had better
not be avoided as the seat of a great
model university—especially if said in
triguers and sharpers are to have the
management of it.
769
for 1872-’73, and presents the statistics
which bear upon the subject. The
“ elections ” of subjects of study or
choices of the students are shown in a
succession of tables, the last of which
divides the college studies into “dis
ciplinary” and “practical,” and ex
hibits the results as follows:
DISCIPLINARY STUDIES.
Ancient languages
. 100
History.....................................
8T
Mathematics
....
. 21
Philosophy..............................
15
Political science ....
. 12
185
PRACTICAL STUDIES.
Modern languages
Physics and chemistry
Natural history ....
.
.
80
87
28
145
ELECTIVE STUDIES AT HARVARD.
In an instructive article upon this
subject, the Nation says : “ There was
a vague but very general impression,
a few years ago, that, if the elective
system were introduced into the older
American colleges, the practical sci
ences, as they are called, especially
physics, chemistry, and natural his
tory, would crowd out the study of
the ancient languages. There was also
a feeling that the obvious utility of the
modern languages, and particularly of
French and of German, would help to
throw the “ dead languages ” into the
background. A great many enthusiasts
fancied that the good time a-coming
was at hand, when books would be
thrown aside, and all intellectual ac
tivity would be narrowed down to the
study of physical Nature; and so much
noise has been made about the natural
sciences that a great many people un
doubtedly think this is the principal if
not the only subject taught where an
elective system prevails.”
To submit this matter to a test, and
“ ascertain what it is that the mass of
students feel the need of most and flock
to most when the choice is left entirely
to themselves,” the Nation overhauls
the university catalogue of Harvard
vol. hi.—49
“By this arrangement the disci
plinary studies preponderate over the
practical in the ratio of 185:145 or
100: 78.”
Upon this the Nation proceeds to
remark: “ The figures show conclusive
ly that, in spite of the crusade which
has been carried on against the ancient
languages, they are still full of vitality,
still a power, still a popular study, and,
in fact, the greatest interest in the
little college world. As our inquiry is
purely numerical and statistical, we do
not ask why the students make the
selections they do. Doubtless, the
reasons are not very obvious; still, one
fact is plain, that they are not guided
wholly by utilitarian views.”
Now, if the Nation had looked a
little into the “ why ” of this matter,
we are sure it would have found the
reasons for this state of things obvious
enough, and, although it might have
somewhat qualified its conclusion, it
would have made the statement more
valuable. The number of votes cast
at an election is usually an expression
of public opinion, but, if in any case
there happen to have been military
interference and dictation, the numeri
cal report of ballots cast, if taken alone,
would be misleading. We are told that
�770
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
the working of the option system at Har
vard affords an indication of the prefer
ences and tendencies of the students in
regard to the studies they incline to pur
sue ; but is not entrance to Harvard a
part of its policy, and what about the
option there? Is there not at the door
of the university a big winnowingmachine which delivers the “ discipli
nary ” studies as acceptable wheat, and
blows the “ utilitarian ” studies to the
winds as the veriest chaff? All the
preparation exacted of students for
entrance to college is in the “ discipli
nary ” studies, and mainly in the Latin
and Greek languages. Besides being
incessantly told in the preparatory
schools that the very poles of the intel
lectual world are two dead languages,
and that a classical education is the
only real broad liberal education, they
are kept for years drilling at Latin
and Greek as the only condition upon
which they can get to college at all.
The standard is here kept as high as it
was twenty years ago, and President
Eliot stated at the late Elmira conven
tion that, in the estimation of the pre
paratory teachers in New England, Har
vard requires a year more study of
Latin and Greek than the other col
leges. The student thus enters college
warped and biassed by his preparation
for it. Of the sciences he knows noth
ing, and he is prejudiced against them
as mere utilitarian studies to be con
trasted on all occasions with liberal
mental pursuits. When these facts are
remembered, it is certainly no matter
of surprise that Latin and Greek lead
in the collegiate elections of study; it
is rather surprising that they lead by
so small a number. It is very far from
being a fair or open choice when a
pupil has to repudiate his past acquisi
tions, and stem the tide of opinion
which has forced them upon him, to
take up studies under the grave dis
advantage of no early preparation. We
think the lesson of the Harvard statis
tics is not altogether exhilarating to
the partisans of the classics. When
Harvard will accept a scientific prep
aration for college as of equal value
with the classical, we shall be better
prepared to estimate the strength of
the tendencies in the two directions.
LIFE OF PRINCIPAL FORBES.
biographer of Sir Walter Scott
alludes to a “ first love ” which ended
unfortunately for the great romancer.
It is related that, rain happening to fall
one Sunday after church-time, Scott
offered his umbrella to a young lady,
and, the tender having been accepted,
he escorted her to her home. The ac
quaintance was continued, and ripened
into a strong attachment on the part
of Scott; but he was doomed to
disappointment, and Lockhart states
that it produced a profound effect upon
his character. “Keble, in a beautiful
essay on Scott, more than hints a .be
lief that it was this imaginary regret
haunting Scott all his life long which
became the true well-spring of his in
spiration in all his minstrelsy and ro
mance.” Be that as it may, the lady,
whose name was Williamina Belches,
instead of marrying Scott, chose his
friend, Sir William Forbes. They had
a family, of which the youngest, James
David, was born in 1809. When the
son was nineteen years old his father
died, and, under the immediate influ
ence of the bereavement, he drew up
a set of brief resolutions for the regu
lation of his life, one of which was “ to
curb pride and over-anxiety in the
pursuit of worldly objects, especially
fame.” Young Forbes became a fa
mous man. He took to science, and mas
tered it rapidly under the guidance of
his intimate friend Sir David Brewster,
choosing physics as his department.
At the death of Sir John Leslie, Pro
fessor of Natural Philosophy in the
University of Edinburgh, he offered
himself as a candidate for the chair, in
The
�EDITOR'S TABLE.
opposition to his old friend Brewster
and others, and was elected to the po
sition at the age of twenty-four. He
was an original investigator in a wide
field of physics, contributed to the ex
tension of knowledge in many direc
tions, and was an able writer. His
health failing, he resigned his chair in
the Edinburgh University, and accept
ed the principalship of St. Andrew’s,
and is therefore known as Principal
Forbes. He died the last day of 1868,
and an elaborate biography, by three
of his Scotch friends, has just been pub
lished by Macmillan, which is an ex
tremely interesting book.
Among other subjects of his inves
tigation were the glaciers, upon which
he published an important volume. He
met Agassiz in the Alps, while that
gentleman was experimenting upon
glacial motions, and they made obser
vations together, but subsequently fell
out with each other about the division
of the honors of discovery. The com
plication extended, involving the claims
of Bishop Rendu, Prof. Guyot, and
others. In his “ Glaciers of the Alps,”
published in 1860, Prof. Tyndall under
took to do justice to the claims of all
parties. Prof. Forbes was not satisfied
with the awards, and replied to Prof.
Tyndall’s work, vindicating his own
claims to a larger share of the investi
gation than had been accorded him. To
this Prof. Tyndall at the time made no
rejoinder; but in his recently-published
“Forms of Water” he restated the
case in a way that was not satisfactory
to Forbes’s biographers, who have met
it by an appendix to the volume. In
the Contemporary Review for August,
Prof. Tyndall returns to the question
in an elaborate paper, entitled “ Prin
cipal Forbes and his Biographers,” of
which we publish the first and last
portions, that are of most general
interest. We have not space for the
whole article, which is long, and omit
ted the extended extracts from Rendu’s
work in French, and that portion of
771
the argument which will mainly con
cern the special students of glacial lit
erature. In an introductory note to
the article, Prof. Tyndall briefly states
the origin and cause of the controversy,
and earnestly deprecates its present re
vival. He says, speaking of the biogra
phers : “I am challenged to meet their
criticisms, which, I find, are considered
to be conclusive by some able public
journals and magazines. Thus the at
titude of a controversialist is once more
forced upon me. Since the death of
Principal Forbes no one has heard me
utter a word inconsistent with tender
ness for his memory; and it is with an'
unwillingness amounting to repugnance
that I now defend myself across his
grave. His biographers profess to
know what he would have done were
he alive, and hold themselves to be the
simple executors of his will. I cannot
act entirely upon this assumption, or
deal with the dead as I should with
the living. Hence, though these pages
may appear to some to be sufficiently
full, they lack the completeness, and
still more the strength, which I ’should
have sought to confer upon them had
my present position been forced upon
me by Principal Forbes himself instead
of by his friends.”
It is to be feared that Prof. Forbes
did not sufficiently abide by the rule
of life which was formed under the
solemn circumstances of his father’s
death.
We commend to the attention of
our scientific readers, with philosophi
cal inclinations, the series of articles
on “The Primary Concepts of Modern
Physical Science,” the first of which
appears this month, on “The Theory
of the Atomic Constitution of Matter.”
The depth and force of the criticism are
only equalled by the clearness of the
conceptions, and the precision and
felicity of the statement. The interest
of the discussion will not be lessened
�772
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
when we say that ;t is by an Ohio law
yer-formerly a judge of Cincinnati.
It has been held as one of the redeem
ing features of the English bar, that
the author of the able and admirable
essay on “The Correlation of Forces ”
belongs to it; and it is certainly to the
credit of the legal profession in this
country that a member of it has culti
vated physical philosophy to such ex
cellent purpose as is evinced by the
article we now publish.
• LITERARY NOTICES.
A
Popular Introduction to the Study of
the Forces of Nature. From the French
of M. Emile Saigey. With an Intro
duction and Notes by Thomas Freeman
Moses, A. M., M. D. Boston : Estes &
Laureat. Price $1.50. 253 pages.
Although this neat and attractive little
volume claims to be a popular introduction
to the study of the forces of Nature, we
think it should rather be regarded as a
book for those who have been previously
introduced to the subject. It is rather
devoted to an exposition of the author’s
speculative views than to a simplified and
elementary statement for those who are
beginning to study. The author holds to a
universal ether, and maintains besides that
matter is constituted from it, and consists
of it, and he aims to build up the universe
of ethereal atoms and motion. The work
is written from the modem point of view
of the correlation of forces, and contains
much interesting information upon this
subject, but the author is less concerned
merely to interpret the phenomena of inter
action among the forces than to get below
them to what he regards as the causes of
their unity. “The atom and motion, be
hold the universe! ” is a somewhat Frenchy
and fantastic cosmology. To readers of a
speculative turn of mind the book will prove
interesting.
The Unity of Natural Phenomena.
Sanitary Engineering : a Guide to the
Construction of Works of Sewerage and
House-Drainage. By Baldwin Latham,
C. E. 352 pages. Price $12. New
York : E. & F. N. Spon.
This work is in all respects a contrast
to that of M. Saigey. Instead of transcen
dental ether, it treats of descendental sew
erage, and, instead of remote imaginative
speculations, it is occupied with the most
immediate and practical of the interests of
daily life. Of the importance of the sub
ject treated, the preservation of life and
health by the thorough construction of
sanitary works, there can be no question,
and the author claims that it is the first
book exclusively devoted to subjects re
lating to sanitary engineering. He has
gathered his material from official reports,
periodical papers, and various works which
touch the subject incidentally, and, adding
to them the results of his own practice, has
produced a most valuable treatise. As
science unravels the complicated conditions
of life, it becomes more and more apparent
that health can only be maintained by the
destruction or thorough removal of those
deleterious products which are engendered
in dwellings. The necessity of drainage is
well understood, and the art has been long
practised in all civilized countries; but, like
all other arts, its intelligent and efficient
practice depends upon scientific principles,
and therefore progresses with a growing
knowledge of the subject. The questions
involved in the proper sewerage of a district
are numerous. Its geological character and
physical features have to be considered;
the meteorological element of rainfall is
important; the constitution of the soil and
subsoil must be taken into account; the
sources and extent of artificial water-supply
are of moment; and the area of the district
to be sewered, and its present and pro
spective population, cannot be overlooked.
Much information of this kind requires also
to be called into requisition in the construc
tion of separate country-residences. The
physical circumstances being given, there
then arise numerous questions in regard to
drainage, construction, household contriv
ances, the materials employed, and the cost,
efficiency, and permanency of works. Mr.
Latham’s volume treats this whole series
of topics in a systematic and exhaustive
way. It is profusely illustrated with wood
cuts and maps, and contains numerous
tables which are indispensable for the
guidance of constructors. It is not re
printed, but is supplied by the New-York
branch of the London house, who hold it
at an exorbitant pice.
�LITERARY NOTICES.
773
and Myth-Makers: Old Tales and attractiveness, due to a certain subtle tact
Superstitions interpreted by Compara or refinement hard to analyze, but quite
tive Mythology. By John Fiske. Price, sensibly felt, which marks the best Ameri
$2.00. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.,
can essay-writing; and his manner of deal
1873.
ing with his subject is well fitted to reassure
Travellers to the United States, and those who have been deterred from seeking
American authors themselves, have often any acquaintance with comparative my
remarked on the affectionate veneration thology, either by the formidable appearance
shown by Americans for the oldest things of philological apparatus and Vedic proper
in Europe, and for all the associations con names, or by the aggressive boldness of
necting their present life with the life of one or two champions of the new learning.
their forefathers in the old country. Not It is very natural to feel a rebellious impulse
long ago, it may be remembered, the build at being told that half the gods and heroes
ers of a new meeting-house at Boston of the classical epics, or even the nursery
(United States), sent for a brick from the tales, which have delighted us from our
prototype still standing at our Boston in youth up, are sun and sky, light and dark
England. We now find an officer of Har ness, summer and winter, in various dis
vard University putting forth labor which guises.
is evidently a labor of love, and the literary
The myth is in its origin neither an al
skill and taste in which the best American legory—as Bacon and many others have
writers set an example worth commending thought—nor a metaphor—as seems now
to many of ours ; and the things he speaks and then to be implied in the language of
of belong to the Old World; to a world, modern comparative mythologists—but a
indeed, so far off that for centuries we had genuinely-accepted explanation of facts, a
lost its meaning, and have only just learned “ theorem of primitive Aryan science,” as
to spell it out again. His theme takes Mr. Fiske happily expresses it. This view
him back from the New World, not only to is brought out in the last essay of the vol
England, not only to Europe, but to the ume, entitled “ The Primeval Ghost World,”
ancient home of the Aryan race, a world where the genesis of mythology is held not
still full of wonders for the dwellers in it, to be explicable by the science of language
whose changes of days' and seasons, inter alone, and is rather ascribed to the complete
preted by the analogy of human will and absence of distinction between animate and
action, were instinct with manifold life; inanimate Nature, which is now known to
where the imagination of our fathers shaped be common to all tribes of men in a primi
the splendid and gracious forms which have tive condition, and to which Mr. Tylor has
gone forth over the earth, as their children given the name of Animism. We are
went forth, and prevailed in many lands, pleased to find Mr. Fiske praising Mr. Tyand have lived on through all the diverse lor’s work warmly, and even enthusiasti
fates of the kindred peoples in India, in cally : here is another of the many proofs
Greece, in Iceland, to bear witness in the that the ties of common language and cult
latter days to the unity of the parent stock. ure are in the long-run stronger than diplo
This book, which Mr. Fiske modestly intro macy and Indirect Claims. We find men
duces as a “ somewhat rambling and unsys tioned, among other instances of animism,
tematic series of papers,” seems to us to the belief that a man’s shadow is a sort of
give the leading results of comparative my ghost or other self. This belief has, in
thology in a happier manner and with comparatively-recent times, made its mark
greater success than has yet been attained even in so civilized a tongue as the Greek,
in so small a compass. It is the work of
in Romaic is a ghost, or rather a
a student who follows in the steps of the personified object generally, and seems to
great leaders with right-minded apprecia correspond exactly to the other self attrib
tion, and who, though he does not make uted by primitive man to all creatures, liv
any claim to originality, is no ordinary ing or not living, indiscriminately. Mr.
compiler. He is enthusiastic in his pursuit, Geldart, in a note to his book on Modem
without being a fanatic; his style has the Greek (Oxford, 1870), which well deserves
Myths
�774
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
the attention of students of language and
mythology, traces this as well as older al
lied meanings from the original meaning of
aroi-xYiov in classical Greek, as the shadow
on the sun-dial, acutely observing that the
moving shadow would seem to the natural
man far more alive and mysterious than the
fixed rod.
There are several matters dealt with in
special chapters by Mr. Fiske which we
must put off with little more than allusion:
the book is indeed a small one, but so full
of interest that choice among its contents
is not easy. An essay on “ The Descent of
Fire ” treats of the divining-rod and other
talismans endowed with the faculty of rend
ing open rocks and revealing hidden treas
ure, which all appear to be symbols, some
times obvious, sometimes remotely and fan
cifully derived, of the lightning which breaks
the cloud and lets loose the treasures of the
rain. There is also a chapter on the my
thology of non-Aryan tribes, showing the
difference between the vague resemblance
of these to Aryan myths and to one another,
and the close family likeness which leads to
the certain conclusion that the great mass
of Aryan mythology came from a common
stock.—Spectator.
and School : A Journal of Popular
Education. Morton & Co., Louisville.
In a late number of this journal is an
excellent article by Prof. Alexander Hogg,
of the Alabama Agricultural and Mechani
cal College, entitled “ More Geometry—
less Arithmetic,” that contains various sug
gestions worthy the thoughtful attention of
teachers. It was a favorite idea of the
late Josiah Holbrook, which he enforced
upon educators on all occasions, that rudi
mentary geometry should be introduced
into all primary schools; but he insisted
with equal earnestness upon his theory of
their order, which was embodied in his
aphorism, “ Drawing before writing, and
geometry before arithmetic.” The priority
of geometrical or arithmetical conception
in the unfolding mind is a subtle psycho
logical question, into which it is not neces
sary for the teacher to go, the practical
question being to get a recognition of the
larger claims of geometry, and this is the
point to which Prof. Hogg wisely directs
Home
the discussion. The fact is, mental devel
opment has been too much considered in
its linear and successive aspects, and the
theories that are laid down concerning the
true order of studies have been hitherto
too much confined to this idea. Starting
with inherited aptitudes, mental develop
ment begins in the intercourse of the infant
mind with the environment, and, while it is
true that there is a sequence of mental ex
perience in each increasing complexity, it is
equally true that many kinds of mental ac
tion are unfolded together. Ideas of form
are certainly among the earliest, and there
fore should have an early cultivation. To
all that Prof. Hogg says about the need of
increasing the amount of geometry in edu
cation we cordially subscribe, and we think
he is equally right in condemning the excess
of attention that is given to arithmetic,
which is mainly due to its supposed prac
tical character as a preparation for business.
But neither is geometry without its impor
tant practical uses. The professor says :
“ Let us see, then, what a pupil with
enough arithmetic and the plane geometry
can perform. He can measure heights and
distances; determine areas; knows that,
having enclosed one acre with a certain
amount of fencing, to enclose four acres
he only has to double the amount of fencing;
that the same is true of his buildings. In
circles, in round plats, or in cylindrical ves
sels, he will see a beautiful, universal law
pervading the whole—the increase of the
circumference is proportional to the in
crease of the diameter, while the increase
of the circle is as the square of the diam
eter. . . .
“ Thousands of boys are stuffed to re
pletion with ‘interest,’ ‘discount,’ and
‘ partnership,’ in which they have experi
enced much ‘ loss ’ but no ‘ profit; ’ have
mastered as many as five arithmetics, and
yet, upon being sent into the surveyor’s of
fice, machine-shop, and carpenter-shop,
could not erect a perpendicular to a
straight line, or find the centre of a circle
already described, if their lives depended
upon it. Many eminent teachers think that
young persons are incapable of reasoning,
and that the truths of geometry are too ab
struse to be comprehended by them. . . .
“ Children are taught to read, not for
�LITERARY NOTICES.
what is contained in the reading-books, but
that they may be able to read through life;
so, let enough of the leading branches be
taught, if no more, to enable the pupil to
pursue whatever he may need most in after
life. Let, then, an amount of geometry
commensurate with its importance be
taught even in the common schools; let it
be taught at the same time with arithmetic;
let as much time be given to it, and we shall
find thousands who, instead of closing their
mathematical books on leaving school, will
be led to pursue the higher mathematics in
their maturer years.”
The Mystery of Matter and Other Es
says. By J. Allanson Picton. 12mo,
pp. 482. Price $3.50. Macmillan & Co.
The purpose of this work is to reconcile
the essential principles of religious faith with
the present tendencies of thought in the
sphere of positive and physical science. Mr.
Picton is not a votary of modem skepti
cism, although he recognizes the fact of its
existence, and its bearing on vital questions.
Nor is he a partisan of any of the current
systems of philosophy or science, but dis
cusses their various pretensions in the spirit
of intelligent and impartial criticism. He
has no fear of their progress or influence;
he accepts many of their conclusions; he
honors the earnestness and ability of their
expounders ; while he believes that their re
sults are in harmony with the essential ideas
of religion. It is possible, he affirms, that
all forms of finite existence may be reduced
to modes of motion. But this is of no con
sequence in a religious point of view, for
motion itself is only the visible manifesta
tion of the energy of an infinite life. “ To
me,” he says, “ the doctrine of an eternal
continuity of development has no terrors ;
for, believing matter to be in its ultimate
essence spiritual, I see in every cosmic revo
lution a ‘ change from glory to glory, as by
the Spirit of the Lord.’ I can look down
the uncreated, unbeginning past, without
the sickness of bewildered faith. I want no
silent dark eternity in which no world was ;
for I am a disciple of One who said, * My
Father worketh hitherto.’ My sense of
eternal order is no longer jarred by the sud
den appearance in the universe of a dead,
inane substance, foreign to God and spiritual
775
being. And if, with a true insight, I could
stand so high above the world as to take
any comprehensive survey of its unceasing
evolutions—here a nebula dawning at the
silent fiat ‘ be light,’ there the populous
globe, where the communion of the many
with the One brings the creature back to
the Creator—I am sure that the oneness of
the vision, so far from degrading, would un
speakably elevate my sense of the dignity
and blessedness of created being. I have
no temptation, therefore, to join in cursing
the discoverer who tracks the chain of divine
forces by which finite consciousness has
been brought to take its present form ; be
cause I know he can never find more than
that which was in the beginning, and is, and
ever shall be—the ‘ power of an endless
life.’ ”
With regard to the speculations of Prof.
Huxley, the author, so far from bewailing
their effects, pronounces them decidedly
favorable to the interests of religion. They
present a formidable barrier to the encroach
ments of materialism. In this respect, he
thinks that Prof. Huxley has rendered ser
vices to the Church, if less signal, not less
valuable, than those which he has rendered
to science. He has brought the religious
world face to face with facts with a vigor
and a clearness peculiar to himself. Not
only so. In the opinion of the author, he
has made suggestions concerning those facts
of vast importance to the future of religion.
He has defined the only terms on which
harmony is possible between spiritual re
ligion and physical science. Equalling
Berkeley in transparent distinctness of
statement, while he far surpasses him in
knowledge of physical phenomena, Mr. Hux
ley has shown that, whether we start with
materialism or idealism, we are brought at
length to the same point. He has thus
proved himself one of the most powerful op
ponents that materialism ever had. All
that he did in his celebrated discourse on
the “ Physical Basis of Life ” was, to call
attention to certain indisputable facts.
“And perhaps it was the impossibility of
denying these facts which was a main cause
of the uneasiness that most of us felt.
Thus he told us that all organizations, from
the lichen up to the man, are all composed
mainly of one sort of matter, which in all
�776
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
cases, even those at the extremity of the deed follow that materialism, in a fair sense
scale, is almost identical in composition. of the word, is impossible, still the conclu
And the one other fact on which he insisted sion cannot be avoided that materialism
was, that every living action, from the vi and spiritualism would then exhibit only
brations of cilia by the foraminifer to the different aspects of the same everlasting
imagination of Hamlet or the composition fact, and physical research might henceforth
of the Messiah, is accompanied by, and in a unfold to us only the energies of Infinite
sense finds an equivalent expression in, a Life self-governed by eternal law.
definite waste or disintegration of material
But, admitting the universal action of
tissue. Thus it is no less certain that the molecular mechanics, the author adduces
muscles of a horse are strained by a heavy numerous instances which show that the
load, than it is that the brain of a Shake explanation they offer of the phenomena of
speare undergoes molecular agitation, pro sensation cannot be realized in conscious
ducing definite chemical results, in the sub ness. Nothing is really an explanation
lime effort of imagination.”
which cannot be reproduced in conscious
But, at first blush, such statements pro ness as such. We demand a cause from
duce a shock in the minds of most readers. which the effect can rationally be educed.
They are reluctant to be told that the soul The perception of distance, for example, is
never acts by itself apart from some excite explained by the action of the muscular
ment of bodily tissue. It seems monstrous sense and the experience of touch. This is
that thought and love, which in one direc an adequate explanation, for it can be re
tion find their expression in the majesty of alized in consciousness. But the case is far
eloquence, should in another direction find otherwise with the explanation of sensation
their expression in evolving carbonic acid by molecular mechanics. Physical research
and water. Such a union between soul and lands us in a dead inert substance called
body seemed to amount to identity. And matter, which, though without soul or mean
yet the soul was conscious that, whatever ing in itself, produces by its vibrations the
might be said, it was not one of the chemi most beautiful visions and sublime emotions
cal elements, nor all of them put together.
in our consciousness. But the external phe
The mental anxiety referred to has been nomena, inseparable from our consciousness
aggravated by the hold which has been of sight or sound, cannot be rationally con
taken on most inquiring minds, by the doc nected with the consciousness that gives
trine of development. Whether natural them all their interest. No one to whom
selection is or is not sufficient to account the Hallelujah Chorus utters the joy of
for the origin of species, the idea of suc heaven, or for whom a sonata of Beethoven
cessive acts of creation out of nothing has gives a voice to the unutterable, can make
been virtually abandoned by all whose ob it seem real to himself that his mind is in
servations of Nature have been on such a vaded by mere waves of vibrating air. At
scale as to entitle their opinions to any no point in the chain of vibrations, not even
weight. What was once the property of a the point most deeply buried in the brain,
few isolated thinkers has been made com can we conceive that molecular action is
pletely accessible to minds of common in converted into any thing besides material
telligence. But the terrors which have movement, or resistance to movement. But
been awakened by the popular reception of this does not exhaust the consciousness.
novel scientific theories are entirely founded The emotional, imaginative, and moral
on the assumption that matter and spirit wealth of human life opens a world of re
are fundamentally distinct in their nature. ality immeasurably greater than can be con
It has been the general belief that matter tained in mere mechanical movement.
was something heavy, lifeless, inert, some
Assuming, then, the fact of a nature in
thing that forms the hidden basis of the man, of which the molecular laws are not
ethereal vision of the world. But, argues the substance, but the condition, the author
the author, if that assumption be the mere takes up the inquiry as to the essential
creature of false analogy, and is wholly in nature of religion. This he defines to be
congruous and unthinkable, it does not in the endeavor after a practical expression of
�LITERARY NOTICES.
man’s conscious relation to the Infinite.
The savage who wonders at the unseen but
mighty wind that streams from unknown
realms of power has already the germ of
the feeling which inspires religion. But the
conscious relation to the Infinite includes
every stage in this consciousness, just as
the name of a plant includes the blade as
well as the fruit. If the evolution of reli
gion be a normal phase in the development
of mankind, there must be at the root of it
that grand and measureless Power which is
the inevitable complement of the conception
of evolution. All evolution implies a divine
Power, but religious evolution has to do
with the dim apprehension of that Power in
consciousness. Mr. Herbert Spencer, to
continue the reasoning of the author, has
been much blamed, by many religious think
ers, for making the reconciliation between
science and religion to lie in the recognition
on both sides that “ the Power which the
universe manifests to us is utterly inscru
table.” Yet the very persons who most
strenuously object to this suggestion are in
the habit of quoting the words of Scripture
which declare the unsearchable mystery of
the Divine Nature. Those words are used
to rebuke the arrogance of philosophy. But,
when philosophy learns the lesson, its hu
mility is condemned as wilful blindness.
The true philosophy of ignorance, however,
retains as an indestructible element of hu
man consciousness an apprehension of
something beyond all fragmentary existence,
the Absolute Being, at once the only true
substance, and the One that constitutes a
universe from the phenomenal world. It
is inevitable that attempts should be made
to give practical expression to this feeling.
And in such efforts we find the first germs
of religion.
With the imperfect summary which we
have given of the views maintained in this
volume, it will be perceived that its position
in literature is that of a commentary on
new developments of thought, rather than
of a complete exposition of any system of
philosophy or science. Accepting the con
sequences of modem physical research, it
aims to establish their consistency with the
principles of a high religious faith, and thus
to remove the vague alarms which their
prevalence has called forth in certain por
711
tions of the community. The author is
evidently a man of an ardent poetical tem
perament, of a reverent and tender spirit,
and an aptitude for illustration rather than
for demonstration.—N. Y. Tribune.
Chimneys for Furnaces, Fireplaces, and
Steam-Boilers. By R. Armstrong, C.
E., 12mo, 76 pages. Price, 50 cents.
This is number one of Van Nostrand’s
science series, and is a technological mono
graph that will be useful to engineers and
builders. The author says : “ Furnaces or
closed fireplaces, which it is the main de
sign of this essay to treat upon, are essen
tially different in principle and construction
to the ordinary open fireplaces of dwelling
houses, as they are exceedingly different in
their general scope and object, and in the
vast variety of their applications; ” and he
then proceeds to expound the general phi
losophy of special chimneys for furnaces
and steam-boilers.
Steam-Boiler Explosions. By Zerah Col
burn. 12mo, 98 pages.
New York :
D. Van Nostrand.
This is number two of the same series,
and is a most instructive and readable essay.
The editor states that, although published
ten years ago, later experiences would add
but little if any thing to the knowledge it
affords. The various observed scientific
questions in regard to the causes of steamboiler explosions, such as over-heating, elec
tricity, the spheroidal state, decomposed
steam, etc., are considered, but Mr. Colburn
maintains that, whether these are valid
causes of explosion or not, they are colleotively as nothing compared with the one
great cause—defective boilers. The style
in which this essay is written is a model of
simplicity and clearness.
Bulletin
ural
of the Buffalo Society of Nat
Sciences. Vol. I., Nos. 1 and 2.
Buffalo, 1873.
The Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences
commences this year the publication of their
Bulletin, which it is proposed to continue,
four numbers to be issued annually. The
two numbers before us contain seven papers,
six of which are devoted to the describing
and cataloguing of American moths, and
one gives descriptions of new species of
�778
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
fungi. The author of the latter paper is
Charles H. Peck ; all the others are by Au
gustus R. Grote. Mr. Grote is well known
to entomologists as an authority on the sub
jects which he discusses, and the Buffalo
society is to be congratulated for being the
medium through which the laborious and
valuable researches of so able a naturalist
are published to the world. The papers are
strictly scientific and technical, being in
tended solely for those who pursue method
ically the special branches of science to
which they refer. They are not popular
expositions, but rather brief notes on cer
tain departments of natural science, to be
understood and valued only by the initiated.
The Bulletin is handsomely printed on good
paper, in octavo form. Subscription price,
$2.50 per volume.
Scientific and Industrial Education. A
Lecture. By G. B. Stebbins. Detroit, 1873,
pp. 24.
The Railroads of the United States. By
Henry V. Poor. New York : H. V. & H. W.
Poor, 68 Broadway, pp. 29.
Cosmical and Molecular Harmonics, No.
II. By Pliny Earle Chase, M. A. Philadel
phia, 1873, pp. 16.
Nickel.
pp. 19.
By Dr. Lewis Feuchtwanger,
Diminution of Water on the Earth, and
its Permament Conversion into Solid Forms.
By Mrs. George W. Houk. Dayton, 0., 1873,
pp. 39.
Sixth Annual Report of the Trustees of
the Peabody Museum of American Archaeol
ogy and Ethnology. Cambridge, 1873, pp.
Atmospheric Theory of the Open Polar 27. Mr. Gillman’s report of his explora
Sea : with Remarks on the Present State tions of the ancient mounds on the St. Clair
of the Question. By William W. Wheil- River is an important contribution to ar
don. First Paper. Boston, 1872.
chaeology. The museum is in a flourishing
This paper was read at the meeting of the state, and growing steadily. The Niccolucci
American Association for the Advancement collection of ancient crania and implements
of Science, held at Newport, R. I., in 1860, was the most important addition made
and was published in the volume of proceed during the past year.
ings of the Association for that year. The ex
traordinary interest taken in Arctic affairs
during the past two years has led to its re
MISCELLANY.
issue in pamphlet form, with brief introduc
Utilization of Waste Coal.—The English
tory observations on the present state of the
problem. Accepting the view, now quite gen Mechanic gives an historical sketch of the
erally held, that an open sea, or at least a various processes suggested for the utiliza
much ameliorated climate, exists in the vi tion of the waste of coal-mines. From this
cinity of the pole, the author, in this paper, account it would appear that so early as the
aims to show that such a condition of things close of the sixteenth century the waste of
“ is largely if not entirely <Me to the cur small coal attracted notice. About the year
rents of the air from the equatorial regions 1594 one Sir Hugh Platt proposed a mixture
which move in the higher strata of the of coal-dust and loam, together with such
earth’s atmosphere, bearing heat and moist combustible materials as sawdust and tan
ure with them.” How well he succeeds in ners’ bark: the loam being the cement
this undertaking, we leave the readers of which was to hold the other ingredients to
gether. But Sir Hugh’s suggestions did not
the argument to judge.
receive much attention in those early times,
when coal was but little, used, wood being
the staple fuel of England.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
It was only at the beginning of the
Washington Catalogue of Stars. By or present century that this question began to
der of Rear-Admiral Sands, U. S. N. Wash receive serious attention. A patent was
ington, 1873.
then granted for a mixture of refuse coal
First Annual Report of the Minnesota with charcoal, wood, breeze, tan, peat, saw
State Board of Health. St. Paul, 1873, dust, cork-cuttings, and other inflammable
pp. 102.
ingredients. A capital objection to such a
�MISCELLANY.
scheme is its expense. The product would
necessarily cost about as much per ton as
good coal, without being at all as service
able. The next attempt was the production
of “gaseous coke.” Here the object was to
convert small coal, by the addition of coaltar, either pure, or mixed with naphtha, into
a well-mixed mass. It was then to be put
into an oven and coked ; afterward it was
to be broken into suitable blocks for use.
There were several modifications of this
process, but as they all more or less involved
the previous manufacture of their most es
sential ingredient, coal-tar, the anticipations
of the projectors were not realized.
In 1823 a step was taken in the right
direction by the combination of bituminous
and anthracite coals, and converting them,
by partial carbonization in an oven, into a
kind of soft coke. In 1845 Frederick Ran
some introduced a plan for cementing to
gether small coal by means of a solution of
silica dissolved in caustic soda, the small
refuse coal so treated to be then compressed
into blocks suitable for use. In 1849 Henry
Bessemer proposed simply to heat small
coal sufficient to soften it, and thus render
it capable of being easily pressed into
moulds and formed into solid blocks. The
coal, according to this plan, might be soft
ened either by the action of steam or in
suitable ovens. Coal alone was used, no
extraneous matter of any kind being em
ployed. In 1856 F. Ransome brought for
ward one of the best plans yet offered. He
placed the small coal in suitable moulds,
which were then passed into an oven, and
there heated just sufficiently to cause the
mass to agglomerate.
Though the writer in the Mechanic com
mends highly the Ransome and the Besse
mer plans, it is clear that they do not fully
solve the problem, for inventors are still
busy on both sides of the Atlantic devising
other and better methods. Perhaps, how
ever, the successful working of the Crans
ton “Automatic Reverberatory Furnace,”
which is adapted for the consumption of
powdered coal, will cause such a demand
for small coal as will leave these utilizing
processes without material to work on.
779
nia of the Human Races,” and recently
laid before the Paris Academy of Sciences
a synopsis of the results which he there
proposes to establish. The materials he
has at hand for this investigation are
abundant—no less than 4,000 skulls; and
he acknowledges the valuable assistance
rendered to him by the most eminent sa
vants both of France and of the rest of
Europe. He holds that the fossil races are
not extinct, but that, on the contrary, they
have yet living representatives. He regards
the skull discovered in 1700 at Canstadt,
near Stuttgart, as the type of the most an
cient human race of which we have ac
knowledge. This skull is dolichocephalous
—that is, having a length greater than its
breadth. With the Canstadt skull he
classes those of Enghisheim, Brux, Nean
derthal, La Denise, Staengenaes, Olmo, and
Clichy—the last-named three being the
skulls of females. Among the representa
tives, in historical times, of the dolichoceph
alous race, M. Quatrefages reckons Kay
Lykke, a Danish statesman of the seven
teenth century, whose skull is portrayed in
the forthcoming work; Saint Mansuy, Bishop
of Toul in the fourth century, whose skull is
also figured ; and Robert Bruce. Whether
the cranium is long or short—dolichoceph
alous or brachycephalous—is a question
which has nothing to do with the intel
lectual status of the man, according to M.
Quatrefages.
Heart-Disease and Overwork.—The ear
ly break-down of health observed among
Cornish miners, and commonly regarded
as an affection of the lungs —“ miners’
phthisis ”—is declared, by competent au
thority, to proceed rather from disturbed
action of the heart; and this, according to
Dr. Houghton, the distinguished Dublin
physiologist, is caused by the great and
sudden strain put upon the system by the
ascent from the pits, at a time when the
body is not sufficiently fortified with food.
In his valuable address on the “ Relation
of Food to Work,” Dr. Houghton says:
“ The labor of the miner is peculiar, and his
food appears to me badly suited to meet its
requirements. At the close of a hard day’s
Qnatrefages on Human Crania.—Quatre- toil the weary miner has to climb, by verti
fages is engaged on a work entitled “ Cra cal ladders, through a height of from 600 to
�780
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
1,200 feet, before he can reach his cottage,
where he naturally looks for his food and
sleep. This climbing of the ladders is per
formed hastily, almost as a gymnastic feat,
and throws a heavy strain (amounting to
from one-eighth to one-quarter of the whole
day’s work) upon the muscles of the tired
miner, during the half-hour or hour that con
cludes his daily toil. A flesh-fed man (as a
red Indian) would run up the ladders like a
cat, using the stores of force already in re
serve in his blood ; but the Cornish miner,
who is fed chiefly upon dough and fat, finds
himself greatly distressed by the climbing of
the ladders—more so, indeed, than by the
slower labor of quarrying in the mine. His
heart, over-stimulated by the rapid exer
tion of muscular work, beats more and
more quickly in its efforts to oxidate the
blood in the lungs, and so supply the force
required. Local congestion of the lung it
self frequently follows, and lays the founda
tion for the affection so graphically though
sadly described by the miner at forty years
of age, who tells you that his other works
are very good, but that he is ‘ beginning to
leak in the valves ’ Were I a Cornish miner,
and able to afford the luxury, I should train
myself for the ‘ ladder-feat ’ by dining on
half a pound of rare beefsteak and a glass
of ale from one to two hours before com
mencing the ascent,”
San Jorge. In 1866, for instance, the vol
cano of Santorin emitted smoke charged
with acid, which produced on plants effects
similar to those observed at San Jorge in
1808.
A writer in the Revue Scientijique is of
the opinion that the facts above stated
give the solution of some of the problems
raised by the exhumations at Pompeii. The
strange posture of skeletons found in the
streets of that town is very difficult to ac
count for, if we insist on finding analogies
with phenomena observed in modem erup
tions of Vesuvius. A shower of ashes, how
ever heavy, however charged with humidity,
could never have thrown down and choked
a strong man like the one who met his
death while making his escape, in company
with his two daughters, along one of the
public roads. They must have inhaled a
poisonous gas of some kind, which caused
them to perish in fearful agony. This gas
would not lie in a layer of equal thickness :
in some places it might have a greater depth
than in others. Hence, while some of the
inhabitants would perish, the remainder
would escape.
It is very probable that the eruption in
the year 79 was accompanied with local
emissions of carbonic acid, springing from
points remote from the crater. In all vol
canic regions, says the author, there are
localities where, even when the volcano is
inactive, carbonic acid exists in the atmos
phere, in quantities sufficient to produce
asphyxia: and the neighborhood of Vesu
vius is particularly noted for the number of
6uch localities. During an eruption, the
amount of the gas given out is usually in
creased, and wells, ditches, quarries, etc.,
are filled with carbonic acid. It is some
times dangerous to enter cavities in the
rocks on the coast when a fresh breeze does
not keep them free of the poisonous gas.
In 1861 Ste.-Claire Deville came near meet
ing his death by entering one of these cavi
ties for a few moments. The following
week he and the author barely escaped
being asphyxiated in the bed of a great
quarry, which they had previously visited
many a time with impunity.
Poisonous Volcanie Gases. — During a
volcanic eruption on the little island of San
Jorge, one of the Azores, in the year 1808,
vaporous clouds were seen to roll down the
sides of the mountain, and to move along
the valley. Wherever they passed, plants
and animals wilted and perished instanta
neously. From this asphyxiating action,
as also from their downward movement on
the mountain-side and toward the sea, we
may conclude that they consisted chiefly of
some dense, deleterious gas, most probably
carbonic acid. Their opacity is to be at
tributed to the presence of watery vapor,
and their reddish color to the presence of
tine volcanic dust. Finally, their injurious
action on plants was doubtless owing to the
presence of chlorhydric and sulphurous acid.
Similar phenomena have been observed
on occasion of other volcanic outbreaks,
A Relie of Ancient Etrurian Art. — An
but nowhere so marked as in the case of antiquarian discovery of very considerable
�MISCELLANY.
interest was recently made at Cervetri,
Italy, being a terra-cotta sarcophagus of
native Etruscan production. The ancient
Etrurians were noted for the honor they
bestowed upon their dead, and their custom
of paying homage to ancestors by placing
their effigies upon their tombs seems to
have been peculiar to themselves, and un
known among the Greeks. The recentlydiscovered sarcophagus is now in the British
Museum. It measures internally four feet
ten inches in length, and two feet in width.
The floor is hollowed out, or rather marked
by a raised border, which takes the form
of a human figure. It rests upon four claw
feet projecting beyond the angles, and ter
minating above in the head and breasts of
a winged siren. The lid of the sarcophagus
represents an upholstered couch upon which
recline two human figures, male and female.
There are inscriptions on the four sides of
the couch. The panel at the foot has the
figures of two warriors in panoply, and the
front panel exhibits the same pair of war
riors engaged in mortal combat. Several
accessory figures are also to be seen. On
the panel at the head of the couch are rep
resented four sitting figures in opposing
pairs, plunged in deep sorrow. The monu
ment has no counterpart among those of its
kind hitherto discovered, the only one at
all resembling it being that of the Campana
Collection in the Louvre. The latter is,
however, of a much more recent date than
the former, nor is it adorned with either
reliefs or inscriptions. The Cervetri sar
cophagus probably dates from the period of
Etruscan ascendency in Italy.
Audible and Inaudible Sounds.—The
phenomenon of color-blindness is a familiar
fact; but an analogous phenomenon, what
might be called pitch-deafness, though not
uncommon, is not so generally known. By
•Ditch-deafness is meant insensibility to cer
tain sound-vibrations. Prof. Donaldson, of
the University of Edinburgh, used to illus
trate the different grades of sensibility to
sound by a very simple experiment, namely,
by sounding a set of small organ-pipes of
great acuteness of tone. The gravest note
would be sounded first, and this would be
heard by the entire class. Soon some one
would remark, “ There, ’tis silent,” whereas
781
all the rest, perhaps, would distinctly hear
the shrill piping continued. As the tone
rose, one after another of the students
would lose sensation of the acute sounds,
until finally they became inaudible to all.
There is reason for supposing that per
sons whose ear is sensitive to very acute
sounds are least able to hear very grave
notes, and vice versa. Probably the hear
ing capacity of the human ear ranges over
no more than 12 octaves. The gravest
note audible to the human ear is supposed
to represent about 15 vibrations per second,
and the sharpest 48,000 per second.
The auditory range of animals is doubt
less very different from that of man; they
hear sounds which are insensible to us, and
vice versa. Many persons are insensible to
the scream of the bat—it is too acute. But
to the bat itself that sound must be in all
cases perfectly sensible. If, then, we sup
pose the bat to have an auditory range of
12 octaves, and its scream or cry to stand
midway in that range, the animal would
hear tones some six octaves higher than
those audible to the human ear—two and a
half million vibrations per second.
Scoresby and other arctic voyagers and
whale-hunters have observed that whales
have some means of communicating with
one another at great distances. It is prob
able that the animals bellow in a tone too
grave for the human ear, but quite within
the range of the cetacean ear.
The Motions of the Heart.—According
to the generally-accepted teachings of phys
iologists, the heart rests after each pulsa
tion ; that is, each complete contraction
during which the auricles are emptied into
the ventricles, and the ventricles into the
vessels, is followed by a moment’s repose,
when the organ is entirely at rest. Dr. J.
Bell Pettigrew, in his recently-published
lectures on the “ Physiology of the Circula
tion,” takes a different view, affirming that
the normal action of the heart is a con
tinuous one, and that as a whole it never
ceases to act until it comes to a final stop.
He says : “ When the heart is beating nor
mally, one or other part of it is always mov
ing. When the veins cease to close, and
the auricles to open, the auricles begin to
close and the ventricles to open ; and so on
�782
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
in endless succession. In order to admit
of these changes, the auriculo-ventricular
valves, as has been stated, rise and fall like
the diaphragm in respiration; the valves
protruding, now into the auricular cavities,
now into the ventricular ones. There is in
reality no pause in the heart’s action. The
one movement glides into the other as a
snake glides into the grass. All that the
eye can detect is a quickening of the gliding
movements, at stated and very short inter
vals. A careful examination of the sounds
of the heart shows that the sounds, like the
movements, glide into each other. There
is no actual cessation of sound when the
heart is in action. There are periods when
the sounds are very faint, and when only a
sharp or an educated ear can detect them,
and there are other periods when the sounds
are so distinct that even a dull person must
hear; but the sounds—and this is the point
to be attended to—merge into each other
by slow or sudden transitions. It would
be more accurate, when speaking of the
movements and sounds of the heart, to say
they are only faintly indicated at one time,
and strongly emphasized at another, but that
neither ever altogether ceases. If, however,
the heart is acting more or less vigorously
as a whole, the question which naturally
presents itself is, How is the heart rested ?
There can be little doubt it rests, as it acts,
viz., in parts. The centripetal and centrif
ugal wave-movements pass through the
sarcous elements of the different portions
of the heart very much as the wind passes
through the leaves : its particles are stirred
in rapid succession, but never at exactly the
same instant; the heart is moving as a
whole, but its particles are only moving at
regular and stated intervals ; the periods
of repose, there is every reason to believe,
greatly exceeding the periods of activity.
The nourishment, life, and movements of
the heart are, in this sense, synonymous.”
phere being represented as 100), he found
the birds seized with violent convulsions.
The same result followed when sparrows
were confined in common air under a press
ure of 17 atmospheres. In oxygen, at 3|
atmospheres’ pressure, or in air at 22 at
mospheres, the convulsions were extremely
violent and quickly fatal. The symptoms
in the latter case were these: Convulsions
set in after four or five minutes: in moving
about, the bird hobbles on its feet, as
though walking on hot coals. It then flut
ters its wings, falls on its back, and spins
about, the claws doubled up. Death super
venes after a few such spasms.
The toxic dose of oxygen for a dog was
found to require, for convulsions, a pressure
of 350 in oxygen; and a pressure of 500 is
fatal. The amount of oxygen in the arterial
blood of a dog in convulsions was found to
be considerably less than twice the normal
quantity. Hence the author’s startling con
clusion, that oxygen is the mostfearful poison
known.
Taking a dog in full convulsion out of
the receiver, M. Bert found the paws rigid,
the body bent backward in the shape of an
arch, the eyes protruding, pupil dilated,
jaws clinched. Soon there is relaxation,
followed by another crisis, combining the
symptoms of strychnine-poisoning and of
lockjaw. The convulsionary periods, at
first recurring every five or six minutes, be
come gradually less violent and less fre
quent.
The author sums up his conclusions as
follows : 1. Oxygen behaves like a rapidlyfatal poison, when its amount in the arte
rial blood is about 35 cubic centimetres per
cent, of the liquid; 2. The poisoning is
characterized by convulsions which repre
sent, according to the intensity of the symp
toms, the various types of tetanus, epilepsy,
poisoning by phrenic acid and strychnine,
etc.; 3. These symptoms, which are allayed
by chloroform, are due to an exaggeration
of the excito-motor power of the spinal cord;
4. They are accompanied by a considerable
and constant diminution of the internal tem
perature of the animal.
Poisoning by Oxygen.—M. Paul Bert,
whose observations upon the physiological
effects of high atmospheric pressure we have
already noted in the Monthly, communi
cates to the Paris Academy of Sciences the
Infant Mortality.—During the year 1868,
results of his observations on the toxic ac
tion of oxygen. Placing sparrows in oxygen 23,198 children under one year of age,
under a pressure of 850 (that of the atmos died by convulsions in England, the num
�NOTES.
ber of births being 786,858—one in 34.
In the same year the births in Scotland
were 115,514, and only.312 infants under
one year—one in 370—fell victims to con
vulsions. This striking difference in the
mortality statistics of the two countries is
accounted for in a report of the Scottish
Registrar-General by the difference between
the English and the Scottish modes of rear
ing infants. “ The English,” he writes,
“ are in the habit of stuffing their babies
with spoon-meat almost from birth, while
the Scotch, excepting in cases where the
mother is delicate, or the child is out nurs
ing, w isely give nothing but the mother’s
milk till the child begins to cut its teeth.”
The statistics of infantile deaths from
diarrhoea may also be adduced as an argu
ment in favor of the Scottish system. In
England more than twice as many infants
die of this disorder than in Scotland.
On comparing these statistics with those
of the last United States census, it will be
seen that the chances of life for infants in
their first year are far more favorable in
this country than in England, though not so
favorable as in Scotland. In the year end
ing May 31, 1870, there were born in the
United States 1,100,475 children. Of these
there died, during the same year 4,863 by
convulsions, and 1,534 by diarrhoea, or one
in 236 from the former cause, and one in
724 from the latter. In England the deaths
from diarrhoea amounted to 138 in 100,000
infants, and in Scotland to 66 in the same
number. It will be seen, on computation,
that the proportion of deaths from this
cause are by a very small fraction less in
the United States than in Scotland. But
now are we to attribute these very credita
ble results to our more rational system of
rearing children, or to the better social con
dition of the population here ?
783
He has the testimony of fifty-six witnesses
who saw the young enter the parent’s
mouth. Of these fifty-six, nineteen testify
that they heard the parent snake warning
her young of danger by a loud whistle.
Two of the witnesses waited to see the young
emerge again from their refuge, after the
danger was past; and one of them went
again and again to the snake’s haunt, ob
serving the same act on several successive
days. Four saw the young rush out when
the parent was struck ; eighteen saw the
young shaken out by dogs, or escaping from
the mouth of their dead parent. These tes
timonies are confirmed by the observations
of scientific men, such as Prof. Smith, of
Yale College, Dr. Palmer, of the Smithsonian
Institution, and others.
NOTES.
The year 1759, which witnessed the
completion of the Eddystone Lighthouse,
closed with tremendous storms, and the
courage of the light-keepers was tested to
the utmost. A biography of John Smeaton,
the builder of the Eddystone, states that
for twelve days the sea ran over them so
much that they could not open the door of
the lantern, or any other door. “The
house did shake,” said one of the keepers,
“ as if we had been up a great tree. The
old men were frightened out of their lives,
wishing they had never seen the place.
The fear seized them in the back, but rub
bing them with oil of turpentine gave them
relief!”
Sir Charles Lyell, in his “ Geology,”
speaking of Madagascar, says that, with two
or three small islands in its immediate vicin
ity, it forms a zoological sub-province, in
which all the species except one, and nearly
all the genera, are peculiar. He singles out
for special remark the lemurs of Madagas
car, comprising seven genera, only one of
which has any representatives on the nearest
main-land of Africa. Hitherto no fossil re
mains of these Madagascar species have
Snakes swallowing their Young.—The been known to exist, but M. Delfortrie, of
question, “ Do snakes swallow their young ?” the French Academy of Sciences, announces
that he has found, in the phosphorite of
that is, give them shelter in the maternal the department of Lot, an almost complete
stomach when danger threatens, was dis skull of an individual belonging to this lecussed in a paper presented to the Ameri murine family.
can Association by G. Brown Goode. The
Of the 35,170,294 passengers carried
author some time since asked, through the over the railroads of Pennsylvania last year,
public press, for testimony bearing on this only thirty-three were killed, less than one
subject, and he now comes forward with in a million. But the English lines make a
far more favorable showing, the number
what appears to be perfectly satisfactory killed in the year 1871 being only twelve—■
evidence in favor of the affirmative side. or one in 31,000,000.
�784
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
In the “ History of the Fishes of the Brit
ish Islands,” Giraldus Cambrensis, a writer
of the twelfth century, is quoted for the•
observation that in the Lyn y Cwn, or Pool1
of Dogs, in Wales, the trout, the perch, andI
the eel, were deficient of the left eye. A
recent work on “ Trout and Salmon Fishing;
in Wales,” strangely enough, confirms in
part this observation, asserting that one-•
eyed trout are still caught in the same
waters.
Professor Smee recently, at the Berlin
Chemical Society, proposed a method for
detecting organic matters contained in the
air, and for effecting at the same time a
kind of distillation by cold. A glass fun
nel, closed at its narrow end, is held sus
pended in the air and filled with ice. The
moisture of the air is condensed, in contact
with the exterior surface; it trickles to the
bottom of the apparatus, and falls into a
small basin placed for its reception. The
liquid obtained in a given time is weighed.
It generally contains ammonia, which is de
termined by known methods. Distillation
by cold may be employed for separating
volatile substances which might be injured
by heat. Thus, if flowers are placed under
a large bell-glass along with the refrigerat
ing funnel, a liquid is obtained in the basin
saturated with the odorous principles of
the flowers.
At various points on the river Thames,
between Woolwich and Erith, there are
visible at low water the remains of a sub
merged forest, over which the river now
flows. This fact, taken in connection with
other local phenomena, has led geologists
to conclude that the present outlet of the
Thames to the North Sea is of quite recent
origin, the waters having formerly passed
southward into the Weald by channels
which still remain. Excavations in the
marshes expose to view a deep stratum of
twigs, leaves, seed-vessels, and stools of
trees, chiefly of the yew, alder, and oak
kinds.
A traveller in Zanzibar describes the
red and black ants as one of the greatest
scourges with which Eastern Africa is af
flicted. These insects, he says, move along
the roads in masses so dense that beasts of
burden refuse to step among them. If the
traveller should fail to see them coming, in
time to make his escape, he soon finds them
swarming about his person. Sometimes,
too, they ascend the trees and drop upon
the wayfarer. The natives call them madinodo, that is, boiling water, to signify the
scalding sensation produced by their bite.
These ants are of great size, and burrow so
deep into the flesh that it is not easy to
pick them out. In certain forests they are
said to exist in such numbers as to be able
to destroy rats and lizards.
An eccentric and methodical man is Dr.
Rudolf, Danish governor of Upernavik,
Greenland. Dr. Rudolf is a scientist of some
distinction, and has contributed his share
to the scientific literature of his own coun
try, yet it is his choice to live in a region
where darkness prevails four months in the
year, and where he can have no communication with civilized life beyond the annual
visit from the government storeship, and the
casual arrival of whalers. By the storeship
the governor receives annually a file of
Danish newspapers; but instead of glan
cing through them hastily, he takes a fresh
journal every morning, reading the Dagblad
of Jan. 1, 1872, on Jan. 1, 1873. He thus
follows, day for day, the changes in the mind
of Denmark: is glad in the order in which
Copenhagen is glad, and vice versa, but al
ways precisely twelve months after the event.
If the white of an egg be immersed for
some 12 hours in cold water, it undergoes a
chemico-molecular change, becoming solid
and insoluble. The hitherto transparent
albumen assumes an opaque and snow-white
appearance, far surpassing that of the ordi
nary egg. Dr. John Goodman, writing in
the Chemical News, recommends this mate
rial for diet in cases where a patient’s blood
lacks fibrine. The substance being light and
easily digested, it is not rejected even by a
feeble stomach; and as it creates a feeling
of want rather than of repletion, it pro
motes, rather than decreases, the appetite
for food. After the fibrine has been pro
duced in the manner described above, it
must be submitted to the action of a boil
ing heat, and is then ready for use.
One of the great dangers attending the
use of the various sedatives employed in
the nursery is that they tend to produce
the opium-habit. These quack medicines
owe their soothing and quieting effects to
the action of opium, and the infant is by
them given a morbid appetite for narcotic
stimulants. The offering for sale of such
nostrums should be prohibited, as tending
to the physical and moral deterioration of
the race. In India mothers give to their
infants sugar-pills containing opium, and
the result is a languid, sensual race of hope
less debauchees. In the United States the
poisonous dose is administered under an
other name ; but the consequences will prob
ably be the same.
During last autumn, says the Journal of
ithe Society of Arts, there were no less than
1
seventeen companies engaged in extracting
j
gold from the auriferous sand of Finland.
'The alluvial deposits at Toalo are said to be
<extremely rich in gold, the total production
1last season being estimated at about $50,000.
<One of the companies returned a dividend
<of 70 per cent The largest nugget weighed
t40 grammes.
�
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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The Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 3, October 1873
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Place of publication: [Harlan, Iowa]
Collation: [657]-784 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Complete issue. Contents: Silk-worms and sericulture / A. de Quatrefages -- Mental science and sociology / Herbert Spencer -- A national university / Charles Eliot -- Agassiz and Darwinism / John Fiske -- The primary concepts of modern physical science / J.B. Stallo -- Finding the way at sea / R.A. Proctor -- Secular prophecy [from Saturday Review] -- Sympathetic vibrations in machinery / Prof. J. Lovering -- Speculation in science / Prof. J. Lawrence Smith -- The glaciers and their investigation / Prof. John Tyndall -- The Moon / Richard A. Proctor. The Popular Science is an American bi-monthly magazine carrying popular science content, which refers to articles for the general reader on science and technology subjects; edited by Joe Brown.
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1873
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Conway Tracts
Science
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Text
AN
“On Earth Peace, Good-will towards Men”; rescued from
the New Testament Revision.
Jetta
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 19th FEBRUARY, 1882,
BY
A. ELLEY FINCH.
bonbon:
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1882.
PRICE THREEPENCE.
�SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and
to encourage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science,—
physical, intellectual, and moral,—History, Literature, and
Art; especially in their bearing upon the improvement and
social well-being of mankind.
PRESIDENT.
W. B. Carpenter, Esq., C.B., LL.D„ M.D., F.R.S., &c.
VICE-PRESIDENTS.
Professor Alexander
Bain.
Charles Darwin, Esq.,
F.R.S., F.L.S.
Edward Frankland, Esq.,
D.C.L., Ph.D., F.R.S.
James Heywood, Esq., F.R.S.,
F.S.A.
Right Hon. Sir Arthur Hob
house, K.C.S.I.
Thomas Henry Huxley,
Esq., LL.D., F.R.S., F.L.S.
Benjamin Ward Richard
son, Esq., M.D., F.R.S.
Herbert Spencer, Esq.
W. Spottiswoode,
Esq.,
LL.D., Pres.R.S.
John Tyndall, Esq., LL.D.,
F.R.S.
THE SOCIETY’S LECTURES
ARE DELIVERED AT
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
On SUNDAY Afternoons, at FOUR o’clock precisely.
(Annually—from November to May.)
Twenty-Four Lectures (in three series) ending 23rd April,
1882, will be given.
Members’ £1 subscription entitles them to an annual ticket,
transferable (and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight
single reserved-seat tickets, available for any lecture.
Tickets for each series (one for each lecture) as below,—
To the Sixpenny Seats—2s., being at the rate of Three
pence each lecture.
For tickets, and for list of the Lectures published by the
Society, apply (by letter) to the Hob. Treasurer, Wm. Henry
Domville, Esq,, 15, Gloucester Crescent, Hyde Park, W.
Payment at the door:—One Shilling (Reserved Seats);—
Sixpence and One Penny.
�The Society’s Lectures by the same Author, are—on
“ Erasmus ; his Life, Works, and Influence upon the Spirit of
the Reformation.” (Now out of Print.)
“ Civilization : a Sketch of its Rise and Progress, its Modern
Safe-guards, and Future Prospects.”
“The Influence of Astronomical Discovery
Development of the Human Mind.”
in the
“ The Principles of Political Economy ; their Scientific
Basis, and Practical application to Social Well-being.”
“The English Free-thinkers
tury.”
of the
Eighteenth Cen
“ The Science jof Life worth Living.”
“ The Victories
stition.”
of
Science in
its
Warfare
with Super
“ An Aspiration of Science : ‘ On Earth Peace, Good-will to
wards Men;’ rescued from the New Testament Revision.”
Price of each of the above Lectures 3d., or post free 3^d.
“The Inductive Philosophy: including a Parallel between
Lord Bacon and A. Comte as Philosophers.” With Notes
and Authorities, (pp. 100, cloth 8vo., price 5s., or post
free 5s. 3d.)
“ The Pursuit of Truth : as Exemplified in the Principles of
Evidence—Theological, Scientific, and Judicial.” With Notes
and Authorities, (pp. 106, cloth 8vo., price 5s., or post
free 5s. 3d.)
Two vols. of Lectures (3rd and 4th Selection) cloth-bound,
price 5s. each, or post free 5s. 6d., contain nearly all the society’s
Lectures still in print, and some out of print. Tables of con
tents of these vols. and lists of the separate lectures, sent on
application to the Hon. Treasurer.
The lectures can be obtained (on remittance, by letter of postage
stamps or order payable Porchester Road, W.) of the JLon.
Treas., W. Henry Domville, Esq., 15, Gloucester Crescent.
Hyde Park, W., or at the Hall on the days of Lecture, or of Mr,
J. Bumpus, Bookseller, 350, Oxford St., W., or Messrs. Cattell & Co., 84, Fleet Street, B. C.
�SYLLABUS.
Origin and history of the English authorised text (a.d. 1611)
Luke ch. 2, v. 14, before quoted, and its Greek and Latin source8
since the invention of printing. Erasmus (1516). Tyndale
(1534). R. Stephens (1551). Genevan-English Version (1557-60).
Beza (1580).
Our authorised form of this text not found in the great uncial
Greek nor in the Latin Manuscripts, nor in the printed Latin
Vulgate (decreed as authentic by the Council of Trent).
Ambiguous evidence in support of this text as embodying an
actual utterance by the heavenly host.
Its inconsistency with the declaration of Christ (Matt. ch. 10,
v. 34): “ Think not that I am come to send Peace on Earth,”
&c.
Its want of fulfilment as a prophecy. Hence probably ex
punged by the Revisers.
Divergent aims of Theology and Science—the one regarding
the Glory of God—the other the Well-being of Man.
Illustrations from some of the chief Theologies of the world,
showing that the Well-being of Man is therein subordinated to
the Glory of God.
Hence the conflict between Theology and Science. Its rise and
nature.
The text explained as an Aspiration of Science.
Illustrations of the primary care (good-will) of Science for
Humanity from its discoveries, deductions, and teachings in re
ference to (e.g.):—•
1. The Order of nature.
2. The Constitution of Man.
3. Health.
4. Education.
5. Morality (Virtue, Happiness).
6. Aversion from War.
7. International Arbitration.
Concluding inferences.
Editions
Scriptures shown in Illustration
of the Lecture:
TheEditio princeps of the Greek New Testament, by Erasmus,
in which the text ‘ good-will towards men ’ (ai>0pd>7rois eiboKia
—hominibus bona voluntas) is first met with in print (Basilese,
1519).
The first Bible in which the Scriptures are separated into
verses, and the text “ towards men good-will ” first appears in
the English language. (Geneva, 1560.)
The Greek and Latin New Testament of Beza. (Editio tertia,
1580.)
of the
�AN ASPIRATION OF SCIENCE:
“ON EARTH PEACE, GOOD-WILL TOWARDS MEN";
RESCUED FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT REVISION.
T is a remarkable circumstance connected with the
origin of the Christian Religion, that no authentic
record of the Life and Doctrines of its founder should
now exist, or ever have existed, written in the language
of the country where Jesus lived and talked; the only
language in which he could have been listened to and
understood by the majority of his disciples, or the com
mon people, who, we are told expressly, heard him gladly.
This reflection must often have occurred to, and more
or less embarrassed, the numerous scholars and critics,
whose investigations into the authenticity and genuine
ness of the New Testament Scriptures form so consider
able a portion of the vast library of Christian theology
and history.
It is a reflection, moreover, that must be borne in mind
when considering the value and authority of the various
translations,, commentaries, and revisions that appear
from time to time, and whose production indeed follows
a natural law, arising as they do out of the necessity of
accommodating these ancient writings to the continuous,
however slow, progress of human thought and intelligence;
that is to say, the spirit of the age requires to be read
into them before it-can be read out.
This view of the function of the commentator, trans
lator, or reviser is not indeed quite obvious, nor is it the
I
�6
An Aspiration of Science,
ostensible reason put forward for undertaking their
work; that reason is invariably alleged to be, in order to
make the translation or revision in question more accurate
in reference to the original; a task which, if we only had
the original as a standard to refer to, might be a not
unprofitable proceeding, but any such original, in the
sense I have adverted to, is not now, and never was, to
be met with.
For the New Testament Scriptures were at the very
first written in a foreign tongue, that is, the Greek
language. We cannot even except the Gospel according
to St. Matthew, for, though there is a probable tradition
that Matthew wrote his Gospel in the Syro-Chaldaic
dialect (the colloquial language of the Hebrews in Pales
tine), this supposition can hardly be accepted as more
than a tradition, since we have not only no positive
proof of it, but not even such a consensus of biblical
critics as might warrant our receiving such supposition
as an admitted fact.
Now the Greek version of the sayings and discourses
of Jesus and others narrated in the Gospels, however
ancient, can no more be regarded as the original of such
sayings and discourses, than an Italian report of one of
the splendid speeches of Mr. Gladstone could be regarded
as the original of what that great English orator may
actually have spoken.
These reflections are especially applicable to the con
sideration of the narrative which St. Luke gives in the
second chapter of his Gospel, part of which, as English
Protestants have hitherto understood it, I have taken for
the subject of the present lecture.
St. Luke, probably a Grecian, at any rate writing in
Greek, tells us (according to our authorised version of
the year 1611) that, shortly after the birth of Jesus in
Bethlehem, ‘ there were in the same country shepherds
�An Aspiration of Science.
7
abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by
night, and lo! the Angel of the Lord came upon them,
and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and
they were sore afraid. And the Angel said unto them,
fear not; for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy
which shall be to all people, for unto you is born this day
in the City of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
And suddenly there was with the Angel a multitude of
the heavenly host praising God, and saying—Glory to
God in the highest, and on earth Peace, Good-will
towards men.’
We are now told, on the authority of the eminent
scholars and divines constituting the company of the New
Testament Devisers, that Luke’s relation of this remark
able supernatural occurrence is not accurately given in
our authorised version. That what Luke really wrote
must be translated or rendered into English thus—‘ Glory
to God in the highest, and on Earth peace among men in
whom he is well pleased.’
This correction, or corruption, of so venerable a text
will be variously regarded, according to the critic’s point
of view. To the pious mind, accustomed to revere the
Scriptures as inspired Oracles, the shock must be great
on finding that he has been imposed upon in being taught
to believe that so sublime an utterance ever formed a
genuine portion of the Gospels, and his dismay will
hardly be diminished on finding further that it has long
been, and will still remain, notwithstanding the revision,
a matter of dispute amongst biblical experts what it really
was that St. Luke actually wrote. The critical scholar,
uninfluenced by dogmatic or doctrinal prepossessions,
will still probably retain his sceptical ©pinion on the sub
ject ; whilst the man of science must consider that what
Luke may himself have written, if not a matter of con
jecture altogether, can be of very little real importance,
�8
An Aspiration of Science.
seeing that he is no authority whatever for what the
heavenly host did really say. For Luke was not present
on the occasion, he does not allege that he received the
report from those who were present, his account of it is
therefore simply hearsay, and, whatever the very words
were, it is morally certain they could not have been
spoken in Greek, that being a language utterly unintelli
gible, an unknown tongue indeed to the shepherds of
Bethlehem, so that, putting it at the highest, if we were
sure, or were agreed, that we were in possession of the
exact language of Luke, it would only in itself amount to
a version or translation of a non-existent, and long since
vanished original.
The man of science, however, will not care to reject
the reviser’s alteration, for he knows that the sublime
aspiration of our text enshrines a truth having higher
intrinsic value than ancient manuscripts, or biblical
critics can confer, and, that though it may henceforth
cease to be received as part of authentic Scripture, it
will live, where in truth it originated, in the noble
inspirations of the human mind, yearning in its benevolence
to ameliorate the lot of man. That it is one of those
scientific forecasts which, flashing from human genius,
are found in history sparsely strewed along the path of
human progress, not confined to creeds, but illuminating
the entire earthly highway towards that goal of human
happiness which all good men are now striving to attain,
for others as well as for themselves.
Before finally parting with our text from the Scrip
ture record, it may be interesting very briefly to trace
its origin and history, to see how and when, in point
of fact, it came to get into our authorised version of
1611.
At the time of the birth of Jesus Christ the language
of the Jews, the Hebrew language, had long ceased to be
�An Aspiration of Science.
9
current amongst the inhabitants of Syria, and their
vernacular speech was that known to scholars as the
Aramaen or Syro-Chaldaic, a dialect very little used as
the vehicle of literature. Hence it happened that the
written accounts or narratives of the life and discourses
of Jesus Christ came from the very first to be composed
in the Greek language ; that language being not only the
language of the learned, but, dispersed through the con
quests of Alexander, was very generally familiar to
educated people of the ancient civilised world, even
amongst the Romans, though their vulgar tongue was
Latin, St. Paul, for instance, when writing his grand
Epistle to the Romans, using the Greek and not the
Latin language.
In the earliest churches established after the death of
Jesus and the spread of a knowledge of his religion, in
the churches, for instance, of Jerusalem, Antioch,
Ephesus, Alexandria, and Rome, the Greek manuscript
gospels had not only to be copied for the purpose of their
dissemination, but, as regards Rome and Alexandria
(Northern Egypt being then a province of the Roman Em
pire), as the religion became dispersed amongst the people
at large, the gospel had to be translated into the latin
tongue, and such translation took place so early, and to so
great an extent, that of the at present existing ancient
manuscripts of the Scriptures the Latin are not only more
numerous than the Greek, but it is by no means a matter
of agreement amongst scholars which of such manuscripts
are the highest in point of authority for what the orginal
writings or autographs of the Apostles (long since utterly
lost), actually contained. Protestant theologians and
critics consider the Greek to be the higher authority.
On the other hand, the Roman Catholic Church consider
the Latin to be now the more reliable source.
Amongst other arguments relied upon by the Roman
�10
An Aspiration of Science.
Church is this, that the most ancient existing latin manu
scripts, even if not more ancient than the existing greek
ones, are known to be recensions of a text that was re
vised in the 4th century by St. Eusebius, and also by St.
Jerome, through comparison with greek manuscripts con
fessedly more ancient than any now existing, or of which
we have now any other knowledge; and from that early
period up to the time of the Reformation, that is for
upwards of 1,000 years, the only Bible of western chris
tendom was a latin book, generally known as the Latin
Vulgate, the text of which was decreed to be authentic
by the Council of Trent (in the year 1546).
The first English translation of the New Testament of
any note was that executed by John Wiclif (the gospel
doctor, as the people called him) about the year 1380.
This was evidently made from the latin version, such
appearing to be the case, not only from internal evidence,
but from the fact that at that time greek manuscripts
were scarce in Europe, and a knowledge of the greek
language rarely possessed by englishmen, and almost
certainly not by Wiclif. His translation therefore simply
followed the latin.
Previously to the next stage in the history we are
following there occurred two memorable events. The one
was the invention of the printing press in the year 1440,
and the very first book that was printed was the splendid
latin bible of the Cardinal Mazarin. The other event was
the taking of Constantinople by the Turks in the year
1453. Its immediate consequence was the diffusion of
greek manuscripts, and greek scholars throughout the
chief European cities.
The first published New Testament in the greek lan
guage, the Editio princeps, was compiled and edited
by the illustrious Erasmus, being printed for him by
Eroben of Basle in the year 1516. Erasmus’s second and
�An Aspiration of Science.
11
greatly improved impression (which I possess here) being
printed in the year 1519.
Now it is observable that in none of the latin manu
scripts, nor in the printed latin version of the Scriptures
do we find the text “ good-will towards men.” The text
of the latin version invariably runs thus: “ Peace on
earth towards men of good-will.” The meaning of which,
as seemingly held by the Roman Church, being, “ Peace
of mind amongst true believers”; such being of course
Roman Catholics.
When Erasmus published his New Testament he gave
to the world a version from Greek Manuscripts that could
not be so rendered. Along with the Greek text he printed
a literal latin translation of his own, differing greatly in
many important particulars from the Latin Vulgate, and,
in reference to the text we are considering, he gave in
latin, more plainly to mark his meaning, the words
‘ hominibus bona voluntas’ ‘ good-will towards men.’
It is really then to this illustrious scholar, who, I venture
to say, was, in learning and scholastic accomplishments,
in liberal-mindedness, in large-heartedness, in love of
toleration, and in disrelish of dogma, the very proto
type of our late lamented Arthur Stanley, Dean of West
minster—it is to Erasmus we really owe our first distinct
knowledge of the sublime expression ‘ On Earth Peace,
towards men Good-will.’
To those of you who are not acquainted with Greek it
may be surprising to hear that the whole difference
between the two renderings turns upon a single letter of
a single word. That is to say, if the G-reek word were
eiSoKla ending with the letter a, as it is found in some
manuscripts, then the literal translation would be ‘ towards
men good-will,” but if the word were euSoKtas, having the
letter s, as it is found in other manuscripts, then the
rendering would be ‘ towards men of good-will ’ or some
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equivalent phrase, even so far fetched, and apparently
strained as that formulated by the Revisers, viz.: “ among
men in whom he is well pleased.”
From Erasmus we may at once turn to our great
countryman and reformer, William Tyndale. He had
probably become personally acquainted with Erasmus on
one of his visits to this country. Tyndale being at
Magdalen Hall, Oxford, whilst Erasmus was at Magdalen
College. Tyndale had great admiration for the erudition
of Erasmus, and had read his Greek Testament, for we
find him paraphrasing the paraclesis prefixed to this
impression of 1519. Tyndale, in his English Translation
of the New Testament (first published in 1526), had
evidently the Greek text of Erasmus in his mind, for his
translation widely differs from the Vulgate Latin, and he
renders our text thus—‘ Peace on Earth, and unto men
rejoicing.’
Erasmus was more closely followed by Robert Stephens
of Paris, who in his fourth edition of the Greek New
Testament (published at Geneva in 1551) not only
reprinted the Greek text of Erasmus with slight variation,
but adopted his latin version verbatim. This Edition of
Stephens is noticeable also as being the first in which the
Scriptures were divided into verses, that is so numbered,
not altogether broken up into verses; that was first done
in the Genevan-English version which I am now going to
mention.
The Greek and Latin texts of Erasmus and Stephens
are the foundation of the valuable translation of the New
Testament executed by the English Exiles at Geneva in
Queen Mary’s reign (in the year 1557). This, together
with their English translation of the Old Testament pub
lished in 1560 (the second year of Queen Elizabeth) formed
for many years the favourite popular household Bible in
in this country (I possess it here). Erasmus and Stephens
�An A spiration of Science.
13
were also further followed on the Continent by the
weighty authority of Theodore Beza, the eminent Genevan
Reformer, and discoverer of the ancient uncial Codex
Bezse, presented by him to Cambridge University, and
whose Greek and elegant Latin Testament of 1580 I also
have here.
In the Anglo-Genevan version we meet with the text
under consideration for the first time printed in the
English language as it was subsequently given in the
authorised version of 1611, the translators of which were
commanded by King James to show especial regard to
this Genevan-English version. Now such as we there
find the text it has ever since remained, and been
accepted by the Protestant English nation and all englishspeaking protestant peoples, until the revision of the New
Testament published last year, that is from the year 1557
down to the year 1881, when we find this time-hallowed
text expunged, and in place of it the strained expression
I have already quoted, that the Peace on Earth, instead
of being for all men, is only for those in whom he is
well pleased; and thus we have the angelic announcement
of ‘ good tidings of great joy to all people ’ cut down and
narrowed by the utterance of the heavenly host (as
interpreted by the revisers), to some portion only of the
great human race.
Now I must not be understood as dissenting from, or
in any way presuming to criticise what the revisers have
accomplished. Erom a doctrinal point of view, there were
doubtless many inducements tempting them to tamper
with the text, and to get rid if possible of the elevated
conception primarily presented to us in print through the
critical acumen of Erasmus. In the first place ‘ Peace
on earth, Good-will towards men’ as general Christian
sentiments, are strikingly inconsistent with the subse
quent declaration of Christ himself. (Matt. ch. x. v. 34.)
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An Aspiration of Science.
“ Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth ?
I tell ye, Nay, but rather division. Think not that I
came to send peace on earth. I came not to send peace
but a sword. For I am come to set a man at vari
ance against his father, and the daughter against her
mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-inlaw.”
Then again, if regarded in any prophetic sense, the
announcement has had no fulfilment. Indeed the history
of the world since the coming of Christ fully and fear
fully contradicts it. Not only has there been no increase
of peace on the earth, there have probably been more
wars and bloodshed arising out of Christianity, or since
its birth, than ever took place before. An eloquent his
torian has remarked ‘ That from the very commencement
of the Christian era the sword has accompanied the Cross,
a sword that has never found and never will find a
scabbard, till superstitious creeds and immoral dogmas
shall be abandoned as things invented in the dark ages of
the world, as things directly calculated to sow the seeds
of discord in society, create feuds between man and man,
and perpetuate those animosities which turn the sweets
of life into wormwood. This dogmatic Christianity has
done in every age and in every country into which it has
been introduced. Wherever the Cross has been raised
thither have followed fire and sword, horrid burnings,
brutal massacres. All history teems with accounts of its
savage wars, its deluging bloodshed.’ Even at this very
time our common humanity is being outraged by the
atrocities of the Christian persecution of the Jews now
being carried on in ‘ Holy’ Russia!
From a theologian’s point of view therefore the
authorized text of 1611 might well be considered as a
stumbling block, and the reasoning above adverted to may
not improbably have contributed, even unconsciously, to
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15
the decision which has now expunged, or attempted to
expunge, the text, entirely from our English Bible.
If however we are to lose the sublime sentiment of
‘good-will towards men’ from the gospel, it may be
worth while to consider whether we are compelled to part
with it altogether. If it be not inspired Scripture, and
if dogmatic theology disown it, may it not find its true
home to be with Science ? Let us consider shortly how
this may be.
The conspicuous conflict between Theology and Science
which characterises our transitional progress from the age
of Eaith to the age of Reason, when looked into with
the object of ascertaining its less obvious causes, will be
found to arise out of the divergent ends which each of
these great systems of thought appears to be aiming at.
Theology will be found to have for its ultimate realisation
the Glory of Grod. The Aspirations of Science, on the
other hand, are wholly directed towards the well-being of
Man.
I could give you abundant illustration of the aim of
Theology taken from any of the great book-religions of
the world enumerated in my lecture of last year, showing,
as they unmistakeably do, that the glory of Grod and the
well-being of Man are very often not altogether consis
tent ; but it will amply suffice for my present argument
to confine my illustrations to those two great Theologies
the Jewish and the Christian, which are embraced in the
single volume of the Bible, and in the creeds and con
fessions of faith that have been deduced from its pages,
and which are supposed, more plainly than Holy writ
itself, to explain its meaning.
In the very first book of that volume we find the Deity
represented as cursing man and the whole human race his
descendants on account of his having partaken of the
forbidden fruit. The fearful fate thus decreed to man
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An Aspiration of Science.
kind universally, though subsequently a comparative few
termed “the Elect” were excepted, is better known
through the adroitly devised and necessarily subdued tone
of it that has been evolved through ecclesiastical subtlety,
such, for instance, as we find it moulded in that authorita
tive theological standard the Westminster Confession of
Eaith, presented by the Assembly of Divines to both
Houses of Parliament in the year 1646, and wherein it
is thus expressed: “ By the decree of God, for the mani
festation of his glory some men and angels are predes
tined unto everlasting life, and others foredained to
everlasting death. God hath appointed the elect unto
glory. The rest of mankind God has pleased, according
to the unsearchable counsels of his own will, for the glory
of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by, and
ordain them to dishonour and wrath for their sin, to the
praise of his glorious justice I ”
I need hardly quote familiar passages from the book of
Psalms and other books of the Old Testament showing
the many fearful human calamities ordained or practised,
even to the sacrifice of the lives of human beings, all for
the glory of God! If we turn to the New Testament
Scriptures the awful idea we are contemplating culmi
nates in the appalling announcement of the everlasting
punishment of Hell!
Now the God of Theology is an idea of the human
mind. Like the Poet’s, the Theologian’s eye
“ Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,
And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the theologian's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.’'
Even the ghastly conception of eternal torments, and
the foredoomed fate of millions of human beings is all
�An Aspiration of Science.
declared by theologians to be for the glory of God.
the grim irony of Burns expresses it—
17
As
I Oh Thou, wha in the heav’ns dost dwell,
Wha, as it pleases best thysel,
Sends ane to Heaven, and ten to Hell
A’ for thy glory,
And no for ony guid or ill
They’ve done afore thee.”
If we turn from theological theory to the practice of
theologians, as exhibited in history, we plainly perceive
how their treatment of mankind has ever corresponded
with the cruel character of their credentials. The
reproachful summing up of their conduct by the learned
historian Buckle is only too true. ‘ The theologians,’ he
declares, ‘considered as a class, have in every country
and in every age deliberately opposed themselves to
gratifications which are essential to the happiness of an
overwhelming majority of the human race. Eaising up
a God of their own creation, whom they hold out as a
lover of penance, of sacrifice, and of mortification, they,
under this pretence, forbid enjoyments which are not only
innocent but praiseworthy ... It must be admitted
by whoever will take a comprehensive view of what they
have done, that they have not only been the most bitter
foes of human happiness, but the most successful ones.
In their high and palmy days, when they reigned supreme,
when credulity was universal, and doubt unknown, they
afflicted mankind in every possible way, enjoining fasts,
and penances, and pilgrimages, teaching their simple and
ignorant victims every kind of austerity, teaching them
to flog their own bodies, to tear their own flesh, and to
mortify the most natural of their appetites.’ And Buckle
emphatically warns us, ‘ that we shall assuredly sink under
the accumulated pressure of our high and complex
civilization if we imitate the credulity of our forefathers,
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An Aspiration of Science.
who allowed their energies to be cramped and weakened
by those pernicious notions which the clergy, partly
from ignorance, and partly from interest, have in every
age palmed upon the people, and have thereby diminished
the national happiness, and retarded the march of the
national prosperity.’
As we are now accepting it as settled by the New
Testament Revision, that the text ‘ Peace on Earth,
Good-will towards men ’ was no part of original Scripture,
and is discarded by theology, it becomes the privilege of
Science, with the right hand of fellowship, to bid it wel
come. It embodies indeed her most cherished aspirations,
for we shall see that, as the ultimate end of Science is to
bring about the greatest happiness of the greatest num
ber, ‘ Good-will towards men,’ that is human well-being,
and ‘ Peace on earth ’ have ever been objects Science has
had nearest and dearest to her, are indeed of the very
essence of her transcendent faith.
And here I call to mind that the leading idea of my
lecture was a few years since, with almost prophetic
foresight of the work of the New Testament Revisers,
shadowed forth in the luminous and lofty language of a
pioneer of progress, one of the bravest and soundest of
our sons of Science. In professor Tyndall’s Presidential
Address on ‘ Science and Man,’ delivered before the
Midland Institute in October, 1877, he asks “ Does the
song of the herald angels ‘ Glory to God on the highest,
and on earth Peace, Good-will toward men,’ express the
exaltation and the yearning of a human soul, or does it
describe an optical and acoustical fact, a visible host, and
an audible song ? If the former, the exaltation and the
yearning are man’s imperishable possession, if the latter,
then belief in the entire transaction is wrecked by nonfulfilment. The promise of ‘ Peace on Earth, Good-will
toward men’ is a dream ruined by the experience of
�.An Aspiration of Science.
19
eighteen centuries, and in that ruin are involved the
claim of the heavenly host to prophetic vision. But,
though the mechanical theory proves untenable, the
immortal song, and the feelings it expresses are still ours,
to be incorporated, let us hope, in the poetry, philosophy,
and practice of the future.”
Now we seem to breathe the free atmosphere of
Science; Science so variously defined, so differently
understood in the past ages of the world. To us, Science,
in its general sense, is simply real knowledge—know
ledge that may be tested and known to be real by verifi
cation through, or comparison with, the facts of Nature.
This is no mere verbal definition, for, side by side with
real knowledge has always existed the persuasion of false
knowledge. This distinction helps to explain, too, how it
has come to happen that Theology and Science are so often
seen in conflict. To say, as is sometimes done, that
Theology is based on supernatural knowledge, whilst
Science is limited to knowledge that is natural, does not
really solve the problem. It might account for difference
in their respective degrees of knowledge, but not, if both
be true, for downright contradiction between them.
The conflict, in its present proportions, has really
arisen in comparatively recent times, and we shall best
get at its source and nature by glancing at it historically.
In the ancient world, and throughout what might be
termed the golden age of Theology, Science was very dif
ferently conceived to what is now regarded as its right
meaning. In that subtle dialogue of Plato,—Theaitetos,
which is a discussion concerning what is meant by Science,
(written nearly 400 years before the Christian Era,) we
find that Socrates could only define or conceive Science
as being the inmost perception of the mind, or inner
consciousness, concerning any matter. He thought that
there could be no external standard, and that what the
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An Aspiration of Science.
individual mind arrives at through pure reflection as
true, must be regarded as the truth by that mind. Such
was the only conclusion that consummate thinker could
come to as to the nature of Science. In Plato’s more
mature Dialogue ‘The Republic’ we again find the nature
and end of Science repeatedly referred to. Thus, with
reference to the Sciences of Arithmetic and Geometry,
Plato thought nothing of any worldly use they might
serve. The object of the study of the properties of num
bers, he says, is to habituate the mind to the contempla
tion of pure and abstract truth, and so to raise us above
the material universe.
In these writings of Plato we have then distinctly
stated the end of Science, and also its method, as he
regarded them; such method being, in the majority of
instances, utterly fallacious, viz.:—That the intuition of
the mind, or the idea which is subjectively conceived, is
to be accepted as the equivalent or correlative of an
objective fact. This fallacy may be detected underlying
those metaphysical systems of philosophy that so authori
tatively prevailed until they were displaced by the modern
inductive method of research, which is based, not on
mental intuitions, but on material facts, ascertained
through the senses, and so marshalled as to constitute an
objective criterion, to which speculative propositions may
be referred, for the purpose of testing which are true and
which are false.
Now the Platonic idea of Science was very early
pressed into the service of Theology. The late Bishop
Hampden, in his learned lectures on the Scholastic Phil
osophy, has acutely explained how this arose, and he
remarks that its abstractedness from the visible world
was one chief reason why Platonism became established
as the orthodox system of the Western Church. This
Platonic notion of Science, having thus become combined
�An Aspiration of Science.
21
with, or subordinated to the dogmas of Theology, with its
universal panacea of prayer, really continued, not always
in practice, but, in intellectual theory, until the advent of
our illustrious countryman Lord Bacon. Bacon, by the
exercise of his marvellous insight, penetrated to the very
core of real knowledge, showing, especially in that latin
casket of scientific gems, the Novum Organum (published
in 1620), that the first thing necessary in the search of
truth is intellectual light—‘ lumen siccum ’ pure light,
unobscured by the mists of superstition, passion, preju
dice, or interest. But then he at once points out that
the intellect left to itself, like the naked hand, can effect
little, that it must be assisted by helps and by instru
ments, and that its intuitions must be corrected, or duly
verified by the observation, or interrogation through ex
periment, of the facts of Nature. That ‘wre scire esse
per causas scire ’—we only truly know anything when we
know its cause.
Utterly ignoring the jargon of theology concerning the
Kingdom of Heaven, Bacon avowed his object was to
establish on Earth the Kingdom of Man, whose sovereignty
would rest on Science, which was not a thing to be
demanded back from the darkness of antiquity, but
must be sought from the light of Nature.
That Science was not derived from human authority,
but is the offspring or fruit resulting ‘ commercio mentis et
rerum’ from the intercourse of mind and matter, or, as
he quaintly phrases it, ‘ the happy marriage between the
mind of man and the nature of things.’
But Bacon’s sagacious discovery, or, at least, his vigorous
presentment in clear and cogent logic of the right method
of arriving at the source of real knowledge, was only a
portion, though a magnificently grand one, of the ser
vices he has rendered to mankind. He proceeded further,
and showed that the speculations of the ancient Philoso
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An Aspiration of Science.
phers were comparatively worthless, as not having in view
the true end of Science, which was not, he averred, an
intellectual pastime, or ‘ web of the wit,’ woven merely to
amuse or mystify the dialectical faculties of the human
mind, but was an investigation into Nature, in order to
establish the well-being, and bring about the happiness
of the human race. The end of Science was to consist in
the multiplying of human enjoyments, and the mitigating
of human miseries, concisely it was, to use his own preg
nant words, ‘the relief of man’s estate’; and this is the
sense in which we are to understand his often-repeated
aphorism ‘ Scientia est Potentia,’ real knowledge is power
—power enabling man to grapple with and overcome the
evils of life.
And thus, through the exhaustive exposition of Bacon,
Science was no longer limited by the definitions or ideas
of Plato, the human intellect became liberated from the
bondage of verbal disputation, and Was turned to the con
sideration of useful truths. Science came to be seen as
we now know it, that is, as the process of discovery, by
man’s natural faculties, of the order or laws of Nature.
The laboratory of Science being, according to Plato,
the inner sanctuary of the mind, and the materials of
Science being, according to Bacon, facts, acquired through
the senses, from the outer World of Nature. So con
sidered, the sphere of Science comprehends everything
that, by the constitution of the human faculties, can be
positively known; the region of reality, as distinguished
from the realm of visionary knowledge, that has been
built up, by means of unverified mental intuitions, into
theological and metaphysical systems.
Now what the genuis of Bacon was so powerfully
propounding in precept, others were almost simul
taneously performing in practice.
In our own country we find William Harvey, the
�An Aspiration of Science.
23
friend and physician of Bacon, discovering, by the aid of
experiment, the circulation of the blood, and, in his con
cise ‘exerdtatio de motu Cordis et Sanguinis’, explaining
this grand truth (published in 1628, two years after the
death of Bacon), and also in his larger work ‘ de generatione
Animalium ’ (published in 1651) we may, I think, perceive
many passages proving the extent to which Harvey was
indebted intellectually to his great predecessor Bacon.
Another almost immediate result of the profound
impression made upon thinking minds by the extra
ordinary brilliancy of Bacon’s philosophical writings
appears in the very striking treatise of Richd. Cumberland
on the Laws of Nature, his ‘ de legibus Natures disquisitio’
(published in 1672). “In this work” (says Hallam)
“ the Bathers and Schoolmen, the Canonists and Casuists,
have vanished like ghosts at the first daylight.* The con
tinued appeal is to experience, and never to authority,
unless it be to the authority of the great apostles of
experimental philosophy.”
And thus piety was becoming purified from the dross
of dogma, for with Science, ‘ laborare est orare ’—prayer
consists in work, and the world was being aroused from
the supineness of superstitious sloth to the activity of
intelligent industry.
And now we may distinctly observe what is the relation
which the Baconian or Inductive Science holds towards
Theology. I pass by the attempts that were made by the
Church to strangle it in its birth. The persecution of
Science by the Church when it possessed power, and of
scientific men, the great men who have been the inter
preters of Nature,
“ Their only crime that they should dare
To think, and then their thought declare ”—
is indeed a theme painfully familiar, but happily it forms
no part of my present argument. We are now only
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An Aspiration of Science.
referring to the intellectual influence of Science, which
is by Buckle thus tersely summarised, and contrasted
with Theology:—
“ Inductive Science takes for its basis individual and
specific experience, and seeks by that means to overthrow
the general and traditional notions on which all church
power is founded. Its plan is to refuse to accept prin
ciples which cannot be substantiated by facts. In Theology
certain principles are taken for granted, and it is deemed
impious to question them. In England, the rise of the
Baconian Philosophy, with its determination to subordi
nate ancient principles to modern experience, was the
heaviest blow which has ever been inflicted on the Theo
logians, whose method is to begin, not with experience,
but with principles which are said to be inscrutable.
That is, they proceed from arbitrary assumptions, for
which they have no proof, except by appealing to other
assumptions equally arbitrary, and equally unproven.
Over the inferior order of minds our clergy still wield
great influence, but the Baconian Philosophy, bv bring
ing their favourite method into disrepute, has sapped the
very base of their system. From the moment that their
method of investigation was discredited, the secret of
their power was gone.”
And the present attitude of the Church towards
Science is thus graphically portrayed by Dr. Draper :—
“ At length the Church has fastened its eyes on Science.
Under that dreaded name there stands before it what
seems to be a spectre of uncertain form, of hourly dilating
proportions, of threatening aspect.
Sometimes the
Church addresses this stupendous apparition in words of
courtesy, sometimes in tones of denunciation.” This
mingled and trembling tone of courtesy and defiance, of
welcome and of dread, may I think be detected in nearly
all the great theological utterances going on around us.
�An Aspiration of Science.
25
We however may in Science recognise the spirit that
has promised to lead us into all truth, and we may hail
as the children of light those who are endowed with the
intelligence enabling them to follow whithersoever such
spirit may lead, and therefore, when the Bishop of Man
chester asks, as he did in his somewhat singular sermon
preached before the British Association in August last
—“ Is Science to tell me what I am to believe, and how
I am to act,” let us, however respectfully, ask empha
tically, Why not ? For it has now been demonstrated
by experience, that only by belief in Science, and by
acting in accordance with its teaching of Grood-will to
wards man, can the great miseries of human life, its
pinching poverty, its depraving intemperance, its de
moralising vices, its agonising diseases, its premature
deaths, with their attendant train of heartrending sorrows
and corroding griefs, be banished, and life on earth ren
dered tolerably happy. It is only by belief in Science,
and by following its teaching, that wars will ever be
abolished, and ‘ Peace on Earth ’ practically realised.
I need not now dilate on illustrations of the primary
care of Science for humanity, as manifested in its dis
coveries, deductions, and teachings in reference to the
Order of Nature, to the Constitution of Man. The great
astronomical and physiological discoveries are more or
less known to every one. On the subject of Health, so
essential to our happiness, I will dwell for a few moments.
The theological theory of disease (explained in my lecture
last year) has been completely exploded from the creed of
the educated classes, and it is now acknowledged that
Health is entirely dependent on the observance of immu
table and imperative laws of Nature. Diseases are
now distinctly traceable to infringement of these
laws, and several diseases are indissolubly associated
with the poisonous nature of some of the food we
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An Aspiration of Science.
eat, and the liquids we drink. But the scientific
knowledge of the subject requires diffusing, to be more
generally taught, and brought vividly home to the reason
and common sense of the people.
Now, some of you may remember that in a former
lecture I deplored the paucity of scientific tracts and texts
or axioms disseminated amongst us, compared with the
number of superstitious stories with which we are literally
deluged by theological Societies. Yet I think that scien
tific teaching might to a great extent be carried on in a
similar manner. Let me hazard a suggestion, illustrative
of my meaning. Some of you I dare say have observed
the scripture text that is engraved above a drinking foun
tain within a quarter of a mile from our doors : “ Whoso
ever drinketh of this water shall thirst again, but whoso
ever drinketh of the water I shall give him shall never
thirst.”
Now, don’t assume that I am quoting this text for the
purpose of scoffing. I only now say, it is not Science,
but it strikes me as pointing out to us a corresponding
method of diffusing scientific knowledge, and that we
might well have our fountains engraved with some scien
tific axiom or truth in connection with their use. Thus,
we might have written over them some such scientific
axiom as the following : “ Whosoever drinketh of water
polluted with organic germs shall be in danger of disease
and death; but whosoever drinketh of water purified
therefrom by Science shall escape taking thereby diarrhoea,
dysentery, cholera, typhoid fever, diphtheria.”
Going to the subject of Education I may point out
that in our Great Schools and Colleges the curriculum
of studies has been considerably changed since society
has come to appreciate the educational value of the study
of the Physical Sciences, not only as regards the real and
useful knowledge thereby imparted of the material world
�An Aspiration of Science.
27
and our actual mode of existence, but in reference to the
discipline of the mental faculties involved in learning their
precise and accurate methods of investigating and veri
fying truth, and showing what concrete truth consists in.
In the Parliamentary Report of the Public Schools Com
mission published in the year 1864 we find Professor
Owen, the late Sir Charles Lyell, and Professor Faraday,
our esteemed President Dr. Carpenter, Professor Tyndall,
and other eminent scientists giving the most clear and
convincing testimony to the value of such study in training
a class of mental faculties which are almost ignored by
purely classical and mathematical culture; such as the dis
tinguishing things from words ; the accurate observation,
and classification of the facts of Nature, and the exercise
of the reasoning faculties on such facts ; the teaching to
the student the principles of real evidence; and how, in
the unprejudiced pursuit of truth, to estimate correctly
the weight of such evidence.
But perhaps the greatest blow that enlightenment has
publicly dealt to superstition in our day was inflicted by
the Elementary Education Act of 1870—under which
Board Schools have been so widely established for impart
ing some amount of really useful secular common-sense
knowledge to the children of the masses of our people,
in the place of the Bible reading and Hymn singing, in
the learning of which their precious time was so much
consumed in the old Church Schools. By Sec. 7 of that
Act of Parliament it is expressly provided, that no religious
observance, or instruction in religious subjects shall be
given during the necessary school hours. That no scholar
shall be bound to attend any religious observance or in
struction, and that it shall be no part of the duty of Her
Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools to enquire into any
instruction in any religious subjects given at such school,
or to examine any scholar therein. Now, bearing in mind
�28
An Aspiration of Science.
that the term religious instruction used in the Act has
especial reference to the jarring and discordant theologies
of the rival religious sects, all of whom were contending
to get the child under their special influence, and that the
prohibition in the Act of Parliament of religious instruction
was resorted to as the only practicable course of getting
rid of the obstructive opposition of such sects; I don’t
think I am going too far in characterising the enactment
in question as the greatest legislative blow dealt at super
stition since the passing of the Act of the 9th of Greo. II.
which repealed that astounding statute of James I., which
had actually recognised as realities the theological delu
sions of witchcraft, conjuration, and dealing with evil
and wicked Spirits, and authorised prosecutions, con
victions, and the infliction of barbarous punishments,
for the alleged commission of such purely imaginary
crimes 1
Now we are all taught in our youth to believe that
Theology or our Religious System is the source or sanc
tion of all morality. If Boman Catholics we are taught
that in matters of Faith and Morals the Pope is the in
fallible authority; a dogma the more astonishing, inas
much as it must be obvious to unprejudiced historical
students that, as the power of the Pope has decayed, the
moral tone of European society has improved. But, in
the decomposition, or decline of theological belief every
where going on, there must exist a danger that what has
been supposed an essential part of its teaching may
decline too. Hence has arisen the necessity of showing,
as the fact is, that the true foundation of morality, or the
right conduct of man towards man, is scientific or secular,
and not essentially theological at all.
Now, that pure morality is absolutely independent of
all theology has been known to Science from the time of
Aristotle, whose demonstration of the doctrine is con
�An Aspiration of Science.
29
tained in his profound and sagacious treatise the Nicomachean Ethics.
Turning then to the consideration of virtue, as the
supreme moral end, we shall see what Science has dis
covered and taught us as the indestructible basis of the
duty of doing, not only what is just and right, but what
is calculated for the happiness of mankind, all of which
are comprehended in that felicitously compendious ex
pression, ‘ good-will towards men.’
It is to the illustrious Grotius (whose great work on the
principles of human conduct I somewhat fully referred to
in my lecture of last year) that we are indebted, according
to his able editor the late Dr. Whewell, for the first
clear enunciation of the true source of moral science.
Man, says Grotius, following the lead of Aristotle, is by
his nature a rational and social being. He can only exist
in the society of his fellow-creatures, and he must live
with them, not anyhow, but according to his instincts,
his faculties, and his desires, that is, peacefully and hap
pily. Human Nature then is the mother of moral right,
and the moral guilt or rectitude of any action is deter
mined by its agreement or disagreement with our rational
and social nature.
These ideas of Aristotle and Grotius have been admirably
developed by (amongst others) Jeremy Bentham, John S.
Mill, and Herbert Spencer. ‘ Nature (says Bentham) has
placed mankind under the government of two sovereign
masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point
out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what
we shall do. The standard of right and wrong is fastened
to their throne. In words a man may pretend to abjure
their empire, but in reality he will remain subject to it
all the while. The principle of utility recognises this
subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that
system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity
�30
An Aspiration of Science.
by the hand of reason and of law. Systems which
attempt to question it deal in sound instead of sense, in
caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.’
This scientific foundation of morals, general utility, or
the greatest happiness principle (adds John S. Mill) holds
that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote
happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of
happiness. This utilitarian standard, however, is not
the agent’s own greatest happiness but, the greatest
amount of happiness altogether. Utilitarianism there
fore can only attain its end by the general cultivation of
nobleness of character, and the multiplication of happiness
is, according to such standard of ethics, the object of
virtue. Thus it embraces not only our duties, but by
what test we may know them. And the highest life,
says Herbert Spencer, is that which includes the greatest
happiness, and ‘that happiness is the supreme virtuous
end is beyond question true, for it is the concomitant of
that ultimate end which every theory of moral guidance
has distinctly, or vaguely in view.
Such shortly is the ideal of Science in regard to the
true nature of virtue, but so backward is our present
social state, that so far from our being able to realise
such an ideal, the greater part of our present virtue
consists in practising the duty of self-denial, lest the
attempted gratification of our own faculties aud activities
should interfere with corresponding gratifications on the
part of others. For (says Herbert Spencer) the main
tenance of equitable relations all round is the condition
to the attainment of the greatest happiness of all..
There is probably no subject respecting which the
teachings of Theology and Science are more at variance
than in their respective views concerning the dreadful
ordeal of War. You know, if you consult the pages of
the Bible, you find that War is treated as almost, under
�An A spiration of Science.
31
certain circumstances, a normal condition of human
existence. I will not stay to quote texts illustrating this
conclusion, in which the Deity is represented as the Lord
of Hosts, as the Grod of Battles, as a Man of War, over
and over again taking part in and encouraging warfare,
and even expressly commanding Wars to be undertaken.
What the human mind may be degraded into believing
through the too exclusive study of Theology, and the too
confiding credulity in all that we find written in the old
historical books of the semi-barbarous Hebrews, may be
gathered from a recent utterance of one of our learned
Bishops, who declared that he believed War was one of
the means by which the Almighty carried on the govern
ment of the world, and promoted civilization!
Now Science cannot conceive an Almighty power
governing or encouraging a world of human beings
through the dreadful horrors of war, and such power
could not, in any scientific sense, be regarded as benefi
cent, if he were really capable of coolly carrying on human
government by means of the atrocious machinery of
warfare. According to Science, such an idea can only
be a delusion of the morbid imagination, enfeebled through
unreflecting faith in the senseless suggestions of supersti
tion. Science can indeed show that it is quite unneces
sary to attribute war to the intentional Will of an
Almighty Supernatural Being, for it can trace its causes
to the passions of human nature, acting in ignorance or
disregard of those preventives of war which the human
understanding, enlightened by Science, has succeeded in
discovering, and by following which wars might be alto
gether banished from the face of the earth, or, at least,
from amongst the Nations of Europe. Hence in nearly
all such Nations have arisen Peace Societies, founded for
the purpose of diffusing such intelligence amongst the
people at large, that they, being instructed to recognise
�32
An Aspiration of Science.
that their true interest always lies on the side of Peace,
may, through enlightened public opinion, bring pressure
to bear upon their rulers, in order that Peace may be
preserved, and the horrors of War avoided. That this
could even now be effected, through the instrumentality
of International Arbitration, can hardly be doubted by
those who have considered the subject from a scientific
point of view.
I may now then conclude by affirming that the senti
ments ‘ Good-will towards men ’ and ‘ Peace on Earth,’
though expelled from Sacred Scripture, and disowned by
dogmatic Theology, are the inalienable heritage of Science,
and under its guardianship will remain, to exemplify the
sublime sympathies of those noble-minded men, whose
fervent thoughts and dignified lives are devoted to the
realisation of their spontaneous aspirations to improve, to
lift up, and to sweeten the earthly lives of their fellow
creatures ; aspirations which superstition has not suc
ceeded in suppressing, because they are the natural
promptings of the uncorrupted heart, and mind, and con
science of man, civilized through Science.
KENNY & Co., Printers, 25, Camden Road, N.W.
�
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An aspiration of science : "On earth peace, good-will towards men", rescued from the New Testament revision. A lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's Hall, Langham Place, on Sunday afternoon, 19th February, 1882
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 32 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 5.
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Finch, A. Elley
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1883
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Bible
Science
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OBSCURANTISM
IN
MODERN SCIENCE
AN ADDRESS
Delivered before the “ Heretics ” Society in Cambridge
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BY
EDWARD CLODD
[ Reprinted by
permission of thé
“Fortnightly Review ”!
London :
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�WORKS DEALING WITH
«
EVOLUTION.
THE EVOLUTION OF MAN. By Professor
Ernst Haeckel. Library edition, in two vols., demy 8vo,
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�NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
OBSCURANTISM IN MODERN
SCIENCE
“ The great thing to remember is that the mind of man cannot
be enlightened permanently by merely teaching him to reject some
particular set of superstitions. There is an infinite supply of other
superstitions always at hand ; and the mind that desires such things
—that is, the mind that has not trained itself to the hard discipline of
reasonableness and honesty, will, as soon as its devils are cast out,
proceed to fill itself with their relations.”
—Gilbert Murray, Four Stages of Greek Religion, p. in.
Under the aggis of an Institution called the North
London Christian Evidence League, there was published
recently a collection of letters from experts in various
branches of science which were answers to inquiries
made by the League as to the attitude of these eminent
persons towards orthodox beliefs.1 The eagerness with
which the editor construes the vague replies of some of
the questioned into endorsement of current dogmas says
more for his shrewdness than for his candour, while the
state of mind which believes that the validity of any
creed can be settled by a referendum betrays a lack of
humour and of sense of proportion. What value can
there be in assent to a body of alleged facts to which no
tests are applicable ; to statements which can never be
submitted to the ordinary canons of evidence ; statements
contained in ancient documents which are products of
an age when the unusual was explained (if things were
By A. H. Tabrum.
1 Religious Beliefs of Scientists.
Longhurst, London.)
i
(Hunter and
�2
OBSCURANTISM IN MODERN SCIENCE
explained at all, which is doubtful) as a supernatural
event? Moreover, when assent to these reported occur
rences is obtained, what bearing has that on the conduct
of life? What relation is there between the dogma of
the Trinity and moral codes? As Mr. Sturt says in his
Idea of a Free Church: “ Historical evidence could never
do more than predispose a man to try how a suggested
religion works in practice. It is by practice that religions
are validated or discredited. Christianity is not a system
of evidence ; it is primarily a way of looking at life ”
<P- 85).
The tenacity with which the Church clung to dogmas
now discredited—as, for example, the vicarious theory of
the Atonement, and physical torture in an eternal hell—
reasserts itself as the dogmas that remain entrenched in
the citadel of the supernatural are challenged. In the
degree that men of high intelligence affirm their adher
ence to those dogmas, comfort comes to those who sit
in uneasy chairs in Zion. Authority determines the
opinions of most of us ; in the domain of Science legiti
mately so, because we have the consensus of the wellinformed and the means of testing for ourselves the
evidence on which their dicta are based ; but in the
domain of Theology illegitimately, because the autho
rities are not in accord, and because no means of
testing the data on which their dicta are based are pro
ducible. But the multitude do not discriminate ; they
assume that the man who can speak with unchallenged
authority on the subject of which he is a master is
entitled to speak with like authority on everything else.
Some satirist has said “ that mere denial of the existence
of God does not qualify a man to be heard on matters of
higher importance,” and it may be said conversely that
mere assertion of belief in a Creative Power and Ultimate
Purpose in the Universe cannot carry more weight
because the assertor has made important discoveries in
physical science.
�OBSCURANTISM IN MODERN SCIENCE
3
There can be little doubt that the more confident tone
adopted by recent defenders of the remnants of “the
faith once delivered to the saints ” has its explanation in
a reaction which has set in against the too dogmatic
spirit which, a couple of generations ago, pervaded
certain scientific deliverances in the enthusiasm begotten
by discoveries whose effect on men’s attitude towards
phenomena was one of revolution. “ Old things passed
away, all things became new.” But to make discoveries
of the causes of the origin of species and of the funda
mental identity of the matter of the universe, the bases
of assumptions that only minor problems awaited solu
tions, is to forget what manner of spirit we are of. As
M. Duclaux has finely said : “ It is because science is
sure of nothing that it is always advancing.” We may
add that in the degree that theology is sure of anything,
stagnation is its doom.
The reaction to which reference has just been made
has led minds in whom the wish to believe is greater
than the desire to know to seize the more eagerly upon
certain deliverances of men eminent in science, the
apparent effect of which is to buttress the shaken
structure of orthodox beliefs. As illustrating this, in
his day the well-nigh forgotten Sir Richard Owen
secured the benison of entirely-forgotten bishops because
of his contention against Huxley that a certain lobe in
the human brain, known as the hippocampus minor, is
lacking in the brain of anthropoid apes.
Owen was
proved to be in the wrong, but the great weight of his
authority as a comparative anatomist retarded, and in
some measure still retards, acceptance of the fact that the
differences between man and ape are differences of degree
and not of kind.
Again, as recently as 1903 a lively controversy arose
in the Times out of a statement by the late Lord Kelvin
that “ modern biologists were coming to a firm accept
ance of a vital principle,” and that “a fortuitous con
�4
OBSCURANTISM IN MODERN SCIENCE
course of atoms may result in the formation of a crystal,
but when we come to living- matter scientific thought is
compelled to accept the idea of Creative Power.”1 The
Times, in a leader on this letter, called this “a weighty
contribution to the formation of just opinion on the
subject ” ; whereupon, with a logic wholly lacking in that
deliverance, Sir Thiselton Dyer contended that while in
the domain of physics he would be a bold man who dare
cross swords with Lord Kelvin, “for dogmatic utterance
on biological questions there is no reason to suppose
that he is better equipped than any person of average
intelligence.”2 Then a waft of fresh air was imported
by Sir Ray Lankester in his declaration that “ the whole
order of nature, including living and non-living matter,
is a network of mechanism the main features of which
have been made more or less obvious to the wondering
intelligence of mankind by the labour and ingenuity of
scientific investigators.
But no sane man has ever
pretended that we can know, or ever can hope to know,
or conceive of the possibility of knowing, whence this
mechanism has come, why it is there, whither it is
going, and what there may or may not be beyond and
beside it which our senses are incapable of appreciating.
These things are not explained by ‘ science, and never
can be.”3 And, it may be added, the theology which
explains them has yet to be discovered.
Much to the same effect had been said before by
Huxley and Tyndall, and men of lesser. calibre, and
much to the same effect has been said since ; . but in
some influential quarters this confession of nescience is
qualified by assumptions of knowledge as to a meaning
and purpose at the core of things.
As prominent
examples of this we may take Sir Oliver Lodge and
Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, whose re-affirmance of such
assumptions constitutes the main purpose of their most
1 Letter to the Times, May 4, 1903.
2 Times, May 7, 1903.
3 Times, May 19, 1903.
�OBSCURANTISM IN MODERN SCIENCE
5
recent books—Sir Oliver’s Reason and Belief (Methuen
and Co.) and Dr. Wallace’s World of Life (Chapman and
Hall).
Dr. Wallace, whose mental agility in his ninetieth
year is an answer to every counsel of despair that would
slacken energy, gives us what, practically, is his last will
and testament, because, he tells us, it is his “summary
and completion of a half-century of thought and labour
on the Darwinian theory of evolution.”1 The body of
facts therein has led him to the conclusion that there is,
“ first, a Creative Power which so constituted matter as
to render these marvels possible ; next, a directive Mind,
which is demanded at every step of what we term
growth ; and, lastly, an ultimate Purpose in the very
existence of the whole vast life-world in all its long
course of evolution throughout the aeons of geological
time. This Purpose, which alone throws light on many
of the mysteries of its mode of evolution, I hold to be
the development of Man, the one crowning product of
the whole cosmic process of life-development....... the
only being who can appreciate the hidden forces and
motions everywhere at work, and can deduce from them
a supreme and overruling Mind as their necessary
cause.” Further on Dr. Wallace asserts that “the
special purpose of this world of ours is the development
of mankind for an enduring spiritual existence....... for
which the whole object of our earth life is a preparation ”
(Preface, p. vii).
With this quotation should be linked the argument
with which Dr. Wallace’s treatise on Darwinism (pub
lished in 1889) concludes—namely, “that there were at
least three stages in the development of the organic
world when some new cause or power must necessarily
have come into action. The first stage is the change
from the inorganic to organic; the next stage the
1 Preface, p. v.
�6
OBSCURANTISM IN MODERN SCIENCE
introduction of sensation or consciousness, constituting
the fundamental distinction between the animal and
vegetable kingdom. The third stage is the existence in
man of a number of his most characteristic and noblest
faculties, those which raise him furthest above the brutes
and open up possibilities of almost indefinite advance
ment ” (pp. 474-75).
In his Riddles of the Sphinx Dr. Schiller remarks
that “ A matter of fact is something which must be faced,
even though it may be unpleasant to do so, whereas a
matter of opinion may be manipulated so as to suit the
exigencies of every occasion ” (p. 364).
And the
difficulty in dealing with the thesis laid down by Dr.
Wallace is that there are in it no facts to be faced, only
a series of assumptions in support of which not a shred
of evidence that can be sifted is offered. It would seem
Sufficient to say, in refutation of these assumptions, that
their acceptance would be destructive of the entire theory
of the processes of evolution which an ever-growing
body of facts proves that, if they operate anywhere, they
operate everywhere. Heedless of this, Dr. Wallace
advances, in explanation of those processes, a theory
that the “organizing mind need not be infinite in its
attributes,”1 or “ not necessarily what we may ignorantly
mean by ‘omnipotent’ or ‘benevolent’ in our mis
interpretation of what we see around us. 2 He spurns
the apparently gratuitous creation by theologians of a
hierarchy of angels and archangels with no defined
duties but that of attendants and messengers of the
Deity,3 and, no doubt, willingly hands over explanation
of the belief in these winged animals to the comparative
1 P. 392.
2 P- 3993 “ Preaching at St. Paul’s, Harringay, the Bishop of London argued
that God and the angels were always near us ’ (Z>«?Zy Chronicle,
November 6, 1911). There was published in December 1911,^
of Angels, by the Rev. J. H. Swinstead (Hodder and Stoughton) to
which Lord Halsbury contributes an Introduction. . Probably both
prelate and jurist will be cited as authorities on the subject.
�OBSCURANTISM IN MODERN SCIENCE
7
mythologists. But this is only to replace them by the
hypothesis that there is “an almost infinite series of
grades of beings having higher and higher powers in
regard to the origination, the development, and the
control of the Universe,” “some of them creating by
their will-power the primal universe of ether,” and others
“so acting upon it as to develop from it, in suitable
masses and at suitable distances,”1 the various elements of
matter from which nebuke and suns are formed ! Hypo
theses have their value, as the history of advance in science
testifies ; but they must be of the workable order, and
where can place or warrant be found for this resuscitation
of animistic beliefs? The functions of this heavenly
host, as defined by Dr. Wallace, appear to be only
physical, the deity reserving to himself the moral
government of the universe, a government which
Dr. Wallace contends is wholly beneficent. He argues
that there is no cruelty in Nature; “the whole system
of life-development is that of providing food for the
higher,” and the pain which is a fundamental condition
of that system is not maleficent, but protective. In the
lowest organisms, where the rudiments of sensation are
present, it is practically absent, and the revolt of the
humane at the spectacle of animals suffering arises from
“ our whole tendency to transfer our sensations of pain
to them.”2 The action of a directive purpose meets us
everywhere ; it is evident, for example, in the myriad
swarms of mosquitoes, because these supply food for birds,
and thus indirectly minister to the existence of song and
plumage whereby the ear and eye of man are gratified !
Dr. Wallace does not explain what beneficent purpose
lies in the multiplication of blood-parasites that slay
their thousands by the appalling “ sleeping-sickness ”
whose venomous causes man is striving to extinguish ;
or in the Californian poison-vine which, when brushed
1 P- 393-
2 P- 377-
�OBSCURANTISM IN MODERN SCIENCE
against, produces eczema over the whole body ; or in
the macuna bean of Zambesia, whose trodden-on spines
revenge the assault by exuding a powder so skin
maddening that the tortured natives will jump into a
crocodile-haunted river to relieve the agony.
His
teleology is a reversion to the smug lessons of our
boyhood when “ the soul of good in things evil ” was
expounded in the namby-pamby literature of such books
as Workers without Wage, of the contents of which this
is a sample :—
Q.: Is there any use in the gadfly and his like?
A.: Yes ; they have a use in making wild cattle move
from spot to spot, and in preventing the flocks and herds
from growing too indolent.
The purposeful involves the ethical, and the ethical is
a purely human product. Neither good nor evil can be
imputed to Nature; hers is the sphere of unbroken
sequence which man can oppose only to fail in the
attempt.
And the optimism of Dr. Wallace has
dignified retort in the lines in which Thomas Hardy
addresses a deity whom he pictures as reviewing his
government of things at a year’s end :—
And what’s the good of it, I said,
What purpose made you call
From formless void this Earth I tread,
When nine and ninety could be said
Why nought should be at all ?
Yea, Sire, why shaped you us, “ who in
This tabernacle groan ? ”
If ever a joy be found therein,
Such joy no man had wished to win,
If he had never known I1
“ Bigness is not greatness,” as Emerson says, but one
would presumably expect the “Creative Power” to
1 Fortnightly Review, January, 1907.
�OBSCURANTISM IN MODERN SCIENCE
9
exhibit some sense of proportion. And we may well
assume absence of that saving grace if Dr. Wallace can
make good his rechauffe of the anthropocentric theory
which evolution has traversed, and, as some of us think,
demolished. A survey of cosmic development can but
suggest the reflection that the purpose which Dr. Wallace
sees in the universe might have been achieved by shorter
cuts. The justification for the existence of a myriad
heavenly bodies and, to make quick descent from these,
for the miscellaneous organisms preceding man, the
most remote star and the “ dragons of the prime” as
alike agents of his spiritual evolution, seems far to
seek. And if we judge only from the history of
these reptilian monsters we see in them a series of
unsuccessful experiments; perchance the “ ’prentice
hands ” of the angelic auxiliaries resulting in the pro
duction of a mass of superfluous unfit to secure the
existence of the fit. Pointing to them, Nature can only
confess, with Beau Brummel’s valet when showing to a
friend of his master’s a heap of discarded ties, “ These
are our failures.”
As for an “enduring spiritual existence,” to once
more quote Dr. Schiller : “ The end and origin of the
soul are alike shrouded in perplexities which religious
dogma makes serious attempt to dispel....... Whence does
the soul come? Does it exist before the body, is it
derived from the souls or the bodies of its parents, or
created ad hoc by the Deity? Is Pre-existence, Traducianism, or Creationism the orthodox doctrine? The
first theory, although we shall see that it is the only one
on which any rational eschatology can be, or has been,
based, is difficult, and has not figured largely in religious
thought; but the other two are alike impossible and
offensive. Indeed, it would be difficult to decide which
supposition was more offensive, whether that the manu
facture of immortal spirits should be a privilege directly
delegated to the chance passions of a male and female,
�IO
OBSCURANTISM IN MODERN SCIENCE
or that they should have the power at their pleasure to
call forth the creative energy of God.”1
Can Dr. Wallace tell us at what precise stage in
man’s development the Creative Power intervened either
directly or through his “hosts of angels”? Was the
“ enduring spiritual existence ” conferred on Pithecan
thropus erectus, or postponed till he had become more
pronouncedly Homo sapiens; and does Eolithic or
Palaeolithic man come under that head? As to the
“almost indefinite advancement ” which this spiritual
endowment was to secure, does the history of mankind,
from the dateless Ancient Stone Age to this twentieth
century of the Christian era, show that that has been
even approximately reached ? It is all very well to point
to the altitudes to which a few units among the millions
of humankind have attained, but what of the depths in
which the myriads have remained ? Is not any tendency
to smug satisfaction checked by even the most superficial
acquaintance with the story of mankind, with its record
of the millions whose existence has been, and millions
whose existence to-day remains, less enviable than that
of the brutes? of the millions whose eyes were opened
only to close on the darkness of death? of the low
intellectual, moral, and spiritual plane on which all but
an infinitesimal number stand, and the extinguishment
of many of these in the fullness of their power and use
fulness ? And so the survey might be extended till we
reach the degrading sequel of an “ enduring spiritual
existence ” which makes proof of its survival by raps and
knocks, and by the whole bag of tricks of the mediums
for whose integrity as claimants of communication with
the unseen Dr. Wallace goes bail.
For it is in his
belief in the validity of the phenomena of spiritualism
that the explanation of his theories is found. Take this
as culled from many proofs. When summoned as
1 Riddles of the Sphinx, p. 372.
�OBSCURANTISM IN MODERN SCIENCE
ii
witness in an action brought by one Archdeacon
Colley against Mr. Maskelyne, Dr. Wallace deposed
that he saw a white patch appear on the left side of a
man’s coat and grow into the distinct figure of a woman
in flowing drapery, and that he was absolutely certain
that this was a spiritual manifestation.1 Further, Dr.
Wallace, face to face with the exposure of the medium
Eusapia Palladino, averred that that detection “ in no
way got rid of the genuine phenomena previously
witnessed.”2 Of this woman’s performances the late
Mr. Frank Podmore said that the whole of them can be
■explained by the time-honoured device of substitution of
foot or hand.3 And the end and aim of the World of
Life is made obvious in the advice which Dr. Wallace
gives therein to his readers to study, “ as dealing with
the ethics and philosophy of spiritualism,” the late
.Stainton Moses’s Spirit Teaching and V. C. Desertes’s
Psychi-Philosophy.
Space forbids further criticism of the World of Life,
with its limited deity working with assistance in a
limited universe—for in his Man's Place in the Universe
Dr. Wallace contends that the sidereal system is finite
—and what remains available must be given to Sir
Oliver Lodge’s Reason and Belief.
In his Substance of Faith Allied with Science: A
Catechism for Parents and Teachers (now in its tenth
edition), Sir Oliver gives as his credo, “ Belief in one
Infinite and Eternal Being; a guiding and loving
Father, in whom all things consist.” Further, that “ the
Divine Nature is specially revealed to man through
Jesus Christ our Lord, who lived, taught, and suffered
in Palestine 1,900 years ago, and has since been
worshipped by the Christian Church as the immortal Son
of God, the Saviour of the World.” He also believes
1 Daily Mail, April 27, 1907.
2 Letter to the Daily Chronicle, January 24, 1896.
3 The Nenuer Spiritualism, p. 144.
�12
OBSCURANTISM IN MODERN SCIENCE
that “ man is privileged to understand and assist the
Divine purpose on this earth ; that prayer is a means
of communication between man and God, and that the
Holy Spirit is ever ready to help us along the way
towards Goodness and Truth, so that by unselfish
service we may gradually enter into the Life Eternal,
the Communion of Saints, and the Peace of God.”
In this we have a slightly eviscerated Apostles’ Creed,
to which a supplement is given in Reason and Belief.
The basis of that book, Sir Oliver submits, is “ one of
fact.” Among the facts is the now unchallengeable
one, that of man’s ancestry “ on his bodily side through
the animals, whereby a terrestrial existence was rendered
possible for beings at a comparatively advanced stage of
spiritual evolution. Plato and Shakespeare and Newton
lay then in the womb of the future.” Probably Sir
Oliver had in his mind Tyndall’s famous sentence in
which, with a true “ scientific use of the imagination,”
he said that “ all our philosophy, poetry, science, and
art—Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, and Raphael—are
potential in the fires of the sun.”
Now for the assumption. “ There must have come
a time when at a definite stage in the long history the
triumphant hymn, ‘ It is finished ; man is made,’ was
sung.” Whether the vocalists were of the angelic type
with which the Gospels, and, with a difference, Dr.
Wallace, make us familiar, we are not told ; neither are
we helped, in seeking to arrive at the process of the
making of man by Sir Oliver’s hints at “pre-existence,”
or at our being “chips of a great mass of mind,”
individuality being attained in the incarnation of these
“spiritual fragments in their several bodies, and thereby
the permanence of personality secured,....... for no
thoughtful person can really and consistently believe
that the spirit will not survive the body ” (pp. io-ii).
In connection with this vague ontology, there follows
a chapter on the “Advent of Christ,” in whose super
�OBSCURANTISM IN MODERN SCIENCE
i3
natural birth Sir Oliver apparently believes. It is often
not easy to catch his meaning, the words are elusive ;
but he says that to him, as “ a student of science,” the
historical testimony in favour of that momentous
Christian doctrine—the Incarnation—is entirely credi
ble.” There is a watering-down of the significance of
this in his remark, “We are all incarnations, all sons
of God in a sense, but,” etc. Anyway, the Incarnation
was necessary because man, who had hitherto been in
a state of innocency, like the animals, having arrived
at a stage when he realized that he was free and could
“discriminate between good and evil,” utilized that
power and fell, whereby sin entered into the world.
Help has been rendered by men to their fellows ; help,
too, “ by other beings and in other ways ”—“ I believe
this to be literally true ” (p. 40) adds Sir Oliver, thus
joining hands with Dr. Wallace in his theory of sub
sidiary “ powers of the air.” Nineteen hundred years
ago “ the Great Spirit took pity on the human race and
sent the Lord from heaven to reveal to us the love, the
pity, the long-suffering ” of the God whom man had
misunderstood. In Memoriam, Wordsworth, and the
Gospel according to John are the chief “authorities”
cited for this action on the part of the deity. But for
the statement, that “while Christ was incarnate he had
in some real sense partially forgotten previous exist
ence,” Sir Oliver is solely responsible, and what he
means is a mystery which he alone can be asked to
solve.1 We are reminded of the undergraduate’s con
clusion in an answer about some events in the life of
Christ which Grant Duff gives in his inimitable Notes
1 A parallel obscurity is supplied in Mr. Chapman’s Introduction to
the Pentateuch (Cambridge University Press, 1911) when commenting
on the question whether Jesus, in quoting from those writings, accepted
the current belief in their Mosaic authorship. Mr. Chapman suggests
that in this and other matters bearing “ on Christ’s knowledge as Man,”
in some manner the Divine Omniscience was held in abeyance, and not
translated into the sphere of human action” (p. 304).
�14
OBSCURANTISM IN MODERN SCIENCE
from a Diary. “ These facts are not recorded in the
Gospels, and there is no allusion to them in the Fathers,
but they are fully detailed by Dr. Farrar.”
There is only brief space, and certainly small
necessity, for reference to the chapters which are
designed “to furnish hints and suggestions for the
effective treating of the Old Testament in the light of
the doctrine of Evolution.”
To Sir Oliver Lodge the miscellaneous writings
grouped under that title—writings of unknown or
disputed authorship and of unsettled date, writings
some of which are compilations and redactions of older
documents and incorporations of legendary materials
from alien sources—are to be treated as vehicles of “ a
progressive revelation, embodying the story of the
chosen race from whom Messiah was to be born”: Sir
Oliver incidentally remarks that “ we, too, are a chosen
people,” thus bandying terms about until they are
emptied of all the old connotation. There is no reason
to suspect that Sir Oliver Lodge shares the delusion of
certain eccentrics that the British are descendants of
the Ten Lost Tribes ; perhaps his remark is but the
echo of verses which, like other youths brought up in
orthodox beliefs, he may have learned in the Sunday
school.
I thank the goodness and the grace
Which on my birth has smiled,
And made me, in this Christian land,
A happy English child.
I was not born, as thousands are,
Where God is never known,
Nor taught to pray a useless prayer
To blocks of wood and stone.
And so on.
Dealing with the mythology in Genesis, he says that
the talk about Jehovah walking in the garden of Eden
“ is a poetical mode of expression for a reality, for surely
�OBSCURANTISM IN MODERN SCIENCE
15
from a beautiful garden the Deity is not absent, and
some pretty verses from the late T. E. Brown are cited in
illustration. Sir Oliver does not tell us what “ reality
underlaid the sequel when the perambulating deity
asked why Adam hid himself, but the whole chapter is
more suggestive for what it omits than for what it
admits.
It is impossible even to summarize the facts confuting
the theories which in this paper are, necessarily,
presented only in briefest outline. But the onus
probandi lies on those who advance them. Assump
tions abound, but no shred of proof is offered, both
authors exemplifying the shrewd axiom of Montaigne
that “ nothing is so firmly believed as that which is
least known.”
While admitting that the mystery of origins remains,
and that many stages in the process are obscure, there
is no justification for the conclusion that what is un
solved is explicable only by assuming a deus ex viachina
acting sporadically and arbitrarily. The cumulative
evidence, ever increasing in volume, as to the funda
mental relationship between the inorganic and the
organic, thereby witnessing to the unity of the cosmos,
is sufficing refutation. The real question at issue
raised in both volumes is man’s place in the universe,
and the assumption that he is its crowning, final
product. Those who assign him a special place therein
have to reckon with the evidence supplied by compara
tive anatomy and comparative psychology. The one
has demonstrated fundamental identity between the
apparatus of animals and man ; it has proved “ that the
structural differences which separate Man from the
Gorilla and the Chimpanzee are not so great as those
which separate the Gorilla from the lower apes”;1 and
that when the blood of these last-named is mixed with
1 Huxley’s Man's Place in Nature, p. 103.
�i6
OBSCURANTISM IN MODERN SCIENCE
human blood the serum of the one destroys the blood
cells of the other, whereas no such effect arises when
the blood of man is mixed with that of the anthropoid
apes.1 The other has demonstrated identity of behaviour
between the higher animals and man, and shown that
“the development of mind in its early stages and in
certain directions is revealed most adequately in the
animal. Its mind exhibits substantially the same pheno
mena which the human mind exhibits in its early stages
in the child.”2
So widely-read a man as Sir Oliver Lodge cannot be
ignorant of the success which has attended the application
of the comparative method to mythology, theology, and
ethics. But not a hint of this is breathed in Reason and
Belief. The reader will close that book without an
inkling how far legendary elements enter into the
historical portions of the Bible, and how scrutiny of the
Christian documents has yielded evidence of the import
of pagan conceptions.
The author of the article
“ Nativity ” in the Encyclopedia Biblica says of the
myth of the Virgin birth that “ here we unquestionably
enter the circle of pagan ideas, ideas foreign to Judaism,”
while to such shifts are modern divines of the liberal
type of Dr. Sanday put that that scholar, seeking to
account for the silence of Mark about the Incarnation,
says that “ possibly Luke had a special source of
information connected with the court of the Herods,
perhaps through Joanna, wife of Chuza, the King’s
steward.”3 Knowledge of so “momentous” an event
has for its source a piece of back-stairs gossip I And
travelling backwards to the so-called previsions of a
Messiah, on which Sir Oliver lays stress, how will he
meet the acute question put by Dr. Reuss in his
comment on the oft-quoted and mistranslated verse in
1 Darwin and Modern Science, p. 129.
2 Baldwin, Story of the Mind, p. 35.
3 Guardian, February 4, 1903.
�OBSCURANTISM IN MODERN SCIENCE
i7
Isaiah (vii, 14) about the child to be born of a “virgin,”
« What consolation would Ahaz have had if the Prophet
had said to him, ‘ Do not fear these two kings, because
in I50 years the Messiah will be born ’ P”1
All that research and inquiry, carried on in that
scientific spirit which commends itself to one who is a
«student of science,” have achieved in the foregoing
and many other cases has no reference in these inchoate
and inconclusive pages. At the end of one of the
chapters a brief list of books on Hebrew history is
given, but these are of pseudo-liberal type, and the
more advanced writings of Canon Cheyne, Driver, and
their school are named only to be dismissed as too
technical for the public for whom Sir Oliver successfully
caters. The Encyclopedia Biblica is ignored.
It is the same with Ethics. That these are a product
of social evolution, and therefore relative in their
standards; that sin is, in its essence, an anti-social
act; that morals rest not on divine codes, but on human
relations—of all this there is never a hint in Sir Oliver’s
cryptic explanation of the doctrine of the Fall. Job’s
question, «Who is this that darkeneth counsel with
words?” rises to the lips as we close this unsatisfactory
book, and hence the warrant for application of the term
« obscurantist” to both writers. For in the degree that
they affirm the truth of the unproved, and assume that
on certain questions the canon is closed, they put a bar
upon inquiry, and encourage the ignorant and the timid,
the «light half-believers of our casual creeds,” in lazy
acquiescence.
There is so much to admire in the character, so much
to imitate in the example, of Dr. Wallace, that animad
version on the retrograde influence of his writings, in
the degree that they are speculative, is a thankless task.
It is among the romances of Science, like the inde
1 Les Prophltes, I, p. 233 (1876).
�OBSCURANTISM IN MODERN SCIENCE
pendent discovery of the planet Neptune by Adams and
Leverrier, that, when exploring in far-away Ternate,
Dr. Wallace should have hit on the identical solution of
the problem of the origin of species at which Darwin,
working in Cambridge, arrived. And it is to the
abiding honour of Dr. Wallace that Darwin’s name
and fame were permitted to eclipse his own, the one
willingly yielding to the other the glory of carrying on
a work which culminated in the publication of the Origin
of Species. For, as Professor Baldwin says in his
Darwin and the Humanities, “the Darwinian theory
might with entire appropriateness have been called
Wallaceism.” And the Professor fitly dedicates that
book to “ Alfred Russel Wallace, because, like that of
his co-worker, his interest extends to all the humanities.”
It may be said with truth that his interest is the wider
of the two. For throughout his long and strenuous
career Dr. Wallace has fought unwearyingly for the
betterment of the conditions of “ the poor also and him
that hath no helper.” Social and economic questions
have largely occupied his pen and time, and if in his
latest book his optimism shows itself in the conviction
that this is the best of all possible worlds, there are
passages in it born of a burning indignation at man’s
misdeeds towards his fellow-man which arrest approach
to the noble ideals in whose ultimate fulfilment Dr.
Wallace has a faith that we fain would share. Nor has
he ever concealed his rejection of current creeds as
having no correspondence to realities, and hence has
been under neither obligation nor inclination to attempt
to square the Christian scheme with the doctrine of
evolution. Therefore, the deeper is the regret that, in
the strange obsession of a mind so richly endowed,
there should be fostered the one heresy with which
science can make no terms—the denial of the unity and
unbroken continuity of the totality of phenomena, both
psychical and physical. Such deviations from the
�OBSCURANTISM IN MODERN SCIENCE
i9
normal have value as supplying data for the science of
mental pathology.
It must be reluctantly admitted that when Sir Oliver
Lodge leaves the domain of physics, wherein he is a
deservedly supreme authority, for that of theology, he
passes to a lower plane. He is by far the greater
obscurantist of the two, because he bewilders most where
he should be most enlightening.
His shambling,
hesitating gait makes him no sure-footed guide for the
plain wayfarer to follow. He wrests their old, straight
forward connotation from such terms as “revelation,
“ inspiration,” “ incarnation,” so that, meaning anything,
they may mean everything. In an Address to the Society
for Psychical Research ^Proceedings, Partxxvi,pp. 14-15),
Sir Oliver said that in dealing with psychical pheno
mena a hazy state of mind is better than a mind “ keenly
awake ” and “on the spot,” and one has the feeling that
this sort of self-hypnotizing process has affected much
that he has to say about questions which need the
exercise of all our wits to grapple with.
But whether it be his Reason and Belief, or Dr.
Wallace’s World of Life, their radical defect is the
assumption that certitude about the significance of the
universe has been reached.
Quoting Plotinus, Sir
Oliver calls him “ the inspired,” and in his suggestive
little essay on the Inner Beauty Maeterlinck says : “ Of
all the intellects known to me that of Plotinus draws the
nearest to the divine. ” Their united tribute calls to mind
a sentence from that philosopher which Sir Oliver and
Dr. Wallace, and all of us, may take to heart : “ If a
man were to inquire of Nature the reason of her creative
authority, she would say, Ask me not, but understand
in silence.”
Note.—A recent example of the disastrous influence of the
pseudo-scientific on the poetic temperament is supplied by
�20
OBSCURANTISM IN MODERN SCIENCE
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says that “the evidence for the genuineness of some such
‘ spirit ’ photographs is—to anyone who really studies it—
beyond question” (p. 186).........“Similarly with the wraiths or
phantoms which are projected from dying or lately dead
persons, the evidence for them in general is much too
abundant and well-attested to allow of disbelief” (p. 148).
“ Meanwhile, it is interesting to find, in corroboration of the
general theory, that some experiments lately carried out, in
weighing the body before and after death, have apparently
yielded the result of a decided loss of weight at, or very
shortly after, the moment of death. Dr. Duncan McDougall,
experimenting with considerable care, found that one of his
patients lost three-quarters of an ounce precisely at death ;
another lost half an ounce, with an additional loss of one
ounce during the next few minutes, after which no further
loss took place ” (p. 184).
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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Obscurantism in modern science : an address delivered before the "Heretics" Society in Cambridge
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Clodd, Edward [1840-1930]
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 20 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Reprinted from the Fortnightly Review. Publisher's advertisements on back cover, and inside both covers. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Watts & Co.
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[n.d.]
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N126
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Science
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Obscurantism in modern science : an address delivered before the "Heretics" Society in Cambridge), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
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Obscurantism
Science
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Text
THE REASONER.
EDITED BY G.
No. 888.]
J.
HOLYOAK E.
LONDON, NOVEMBER i, 1868.
Price id.
“I am by the law of my nature a Reasoner. A person who should suppose I meant by that word,
an arguer, flPOuld not only not understand me, but would understand the contrary of my meaning.
I can tak^to interest whatever in hearing or saying anything merely as a fact—merely as
having happened. I must refer to something within me before I can regard it with any curiosity
or care. I require in everything a reason why the thing is at all, and why it is there or then rather
than elsewhere or at another time.”—S. T. Coleridge.
THE PRIESTHOOD OF SCIENCE: THEIR VISIT TO NORWICH.
NEW thing has occurred in the history of the old City, which has
seen many strange things in its time. The British Association for
the Advancement of Science has paid Norwich a visit, and has been
as cordially welcomed, as hospitably entertained, and as civilly treated,
as in any city into which it has travelled. Indeed Mr. Harvey and
Lady Henrietta Harvey, entertained the Members at Crown Point in a
Royal way. By day the grounds were resplendent with gaiety, by night
radiant with fire, accompanied by a costly profusion which knew no
limits, of all that the daintiest appetite could appreciate : and in addition
Mr. Harvey made no speeches and asked none in return ; so that the
philosophic digestion was never disturbed by untimely efforts at coining
phrases of thanks. This was a refinement of philosophic hospitality un
exampled in my experience. The Mayor’s (Mr. J. J. Coleman) final
dinner, truly, left upon the minds and palates of the guests, pleasant
recollections of the civic hospitality of the ancient city of Churches.
And what a pleasant old city of Churches, Norwich is. Ecclesiastical
genius once dwelt there. The old , temples, were no bare Bethels, but
such as a man of taste could worship God in. Even Dissenting Chapels
caught an air of grace which they lack in other places. Still having
regard to the prodigious number of Churches in the City, it is hard to
resist the impression that Norwich must at one time been as wicked as
Gomorrah; and when the population was scanty there must have been a
Church to every family. Certainly a grim taste dwelt among the
citizens once, when they hung up the Ketts alive—one on the Castle
and the other brother on Wymondham Steeple. There must have
been a revolting vigour in the pious stomach, which could look up
morning after morning and calculate how long the famishing wretch
would last in his irons: and go in to pray with the consciousness of that
ghastly agony writhing over the altar. Then there was that ugly hole
the Lollard’s Pit, where they roasted any man who had an opinion of
his own, as to the faith which he thought most acceptable to God.
Even gentlemen and women were scorched, who declined to enter
A
No. I. EIGHTH SERIES.
�2
REASONER REVIEW.
heaven in the Norwich way, and if any bystander expressed pity for
so forlorn an end, the clergy fried him on the shortest notice, until his
sympathies evaporated. Even now in the reverberations of the old
trees you may detect fragments of shrieks of the writhing wretches.
All this took place at the back of the Bishop’s palace, and his Grace of
that day had the scent of smoking heretic wafted into his breakfast
room, and even now in the old carvings and cornices of the Cathedral
the dreadful odour seems to linger. We have, however, come on better
times now. A series of the best Bishops England has known of late
years have filled the see of Norwich, of which the last, Dr. Hinds, has
displayed a brave conscience. But whether in the battle of pikes or
books, there was always pluck in your Norfolk man, whether Knight
or tradesman, priest or rascal.
It is within the recollection of many Norwich men, who inherit the
Lollard courage of thinking for themselves, that Richard Carlile who
was an occasional speaker to the City, used to pray, especially in the
latter portion of his life, that there might arise in England a Priesthood
of Science. It seemed then like the distant dream of a prophet •, but we
have lived to see it realized. The names of Tyndall, Huxley, Hooker,
Darwin, Spencer, Grove, Lewes, Lyell are names which rule in the
realms of thought, as those of priests did of old, but with a distinction
and beneficence no priests ever exercised. The visit of the philosophers
was attended with some spiritual perturbations, but they left behind
them many blessings.
One of the features of the British Association was the Pre-Historic
Society, the President of which was Sir John Lubbock. No word was
so often- pronounced, no placards were so copiously seen, as those of
the pre-historic people. Their very name smelt strongly of heresy.
Many theological nostrils started at it. To investigate the doings of
man before History began was a personal attack upon Moses, and
many good souls thought that a Baronet might be expected to set a better
example. The British Association commenced its career thirty-eight
years ago with only one Christian sign, which nobody desires to imitate
—that of “fear and trembling.” It begged permission to have an
opinion—it apologized next for having one, and several Presidents did
worse—they tried to harmonise the discoveries of Science with the
dogmas of Religion. Of late years, Presidents have put on more of the
dignity of philosophers, and the independence of thinkers, and have
asserted a right to the territory they have conquered. The British
Association in my time, has never had a President with so wholesome
and impassioned a mind as Dr. Hooker. The tones of his voice were
manly and sincere. He spoke like one who cared for Science, and
asserted its dignity with intrepidity no President ever ventured upon
before. . .Mr. Herbert Spencer’s system of philosophy is as Atheistic as
the positive philosophy of Auguste Comte: yet Dr. Hooker did not
hesitate to name the author and to praise him. The author of the
�THE PRIESTHOOD OF SCIENCE.
3
“ Vestiges of Creation” found it necessary to wear a mask, Dr. Darwin
wrote boldly without one, though proving what the other had only
ventured to suggest. Dr. Hooker distinguished Dr. Darwin by grace
ful homage, Though the President holds at Kew an appointment
under the Crown, he did not hesitate to avow opinions by the side of
which, those of Dr. Colenso, the most honoured and heroic of our
Bishops, seems orthodox.
Dr. Hooker, said “ Science has never in its search hindered the
religious aspirations of good and earnest men; nor have pulpit cautions,
which are but ill disguised deterrents, ever turned inquiring minds from
the revelations of Science.” The President knew the ill office the pulpit
had often done Science, and he drew attention to its “ deterrents.” He
did more, he pointed out where the Priest fails us and Science serves
us. These were his bold words: “ A sea of time spreads its waters
jbetween' that period to which the earliest traditions of our ancestors
[point, and that far earlier period, when man first appeared upon the
globe. For his tract upon that sea man vainly questions his spiritual
teachers. Along its hither shore, if not across it, Science now offers to
pilot himS Dr. Hooker then stated the mission and determination of
the natural philosopher. “ Science, it is true/may never sound the
depths of that sea, may never buoy its shallows, or span its narrowest
■creeks, but she will still build on every tide-washed rock, nor will she
deem her mission fulfilled till she has sounded its profoundest depths
and reached its further shore, or proved the one to be unfathomable
and the other unattainable, upon evidence not yet revealed to mankinds
The President next drew the line between the work of the religionist
and students of nature. “The laws of mind are not yet relegated
to the domain of the teachers of physical science, and that the laws of
matter are not within the religious teacher’s province, these may then
work together in harmony and with good-will. But if they would do
this work in harmony, both parties must beware how they fence with
that most dangerous of all two-edged weapons, Natural Theology—a
■science, falsely so called, when, not content with trustfully accepting
truths hostile to any presumptuous standard it may set up, it seeks to
weigh the infinite in the balance of the finite, and shifts its grounds to
meet the requirements of every new fact that Science establishes, and
every old error that Science exposes. Thus pursued, Natural Theology
is to the Scientific man a delusion, and to the religious man a snare,
leading too often to disordered intellects and to Atheism.” Dr. Paley’s
never received so scalping a criticism as this before.
Professor Tyndall who so astonished the “bold Duke of Buccleugh,”
in his famous lecture to the Working-men of Dundee, last year, carried
forward this year in Norwich'—his demonstrations which no one put
more boldly or brilliantly than himself, of the truths which materialism
may count as her own. When I last spoke in Norwich, it was in discussion with my friend Thomas Cooper, who was disconcerted, when I
�4
REASONER REVIEW.
told him, that as an humble student of Nature, I could discern some of
the processes of causation, but could not explain why they occurred 9
and maintained that Theology itself had not imparted any portion of
the secret to him. Now the greatest authority upon Materialistic Phil
osophy—Professor Tyndall—has told the people of Norwich, in the
presence of the most competent tribunal in Europe; that where the
Materialist is mute the Theologist is also dumb. Professor Tyndall
demonstrated, that the Atomic Action of common Salt, is as formative and
instrumental of design as the architect of the Pyramids of Egypt—that
the growth of thought is the result of processes, as definite as the me
chanical growth of the body, and that the agerft of development in Matter
and Mind “ is a power which has feeling, not knowledge for its base.’l
Hitherto it had been thought the “respectable and proper ” thing
for Scientific men to follow the policy of suppression ; no allusion to the
Atheist was ventured upon. If anything told in favour of the Materialist it
was thought better not to mention his name. Scientific men did not call
him gross or defame him, as a person whose liberal principles pro
ceeded from a loose morality; but they never admitted in high places,
places of public notice, that he had an existence which could be recog
nized or principles that must be taken into account. Professor Tyndall
however, is not one of this order; he did justice to truth, regardless
of “propriety.”—He said in his opening address to his Section:
“ In affirming that the growth of the body is mechanical, and that
thought, as exercised by us, has its correlative in the physics of the
brain, I think the position of the ‘Materialist’ is stated as far as that
position is a tenable one. I think the Materialist will be able finally
to maintain this position against all attacks.”
Two memorable Lectures were delivered in Norwich, one by Pro
fessor Huxley and the other by Mr. Ferguson. A miracle of audacity
was Mr. Ferguson’s Lecture upon Buddhism. Stolid as an Assyriarl
Statue, bronzed with the sun of every clime, Mr. Ferguson told the
story of a great religion which arose ages before Christianity, and
disseminated nobler sentiments, and maintained a career by the side
of which that of Christianity seems poor and petty. This religion which
existed ages before Christianism, taught how pain might be avoided
and life made happy. The great object of the religion was to inculJ
cate kindliness to animals, and above all to establish thoroughly, love
and kindliness among men. One of the edicts of this religion was called
the edict of toleration, and it was one which Christians might with much
propriety follow. It was to the effect that a man must honour his own
faith without blaming that of another, and that there were circumstances
under which the faith of another should be honoured. This Prince
preached the doctrine all over India, and it was by persuasion alone
that it was propagated. There was not a single instance of religious
persecution on the part of this people, although they had to endure
much persecution themselves. Their faith and doctrine was good-wUl
�THE PRIESTHOOD OF SCIENCE.
5
to men, and they never sought to obtain converts to it.” Mr. Ferguson
very quietly said that Christianity might learn a lesson of toleration
from [its memorable and nobler] predecessor. Mr. Ferguson told us
of an old religion, that of the tree and serpent worship, which once
Jcovered the earth, the proofs of which (the best accessible to us) were
locked up forty-five years in a stable, in Whitehall Yard. After
demonstrating the prevalence and antiquity of this extraordinary Faith,
he said in the quietest manner possible, looking the Bishop of Norwich
(who sat near him) in the face. “If this kind of worship had been a
mere local superstition of India, it would be hardly worth his while to
devote so much attention to this point, but I believe that it had pre
vailed in the world from the earliest times. The history of the tree
and the serpent in the book of Genesis, I believe, was a remnant of
that old worship, and the curse of the serpent was a curse of that
impure religion.” Then arises the question ! Why, said Moses nothing
about it? Was Moses ignorant, or why was Moses silent? The
author of Genesis dropped both ages and nations out of his narrative,
and told us nothing of his stupendous omissions. But more wonderful
than the matter, was Mr. Ferguson’s manner. He announced these
revelations, new to the World and wondrous to the Norwich mind,
which takes Moses to be a reliable, historian—in the quietest matter
of fact way, as though each knew that Moses/cOld be nowhere
in his facts, if he read a pre-historic paper aMrojffie British Association.
Dr. Hooker introduced Professor Huxley to thelarge meeting in the
Drill Hall as “a friend of the woAinp'-man whollilP at^trouble to
instruct him.” Without a word of preface, Mr. Huxley said “ if a
shaft were sunk at my feet, deep ijjtp' the eaWhiSthose who conducted
the operation would pass through various strata of earths, but at
length they would arrive at that substance of which every carpenter
carries a piece in his pocket—and which we call ‘ chalk” and for one hour
and a half, he discoursed in language of perfect simplify'and trans
parency, of the diffusion, formation, and marVefi|us age of chalk. The
narrative never halted, and was never obscure. It had no brilliant periods
which illuminated dark passages. It was all light, you saw all along the
line of thought, and over all the vast field through which the Professor
travelled, who ended with a simple, single metaphor of such beauty and
brilliancy that it re-illumed, in a double sense, all the tracks through
which his discourse had extended. He saidjEl have now reached the
end of my task. If I were to take a piece oCTwijand put it into the
dull and obscure flame of burning hydrogen, it would, after a while
be converted into a substance which would shine like the sun, and
which would illuminate on all sided if theseSlalls were not about us,
the darkness of the night without. I have been endeavouring to turn
upon this piece of chalk the heat of by no meaifi a particularly brilliant
course of reasoning, and by degrees, I hope, you helping me, that this
piece of chalk has in an intellectual sense begun to shine, that it has
�6
REASONER REVIEW.
lighted up the remote vista of the past history of the world, that it has
enabled you to get some sort of glimpse into that marvellous and
astonishing history of the planet which we men of Science are trying
patiently and quietly to unravel. And the most important conclusion
of all is that wherever its rays have shone, it has revealed to you,
always working without haste and without rest, Natural Causation?]
A working-man got up and said “they had never heard anything
like that in Norwich before ; they had all been delighted; many had
been instructed; and some, he feared, had been alarmed.” It was
a simple and worthy speech. For never did Science seem so vast and
mere creeds so little, as during Professor Huxley’s masterly discourse.
The Bishop of Norwich said at the Mayor’s Dinner “ he welcomed
men of Science as fellow workmen, as fellow students of different
volumes, occupying different departments of the one Divine Master.”
This is an admission that the field of Science is a Divine department.
“ The great meeting ” he said, “ tended to show that men of faith
should enquire more and men of Science believe more.” It is necessary
advice that “ men of faith should enquire,” men of Science are sure to
believe all that is true. Lamarck when he started the theory of the
origin of species was regarded on all hands as an Atheist and was
treated as one, and Darwin paused twenty years before he ventured
to incur the inheritance of the same odium.
The Rev. J. M. Berkeley, the president of the Biological Section, very
generously defended Dr. Darwin—he said “ nothing could be more
unfair or unwise than to stamp at once this and cognate speculations
with the charge of irreligion. Of this, however, he felt assured, that
the members of that Association would unite with him in bidding that
great and conscientious author, God speed, and join in expressing a
hope that his health might be preserved, to enrich Science with the
results of his great powers of mind and unwearied observation.”
Canon Robinson, who preached at St. John’s, Maddermarket, said,
very liberally, “ that geology teaches us the eternity of God, astronomy
His power, and chemistry His wisdom,while the Bible—His revelation—
speaks to us of His righteousness.” This gives three things to Science—
reserving one to Revelation—a considerable reduction of the magnitude
of theological professions, to which we have been accustomed !
The Dean of Cork made, in his sermon at the Cathedral, concessions
equally remarkable. “We cannot,” he said, “ demonstrate the super
natural. The demonstration of the supernatural is an impossibility: it
is a contradiction in terms. No amount of facts in the world of nature
will ever prove the existence of a world above nature. The very facts
produced to prove the supernatural are supernatural facts; they
are miracles and prophecy. No amount, therefore, of this kind of
evidence would demonstrate the supernatural. Between the man who
believes only what he sees, and the man who believes in order that he
may see, there is a necessary and an endless opposition.”
�THE PRIESTHOOD OF SCIENCE.
7
As for not being able to “ prove the supernatural,” Theologians have
been trying to do it all their lives; and have only just found out
that they- cannot succeed : and the man “ who belives in order that he
may see ” will wear out his faith before he improves his eyesight,
k The Rev. G. Gould preached at St. Mary’s Chapel the most irrelevant
sermon in the Science Week. He, however, admitted that “ Science
may lead us into the secrets of God’s work round about us,” and that
is more than Theology has done. “ But Science,” added Mr. Gould,
“ cannot change the moral nature of man, cannot uplift him of itself
from the degradation into which he may have sunken, through his lusts
and passions, through the caprices in which he has indulged, and the
(mistakes in which he has delighted, that nothing but light from heaven
can irradicate the gloom in which man has immured himself by sin;
nothing but the grace of God, as it is manifested in Christ Jesus, the
light of the world, can at once lay hold of the corrupt human nature,
and by its very teaching purify that nature ; ” Theology, however, has
been so long in trying to do this, and has not done it yet—that
pcience is now entitled to a turn. Even the Earl of Shaftesbury admits
that Spiritural light cannot be expected to grow out of bad material
Conditions, and Science which makes possible good conditions may
“ purify human nature ” faster than Mr. Gould supposes.
The Rev. J. Crompton delivered a lecture worthy of a free Christian
Church and of the occasion that gave rise to it.
In future Free-enquiry in Norwich will have honourable recognition.
The Norfolk News which has not usually been regarded as a Freethinking Journal, wrote upon the subject at the close of the Association
in terms which might be fit for the Reasoner Review or the National
Reformer. It said, “ we therefore strongly urge on our readers the
duty of encouraging the utmost freedom of thought and investigation.
Let no such weakness be exhibited amongst us as some miserable
‘ apologists ’ for Christianity have shown elsewhere, lest something
[may be found out, which ‘ the defenders of the faith ’ would be unable
to answer. They are poor defenders, and that must be a poor faith
which has to supplicate gainsayers, not to gainsay, and sues for mercy
This is boldly and bravely said: it is impossible not to respect Christi
anity when it assumes this frank, fair and courageous tone.
Norwich has an Ecclesiastical atmosphere. If Churches could save
the people the whole county of Norfolk might hope to be translated
to heaven. But in the sacred City itself there are poor, ignorant,
Iniserable and unhealthy people. If every preacher were a teacher,
every creature in Norwich should be well taught. But there are
purlieus no man could wish to see; wretched habitations; courts noisome
with disease; dwellings in which Prince Albert would not have
Buffered his hounds to live. These have grown up with the Churches,
and subsist with them. But a Priesthood of Science would purge the
City in twelve months and make it as intelligent and wholesome as
�REASONER REVIEW.
it is rich in historic renown. Piety has never given the people a park.
Dr. Hooker pleaded for one, but the trust of the people is more in
Mr. Harvey than in the clergy, for the possession of it.
Mr. Ferguson told us that before the time of Asoko, 250 b. c. there
was not in India a single temple worthy of the name, but he taught
the art of gracefulness in such erections. It would be well if the
Free-thinkers of Norwich had some Prince Asoko, who would teach
them that honourable art, for though the temples of Baal do abound,
they have done nothing, as yet, to secure to themselves a place, where
the new cause of Science can be adequately illustrated. The books,
the aims, the news of Science, its moral and liberalising tendencies,
must be entirely unknown to thousands of the inhabitants of Norwich,
and a Society careful of things decent, and afraid of nothing' true,
might open its doors to people who would be grateful for the oppor
tunity of reading and hearing. It is likely that persons of very
opposite opinions would carry into effect a plan by which the humbler
men of all parties would benefit.
The people of Norwich have now the means of judging of the
relative value of men of Creeds, and men of Science. The Clergy save
souls—men of Science save lives, and by improving human conditions
of existence, save from sin which endangers souls: and the people
of Norwich will now see how different is their mode of proceeding.
How timid and supplicatory the one—how manly, how confident the
other—how commanding in its influence is this Priesthood of Science !
Its language how courageous, its tone how independent! The priest
begins with a prayer for help, in addition to his own strength, he
invokes supernatural aid—he points a collect like a Chassepot rifle
at the head of the hearer. The Dissenting minister piles prayer upon
prayer, and puts all heaven in a flutter to aid him in his discourse,
and creates such a din of Hymns in the air, that no aspiration of the
philosopher can be heard as it ascends.
But the man of Science imitates none of these arts of feebleness:
he tells his straightforward story, he adduces his facts and trusts to
reason to give him the victory. He appeals to no terror, he raises
no fear, he scolds no hearer; he does not tell him that he is
stiff-necked, or rebellious, or that he withholds his assent from
depravity of heart.
The Priest of Science is proud and decent
in language, and asks nothing from his hearer, but attention. This was
a new tone in Norwich, and it will be long before the memory
of it dies away.
G. J. H.
The subject of the Next Number will be WORKING-CLASS REPRE
SENTATION. Published November 15, 1868.
’
LONDON BOOK STORE, 282, STRAND.
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
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The priesthood of science: their visit to Norwich.
Creator
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Holyoake, G.J.
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 8 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: From The Reasoner, no. 888, November 1 1868. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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Q-
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
PROBLEMS OF THE
FUTURE
BY
S. LAING
AUTHOR OF “ MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT,”
“A MODERN ZOROASTRIAN,” ETC.
Revised and brought up to date by Joseph MeCabe
[issued for
the rationalist press association, limited]
WATTS & CO.,
17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.
1905
��CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION .
*
7
CHAPTER I.
9
SOLAR HEAT
Difference between Astronomers and Geologists—The former say twenty, the latter two
hundred millions of years—Argument of Astronomers—Amount of Heat received from
Sun—How Supply kept up—Meteorites—Gravity—-Method of Calculation—Result:
Supply of Heat cannot have lasted more than ten to fifteen millions of years—Case of
Geologists—-Progress of the Science—Theological—Theologic-Scientific—Scientific
Uniformity of Conditions—Proved by Fossil Remains—By Temperature and Atmosphere
—Assuming Uniformity, Time required—Instances—-Solent River—Eocene Lake—Lake
of Geneva—Coal Measures—Geology based on Facts—-Mathematical Conclusions on
Theory—If Heat comes from Gravity, where does Gravity come from ?—Gravity really
unknown—Different Theories as to Solar Heat—Lockyer and Crookes—Sun-spots—
Magnetic Storms—Conservation of Energy.
CHAPTER II.
WHAT THE UNIVERSE IS MADE OF
.
.
.
.
.
•
•
.21
Shooting Stars: their number, velocity, size—Connection with Comets—Composition—
Spectra—Meteorite Theory—Genesis of Stars and Nebulae—Further stage of Theory
Impact Theory—Dark Suns in Space—Temperature of Visible Stars—Their proper
Motions—New Stars—Variable Stars—Facts better explained by Impact Theory—Laplace’s
Theory—Based solely on Gravity—Not inconsistent, but insufficient—Even Impact Theory
not last step—Stony Masses made of Atoms—-What are Atoms ?—Chemical Elements—
Attempts to reduce them to one—Hydrogen—Helium—Mendelejeffs Law—Atoms
Manufactured Articles—All of one Pattern—Vortex Theory—Theory of Electrons—What
behind Atoms ?—The Unknowable.
CHAPTER III.
CLIMATE
29
Conflict between Geology and Astronomy—Geology asserts Uniformity of Climate until
Recent Times—Astronomy asserts Inclination of Earth’s Axis to be invariable, and
therefore Climates necessary—-Evidence for Warm and Uniform Climates—Greenland
—Spitzbergen—Impossible under Existing Conditions—-Heat, Light, and Actinism—
Invariability of Earth’s Axis—Causes of Higher and more Uniform Temperature—
Cooling of the Earth—More Heat from the Sun—Warmer regions of Space—More
Carbonic-dioxide—Would not explain Uniformity of Temperature—Excess of Oxygen—
Modification of Species—Configuration of Sea and Land—Croll’s Theory—Displacement
*of Earth’s Axis—Inclination of Axis of Planets and Moon—Unsolved Problems of the
Future.
CHAPTER IV.
THE GLACIAL PERIOD ..........
Importance of Date of Glacial Period-—Its Bearing on Origin of Man—Short Date
Theories—Prestwich says 20,000, Lyell 200,000, years—Croll’s Theory—Prestwich’s
Arguments—Solar Heat—Human Progress—Shown by Palaeolithic Remains—Geological
Evidence—Advance of Greenland Glaciers—Denudation—-Erosion of Cliffs and Valleys—
Deposition—Loess—Elevation and Depression of Land—All Show Immense Antiquity—
35
�CONTENTS
4
Post-Glacial Period—Prestwich says 8,000 to 10,000 years—Mellard Reade 60,000—His
Reasons—Inconsistent with Short-Date Theories—Causes of Glacial Period—Cooling of
Earth—Cold Regions of Space—Change of Earth’s Axis—More Vapour in Atmosphere—
Lyell’s Theory—Different Configuration of Sea and Land—Conditions of GlaciationProblems Pressing for Solution.
PAGE
CHAPTER V.
TERTIARY MAN
..........
47
Antiquity of Man—Man part of Quaternary Fauna—What this Implies—Historical and
Neolithic Periods—Palaeolithic—Caves and River Gravels—Glacial and Inter-Glacial
Deposits—Wide Distribution of Palaeolithic Implements in Early Quaternary Deposits—
Origin of Species—Evolution and Migration—Diversity of Human Types—Objections to
Tertiary Man—Specialisation of Type—Survival through Vicissitudes .of Climate—
Positive Evidence for—-St. Prest—Thenay—Tagus Valley—Monte Aperto—Cuts in Bones
of Balaeonotus—Elephas Meridionalis and Halitherium—Auvergne Worked Flints in
Pliocene Tuffs—Castelnedolo—Human Bones in Pliocene—Olmo—Evidence from America
—Californian Auriferous Gravels—Tuolumne and Calaveras Skulls—Age of Gravels—
Skertchley’s Stone Implements—The Nampa Image—Brazilian Caves—Pamprean Strata—
Summary of Evidence.
CHAPTER VI.
THE MISSING LINK
..........
65
Human Origins—-Evolution or Miracle—First Theories Miraculous—Conception of
Natural Law—Law Proved to be Universal in Inorganic World—Application to Life
and Man—Darwin and Evolution—Struggle for Life and Survival of the Fittest—Con
firmed by Discovery of Missing Links—Professor Cope’s Summary—M. Gaudry—
Instances of Missing Links—Bears and Dogs—Horse—Pedigree of the Horse from
Palseotherium and Eohippus—Appearance and Disappearance of Species—Specialisation
from Primitive Types—Condvlarthra—Reptiles and Birds—Links between other Genera
and Orders—Marsupials and Mammals—-Monotremata—Ascidians and Fish—Evolution
of Individuals and Species from Primitive Cell—Question of Missing Links Applied to
Man—Man and Ape—Resemblances and Differences—Specialisation of Human Type—
For Erect Posture—How Man Differs from Animals—Mental and Moral Faculties—
Language—Tools—-Progress—Mental Development—Lines of Research for Missing Links
—Inferior Races—Fossil Remains—The Pithecanthropus—Point in Direction of Tertiary
Origin.
CHAPTER VII.
ANIMAL MAGNETISM AND SPIRITUALISM
.
.
.
.
.
•
«
79
Binet and Fere’s Volume—School of Salpetriere—Dr. Braid—Hypnotism—How Produced
—Effects of—Lethargy—Catalepsy—Somnambulism—Hallucination—Dreams—-Hypnotic
Suggestion—Instances of—-Visible Rendered Invisible—Emotions Excited—Acts Dictated
— Magnet — Trance — Alternating Identity —• Thought - Reading —■ Clairvoyance —
Spiritualism — Slate-Writing—Scybert Commission—-Ail Gross imposture—Dancing
Chairs and Tables—Large Field Opened up by French Investigations—Point to
Materialistic Results.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE.
AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY
.
.
-9°
PART I.
Are they Reconcilable?—Definitions of Agnosticism and Christianity—Christian Dogma
—Rests on Intuition, not Reason—Descartes, Kant, Coleridge—Christian Agnostics—#
Tendency of the Age—Carlyle, George Eliot, Renan—Anglican Divines, Spurgeon.
CHAPTER VHL—
PART II.
1
Effect on Morals—Evolution of Morality—Moral Instincts—Practical Religion—Herbert
Spencer and Frederic Harrison—Positivism and the Unknowable—-Creeds and Doctrines
—Priests and Churches—Duty of Agnostics—Prospects of the Future.
�5
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER VIII.—(continued)
PART III.
Practical Philosophy—Zoroastrian Theory—Emerson on Compensation—Good and Evil—
Leads to Toleration and Charity-Matthew Arnold and Philistinism-Salvation ArmyConflict of Theology and Science—Creed of Nineteenth Century.
CHAPTER IX.
. 108
THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS
•
•
•
Huxley and Dr. Wace-Sermon on the Mount, and Lord’s Prayer—English and German
Biblical Criticism—Papias—His Account of O^gm the Gospels-Confirmed ^ Inter^
Evidence - Common-sense Conclusions - Miracles a Question of Faith -^vMence
Required—The Ascension—Early Christian and Mediaeval Miracles—St Thoma a
Becket—Faith—Historical Element—Virgin Mary—Guiding Principles of Histor cal
Inquiry—Minimum of Miracles—Admissions which Tell Against—Jesus an Historica
Person-Born at Nazareth-Legends of Nativity-St, John the Baptist-Kingd om of Go Socialistic Spirit-Pure Morality-Nucleus of Fact in
Disputes with Scribes and Pharisees-Jesus a Jew—Messiahship—Dying Words Passion
and” Crucifixion —Improbabilities —Pilate—Resurrection—Contradictions—Growth of
Te£rend—Probable Nucleus of Fact—Riot in the Temple—Return of Disciples to Galilee
—Conflicting Accounts of Resurrection—Return of Apostles to Jerusalem and Foundation
of Christian Church.
CHAPTER X.
128
SCEPTICISM AND PESSIMISM
Carlyle—Causes of Pessimism—Decay of Faith—A Prosaic Future-Denial of’ these
Charges—Definition of Scepticism—Demonology—Treatment of Lunatics WJ*chcra
Heresy—Religious Wars—Nationality has Superseded Religion—Wars
Humane
Originality of Modern Events and Characters-Louis Napoleon-Bismarck-GladstoneAbraham Lincoln—Lord Beaconsfield—Darwin—Huxley—Poetry—Fiction Painting
A Happier World.
CHAPTER XI.
CREEDS OF GREAT POETS
...••
••
’
14K
What is a Great Poet ?—Ancient and Modern Poets—Byron, Shelley, Swmbuije,
Browning, Pope, Dryden, Coleridge, Spenser—Chaucer—Wordsworth-Nature-Worship
—Ode on 'immortality—Byron and Shelley—Burns—Gospel of Practical Life—Shakespeare
—Self recorded in Hamlet and Prospero—The Sonnets—\ lews of Death—Behind the
Veil—Prospero—Views identical with Goethe’s Faust—And with the Maya qr Musiar ot
Buddhism—Pantheism—Ignoring of Religion—Patriotism and Loyalty his Ruling Motives
—Practical Influence of Religion Exaggerated—Religious Poets—Dante Milton
Contrast between Greek Tragedy and Modern Poetry—Tennyson—Poet of Modern
Thought—In Hemoriam^—Practical Conclusions.
INDEX
4
•
I5S
��INTRODUCTION
“ Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever
reaping something new,
That which they have done but earnest of the
things that they shall do.”
—Tennyson’s Locksley Hall.
The traveller in the Alps, after struggling
up through dense fir woods, in which his
view is limited to a few yards, emerges
on grassy slopes, where swelling ridges
and rocky peaks appear to bound the
horizon. Weary and scant of breath, he
thinks if he can surmount these his
labour will be ended, and a free view
enjoyed, with nothing but the vault of
heaven above him. But, no ! When
these heights are scaled he sees before
him ridge behind ridge of loftier summits,
and, in the background of all, the glitter
ing peaks of Jungfraus and Matterhorns,
standing out white and seemingly inac
cessible, against the deep blue sky.
But, if he is a practical mountaineer, he
knows that, grim as are the glaciers and
precipices which girdle their icy for
tresses, they are not invincible to human
effort; and, as the foot of man has stood
on some of the loftiest summits, he feels
assured that it will stand on those which
remain unsealed.
So it is with modern science. For
centuries it had to grope its purblind
way through dense jungles of superstitious
ignorance, where misty shapes of theo
logical and metaphysical speculation
obscured the real facts of the universe,
or were mistaken for them. At length,
and comparatively quite recently, the
human intellect emerged into the light of
day, and, gaining the first heights, began
to acquire accurate ideas of the true laws
and constitution of the universe. The
progress, once begun, went on at an
accelerated • rate, until in the last halfcentury it has carried with it in an
impetuous torrent old creeds and
cherished convictions, like so much
drift-wood floating on the surface of
Lake Erie, when caught by the current
which hurries it down the Falls of
Niagara.
So irresistible and so widespread has
been the advance of science that at first
sight we are perhaps disposed to overrate
it, and to fancy, like Alexander, that no
more worlds remain to conquer, or that,
at most, a few unimportant territories are
still unannexed. But the true man of
science knows differently. He sees ridge
still rising behind ridge, and at every
step wider horizons opening, with distant
peaks that still baffle the boldest climber.
But he no longer gazes at them with
aimless wonder, or, if he fails to under- •
stand them, invents a high-sounding
phrase to disguise his ignorance. His
faith is firm in the laws of Nature, and
he feels assured that whatever lies within
their domain is discoverable, and will,
sooner or later, and probably sooner
rather than later, be discovered.
In former works I have attempted to
give some popular view of what modern
�8
INTRODUCTION
science has actually accomplished in the
domains of Space, Time, Matter, Energy,
Life, Human Origins, and other cognate
subjects. In this I will endeavour to
point out some of the “Problems of
the Future” which have been raised
but not solved, and are pressing for
solution.
In both cases I address myself to what
may be called the semi-scientific reader.
The advanced student of science will find
little which he does not already know.
Ihose who are ignorant of the first
elements of science, and, like Gallio,
care for none of these things, will
scarcely understand or feel an interest in
the questions discussed. But there is a
•large, and I believe rapidly increasing,
class, who have already acquired some
elementary ideas about science, and who
desire to know more. Curiosity and
culture are in effect convertible terms:
the wish to know is the first condition of
knowing. To many who are in this
stage of culture, but who have neither
the time nor faculty for following up
closely the ever-widening circle of
advanced thought, it may be interesting
to get some general and popular idea of
a few of the unsolved problems which
have been raised by modern science, and
are occupying the thoughts of the men
who lead its van.
In selecting a few among the many
questions which have been thus raised, I
have been guided by this principle. In
the course of nature, I must have left
this earth before they have been solved.1
If the option were given me of paying it
a short visit fifty or a hundred years
hence, what are the questions which I
should ask with the most eager curiosity,
and to which I should expect to get a
satisfactory reply ?
They are partly scientific questions,
respecting the age of the earth, the con
stitution of the sun and solar system; the
ultimate nature of matter and energy, the
beginnings of life, the origin and anti
quity of man; partly religious, social, and
political questions which are looming on
the horizon and engaging the attention of
thinking men.
I do not pretend to have exhausted
the list, but I hope I may have done
something to give definiteness and pre
cision to the ideas of some of the edu
cated public who are not specialists upon
various questions which are now pressing
forward and waiting for solution.
S. L.
1 Mr. Laing died in 1903.
�PROBLEMS OF THE FUTURE
Chapter
I.
SOLAR HEAT
Difference between Astronomersand Geologists—
The former say twenty, the latter two hundred
millions of years—Argument of Astronomers—
Amount of Heat received from Sun—How Sup
ply kept up—Meteorites—Gravity—Method
of Calculation—Result: Supply of Heat can
not have lasted more than ten to fifteen millions
of years—Case of Geologists—Progress of the
Science—Theological—Theologic-Scientific—
Scientific—Uniformity of Conditions—Proved
by Fossil Remains—By Temperature and
Atmosphere—Assuming uniformity, time re
quired — Instances — Solent River—Eocene
Lake—Lake of Geneva—Coal Measures—
Geology based on Facts—-Mathematical Con
clusions on Theory—If Heat comes from
Gravity, where does Gravity come from ?—
Gravity really unknown—Different Theories
as to Solar Heat—Lockyer and Crookes—
Sun-spots—Magnetic Storms—Conservation
of Energy.
One of the most interesting and per
plexing scientific problems of the day is
that raised by the conflict between phy
sicists and geologists as to the duration
of solar heat.
Leading mathematicians, such as Lord
Kelvin and Helmholtz, assign twenty, or
more probably ten, millions of years as
the outside possible past duration of a
supply of heat from the sun, sufficient to
maintain the earth under conditions
enabling it to support life. Lyell, and a
majority of the best geologists, consider
that one hundred to two hundred millions
of years are required to account for the
undoubted facts of geology since life
began. Each side support their case by
arguments which, taken by themselves,
seem conclusive. And yet the gap
between the two is so wide that it cannot
be bridged over by mutual concessions,
and it is evident that there must be some
fundamental error in the assumed data
on one side or the other.
The mathematicians base their argu
ment on the supply of solar heat. They
say the present amount of heat radiated
by the sun is a measurable quantity ; the
principle of the conservation of energy
shows that this heat cannot J>e self
supplied, but must be a transformation
of pre-existing energy; the only sufficient
energy we know of is that of the mechan
ical force generated by the contraction
of the sun as it cools. This, again, is a
measurable quantity, and the outside
amount of mechanical power generated
by contraction of the sun’s mass to its
present volume by gravity would not
supply the present amount of heat for
more than twenty millions, or more pro
bably for more than ten or fifteen millions
of years.
This forms a chain of reasoning, every
link of which seems to be solidly welded.
Let us examine each link in detail. The
amount of solar heat received at the
earth’s surface has been carefully measured
by Herschell, Pouillet, and other eminent
observers, the principle being to intercept
a beam of sunshine of known dimen
sions, and make it give up its heat
to a known mass of water or other sub
stance, measuring accurately the rise of
A*
�IO
SOLAR HEAT
temperature produced in a given time.
The result is this: the heat, measured
by calorics, or units of heat sufficient to
raise the temperature of one kilogramme
of water one degree Centigrade, received
per minute by one square metre exposed
perpendicularly to the sun’s rays at the
upper surface of the atmosphere, ranges
from Pouillet’s estimate of 17.6 to that
of Forbes’s 28.2 calorics, the difference
arising mainly from the different allow
ance made for absorption by the atmo
sphere. Langley’s observations at a high
altitude increased the figure, and more
recent observations have raised it to
about 40 calorics.
From this it is easy to calculate the
amount of heat received by the earth
from the sun in a given time. Herschell
puts it in this striking way. The amount
of heat received on the earth’s surface,
with the sun in the zenith, would melt an
inch thickness of ice in two hours and
thirteen minutes. But, if it be assumed
that the sun radiates heat equally in all
directions, the earth intercepts only an
almost infinitesimally small amount of
this heat—in fact, only the proportion
which the earth’s surface bears to the
surface of a sphere whose centre is in the
sun, and its radius the distance of the
earth from the sun, or about ninety-three
millions of miles. This proportion is
a.To'o.o^o.ooo- . But even this minute frac
tion is sufficient to melt yearly, at the
earth’s equator, a layer of ice of more than
one hundred and ten feet thick. So, as
Lord Kelvin puts it, if the sun were a
mass of solid coal, and produced its heat
by combustion, it would burn out in less
than six thousand years. In the light of
the most recent calculations, it is said
that “the sun’s heat reaching the out
skirts of our atmosphere is capable of
doing, without cessation, the work of an
engine of four horse-power for each
square yard of the earth’s surface,” Of
course, this calculation depends on the
assumption that the sun radiates heat
equally in all directions into space. It is
difficult to conceive how this can be other
wise, for, as far as we know, all heated
bodies at the earth’s surface do so,
and all impulses which cause waves in
an elastic medium, such as we know to
be the case with heat and light, propa
gate these waves in all directions.
Assuming, therefore, that the sun gives
out this enormous amount of heat, where
does it come from, and how is the supply
kept up, uniformly, or nearly so, for
millions of years ? The law of the con
servation of energy says, in effect, that
something cannot be made out of
nothing, and that all special forms of
energy, such as heat, light, electricity, and
mechanical power, are convertible into
one another, and are simply transforma
tions of one original fund of energy. If
so, the sun’s heat must be kept up by
energy transformed into heat from some
other form.
It cannot be from com
bustion, which is a chemical action, for
we have seen that a sun of solid coal
would be burned out in six thousand
years. It must be from mechanical force,
which we know as a fact to be* con
vertible into heat in a definite and
ascertained proportion.
Now, what are the sources of mechani
cal power known in the case of the sun ?
Two—the impact of aerolites, and the
shrinkage of the sun as it contracts,
which latter resolves itself into ap effect
of gravity.
Both are real causes. Aerolites fall on
the earth and generate heat, the smaller
ones, or shooting stars, being set on
fire and burnt up by the friction
of the atmosphere; the larger ones
reaching the earth in masses of stone,
singularly like those ejected from
deep-seated volcanoes, and with their
surfaces glazed by intense heat. If such
meteors fall on the earth, it is reasonable
to suppose that far more must fall on the
sun, with its vastly greater surface and
attracting power. And it is to be noted
that comparatively small masses might
generate large amounts of heat, for the
amount of mechanical force, and there
fore of heat generated by arrested
motion, increases with the square of
the velocity. A body weighing 8.339
�SOLAR HEAT
kilogrammes, falling from a height which
gave it a velocity of one metre per second,
would generate one caloric of heat, or
enough to raise the temperature of one
kilogramme of water by i° Centigrade.
But the same body moving with the
velocity of a cannon-ball, or 500 metres
per second, would generate 250,000
times as much heat; and if moving
with a velocity of 700,000 metres per
second, which is about the velocity
with wffiich a body would fall into the
sun from the distance of the earth,
the heat produced would be nearly two
million times as great.
Lord Kelvin has calculated that a
quantity of matter equal to about onehundredth of the mass of the earth falling
annually with this velocity on the sun’s
surface would maintain its present radia
tion indefinitely. It is clear, therefore,
that, if this amount of meteoric matter
really falls on the sun, its heat might be
maintained. But many objections have
been raised to such a supposition.
To explain the sun’s helt we must
have a cause that is not only sufficient
to generate its total amount, but also one
which generates it uniformly. If the sun
were a target kept at an intense white
heat by showers of meteoric small shot
peppering into it, how is it that this
stream of small shot is incessant and
uniform ?
Only small portions of the total
meteoric mass revolving round the sun
can be captured by it gradually, as their
orbits are contracted. An extra supply,
as some solid body or enormous comet
with its attendant meteoric train falling
into the sun, would raise its temperature
above, while a deficient supply would
depress it below the average, and a com
paratively slight variation in the sun’s
temperature would destroy existing con
ditions of life on the earth.
Another objection to the meteoric
theory is that it would require such a
large mass of meteoric matter revolving
in space as might be expected to exercise
a perceptible effect on the motions of
the planets, both by the law of gravity
11
and by the retardation due to a resisting
medium. And this is specially true of'
the orbits of comets which approach the
sun very closely. As meteors do not fall
from a state of rest straight into the sun,
but revolve round it with planetary velo
cities, they can only fall into it by being
drawn inwards in gradually contracting
spirals, until they reach a point where
they impinge on the sun or its atmo
sphere. Hence a vastly greater amount
of meteoric matter must be revolving
round the sun in the space near it than
can be captured and generate heat in
any single year. But several comets are
known to have almost grazed the sun’s
atmosphere, and emerged from it to
continue to describe their elliptic orbits
and return true to time, as predicted by
calculations based on the known laws of
gravity acting on them from the sun and
planets alone, in a non-resisting medium.
Consider what this means. Comets
are bodies of such immense volume and
extreme rarity that one of them got
entangled among Jupiter’s satellites and
thrown out of its course, without affecting
in the slightest perceptible degree the
motions of those satellites. How could
such comets, rushing closely round the
sun with enormous velocities, avoid
showing perturbations, if they encoun
tered any considerable mass of meteoric
matter ?
The theory of meteorites, to which
reference will be made in a future chap
ter, meets many of these difficulties, and
strengthens the case for a meteoric origin
of a large part of solar heat, but it hardly
accounts for the uniformity of the supply,
and is hardly yet so generally accepted
as to supersede the older theory that the
main source of the sun’s heat is to be
sought in the transformation of the
mechanical energy of gravity, as its
volume contracts.
Assuming this theory, the principle on
which the supply of solar heat is calcu
lated is the following. We know the
amount of heat given out by each square
metre of the sun’s surface, and we know
the height from which a given weight
�12
SOLAR HEA T
must fall to generate this heat when its
motion is arrested. We know also that
this heat will be the same whether the
motion is suddenly or gradually arrested.
Now, in this case, the given weight is that
of a long narrow cone of matter, whose
base is one square metre at the sun’s
surface, and its apex a point at the sun’s
centre. Knowing the sun’s diameter and
mean density, it is easy to calculate the
weight of such a cone if we suppose it to
be solid. Its weight is equivalent to that
of 244,000,000 tons of solar heaviness at
the sun’s surface. To reduce this to
terrestrial tons, and their equivalent in
horse-power, we must allow for the differ
ence of weight or gravity at the respec
tive surfaces of the sun and earth.
Reduced to terrestrial figures, in which
one horse-power is 270 metre-tons per
hour—i.e., a ton lifted 270 metres in an
hour—the horse-power at the sun’s sur
face is ten metre-tons. But the radiation
from each square metre of the solar sur
face in heat per hour is equivalent to
78,000 horse-power in energy, or to that
of 780,000 metre-tons. An easy calcu
lation shows that, to supply energy at this
rate for a year, our supposed cone of
244,000,000 tons must fall one metre in
313 hours, or about thirty-five metres in
a year. Refined mathematical calcula
tions are requisite to show how this result
is effected, if we suppose, as is probable,
that the mass of matter forming the sun,
instead of being solid, existed first in the
nebulous or gaseous state, and gradually
contracted into a fluid mass in which
convection currents are constantly carry
ing down surface layers which have
become cooler by radiation, and replacing
them by ascending currents from the
hotter and denser interior. These cal
culations have been made by mathema
ticians of undoubted competence, with
the result that the dynamical equivalent
of the heat radiated from the sun in a
given time is practically the same as if it
were solid.
This result shows that if the sun has
contracted to its present size, from a
volume extending far beyond the orbit
of the remotest planet, Neptune, it has
furnished about eighteen million times
as much heat as it now supplies in a year ;
and that with its present dimensions it
must contract at the rate of thirty-five
metres per year, or one per cent, of its
radius in 200,000 years. Recent astro
nomers give a contraction of a mile in
twenty-five years.
Allowing for the increasing density of
the sun as shrinkage proceeds, the
problem works out that, if the sun’s
radiation of heat has been uniform for
the last fifteen millions of years, the solar
radius must then have been four times
greater than it is now; and that, if the
present supply were maintained by
shrinkage alone, for the next twenty
millions of years, the sun must have
shrunk to half its present size. But
these figures must be greatly reduced by
several considerations. They are based
on Herschell’s and Pouillet’s figures for
the total activity of solar radiation; but
Forbes and Langley have shown that the
allowance made for absorption of solar
heat by the earth’s atmosphere was
insufficient, and that the real amount of
heat radiated by the sun is greater than
was supposed by Pouillet in the ratio of
1.7 to 1 ; and Angstrom has more
recently fixed the amount higher still.
This diminishes the past and future
periods of solar radiation in the same
proportion. Moreover, when the sun’s
surface was four times larger, it must
have given out more heat than at present,
and more than existing conditions of life
in geological times could support. If,
therefore, the sun’s shrinkage from gravity
has been the sole or principal source of
its supply of heat, it is difficult to see
how life and the existing order of things
on the earth can have lasted for more
than eighteen millions of years at the
outside.
So far the mathematicians seem to
have it all their own way, and, as often
happens when the plaintiff’s case only
has been heard, it seems to be conclusive.
But what say the defendants—the geolo
gists ? They also base their case on an
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undoubted principle, and on undeniable
facts. The principle is that of the
uniformity of existing causes ; the facts,
those of actual experiment and observa
tion.
Geology, in the pre-Lyellite days,
passed through two stages, the theological
and the theologico-scientific. The theo
logical, which prevailed universally until
the present century, was based on the
belief that the book of Genesis, instead
of being a sort of poetical prelude to a
collection of ancient writings of religious
and moral import, was a strictly literal
and scientific narration of what actually
took place, every word of which was
imparted by a Divine revelation, which
it was impious to explain away or to dis
pute. Geology was therefore confined
very much to searching for facts in
Nature confirming this narrative. Thus,
when fossil-shells were observed on
mountain-tops, they were adduced as
incontrovertible proofs of Noah’s deluge;
and even a sceptical and encyclopaedic
mind like that of Voltaire could only
attempt to palliate this proof by suggest
ing that the shells were dropped from
pilgrims’ hats while crossing the Alps on
their way to Rome. The period when
such a ridiculous suggestion could be
made by an accomplished scholar seems
thousands of years from us, and yet it
occurred in the 18th century. The naive
and infantile narrative of the Noachian
deluge is now taken no more seriously
than are the little wooden arks, with
their contents of pigmy animals, which
with other toys amuse the nursery.
The next stage was what may be called
the theologico-scientific, when the facts
and laws of Nature began to be recog
nised; but the old dogmatic faith was
still so prevalent that these facts and
laws were viewed through a theological
medium, and attempts were made to
reconcile the Bible and science by dis
torting the conclusions of science, and
giving the statements of Genesis a general
and allegorical, rather than a literal,
meaning. This was the era when days
were expanded into periods, universal
13
deluges contracted into local floods, and
when miraculous catastrophes and crea
tions were invoked ad libitum,. to bring
geological and zoological facts into some
sort of possible accordance with the
non-natural versions of plain words into
which Scriptural texts were evaporated.
This school included, in its time, some
eminent men, such as Buckland and
Hugh Miller, and it lingered long on the
outskirts of science, as may be seen by
Mr. Gladstone’s essay on the Proem to
Genesis. But with all the leaders of
science it is quite extinct, and the pre
vailing tone of thought has become
Darwinian, as universally as a century
ago it was theological. Differences may
exist as to the details of Darwin’s theory,
and the extent of its application in some
of the more recondite causes of variation ;
but no one of any authority in science
doubts that evolution, under fixed laws,
is the key to the secrets of the universe,
and that one original impress, and not per
petual miracle, or secondary interference,
has been the real course of Nature.
In geology this conviction has been
embodied in what is known as Lyell’s
Law of Uniformity. If anyone wants to
get a clear idea of what this means, let
him go to the British Museum and look
at a slab of sandstone from the Silurian
formation. He will see precisely what
he may see to-day on the sands of South
end or Margate.
Ripple marks of a
gently flowing or ebbing tide, worm
castings, or even little pits showing
where rain-drops had fallen on the wet
sand, and these pits higher on one side
than the other, showing the size of the
drops, the force of the wind, and the
direction from which it was blowing.
The inference is irresistible that at this
immensely remote period the winds blew,
the rain fell, the tides ebbed and flowed,
sand-banks were formed, and worms or
sand-eels burrowed in them, as they do
at the present day. Or look at a piece
of chalk through a microscope, and you
will find it mainly composed of the
microscopic shells of a minute form of
animal life, the Globigerina, which,
�14
SOLAR HEA T
gradually falling to the bottom of a deep
ocean like the finest dust, have accumu
lated strata more than a thousand feet in
thickness. Precisely the same thing is
going on in the Atlantic to-day, where
deep-sea dredgings bring up a Globigerina ooze, which affords a safe bed
for the submarine telegraph. Or take
another instance. A shell called the
Lingula, about the size of a small mussel,
is found abundantly in the Silurian, and
even in the earlier Cambrian, formations;
and another shell, theTerebratula, in the
Devonian. Both are found living at the
present day, not only of the same genus,
but identically of the same species. It
is evident that no great change can have
taken place in the conditions of oceanic
life since these mollusks lived and
flourished in Silurian and Devonian seas.
Nor can the condition of the atmo
sphere have greatly changed since the
time of the air-breathing
Silurian
scorpion, whose fossil remains show him
to be scarcely distinguishable from the
present scorpion.
In fact, the atmosphere affords one of
the most conclusive proofs of the un
interrupted maintenance of existing con
ditions during an enormous period.
When we say enormous time, the term
is used with reference to any recent or
historical standard as applicable to the
period when geology practically com
mences ; that is, with the first dawn of
life disclosed by fossils in the Cambrian
era, or beyond that with formations like
the Laurentian, which can be clearly
proved to be sedimentary and meta
morphic. But no geologist ventures to
extend this doctrine of uniformity beyond
the date when fossils appear, or to deny
that, though the laws of Nature are the
same, the conditions must have been
totally different in the earlier stages of
the planet, when it was cooling and
condensing into its present form. • Nor
could he deny that, even within this
comparatively recent period, there may
have been changes of existing conditions,
as we know indeed from the alternations
between the Glacial period and those of
higher and more uniform temperature.
But his position is that such changes
have been of the same order, and owing
to similar causes as those which now
prevail; and that when a known cause,
given a sufficient time, will produce an
effect, it is unphilosophical to assume
miracles, catastrophes, or a totally dif
ferent order of things, in order to reduce
the time to some procrustean standard
of theoretical prepossession.
To Sir C. Lyell belongs the credit of
having established this doctrine of uni
formity on an unassailable basis, and
made it the fundamental axiom of
geological science. By an exhaustive
survey of the whole field of geology,
from the earliest formations in which
life appears down to the present day,
he has shown conclusively that while
causes identical with, or of the same
order as, existing causes, will, if given
sufficient time, account for all the facts
hitherto observed, there is not a single
fact which proves the occurrence of a
totally different order of causes. This,
of course, applies only to the geological
record commencing with the commence
ment of organic life on the earth, and
not to the earlier astronomical period
when the planet was condensing from
nebulous matter, and slowly cooling and
contracting. Nor does it imply absolute
uniformity with existing conditions, for
changes in climate, temperature, distri
bution of sea and land, and otherwise,
have doubtless occurred from the slow
operation of existing causes.
But it
excludes all fanciful theories of cata
clysms, annihilating each successive era
with its life, and introducing a new one ;
earthquakes throwing up mountain chains
at a shock; deluges sweeping over the
face of the earth, and so forth, in which
even eminent geologists used to indulge
thirty or forty years ago. While no
competent geologist of the present day
would like to affirm positively that there
may not have been, in past ages, explo
sions more violent than that of Krakatoa,
lava streams more extensive than that
of Skaptar-Jokul, and earthquakes mors
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powerful than that which uplifted five or
six hundred miles of the Pacific coast of
South America six or seven feet, it may
be doubtful if he could point out a single
instance since the Silurian epoch where
such was demonstrably the case..
Assuming the principle of uniformity,
the time requisite to explain the facts of
geology becomes a matter for approxi
mate calculation. Not readily in years
or centuries, for our historical measuring
yard does not extend beyond seven
thousand years, when we find a dense
population and high civilisation already
existing in Egypt; but in periods of
which we can form some approximate
idea.
To understand the full force of the
evidence, it is necessary to study care
fully the works of Lyell, Croll, Geikie,
and other authorities on geology; but
some idea of the sort of periods which
are required for gauging Time back to
the commencement of life may be arrived
at from a few instances.
The tests of geological time are derived
mainly from two sources—denudation
and deposition. The present rate of
denudation of a continent is known with
considerable accuracy, from careful
measurements of the quantity of solid
matter carried down by rivers. The
Mississippi affords the best test, both
because the measurements have been
made with the greatest accuracy, and
because the conditions of the vast area
drained by it and its tributary rivers
afford a better average of the rate of
continental denudation, including as it
does a great variety of climates and
geological formations, and being singu
larly free from exceptional influences.
The rate thus deduced is one foot from
the general surface of the basin in six
thousand years. Now, the measured
thickness of the known sedimentary
strata is about 177,000 feet.
The
proportion of sea to land is three
to one, and the bulk of the deposi
tion of the waste of land must have
been laid down within a compara
tively narrow margin of the sea nearest
15
to land. On these data Wallace calcu
lates that the time required to deposit
this 177,000 feet would be 28,000,000
years, taking the rate of denudation at
one foot in 3,000 years, or 56,000,000
years, taking the rate deduced from the
Mississippi. But it must have been
much more than this, for the stratified
rocks are to a great extent composed of
the debris of older strata, which have
been deposited, upheaved, and again
denuded. Most of the known stratified
rocks must have been in this way denu
ded and deposited many times over.
Nor is there any good reason for suppo
sing that the rate of denudation was
materially greater in former than in
recent geological eras. On the contrary,
the recent Glacial period, by grinding
down solid rock into loose materials,
and, as the ice and snow melted, causing
more torrential inundations of rivers,
must have tended to accelerate denuda
tion.
Another proof of the enormous amount
of solid rock which has been removed
by denudation is afforded by the faults
or cracks in the earth’s crust, which have
in many cases displaced strata by
thousands of feet, all traces of which
displacement have been subsequently
planed down to one uniform surface.
Thus the great fault which separates the
Silurian of the south of Scotland from
the Devonian and Carboniferous region
to the north of it is estimated by the
Geological Survey at 15,000 feet. A
mountain mass of this height, termi
nating in a steep cliff at the fault, must
have existed to the south of it, composed
mainly of the Devonian strata which
now stop abruptly at the north edge of
the fault. At present there is no in
equality of the surface at the fault, and
therefore 15,000 feet or nearly three
miles of rock must have been removed
by denudation.
And, what is most
important, the time in which this denu
dation was effected is fixed as having
occurred in the interval between the
Devonian and Carboniferous periods,
for, while no trace of the former
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formation is found south of the fault,
the limestones and coal-measures of the
latter lie directly on the Silurian rocks.
At the rate of denudation deduced from
the Mississippi observations of one foot
in 6,000 years, the removal of those
three miles of rock would have required
90,000,000 years for the interval between
two of the geological formations.
Croll, in his work on Stellar Evolution,
gives a number of similar instances, one
in the Appalachian Mountains, in which
the vertical displacement is not less than
20,000 feet, bringing the upper Devonian
strata on one side opposite to the lowest
Cambrian on the other. Of course, we
cannot assume these enormous intervals
of time to have actually occurred; but
they are quite sufficient to show the
absolute impossibility of reconciling
geological facts with any estimate of the
duration of solar heat derived from the
theory of contraction by gravitation.
Take another instance from a more
recent period. There is a dried-up
Eocene lake in North America, which
once occupied an extensive area in the
States of Wyoming and Nebraska,
formed by streams running down from
the Wahsatch, Uintah, and other moun
tain ranges, which are gastern outliers
of the great backbone of the continent—
the Rocky Mountains. It was gradually
silted up by a deposit of more than 5,000
feet, or a mile thick of clays and sands,
a portion of which has since been carved
by the rain and weather into the singular
formation of isolated castle-like bluffs
and pyramids, known as the “ bad lands.”
It is full of remains of Eocene animals,
often of huge size and of a peculiar type.
How long must it have taken to silt up
a lake larger than Lake Superior, with
tranquil deposits of fine mud and sand ?
The nearest approximation towards such
a calculation is afforded by the silting
up of the Lake of Geneva. Swiss geo
logists have calculated, from the rate of
advance of the delta in historical times,
that it may have taken 90,000 or 100,000
years since the silting process began,
which could only be after the first Rhone
glacier, which once extended to the
Juras, had shrunk back to the head of
the lake. This calculation may be right
or wrong, but certainly a vastly longer
time must have been required to silt up
a vastly larger lake to a depth of 5,000
feet. And, if anything, one would expect
the process of silting up to have been
slower, for in the Eocene period there
were no glaciers, or melting snow-fields,
to accelerate the denudation which must
have gone on pari passu with the deposit.
If we consider the geological evidence
more in detail, we find it all pointing
to the same conclusion of immense
antiquity.
Thus, let us take the coal-measures
which form only a part of one formation
—the Carboniferous. Each seam of
coal consists of the consolidated debris
of a forest. With every seam there is
an under-clay in which the trees and ferns
grow; and a roof of shale or sandstone
deposited on it when this floor was sub
merged. The bulk of the coal is fre
quently composed of the microscopic
spores of the ferns and club-mosses
which formed the principal vegetation of
these forests. The time required is,
therefore, that for the accumulation of
vegetable matter, consisting mainly of
fine spore-dust, to a depth sufficient,
under great compression, to give the
seam of solid coal. In Nova Scotia and
other localities the coal-measures have a
thickness of 12,000 feet, made up of
seam upon seam of coal, each with its
under-clay and roof, implying a separate
growth, submergence, and elevation.
Sir J. Dawson and Professor Huxley,
who have studied the subject minutely,
calculate that the time represented by
the coal-measures alone would be six
millions of years. In other words, the
time required for this one subordinate
member of one geological formation
would be half the total time assigned by
Kelvin and Helmholtz for the total
possible past duration of the present
supply of solar heat.
Those who fully consider and appre
ciate any one of these instances will not
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be astonished to hear that Sir C. Lyell,
after carefully going over and summing
up the various lines of evidence afforded
by the 100,000 feet of stratified and
fossiliferous formations above the Cam
brian, came to the conclusion that two
hundred millions of years was the pro
bable, and one hundred millions the
minimum possible, duration of the exist
ing order of things that would explain
the facts. And all subsequent discoveries,
and the best geological opinions, go to
confirm this estimate. Thus, when Lyell
made his estimate, the great Laurentian
system of gneissic and other rocks which
underlie the Cambrian was scarcely
known, or assumed to be a primitive
portion of the earth’s crust of Plutonic
origin. But it is now clearly proved to
be bedded, and therefore an aqueous
deposit from the denudation of older
rocks, though the minor signs of strati
fication have disappeared, owing to
metamorphism under heat and pressure.
This at once adds 30,000 feet to the
known thickness of deposited strata. It
is not positively known to have contained
life, for, with the doubtful exception of
the Eozoon Canadiense, the fossils, if
any, have disappeared during this pro
cess of metamorphism; but it contains
indirect evidence of life on the most
extensive scale. Thus great quantities
of graphite or plumbago are found in it,
and, as ordinary coal can be traced first
into anthracite and then into graphite,
the inference is strong that the Lauren
tian graphite must, like coal, have origi
nated from masses of vegetable matter.
It contains also great beds of limestone,
similar to those which, in later forma
tions, are known to have originated from
the remains of corals and other hard
parts of marine animals, which derived
their skeletons from calcareous matter
dissolved in sea-water. Large beds of
iron ore are also found, which, in later
formations, owe their origin to the solu
tion of peroxide of iron and its deoxida
tion by organic agency. There is thus,
therefore, evidence of the existence of
life on a vast scale in this lowest of all
17
formations, which of itself adds more
than a fourth to the thickness of the
whole of the previously known deposited
strata of the earth’s crust, and therefore
to the time presumably required for their
deposit.
And yet, as we have seen, mathema
ticians affirm with equal confidence that
Lyell’s figures must be divided by at least
ten, or probably by twenty, to arrive at
the ten millions of years, which is their
estimate of the time for which the sun has
given out its present life - sustaining
amount of light and heat; and this short
period has to provide not only for geo
logical time, but for the far larger time
during which the earth was passing
through its earlier stages, and condensing
from a gaseous vapour.
It is evident that there must be some
fundamental error on one side or the
other, which some day will be detected,
for the laws of Nature are uniform, and
there cannot be one code for astronomers
and another for geologists. I am inclined
to think that the error will be found in
some of the assumptions of the physicists.
The data of geology seem more certain
and more capable of verification by an
appeal to facts. Thus, the rate at which
rocks waste away, and lakes silt up ; the
amount of solid matter carried down by
rivers, and the number of feet or inches
per square mile thus denuded in a given
time, are all matters of approximate and
tolerably accurate observation and calcu
lation. But of the nature and constitu
tion of the sun we really know very little,
and are only beginning to get some
glimpses of them during the past ten or
twenty years by the aid of the spectro
scope. The sun, as we see it, is not
fluid, for if it were its rotation must make
it protuberant at the equator, which it is
not. It is not solid, for if it were its
equatorial region could not rotate, as it
does, more rapidly than that nearer the
pole. We know its apparent volume
and its mean density; but we do not
know how this density is distributed.
The conditions of matter under such
extreme temperature and pressure are
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quite conjectural. For aught we know
to the contrary, the sun may have a
nucleus much smaller and much heavier
than we are in the habit of assuming.
Above all, what makes me distrust
these mathematical calculations respect
ing the sun’s heat is that they do not
really solve the problem, but only remove
it one step further back. Heat, they say,
can be nothing but transformed mechani
cal power; but where does the mechani
cal power come from ? From gravity.
And where does the gravity come from ?
They cannot tell. It is the old Hindoo
cosmogony over again. The world rests
on aft elephant; the elephant on a
tortoise. But what does the tortoise rest
on ?
We are accustomed to speak of gravity
as the one well-known and established
fact of the universe. And so it is as
regards the various motions which result
from it, and the fact of its being an
attribute of all matter from atoms to
stars. But of its real essence and modus
operandi we know nothing; less even
than in the case of some of the other
forms of energy into which it can be
transformed. In the case of light, for
instance, we know that it is caused by
waves or vibrations of an exceedingly
elastic and imponderable medium or
ether diffused through space. We can
measure and count these vibrations, and
know the velocity with which the light
wave travels, and trace its effects from
impact on the eye, through the retina and
optic nerve up to the cells of the brain.
But in the case of gravity we know
none of these things, and cannot even
form a conception of how one mass of
matter can act upon another, without
connection and apparently without re
quiring time for the transmission of the
impulse. Is it a pulling or a pushing
force ? We do not even know this, and
are not one whit advanced beyond the
saying of Newton that he could not con
ceive how one body could act on another
without some physical connection be
tween them.
It seems to me that Lord Kelvin starts
from the assumption that gravity is the
one fundamental form of energy from
which all other forms, such as light and
heat, are derived by transformation. But
what a mere drop in the ocean is the
energy of gravity compared with the
atomic and molecular energies, which
now in a latent and now in an active form
build up the universe of matter • How
incalculably small must the gravity of the
sun be, compared with the sum of the
energies of the atoms of which its mass
is composed.
If it were permissible to hazard a con
jecture where there is no proof, it would
be that gravity may turn out to be one,
and that by no means the most impor
tant, manifestation of the primitive fund
of energy, which underlies the atoms of
which all matter is composed.
Various ingenious attempts have been
made to explain the cause of gravity, as
that of strain or stress of some inter
vening medium, or space-filling, incom
pressible fluid; or by Le Sage’s theory
of infinite impacts of ultramundane cor
puscles, partially screened in the direction
in which gravity acts by the bodies which
attract one another. But Clark Maxwell
and other accomplished mathematicians
have shown serious objections to all these
theories, and Tait, in his Properties op
Matter, sums up the latest results almost
in the identical words used by Newton
in his letter to Bentley: “ In fact, the
cause of gravitation remains undis
covered.”
Again, who can tell what is the con
stitution of the infinite space through
which our solar system and the universe
of visible stars are travelling, with a
velocity which has been estimated in
some cases as high as 200 or even 300
miles per second ?
These facts of the proper motions of
the stars, and especially of what are
known as the “ runaway stars,” seem
conclusive against the assumption that
gravity is the sole and primitive form of
energy, from which all other forms, such
as heat and light, are derived by trans
formation. These star-motions are
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apparently in straight lines in a variety
of directions, and the velocities are such
that it is impossible to account for them
by any conceivable action of the force
of gravity. Professor Newcomb has
shown by mathematical calculation that
the gravitation of the whole universe,
assuming it to contain 100,000,000 of
stars, each on the average five times
larger than the sun, would require to be
sixty-four times greater than it really is,
to have given one star (1830 Groom
bridge) the velocity of 200 miles per
second which it actually possesses, or to
be able to arrest its flight through space.
Of course, this applies with greater force
to a star like Arcturus, moving with a
velocity of 300 miles per second. The
amount of energy of a star like this,
whose volume has been computed to be
eleven times greater than that of the sun,
moving with a velocity of 300 miles per
second, must be enormously greater
than any energy exerted by it in the
form of gravitation; and, if its motion
were arrested, the heat engendered must
be in an even larger proportion, seeing
that it depends on the square of the
velocity, than any heat which could be
supplied by its gradual contraction, on
the theory applied by Kelvin and Helm
holtz to solar heat.
After all, what do we really know of
the contents of space except this, that
it contains a vast number of stars which
are suns like ours, scattered at enormous
distances from one another, and in
numerable meteorites? And also this,
that the phenomena of light and heat
prove the existence of waves of known
dimensions, vibrating with known veloci
ties, and transmitted at a known rate;
which waves compel us to assume a
medium or ether with certain calculable
qualities. But these qualities are so
extraordinary that it may almost be
doubted whether such an ether has a
real material existence, and is anything
more than a sort of mathematical entity.
Its elasticity must be a million million
times that of air, which, as we know, is
equal to a pressure of about fifteen
19
pounds to the square inch; the number
of its oscillations must be at least
700,000,000,000,000 in one second of
time; and it must be destitute of any
perceptible amount of the ordinary
qualities of matter, for it exerts no
gravitating or retarding force, even on
the attentuated matter of comets moving
through it with immense velocities.
Beyond this we are now aware
that space contains a number . of
larger meteors or dark suns, rushing
through it in all directions, and possibly
in the state of dissociated atoms the
elements of substances such as carbon
and oxygen, which are locked up in the
earth’s crust through the medium of life
and vegetation, in vastly greater quan
tities than could be afforded by any con
ceivable supply derived from the atmos
phere. And it may be conjectured also
that variations of temperature may exist
in different regions of space, helping to
account for the secular variations of
temperature at the earth’s surface, such
as are shown by the Glacial period or
periods.
Even if we confine ourselves to the
sun itself, leaving these cosmic specula
tions to be discussed in a subsequent
chapter, we find the greatest uncertainty
prevailing as to the conditions under
which it exerts and generates heat.
Thus, Professor Young says: “ The sun’s
mass, dimensions, and motions are, as a
whole, pretty well determined and under
stood ; but when we come to questions
relating to its constitution, the cause and
nature of the appearances presented
upon its surface, the periodicity of its
spots, its temperature, and the mainte
nance of its heat, the extent of its atmos
phere, and the nature of the corona, we
find the most radical differences of
opinion.”
Take the case of the spots. These
were originally attributed by Herschell
to cyclones in the sun’s atmosphere,
showing us glimpses, as through a
funnel, of a cool and dark solid body
below; by others they have been
thought to be splashes caused by the
�20
SOLAE HEAT
downfall of large masses of meteoric
matter; by some to be volcanic erup. tions throwing up vast scoriae; and
finally, as the most probable solution, to
be great whirlwinds, or cyclonic convec
tion currents, by which the cooler gases
of the sun’s atmosphere are sucked down
and replaced by hotter gases from the
interior. But none of these theories
gives an explanation of the observed fact
that these sun-spots have a regular
maximum and minimum period of about
eleven years. Nor do they give the
slightest clue to the other remarkable
fact that the outburst of large sun-spots
often produces an apparently instanta
neous effect on the earth’s magnetism,
causing electric telegraphs to write with
a tongue of fire, magnets to oscillate
violently, the Aurora Borealis to appear,
and otherwise indicating what is known
as a magnetic storm.
It is pretty clearly established that the
spots are cooler than the sun’s general
surface, but not sufficiently so as to
affect its general temperature, or the
course of the seasons upon the earth;
but the far more inexplicable effect upon
terrestrial magnetism is attested by too
many observations to be at all doubtful.
This opens up a new’ and quite unex
plained field of speculation as to the
sun’s electric energy. The physicists,
who treat the attractive form of gravity
as the sole cause of the sun’s energy,
and convert it all into heat, take no
account of the energy which manifests
itself as a repulsive force, and takes the
form of electricity. And yet electricity
is one of the transformable manifesta
tions of energy as much as heat or
mechanical power, and the phenomena
of comets’ tails are sufficient to show
that, under certain conditions, the sun
can exercise an enormous repulsive
force. The question also may be
raised whether, after all, it is certain that
heat is radiated out in all directions, so
that out of 1,000,000 units of the life
giving energy of the sun 999,999 are
absolutely wasted in space, and one only
is utilised. Electricity, so far as we
know, cannot exist without two opposite
poles, implying reciprocal action. Do
the sun-spots, which affect the earth’s
magnetism, radiate out an equal amount
of magnetic energy in all directions into
space ? If not, how can we be sure that
heat, into and out of which electricity
and magnetism can be transformed,
does so ?
As Professor Young observes, “per
haps we assume with a little too much
confidence that in free space radiation
does take place equally in all directions,”
and he asks “ whether the constitution
of things may not be such that radiation
and transfer of energy can take place
only between ponderable masses; and
that, too, without the expenditure of
energy upon the transmitting agent (if
such exist) along the line of transmis
sion, even in transitu? If this were the
case, then the sun would send out its
energy only to planets, meteors, and
sister-stars, wasting none in empty space;
and so its loss of heat would be enor
mously diminished, and the time-scale of
the planetary system would be corres
pondingly extended.”
The same difficulty applies in the
case of gravity. We only know it as
an attractive force reciprocally exerted
between two bodies in the proportion of
their masses and inverse squares of dis
tances. Is it radiated out in all direc
tions into empty space, where it meets
with no reciprocally attracting body?
This affects not only the permanent
maintenance of the supply of gravity,
but goes even deeper to the fundamental
axiom of all modern conceptions,
whether scientific or philosophical, of
the universe—viz., the Conservation of
Energy. You cannot make something
out of nothing; you cannot create
energy or matter, but only transform
them. Good; but how about that
which is one of the principal manifesta
tions of energy in the universe—that of
gravity ? You can catch limited portions
of it, transform them into mechanical
power, and then backwards and forwards
as you like into heat, light, chemical
�WHAT THE UNIVERSE IS MADE OF
action, electricity, and magnetism, neither
losing nor gaining a particle of the original
energy by any of these transformations.
A water-wheel may turn a dynamo, which
generates electricity that may be stored
in accumulators, and turn a wheel a
hundred miles off; and, if you could
eliminate waste and friction, the second
wheel would give out exactly what the
weight of the falling water put into the
first one. But whence came the gravity
which made the waterfall and the wheel
turn ? Was it itself a transformation of
heat or electricity ? If not, what was it,
and how came it there? If Kelvin
and Helmholtz assume an infinite fund
of energy in the form of gravity to
account for heat, why do they not as
well assume an infinite fund of heat to
account for gravity? And if heat is
dissipated by use until it is exhausted,
or reduced to one stationary average of
temperature, and worlds and suns die,
why should gravity be gifted with per
petual youth, and escape the general law
of birth, maturity, and death ?
These are problems which the present
cannot answer. Possibly the future may;
but in the meantime we shall do well to
keep a firm footing on solid earth, and
rely on conclusions based on ascertained
facts and undoubted deductions from
them, rather than on abstract and
21
doubtful theories, even if they are pre
sented to us in the apparently accurate
form of mathematical calculation. Or,
to bring this chapter to a practical
result, we shall be more likely to arrive
at just views respecting the constitution
of the earth and its inhabitants by
following Darwin and Lyell as our
guides, than by accepting astronomical
theories which would so reduce geo
logical time as to negative the idea of
uniformity of law and evolution, and
introduce once more the chaos of catas
trophes and supernatural interferences.
As a matter of fact, the most recent
and revolutionary discoveries in the
domain of physics itself seem to be
cutting the ground from under the feet
of the opponents of the geologists.
The phenomena of radium have opened
out a new source of energy which
scientists have not hesitated to apply to
this problem of the sun’s heat. It has
been proved that, if we assume the
matter 'of the sun to be radio-active, its
vast expenditure of heat could be sus
tained for an enormous period beyond
that hitherto allowed by physicists. It
remains to be seen if the solution of the
problem lies here. Meantime the mere
suggestion of this new energy bids us
put our trust rather in the solid calcula
tions of the geologist.
Chapter
II.
WHAT THE UNIVERSE IS MADE OF
Shooting Stars: their number, velocity,. size—
Connection with Comets—Composition—
Spectra—Meteorite Theory—Genesis of Stars
and Nebulae—Further stage of Theory—
Impact Theory—Dark Suns in Space—Tem
perature of Visible Stars—Their proper
Motions—New Stars—Variable Stars—Facts
better explained by Impact Theory—Laplace’s
Theory— Based solely on Gravity—N ot incon
sistent but insufficient—Even Impact Theory
not last step—Stony Masses made of Atoms
—What are Atoms ?—Chemical Elements—
Attempts to reduce them to one—Hydrogen—
Helium—Mendelejeff’s Law—Atoms Manu
factured Articles—All of one PatternVortex Theory—Theory of Electrons—What
behind Atoms?—The Unknowable.
What is the universe made of? Such
is the question which has been asked in
many ages and countries by earnest men
�22
WHAT THE UNIVERSE IS MADE OF
looking u’p at the starry vault of heaven
and down into the recesses of their own
minds. One of the latest replies of
science is that it is made of shooting
stars. The idea may seem paradoxical
to those whose only knowledge of shoot
ing stars is derived from an occasional
glimpse on a clear night when they have
seen something like a small rocket flash
across the sky, apparently close to the
earth, out of darkness into darkness,
reminding them of some human life—
“ Qui file, qui file et disparait.”
And yet it is now presented to us
by eminent authorities, and supported
by a long array of serious scientific argu
ments.
What do we know as certain facts with
regard to shooting stars ?
i. They are vastly more numerous
than any one has an idea of who has
not watched them continuously for many
nights. Astronomers who have kept a
record for many years assure us that the
average number seen by one observer at
one place on a clear moonless night is
fourteen per hour, which is shown by
calculation to be equivalent to twenty
millions daily for the whole earth. But
the number of meteorites met with by
the earth can only be the minutest
fraction of those circulating in space.
The orbits of those we see do not'
coincide with the ecliptic, but lie in
planes inclined to it at all sorts of angles,
and apparently having no relation to the
plane in which the earth travels round
the sun, or to the solar system. The
chances are almost infinite against our
minute speck of a planet encountering
any single meteor, or stream of meteors,
thus traversing space in all directions;
and, as we do encounter some seven
thousand millions of these small bodies
in the course of each year, their total
number must be an almost infinite
multiple of this large figure. Moreover,
the pun, with its attendant system, is
rushing through space with a velocity of
some twenty miles per second, and there
fore carrying us into new regions of the
universe at the rate of some six hundred
millions of miles per annum; and yet
meteorites are met with everywhere.
Granting, therefore, that each separate
meteorite may be very small, not exceed
ing on the average a fraction of an ounce
in weight, and that even in meteor
streams they may be, as some astronomers
have calculated, 200 miles apart, the
aggregate amount of this meteoric matter
in space must be practically almost
infinite.
2. They are not terrestrial phenomena
moving in the lower atmosphere, but
celestial bodies moving in orbits and
y^ith velocities comparable to those of
planets and comets. Their velocities
are seldom under ten miles a second or
over fifty, and average about thirty, the
velocity of the earth in its orbit round
the sun being eighteen.
3. They are of various composition,
comprising both a large majority of
smaller particles which are set on fire by
the resistance of the earth’s atmosphere,
and entirely burned up and resolved
into vapour long before they reach its
surface; and a few larger ones, known
as meteors, which are only partially
fused or glazed by heat, and reach the
earth in the form of stony or metallic
masses.
4. They are not uniformly distributed
through space, but collect in meteoric
swarms or' streams, two at least of which
revolve round the sun in closed rings
which are intersected by the earth’s
orbit, causing the magnificent displays
of shooting stars which are seen in
August and November.
5. They are connected with comets,
it having been demonstrated by Schia
parelli that the orbit of the comet of
1866 is identical with that of the
August swarm of meteors known as the
Perseids, and connections between
comets and meteor streams have been
found in at least three other cases.
The fact is generally believed that
comets are nothing but a condensation
of meteorites rendered incandescent by
the heat generated by their mutual
�WHAT THE UNIVERSE IS MADE OF
collision when brought into close proxi
mity.
6. Their composition, as inferred from
that of the larger meteors which reach
the. earth, is identical, or nearly so, with
that of matter brought up from great
depths by volcanic eruptions. In each
case they consist of two classes : one,
composed mainly of native iron alloyed
with nickel, the other of stony matter
consisting mainly of compounds of silicon
and magnesium. Most meteorites con
sist of compounds of the two classes, in
which the stony parts seem to have
broken into fragments by violent collision,
and become embedded in iron which
has been fused by heat into a plastic or
pasty condition.
At this point our positive knowledge
of meteorites from direct observation
ceases, and we have to be guided by the
spectroscope in further researches. This
marvellous instrument enables us, by
analysing the light transmitted to us by
all luminous objects, however composed
and however distant, to ascertain their
composition as accurately as if portions
of them had been brought down to earth
and could be analysed in our laboratories.
We can tell whether they are gaseous,
liquid, or solid; whether they shine by
intrinsic or reflected light; and, by com
paring the lines in their spectra with
those of known terrestrial elements,
whether they contain those elements, or
are made up of matter in a state unknown
to us. The first result of spectroscopic
discoveries was to establish the fact that
the sun, stars, nebulse, comets, . and
meteorites all show such an identity in
their spectra with some one or more of
those of terrestrial elements as to leave
no doubt that the composition of matter
is uniform throughout the universe.
Further experiments, of which Sir
Norman Lockyer’s paper, read to the
Royal Society, affords the most complete
summary, carry this knowledge farther.
They show that spectra are not fixed and
invariable, but change according to the
conditions of heat, pressure, and other
wise, affecting the bodies from which the
23
spectra are given out. Thus the spec
trum of a comet in perihelion, when its
component parts are crowded together
and intensely heated by the sun, is very
different from that of the same comet
when it is at a great distance from the
sun, either in advancing towards it or
receding from it. Thus the spectrum of
the great comet of 1882, when nearest
the sun, exhibited many of the lines
obtained in the laboratory from the
vapours of sodium, iron, and magnesium
at the temperature of the Bunsen
burner. As it receded the lines gradually
died out until a very few were left; and
in the'comet of 1886-7, when last seen,
all had died out except one line . of
magnesium. Thus carbon also, which
is such an important ingredient in
organic life, appears and disappears in
cometary spectra according to the con
ditions of pressure and temperature.
What Sir N. Lockyer has done is to
show that all the varied spectra and
classes of spectra, given out by suns,
stars, nebulae, comets, and shooting
stars, can be reproduced from actual
meteorites which have fallen to the
earth, by experiments in the laboratory,
with the exception only of those of
stars which, like Sirius, are glowing at a
transcendental temperature far exceed
ing that of our sun, and which cannot
be approached by the electric arc in any
form of intense heat which can be
obtained in our present earth. Thus
the “ spectrum of the sun can be very
fairly reproduced (in some parts almost
line for line) by taking a composite
photograph of the arc spectrum of
several stony meteorites between iron
meteoric poles.”
We are now in a position to under
stand the meteorite theory of the uni
verse.
Granted that the. number . of
meteorites in space is practically infinite,
and that they tend to coalesce into
streams, their collisions supply an
equally unlimited fund of heat upon
which we can draw at pleasure. The
amount of heat developed by each
collision is the transformed energy of the
�24
WHAT THE UNIVERSE IS MADE OF
mechanical force. This force, and con
sequently this heat, increases with the
square of the velocity. Thus, if a tropical
hurricane, moving at the rate of ioo
miles an hour, uproots trees and levels
houses, the same mass of air, moving
with the mean meteoric velocity of
33% miles per second, would exert a
force of 144,000,000 times greater. We
know from the explosion of dynamite
that, when a gas expands very much
quicker than the air can get out of its
way, the effect is as if the blow of a
tremendous steam-hammer were inflicted
on an unyielding anvil; arid we can
readily conceive, therefore, how meteo
rites are almost invariably burnt up and
dissipated, even in the rare air of the
upper atmosphere, and how their re
peated collisions in space might generate
any required amount of heat.
Suppose, therefore, in the beginning
of things, space filled by an innumer
able multitude of these little stony
masses, composed of the one, or pos
sibly two or three, primitive elements of
matter, moving in all directions, with
immense though different velocities,
coalescing into streams and colliding;
we have a basis out of which suns, stars,
planets, satellites, nebulae, and comets
might be formed. The looser aggrega
tions, giving fewer collisions and less
heat, form comets and nebulae, and the
clash of two mighty streams gives us
suns like Sirius in a state of intense
luminosity and temperature. As these
cool and contract by radiating out their
heat, they pass into the second stage of
stars of which our sun is one, still
glowing with heat and light, but cooled
down to a point at which the primitive
elements can combine and form secon
dary ones, which can be detected by
the spectroscope, and identified with
those with which we are familiar as
chemical elements upon earth. As
cooling proceeds, they pass from the
white-hot into the red-hot stage, and,
finally, into the cold and lifeless nonluminous stage of burnt-out suns. Not,
however, necessarily to die, for in the
chances of infinite time these dead and
invisible masses may collide together,
and at a blow regain their youth, and
commence the cycle anew as suns of the
first order.
There is grandeur in the idea which,
to a certain extent, reproduces what the
kinetic theory of gases teaches as to the
clash of innumerable atoms darting
about in all directions, producing the
temperature and pressure of a gas in a
confined space. Only here, instead of
atoms—so small that one of them is of
the size of a rifle bullet, compared to
the earth—we have stony masses for
atoms, stars and nebulae for molecules,
and, instead of glass jars or bladders, the
whole universe.
This, however, is only the first stage
of the theory. What are these little
stony bodies, and how did they come
there ? The only answer we can give
is derived from the constitution of those
larger meteor-stones which actually fall
on the earth and can be examined.
They have invariably the appearance of
fragments torn from larger bodies by
collisions or explosions, and there is
no reason for doubting that what they
appear to be they are.
This carries us back to the impact
theory of which a full account is given
in the work published by Dr. Croll on
Stellar Evolution. It supposes that, for
an almost infinite time, an almost infinite
number of dark stars, or cold and nonluminous solid bodies of stellar magni
tude, have been rushing about in an
unlimited space in all directions, and
with enormous velocities. Occasionally
they collide, and, as mechanical prin
ciples show, generate an intense heat,
more than sufficient to convert their
whole mass into glowing gas, at a tem
perature which may possibly dissociate
its atoms, with the exception of some
fragments from the shattered surfaces
which are thrown off into space by the
sudden generation of explosive gas.
That there really are such dark suns
rushing through space is certain from
what we know respecting the constitution
�WHAT THE UNIVERSE IS MADE OF
of the visible stars. We find them
exhibiting all ranges of temperature,
from the intense heat of the white stars
like Sirius to that of the duller red stars
like Aldebaran, our own sun occupying
an intermediate position; while our
moon affords an example of a dead
world, which from its smaller size has
cooled more rapidly. As the moon is,
so must the red stars inevitably become
in a sufficient number of millions of
years, if the laws of nature continue
uninterrupted. And their proper motions,
rushing through space in different direc
tions with velocities ranging up to 400
miles per second, must continue after
they have become dark, as long as the
first law of motion holds good, that
bodies in motion cannot generate
changes of motion of themselves, but
must continue to move forward in their
orbits (the majority following a circular
direction under the control of their
neighbours) or, in a few cases, in a straight
line.
Among bodies thus rushing in different
directions collisions must occasionally
occur, and it is a matter of simple calcu
lation that the mechanical force converted
into heat by such collisions is amply
sufficient to produce any temperature
that may be required to create new suns
and nebulre, and to account for all the
phenomena which are actually observed.
Moreover, the existence of such dark
bodies is established by direct observa
tion. That fragmentary masses, weigh
ing several hundredweights, come in from
space and fall upon the earth is a fact.
So also is it a fact that bright stars, some
of them like the famous new star in
Cassiopsea, brighter than stars of the first
magnitude, suddenly blaze out and
gradually disappear. The impact theory
accounts for this, while the nebular
theory, or any hypothesis based solely on
the contraction of a mass of nebulous
vapour under the law of gravity, entirely
fails to do so. Again, the phenomena of
variable stars can best be explained by
assuming that in some cases such stars
pass periodically through dense streams
25
of meteoric matter, increasing their light,
and that in others large dark bodies are
periodically interposed between us and
the stars, and thus diminish it. Modern
astronomers are, in fact, disposed to think
that the dark stars are more numerous
than the light ones. In some cases,
indeed, we have become so far acquainted
with these dark stars as to weigh and
measure them. The constitution also of
comets, and of many nebulae, as disclosed
by the spectroscope, is far better explained
by the impact than by the nebular theory.
In fact, it is inconsistent with the latter
theory in its narrow form, since this can
give no account of comets, meteorites,
or other phenomena, which imply small
dissociated portions of matter, moving in
streams or aggregating in nebulas, and
rushing with immense velocities in paths
inclined to each other at different angles,
and which have no relation to the rotating
plane of the solar or any other system.
Even within the limits of the planetary
system there are many facts which are
better explained by the theory of impact
than by that of contraction—for instance,
the great differences in the inclination of
the axes of rotation of many planets and
satellites to the plane in which they
revolve about the sun and their primaries.
But, after all, there is no real inconsistency
between the impact theory and that of
Laplace. The former takes up the history
of the universe at an earlier stage, and
supplies a mass of gas or cosmic matter
at a higher temperature, and with that
temperature longer maintained by re
peated collisions and indraught of
meteorites than is assigned to it by the
nebular hypothesis; but ultimately a great
deal of this gas must resolve itself into
such a medium as Laplace supposes,
contracting and forming whirls under the
operation of gravity. The triumphs of
mathematical science deduced from
Newton’s law of gravity were so signal
that it is not surprising that it should
have been assumed that gravity, and
gravity alone, was the fundamental law
which would explain everything. But,
as often happens, increasing knowledge
�26
WHAT THE UNIVERSE IS MADE OF
has rendered many things uncertain
which appeared to be certain. Problems
which seemed simple have grown com
plex, and it has become apparent that
the universe contains many forms of
motion and many manifestations of
energy which cannot be explained by
the laws of gravity—for instance, the
runaway stars, the world of meteorites,
the proper motions of molecules and
atoms, and the requisite duration of solar
heat to account for the undoubted facts
of geology. The law of gravity and the
nebular theory made a great step towards
reducing the phenomena of the universe
to one great uniform law; but the theory
of impact takes up the history at an
earlier stage, and carries us one step
further towards infinity and eternity. If
the whole stellar universe is not, so to
speak, the crop of a single season, but
an indefinite succession of crops, stars
being born and dying, dying and being
renewed, without appearance of a
beginning or an end, the vista of exist
ence is vastly enlarged.
But even this is not the last step
towards the unknowable. Granted that
these dark suns are facts, they are not
ultimate facts. They are matter, and
matter is made up of molecules, and
molecules of atoms. Judging from the
fragments which reach the earth, and the
teachings of the spectroscope, meteoric
matter is composed of a few atoms iden
tical with those which are the most
common elementsof terrestrial chemistry.
Hydrogen, nitrogen, sulphur, iron, nickel,
calcium, silicon, and aluminium are the
principal, if not the sole, constituents of
meteoric stones; and the lines of one or
more of these appear in the spectra of
stars, nebulas, meteors, and comets,
according to their conditions of tempera
ture and pressure. What, then, are
these atoms ? There are some seventy
eight of them known to chemists as
ultimate elements—that is to say, which
are not further resolvable by any means
available in our laboratories. But no
one can suppose that this is really the
ultimate fact, and that original matter
consists of seventy-eight indivisible units,
ranging in weight from the one of
hydrogen to the 240 of uranium, and
more than half of them consisting of
exceedingly rare elements, which play no
appreciable part in the construction of
any form of matter. The mind refuses
to accept the conclusion that such little
mole-hills as yttrium, zirconium, and
gallium, only known as minute products
of a few of the rarest minerals, really
present insurmountable obstacles to the
science which has scaled Alps, measured
light-waves, and weighed stars.
Accordingly, constant attempts are
being made to reduce atoms to one
simple element, and to one comprehen
sive law. The problem is not yet
solved; but it is being attacked on
various sides, and . almost every day
brings us nearer to a solution. Hydrogen
first put in a claim to be the primitive
element, as being the lightest, and it is
remarkable that the weight of a very
large proportion of the other elementary
atoms is an exact multiple of that of the
hydrogen atom. The spectral lines of
hydrogen are also the last seen in those
of the hottest stars, where all secondary
combinations may be supposed to be
dissociated.
This hydrogen theory,
which was first proposed by Prout,
proved to be only a provisional step.
Later researches seemed to show that
by halving the hydrogen atom—that is,
supposing this atom to be composed of
two-linked atoms—the deviations from
the law might be reduced within limits
which could be fairly attributable to
errors in the delicate operations requisite
for fixing atomic weights. Sir W.
Crookes suggested that helium, which
seemed to be lighter than hydrogen,
might be this half-hydrogen-atom, and
thus be the ultimate element out of
which all other atoms are manufactured.
It was, in fact, certain that some rela
tion existed among them, for the Russian
chemist Mendelejeff had shown that, if
the atomic weights of the known elements
are arranged in a consecutive order,
they show what is called a periodical
�WHAT THE UNIVERSE IS MADE OF
law. That is, the other qualities _ of
atoms, such as specific heat, . affinity,
atomicity, etc., rise with the weights up
to a certain point, then fall, then rise
again, and so describe a sort of zig-zag
line like those we see of the readings of
the barometer on a weather chart. Only
this atomic zig-zag seems to follow a
certain law, so that groups of elements
which have similar qualities recur at
nearly fixed intervals. The meaning of
this law is not yet clear, but it _ is so
certain that it enabled Mendelejeff to
predict the discovery of three new
elements, which have since been found,
filling up gaps in the series which his
law required.
The nearest approach to a mathe
matical explanation of this law is afforded
by the discovery that if the cube roots of
the atomic weights were used as ordinates
instead of the weights themselves, which
is equivalent to taking volumes instead
of lines to represent the atomic weights,
the zig-zag line resolves itself into a
regular curve, which is identical with, or
very closely resembles, the logarithmic
curve well known to mathematicians.
All these facts pointed towards the
conclusion that the atoms which we call
elementary are all really manufactured
out of some one atom or sub-atom,
which is the primary element of matter.
Where are they manufactured ? Crookes
said, on the outside of the universe,
wherever that might be, and that they
were destroyed or dissociated when they
reached the position of the lowest
potential energy, which is in the centres
of the largest stars. Whatever sort of
manufactured articles the atoms may be,
they are manufactured to the same
pattern, like the nuts and screws of a
large locomotive or gun factory. The
hydrogen-atom gives the same spectral
lines, which means that it vibrates and
starts or absorbs ether-waves precisely
in the same manner whether it exists in
Sirius, in the nebula of Orion, or in a jar
of gas in a laboratory.
Until recently the most generally
received theory of the formation of the
27
atom was the vortex theory of Helm
holtz and Kelvin, which assumed
atoms to be revolving rings of a perfect
fluid pervading space. The general idea
is given by the rings of smoke which
occasionally escape from the lips of
smokers. These rings persist for a long
time, glide before the knife so as to be
indivisible, and when two of them collide
they rebound and vibrate. In a word,
they behave in many respects very like
atoms ; and refined mathematical calcu
lations show that if we could suppose
them formed and rotating, not in air,
but in what is called a perfect fluid, in
compressible, possessing inertia, and yet
offering no resistance whatever to motion
through it in any direction, such vortex
rings would be indeed indivisible and
indestructible, and might well be what
we call atoms.
Another important
theory, that of Dr. Larmor, conceived
the atom, or the component of the
atom, to be a sort of strain-centre in
ether. But the latest researches of
physicists and chemists have opened out
a line of inquiry which marks a consider
able advance in attacking the problem.
We have now actual proof that small
particles are chipped off the atom in
certain electrical experiments. More
over, when radium was discovered, and
the same kind of radio-action was
detected in a less striking degree in
other forms of matter, it was clear that
we had before us actual instances of
the breakdown, or disintegration, of the
atom. The small particles emitted from
the atom were then identified with the
particles of electricity called electrons,
and the theory has gained ground that
the atoms of all ponderable substances
are built up of these electrons. It is
calculated that one thousand of these
tiny sub-atoms go to the making of a
single atom of hydrogen. They are
infinitesimally small—hardly one-hun
dred-thousandth of the diameter of the
atom—and are believed to form a
whirling system of forces, occasionally
breaking loose from the control of the
cluster and being shot forth, as in the
�28
WHAT THE UNIVERSE IS MADE OF
emanations of radium. The conclusion
is almost irresistible that these are the
real atoms—the ultimate particles—of
the whole solid fabric of the universe.
As yet, however, speculation is pre
carious, and is apt to run in advance of
the known facts. It remains for the
future to tell us more of the nature of
these wonderful electrons, their relation
to ether, and the way in which they are
drawn together to form the great variety
of the chemical elements. Recently a
distinguished Swedish chemist has put
forward a theory that the meteors, which
we have taken to be, as it were, the
bricks of the universe, are themselves
formed by the electrons poured out into
space from the stars. If that were so,
we should be approaching some explana
tion of the “perpetual motion” of the
universe. But it is premature to pro
nounce on these matters.
Thus it will be seen that the problem
of atoms, involving that of the ulti
mate constitution of matter, is fast
advancing towards some definite solu
tion ; but it is not yet solved, and is
a problem of the future. Seeing, how
ever, the wonderful advances which have
been made in the last half-century, and
especially in the last few years, it is im
possible to doubt that, as in the case of
gravity, some future Newton will sum
up in a comprehensive law all the
scattered facts which point in the same
direction towards the unity of the
universe, and the persistence of evolu
tion from the simplest to the most
complex.
But even when this triumph of science
has been attained, the question remains
as insoluble as ever—Whence came
this primeval ' matter and primeval
energy ?
I recollect as a boy looking up at the
stars, and asking myself what does all
this mean ? Where did it come from,
and what is beyond it ? The only answer
was a sort of painful ache, as of straining
the eyes to see in the darkness. And
now that, thanks to the discoveries of
modern science, I can see so much
beyond the visible stars, far off into the
.infinitely great, far down into the
infinitely small, far back into infinite
Time—at the end of all I am not one
whit advanced beyond that feeling of
boyhood. I gaze with straining eyes
into the Unknowable, and gaze in vain.
Others may see, or fancy they see, some
thing behind the knowable phenomena
of the universe, linked together by in
variable laws. Some a personal God,
others a design like human design, a
living whole, ideas in a Universal Mind,
illusion, Maya Nirvana, what not. For
my own part, if I candidly confess the
truth to myself, I can only say with
Tennyson,
“ Behold ! I know not anything,”
and content myself with the only creed
which seems to me certain—that of trying
to do some little good in my generation,
and leave the world a little better rather
than a little worse for my individual unit
of existence.
�CLIMA TE
29
Chapter III,
CLIMATE
Ichthyosauri have been met with in
Greenland and Spitzbergen.
Lyell,
Dana, and all modern geologists agree
that in primordial times there were “ no
zones of climate,” “ no marked difference
between life in warm and cold latitudes
“warm Arctic seas all the year round.” _
This continued until what is, geologi
cally speaking, quite the other day, the
close of the Tertiary period. In Spitz
bergen, latitude 78°. 56', are found the
remains of a luxuriant Miocene flora,
comprising species like the common
cypress, which now grow in the Southern
United States and California. Magnolias
and zamias are found in Miocene strata
Geology and astronomy are in conflict in Greenland in latitude 70 .
These species, it must be observed,
on other questions as well as that of the
time during which a sufficient supply of require not only a warm but an equable
solar heat has rendered the earth habit climate. They would be killed by a
able. The conditions of that supply are single severe night’s frost, and yet they*
as important as the -total quantity, and grew and flourished where the winter
these conditions depend mainly on night now lasts for four months, and
climate. Geology seems to show that, where the thermometer has registered
during the vast lapse of time embraced more than ioo° below freezing-point.
by fossil records from the Cambrian to The difference between summer and
the close of the Tertiary period, there winter temperature in high Arctic lati
were no well-marked zones of climate, tudes exceeds 100° Fahrenheit, and, what
and the conditions of life were uniform, ever may have been the initial tempera
or nearly so, throughout the whole earth. ture, this difference of heat, due to solar
On the other hand, the astronomical radiation, must have been added and
theory of precession asserts that the subtracted every year, as long as the
vicissitudes of the seasons, with their earth’s axis of rotation preserved its
corresponding zones of climate, must present obliquity to the plane of the
have existed from the beginning as they ecliptic in which the earth revolves round
now are. Geology relies on undoubted the sun. If the temperature of Spitz
facts. Coral formations, which require bergen was from ■ any cause high enough
both a warm and an equable climate, to prevent the thermometer from falling
and cannot live in a temperature below below zero in winter, it must have risen
66° Fahrenheit, were found by Captain in summer far above the extremest
Nares in Greenland, in latitude 8i° 40'. tropical temperature at which life and
Ammonites of the same genera and even vegetation are possible.
Nor is it a question of temperature
of the same species are found alike in
Melville’s Island and in India; and only, but of light and the actinic rays of
Conflict between Geology and Astronomy— |
Geology asserts Uniformity of Climate until 1
Recent Times—-Astronomy asserts Inclination
of Earth’s Axis to be invariable, and therefore
Climates necessary—Evidence for Warm and
Uniform Climates—Greenland—-Spitsbergen
—Impossible under Existing Conditions Heat, Light, and Actinism—-Invariability of
Earth’s Axis—Causes of Higher and more
Uniform Temperature—Cooling of the Earth
—More Heat from the Sun—Warmer regions
of Space—More Carbonic-dioxide—Would
not explain Uniformity of Temperature
Excess of Oxygen—-Modification of SpeciesConfiguration of Sea and Land—- .Crolls
Theory—-Displacement of Earth’s Axis—In
clination of Axis of Planets and Moon—Un
solved Problems of the Future.
�30
CLIMATE
the solar beam, which are Equally essen
tial for vegetation. A luxuriant forest
vegetation, including such forms as the
magnolia and cypress, could no more
flourish under any conditions now known
to us in Spitzbergen than they could if
shut up for four months in a dark cellar.
And yet, with the present obliquity of the
axis, the sun must have been below the
horizon in those latitudes from November
till March.
At present, as we go north from the
equator towards the Arctic circle, we
find species changing to accommodate
themselves to the change of environment.
Palms are succeeded by oaks and
beeches; these again by pines and
birches, and these by dwarf willows and
lichens, until all vegetation, except of
the very humblest forms, dies out as we
approach the pole. But in the geological
records of earlier periods no such changes
are discernible. The Miocene magnolia
of Spitzbergen is not even a greatly
modified magnolia, but of the same
species as the magnolia of the present
day. The Miocene cypress is the common
cypress. If there were no such science
as astronomy, geology would point to
the conclusion that until after the
Miocene period climate was uniform;
there were no distinct zones or seasons,
and therefore no obliquity of the earth’s
axis, or at any rate nothing like the
present amount. With these conditions
there would have been perpetual spring,
and all we should require would be a
higher average temperature for the whole
earth. But to this conclusion astronomy
opposes an inflexible non possumus. If
there is one thing more certain than
another, it is that mathematical calcula
tions, based on Newton’s law of gravity,
explain all the movements of the solar
system. They do so 'with a certainty
that enables us to predict the places of
the earth, moon, and planets years before
hand with absolute accuracy. And if
there is one thing more certain than
another in these calculations, it is that no
permanent change is possible in the
inclination of the earth’s axis. The earth j
now spins, in twenty-four hours, round
an axis inclined at an angle of 66}4° to
the plane on which it revolves round the
sun in a year. It must always have so
spun, for there is no cause known to
science by which, when this rotation
was once established, the inclination of
the axis could have been permanently
altered. The plane of the equator shifts
its position slowly on that of the ecliptic,
owing to various minor actions of the
force of gravity, the principal one being
the precession of the equinoxes, due to
the protuberant matter at the earth’s
equator; and thus in 22,000 years it
makes a complete circuit, returning to
its original position. But during this
circuit its inclination to the plane of the
ecliptic remains practically constant, and
the effect on the seasons is unchanged,
except that they come at different posi
tions of the earth in its orbit round the
sun, so that summer and winter alter
nately come when we are farthest from
the sun or nearest to it. At present we
are nearer the sun in winter than in
summer, and the winter half of the year
is shorter than the summer half in the
Northern hemisphere. In 11,000 years
this position will be reversed, and the
winter will be shorter than summer in
the Southern hemisphere; but there is
nothing in these slight changes to affect
the general course of the seasons, and
as we happen to be now nearer the sun
in winter the effect of any slight change
due to precession would rather be to
increase the difference between summer
and winter heat in high northern lati
tudes, and so aggravate the difficulty of
reconciling the conclusions of the two
conflicting sciences. And yet there must
be some way of reconciling them. Truth
cannot speak with two voices, and the
laws of Nature cannot give contradictory
results.
Let us consider first what the un
doubted facts of geology require us to
assume. Two things—firstly, that the
general temperature of the earth was
higher in former times than now;
secondly, that it was more uniform. As
�CLIMA TE
regards the first condition, astronomy
interposes no obstacle, but affords no
aid, and it must be admitted that we
are still in the region of conjecture
rather than of certainty. The first
obvious guess is that the earth was
formerly hotter, and has been gradually
cooling. But this guess is contradicted
by mathematical calculations as to the
cooling of heated bodies, which show
that after the earth had cooled down to
the point of forming a solid crust, many
miles in thickness, of non-conducting
rock, internal heat could have had little
or no effect on surface temperature.
This is confirmed by what we know of
the climates of areas where large reser
voirs of internal heat lie comparatively
near the surface, as in Iceland and other
volcanic districts. In the celebrated
Comstock lode the heat of the earth
increases so rapidly that it becomes im
possible to work the mines below a very
moderate depth. Yet in all these cases
the temperature at the surface remains
the same as that of other regions on the
same isotherm, and is determined by the
same circumstances of latitude, elevation,
aerial and ocean currents, and other
known conditions. Nor, if the internal
temperature of the earth was a factor in
the problem, would it be easy to account
for our recovery from the cold of the
Glacial period, in the face of a con
tinued and progressive diminution of the
planet’s heat.
A more important conjecture is that
there may have been variations in the
amount of heat given out by the sun.
Generally considered, theory points to
the paradoxical conclusion that, as the
sun has cooled, it has got hotter—that
is, that a volume of gas, in cooling,
developes rather more heat by contract
ing than it loses by radiating. But
recent research is held by some scientific
writers to have shown that “ compara
tively small changes in solar activity
produce rather important meteorological
e-ffects,” and it is claimed that there are
indications of such changes having taken
place. Dr. Sven Hedin discovered proof
31
that important changes of climate have
occurred in Central Asia during the
Christian era. It is for future investiga
tion to follow up this clue, and determine
its value in the estimation of changes of
climate.
Thepassageof the solar system through
warmer and colder regions of space is
another explanation which has been
invoked. But this—though by no
means improbable—is as yet a mere
possibility, and based on nothing ap
proaching to actual knowledge.
Of existing known causes there is one
which seems, as far as it goes, to be a
vera causa which might have given the
earth’s surface a warmer temperature in
early ages. Its reality may be proved by
the very simple experiment of sleeping
on a cold night without a blanket.
Evidently, other circumstances being the
same, such as the reading of the thermo
meter and blood heat of the body, the
question of blanket or no blanket makes
an immense difference in the resulting
temperature. Why is this the case ?
Because the blanket keeps the heat in,
or, in other words, radiates ■ it back to
the body instead of letting it radiate out
into space. There are other things
which do this even more effectually than
a woollen blanket, for they let the heat
of the sun’s rays in, and, having let it in,
catch it as in a trap, and do not let it
out again. Glass, for instance, in a con
servatory, is such a trap, and, as we all
know, will keep the temperature inside
much warmer than it is outside, even
without the aid of artificial heat. Many
other substances have the same property,
and among them two which are essential
elements of the earth’s atmosphere,
water in the form of vapour, and carbonicdioxide. Tyndall, in his Heat Con
sidered as a Mode of Motion, has shown
clearly what an immense part these
gases have in maintaining the tempera
ture of the earth’s surface. If the cold
is more intense, especially at night, on
high mountains, it is not because less
heat is received from the sun’s rays
during the twenty-four hours, but
�32
CLIMATE
because half the atmosphere is left below,
and so the heat-retaining blanket is thin
and threadbare. So in deserts where the
air is dry and there is little aqueous
vapour, the heat by day may be exces
sive and yet the cold by night well-nigh in
tolerable. “The removal,” says Tyndall,
“ for a single summer’s night of the
aqueous vapour which covers England
would be attended by the destruction of
every plant which a freezing temperature
could kill.” And such a removal on a
winter’s night would send the thermo
meter down far below zero.
This property of retaining heat is not
confined to water in the form of vapour ;
it is common to other gases, and often
in a higher degree. Among these is
one which is always present in the
atmosphere—carbonic-dioxide, a gas
formed by the combination of two
atoms of oxygen with one of carbon.
The percentage of this gas in the air
is very small, only a fraction of one per
cent., and yet it constitutes the sole
source of supply of the carbon required,
directly for vegetable and indirectly for
animal life. At present the balance
between the two sorts of life seems to
be kept up, as in an aquarium, by
animals restoring to the air, in the form
of carbonic-dioxide, the carbon which
has been abstracted from it by plants.
But when we look at the enormous
amount of carbon which has been
locked up in coal, limestone, and other
carboniferous formations of the earth’s
crust, it is evident that it must be vastly
greater than could be derived from such
a small percentage of carbonic-dioxide
as now exists in the atmosphere. It has
been estimated by experienced geologists
at many hundred times greater. Where
all this carbon could have come from is
a question not yet solved. Some have
thought that it may have been supplied
from the interior of the earth by volcanoes;
but, although it is certain that some
volcanic vents do emit carbonic-dioxide,
as in the case of Lake Avernus, and the
Grotto-del-cane, near Naples, the quan
tity is small, and the better opinion
seems to be that it is only given out
when subterranean fires come in con
tact with limestone, or some other form
of previously deposited carbon. Did
the carbon, then, come from the air?
If so, there must have been more than
one hundred times as much carbonicdioxide in it in early geological times as
there is at present.
This would go some way towards
explaining the difficulty of the higher
temperature prevailing in past ages, for
more carbonic-dioxide would undoubtedly
be equivalent to an additional blanket to
protect the earth from cold; and the
higher temperature thus caused would
enable the air to hold more aqueous
vapour in solution, and thus increase
the thickness of the water-blanket.
It is conceivable that under such con
ditions a warm and humid climate may
have prevailed over a great part of the
earth’s surface, though this would hardly
meet the difficulty of the uniform exist
ence of such a climate in latitudes where
the supply of heat from the sun must
have been so very different in winter
and summer. Nor would this difficulty
be removed even if we were to suppose
that the earth’s axis might have been
nearly vertical to the plane of the ecliptic.
This might meet the difficulty as to
light and actinic rays, for there would
be everywhere twelve hours of day
throughout the year; but it would not
meet the difficulty as to temperature, for
if the air-blanket was sufficient to retain
heat enough in the Arctic Circle to
prevent frosts, from a sun which never
rose much above the horizon, it must
have retained far too much heat for
existing life and vegetation in latitudes
nearer to the equator.
There are, however, many grave
objections to considering this to be the
sole or even the principal cause of the
warmer climates of early ages. It is by
no means certain that either animal or
vegetable life, in anything like known
forms, could exist in an atmosphere so
surcharged with carbon. Nor is carbon
all; we must account also for oxygen.
�33
CLIMA TE
If the whole of the carbon now fixed
in the different strata of the earth’s
crust was derived from carbonic-dioxide
originally present in the atmosphere,, so
also must have been the oxygen, which
in various form of oxides now forms
an even larger constituent of that crust.
Oxygen is a very active element, which,
under moderate conditions of heat , and
moisture, combines readily with iron,
silicon, calcium, aluminium, and all. the
metallic bases. Many hundred times
more oxygen must have been withdrawn
from the air than now exists in it. to
form the rocks which are the principal
part of the earth’s crust. But an excess
of oxygen is as fatal to life as an excess
of carbonic-dioxide. Terrestrial life, as
known to us, depends on a very delicate
adjustment of the quantities of oxygen
and nitrogen in the air. A very little
excess or deficit of either would, destroy
all air-breathing animals. With too
much oxygen we should be burned up
even more rapidly than the drunkard is
by too much alcohol; with too little, the
fire of life would be choked by ashes
and refuse. If there was formerly a
hundred, or even ten, times more oxygen
in the atmosphere than there is now,
there must have been a corresponding
excess of nitrogen to neutralise it, and,
if so, what has become of the nitrogen ?
Nitrogen is an inert element which enters
sparingly into combinations, and does
not, like oxygen and carbon, get locked
up in great masses of the earth’s solid
crust. Once in the atmosphere, it would
seem that it must have remained there;
and, if so, as oxygen was withdrawn in
continually increasing quantities, how
could the life-sustaining proportion of
the two gases have been maintained and
continued down to the present day ?
It has been said that life may have
been so differently organised in past
geological ages as to have existed under
very different conditions ; the mammoth
is appealed to as an instance of an
elephant modified so as to resist Arctic
cold; and the result of deep-sea dredg
ings shows that molluscs, crustaceans,
and other low forms of life may exist in
ice-cold water and without light. But
we can hardly suppose such profound
modifications of existing genera and
species of highly-organised plants and
animals as would enable them to breathe
air of a very different composition.
For we must remember that the evi
dence for an elevated and uniform tem
perature is not confined to remote geo
logical ages, but comes down to the
close of the Tertiary period, when
existing forms, both of animal, and
vegetable life, were firmly established,
and several species have survived to the
present day without perceptible change.
Thus, when the magnolia was growing in
Spitzbergen, the dryopithecus was living
in Southern France. Can it be supposed
that this anthropoid ape breathed a
different air from his congeners, the
chimpanzee and gorilla; and yet, if his
lungs required the same air, how could
excess of carbonic-dioxide have supplied
the extra warm blanket to protect the
Spitzbergen magnolia ?
A different configuration of sea and
land is the explanation which many geo
logists, following Lyell, have advanced
for different conditions of climate. And
no doubt aerial and oceanic currents,
such as now cause the trade-winds and
Gulf Stream, are responsible for great
variations of climate, while low lands in
low and high lands in high latitudes
must always have had a considerable
influence in raising or depressing tem
perature. But changes of this descrip
tion can more readily account for the
cold of the Glacial than for the heat of
the Tertiary and preceding periods. We
have now got the trade-winds and the
Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic, and
although the diversion of the latter might
bring the ice-cap back to London and
New York, and make the climate of Scan
dinavia and Scotland the same as that of
Greenland and Labrador, its presence
takes us a very short way towards enabling
magnolias to flourish in Spitzbergen.
In like manner, even if Croll’s theory
were established, which it is far from
B
�34
CLIMATE
being, and the effect of the obliquity of
the earth’s axis combined with preces
sion, though imperceptible while the
earth’s orbit was nearly circular, became
great in the two hemispheres alternately,
when the orbit was approaching its maxi
mum eccentricity, this would not explain
the high and uniform temperature of past
geological ages. If this theory were true,
what we should look for would be two or
three Glacial periods in the course of
each geological epoch; for the least time
required for any of the great geological
formations must have been long enough
to include two or three secular variations
of the earth’s orbit, from minimum to
maximum eccentricity. And each of
these Glacial periods must have included
several changes, alternating, at intervals
of 11,000 years, between severe cold and
genial heat, owing to the effect of the
precession of the equinoxes combined
with great eccentricity.
Instead of uniform warmth there must
have been more than one hundred
Glacial periods during the immense
lapse of time between the dawn of life
in the Cambrian and the last of such
periods in the Quaternary. It is a moot
point with geologists whether traces of a
single one of such periods, prior to the
last one, have been found. There are a
few conglomerates which look very like
consolidated boulder-clays, and every
now and then we hear of some formation,
supposed to be glaciated, being found in
the Permian and in other formations in
India, South Africa, and Australia; but
there is no evidence hitherto which com
mands the general assent of geologists
for a single Glacial period prior to the
recent one which closed the Tertiary
period. And there is abundant evidence
that during many formations, such as the
Carboniferous and Coal-measures, which
must have taken millions of years to
accumulate, there were no vicissitudes of
climate such as must have inevitably
occurred if any astronomical cause, such
as precession or eccentricity, had been
sufficient to bring about great vicissitudes
of heat and cold. And what is still more
conclusive, the evolution of vegetable
and animal life, as shown by fossils,
affords no trace of the repeated modifica
tions which must have taken place within
the limits of the same geological forma
tion if there had been such vicissitudes of
heat and cold as the theory requires.
It remains to be considered whether
any change in the direction of the earth’s
axis may have been possible. Clearly
no such change can have taken place
within the earth itself, for its shape is
that of an oblate spheroid, revolving
round its present axis. Any displace
ment of the poles must displace the
present equator, and tend to establish a
new one on a different plane. But the
equatorial diameter of the earth is twentysix miles longer than the polar diameter,
so that any displacement of the poles
must have tended to displace this
enormous mass of protuberant matter,
and send such portion of it as was fluid
in a diluvian wave, miles in height,
towards the new position of equilibrium;
while the solid portion remained in a
plane no longer coincident with that of
the earth’s rotation. There is no trace
of anything of the sort having ever
occurred, and, if the axis has shifted, the
whole earth has shifted with it, which is
just what astronomers declare to be
impossible by any known laws.
But are the whole of the laws really
known ? There is nothing more difficult
than to account for the varying inclina
tions of the axes of rotation of the diffe
rent bodies of the solar system. On the
older conception of the nebular hypo
thesis, which traced the sun, planets,
and satellites back to the condensation
of a revolving disc-like mass of nebulous
matter, one might have expected to find
the planes of rotation and revolution of
planets and satellites, not only in the
same general direction from west to east,
but nearly coincident.1 Jupiter, however,
* The tendency in astronomy now is to con
ceive the primitive nebula in a rough spiral form,
instead of the disk-shape which was earlier
imagined.
�THE GLACIAL PERIOD
is the only one of the planets which
fulfils this condition. Its axis of rotation
is inclined at an angle of 87°, or very
nearly at right angles, to the plane of its
revolution round the sun. But there is
no certain rule. That of Saturn, which
comes next in order on the outside of
Jupiter, has an inclination of 64°, while
that of the next planet on the inside,
Mars, is 6i° 18'. The earth’s axis is
inclined at 66° 33', while we find its
satellite, the moon, rotating like Jupiter
in a plane inclined only i° 30'; and the
axis of Venus, on the other hand, is so
oblique that in its winter the Arctic
Circle almost extends to the equator.
The case of the moon is most difficult
to understand, for on any theory of its
origin, whether as a condensed ring left
behind as the nebulous matter of the
earth contracted, or whether it was
ejected from the earth in some eruption
of its fiery stages, it might have been
expected to retain nearly the same rota
tory motion as its parent orb. But, if
so, clearly some unknown force must
have intervened, either to make the
earth’s axis more, or that of the moon
less, oblique than they were originally.
No such force is known, nor has any
plausible guess been made as to what
might have occasioned it; but the same
observation applies to many of the phe
nomena of the solar system. How has
35
the supply of solar heat been kept up for
the time required by geology ? How
does the energy we call gravitation act
across space from atom to atom, and
from star to star, and how is its supply
maintained? Why is the axis of the
earth inclined at an angle of 66° 30' to
the ecliptic, while that of Jupiter is
almost perpendicular to it, and that of
Venus oblique to the extent of nearly
two-thirds of a right angle ?
These are all problems which depend
on natural laws, and must lie within the
limits of human reason; but they are
pebbles which have not yet been picked
up on the shore of the ocean of truth.
It may bring home to us the force of
Newton’s saying that we are but as
children picking up such pebbles, when
we see what a multitude of the deepest
problems, as to the constitution of the
earth and of the universe, are raised by
the simple fact that Captain Nares
brought back a specimen of coral from
latitude 81° 40' in Greenland, and that
luxuriant forests, of a sub-tropical or
warm temperate vegetation, flourished in
Spitzbergen as lately as the period when
an anthropoid ape of the stature of man
was living in the south of France, and
when man himself, or his savage progeni
tors, were possibly, or even probably,
already chipping flints into rude imple
ments.
Chapter IV.
THE GLACIAL PERIOD
Importance of Date of Glacial Period Its
Bearing on Origin of Man—Short Date
Theories—Prestwich says 20,000, Lyell
200,000, years—Groll’s Theory—Prestwich’s
Arguments—Solar Heat—Human ProgressShown by Palaeolithic Remains—Geological
Evidence—Advance of Greenland Glaciers—
Denudation—Erosion of Cliffs and Valleys—
Deposition—Loess—Elevation and Depres
sion of Land—All Show Immense Antiquity—
Post-Glacial Period—Prestwich says 8,000 to
10,000 years—Mellard Reade 60,000—His
Reasons — Inconsistent with Short - Date
Theories—Causes of Glacial Period—Cooling
�36
THE GLACIAL PERIOD
of Earth—Cold Regions of Space—Change of
Earth’s Axis—More Vapour in Atmosphere—
Lyell’s Theory—Different Configuration of
Sea and Land—Conditions of Glaciation—
Problems Pressing for Solution.
The date and duration of the Glacial
period present a problem which is in
many respects of the highest interest.
It comes nearest to us as inaugurating
the recent period in which we live, and
for which we have historical data. It
affords the best chance of obtaining an
approximate standard by which to
measure geological times in years or
centuries. And it touches directly on
the great question of the Origin of Man.
For man is like the mammoth and
cave bear—an essential part of the
Quaternary fauna; and, whatever doubts
may.be entertained as to his existence in
Tertiary times, there can be none as to
the fact that his remains are found in
great numbers, and widely scattered over
the four quarters of the globe, in con
junction with those of the mammoth and
other characteristic Quaternary mammals,
in deposits which date, probably, from
the earlier, and certainly from the inter
mediate and later, stages of the Glacial
period. A short date, therefore, for that
period shortens that for which we have
positive proof of the existence of man,
and a very short date reduces it to a
length during which it is simply impos
sible that such a state of things as is
found existing in Egypt 7,000 years ago
could have grown up by natural laws and
evolution, and therefore brings us back
to the old theories of repeated and
recent acts of supernatural interference,
which, since the works of Lyell and of
Darwin, have been generally considered
to be completely exploded.
. The question, therefore, is one of the
highest theological as well as scientific
importance, and as such it has too often
been approached with theological pre
possessions. An extreme instance of
this is afforded by Sir J. Dawson, who,
in his work on Fossil Man, assigns 7,000
years as the probable date for the first
appearance of man upon earth, ignoring
the fact that at this date a dense and
civilised. population already existed in
Egypt with a highly-developed language
and system of writing and religion, and
that the types of the various races of
mankind, such as the Negro, the Copt,
the Semitic, and the Arian, are as clearly
distinguished in the paintings in Egyp
tian tombs 5,000 years ago as they are at
the present day.
Sir J. Dawson, however, though an
excellent geologist as long as the older
formations are concerned, is so domi
nated by the desire to square facts with
the account of creation in Genesis that
he becomes totally unreliable when the
human era is approached.
More recently, a very different autho
rity, Professor Prestwich, reasoning on
strictly scientific grounds, concludes
“ that the Glacial period, or epoch of
extreme cold, may not have lasted longer
than from 15,000 to 25,000 years, and
the Post-Glacial period of the melting
away of the ice-sheet to from 8,000 to
10,000 years or less ; giving to palaeo
lithic man no greater antiquity than,
perhaps, about 20,000 to 30,000 years,
while, should he be restricted to the socalled Post-Glacial period, his antiquity
need not go farther back than from
10,000 to 15,000 years before the time
of neolithic man.”
Prestwich cannot be accused of theo
logical bias, and, in fact, this estimate is
as inconsistent with theological theories
of Adam and Noah as if the figures
were multiplied tenfold. But he was
influenced by the wish to make geological
time accord with the short-date estimates
of Lord Kelvin, as to the possible
duration of solar heat. Be this as it
may, the fact that an authority like
Prestwich reduces to 20,000 years a
period to which Lyell and modern
geologists generally have assigned a
duration of more like 200,000, shows in
what a state of uncertainty we are as
to this vitally important problem. For
even the longest period for man’s anti
quity assigned by Prestwich would be
clearly insufficient to allow for the
�THE GLACIAL PERIOD
37
development of Egyptian civilisation as earth’s orbit was nearly circular as at
it existed 7,000 years ago, from savage present, they might become very powerful
and semi-animal ancestors, and still less when they coincided with one of the
for the evolution of the human race long periods at which the earth’s orbit
from earlier types, as is proved to have became flattened out into an ellipse of
been the case with the horse, stag, maximum eccentricity. He showed by
elephant, ape, and other mammals, with calculation that one such period began
whom man is so intimately connected, 240,000 years ago, attained its maximum
both in physical structure and in geo in 80,000 years, and passed away about
80,000 years before the present era.
logical association.
It is highly important, therefore, to These figures fitted in so well with those
consider the grounds on which the deduced by Lyell and other eminent
various theories are based of the pro geologists from geological data that
bable cause and duration of the Glacial Croll’s theory received very general
period. The first natural guess was to acceptance. But it is open to the same
attribute it to the precession of the objection, though in a less degree, that
equinoxes. Owing to this cause, the it requires us to assume a periodical
North Pole is alternately turned towards succession of Glacial epochs. The oscil
the sun every summer and away from it lations of the eccentricity of the earth’s
every winter, the reverse being the case orbit, about its maximum and minimum
in the Southern hemisphere. But, owing limits, though slow as measured by cen
to the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit, turies, are not so slow according to the
the duration of the seasons is not exactly standards of geological time. Croll’s
equal, and summer and winter may occur calculations have shown that another
either when the earth is nearest to or position, such as is assumed to have
farthest away from the sun. At present caused the latest Glacial period, must
winter occurs in the Northern hemi have occurred 500,000 years earlier.
sphere when the earth is nearest the sun The calculations have not been carried
and moving with the greatest velocity, further back ; but it is tolerably certain
so that it is shorter by some days, and that, if Croll’s theory be correct, at least
summer longer, than in the Southern two or three Glacial periods must have
hemisphere. Now, it is a fact that what occurred during each of the great geo
This is opposed to
may be called a Glacial period prevails logical epochs.
at present in the Southern hemisphere, geological evidence. The Permian is
while corresponding latitudes in the the only formation in which what look
Northern hemisphere enjoy a temperate like traces of glacial action have been
climate. It might be thought that this unmistakeably found, and even these are
fact afforded an explanation of the considered doubtful by many geologists.
Glacial period; but this conjecture is Still more doubtful are the proofs of
negatived when it is considered that this older Glacial epochs deduced, from
revolution of the earth’s axis is periodical, isolated cases of boulders, as in the
and completed in about 22,000 years, Miocene conglomerate of Monte Superga,
so that, if it were the sole or principal near Turin, the Flysch of Switzerland,
cause of Glacial epochs, they must have and in some of the conglomerates of the
“Not proven” is the
recurred from the beginning of geological old Devonian.
time at this short interval, which is verdict which most geologists would
altogether inconsistent with the evidence return on the few alleged instances of
earlier Glacial periods; while, if Croll’s
of facts.
Croll expanded this crude theory into theory were true, we might expect to
one which had vastly more plausibility— find them frequently. Above all, it is
viz., that, although the effects of preces difficult to conceive how two or three
sion might be imperceptible while the great changes of temperature could have
�38
THE GLACIAL PERIOD
occurred during each geological forma advance of the glaciers of Greenland is
tion without showing unmistakeable traces found to be much more rapid than that
in the fauna, and still more distinctly in of the Swiss glaciers upon which previous
the flora, of the epoch. Ferns must theories had been based of the time
have died out and been succeeded by required for the advance of the Scandi
mosses j and these in their turn given navian and Laurentian ice-fields over
place to ferns two or three times over or Northern Europe and America.
more, during the growth of the coal. The two considerations may be briefly
measures, if any changes of climate had discussed. The first, as I have already
occurred at all resembling those of the shown, is based on a theory as to solar
recent Glacial period.
heat which is in the highest degree
The confidence, therefore, with which uncertain, which is being shaken by the
Croll’s theory was at first received has latest discoveries in physics, and which
been a good deal shaken, and, although requires rather to be tested by the posi
many geologists still believe that it may tive facts of geology than accepted as
have been one among other causes of an admitted conclusion to which those
the last great refrigeration, it can no facts must be squared. To allow it to
longer be considered as affording a distort those facts, or even to influence
reliable standard by which to measure us in interpreting them, is a preposses
the time in historical years, either of the sion only one degree less mischievous
Quaternary or still less of any previous than the theological prepossession which
geological epoch.
so long retarded the progress of true
We have to fall back, therefore, on science.
the geological evidence of deposition
The second consideration, as to the
and denudation, of the rise and fall of rate of human progress, is a mere ques
continents, of the erosion of rivers, tion of what each individual inquirer
valleys, and so forth, in any attempt to may think probable estimates, which will
decide between the 200,000 years of depend very much on his habit of mind
Lyell and the 20,000 years of Prestwich. and previous bias. There are positively
The former period, based on the minute no facts on which to base a conclusion
and careful investigations of Lyell, Geikie, as to the rate of progress of isolated
Croll, and other eminent geologists, held salvage tribes living in the hunter stage,
the field until the recent attempts of without contact with more civilised races.
Prestwich and others to reconcile geo The Australian savages, the South African
logy with Lord Kelvin’s theory of bushmen, the Negritos of the Andaman
solar heat, by reducing geological time Islands, may have lived as they were first
to about one-tenth of the accepted found by Europeans any time you like
amounts.
from 1,000 to 100,000 years, for aught
Prestwich, in his recently-published we know to the contrary. There is, in
works on geology, states that he has fact, no record of any such savage race
been influenced mainly by two con emerging into comparative civilisation
siderations :—
by any effort or natural progress of its
1. The wish to bridge over the wide own. Even much more advanced races
chasm between geologists and physicists trace back their knowledge of the higher
as to the possible duration of the supply arts and civilisation to some divine
of solar heat.
stranger, like the Peruvian Manco-Capac,
2. The difficulty of conceiving that or Chaldasan Oannes, who lands on their
man could have existed for a period of shores; or else, like the Egyptians,
80,000 or 100,000 years without change assign these inventions to gods, which
and without progress.
means that they are lost in the mists of
And the principal, or rather the sole, antiquity. The neolithic men of Europe
fact on which he relies is that the were clearly invaders, who brought a
�THE GLACIAL PERIOD
39
higher civilisation with them from Asia, decided change has taken place in the
and the knowledge of polished stone fauna, which in the Neolithic age corre
sponds closely with that of recent times
and metals was diffused by commerce.
It is incorrect, however, to say that in the same locality.
It is impossible, therefore, to deny
palaeolithic man shows no signs of change
or progress. On the contrary, the evi that both change and progress have
dence of palaeolithic deposits shows existed from the first appearance of man,
everywhere a progress which, although and there are absolutely no data to
it may have been extremely slow, is enable us to say what may have been
uniformly in the same direction—viz., the intervals of time required for the
upwards; There is no exception in the successive stages of this progress. All
hundreds, or rather thousands, ofinstances we can say is that, the more nearly
in which palaeolithic implements have primitive man approximated to a state
been found, to the law that the rudest of semi-animal existence, the slower
implements are found in the lowest must have been the steps by which he
deposits, and that improvements are emerged from it into comparative civili
traced in an ascending scale with sation.
We must fall back, therefore, on
ascending strata. This is most markedly
the case in caves, where, as in Kent’s geology for anything like reliable data on
Cavern, deposits of different ages have which to base any estimate of the time
been kept distinct and securely sealed required for the Quaternary or any
under separate sheets of stalagmite. In preceding geological epoch. Here, at
the rock-shelters, also, and river gravels, any rate, we are on comparatively certain
in which the relative antiquity is proved ground. So many feet of deposition, so
by their higher or lower levels, the same many of erosion, so many of elevation or
law prevails. In the oldest, where the depression; these are measurable facts
cave bear and mammoth are the cha which have been ascertained by compe
racteristic fossils, the stone axes, knives, tent observers. How much time is re
and scrapers are of the rudest description. quired to account for them ? This can
The celts or hatchets are mere lumps of only be an approximation, based on our
stone, roughly chipped, and with a blunt knowledge of the time in which similar
butt-end, evidently intended to be held results, on a smaller scale, have been
in the hand. In the next stage we find produced by existing natural laws within
finer chipping, and celts adapted for the Historical period. Still, if we argue
hafting; while arrow and javelin heads from natural causes, and ignore imaginary
appear, at first rude, but gradually cataclysms and supernatural interferences,
becoming barbed and finely wrought. we may arrive at some sort of maximum
Still later, with the advent of the reindeer and minimum limits of time within which
in large herds, affording in their horns a the observed results must lie.
This was the process by which Lyell
softer material than stone, a remarkable
improvement takes place, and eyed and his school of geologists arrived at
needles, barbed harpoons, and in some their estimates of geological time, and
cases engraved and sculptured portraits it is only by a careful study of their
of animals of the chase, testify to a works that it is possible to see how
decided advance in the arts of civilisa closely the chain is woven, and what a
tion. Above all these come the weapons mass of minute investigations support
and implements of the Neolithic age, their conclusions. The one solid fact
which, as already stated, are separated which Prestwich opposes to them is the
by a sharp line from the earlier records rapid advance of the glaciers of Green
of palaeolithic man. No polished stone land. Recent observations by Rink and
has ever been found in deposits belonging other explorers have shown that the
clearly to the Palaeolithic period, and a fronts of these glaciers advance much
�40
THE GLACIAL PERIOD
more rapidly than the rate which had
been assumed from the advance of the
Swiss glaciers.
The average rate of advance of the
great glaciers which discharge themselves
into Baffin’s Bay is about thirty-five feet
daily, or two and three-quarter miles
yearly. Calculating from these data,
Prestwich arrives at the conclusion that
the old ice-sheets which radiated from
the Scandinavian and Canadian moun
tains to a distance of about 500 miles
might have been formed in from 4,000 to
6,000 years. The great changes which
have taken place since the retreat of the
ice-sheets he accounts for by supposing
that, with a greater rainfall, these changes
went on much more rapidly than they
have done during the Historical period.
These views, however, did not command
the assent of other eminent geologists
who were present when Professor Prestwich’s paper was read, and they are open
to very obvious objections.
The rate of advance of a glacier thrust
outwards by such an immense mass of
ice as caps Greenland, through a narrow
fiord, on a steep descending gradient,
into a deep sea which floats off its front
in icebergs, affords little test of the
advance of an ice-sheet spread out with
a front of 1,000 miles over a whole con
tinent, unaided by gravity, and obstructed
by ranges of mountains 2,000 or 3,000
feet high, which it has to surmount.
Nor does the rate of advance of such a
sheet afford any clue to the time during
which it may have remained stationary
or been receding. The two latter condi
tions evidently depend on the climate at
the extremity of the ice-sheet, when the
ice pushed forward by it is melted by the
summer heat. As long-as the climate of
Switzerland remains the same, the Swiss
glaciers will remain at their present level
with slight local and temporary varia
tions ; and this must have been equally
true of the great Scandinavian and Cana
dian glaciers. They may have advanced
in 5,000 years, remained stationary for
50,000 years, and taken 100,000 years to
retreat, for anything we know to the con- |
trary, from the Greenland glaciers. Nor
is it a question of one advance and retreat
only, for there is distinct evidence of
several advances and retreats, and of
prolonged Inter-Glacial periods.
In the cliffs of the east of England
four boulder-clays are found, separated
by sands and gravels deposited as each
ice-sheet successively receded and melted;
and in France there is evidence of at
least one Inter-Glacial period, sufficiently
warm and prolonged to allow the Canary
laurel and fig--tree to supplant the lichen
and Arctic willow. The only real test of
time is from the amount of geological
work that has been done in the way of
denudation, deposition, elevation, and
depression since Northern Europe and
Northern America were covered by such
an ice-cap as now covers Greenland.
Tried by these tests, the conclusions
point uniformly to a longer rather than
a shorter duration of the Quaternary,
including the Glacial, period. If we take
denudation, we may refer to the fact that,
since palaeolithic man left his implements
on the banks of the old Solent river
above Bournemouth, the level of its
valley and of the adjacent land has been
denuded by that small stream to a depth
of 150 feet, and the erosion of the sea
now going on at the Needles has eaten
away a wide range of chalk downs which
were then continuous from the Isle of
Wight to Dorsetshire. The same action
of waves and tides as is now eroding
Shakespeare’s Cliff has removed the
chalk ridge between that cliff and Cape
Grisnez, and made England an island.
The valleys of the Thames, the Somme,
and other rivers of the south of England
and north of France have been excavated
to a depth of more than one hundred
feet and a width of miles by streams
which have produced no perceptible
change since the Roman period. And
a still more striking proof of the immense
time which has elapsed since the Glacial
period is afforded by the fact, stated in
Prestwich’s Geology, that the great basaltic
plateau of the Cascade Range in British
Columbia, which is cut through by the
�THE GLACIAL PERIOD
4i
argument from the disappearance of
Columbia river to the depth of 2,000 to e
the downs between the Isle of Wight and
3,000 feet, is underlain by the Northern t
Boulder-drift. Consider what a lapse of Dorsetshire, and between France and
time this requires. Since the Boulder- England, would remain the same. . Lord
1
Avebury estimates the rate of erosion of
drift, and therefore since the Glacial .
period, vast sheets of basalt must have a perpendicular cliff of solid chalk. at
<
only a few inches per century, at which
been poured out by volcanoes now <
extinct, and those sheets of hard rock rate it must have taken an enormous
1
time to wear away the chalk ridge
cut down by river action to the levels at 1
between the Needlesand Ballard downs;
which the relics of the old ice-cap now
but even if we read yards instead of
appear.
As regards the erosion of valleys, it is inches it must have taken a far longer
said that there may have been a much time than Prestwich assigns for the
whole Glacial period. There is nothing
greater rainfall formerly than in historical
times, and therefore erosion may have upon which reliable data are more
wanted than as to the rate of erosion of
gone on much more rapidly. Doubtless
there may have been more extensive inun solid cliffs by the action of the sea, for
dations while great masses of ice and here the hypothesis of a larger rainfall
and greater floods could not be invoked
snow were melting under the summer
to accelerate the rate, as in the case of
heat of an improving climate; but there
seems no adequate reason to account the erosion of valleys.
If from denudation we turn to deposi
for a much greater rainfall. The maxim
ex nihilo nihil fit applies to rain as to the tion, we find equally conclusive evidence
of the immense duration of the Glacial
other operations of nature, and more
rainfall
implies
more evaporation, period. The deposit known as loess
brought by warm winds blowing over is universally admitted to be one of fine
warm oceans, and deposited when it glacial mud, deposited tranquilly from
comes in contact with land at a lower sheets of inundation water, which have
overflowed wide tracts during the melt
temperature. We already have these
conditions in Western Europe, and the ing of the ice and snow, as the climate
improved and glaciers retreated. It is,
Gulf Stream and prevalent westerly
winds make the climate more moist and in fact, just such a loam as the Arve
genial than is due to the latitude. To deposits every summer on the meadows
have had it still more moist these condi of Chamouni, when the turbid river
tions must have been intensified, and issues in a swollen stream from the
there is no reason to suppose that in bottom of the mer-de-glace^ and overflows
recent times, and with the present con its banks. Now, this loess covers, as
with a mantle, the valley systems of all
figuration of sea and land, the Gulf
the great rivers of the Northern hemi
Stream could have been much warmer
than it now is. If the land had extended sphere, whose upper courses lie within
farther to the westward, the effect must the area which was covered by ice and
have been to diminish rather than snow during the Glacial period. The
increase the rainfall in the districts Rhone, the Rhine, the Danube, the
where the Somme and the Thames were Mississippi, the Yang-tse-kiang, all run
excavating their valleys ; and with more through cliffs of loess, which also fills
extensive forests and morasses rain-water their tributary valleys and spreads to a
would be absorbed as in a sponge, and considerable height up the slopes of the
descend more gradually and less in hills and over the adjoining plateaux.
It lies thickest in the valleys, dying off as
tumultuous floods.
But, even if a greater rainfall were; it ascends the slopes, though it can often
l
granted, it would not affect the erosion be traced to a height of 2,000 or 3,000
>
of solid chalk cliffs by the sea, and the feet. The thin beds of loess at these
,
�42
THE GLACIAL PERIOD
heights and on the plateaux are probably There is distinct evidence that since the
the result of the melting of frozen snow; first epoch of intense cold a great part of
but the great masses in the valleys are Britain has been submerged, until only a
evidently the accumulations of mud from, few of the highest mountains stood out
the overflows of the existing rivers as from the Arctic Sea as an archipelago of
they gradually cut their valley-systems frozen islands, and has been since
down from higher to lower levels.
elevated, with several minor fluctuations,
These accumulations invariably corres to its present height. Marine shells of
pond to the configuration of the existing an Arctic character have been found on
valleys, and overlie coarser sands and Moel-Tryfane, a hill in North Wales, in
gravels, showing that they have been glacial drift 1,392 feet above the level of
made since the rivers lost the transport the sea; and similar drift is traced con
ing power which they possessed when tinuously, both in Wales and Scotland,
they ran with a more rapid current to a height of over 2,000 feet. It rests
during the earlier stages of the retreat on rocks which had been already
of the glaciers. The thickness of this rounded and polished by glaciers.
accumulation of fine mud is stated by
It is evident, therefore, that sufficient
Lyell to be 800 feet or more above the time must have elapsed during an inter
existing alluvial plain of the Rhine, and mediate phase of the Glacial period for a
in other rivers it is even greater. It is depression of more than 2,000 feet,
impossible that such a thickness could followed by a re-elevation of an equal
have been accumulated in anything like amount. Consider what this means.
the shorter time assumed by some geolo All we know of these secular movements
gists for the duration of the whole of large masses of land shows them to be
Glacial period.
And yet it represents excessively slow. Even the small local
only one phase of its concluding period ; elevations and depressions, like those of
and it not only contains human remains, the temple of Serapis at Pozzuoli, which
but is itself clearly posterior to many of have taken place principally in volcanic
the sands and gravels in which remains districts, have not exceeded a few feet in
of man and his associated Quaternary historical times.
fauna have been undoubtedly found.
The deltas of rivers have increased,
It is difficult to suppose that the loess and the sea has sometimes eroded and
can have accumulated much more sometimes added to the outline of coasts;
rapidly than the alluvium of the Nile, but there has been no change for more
which has been proved to raise the soil than 2,000 years in the general level of
of Egypt at the rate of about three inches sea and land in any of the districts known
in a century. At this rate it would to the ancient world. The spit of shingle
require 320,000 years to accumulate the which connects St. Michael’s Mount with
800 feet assigned by Lyell to the loess Cornwall is still covered at flood and dry
of the Rhine valley. Making every at ebb tide, as when the ancient Britons
allowance for a quicker rate of deposition, carted their tin across it to barter with
it seems impossible that this deposit, Tyrian merchants. Marseilles is a sea
which is only an interlude in one of the port, as it was when the Phenician galleys
later stages of the Glacial period, can entered its harbour. In Egypt it is
have been accumulated in anything like evident that no considerable change of
the time assigned by Prestwich for the level, either of the land or of the Medi
whole of that period.
terranean, can have occurred since
If we consider the elevations and Menes embanked the Nile 7,000 years
depressions of land which have taken ago.
place since the commencement of the
The only authentic records we have of
Glacial period, the evidence all points to the rise or fall of masses of land as ascer
the same conclusion of immense antiquity. tained by actual measurement are those
�THE GLACIAL PERIOD
43
of Scandinavia and South America. The and Post-Glacial periods, of which this
Pacific shore of the latter was upheaved was only one of the intermediate phases,
five or six feet for a distance of 500 or within anything like the limits of from
600 miles by the shock of a single earth 25,000 to 35,000 years assigned to them
quake, and remains of human art, such by Professor Prestwich. On the con
as plaited rushes and string, have been trary, all the evidence from existing
found in a bed of marine shells near known facts points rather to an exten
Callao, showing that this part of the sion than to a contraction of the times
continent had been elevated eighty-five assigned by Lyell and Croll; and, if the
feet since it was inhabited by man. This, theory of the latter is correct, it would
however, gives no clue to the rate of almost seem as if his first period of
elevation, since we know nothing of the maximum refrigeration, 700,000 years
date of man’s appearance in Peru, and ago, was that of the formation of the first
the whole area is one of volcanic dis great ice-cap. And, whatever the time
turbance, which has been raised by may be, it is clear that in its earlier
successive earthquake shocks, and not stages man was already widely distri
buted over the earth, while there is the
by gradual elevation.
In the case- of Scandinavia, however, strongest probability that his origin must
where raised beaches up to the height of have taken place very much further back
600 feet above the sea level afford proof in the Pliocene, or even in the Miocene,
of much recent elevation, and where period.
It must always be remembered that,
there are no signs of volcanic action,
attempts have been made to measure the while the date of human origins in years
rate accurately by marks cut on rocks. or centuries is a question of great
The results, carefully considered by Sir scientific interest, it makes little difference,
C. Lyell, show a slow, uniform rate of as regards the religious and philosophical
elevation of two or three feet in a century, aspects of the question, whether it
where the rate is at its maximum at extends over 50,000 or 500,000 years.
Gefle, ninety miles north of Stockholm, In any case, the fact is beyond question
which dies out towards the North Cape that it is one of immense antiquity, far
and is converted into a slow depression transcending any period recorded by
in the south of Sweden. At this rate of history or tradition, and that during
three feet per century, the depression this immense period the course of
which carried the hills of Wales and humanity has been upward, and not
Man has not fallen, but
Scotland 2,000 feet down would have downward.
required 66,666 years, and its elevation risen, and arts, morals, societies, and
an equal period, so that, without any civilisation have been slowly developed
allowance for the time the sea-bottom from an animal-like condition of the
may have remained stationary, this inter lowest savagery.
Perhaps the issue between the long
lude of the Glacial period would have
required 133,333 years. Of course, it is and short dates of the Glacial period can
not implied that this was the real time, be most closely joined if we take that
or that the rate both of elevation and portion of it which comes nearest to
depression may not have been faster; historical times, and is known as the
but all the evidence points to its having Post-Glacial. Prestwich assigns to this
been gradual and not paroxysmal, as period a duration of “ 8,000 to 10,000
there are no traces of any contempora years or less ”—that is, a duration of not
neous earthquakes or volcanoes in Wales more than 2,000 or 3,000 years before
or Scotland. And, whatever the rate may the time when we know for certain that
have been, it is scarcely possible to sup a dense population and high civilisation
pose that it can have been such as to already existed in Egypt and Chaldaea.
enable us to compress the whole Glacial I I am not aware that he assigns any
�44
THE GLACIAL PERIOD
reason for this highly improbable date,
except the conjecture that the erosion of
river valleys may have gone on more
rapidly, owing to a greater rainfall.
Now, the duration of this Post-Glacial
period is a question, not of conjecture
or theory, but of a vast number of
definite and measurable facts. In the
British Islands these facts have been
carefully examined and ascertained with
great accuracy, mainly by the labours of
the Geological Survey. An eminent
officer of this Survey, Mr. T. Mellard
Reade, who has worked for many years
at these beds in Lancashire and Cheshire,
and is one of the best authorities
on the subject, read, in February,
1888, a paper before the Geological
Society, in which he gave a minute des
cription of the successive changes in
Post-Glacial times, by which the Mersey
valley and estuary were brought into
their present condition, with an estimate
of the time they may have required.
His estimate is “ that in round figures
60,000 years for Post-Glacial time is a
reasonable one, and, as represented by
these changes, well within the mark.”
This is not a random estimate, but
based on a careful calculation of the
different changes which are shown by
sections and borings to have actually
taken place. At the close of the Glacial
period the district was submerged, and
the valleys of the old Pre-Glacial rivers
were levelled up to a height of at least
200 feet by marine boulder-clay. The
land then rose until its surface became
an undulating upland plain, through
which the present rivers began to cut the
existing valleys. A mass of boulder
clay 200 feet in depth, and several miles
in width, must thus have been removed
by sub-aerial denudation before the next
stage, which consisted of a general
depression of the area, as is proved by
the fact that borings show a series of
estuarine deposits with marine shells in
places fifty feet thick, overlying the
boulder - clay, and levelling up the
inequalities of its surface due to sub
aerial erosion.
Above these silts and
clays is a peat-bed, containing stumps of
trees with their roots running down into
the clays below. This is a remarkable
deposit, for a similar submerged forest
bed is to be traced all round the shores
of the British Islands, from Devonshire
to the Orkneys. Evidently at a recent
period, geologically speaking, there has
been an age of forests which flourished,
and in their decay formed great beds of
peat, in localities where no trees have
grown within the Historical period.
Before these forests could have grown,
the marine silts and clays must have
been elevated above the sea to a suffi
cient height to become dry land and
covered with trees, and the climate must
have been very different from that at
present prevailing. It must have been
more of a continental and less of an
insular climate, and in all probability
the German Ocean was then dry land,
and the British Islands were connected
with an Europe which extended west
ward up to the ioo-fathom line. In no
other way can the existence of submerged
forests, and vast masses of peat with
remains of trees, be accounted for in
such isolated islands as those of Orkney
and Shetland, now swept by ocean blasts,
where no vestige of a tree has grown
for at least 2,000 years, when a Roman
author described them as “ carentes
sylva.”
But, at whatever height the land may
have stood during this Forest period, it
is evident that it must have subsided, at
any rate to the extent necessary to bring
the submerged forests to their present
level of some feet below low-water mark.
Or, indeed, some twenty-four feet more,
for there is evidence that a rise to this
extent has taken place, quite recently,
along a considerable portion of the
British coast, as shown by raised beaches.
When I say recently, I mean in geological
time, for in historical time there has
been no appreciable change of level
since the occupation of Britain by the
Romans, or for nearly 2,000 years.
In other regions, however, we have
still more conclusive evidence of the
�THE GLACIAL PERIOD
45
like the hippopotamus—which is found
great length of time which has elapsed
as far north as Yorkshire—-could by no
since any appreciable change has taken
possibility have lived in a country where
place in the physical geography of Europe,
the lakes and rivers were bound m ice
and in the present relative levels of sea
for a great part of the year. And still
and land. The localities described by
more conclusively by the presence in the
Homer in the Odyssey can be identified,
and the very cave and beach pointed south of France of a vegetation compris
ing the fig-tree and delicate Canary
out in Ithaca, on which Ulysses was
laurel in the region over which, at
landed by the Phoenician mariners. The
another period of the Glacial age,, herds
annals of Egypt carry us back . still
of reindeer roamed, feeding on lichens
farther, and show that no appreciable
and Arctic-willows, and accompanied, by
change can have taken place in the
the musk-ox, the glutton, the lemming,
levels of sea and land in the Eastern
and other exclusively Arctic animals.
Mediterranean for at least 7>oo° Years’
But, although the evidence for the
and probably for much longer.
great antiquity of the Glacial period
With these facts, even if we had no
other evidence than that of the sub seems to be conclusive, it must be con
merged forests, Professor Prestwich’s fessed that we are as far as ever from
estimate of 8,000 to 10,000 years for being able to assign any reliable explana
tion of the causes which produced it.
the whole Post-Glacial period down to
It came on suddenly, for the interval
the present time seems totally inadequate,
between the temperate Pliocene and the
and Mr. Mellard Reade’s of 60,000 years
extreme rigour of the first great ice-sheet
much more probable. In fact, it seems
is, geologically speaking, very short.
impossible that changes, such as. those
demonstrated to have occurred in the Only a few feet of clay and sand separate
the Cromer forest, in which the great
Mersey valley, can have been accom
southern elephant, the Elephas Meriplished within a period shorter than that
dionalis, and other Southern mammalia
which is shown by historical records to
roamed, from the boulder-clay of the
have elapsed in Egypt without perceptible
Scandinavian ice-sheet, which carried
change.
.
But, whether the duration of the Post- rocks from Lapland and Norway across
the North Sea and over hills and valleys
Glacial period be more or less, it is
almost to the centre of Europe. This
evidently a small fraction of the time
first period was the coldest, and after
which is required to account for the
several oscillations of heat and cold, each
work done during the preceding Glacial
period, or rather periods, for there is apparently less intense than its pre
decessor, the climate of the Northern
distinct evidence that there were several
advances and retreats of the ice-sheets, hemisphere finally settled down to its
_
and alternations of climates, during some present conditions.
These facts seem to negative most, ot
of which the winter temperature of
the theories, or rather guesses, which
Western Europe must have been higher
have been hazarded to account for this
than it is at present. The succession of
great and sudden refrigeration. It could
ice-sheets is clearly shown . by the
not be due to any cooling of the earth,
sections afforded by the coast cliffs of the
east of England, where four successive for this must have been gradual and pro
gressive, and the great cold of the first
boulder-clays are shown, separated, by
masses of sand and gravel deposited period, instead of decreasing, and dis
during the melting and retreat of each appearing, must have gone on increasing.
ice-sheet.
The alternation. of mild It has been supposed that the solar
Inter-Glacial with severe Glacial periods system on its journey through space may
is shown by the frequent presence, in have entered into, and emerged from,
regions very much colder than those of
caves of a Southern fauna, some of which,
�46
THE GLACIAL PERIOD
former ages or at present; but such a
When we inquire under what con
cause is at present little more than a con ditions great glaciers are now formed,
jecture. Nor is it possible that any we find them to be mainly heavy snow
alteration in the position of the earth’s falls combined with low temperature.
axis can have occurred within the earth, Thus the snow-fall is very heavy on the
for this would have disarranged its Pacific slope of the Sierra Nevada and
equatorial protuberance, which is pre coast range of Northern California and
cisely that of a fluid mass, rotating about British Columbia; but it does not, as
the present axis, and could not be formerly, produce glaciers, because the
altered without producing a complete temperature is not low enough to convert
cataclysm. No one can suppose that an the winter snow into the frozen “neve”
equatorial protuberance of more than which is the source of glaciers, and to
twenty miles can have been shifted produce the conditions under which the
through many degrees of latitude during accumulation finds its way to lower
the short interval between the close of levels by solid rather than by fluid rivers.
the Pliocene and the commencement of Again, extreme cold does not of itself
the Glacial period.
produce glaciers, as is seen in Northern
Neither can the theories which have Russia and Siberia. The influence of
been applied to earlier geological epochs ocean-currents is also apparent from the
of a warmer blanket of watery vapour effects of the Gulf Stream, which gives
and carbonic-dioxide in the atmosphere open winters to the coasts and islands
account for such a sudden refrigeration of Western Europe, in a latitude as high
and its gradual disappearance. The as that of the southern extremity of
conditions under which the Pre-Glacial Greenland.
Cromer forest flourished and those at
Here, then, are real causes which may
present existing in the same locality account for such a Glacial period as
cannot have been so different as to has been experienced, without invoking
imply a new order of cosmic or telluric utterly unknown and conjectural theories.
causes.
But there are considerable difficulties in
There remain only two at all plausible the way of accepting Lyell’s' theory as
theories—the astronomical one of Croll, the sole and sufficient explanation. The
and that of I,yell, who explains every suddenness with which the intense cold
thing by a different configuration of sea came on is one of them. It is difficult
and land. Croll’s theory explains many to suppose that such a great elevation
of the facts admirably, but, as we have of land in the North Atlantic as
seen, it cannot be accepted with con would be required took place, almost at
fidence, in the absence of proof that a once, in the short interval in which the
succession of Glacial periods has occurred Pliocene passed almost continuously
in previous geological epochs. Nor is it into the Quaternary. We are tolerably
very consistent with the fact that the certain, from the similarity of the fauna
cold period came on suddenly, and was and flora, that America was connected
greatest at first; while, if due to the with the Old Continent during the
eccentricity of the earth’s orbit, it ought Miocene period by a land passage across
to have come on gradually, and only . the North Atlantic, and yet there are
attained its maximum simultaneously no traces of a rigorous climate. On the
with that of the eccentricity. Lyell’s contrary, a climate almost sub-tropical
theory is, on the whole, most generally prevailed then in Greenland and Spitzaccepted, as actual experience shows bergen, far within the Arctic Circle.
that high land in high latitudes is a
Again, the Gulf Stream must always
cause of glacial conditions, and also have been an important factor in deter
that oceanic currents are a main factor mining the climate; but recent theories
in producing climate.
I as to the great geological antiquity of
�tertiary man
the Atlantic Ocean make it difficult to
conceive how this Stream can have een
greatly diverted from its present course,
in recent geological times. And t e
fact that the ice-cap extended much
farther to the south in North America
than in Europe makes it almost certain
that the influence of the warm Gulf and
cold Polar streams must have been felt
during the Glacial period, as they are
now. How otherwise can we account
for the fact that the difference of tem
perature between Europe and America
seems to have been almost the same
during the period of extreme cold m
both as it is now under temperate con
ditions? And the diversion of the
Gulf Stream would certainly tend to
produce less evaporation in the North
47
Atlantic, and therefore less fall of rain
or snow on Northern lands, whereas the
contrary is required to account for the
ice-caDS. We must conclude, therefore,
that, while Lyell’s theory affords the most
probable explanation, we are still in a
state of great uncertainty as to.the causes
which may have co-operated in bringing
about the last and greatest vicissitude of
climate, the Glacial period, which is so
interesting to us from its close connec
tion with the origin of man. The causes
and duration of the last Glacial period,
and whether there have been several,
and, if so, how many, of such periods
in former geological ages, are among the
problems of the future which are pressing
for solution.
Chapter V.
TERTIARY MAN
Antiquity of Man—Man part of Qu.atfna7
Fauna—What this Implies—Historical and
Neolithic Periods—Palaeolithic—Caves and
River Gravels—Glacial and Inter-Glacial
Deposits—Wide Distribution of Paleolithic
Implements in Early Quaternary Deposits—
Origin of Species—Evolution and Migration
—Diversity of Human Types—Objections o
Tertiary Man—Specialisation of type
Survival through Vicissitudes of Climate
Positive Evidence for—St. Prest—Thenay
Tagus Valley—Monte Aperto—Cuts in Bones
of Baleonotus—Elephas Meridionalis and
Halitherium—Auvergne Worked Flints; 1
Pliocene Tuffs-Castelnedolo-Human bones
in Pliocene—Olmo—Evidence from America
—Californian Auriferous Gravels—Tuolumne
and Calaveras Skulls—Age of GrayelsSkertchley’s Stone Implements—The Nampa
Image—Brazilian Caves—Pampiean Strata
Summary of Evidence.
geology, which only indirectly affect the
unscientific mass of mankind. It shatters
at a blow what had been for centuries
the axioms of the whole Christian world
respecting the origin of man,.his place
in creation, and the course of his develop
ment. A literal acceptance of the dates
and narrative of Genesis was assumed
to be the sole basis of knowledge on the
subject, and to question what was told
bv a Divine revelation was universally
considered to be alike ridiculous and
As far as science had a word to say it
was thought to confirm theology, for did
not Cuvier himself lay down as an axiom
that no human remains had been found
in a fossil state, or in conjunction with
the remains of any of the extinct animals
Of all the discoveries of modern science, And although a few scientific men here
that of the antiquity of man has been
and there, basing their ideas mainly on
the most startling. It is not like the
the dates of Egyptian monuments,
abstract discoveries of astronomy and
�48
TERTIARY MAN
pleaded for a somewhat longer period
than the date assigned by Archbishop
Usher, there may fairly be said to have
been a universal consensus of opinion
among all men, learned or unlearned,
that the existence of the human race on
our planet had not lasted longer than
some 6,000 or 7,000 years before the
present period. This was the universal
opinion only forty years ago, when in
1859 Mr. Prestwich read his memorable
paper to the Royal Society, confirming
the discoveries of M. Boucher de
Perthes, and proving beyond a possi
bility of doubt that flint implements,
fashioned by human hands, were found
in Quaternary gravels and brick-earths of
the valley of the Somme in juxtaposition
with remains of the mammoth and other
extinct animals, which must have been
deposited when the river ran at more
than one hundred feet above its present
level. The careful exploration of the
Devonshire caves of Brixham and Kent’s
Hole by committees of competent geolo
gists removed the last doubts on the
subject, and since then evidence has
accumulated so rapidly from all quarters
of the world that the existence of
Quaternary man has become as certain
a fact as that the earth revolves round
its axis.
Consider what this implies.
The
Tertiary epoch, in which mammalian life
for the first time appears prominently
and an approximation is made to existing
conditions, is itself but a small fraction
of the succession of geological ages since
our planet became the abode of animal
and vegetable life. At the outside, its four
divisions of Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene,
and Pliocene may together represent onetwentieth part of the thickness of fossiliferous strata from the Cambrian to the
Cretaceous. The Quaternary period
again is but a fraction of the Tertiary;
and the recent or existing epoch, includ
ing the Historic and Pre-Historic, is but
a fraction of the Quaternary. The recent
or Historical epoch, characterised by the
existing fauna, and, in the main, by the
existing climate and disposition of sea
and land, is certainly not less than 7,000
years old, when Egyptian records and
monuments show us a populous and
highly civilised nation already existing
in the valley of the Nile and civilised
empires of almost as early a date in
Chaldaea and China. The Pre-Historic
period, characterised by the existing
fauna and by neolithic man, must have
lasted much longer before such empires
could have been developed from the
rude and primitive civilisation shown by
the Scandinavian Kjokken-middens, the
Swiss Lake-dwellings, and other early
records of the Neolithic period. Borings
in the Nile valley have everywhere
brought up rude pottery and other
neolithic remains from depths below
the foundations of the oldest historical
monuments, which, at the present rate
of silting up by the annual inundations
of the river, imply an antiquity of about
26,000 years. This may not be quite
accurate as a chronological standard in
years, but undoubtedly this, and other
similar calculations from physical changes
during the Neolithic period, all point to
the conclusion that 15,000 or 20,000
years is the shortest time that can have
elapsed since its commencement.
Then comes a long break.
The
climate, geographical and physical con
ditions, and fauna have undergone great
changes when we next meet with traces
of man, and the Quaternary period
stretches back into the Pliocene, through
an immense though unknown duration
of time. This much, however, is known,
that it embraces two, if not more, great
Glacial periods, during the first and most
severe of which the northern halves of
Europe and America were buried under
an ice-cap, in places 5,000 or 6,000 feet
thick, resembling that of modern Green
land, and driving all terrestrial life before
it into more southern regions. These
Glacial periods alternated with long
Inter-Glacial ages, when the ice retreated,
and vegetation and animal life again
returned to their old abodes, and again
advanced and retreated, finally occupy
ing their present stations when the
�TER T1A R Y MA N
49
glaciers had shrunk into the valleys of and flint flakes and scrapers, are almost
identically of the same type.
the loftier mountains.
These facts have such an important
It is certain, also, that vast changes in
the physical geography and configuration bearing on the origin of the human race
of sea, land, and rivers. occurred during that it is desirable to consider them in
this period. The British Islands, or a some detail.
The discoveries, both of implements
large portion of them, were at one time
submerged to a depth of certainly i,5oo> and of human skulls and skeletons, have
and probably 2,000 or 2,500, feet beneath now been so numerous, especially in the
an Arctic sea, presenting nothing above caves of France, England, Germany, and
it but an archipelago of what are now Belgium, that it has enabled_ geologists
mountain peaks while at another time not only to prove the existence of
they were part of an European continent, Quaternary man, but to a considerable
then connected with Africa, and across extent to analyse and classify the succes
which huge extinct lions, tigers, bears, sive stages of his progress.
The earliest is that known as the Cave
elephants, and rhinoceroses roamed, and
left their remains in the caves of lime bear epoch, which occupies the lowest
stone districts and the sands and gravels position in the oldest caves, and in
of rivers when they flowed 100 feet which the rudest human implements are
or more above their present level. found associated with a preponderance
During part of this period a southern of bones belonging to this formidable
fauna, and even the hippopotamus, found animal. Thus, in Kent’s Cavern, in
their way as far north as Yorkshire, Devonshire, we have in descending
testifying to the existence of great rivers order:—
1. A layer of black mould, near the
flowing from the south across this
entrance, from three to twelve inches
Quaternary continent.
Now, three facts have come out clearly thick, containing successively relics of
the Historical and Neolithic periods,
from the latest research.
1. That man is a characteristic mem and bones of existing species of animals.
2. A bed of granular stalagmite from
ber of this Quaternary fauna just as
much as any of these extinct animals ; one to three feet thick, securely sealing
or, in other words, that, wherever you all below it.
3. Red cave earth, in places five to six
find the mammoth, cave bear, or woolly
rhinoceros, you may expect to find man j feet thick.
4. A bed of older crystalline stalagmite,
and where you find man in old deposits
you may expect to find the mammoth, in places twelve feet thick.
5. Breccia of angular stones; red-clay
cave bear, and rhinoceros.
2. That the man whom you thus find and bones to the rock floor of the cave.
In the lower deposits (4 and 5) the
is “ Palaeolithic man ”—that is,' man in
such a rude and savage state that he has bones are numerous, but almost exclu
not yet attained the art of polishing sively those of the cave-bear, and a few
stones, and uses implements roughly human implements have been found,
fashioned by chipping from flints or other including a flint hache or celt in the
breccia, which is the oldest deposit of
hard stones of the district.
3. That these rude implements are all. In the upper stalagmite, and cave
found in the caves and gravels of the earth beneath it, were found numerous
Quaternary period in Europe, Asia, human implements of various sorts,
Africa, and America—in fact, throughout including a bone needle and barbed
the whole world, so far as it has been harpoon, associated with remains of lion,
hitherto explored; and, wherever they cave-bear, mammoth, rhinoceros, hyena,
are found, the rudest and earliest imple reindeer, Irish elk, and other usual
ments, such as stone hatchets or celts, animals of the Quaternary fauna,
�5o
TERTIARY MAN
including one tooth of the Machairodus
or sabre-toothed tiger, which is charac
teristic of the Pliocene fauna.
Similar facts have been recorded in
such a multitude of caves in France,
Belgium, and Germany, especially in
those of the South of France, that it is
a perfectly well-established fact that the
Palaeolithic period may be divided
roughly into three, groups—an upper
one, in which the reindeer was very
abundant, and
human implements
showed a considerable advance in
civilisation; a middle stage, in which
the reindeer was scarcer and the
mammoth more abundant, with ruder
human implements, though still showing
considerable design; and the lowest of
all, with fewer remains of the mammoth
and more of the cave-bear, and with
fewer implements, and those exclusively
of stone of a very rude type.
This is exactly what might be expected
if the theory of evolution applies to the
human race. The first dawn of intelli
gence when primitive man emerged
from the animal state would show itself
by picking up natural stones to use as
tools or weapons of offence. He would
naturally select stones of the type of the
hache, with a sharp point for crushing in
the skull, and a blunt butt-end to give
weight to the blow and a firm grasp for
the hand. This would hardly require
more intelligence than that of the
gorilla, who, living in forests, uses
branches of trees as clubs; or of apes,
who throw stones at enemies. The next
stage would be to improve natural
stones, or supply them if deficient, by
chipping, so as to give a sharper and
more solid point or edge, and a similar
process would apply to flint chips used
as knives or scrapers.
After a while, some genius would dis
cover that, by hafting the hache and
attaching it as a lance to a long handle,
he could kill without coming to such
dangerous close quarters as was neces
sary when striking with the hand. This
would lead to finer chipping, both to
ensure penetration at the point, and to
fit the butt-end for attachment. And
finally the invention of the bow would
lead to diminished size and still finer
chipping for the arrow-head. From this
point the progress can be readily traced
to the invention of barbs for arrows and
harpoons, and the occasional substitution
of bone for stone as being more easily
scraped into the desired form; and from
these the evolution is uninterrupted up
to the beautifully finished weapons of
the Neolithic and Bronze periods. But
the starting-point is the rude stone
hache, such as is universally found in
the oldest deposits of caves and river
gravels.
There has been a good deal of discus
sion as to the purposes for which these
implements were employed; but there
can be little doubt that their primary
use was for killing large game and
human enemies.
The bushmen of
South Africa, who represent most nearly
this primitive savage state, use for this
purpose implements so closely resem
bling those of the river drifts that some
of those exhibited at the Colonial Exhi
bition, and labelled “pourle gros gibier,”
might have been specimens from Amiens
or St. Acheul.
A good deal of discussion has also
taken place among British geologists as
to the exact place, with reference to the
great Glacial periods, occupied by the
earliest drift and cave implements which
have been found in this country. Most
of them are Post-Glacial—that is, later
than the retreat of the last of the two or
more great ice-caps which extended over
all except a few of the southern counties
of England, during the Quaternary
period.
Some, however, are clearly
proved to be either Inter-Glacial or
Pre-Glacial, being overlaid by boulder
clay, as at Brandon, and in the caves of
Cae Gwyn in North Wales ; while as to
the lowest deposits of many caves, as,
for instance, the lower stalagmite and
bone breccia of Kent’s Cavern, there is
no distinct evidence except of extreme
antiquity, though the presumption is
strong that they are either Pre-Glacial or
�TER T1A R Y MA N
Inter-Glacial. Mr. Pengelley, who has
devoted years of research to Kent’s
Cavern, expresses an unhesitating opinion
that the lowest deposits are Pre-Glacial.
As fresh evidence accumulates, it all
points towards the existence of man on
British soil in Pre-Glacial, or very early
Glacial, times, and therefore seems, to
carry it back far beyond the period
assigned to it by Post-Glacial geologists.
Thus, quite recently, rude palseolithic
implements of unmistakeable human
design have been found near Wye, in
Kent, at an elevation of upwards of 300
feet, in a gravel which does not corres
pond with the existing valleys, but which
overspreads the chalk plateau of the
North Downs, and was drained by rivers
running southwards in a directly oppo
site course to that of the present streams.
Professor Prestwich, whose bias, as we
have seen, is towards shortening the
period of man’s antiquity, after a per
sonal examination of the locality, came
to the conclusion that this drift was
immensely older than the ordinary highlevel gravels of existing rivers, and in all
probability was Pre-Glacial.
Since Professor Prestwich’s paper was
read, similar palseolithic implements have
been found by Mr. Worthington Smith,
on the Chalk downs near Dunstable, up
to a height of 759 feet above Ordnance
datum, and some of them embedded in
the brown clay which, with gravel, covers
the chalk. But the question of the evi
dence afforded by England is compara
tively unimportant, for the wider induc
tion of continental experience settles
conclusively the general relations of
palseolithic man to the Quaternary
period. It is absolutely certain that in
the later stages of the Palaeolithic record,
when man had already made consider
able progress, and was able to draw and
carve figures of the contemporary animals
with a good deal of artistic skill, vast
herds of reindeer roamed over the plains
of Southern France and Germany, accom
panied by a group of Arctic animals,
such as the musk-ox and the lemming,
which are found even on the Italian side
gi
of the Alps. When this was the case in
Southern Europe, it is evident that all
its northern portion and higher, moun
tains must have been covered by ice and
frozen snow, and one of the great Glacial
periods must have been in full force.
All earlier deposits, therefore, in which
ruder implements and a more temperate
or even African fauna are found must of
necessity have been either Inter-Glacial
or Pre-Glacial, and there is no reason
able doubt that the earliest of such
deposits date back at least to the earlier
stages of the Quaternary period. We
must recollect that, when we talk of
geological periods, there was no real
break in the succession of time. We
merely use a convenient expression to
distinguish those formations between
which the evidence of the regular pro
gression of development has been lost
for such a long period, that when we
find it again the characteristic fauna and
flora have undergone a marked change.
But the idea of cataclysms and of re
peated destructions and miraculous
renovations of the whole vegetable and
animal worlds is completely exploded,
and every day affords fresh evidence of
the gradual process of transition from
one so-called epoch or formation to the
succeeding one. Thus types and even
species appear sparingly in one forma
tion, become abundant in another, and
finally die out and disappear, or persist
with slight modifications, as we see. in
the first appearance of fish in the Silurian
and of reptiles in the Carboniferous eras,
in each case in one or two geological
periods before they became the pre
dominant type. This applies specially
to the relation of the Quaternary to the
Pliocene and Miocene periods. It is
difficult to say definitely where one
begins and the other ends. Thus not
only do most of the great Mammalian
genera persist from the Miocene, through
the Pliocene and Quaternary, down to
the recent periods, but some specific
forms, such as the tapir, have continued
unchanged; while the ox, bear, horse,
wild boar, and other species first found
�52
TERTIARY MAN
in the Pliocene survive through the
Quaternary to the present day.
The gravels and sands of St. Prest,
the forest bed of Cromer and other Pre
Glacial formations, contain such a mix
ture of characteristic mammals that
some geologists have considered them
to be Pliocene, while others have pro
nounced them to be Quaternary.
What we really can affirm with certainty
is that as soon as we find a Quaternary
fauna firmly established we find man
forming an essential and characteristic
part of it. Can he be traced further
back into the Tertiary? The question
involves points of the highest interest,
for, as in the issue between short-time
and long-time geologists as to the dura
tion of the Glacial period, the issue really
is between evolution and miracle.
Even if the Glacial or Quaternary
periods were extended to the 200,000
years assigned to them by Lyell, Croll,
Geikie, and other leading geologists, the
difficulty as to man being a product of
evolution would be only postponed, and
not removed. By no possibility could
such conditions of the human race as
are found at the commencement of the
Quaternary period have been produced
by the natural laws applicable to the rest
of the animal creation, unless man can
be carried back into the Tertiaries.
For under what circumstances do we
find undoubted traces of the existence of
man upon the earth early in the Quater
nary period? Not in small numbers, or
in some limited locality, in which we
may suppose the human species to have
originated, and from which we can trace
the different races slowly developing and
radiating out to more distant regions.
No; when we find them lowest in the
Quaternary, we find them in large num
bers and practically all over the world,
from China to Peru, and from Northern
Europe to South Africa. This is so
important that I proceed to state the
facts in some detail, and specify the
localities in which stone hatchets and
knives of the rude type of the oldest
river drifts and lowest cave deposits have
been found in Europe, Asia, Africa, and
America.
The list is doubtless incomplete, and
every day is adding to it, but it is already
amply sufficient to prove the general
proposition.
In England they have been found in
the river drifts and deposits of the
Thames, the old Solent river, and all
the existing and Quaternary valley
systems south of a line drawn across it,
a little to the north of the Bedford Ouse;
and in the caves of all the limestone
districts of Yorkshire, Derbyshire, North
and South Wales, Somersetshire, and
Devonshire; and they are absent only
in those northern districts which were
covered with ice during the successive
phases of the Glacial period. In France
and Belgium they are met with in the
oldest drifts of the valleys of the Seine,
Somme, Meuse, Loire, Rhone, Garonne,
and other rivers, and in almost innumer
able caves and rock-shelters in all the
limestone districts, from Liege and
Maestricht to the Pyrenees, and on the
Mediterranean coast at Mentone. In
Spain and Portugal they appear in the
drifts of the Tagus and Ebro, and in
Italy in those of the Tiber and Arno.
In Central and Southern Germany and
Switzerland they are found in numerous
caves and river drifts, often deeply buried
under thick beds of the loess, or fine
glacial mud, which was deposited during
the melting of the great ice-fields.
In Asia these palaeolithic implements
associated with extinct animals have
been found almost everywhere where
search has been made for them. They
have been found in Asia Minor and
Syria, in the Caucasus, in Mongolia,
China, and Japan. India, which has
been examined by competent geologists,
affords the most authentic and complete
record. Here they have been found in
large numbers, both in the river drifts of
the Nerbudda, Godavery, and other
rivers, and in the laterite of Madras and
other places, which is a loamy land
deposit similar to that of the loess of
Europe and China. Implements almost
�TERTIARY MAN
53
exactly of the type of those of St. Acheul, twenty feet deep, in an old bed of gravel,
1
though made of quartzite, as. flints were with large boulders, which is exposed in
wanting, have been found, in Bengal, 1the cliffs of the river’s banks. A portion
Orissa, the Deccan, Scinde, Assam, and of a human lower jaw was found at a
<
other provinces; and some of them in depth of sixteen feet in the gravel, and
■
deposits which, from the extinct animals also a human skull of a peculiar type,
associated with them, experienced.geolo being small, long, and very thick.
We are able, therefore, to affirm as an
gists are doubtful whether to consider as
upper Pliocene or as the lowest Quater undoubted fact that, at the earliest stage
of the Quaternary period, the human
nary.
In Africa well-characterised palaeolithic species not only existed, but was already
implements have been found in Algeria widely diffused over four continents, and
and in the valley of the Nile; and at the occupied nearly the whole surface of the
other extremity of the continent, in habitable globe. How did man get
there ? Evidently by the same process
Natal and at places in Cape Colony.
America furnishes some of the most by which other fauna become distributed
conclusive proofs, both of the extreme over wide distances and extensive zoo
antiquity and of the wide diffusion of logical provinces—that is, by migration
man. Human implements, human skulls from one or more centres, where the
and bones, have been found associated different species were first developed in
with the mastodon and other extinct the course of evolution. In the case of
animals over nearly the whole area of land mammals this implies that there
the United States; in Mexico, Brazil, has been an uninterrupted land connec
and in the pampas of Buenos Ayres and tion within recent geological periods.
There is no fact better established by
Patagonia; associated in South America
geological and zoological research than
with the Glyptodon and other extinct
mammals of its peculiar fauna. In one that the existing fauna are not uniformly
instance, in Buenos Ayres, a human alike throughout the world, but are
skull was found under a huge carapace located in separate provinces, bounded
of this extinct armadillo, which it was by some barrier of sea, mountain, or
conjectured might have been used as a desert, insurmountable by the ordinary
roof for a hut. In these South American animal species. The most signal instance
cases, however, as well as in those which of this is that of the absolute separation
will presently be referred to from Cali of the two totally dissimilar faunas of
fornia, the geological age is uncertain, Southern Asia and Australia, by the
and they are considered by some to be narrow strait of Lombok, not above
evidences of Pliocene, by others of early twenty miles wide, which is a deep sea
Quaternary, man; while in other instances fissure or channel, dating back to very
they are probably Post-Glacial, or, at remote geological times. On the other
latest, Inter-Glacial. In one typical hand, in the north temperate zone of
case, that of the discoveries of Mr. Europe and Asia one may travel from
Abbott in the drift of the Delaware the Atlantic coast of Western Europe to
valley at Trenton, in New Jersey, there the Eastern coast of China without
can be little hesitation in referring them observing any marked change in the
to the same early Quaternary period as familiar fauna and flora, the extension of
the corresponding finds in the oldest which to the British Islands and Japan
river drifts of Europe and Asia, though leaves no doubt that they recently formed
it is not yet fully admitted. The Trenton part of the same continent; while the
implements are of a granular argillite,, existence of so many of the same forms
closely resembling in size and form the: in North America makes it certain that
flint implements of the valley of the: there was a land connection, at no
Somme; and they are found sometimes> distant geological date, between the Old
l
�TERTIARY MAN
and New Worlds, by what is now the the exception of the Esquimaux and
North Atlantic, and probably also by Fuegians, there is little doubt that they
Behring’s Straits. The familiar instance would creep onwards along the sea-coast,
of the absence of snakes in Ireland accumulating their Kjokken-middens as
shows clearly how this extension of a they went, until they had occupied the
fauna was accomplished by gradual whole continent. But the process must
migration. Ireland was connected with necessarily have been a very slow one,
England and with continental Europe and there must have been already a con
long enough to enable most forms of the siderable population and pressure on
European fauna to occupy it. Herds of the means of subsistence, before these
Irish elk, deer, oxen, wolves, and other Quaternary men could have spread over
animals roamed over it; but some of the nearly the whole habitable globe, and
slower-moving reptiles had not had time left their remains where we now find
to reach it before it became finally them. . The fact that they are so found
separated from England by St. George’s makes it certain that they must have had
Channel.
a long series of ancestors, and that the
The only alternative to migration is first origins of the human race must be
the special miraculous creation of every sought in a vastly more remote antiquity.
separate species which has ever existed The immense time required for such
throughout the vast range of geological migrations will be apparent when we
time, and this idea is as thoroughly consider that it is not only a question of
exploded as that of the absence of traversing such great distances, but much
snakes in Ireland being due to the prayers more of becoming gradually acclimatised
of St. Patrick in the seventh or eighth during the passage from Arctic, or tem
century. It breaks down under the perate, through tropical regions. Evi
weight of the innumerable instances of dently the existing Esquimaux or Lap
special miracles, which must be invoked landers could not reach Patagonia or
on the most trivial occasions. Thus it South Africa without passing through a
has been shown that more than 160 wide extentof hot andpestilential country,
miraculous creations must have taken in which the northern immigrants could
place to account for the separate species only live by the gradual survival of new
of land-shells alone which are peculiar types adapted to the altered conditions.
to the little group of the Madeira Islands.
Another well-established fact points
Admitting, then, evolution to be the to the great antiquity of the human race
cause of the origin of species, and when those early palaeolithic implements
migration for their diffusion, it must be were so widely distributed. A sufficient
observed that the human species is number of skulls and skeletons have
specially organised for extensive migra been found associated with these imple
tion. . The structure of man, and his ments to enable ethnologists to classify
intelligence, even in the most rudi them as belonging to essentially different
mentary form, enable him to overcome races. Thus the skulls found in America
obstacles and resist changes of climate all present distinctive characters of the
and environment, which would be fatal high and narrow type now existing among
to most of the brute creation. And, as the various native races of that continent.
a matter of fact, in historical times we In Europe those of the Canstadt type,
know that New Zealand and the Pacific which is considered to be the oldest,
Islands have been peopled by migration; and of which the celebrated Neander
and that races like the Bushmen, thal skull is an extreme instance, are
Esquimaux, and Australians, which come very dolicocephalic, or long-headed, with
nearest to the state of primitive men, markedly projecting brows, differing
are essentially migratory. If the popu essentially from those of the Cro-Magnon
lation of America were annihilated, with type, which represent an exceptionally
�TERTIARY MAN
tall race with a good cranial development,
equal to that of many modern European
races j while the Furfooz type, again, is
that of a dwarfish race, with small round
heads, resembling the modern Lap
landers. This diversity of race argues
for a long departure from the original
type, involving development through a
long series of ages. We know from the
Egyptian monuments that a period of
5,000 years has been insufficient to pro
duce any perceptible change in the type
of the Negro, the Copt, the Semite, and
other races of Africa and Western Asia.
It is remarkable, however, that, while
this diversity of race type is thus early
found, there is almost perfect identity
among the early palaeolithic implements
found in regions the most distant from
one another. Rude stone hatchets,
knives, and scrapers are of the same
form and fabricated in the same way
whether they come from the gravels of
the Delaware, the Thames, the lagus,
the Godavery, or the Yang-tse-Kiang;
from the caves of Devonshire, the deserts
of Mongolia, or the plains of Patagonia
and South Africa. The only apparent
exception is afforded by the stone imple
ments found in the auriferous gravels of
California, which consist mainly of rude
stone mortars and pestles, resembling
those used for pounding acorns by
modern tribes of Digger Indians,
inhabiting the same districts. This
uniformity of industrial type over such
wide spaces shows that the peopling of
the earth by migration must have been
effected while the human race was still
in that uniform state of rudimentary
intelligence which had not got beyond
the first stage of supplementing natural
stones by rude chipping.
Thus far we have been going on
ascertained facts, admitted by all com
petent geologists ; but in taking the next
step, and carrying man back into the
Tertiary period, we enter on new ground,
where positive evidence is scanty and
disputed, and where probabilities and
theoretical preconceptions are, to a great
extent, invoked to supply its want.
55
Among English geologists especially
there still remains a strong desire to
abridge as much as possible the time of
man’s existence upon earth. The evi
dence furnished by England, which has
been almost entirely covered during
recent geological times by two or more
successive ice-sheets, is comparatively
weak to carry back the evidence for
palaeolithic man, even into Pre-Glacial
times, and some good authorities still
contend for all such remains in this
countrybeingPost-Glacial. Others, again,
of less weight, and the general public who
have a smattering of science, have a
vague fear that every extension of man’s
antiquity carries them further away from
the old theological standpoint, and
brings them nearer to the proof that
man is the product of evolution from
an animal ancestry. The evidence of
facts has, however, become too strong
to maintain this ground, and, the Qua
ternary line of defence being broken
through, the defenders of old ideas
have fallen back on their next entrench
ment, and insist that man, if not I ostDiluvian or Post-Glacial, is, at any rate,
Post-Tertiary.
We pass here from the region of facts
universally admitted into that of proba
bilities, and statements of facts which,
although probable in themselves, and
apparently well authenticated, . are still
disputed by competent authorities. Let
us first deal with the probabilities. for
and against the existence of Tertiary
man. It is objected that an animal so
highly organised and specialised as man
can hardly have come into existence in
geological periods characterised by a
fauna, so much nearer the primitive and
generalised type of Mammals, as those
of the Pliocene, and still more of the
Miocene and Eocene eras. The answer
to this is that such a highly specialised
specimen of the anthropoid type as the
Pliopithecus undoubtedly did exist in
the Middle-Miocene. This, which was
an anthropoid ape, as highly organised
as the chimpanzee or gorilla, and of a
stature equal to that of man, has been
�56
TERTIARY MAN
found in that formation in the South of man in the Quaternary period, sprung
France and in Germany. A slightly suddenly into life along with him by
lower form, the Dryopithecus, has also some act of miraculous creation, in the
been discovered. Now, looking at man teeth of all the accumulated and irre
simply as an animal, the anthropoid ape sistible evidence which shows them
is just as much a specialised develop existing in the upper Tertiary, and traces
ment of the primitive quadrumanous their ancestry and lines of progressive
type, as man. Monkeys and apes are development through the Miocene into
specialised for life in forests and climbing the earliest Eocene period.
trees, as man is for life on the earth and
Having thus cleared the ground of
walking; but in their anatomical struc probabilities, I proceed to state the
ture they correspond bone for bone and positive evidence for discoveries of
muscle for muscle. If there is any human remains in Tertiary formations,
truth in evolution, they must have premising that it is nearly all the result
descended, not necessarily one from the of the last few years, and is rapidly
other, but both from a common ancestor. accumulating; and that there is no
Again, it is said that man could not reason to expect that it will ever be
have survived for such a succession of abundant, as the more nearly we approach
geological periods during which so many to the time and place of man’s origin,
other species have died out and dis the narrower must be the area, and the
appeared. But here, again, the answer fewer the stations, at which we can hope
is that many of the animals which are to find his traces, and the greater the
associated with man as part of the effect of denudation in obliterating those
Quaternary fauna have, in fact, survived traces.
unchanged from the Pliocene, and with
The first well-authenticated instance
slight modifications from the Miocene is that of St. Prest, near Chartres, on
periods, and that man’s larger brain, and the Eure, one of the tributaries of the
consequently greater intelligence, must Seine. Here the lowest gravels of the
have given him a better chance of present river rest on gravels of what
survival than in the case of elephants, Lyell, after personal examination, con
rhinoceroses, oxen, and horses. If man sidered to be an earlier Pliocene river,
could survive, as we know he did, the and which are characterised by the
severe and extreme fluctuations of the older forms of elephant and rhinoceros—
different Glacial, Inter-Glacial, and Post- the Elephas Meridionalis and Rhinoceros
Glacial periods, what was there in the Leptorhinus, instead of by the Quater
milder and more equable conditions of nary Mammoth and Rhinoceros Tichothe Pliocene and Miocene to have pre rinus. In these older gravels have been
vented his existence ?
found stone implements, and bones of
The theoretical objections, therefore, the Elephas Meridionalis with incisions
to Tertiary man seem to be of the evidently made by a flint knife worked
weakest and vaguest character, while, on by a human hand. This was disputed
the other hand, the probabilities in its as long as possible, but Quatrefages, a
favour are so cogent as almost to amount very cautious and competent authority,
to demonstration. How could man, states in his latest work, published in
early in the Quaternary period, have 1887, that it is now established beyond
already found his way to the remotest the possibility of doubt. It is con
regions of the globe, and developed a tended, however, by some geologists,
varie.ty of types and races, if his first that this formation, though always con
appearance on earth lay within the sidered to be Pliocene until human
limits of that period? One might as remains were found in it, is in reality
well suppose that elephants, horses, and a very low stage of the Quaternary, or
all the other mammals associated with a transition bed between it and the
�TERTIARY MAN
57
Pliocene. The instance, therefore, been deceived by workmen, and mis
cannot be accepted as absolutely con taken in supposing that flints, which
clusive for anything more than tne really came from overlying Quaternary
existence of man at the earliest com strata, were found in the Miocene
mencement of the Quaternary period, deposit. This hardly seems probable in
though the evidence all points to the the case of such an experienced observer,
gravels being really Pliocene. The and, had it been so, the implements
same uncertainty applies to the cele might have been expected to show, the
brated discovery by the Abbe Bourgeois, usual Quaternary types of celts, knives,
of flint knives and scrapers in the and arrow-heads fashioned by percussion,
Miocene strata of Thenay, near Blois. whereas the specimens found all bear a
When these were first produced, the distinct type, being scrapers and borers
opinion of the best authorities was very of small size, and partly fashioned by
equally divided as to their being the fire. The other supposition is based on
work of human hands; but subsequent no evidence, and contrary to all we
discoveries have produced specimens as know of the limited intelligence of
to which it is impossible to entertain any any anthropoid ape. If it were, true,
doubt, especially the flint knife and two we might at once say that the missing
small scrapers figured by M. Quatre- link had been discovered, as a Dryo
fages' at p. 92 of his work on Races pithecus, able to do what the Mincopics
humaines. They present all the charac are now doing, might well have been the
teristic features by which human design ancestor of man. On the whole, the
is inferred in other cases—viz.,. the bulb evidence for these Miocene implements
of percussion and repeated chipping, by seems to be very conclusive, and the
small blows all in the same direction, objections to have hardly any other
round the edge which was intended for ground than the reluctance to admit the
great antiquity of man, which so long
use.
The human origin of these implements opposed itself to the recognition of the
has been greatly confirmed by the dis discoveries of M. Boucher de Perthes.
covery that the Mincopics of the A similar later discovery of flints at. Puy
Andaman Islands manufacture whet Courny strongly confirms this position.
The same class of objection applies to
stones or scrapers almost identical with
those of Thenay, and by the same the palaeolithic hatchets found by M.
process of using fire to split the stones Ribiero in beds of the valley, of the
into the requisite size and shape. Tagus, at Oita, in Portugal, which have
These Mincopics are not acquainted always been considered as being of the
with the art of chipping stone into celts Upper Miocene. It is thought possible
or arrow heads, but use fragments of that they may have fallen at some distant
large shells, of which they have a great period from overlying Quaternary gravels,
abundance, or of bone or hard wood; and and become mixed up with the upper
the scrapers are employed in bringing bed of the Miocene. The congress of
these to a sharper point or finer edge. geologists, therefore, who met at Lisbon
The main objection, therefore, at first a few years ago, thought it wise, to
raised to the authenticity of these relics suspend their opinion as to the Tertiary
of Miocene man, that they did not afford age of M. Ribiero’s implements.
Other discoveries, however, of the
conclusive proof of design, may be con
sidered as removed, and the objectors same nature .seem to be absolutely
have to fall back on the assumption conclusive for man’s existence, at least
either that the implements were fabri as far back as into the Pliocene era. An
cated by some exceptionally intelligent Italian geologist, M. Capellini, has found
Dryopithecus, or that, as Prestwich in the Pliocene strata of Monte Aperto,
supposed, the Abbe Bourgeois may have near Sienna, bones of the Balaeonotus, a
�58
TERTIARY MAN
well-known species of a sort of Pliocene had found in a Miocene deposit a* Billy.
whale, which are scored by incisions
The only incisions on bones from very
obviously made by a sharp-cutting instru early strata which these experts have
ment, such as a flint knife, guided by admitted as undoubtedly made by sharp
design and by a human hand. At first cutting instruments held by a human
it . was contended that these incisions hand are those above mentioned—viz.,
might have been made by the teeth of on the Elephas Meridionalis of St. Prest,
fishes, but as specimens multiplied, and and the Pliocene Bateeonotus of Monte
were carefully examined, it became evi Aperto, and in the humerus of a Halident that no such explanation was therium from the Upper Miocene of
possible. The cuts are in regular curves, Pouance (Maine et Loire). This shows
and sometimes almost semi-circular, such with what caution and scrupulous good
as a sweep of the hand could alone have faith the experts have worked who bear
caused, and they invariably show a clean- testimony to facts which, if admitted,
cut surface on the outer or convex side, are a conclusive demonstration of the
to which the pressure of a sharp edge existence of Tertiary man.
was applied with a rough or abraded
But, in addition to these instances
surface on the inner side of the cut. from cut bones, there are others equally
Microscopic examination of the cuts certain and well-authenticated. In the
confirms this conclusion, and leaves no region of the extinct volcanoes of
doubt that they must have been made Auvergne, in which the celebrated fossil
by such an instrument as a flint knife, man of Denise was discovered under a
held obliquely and pressed against the stream of lava, embedded in a volcanic
bone while in a fresh state with con tuff, which, however, was considered to
siderable force, just as a savage would be probably Quaternary, there are older
do in hacking the flesh off a stranded lava streams overlaying tuffs and gravels,
whale. Cuts exactly similar can now be which, from the fossils contained in them,
made on fresh bone by such flint knives, are undoubtedly Tertiary. From one of
and in no other known or conceivable these Tertiary gravels at Puy Courny, M.
way. It seems, therefore, more like Rames, a competent geologist, assisted
obstinate prepossession than scientific by MM. Badoche, Chibret, and Grandscepticism to deny the existence of vaux, obtained at three different points a
Tertiary man if it rested only on this considerable number of flint implements,
single instance.
which, if found in any Quaternary deposit,
As regards the evidence from cut would have been accepted without hesi
bones, it is very conclusive, for expe tation as of human origin. They com
rienced observers, with the aid of the prise small and rude specimens of the
microscope, have no difficulty in distin types found in the lowest Quaternary
guishing between cuts which may have gravels, such as celts, knives, and scrapers,
been made accidentally or by the teeth and present all the characters by which
of fishes and those which can only have artificial are distinguished from natural
been made in fresh bone by a sharp flints in those formations—viz., bulbs of
cutting instrument such as a flint knife. percussion, and chippings in a deter
In fact, the best authorities on the minate direction on the sides and points
subject, such as M. Mortillet, the intended for use; while no such chip
Curator of the Museum at St. Germain, pings appear on other parts of the flint,
M. Hamy, and M. Quatrefages, while as must have been the case if they had
admitting the authenticity of the cuts been the result of casual blows on natural
submitted to them in a few cases, have flints.
rejected it in numerous others, as in the
M. Quatrefages, by whom the subject
well-known instance of the grooves on is fully discussed, and the objects
the bones of a rhinoceros which Delaunay figured in his recent work, lays great
�TERTIARY MAN
stress on the fact that, while the beds
contain five different sorts of flints, those
which present traces of design are con
fined exclusively to one description of
flint, which is most easily manufactured,
and best adapted for human use. He
observes with much force that a torrent
capable of tearing flints from their bed
and rolling them on, with collisions
violent enough to imitate artificial chip
ping, could not have exercised a selec
tion and confined its operations to one
only out of five different descriptions of
flints. He shows also that the worked
edges exhibit, when closely examined,
both intentional chipping and fine
parallel striae, as from repeated use in
cutting or scraping, while nothing of the
sort is to be seen on the sides left in the
natural state, though they are often as
sharp, or even sharper.
It only remains to add that these
specimens were submitted by M. Rames
to two Congresses of French geologists—
the first at Blois, when doubts were
expressed in some quarters ; the second
one at Grenoble, when the Congress
decided that the existence of Tertiary
man was in this case fully established.
Italy supplies the next instance, and
it is a very remarkable one, for here
competent geologists have found, not
merely implements or cut bones showing
human design, but man himself, includ
ing skeletons of several individuals. The
discovery was made on the flank of the
hill of Castelnedolo, near Brescia, in a
bed which is identified by its fossils as
belonging to the Lower Pliocene. The
excavations were made with the utmost
care, in undisturbed strata, by M.
Ragazzoni, a scientific man of good
reputation, assisted by M. Germani, and
the results confirmed by M. Sergi, a
well-known geologist, who visited the
spot and inquired minutely into all
the circumstances. According to their
united statement, some human bones
were found in this deposit by M. Ragaz
zoni as far back as i860. This led to
further excavations, made at different
times, and with all the precautions
59
pointed out by experience. The deposit
was removed in successive horizontal
layers, and nowhere was the least trace
found of the beds having been mixed or
disturbed. At a considerable depth in
it were found the bones of four indivi
duals—a man, a woman, and two chil
dren, which presented the same appear
ance of fossilisation as the bones of
extinct animals found in the same
deposit. The female skeleton was almost
entire, and the fragments of the skull
were sufficiently perfect to admit of their
being pieced together so as to show
almost its whole form.
This preservation of the entire skeleton
might lead to the conjecture that it had
come there as the result of a subsequent
burial; but this supposition is negatived
by the undisturbed nature of the beds,
and by the fact that the other bones
were found scattered in the same stratum,
at considerable distances from the per
fect skeleton. M. Quatrefages sums up
the evidence by saying, “that there exists
no serious reason for doubting the dis
covery of M. Ragazzoni, and that, if made
in a Quaternary deposit, no one would
have thought of contesting its accuracy.
Nothing, therefore, can be opposed to it
but theoretical a priori objections, similar
to those which so long repelled the exist
ence of Quaternary man; objections which
have long since been refuted, and shown
to be absolutely inconsistent with a
multitude of established facts.”
If we accept this conclusion, this
remarkable consequence follows: that
man, so far back as the Early Pliocene
period, was perfectly human, for the
skull and bones present no marked
peculiarity, or approximation to an
animal type. The skull is of fair capa
city, and very much what might be
expected of a female of the Canstadt
race. But, if this be so, it necessarily
puts back the origin of the human species
to a vastly more remote antiquity, which
can hardly be less than that of the Early
or Middle Miocene, in which the remains
of the great anthropoid Dryopithecus
have been found.
�6o
TERTIARY MAN
A skull very similar to the above has
also been found in Italy, in a lacustrine
deposit at Olmo, near Arezzo, on the
flank of the Apennines; but, although it
was found at a depth of nearly fifty feet
from the surface, and some feet lower
than a layer of clay containing a tooth of
the Elephas Meridionalis, a species which
in Northern Europe scarcely survived
the Pliocene period, the whole forma
tion is considered, from other remains
found in it, as probably belonging to an
early Quaternary age, and therefore not
affording satisfactory evidence of Ter
tiary man. It can only be quoted as
affording some corroboration of the dis
coveries of Capellini and Ragazzoni, by
showing that man has existed in Italy
for an immense period, and is found
in deposits between which and the
Pliocene there is no abrupt line of de
marcation.
This completes the evidence from the
Old World. Turning to the New World,
we find, both in North and South
America, numerous proofs of the exist
ence of man from a very remote anti
quity; but there is some difficulty in
arriving at definite conclusions as to
their Tertiary date, from the fact that the
succession of geological periods does not
exactly correspond on the two sides of the
Atlantic. America has been said to be,
in some respects, a whole period behind
Europe and Asia in this succession.
Thus the mastodon, which in the Old
World is a characteristic Miocene and
Pliocene species, and did not survive
into the Quaternary, is found in America
in the latest drifts, and even in peat
mosses associated with neolithic flint
arrows, and not impossibly survived into
the Historical period. The bear family,
on the other hand, which is so conspic
uous in the old formations of Europe,
is not found in America until the Quater
nary. The extinct fauna also of South
America is, like the present, that of a
distinct zoological province from either
North America or Europe, so that we
cannot assume that the Zenglodon and
other huge ancestral types of armadillos
and ant-eaters were necessarily of an
age corresponding to our Tertiary.
With this reservation, I proceed to
state some of the leading instances which
have been referred to by American geo
logists as establishing the existence of
Tertiary man on that continent.
The most important case is that of the
skulls and stone implements which have
been found in the auriferous gravels of
California, the evidence for which, and
for other ancient remains in North
America, has been very carefully summed
up by the distinguished naturalist, Mr.
Alfred Wallace, in an article in the
Nineteenth Century of November, 1887.
These gravels are the result of an enor
mous denudation of the Sierra Nevada,
which has filled up all the great valleys
on its Pacific slope with thick deposits
of debris, forming in some cases detached
hills, and even mountains, of consider*
able height. While this was going on
there were repeated volcanic eruptions
in the higher range, giving rise to beds
of lava, tuff, and ashes, which are fre
quently inter-stratified with the gravels;
and, finally, the close of the volcanic
period was marked by a great flow of
basaltic lava, which spread in a nearly
level capping over the whole surface of
the country. This, and the subjacent
beds of gravels and tuffs, has since been
cut down by the action of the present
rivers, to a depth of sometimes 1,500 or
2,000 feet, leaving a series of isolated,
tabular hills composed, on the upper
part, of a horizontal layer of basalt,
varying from 50 to 200 feet in thickness,
and, in the lower part, of 800 to 1,500
feet of gravels, lava-beds, and tuffs.
Thus what was once a single lava stream,
or succession of lava streams, is now a
series of detached hills, the tops of
which form parts of one gently-inclined
plane, sloping from the mountains
towards the plains, and now, in some
cases, 1,000 feet or more above the
adjacent valleys.
The present rivers have in some places
cut down the lavas and gravels to the
beds of ancient rivers, which flowed in,
�TERTIARY MAN
different courses from the existing ones ;
and it is in the beds of these ancient
rivers that the principal accumulations
of gold are found. Hence an enormous
amount of the oldest gravels has been
excavated in working for gold, and . in
some of these workings human remains
have been found, associated with animal
remains, which are all of extinct species,
entirely distinct from those that now
inhabit any part of the North American
continent. Some of the genera, such as
Hipparion, Auchenia, and Elotherium,
would, if found elsewhere, undoubtedly
be taken to denote a Pliocene, if not a
Miocene, formation.
The vegetable
remains also indicate a totally different
flora from that now prevailing in Cali
fornia, and which Professors Lesqueraux
and Whitney—the latter the geologist of
the State, and well-known from his
Report on the Auriferous Gravels of the
Sierra Nevada—consider to be of Plio
cene age, with some affinities to Miocene.
Numerous stone implements have been
found associated with this extinct fauna
and flora in nine different counties, and
human bones in five widely-separated
localities. The two most remarkable
instances of the latter are :—
1. The Tuolumne skull. A fragment
brought up from a shaft in Table Moun
tain, at a depth of 180 feet below the
surface, beneath a bed of three feet of
consolidated volcanic tuff, with fossil
leaves and branches, over which is a
deposit of seventy feet of clay and
gravel.
2. The Calaveras skull. This was
found in 1866, under four beds of lava,
and in the fourth bed of gravel from the
surface, embedded in a rounded mass
of earthy and stony matter containing
bones.
The cemented gravel was
removed with great difficulty, and dis
closed a human skull, nearly entire, with
several bones of the human foot and
other parts wedged into the cavity of the
skull, the whole being in a fossilised
condition, like that of the animal bones
in similar formations. Human bones
have been found in two other instances
61
—one by an educated observer, under a
bed eight feet thick of lava; and more
recently a discovery has been announced
ofy rude stone implements in Tertiary
gravels of Stone Creek, Colorado, asso
ciated with shells which are considered
by conchologists to be not later than of
the older Pliocene.
The Calaveras case is, however, the
typical one, owing to its having been
extracted from the matrix by Professor
Wyman, and all the circumstances of the
find thoroughly investigated by Professor
Whitney. When the discovery was first
announced, it was objected that the skull
was possibly taken by the miners from
some Indian grave. But this objection
disappears before the fact that it was
fossilised, and embedded in a matrix
which no forger could have counterfeited,
and even more conclusively from the
great number of instances in which
human bones and implements have been
discovered at different localities . in
similar formations. Even the polemical
imagination of the Duke of Argyll could
hardly invent a conspiracy of so many
groups of Californian miners, at different
times, and in different localities, to hoax
scientists, or to supply proofs for or
against the Darwinian theory of the
descent of man. Nor would men intent
on such a fraud have buried fragments
instead of whole skulls, and stone imple
ments of a type different from that which,
if they had known enough on these sub
jects to conceive the fraud, they must
have been aware would have been
expected.
For the nature of these
implements is an exception to the general
rule, that the oldest type found through
out the world, from South Africa . to
China, is everywhere the same, consist
ing of rudely-chipped celts, knives, and
scrapers, the Californian implements
consisting of stone plates or mortars, and
pestles or pounding stones, very like
those used by some living tribes of
Indians for crushing acorns.
Quatrefages, assuming that these im
plements were used for pounding corn,
justly considers it highly improbable that.
�62
TERTIARY MAN
agriculture could have been known at
such an early period, and that Pliocene
man in California could have been so far
in advance of his Quaternary brother on
the Atlantic side of the continent, as
shown by the rude celts and knives of
the Trenton gravels. But if they were
used for crushing acorns, the argument
is not so clear, for a tribe of primitive
savages, living among oak forests, might
use flat stones and pounders for the pur
pose, while hunting tribes might-use rude
celts, as the bushmen do at the present
day. Either form seems equally within
the range of the early dawn of human
intelligence, and not much in advance of
that of the gorilla or chimpanzee.
Equally futile is Sir J. Dawson’s sur
mise that the skull may have been
dropped into some old mining shaft.
There is no evidence for any prehistoric
mining for gold in California, such as is
found in the copper region of Lake
Superior; and it is certain that, if any
such had existed, it must have been con
fined to the superficial deposits. Noth
ing but an intrepid determination to
ignore facts could have led to such a
supposition. The Calaveras skull is not
a solitary instance, but one of several
human bones, and hundreds of human
implements, which have been found, at
wide distances apart, in these auriferous
gravels, and often underneath beds of
dense basalt, which could by no pos
sibility have been pierced without the
aid of metal tools and blasting powder.
Objections like these prove nothing
except that the objector is in the theologico-scientific frame of mind, which
sees everything relating to the origin of
man through the medium of the first
chapter of Genesis.
The only serious objection to assum
ing these Californian discoveries to be a
conclusive proof of the existence of
Tertiary man arises from the fact that
several good American geologists dispute
Professor Whitney’s conclusion that these
auriferous gravels are of Tertiary origin.
They consider that such an enormous
accumulation could only have been
formed during a Glacial period, when
frost and ice were grinding down the
mountains, and swollen rivers, from
melting snow and glaciers, sweeping the
debris down the valleys into the plains.
This leaves doubt as to their origin in
the comparatively mild and equable
climate of the Pliocene period, but as
regards the question of the great anti
quity of man it does not much signify
to which period we assign them. Any
time subtracted from the Pliocene has to
be added to the Quaternary, for the fact
remains _ unquestioned that, since man
existed in California, valleys have been
filled up by drifts from the waste of moun
tains toadepth in some casesof 1,500 feet;
these covered by a succession of tuffs^
ashes, and lava streams, from volcanoes
long since extinct, and finally cut down
by the present rivers through beds of
solid basalt, and through this accumula
tion of lavas and gravels. Such an
operation corresponds in time with that
by which the great river systems of the
Old World were sculptured out from a
table-land, standing, in some cases, many
hundred feet higher than at present, as
shown by the deposit of the loess, which
is universally recognised to be an
accumulation of fine glacial mud.
A later contribution towards the anti
quity of human remains in California is
contained in a paper read to the Anthro
pological Society by Mr. Skertchley, the
well-known geologist, to whom we are
indebted for the discovery of palaeolithic
implements beneath the chalky boulder
clay at Thetford, in Norfolk.
During a visit to the Spring Valley
gold-mine, in one of the tributary valleys
of the Sacramento River, he ascertained
the following facts: This mine is worked
by hydraulic jets directed on the sands
and gravels of an old river which once
flowed in an impetuous course down a
steep gradient from the Sierra Nevada.
It has long since ceased to flow, and the
bed of the old river is now buried under
500 feet of its own deposits, capped in
places by 100 feet of basalt, which has
flowed in wide sheets from long-since
�TERTIARY MAN
63
variety of other sources as to the frequent
discovery of human implements, and
even, in a few instances, of human
1. Basalt cap
...
... 25 to 100 feet.
skulls, from similar auriferous . gravels
2. White sands and gravels
45° >>
over a wide range of country in Cali
3. Blue gravel, with boulders 2 to 15 >>
fornia. Whether Tertiary or not, it is
4. Blue gravel, with large
evident that they must carry back the
boulders
...
•••
5° »
5. Bed rock —metamorphoid
date of man’s existence in the north
cretaceous slates.
west of America to a period vastly older
Stone mortars, rudely chipped, occur than that of 25,000 or 30,000 years
abundantly in the white sand (No. 2), assigned to him by the latest guess of
about 300 having been found; and one Professor Prestwich.
is said to have occurred in No. 3. ' Another recent discovery in connec
There can be no question of their occur tion with the great basalt cap of Northring in situ, as they are washed out of Western America presents a similar
the gravel by powerful hydraulic jets, difficulty to that of M. Ragazzoni. In
from the working face of the mine, which boring for an artesian well at Nampa, in
forms an artificial cliff of 400 to 600 feet Ada County, Idaho, a small clay image
of a human figure was brought up from
in height.
Nor can there be any doubt as to their a depth of 215 feet. The borer had
human origin, for the specimen produced cut through a lava-cap fifteen feet thick,
by Mr. Skertchley to the Anthropological and then penetrated through some 200
Society was universally admitted to have feet of sand and clay. Mr. Emmons, of
been artificially wrought. Their use was the State Geological Society, gave the
probably for pounding acorns, which opinion that the stratum from which the
then afforded a great part of the food of Nampa image was taken is older by far
the savages who inhabited the district, than any others from which human
as they did recently of the Digger remains have been taken. The little
statuette, however, evinces a relatively
Indians.
The question, therefore, is entirely one high degree of artistic skill in modelling,
of the age of the gravels, as to which and thus seems to indicate a fairly
American geologists differ, some assign developed brain in the man of this most
ing the upper or white gravels to the distant period. We await, however, a
Pliocene, others to the early Quaternary closer determination of the age of the
period. As Mr. Skertchley says : “ If the American formations.
The other instances from America are
human remains had not been found in
them, geologists would never have open to the same doubt as to their
doubted their Tertiary age. At any geological age. The cavern of Semirate, they must be of immense antiquity. douro, in the plateau of Lagoa-Santo, in
Since they were deposited the present Brazil, has yielded sixteen human skulls,
river system of the Sacramento, Joaquim, associated with bones of extinct species,
and other large rivers has been estab such as Glyptodon, Machserodus, Hydrolished ; canons 2,000 feet deep have chserus, Scalidotherium, and others,
been excavated by these later rivers which, if found in Europe, would un
through lava, gravels, and into the bed doubtedly be taken to imply a Tertiary
rock; and the gravels, once the bed of fauna. But there remains the doubt
a large river, now cap hills 6,000 feet as to the real succession of geological
periods in America; and if the Mastodon
high.”
This definite information, conveyed lived on there until recent times, for
by an experienced geologist like Mr. which there is a good deal of evidence,
Skertchley, gives confirmation and preci there is no conclusive reason why the
sion to what has been stated from a Machserodus and other Tertiary forms
extinct volcanoes. The section given by
Mr. Skertchley is :—
�64
TERTIARY MAN
might not have survived from the Plio human remains in the presumably
cene or Miocene into the Quaternary. Pliocene auriferous gravels of California;
The human implements also found in and in South America, in the pampean
these Brazilian caves seem, in many remains of Buenos Ayres. Of these,
cases, of too advanced a type to be the discoveries at Puy-Courny, Monte
readily accepted as of such extreme Aperto, St. Olmo, and Castelnedolo
antiquity.
seem to be undoubted, both as regards
The same doubt also applies to the the human nature of the remains and
numerous human remains found by two the Tertiary character of the deposits.
competent observers, M. Ameghino and Those of St. Prest and of the Californian
M. Burmeister, at different points in the gravels are doubtful only as regards the
pampas of Buenos Ayres. They both question whether the deposits may not
recognise two distinct beds in this be of the earliest Glacial or Quaternary
pampean formation—an upper one, in period, rather than Tertiary, the evidence
which these remains have been found, from the associated fossil remains being
and a lower one, in which nothing of strongly in favour of their Tertiary origin.
human origin has yet been discovered. There remain three cases of alleged
Ameghino, relying on the fossil remains discoveries in the Miocene—viz., at
of extinct animals, considers the upper Thenay, Pouance, and in Portugal—the
bed to be Tertiary; while Burmeister evidence for which, especially for the
considers the lower one only to be Pre two former, is extremely strong and
Glacial and the upper one to be Quater almost conclusive, while the objections
nary. While these doubts continue we to them are obviously based on a reluc
must hold our judgment in suspense as tance to admit such an extension of
to the evidence from America, though human origins, rather than on scientific
undoubtedly it tends as far as it goes to evidence.
confirm the rapidly accumulating evi
In none of these cases, as further
dence from the Old World of the evidence has accumulated, has it tended
existence of Tertiary man; and the to shake the conclusions of the first
discovery of his traces at so many discoverers as to the human character of
widely-separated places, at such a remote the implements and the Miocene age of
antiquity, adds to the irresistible force of the formations. On the contrary, the
the conclusion that his first origin, and most cautious authorities, such as M.
subsequent diffusion by migration, must Quatrefages, who held their judgment in
be sought in one of the geological forma suspense when the first implements were
tions preceding the Quaternary,
produced, have been converted by sub
To sum up the evidence, there are at sequent discoveries, and expressed their
least ten instances of the alleged dis conviction that doubt is no longer pos
covery of human remains in Tertiary sible. . And a recent Congress of French
strata, of each of which it may be safely geologists has expressed the decided
said that, if the remains had been those opinion that the existence of Tertiary
of any other Mammalian species, no man is fully proved. In the next
doubt would have been entertained of chapter we shall learn of a remarkable
their Tertiary origin by any geologist. discovery of a semi-human form which
Four of these are in France, those of St. adds great force to all these earlier
Prest and of Puy-Courny in the Pliocene, evidences.
and of Thenay and Pouance in the
On the whole, we may say with con*
Miocene; three in Italy, in the Pliocene fidence of the problem of Tertiary man
of Monte Aperto, St. Olmo, and Castel- that, if not completely solved, it is
nedolo; one in Portugal, in the Miocene very near solution, and that there is
of the Tagus; in North America, the little doubt what the solution will be.
skull of Calaveras and other numerous
The next generation will probably
�THE MISSING LINK
accept it as an obvious fact, and wonder
at the doubts now entertained, very
much as we wonder at the incredulity
with which the discovery of palaeolithic
65
implements in the Quaternary gravels of
the Somme by M. Boucher de Perthes
was received by the scientific world
when it was first announced.
Chapter VI.
THE MISSING LINK
Human Origins—Evolution or Miracle First
Theories Miraculous—Conception of Natural
Law—Law Proved to be Universal in Inor
ganic World—Application to Life and Man—
Darwin and Evolution—Struggle for Life and
Survival of the Fittest—Confirmed by Dis
covery of Missing Links—Professor Cope’s
Summary—M. Gaudry—Instances of Missing
Links—Bears and Dogs—Horse—Pedigree of
the Horse from Palseotherium and Eohippus—
Appearance and Disappearance of Species—
Specialisation from Primitive Types—Condylarthra—Reptiles and Birds—Links between
other Genera and Orders—Marsupials and
Mammals — Monotremata — Ascidians and
Fish—Evolution of Individuals and Species
from Primitive Cell—Question of Missing
Links Applied to Man—Man and Ape—
Resemblances and Differences—Specialisation
of Human Type—For Erect Posture—How
Man Differs from Animals—Mental and Moral
Faculties — Language — Tools— Progress—
Mental Development—Lines of Research for
Missing Links — Inferior Races —Fossil
Remains—The Pithecanthropus—Point in
Direction of Tertiary Origin.
Of all the problems which have been
raised, but not solved, the most impor
tant is that of the origin of man. It is
important not only as a question of the
highest scientific interest, but from its
bearings on the deepest mysteries of
philosophy and religion. Is man, like
the rest of the animal creation, a product
of evolution acting by natural laws, or is
he an exception to the general rule, and
the product of some act of secondary
supernatural interference? Or, to put
it in theological language, is man a con
sequence of that “ original impress ”
which Dr. Temple considered to be more
in accordance with the idea of an
omniscient and omnipotent Creator, to
whom “a day is as a thousand years, and
a thousand years as a day,” than the
tiaditional theory of a Creator con
stantly interposing to supplement and
amend his original creation by miracles?
Or is he an exceptional supplement and
amendment to such original creation,
miraculously introduced at one of its later
stages ? It is a question which has to
be solved by facts, and not by theories
or prepossessions.
As regards the physical universe, and
the whole of the world of lii$ with the
possible exception of man, it may be
taken as already solved in the sense of
evolution and original impress. But in
the case of man there are still a few men
of science who question whether the
human mind, at least, has been formed
by natural evolution. The problem is
of such importance that it may be well
to state its conditions in some detail.
When I say that evolution has become
the accepted law of the whole animate
and inanimate universe, with the possible
exception of man, why do I say this?
The old theory of special miraculous
interpositions to account for all unex
plained phenomena was the most natural
and the most obvious. It was, in fact,
the inevitable result of the first attempts
of the human mind to connect effects
with causes, or, in other words, to
reason. Take the case of thunder.
What could the first savage who reasoned
c
�66
THE MISSING LINK
on the subject infer except that the noise,
being like the roar of an angry wild
beast or enemy, and the flash like that
of the darting of an arrow or javelin,
there was probably a sort of magnified
man like himself in the clouds full of
wrath and very capable of doing him an
injury ? The savage who reasoned thus,
and the early priests and astronomers
who, whenever they saw motion in the
sun and planets, inferred life, were
natural philosophers, who reasoned
correctly from their premises, only their
premises were wrong. In the course of
time it came to be demonstrated that
phenomena formerly supposed to be
isolated miraculous acts of an anthropo
morphic power were linked together by
that invariable sequence which we call
law, and that their real first cause or origin
must be pushed vastly further back in
space and time, and relegated more and
more from the known to the unknown.
The establishment of Newton’s law of
gravity as the pervading principle of all
celestial movements gave the first great
blow to the old miraculous theory, and
introduced the conception of Natural Law.
Geology did for time what astronomy
had . done for space; and since the
publication of Lyell’s .Principles no
serious thinker has doubted that the
successive stages by which the earth
was brought to its present state were
due to evolution, acting by natural
laws over immense periods of time. The
discoveries of modern chemistry have
confirmed the impression of the uni
formity and invariability of Law by show
ing it extending from the infinitely great
to the infinitely small, from stars to atoms;
while the spectroscope shows the identity
of matter and energy throughout this
extreme range. Above all, the establish
ment of the laws of the indestructibility
of matter and energy, and their mutual
transformation into new forms and new
modes of action, have placed special
causes altogether out of court, and
reduced all the phenomena of the inor
ganic universe to one law of universal
simplicity and generality. Instead of
speculating with ancient sages who may
be the . God who flashes lightnings from
the skies, or drives the chariot of the
sun, or even as late as Kepler, assigning
a spirit to each planet to direct its
harmonious movement, the question for
modern science is reduced to the
ultimate stage of—What mean these
atoms and energies into which everything
can be resolved? Whence came they,
and how did they become endowed with
those laws which have enabled them to
build up the universe by an irresistible
evolution ?
But the miraculous theory died hard.
Based as it wras on popular apprehension
and on theological prepossession, when
driven from the outwork of the inorganic
universe, it held out stoutly in the
inner citadel of life. Were not species
distinct, and, if so, how could they have
come into existence unless by a series of
special acts of miraculous creation ?
Above all, was not man a miracle, with
his high faculties, “only a little lower
than the angels
and did not all records
and traditions describe him as a recent
creation, who had fallen from a high
state of perfection by an act of original
sin ? Nay, more. Did not science itself
confirm this view, and had not Cuvier
laid down the axiom that no human
remains had been found in connection
with any extinct animals, or in any but
the most superficial deposits ? The dis
covery of innumerable human imple
ments and remains in all quarters of the
globe, in caves and river drifts of
immense antiquity, and associated with
extinct animals, has shattered this theory
into fragments, and it is now as impos
sible to believe in man’s recent origin
and fall as it is in the sun’s daily journey
round the earth, or the notion that it
might be as big as the Peloponnesus.
Still, the difficulty as to the creation
of distinct species remained, and until
the publication of Darwin’s celebrated
work on The Origin of Species the
miraculous theory, though driven back,
could hardly be said to be routed. But
evolution was in the air, and Darwin’s
�THE MISSING LINK
book produced the effect of a fragment
of crystal dropped into a saturated
solution. In an incredibly short time
all the floating elements crystallised
about it, and the speculations of science
took a definite form, the evidence for
which has gone on strengthening and
increasing from that day to this, until, as
I have said, with the solitary exception
of human origins, evolution or original
impress has become the axiom of science,
and is admitted by every one who has
the slightest pretensions to be considered
a competent authority.
This predisposition to accept Darwin’s
views arose from various causes. The
establishment of evolution as a fact in
the material universe had familiarised
men’s minds with the idea of Natural
Law, and the discoveries of astronomy
and geology had proved to demonstra
tion that the accounts of creation, for
merly taken to be inspired truths which
it was impious to question, could only be
considered as vague poetical versions of
the ideas which were current among
Eastern nations in the infancy of Science.
The last remnant of respect for these
narratives as literal records of actual
events vanished when the discoveries of
M. Boucher de Perthes were confirmed,
and it became apparent that man was
not a recent creation who had fallen
from a high estate, but the descendant
of palaeolithic savages, who had struggled
slowly up to civilisation through immense
periods of time. As a knowledge of
natural history increased, it became
apparent that the earth had not been
peopled recently from a single centre,
but that it was divided into numerous
vegetable and zoological provinces, each
with its own separate flora and fauna;
and a better acquaintance with the
zoological record showed that this had
been the case for millions of years, and
through the vast succession of strata of
which the earth’s crust is composed.
Finally, the multiplication of species,
both now existing and in past geological
ages, reached a point which, on any
theory of separate supernatural creations,
67
required an amount of miracle which
was plainly absurd and impossible.
When it came to this, that 160 separate
miracles were required to account for
the 160 species of land shells found, to
exist in the one small island of Madeira,
and that 1,400 distinct species of a single
shell, the Cerithium, had been described
by conchologists, the miraculous theory
had evidently broken down under its
own weight and ceased to be credible.
In this state of things Darwin not
only supplied a vast number of instances,
drawn from his own observation, of
graduation of species into one another,
and the wide range of varieties produced
and rendered permanent by artificial
selection, but, what was more important,
he showed the existence of a vera causa
operating in nature, which could not
fail to produce similar effects. If a
pigeon fancier could, by pairing .birds
which showed a tendency to variation in
a particular direction, produce in a few
generations races as distinct from the
original blue-rock as the fantail or the
pouter, it is evident that nature could do
the same in a longer period. Nay, not
only that nature could., but that nature
must, do this, for in the struggle, for
existence variations, however slight,
which gave an advantage to individuals,
must tend to survive and become extended
and fixed by the operation of heredity.
This was the famous theory of “ Natural
Selection ” and “ Survival of the Fittest,”
which at once converted the chaos of
life into a cosmos, and extended the
domain of harmonious law to the organic
as well as the inorganic universe. At
tractive, however, as the theory was from
the first to thinking men, its universal
acceptance at the present day is due
mainly to the immense amount of con
firmation which it has since received.
This confirmation has come from two
independent sources—the discovery of
Missing Links and Embryology.
When Darwin’s theory was first pro
pounded the objection was raised that,
if species were not created. distinct, but
gradually evolved from one another by
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THE MISSING LINK
slight variations, geology ought to show
radius, femurs, feet, etc., of the one,
us the intermediate forms which must
side by side with those of the other, the
have existed before the permanent types
sum of the likenesses will appear so
were established. The objection was much greater than that of the differences
reasonable, and Darwin was the first to that, the idea of family relationship
admit it j but he pleaded the imperfec
will impose itself on the mind. In vain
tion of the geological record, and pre
would sceptics try to throw doubts on
dicted that with fuller knowledge of it
this relationship by pointing out some
the gaps would be filled up and the slight shades of difference. We see
missing links discovered. The truth or
too many points of resemblance to
falsehood of his theory was thus staked
admit that they can be all fallacious.”
on the discovery of missing links. The And, again, he says: “ Where our pre
case was almost similar to that of the decessors. saw ten or one hundred dis
truth of Halley’s calculations as to the tinct beings, we see only one; and
orbit of his comet being staked on its
instead of creations thrown, as it were,
return at the predicted period. The into the world at haphazard, without
comet did return, and the missing links law and without connection, we follow
have been discovered, or so many of
the trace of a few types whose essential
them that no doubt remains in the
characters are so similar as to enable us
minds of scientific men that evolution
to comprehend them in still simpler
has been the real law of the animal and
types, and thus hope to arrive some day
vegetable kingdoms.
at understanding the plan which God
In fact, the discovery of missing links
has followed in producing and developing
has gone so far that Professor Cope, one
life in the world.”
of the latest and highest authorities on
This is almost identical with Dr.
the subject, who has done so much for
Temple’s profession of faith, “that it
it by hisWdiscoveries of the wonderfully
seems something more majestic, more
rich fossil fauna of the Tertiary forma
befitting of Him to whom a thousand
tions of the Rocky Mountains and
years are as one day, thus to impress His
California,. says: “We have attained
will once for all on His creation, and
the long-since extinct ancestor of the
provide for all its countless varieties by
lowest vertebrates. We have the ancestor
this one original impress than by special
of all the reptiles, of the birds, and of
acts of creation to be perpetually modi
the mammals. If we consider the
fying what He had previously made.”
mammals separately, we have traced up
A clear, popular conception of this
a great many lines to their points of question of “ missing links ” is so impor
departure from very primitive types.
tant for all who desire to understand the
Thus we have obtained the genealogical
latest, conclusions of modern science
trees of the deer, the camel, the musk, that it may be well to illustrate it by a
the horse, the tapir, and the rhinoceros;
homely example. Fifty years ago the
of the cats and dogs, of the lemurs and
popular belief respecting the animal
monkeys, and have important evidence creation was summed up in the simple
as to the origin of man.”
words of Dr. Watts’s hymn :—
M. Gaudry, the celebrated discoverer
“ Let dogs, delight to bark and bite,
of the fossil treasures of the Upper
For ’tis their nature to ;
Miocene of Pikermi, repeats the same
And bears and lions growl and fight,
thing. He says : “ If we take a skeleton
For God has made them so.”
of a fossil mammalian species, and com Science could only shrug its shoulders
pare it with one of an analogous living and say: “ So it seems; I have no better
species ” as, for instance, a Mammoth explanation to give.”
or Mastodon with a modern elephant—
How different are the terms in which
“ placing the heads, vertebrae, humerus, science would now reply: “Made, if
�THE MISSING LINK
69
you like, but how made? As individuals, and masticating grass were better than
each from a cell not distinguishable from the more millstone-like tubercular teeth
any other microscopic cell of the lowest adapted for grinding down shrubs and
animal and vegetable organisms, but branches of trees. Accordingly, we find
endowed with such an impress of evolu the evolution of the horse constantly
tion that it developes through the stages following this line. In Europe, the
of fish, reptile, and mammal into the Hipparion, who is the immediate ancestor
special mammalian form of its parents. of the horse, whom it closely resembles,
As species, traceable through a similar has already the two lateral toes so rudiprogression backwards from the living mental as to have become wholly useless;
form, through intermediate ancestral in the Anchitherium the tips of the outer
forms graduating by slight distinctions toes just touch the ground, while the
into one another up to the generalised Palseotherium is a distinctly three-toed
Eocene type of the Placental mammal, animal, though the middle toe is larger
and thence backwards by less definite than the two side toes. We have thus a
but still traceable variations to the types complete progression from a slow, heavy
of the marsupial, the reptilian, the fish, animal, adapted for living on marshy
the vertebrate, and so up to the primitive ground, like the tapir, to the courser of
cell in which the individual living animal the plains, whose latest development,
under artificial selection, is seen in a
originated.”
Thus the dog and bear, now so dis Ladas or a Sceptre.
In America, the links in the pedigree
tinct, can be traced up to Amphicyon
and Hysenarctus, which combined the of the fossil horse are still more numerous,
qualities of both; the former being rather and the transitions closer. The line
more dog than bear, the latter rather begins in the Early Eocene with the
more bear than dog; and these again, Eohippus, an animal of the size of a
either through the Creodonta to the fox, which, in addition to four wellBunodonta of the early Eocene, or developed toes of the forefoot, had the
through the Ictitherium to the Cyno- remnants of the hoofed fifth toe. In
dictis, or weasel-like dog of the same the Upper Eocene, the Eohippus was
formation, which is clearly a descendant replaced by the Orohippus, in which the
of the insectivorous Marsupials of the rudimentary first digit had disappeared,
and the fifth was reduced to a splint.
Secondary age.
The horse affords the best example of In the Lower Miocene the Mesohippus,
this progressive evolution, the specialisa which was about as large as a sheep, had
tion from the generalised Eocene type only three toes with a rudimentary splint
of a five-toed and tubercular-toothed on the foreleg, and in its teeth and other
mammal being clearly traced, step by particulars approached more closely to
step, down to the present one-toed horse. the horse. In the Upper Miocene,
The evolution took the course of adapt Mesohippus is replaced by Miohippus,
ing the original form to the requirements which approaches closely to the Anchi
of an animal which had to live on wide therium of Europe ; while in the Lower
prairies or desert plains, where a bulky Pliocene this gives way to the Proto
body had to be transported at high hippus, which approached the horse
speed, by leaps and bounds, over great very closely, and was about the size of
distances, both to find food and to escape an ass. Like the Hipparion of Europe,
from enemies by flight. For this purpose, which in many respects it resembles, it
evidently, one solid toe, protected by a had three toes, of which only the middle
single enlarged nail or hoof, was prefer one reached the ground. In the Middle
able to five or three weak toes terminating Pliocene we have the Pliohippus, which
each in a separate nail or claw; and in has lost the small hooflets on the rudi
like manner teeth adapted for cutting mentary toes, and is in all respects very
�7°
THE MISSING LINK
like a horse; and, finally, in the Upper accidental variations in this direction, or
Pliocene we have the true horse. This partly by this and partly by heredity
progression gives rise to two important fixing variations induced by use and
remarks. First, that size cannot be disuse of organs in stretching to reach
accepted as of much importance in the branches of palms, in no way affects
tracing lines of descent, as might, the question whether the animal is a
indeed, have been anticipated from the product of evolution or a miraculous
wide variations in the size of dogs and creation.
other domestic animals introduced by
To return to the pedigree of the
artificial selection. Secondly, that the horse, which may be taken as the typical
extinction of widespread and apparently instance of descent traced by progressive
unexhausted races of animals is a fact specialisation. What is a horse ? It is
which has to be reckoned with. The essentially an animal specialised for a
total disappearance of the horse in particular object—that of the rapid pro
America, where it and its ancestors had gression of a bulky body over open
existed in such numbers from the Early plains or deserts. When mammalian
Eocene down to quite recent times, is a life first appears abundantly in the lower
most perplexing problem. There is no Tertiaries,it is in the primitive generalised
appearance of any great change of type, in which nature seems always to
environment since the horse roamed in make its first essays, as if it were trying
countless numbers over the continent of its ’prentice hand on a simple sketch, to
America; and we know, from the experi be gradually developed into a series of
ence of Europe, that it was a hardy finished pictures. The primitive sketch
animal, capable of resisting both the in this instance took the form of what
torrid heat of Arabia and the intense Professor Cope calls a “ pentadactyle,
cold of the Glacial period. And so plantigrade, bunodont,” by which for
many other species survived in America, midable collocation of words we are to
from the Pliocene to the Quaternary understand an animal which had five
and recent periods, as to show that the toes at the extremities of each of its
extinction of the horse was an isolated limbs; which walked on the flat of its
phenomenon. And as of extinction, so feet, and whose molar teeth presented a
of creation. We do not fully under flat surface, with four, or in the very
stand the exact process by which types earliest form three, little cones or
and species have either appeared or dis tubercles, to assist in grinding its food.
appeared, and this affords the only It may give some idea of the precision
ground left to those who, from theo and certainty to which such researches
logical or other prepossessions, are have attained to say that this primitive
hostile to Darwinism. They say his form was predicted by Professor Cope
theory of natural selection from spon in 1874, from the progress towards it
taneous variations does not account for traced in following backwards various
everything, and does not explain fully lines of later descent; and that seven
all the laws of these variations. This years later, in 1881, the prophecy was
may be partly true; but it in no way fulfilled by the discovery that such a
affects the truth of evolution, which is a type of mammals, now known as the
fact and not a theory, and is quite inde Condylarthra, actually existed in large
pendent of the subsidiary question numbers in North America in the early
whether natural selection can account Eocene period.
for all or only for a principal part of
Consider now what the specialisation
the facts which, in some way or other, from this original type to the horse
have to be accounted for. Thus, whether implied. The first step was to walking
the long neck of the giraffe was developed on the toes instead of on the flat of the
by natural selection taking advantage of foot—a change which, whether owing
�THE MISSING LINK
or not to the lady Condylarthra having
adopted the modern fashion of wearing
high-heeled boots, became general in
most lines of their descendants. . For
galloping on hard ground it is evident
that one strong and long toe, protected
by a solid hoof, was more serviceable
than four short and weak toes, protected
by separate nails. Accordingly, coales
cence of the toes is the fundamental
fact in the progress of structural changes
through successive species, by which the
primitive Bunodont was converted into
the modern horse. Corresponding with
this are other progressive changes in the
articulation of the joints, especially those
of the bones corresponding to the ankle
and wrist joints, which are modified from
a contact of plane surfaces into a system
of tongues and grooves, which give
freedom of action in direct progression,
but secure them against the dislocations
from shocks and strains to which they
would be exposed in galloping or jumping.
So in other types the specialisation takes
different forms, but always towards the
sharper distinction of species formerly
more united and generalised. Thus the
half-bear, half-dog, and half-cat original
type of the Eocene becomes differen
tiated into the three distinct types of the
wholly bear, dog, and cat of later forma
tions.
Nor is this tracing back of existing
mammalian species to ancestral forms in
the Early Tertiary all that recent science
has accomplished.
The course of
palaeontological discovery for the last
twenty, and specially for the last ten,
years may almost be summed up as
that of the discovery of “ missing links,”
until gap after gap, which seemed to
separate not only species, but genera
and orders, by insurmountable barriers,
has been bridged over by intermediate
forms. Thus, to take one of the most
striking instances, what can, at first
sight, appear more unlike than reptile
and bird, and who would have ventured
to predict that any relationship could be
traced between a tortoise and a swallow?
And yet nothing is more certain than
71
that the Reptilia pass over into the Aves
by successive gradations which make it
difficult to pronounce where one ends
and the other begins. The pterodactyl,
or flying dragon of the lias, approaches
in structure and habits towards the bird
type; the ostrich retains some resem
blance to the pterodactyl, but the com
plete transitional type, or “ missing link,”
has been found in those feathered
reptiles, or birds with reptilian heads
and teeth, whose remains have fortunately
been preserved in a fossil state. The
Archaeopteryx, from the CEningen slate
of the Upper Oolite, in the museum of
South Kensington, is a beautiful specimen
of such a missing link, and would cer
tainly be taken for a bird by any casual
observer, though comparative anatomists
find many of its essential features to be
reptilian.
The Archaeopteryx and other transi
tional types, which have been discovered
in Europe and America between birds
and reptiles, afford perhaps the most
obvious and universally intelligible in
stances of what recent palaeontology has
done in the way of the discovery of
“missing links,” between genera and
orders now widely separated ; but similar
discoveries have gone a long way towards
establishing the continuity of life from
the earliest periods in which it appears
down to the present day, and showing
the kind and progress of the changes in
structure which in the course of evolu
tion have linked the various orders and
species of living forms together. Thus
the higher form of Placental mammals
which became predominant in the Early
Tertiary differs from the Marsupials,
which extend into the trias of the
Secondary period, by the greater exten
sion of the allantois or membrane which
surrounds the foetus. In the Placentals
this completely surrounds it, so that the
foetus remains part of the mother until
birth; while in the Marsupial the young
are born incomplete, and take refuge for
a time in a pouch which is attached to
the mother’s stomach. But there are
fossil animals in the Eocene which
�72
THE MISSING LINK
combine the two characters, showing a
Marsupial brain and dentition, with a
Placental development. They are, in
effect, Marsupials in which the allantois,
instead of being arrested at an early
stage, has continued to grow.
Again, the Marsupials are linked on to
still lower forms of animal life through
the Monotremata, of which a few speci
mens survive in Australia, typified by
the Ornithorynchus, or water-mole, which
has the bill of a duck, and lays eggs.
This order has only one opening, called
the cloaca, for the purposes which, in
higher orders,' are performed by separate
organs; and it is remarkable that this
stage is passed through by man and the
higher mammals in the course of their
embryonic development.
Going still further back, the lines of
demarcation between orders are, as in
the case of birds and reptiles, more and
more broken down every day by the dis
covery of intermediate forms, and we
can almost trace the evolution from the
Ascidian or lowest vertebrate type into the
fish, the amphibia, the reptile, and so
upwards. And it is remarkable that this
course of evolution invariably corresponds
with the general progressive evolution
of types through geological ages, and
with the embryonic evolution of indi
vidual life from the primitive cell. It
is not too much, therefore, to assume
evolution to be the demonstrated law of
the world of life as well as of that of
matter, and to confine ourselves to the
question whether man is or is not a
solitary exception to this law.
We are now in a position to examine
more closely the bearing of this question
of “ missing links ” on that of human
origins. Geologically speaking, man is
one of the order of Primates, which
includes also the catarrhine apes and
monkeys of the Old World, the platyrhine
apes and monkeys of America, and the
lemurs or half-monkeys which are found
principally in Madagascar and a few
districts of continental and insular Asia
and Africa. Of these, the anthropoid
apes—the chimpanzee, gorilla, and orang
—approach most closely to man in their
structure.
In fact, considered as mere machines,
the resemblance between them and man
is something wonderful. It is much
closer than is suggested by a mere com
parison of outward forms. One must
have read the results arrived at by the
most distinguished comparative anato
mists. to understand how close is the
identity. Not merely does every bone,
every muscle, and every nerve in the
one find its analogue more or less
developed in the other, but even in such
minute particulars as the direction of the
hairs on the forearm converging towards
the elbow there is an absolute corre
spondence.
It is in the brain, however, which is
the most important organ, as being that
on .which the specially human faculty
of intelligence depends, that the close
- physical resemblance between man and
the other quadrumana is most striking.
The brain of all quadrumanous animals is
distinguished from that of quadrupeds by
certain well-defined characters. Those
of lemurs, monkeys, baboons, and apes
show a progression of these characters
from the lemurs, whose brain differs little
from that of rodents, up to the anthro
poid apes, the chimpanzee, the gorilla,
and the orang, who have a brain which
in its most essential particulars closely
resembles that of man. In fact, the
brain of these apes bridges over much
more than half the interval between the
simplest quadrumanous form of the
lemur and the most advanced—that of
man; while, in like manner, the brains of
some of the inferior races of mankind,
and of idiots, where the development of
the brain has been arrested, bridge over
the interval between man and ape, and,
in some extreme cases, approach more
nearly to the latter than to the former
type both in size and structure.
Attempt after attempt has been made
to find some fundamental characters in
the human brain on which to base a
generic distinction between man and the
brute creation; but such attempts have
�THE MISSING LINK
invariably broken down under a close
investigation. Thus, in the celebrated
controversy between Owen and Huxley,
the former distinguished anatomist
thought that he had found such a
distinction in the hinder part of the
human brain, but it turned out that he
had been misled by relying on the plates
in the work of the Dutch anatomists,
Camper and Vrolik; and Huxley, con
firmed by them, proved by actual dis
section that all the characters on which
Owen relied were to be found equally in
the brain of the chimpanzee and other
higher quadrumana.
The distinction also on which the
very term “ quadrumana ” is founded is
proved to be fallacious, for Huxley has
shown that the termination of the hinder
limbs of the anthropoids is really a foot
with a prehensile great toe, and not a
hand; and there are many instances,
both of human individuals and races,, in
which this toe has considerable flexibility,
and is used in climbing trees or picking
up small objects. And so in innumerable
other cases in which anatomical observa
tions, supposed to be specifically human,
have either been found wanting in some
individual men, and present in some
individual quadrumana, or have been
traced in both in some undeveloped or
foetal condition.
And yet with this close identity of
anatomical conditions there is, as Huxley
emphatically asserts, a wide gap between
man and the highest ape, which has
never been bridged over, and which pre
cludes the idea of direct lineal descent
from one to the other, though it implies
close relationship. The differences are
partly physical and partly intellectual.
Of the former, it may be said that they
may be all summed up in the fact that
man is specialised for erect posture.
Speaking broadly, it may be said that
man is a member of the order of Primates,
specialised for erect posture; while mon
keys are specialised for climbing trees;
and anthropoid apes are a sort of inter
mediate link, specialised mainly for
forest life, but with a certain amount of
73
capability for walking erect and on the
ground.
Thus, to begin at the foundation of
the human structure, the foot, with its
solid heel bone, arch of the instep, and
short toes, is obviously better adapted
for walking and worse for climbing than
that of monkeys. The upright basis of
the foot corresponds with longer, stronger,
and straighter bones of the leg, and a
greater development of muscles to move
them. The erect posture determines
the shape of the pelvis and haunch
bones, which have to support the weight
of the vertebral column and intestines
in a vertical direction. The vertebral
column, again, is arranged with a slight
double curvature, so as to enable the
body to maintain an upright posture, and
to afford a vertical support for the head.
And, finally, the larger brain is rendered
possible by its weight being nicely
balanced on a vertical column, instead
of hanging down and being supported
by powerful muscles requiring strong
processes for lateral attachment in the
vertebrse of the neck.
Again, the fore-limbs being entirely
relieved from the necessity of being used
as supports, acquire the marvellous
flexibility and adaptability of the human
arm and hand; a specialisation which
has doubtless a good deal to do with
man’s superior intelligence, for, as we
see in the case of the elephant, the
intelligence of an animal depends not
merely on the mass of the brain, but
very much on the nature of the organs
by which it is placed in relation with
the surrounding environment.1 In this
respect there is no animal organ com
parable to the human hand, and we may
probably trace its influence in other
divergencies of the human from the
bestial type. Thus, the greater develop
ment of the jaws and bones of the face
in animals, giving rise to a projecting
1 At a recent Congress of the British Associa
tion the theory was put forward, on high autho
rity, that this setting free of the arms may have
reacted on the brain and occasioned man’s great
mental progress.
�THE MISSING LINK
muzzle, is no longer requisite when the
arm and hand afford so much better an
instrument than the mouth for seizing
objects, and for attack or defence; while
from the same cause the canine teeth
tend to diminish. In fact, the specialisa
tion of improved types from the early
generalised type takes very often the
form of a reduction of the number of
teeth to that required for the relations of
the new types to their environment.
Thus, in the pure carnivora, like the
cats, the molars disappear and the
canines and sectorial premolars assume
a great development. In the herbivora,
on the other hand, the molars are
developed at the expense of the flesh
cutting teeth ; and in civilised man there
is a progressive diminution in the size of
the jaws, which hardly leaves room for
the normal number of teeth, some of
which are probably destined to dis
appear, as the so-called wisdom-teeth
have already almost done.
Thus, from the single point of view of
specialisation for erect posture, we arrive
at all the physical characteristics which
distinguish man from the monkeys and
anthropoid apes. At the same time, it
is a difference only of adaptation, and
not of essence. The machine man
differs from the machine ape, much as
the modern railway locomotive differs
from the old-fashioned pumping steamengine. The essential parts—boiler,
pistons, cylinders, valves—are the same,
but differently modified; those of the
locomotive being vastly better adapted
for condensed energy and rapid motion
in a smaller compass. Still, no one can
doubt their affinity and common origin,
or suppose that, while the Newcomen
engine owed its existence to human
invention, the Wild Irishman or Flying
Scotchman could only be accounted
for by invoking supernatural agency.
This is precisely the case as regards
man in his physical aspect. It is diffi
cult to imagine that the combination of
bones, muscles, and nerves, which make
a man, originated in any different manner
than did the combination of the same I
identical bones, muscles, and nerves
which make a chimpanzee or gorilla. If
one originated by evolution, the other
must have done so also; and conversely,
if. one came into being by special
miraculous creation, so also must the
other, and not only the other, but all
the innumerable varieties of distinct
species, now, and in past geological
times, existing upon earth.
It is only when we come to the higher
intellectual and moral faculties that the
wide gulf appears between man and the
animal creation, which it is so difficult
to bridge over. It is true that all or
nearly all of these faculties appear in a
rudimentary state in animals, and that
not only apes and monkeys, but dogs,
elephants, and others of the higher
species, show a certain amount of
memory, reasoning power, affection, and
other human qualities; while, on the
other hand, some of the inferior races of
mankind show very little of them. The
chimpanzee Sally, in the Zoological
Gardens, and Lord Avebury’s dog
Van, can count up to five; while it is
said that three is the limit of the count
ing power of some of the Australian
tribes. The gorilla, in his native forests,
according to the accounts of travellers,
lives respectably with a single wife and
family, and is a better husband and
parent than many of our upper ten who
figure in Divorce Courts. Still, there is
this wide distinction—that even in the
highest animals these faculties remain
rudimentary, and seem incapable of
progress, while even in the lowest races
of man they have reached a much higher
level, and seem capable of almost un
limited development. No human race
has yet been discovered which, however
savage, is entirely destitute of speech,
and of the faculty of tool-making in the
widest sense of adapting natural objects
and forces to human purposes.
As
regards speech, no animal has advanced
beyond the first rudimentary stage of
uttering a few simple sounds, which by
their modulations and accent give ex
pression to their emotions. They are in
�THE MISSING LINK
the first stage of what Max Muller calls
the “ bow-wow and pooh-pooh theory,”
and even in this they have advanced but
a little way. They have a very few root
sounds, and those are all emotional. A
dog or an ape can express love, hatred,
alarm, pain, or pleasure, but has. not
risen even to the height of coining
roots imitating sounds of nature, such as
“crack” and “splash,” and still less to
that which all human races have attained,
of multiplying these primitive roots
indefinitely, by extending them by some
sort of mental analogy to more abstract
ideas ; and connecting ' them by some
sort of grammar, by which they are
made to express a variety of shades of
meaning and modifications of human
thought. Animals understand their own
simple language perfectly well, and to a
certain extent some of the higher orders,
such as dogs and monkeys, can be
taught to understand human language;
but no animal has ever learned to speak
in the sense of using a series of articulate
sounds to convey meaning, though, as
in the case of the parrot, the vocal organ
may be there, capable of uttering imita
tion words and sentences.
As regards tool-making, no human
race is known which has not shown some
faculty in this direction. The rudest
existing tribes, such as Bushmen or
Mincopies, chip stones, and are acquain
ted with fire and with the bow and arrow,
spear, or some corresponding weapon
for offence and defence. The highest
apes have not got beyond the stage of
using objects actually provided for them
by nature for definite purposes. Thus
monkeys enjoy the warmth of a fire and
sit over it, but have never got the length
of putting on coals or sticks to keep it
up, much less of kindling it when extin
guished. Sally and Mafuca perfectly
understood the use of the keeper’s key,
and would steal and hide it, and use it
to let themselves out of their cage; but
no chimpanzee or gorilla has ever been
known to fashion any implement, or do
more than use the sticks and stones
provided by nature, for throwing at
75
enemies or cracking nuts. Their nearest
approach to invention is shown in con
structing rude huts or nests from branches
and leaves, for shelter and protection ;
an art in which both apes and savages
are very inferior to most species of birds,
to say nothing of insects. The difference
is a very fundamental one, for in the
case of man we can trace a constant
progression, from the rudest form of
palaeolithic chipped stones up to the
steam-engine and electric telegraph; but
in the ape we can discern no signs of
progress, or of a capacity for progress.
It is conceivable that by taking a certain
number of Bushmen or Australians when
young, placing them in a favourable
environment, and breeding selectively
for intelligence, as we breed race-horses
for speed or short-horns for fat, we might,
in a few generations, produce a race far
advanced in culture ; but it is not readily
conceivable that we could do the same
with orangs or chimpanzees. It would
be a most interesting experiment, to try
how far we could go with them in this
direction, but unfortunately it cannot be
tried, as we have no sufficient number
of specimens to begin with, and the race
cannot be kept alive, much less per
petuated, in our climate. Even if it
could, there is no reason to expect that
it would succeed up to the point of
making a race of apes or monkeys who
could speak a primitive language or
make primitive tools. For the funda
mental difference between them and
man may be summed up in the words,
“arrested development.”
At an early age the difference between
a young chimpanzee and a young negro
is not very great. The form and capa
city of the skull, the convolutions of the
brain, and the intellectual and moral
characters are within a measurable dis
tance of one another; but as age
advances the brain of the negro child
continues to grow, and its intelligence
to increase up to manhood; while in the
case of the ape the sutures of the skull
close, the growth of the brain is arrested,
and development takes the direction of
�76
THE MISSING LINK
bony structure, giving rise to a projecting
muzzle, protuberant crests and ridges,
and generally a more bestial appearance;
while the character undergoes a corre
sponding change and becomes less
human-like.
It is evident, therefore, that these two
branches of the Primates, man and ape,
follow diverging lines of development,
and can never be transformed into one
another, and that the “missing links”
to connect the human species with the
common law of evolution of the animal
kingdom are to be sought in other direc
tions than that of direct descent from
any existing form of ape or monkey.
There are three lines of research
which may be followed in looking for
traces of such missing links.
1. We may compare the higher with
the lower varieties of the existing human
species, and see if we can discover any
tendency towards a lower form of ances
tral development.
2. We may observe the results in the
cases of arrested development which
occur in those unfortunate beings who
are born idiots or microcephali—that is,
with deficient brains.
3. We may explore the records of the
past, of which we have now numerous
remains preserved in the fossil state.
. The first and second of these lines
give us a certain amount of clear and
positive result.
Comparing civilised
man with the Negro, Australian, Bush
man, and other inferior races, we invari
ably find differences which all tend in
the direction of the primitive “pentadactyle, plantigrade, bunodont.” The
brain is of less volume, its convolutions
less clearly marked, the bony develop
ment of the skull, face, and muzzle more
pronounced, the legs shorter and frailer,
the arms longer, the stature less. The
most primitive savage races known to us
are apparently those Pygmies who, like
the Akkas and Bushmen of Africa, the
Negrillos of Asiatic islands, some of the
hill tribes of India, and the Digger
Indians of North America, have been
driven everywhere into the most inacces
sible forests and mountains by the inva
sion of superior races.
The average
stature of many of these does not exceed
four feet, and in some instances falls as
low as three feet six inches; and in
structure, as well as in appearance and
intelligence, there is no doubt that they
approximate towards the type of monkeys.
In the case of idiots the resemblance
to an animal type is carried much further,
so far, indeed, that they may be almost
described as furnishing one of the missing
links. As Vogt says, “we need only
place the skulls of the negro, chimpanzee,
and idiot side by side to show that the
idiot holds, in every respect, an inter
mediate place between them.”
Thus the average weight of the brain
of Europeans is about 49 oz., while that
of Negroes is 44^oz.; and in some of
the inferior races it is still lower, descend
ing to about 35 oz. in the case of some
skulls of Bushwomen. This approaches
very closely to the limit of 32 oz. which
Gratiolet and Broca assign as the lowest
weight of brain at which human intelli
gence begins to be possible; but in many
cases of small-headed idiots the weight
descends much lower, and has even been
observed as low as 10 oz. The average
weight of the brain of the large anthro
poid apes is estimated at about 20 oz.,
and in some cases is even higher, so that
the brains of some of the inferior human
races stand about half-way between those
of the superior races and of the anthro
poids, which latter again differ more
from those of the lemurs and inferior
monkeys than they do from those of
man.
The approximation towards primitive
conditions shown by a comparison of
superior with inferior races, and of nor
mally developed men with idiots and
apes, might have been expected to derive
further confirmation from tracing back
to the third line of inquiry, that of fossil
remains.
And yet it is just here, where we might
expect to find conclusive evidence, that
we meet with least success. The number
of skulls and skeletons dating back to
�THE MISSING LINK
77
early Quaternary times, distant from us the muscle of the tongue is attached, and
1
certainly not less than 50,000 years, and is said to be necessary for the movements
i
probably much more, is now so great as 1of the tongue which render speech pos
to enable us to speak confidently as to sible. It is absent in the monkey and
1
their character, and even to classify their .all non-speaking animals ; and Mortillet
different types. The oldest is that known asserts that in the Naulette skull the
as the Canstadt type, the next oldest bone is absent, and its place shows a
that of Cro-Magnon. Now, the Cro- hollow. He argues that the primitive
Magnon type is not only not a degraded men of the Neanderthal or Canstadt
one, but, physically speaking, that of a type were incapable of speech, and his
fine race—tall in stature, with large and conclusion is thought probable by several
symmetrical brain-structure, and, on the good authorities. But the induction
whole, on a par with some of the best seems too wide to be drawn from a single
instance, and, as far as I am aware, it
modern races.
The Canstadt type is somewhat more has not been confirmed by any other
rude, and in extreme cases, like that of undoubted specimen of early palaeolithic
the celebrated Neanderthal skull, so man.
But a far greater advance was made
simious in the low forehead and massive
by the discovery of a few fragments of
bony ridges that at first sight it was
thought that one of the missing links what is now known as the pithecanthro
had really been discovered. But further pus erectus. In 1894 a Dutch military
inquiry showed that this was only an physician, Dr. Eugene Dubois, found in
■ extreme instance of a type which is Java the skull-cap, a femur, and two
presented by numerous other skulls of a teeth of some man-like animal. They
character entirely human, certainly not were submitted to the International
inferior to that of existing savages, and Zoological Congress at Leyden; and,
which may be traced as surviving among although they naturally gave rise to a
many of the best European races. Even heated discussion at first, they are now
in the extreme case of the Neanderthal generally recognised to be relics of some
skull, the brain was of fair capacity; and ancestral form, almost midway between
a modern skull, that of Lykke, a Dane man and his Simian progenitors. The
of distinguished intellectual capacity, is form to which they belonged is computed
preserved in the museum at Copenhagen, to have stood, when erect, five feet six
which closely resembles it in all its inches high, and to have had a skull
with a cranial capacity little more than
principal peculiarities.
If the Tertiary skulls of Olmo, Cas- half that of the native Australian or
telnedolo, and Calaveras are accepted Veddah woman. The bones rested upon
as genuine, they carry us back much a conglomerate which lies upon a bed of
further in the same direction. Every marine marl and sand of Pliocene age.
thing about these remains is entirely Professor Haeckel claims that we have
human, and in the female skull of Castel- in these remains “ the long-searched-for
nedolo, M. Quatrefages thinks he can missing link,” or “ a Pliocene remainder
discover a specimen of one of the milder of that famous group of highest Catarrand less savage forms of the Canstadt hines which were the immediate pithe
coid ancestors of man.” And as a writer
type,
. .
d
A nearer approach to positive data (Professor Keabley) in the Popular
seemed to be provided by a human jaw Science Monthly (February, 1902) says :
found in the Cave of La Naulette, inl “These remains have been subjected to
Belgium, in which Mortillet and other• the strictest scientific scrutiny and progood authorities assert that the genal[ nounced genuine.”
No further discoveries of intermediate
tubercle is wanting. This is a small[
bony excrescence on the chin, to whichl forms have yet been reported, but the
�78
THE MISSING LINK
evidence for at least the bodily evolution origins of man are to be sought as far
of man is now no longer seriously dis back as the Miocene, we can hardly
puted, and further investigation can only expect to find many specimens of the
serve the purpose of filling the gap in missing link. If we find such an abun
our galleries of palaeontology. No doubt dance of palaeolithic remains early in the
this gap will be supplied as the search Quaternary period, it must be because
proceeds, but the circumstances forbid the human race had long existed, and
us to hope to find these intermediate been driven by the pressure of increasing
forms in any abundance.
population to diffuse themselves over
From the wide diffusion of mankind nearly the whole of the habitable globe.
over nearly the whole of the habitable But this radiation from the original birth
globe in early Quaternary times, it is place must have been extremely slow,
clear that, if the race originated, like and immense periods must have elapsed
other animal races, from evolution, the before it reached the countries which have
origin must be sought in a much more been the fields of scientific research.
remote antiquity. The existence of the Again, great geological changes have
Dryopithecus and other anthropoid taken place since the Miocene period,
apes in the Middle Miocene shows that and it is quite probable that the earliest
the development of another branch, so scene of man’s development may be now
closely allied to man in physical structure, submerged beneath the Indian or Pacific
had been completed in the first half of Ocean.
the Tertiary period. Unless we assume
In Miocene times, when Greenland
direct descent, and not parallel develop and Spitzbergen supported a luxuriant
ment, for the two species, why should vegetation, such a continent would be
the starting-point of man be later than found to the north, possibly in that sub
that of the Dryopithecus ? The horse, merged northern continent which afforded
whose ancestral pedigree is the best a bridge for the passage of so many forms
established of any of the existing of animal life between the Old and New
mammals, was already in existence in Worlds. In fact, many geologists incline
the Pliocene period; and the Hipparion, to the conclusion that the more recent
which is the first of the links connecting forms of animal and vegetable life have
him with the primitive mammal, is first migrated southwards from this circum
found in the Miocene and not later than polar Miocene land, and not northwards
the Pliocene. Why should the develop from tropical regions.
ment of man have begun later, and
We can, therefore, draw no conclusion
followed a more rapid course than that from this scarcity of the remains of
of the horse ? Man, as M. Quatrefages intermediate forms. Science can only
observes, must, from his superior intelli continue to probe the crust of the earth
gence and knowledge of fire and clothing, wherever it is opened, and trust that
have been more able to resist changes of some lucky chance may again add to
climate and environment than many of our knowledge of them. The problem
the animals which undoubtedly outlived is one of the greatest theoretical interest,
the change from the Tertiary to the though we can now happily state that the
Quaternary period, and even survived admission of the fact of man’s animal
the excessive rigour of the Glacial epoch. descent no longer depends on such dis
If, as seems almost certain, the first coveries.
�ANIMAL MAGNETISM AND SPIRITUALISM
79
Chapter VII.
ANIMAL MAGNETISM AND SPIRITUALISM
Binet and Fere’s Volume—School of Salpetri^re could do just as much as a Mesmer with
his flowing robes and magic wand. This
_ .Dr. Braid—Hypnotism—How Produced
Effects of—Lethargy—Catalepsy—Somnam led to the further conclusion that any
bulism — Hallucination—Dreams—Hypnotic thing that strained the attention, or, in
Suggestion—Instances of—Visible Rendered
Invisible—Emotions Excited—Acts Dictated other words, excited certain sensory
—Magnet—Trance—Alternating Identity- centres of the brain abnormally, threw
Thought - Reading—Clairvoyance—Spiritual it, so to speak, out of gear, an<i caused
ism—Slate-Writing—Scybert _ Commission- both sensory and motor nervous centres
All Gross Imposture—Dancing Chairs and to behave in a very extraordinary and
Tables—Large Field Opened up by French
Investigations—-Point to Materialistic Results. unusual manner.
.
The volume by Messrs. Binet and. Fere,
published in the International Scientific
Series, gives a lucid view of the recent
researches by which the mysterious sub
jects comprised under the cognate heads
of animal magnetism, hypnotism, som
nambulism, catalepsy, hallucination, and
spiritualism have been,. to a consider
able extent, brought within the domain of
experimental science. The existence of
extraordinary phenomena in this misty
region had been known since the time
of Mesmer, and at times professors. of
what seemed to be something very like
the black art had excited a temporary
sensation, which died out as their tricks
were exposed, or as folly changed its
fashion. But there was such an atmos
phere of imposture, delusion, and super
stitious credulity about the whole subject
that rational men, and especially men of
science really competent to make experi
mental inquiries, turned fromit in disgust.
The first step towards a really scientific
inquiry was made by Dr. Braid, a wellknown surgeon in Manchester, about
forty-five years ago. He proved conclu
sively that the state known as mesmerism,
or artificial somnambulism, could be
produced by straining the eyes for a short
time to look at a given object.
A black wafer stuck on a white wall
Thus it produced a state of anaesthesia,
and, if chloroform had not proved a more
generally efficacious and manageable
agent, hypnotism would probably have
been employed to this day in surgical
operations. Healing effects also were
produced, which bordered very closely
on what used to be considered as
miraculous cures; and in several cases
Braid literally made the blind to see and
the lame to walk, by directing a stream
of vital energy to a paralysed nerve.
Still more extraordinary were the
effects produced in exalting the faculties
and paralysing the will. Muscular force
could in certain cases be so increased
that a limb became as rigid as a bar of
iron, and memory so stimulated that
words and scenes scarcely noticed at the
time, and long since forgotten, started
into life with wonderful vividness and
accuracy.
Thus, in one of Dr. Braid’s experi
ments, an ordinary Scotch servant-girl
startled him by repeating in Hebrew a
passage from the Bible.. It turned out
that she had been maid to a Scotch
minister who was learning. Hebrew, and
who used to walk about his study recit
ing passages from the Hebrew text.
Another instance shows the remark
able obliteration of the will in hypnotised
subjects. A puritanical old lady, to
�8°
ANIMAL MAGNETISM AND SPIRITUALISM
whom dancing was an abomination, was process is repeated may be soon brought
sent capering about the room by playing into a state in which the slightest hint or
a reel tune on a piano, and telling her to suggestion is sufficient to produce the
join in the dance.
abnormal condition. Thus a highly
Dr. Braid’s experiments, however, did sensitive patient may be hypnotised if
not carry the subject much farther than led to believe that an operator is making
to make believe that there was really passes in an adjoining room, although
something in it; and the subsequent rise he is not really there; while, on the
of spiritualism, with its vulgar machinery other hand, the weight of evidence is
of table-turning and spirit-rapping, and against any effect being produced by
frequent exposures in police-courts, once real passes if the patient is totally
more repelled rational men and consigned unaware of anything of the sort going on,
the subject to oblivion.
or being expected.
But within the last few years a school
But with the class of patients at the
has arisen of French medical men, con Salpetriere the various effects can, in
nected with the hospital of Salpetriere, many cases, be produced with as much
at Paris, who have taken up the subject precision and certainty as when a bar of
in a thoroughly scientific spirit, and iron is magnetised or de-magnetised by
have arrived at truly wonderfully results. turning on or off an electric current
This hospital, affording as it does a con through a coil of copper wire surround
stant supply of hysterical and epileptic ing it.
patients, presents peculiar facilities for
These effects may be classed under
conducting a series of experiments. In two heads — physical and mental or
cases of individual experiments there is psychical. . Not but that the latter
always danger of error from simulation depend ultimately on mechanical move
on the part of the patient, or delusion ments of nerve-centres of the brain, but
on that of the operator. But here the they are connected with will, conscious
experiments were conducted by a body ness, and other phenomena which we
of scientific and sceptical men, selected are accustomed to consider as mental.
from the flower of French surgeons and The purely physical efforts, again, may
physicians; and the patients were so be classified under three heads—viz.,
varied and numerous that, by proper those of lethargy, catalepsy, and som
precautions, it was possible to eliminate nambulism.
The divisions shade off
the element of conscious imposture. into one another, but the typical states
This supply of a large number of patients, are sufficiently distinct to justify this
suffering from hysteria and other nervous classification, which is due to M. Charcot,
disorders, was an essential element for the Director of the Salpetriere.
success, for it is with this class of patients,
In lethargy the patient appears to be
and especially of female patients, that in the deepest sleep. In fact, all the
the phenomena can be produced with functions of mind and body, except the
most completeness and certainty. It is bare life, seem to be suspended. The
a moot point whether all human organ eyes are closed, the body is perfectly
isms are subject more or less to the helpless; the limbs hang slackly down,
influence of hypnotism; but it is certain and, if they are raised, they drop heavily
that with healthy adults not more than into the same position. The charac
one out of every five or six subjects can teristic feature of this state is that any
be hypnotised at the first attempt, and excitement of the muscles, either direct
a great majority of those who can are or through a stimulus applied to the con
only so in a slight degree.
necting motor nerve, produces what is
The liability, however, to hypnotic called a contracture. Thus, if the ulnar
influence increases rapidly by practice, nerve is pressed, the third and fourth
so that nervous patients on whom the fingers of the corresponding hand are
�ANIMAL MAGNETISM AND SPIRITUALISM
forcibly contracted, and so for every
other nerve and corresponding muscle
of the body. This evidently affords a
perfect security against simulation, for no
one who was not a skilled anatomist
would know what muscles were con
nected with a particular nerve.
One of the most remarkable pheno
mena connected with these contiactures
is that they may be produced by a
magnet not in physical contact with the
nerve or muscle excited, and, still more
wonderful, that it may be transferred by
a magnet from one side of the body to the
other. Thus, if the fingers of the right
hand have been contracted by pressure
on the ulnar nerve of the right arm, and
a magnet is brought close to that nerve,
both hands become agitated with slight
jerking movements, and soon the con
tracture of the right fingers ceases, and
is transferred to the same fingers of the
left hand. We shall see later that in
more advanced stages of hypnotism still
more marvellous effects are produced by
the magnet, even to the extent of transfer
ring moral emotions into their opposites,
as love into hatred, or hatred into love.
In the meantime, it may be sufficient
to observe that these experiments with
the magnet seem to point out the most
likely way of bringing these mysterious
phenomena within the domain of accurate
science, and here the researches of the
Salpetriere school seem to be deficient.
We are merely told that the magnet pro
duces certain effects, but we want to
know at what distance does it produce
these effects. Do the effects and distance
vary with the power of the magnet ? are
they produced differently by the pre
sentation of the positive or negative pole?
are they produced by an electro-magnet
or by electric currents? is there any and
what reaction by the nerve or muscle on
the magnet ? and other similar questions.
When these are certainly known and
can be expressed in terms of weight and
movement, we shall have made the first
solid and secure step in advance towards
a solution of the more complicated
problems.
81
The next stage is that of catalepsy,
into which lethargy may be made to pass
by simply opening the eyelids. But,
although so closely allied to lethargy,
the states are very different. In catalepsy
all power of movement, or of resistance
to movement, is absolutely suspended,
and the body is like a lump of plastic
clay, which may be moulded into, and
will retain, any form given to it by the
operator. In fact, the subject becomes
a lay figure, with this sole difference,
that he remains so only for some ten or
fifteen minutes, after which the con
strained positions give way to natural
ones. But that he is a bona fide lay
figure for the time is proved by registering
the movements of the extended arm and
the regularity of the respiration, by means
of tracing instruments, and comparing
them with those of a healthy man volun
tarily assuming the same position. The
contrast of the tracings is most remark
able. That of the arm extended by
catalepsy is a straight line showing abso
lutely no tremors; while that of the arm
voluntarily extended shows such a series
of abrupt and increasing oscillations as
to make it quite conceivable how
thought-reading may be possible by con
tact between persons of exceptionally
delicate nervous organisation.
Another remarkable feature in cata
lepsy is that the position in which the
body is placed seems to react on the
mind, and call up the emotions, and
their reflex muscular motions, which are
habitually associated with the attitude.
Thus, if the head is depressed, the face
assumes the expression of humility; if
elevated, that of pride.
The most extraordinary phenomena
known are those of somnambulism, and
of the artificial somnambulism which is
produced by animal magnetism or
hypnotism. These are of various stages,
graduating from that of, ordinary waking
dreams to that of profound hypnotism,
in which will, consciousness, _ memory,
and perception are affected in a way
which at first sight appears to be truly
I magical or supernatural. The symptoms
�82
ANIMAL MAGNETISM AND SPIRITUALISM
may be classed for convenience as nation and suggestion that the results
physical or psychical, although the latter are most startling and most opposed to
are really physical, depending ultimately ordinary experience. What is an hallu
on movements of nerve-centres.
cination? It may be described in one
The direct physical effect seems to be word as seeing the invisible and not
the exact opposite of that of lethargy— seeing the visible. And the same of the
viz., that the senses, instead of being other senses. They not only deceive us,
asleep, have their sensibility exalted in but give evidence directly contradictory
an extraordinary degree. Thus, subjects of that of the waking senses. We hear
feel the heat or cold produced by the inaudible, and are deaf to the audible;
breathing from the mouth at a distance we touch the intangible, and lose touch
of several yards. The hearing is so of the tangible; bitter tastes sweet, and
acute that a conversation may be over sweet bitter.
The fundamental fact
heard which is carried on in the floor seems to be that, if certain conditions or
below.
molecular movements of certain sensory
The amount of this exaltation of the nerve-centres of the brain are caused, no
senses can almost be measured. There matter how, the corresponding percep
is a familiar experiment in which the tions, with their train of associated ideas
impression of two points, as of separate and reflex movements, inevitably follow.
pencils near one another, is felt as one ; In. the normal waking state these con
and an instrument has been constructed, ditions are created by real objects con
known as Weber’s compasses, which veyed to the brain through the senses.
measures the amount of deviation neces We see a man, and we conclude him to
sary to produce a two-fold sensation. be a real man because our other senses
This deviation appears to be six times confirm the testimony of sight. If he
greater in the waking than in the som speaks, we hear him; if we touch him, we
nambulistic state, whence it may be in feel him ; and the evidence of all other
ferred that the sensibility of the sense people who see and hear him confirms
of touch has been exalted sixfold.
our experience. But in dreams we have
A similar exaltation is produced in the commencement of a different experi
the faculty of memory, as shown in the ence, for we see and hear distinctly for
instance already quoted, in which an the time, though in a fleeting and imper
ignorant servant-girl recited a long passage fect manner, scenes and persohs which
in Hebrew. As in dreams, perceptions have no real objective existence. In
long since photographed on the brain hallucinations we have the same thing,
and completely forgotten seem to be only in a waking or partially waking
revived with all the vividness of actually state, and the impressions made are
present perceptions when recalled by vastly more vivid and permanent.
some association with the dominant idea
Take the following as instances of
which has taken possession of the mind. positive hypnotic hallucinations, or seeing
This arises doubtless, in a great measure, the invisible, recorded by Messrs. Binet
from the mind being closed against the and Fere from their experience at the
innumerable other impressions which, in Salpetriere. A patient told to look at a
the waking state, wholly or partially butterfly which had just alighted on the
neutralise any one suggested idea, and table before her immediately said, “ Oh,
weaken its impression. Thus, a som what a beautiful butterfly,” and proceeded
nambulist walks securely along a narrow cautiously to catch it and impale the
plank, because no other outward impres imaginary butterfly with a pin on a piece
sions of surrounding objects confuse his of cardboard. Another patient, being
mind with suggestions of danger.
shown a photographic plate with an
It is, however, when we come to the impression of a scene in the Pyrenees,
partly psychical phenomena of halluci and told that it was a portrait of herself
�ANIMAL MAGNETISM AND SPIRITUALISM
83
in a very unbecoming dress, or rather in the waking mind, and produce the
want of dress, immediately saw it so, and effects corresponding to the idea as by
was so enraged that she threw the plate an inevitable piece of machinery. This
on the ground and stamped on it. And brings the subject within the domain
what is remarkable, as showing the of criminal jurisprudence, for there is
intensity and persistency of these hallu abundant evidence that a normally moral
cinations, for nearly two months after person may obey a hypnotic suggestion
wards, when shown in her waking state which had been totally, forgotten, even
photographs of this landscape which had to the extent of committing the greatest
been taken from the plate, she saw her crimes, as attempting to stab or adminis
own portrait and fell into fits of passion. ter poison. Thus M. Fere relates that,
In another case a patient, being told that having ordered a subject in a state of
one of the hospital doctors would be somnambulism on awakening to. stab
present at a ball to be given, next night M. B------ with the pasteboard knife he
among the inmates of Salpetriere, saw, put into her hand, as soon as she awoke
conversed, and walked about with this she rushed on him and struck him in
imaginary doctor, who was not really the region of the heart. M. B-——•
present, and when she saw the real man feigned to fall down. The subject,
the day after could not recognise him being asked why she had killed him,
until she had been again hypnotised and replied with an expression of ferocity,
“He is an old villain, and wished to
the hallucination dispelled.
The negative experiences of making insult me.”
It is evident that, if these phenomena
the visible invisible are even more extra
are real, hypnotism ought to be regulated
ordinary. Take the following case:—
“ We suggested to a hypnotised patient by law as much as the far less dangerous
that when she awoke she would be unable practice of vivisection. The practice of
to see F----- •. She could not see him, it should be confined to licensed medical
and asked what had become of him. . practitioners, and under conditions re
We replied, 1 He has gone out; you may quiring the presence of at least two or
return to your room.’ She rose, said more witnesses, one of whom, especially
good morning, and, going to the door, in the case of females, should be some
knocked up against F------ , who had respectable friend or relative. I prefer,
placed himself before it. We next took however, not to dwell on this branch of
a hat, which she saw quite well, and the question, but to return to its purely
touched it so as to be sure that it was scientific and philosophical aspects.
The purely mechanical origin of these
really there. We placed it on F------’s
head, and words cannot express her hallucinations is shown by a number of
surprise when she saw the hat apparently interesting experiments. An hallucina
suspended in the air. F------ took off tory image can be reflected, refracted, or
the hat and saluted her with it several made to appear double, in precisely the
times, when she saw it, without any same manner as a real one. Thus, in
support, describing curves in the air. in what is known as Brewster’s experi
She declared the hat must be suspended ment, where an image is duplicated by
by a string, and even got on a chair to a slight lateral pressure on one eye
throwing it out of focus with the other,
feel for it.”
Numerous other instances equally the same effect is produced. A case is
remarkable are recorded, and there is a recorded where an hysterical patient, who
whole class of cases in which suggestions had a vision of the Virgin Mary appear
impressed on the subject’s mind in a ing in great glory, saw two Virgins
state of hypnotism may long afterwards, directly this lateral pressure was applied.
and when totally forgotten, be revived at Complementary colours also appear to
predicted periods, with irresistible force, an hallucinatory image of a red or green
�84
ANIMAL MAGNETISM AND SPIRITUALISM
spot on a sheet of white cardboard, just: really displaced by F------ , who had been
as they would in the waking state if the: rendered invisible by suggestion. It is
spot were real. The magnet also, by’ evident that, if there is any real residue
a purely mechanical action, transfers of facts in the phenomena of spiritualistic
unilateral hallucinations which affect one; seances, after deducting what is due to
eye only, from the right to the left eye, legerdemain and imposture, the above
and vice versa, and it may be made to experiments would go a long way to
destroy an hullucination, as when X------ account for them. The preliminaries of
was made invisible to an hypnotic a seance, such as darkened rooms, con
subject; on applying a magnet to the tact of hands, and excited imagination,
back of the head, X------ again became are almost identical with those employed
visible.
by Mesmer, and it would be contrary to
And what is still more wonderful, the experience if they did not frequently
magnet is capable of transferring emo produce, on susceptible subjects, hyp
tions. Thus the idea was impressed on notic effects which made them suscep
a hypnotised subject that on awaking tible to hallucinating suggestions. If so,
she would feel a desire to strike F
—. there is no doubt that they might see
A magnet was placed near her right foot. tables move and Mr. Home float in the
On awaking, she jumped up and tried air, with a full conviction that they were
to give F----- - a slap, saying, “ I do not awake all the time and in possession of
know why, but I feel a desire to strike their ordinary senses.
him.” In another moment her face
This much I would observe, that all
assumed a gentle and endearing ex these attempts to escape from the inexor
pression, and she said, “ I want to able laws of nature invariably fail.
embrace him,” and tried hard to do so. Spiritualism is grasped at by many
Consecutive oscillations between love because it seems to hold out a hope of
and hatred were then observed.
escaping from those laws and proving
Another most remarkable phenomenon the existence of disembodied spirits.
is recorded. It was suggested to a sub But, when analysed by science, spiritual
jected X----- r that she had become M. ism leads straight to materialism. What
F------•. On awaking, she was unable to are we to think of free will if, as in the
see M. F------ , who was present, but she case of Dr. Braid’s old lady, it can be
exactly imitated his gestures, put her annihilated, and the will of another brain
hands in her pockets, and stroked an substituted for it, by the simple mechani
imaginary moustache. When asked if cal expedient of looking at a black wafer
she was acquainted with herself, X------ , stuck on a white wall ? Or what becomes
she replied with a contemptuous shrug, of personal consciousness and identity
“Oh, yes, an hysterical patient. What if, as in the case above quoted, a young
do you think of her? She is not too woman can be brought to refer to herself
wise.”
with contemptuous pity as a strange girl
There are two experiments recorded who “was not over wise ”? These cases
which throw a good deal of light on the of an alternating identity are most per
phenomena of what is known as spiritual plexing. Smith falls into a trance and
ism. In slight hypnotism, the subjects believes himself to be Jones. He really
assert, on awaking, that they have never is Jones, and Smith has become a stranger
for a moment lost consciousness, and to him while the trance lasts; but when
that they have been present as wit he awakes he is himself, Smith, again,
nesses at the phenomena of suggestion ;and forgets all about Jones. He falls
developed by the magnetisers.
In into another trance, and straightway he
another case the furniture of the room 1forgets Smith and takes up his Jones
seemed to the subject to be noisily <existence where he dropped it in the
moved about by invisible hands, being ]previous trance, and so he may go on
�ANIMAL MAGNETISM AND SPIRITUALISM______
ments. These are transmitted, in the
r
case of hearing, by sound-waves of air ;
c
in that of sight by light-waves of ether,
1
to the nerve-endings of B, and along
t
those nerves to his brain, where they
t
originate cell-movements corresponding
Jto the original movements in the brain
t
of A, and which are accompanied by the
(
same train of ideas and perceptions. In
s
the sense of touch, there is no interme
1
diate medium between the nerve-endings
<
of A and B, and the movements of the
<
former are communicated directly to
those of B by contact. The senses of
taste and smell are hardly used by the
human species as means of communicat
ing ideas, though in many animal species,
as in the dog, the latter, sense is greatly
used in placing them in relation with
their environment.
This also may be affirmed respecting
the different senses, that they are capable
of being brought to an exceptional degree
of susceptibility by necessity and practice,
as is well illustrated by the facility with
which the blind substitute the sense of
“We are such stuff as dreams are made of,”
touch for that of sight, and read fluently
he enunciated what has become a scien books printed with raised letters. The
tific fact. The “stuff” is in all cases sense of sight also may be brought to a
the same—vibratory motions of nerve degree of unusual acuteness, enabling
the observer to read indications in the
particles.
The researches of the French school face and expression so slight as to be
of physiologists throw a good deal of invisible to the ordinary sense, and of
light on the mysterious regions of pheno which the person observed is . himself
mena, or alleged phenomena, which unconscious. A remarkable instance
are classed under the general heads of of this is given by Lord Avebury, of a
thought-reading, clairvoyance, and spirit dog who could pick out from a series of
ualism. Those of thought-reading and numbers on cards laid on the floor the
clairvoyance may be summed up in the; correct answer of sums in arithmetic,
question whether or no it is possible for and even extract cube-roots,. doubtless
one brain to communicate with another■ by observing unconscious indications in
otherwise than through the ordinary- his master’s face when he touched the
medium of the senses. It is certain that; correct card.
This, no doubt, goes a long way towards
in the immense majority of cases it is5
not possible. Consider how the ideas5 explaining the phenomena of what is
or perceptions of A are communicated1 called thought-reading. It is quite conto B. Certain movements of the brain- ceivable that, with contact, an exception
cells of A which are, if not the cause,, ally delicate sense of touch, exceptionally
j
the invariable concomitants of those cultivated, may enable a man to read
s
ideas and perceptions, send currents the insensible tremors which are unalong the nerves, which at their extre- consciously transmitted to nerve-ends
mities contract muscles and cause move and superficial muscles, the existence of
alternating between Smith and Jones,
I often ask myself the question—If he
died during one of his trances, which
would he be, Smith or Jones ? and I
confess that it takes some one wiser than
I am to answer it.
Again, what can be said of love and
hate if, under given circumstances, they
can be transformed into one another by
the action of a magnet ? It is evident
that these phenomena all point to the
conclusion that all we call soul, spirit,
consciousness, and personal identity are
indissolubly connected with mechanical
movements of the material elements of
nerve-cells, and that, if we want any
further solution, we must go down deeper
and ask what this matter, and what these
movements, or rather the energy which
causes them, may really mean. Can the
antithesis between soul and body, spirit
and matter, be solved by being both
resolved into one eternal and universal
substratum of existence ? When Shake
speare said,
�86
ANIMAL MAGNETISM AND SPIRITUALISM
which is a necessary consequence of all
different. Here we find ourselves on
brain-motion or thought, and which is
less firm ground, and opinions vary
proved to exist as a matter of fact by the
considerably. Mr. Frank Podmore, who
irregularities in the line traced by a
was for many years the secretary of, and
pencil under suitable conditions. And
an indefatigable and critical worker in,
it is to be remarked that keeping the
the above society, believes that there
mind fixed on the idea—in other words,
making the corresponding brain-motions remain a large number of facts after the
keenest analysis which point to the
and nerve-currents stronger and more
persistent — is the condition usually existence of telepathy and a kind of clair
required for a successful experiment in voyance. He has discussed the matter
fully m his Apparitions and Thoughtthought-reading.
Transference and later works. Professor
Thus far—and Mr. Cumberland, the
Charles Richet has also conducted a
most successful thought-reader of the number of experiments which lead him
day, carries it no farther—there is nothing
to the same conclusion. In their theory
impossible, or even a priori improbable, the active particles in the brain cause
in the assertion that thought may be
waves in the surrounding ether, and
thus read. It is a question of evidence,
these are received and interpreted by a
and here the weight of the negative
sympathetic brain, much as in the pro
evidence is so great that it requires
cess of wireless telegraphy. But other
extremely strong proof to establish ex scientific men consider that coincidence
ceptions. It is a matter of notoriety is not inadequate to explain the few
that persons, even of delicate tempera
phenomena which can be demonstrated
ments, may lie in the closest contact, to be free from fraud or hallucination.
clasped in each other’s arms, without
Consider the enormous number of
either having the remotest idea of what
dreams, 300,000,000 at least, of civilised
is passing. in the mind of the other, human beings dreaming for most nights
unless it is conveyed by the ordinary of the year, and these dreams all made
channels of sight or hearing. On the
up of fragments of actual scenes and
other hand, the evidence for a few rare
persons, which have been photographed
exceptions is strong, especially in the
on the brain. The wonder is not that
case of some of Mr. Cumberland’s ex there should be occasional coincidences
periments, which are all the stronger
between dreams and contemporaneous
because he does not pretend to any
or subsequent occurrences, but that there
supernatural power, and shows none of should be so few of them. How many
the ordinary signs of an impostor. All
anxious brains must have dreamt of
we can say, therefore, is that where there absent friends or relations dying or in
is contact, or where unconscious indi
danger, and in how many millions of
cations may be read by the eye, there is
cases must the dream not have been
nothing in thought-reading inconsistent verified. And how many vivid dreams,
with the known laws of Nature ; but that or dreams in a dozing state, between
the evidence, though strong, is hardly sleeping and waking, must have passed
strong enongh to enable us to accept it into the stage of hallucination, and been
as an established fact.
taken for actual visions. And how weak
Yet when we come to thought-reading is memory, and how strong the myth
at a distance, and to the analogous making propensity of the human mind
alleged phenomena of clairvoyance,
to convert these dreams and visions into
fulfilled dreams and visions, and com waking realities. Of the many cases of
munications across the globe, mostly distant communications collected by the
from the dead and dying, such as are so Psychical Research Society, I do not
plentifully recorded in the annals of the know of one which may not be thus
Psychical Research Society, the case is
accounted for; and in some the proof is
�ANIMAL MAGNETISM AND SPIRITUALISM_________ 87
what the answer was I The “m” of
conclusive, as where visions have been
seen or impressions felt of events before “mother” had been written not very
'
they occurred, owing to the difference of legibly, with the first stroke too long, so
1
that at a hasty glance in a constrained
time due to longitude.
. .
1
In the case of spiritualism it is re- position it might be easily read as
i
And sure enough the
markable that it is only the more vulgar “brother.”
and grotesque forms which there is any answer came, “ Your brother’s spirit not
•
difficulty in explaining. We understand being here, we do not know his Christian
This was my first and last
how spirits are materialised, for the name.”
apparatus has been frequently exposed experience of omniscient spirits, and it
in the police-courts; there is. nothing was perfectly apparent that it was only a
very mysterious in the way in which piece of very simple and very clumsy
No doubt things more
slight hints and clues are followed up by legerdemain.
professional mediums. And there is this marvellous are done by superior legerde
conclusive consideration—that the spirits main, but nothing that I have ever heard
never say or know anything which has of that is beyond the resources of leger
not passed through the mind of the demain, or which is so wonderful as the
medium. If he is illiterate, the spirits mango and other tricks of Indian
would be plucked for their spelling; if jugglers. No one who has not studied
he is weak in his h’s, so are they; if he the art of legerdemain can be aware how
makes a mistake or is entrapped into a great its resources are, and how com
contradiction, they follow suit. In no pletely the senses may be deceived by a
single instance has any communication skilful operator. Nor is it at all difficult
of the slightest use or novelty been made to understand how slight clues may .be
used by an experienced operator, to give
by these visitors from another world.
In short, the whole affair is obviously what are apparently astounding answers.
legerdemain in rapping or writing on Thus, if a medium happens to know that
slates, answers to questions known to the a death has at any time occurred in the
medium, supplemented by any hints or family of the questioner, the answer
clues he may possess, and in the absence wrapped or written out is sure to profess
of these by such commonplaces as “We to come from the spirit of the deceased
are happy,” “ We are with you.” I saw relative.
If any doubt had remained as to the
a conclusive proof of this in the only
experience I ever had with a professional nature of these spiritualistic experiences,
medium, one of great repute.
The it would have been removed by the
question put was, “ What was my report made in 1887 by the Scybert
mother’s Christian name?” This was Commission. In this case Mr. Scybert,
written on a slate out of sight of the an enthusiastic spiritualist in the United
medium, and turned down, and ap States, bequeathed a considerable sum of
parently held by one of his hands under money to the University of Philadelphia,
a table, while the other hand was held by on the condition that it should appoint
the questioner. Nothing occurred for a a Commission to investigate modern
while, but then began a series of groans spiritualism. Ten Commissioners were
and twistings by the medium, which I appointed, including several professors
took to be part of the usual conjurer’s and well-known men of science j some
patter to divert attention; but, looking of whom, including their chairman, Dr.
closely, I distinctly saw a corner of the; Furness, confessed “ to a leaning in
slate reversed under the table, with the: favour of the substantial truth . of
writing on it uppermost, followed by the: spiritualism.” They took . great pains
scratching of a pencil, after which the: with the investigation, which was conanswer was produced, alleged to have; ducted wiih scrupulous fairness, and
been written by the spirits. But mark; examined many of the most famous
�88
ANIMAL MAGNETISM AND SPIRITUALISM
mediums, among whom was the well- are produced. There is a deal of eviknown Dr. Slade.
Their unanimous dence from persons whose good faith
5
report was that the whole thing was based cannot be doubted that they have seen
1
on “gross, intentional fraud.” They1 pieces of furniture move at the end of a
saw distinctly how the tricks were; room, without any contact or apparent
effected, and a professional conjurer,, cause, and that this took place in private
Mr. Kellar, who had been at first baffled houses, where there was no possibility of
by the phenomena of slate - writing,, prepared machinery.
having turned his attention more closely
The mediums say it is done by spirit
to this branch of conjuring, was able not hands. This is obviously absurd, for it
only to repeat the processes of the best is not a case which lies outside of known
mediums, but to do so with far greater laws of Nature, but one which radically
skill, and _ produce effects which they
conflicts with them. As long as the law
could not imitate; while he has given a of motion holds “that action and reaction
challenge to the spiritualistic world that
are equal and opposite,” there can be no
he will reproduce by sleight-of-hand any action without a solid point of resistance.
alleged spiritualistic phenomena which Archirnedes said that he could move the
he has witnessed three times. Slade world if you gave him a irov trra, or
himself was later condemned to prison fulcrum, on which to rest his machinery;
in London for fraud.
and the ghost of Archimedes, if sum
This report is so conclusive to any moned from the Elysian fields at the
reasonable mind that it is scarcely bidding of a seedy professional medium,
necessary to refer to the mass of corro could say no more. Spirit-hands must
borative evidence to the same effect; be attached to a solid spirit body, stand
such, for instance, as the confession of ing on solid feet on a solid floor, to lift a
the Fox family, that the rappings, in weight. And the same thing applies to
which the spiritualistic faith originated, any supposed magnetic or psychic force
were produced by a knack they had of enacted by the medium. If the medium
half-dislocating toe and knee joints, and pulls the chair, the chair must pull the
replacing them with a sudden snap— medium, and it becomes a case of “pull
a knack which, singularly enough, is also devil, pull baker.” If a magnet lifts an
possessed by Professor Huxley; the iron bar, it is because the magnet is fixed
confessions of Home and other exposed to some point of attachment.
mediums; and the experiences of Mr.
The question, therefore, resolves itself
Davy, Mrs. Sedgwick, and others, related into one either of hallucination or
in a volume of the Psychical Research legerdemain. Do the chairs and tables
Society.
really move, or only seem to move?
Those who are not convinced by such There appears to be no trustworthy
proofs as these are impervious to reason, evidence as to this fundamental point,
and it would be a waste of words to argue and yet it is one easily determined.
the matter any farther. It may be Does the housemaid when she comes
assumed as a demonstrated fact that all :into the room next morning, or anyone
the phenomena which profess to be based ■who has not been under the influence
on a communication with a spiritual <of the seance, find the furniture where it
world are, in the words of the Scybert 1was originally, or where it seemed to be
Report, simple instances of vulgar leger- jplaced. If it was really moved, who moved
demain and of human credulity.
jit? Here, also, hallucination might come
It is only when we come to what may i
into play in another form, for if, as
be called the tomfoolery of spiritualism, <
described in the experiment of Binet and
such as unmeaning tricks of dancing ]
Fere, already mentioned, the medium
chairs and tables, that we are left in c
could release his hands without being
doubt how some of the appearances I [
perceived, and render himself invisible
�ANIMAL MAGNETISM AND SPIRITUALISM_________ 89
by suggestion, or perform the trick in a apparent contact. Nor do they seem to
dark room, he could easily move the have thoroughly studied and mastered
chairs himself without being seen. ^his the resources of legerdemain, which are
seems the more probable, as in all the obviously one of the principal causes,
accounts I have read the articles moved and in many cases the sole cause, of the
do not exceed the weight which the so-called spiritualistic manifestations, and
medium might move, either in his natural without a knowledge of which no one
is really competent to form an opinion.
condition, or with his muscular strength
excited by hypnotism. Assuming a state Indeed, it is questionable whether, when
all the more refined tricks of spiritualistic
of hypnotism to be induced in the spec
mediums have been so thoroughly
tators, the explanation would be easy,
and, in fact, identical with many of the exposed, it is worth while to seek for
scientifically-recorded experiments of any other hypothesis than that of ordi
Binet and Fere. And it is remarkable nary conjuring to account for those
that the preliminary conditions of the mere childish and unmeaning manifesta
stance, such as darkened rooms, clasped tions, the modus operandt of which has
hands, and strained attention, are identi not yet been fully explained.
It is evident, however, from the wellcal with those employed, from Mesmer
attested experiments of the French school,
downwards, in producing real hypnotism.
At the same time, it would seem that that there really is opening up a most
the hypnotism (if it be so) introduced at interesting field of inquiry as to the
stances differs from ordinary hypnotism. relations of mind to matter under certain
The subjects retain the fullest convic exceptional conditions, and the extent
tion that they have been wide awake all to which illusions may appear as realities
the time, and in full possession of their under the influence of excited imagi
Hypnotism, somnambulism,
ordinary senses. Can there be a state of nation.
semi-hypnotism in which the brain, while dreams, and hallucinations are becoming
retaining its full consciousness, is rendered exact sciences; and researches pursued
susceptible to suggested hallucinations ? in the same manner into the alleged
If so, the whole matter is explained. If phenomena of spiritualism and thought-’
not, it is very singular that the same reading would end either in exposing
preliminary operations which produce imposture, or in reducing such residuum
hypnotism, where hypnotism is expected, of truth as they may contain to known
should make chairs and tables dance, laws analogous to those which prevail
and bodies float in the air, where that is in other branches of physiological and
what the spectators expect to see. But psychological investigation.
In the meantime, I conclude by saying
the problem could easily be solved, so
that, so far as we have yet gone, the whole
far as the medium is concerned, by
connecting him with an electric current, of what is called “ spiritualism. seems
which would be broken and ring a bell to be quite dreadfully “materialistic.”
if he moved hand or foot, and seeing The one fact which comes out with
whether, under such circumstances, the demonstrated certainty is that definite
ideas are indissolubly connected with
furniture could be moved.
It is singular that the men of really definite vibrations of brain-cells; and
scientific attainments who profess a belief that, however these vibrations are
in spiritualism, such as Sir W. Crookes induced, the corresponding ideas and
and Mr. Wallace, do not seem to have perceptions inevitably follow. In the
proceeded in this way of accurate experi ordinary course of things, these vibrations
ment pursued by the French school of are induced by what are called realities
Salpetriere, even as regards the first acting through the senses, and by the
rudimentary alleged facts of moving normal action of the brain-cells on the
heavy bodies at a distance without perceptions thus received and stored up.
�90
AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY
But this applies only to about twothirds of our existence—viz., the waking
state. In sleep and dreams the vibra
tions set up are from former perceptions,
photographed on the brain, and grouped
together in unreal and often fantastic
pictures.
In somnambulism this is
carried to a further point, and we act
our dreams. In hypnotism it is carried
still farther, and the vibrations are excited
by a foreign will and by foreign sugges
tions. In the ultimate state, madness,
the hallucinations have become per
manent. But what strange questions
does it raise when we find that, in
certain abnormal conditions, all that is
most intimately connected with what we
call soul, individuality, and conscious
ness can be annihilated, or exchanged
for those of another person, by the
mechanical process of exciting their
corresponding brain-motions in another
way. What are love and hate, if a
magnet applied to a hypnotised patient
can transform one into the other? What'
is personal identity if the suggestion of
a. third person can make an hysterical
girl forget it so completely as to make
her talk of herself as a distant acquaint
ance “ who is not over wise ” ? What is
the value of the evidence of the senses
if a similar suggestion can make us see
the hat, but not the man who wears it,
or dance half the night with an imaginary
partner? Am I “I myself, I,” or am I
a barrel-organ, playing “ God save the
Queen, if the stops are set in the normal
fashion, but the “ Marseillaise ” if some
cunning hand has altered them without
my knowledge? These are questions
which I cannot answer. All I can say
is that practically the wisest thing I can
do is to keep myself, as far as possible,
in the sphere of normal conditions, and
assume its conclusions to be real; avoid
ing, except as a matter for strict scientific
investigation, the various abnormal paths
which, in one way or other, all converge
towards the ultimate end of insanity.
Chapter VIII.
THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE. AGNOSTICISM
AND CHRISTIANITY
PART I.
Are they Reconcilable ?—Definitions of Agnosti
cism and Christianity—Christian Dogma—
Rests on Intuition, not Reason—Descartes,
Kant, Coleridge—Christian Agnostics—Ten
dency of the Age—Carlyle, George Eliot,
Renan—Anglican Divines, Spurgeon.
we know nothing of what may be beyond
phenomena,” and “ that a man shall not
say he knows or believes that which he
has no scientific grounds for professing
to know or believe.” This is not a
positive or aggressive creed, and is recon
Is Agnosticism reconcilable with Chris cilable with any . form of moral, intel
tianity, orare theyhopelesslyantagonistic? lectual, or religious belief which is not
That depends on the definition we give dogmatic—/.<?., which does not attempt
to the two terms. That of Agnosticism to impose on us some hard-and-fast
is very simple. It is contained in the theory of the universe, based on attempts
sentence of Professor Huxley’s, “ That to define the indefinable and explain
�AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY
the unknowable.
The definition of
Christianity is by no means so simple.
Practical Christianity resolves itself very
much, and more and more every day,
into a sincere love and admiration of the
life and teaching of Jesus, the son of the
carpenter of Nazareth, as depicted in the
narratives which have come down to us
respecting them, mainly in the Synoptic
Gospels. This love and admiration
translates itself into a desire to imitate as
far as possible this life, and to act upon
these precepts; to be good, pure, loving,
charitable, and unselfish even to the
death.
With this form of Christianity the
Agnostic has no quarrel; on the contrary,
if he is not dwarfed and stunted in his
faculties, if he has a heart to feel and
an imagination to conceive, he recognises
as fully as the most devout Christian all
that is good and beautiful in the true spirit
of Christianity and its Author. Nay,
more, he will not quarrel with the mass of
humble and simple-minded Christians
who show their love and admiration by
piling up adjectives until they reach the
supreme one of “ divine,” and who, in
obedience to the ineradicable instinct of
the human mind to personify abstract
ideas and emotions, make Jesus of
Nazareth their Ormuzd, or incarnation
of the good principle, and author of all
that is pure, righteous, and lovely in the
universe.
But there is another definition of
Christianity of a totally different char
acter—the dogmatic or theological defini
tion, which, commencing with St. Paul
and St. John, and culminating in the
Athanasian Creed, has been accepted
from the early ages of Christianity,
almost until the present day, as the
miraculous revelation of the true theory
of the universe. It teaches how a
personal God created the universe, how
he deals with it and sustains it, how
he formed man in his own image, and
what relations he has with him. It pro
fesses to explain mysteries such as the
origin of evil, man’s fall and redemption,
his life beyond the grave, the conditions
9i
of his salvation, and a variety of other
matters which, to ordinary human percep
tion, and human reason, are absolutely
and certainly hidden “ behind the veil.”
With this definition of Christianity
Agnosticism has nothing in common.
It cannot be both true that we know
certain things and that we do not and
cannot know anything about them.
Theology asserts that we are quite
capable of knowing the truth respecting
these mysteries, and that, in point of fact,
we do know it, either by intuition or
by historical evidence.
Philosophy
traverses the assertion that we know it
by intuition; Science shatters into frag
ments the scheme assumed to be taught
historically by a miraculous revelation.
To begin with intuition. It rests on
Cardinal Newman’s celebrated theory of
the “Illative sense,” or a. complete
assent of all the faculties, which gives a
more absolute proof than any that can
be attached to proofs of science, which
are only deductions from certain limited
faculties, such as experience and reason.
This was very clearly put by Father
Dalgairns in the discussion on “The
Uniformity of Laws of Nature ” at the
Metaphysical Society. He said: “I
believe in God in the same sense in
which I believe in pain and pleasure, in
space and time, in right and wrong, in
myself. If I do not know God, then
I know nothing whatever.” That is, the
idea of such a being as the God of
theology, a personal creator of the uni
verse, with faculties like, though trans
cendently like, those of man, appeared
to him a necessary postulate, or rather a
fundamental instinct or mould of thought,
as universal and imperative as those of
space and time. Now, is this so? It is
at once refuted by the fact that it is not
universal and not imperative. The im
mense majority of mankind, both now
and in all past ages, have had no such
intuition. It is the refined product of
an advanced civilisation, confined to a
few exceptional minds of high culture,
acute intellect, and tender conscience.
Even in Christian countries it is an
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AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY
affair of education and authority, rather the attempted definitions are mere
than of necessary intuition; and even juggles with words which convey no real
those who assert most loudly that it meaning. We talk of creation; but when
is a fundamental category of thought it comes to the point we find that we
complain that ninety-nine men out of really mean transformation, and that of
every hundred in modern England live creation, properly speaking, we have no
practically as if there were no God. Not more idea than the babe unborn. We
so with the real categories of thought and talk of immortality; but what we were
perception. No man, past or present, before we were born, or what we shall
in Monotheistic, Pantheistic, or Poly be after we die, what soul, consciousness,
theistic countries, has ever lived practi personal identity really are, how they
cally as if there were no such things as came to be indissolubly connected with
space and time, or as if such primary matter, and what they will be when
perceptions as those of pain and pleasure that union is dissolved, are mysteries as
had no real existence. These have to which we can only make guesses, like
never deceived us ; but the instances are the Brahmins and Buddhists, whose
innumerable in which the “illative guess is transmigration, or the Red
sense,” the complete, earnest, and con Indians, whose guess is a happy hunting
scientious assent of all the faculties, has ground beyond the setting sun.
deceived us, and has led to conclusions
The greatest philosophers have come
which a wider knowledge has shown to to this as the ultimate fact of their meta
be not only erroneous, but, in many physical reasonings.
Descartes says
cases, absurd and noxious.
“ that by natural reason we can make
When closely analysed, the theological many conjectures about the soul, and
idea of God may be clearly seen to be have flattering hopes, but no assurance.”
an attempt to define the indefinable. Kant confesses that reason can never
The primary idea is that of a creator. prove the existence of a God. Even
But what is creation ? Making a thing, great theologians, in the midst of their
in the sense in which alone man makes dogmatic definitions, let drop admissions
anything—that is, transforming existing which show that, at the bottom of their
matter and energy into new forms—we hearts, they feel their ignorance of the
can understand. As we make a watch high mysteries of which they talk so con
or a steam-engine, we can conceive how fidently. The Athanasian Creed, the
a Being, with faculties like our own, but very essence and incarnation of dogma
indefinitely magnified, might make a tism, says “the Father incomprehen
universe out of atoms and energies, and sible” in the midst of a long series of
make it so perfectly that it would go for articles, every one of which is absolutely
ever. But how he could make some devoid of meaning unless on the assump
thing out of nothing, which is what tion that he is comprehensible, and that
creation really implies, altogether passes the writer rightly comprehended him.
our understanding. We have absolutely St. Augustine writes, “ God is unspeak
no faculties which enable us to form even able,” and then proceeds, in a long
the remotest conception of what those treatise on “ Christian Doctrine,” to
atoms and energies really are, how they speak of him as if he knew all about
came there, or what will become of them. his personality, attributes, and ways of
The more closely we examine, the dealing with the world and man. Even
clearer it will appear that these theo St. Paul says, “ O the depths of God 1
logical intuitions are, in effect, nothing how unsearchable are his judgments, and
but aspirations; or reflections, like how inscrutable are his ways !”
Brocken spectres, of our earnest longings,
What more have Huxley and Herbert
fears, and hopes on the back-ground Spencer ever said ? Only they have said
mists of the Unknowable; and that all it deliberately, consistently, and knowing
�AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY
93
things is regulated by a special personal
the reason why; while theologians,
providence, frequently interfering by
admitting the premises, have preferred to
miracles with the course of evolution and
act and argue as if a totally different set
the uniformity of the laws of Nature.
of premises were true. The cause is The cause of miracles may be considered
obvious: Reason failing, they have as out of court when even enlightened
fallen back on Revelation. They had an
advocates who hold a brief for them,
• assured belief that an inspired volume,
like Dr. Temple, an Archbishop of the
attested by miracles, . taught things
Anglican Church, throw it up . and
respecting these mysteries which other
declare “ that all the countless varieties
wise must have remained, unknown.
of the universe were provided for. by an
Thus Coleridge, who occupies a fore
original impress, and not by special acts
most place among those who have
of creation modifying what had pre
attempted to base Christian theology on
abstract reason, arrives at this conclusion, viously been made.”
Dogmatic theology, therefore, having
that “aChristian philosophy or theology
no solid foundation either in abstract
has its own assumptions, resting.on three
ultimate facts—namely, the reality of the reason or in historic facts, and. being in
law of conscience, the existence of a hopeless conflict with science, is bound
responsible will as the subject of that law, to disappear; and even now, in address
ing enlightened and impartial men, it
and, lastly, the existence of God. The
first is a fact of consciousness; the may be taken as “ une quantite negligesecond, of reason necessarily concluded able.” This being the. case, the barrier
which separates Agnosticism from Chris
from the first; the third, a fact of history
tianity is to a great extent removed.
interpreted by both.” He clearly sees
The term “Christian Agnostic” is
that any certain knowledge respecting the
coming more and more to the front in
existence of God, and the various. con
clusions deduced from it by Christian the thoughts and utterances, of en
theology (such as the creation of man, lightened Christian men. I notice these
his fall and redemption, the origin of sin with pleasure, for it is always more
and evil, atonement, grace, and pre profitable to find points of . agreement
destination), if a fact at all, is a fact. of rather than of difference with sincere
A Professor of
history—that is, depends on a conviction and reasonable men.
that these mysteries were . actually Divinity, preaching in the University of
revealed as recorded by the Bible, and Oxford a short time ago, said : “ The field
that the Bible is an inspired, book of speculative theology may be regarded
attested by historical facts; that it con as almost exhausted: we must be. con
tains prophecies which really were ful tent henceforward to be Christian
filled, and describes miracles which Agnostics.” Canon Freemantle, in an
article in the Fortnightly Review, quotes
actually occurred.
This assumption has turned out to be this with approval. In the course of a
a broken reed.
In face of the dis very able argument on the changed con
coveries of recent science, no reasonable ditions of theology, he says that “ theo
man doubts that, beautiful, and admirable logians, in defiance of Aristotle s axiom,
as the Bible, and especially the New that you must not expect demonstration
Testament, may be in many parts,, it is from a rhetorician, have begun with
not a true, and therefore not a Divine, axioms and definitions and proceeded to
They have said or
revelation of the scheme of the universe. demonstrations.
1 proved ’ that God is just or. good, God
It is not true that the world was created
as described by Genesis; that man is a is personal, God is omniscient and
recent creation made in God’s image, omnipotent; and they have used these
who fell from his high estate by an act phrases, not in a literary, but in a quasiof disobedience; or that the course of scientific, manner, and have proceeded to
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AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY
draw strict inferences from them. But,
in doing this, they have not only acted
in the way of unwarrantable assump
tions; they have often produced what
St. Paul termed the vain janglings of a
science falsely so-called; have enslaved
the Divine to their own puny conceptions,
and have provoked violent revolt.”
This is precisely what Agnostics con
tend for. They do not deny that, in the
course of evolution, certain feelings and
aspirations have grown up and come to
be part of the mental furniture of civi
lised nations, which find a poetical
expression in the ideas of God and of
immortality. They simply deny that we
have, or ever can have, any certain,
definite, and scientific knowledge respect
ing these mysteries.
To take an
instance—that of the pre-existence of
the soul before birth; we recognise a
certain poetical truth in Wordsworth’s
noble ode when he asserts this pre
existence, and tells us that in infancy—
“ Trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.”
But we do not accept it as a known or
knowable fact. We have absolutely no
experience of any consciousness or
personal identity before birth, or as
existing otherwise than in association
with the matter and energy of our cor
poreal body. No more have we of any
continuance of that identity after death.
It is “behind the veil,” in that great
region of the “ Unknowable ” where
nothing is known, and therefore all
things are possible. Here Agnosticism
comes in as a powerful auxiliary to those
emotions and aspirations which consti
tute what is called “religion.” It is the
best of all arguments against Atheism
and Materialism, for, if we cannot prove
an affirmative, still less can we prove a
negative.
No man who understands
what knowledge really means can affirm
that any conception of what may exist in
the great Unknowable which compasses
us about on every side is impossible.
He can only call it impossible when it
conflicts with known facts and laws; but
as long as it remains in the region of
poetical imagination or moral emotion
he cannot disprove it, and may even, if
he finds consolation or guidance from
it, give it a sort of provisional assent.
Thus, no Agnostic can deny that, if he
had faculties to see him, there might be
in the Unknowable a Divine spirit or *
substratum bearing some resemblance
to what enlightened men understand by
the term “God”; that there maybe a
Divine eye watching his every thought
and recording his every action ; and he
will not be. acting unwisely if he endea
vours to mould his life as if this were a
true supposition.
Only he does not
pretend to know this as a dogma or
certain truth, and therefore he does not
quarrel with any brother-man who thinks
differently, or who fancies that he has
more certain assurance.
Christian
morality he recognises fully, not as
taught by the later inventions of Churches
and casuists, but as displayed in the life
and teachings of Jesus, the son of the
carpenter of Nazareth, as they stand out,
when stripped of their mythical and
supernatural attributes, in the narrative
of the Gospels.
He looks on these
moral precepts as the results of a long
process of evolution in the best minds of
the best races, and not as arbitrary rules,
invented for the first time, and imposed
from without by miraculous teaching;
and he sees in Jesus simply the brightest
example and best model of a large class
of the virtues which are most needed to
make practical life pure, lovely, and of
good repute. In this sense may we not
all shake hands in the near future and be
“ Christian Agnostics ” ?
The tide is already running breasthigh in this direction. During the last
half-century how many of the foremost
men of light and leading have drifted
towards orthodox Christianity, and how
many away from it? Darwin, Herbert
Spencer, Huxley, Carlyle, Mill, all the
great thinkers who have influenced the
currents of modern thought, are men
who had renounced all belief in the
traditional theories of miracles and
�AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY
inspiration, and who, a few centuries
earlier, would have been burned as
heretics. The conversions have been
all one way; Romanes expressly stating
that his late acceptance of Theism rested
on non-rational grounds. Darwin, greatest
of all, was an orthodox believer in his
early life, and had even contemplated
taking orders before he embarked on his
mission of naturalist to the expedition
of the Beagle. In his case no violent
impulse or sudden crisis changed his
views; but the theological mists simply
melted away as the sun of Science rose
higher above his horizon. Patiently he
worked out his great book, guided solely
by his unswerving allegiance to truth,
until his conception of the universe as
the product, not of innumerable super
natural interferences, but of evolution by
natural law, became the creed of all men
of all countries who are able to appreciate
scientific facts and evidence.
But Darwin and men of scientific
training are not the only ones who have
exchanged the old for the new stand
point. Conversions have been even
more remarkable among eminent leaders
in literature and philosophy who were
brought up in the strictest traditions of
the old religious beliefs. In another
work1 I have called attention to the fact
that, if ever there were three minds
trained under the strongest influences
binding them to typical though different
forms of faith in Christian theology, they
are Carlyle, George Eliot, and Renan.
Carlyle was a Puritan of the Puritans,
bred in a farmhouse, whose inmates
might have been Covenanters who
fought against Claverhouse at Drumclog;
George Eliot was, in her surroundings
and early life, a typical representative
of middle-class English Evangelicalism ;
Renan of the simple Catholic piety of
Breton peasants, developed in an eccle
siastical seminary. How came they, all
three, to break away, with a painful
wrench, from old ideas and associations,
and become leaders of advanced thought?
1 Modern Science and Modern Thought.
95
How, indeed, except that they were
sincere searchers after truth, and that
truth compelled them ? If the case for
miracles and the inspiration of the Bible
had been convincing or even plausible,
is it conceivable that Carlyle, George
Eliot, and Renan should have all three
rejected it ? Where are the conversions
that can be shown in the opposite direc
tion? Where the leading minds which,
bred in the doctrine of Darwinism, have
abandoned it for the doctrine of St.
Athanasius or of Calvin ? The few
eminent men who literally adhered to
the old theology late in the last century,
such as Cardinal Newman and. Mr.
Gladstone, were of a generation which is
passing away. Where are their succes
sors? Where are the rising naturalists
who are to refute Darwin? where the
young geologists who are to dethrone
Lyell ? where the Biblical critics who are
to answer Strauss ? Such men as Lord
Kelvin and Sir O. Lodge are quoted,
but how slender and unorthodox is the
theology they profess 1.
Perhaps the best proof of the irresist
ible force of the movement is afforded
by the attitude of those who still remain
within the pale of the Church, and are
among its most distinguished members.
Three eminent Bishops of the Anglican
Church preached sermons in Manchester
Cathedral, during the meeting of the
British Association there in 1887, which
were published in a pamphlet, under the
title of The Advance of Science. They
adopt the doctrine of Evolution and the
conclusions of modern science so frankly
that Huxley, reviewing them in the Nine
teenth Century, says that “theology, acting
under the generous impulse of a sudden
conversion, has given up everything to
science, and, indeed, on one point, has
surrendered more than can reasonably
be asked.” Other bishops, it is true,
denounce this as “an effort to get up a
non-miraculous invertebrate Christianity, ”
and assert that “Christianity is essen
tially miraculous, and falls to the ground
if miracles never happened.” Perfectly
true of the old theological Christianity;
�g6
AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY
but, if this is the only Christianity, it is
its sentence of death, for it is becoming
more and more plain every day that it is
as impossible for sincere and educated
men to believe in Scripture miracles as
it is to believe that the sun stood still in
the Valley of Ajalon, or that the world
was peopled from pairs of animals shut
up, a few centuries ago, in Noah’s Ark.
These truths are rapidly passing from
the schools into the streets, and becom
ing the commonplace possessions of the
rank-and-file of thinkers. Thus, in a
lower plane of thought and among the
strictest sect of believers, we find Spur
geon complaining that, whereas “ twenty
years ago there was no question of
fundamental truth (brethren used to
controvert this or that point; but they
were at least agreed that whatever the
Scripture said should be decisive), now,
however, it did not matter what Scripture
said; it was rather a question of their
own inner consciousness.” And, again,
that “the position of sitting on the fence
is the popular one. There are two or
three very learned men who are trying
to get down on both sides of the fence
at once.”
There is something touching in the
spectacle of a man like Spurgeon thus
finding the solid earth giving way and
heaving under his feet, and even the
preachers of his own persuasion lapsing
into views inconsistent with his own
rigid orthodoxy. But did it never occur
to him to ask himself why the landmarks
were thus drifting steadily past him all
in one direction? Is it a question of
inner consciousness and human perver
sity, or is it not rather that a flood-tide
of advancing knowledge and allegiance
to truth is really setting in and running
with increasing velocity ?
Chapter VIII.—fcontinued)
PART II.
Effect on Morals—Evolution of MoralityMoral Instincts—Practical Religion—Herbert
Spencer and Frederic Harrison—Positivism
and the Unknowable—Creeds and Doctrines
—Priests and Churches—Duty of Agnostics
—Prospects of the Future.
Assuming, as I do, that some form of
liberal and reverent Agnosticism is
certain to supersede old theological and
metaphysical creeds in our conceptions
of the universe, it remains to consider
how this will practically affect the
machinery and outward form of religion,
and, what is of more importance, the
interests of morality.
In stating the results of my reflections
on this subject I am far from wishing to
dogmatise, or, like Comte, to build up
any positive religion of the future, which,
like his, might be comprehensively
summed up as “ Catholicism without
Christianity.” I know too well that
religions, like other social institutions,
are evolved and not manufactured, and
that religious rites and institutions only
flourish when they are a spontaneous
growth. Nevertheless, I think the time
has come when the intellectual victory
of Agnosticism is so far assured that it
behoves thinking men to begin to con
sider what practical results are likely to
follow from it.
The first question is as to the effect
on morals. Those who cling to old
creeds make great use of the argument
that religion is the best of policemen,
and that, if faith in a future state of
rewards and punishments, as taught by
�AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY
an inspired Bible, were once shaken, all
security for life and property would be
at an end. This, if it were true, would
be no argument, any more than the fact
that a nurse may occasionally quiet a
naughty child by the threat of a bogey
would prove the existence of a black
man with horns and a tail in the
cupboard. But it is distinctly untiue.
The foundations of morals are fortunately
built on solid rock, and not on shifting
sand; they are based on ideas and
feelings which, in the course of the
evolution of the human race, have
gradually become instinctive in civilised
communities, and passed beyond the
sphere of abstract reasonings or specu
lative criticisms. So far from morality
being a thing altogether apart from
human nature, and which owes its obli
gation solely to its being a revelation of
God’s will, it may be truly said, in a
great many cases that, as individuals
and nations become more sceptical, they
become more moral. Thus, for instance,
an implicit belief in the inspiration of
the Old Testament perverted the moral
sense to such an extent that the. most
monstrous cruelties were inflicted in the
name of religion. Murders, adulteries,
witchcraft, religious wars and persecu
tions, all found their origin and excuse
in texts either expressly enjoining them,
or showing that they formed part of the
character and conduct of men “after
Jehovah’s own heart.” We no longer
burn heretics, torture old women, or
hew captives in pieces before the Lord.
Why? Because we have become scep
tical, and no longer believe in the Bible
as an infallible record of God’s word.
When we find anything in it contrary
either to the facts of science or to the
moral instincts of the age in which we
live, we quietly ignore it; and, instead
of trying science and morality, as our
forefathers did, at the bar of inspiration,
we reverse the process, and bring religion
before the bar of reason.
Is the world better or worse for this
latest phase of its evolution? Is it
more or less tolerant, humane, liberal-
97
minded, charitable, than it was in the
ages of superstitious faith ? The answer
is not doubtful, and it confirms my posi
tion that, as a matter of fact, as we have
become more sceptical we have become
more moral.
If there is one fact more certain than
another in the history of evolution, it is
that morals have been evolved by the
same laws as regulate the development
of species. They were no more created,
or taught supernaturally, than .were the
various successive forms of animal and
vegetable life. Take, for instance, the
simplest case—the abhorrence of murder.
It is not an implanted and universal
instinct, for even at the present day we
find sections of the human race among
whom murder is honourable. The Dyak
maiden scorns a lover who has not taken
a head ; the Indian squaw tests a suitor’s
manhood by the number of scalps in his
wigwam, and the more they were taken
by stratagem and treachery the more
honourable are they esteemed. The
priest and prophet of ancient Israel
considered it an act of duty towards
Jehovah to hew Agag to pieces before
the Lord ; and Jael was famous among
Hebrew women because she drove a
nail into the head of the sleeping refugee
who had sought shelter within her tent. •
David, the man after God’s own heart,
committed the most treacherous and
cold-blooded murder in order to screen
a foul act of adultery. Where in those
cases was either the implanted instinct
or the recognition of a divine precept
commanding “ Thou shalt do no
murder ”? Millions of Brahmins and
Buddhists, who never heard of Moses
or of the Commandment inscribed on
the table of stone at Sinai, have carried
the abhorrence of murder to such an
extreme as to shrink from destroying
even the humblest form of animal life,
while millions of savages have killed and
eaten strangers and captives without
scruple or remorse.
Evidently moral ideas are, like other
products of evolution, the result of the
interaction of the two factors, heredity
D'
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AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY
and environment, determined in the
course of ages by natural selection.
They may be seen in the simplest form
in the instinct of all social animals, from
ants and bees up to man, which makes
them abstain from injuring those of the
same nest or herd, and prompts them to
act together for the common good.
Those who had this instinct strongest
would be most likely to survive in the
struggle for existence, and each succes
sive generation would tend to fix the
instinct more strongly by heredity.
What is instinct ? In the last analysis
it is motion, or tendency to motion, of
certain nerve-cells, which have become
so fixed, by frequent practice or by
heredity, that they become unconscious,
and follow necessarily on impulses from
without, as in the act of breathing or
swallowing. The simpler instincts, as
in the case of animals, are the most
spontaneous and inevitable. The duck
ling swims, to the alarm of the mother
hen, because it is the descendant of
generations of ducks which have taken
to the water as their natural element.
The sight of water sets up certain
motions in the duckling’s brain which,
by reflex action, impel it to swim.
But, in higher organisations and more
complicated instincts, what is inherited
is not so much absolute motion as
tendency to motion. The almost in
finitely complex moleciiles of the higher
brain do not move mechanically, so as
to produce a definite result from a definite
impulse, but they move more readily in
certain directions than in others, those
directions being determined partly by
the ancestral channels in which they
have run for generations, and partly by
the action of the surrounding environ
ment. Thus it may be accepted as
certain that a child born and educated
in England in the nineteenth century
will, as a rule, grow up with an instinctive
abhorrence of murder; but it is not so
certain as that it will breathe and eat.
A very violent outward impulse, such as
greed or revenge, may overcome the
instinct; and if the child had been kid
napped in infancy and brought up among
Dyaks or Indians, its notions would
probably have been the same as theirs as
to the taking of heads or scalps. But,
speaking generally of modern civilised
societies, there is such an enormous pre
ponderance in favour of the fundamental
rules of morality that with each succes
sive generation theresults both of heredity
and environment tend more and more to
make them instinctive. The lines which
Tennyson, the great poet of modern
thought, puts into the lips of his Goddess
of Wisdom—
“ And because right is right, to follow right
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence ”—
are becoming more and more every day
the instinct, not of higher minds only,
but of the mass of the community.
Such a foundation for morals is clearly
both more certain and more comprehen
sive than one based on doubtful revela
tions. It is more certain, for it does not
depend on evidence which, with the
progress of science, is fast becoming
incredible. The command not to murder
is not weakened by proof that the book
of unknown origin and date which con
tains it gives a totally erroneous account
of the creation, and is therefore not
inspired ; nor does adultery cease to be
a crime because the narrative of Noab’s
deluge is shown to be fabulous. It is
also more comprehensive, for no hardand-fast written code can long conform
to the conditions of an ever-varying
society. It will err both by enjoining
things which have become obsolete, and
by omitting others which have become
imperative.
Thus the Mosaic code
classes sculptors with murderers and
thieves, and makes Canova and Thorwaldsen as great offenders against Divine
commands as the last criminal who was
convicted at the Old Bailey. On the
other hand, there is no injunction against
slavery or polygamy, but, on the contrary,
an implied sanction of them, from the
example of the patriarchs who are held
up as patterns of holiness. The feeling
against slavery is a conspicuous instance
�AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY
of the development of a moral instinct
in quite recent times. It is the result of
advancing civilisation leading to more
humane ideas, and to a clearer recog
nition of the intrinsic sacredness and
dignity of every human soul.
In like manner, a multitude of moral
ideas have come to be part of our mental
furniture which had no place in the early
code of the Jews, or even in the more
advanced period of early Christianity.
The Christian ideal, to a great extent,
ignored courage, hardihood, self-reliance,
foresight, providence, and all the sterner
and harder qualities that make the man,
for the softer and more feminine virtues
of love, patience, and resignation. The
aesthetic side of life also, the recognition
and love of all that is beautiful in art
and nature, was not only ignored, but, to
a great extent, condemned by it, owing to
an exaggerated and one-sided antithesis
between the flesh and the spirit.
Among the modern ideas which are
fast becoming moral instincts is that of
the duty of following truth for its own
sake. Doubt is no longer regarded as a
crime, but as a duty, when there are real
ground's for doubting. We may parody
the words of the poet, and say
“ And because truth is truth, to follow truth
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.”
And this allegiance to truth carries with
it the virtue of sincerity. A man must
not palter with his convictions, and pro
fess to hold one set of opinions because
■they are expedient, while he holds others
because they are true. If it be a fact
that the human race has risen by evolu
tion through long ages from palaeolithic
savagery, he has no right to admit the
fact and at the same time profess to
believe that he is a fallen creature
descended from the Biblical Adam.
His duty is to use his reason to ascer
tain which statement is true, and, having
done so, to the best of his ability and
without bias or prejudice, to cleave with
his whole heart to the truth, and not
remain a miserable, half-hearted Mr.
Facing-both-ways.
99
So far, therefore, as morality is con
cerned, we need not much concern our
selves about the future of religion.
Morality can take care of itself, and,
with or without theological creeds, it
will go on strengthening, widening, and
purifying its instinctive hold on the
character and conduct of civilised com
munities. As regards conduct, which
is, after all, the practical test of the
goodness or badness of theoretical
opinions, a system which can produce a
life like that of Darwin is good enough
for anything. Conduct is, fortunately,
not dependent on creeds, and good men
and women can be found plentifully
among all classes of belief, from Ortho
doxy to Agnosticism. But it cannot, I
think, be denied that the leaders of
scientific thought, such as Darwin,
Herbert Spencer, Lyell, Huxley, and
other honoured names, have led, on the
whole, simple, noble lives, and present
characters worthy of imitation. Nor is
there any reason to believe that the vast
and increasing number of the rank-andfile, who have more or less adopted the
views of these great leaders, are in any
respect below the average type, or lead
worse lives than those who walk in the
narrower paths of pre-scientific tradi
tions.
Thus far the religion of the future
has been comparatively plain sailing.
Intellectually, it is clear that evolution
has become the mould of thought, and
that the lines of Agnostic Christianity
and of Agnosticism pure and simple,
but recognising Christianity as one of
the forces of evolution, have converged
so closely that the difference between
them is almost reduced to a name.
What Herbert Spencer calls the infinite,
eternal energy, which underlies all phe
nomena, and of whose existence we feel
certain, though we can never know or
define it, Bishop Temple calls “ God.”
Accurate thinkers may prefer the former
definition, for the term “ God ” has come
to be associated with a number of anthro
pomorphic and other ideas, which imply
knowledge of the Unknowable; but
�IOO
AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY
practically the bishop and the philosopher
mean much the same. thing, and the
converging lines of science and religion
approach so nearly that they may be said
to coincide. Morally, it is equally clear
that there is nothing to fear from such a
view of religion, and that the moral
instincts are based on something much
more permanent and certain than intel
lectual conceptions or antiquated tradi
tions. But when we come to practical
religion there is a great deal comprised
in the word which it is not so easy to
dispose of.
In the recent controversy between
Herbert Spencer and Frederic Harrison
the latter reproached the former with
offering to the world the mere ghost of
a religion. Religion, he says, must be
something positive; it must have a
“ creed, doctrines, temples, priests,
teachers, rites, morality, beauty, hope,
consolation”; and these, he adds, can
be found only in a religion which is
intensely anthropomorphic. “You can
have no religion without kinship, sym
pathy, relation of some human kind
between the believer, worshipper, servants,
and the object of his belief, veneration,
and service.”
As Mr. Harrison not only admits, but
asserts strongly, that science has upset
all existing anthropomorphic creeds and
theories, his logical conclusion apparently
ought to be that there can be no more
any religion. But he escapes from his
dilemma by offering us a new religion—
Positivism, or the religion according to
Comte. For the dethroned Deity of
the Christians, who has been, by the
confession of his own theologians,
“ defecated to a pure transparency,” we
are to substitute “ Humanity,” the symbol
of the new Divinity being a woman of
the age of thirty, with her son in her
arms; and Christian worship is to be
replaced by an elaborate series of rites
and ceremonies, evolved from the inner
consciousness of the French philosopher,
and which, to the apprehension of an
ordinary observer, are for the most part
puerile and ridiculous. Thus among
the Positivist saints, who are to be
canonised in order of merit, Gall, who,
in conjunction with Spurzheim, wrote an
obsolete book on phrenology, gets a
week, while Kepler gets only a day;
Tasso is assumed to be a seven-times
greater poet than Goethe, and Mozart
a seven-times greater musician than
Beethoven; while in politics Louis XI.,
the crafty and sinister French king, de
picted by Walter Scott in Quentin Durward, is to be worshipped as a seven
times greater saint than Washington.
Of the only two new forms of positive
religion which have been started in my
recollection, Positivism and Mormonism,
I may be excused if, barring the plurality
of wives, I give the preference to the
latter, which has, at any rate, proved its
vitality by laying hold, not without a
certain amount of success, of colonisa
tion, temperance, and other problems of
practical life. Herbert Spencer had little
difficulty in answering this attack. He
showed that his definition of the “ Un
knowable” was very different from the
mere negation, or algebraical symbol,
which Harrison assumed it to be, and
that it was distinctly the assertion of
something positive and actually existing,
though beyond our faculties. In fact,
it is very much the same as Words
worth’s—
“ Sense sublime,
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round earth, and in the mind of man.”
And if such a feeling can inspire noble
poetry, why not a noble religion ? The
retort was obvious that, if the Unknow
able were too refined an idea on which
to base a religion, at any rate it was
better than humanity; for the first is
based on a fact, while the second has no
foundation but a phrase.
It is an undoubted fact that, when we
trace phenomena back to their source,
we arrive at a substratum, or first cause,
which we cannot understand, or even
form any conception of. But what is
Humanity ? It is but a convenient
expression, like gravity or electricity, by
�AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY
IOI
and sordid asceticism. Hope would, as
which we sum up a number of separate, a
at present, find its field in the possibili
individual facts, which have certain a
ties which lie behind the veil, and time,
attributes in common. The only thing t
real about gravity is, that individual the one great consoler of human sorrows,
t
would still exert its beneficent influence
bodies attract one another directly as v
to assuage the poignancy of recent afflic
the mass and inversely as the. square of t
the distance. Annihilate the individual tions.
t
But what will become of the “creed,
masses, and you cannot anthropomoidoctrines, temples, priests, teachers, and
phise the law of gravity; for instance, c
rites,” which constitute what may be
following the example of Comte, under r
called the machinery or practical side of
the symbol of a woman with a child. (
No more can you individualise and existing religions? Is the creed the key
f
anthropomorphise “ Humanity,’ apart stone of the fabric, and will it crumble
s
from the individual human beings, good, to pieces if this creed ceases to be
1
credible ? In other words, if the creeds
bad, and indifferent, of whom the aggre- <
gate has been, is, and will be composed. of Christian Churches, instead of .being
<
“ Parturiunt monies ”—the mountains definite doctrines, as embodied in the
i
Thirty-nine Articles, or the dicta of
labour to produce a new religion; and
infallible Popes and Councils, are sub
the result of Positivism is to make a
limated into such vague and remote
fetish of a phrase.
.
.
At the same time, it must be admitted conceptions as enable Huxley to say
that the three bishops have conceded
that, while Positivism is no more likely
than Mormonism to become the world’s all he asks, and Mivart to remain so long
a good Catholic while admitting all the
religion of the future, the new creed to
most advanced conclusions of. Darwinian
which we are tending, whether we call
it Agnostic Christianity or Christian science and of Biblical criticisms, can
sincere men become Christian priests and
Agnosticism, places in jeopardy a great
deal of what has hitherto been included officiate in Christian churches ?
I judge no one, and can appreciate
under the word “religion.” Mr. Harrison’s
definition is not an unfair one, that the the reasons which may induce enlight
ened and excellent men to cleave to old
term includes “creed, doctrines, temples,
priests, teachers, rites, morality, beauty, creeds and remain in positions when
hope, consolation.” Of these, the last they feel that they are doing good, as
long as it is possible for them to allegorise
four may be called spiritual, and the first
six practical elements of religion. As or explain away accepted doctrines,
regards the spiritual elements, they will without feeling that they are consciously
remain unaffected, and, in some cases, insincere. But I confess that it is not
will be strengthened. Morality, as we> easy to understand how this can go even
the length it has, and, still more, how it
have seen, depends on rules of conduct,
; can go further and become general, withwhich have, to a great extent, become
instinctive; and it would be strengthened,, out degenerating into hypocrisy and
f
Take, for instance, the
rather than impaired, by getting rid of insincerity.
1
the Calvinistic conceptions of a cruel Apostles’ Creed, which, I suppose, con1
and capricious Deity, condemning untold tains the minimum of doctrine that is
s
millions to eternal punishment for the generally considered consistent with a
y
offence of a remote ancestor, and only profession of Christianity. I can unders
partially appeased by the sacrifice of his stand how, by an allowable latitude, of
y
only son. Beauty, again, would certainly construction, a Broad Church divine
fl
gain by getting rid of the idea that all may adopt the first Article and confess
e
But when we come
pleasant things are of the domain of the a belief in God.
n
flesh and the devil, and substituting an to the subsequent, more precise and
iv
enlightened aestheticism for a narrow definite Articles, which profess a belief
�102
AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY
in the miraculous conception, birth, and a class, much better than they were in
resurrection of Jesus, the carpenter’s1 former ages. . Few exercise an influence
son of Nazareth, I fail to see how actively injurious, many are respectable
anyone can subscribe to them who and harmless, and a considerable number
believes in the permanence of Natural set a good example of virtuous lives, and
Law and the Darwinian theory of devote themselves to the promotion of
Evolution. Even in the form of Dr. works of charity and benevolence. They
Temples theory.of original impress, as have, no doubt, to a considerable extent,,
opposed to special acts of supernatural lost touch with the masses of population
interference, it must be admitted that in large towns and industrial centres;
miracles, if not impossible, are in the and where they have preserved it, chiefly
highest degree improbable, and that it among dissenting congregations, it is
would require an immense amount of too often exerted towards narrowness, of
the clearest possible evidence to admit views and sectarian prejudices. Still, on
occurrences which are so entirely opposed the whole, it is exerted for good; and in
to all we know of the real facts of the many rural parishes and poor districts,
universe, and which, in so many cases, like the East-end of London, the priest
have been shown to be mere delusions is a powerful factor in organising charities,
of the imagination. And the slightest visiting the sick, rescuing the fallen, and
acquaintance with Biblical criticism is giving consolation to the suffering. To
sufficient to show how weak the evidence take an extreme case, what would a poor
really is, and how utterly unfounded are parish, in the West of Ireland be without
the claims of the various books of the its. priest ? He is the sole centre of
Old.and New Testament to anything like civilisation in a district of, perhaps,
Divine inspiration. But, if the creeds twenty square miles ; he is not only the
go, what becomes of the priests? and, spiritual guide of his flock, but, to a
without priests, where are the Churches, great extent, their Education Board and
rites, and ceremonies? And, if these Poor Law Guardian ; he is their friend
disappear, what an immense gap does it and adviser in all their difficulties, and,
make in the whole framework of existing in case of need, their “ Village Hamp
society ! Consider the priests, including den,” who fights their battles with
in the word all ministers of all denomina tyrannical landlords, and negotiates the
tions. It is easy to denounce priestcraft, compromises by which they are enabled
and to show by a thousand examples to retain their humble roofs over their
that wherever priests have had power heads. . He is worth all the magistrates
they have done infinite mischief. They and policemen put together in repressing
have too often been cruel persecutors crime and preventing outrages. It will
and narrow-minded bigots; and, even at be long before a population like that of
the best, have been opposed to freedom rural Ireland can dispense with priests.
of thought and progress. But, for all
Again, priests and Churches go to
this, the question has another side, and gether ; and, although Church services
there is a good deal to be said for the have to a great extent become a repetition
existence of a special class, set aside of formulas, and sermons an anachron
from the ordinary pursuits of life, for ism, still there is a good deal in institu
spiritual instruction and works of mercy tions which bring people together on
and charity.
one day in the week, cleanly in dress
In countries like England, where and. decorous in behaviour, to join in
priests have long since ceased to possess services and listen to discourses which
any temporal power, and where they live .appeal, however faintly and drearily, to
more and more every day—in an higher things than those of ordinary
atmosphere of free and liberal thought, prosaic life. Especially to the female
there can be no doubt that they are, as ;half of the population attendance at
�AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY
IO3
Barnardo,and thousands of other devoted
church or chapel is, in many cases, a men and women who fight in the fore
great pleasure; and, if it were only to see
most ranks against sin and misery.
and be seen and criticise one anothei s
With such as these all men can sym
bonnets, it is a relief from the monotony pathise ; and a more intellectual creed
of life, gives them topics of interest, and ought to be no obstacle in giving aid and
promotes a feeling of decency and
co-operation, but rather an incentive to
respectability. Those, therefore, who
show that a belief in the truths of science
hold larger views, and feel that they
is not inconsistent with active charity
cannot without insincerity subscribe to
creeds which to them have become and benevolence. which Agnostics would
Another point
incredible, would do well to be liberal
do well to attend to is to cultivate a love
and tolerant towards traditional opinions of Nature and Art, so as to keep alive
and traditional practices, and trust with
the imaginative and emotional faculties
cheerful faith to evolution to bring about which might wither in the too exclusive
gradually such changes of form as may atmosphere of pure reason. A prosaic
be required to embody changes of spirit. life is a dwarfed and stunted life, which
In the meantime, the course of those has been more than half a failure ; and,
who worship Truth above all other con as old dogmatic religions fail to supply
siderations is plain. There are abun
the spiritual stimulus, it is the more
dance of duties clear enough for men ot necessary to find it in the wonders o
all creeds : the difficulty is to live up to the universe, the beauties of nature, and
them. But for those who hold the in communion with great minds through
larger views the first duty is to be doubly
music, painting, and books. These are
careful as to conduct. It would be too
now brought, to a great extent, .within t e
great a scandal if the larger creed were
reach of every one, and there is no more
made the excuse for a looser life. Those
hopeful symptom of the times than to
who are Darwinians in theory ought to
find that really good books by great
try to be like Darwin in practice—like
authors, when brought out in cheap
him, high-minded, modest, gentle, patient,
editions, circulate by the millions.
honourable in all relations of life, loving
Shilling and even sixpenny editions ot
and beloved by friends and family. Shakespeare, Scott, Carlyle, and other
This, at least, is within the reach of every
standard authors, are continually brought
one, high or low, rich or poor, if not to out, and must be sold in tens of thousands
attain to, at any rate to aim at, as an to make them a paying, speculation.
ideal. Nor do I think that Freethinkers
Who buys them ? Certainly not the
will be wanting in this passive side of
upper classes, who, in former days, were
conduct. On the contrary, as far as my
the only buyers of books. They must
experience has gone, while more liberal
circulate widely among the masses, and
and large-minded, they lead lives quite
especially among the more thoughtful
as good, on the average, as those which
members of the working-classes, and the
are more directly under the traditional
rising generation of all classes who. are
influences of religion. But what the
earnestly seeking to improve their, minds
Agnostic must beware of is, not to be
and widen their range of sympathies and
content with the passive side of virtue,
culture. To read good books rather
but to cultivate also its active side, and
not let himself be surpassed in works of than silly novels is a practical measure
within the reach of every one, and it is
charity and benevolence by those whose
supplying, more and more every day, a
intellectual creeds are narrower than his
larger and more liberal education than
own. There is no doubt that the evan
was ever afforded by theological con
gelical faith in Jesus has been and. is
a powerful incentive with men like troversies and conventional sermons.
Another hopeful symptom is to see
Lord Shaftesbury, General Gordon, Dr.
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AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY
the growing demand among the working
classes for schools, libraries, museums,
music-halls, excursion trains, and all
manner of clubs and societies for
mutual help, instruction, and amuse
ment. These are the plastic cells multi
plying and forming new combinations,
out of which, in due time, will be evolved
the “ priests and temples, the rites and
ceremonies,” and other institutions requi
site to give life and form to the demon
strated truth of the “Great Unknowable,”
and leave the magnificent conception of
Darwin and Herbert Spencer no longer
the ghost of a religion, but the founda
tion of a rational, lovable, and, on the
whole, happy existence, useful and
honourable while its little span of life
lasts, and looking forward with hope and
manly fortitude to whatever may await
it behind that veil which no mortal hand
has ever lifted.
Chapter VIII. —(continued)
PART III.
Practical Philosophy — Zoroastrian Theory —
Emerson on Compensation—Good and Evil—
Leads to Toleration and Charity—Matthew
Arnold and Philistinism—Salvation Army—
Conflict of Theology and Science—Creed of
Nineteenth Century.
The philosophy which I have found
work best, both in reconciling intel
lectual difficulties and as a guide in prac
tical life, is that which I have described
elsewhere1 at some length as “ Zoroas
trianism,” or “ Polarity.” It amounts to
this—that the infinite, eternal, and incon
ceivable essence of all phenomena, which
theologians call God, and philosophers
the Unknowable, manifests itself to
human apprehension under conditions
or categories which are equally certain
and equally incomprehensible.
We
know that it is so, or so appears to us;
but we do not know why. Thus Space
and Time are fundamental moulds of
thought, or, to use the phraseology of
Kant, imperative categories. Another
of such categories is that of Polarity:
no action without reaction, no positive
without a negative, no good without evil.
1 A Modern Zoroastrian,
In the physical world this is a demon
strated fact. Matter is made of mole
cules j molecules are made of atoms;
atoms are little magnets which link
th^piselves together and form all the
complex creations of an ordered cosmos,
by virtue of the attractive and repulsive
forces which are the results of polarity.
Ordered and regular motion also —
whether it be of planets round suns, of
an oscillating pendulum, or of waves of
water, air, or ether, vibrating in rhythmic
succession—is a result of the conflict
between energy of motion and energy of
position.
As Emerson well says in his essay on
“Compensation”: “Polarity, or action and
reaction, we meet in every part of nature :
in darkness and light; in heat and cold;
in the ebb and flow of waters ; in male
and female; in the inspiration and
expiration of plants and animals ; in the
undulations of fluids and of sound; in
the centrifugal and centripetal gravity;
in electricity, galvanism, and chemical
affinity. Superinduce magnetism at one
end of a needle, the opposite magnetism
takes place at the other end. If the
South attracts, the North repels. To
�AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY
10$
cruel, unjust, and even devilish, in the
empty here you must condense there.
case of a human despot become merci
An inevitable dualism besets nature, so
ful and righteous if done by an Almighty
that each thing is a half, and suggests
Ruler in Heaven. Such a dogma is, to
another to make it whole; as spirit,
all intents and purposes, devil-worship,
matter; man, woman; odd, even; sub
and degrades man into a slave crouching
jective, objective; in, out; upper, under;
under the lash of a harsh master. How
motion, rest; yea, nay.” This principle,
infinitely superior was the ideal of the
applied to the higher problems of religion
old Roman poet of the “justum. el
and philosophy, leads to results singularly
tenacem propositi virum”; the upright
like those which, if we may believe the
and firm-minded man, whom no threats
sacred books of the Parsees, were taught
of a frenzied mob or raging tyrant could
3,000 years ago by the ancient Bactrian
sage, Zoroaster. His religion was one of shake from his purpose, or induce to
palter with his convictions; nay, not
pure reason. He disclaimed all preten
even though the earth and sky fell in
sion to found it on miracles, or to define
ruins about his head, could the convul
the indefinable by dogmas; but, taking
sion of nature daunt his steadfast soul.
natural laws and human knowledge as
his basis, he asserted, in the identical “ Victrix causa Deis placuit sed victa CatoniT
words used by Emerson thirty centuries But, with a Polar theory of existence,
later, that an “ inevitable dualism besets the difficulty is relegated to the realm, of
nature,’’and embodied the two conflicting the unknown, and, instead of sinking
principles under the names of Ormuzd with Cowper into the despairing depths
and Ahriman. To Ormuzd belong all of religious madness, we may hold with
things that are bright, beautiful,, pure, Wordsworth—
lovely, and of good repute, both in the
The cheerful faith that all which we behold
material and moral universe; to Ahriman,
Is full of blessings.”
all that is foul, ugly, and evil.. Apart A serene and cheerful faith is, of itself,
from certain archaisms of expression and
one of the greatest blessings, and. it is
ritual observances which have become
specially needed in an age in which so
obsolete, the Zendavesta might have been
many gospels of pessimism are abroad,
compiled to-day from the writings of
and so many failures in the struggle for
Herbert Spencer and Huxley. This con
existence tell us that society is a sham, civi
ception of the universe has the enormous
lisation an imposture, and life a, mistake.
advantage over all those which rest on
Another advantage. of this Polar
the idea of an anthropomorphic Creator
theory of the universe is that it teaches
that it does not make religion a means
us to take a large and tolerant view of
of perverting the fundamental instincts
men and of events. The true charity
of morality by making an Omnipotent
which “ suffereth long and is kind ” is
Creator the conscious author of evil.
scarcely compatible with a bigoted and
This is a dilemma from which no
one-sided adherence to a particular set
anthropomorphic form of religion can
escape : either its God is not omnipo of opinions. Whether in politics or in
religion, if we believe that all those who
tent or he is not benevolent. Sin and
differ from us have a double dose of
suffering are facts, as much as virtue and
original sin, we can scarcely comprehend
happiness; and, if the good half of crea
tion argues for a good Creator, it is an or love them. Good natures may pity
them, bad natures hate them, conscien
irresistible inference that the bad half
tious natures feel it a duty to stamp
argues for one who is evil.
them out; but we can never really feel
Theologians, in attempting to escape
towards them as brothers and sisters,
from this dilemma, have been only too
apt to confuse the instincts of morality who have gone a ‘c a kenning wrang,
by arguing that actions which would be and been drawn a little too far by the
�io6
AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY
attraction of the opposite polarity to that commoners; if of religion, they are sons
under the influence of which we ourselves of perdition.
To the narrow-minded
live and have our being.
Thus, in Tory all Irish are dynamiters, all Radicals
politics, the cosmos of an ordered rebels, and Gladstone is Antichrist. To
society can only be maintained, as in the narrow-minded Radical all landlords
the orbit of a planet, by a due balance are robbers and all parsons hypocrites.
between the centripetal and centrifugal Socialists seek to regenerate society by
forces. If we were all Conservatives, abolishing capital; capitalists, to save it
society would condense into a sluggish by ignoring that property has duties as
and inert mass ; if all Radicals, it would well as rights. It is all Philistinism, and
be apt to fly off into space. Evolution incapacity to see that there are two sides
will surely bring about in their appro to every question,, and that one thing
priate time the results which are fittest only is certain—that falsehood lies in
to survive.
Why quarrel, then, and extremes. Half the difficulties which
entertain hard and bitter thoughts be perplex us would disappear if we could
cause our own individual atom is acting enlarge our minds, so as, in the words of
in one direction, while that of our Burns,
neighbour is acting in another? Act
“ To see ourselves as others see us”;
strenuously in that direction which, after
conscientious inquiry, seems to be the and to act on the precept of the wise
best; do the duty which lies most nearly old Rabbi Hillel, now 1,900 years old :
and plainly to our hands ; and trust to “ Never to judge another man till you
what religious men call Providence, and have stood in his shoes.”
scientific men Evolution, for the result.
Another advantage of this Polar philo
A large-minded and. large-hearted sophy is that it enables us more readily
creed is the more needful, as the weak to assimilate with those who hold dif
part in the otherwise admirable British ferent forms of belief. What matters it
nature is a tendency to that peculiar whether the Parsee embodies his good
form of narrowness which is commonly principle in an Ormuzd, the Christian in
called Philistinism. Why the Philistine, a Jesus, the Stoic in a Marcus Aurelius,
or dweller in the land of palms on the or the philosopher finds no need for any
border of the Mediterranean, should personification at all?
The essential
have been taken as the type of strait thing is that they are all soldiers fighting
laced and narrow-minded convention together in the cause of goodness and
ality, is hard to see. But the fact is light, against evil and darkness. Practi
there, and the word expresses it; and it cally, a great many modern Christians
is beyond doubt that there is a great are Zoroastrians, with Jesus for their
deal of truth in Matthew Arnold’s in Ormuzd. They care little for dogmas,
dignant diatribes, and that the average except as exalting the character of the
well-meaning and respectable citizen is object of their veneration and giving
apt to be an awful Philistine. It is not expression to their transcendental love
confined to classes; in fact, there is and adoration for his person and char
probably more of it in the upper and acter. Listen to the simple preaching
middle classes than among workmen. of the Salvation Army, and you will find
But whether it be the cut of a coat, or of how exclusively it turns upon the one
a creed, and whether going to a court or element of the love of Jesus.
You
to a chapel, the essence of the thing is would never discover that Christianity
the same—viz., that some class or coterie had been identified with mysterious
fences itself in behind some narrow con dogmas and metaphysical puzzles, and
ventionality, and ignores the great outer that salvation depended on holding the
world. If the pale be one of fashion, Catholic faith as defined by St. Athana
those not within it are outsiders, cads, sius. But sinners are exhorted to give
�AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY
up drink and evil ways for the love of logical theory is based entirely on the
the dear Redeemer who died for them , assumption that the Bible is an inspired
and if this touches simple natures, and record of Divine truth, attested by
if calling themselves soldiers, .marching miracles. The scientific theory rests on
in ranks, and beating drums, aid in the the evidence of a vast and ever-accumu
work, why should anyone object to it ? lating mass of facts, which admit of no
We are nearer to these simple souls than doubt or contradiction. It seems to me
we are to the divines who beat the drum that an unlearned man need not go
ecclesiastic, and tell us from pulpits that, farther than to contrast , the theories of
unless we believe all the articles of the man’s descent. Let him go to the
Catholic faith, without doubt we shall British Museum and look at the imple
ments of flint and bone which have been
perish everlastingly.
To sum up, the duty of a man of the found in conjunction with remains, of
twentieth century is clear. He has to extinct animals, in caves and river
follow truth at all hazards. Questions gravels of immense antiquity. How
of the highest importance have . been can the theological theory hold water,
raised which he cannot shirk without unless it could be proved that these, and
narrowing his whole nature, and shutting the hundreds of thousands of similar
himself up in an ever-contracting circle human remains, including skulls and
of ignorance and prejudice. There aie skeletons, which have been discovered
two theories of the universe, and two of in similar deposits over the four quarters
man, which are in direct conflict. Of of the earth, were placed there by a
the universe, one, the theological, that it conspiracy of scientific men who wished
was created and is upheld by miracles— to discredit the Bible ? Even the Duke
that is, by a succession of secondary of Argyll, who has conspiracy on the
supernatural interferences by a Being brain, would hardly contend for such a
who is a magnified man, acting from conclusion, or maintain that the narrative
motives and with an intelligence which, of Noah’s deluge gives a true. account of
however transcendental, are essentially the manner in which animal life has been
human; the other, the scientific, that it diffused over the different zoological
is the result of original impress, or of provinces in which it is actually divided.
The more he extends his researches
evolution acting by natural laws on a basis
of the Unknowable. In like manner, of and enlarges his knowledge, the more
man, one theory, the theological, is that will every honest and conscientious
he is descended from the Biblical Adam, inquirer find that the scientific theory is
created quite recently in a state of high victorious along the whole line. . If he
moral perfection, from which he fell by is a lover of truth, therefore, he will find*
an act of disobedience, entailing on his himself constrained to adopt the larger
descendants the curse of sin and death, creed. But, in doing so, let. him show
from which a portion were redeemed by that it is not merely a speculative creed or
the sacrifice of the Creator’s own son, an intellectual deduction ; that the larger
incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth; the other, creed leads to a larger life; that it makes
the scientific theory, that man is a him more liberal and tolerant, more pure
product of evolution from palaeolithic and upright, more loving and unselfish,
ancestors, who lived for innumerable more strenuous, as becomes a soldier
ages in a state of savagery, but always fighting in the foremost ranks in the
gradually progressing upwards in arts and campaign against sin and misery; . so
that, when the last day comes which
civilisation.
Both theories cannot be true; they comes to all, it may be recorded of him
are in direct contradiction upon funda that his individual atom of existence left
mental facts, which are a question of the world, on the whole, a little better,
evidence. The evidence for the theo- rather than a little worse, than he found it.
�io8
THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS
Chapter IX.
THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS
Huxley and Dr. Wace—Sermon on the Mount,
and Lord’s Prayer—English and German
Biblical Criticism—Papias—His Account of
Origin of the Gospels—Confirmed by Internal
Evidence —• Common-sense Conclusions —
Miracles a Question of Faith — Evidence
Required—The Ascension—Early Christian
and Mediaeval Miracles — St. Thomas it
Becket—F aith—Historical Element—Virgin
Mary — Guiding Principles of Historical
Inquiry—Minimum of Miracles—Admissions
which Tell Against—-Jesus anHistorical Person
—Born at Nazareth—Legends of Nativity—
St. John the Baptist—Kingdom of God—Socialistic Spirit—Pure Morality—Nucleus of
Fact in Miracles—Precepts and Parables—
Disputes with Scribes and Pharisees—Jesus a
Jew—Messiahship—Dying Words—Passion
and Crucifixion —• Improbabilities — Pilate —
Resurrection —- Contradictions — Growth of
Legend—Probable Nucleus of Fact—Riot in
the Temple—Return of Disciples to Galilee—
Conflicting Accounts of Resurrection—Return
of Apostles to Jerusalem and Foundation of
Christian Church.
Professor Huxley, in an article in the
Nineteenth Century, refers to the great
difficulty he has felt in his efforts to
define “the grand figure of Jesus as it
lies in the primary strata of Christian
literature. What did he really say and
do? and how much that is attributed
to him in speech and action is the
embroidery of the various parties into
which his followers tended to split them
selves within twenty years after his death,
when even the threefold tradition was
only nascent ? ”
I have felt the same difficulty myself,
and after reading a mass of critical litera
ture, both English and German, I must
confess to having found myself more
than ever perplexed. In English Biblical
criticism the tone is almost invariably
that of advocates rather than of judges.
The opponents of Orthodoxy insist too
much on finding arguments against
inspiration in every text, while its sup
porters are almost always guilty of
the fallacy which is known to logicians
as the petitio principii, and begin by
assuming the very points which they
profess to prove. Thus Dr. Wace, in
his reply to Huxley, starts with the
assumption that the Sermon on the
Mount and the Lord’s Prayer prove the
divinity of Jesus and the inspiration of
the Gospels; and, this being proved, it
follows that we must believe everything
we find recorded in these Gospels as
true, down even to the miracle of the
Gadarene swine, under pain of making
Jesus out to be a liar. Of course we
must, if we admit the theory of divine
inspiration; but this is the very point
to be proved. How does Dr. Wace
attempt to prove it? By lengthened
arguments to show that the omission
of all mention of the Sermon on the
Mount and Lord’s Prayer by Mark is
not a fatal objection; that the Synoptic
Gospels, or parts of them, were probably
written not later than from 70 to 75 a.d.,
and other doubtful points of really very
little importance. But he totally ignores
what is the real difficulty in the way of
accepting his fundamental axiom that
the Sermon on the Mount and Lord’s
Prayer compel us to admit inspiration.
The difficulty is this—that their precepts,
admirable as they are, are not original.
There is scarcely one which is not to be
found, identical in substance and often
almost in the exact words, in the older
writings of earlier religions and philo
sophies. Thus the cardinal precepts,
such as to “ Love your neighbour as your
self,” to “Do as you would be done by,”
to “ Return good for evil,” etc., are found
�THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS
io9
in the old Egyptian ritual, the Vedic ordinary men using their reasoning
faculties, and either refuse to reason and
literature, the maxims of Confucius, and
still more conspicuously in the oldest appeal to faith, or battle about minor
;
writings of the Buddhist and Zoroastrian points which hardly touch the real
objections.
_ . .
religions.
When I turned to German criticism,
And what is even more important,
I found it less obscured by theological,
the Talmudic or Rabbinical literature
of the age immediately preceding that but more by theoretical, prepossessions.
of Jesus is full of them; the writings Every professor had his own theory to
of Jesus, the son of Sirach, of Hillel, establish, and that of his predecessors
to demolish, and in doing so applied an
and of Philo, contain many of the same
enormous amount of erudition to points
precepts, almost verbatim, and they were
the common possession of the Jewish which, for the most part, seemed to me
to remain doubtful, or to be of minor
world at the time when the Sermon on
the Mount is supposed to have been importance. The effect produced on
my mind by critics such as Strauss,
preached.
.
. .
These facts are undeniable, and it is Baur, Volckmar, and Reuss was to leave
a sort of blurred and hazy image, as of
equally undeniable that, if so, the bottom
a landscape in which the essential
is knocked out of Dr. Wace s assump
features are lost in the multitude of
tion ; for, if these precepts and this code
of morality could be evolved in other details.
For instance, it seemed to me that
ages and countries by natural means,
why should they require the miracle of the enormous mass of literature which
Divine Inspiration to account for them has been written to assign the precise
in the New Testament ? The Sermon, date of each Gospel, their respective
no doubt, has its value in bringing to a priorities, how many successive editions
focus a number of excellent precepts, they went through, and how far each
and helping to form the ideal of Jesus copied from the others or from older
and his teaching which has become the manuscripts, might have been greatly
fundamental fact of Christianity ; but as abridged if the learned authors had
anything like reasonable proof of miracu been content to take the simple, straight
lous inspiration it is worthless. Nor is forward evidence of the earliest Christian
writer who gives any account of their
there anything in the Lord’s Prayer
which might not have been the prayer origin—viz., Papias.
Papias was Bishop of Hierapolis, one
of any pious Jew of the time, or, for
the matter of that, of any pious Gentile, of the Churches in Asia Minor, which
for “Our Father which art in heaven” was reputed to have been founded by
is a literal translation of Jupiter, or St. John, and who suffered martyrdom
Dyaus-piter, the father of gods and men for his faith when an aged. man, about
identified with the vault of the sky. 160 a.d. He was certainly in a position
And it cannot be reasonably denied to know what was accepted as of authority
that the omission of all mention of it in by the early Christian Church of his
Mark tells strongly against its authen period. He had been in close personal
ticity, for, if really taught by Jesus, it communication with Polycarp and others
would have been the very thing to be of the generation preceding his own, who
committed to memory, and taught to all had been themselves disciples of the
Apostles, and his information was, there
converts by his immediate disciples.
I refer to this argument of Dr. Wace’s fore, only removed by one degree from
to illustrate what I find to be the great being that of a contemporary and eye
fault of English theologians—viz., that witness. His work is unfortunately lost;
they shirk the obvious difficulties which but Eusebius, who was a great collector
present themselves to the minds pf' of information respecting the Gospels
�no
THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS
in the fourth century, happily preserves
the most important part of it in a long
quotation.
What does Papias say? Practically
this—that he preferred oral tradition to
written documents, of which he expresses a
somewhat contemptuous opinion, assign
ing as a reason that there were only two
written records which possessed any real
authority : one a collection of anecdotes
or reminiscences, taken down without
method or order from the mouth of St.
Peter by.Mark, his interpreter; the other
a collection of logia, or sayings of Jesus,
written by St. Matthew in Hebrew, and
badly translated into Greek by various
writers.
This statement of Papias, if correct,
proves several things :—
1. The Gospel of St. John could not
have been known to Papias, or he, a
bishop of a Church reputed to have
been founded by that Apostle and a
friend of Polycarp and others who had
known him personally, could never have
expressed an almost contemptuous pre
ference for oral tradition over any written
records, and made no mention of what
has been always considered the most
important and spiritual of all the Gospels,
proceeding direct from the Apostle whom
Jesus loved.
2. The same remark applies to the
Gospel and Acts of St. Luke, which
contain by far the most precise details of
the crowning miracles of the Resurrec
tion and Ascension.
3. It is equally clear that he could not
have known the Gospels of Mark and
Matthew as they now exist, for they are
connected biographies of the life and
teachings of Jesus, and not fragmentary
anecdotes and sayings such as Papias
describes.
4. It is evident, however, that two
written records—one attributed to Mark,
and the other to Matthew—were known
in the time of Papias, and received as of
sufficient authority to make him refer
to them in his general depreciation of
written as compared with oral testimony.
Ibis is a perfectly clear and intel
ligible statement, made apparently in
good faith, without any dogmatic or other
prepossession; and it is confirmed by all
the. evidence we possess of this obscure
period — whether it be the external
evidence that the Gospels in their
present form are not quoted or referred
to as an authority by any Christian
writer earlier than the second century,
or the internal evidence derived from the
Gospels themselves. That of Mark has
exactly the appearance of having been
compiled into a biography from a series
of such reminiscences as Papias describes.
It is full of little life-like touches which
have no special significance, but seem to
have come from the recollection of an
eye-witness.
For instance, that the
throng was so great to hear Jesus that
not only the room but the doorway was
crowded, and that the hurry and bustle
were such that they had not time even
to eat.
It is. true that such touches are not
conclusive, and may have been added to
give local colour and a life-like character
to the narrative, a remarkable instance
of which is afforded by the episode of
the woman taken in adultery, in St.
John, which is not found in the oldest
manuscripts, and is doubtless an inter
polation.
This episode has every ap
pearance of being taken from the life :
the abstracted air, the writing with the
finger on the sand, the exact words
spoken, all give it an air of reality; and
yet it must have been interpolated at a
comparatively late date after several
manuscripts of the Gospel were already
in existence.
Such an instance may
make us hesitate in judging of similar
passages from internal evidence, but it
hardly applies to Mark, whose character
istic traits are much shorter and simpler,
and whose level of culture and literary
ability is much lower than that of the
compiler—whoever he may have been—■
of the Gospel according to St. John.
The Gospel of Matthew, again, has
exactly the appearance of having been
compiled from such a collection of logia
as Papias describes, woven into a
�THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS
biography by the aid of the original Mark
and other early traditions, and embel
lished by the addition of much mythical
matter intended to show the fulfilment
of Messianic prophecies, and to meet
objections.
It has always seemed to me, therefore,
that all theories as to the date and origin
of the Canonical Gospels were com
paratively worthless which did not take
into account the fundamental fact of this
statement of Papias. It is either true or
false. If true, it is worth a hundred
theories evolved, like the ideal camel,
from the inner consciousness of German
professors, and is conclusive of the fact
that the Gospels in their present form
were not known, or not accepted as an
authority, by the early Christian Churches
of the East in the first half of the second
' century, though this is quite consistent
with their containing passages and tradi
tions which may date back to the siege
of Jerusalem, or even to a much earlier
period. If, on the other hand, Papias is
to be rejected, let us know the reason why,
and give us some sort of an intelligible
explanation of how such a passage came
to be quoted from his work by Eusebius.1
ni
I give this as an illustration of the way
in which, the more I studied these pro
fessional works of Biblical criticism, the
more confusion became worse con
founded. At length, after having aban
doned the subject for a time, I resolved,
almost in despair, to see what conclusion
I could form for myself by the applica
tion of common sense and the ordinary
rules of evidence. I succeeded thus in
forming a tolerably clear and consistent
view of what might be the real, historical
element in the origin of Christianity and
the personality of its Founder. I do not
pretend to impose on others my own
origin: and therefore that the silence of Eusebius
is no proof that there may not have been refer
ences to and quotations from these Gospels in
the writings of Papias.
But this, which is in itself a very far-fetched
supposition, is contradicted by the words of
Eusebius himself, who says, “ As my history
proceeds, I will take care. to indicate what
Church writers from time to time have made use
of any of the disputed books, and what has
been said by them concerning the Canonical ana
acknowledged Scriptures.”
2. That when Papias says, I thought I could
not derive so much advantage from books as from
the living and abiding oral tradition, he meant
books which were not Gospels, but commentaries
on Gospels.
.
Here again this far-fetched supposition is con
1 The difference to which I have referred
tradicted by Papias himself, who says books
between the conclusions of common sense and
without any qualification, and refers to written
those of erudite ingenuity acting under the records—viz., the notes of Mark and the logia
influence of theological prepossession is well,
of Matthew, which assuredly were not commen
illustrated by the attempt of Bishop Lightfoot,
taries or interpretations of existing Gospels, but
in his Essays on Supernatural Religion, to
historical records of the sayings and doings oi
answer the obvious inference from this passage the Founder of the religion as much as the
of Papias. Common sense says, if the Canonical Canonical Gospels themselves; or rather they
Gospels, and especially that of St. John, had
were the primary matter and first forms of the
beenextant in their present form.and accepted Synoptic Gospels, and could not have been so
as an authority by the early Christian Church, referred to if the Gospels, in their more complete
Papias must have known them. If he had
and elaborate form, and especially that according
known them, he could not have referred in such
to St. John, had been known to Papias and
contemptuous terms to written records as inferior
to oral tradition, and could not have mentioned received as authorities.
The closer the connection is drawn between
the disconnected anecdotes of Mark and the
Papias and the Apostle John through Polycarp—
Hebrew logia. of Matthew as the only records of
importance. Nor could Eusebius.have quoted and the Bishop insists greatly on this m his
Essays—the more impossible does it become
this passage alone from Papias, which obviously
that, if Papias had known of such a Gospel as is
tells against his own views, without quoting other attributed to John, he could have written such
passages which refer to the Canonical Gospels,
as is quoted from
y
if any such had existed in other portions of the a sentencesaying that he could his lost worprofit
Eusebius,
get “little
work of Papias. The Bishop replies
i. That the design of Eusebius may have been from books,” and have referred, as he does, to
to quote only references to the Apocryphal Matthew and Mark, without saying a word of
John, or of the Gospel which is pre-eminently
writings, and. in the case of the Canonical
Gospels anything which threw light on their the foundation-stone of Christian theology.
�112
THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS
solution of this extremely difficult and■ life. You wish to establish some five or
obscure question, but I think it may Six exceptions to this rule, or rather one,
perhaps aid some sincere inquirers in for, if the return to life of Jesus cannot
giving clearness and precision to their be proved, few would be disposed to
ideas, and defining the boundaries rest their faith in miracles on any other
between what may be accepted by the of the alleged cases of resurrection.
ordinary rules of reason and that which And the historical truth of the appear
lies outside the province of reason, and ances of a living and tangible Jesus after
can only be accepted as an article of faith. death hinges mainly on the account of
. To begin with, I believe that miracles the Ascension given by St. Luke in the
lie entirely within the domain of faith. Acts of the Apostles. This is the
I mean real miracles, for a large number crowning miracle of all, the appropriate
of those narrated by the Gospels may conclusion of his mission on earth, and
well be natural occurrences described in strongest proof of his Divine nature;
the language of the day. For instance, and it . is described in the fullest detail
casting out devils, faith-healing, or curing as having occurred in the presence of a
paralytic affections of the nerve or will by large.number of witnesses. St. Paul says
a strong impulse; and the effects of reli of this, or of some other appearance not
gious excitement, the sympathy of crowds, recorded in any of the Gospels, that there
dreams, visions, and hallucinations, are were five hundred witnesses, many of
all well-known causes of the present day, whom remained alive till his day, and in
of effects which in former ages would a definite and well-known locality close
undoubtedly have been considered as to . the large city of Jerusalem. If the
miraculous. These may very well have evidence for this miracle fails us, how
actually occurred, and be as historical as can we believe in others more obscure
any other part of the narrative.
and less well authenticated ?
But when we come to such miracles
Surely the evidence for an event which
as raising the dead, or permanently is a solitary exception to i55ooo,ooo,ooo
curing organic diseases, they require a experiences requires to be proved by
special supernatural interference with testimony far stronger than would be
the laws of nature.. Now, what does required to prove an ordinary occur
reason say to such miracles ? It tells us rence.. But how stands the evidence for
that in thousands of such cases of alleged the miracle of the Ascension ? Of the
miracles, alike in Pagan, early Christian, four witnesses called into court, one,
and mediaeval ages, once firmly believed Mark, the. oldest of all, and probably
in and attested by what seems strong deriving his information direct from St.
contemporary evidence, not one now Peter, makes no mention whatever (if we
holds the field and is seriously accepted, omit the last verses, which are an obvious
with the possible exception of some half addendum, and, as the authors of the
dozen which are accepted solely on the revised edition tell us, are not found in
authority of the New Testament.
the oldest manuscripts) of the Ascension,
Take, as an illustration, the statement or of any other supernatural event con
that one who was really dead returned nected with the Resurrection. Matthew
to life.
There are some thousand says distinctly that the message sent by
millions of people living in the world Jesus to his Apostles was to “depart
who are renewed by death and birth at into Galilee,” and that they went there
least three times in every century, and accordingly, where they saw him, but
this has been going on for some fifty cen
some doubted,”and makes no reference
turies. That makes some 15,000,000,000 to. any. Ascension. John describes cer
human beings who have died, and of •tain miracles occurring at Jerusalem, but
whom it may be said with certainty that places the concluding scene of the
;
not one has ever returned in the body to \Resurrection, when Jesus took his final
�THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS
113
farewell of his disciples, in Galilee, and, comply with the perfectly reasonable
request of the Pharisees to prove his
like Mark and Matthew, makes no men
Messiahship by a sign from heaven—a
tion of any Ascension.
Observe that Luke says distinctly that refusal which, if he possessed the power,
was unfair to men who, if narrow and
Jesus charged the Apostles “not to
depart from Jerusalem,” and that all the fanatical, were doubtless many of them
miraculous appearances, including the sincere and zealous for their country and
Ascension, occurred there. There can religion.
I do not see how it can be doubted
not be a more flagrant contradiction than
that the evidence for many early Christian
that between Matthew and Luke. Con
sider now what would be the chance of and mediaeval miracles, which no one
establishing, not a stupendous miracle, any longer believes, is much stronger
but such a commonplace event as the than for those of the Gospels. St.
signature of a will, if the first witness Augustine, a perfectly historical and
called was a solicitor who said that the leading personage of his day, testifies
testator in his last illness asked him to that in his own time, and in his own
remain in London to draw and attest bishopric of Hippo, upwards of seventy
his will, which he did, while the second miracles had been wrought by the relics
of St. Stephen. The friend and bio
witness was another solicitor, who swore
that the testator told him he was going grapher of St. Ambrose relates numerous
down to his place in Yorkshire, on the miracles, one a resurrection from the dead,
chance that the air of the country might which had been notoriously wrought at
Milan by the saint during his lifetime.
revive him, and asked the witness to
follow him there by the next day’s train, Eginhard, the secretary of Charlemagne,
in order to complete his will, which who was a well-known historical char
instructions he accordingly carried out. acter, relates, as from his own experience,
And let any candid and dispassionate a number of miracles wrought by the
person say how, if tried by the ordinary relics of two Christian martyrs which an
rules of reason, this differs from the emissary of his had purloined from
direct contradiction between Matthew Rome, and which he was transporting to
Heiligenstadt. To come to later times,
and Luke.
With this conclusive proof of the im St. Thomas a Becket was as well known
possibility of establishing the greatest of an historical character as King Henry,
and no miracles were attributed to him
all miracles by the ordinary rules of
evidence, it is almost superfluous to in his lifetime; but after his niurder,
refer to the many other circumstances under circumstances causing universal
which, on the showing of the Gospels horror and excitement, a whole crop of
themselves, lead to the same result. For miracles sprung up about his shrine at
instance, the next greatest miracle to Canterbury. Any one who will consult
those of the Resurrection, the raising of the authorities cited by Freeman will be
Lazarus, is related only in one Gospel, astonished to find how very precise and
and that the latest and least authentic; circumstantial is the evidence for. many
while, if it really occurred, it must have of these miracles. One instance is that
been known to and recorded by the of the attestation of the mayor and
three other evangelists. Or what can be several burgesses of a northern borough
said of the admission that even the to the fact that a fellow-townsman of
minor miracles of casting out devils and theirs, blind from his youth, had gone to
faith-healing depended . on faith, and the shrine and returned with perfect
could not be performed in the sceptical sight. There is nothing in the account
atmosphere of Nazareth, where Jesus of any miracle in the New Testament at
and his family and surroundings were all approaching this in what constitutes
well known j or of the refusal of Jesus to the force of evidence, precision of date,
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THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS
place, persons, and circumstance. And
yet, for millions who believe on the
weaker evidence, there is scarcely one
who retains any belief in such miracles
as those related of St. Thomas a Becket.
The reason is obvious : miracles are
in a totally distinct province—-that of
faith. What is faith ? St. Paul tells us
it is “ the assurance of things hoped for,
the proving of things not seen.” Hardly
of “things not seen,” for, in that case,
mathematicians and chemists who believe
in atoms and molecules would, of all
men, have the largest faith. But say of
“things not proven,” and it is a very
accurate definition. There can be no
doubt that there are men, often of great
piety and excellence, who have, or fancy
they have, a sort of sixth sense, or, as
Cardinal Newman calls it, an “illative
sense,” by which they see by intuition,
and arrive at a fervid conviction of the
truth of things unprovable or disprovable
by ordinary reason. The existence of a
personal God, the divinity of Christ, the
inspiration of the Bible, and consequent
reality of .miracles, appear to them to be
fundamental and necessary truths beyond
the scope of reason. They feel that, if
their belief in these were shaken, their
whole life would be shattered, and they
would lose what Wordsworth says
Nature was to him—
“ The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.”
With such men I have no quarrel.
Let them hold to their faith, and leave
reason to poor ordinary mortals, who,
like myself, have no such transcendental
intuitions. Only do not let them confound
the two provinces, and try to ride on two
horses at the same time. Faith is either
a delusion or something which is above
and beyond reason. If the latter, they
only weaken it by seeking to prop it up
by weak and sophistical arguments. If,
for instance, a man tells me that he
believes in the miracle of the Ascension
by faith, I have no more to say; but if
he proceeds to back up his assertion by
arguing that there is no contradiction
between Luke’s account of it and that of
the other evangelists, I say : “This man
is either insincere or illogical.” His
motto is, “ Believe if you can; if you
can’t, cant.”
I do not, therefore, so much deny the
truth of the Christian miracles as affirm
that they are altogether outside the
province of reason, and have no place
in such an historical resume as I am
attempting to give in this essay.
Another reservation I have to make is
that, if the historical element in the life
of Jesus may seem to be reduced to very
slender proportions, this does not neces
sarily affect the vital truth of the
Christian religion.
This religion has
always been to a considerable extent,
and is becoming more and more every
day, not so much a question of external
evidence, or of dogma, as of a sincere
love and reverence for the ideal which
has come to be associated with the name
of Jesus. This ideal is a fact, and has
long been, and will continue to be, an
important factor in the progress of human
evolution from lower to higher things.
How the ideal grew up and came to be
established is of far less importance than
what it is. Love, charity, purity, com
passion, self-sacrifice, are not the less
virtues because the Jdeas and emotions
of so many good men and women, for
nineteen centuries, have taken form and
crystallised about a comparatively small
nucleus of historical fact.
My meaning will be best explained by
an illustration. In Catholic countries
there is a figure 'which competes with, if
indeed it does not often supersede, that
of Jesus—-the figure of the Virgin Mary.
Now, here we can trace the historical
nucleus down to a minimum. What do
we really know of the mother of Jesus as
an historical fact?
That she was a
Jewish matron, the wife of a mechanic
in a small provincial town, the mother of
a large family, for four brothers of Jesus
are mentioned as well as sisters. Apart
from the legends of the .Nativity, which
are obviously mythical, nothing else is
�THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS
ii5
known of her, except that she was pro historical evidence ? I tell you it is a
bably one of the sceptical friends and fact, far more certain and more impor
kindred at Nazareth whose want of faith tant than nine-tenths of the events
prevented the working of miracles there, related in history. If you doubt it, look
and whose impression seems to have at Raffaelle’s Madonna di San Sisto,
been that Jesus was not altogether in his or Murillo’s Immaculate Conception ; or
right mind. Her relations with her Son listen to Mozart’s Ave Maria, or
do not appear to have been very cordial, Rossini’s Stabat Mater, and you will
from his refusal to go out to her when see that this ideal worship of the car
she came to the door asking to see him, penter’s wife of Nazareth has produced
and his emphatic assertion that those works which will remain for ever as highwho believed in him were dearer to him water marks which have been reached in
the evolution of modern art. You will
than his blood-relations.
The only other mention of Mary by say with Byron :—
St. John, who describes her as sitting at
“ Ave Maria, oh, that face so fair,
Those downcast eyes beneath the Almighty
the foot of the Cross, is apocryphal, being
dove.
directly contradicted by the very precise
Ave Maria, may our spirits dare
statement in the three other Gospels, that
Soar up to thee and to thy Son above.”
the Mary who was present on that occa
And so of Jesus; the historical figure,
sion was a different woman, the mother
of Salome. The motive of this intro though a good deal more certain and
duction of Mary, the mother of Jesus, definite than that of his Mother, is but
by the author of the fourth Gospel is a small matter compared with the ideal
obvious—viz., to exalt the character of which has grown up, in the course of
St. John, as is apparent throughout this ages, about it. It is but as the fragment
Gospel, in which the “ Boanerges,” the which, dropping into a saturated solu
violent and narrow-minded John of the tion, attracts molecule after molecule,
other Gospels, is converted into the until it grows into a large and lovely
gentle and amiable Apostle whom Jesus crystal which all eyes admire.
With these reservations, which may
loved.
What is the sort of figure which, if we go some way to mitigate the scruples of
relied on historical evidence only, we orthodox readers, if I should happen to
should draw from these scanty records ? have any—viz., that miracles are a ques
That of a plain, motherly Jewish woman, tion of faith, and that the historical
who did her own scrubbing and washing, element does not materially affect the
and was probably too much oppressed vital truth of Christianity—I fall back
by household cares, and those of a large on my own humble province of reason,
family, to know or care much for the and attempt to show what can be
spiritual aspirations and prophetical gathered by it from the earliest records
as to the personality and teaching of
pretensions of her eldest son.
And yet from this homely figure -what Jesus.
I begin by stating the two principles
a world of beautiful ideas and associa
tions have flowered into life.
The by which I have been mainly guided in
Madonna has become an embodiment the research. The first is what I may
of all female virtues carried to a point call the “Minimum of Miracle.” Of
where they become divine.
Love, different biographies of the same person,
purity, innocence, maternal affection, that which contains the fewest miraculous
human suffering, have all found their legends is almost certain to be the
highest ideal in the “ Mother of God,” earliest and most authentic. It is far
the “ mild and merciful Madonna,” the more likely that such legends should be
“ Blessed Virgin.” Do you tell me this added or invented than that, if they
is not a fact because it is not based on actually occurred, or were generally
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THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS
accredited, they should be designedly
omitted. As an illustration of what I
mean by this, take the case, already
referred to, of St. Thomas a Becket. If
newspapers had existed in his time which
published a biography of eminent men
on the day after their death, such a
biography would have contained no
miracles; one written a few weeks later
would have doubtless contained some
reference to the miraculous vision of the
monk who watched by his remains, and
some of the miracles said to have
occurred at his shrine; while still later
accounts would have multiplied the
miracles into scores and hundreds.
There can be no doubt here that the
succession in point of time would have
been—No miracles, few miracles, many
miracles. And the same holds good of
all biographies of eminent men, saints,
and martyrs. The outlines of their
historical figures are almost lost in the
accumulation of myths and legends,
which in uncritical times have grown up
about them. Even . in the nineteenth
century we have had a most significant
illustration of this. When the life of
the Bab, a great religious reformer of
modern Persia, was published shortly
after his death, it contained no miracles.
But in thirty years it came to be packed
with miracles.
The second even more important
principle is, that admissions of events
and sayings which tell against the point
of view of the writer are far more likely
to be historical than those which have
the appearance of being introduced to
show the fulfilment of prophecies, to
answer objections, or to support dogmatic
views. Thus, if Jesus is described as
being born and bred at Nazareth, the
son of a carpenter whose family and
surroundings were well known there, the
statement is far more likely to be true
than one which describes him as having
been born at Bethlehem, and attributes
to. him a whole series of marvellous and
miraculous incidents.
Tried by both these tests, the Gospel
of Mark has every appearance of being
the earliest and most authentic record;
and when this is confirmed by the clear
and explicit statement of Papias, I have
no hesitation in assuming it to be the
surest basis of our historical knowledge,
and in all probability mainly derived
from the reminiscences of Peter himself,
or of other contemporary witnesses of
the events described.
Starting from this basis, I assume, as
beyond all doubt, that Jesus was an
historical personage. There is nothing
in Mark which would lead to the sup
position that any considerable portion of
his Gospel was legend or myth. The
time is too modern, and the narrative
too precise, to allow us to suppose that
the whole story had been elaborated by
later theologians from Oriental myths
and Messianic prophecies. The age
was long past when religions could
originate in solar myths and misunder
stood personifications of natural pheno
mena. Every great religious movement
which comes fairly within the historical
period, from Buddha and Zoroaster down
to Mohammed, had some real personality
as its starting-point, about whom myths
and dogmas accumulated, until almost
obscuring the historical nucleus. So
also was doubtless the case with Jesus.1
The next point I consider to be quite
certain is, that he was born of humble
parents at the little town of Nazareth in
Galilee. The legends of the Nativity
and Infancy may all be dismissed as
purely mythical. The two accounts
and genealogies in Matthew and Luke
do not agree, and are each hopelessly
inconsistent with the evidence of the
other Gospels. It is plain that during
his life and afterwards Jesus was supposed
to have been born at Nazareth, that this
was cast in his teeth as being irrecon
cilable with any claim to be the Messiah,
and that neither he nor his Apostles ever
attempted to deny it, or made any claim
J. The reader who desires to study the more
critical position, which calls into question the
historical reality of Jesus, will do well to read
Mr. J. M. Robertson’s Christianity and Mytho
logy and Pagan Christs,
�THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS
117
to his having been born at Bethlehem. heroes and gods of antiquity, and is
If such a series of startling events as almost certainly derived from a solar
are described by Matthew had really myth of the sun rising in the constella
occurred, the inhabitants of Nazareth tion of Virgo. The story of the massacre
could hardly have ignored his claims as of the innocents is related of Krishna;
a prophet on the ground that he was a and, if we accept the narrative of Matthew,
mere ordinary fellow-townsman, “the we have to suppose that there were two
Son of the carpenter, whose brothers wicked kings, one in India and another
in Judaea, separated by an interval of
and sisters are with us every day.’'
The accounts of the nativity, infancy, many centuries, who both adopted the
arid early manhood of Jesus may be same expedient, of a massacre of all
dismissed as purely legendary. I do male children under two years of age,
not say so merely because they contain to destroy a Divine Incarnation who was
so many miracles, but on the ordinary Lorn in one of their cities. The escape
grounds of historical criticism. In the by flight, owing to a miraculous warning,
first place, the two accounts of Matthew and other particulars, are almost word
and Luke are contradictory. The second for word the same in the two legends;
admits that Nazareth was the abode of and we may fairly assume that both are
Joseph and Mary, and accounts for the alike unhistorical. We know that a
birth of Jesus at Bethlehem by the sup whole crop of such legends grow up in
posed necessity of Joseph’s going there early Christian tradition, for we have
to be taxed, as being of the family of the Gospel of the Infancy, which is full
David; while the first assumes that of the most childish and absurd magical
Bethlehem was the abode of the parents, tricks, supposed to have been performed
and says that they only went to Nazareth during the boyhood of the Messiah.
The first firm historical ground is
some years later from fear of Archelaus,
who had succeeded to his father Herod. afforded by the Gospel of St. Mark, who
Matthew describes the Massacre of the begins with the visit of Jesus to John the
Innocents at Bethlehem, and says that Baptist. This is very likely to be true,
Jesus escaped it by flying into Egypt; for we know from Josephus that the time
while Luke omits all mention of the was one of great religious and political
massacre, the miraculous star, and the excitement, and that there were several
wise men of the East, and says that the such preachers or prophets as John the
parents took the babe straight to Jeru Baptist is described to have been, who
salem. In both cases all the events are went about holding what may be called
described as happening in fulfilment of camp-meetings, and in some cases caus
prophecies. The other two evangelists, ing local insurrections, which had to be
Mark and John, make no mention of repressed by the Roman soldiery. Noth
any such occurrences, and begin their ing is more likely than that a young man
biographies with the visit of Jesus, when of original genius and strong religious
a grown-up man, to John the Baptist. sentiment should go to one of such
It is now recognised by prominent theo meetings, not far from his home, to hear
logians, such as Dr. Loofs, that the a celebrated preacher. That such a
account given in Luke is a late interpola young man was not altogether satisfied
with the narrow and fierce denunciations
tion in the text.
But the most conclusive fact is that of a rude ascetic, and did not enrol him
these legends are identical, both in their self as one of his disciples, was also very
general tenour and in many minute details, probable; but that John really did make
with similar legends of earlier religions. a considerable impression on him is
Thus the miraculous birth from a virgin evident from the fact that he left his
is related of Horus, of Krishna, of home immediately afterwards, assumed
Buddha, and of many of the celebrated the character of a wandering missionary,
�ii8
THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS
and began to preach identically the same
the New Testament. They supply a
gospel as that of John: “Repent ye, for
motive-power which may explain the
the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
early conversions and the rapid spread
Let us pause for a moment to consider
what was meant by the kingdom of heaven of the new religion. Evidently the hope
eing at hand. It did not mean such a of a large and .immediate reward was
millennium as certain enthusiasts may present in the minds of the Apostles,
now suppose, after nineteen centuries of these humble peasants and fishermen
unfulfilled expectation—thatis, the advent we're to sit on twelve thrones judging
of an era of purer morals and better laws the twelve tribes of Israel,” and “every
—but the literal end of the world and last one who has left houses, or brethren, or
judgment, to take place within the life sisters, or children, or lands, for My
Name’s sake shall receive a hundred
time of some of the existing generation.
fold.” And this not in a remote future,
1 he sun was to be darkened, the moon
but m the lifetime of the existing genera
not to give her light, and the stars fall
tion. It is conceivable also that many
rom heaven. And then they were to
see the “ Son of Man coming in clouds educated Jews, who despaired of an
with great power and glory,” and his armed resistance to the overwhelming
angels to gather all mankind from the power of Rome, might be inclined to
four winds of heaven before the judgment view with favour the idea of a spiritual
Messiah who should bring about the
seat, where the tares are to be separated
advent of an end of the world and last
from the wheat, the goats from the sheep,
judgment, in which the elect children of
the good rewarded and the wicked cast
God should be rewarded and the heathen
into everlasting fire. Nothing can be punished.
more explicit than the assurance that this
Another element which must have
event would come to pass in the lifetime
contributed largely towards the reception
of the present generation. “Verily I say
of the Gospel by the poorer classes is
unto you, This generation shall not pass
the extreme socialistic spirit which is
away until all these things are accom uniformly displayed. For “rich’’write
plished.”
Such was evidently the current opinion “capital,” and for “poor” “wages,” and
the preaching of Jesus is almost identical
among the Apostles and early Christians: with that of modern socialists. The
and even the cultured and educated Paul,
poor are to be rewarded and the rich
some twenty years later, repeats it with punished in the kingdom of God, irre
the fullest conviction, and describes how
the Lord shall descend from heaven spective of any merit or demerit. Thus,
blessed are ye poor,” “woe unto you
with a shout, with the voice of an arch
that are rich.” Even the rich young
angel, and with the trump of God”; and
how “the dead shall rise first; then we man, who had kept all the Command
that are alive, that are left, shall together ments, is told that he cannot be saved
unless he “sells all his possessions and
with them be caught up in the clouds, to gives to the poor”; and the remark of
meet the Lord in the air.”
Jesus is, that it is “ easier for a camel to
It is clear that, according to all rules
go through a needle’s eye than for a rich
of ordinary reason, predictions thus con
man to enter into the kingdom of God.”
fidently made and conclusively refuted For anything that appears to the contrary,
are an irresistible argument against the Lazarus may have been a loafing vaga
possession of any inspiration or special bond, who had brought poverty and dis
foresight on the part of the prophets, and
ease upon himself by his own misconduct;
that prophecies, like miracles, must be and Dives a man who, having inherited
relegated to the province of faith. But,
a large estate, spent it hospitably in
on the other hand, they bring us nearer
entertaining his neighbours; but no moral
to the human and historical element in is inculcated. It is enough that Lazarus
�THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS
is poor and Dives rich, to place one in
Abraham’s bosom and the other in eternal
fire.
It is evidently neither in these falsified
prophecies, nor in this exaggerated social
ism, that we are to find the fascination
which the ideal of Jesus has exercised
over so many minds for so many centuries.
It is rather in the interpretation which he
gave to the first words of the Baptist’s
formula, “ Repent ye, for the kingdom of
God is at hand.” Repentance, as taught
by Jesus, meant not merely an outward
obedience to formal laws and abstinence
from direct breaches of moral command
ments, but such a spiritual conversion as
embraced the whole sphere of human
life and made the very idea of sin insup
portable. Men were to be good, pure,
merciful, compassionate, and charitable,
because the principle of “loving God and
thy neighbour as thyself” was so wrought
into the soul that it became a second
nature. The law was to be observed, but
in a liberal, tolerant, and comprehensive
spirit, and the intention was to be looked
to rather than the outward act. The
widow’s mite was of more value than the
rich man’s offering, and the publican’s
remorseful prayer was more acceptable
than the formal and lengthened devotions
of the strait-laced Pharisee.
It is remarkable, when we come to
consider it, how much more the ideal of
Jesus, which is the central fact of Chris
tianity, is founded on the precepts and
parables by which this spiritual religion
is taught, and by the human incidents of
his life which illustrate it, than it is on
the alleged miracles. The Sermon on
the Mount, the Parable of the Good
Samaritan, the tenderness to children,
the affectionate and “sweetly reason
able ” intercourse with his humble
followers—these and such as these are
the traits which build up the ideal char
acter that draws all hearts.
The miracles, on the other hand, are
at best but capricious instances of a
supernatural power, healing one and
leaving thousands unhealed, and failing
when most required as evidences, as in
119
the case of the incredulous Nazarenes
and the Pharisees who asked for a sign;
while, at the worst, some of them are
wholly inconsistent with the historical
character of the just and gentle Jesus.
Thus the miracle of the Gadarene swine,
if true, obviously detracts from this char
acter. It is an act of cruelty to animals
(for what had the poor swine done to
deserve death?), and it is a wanton
destruction of property cruel. to the
owners. Doubtless these swine had
owners, perhaps some poor Galilean
peasants, who, like those of Donegal or
Galway, depended on the pig to pay
their rent and save them from eviction.
It was a wanton and a cruel act to send
their humble property to destruction m
order to please a pack of devils. Again,
the miracle of the fig-tree reads rather
like the hasty curse of a passionate fool
than the act of a gentle, long-suffering,
and sweetly reasonable man.
But, to return to the historical narative,
I find no difficulty in believing that the
accounts of the commencement of the
mission of Jesus, of his comings and
goings among the small towns of Galilee,
of his camp-meetings, and of most of
his preachings, parables, and sayings, are
substantially accurate. There is nothing
improbable in them, except in some of
the miracles taken literally, and these
may readily be explained, or indeed
were inevitable, in such a medium of
excited crowds of poor and ignorant
men, where everyone believed in miracles
as events of daily occurrence, and where
many natural acts of faith-healing and
casual coincidences had given a popular
prophet the reputation of being a worker
of mighty works.
Indeed, many of the miracles appear
as if they had a nucleus of historical fact,
which became expanded into legend.
Thus, the legends of Jesus and Peter
walking on the sea appear to be based
on the first simple narrative, how a
sudden squall having overtaken the boat
in which they were crossing at night,
they awoke Jesus, who was asleep, and
the squall passed over.
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THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS
Those, again, of the “ loaves and fishes ” nent . makes a desperate thrust by a
may have readily arisen from the recol puzzling question; it is parried by an
lection of some occasion when a scanty adroit answer, both leaving the root of
supply of food had lasted out longer than the matter untouched. Thus the cele
was expected, owing very probably to brated answer, “ Render unto Csesar the
many of those who attended the camp things that are Caesar’s, and unto God
meeting having brought their own provi the things that are God’s,” is clever, but
sions—a conjecture which is confirmed no answer to the real question whether a
by the abundance of baskets, in which conscientious servant of Jehovah could
to collect the fragments, and which could voluntarily pay taxes to a heathen power
not have been required to carry seven or which had usurped his place. The posi
five loaves.
tion was precisely that of a conscientious
These, however, are mere conjectures, Dissenter in our own days, who was in
and not to be taken as facts, and I only doubt whether to pay Church rates or
mention them to show that a good many let his chattels be seized. He would
of the miraculous legends need not have got little enlightenment from being
necessarily detract from the general told to pay King Edward VII. the things
historical value of Mark’s simple narra that were his, and render to God what
tive of this early part of the career of was God’s. The question was, what
Jesus in Galilee.
things were Caesar’s and what God’s.
And I think the sayings and parables
Again, the puzzle of the Sadducee,
may generally be taken .as authentic. It whose wife she would be in heaven who
is true that most of both may be found had been married successively to seven
in the literature of the Talmud and of brothers, remains a puzzle to this day.
older religions, but this does not negative It is no question of marrying in the
the probability that Jesus may have used kingdom of heaven, but of marriages
them in his popular addresses, and at which have taken place on earth. Shall
any rate they afford a view of what his we preserve our personal identity after
doctrine and style of preaching really death, so that two souls which have been
were ; and . many of the parables and united by the holiest and closest ties
shorter sayings are just such things as while living shall be united in a future
would be readily retained in the memory life ? Shall we know and recognise those
and transmitted by oral tradition. Many whom we have loved and lost—
of the details also of the incidents and
“ See every face we feared to see no more ” ;
wanderings to and fro of this Galilean
or is Arthur’s last wish, that Guinevere
period are very like what might be
expected from the reminiscences in old should cling to him and not to Launcelot,
age of an Apostle like Peter, who had when they meet before “ the fair father
accompanied Jesus from the first, though Christ,” a vain dream ? If it be not,
we must always recollect that the author who can answer the Sadducee’s question,
who worked up these reminiscences, as or say more than our greatest poet:
“ Behind the veil, behind the veil ”?
described by Papias, into a connected
biography may have added a good deal What Jesus might have said, but did
from other sources.
not, is : The rule is an abominable one;
I am inclined also to accept as it degrades the sanctity of marriage, and
authentic a good many of the contro reduces woman to a mere chattel, who is
versies between Jesus and the Scribes to be handed over like an ox or an ass—
and Pharisees. They are exactly in the they to bear burdens, she to bear chil
style of the verbal conflicts which were dren—for their master, man.
so common in the East, and which sur
Up to this point, therefore, I see no
vived down to the scholastic tourna difficulty in accepting the Synoptic narra
ments of the Middle Ages. An oppo tive, best told in the earliest and simplest
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121
Gospel of Mark, as being in the main and Pharisees had introduced in later
historical. And if so, the best picture I times. Thus, he strolled through the
can form of it fs something very like the fields on a Sunday afternoon with his
Salvation Army of the present day. The disciples, plucking ears of corn, and
movement had evidently no political declared that “ the Sabbath was made
significance, and attracted little notice, for man, not man for the Sabbath,” a
or Josephus must have mentioned it; and saying in respect of which our modern
there is no trace of any interference with Pharisees have generally sided with those
it, in the earlier stages, on the part of of old rather than with the liberal-minded
the authorities. In fact, the modern and tolerant Jesus.
What did Jesus believe respecting his
Salvationists have suffered more from
provincial Bumbles and Justice Shallows own Messiahship ? This is a very per
than Jesus and his disciples seemed to plexing question, aggravated by the
have done while they remained in Galilee. tendency, after the doctrine was firmly
But, like the Salvation Army, there was established, to invent or adopt traditions
a loose organisation of a general, twelve showing that he had fulfilled the condi
principal officers, and a body of disciples tions attached to such a character by the
or professed adherents, who went about prophecies of the Old Testament, and by
holding camp-meetings, and preaching the prevailing expectations.
But it is tolerably clear that in the
the advent of the kingdom of God and
a new and better life to excited crowds, early part of his career he advanced no
who listened eagerly, and on the whole such pretension. The Gospels all agree
sympathised with them. The only dif in describing the remarkable persistency
ference was in the superior genius, with which he endeavoured to suppress
eloquence, and attractiveness of the all evidence which tended to support
personality at the head of the movement, such a claim. The evil spirits who
and the purity, spirituality, and general recognise him, the patients whom he
miraculously cures, Peter when he calls
excellence of his doctrine.
There are one or two points in this him the Christ, are all enjoined to “ tell
doctrine which it is interesting to con no man anything.” When the little
sider. Did Jesus regard himself as a damsel is supposed to have been raised
Jewish reformer, or as the founder of a from the dead, his first care is to “ charge
new religion ? Decidedly the former. them much that no man should know
The declarations are quite explicit : this.” In any ordinary case the inference
“Think not that I come to destroy the would be that he did not wish miracles,
law or the prophets, but to fulfil ”; “Till which passed muster with ignorant dis
heaven and earth pass away, one jot or ciples, to be investigated by impartial
one tittle shall in no wise pass away from and educated critics. If this explanation
the law ”; “ I was not sent but unto the be negatived as inconsistent with his
lost sheep of the house of Israel.” He pure and holy character, the only other
was as far as possible from Paul’s doc that can be suggested is that he did not
trine, that he was sent to liberate the wish it to be supposed that he was a
Jews from the bondage of the law,, and supernatural being attested by miracles,
to introduce a new and universal religion believing miracles to be vulgar things
for Jews and Gentiles alike. But in a of which even false prophets might be
few exceptional cases he healed Gentiles capable, but that he preferred to rely on
who had shown extraordinary faith, and the excellence of his doctrine and his
his interpretation of the law was a large own powers of eloquence and persuasion.
It would seem, however, that later in
and liberal one, looking to the spirit
rather than the letter of the Mosaic his career the conviction began to dawn
commandments, and rejecting the trifling on him that he might be the Messiah of
and vexatious rules which the Scribes . the prophecies, and that he stood in
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THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS
some peculiar relation to God, and would any other record. It is evident that, if
be His vicegerent in inaugurating His Luke s version had represented the words
kingdom and holding the assizes of the really spoken, they could never have been
last judgment.
altered by eye-witnesses or by early tradi
The most distinct assertion of this is tion into words conveying such a totally
found after he had gone to Jerusalem, in different impression as “My God, my
his reputed reply to the adjuration of the God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
high priest to say whether he was “ the
We come now to the concluding scene
Christ, the Son of the Blessed,” to which at Jerusalem, when it becomes more
he replied, according to one version, “ I than ever difficult to distinguish between
am,” and to another, “ Thou sayest.”
fact and legend. The narratives of the
It is evident, however, that he never three Synoptic Gospels are fairly consis
thought of equalling himself to God, or tent up to the Crucifixion, when they
representing himself in the literal sense become hopelessly discordant. That of
as being “of one substance with the John is apparently founded on the same
Father,” and he would probably have torn tradition, though, after the fashion of the
his clothes and shouted “blasphemy ” if author, dealt with in a very freehand
he had heard the articles of the Athana- way, altered, transposed, so as to make it
sian Creed. To the last he uses the the ground-work for several dogmatical
term “ Son of Man ” in speaking of him speeches and visits to Jerusalem, and
self, even in his answer to the high embellished by various amendments and
priest j and he never adopts the language details. But the primitive narrative is
of the evil spirits who address him as clear enough. Jesus and his Apostles go
“Jesus, thou Son of the Most High up to Jerusalem to keep the Passover ;
God,” or as “ the Holy One of God.” they are received there with a triumphal
He never doubts that" “my Father is procession; Jesus clears the Temple of
greater than I,” or that God alone knows the money-changers; the authorities
things which he does not know.
become alarmed, but are afraid to arrest
. The best clue to his conception of him openly, as the people are in his
himself is, to my mind, afforded by the favour ; one of the Apostles betrays his
pathetic dying words, “ Eloi, Eloi, lama hiding-place, and he is arrested at night;
sabachthani ?” These, if any, must be he is tried and condemned by the Sanhe
historical, for they tell against the drim and by the Roman Governor;
orthodox view, and could never have Pilate believes him to be innocent, and
been invented, while they are just the tries to save him, but the Jews clamour
sort of thing which would impress itself, for his blood; Pilate yields, and he is
in the actual words spoken, on the crucified.
memory of his affectionate disciples.
Thus far the story is consistent, and it
But if these words were really spoken, involves nothing that is impossible. But
they show that he really believed himself it is full of the gravest improbabilities.
to be the promised Messiah, and trusted Why should the Jews, who one day are
up to the last in some signal miraculous so much in his favour that the authorities
act of deliverance, such as the advent of are afraid to arrest him, be converted in
the last day, or the descent from heaven a single day into a furious crowd clamour
of “ more than twelve legions of angels.” ing for his execution ? Why should an
It is worthy of remark that the author appeal to Pilate be necessary for a reliof Luke seems to have felt the force of gious offence against the Mosaic law,
this objection, for he transforms the when Stephen, under precisely similar
expression into “My God, into thy circumstances, was publicly stoned to
ha ids I commend my spirit,” and inserts death, and Paul made havoc of Chris
“ Forgive them, for they know not what tians without any Roman mandate ? Why
they do,” which words are not found in • should false witnesses, whose testimony
�THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS
123
was inconsistent, be required to prove any one written document or from any
an offence which Jesus avowed in open fixed tradition. Thus, Judas’s death is
differently described. Herod is intro
court ?
But the portion of the narrative which duced by Luke, and not mentioned by
relates to Pilate is that which is open to the others. Jesus carried his own cross
the gravest suspicion. It is opposed in one account, while Simon of Cyrene
alike to human nature and to Roman bore it in another. Jesus gave no answer
practice that a high functionary should to Pilate, says Matthew; he explained
first publicly proclaim his belief in the that “his kingdom was not of this world,”
innocence of a prisoner whom he was says John. Mary his mother sat at the
trying, and go through the solemn act of foot of the cross, according to John; it
washing his hands to show that he would was not his mother, but another Mary,
not be guilty of his blood, and immedi the mother of Salome, who “beheld from
ately afterwards condemn him to a cruel afar,” according to Mark and Matthew.
and ignominious death. Nor is it con There was a guard set to watch the tomb,
ceivable that such a Governor, if forced says Matthew; there is no mention of one
to yield by the threat of being reported by the others.
These, however, are minor discrepan
to Csesar for disloyalty, should insist,
against the remonstrances of the Jewish cies which are only important as showing
rulers, in placing an inscription on the that there was no clearly fixed historical
cross, which proclaimed Jesus to be “ the tradition, except of the general outline of
the course of events, when the different
king of the Jews.”
In fact, the whole episode of Pilate Gospels were compiled; and subsequent
has very much the air of being an inter to the Crucifixion there is, as we have
polation of much later date, when the seen, a hopeless discordance.
In some cases it is almost possible to
feeling of hatred between Christians and
Jews had become intense. The object trace, step by step, how the legends grew
evidently is to show that this hatred was with each successive repetition. Thus,
justified by the Jews having imprecated according to Mark, two women went to
the blood of Jesus on their own heads the tomb, found the stone rolled away
and those of their sons, and to represent and the tomb empty, and saw a young
the heathens as having been better than man clothed in white, who gave them a
the Jews, inasmuch as Pilate tried to save message to Peter and the disciples that
Jesus, and to a certain extent believed in Jesus had risen and gone before them to
him. It is difficult to credit that such Galilee, where they would see him—a
a narrative could have come from men message which they never delivered,
like Peter, John, and James, who re being afraid. In Matthew the young
mained devout Jews, zealous for their man has become an angel who rolled the
stone away and sat on it, delivering the
faith and country.
Nor, again, is it easy to see how, if the same message to go to Galilee, where his
events had really assumed the publicity disciples would see him, which they ran
and importance assigned to them, there and delivered. In Luke there are the
should be no mention of them by Jose same two Marys, with another woman
phus, or any contemporary writer, espe named Joanna, and several others, and
cially if there was, as the Gospels say, a they saw not one but two men in dazzling
miraculous darkness over the land, an apparel; “Go to Galilee” is changed
earthquake, the veil of the Temple rent, into “ As he spoke unto you while yet in
and ghosts walked about the streets. Galilee,” which in the Acts is enlarged
The Gospel narratives also, though con into a positive injunction “ Not to depart
sistent in the main outlines, contain a from Jerusalem ”; and Peter is intro
number of discrepancies in details which duced as running to the tomb and finding
show that they were not derived from it empty. In John there are two angels;
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THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS
John runs along with Peter to the tomb;
and Mary Magdalene has a miraculous
vision of Jesus, whom she at first mistakes
for the gardener. No one who reads
these narratives by the ordinary light of
reason can doubt that the simple story
of Mark is nearest to the original fact or
tradition, and that the successive amplifi
cations of one into two, men into angels,
the introduction of Peter, and finally of
Peter and John, and the miraculous
vision of Mary Magdalene, have grown
up about it. If the facts had really
happened as described by Luke and
John, no one could have subsequently
cut them down into the bald statement
of Mark, while the opposite process is
what we know to be historically true in
the case of so many early Christian
martyrs and mediaeval saints. It is the
clearest possible case of the application
of.the principle of the “Minimum of
Miracle.”
I may here remark, however, that, as
I said before, the historical nucleus is of
minor importance compared with the
fact that the belief in the Resurrection
did somehow come to be entertained,
and became the chief agent in the estab
lishment and evolution of the new reli
gion, and that there is no reason to doubt
that it was honestly entertained by sincere
men, who, if they did not see it with their
bodily eyes, saw it with the eyes of faith,
and to whom visions, dreams, hallucina
tions, and subjective impressions were as
much facts as objective realities.
In trying to disentangle the historical
nucleus from these legends, the best ray
of light I can discover is afforded by the
account of the riot in the Temple, and
assault on the traders who changed money
and who sold doves and other objects of
sacrifice. This is found in all the Gospels,
and could hardly be an invention; while,
if true, it must have been followed by
immediate consequences. Prompt and
stern repression must have been exercised
both by the Jewish and the Roman
authorities.
. We must recollect that their point of
view would not be that of later Christians,
when the faith in the Divine character of
Jesus had been established for centuries,
but that of contemporaries who knew
nothing of him but as the provincial
prophet of an obscure sect. To recur to
the simile of the Salvation Army, it
would be as if a body of Salvationists,
who had preached without interruption
in some remote province of Russia, came
to Moscow, and in a fit of religious
enthusiasm invaded the cathedral, and
broke the windows of the shopkeepers
in its vicinity who exhibited ikons and
other sacred objects of the Greek ritual.
Undoubtedly the Metropolitan would
complain to the Governor, and the
leader of the rioters would be summarily
arrested, and, if not crucified, sent to
Siberia.
Supposing this narrative to be true, it
affords a natural explanation of many
of the incidents recorded. A disciple
might well be bribed to disclose the
hiding-place of his Master; the arrest
might be made under the circumstances
described; the disciples might disperse
in alarm, and Peter deny his connection
with them; Jesus might be taken before
the high priest, and by him referred to
the Roman Governor. The incredible
legends about his trial and Pontius
Pilate might resolve themselves into the
fact that Jesus had no defence to make,
and was condemned, not on theological
grounds, or on the charge of having
proclaimed himself as a temporal king of
the Jews, but on the simple charge of
having been the ringleader in a serious
riot. Crucifixion would, as we know
from numerous instances in Josephus,
have been a common Roman method of
dealing with such leaders, and its various
incidents, such as the brutality of the
soldiers and the procession to Golgotha,
are only what might be expected. The
historical part of the narrative can hardly
be carried farther than that Jesus came
up to Jerusalem with a body of his
followers, that a riot took place in the
Temple, and that he was arrested, tried,
and executed by the Roman Governor
at the request of the Jewish authorities.
�THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS________
125
might well have come from an enemy of
His entombment and the finding of the
tomb empty rest, according to Mark, who the new faith, but hardly from an
Apostle. On the other hand, at a subse
is the best authority, on the testimony of
quent period, when the eye-witnesses
two women, Mary Magdalene and Mary
were dead, and the original records and
the mother of James, who are alone
traditions were obscured by time, and
mentioned as seeing where the body
when the dogmas of the Resurrection
was laid, and as afterwards, with
and Divine nature of Jesus were firmly
Salome, finding the tomb empty, but,
established, nothing is more likely than
being afraid, said nothing at the time to
that the birthplace of the new religion
anv one.
.
.
should be transferred to Jerusalem, and
The next historical question is one of
the vague statements of occurrences in
great importance. Did the Apostles, as
directly asserted by Matthew, and in Galilee should be transformed into, a
series of stupendous miracles occurring
directly by Mark, return immediately to
at the sacred city in the presence of a
Galilee, where the belief in. the Resur
rection took form; or did they, as large number of witnesses.
The probabilities of the case, also, are .
asserted with equal positiveness by Luke,
all in favour of the return to Galilee.
remain at Jerusalem, where a series of
startling miraculous appearances took The disciples had come to Jerusalem on
a special pilgrimage to keep the Passplace ?
.
There can be little doubt in consider over there, which was over j there was
no intimation of any intention to remain,
ing the Galilean tradition to be the true
nor could they well have brought with
one. Independently of the great weight
them any sufficient resources for a long
of authority for considering the narrative
stay. They were in mortal fear of the
of Mark, which is substantially the same
Jews, and several of them had wives and
as that of Matthew, to be the earliest and
families at home, to whom they would
most authentic, it is inconceivable that,
hasten to return. If we could believe
if events had really occurred as described
by Luke, any author or compiler of any John, they not only returned, but
resumed their original occupation as
other Gospel should have ignored them
fishermen ; but I lay little stress on this,
and transferred the scene to Galilee.
as the author of John, whoever he was,
However simple-minded such an author
was evidently a man of considerable
may have been, he could not but have
seen that he was weakening immensely literary attainments and dramatic genius,
which he displayed in writing a Gospel,
the evidence for the cardinal fact of the
great parts of which may be most aptly
Resurrection if, instead of referring to
such precise and definite statements of described as a theological romance.
But it is useless to dwell on details, as
miracles, including the. Ascension, occur
the conclusive argument is that Mark
ring in or near the capital city Jerusalem,
and Matthew could by. no possibility
in the presence of numerous witnesses,
many of whom survived to attest their have written as they did if the course of
events immediately after the death of
truth twenty or more years afterwards,
he either omitted all mention of such Jesus had really been, or even had been
generally supposed to be, as described
occurrences like Mark, or like Matthew
transferred the scene to a remote pro by Luke.
With the return of the disciples to
vince and to a select few of his own
disciples, and whittled down the evi Galilee the curtain falls on what may be
fairly called the historical drama of the
dence to the vague statement that these
went into the “ mountain where Jesus life of Jesus, and we enter on a region
had appointed them,” where “some where all is conjecture and uncertainty.
The belief in the Resurrection evidently
worshipped him and some doubted.”
It probably
Such a perversion of Luke’s narrative grew up in Galilee.
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THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS
originated with the women, for they are
mentioned in all the accounts as the first
to have seen the risen Jesus, or to have
brought a message from him or from
angels, and this is hardly likely to have
been invented.
If at first they were afraid to tell any
one, nothing is more natural than that,
when they found themselves in their
own country, and among friends, their
tongues would have been loosened, and
they would begin to talk of the wonderful
things they had seen, or fancied they
had seen, at Jerusalem. '
The only thing certain is that the
belief in the Resurrection, once started,
grew rapidly, but that the various
accounts of how it grew are so vague
and contradictory that it is hopeless to
attempt to draw any certain conclusion
respecting them. This will be apparent
if we simply place in juxtaposition the
five different records which have come
down to us in the New Testament.
The most certain and authentic record
is that related by St. Paul in his Epistle
to the Corinthians. It is true that Paul
was not an eye-witness, or at all likely to
have examined the evidence critically,
and he places the appearance to himself,
which, whether supernatural or not, was
obviously in the nature of a vision, on
precisely the same footing as the others.
Still, it is good evidence that, some
twenty years after the event, the appear
ances he mentions were currently believed
by the early Christian community at
Jerusalem.
They are six in number, and, presum
ably, though he does not mention the
place, all at Jerusalem, except that to
himself on the road to Damascus.
Viz.
1. To Peter.
2. To the twelve.
3.
4.
56.
To above 500 brethren at once.
To James.
To all the Apostles.
To himself.
Compare this with the other accounts,
beginning with that of Mark, which
probably came direct from St. Peter.
In the genuine Mark of the oldest
manuscripts :—
Miraculous appearances. None.
Only a message from a young man in
white delivered to the two Marys and
Salome.
In the addition to Mark, introduced
later than the date of the oldest manu
scripts :—
/
Three. 1. To Mary Magdalene.
2. To the two walking from Em
maus.
3- T° the eleven.
i and 2 being distinctly stated not to
have been believed by those to whom
they were told, at the time of their
alleged occurrence.
According to Matthew :—
Miraculous appearances. Two.
1. To Mary Magdalene and the other
Mary at Jerusalem.
2. To the eleven on a mountain in Gali
lee, when some worshipped and
“some doubted.”
According to Luke :—
Miraculous appearances. Four — all at
Jerusalem.
1. Messages of tWo men in dazzling
apparel, probably angels, to the two
Marys, Joanna, and other women.
2. To the two disciples walking from
Emmaus, who at first did not recog
nise him.
3. To the eleven, when he eat the broiled
fish.
4. The Ascension, when he was bodily
taken up in a cloud to-heaven in the
presence of the eleven.
According to John :—
Miraculous appearances. Four—first three
at Jerusalem, fourth in Galilee.
1. To Mary Magdalene alone, who at first
took him for the gardener.
2. To the disciples sitting in a room with
closed doors.
3. A second time to the disciples, to re
move Thomas’s doubts.
4. By the sea of Galilee, when Peter and
six other disciples caught the miracu
lous draught of fishes, when at first
none of them recognised him.
And John expressly states that this
last was the third appearance to the dis
ciples after Jesus had risen from the
dead, thus excluding all others except
1, 2, and 3.
�THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN THE GOSPELS
It will be remarked that, of the five
miraculous appearances recorded by St.
Paul as being the current belief at Jeru
salem twenty years after the event, three
—those to Peter, James, and above 500
brethren at once—are not even men
tioned in any other account. The latter
can hardly be the same as Luke’s Ascen
sion, which comes in its natural place as
the concluding scene of the great drama
of the life and resurrection of Jesus, and
the spectators are confined to the eleven
Apostles.
Paul’s No. 5, or second appearance to
all the Apostles, may refer either to that
described by John to convince Thomas,
or to Luke’s Ascension; but Paul makes
no mention either of Thomas or of the
Ascension, which would be very strange
if the bodily Ascension to heaven was a
cardinal article of faith when Paul visited
Jerusalem, which it must have been if it
really happened as described by Luke.
There remains, therefore, only the vague
tradition that Jesus had appeared to the
twelve, as to which the enumeration by
Paul of five miraculous appearances
receives not the slightest confirmation
from any of the Gospels.
The Gospel accounts, again, vary so
much that there is not a single case in
which any one is confirmed by any of
the others. The nearest approach to it
is in the appearances to women; but
here John says distinctly it was to Mary
Magdalene alone, while Matthew says
it was to the two Marys ; Luke, that the
vision was to the two Marys, Joanna,
and other women, and was one of angels,
and not of Jesus; Mark, that the message
was given to the two Marys and Salome
by a young man. Evidently the tradi
tion as to the women was very vague.
Again, the Ascension at Jerusalem,
the greatest of all the miracles, rests on
Luke alone, and is negatived by the
testimony of Matthew and John that
the Apostles returned to Galilee, and
that the final scene, whatever it may
have been, took place there; and still
more significantly by their silence, and
that of Mark, respecting an event which,
if it took place as described by Luke,
must have been known and mentioned.
The appearance to the two disciples
returning from Emmaus rests also on
the sole authority of Luke, and that to
convince Thomas on that of John. The
miraculous draught of fishes is mentioned
by John, and by John alone. The appear
ance to the eleven is the only event
mentioned by three of the Evangelists;
but of these, two place it in a room at
Jerusalem, while one places it on a
mountain in Galilee.
It is evident that it would be futile to
attempt to form any historical estimate
from such accounts as these ; they must
be left, with miracles generally, to the
province of faith rather than that of
reason. All we can rationally infer is,
that, as in the case of St. Thomas a
Becket and so many other saints and
martyrs, the growth of miraculous myths
was very rapid, and that probably those
records which contain the fewest of
them must date back very closely to the
original events, and to the actors who
took a principal part in them. I have never
been able to see any explanation of the
silence of the Gospel according to St. Mark
respecting any miraculous appearances
after the Resurrection, and the brief and
vague reference to them in St. Matthew,
except in the supposition that the account
given by Papias is true, and that they are
really based on written notes taken down
by Mark from Peter, whose authority
was sufficient to prevent later compilers
and editors from adding to them legends
and traditions which were floating about
in the early Christian world, unsupported
by any direct Apostolic authority.
Here, then, the curtain falls on any
attempt to realise the historical element
in what Huxley so appropriately terms
“the grand figure of Jesus as it lies
embedded in the primary strata of
Christian literature.” We see him cruci
fied at Jerusalem, his disciples returning
to Galilee, and the faith in his Resurrec
tion growing up there, and soon becom
ing an assured conviction, though with
no agreement as to the facts on which it
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SCEPTICISM AND PESSIMISM
was founded, and rapidly becoming
surrounded with an atmosphere of myths
and miracles.
The next stage is even more obscure.
We have no information as to when and
how the Apostles returned from Galilee
to Jerusalem, and became, as we find
them twenty years later, pillars of the
Church there, and leaders of a great
religious movement. The Acts of the
Apostles may contain some authentic
records of their proceedings at a later
period, after they had established them
selves at Jerusalem, and exchanged the
profession of fishermen for that of
missionaries of the new religion; but
Luke’s account is discredited by the
obvious fact that his earlier narrative of
what occurred during the first period of
the Crucifixion is unhistorical. It is
clear that some time must have elapsed,
and considerable changes taken place at
Jerusalem, during the interval between
the departure of the disciples for Galilee,
in mortal fear of the Jews, and their
return to the capital, where they seem
to have preached publicly, and made
numerous converts, without any serious
interference by the populace or the
authorities.
The narrative of this early period in
the Acts, up to the date of Paul’s appear
ance on the scene, is full of improbabili
ties. The miracles attributed to Peter,
his deliverance from prison by angels, the
gift of tongues by the Holy Ghost, which
did not enable Peter to dispense with an
interpreter, these and many other inci
dents have rather the air of legends than
of genuine history.
They stand in
marked contrast with the naive and
natural incidents recorded by Mark—how
the crowd overflowed into the street, how
the bustle was such that they had no time
to eat, how Jesus slept through a night
squall which endangered the boat. I can
find no solid historical ground until Paul
met the pillars of the Church at Jerusalem,
except the general fact that the Apostles
returned there from Galilee, preached
publicly, made numerous converts, and
that Peter probably played a leading part.
But with the death of Jesus and the
flight of his disciples to Galilee the first
chapter ends, and the second opens with
the history of the early Christian Church,
when the preoccupations of the principal
actors were doctrinal rather than his
torical, and we enter on a new and wider
phase of religious controversies and
metaphysical speculations. It requires
all the erudition of the most learned
divines and professors to find any clue
through this labyrinth, and takes us far
from that which is the sole object of this
essay—to endeavour to form some con
ception of what may be the historical
element in the records of the life and
death of the Founder of the religion.
Chapter X.
SCEPTICISM AND PESSIMISM
Carlyl e—Causes of Pessimism—Decay of Faith
—A Prosaic Future—Denial of these Charges
—Definition of Scepticism—Demonology—
Treatment of Lunatics—Witchcraft—-Heresy
—Religious Wars—Nationality has Super
seded Religion—Wars More Humane—Origi
nality ot Modern Events and Characters—
Louis Napoleon — Bismarck — Gladstone —
Abraham Lincoln — Lord Beaconsfield —
Darwin — H uxley —Poetry— Fiction—Paint
ing—A Happier World.
Carlyle was a great genius, but he was
a dreadful croaker. Barren, brainless,
soulless, faithless, were the epithets he
�SCEPTICISM AND PESSIMISM
129
commonly applied to the age in which passing over to the masses. And above
]
he lived; and his favourite simile for his all there are the orthodox divines, and
;
contemporaries was that of apes chatter- good but narrow-minded religious public,
j
ing on the shores of the Dead Sea. In whose one idea of religion is that it
the case of Carlyle, the cause of this consists of adherence to traditional
<
pessimism is not far to seek. He <dogmas and an unbroken belief in the
suffered from chronic dyspepsia. If, truth of every word of the Bible as the
1
with the many other excellent qualities inspired word of God, and the ne plus
:
of his peasant progenitors, he had in- ultra of human knowledge.
;
With prejudices such as these it would
herited some share of the dura messorum
be a waste of time to attempt argument;
ilia, and been able to eat his three
square meals a day and feel all the but there are a certain number of
better for it, his views of the age and earnest and thoughtful men who hold
of his contemporaries would have been what are substantially the same views
materially altered. He would have seen upon different grounds, which deserve
an age which is one of the most marked more careful consideration. They are
chapters in the history of human evolu not confined to social swells, would-be
tion ; an age of great events and marvel superior persons and orthodox theolo
lous progress—progress not material gians, but even a man of light and lead
only, but fully to an equal extent ing like Mr. Frederic Harrison can see
social, political, moral, and intellectual. no salvation except in the exceedingly
The shores of the Dead Sea would have improbable contingency of the world
blossomed with verdure, and, instead of adopting the cult of humanity as evolved
chattering apes, he would have seen by the inner consciousness of M. Auguste
human faces, “ men my brothers, men Comte. What they say is substantially
the workers,” with a great deal of human this: Science is killing faith; scepticism
nature in them, good and bad, weak and and democracy are advancing on old
strong, joyous and sad, healthy and creeds and old institutions, like the lion
suffering, but on the whole working up of the desert, who, in Tennyson’s splendid
to a level which, if not necessarily happier, simile—
“ Drawing nigher,
is at any rate higher.
Glares at one who nods and winks behind a
For such dyspeptic pessimists there is
slowly-dying fire.”
an excuse. Pessimism is probably as
Religion, they say, is becoming extinct,
inevitably their creed as optimism is for
the more fortunate mortals who enjoy not only in the simple, old-fashioned
the mens sana in corpore sano. But sense of belief in creeds and cate
there are a large number of our modern chisms, but in the higher sense of
pessimists for whom no such excuse can doubting the truth of the essential
principles on which the Christian
be pleaded.
There are the would-be superior scheme of theology, and ultimately all
persons, who think their claim to supe spiritual faith and all religions, depend.
riority is best established by affecting a A God who, according to one eminent
lofty air of superfine disdain for the rude Anglican divine, has been “ defecated to
realities of real life; the critics who, as a pure transparency,” and, according to
Lord Beaconsfield wittily says, are the another, removed behind the primaeval
failures; the minor poets, painters, and atoms and energies into an “original
writers, who, in their own opinion, would impress ” acting by unvarying laws, is,
have been shining lights if their tapers; they tell us, practically equivalent to no
■
had burned in a more congenial atmos God at all, and instead of Agnostics we
phere; the prejudiced politicians and1 ought to call ourselves Atheists. Witharistocratic classes who feel that know out a lively faith in such a personal, everledge, and with it political power, is> present Deity, who listens to our prayers,
E
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SCEPTICISM AND PESSIMISM
modifies the course of events, records deliveis his verdict, and, if the evidence
our. actions, and finally rewards or is insufficient, makes him return one of
punishes us after death according to our
not proven.” Doubt of doubtful things
deserts, there can be, they say, no real is to such a one as sacred a duty as
religion; and they hold, and I think affirmation of what is true and denial of
rightly hold, that the only support for what is false. His cardinal maxim is
such a religion is to be found in the that of Dr. Johnson, “ Clear your mind
assumed inspiration of the Bible and the of cant.
Don’t say you believe when
divinity of Christ.
you really disbelieve, or only half believe,
Destroy these, and they think the and try to hide your misgivings from
world will become vulgar and materialised, yourself and from the world by loudness
losing not only the surest sanction of of asseveration or bitterness of denuncia
morals, but, what is even more important, tion.
the spiritual aspirations and tendencies
But to this general meaning of the
which lift us above the sordid realities of
word “ scepticism ” a more limited and
daily existence, and give poetry to the precise significance has come to be
prose of life. The Muses will take their attached, and it is commonly used to
flight with their sister Theology to denote disbelief in the inspiration of the
happier spheres ; imagination, idealism, Bible and the dogmas of theological
heroism, and originality will disappear, Christianity. In this sense I accept it,
leaving the world to a barren and prosaic and proceed to join issue with those who
sort of Chinese civilisation. In short, deny my assertion that the world is a better
their forecast of human existence is very place to live in on account of scepticism.
similar to that which astronomers make
I will begin by taking a specific instance
of the planet upon which the human —the treatment of lunatics. Ever since
race live—viz., that, as its inner heat the establishment of Christianity there
radiates away in the course of ages, it has been a controversy between doctors
will become, like its satellite the moon, and theologians. Theologians, and the
a barren and burnt-up cinder.
public generally, relying on texts of Scrip
To these gloomy forebodings I venture ture, held that lunacy, with its kindred
to return a positive and categorical diseases of epilepsy and nervous affec
denial; to assert, on the contrary, that tions, were caused by demons, or evil
scepticism has been the great sweetener and unclean spirits, taking bodily posses
of modern life, has not only given us sion of the unfortunate patients. Doctors,
truer and juster views of the realities of who for a long time alone represented
the universe, but has made us more the cause of science, relying on fact and
liberal-minded, tolerant, merciful, charit experiment, and the teachings of great
able,. than in the hard, cruel days of physicians of pre-Christian times, such
mediceval superstition; and, in a word, as Hippocrates and Galen, held that
that almost in exact proportion as we such diseases were simply cases of
have drifted away from the letter, we pressure on the brain and over-wrought
have approached nearer to the spirit of nervous systems. This was held to be
true Christianity.
so contrary to the truths of revealed
This, I am aware, will appear to many religion that doctors were looked upon
a strong assertion, and I must be pre as infidels of the worst sort, and the
pared to justify it by specific instances, saying became general, “ Ubi tres medici
which I proceed to do. But first let me duo Athei ” ; Atheist being the polite
define what I mean by the term “scepti appellation with which every one was
cism.” In a general way it means alle pelted who dared to appeal from Scrip
giance to truth; the habit of mind which ture to reason and think for himself.
makes a man, like a conscientious
This radical divergence of view respect
juryman, require evidence before he ing the cause of lunacy led naturally to a
�SCEPTICISM AND PESSIMISM
i3i
Here, then, was a distinct issue joined
corresponding difference in the mode of
between the Doctors of Divinity and the
treatment. From the orthodox point of
view the lunatic was a loathsome and Doctors of Medicine, between the
repulsive object, whose body, probably “theologici” and the “athei.” If the
question were to be decided by. texts,
for sins of his own or of his ancestors,
had been taken possession of by an evil the “theologici” had it all their own
way, and the “athei” were nowhere.
spirit. The only hope of cure was, so to
speak, to bully the demon out of him by Nothing can be clearer than that Jesus
portentous exorcisms in ecclesiastical over and over again asserted the theory
of demoniacal possession. The demons
latin, and, worse still, by ill-treatment
knew him, he knew them, they con
amounting often to the most horrible
versed together; and he was so well
torture. Bedlam, with its row of raving
acquainted with their ways that, he could
madmen chained like wild beasts to the
wall, was a type of the usual mode of tell what sort could only be ejected by
prayer and fasting. In the famous
treatment.
instance of the Gadarene swine, a raging
Even such a great and good man as Sir
Thomas More ordered acknowledged madman was cured by evicting a legion
lunatics to be publicly flogged; and of devils, and, instead of leaving them
homeless on the roadside, as if they had
throughout rural England there were
many what were called bowsening-places, been Irish peasants, allowing them to
for curing of madmen, consisting of deep occupy as caretakers the bodies of more
walled cisterns full of water, into which, than two thousand unfortunate pigs.
Nothing can be more.explicit. . Ortho
as Carew describes it in his Survey of
Cornwall, “the lunatic was suddenly dox Christians were quite right in strug
gling to the last against a theory of
plunged by a blow on his breast, tum
bling him headlong into the pond, where lunacy which was in such direct con
tradiction with the express words of
a strong fellow, kept for the purpose,
dragged him about till he was quite Scripture and of Jesus himself. We
cannot wonder at Bossuet preaching his
exhausted”; when he was taken to
two great sermons, “Sur les Demons,”and
church, masses said over him, and, if he
John Wesley insisting that “ most lunatics
did not recover, he was “bowsened
again and again while there remained are really demoniacs,” and that “ to give
up witchcraft is to give up the Bible, and
any hope of life in him.”
to take ground against the fundamental
This simple picture of what was going
on every day in remote country parishes truths of theology.”
There cannot be a clearer illustration
of England enables us to realise the
practical consequences of the theory of of the logical strength of Dr. Wace’.s
demoniacal possession better, perhaps, formula that, if you believe in the inspi
than an enumeration of the Papal bulls ration of the Bible and in the Divine
and sermons of eminent divines, which nature of Jesus, you must believe, these
urged the civil to unite with the eccle things, or make him out to be a liar I
siastical authorities and the Inquisition in may add, a liar of the worst description,
for, if he were Divine and Omniscient,
rooting out the bond-servants of Satan.
The medical men, on the other hand, he must have known not only that he
was fostering a delusion, but that this
of whom two out of every three were
reputed to be Atheists, took the opposite delusion would be in future ages the
view—that madness was nothing but a cause of misery and torture to thousands
form of brain disease, that its. victims of the most helpless of the human race.
were rather objects for compassion than But I reply, not without some little tone
for aversion, and that gentle treatment of indignation : “ It is you, not I, who
was far more likely to effect cures than make J esus out to be a liar ; it. is your
assumption of Divine inspiration and
exorcisms and tortures.
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SCEPTICISM AND PESSIMISM
Divine nature which defaces the pure and, with Galileo, Newton, and the
and noble image of the Man Jesus, and triumphs of modern science, created the
places us in the alternative of either purer sceptical and scientific atmosphere
believing incredible things, or making of the present age, in which the monsters
him out to be an utterer of falsehoods. of mediaeval theology simply die out like
As a man, no taint of falsehood or insin the Saurians of the secondary period,
cerity attaches to him in admitting that leaving a few fossil remains and degenerate
he used the language and shared the descendants.
mistakes of his age and country. But
Witchcraft affords another test-case
as a God, there is; and a God who in which the humanising influence of
teaches theories which are demonstrably scepticism is most apparent. Down to
false, and which lead to barbarous and a comparatively recent period the belief
revolting practices, is an incarnation, not in witchcraft was universal, and whole
of goodness, but of evil.”
hecatombs of miserable victims were
For the theory of demoniacal posses sacrificed to a superstition which is no
sion is demonstrably false. If, instead less barbarous and degrading than that
of appealing to texts, the appeal is made which exists to the present day in
to facts, the verdict is reversed ; it is the Dahomey and among the cannibals of
“athei” who hold the field, and the Central Africa. Why ? Because the
“ theologici ” who are nowhere.
texts of what was supposed to be the
Which cure or alleviate the larger inspired Word of God explicitly asserted
number of cases of lunacy—exorcisms the reality of witchcraft, and contained
and tortures or gentle treatment? Which the command—“Ye shall not suffer a
is most in harmony with the best instincts witch to live.”
of human nature—love, charity, mercy,
The case is the same as that of the
and compassion, Hanwell, with its harm belief in demoniacal possession as the
less and happy inmates; or Bedlam, cause of lunacy, except that the treat
with its row of chained wild beasts ? If ment of witches was even more cruel
a Doctor of Divinity says of a lunatic than that of lunatics, being founded
that he is possessed by a devil, while a more on texts of the Old Testament,
Doctor of Medicine says he is suffering dating back to a barbarous age. It was
from a lesion of the brain; if the lunatic a form of cruelty also for which Pro
dies, and his brain is dissected, which testants were even more responsible than
do you find, the devil or the lesion ? Catholics, its worst excesses occurring in
Nay, has not medical science gone so Protestant countries after the Reforma
far that you can often predict the exact tion. In Germany alone it is estimated
spot where the pressure on the brain is that, in the great age of witch-burning
taking place, and by an operation remove which followed that event, more than
the tumour, and restore the patient to 100,000 persons perished by an excru
reason ?
ciating death in the course of a single
If these things are true, and if the century.
modern treatment of madness is really
On a smaller scale, one of the worst
an improvement on the old one, it is and latest outbreaks of the witch-burning
quite clear that we are indebted for the epidemic occurred in Puritan Massachu
change to scepticism, for it was impos setts at the close of the seventeenth
sible as long as the authority of Scripture century, incited and fanned into a flame
was held to be the supreme tribunal, by the efforts of the Mathers and other
superior to fact and reason, and whose leading Calvinistic divines. Hundreds
dicta it was impious to dispute. Mon of innocent men and women of good
taigne, Hume, Voltaire, and a host of characters were tortured into confessions,
what used to be called infidel writers, or convicted on the testimony of private
were the precursors of Pinet and Tuke; enemies and professional witch-hunters,
�SCEPTICISM AND PESSIMISM
133
remarkable Creed. What right have we
and perished in the flames, as was clearly to rail against Torque mada, or blame
proved when the epidemic subsided, and Calvin for burning Servetus, if we really
reason began to resume its sway thoug 1 believe this to be true? They were
divines like Cotton Mather held out to simply carrying out, conscientiously and
the last, and groaned over the evil spin logically, the principles to which all
of unbelief which had thwarted the orthodox Christians profess to adhere.
glorious work of freeing New England Surely, if it is right to stamp out the
from demons.
.
cattle plague, it must be still more right
Nobody now believes in witchcraft, to stamp out a moral cattle plague, which
and foolish old women and hysterical is eminently contagious, and which beyond
young ones may talk as much nonsense all doubt causes those who contract the
as they like without fear of being burned disease “to perish everlastingly.” There is
alive. Surely the world is the better for no possible answer to this, except that we
this • but how has it been brought about? do not believe the Creeds; that we feel
Not" that the texts have become more the burning of men for differences, of
ambiguous, but that people have ceased opinion to be cruel, and the suppression
practically to believe in them. I say of freedom of thought to be mischievous.
practically. for there are a good many who In short, that our attitude has become
still retain a sort of half-belief, and who
would be shocked either to confess that that of the poet who says
“ There is more truth in honest doubt,,
the Bible is not inspired, or to say, with
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
Tohn Wesley, that “to give up witchcraft
is to give up the Bible”; but as the If this is not “scepticism,” I do not
Ichthyosauri died out, and left harmless know what the meaning of the word is.
lizards as their successors in the purer air
We live, fortunately, in an age when
of the Tertiary era, so this, with other scepticism has so effectually killed . the
barbarous superstitions, has lost all real class of ideas which led to persecutions
hold on the minds and consciences 01 for heresy that we have almost forgotten
those who, happily for themselves, live what the Inquisition and the fires of
in the atmosphere of a scientific and Smithfield really were. From first to last
sceptical age.
.
,
hundreds of thousands of victims perished
If the idolatry of Scriptural texts has in horrible tortures for the crime of think
caused so much human misery in the ing for themselves. There is hardly a
case of lunacy and witchcraft, the same man of light and leading of the present
idolatry, expanded from texts into dogma century who would not have been sent
tical creeds and confessions, has been• to the stake if Spain had conquered
even more destructive in the case ot• England, and the integrity of the Catholic
heresy. Heresy, or the holding of different■ faith had been enforced by the civil
beliefs from those of the Church, is either. power, or if Calvin had ruled in England
a harmless and necessary incident m the as he did in Geneva. Darwin, Huxley,
use of human reason, or it is an act of and Herbert Spencer would certainly
pernicious and contagious wickedness have been burned; Carlyle, George Eliot
' which it is the duty of the State to aid Byron, and Shelley would have shared
the Church in stamping out. This the same fate; and Dean Stanley, Dr.
depends on whether we do or do not Temple, and the whole Broad Church
believe the Creeds. If we believe the would have been in imminent peril.
Athanasian Creed, which contains the Spain, where the Inquisition so long
fullest summary of the articles of the reigned supreme, is an instance, not only
Catholic faith, and which is still retained of the devilish cruelty which a misplaced
in the Anglican ritual, all men will “with religious earnestness can inspire, but
out doubt perish everlastingly ” who do of the inevitable political and social
not believe in every single article of that
�134
SCEPTICISM AND PESSIMISM
decrepitude which follow from successful mate and exhaustive record written by
attempts to stamp out freedom of God’s finger has vanished, never to return,
thought.
and has quite lost its power as a practical
Religious wars were only an outcome, factor in the life of nations. We retain
on a larger scale, of the ideas which our affection and reverence for it, from
inspired religious persecutions.
At old associations, and as containing many
bottom, it was a firm conviction by those beautiful and excellent things; but we
who held one set of opinions that those no longer make it an idol. We criticise
who held different ones were miscreants, it freely, and find it to be a collection
enemies of the human race, who ought of various writings of various ages,
to be forcibly converted or exterminated. by unknown or doubtful authors,
Given the conviction, the persecutions and containing, with much that is
and wars followed as a matter of course, of the highest truth and highest
or rather of conscience. Destroy it, and interest, much that bears evident traces
the persecutions and wars cease. We no of the ignorance, superstition, ferocity,
longer persecute and go to war in the and immorality of the rude and bar
name of religion. Why ? Because the barous ages over which its traditions
age has become too liberal, enlightened, extend. No one now would think of
tolerant, and humane. And why has it appealing to every single text of Scrip
become so ? Because scepticism has ture as an ultimate tribunal from which
triumphed over orthodoxy. That the there was no appeal, or, like the Caliph
age has become more sceptical, and that Omar, burning all the other books in the
faith in the old hard-and-fast lines of world because, if they agreed with the
orthodox religion has declined, are facts Bible, they were superfluous, and, if they
which all acknowledge, though some disagreed with it, mischievous.
deplore. It is evident, moreover, that
A better proof cannot be afforded of
these two facts are not merely concurrent, the extent to which ecclesiastical religion
but stand to one another in the relation has ceased to be a motive-power in
of cause and effect. It is a case not human affairs than by a reference to the
merely of post hoc, but of propter hoc. great wars of the last half-century. By
Voltaire, who may be taken as the an irony of fate, the first great exhibition
representative of the literary scepticism in Hyde Park, which was thought to
of the last century, was inspired in his have inaugurated an era of peace, has
attacks on orthodoxy by his indignation been, like opening the temple of Janus,
at one of the last autos-da-fe, or acts of the signal for a series of the greatest
faith, in the burning of a heretic. His wars recorded in history—wars great not
shafts of ridicule wounded the monster only in the magnitude of the scale on
to death more effectually, perhaps, than which they were waged, but in the
could have been done by solid argu momentous importance of the issues
ments. The name of Darwin, again, may involved. In all these wars the element
be taken as the representative of the of religion was entirely absent, and its
scientific scepticism which has effected place was supplied by the new element
the greatest revolution of thought in the of Nationality. The net result of these
history of the human race, and substi wars has been the consolidation of a
tuted the idea of original impress, acting great Germany, a great Italy, and a great
by unvarying law, for that of secondary United States. Everywhere people of
supernatural interferences with the course the same race, speaking the same lan
of Nature. No educated man any longer guage, and having a common literature
accepts the Bible in the sense in which and common interests, however broken
our forefathers accepted it, and in which up and divided into fragments by
Mohammedans still believe in the Koran. internal dissensions or foreign foes,
The assured faith in the Bible as an ulti have tended with irresistible force to
�SCEPTICISM AND PESSIMISM
135
ally herself to heretic Prussia. France
consolidate themselves into great nations.
,, | has for more than a century been
Even the weaker races—the Greeks, intensely national, and very httle
Roumanians, Servians, and Bulgarians—- i
Even"?n Spain a dominant
gsgof
and Chili are entering on a career of
A they have emancipated themselves
ideas.
. .
given them a free Press and Parliamen modern this change from religious to
Has
STyctolninc^
I £a^al ™
iTceffain-Jha^wa;
and recognition of their separate nation- | ficial? One thing is certain
among civilised States has become infi
ality, which we hesitate to concede,
nitely more humane. Compare the
because we fear that it would destroy picture by a military correspondent of
the old system of English ascendancy,
and subvert many of the settled prin the advance of the Crown Prince s army
through France with the details of the
ciples of English law. . If we have saved
Thirty Years’ War as given in Schiller’s
our colonial empire, it is only by con history. In the one case you see French
ceding with the freest hand to Canada, peasant girls standing at the doors of
Australia, New Zealand, and South , their cottages to see the brilliant staff
nee conrenueu. ivb
Africa all that we once contended for,
he fullest scope to ride by, and exchanging nods and smiles
and giving them the _ as independent with the German soldiers ; in the other
■ uesuui«
work out their destinies as
communities, attached to interests and you have Tilly’s the points of their pikes
— the mother heretic babies on pappenhei^^^
country oy
uf
country by ties of common
r:CrOnSo?±rer£XS the hard'“d’ at
si^S LtlU perhaps, of
fast linesin all fhese force. movements it the humanising influence"
of superior great
No“
is remarkable that ecclesiastical religion ideas is afforded by the actip
“ on!; not been an appreciable United States after the close of the great
factor but that in many cases they have
rone on in the teeth of whatever influfn?e ff might be supposed to have
remaining In Italy, [he headquarters
of Tcdefiastical authority, the4 Pope,
though still the venerated head of
Sus of Catholics, has been utterly
powerless when opposed to the idea ot
Italian nationality. The Catholics of
South Germany fought as stoutly at
Gravelotte and Sedan, shoulder to
shoulder with the Protestants of the
North, to make a great Germany, as
their ancestors did under Tilly and
Wallenstein against the ancestors of the
same Protestants to secure the ascen
dancy of their respective creeds. Austria
has to forget the traditions of the Thirty
Years’ and the Seven Years’ Wars and
I
Civil War. A
P
magnitude, costing tens of thousands of
lives and millions of money had been
fought out with unexampled determmation. The yanqutshed had begun the
war, and tn the view of the victors were
rebelsbut not a smglehauyrfjhe.r
heads was touched after the contest was
over, not a single political prisoner was
brought to trial. Jeff Davis was not
hanged on a sour-apple tree, and. the
leading generals and politicians on either
side for the most part returned quietly
to civil occupations. I sometimes
wonder what an historian writing a
century hence will think of this record
compared with our English one of
twenty-five members of Parliament
imprisoned as common felons for
�136
SCEPTICISM AND PESSIMISM
political offences. To pursue this
S
further would, however, lead me too far
r
towards the burning region of contem
porary politics, and I content myself byz
drawing this conclusion. If the spiritt
of the age be really sceptical and demo
cratic, as all admit and many deplore,,
then scepticism and democracy must be:
included among those “ingenuas artes”
of which the Roman poet says :—
“ Girt by friends or foes,
A man may speak the thing he will.”
That world-old though newly-named
institution, the “ boycott,” is no longer
applied to differences of opinion, but
confined to conspicuous offenders against
the unwritten laws of a nation’s conscience; to respondents in divorce
courts, exceptionally bad landlords, and
heartless profligates. The poor are
always with us, but we no longer pass
“ Emolht mores nec sinit esse faros.”
them by on the other side like the
Nor is it in war only that milder Pharisee, muttering our ecclesiastical
manners and a more humane and charit texts and economical formulas. We
able spirit have accompanied, if they feel for them; our consciences are
have not been created by, the develop touched; a daily diminishing number
ment of these two great principles of ignore them, and an increasing number
modern society. The air is full of try, in their, respective spheres, to assist
projects, visionary or otherwise, which them by active effort, or sympathise with
are all based on the spirit, if not on the those who do.
letter, of true Christianity, of assisting
The truth is that morals are built on
the poor and suffering, and sweetening a far surer foundation than that of
the conditions of life. Bismarck and creeds, which are here to-day and gone
the German Emperor adopt large to-morrow. They are built on the solid
schemes of State socialism, and aim at rock of experience and of the “sur
a universal insurance of workmen against vival of the fittest,” which, in the long
poverty and old age. Trades Unions, evolution of the human race from
Provident Societies, and Savings Banks primeval savages, have by “natural
do the same on an ever-widening scale selection ” and “ heredity ” become
in English-speaking communities. The almost instinctive. Every day of civi
old harsh principles of English law, lised society, working in an atmosphere
which always sided with the strong of free discussion and free thought,
against the weak, with man against tends to make the primary rules of
woman, with landlord against tenant, morality more and more instinctive, and
with capital against labour, are being to extend and widen their application.
broken down in all directions. The
The other charge against the spirit of
rigid conclusions of political economy the age is still more easily refuted. It
are no longer accepted as axioms. The is said that scepticism has killed spiri
duties of property, so long ignored, are tualism, and stripped life of its poetry
coming into formidable antagonism with and higher aspirations, while democracy
its rights.
has reduced everything to a dead level
So far from impairing the sanctions of of prosaic mediocrity. Those who say
morality, moral considerations are coming so see the reflection of their own souls.
more and more to the front in this age The man must be, indeed, hopelessly
of material progress.. Slavery, long <commonplace and prosaic who fails to
sanctioned by Bible texts and im recognise the grandeur, splendour, and
memorial usage, offends the public con- idramatic interest of the events of the
science and disappears. We began by ;age in which we live, and the striking
burning heretics; then burning softened <originality of its principal characters.
into boycotting; and finally this last 1Was there ever in classic or mediaeval
vestige of intolerance has disappeared, ttimes such a tragic drama of human life
and we live in an England where,
a is afforded by the career of Louis
as
�SCEPTICISM AND PESSIMISM
B7
Napoleon ? See him in his early years, a his power: “ The world will some day
dreamy youth, dabbling in obscure con discover that the man has a better heart
spiracies, and musing over vague ideas and a worse head than it gives him credit
and destinies connected with the name for.”
I have mentioned Bismarck. There
he bore. Then comes the attempt at
Strasburg ; the life in London, half is a man, indeed; a man such as Europe
Bohemian, half on the outskirts of has not produced since Luther and
fashionable society ; the ludicrous fiasco Cromwell. Think of his career from a
at Boulogne; the romantic escape from wild student, a provincial Tory squire,
the prison at Ham. The curtain falls training himself by degrees to be first a
on the first act, and when it rises we diplomatist, and then a statesman;
find the obscure adventurer clearing the startling the starched representatives of
streets of Paris with grape-shot, imprison the German Confederation at Frankfort
ing all that is noblest and most respect by lighting his cigar without the per
able in the public life of France, and, mission of the Austrian Envoy, with the
finally, firmly seated on the Imperial same cool courage and happy audacity
throne. He proclaims the Empne to which led him to Sadowa and Sedan;
be at peace, and he plunges France into and, finally, the founder of the German
four great wars—the Crimean, the Italian, Empire, the great Chancellor, the arbiter
of the peace of Europe. What made
the Mexican, and the Franco-German
all alike senseless in the view of any him what he was ? His solid strength
possible French interest. He inaugurates of character, his sagacious sincerity, his
the system of armed peace and excessive keen insight, glancing through the out
armaments, and for a quarter of a century ward show of things into their, real
is the disturbing element in European essence, and, above all, his indomitable
politics. The attitude of all other courage, which never quailed before hostile
nations is, to use the expression of the parliaments or vacillating emperors, and
witty Frenchman, that of spaniels watch led him to stake his head on the success
ing the eye of their master at the of the Prussian needle-gun and Prussian
Tuileries. Then comes the collapse, discipline against the veteran legions of
and in the closing scene we see a Austria and the showy prestige of imperial
wretched creature driving out in a hack France.
At the opposite pole from Bismarck
carriage from Sedan to give up his
sword to the German Emperor, and was our own “ Grand Old Man.”
sitting on a wooden chair with Bismarck, Opinions may differ as to Mr. Gladstone’s
in front of a little wayside cabaret, to policy, and whether his powerful per
discuss the terms of the surrender as sonality was an element for good or for
prisoners of war of his last army of evil in English history; but no one who
120,000 men. What must have been is not a purblind political partisan can
the emotions on that fatal day, hid deny that, whether for good or evil, he
under the mask of an imperturbable was a grand and striking figure. Where
countenance and an eternal cigar ? And will you find a man of such universal
all the time the man was essentially the attainments, wide sympathies, and per
same. Kind-hearted, easy-going, utterly suasive eloquence ? Where look for an
unprincipled, vague, moony, idealistic; intellect which combined such scholastic
easily influenced by those about him, subtlety with such argumentative power,
and twisted round his finger by a strong such a grasp of details, such juvenile
and practical nature like that of Bismarck. energy, and such a fervid white heat of
As his best counsellor and most intimate passionate conviction. What a rich and
friend, the shrewd, cynical, polished, and complex nature must it have been, which
worldly De Morny once said to me, had in it the evolution from the ecclesias
when the Emperor was in the height of tically-minded Oxford student who was
�SCEPTICISM AND PESSIMISM
the rising hope of the Tories to the great
financier of Free Trade, the disestablisher
of the Irish Church, the statesman at
the head of all Liberal movements, the
man whose eager sympathies side with
liberty and with the masses “of our
own flesh and blood,” from Ireland to
Italy. His mind was like the steam
hammer, which can either crack nuts or
mould masses of stubborn iron.
Again, there is Abraham Lincoln, one
of the greatest, as he was certainly one
of the most original and interesting, of
modern statesmen. Wise, far-seeing,
steadfast, simple, and noble, as Wash
ington, he had a fund of genial humour,
and a touch of the quaintness and eccen
tricity of the old Illinois rail-splitter,
which endears his memory to the affec
tionate respect of all classes of Englishspeaking men, and makes him a bright
example for all time of the height of
heroism to which a self-taught working
man of the new democracy may attain.
If we turn from what may be called
the epic of modern history to its romance,
what figure can be more original and
interesting than that of Lord Beacons
field? What a career, from a secondrate novelist and dandy about town,
seeking notoriety by resplendent small
clothes, to become the minister of a
great country, the favourite of sovereigns,
the superior of dukes, the champion and
hero of a proud aristocracy and of a
great historical party. And yet, as the
novel of his last years shows, essentially
the same man throughout. Brilliant,
audacious, a master of phrases, and
believing in them as stronger than facts.
A sort of glorified Gil Blas, or hero of a
Spanish comedy ; and yet with qualities
which endeared him to friends, captivated
the popular imagination, and enabled
him to play his part to perfection in all
the varied vicissitudes of his extraordinary
career. Infinite cleverness, infinite
courage, infinite self-possession, and at
bottom a genial and artistic tempera
ment, which made him always, whatever
else he might be, a finished gentleman.
No one ever heard of him, whether as
leader of a Government or as leader of
an Opposition, doing a coarse, vulgar,
or ungentleman-like thing. He never
lost his temper ; he fought, like a courtly
duellist of one of Dumas’ romances, with
the keen rapier of polished sarcasm and
pungent epigram; but he fought fairly,
and left the coarser work, the flouts and
jeers, to titled subordinates. His ideas,
if vague and visionary, were always
grandiose, and, according to his lights,
imperial and patriotic. He had no pre
judices, and although the leader of
bucolic squires and favoured guest of
ducal drawing-rooms, he was fully con
vinced that Toryism could only survive
by becoming democratic. Here surely
was a product of the age as piquant and
original as any to be met with in the
romance of history.
I turn gladly to the serener regions of
science and art. Here also, while we
find everywhere the influence of the
spirit of the age, we find everywhere
genius and originality of character. It
is the age of science; its marvellous
triumphs have given man an undreamt
of command over the forces of nature,
and revolutionised his ideas both of the
material and of the spiritual universe.
But what I wish principally to remark
for the present purpose, these triumphs
have been achieved, not by a mechanical
process of second-rate specialists working
each in his separate groove like wheels
and pulleys in the mill of progress, but
by a succession of great men, worthy
leaders of great events. Take Darwin,
the greatest of all. Who, in the school
boy scolded by his master for wasting
the time which should have been devoted
to hexameters in trying rude chemical
experiments and collecting beetles, could
have foreseen the great philosopher who
was to revolutionise the whole course of
modern thought ? At college he was,
like many another careless student,
thinking more of partridge-shooting than
of books, and looking forward to taking
orders, and becoming a college don, or
vicar of a country parish. But his
beetle-hunting saved him; it brought
�SCEPTICISM AND PESSIMISM
him into connection with men of science
at the University like Henslow, and the
merest accident led to his being appointed
as naturalist to accompany Captain Fitzroy in the exploring voyage of the Beagle.
He saw new lands and new races of
men, and his mind, rapidly expanding,
acquired a storehouse of new facts and
ideas which were the germ.of his future
greatness. See him next a martyr to
ill-health in his quiet cottage in a
secluded Kentish village, thinking out
his ideas, trying simple experiments,
clipping out extracts, and patiently col
lecting informaticta, until one day he
woke to find himself famous, and to
have his name associated with the
greatest revolution ever known in man’s
conception of the universe. In less
than forty years “ Darwinism ”—that is,
evolution by unvarying law—-superseded
“ Supernaturalism,” or the theory of a
world created and maintained by a suc
cession of secondary interferences, as
completely as the Copernican theory
superseded that of Ptolemy.
Before he died he could see all edu
cated thought, all men of light and lead
ing in all countries, converts, if not to all
the details, to the leading ideas and factsof his world-wide theory. And what a
simple, noble character he was 1 Patient,
candid, magnanimous, modest, loving,
and beloved in all intercourse with family
and surroundings down even to his little
dog, faithful friend, single-minded wor
shipper of truth; one might say that,
apart from his fame, here was a model
man of the nineteenth century, and, if
scepticism can give us more like him,
we may well be content to take what the
outcome of a sceptical age has in store
for us without much apprehension.
And if Darwin was the Napoleon of
science, what a brilliant array of mar
shals marched under him at the head of
its various divisions—men not of one
idea and cramped intellects, but largeminded men of genius and originality,
men such as Lyell, Huxley, Herbert
Spencer, and a host of others.
Take Huxley as a typical instance.
139
If he had never made a discovery in
science, he would go down to posterity
as the greatest master of style and best
writer of English prose in the whole
range of modern literature. To a wit
keen as that of Voltaire he added a far
greater range of accurate knowledge and
force of pungent logic; his. grave irony
and undercurrent of genuine humour
are delicious, and every sentence goes
straight to the mark like a rifle-bullet.
In controversy he was like a sun-god
shooting his arrows of light through the
thickest cuirass of ignorance and preju
dice. Given something to say on a
theme of science or philosophy, I know
of no writer who could say it as well as
Huxley.
Of all these, and of the hundred other
names which might easily be . added to
the list of generals and captains of the
army of modern science, it may safely
be said that, as a rule, they lived true,
simple, and noble lives, giving no cause
of scandal or offence to the world, and
showing that the high priests of truth
need not fear a comparison as regards
character and conduct with those of any
stereotyped and formalised religious
creed or caste.
The remaining complaint of the pes
simists, that the world is becoming
uninteresting and prosaic, is easily dis
posed of.
I reserve for another time
what I have to say as to the creeds of
the great poets; but, for the present, it
is enough to ask whether Byron and
Shelley were believers or sceptics, and
whether their poems show any falling-off
in the poetic faculty ? Swinburne, what
ever we may think of him otherwise, has
the gift of word-music and of brilliant
imagination in an eminent degree; and
Victor Hugo, though too turgid and
rhetorical for an English taste, strikes a
powerful lyre whose chords resound
loudly in the souls of his sceptical
countrymen. Above all, Tennyson, the
great poet of modern thought, attained
a height of inspiration which has been
seldom if ever equalled. Whatever his
creed may have been, he was thoroughly
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SCEPTICISM AND PESSIMISM
the man of his age, imbued with its
science, from which many of his noblest
similes are drawn, and a sharer in its
strength and weakness, its hopes and
fears, its grandest aspirations and its
blankest misgivings. The stanzas in
In Memoriam, which conclude with the
solemn words, “Behind the veil,” are
the profoundest expression of the deepest
thoughts of the most earnest minds of
the nineteenth century.
In fiction we have a hundred writers
and a thousand readers, of works of a
fairly high standard of excellence, for
one of former centuries. Nothing gives
me more hope for the future of that
inevitable democracy which is advancing
on us with such rapid steps than the
multitude of standard works which are
circulated in cheap editions. Shake
speare, Walter Scott, Dickens, Thackeray,
George Eliot, as well as works on history,
philosophy, andart, like thoseof Macaulay,
Carlyle, and Ruskin, are published in
ever-increasing numbers and at ever
lower prices. Who reads them ? They
must be bought by hundreds of thou
sands, or it would not pay to publish
them. They must be read by millions
who never read before, but who now
read with intelligent interest for educa
tion and self-culture.
If we turn to painting, we find the
same phenomenon. It is becoming
more popular and more democratic.
Prints and chromo-lithographs hang on
the walls of every cottage ; illustrations,
often admirable, like those of the modern
school of wood-cut, adorn the pages of
pictorial newspapers and magazines, and
have become almost a necessary accom
paniment of every work of wide circula
tion. And how has this affected the
higher class of painting? Has it be
come more prosaic ? Distinctly the
reverse; it is far more poetical—-that is
to say, it aims far more at expressing the
real essence and typical spirit of the
varying moods, whether of external or
of human nature. The contrast between
the modern French school and that of
conventional classicism affords the best
instance for my present purpose, for
Prance is par excellence the country
whose scepticism and democracy may
be supposed to have killed poetry.
Compare a landscape of Corot’s with a
landscape of Poussin; which is the
more poetical? Or take Millet, who
has caught for all time the type of the
true French peasant, with his simple or
even sordid surroundings, his narrow
horizon as he bends with an almost
ferocious intensity of labour over his
paternal clods, yet illumined by gleams
of humble poetry, as in the Angelas, or
of pure domestic affection, as in Teaching
the Baby to Walk. Surely this is real
poetry, and worth a thousand of the
academic pictures of the school of
David.
In the English school of art the same
tendency is manifest. All the great
modern masters aim at representing
types and ideas rather than traditional
conventionalities or prosaic realities.
Thus Millais’s “North-West Passage”
and “ Boyhood of Raleigh ” give us the
essence of that spirit of maritime adven
ture which has made Britannia rule the
waves ; Faed’s pictures of humble Scot
tish life are as tender and true as if they
were poems of Burns transferred to
canvas; Peter Graham, Brett, and Hook
paint the sea as it never was before
painted, in all its moods of strength,
repose, and of the joyous freshness of
its rising flood. And so of a host of
others. They aim at and often succeed
in painting pictures which are really
poems, true and touching phases of
human characters, types of nature which
speak to the varying emotions of the
human soul, and their masterpieces find
a ready response in the hearts of mil
lions.
All this does not look like the advent
of a drab-coloured age of prosaic medioc
rity ; or as if the fresh bracing breeze of
modern science and free thought, sweep
ing through the confined air of mediaeval
cloisters, were going to do otherwise than
sweeten and purify the atmosphere, and
make the blue of heaven more blue, the
�CREEDS OF GREAT POETS
141
grass greener, and the earth, on the whole, filling the lungs with ozone, bracing the
a better and more genial place for man nerves and brightening the eye.
to live in. Blow, brave North-Wester!
“ Who loves not Knowledge, who shall rail
sweeping over the free and boundless
Against her beauty ? may she mix
ocean of Truth, chilling to _ worn-out
With men and prosper, who shall fix
Her pillars ; may her cause prevail.”
creeds and decrepit superstitions, but
Chapter XI.
CREEDS OF GREAT POETS
What is a Great Poet—Ancient and Modern
Poets—Byron, Shelley, Swinburne, Brown
ing, Pope, Dryden, Coleridge, Spenser—
Chaucer — Wordsworth — Nature-Worship—Ode on Immortality—Byron and Shelley—
Burns—Gospel of Practical Life—Shakespeare
—Self recorded in Hamlet and Prospero—
The Sonnets—Views of Death—Behind the
Veil—Prospero—Views identical with Goethe’s
Faust—And with the Maya or Musair of
Buddhism—-Pantheism—Ignoring of Religion
—Patriotism and Loyalty his Ruling Motives
—Practical Influence of Religion Exaggerated
—Religious Poets—Dante—Milton—Contrast
between Greek Tragedy and Modern Poetry
—Tennyson—Poet of Modern Thought—In
Memoriam—Practical Conclusions.
or even a considerable poet; but to make
,
a great poet something more is required.
To this fine susceptibility and musical
nature must be added a great intellect;
an intellect capable of casting flashes of
insight into the varying phases of human
character, and the deepest problems of
man’s relations to the universe; an in
tellect so imbued with the spirit of the
age and abreast of the knowledge of the
day as to be able to sum them up in a
few glowing lines which embody their
inmost essence. Such poets are ex
tremely rare. Of the ancient world,
Homer, JEschylus, Sophocles, and Eu
What is a poet, and what is a great ripides of the Greeks, Lucretius and
poet ? A poet I take to be one whose Virgil of the Romans, still shine as stars
nature is exceptionally susceptible to of the first magnitude among the “ stars
impressions from the surrounding uni of mortal night,” though dimmed by
verse, especially those of a character distance and seen under greatly altered
which comes within the domain of art, conditions. Of moderns, I hardly know
and who unites with this a certain that the very first class can be assigned
musical faculty and command of lan to othernames than those of Shakespeare,
guage, which enables him to translate Dante, Milton, Goethe, Burns, Words
these impressions into apt and harmo worth, and Tennyson. Many come near
nious verse. The poet’s brain may be it from exceptional excellence in some
compared to a photographic plate which of the qualities which are most essential
is extremely sensitive and retentive of to true poetry. Shelley, for instance, is
images which flash across it; or to a equal to the very greatest in the exquisite
delicate LEolian harp which vibrates susceptibility to all that is beautiful in
responsive to harmonies of nature, un nature, and the faculty of reproducing it
heard, or only half-heard, by the coarser in the loveliest and most musical of lyrics.
His Skylark and Cloud may well stand
fibres of ordinary mortals.
This of itself, where it exists in an as the high-water mark to which lyrical
exceptional degree, may make a pleasing poetry has ever attained. But he was
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CREEDS OF GREAT POETS
cut off at an early age, before his intellect
had got over the stage of youthful effer
vescence, and settled down into the sober
and serene wisdom requisite to reflect
truly the spirit of an age, and guide a
world towards better and higher things.
He and Keats have given us “things of
beauty” which are “joys for ever,” but
scarcely wise counsels and consoling
words, to enable us better to live our
lives and face our destinies. The same
may be said of Byron, the vigour of
whose verse and vividness of feeling and
description are unsurpassed, but whose
ideal of life and character, be it real or
be it affected, is about the last any one
would do well to follow.
Of more recent poets Tennyson alone
comes up to the highest standard. Others
approach it on different sides, but on
special sides only, and fail as conspicu
ously in many of the attributes of the
highest poetry as they excel in others.
Swinburne, for instance, almost equals
Shelley in the exquisite musical suscepti
bility of rhythm and language; but the
ideas behind the words are, for the most
part, rhetorical and exaggerated, like
those of his prototype, Victor Hugo.
Browning, again, has intellect and insight,
but his style is so rugged and obscure
that to read his poetry is almost like
trying to solve chess-problems. He is
to Shelley or Tennyson what Wagner is
to Rossini or Beethoven; caviare to the
multitude, and almost outside the range
of the true art which is based essentially
on the beautiful.
Of other well-known poets, Pope is a
great master of the art of weaving appro
priate words into harmonious verse, and
his ideas are, for the most part, clear
and sensible. . But they are not profound,
and in his chief philosophical work, the
Essay on Man, he rather reflects, with
point and precision, the somewhat con
ventional and commonplace views of the
average intellect of his age than gives
flashes of insight drawn from his own
inward struggles .and experiences. The
same may be said of Dryden, who had
a singular gift of terse and vigorous
expression, which has made so many of
his lines survive in the form of standard
quotations. But he was hardly a deep
and original thinker, and, however much
we may admire his poetry, we learn little
from it.
Coleridge I hardly mention as a poet,
for his principal work, as a religious
philosopher influencing to a certain
extent the spirit of his age, was done in
prose and in conversation. His Aids to
Reflection was long the text-book of the
advanced thinkers of Anglican theology,
but his Christabel, Kubla Khan, and
Ancient Mariner, admirable as they are,
are little more than the dreams of a
gorgeous imagination. . They might be
the visions of an “English Opium-Eater,”
in the earlier stages of the seductive drug
as described by De Quincey.
Of the early English poets, the names
of Chaucer and Spenser stand out pre
eminent. Spenser, indeed, has perhaps
as large a share as any other, even of the
greatest poets, of that which is the sub
stratum or first requisite of all true poetry:
the exquisite susceptibility to all that is
beautiful in the surrounding universe.
But his philosophy does not go much
beyond an allegorical representation of
vices and virtues as they appear in the
abstract, rather than in the concrete form
of living individuals. Compare Una,
who is his most distinct and lovable
character, with Imogen, and you feel at
once that Shakespeare gives you a living
woman, in contact with an actual world;
while Spencer’s embodiment of nearly
the same ideal is shadowy and mystic,
half woman and half allegory, living in a
world of impossible giants and monsters.
Chaucer, on the other hand, stands on
solid earth, and deals with real characters.
In the dramatic faculty of depicting actual
living men and women he has no rival
except Shakespeare, and is inferior to him
rather in the narrower width of his canvas,
and in the complexity and variety of the
characters depicted, than in the truth and
vividness of the portraits themselves.
In his Canterbury Tales we have the real
England of the reign of Edward III.
�CREEDS OF GREAT POETS
U3
brought before us as distinctly as if we His wise Providence, so established its
had been one of the company assembled order that definite pieces and progres
at the Tabard, and had ridden on the sions of things shall not be eternal, but
come into existence and pass away in
Dover road to the shrine of St. Thomas,
with the worthy knight, the dainty and due succession.
“ Thus the oak, which grows so slowly
soft-hearted abbess, the jolly wife of Bath,
and has so long a life, at last wastes
and the other typical representatives of
away and dies. Even the hard rock in
the various classes who made up what
was the framework of English society in time wasteth away; broad rivers run dry;
great cities decay and disappear; and all
the fourteenth century. How like they
things have an end. So also of the
are to us, how completely we feel that
they are our own flesh and blood, and human race. All die; some in youth,
that five centuries have made but little others in old age; kings as well as
change either in human nature itself or commoners; some in their beds, some
in the special form of it which may be in the deep sea, some in battlefields.
“There is no help; all go the same
called English nature.
In reading Chaucer I am also struck way; all die. What causeth this but the
by the wonderful anticipations of the Ruler and First Cause of all things, who
most advanced modern thought, which draws back into His own essence all that
occasionally crop up in the most unlikely was derived from it, against which decree
places, and which only require to be it availeth no living creature to strive.
translated into modern language to be at Therefore it seems to me to be wise to
once recognised. For instance, I came make a virtue of necessity, and make the
across a passage the other day which, if best of that which we cannot prevent;
expressed in the terminology which would and that a man is a fool who grumbles
now be used to convey the same ideas, at that which is the universal fate, and
rebels against the law to which he is
would read as follows :—
“The inscrutable First Cause of the indebted for his own existence.”
If anyone came across this passage
universe knew well what He was about
without knowing its origin, he would be
when He established the fair chain of
love or of mutual attraction. For with apt to attribute it to some writer who was
this chain He bound the elements, fire, conversant with the works of Herbert
air, water, and land, together in definite Spencer, Darwin, and Lyell; and about
forms, so as not to fly asunder into the last guess he would make would be
that it came from the father of English
primeval chaos.
“In like manner He established certain poetry writing in the fourteenth century.
periods and durations for all creation, And yet, if he would turn to the speech
beyond which nothing could pass. This of Duke Theseus in the Knight's Tale,
needs no authority to confirm it, for it he would find that it is a literal though
is proved by universal experience. Men, modernised version of what Chaucer puts
therefore, by this order of the universe, into the mouth of his representative of
may easily discern that the laws of nature perfect manhood and mature wisdom.
are 'fixed and eternal. And anyone who Religions and philosophies have changed,
is not a fool can understand that, as every knowledge has increased; but these lines
part is derived from a whole, nature of Chaucer remain as a summary of the
cannot have originated from any part or best and truest attitude in which a man
parcel of a thing, but from something can face the insoluble mysteries of the
that is perfect and stable, passing by universe.
This passage alone should be sufficient
evolution from the homogeneous into
the heterogeneous, until it becomes to justify Chaucer’s claim to rank among
subject to change and corruption. The the great poets.
My object, however, is not so much to
Creator of the universe has, therefore, in
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CREEDS OF GREAT POETS
review poetry generally, or to assign to
each poet his proper place in the hier
archy of Art, as to ascertain what have
been the real creeds or inmost convic
tions of those who, by universal consent,
are ranked among the highest. And
when I talk of creeds, I do not mean
the outward professions, which, with poets
as with other men, may be mainly affairs
of time and circumstance; but the deeper
insight with which they “see into the life
of things,” and find, with Wordsworth,
Wordsworth, in common with Brahmins,
Buddhists, and Platonists, solves this
problem by postulating pre-existence :—
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.”
. It is remarkable that this Pantheistic
view of the universe is essentially that of
other great modern poets, who, in many
respects, differ most widely from the
calm and self-contained character and
“ The anchor of the purest thoughts, the nurse, serene wisdom of Wordsworth. Byron,
The guide, the guardian of the heart, and soul in his _ moments of best and truest
Of all the moral being. ”
inspiration, expresses, in still more
In Wordsworth’s case the answer is easy: passionate and vigorous language, the
he gives it himself. He finds it in nature.’ same feeling for one great living whole,
Not in a. dead or mechanical nature, or comprising nature, humanity, and him
one limited to seas and skies, mountains self :—
and rivers; but one which includes
All heaven and earth are still—though not in
“ The still sad music of humanity,”
and which lives with
“ A presence which disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfuse
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.”
This is very nearly pure Pantheism,
and it is remarkable how closely he
approximates in other respects to the
Oriental philosophy which finds its ex
pression in the religions of Brahma and
of Buddha, and which tinged the
speculations of Plato. In the Intima
tions of Immortality he adopts, to a
considerable extent, the doctrine of the
transmigration of souls, or, to express it
in modern language, the “ Conservation
of Energy,” applied to the immaterial
soul as a distinct and indestructible
essence.
The problem of immortality hinges on
two questions : life before birth, life after
death. They hang very much together,
for if from nothing we came —
nothing in the sense of no conscious
personal identity—it is more than pro
bable that to nothing we shall return.
sleep,
But breathless, as we grow when feeling most;
And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep_
All heaven and earth are still ; from the high
host
Of stars to the lulled lake and mountain-coast,
All is concentred in a life intense,
Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost,
But hath a part of being, and a sense
Of that which is of all Creator and defence.
Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt
In solitude when we are least alone.”
And again, in the rush of the midnight
storm, he wishes to be
“ A sharer in thy fierce and far delight,
A portion of the tempest and of thee ! ”
Shelley, again, was essentially the poet
of Pantheism, and derived all his best
inspiration from
“ Earth, ocean, air, beloved brotherhood !”
The song of the skylark, the fleeting
cloud, the forest at noonday, the
“ Waste and solitary places, where we taste
The pleasure of believing what we see
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be,”'
spoke to him and he to them as living
beings, vibrating in unison with the most
delicate harmonies.
Of Death he speaks as
The boundless realm of unending change,”
where
“ All that we feel, and know, and see
■Shall pass like an unreal mystery.”.
�CREEDS OF GREAT POETS
In other words, his glance of insight
into the mysteries of the universe is
essentially Pantheistic and Agnostic.
In sharp contrast with the ethereal
poetry of Shelley, Burns, while equal to
him or any other poet in the exquisite
delicacy of his lyrics, stands on solid
earth, and teaches what may be called
a gospel of practical life. He may not
always have acted up to it, but his
poetry is pre-eminent in laying down
sound and sensible maxims of conduct,
and investing common things and ordi
nary life with a halo of tenderness and
dignity drawn from the inspiration of
the highest feelings of human nature.
Thus, when he says,
.“To make a happy household clime
For weans and wife
Is the true pathos and sublime
Of human life,”
he presents an ideal universal in its
application, within reach of all, common
to all sorts and conditions of men; and
he presents it in a way which lifts the
fundamental fact of the family tie from
the region of prose into that of poetry.
The poorest man, who lives even approxi
mately up to these lines, may feel that
he has not lived in vain. By industry,
prudence, self-restraint, good temper, and
kindness, he has made his humble home
a shrine of affection and happiness, and
has made good his title to rank as one
of nature’s gentlemen. Goethe means
much the same thing when he says that
“no man carries it farther than to per
petuate the species, beget children, and
nourish them as well as he can.” But
how cold and ironical does this sound
when contrasted with Burns. One is
prose, the other poetry ; one a criticism
on life, the other an incentive to purify
and exalt it.
No one equals Burns in the keenness
of insight with which he looks through
the outer husks and habiliments of
things to their real essence. Carlyle’s
clothes philosophy in Sartor Resartus
is but a sermon on the text—
“ The rank is but the guinea stamp,
The man’s the gold for a’ that.”
145
A manly independence, based on the
qualities which Tennyson attributes to
the Goddess of Wisdom,
“ Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,”
is to Burns, as it is to everyone, the
solid basis of all the manly virtues.. It
is a basis which is more readily provided
to those who live by work, whether of
the hand or head, than to those who are
born with a silver spoon in their mouths,
and are cradled in comfort and luxury.
A man never knows what is really , in
him until he has measured himself with
his fellows in real honest work. I. have
known many a man who fancied himself
one of the creme de la creme, and looked
down on the rest of the world as “ cads
and “ outsiders,” who was not honestly
worth twenty shillings a week of any
man’s money. He could ride, but not
well enough to be a whipper-in; shoot,
but did not know enough of wood-craft
or rearing pheasants to be a game
keeper ; dance, sing, or draw, perhaps,
but nothing well enough to earn a penny
by it. Strip him of his cotton-wool
wrappings of wealth and rank, and land
him at Sydney or Melbourne without a
sixpence in his pocket, and what could
he do to earn a living ? Possibly drive
a cab, or be a waiter at an eating-house.
How can such a man feel the same
manly independence as one who knows
that, wherever he goes, he has muscles
or brains to sell which are honestly
worth their price in the world’s market.
No one sets forth so forcibly as Burns
the dignity of labour, and the compen
sations which go so far to equalise the
lot of the rich and poor. If I wanted
to convert to sounder views some narrow
minded social democrat, whose one idea
was envy of the rich, I would make him
read Burns’ Twa Dogs, where the rela
tive advantages _ and disadvantages of
different stations of life are set forth
with so much force and humour. Against
the hardships and privations of the
working masses, alternating with the
enjoyments of the evening rest, the
healthy appetite, and the sound sleep,
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CREEDS OF GREAT POETS
he would read of the non-working classes,
how
“ Gentlemen, and ladies worst,
With even-down want of work are curst,”
and learn
“ It’s no in riches or in rank,
' It’s no in wealth like London Bank,
To bring content and rest.
“If happiness has no its seat
And centre in the breast,
We may be rich, or wise, or great,
But never can be blest.”
He may learn also from the Cotter's
Saturday Night how peasant life may
rise to the level of patriarchal dignity;
and from Highland Mary or Bonnie
Jean how the romance of love may be
as true and tender by the “ banks and
braes o’ bonnie Doon ” as in Belgravian
drawing-rooms. Nor will the lesson be
wanting from Willie brewed a peck o'
maut and Auld Lang Syne, that frank
joviality and hearty friendship are not
the exclusive appanage of any class or
condition of mortal men.
From Burns to Shakespeare is a long
stretch, but any attempt to ascertain the
creeds of great poets would be . incom
plete without some analysis of what
seems to be the inmost and truest
attitude of the greatest of all poets
towards the deepest problems of life.
In the case of Shakespeare this is not
easy to discover, for his genius is so
essentially dramatic that his characters
speak and act their own lives, and are
not mere masks behind which the author
discourses to the publiic. Thus Childe
Harold, Conrad, Lara, and Manfred are
only Byron himself posing in different
attitudes, while Othello and Macbeth,
Falstaff and Dogberry, are types of
themselves reflecting nature, and not
Shakespeare. All we can say from them
of Shakespeare’s individuality is, that it
must have been wide enough and rich
enough to realise, with a certain amount
of sympathy, all the varied range of
human passions and emotions, strength
.and weakness, wisdom and folly. Even
the humorous drolleries, and rogueries,
and sheer imbecilities of human nature
are noted and reproduced with a genial
smile.
We cannot say that Shakespeare had
any resemblance to Falstaff, but we may
be sure that he had noted someone like
him; some humorous ton of flesh,
unblushing compound of braggart,
coward, liar, and glutton, yet who half
redeemed these evil qualities by his
ready wit and unfailing good-humour,
and left us almost sorry for him when
he died babbling of green fields in
Mistress Quickly’s hostelry.
It is only in one or two of his
characters that we can discover some
thing of the real Shakespeare himself,
projected from within outwards, and
fashioned in some mood of his own
image. This is the case mainly with
Hamlet and Prospero. Of Hamlet I
think we may say with some certainty
that no one could have conceived such
a character who had not a Hamlet in
him. He must have felt the irresolu
tion, the despondency, the metaphysical
thought sicklying over the “native hue
of resolution,” the burden of life almost
too heavy to be borne, which made a
noble nature and high intelligence drift
the sport of circumstances, rather than
“ take arms against a sea of troubles ”
and incur the pain of coming to a definite
decision.
The Sonnets, in which Shakespeare
speaks in his own person, reveal a good
deal of this frame of mind. The general
tone is that of thought rather than of
action, with an undercurrent of despon
dency and gentle melancholy. Thus, if
the twenty-ninth Sonnet be really Shake
speare’s, what a sermon is it on the vanity
of human things to find the supreme
artist of the world, the man who had
apparently led the most prosperous life,
who had risen from a poor country lad
to be the admired friend of the highest
nobles and best intellects of his day, and
who had in a few years achieved fame
and competence, writing such lines as
these:—
“ When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
�CREEDS OF GREAT POETS
147
by anyone who had not known it by
personal experience. We can hardly
And look upon myself, and curse my fate.”
suppose the high-born and accomplished
Or think of such a man, when recalling heir to the Danish throne to have been
his past life to the “sessions, of sweet a party to a Chancery suit, or to have
trod for years, like Peter Peebles, the
silent thought,” thus summing it up :—
corridors of a Copenhagen Court of
“ I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,.
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s Session. Nor was he likely to have
waste ;
suffered from
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death s dateless
night,
And weep afresh love’s long-since cancelled
And moan the expense of many a vanished
sight.
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan.”
No one can mistake the analogy
between these Sonnets and the melan
choly musings of the Prince of Denmark.
Again, the sixty-sixth Sonnet is almost
identical with the enumeration of the ills
of life which make death desirable in
Hamlet’s famous soliloquy :—
“ Tired with all these, for restful death I cry—
As, to behold desert a beggar born.
And needy nothing trimmed in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily foresworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,
'
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,
And simple truth miscalled simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tired with all these, from these would I be
gone.”
The evidence of this identity between
Shakespeare and Hamlet is strengthened
if we examine in detail the enumeration
of the “whips and scorns of time” which
might almost compel a man to suicide.
As a general rule, Shakespeare’s charac
ters speak with an admirable dramatic
propriety of place and circumstance.
They say nothing but what such charac
ters in such conditions might have said.
But in this soliloquy there are things
which Hamlet hardly could have said,
and which must be Shakespeare speaking
of his own experiences. Thus, the “law’s
delay ” would hardly be included among
the serious ills of life justifying suicide
“ The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes.”
If, then, Hamlet’s soliloquy expresses
the real sentiments of Shakespeare, we
have his judgment on the great questions
of death and immortality summed up
almost in the identical words of Tenny
son :—
“ Behind the veil, behind the veil.”
To die is “to sleep—to sleep ! perchance
to dream.” Death is “the undiscovered
country from whose bourne no traveller
returns.” There is no assurance, abso
lutely none ! He cannot say, with the
Materialist, we shall certainly perish,, or,
with the Christian, we shall certainly live.
The character of Prospero affords even
a better test than that of Hamlet for
ascertaining what were Shakespeare’s
■ mature views on these subjects. There
can be little doubt that in Prospero
Shakespeare has an eye to himself, retir
ing in the plenitude of his powers from
London and the stage, to spend the
autumn of his days in a round of domestic
duties in his native town. The magic
which Prospero abjures can hardly be
other than the poet’s imagination, and
the staff which he breaks and book which
he drowns,
“ Deeper than did ever plummet sound,”
the poet’s pen, which had bodied forth
so many of these airy nothings, and given
them
“ A local habitation and a name.”
It is well worthy of remark how nearly
this practical solution of the problem of
life coincides with that of another of the
world’s greatest geniuses, Goethe.
The drama of Faust concludes by
showing howr the hero is delivered from
the power of evil, and how the sins and
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CREEDS OF GREAT POETS
miseries of his career while commanding
the powers of magic are condoned, by
devoting himself to the practical work of
real life—reclaiming a waste tract from
the sea, colonising it, and making it the
abode of healthy human industry.
The moral is precisely the same in the
two cases, that man’s true life is in the
natural and not in the supernatural, or,
as Goethe expresses it elsewhere, that
“here is your America’’—not in visionary
continents across unmeasured oceans, but
in doing, as Carlyle phrases it, “the duty
that lies nearest to your hand, as the best
guide to further duties.”
But Shakespeare, speaking through
Prospero, in his farewell address to the
world, goes beyond the sphere of practical
life, and gives us his views of the highest
problems of the universe in the wellknown lines :—
“ And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
. Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this unsubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”
If, in the case of Wordsworth, I had
to remark on the singular approximation
of modern poetry to the Pantheistic views
of Oriental religions and philosophies,
this passage of Shakespeare carries the
comparison still closer. It is the pure
doctrine of Maya or illusion, which plays
such a great part in the systems of
Brahma and Buddha.
There is no
reality but the great unknowable; all the
manifestations of the universe are illu
sive dreams, rising and falling like mists
from the Ocean of the Infinite. Indi
vidual existence is but one of these
illusions, destined to disappear like
others when its “little life is rounded
with a sleep.”
Observe that in this latest utterance
Shakespeare has gone beyond the phase
of thought which dictated the soliloquy
of Hamlet. There, death was a sleep
indeed, but a sleep in which there might
be dreams, an undiscovered bourne
where there might be anything. But I
here there is not merely Agnosticism,
but the positive assertion that sleep is
all, and that the individual life is ab
sorbed, like everything else, in the great
Ocean from which it came, of the
Infinite and Absolute.
_ Goethe’s theory of the universe is very
similar to that of Shakespeare, but he
approximates to the Oriental philosophy
rather on its positive or Pantheistic side
than on the metaphysical side of Illu
sion. Thus, in the famous reply of
Faust to the simple inquiry of Margaret
whether he believes in God, “ Wer darf
ihn nennen ? ” he says :—
“ Who dares to name Him ?
Who to say of Him, I believe?
Who is there ever
With a soul to dare,
To utter, I believe Him not?
The All-encompasser, the All-upholder,
Enfolds, sustains He not
Thee, me, Himself?”
And he goes on to say how the over
arching sky, the solid earth, the ever
lasting stars, the depths of human
emotion, are but manifestations of the
eternal essence, call it what name you
will—
“ Words are but mist and smoke
Obscuring Heaven’s glow.”
This is almost identical with Words
worth’s
“ Sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused.”
In a word, it is pure Pantheism. So
also is the hymn of the Earth Spirit, who
sits weaving the varied shows of the
universe,
“ And at Time’s humming loom prepares
The garment which the Eternal Spirit wears.”
It has often been observed to what a
little extent religion—that is, the formal
religion of theological creeds, appears in
Shakespeare’s plays. Love, ambition,
jealousy, all the various motives which
practically influence human conduct and
character, are depicted to the life ; but
religious belief is as completely ignored as
if it had no existence. One would have
thought that in an age which had wit
nessed the martyrdoms of Latimer and
�CREEDS OF GREAT POETS
149
Cranmer, the destruction of the Spanish threat of foreign interference he would
Armada, and the innumerable wars and have been for England, whether under a
conspiracies of the reign of Elizabeth, King, a Protector, or a Parliament.
Perhaps Shakespeare is right, and after
almost every one must have been a keen
all religion plays a less part in the real
partisan either of the Protestant or of the
Catholic persuasion. And yet such is life of individuals and of nations than
Shakespeare’s indifference or impartiality we are apt to assign to it. It becomes
that it is impossible to say to which side important when it happens to coincide
he inclined. The only conjecture that with great currents of feeling or opinion
has been hazarded is that he leant which are setting in the same direction,
towards the old faith, because his friars, but it has little effect when it runs counter
especially Father Lawrence in Romeo to them. Thus at the present day we
and Juliet, are depicted in a favourable see that the feeling of nationality is vastly
light. But this can hardly be carried more powerful than any differences of
I renchmen,
further than to show that he was not one religious denomination.
of those bigoted Protestants to whom Italians, and Germans are for national in
everything connected with Rome was an dependence and greatness alike, whether
abomination. On the other hand, we they are Catholics, Protestants, or Free
find no trace of it, where it might have thinkers, just as English Catholics were
been most expected, in ridicule or abuse Englishmen first and Catholics afterwards
at the time of the Armada. Catholic
of the Puritans.
The Puritans were already a consider Ireland bows the Pope’s rescript respect
able sect, and from their bitter hostility to fully out of Court when it comes in con
the stage must have appeared to Shake flict with national feeling, and follows
speare almost in the light of personal the lead of an “uncrowned king’’who is
enemies. His observant eye could not a Protestant. In private life nothing can
have failed to notice many of the traits be clearer than that the Christian theory
which, as in Butler’s Hudibras, laid them is that it is better to be poor than rich;
open to ridicule. Many of his characters, while the Christian practice is that it is
as for instance that of Malvolio, would better to be rich than poor. The example
have enabled him with perfect dramatic of Lazarus and Dives does not prevent
propriety to sharpen the shafts of his the immense majority of mankind fiom
satire by introducing an element of striving to be better fed, better clothed,
Puritanism. But he entirely abstains better lodged, and more independent;
from doing so by a single word or and the precept to “ take no thought for
insinuation. Malvolio is a prig, but not the morrow ” is nowhere in competition
with Burns’s ideal of life :
a Puritan.
The fact is that patriotism and loyalty
“ To make a happy household clime
For weans and wife ”—•
seem to have been such ruling motives
in Shakespeare’s breast as to have left no
room for political or theological differ an ideal which, under existing conditions,
ences. The dithyrambic and almost is only to be realised by the constant
Jingoist praises of England which he puts exercise of providence and foresight. So
® the mouth of John o’ Gaunt and other also nine-tenths of the very men who
characters are evidently written con amore, preach and who repeat the command,
and express his real sentiments ; and so “ Thou and thy servant shall do no work
also are the glowing eulogiums on the on the Sabbath,” go home to a hot dinner,
“imperial votaress throned in the West.” which compels their cook to do the same
Had he lived a generation later, we may work on the seventh as on the other days
conjecture that he would have been a of the week.
The fact is that these remote and
Cavalier, and charged with Rupert rather
than with Cromwell; but at the first metaphysical speculations, whether of
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CREEDS OF GREAT POETS
theology or philosophy, exert wonder
fully little influence on practical life.
The spiritualist who holds with Berkeley
that matter has no real existence walks
on solid earth exactly as does the
materialist who believes in nothing but
matter. The determinist, who holds
that everything is the result of preestablished harmony or of mechanical
necessity, when it comes to practical
action differs in no perceptible degree
from the believer in free-will, who holds
with Tennyson that
“ Man is man, and master of his fate.”
In either case, the practical incentive is
that
“ Because right is right, to follow right
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.”
In other words, that the rules of right
and wrong, which have become almost
instinctive by the operation of heredity,
education, and environment, influence
conduct far more than any theoretical
considerations as to the origin of morals,
and practical life is made up mainly of
the conflict between these instincts and
the lower inducements of selfishness,
sensuality, and passion, which tempt us
to disregard them.
Of great poets who may be considered
to have drawn their inspiration from
theology there are two—Dante and
Milton. In the case of Dante, however,
it is doubtful whether the phantasmagoria
of mediaeval horrors in the Inferno can
be considered as anything more than
the canvas on which he has painted his
immortal pictures. He is a great poet,
from the passionate insight with which
he has described contemporary events
and characters, his knowledge of universal
human nature, his vivid power of descrip
tion, and the occasional gleams of pity
and tenderness which lighten up his
gloomy landscape. His inspiration is,
to a great extent, political and personal
rather than theological. He loves and
hates with the intense vehemence of an
exile whose life has been marred by the
struggles of contending factions, and
who has known the misery of eating the I
bread of charity and mounting the cold
stairs of haughty patrons. He takes the
regions of Tartarus, the tortures of the
damned, and the malignity of devils, as
he finds them ready to his hand in the
popular beliefs of his day, and on this
canvas dashes down the vivid impres
sions and brooding ideas of which his
soul is full; and that soul being a great
one, the picture is great also.
In the case of Milton, on the other
hand, we have an instance of a really
great poet, who, “smit by the love of
sacred song,” derived his inspiration
mainly from the Bible and from theo
logy. And if theology acted thus power
fully on him, he in return reacted no
less powerfully on it, for the conceptions
of Adam and Eve, of paradise, of heaven
and hell, and of the whole hierarchy of
good and bad angels, are derived mainly
from his Paradise Lost. In particular that
of Satan transformed from the grotesque,
Pan-like devil of popular mythology into
an heroic figure, not less than “arch
angel ruined,” is purely Miltonic. The
indomitable resolution with which he
opposes his own personality and free
will to the buffets of adverse fate and
the decrees of Omnipotence elevates
the horned and tailed “auld Clootie”
of vulgar tradition into an heroic figure
akin to the Prometheus of Greek tragedy.
It may easily be seen from the example
of Milton how readily poetry may pass
into mythology in uncritical ages. It
was thought by some Greek philosophers
that the gods of Olympus were a creation
of Homer’s. Had Milton’s Paradise
Lost been written before the invention
of printing and transmitted for centuries
by the chants of itinerant bards, probably
the same thing might have been said of
many of the personifications of popular
Christianity.
In contrasting the spirit of the Greek
tragedians with that of modern poetry,
it strikes me very forcibly how much
more the element of morality enters
into the former. The ground-note of
■/Eschylus and Sophocles, and in a less
degree of Euripides, is that of an
�CREEDS OF GREAT POETS
inexorable and irresistible Fate, based
mainly on a vindication of immutable
moral laws. This all-powerful Fate grinds
gods and mortals alike, regardless of indi
vidual lives, and of individual pains and
sufferings, merits and demerits.
The
essence of tragedy lies in the heroic
struggles of lofty souls to oppose this
inexorable Fate, and either vindicate
against it the more immediate laws
of human justice and mercy, or, if
defeated, to suffer and endure with
unshaken resolution. Thus the Thyestian banquet entails a curse on the
house of Atreus, which is visited from
father to son, to the third and fourth
generation, of those whose ancestor had
violated one of the fundamental laws of
human nature and been guilty of canni
balism. The avenging Furies pursue
Orestes to assert the eternal law against
the unnatural crime of matricide, regard
less of the extenuating circumstances
which might have induced a modern
jury to bring in a verdict of justifiable
homicide. So also (Edipus undergoes
the extreme of human suffering, regard
less of the fact that the homicide of his
father and marriage with his mother
were committed in total ignorance, and
without any taint of what may be
called personal depravity. Antigone and
Electra suffer, not only when they are
free from guilt, but when their lives have
been devoted to acts of natural piety.
They suffer not for their own sins, but
because circumstances have involved
them in the train of events and family
connections, for which the eternal moral
laws require expiation. The spirit of
modern poetry is very different. It is
based less on Fate and more on nature;
on nature as it is seen in the outward
universe, conceived in the Pantheistic
spirit of a living whole, and on nature as
shown by the actual course of events and
real characters and actions of actual
men and women. Virtue is sometimes
^rewarded and vice punished, but not
always ; characters are partly good and
partly bad, just as we see them in the
real world; they do not stalk before us
151
on the stage as heroes or demi-gods, in
heroic mask and buskin, but tell their
tale and act their parts as ordinary
mortals, by the play of words, gesture,
and of the human countenance. From
Chaucer and Shakespeare downwards,
the aim of all first-rate poets, dramatists,
and novelists has been, not to preach
sermons or illustrate views of “fate, free
will, foreknowledge absolute,” but to
hold up a mirror to nature and reflect it
as it really is. Not partially, as in the
modern French realistic school, which
photographs only that which is ugly and
obscene; nor as in society novels, which
find nothing in the world but school-girl
romance and the rose-coloured trivialities
of fashionable circles; but, as Shakespeare
did in a supreme degree, the whole real
world of nature, which lies within the
domain of art—that is, which admits of
being illuminated by genius into some
thing which, in its final impression, is
beautiful and not ugly, pleasing and not
repulsive.
I have reserved for the last Tennyson,
for he was the great poet of modern
thought, who stood nearest to us, and
who wrote with the fullest knowledge of
the discoveries of recent science, and of
the problems which occupied the minds
of the living generation. In writing of
Tennyson I have to bear in mind that
he lived many days, and went through
many phases of thought, and might,
therefore, probably have objected to be
classed in any one category, or repre
sented as consistently holding in his
declining years the views which he ex
pressed in his early youth or mature
manhood. It is a long journey from the
first Locksley Hall, where the poet of
progress hails with exulting spirit the
“ wondrous mother age,” and sees in his
fellow-men—
“ Men my brothers, men the workers ever
working something new,
What they have done but the earnest of the
things that they shall do,”
to the Locksley Hall, Sixty Years After,
of the mournful bard who, being old,
“ thinks gray thoughts,” and walks from
�152
CREEDS OF GREAT POETS
Dan to Beersheba, finding all things
barren. It is not for us to complain
that the sun is not always at its meridian
splendour, but, after having given us light
and warmth for its appointed season,
sinks, not in the softer glories of a glow
ing sunset, but behind the gray and
clammy mists that obscure the horizon.
_ Let us rather take our great poet at
his best and fullest, in the days when
he poured out his inmost soul in In
Memoriam, and gave the world his views
on the deepest problems, in lines which
dwell for ever in the minds of the fore
most thinkers of his generation. No
poet of any generation struck a deeper
or truer note than Tennyson in those
noble stanzas in In Memoriam in which
he says :—
“ No more ? a monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime,
Who tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music matched with him.
“ Oh, life as futile, then, as frail '
Oh, for thy voice to soothe and bless !
What hope of answer or redress ?
Behind the veil, behind the veil! ”
I never read those noble lines without
almost a thrill of awe at the intense
truthfulness wfith which they sum up the
latest conclusions of the human intellect.
Here, at last, is the true truth, based on
the inexorable facts and laws of modern
science, and on the ineradicable hopes,
fears, and aspirations of human nature
which underlie them in presence of the
“ unknowable.” Tennyson has read his
Darwin, and understands the facts of
“ Are God and Nature then at strife,
“ Evolution ” and the “ struggle for
That Nature lends such evil dreams ?
existence.” He has read his Lyell, and
So careful of the type she seems,
knows how the facts of geology show
So careless of the single life ;
that what is true of individuals is true
“ That I, considering everywhere
of types, and that all creation lives and
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
dies, comes into existence, and is trans
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear ;
formed, by immutable laws. He sees
this as clearly as Llerbert Spencer, but,
“ I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
like Spencer, he sees that this is not all,
Upon the great world’s altar-stairs
and that underlying these known or
That lead from darkness up to God ;
knowable facts and laws is a great
“ I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, Unknowable, in presence of which we
And gather dust and chaff, and call
can only veil our faces and bow in
To Him I feel is Lord of all,
reverent silence.
And faintly trust the larger hope.
This much, at any rate, it teaches us
“ ‘ So careful of the type ? ’ but No !
—that the apprehensions are visionary
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, ‘ A thousand types are gone: which tell us that the progress of science
I care for nothing, all shall go.
and the light of reason will banish all
poetry and all religion from the world,
“ ‘Thou makest thine appeal to me :
and reduce life to an arid and prosaic
I bring to life, I bring to death :
The spirit doth but mean the breath :
desert like that of a burnt-out planet.
I know no more.’—And He, shall He,
His science furnishes him with some of
“ Man, her last work, who looked so fair,
the most magnificently poetical similes
With splendid purpose in his eyes,
ever penned by mortal poet.
The
Who rolled the psalm to wintry skies,
struggle for existence, and apparent
And built him fanes of fruitless prayer ;
cruelty of nature, is embodied as the
“ Who trusted God was love indeed,
wild eagle, dropping gore from beak and
And Love Creation’s final law—
Though Nature, red in tooth and claw talon, and shrieking with ravine against
the creed of love and mercy.
The
With ravine, shrieked against his creed ;
Ichthyosaurus and Plesiosaurus give him
“ Who loved, who suffered countless ills,
the
And battled for the True and Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or sealed within the iron hills ?
“ Dragons of the prime,
Who tare each other in the slime.”
�CREEDS OF GREAT POETS
The decay of the old simple paths, the
slowly-dying creeds, translate themselves
into a deep undertone of the “ still, sad
music Of humanity.” Men “ falter where
they firmly trod,” doubt whether their
churches and cathedrals are not “ fanes
of fruitless prayer,” and their accepted
creeds and solemn services but as the
“ cry of an infant in the night,” and with
“no'language but a cry.”
Tennyson’s practical conclusion is very
similar to that of Shakespeare and Goethe
—viz., to place the centre of gravity of
human life in the natural rather than in
the supernatural. The advice of his
Goddess of Wisdom is to cultivate “ self
reverence, self-knowledge, self-control
and, without investigating too closely the
origin of conscience, to accept it as a fact,
153
“And because right is right, to follow right.”
In his Two Voices, after a deep philo
sophical disquisition on the Zoroastrian
doctrine of polarity, or conflict of two
principles, he finds the best solution of
the problem in the spectacle of a man
walking to the parish church between
his wife and child.
This is apparently the last word of
religions and philosophies. Work while
it is day, for the night cometh when no
man can work. Work well and wisely,
and when your little day is over go to
sleep calmly, accepting with an equal
mind whatever fate, if fate there be, that
may be in store for you
“Behind the veil.”
�.................................................
i
-1
4
�INDEX
Clairvoyance, 85
Bear, evolution of the, 69
Acts of the Apostles, 128
Clergy, the modern, 102
Bethlehem, story of, 117
Advance of Science, 95
Coal-measures, thickness of the,
Aerolites as cause of solar heat, Bible, inspiration of the, 93
16
Bird, evolution of the, 71
10-11
Coleridge as a poet, 142
^Esthetic sense and Christianity, Birth-place of mankind, 78
----- on theological assumptions,
Bismarck, 136, 137
99, 101
93
Africa, prehistoric implements Boucher de Perthes, discoveries
Comets, II
of, 48
in, 53
Comets and meteorites, 32
Agnosticism and morality, 96- Boulder-drift, 40-1.
Comstock, 31
Bourgeois, discoveries of, 57
100
Bow-wow theory of language, 75 Comte, religion of, 96
Agnosticism, definition of, 90
Conduct and creed, 99
Boycotting, 136
Ahriman, 105
Condylarthra, 70
America, prehistoric man in, 53, Braid, Dr., 79
Configuration, Lyell’s theory of,
Brain of man and the ape, 72
60
46
Brain, weight of the, 76 .
Amphicyon, 69
Britain, Ancient, animal life in, 49 Conservation of energy, 29
Ancestors of man, 78
British Islands, once joined to Contraction as source of solar
Anchenia, 61
heat, 12
continent, 49
Angstrom, on solar heat, 12
Contradictions in the Gospels,
Browning, 142
Animals, language of, 75
112, 117
----- non-progressiveness of, 75 Buckland, 13
Buenos Ayres, pre-historic man Conversions, religious and scien
----- tools not used by, 75
tific, 94-5
in, 64
Anthropoid apes, fossil, 55
Cope, Professor, on missing
Anthropomorphism of the savage, Bunodonta, 69
links, 68
Burns, 145
65-6
Bushmen, intelligence of, 74? 75 Corals in Greenland, 29
Ape, man and the, 55-6, 72
Corot, 140
Byron, 139, 142
Apostles, the, 118
Creation an absurdity, 92
Apostles’ Creed, the, 101
Creeds, decay of, 101
Calaveras skull, the, 61
Apparitions of the dying, 86
California, prehistoric man in, Creodonta, 69
Archaeopteryx, the, 71
Groll’s theory of climatic varia
55? 60-3
Architherium, the, 69
tion, 33-4, 37
Arctic regions, former high Canstadt man, 54, 77
Carbonic-dioxide in atmosphere, Cro-Magnon man, 54, 77
temperature of, 29, 30
Cromer forest, the, 45
31, 32
Arcturus, speed of, 19
Carew on the treatment of luna Cromwell, 137
[Argyll, Duke of, 61
Crucifixion of Christ, 122
tics, 131
Arrested development in apes, 75
Crust of the earth, 31
Carlyle, pessimism of, 128-9
Art, beginnings of, 51
Cumberland, the
thought
Cassiopzea, 25
----- need of cult of, 103
reader, 86
Ascension, evidence for the, 112, Castelnedolo discoveries, the, 59
Cures by mesmerism, 79
Catalepsy, 81
127
Cuvier on fossil man, 47
Cerithium, the, 67
Ascidian, the, 72
Asia, prehistoric implements in, Chalk downs, implements of the, Cynodictis, 69
52
51
Dalgairns on the existence of
Atmosphere, the, as a blanket, Chamouni, 41
God, 9^
Chauc'er, 142
31-2
Chimpanzee, mind of the, 74, 75 Dante, 150
Atoms, 26
Dark stars, 19, 24, 25
Christian Agnostics, 93
Athanasian Creed, the, 92
Darwin, life of, 138-9
(Augustine, St., on miracles, 113 Christian morality, 94
----- views of, 95,
Axis, terrestrial, variations in, 34 Churches, future of the, 102
Darwinism, spread of, 67
Civil war in America, 135
Civilisation, rate of progress of, Dawson, Sir J., on fossil man,
Bab, miracles of the, 116
36
Be&consfield, Lord, 138
38
�156
Death of Christ, probable truth
about, 124
Denise, fossil man of, 58
Denudation, rate of, 15, 39
Deposition, rate of, 15, 39
Depressions of earth’s surface, 42
Descartes on the soul, 92
Devils, possession by, 131
Digger Indians, 55
Divinity of Christ, 121-2
Dog, evolution of the, 69
Dogmatic Christianity, 91
Doubt, morality of, 99
Dreams, 86
Dryden, 142
Dryopithecus, the, 56, 59
Dualism in nature, 105
Dual personality, 84
Earth, age of the, 9-17
Eginhard, 113
Egypt, ancient civilisation of, 48
Electricity in the sun, 20
Electrons, 27
Elephas meridionalis, 56
Elevation of earth’s surface, 43
Eliot, George, secession of, 95
Elotherium, 61
Emerson on polarity, 104
Energy, primitive fund of, 18
----- problem of, 20-21
Eohippus, the, 69
Erect posture of man, 73
Erosion, rate of, 39, 41
Esquimaux, migrations of the, 54
Euripides, 150
Eusebius, 109
Evil, problem of, 105
Evolution and creation, 65-9
----- of prehistoric man, 50
----- reception of theory, 67
Exorcisms, 132
Faith, nature of, 114
Fate, 151
Faust, 146
Flint instruments, making of, 50
Fiction, 140
Foot of man and the ape, 73
France, progress in, 135
Freeman on miracles, 113
Freemantle, Canon, on theo
logy, 93
Freethought and conduct, 103
Furfooz type, the, 55
Future life, our ignorance about,
94
Gadarene swine, the, 119
Gaudry on evolution, 68
Genesis, refutation of, 47
Geneva, Lake of, 16
Geological time, duration of, 15
Geology, history of, 13
INDEX
Germany, progress in, 135
Glacial deposits in England, 40
Glacial period, the, 36-47
----- duration of the, 43, 45
Glacial periods, number of, 34,
37
Glaciers, formation of, 46
----- rate of advance of, 38, 39,
40
Gladstone, 137-8
Glyptodon, 63
God, theological idea of, 92
Goethe, 147
Gorilla, morality of the, 74
Gospels, date of the, no
----- miracles of the, 112
Gravitation, nature of, 18
Greenland, glaciers of, 40
Gulf Stream, the, 46-7
Hallucinations, 82-3
Hamlet, 146-7
Harrison, F., on religion, 100
Heat received from sun, IO
Helium, 26
Heresy, nature of, 133
■---- - persecution of, 133
Herschell on solar heat, IO
Higher critics, the, 109
Hipparion, the, 69
Historical epoch, the, 48
Horse, evolution of the, 69-71
Hugo, Victor, 139
Humanism and progress, 97
Humanity, religion of, 100
Huxley, sketch of, 139
Hyrenarctus, 69
Hyde Park exhibition, 134
Hydrochrerus, 63
Hydrogen, 26
Hypersesthesia, 82
Hypnotism, 79-85
----- dangers of, 83
Hysteria and hypnotism, 80
John, Gospel of, no
Jupiter, 34
Kellar and the spiritists, 88
Kent’s cavern, 49, 51
Krakatoa, 14
Krishna, 117
Lakes, drying up of, 16
Language of animals, 75
Laplace, theory of, 25
Larmor’s theory of atoms, 27
Law of Uniformity, the, 13
Lazarus, raising of, 113
Lemurs, the, 72
Lethargy, hypnotic, 80
Leyden, Congress of, 77
Lightfoot on the testimony of
Papias, ill
Lincoln, Abraham, 138
Lingula, 14
Lisbon Congress, 57
Literature, growth of, 103
Loaves and fishes, miracle of the,
120
Loess deposits, 41-2
Lockyer, Sir N., on stellar evo
lution, 23
Lord’s Prayer, the, 108
Luke, Gospel of, no
Lunacy, medieval treatment of,
130
Luther, 137
Lyell on the causes of climatic
variation, 33
----- on the earth’s age, 17
----- on solar heat, 9
----- on uniformity, 13
Lykke, skull of, 77
Machairodus, the, 50
Machine, man as a, 74
Magnet, effect of, in hypnotism,
81, 84
Mammoth, the, 36
Man, antiquity of, 36, 43
Ictitherium, 69
Manco-Capac, 38
Idiots, skulls of, 76
Mark, Gospel of, no
Illative sense, the, 91
Immortality, irrationality of, 92 Marriage, Christ on, 120
Mars, 34
Impact theory, 25
Marseilles, 42
Incisions on bone, 58
Marsupials, the, 71
Inter-glacial periods, 45
Massachusetts, witch-burning in,
Inquiry, duty of, 107
132
Inquisition, the, 133
Massacre of the innocents, II7
Instinct, nature of, 98
Mastodon, 60, 63
Intuition, 91, 92
Ireland, once connected with Mather, Cotton, 133
Matter, nature of, 26
England, 54
Matthew, Gospel of, no
Irish question, the, 135
Medicine and Christianity, 130
Italy, progress in, 135
Mediums, fraud detected in, 87.
Mellard Reade’s geological esti
Jesus, character of, 108-20
mates, 44
----- historicity of, 116
Memory, abnormal feats of, 82
John the Baptist, 117
�INDEX
157
Rabbinical literature and the
New Testament, 109
Races, lower and human, 76
Radiation in space, 20
Radio-action, 27
Radium, 21
Rainfall, variations in, 41
Religion, elements of, 101
Religion of the future, 99
Renan, secession of, 95
Pagan parallels of birth stories, Resurrection, contradictory ac
counts of the, 123
117
Painting, modern standard of, ----- improbability of, 112
•----- - witnesses to the, 112-3
140
Rhinoceros Leptorhinus, 56
Palaeolithic man, 39, 49, 51
Romanes, 94
----- weapons, 39
Rotation of the earth, 30
----- period, stages of, 50
Palaeotherium, the, 69
Salpetriere experiments, the,
Pantheism, 144
80-85
Papias, 109-10
Parables, authenticity of the, Salvation Army, the, 106
Saturn, 34
120
Paul, St., on the Resurrection, Savages, characteristics of, 7b
Scalidotherum, 63
126
Scandinavia, elevation of, 43
Pessimism, 129
Scepticism, consequences of, 130
Pharisees, the, 113
----- nature of, 130
Philistinism, 106
Physical phenomena of spiritism, Scybert Commission, the, 87-8
Seances, hypnotic conditions of,
88
89
Pilate, 123
Pithecanthropus erectus, the, 77 Semidouro skulls, the, 63
Sermon on the Mount, the, 108
Pliocene man, 59
Services, evolution of, 103
Pliohippus, 69
Shakespeare, 146
Pliopithecus, the, 55
Shelley, 139, 144
Poetry, 141
----- not injured by scepticism, Shooting-stars, 22
Sierra Nevada, prehistoric re
139
mains of, 60-1
Polarity, 104
Sirius, 24
Politics, polarity in, 106
Polygamy sanctioned in Old Skaptar-jokal, 14
Skertchley, discoveries by, 62
Testament, 98
Slade, the spiritist-medium, 88
Pope, 142
Slate-writing, 87
Positivism, 100
•*. '
Slavery sanctioned in Old Testa
Post-glacial period, the, 43-4
Nampa image, the, 62
ment, 98
Napoleon, Louis, sketch of, 137 Pouillet on the sun's heat, 12
Snakes, absence of from Ireland,
Poussin, 140
Nationality, 134
Practical Christianity, 90
Nativity, legends of the, 116
Social instincts and morality, 98
Precession, theory of, 30, 37
Natural law and miracles, 66
Social progress, 136
Pre-historic man, 49
Natural selection, 67
Prestwich on the Glacial period, Socialism of Christ and early
Nature, the law of, 103
Christians, 118
36, 38
Naulette, prehistoric remains of,
Solar heat, source of, 9, 10
Priests, future of the, 102
77
----- supply of, 9, IO
Primates, the, 76
Neanderthal man, 77
Primitive man, migrations of, 54 Solar radiation, variations in,
Nebulse, 24
31
Progress in palaeolithic age, 39
Nebular hypothesis, 25, 34
Psychical Research Society, 86 Somnambulism, artificial, 81
Neolithic weapons, 39
Space, cold regions of, 45
Nervous disease and hypnotism, Pterodactyl, the, 71
------constitution of, 18, 19
Puritanism, 149
80
Puy Courny discoveries, the, 58 Spain, progress in, 135
New stars, 25
Species, evolution of, 66
Newcomb on gravitation, 18
Quadrumania, incorrectness of Spectra, classes of, 23
Newman’s idea of faith, 114
Spectroscope, work of the, 23
name, 73
Nile valley, borings in, 48
Speech of animals, 74
Nitregen in the atmosphere, 33 Quaternary epoch, the, 48
Spencer on Positivism, 100
I----- man, distribution of, 51-2
North Pole, the, 37
Mendelejeff’s law, 26
Mersey valley, changes in the,
44
Mesmer, 79
Mesmerism, 79-85
Mesohippus, 69
Messiahship of Jesus, 121
Metamorphism, 17
Meteoric theory, the, II, 23-5
Meteorites, II, 22-3
Meteors, nature of, 26
—— origin of, 26
Millais, 140
Millennium, the, 118
Miller, Hugh, 13
Millet, 140
Milton, 150
Mincopics, implements of the, 57
Mind in man and the lower
animals, 74-5
Minimum of miracle, theory of,
115
Miohippus, 69
Miracle theory, refutation of, 66
Miracles, decay of belief in, 112
----- of Christ, absurdity of, 119
Missing links, 67-69
Mississippi, work of the, 15
Monotremata, the, 72
Monte Aperto discoveries, the,
57
Moon, origin of the, 35
Morality and religion, 96-9
---- » foundations of, 97, 98
---- •» in the Old Testament, 97
----- source of, 98
More, Sir Thomas, on lunatics,
I31
Mormonism, 100
Mosaic code, the, 98
. law and Jesus, 121
Murder, abhorrence of, 97
Oannes, 83
Old Testament, degrading fea
tures of, 97
Olmo skull, the, 60
Oita discoveries, the, 57
Ormuzd, 105
Ornithorhyncus, the, 72
Orohippus, 69
Oxygen in the atmosphere, 33
�158
Spenser, 142
INDEX
Temperature of the earth, 33
Temple, Dr., on evolution, 93
Tennyson, 139, 151-3
Tertiary epoch, the, 48
Tertiary man, question of, 55-65
Thenay discoveries, the, 57
Theologians and science, 129
Theology and science, 107
Thirty Years’ War, 135
Thomas a Becket, miracles of,
116
Thought-reading, 85
Thought-transference, 86
Tolerance, growth of, 105
Tools as a human characteristic,
75
Trenton implements, the, 53
Trial of Christ, 122
Truth, modern reverence for, 99
Talmudic literature and the Tuolumne skull, the, 61
New Testament, 109
Teeth, evolution of the, 74
Universe, nature of the, 19
Telepathy, 86
Unknowable, the, 92
Spiritualism, 84-90, 136
Spitzbergen, tropical plants in,
2?, 3°
Spring Valley remains, the, 62
Spurgeon on liberalism, 96
St. Prest, prehistoric remains of,
56
Stars, motion of the, 18, 25
Stellar evolution, 24-6
Strain theory of matter, the, 27
Sub-atoms, 27
Sun, age of the, 9
------temperature of the, 10
----- nature of the, 19
----- spots, 19
----- - shrinkage of the, 12
Swinburne, 139
Usher, Archbishop, estimate of, 48
Vertebral column in man and
the ape, 73
Vibrations from the brain, 90
Virgin Mary, cult of the, 114
------------ historical account of
the, 115
Voltaire on persecution, 134
Vortex theory of matter, the, 26
Wace, reply of, to Huxley, 108
Wars, religious, 134
Wesley on witchcraft, 133
Whitney, Professor, 61
Witchcraft, 132
Wordsworth, 144
Working-classes, improvement
in the, 104
Zenglodon, 60
Zoroaster, 105
Zoroastrianism, 104
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Problems of the future
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Edition: [Rev.ed.]
Place of publication: London
Collation: 160 p. ; 22 cm.
Series title: R.P.A. Cheap Reprints
Series number: No. 22
Notes: Includes index. Printed in double columns. Issued for the Rationalist Press Association, Limited. First published, London: Chapman and Hall,1902, but without the final three chapters. Front cover has added imprint for Chapman & Hall, Ltd. At head of title on front cover: 'A fascinating work'. Publisher's advertisements p.[159]-160, also inside and on back cover. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Laing, Samuel [1812-1897]
McCabe, Joseph [1867-1955]
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1905
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Religion
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Problems of the future), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Agnosticism
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Science
Science and Religion
Spiritualism
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Text
VICTORIES OF SCIENCE
IN ITS
WARFARE WITH SUPERSTITION.
•
’ *
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY LECTURE
SOCIETY,
ON
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 20th FEBRUARY, 1881,
2U■
BY
A. ELLEY
FINCH.
j'lwdu* 1
i-niiHfirhi
-sawi)
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1881..
PRICE THREEPENCE.
�SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and to
encourage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science, —physical,
intellectual, and moral,—History, Literature, and Art; especially
in their bearing upon the improvement and social well-being of
mankind.
PRESIDENT.
W. B. Carpenter, Esq., C.B., LL.D., M.D., F.R.S., &c.
VICE-PRESIDENTS.
Professor Alexander
Bain.
Charles
Darwin, Esq.,
F.R.S., F.L.S.
Edward Frankland, Esq.,
D.C.L., Ph.D., F.R.S.
James Heywood, Esq., F.R.S.,
F.S.A.
Ser Arthur
Hobhouse,
K.C.S.I.
Thomas Henry Huxley,
Esq., LL.D., F.R.S., F.L.S.
Benjamin Ward Richard
son, Esq., M.D., F.R.S.
Herbert Spencer, Esq.
W. Spottiswoode,
Esq.,
LL.D., Pres.R.S.
John Tyndall, Esq., LL.D.,
F.R.S.
THE SOCIETY’S LECTURES
ABE DELIVERED AT
ST.. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
On SUNDAY Afternoons, at FOUR o’clock precisely.
(Annually—from November to May.)
Twenty-Four Lectures (in three series) ending 25th April,
1881, will be given.
Members’ £1 subscription entitles them to an annual ticket, trans
ferable (and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight single
resOrved-seat tickets, available for. any lecture.
Tickets for each series (one for each lecture) as below,—
•
To the Shilling Reserved Seats —5s. 6d.
To the Sixpenny Seats—2s., being at the rate of Threepence
each lecture.
For tickets, and for list of the Lectures published by the Society,
apply (by letter) to the Hon. Treasurer, Wm. Henry Domville,
Esq., 15, Gloucester Crescent, Hyde Park, W.
Payment at the door:—One Shilling (Reserved Seats);—Six
pence
and One Penny. . .
�The Society’s Lectures by the same Author,
now printed, are—on
,
“ Erasmus ; his Life, Works, and Influence upon the Spirit of
the Reformation.” (Price 3d., or post free 3|d.)
“ Civilization : a Sketch of its Rise and Progress, its Modem
Safe-guards, and Future Prospects.” (Price 3d., or post
free 3jd.)
“The Influence of Astronomical Discovery in the
Development of the Human Mind.” (Price 3d., or post
free 3^d.)
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Basis, and Practical application to Social Well-being.”
(Price 3d., or post free 3£d.)
“The English Free-thinkers of the Eighteenth Cen
tury.” (Price 3d., or post free 3jd.)
“The Science
. free 3 jd.)
of
Life worth Living.” (Price 3d., or post
“ The Inductive Philosophy : including a Parallel between
Lord Bacon and A. Comte as Philosophers.” With Notes
and Authorities, (pp. 100, cloth 8vo., price 5s., or post
free 5s. 3d.)
“ The Pursuit of Truth : as Exemplified in the Principles of
Evidence—Theological, Scientific, and Judicial.” With Notes
and Authorities, (pp. 106, cloth 8vo., price 5s., or post
free 5s. 3d.)
.
• .
’9 f
Can be obtained (on remittance by letter of postage stamps or
order) of the Hon. Treasurer, Wm. Henry Domville, Esq., 15,
Gloucester Crescent, Hyde Park, W., or at the Hall on the days
of Lecture; or of Mr. John Bumpus, 158, Oxford Street, W.
�SYLLABUS.
Vast number, variety, and vacillation of Religious Beliefs, pre
sented to us by the history of the Human Race.
Distribution amongst mankind of the eight great Theologies
(book-religions) of the present day, viz., Zoroastrianism—
Brahmanism—Buddhism—Confucianism —Tao-ism—Mosaism—
Christianism—Mahommedanism.
No generally acknowledged standard of Theological truth,
and why.
Theology explained as a human (logical) system, based upon
the blending of Religion with Superstition.
Religion as defined by Herbert Spencer, the late Lord Amberley,
and Dr. James Martineau.
Superstition defined as credulity concerning manifestations
of the Supernatural inconsistent with the experienced order and
veracity of Reason and Nature.
Science explained as generalized human knowledge of Natural
Phenomena.
The criticism of Science purifies Theology by purging it of
Superstitions, thereby compelling it to undergo transmutations
corresponding to the progress of human intelligence.
Illustrations from the conflict of Science with the following
Superstitions:—
1. The relative magnitude, flat form, and immobility of the
Earth. (Conflict with Astronomical Science.)
2. The six days creation of the world 6,000 years ago.
(Conflict with Geological Science.)
3. The government of human life by Special Providence.
(Conflict with Physical Science.)
4. The Theological theory of disease, involving miracle-cure,
relic-cure, prayer-cure, &c. (Cwflict with Sanitary
Science.)
5. Anthropomorphic conceptions of the Nature, Attributes,
and Will of Deity. (Conflict with Mental and Mol'd
Science.)
Probability that popular Theologies are still saturated with
Superstitions (e.g., belief in the objective efficacy of sacerdotal
supplications, humiliations, and asceticisms, supernatural revela
tions, and exclusive salvations) which the expansion of Science
must eventually explode.
Summary of evils of life inflicted by Superstition, and ameli
orations of human well-being achieved by Science, showing that
the increase of Health, Happiness, and the Moral Virtues is
coincident with the decline of Superstition and the advancement
of Science.
The debt Religion owes to Science.
�THE VICTORIES OF SCIENCE
IN ITS
WARFARE WITH SUPERSTITION.
HE modern student 'of Universal History, seeking
T to enlarge and generalize his conception of human
nature by the contemplation of the life of man in almost
every discovered clime, and throughout the ages of
recorded time, finds himself at the confluence of the
greatest number of streams of knowledge that have ever
been found flowing and converging together; greatly
embarrassed therefore, not to say overwhelmed, by the
multiplicity and diversity of his materials. .
Even limiting his research to that emotional and
imaginative yet transcendently interesting aspect of the
human mind presented by religious phenomena, he
quickly discovers that he is surrounded by a vast number,
variety, and almost incessant fluctuation of Beliefs con
cerning the supernatural, that have everywhere been
found more or less prevailing from the earliest dawn of
authentic history.
On the one hand, it is remarkable that no people, or
trace of a people, has hitherto been discovered absolutely
destitute of some of the ultimate elements or sentiments
of Beligion, Travellers and thinkers entertaining diverse
views on historical, political, and social questions, who
have made the early history of man, or his most savage
condition subjects of careful study, are really agreed on
this fundamental point.
On the other hand, the most civilized and polished
nations on the fa,ce of the globe have exhibited, and still
�6
The Victories of Science in its
exhibit almost endless differences, divisions, and distinc
tions in their theological creeds, rites, and ceremonies.
The time now at our disposal would not suffice for
the slightest allusion to the numerous Religions or
Mythologies of even the chief Nations of the ancient
world. Babylonians, Assyrians, Phoenicians, Egyptians,
Arabians (before conversion), Greeks, Romans, various
Teuton, Celtic, and Sclavonic Nations, the Astecs of
Mexico, the Incas of Peru—all having their indigenous
and various ways of regarding and. worshipping the
supernatural—must now be passed by, in order that I
may concentrate some general observations, suggested by
so endless a variety of supernatural beliefs, upon those
great Theologies or book-religions which constitute the
religious faiths of the present inhabitants of our globe—
viz.—(taking them in the order of their antiquity)—
Zoroastrianism, with its sacred Zend-Avesta, the religion
of the Parsees, descendants of the ancient Persians—
Brahmanism and Buddhism, with their sacred Vedas and
Tripitaka, the chief religions of the inhabitants of the
great Indian Peninsula.— Confucianism and Tao-ism
with their sacred books of Kings and Tad-te-King, the
religions of the Chinese — Mosaism with the Hebrew
Scriptures, the religion of the Jews—Christianity with
the New Testament, the religion of modem Europeans
and Americans—and Mahommedanism, with its sacred
volume the Koran, the religion of the Turks and
Arabians, and other considerable peoples in Asia.
The numbers of the respective members of these
several faiths, as given in Johnston’s Physical Atlas,
may be summed up thus—assuming the entire population
of the earth at 1,000 millions, the Christians constitute
340 millions, the Buddhists 300 millions, the Brahmins
130 millions, the Mahommedans 124 millions, the Jews
6 millions, and all other religions 100 millions. A some
�Warfare' with Superstition.
7
what different proportion is cited by Professor Max
Muller from the geography of Berghaus; where the
Buddhists are stated to constitute 31 per cent, of the
entire population of the globe, the Christians 30 per
cent., the Mahommedans 15 per cent., the Brahmins
13 per cent, the Jews a fraction of 3, and all other
religions 8 per cent. These different estimates call of
course be only roughly approximate, but either is
sufficiently near for illustrating our present purpose.
If we looked somewhat closer we should find that
these several religious faiths are mostly subdivided in
ternally into numerous conflicting sects. Christianity,
the religion of the most intellectual and cultured peoples
in existence, is almost infinitely so divided. In Pro
fessor Schaff’s comprehensive and learned work upon
‘ The Creeds of Christendom ’ we are furnished with the
literal texts of nearly 100 distinct creeds, confessions,
articles and formularies of faith of the almost endless
denominations among which dogmatic Christianity has
now become dispersed.
i“
When the mind is thus brought into the simultaneous
presence of the irreconcilable dogmas of the numerous
and conflicting theological faiths, all devoutly believed
in by their respective worshippers, it is difficult to
conceive how any one of them can be considered as
constituting a supernatural universal scheme necessary
for the Salvation of Mankind, seeing th^it it has not,
after upwards of 1,800 years, been believed in, or even
sb much as heard of by more than about a third part
of the great human race.
In view of such manifold differences of theological
belief as a simple comparison of creeds discloses, it is
almost obvious to observe that there can be no generally
acknowledged standard or infallible test of theological
truth. To use the words of a late accomplished historian—-
�8
The Victories of Science in its
Henry Thomas Buckle—“ Theological systems are sub
jects upon which different persons and different nations,
equally honest, equally enlightened, and equally com
petent, have entertained and still entertain the most
different opinions, which they advocate with the greatest
confidence, and support by arguments perfectly satis
factory to themselves, but contemptuously rejected by
their opponents.”
It is so very difficult to place oneself at the point of
view of any religion save our own that we invariably
hear with amazement the arguments or evidence adduced
by the advocates of other religions. Dr. Sprenger, in
the course of a theological discussion, was seriously
asked by a Mussulman how he could possibly disbelieve
the religion of Islam, seeing that Mahomet’s name was
written on the gates of Paradise I and Dr. Morell, in his
thoughtful work on “ The Philosophy of Religion,” relates
the following authentic incident. A distinguished friend
of his in the East had been arguing for some time with
a Mahommedan upon the evidences of Christianity, and
apparently with some success. At length the Mahom
medan, who had been listening attentively, exclaimed—
“ I tell you what it is, Rajah. You Franks are very clever
people; God has given you the power to make ships and
houses and penknives, and to do a great many wonderful
things, but he has granted to us what he has denied to
you—the knowledge of the true Religion.”
The philosopher, though he is confident that all theo
logical systems cannot be wholly true, yet feels that in
the search after truth it must be possible, however
difficult, to arrive at some explanation that may seem
to reconcile the existence of so many divergent faiths;
and if we look a little carefully into the constituents
of theology we may I think discover a clue to the desired
solution. Now we find on examination of any theology
�Warfare with Superstition.
9
or book-religion that it essentially consists of a body of
connected propositions, logically deduced by the human
mind from certain assumed to be inspired writings.
So long then as to err is human, and man remains
short of being infallible, it is clear that such a system of
knowledge must contain some amount of error, and we
may therefore assert with tolerable accuracy, that every
theology the world has seen will be found on analysis to
be compounded of two elements—viz., a germ or sub
stratum of probable truth, and a superstructure or ad
mixture of positive error. The substratum of truth must
ultimately be the same in all theologies, but their several
superstructures of error will be found to vary; partly in
accordance with difference of climate and other geogra
phical circumstances ; partly on account of the differing
race or genius of the peoples, and their stage of civilization,
amongst whom the various theologies have respectively
arisen, or by whom they have since been adopted; and
partly from the dissimilar mental idiosyncracies of their
respective founders or principal expositors.
For the purpose of our argument this afternoon, we
may conveniently designate the substratum of truth as
Religion, and the superstructure of error as Superstition.
Now, keeping this simple distinction clearly in view, we
shall find that notwithstanding the abuse and vituperation
which the Religious World (as it is phrased), have so
incessantly heaped upon Science and its professors, men
of science, whose noble purpose ever is simply to arrive
at truth, and who, for that end, would impress on us the
duty of enquiry, and the folly of credulity, have in reality
never attacked Religion at all, but that in their discoveries
and contentions for the purpose of enabling truth to pre
vail, they have only been attacking or unmasking the
falsehood and error that are ever found lurking in the
guise of Superstition. Superstition—that incubus upon
�IO
The Victories of Science in its
the human mind, whose malediction was so eloquently
pronounced by Buckle, who declared that against the
vitality of that dark and ill-omened principle there was
only one weapon, and that weapon was Science.
I will now define more exactly what we should under
stand by the terms Religion and Superstition, in connection
with the present discourse.
Religion, whatever other quality we claim for it, must
certainly be regarded as true. Its intellectual meaning
then must be strictly limited to assertions that cannot be
contradicted by the discoveries of Science now or hereafter,
or by the truly religious assumption of any theology
whatever; for religious and scientific truth must ever be
one. In reference to this its fundamental requisite, we
find that Religion has been defined by many thoughtful
minds. Thus, our profound philosopher Herbert Spencer
has described it as “ our consciousness of an Inscrutable
Power or Cause manifested to us through all phenomena,
but whose nature transcends intuition, and is beyond
imagination.” The late lamented Lord Amberley, in his
exhaustive “ Analysis of Religious Belief,” describes Re
ligion as ‘ an abstract indefinable pervading sentiment
corresponding to the relation subsisting between the
hyperphysical (or supernatural) power in the Universe,
and the hyperphysical entity in Man.” Dr. James
Martineau, one of the most highly cultured and liberalminded of our theologians, has defined or distinguished
Religion and Science thus—“Science discloses the method
of the World, Religion its cause, and there is no conflict
between them, except when either forgets its ignorance of
what the other alone can know.”
Dr. Martineau however does not leave his definition
there. He boldly ventures into the region of assumptions,
and affirms “that the universe which includes us and folds
us round is the life-dwelling of an Eternal Mind ; that the
�Warfare with Superstition.
•
11
world of our abode is the scene of a moral government
incipient but not yet complete; and that the upper zones
of human affection above the clouds of self and passion
raise us into the sphere of a Divine Communion.” These
three assumptions he considers to be independent of any
possible result of the natural sciences.
Now let us turn to the consideration of what we are
to understand by the term Superstition. Here we have
to deal with something that should be regarded as the
opposite of Religion, for it is something, which taking its
rise from the faculty of fear or dread of the unknown,
imaginatively figures to itself the features of some super
natural or super-human power which is manifested in
ways that are inconsistent with our knowledge of the
established order of nature and the veracity of human
reason; based as such knowledge is on the verified dis
coveries of science and on the uniformity and analogy of
invariable human experience. Superstition then is that
which assumes thus to know and to describe the super
natural. But what, we may ask, is the supernatural ?
It was well argued by the sublime philosopher Spinoza
(whose noble moral life, and subtle thoughts have lately
been so powerfully portrayed by the pen of our good
friend and lecturer Frederick Pollock) that “ we cannot
pretend to determine the boundary between the natural
and the supernatural until the whole of nature shall be
open to our knowledge,” and the late Oxford professor,
Baden Powell, in his striking Essay on the Order of
Nature has remarked, and in approval of this acute
observation of Spinoza, that the supernatural can really
never be a matter of science or knowledge at all, for
the moment it is brought within the cognizance of
reason it ceases to be supernatural; and he affirms that
all assumed knowledge of the supernatural is the off-
�12
.
The Victones of Science in its
spring of ignorance, and the parent of superstition and
idolatry.
Now let us briefly consider what, in connection with
our subject, we should understand by the term Science.
Science you know does not pretend to deal with the
supernatural. Its views and its researches are limited
entirely to Nature. The natural phenomena, matter,
force, and energy are its sources of knowledge, whilst
its organon of induction, or methods of investigation
subordinate the suggestions of the imagination and the
emotions to the dictates of Beason and the evidence
of Nature — Science then simply signifies methodized
or reasoned knowledge of the experienced course of
Nature, i.e. those invariable co-existences and successions
of phenomena — which the human mind discovers by
accurate observation and reflection, and then generalizes
as laws of Nature or unalterable rules constituting the
actual or ultimate government of the course of our
lives. In an abstract sense these laws, being inferences
drawn by the human mind from the observed uniformity
of Nature, may be said to possess in themselves no
governing power ; and that the force we seem to observe
in natural law may in reality be a force behind Nature.
This criticism many of you may remember was most
ably and lucidly submitted to us by our respected Presi
dent Dr. Carpenter in the opening lecture of this year.
But the practical danger of pressing this metaphysical
assumption of some recondite force, of which Science
knows and can know nothing, appears to be this, that it
has a manifest tendency to cause us to retrogade from
Science back to Superstition, for the mystery it involves
inevitably allures the mind to disregard the clearly
observed Law, and to make its appeal to the force or
power assumed to exist behind the law.
�Warfare with Superstition.
13
Now, so far as scientific knowledge extends, the exis
tence of any such force has nowhere been proved.
Natural law is apparently universal and ultimate. “ The
growing belief” observes Herbert Spencer “in the uni
versality of law is so conspicuous to cultivated minds as
scarcely to need illustration, but,” (he shrewdly adds,)
“ Though the fact is sufficiently familiar, the philosophy
of the fact is not so.” “ A natural philosopher,” (says
Professor Jowett) “ capable of seeing creation with a real
scientific insight, would behold the reign of law every
where ; one and continuous in all the different spheres
of knowledge, in all the different realms of Nature,
throughout all time, and over all space.” “ And,” (says
Dr. Carpenter, referring for instance to the law of gravi
tation) “ we feel an assurance of its truth which nothing
save a complete revolution in the world of matter or in
the world of mind can ever shake.”
Although then the inference which the mind draws
from observing the uniformity of Nature is, at the out
set, simply a scientific assumption, similar to the meta
physical assumption of a force existing behind Nature,
yet the substantial difference between the two is really
this—that whilst the metaphysical assumption ever
remains an assumption, the scientific assumption becomes
verified as true through the evidence of universal
experience.
Such undoubtedly are the conclusions of science, and
if they cannot be disproved I submit to you, not specu
latively, but as an important practical matter, that we
should be counselled to regulate our lives in obedience to,
or conformity with the discovered and verified Law of
Nature, and not in reference to some unknown force
assumed to exist behind Nature.
If now we turn and limit our attention to the more
recent history of European Communities we find that
�14
The Victories of Science in its
their advance in civilization, that is in material and
social comfort, and in the conveniences and even neces
saries of civilized life, has progressed in a remarkable
manner parallel with the development of Science. There
is scarcely an improvement in real life that is not strictly
traceable to scientific discovery or invention, and all
such discovery and invention being the result of the
exercise of natural human sagacity is, by its very nature,
antagonistic to Superstition; and the process of continu
ally ascertaining and applying the natural law, by which
the events of life on earth are found to be really regu
lated, has the necessary gradual effect of purifying
theology, so far. as it superstitiously attributes such
events to the immediate action of supernatural causes,
and thereby of compelling theology to undergo interpre
tations and modifications corresponding more or less
closely, to the continual progress of human intelligence.
We shall I think meet with ample evidence of this
progressive change in theological beliefs if we examine,
by way of illustration, some few of the more con
spicuous examples of that ceaseless conflict which Science,
since the establishment of Christianity in Europe, has
ever had to wage with superstition, and where it has
come into collision with the prevailing theological dogmas
of the day.
The first of these memorable contests which I will
mention relates to the supposed magnitude, immobility,
and flat form of the Earth. At the time when this con
flict seriously arose (about the beginning of the 16th
century), the Bible was universally believed to be an
inspired supernatural authority for every matter asserted
or treated of within its various pages, and its true
interpretation in any ambiguous matter to have been
authoritatively declared in the dogmas decreed by suc
cessive Councils of the Church, or in the commentaries
�Warfare with Superstition.
15
of a succession of personages of extraordinary learning
and sanctity termed the Fathers, and it was not only
thought to be utterly fallacious but to be awfully wicked
for anyone to set up an opinion adverse to so revered a
weight of authority as the Bible, Councils, and Fathers
combined was held to be.
Amongst other matters of fact, believed to have been
thereby decided as infallibly true, were the size and
shape of the Earth. It was declared to be the largest
Or chief body in the Universe, and in form or shape to
be a flat plane—and relatively immoveable—and that the
sun, moon, and stars all moved round it; and every
attempt to show, from observation of Nature or calcula
tions of the reason based on such observation, that these
views were physically untrue was met for a long time
with simple scorn and derision : which only became con
verted into the actual persecution of Science and its
professors when so large an amount of evidence to the
contrary had been collected, and marshalled in such a
way as to produce a profound impression upon the lay
intelligence of the age, and when therefore the scientific
views could no longer be safely ignored by ecclesiastical
power.
This evidence I can only glance at, and indeed we are
all now of course more or less familiar with it. For
instance, the voyages of those adventurous navigators
Columbus and Vasco de Gama in the years 1492—97,
and of Magellan in the year 1519, who had amongst them
actually sailed round the earth, proving to demonstration
by this astonishing achievment that it was of definite and
comparatively small size, and not in form a flat plane, but
a circular or globular body. Then the startling astro
nomical researches of Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, and
Kepler, had resulted in demonstrating the Earth’s motion
round the Sun. That it was the Sun that was stationary
�16
The Victories of Science in its
and not the Earth: and then Galileo who, supplementing
previous discoveries by his own, and by the aid of the
telescope, then recently invented, verified, visually as well
as mathematically, the great outline of our Solar System
in a manner that utterly contradicted and indeed outraged
all that men had been taught to believe, and did then
verily believe, on the faith of scriptural and patristic
authority.
The discoveries resulting from the invention of the
telescope were indeed simply astounding, and they exer
cised such a withering influence upon the prevailing
orthodox theories that many of the theologians refused
even to look through the telescope, being afraid to behold
the heavenly phenomena then revealed for the first time
to mortal eyes. A most amusing letter on the subject
from Galileo to Kepler, written in the year 1609 has
been preserved: “Oh, my dear Kepler,” he writes, “how
I wish we could have one hearty laugh together. Here,
at Padua, is the professor of Philosophy, whom I have
repeatedly requested to look at the moon and planets
through my glass, pertinaciously refusing to do so.
Why are you not here ? What laughter we should have
at this glorious folly, and to hear the professor labouring
before the Grand Duke with logical arguments, as with
magical incantations, to charm the new planets out of the
sky! ”
Now Galileo, you remember, was accused of having
attacked Religion; he was prosecuted accordingly, and,
though the consummate audacity of the infallible Roman
Church has since been equal to the denial of its com
plicity in his condemnation—he was summoned before
the tribunal of the Holy Inquisition, the grand ecclesi
astical Court of the time, and he was made, as you know,
to recant all his scientific convictions. We have the
exact words of his recantation, and they sre still worthy
�Warfare with Superstition.
17
of being repeated. Galileo was compelled to declare—
first, bis proposition, “that the Sun is the Centre of the
World and immovable from its place,” is absurd, philo
sophically false, and formally heretical, because it is
expressly contrary to Holy Scripture. Secondly, his
proposition, “ that the Earth is not the Centre of the
World nor immovable, but that it moves, and also with a
diurnal motion,” is absurd, philosophically false, and
theologically considered, erroneous in faith.
Now it should be observed that the Cardinal Inquisi
tors who sentenced Galileo were amongst the most
enlightened ecclesiastics of their age; they were not bad
men, they acted conscientiously according to their light,
and their views were in harmony with the generally
accepted religious knowledge and sentiments of the
time.
The case therefore was one in which it was solemnly
adjudged by theologians that Science had attacked and
was in conflict with Religion. We, living now, know
perfectly well that it was nothing of the sort—that it
was Science in possession of the truth, sapping the
superstitions that formed the superstructure of the theo
logical system of the day; and now every Schoolboy is
taught that Galileo’s recanted propositions are matters of
verified astronomical science, and therefore cannot be
contradictory to, but must be in harmony with, real re
ligious truth. Thus the discoveries and reasoning of these
astronomers and their illustrious successors Newton,
Laplace, Herschel, and divers others, constitute the
first complete victory achieved by Science over Super
stition.
I need not stop to dilate upon the deep importance to
our thoughts and lives of the transcendent truths dis
covered by Astronomers, having given a summary of the
subject in a lecture delivered here four years ago, and
�18
The Victories of Science in its
still in print, “ On the Influence of Astronomical discovery
“ in the development of the human Mind.”
We will now turn to a second illustration of the main
argument of the present lecture. Until quite recently,
almost within the memory of living men, we were sup
posed to possess in the Bible a supernatural revelation of
the Creation of the World, and the time when and the
manner in which it took place. There are ecclesiastical
commentaries on the book of Genesis which undertake to
inform the reader by means of biblical interpretation the
exact month and day of the week when this stupendous
event occurred. Generally however, what is known as
Archbishop Ussher’s chronology was believed as a part of
religious faith, and that system of dates placed the Crea
tion as occurring precisely 4004 years before the birth of
Christ; and the authority of other books of the Penta
teuch is explicit and confirmatory of the Creation having
been accomplished in six days, and according to the
method described in the opening chapters of Genesis.
We read therein, amongst other amazing assertions,
that God rested on the seventh day, and we, or those to
whom these writings are assumed to have been addressed,
are commanded to keep the seventh day holy on that
account, and there can be no doubt of belief in these
narrative and injunction being considered as an essen
tial part of religious faith. Indeed the wearying gloom
and austerity in which the religious world still struggle
to retain our Sunday are strictly traceable to credulity
in the superstition in question.
Now, the science of Geology, which, as most of you
know, consists primarily of an actual examination of the
Earth’s crust or surface and strata beneath for the pur
pose of ascertaining what they may teach concerning the
Earth’s age and history, establishes the existence of a
multiplicity of facts which are utterly contradictory to
�Warfare with Superstition.
19
and subversive of^-first, the alleged creation of the Earth
only some 6,000 years ago, and secondly, of its present
order of inhabitants, vegetable, animal, and human,
having then been brought into existence in the course
of the six days mentioned in the Book of Genesis, and
in the order of succession therein particularised. How
thoroughly irreconcileable with the Biblical account of
the Creation are the scientific conclusions of Geology
will sufficiently appear from the consideration of, amongst
others, the two following well-established geological con
clusions :—Evidence has been obtained in Egypt of the
existence of inhabitants to some extent civilized in that
country 13,000 years ago, and geologists of eminence,
however differing on the details of their science are
agreed that the present condition of the rocks over and
near to which flow the Falls of Niagara evidencing the
recession of the falls from Queenstown to their present
site, has been occasioned by the continuous action of
water throughout a period of 30,000 years—and the
most trustworthy and recent geological authorities, such as
Lyell, Croll, Darwin, Haeckel, Boyd-Dawkins, and Geikie
concur in considering that the antiquity of man is to be
reckoned not by tens of thousands, but by hundreds of
thousands of years !
But I need not occupy your time by considerations
showing how utterly fallacious were the religious notions
on the subject derived simply from the study of the
Scriptures—their fallacy is now on all hands conceded.
I may quote as recent theological authority for our
present scientific views the statement of the Bev. Bobert
Main, Badcliffe observer in the University of Oxford:—
“ Some school books,” he remarks, “ still teach to the
ignorant that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, and that
all things were created in six days—No well educated
person of the present day shares in the delusion. What-
�20
The Victories of Science in its
ever the meaning of the six days, ending with the seventh
day’s mystical and symbolical rest, indisputably we
cannot accept them in their literal meaning, they as
plainly do not denote the order of succession of all the
individual creations.” And Dr. James Martineau has
declared emphatically “ that the whole history of the'
genesis of things Religion must now unconditionally
surrender to Science.”
Well, but there is hardly any class of scientific men
who have been more vehemently denounced for attacking
religion than the geologists. The great argument used
to discredit their researches was the old cry that their
conclusions contradicted Scripture, and accordingly
volumes upon volumes have been published all composed
on the same argumentative basis, viz., That what contra
dicts Scripture cannot be true—an argument as some
of you may have heard, as old at least as the time of
Galileo. “If nature contradicts Scripture” (said the
schoolmen to Galileo), “ Nature must be mistaken, for
we know that the Scriptures are true! ”
And now how does the case stand as regards our
illustration. Geological science being true could not
have been attacking religion, but only those parts of the
theological system which had been constructed from the
superstitions of the day, and thus it has come to pass
that, through the discoveries of the geologists, a second
great victory has been achieved by Science in its warfare
with Superstition.
A third illustration I will refer to relates to the super
stition which I have mentioned in the syllabus of the
Lecture as belief in the government of human life by
special Providence;—the question being whether the
affairs of life are carried on subject to incessant super
natural intervention, or Whether they take place through
the operation of constant invariable natural law.
�Warfare with Superstition.
21
Previously to the rise of the physical Sciences, especially
Astronomy and Geology, the almost universal belief of
Christian Europe was that every significant act #nd
occurrence of life was the direct result of the exercise of
the providence of God, or the power of the Devil. Not
only was this conclusion directly deducible from the
literal interpretation of the language of the Bible, but,
it being the manifest interest of a priesthood, (whose
aim is ever to stand between the prayer of the Votary
and the providential act,) to encourage this belief, books
of devotion are composed by them based upon this idea,
in which instructions are given to enable the worshipper
to beseech the Almighty in a becoming manner for
almost every conceivable thing the circumstances of his
life may for the time being seem to require.
The church of England book of Common Prayer com
piled more than three centuries ago, that is long before
the Physical Sciences had been popularly heard of in this
Country, need only to be opened at random to confirm
what I am now submitting to you. But the progress
of Science has proved beyond rational doubt, that those
circumstances of our lives which were theologically re
ferred to as direct Providential or Satanic interventions,
the inflictions, chastisement, temptations, judgments, or
whatever other sacerdotal phrases are employed to define
supposed manifestations of supernatural Will, are the
result of the operation of natural Law, that is, they are
the direct consequences of the disregard of SQme natural
law which might have been observed and obeyed by the
sagacious use of man’s natural and moral intelligence.
So now, in reference, for example, to the cause and cure
of sickness, our attention is being most usefully drawn
away by Science from miserably moping over manuals
of devotion to the exhilirating study of handy books on
the laws of health—and thus it is, in the words of
�22
The Victories of Science in its
Professor Huxley, that “ Science is teaching the World
that the ultimate Court of Appeal is observation and
experiment, and not theological authority, she is teaching
us to estimate the value of evidence, she is creating a
firm and living faith in the existence of immutable moral
and physical laws, perfect obedience to which is the
highest possible aim of an intelligent being.”
No one then who has impartially watched the course
and improvement of human life, since we have come
to study and to treat its healthy physical and moral exis
tence as immediately dependent upon the observance
of natural law, can doubt that the illustration we are
considering constitutes another most important triumph
of Science over Superstition.
Connected with the last illustration, or rather a con
tinuation of it, is what we may not inaptly term the
theological theory of disease—viz. the notion that diseases,
and epidemics especially, were punishments or judgments
inflicted by the hand of the Almighty for some individual
or national sins, and that they are to be cured sometimes
by a miracle, sometimes by devotion to the shrine or relics
of a Saint, and sometimes by simple prayer addressed to
the Supreme. All these various ways and practices of
appealing for relief to supernatural power were until
quite recent times devoutly believed in throughout almost
the whole of Europe, and were supposed to form essential
parts of religious faith.
Even now in visiting Boman Catholic Churches, espe
cially on the Continent, you cannot fail to observe the
number of Votive offerings that are fixed or suspended
round the shrine and image of a favorite Saint by those
who believe that they have recovered from diseases or
misfortunes through the intervention of the Saint in
answer to the invocations of the patient. This practice,
(like the Ritualistic lighting of candles on the Altars of
�Warfare with Superstition,
23
Churches in the day time,) has been copied from the ser
vice of the Temples of the Pagan religions which prevailed
in Ancient Rome at the time of the establishment of
Christianity in the reign of the Emperor Constantine.
Well therefore asks the astute Middleton, in his instruc
tive “Letter from Rome,”—“ what is all this but a revival
of the old impostures, with no other difference, than what
the Pagan priests ascribed to the imaginary help of their
Deities, the Romish priests as foolishly impute to the
favor of their Saints.” Of course it has been the policy
of the Church to discourage the physician and his science.
He interfered too much with the gifts to and profits of
the shrines.
At one time it was a constant practice on the breaking
out of an epidemic to carry the relics of the Patron Saint
of the locality round the infected districts to drive the
disease away. The superstitious belief we are considering
had become so extravagant, and the practice in connection
with it had obtained a height so ludicrous, that no longer
ago than the end of the last century, the clergy in Spain
induced the people to believe that a pestilence then raging
was caused by their allowing the performance of so un
godly an entertainment as the opera, and it is a fact
that the opera had actually on that account to be put a
stop to 1
Although sanitary science has now in this country com
pletely triumphed over the Superstition in question, yet
owing to our still continued narrow theological teaching
very lamentable occurrences are occasionally seen to
happen. For instance, it is still taught at those strong
holds of sacredotalism, our two great Universities, that
the Bible is in every part of it supernaturally inspired
truth. Mr. Burgon, recently one of the select preachers
at Oxford, in a work addressed to the junior members of
the University, thus expressed himself:—“ The Bible is
�24
The Victories of Science in its
none other than the Voice of Him that sitteth upon the
Throne. Every book of it, every chapter of it, every
verse of it, every word of it, every syllable of it, every
letter of it, is the direct utterance of the Most High.
The Bible is none other than the Word of God—not
some part of it more some part of it less, but all alike the
utterance of Him who sitteth upon the Throne—absolute,
faultlegs, unerring, supreme ! ” We cannot wonder then
that there should be persons who repose faith in its verbal
teaching as applicable at the present time, and who seek
to derive benefit from strictly and literally following its
plainly expressed precepts. One of the apparently plainest
of its injunctions is contained in the general Epistle of
St. James the 5th chap, and the 14th and 15th verses.
“ Is any sick among you ?, Let him call for the elders of
the Church, and let them pray over him anointing him
with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith
shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up.”
A religious sect known as the Peculiar People rigidly
follow this injunction in cases of sickness, and it is not so
long since we were scandalized by the spectacle of a cri
minal prosecution, on account of the death of a child
whose parents had treated it biblically and not medically,
and the Magistrate, (Bible and University theological
teaching non obstante,) found the Parents to have been
guilty of culpable neglect for relying on the Bible, with
out calling in medical assistance, and punished them
accordingly.
This case strikingly illustrates the spirit of our age,
showing as it does that secular teaching is in point of
intelligence very far in advance of theological teaching ;
yet it is impossible not to feel commiseration for the
unfortunate people who are so drugged with dognfa that
their religious beliefs actually become conducive to the
deaths of their own offspring, and who are only roused
�Warfare with Superstition.
25
out of their superstitions by finding them thus rudely
shocked by the judgment and penal sentence of the law.
With this exception we in England may be said to
have entirely freed ourselves from the folly of this
branch of superstition, unless it may be thought still to
linger at Guy’s Hospital, where, as we have lately seen,
praying nurses are placed in authority over scientific
physicians !
The only further illustration I will now give you has
reference to those anthropomorphic conceptions of Deity
which have more or less disfigured all the theological
systems of the world,.and until recently characterised
our own conception of the God of Christianity, who is
of course the historical continuation of the Jehovah of
the Hebrew Scriptures ; for, though the Deity of the
New Testament has attributes somewhat different from
those of Jehovah (to which I shall presently refer), He is
evidently the same God throughout.
It might not be easy, it would indeed be impracticable
within the time now at our disposal, to exhibit the
successive steps which have resulted in generally endow
ing the foremost minds of our generation with that
correct and exalted standard of morality or moral sense
by which our social actions, opinions, and beliefs are
righteously judged in the last resort, and whereby the
practice of life has become so mild and humane and
unselfish compared with that of our ancestors, or other
semi-barbarous peoples.
One great effort to improve the morality of Princes
and Rulers stands out conspicuous—I mean the great
work of Hugo Grotius published at Paris in the year
1625 and entitled, “ Three books concerning the Rights
of War and Peacea work whose main objects were,
First—To induce nations to abstain as far as possible
from resorting to the dreadful ordeal of war. and to
�26
The Victories of Science in its
cultivate that noble ideal of the lovers of mankind—a
perpetual peace. To recognise the sovereignty of the
moral or social law, and to submit their quarrels and
conflicting claims to be judged at the bar of conscience.
To this end to establish Courts of Conciliation, and
agree to settle international disputes by arbitration.
Secondly—when that could not be done, or war avoided,
to conduct their warfare with as generous a humanity as
possible. And thirdly—To treat prisoners of war with the
clemency due to them as human beings and brothers, and
not with the relentless cruelties that were then habitu
ally practised towards those unfortunate persons.
The chief contents of Grotius’ grand work consist of
discussions historical and moral enlivened and embel
lished with abundant and interesting citations from the
most celebrated authors of classical and sacred antiquity
—poets, orators, historians, philosophers, and sages of
all times and nations are, with the very splendour of
learning, laid under contributions for the purpose of
supporting, by their conspiring sentiments and reason
ings, the benevolent objects of the good and great
Grotius ; showing in short the unanimity of the higher
order of minds of the whole human race on the great
rules of duty, and the fundamental principles of morals.
If we, studying the lofty argument of Grotius at the
present day,’ can hardly fail to find our views of virtue
and humanity expanded and inspired by so impressive a
display of the principles it expounds, we can easily be
lieve what is related of it when first published—viz. that
it at once fascinated all the sovereigns and ministers and
great men of the time ; that the king of Sweden,
Gustavus Adolphus carried it about with him and kept
it under his pillow ; that a professorship was founded to
teach and diffuse its doctrines ; and that it was translated
(from its original latin) into most modern languages.
�Warfare with Superstition.
27
There has been of course, since the time of the illustri
ous Grrotius, a succession of similar though lesser lights,
whom I will not now stop to name, all exhibiting and
enforcing his humane and philanthropic views.
Another cause operating in the same direction has
been the gradual improvement in the nature and number
of criminal punishments. The penal codes of all Euro
pean nations during the times of theological ascendency
were painfully disfigured by the practice of judicial torture
and arbitrary imprisonments, and the cruel and vindictive
punishments inflicted upon criminals. Bearing in mind
too how large an extent the moral sense or conscience of
a community is a reflection of its legal system, the pre
sent mitigated severity and graduated scale of punish
ments, more or less proportioned to the nature and
gravity of the offence, and to the frailty of and tempta
tion besetting the offender, must have materially assisted
in maturing and refining the public moral sentiment.
A similar effect is also observable as proceeding from
the more civilized character of our popular amusements
—bear baiting, bull baiting, badger baiting, dog fighting,
cock fighting and shying, and other cruel and depraving
sports have now almost ceased amongst us, and if we
desire an example to show the connection between such
barbarous cruelties and the influence of Superstition, we
need only turn our gaze towards Spain, where we see the
most brutalizing of sports—bull-fighting—is still the
principle pastime of the most superstitious people on the
face of Europe.
Now that the cause of our advance in intelligence and
morality, and of our more earnest love of toleration and
truth, has' been scientific or secular, and not theological,
seems plain from the fact that it has resulted in causing
us to view with a sentiment akin to horror, some of the
anthropomorphic attributes and commands of Deity that
�28
The Victories of Science in its
we find recorded in the books of the Bible, and which
previously to the scientific culture and elevation of our
moral sense were generally acquiesced in quite as a matter
of course; were to be believed (suggested an eminent
theologian, the late Dean Mansel,) as God’s temporary
suspensions of the laws of moral obligation, or moral
miracles ! Thus, in the old Testament the Almighty is
represented as walking on the Earth, eating with Abra
ham, wrestling with Jacob, appearing in a visible form to
Moses, .tempting men, and speaking with human speech.
Then the shocking stories related, such as the Divine
sanction of the frightful massacres of the Canaanites and
Levites, with the ruthless slaughter of women and childred, the divine patronage of the odious Jacob—and
numerous instances of extraordinary cruelties ascribed
to Jehovah in the books of the Pentateuch, making him
out to be a man of war, cruel, capricious, revengeful,
and not to be trusted.
In the New Testament indeed we find an improved
character of the Deity, and one in many important aspects
widely different. There is however attributed to the God
of the New Testament what, if rigorously balanced against
the failings ascribed to Jehovah, must be considered to
outweigh them all; viz., the eternity of punishment which
he will inflict in a future life. No efforts of the disci
plined human reason, which is guided by the conscious
ness of right, can discover any justification for the creation
of beings whose lives are to terminate in endless torment.
The enlightened intellectual and moral capacity of civil
ized man rejects the idea of eternal punishment as utterly
revolting to its sense of justice, mercy, and charity,, and
any attempt to realise ‘ in the unpolluted temple of the
mind ’ an enormity so awful causes it to recoil from its
imputed author, who (as is alleged) could create the human
race with the infallible foreknowledge, and therefore
�Warfare with Superstition.
29
with the intention, that the majority, or even some were
eventually to be consigned to the horrible and everlasting
torture of Hell-fire I
From the slight review we have now taken of the influ
ence of Science upon Superstition, and the modifications
that religious creeds have thereby undergone, we may feel
assured that the process is not yet ended, and that popu
lar theologies are still disfigured by superstitions which
expanding science will explode. Such for instance prob
ably, as belief in the objective efficacy of the supplications,
humiliations, fastings, and other asceticisms prescribed by
preistcraft, and not improbably, I venture to think, our
beliefs in supernatural revelations and exclusive salva
tions.
We now know through the Science of Geology, whose
connected sequence of events was so admirably summar
ised by Professor Ramsay, in his Presidential address last
year to the British Association for the advancement of
Science, that in the physical government of the world,
throughout the long ages whose history is embraced by
this marvellous science, all progress has been continuous
and orderly, not varying in kind and intensity from that
of which we now have experience, is indeed the effect of
causes still in full operation, that is, without cataclysms
or catastrophes of any kind. Reasoning by analogy we
should say that if such has been the course of the mate
rial world the course of the spiritual world (the sphere
of religious development) has most probably been similar,
and that if there has been no physical cataclysm in the
one world, neither has there been a spiritual cataclysm
in the other, such as a sudden supernatural revelation
accompanied by miracles would undoubtedly be, but that
throughout the ages all spiritual enlightenment has pro
gressed by the same means and in the same manner as at
the present moment.
�30
The Victories of Science in its
Probably therefore it may come to be generally believed
that the only real revelation is in Science, which, as Herbert
Spencer observes, is a continuous disclosure, through the
intelligence with which we are endowed, of the established
order of the Universe.
If time permitted me now to enter upon a catalogue
of the evil effects wrought by Superstition, that is false
demoralising beliefs relating to the supernatural, we
should find that there is scarcely a single one of the great
miseries of life that is not distinctly traceable to this,
cause. I will only now recall to your mind the horrors
of the Crusades, the numerous religious wars, the Spanish
Inquisition, the persecutions, burnings, martyrdoms,
massacres, and other hideous atrocities that for ages
formed part of the very staple of European history, and
which directly arose out of the superstitious beliefs en
gendered by their dogmatic Theology, which, in its merci
less endeavours to crush freedom of thought and speech,
has impelled man to inflict upon his fellow-man every
species of cruelty and calamity that bigotted and intoler
ant fanaticism could devise.
Now one of the habits engendered by superstitious
belief is of course a tendency to assume that everything
happens through the interposition of providence, and.
must accordingly be right however unscrutable; and,,
however disastrous, yet sent for some good purpose and
to chasten or to benefit us somehow and eventually.
Of course such a tendency operates mischievously by its
withdrawing our minds and energies and precious time
from the search in this world for those natural causes of
misery which when discovered show that it is remediable
by scientific effort, in other words, that it is to be alleviated
by the application of our natural intelligence, and not by
our taking refuge in that sanctuary of Superstition (pro
fanely called) the Will of God.
�Warfare with Superstition*
31
To enumerate the ameliorations of human well-being
that have been achieved through the exercise of man’s
natural intelligence would be a theme almost exhaustless.
In reference to these I will now confine myself to
merely quoting to you the striking summing-up by
Macaulay in his brilliant Essay on Lord Bacon, of the
utilitarian result of the development of scientific method,
so luminously expounded to his contemporaries, and
impressed upon his posterity by the genius of the great
English Philosopher, who enunciated the fruitful axiom
that true philosophy, whatever its theory, is practically
the application of the discoveries and methods of the
sciences to the regulation of the affairs and conduct of
our lives
“ Ask a follower of Bacon what Science has effected for man->
kind and his answer is ready. It has lengthened life; it has
mitigated pain; it has extinguished diseases; it has increased
the fertility of the soil; it has given new securities to the
mariner; it has furnished new arms to the warrior; it has
spanned great rivers with bridges of form unknown to our
fathers; it has guided the thunderbolt innocuously from heaven
•to earth ; it has lighted up the night with the splendour of the
day; it has extended the range of the human vision; it has
multiplied the power of the human muscles; it has accelerated
motion; it has annihilated distance; it has facilitated inter
course, correspondence, all friendly offices, all dispatch of
business; it has enabled man to descend to the depths of the
sea, to soar into the air, to penetrate securely into the noxious
recesses of the earth; to traverse the land in carriages which
whirl along without horses, and the ocean in ships which run
ten knots an hour against the wind. These are but a part of its
fruits, and of its first fruits—for Science never rests, its law is
progress.”
But in truth every page of the history of civilization
shows us that improvement in the health, the happiness,
and the virtue of mankind has taken place entirely
through the intellectual and moral progress resulting
from the teaching of Science. You will find the un
answerable details of this history very clearly exhibited
in Dr. Draper’s remarkable work on “ The intellectual
development of Europe,” and also in its condensed and
�32 Victories of Science in its Warfare with Superstition.
lucid summary, published under the title of ‘ The Con
flict between Religion and Science.’ An unhappy
misnomer this title, however, if the argument of my
lecture be a sound one, viz., That it is not Religion that
Science has attacked or come into conflict with—but
only the superstitions of the hour, that were ignorantly
and erroneously supposed to form parts of Religion, and
that were 1 intent on offering to the Author of Truth
the unclean sacrifice of a lie.’ Now, in exposing and
stamping out Superstition and that old theological spirit
which has brought so much misery upon the world,
Science has actually rendered the most vital service to
Religion; for the true beliefs which Science has thus
compelled Theology to adopt are far more really reli
gious than the superstitious beliefs which Science has
from time to time forced Theology to surrender.
Let us rejoice, in the cause of Humanity, that such
has been the case, and moreover that this purifying
process is yet proceeding, and that Science, whose coura
geous career has hitherto been unstained by cruelty,
oppression, or crime, will, in her warfare with Supersti
tion, still continue marching on to Victories alike
beneficent and bloodless; for
Science is a child as yet,
And her power and scope shall grow,
And her triumphs in the future
Shall diminish toil and woe.
Kenny & Co., Printers, 25, Camden Road, N.W.
�
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The victories of science in its warfare with superstitions: a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, on Sunday afternoon, 20th February 1881
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Finch, A. Elley
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Place of Publication: London
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Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 5. The Society's lectures by the same author on p. [3].
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Superstition
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Morris Tracts
Science and Religion
Superstition
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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
a state of ignorance persons are liable to numerous
impositions ; they are easily imposed- on by rumours
IbSj
ar* reports which they have not the power of investid
pat'nS> and still more easily imposed on by their own
iMCiMiSSffi impressions or notions. Of all the impositions which
have vexed the ignorant, a belief in the reality of spectral appear
ances has been one of the most ridiculous, yet one of the longest
and most zealously supported. This belief was once current even
among men reputed for their learning—that is, a kind of learning, not
founded on a correct knowledge of nature—but, by the progress of
inquiry, it has gradually been abandoned by persons of education,
and now is maintained only by those whose minds have not been
instructed on the subject. Considering that this belief, like every
other error, is injurious to happiness, and that, in a particular
manner, the young require to be put on their guard against it, we
propose, in the present paper, to explain the theory of spectral
illusions—how they originate in the mind, and are in no respect
supernatural in their character.
To obtain right ideas of this curious, and, to many, mysterious
subject, it is necessary to understand, in the first place, what kind
of a thing the human mind is, and how it operates in connection
with the senses, or at least two of them—seeing and hearing. The
seat of the mind is in the brain ; in other words, the brain is the
organ or mdss of organs by which the thinking faculties act. Like
No. 159.
,
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
an instrument finely tuned, the brain, when in a sound state of
health, performs its part in our economy with fidelity. Shut up in
the skull, however, it has no communication with external nature
except through the medium of the senses. The senses are the
channels of intelligence to the brain. When the eye receives the
impression or picture of a thing presented to it, that impression iscarried by a nerve to the brain, where the consciousness or mind
recognises it; and the same thing occurs with the ear in the trans
mission of sound. The ordinary notion, therefore, that the eye sees,
is scarcely correct. It is the mind, through the operation of the
brain, the optic nerve, and the eye, which sees. The eye is only an
instrument of vision and recognition. Such is the ordinary process
of seeing, and of having a consciousness of what is presented to the
eye ; and we perceive that the outer organ of vision performs but an
inferior part in the operation. There is, indeed, a consciousness of
seeing objects, without using the eyes. With these organs shut, we
can exert our imagination so far as to recall the image of objects
which we formerly have seen. Thus, when in an imperfect state of
sleep, with the imagination less or more active, we think that we
see objects, and mingle in strange scenes ; and this is called dream
ing. Dreams, therefore, arise principally from a condition of partial
wakefulness, in which the unregulated imagination leads to all kinds
of visionary conceptions. In a state of entire wakefulness, and with
the eyes open, unreal conceptions of objects seemingly present may
also be formed; but this occurs only when the system is disordered
by disease.
We are now brought to an understanding of the cause of those
illusions which, under the name of ghosts, apparitions, or spectres,
have in all ages disturbed the minds of the credulous. The disorder
which leads to the formation of these baseless visions may be
organic or functional, or a combination of both. Organic disorder
of the body is that condition in which one or more organs are
altered in structure by disease. Functional disorder is less serious
in character : it is that condition of things where the healthy action
of the organ or organs, in part or whole, is impeded, without the
existence of any disease of structure. Lunacy, if not arising from
organic disorder, hovers between it and functional derangement, in
either case producing unreal conceptions in the mind. Functional
disorder may arise in various ways, and be of different kinds. It
may be said that violent excitement of the imagination or passions
constitutes functional mental disorder : ‘ Anger is a short madness/
said the Romans wisely. As for functional bodily disorder, tem
porary affections of the digestive organs may be pointed to as
common causes of such cases of physical derangement. All these
disorders, and kinds of disorders, may appear in a complicated
form; and, what is of most importance to our present argument,
the nervous system, on which depend the action of the senses, the
2
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
powers of the will, and the operation of all the involuntary functions
(such as the circulation of the blood, and digestion), is, and must
necessarily be, involved more or less deeply in all cases of constitu
tional disorder, organic or functional. These powers of the nerves,
which form, as we have seen, the sole medium by which mind and
body act and react on each other, are clearly, then, connected with
the production of every kind of illusory impression.
In lunacy, from organic derangement, these impressions are
usually the most vivid. Every lunatic tells you he sees spectres, or
unreal persons ; and no doubt they are seemingly present to his
diseased perceptions. The same cause, simple insanity, partial or
otherwise, and existing either with or without structural brain disease,
has been, we truly believe, at the foundation of many more apparition
cases than any other cause. By far the greatest number of such
cases ever put on record, have been connected with fanaticism in
religious matters ; and can there be a doubt that the majority of the
poor creatures, men and women, who habitually subjected themselves,
in the early centuries of the church, to macerations and lacerations,
and saw signs and visions, were simply persons of partially deranged
intellect ? St Theresa, who lay entranced for whole days, and who,
in the fervour of devotion, imagined that she was frequently addressed
by the voice of God, and that St Peter and St Paul would often in
person visit her solitude, is an example of this order of monomaniacs.
That this individual, and others like her, should have been perfectly
sensible on all other points, is a phenomenon in the pathology of
mind too common to cause any wonder. We would ascribe, we
repeat, a large class of apparition-cases, including these devotional
ones, to simple mental derangement. The eye in such instances
may take in a correct impression of external objects, but this is not
all that is wanting. A correct perception by the mind is essential to
healthy and natural vision, and this perception the deranged intellect
cannot effect.
We should go further than this for a complete elucidation of
spectral illusions. At the time the spectre makes its appearance,
the mind may be neither altogether diseased nor altogether health
ful ; the perceptive powers may recognise through the eye all
surrounding objects exactly as they appear, but, almost in the same
instant of time, the mind may mix up an unreal object with them.
How, then, is the unreal object introduced into the scene ? There
is the strongest ground for believing that the unreal object—the
spectre—is an idea of the mind acting on the optic nerve, and
impressing a picture on the retina, just as effectually as if the object
were external to the person. The mind, as it were, daguerreotypes
the idea—the flash of thought—on the retina, or mirror of the eye,
where it is recognised by the powers of perception. That spectres
are mental pictures, is forcibly stated as follows by Sir David
Brewster : ‘ I propose to shew that the “ mind’s eye ” is actually the
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
Tody’s eye, and that the retina is the common tablet on which both
classes of impressions are painted, and by means of which they
receive their visual existence according to the same optical laws.
Nor is this true merely in the case of spectral illusions. It holds
good of all ideas recalled by the memory, or created by the imagina
tion, and may be regarded as a fundamental law in the science of
pneumatology.
‘ In the healthy state of the mind and body, the relative intensity
•of these two classes of impressions on the retina are nicely adjusted.
The mental pictures are transient, and comparatively feeble, and in
ordinary temperaments are never capable of disturbing or effacing
'the direct images of visible objects. The affairs of life could not be
• carried on if the memop' were to intrude bright representations of
‘•the past into the domestic scene, or scatter them over the external
{-landscape. The two opposite impressions, indeed, could not co
exist. The same nervous fibre which is carrying from the brain to
the retina the figures of memory, could not at the same instant be
carrying back the impressions of external objects from the retina to
the brain. The mind cannot perform two different functions at the
same instant, and the direction of its attention to one of the two
classes of impressions necessarily produces the extinction of the other.
But so rapid is the exercise of mental power, that the alternate
appearance and disappearance of the two contending impressions is
710 more recognised than the successive observations of external
objects during the twinkling of the eyelids.’ *
With these general observations, we proceed to an analysis of the
-different kinds of spectre-seeing, beginning with a short explanation
of dreaming and somnambulism, with which apparitional illusions
are intimately associated.
DREAMS—SOMNAMBULISM.
Dreaming is a modification of disordered mental action, arising
usually from some kind of functional derangement. In sound sleep,
■The functions of digestion, the circulation of the blood, and all others,
may be said to be duly in action, and the mind is accordingly not
•disturbed. If, however, any of the bodily functions be in a state of
derangement ; if, in particular, the digestion be incommoded, which
it ordinarily is in an artificial mode of life, the senses, the nerves,
"the mind, will also be probably affected, and an imperfect sleep,
with an imperfect consciousness, is the result. According to the
Test writers on the subject, it has been ascertained that, in beginning
To sleep, the senses do not unitedly fall into a state of slumber, but
drop off one after the other. The sight ceases, in consequence of
The protection of the eyelids, to receive impressions first, while all
* Letters on Natural Magic.
4
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
the other senses preserve their sensibility entire. The sense of tasteis the next which loses its susceptibility of impressions, and then the
sense of smelling. The hearing is next in order ; and, last of all,,
comes the sense of touch. Furthermore, the senses are thought to
sleep with different degrees of profoundness. The sense of touch
sleeps the most lightly, and is the most easily awakened; the next
easiest is the hearing ; the next is the sight ; and the taste and
smelling awake the last. Another remarkable circumstance deserves
notice ; certain muscles and parts of the body begin to sleep before
others. Sleep commences at the extremities, beginning with the feet
and legs, and creeping towards the centre of nervous action. The
necessity for keeping the feet warm and perfectly still, as a prelimi
nary of sleep, is well known. From these explanations, it will not
appear surprising that, with one or more of the senses, and perhaps
also one or more parts of the body imperfectly asleep, there should
be at the same time an imperfect kind of mental action, which pro
duces the phenomenon of dreaming.
A dream, then, is an imperfectly formed thought. Much of the
imperfection and incoherency of such thoughts is from having no
immediate consciousness of surrounding objects. The imagination
revels unchecked by actual circumstances, and is not under the
control of the will. Ungoverned by any ordinary standards of
reason, we, in dreaming, have the impression that the ideas which.,
chase each other through the mind are actual occurrences: a mereill-formed thought is imagined to be an action. As thought is veryrapid, it thus happens that events which would take whole days or
a longer time in performance, are dreamed in a few moments. Sowonderful is this compression of a multitude of transactions into the
very shortest period, that when we are accidentally ‘ awakened from
a profound slumber by a loud knock at, or by the rapid opening of,
the door, a train of actions which it would take hours, or days, or
even weeks to accomplish, sometimes passes through the mind.
Time, in fact, seems to be in a great measure annihilated. An
extensive period is reduced, as it were, to a single point, or rather a
single point is made to embrace an extensive period. In one
instant we pass through many adventures, see many strange sights,,
and hear many strange sounds. If we are awaked by a loud knock
,
*
we have perhaps the idea of a tumult passing before us, and knowall the characters engaged in it—their aspects, and even their very
names. If the door open violently, the flood-gates of a canal mayappear to be expanding, and we may see the individuals employed,
in the process, and hear their conversation, which may seem an
hour in length ; if a light be brought into the room, the notion of
the house being in flames invades us, and we are witnesses to the
whole conflagration from its commencement till it be finally extin
guished. The thoughts which arise in such situations are endless,,
and assume an infinite variety of aspects.
5.
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
' ‘ One of the most remarkable phenomena attendant upon dream
ing, is the almost universal absence of surprise. Scarcely any event,
however incredible, impossible, or absurd, gives rise to this emotion.
We see circumstances at utter variance with the laws of nature, and
yet their discordancy, impracticability, and oddness never strike us
as at all out of the usual course of things. This is one of the
strongest proofs that can be alleged in support of the dormant
Condition of the reflecting faculties. Had these powers been awake
and in full activity, they would have pointed out the erroneous
nature of the impressions conjured into existence by fancy, and
shewn us truly that the visions passing before our eyes were merely
the chimeras of an excited imagination—the airy phantoms of
imperfect sleep.’*
Dreams are in general connected with snatches of waking recol
lections, and assume a character from the dreamer’s ordinary'
pursuits and feelings. Shakspeare has admirably described the
effects of dreams of different classes of persons; and the subject
has been also well illustrated by Stepney in the following lines :
‘ At dead of night imperial reason sleeps,
And Fancy with her train her revels keeps.
Then airy phantoms a mixed scene display,
Of what we heard, or saw, or wished by day;
For memory those images retains
Which passion formed, and still the strongest reigns.
Huntsmen renew the chase they lately run,
And generals fight again their battles won.
Spectres and fairies haunt the murderer’s dreams;
Grants and disgraces are the courtier’s themes.
The miser spies a thief, or a new hoard ;
The cit’s a knight; the sycophant a lord.
Thus Fancy’s in the wild distraction lost,
With what we most abhor, or covet most.
Honours and state before this phantom fall;
For sleep, like death, its image, equals all.’
Chaucer’s description, versified by Dryden, is also worthy of being
quoted :
.
‘ Dreams are but interludes which Fancy makes ;
When monarch reason sleeps, this mimic wakes;
Compounds a medley of disjointed things,
A court of cobblers, and a mob of kings :
Light fumes are merry, grosser fumes are sad:
Both are the reasonable soul run mad ;
And many monstrous forms in sleep we see,
That neither were, or are, or e’er can be.
* Macnish’s Philosophy of Sleep.
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
Sometimes forgotten things, long cast behind,
Rush forward in the brain, and come to mind.
The nurse’s legends are for truth received,
And the man dreams but what the boy believed;
Sometimes we but rehearse a former play,
The night restores our actions done by day;
As hounds in sleep will open for their prey.
In short, the farce of dreams is of a piece
In chimeras all; and more absurd or less.’
In ordinary dreaming, the powers of voluntary motion are often
exercised to a slight extent. A dreamer, under the impression • that
he is engaged in an active battle, will frequently give a bed-fellow
a smart belabouring. Often also, in cases of common dreaming,
the muscles on which the production of the voice depends are set
in action, through the instrumentality of that portion of the brain
which is not in a quiescent state, and the dreamer mutters, or talks,
or cries aloud. Sometimes nearly all the senses, along with the
muscles of motion, are in activity, while part of the cerebral organs
are dormant, and in this condition the dreamer becomes a somnam
bulist, or sleep-walker. ‘ If we dream,’ says Mr Macnish, 1 that we
are walking, and the vision possesses such a degree of vividness
and exciting energy as to arouse the muscles of locomotion, we
naturally get up and walk. Should we dream that we hear or see,
and the impression be so vivid as to stimulate the eyes and ears,
or more properly speaking, those parts of the brain which take
cognizance of sights and sounds, then we both see any objects, or
hear any sounds, which may occur, just as if we were awake. In
some cases the muscles only are excited, and then we simply walk,
without hearing or seeing.’ In other cases we both walk and see,
and in a third variety we at once walk, see, and hear. In the same
way the vocal organs alone may be stimulated, and a person may
merely be a sleep-talker; or, under a conjunction of impulses, he
may talk, walk, see, and hear.
Cases of persons in a state of somnambulism rising from bed and
walking to a distant part of the house, or of looking for some object
of which they were dreaming, and so forth, are exceedingly common,
and the seeming marvel is explained by the fact already noticed—
only certain senses and portions of brain are asleep while others are
waking. The boy who, according to the common story, rose in his
sleep and took a nest of young eagles from a dangerous precipice,
must have received the most accurate accounts of external objects
from his visual organs, and must have been able to some extent to
reason upon them, else he could never have overcome the difficulties
of the ascent. He dreamed of taking away the nest, and to his great
surprise found it beneath his bed in the morning in the spot where
he only thought himself to have put it in imagination. The follow
ing case, mentioned by Mr Macnish, is scarcely less wonderful. It
7
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
occurred near one of the towns on the Irish coast. ‘About two
o’clock in the morning, the watchmen on the Revenue Quay were
much surprised at descrying a man disporting himself in the water,
about a hundred yards from the shore. Intimation having been
given to the Revenue boat’s crew, they pushed off, and succeeded in
picking him up ; but, strange to say, he had no idea whatever of his
perilous situation, and it was with the utmost difficulty they could
persuade him he was not still in bed. But the most singular part
of this novel adventure was, that the man had left his house at
twelve o’clock that night, and walked through a difficult and to him
dangerous road, a distance of nearly two miles, and had actually
swum one mile and a half when he was fortunately discovered and
picked up.’ The state of madness gives us, by analogy, the best
explanation of the condition of these climbers and swimmers. With
one or more organs or portions of his brain diseased, and the
rest sound, the insane person has the perfect use of his external
senses, yet may form imperfect conclusions regarding many things
around him. The somnambulist, with one or more of his senses in
activity, but with some of his cerebral organs in a torpid state, is
in much the same position as regards his power of forming right
judgments on all that he hears or sees.
A respectable person, captain of a merchant-vessel, told Sir
Walter Scott the following story, in illustration of illusion from
somnambulism. While lying in the Tagus, a man belonging to his
ship was murdered by a Portuguese, and a report soon spread that
the spirit of the deceased haunted the vessel. The captain found,
on making inquiry, that one of his own mates, an honest, sensible
Irishman, was the chief evidence respecting the ghost. The mate
affirmed that the spectre took him from bed every night, led him
about the ship, and, in short, worried his life out. The captain knew
not what to think of this, but he privately resolved to watch the mate
by night. He did so, and, at the hour of twelve, saw the man start
up with ghastly looks, and light a candle ; after which he went to
the galley, where he stood staring wildly for a time, as if on some
horrible object. He then lifted a can filled with water, sprinkled some
of it about, and, appearing much relieved, went quietly back to his
bed. Next morning, on being asked if he had been annoyed in the
night, he said : ‘Yes; I was led by the ghost to the galley ; but I
got hold, in some way or other, of a jar of holy-water, and freed my
self, by sprinkling it about, from the presence of the horrible phantom.’
The captain now told the truth, as observed ; and the mate, though
much surprised, believed it. He was never visited by the ghost
again, the deception of his own dreaming fancy being thus discovered.
Had the mate burned his hand with the candle, and, by the same
mode of reasoning which led him to believe in the banishment of
the ghost by holy-water, formed the conclusion that the spectre had
touched his hand to imprint on it a perpetual mark, what would
8
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
have been said of the matter by his comrades and himself in the
morning, supposing no watching to have taken place? They would
assuredly have held the scar as an indubitable proof of the super
natural visitation, and the story would have remained as darkly
mysterious as could be desired.
The condition of nightmare, in which the sufferer is under the
feeling of some terrible oppression, is one of the most afflicting kinds
of dreaming. In the more simple order of cases of nightmare, the
dreamer is only labouring under the influence of indigestion; but in
the more severe, the cause is ascribed to cerebral disorder. A
gentleman in Edinburgh was afflicted for years with a night
mare which rendered existence almost unsupportable. On falling
asleep, he dreamed that he was chased by a bull; and frequently, in
terror of being tossed by the horns of the infuriated animal, he leaped
from the bed to the opposite side of the room, on one occasion doing
himself a serious injury. At the death of this unhappy gentleman,
his head was opened, and a portion of his brain found to be affected
with a deep-seated ulcer. In cases of this kind, the spectral
illusions of the dreamer are usually most vivid, and on awakening,
it requires a strong effort of reason to be convinced that the appear
ances were nothing more than airy phantoms of the disordered brain.
With these explanations on the subject of dreaming, we are pre
pared for a consideration of those unreal impressions made on the
mind while in a wakeful condition.
ILLUSIONS FROM CONGESTION OF THE BLOOD-VESSELS.
One of the more simple kinds of functional disorder producing
false impressions on the mind, is an overfulness of blood in the
circulatory vessels. Persons who have followed the discommendable
practice of blood-letting periodically, and have neglected it for more
than the usual length of time, are the most liable to this species of
illusion. Upwards of seventy years ago, Nicolai, a celebrated book
seller in Berlin, experienced the feeling of seeing spectres from this
cause. According to an interesting account he has given on the
subject, it appears that he was a man of a vivid imagination and
excitable temperament, who, some years previous to the occurrences
he relates, was troubled with violent vertigo, which he relieved by
periodical bleeding with leeches. It became with him a custom to
be bled twice in the year; but at length having on one occasion
neglected this means of relieving the system, his mind became
depressed, and apparitions began to be seemingly present to his eyes.
The following is his narration of this painful condition :
‘ My wife and another person came into my apartment in the
morning in order to console me, but I was too much agitated by a
series of incidents, which had most powerfully affected my moral
feeling, to be capable of attending to them. On a sudden I perceived,
159
9
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
at about the distance of ten steps, a form like that of a deceased
person. I pointed at it, asking my wife if she did not see it. It was
but natural that she should not see anything; my question, therefore,
alarmed her very much, and she immediately sent for a physician.
The phantom continued about eight minutes. I grew at length more
calm, and being extremely exhausted, fell into a restless sleep, which
lasted about half an hour. The physician ascribed the apparition to
a violent mental emotion, and hoped there would be no return; but
the violent agitation of my mind had in some way disordered my
nerves, and produced further consequences which deserve a more
minute description.
‘At four in the afternoon, the form which I had seen in the
morning reappeared. I wp.s by myself when this happened, and, •
being rather uneasy at the incident, went to my wife’s apartment,
but there likewise I was persecuted by the apparition, which, how
ever, at intervals disappeared, and always presented itself in a
standing posture. About six o’clock there appeared also several
walking figures, which had no connection with the first. After the
first day the form of the deceased person no more appeared, but its
place was supplied with many other phantasms, sometimes repre
senting acquaintances, but mostly strangers ; those whom I knew
were composed of living and deceased persons, but the number of
the latt'er was comparatively small. I observed the persons with
whom I daily conversed did not appear as phantasms, these repre
senting chiefly persons who lived at some distance from me.
‘ These phantasms seemed equally clear and distinct at all times
and under all circumstances, both when I was by myself and when
I was in company, as well in the day as at night, and in my own
house as well as abroad; they were, however, less frequent when I
was in the house of a friend, and rarely appeared to me in the street.
When I shut my eyes, these phantasms would sometimes vanish
entirely, though there were instances when I beheld them with my
eyes closed; yet when they disappeared on such occasions, they
generally returned when I opened my eyes. I conversed sometimes
with my physician and my wife of the phantasms which at the
moment surrounded me; they appeared more frequently walking
than at rest; nor were they constantly present. They frequently
did not come for some time, but always reappeared for a longer or
shorter period, either singly or in company; the latter, however,
being most frequently the case. I generally saw human forms of
both sexes ; but they usually seemed not to take the smallest notice
of each other, moving as in a market-place, where all are eager to
press through the crowd; at times, however, they seemed to be
transacting business with each other. I also saw several times
people on horseback, dogs, and birds.
‘ All these phantasms appeared to me in their natural size, and as
distinct as if alive, exhibiting different shades of carnation in the
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�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
uncovered parts, as well as different colours and fashions in their
dresses, though the colours seemed somewhat paler than in real
nature. None of the figures appeared particularly terrible, comical,
or disgusting, most of them being of an indifferent shape, and some
presenting a pleasing aspect. The longer these phantasms continued
to visit me, the more frequently did they return, while at the same
time they increased in number about four weeks after they had first
appeared. I also began to hear them talk: these phantoms sometimes
conversed among themselves, but more frequently addressed their
discourse to me ; their speeches were commonly short, and never of
an unpleasant turn. At different times there appeared to me both
dear and sensible friends of both sexes, whose addresses tended to
appease my grief, which had not yet wholly subsided : their consolatory speeches were in general addressed to me when I was alone.
Sometimes, however, I was accosted by these consoling friends while
I was engaged in company, and not unfrequently while real persons
were speaking to me. These consolatory addresses consisted some
times of abrupt phrases, and at other times they were regularly
executed.’
Having thus suffered for some time, it occurred to him that the
mental disorder might arise from a superabundance of blood, and he
again had "recourse to leeching. When the leeches were applied, no
person was with him besides the surgeon ; but during the operation
his apartment was crowded with human phantasms of all descriptions.
In the course of a few hours, however, they moved around the
chamber more slowly; their colour began to fade; until, growing
more and more obscure, they at last dissolved into air, and he ceased
to be troubled with them afterwards.
ILLUSIONS FROM DERANGEMENT IN DIGESTION.
Any derangement of the digestive powers acts on the brain; when
the derangement is excessive, and the health otherwise impaired,
the mind becomes affected, so as to deceive the senses and to produce
spectral illusions. Sir David Brewster, in his Letters on Natural
Magic, narrates the case of a lady of high character and intelligence,
but of vivid imagination, who was so affected from only simple
derangement of the .stomach. The facts were communicated by
the husband of the lady, a man of learning and science, and are as
follow:
‘ I. The first illusion to which Mrs A. was subject was one which
affected only the ear. On the 26th of December 1830, about half
past four in the afternoon, she was standing near the fire in the hall,
and on the point of going up stairs to dress, when she heard, as she
supposed, her husband’s voice calling her by name : “------------ J
come here! come to me 1” She imagined that he was calling at
the door to have it opened; but upon going there and opening the
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�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
door, she was surprised to find no person there. Upon returning to
the fire, she again heard the same voice calling out very distinctly
and loudly: “----- , come; come here!” She then opened two
other doors of the same room, and upon seeing no person, she
returned to the fireplace. After a few moments, she heard the same
voice still calling: “------------ , come to me! come! come away!”
in a loud, plaintive, and somewhat impatient tone. She answered
as loudly: “Where are you? I don’t know where you are;” still
imagining that he was somewhere in search of her : but receiving no
answer, she shortly after went up stairs. On Mr A.’s return to the
house, about half an hour afterwards, she inquired why he called to
her so often, and where he was ; and she was of course greatly sur
prised to learn that he had not been near the house at the time.
‘2. The next illusion which occurred to Mrs A. was of a more
alarming character. On the 30th of December, about four o’clock
in the afternoon, Mrs A. came down stairs into the drawing-room,
which she had quitted only a few minutes before, and on entering
the room she saw her husband, as she supposed, standing with his
back to the fire. As he had gone out to take a walk about half an
hour before, she was surprised to see him there, and asked him why
'he had returned so soon. The figure looked fixedly at her with a
serious and thoughtful expression of countenance, but did not speak.
Supposing that his mind was absorbed in thought, she sat down in
an arm-chair hear the fire, and within two feet at most of the figure,1
which she still saw standing before her. As its eyes, however, still
continued to be fixed upon her, she said, after the lapse of a few
minutes: “Why don’t you speak,----- ?” The figure immediately
moved off towards the window at the farther end of the room, with
its eyes still gazing on her, and it passed so very close to her in
doing so, that she was struck by the circumstance of hearing no step
nor sound, nor feeling her clothes brushed against, nor even any
agitation in the air. Although she was now convinced that the figure
was not her husband, yet she never for a moment supposed that it
was anything supernatural, and was soon convinced that it was a
spectral illusion. The appearance was seen in bright daylight, and
lasted four or five minutes. When the figure stood close to her, it
•concealed the real objects behind it, and the apparition was fully as
vivid as the reality.
‘ 3. On these two occasions Mrs A. was alone, but when the next
phantasm appeared her husband was present. This took place on
the 4th of January 1831. About ten o’clock at night, when Mr and
Mrs A. were sitting in the drawing-room, Mr A. took up the poker
to stir the fire, and when he was in the act of doing this, Mrs A.
exclaimed : “Why, there’s the cat in the room !” “ Where?” asked
Mr A. “ There, close to you,” she replied. “ Where ?” he repeated.
“ Why, on the rug to be sure, between yourself and the coal-scuttle.”
Mr A., who had still the poker in his hand, pushed it in the direction
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�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
y
mentioned. “Take care,” cried Mrs A.; “take care, you are hitting
her with the poker.” Mr A. again asked her to point out exactly
where she saw the cat. She replied : “Why, sitting up there close
to your feet on the rug : she is looking at me. It is Kitty—come
here, Kitty ?” There were two cats in the house, one of which went
by this name, and they were rarely if ever in the drawing-room. At
this time Mrs A. had no idea that the sight of the cat was an illusion.
When she was asked to touch it, she got up for the purpose, and
seemed as if she were pursuing something which moved away. She
followed a few steps, and then said : “ It has gone under the chair.”
Mr A. assured her it was an illusion, but she would not believe it.
He then lifted up the chair, and Mrs A. saw nothing more of it..
The room was then searched all over, and nothing found in it. There was a dog lying on the hearth, which would have betrayed great
uneasiness if a cat had been in the room, but he lay perfectly quiet.
In order to be quite certain, Mr A. rung the bell, and sent for the
two cats, both of which were found in the housekeeper’s room.
‘ 4. About a month after this occurrence, Mrs A., who had taken
a somewhat fatiguing drive during the day, was preparing to go
to bed about eleven o’clock at night, and, sitting before the dressing
glass, was occupied in arranging her hair. She was in a listless
and drowsy state of mind, but fully awake. When her fingers were
in active motion among the papillotes, she was suddenly startled
by seeing in the mirror the figure of a near relation, who was then
in Scotland, and in perfect health. The apparition appeared over
her left shoulder, and its eyes met hers in the glass. After a few
minutes, she turned round to look for the reality of the form over
her shoulder; but it was not visible, and it had also disappeared
from the glass when she looked again in that direction.’
Passing over from the fifth to the ninth cases, we come to the
tenth. ‘ On the 26th of October, about two P.M., Mrs A. was sitting
in a chair by the window in the same room with her husband. He
heard her exclaim : ‘ What have I seen ! ’ And on looking at her,
he observed a strange expression in her eyes and countenance.
A carriage and four had appeared to her to be driving up the
entrance road to the house. As it approached, she felt inclined
to go up stairs to prepare to receive company, but, as if spell-bound,
she was unable to move or speak. The carriage approached, and
as it arrived within a few yards of the window, she saw the figures
of the postilions and the persons inside take the ghastly appearanceof skeletons and other hideous figures. The whole then vanished
entirely, when she uttered the above-mentioned exclamation.
‘11. On the morning of the 30th October, when Mrs A. was
sitting in her own room with a favourite dog in her lap, she distinctly
saw the same dog moving about the room during the space of about
a minute or rather more.
‘12. On the 3d December, about nine P.M., when Mr and Mrs
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�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
A. were sitting near each other in the drawing-room, occupied in.
reading, Mr A. felt a pressure on his foot. On looking up, he
observed Mrs A.’s eyes fixed with a strong and unnatural stare on
a chair about nine or ten feet distant. Upon asking her what she
saw, the expression of her countenance changed, and upon recover
ing herself, she told Mr A. that she had seen his brother, who was
alive and well at the moment in London, seated in the opposite chair,
but dressed in grave-clothes, and with a ghastly countenance, as
if scarcely alive 1
‘ From the very commencement of the spectral illusions,’ observes
Sir David in conclusion, ‘ both Mrs A. and her husband were well
aware of their nature and origin, and both of them paid the most
minute attention to the circumstances which accompanied them,
not only with the view of throwing light upon so curious a subject,
but for the purpose of ascertaining their connection with the state
of health under which they appeared.’
ILLUSIONS
FROM
DELIRIUM
TREMENS.
A bodily disorder, which in itself ought to afford a solution of
nearly all apparitions, is that called delirium tremens, or vulgarly
blue devils. This is most commonly induced, in otherwise healthy
subjects, by continued intemperance in intoxicating liquors. It is a
disorder intimately connected with a derangement of the digestive
functions. So long as the drinker can take food, he is comparatively
secure against the disease, but when his stomach rejects (jommon
nourishmept, and he persists in taking stimulants, the effects are
for the most part speedily visible, at least in peculiarly nervous
constitutions. The first symptom is commonly a slight impairment
of the healthy powers of the senses of hearing and seeing. A ringing
in the ears probably takes place; then any common noise, such
as the rattle of a cart on the street, assumes to the hearing a
particular sound, and arranges itself into a certain tune perhaps,
or certain words, which haunt the sufferer, and are by and by rung
into his ears on the recurrence of every noise. The proverb, ‘ As
the fool thinks, so the bell tinks,’ becomes very applicable in his
case. His sense of seeing, in the meanwhile, begins to shew equal
disorder; figures float before him perpetually when his eyes are
closed at night. By day also, objects seem to move before him
that are really stationary. The senses of touch, taste, and sfnell
are also involved in confusion. In this way the disturbance of
the senses goes on, increasing always with the disorder of the
alimentary function, until the unhappy drinker is at last visited,
most probably in the twilight, by visionary figures as distinct in
outline as living beings, and which seem to speak to him with the
voice of life. At first he mistakes them for realities; but, soon
discovering his error, is thrown into the deepest alarm. If he
14
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
has the courage to approach and examine any one of the illusory
figures, he probably finds that some fold of drapery, or some shadow,
has been the object converted by his diseased sense into the appari
tion, and he may also find that the voice was but- some simple house
hold sound, converted by his disordered ear into strange speech:
for the senses, at least in the milder cases of this sort, rather convert
than create, though the metamorphosed may differ widely from the
real substance. The visitations and sufferings of the party may
go on increasing, till he takes courage to speak to the physician,
who, by great care, restores his alimentary organs to a state of
health, and, in consequence, the visions slowly leave him. If, how
ever, remedies are not applied in time, the party will probably sink
under the influence of his disorder. The spectral figures and voices
being solely and entirely the creation of his own fancy, will seem
to do or say anything that may be uppermost in that fancy at
the moment, and will encourage him to self-murder by every possible
argument—all emanating, of course, from his own brain. The whole
consists merely of his own fancies, bodied forth to him visibly and
audibly in his seeing and hearing organs. His own poor head is
the seat of all; there is nothing apart from him—nothing but
vacancy.
Dr Alderson, a respectable physician, mentions his being called
to a keeper of a public-house, who was in a state of great terror, and
who described himself as having been haunted for some time with
spectres. He had first noticed something to be wrong with him on
being laughed at by a little girl for desiring her to lift some oyster
shells from the floor. He himself stooped, but found none. Sooh
after, in the twilight, he saw a soldier enter the house, and, not
liking his manner, desired him to go away; but receiving no answer,
he sprang forward to seize the intruder, and to his horror found the
shape to be but a phantom ! The visitations increased by night and
by day, till he could not distinguish real customers from imaginary
ones, so definite and distinct were the latter in outline. Sometimes
they took the forms of living friends, and sometimes of people long
dead. Dr Alderson resorted to a course of treatment which restored
the strength of the digestive organs, and gradually banished the
spectres.
,
ILLUSIONS FROM SEVERE DISORDERS.
Among the other varieties of bodily ailments affecting either
structure or function, which have been found to produce spectral
illusions, fevers, inflammatory affections, epileptic attacks, hysteria,
and disorders of the nerves generally, are among the most pro
minent. As regards fevers and inflammatory affections, particularly
those of the brain, it is well known to almost every mother or
member of a large family, that scarcely any severe case can occur
l5
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
without illusions of the sight to a greater or less extent. In hysteric
and epileptic cases also, where fits or partial trances occur, the same
phenomena are frequently observed. But we shall not enlarge on
the effects produced by the influence of severe and obviously exist
ing maladies, as it is in those cases only where the spectre-seer has
exhibited apparent sanity of mind and body that special wonder has
been excited. It is so far of great importance, however, to notice
that these diseases do produce the illusions, as in most cases it will
be found, on inquiry, that the party subject to them, however sound
to appearance at the time, afterwards displayed some of these
complaints in full force; and we may then rationally explain the
whole matter by supposing the seeds of the ailments to have early
existed in a latent state. A German lady, of excellent talents and
high character, published an account some years back of successive
visions with which she had been honoured, as she believed, by
Divine favour. The case of this lady throws so much light on
delusions arising from deranged temperament and kindred maladies,
that we take the liberty of extracting it from the interesting work of
Dr Hibbert.
‘The illusions which the lady experienced first came on in the
fourth year of her age, while she was sitting with her little doll upon
her knees; and, for the greater convenience of dressing and
undressing it, resting her feet upon a large folio Bible. “ I had
scarcely taken my place,” she observes, “ above a minute, when I
heard a voice at my ear say: ‘Put the book where you found it;’
but as I did not see any person, I did not do so. The voice, how
ever repeated the mandate, that I should do it immediately; and,
at the same time, I thought somebody took hold of my face. ' I
instantly obeyed with fear and trembling; but not being able to
lift the book upon the table, I called the servant-maid to come
quickly and assist me. When she came, and saw that I was alone
and terrified, she scolded me, as nobody was there.” It may be
remarked of this part of the account, that the voice which the
narrator heard can only be regarded as a renovated feeling of the
mind, resulting from some prior remonstrances that she might have
incurred from her protectors, whenever she treated with unbecoming
irreverence the holy volume ; while the impression of a person
taking hold of her face, may be referred to some morbid sensation
of touch, incidental to many nervous affections, which would easily
associate itself with the imaginary rebuke of her mysterious monitor,
so as to impart to the whole of the illusion a certain degree of
connection and consistency. The patient (for such I shall call her)
next describes the extreme diligence and the peculiar delight with
which, as she grew up in years, she read twice over, from the
beginning to the end, the pages of the Scriptures ; and she likewise
dwells upon her constant endeavour to render the Bible more
intelligible, by often hearing sermons and reading religious books.
16
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
It is certainly of importance to know the subject of her incessant
and anxious studies, as it is well calculated to explain the nature of
her visions, which, as we might expect, were generally of a religious
description. We are, in the next place, told by the lady, that after
she had reached her seventh year, she saw, when playing, a clear
flame which seemed to enter through the chamber door, while in
the middle of it was a long bright light about the size of a child of
six years old. The phantasm remained stationary for half an hour
near the stove of the room, and then went out again by the room
door ; the white light first, and the flame following it. After this
vision, we hear of no other until the lady is married, when, unfor
tunately, her husband made her life so bitter to her, that she could
think only of death. Hence must have necessarily arisen the
combining influence of strong mental emotions, which could not
but act as powerful exciting agents upon a frame the mental feelings
of which, from constitutional causes, were of the most intense kind.
Spectral illusions would of course become very frequent. Thus, on
one occasion, when she had received some ill-treatment from her
husband, she made a resolution to desist from prayer, thinking the
Lord had forsaken her; but, upon further consideration, she
repented of this purpose, and, after returning thanks to Heaven,
went to bed. She awakened towards the morning, and then, to her
astonishment, found that it was broad daylight, and that at her bed
side was seated a heavenly figure in the shape of a man about sixty
years of age, dressed in a bluish robe, with bright hair, and a
countenance shining like the clearest red and white crystal. He
looked at her with tenderness, saying nothing more than ‘■'■Proceed,
proceed, proceed!” These words were unintelligible to her, until
they were solved by another phantasm, young and beautiful as an
angel, who appeared on the opposite side of the bed, and more
explicitly added : “ Proceed in prayer, proceed in faith, proceed in
trials” After this incident, a strange light appeared, when she
immediately felt herself pulled by the hairs of her head, and pinched
and tormented in various ways. The cause of this affliction she
soon discovered to be the devil himself, who made his debut in
the usual hideous form under which he is personated, until at length
the angel interfered and pushed away the foul fiend with his elbow.
“Afterwards,” as the lady added, “the light came again, and both
persons looked mournfully at it. The young one then said : ‘ Lord,
this is sufficientand he uttered these words three times. Whilst
he repeated them, I looked at him, and beheld two large white
wings on his shoulders, and therefore I knew him to be an angel
of God. The light immediately disappeared, the two figures
vanished, and the day was suddenly converted into night. My
heart was again restored to its right place, the pain ceased, and I
arose.” ’
Dr Crichton, author of an able work on insanity, found that this
17
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
unfortunate lady was always affected with the aura epileptica during
the prevalence of the illusions ; or, in other words, that she was
labouring under slight attacks of epilepsy. Thus simply was
explained a series of phenomena which, from the high character
for veracity of the subject of them, astonished a great part of
Germany.
ILLUSIONS OF THE IMAGINATION.
Persons in a desponding or gloomy state of mind are exceedingly
liable to be deceived by their fancies. The morbid imagination
catches at every seemingly mysterious appearance, and transforms
it into a spectre, or warning of approaching dissolution. ‘ A man
who is thoroughly frightened,’ observes a popular American writer,
*
* can imagine almost anything. The whistling of the wind sounds
in his ears like the cry of dying men. As he walks along trembling
in the dark, the friendly guide-post is a giant; the tree gently waving
in the wind is a ghost; and every cow he chances to meet is some
fearful apparition from the land of hobgoblins. Who is there that
•cannot testify, from personal experience, of some such freaks of
imagination? How often does one wake up in the night and find the
clothes upon the chair, or some article of furniture in the room,
assuming a distinctly defined form, altogether different from that
which it in reality possesses!
‘ There is in imagination a potency far exceeding the fabled power
of Aladdin’s lamp. How often does one sit in wintry evening
musings, and trace in the glowing embers the features of an absent
friend! Imagination, with its magic wand, will there build the
city with its countless spires—or marshal contending armies
—or drive the tempest-shattered ship upon the ocean. The
following story, relate.d by Scott, affords a good illustration of
this principle :
‘ “ Not long after the death of a late illustrious poet, who had filled,
while living, a great station in the eye of the public, a literary friend,
to whom the deceased had been well known, was engaged, during
the darkening twilight of an autumn evening, in perusing one of the
publications which professed to detail the habits and opinions of the
distinguished individual who was now no more. As the reader had
enjoyed the intimacy of the deceased to a considerable degree, he
was deeply interested in the publication, which contained some
particulars relating to himself and other friends. A visitor was
sitting in the apartment, who was also engaged in reading. Their
sitting-room opened into an entrance-hall, rather fantastically fitted
up with articles of armour, skins of wild animals, and the like. It
was when laying down his book, and passing into this hall, through
• Scientific Tracts (Boston, 1832).
18
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
which the moon was beginning to shine, that the individual of whom
I speak saw right before him, in a standing posture, the exact repre
sentation of his departed friend, whose recollection had been so
strongly brought to his imagination. He stopped for a single
moment, so as to notice the wonderful accuracy with which fancy
had impressed upon the bodily eye the peculiarities of dress and
position of the illustrious poet. Sensible, however, of the delusion,
he felt no sentiment save that of wonder at the extraordinary accuracy
of the resemblance, and stepped onward towards the figure, which
resolved itself, as he approached, into the various materials of which
it was composed. These were merely a screen occupied by great
coats, shawls, plaids, and such other articles as are usually found in
a country entrance-hall. The spectator returned to the spot from
which he had seen the illusion, and endeavoured with all his power
to recall the image which had been so singularly vivid. But this he
was unable to do. And the person who had witnessed the appari
tion, or, more properly, whose excited state had been the means of
raising it, had only to return into the apartment, and tell his
young friend under what a striking hallucination he had for a
moment laboured.”
‘Most persons under such circumstances would have declared
unhesitatingly that the ghost of the departed had appeared to them,
and they would have found great multitudes who would have believed
it. When the imagination has such power to recall the images of
the absent, is it at all wonderful that many persons should attribute
such appearances to supernatural visitations? Had the poet himself
been in the place of the screen, he probably would not have been
more vividly present. How many, then, of the causes of vulgar fear
are to be attributed to the effect of imagination 1 A lady was once
passing through a wood, in the darkening twilight of a stormy
evening, to visit a friend who was watching over a dying child. The
clouds were thick—the rain beginning to fall; darkness was increas
ing ; the wind was moaning mournfully through the trees. The
lady’s heart almost failed her as she saw that she had a mile to walk
through the woods in the gathering gloom. But the reflection of
the situation of her friend forbade her turning back. Excited and
trembling, she called to her aid a nervous resolution, and pressed
onward. She had not proceeded far, when she beheld in the path
before her the movement of some very indistinct object. It appeared
to keep a little distance in advance of her, and as she made efforts
to get nearer to see what it was, it seemed proportionably to recede.
The lady began to feel rather unpleasantly. There was some pale
white object certainly discernible before her, and it appeared
mysteriously to float along at a regular distance, without any effort
at motion. Notwithstanding the lady’s good sense and unusual
resolution, a cold chill began to come over her. She made every
effort to resist her fears, and soon succeeded in drawing nearer the
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�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
mysterious object, when she was appalled at beholding the features
of her friend’s child, cold in death, wrapped in its shroud. She
gazed earnestly, and there it remained distinct and clear before her
eyes. She considered it a monition that her friend’s child was dead,
and that she must hasten on to her aid. But there was the apparition
directly in her path. She must pass it. Taking up a little stick,
she forced herself along to the object, and behold, some little animal
scampered away. It was this that her excited imagination had
transformed into the corpse of an infant in its winding-sheet. The
vision before her eyes was undoubtedly as clear as the reality could
have been. Such is the power of imagination. If this lady, when
she saw the corpse, had turned in terror and fled home, what
reasoning could ever have satisfied her that she had not seen some
thing supernatural? When it is known that the imagination has
such a power as this, can we longer wonder at any accounts which
are given of unearthly appearances ?’
The numerous stories told of ghosts, or the spirits of persons who
are dead, will in most instances be found to have originated in
diseased imagination, aggravated by some abnormal defect of mind.
We may mention a remarkable case in point; it is told by the com
piler of Les Causes Celebres. Two young noblemen, the Marquises
De Rambouillet and De Precy, belonging to two of the first families
of France, made an agreement, in the warmth of their friendship,
that the one who died first should return to the other with tidings of
the world to come. Soon afterwards, De Rambouillet went to the
wars in Flanders, while De Precy remained at Paris, stricken by a
fever. Lying alone in bed, and severely ill, De Precy one day heard
a rustling of his bed-curtains, and turning round, saw his friend De
Rambouillet in full military attire. The sick man sprung over the
bed to welcome his friend, but the other receded, and said that he
had come to fulfil his promise, having been killed on that very day.
He further said that it behoved De Precy to think more of the after
world, as all that was said of it was true, and as he himself would
die in his first battle. De Precy was then left by the phantom ; and
it was afterwards found that De Rambouillet had fallen on that day.
De Precy recovered, went to the wars, and died in his first combat.
Here, a'fter a compact—the very conception of which argues credu
lousness or weakness of mind—we not only have one of the parties
left in anxiety about the other, but left in a violent fever, and aware
that his friend was engaged in a bloody war. That a spectral illusion
should occur in such a case, is a thing not at all to be wondered at, as
little as the direction and shape that the sick man’s wanderings took.
The fulfilment of the prophecy is the point of interest; and regard
ing it we would simply use the words of Dr Hibbert, in referring to
the story of Lord Balcarras and Viscount Dundee. Lord Balcarras
was confined as a Jacobite in the castle of Edinburgh, while Dundee
was fighting for the same cause ; and on one occasion the apparition
20
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
of the latter came to the bedside of Balcarras, looked at him stead
fastly, leaned for some time on the mantel-piece, and then walked
away. It afterwards appeared that Dundee fell just about the time
at Killiecrankie. ‘ With regard to this point,’ says Dr Hibbert, ‘ it
must be considered that, agreeably to the well-known doctrine of
chances, the event [of Dundee’s death] might as well occur then as
at any other time ; while afar greater proportion of other apparitions,
less fortunate in such a supposed confirmation of their supernatural
origin, are allowed quietly to sink into oblivion? This observation
applies equally as well to the case of De Precy as to that of Balcarras,
each of whom knew that his friend was then hotly campaigning, and
could most probably even guess, from the latest bulletins, on what
day the hostile armies would decisively meet. We are not told
whether or not Balcarras, like De Precy, was in ill health, but the
Scottish lord was confined on a charge of high treason, and on
Dundee’s life or death, victory or defeat, the fate of the prisoner
must have been felt by himself to rest. This was enough to give his
lordship a vivid dream, and even to give him a waking portraiture of
Dundee, after the fashion of the bust of Curran case.
But though explanations may thus be given of the common run
of apparition cases, it may seem to some that there are particular
cases not to be so accounted for. Of this nature, such readers
may say, is the well-warranted story of the Irish lady of rank, who,
having married a second time, was visited in the night-time by the
spirit of her first husband, from whom she received a notification of
the appointed period of her own death. The lady was at first
terrified, but regained her courage. ‘ How shall I know to-morrow
mom,’ said she boldly to the spectre, ‘ that this is not a delusion of
the senses—that I indeed am visited by a spirit ?’ ‘ Let this be a
token to thee for life,’ said the visitant, and, grasping the arm of the
lady for an instant, disappeared. In the morning a dark mark, as
if of a fresh burn, was seen on the wrist, and the lady kept the scar
covered over while she lived. She died at the time prophesied.
This story is told with great unction by some memoir writers,
and the circumstances are said to have been long kept secret by
the lady’s family. For argument’s sake let us admit the most striking
points of the case to be true. As for the circumstance of her death
at the time foretold, it is well known how powerful imagination is in
causing fulfilment in these cases ; and at all events, one instance of
such a fulfilment is no great marvel amid hundreds of failures.
But the black mark—what of it ? We confess to the reader, that if
we had actually seen the scar upon the wrist of the lady, we should
not have been one step nearer to the admission of supernatural
agency. Supposing, however, that the mark actually existed, could it
not have been explained by somnambulism ? The lady may readily
have risen in her sleep, burnt her hand against the bedroom grate,
and, conscious of an unpleasing sensation, though not awakened by
2X
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
it, her fancy may have formed the whole story of the preternatural
visitation, precisely as the Irish mate of the merchant vessel in
vented the circumstances connected with the holy-water. When
we find that such an explanation of the matter is accordant with
observed and unquestionable facts, it would be irrational to over
look it, and seek a solution in a supposed breach of the laws of
nature.
In some instances, it may be difficult to decide whether spectral
appearances and spectral noises proceed from functional derange
ment or from an overwrought state of mind. Want of exercise and
amusement may also be a prevailing cause. A friend mentions to
us the following case. An acquaintance of his, a merchant in London,
who had for years paid a very close attention to business, was one
day, while alone in his counting-house, very much surprised to hear,
as he imagined, persons outside the door talking freely about him.
Thinking it was some acquaintances who were playing off a trick, he
opened the door to request them to come in, when, to his amazement,
nobody was there. He again sat down at his desk, and in a few
minutes the same dialogue recommenced. The language employed
was now very alarming. One voice seemed to say : ‘ We have the
scoundrel safe in his counting-house ; let us go in and seize him.’
‘ Certainly,’ replied the other voice ; ‘ it is right to take him ; he has
been guilty of a great crime, and ought to be brought to condign
punishment.’ Alarmed at these threats, the bewildered merchant
rushed to the door; and there again no person was to be seen. He
now locked his door and went home ; but the voices, as he thought,
followed him through the crowd, and he arrived at his house in a
most unenviable state of mind. Inclined to ascribe the voices to
derangement in mind, he sent for a medical attendant, and told his
case ; and a certain kind of treatment was prescribed. This, how
ever, failed: the voices menacing him with punishment for purely
imaginary crimes continued, and he was reduced to the brink of
despair. At length a friend prescribed entire relaxation from business,
and a daily game of cricket; which, to his great relief, proved an
effectual remedy. The exercise banished the phantom voices, and
they were no more heard.
In bygone times, when any kind of nonsense was believed without
investigation, the Lowland Scotch, as they alleged, occasionally saw
wraiths, or spectral appearances of persons who were soon to quit
this mortal scene ; the Irish were also accustomed to the spectacle
offetches; and the Highlanders had their second-sight; the whole,
be it observed, being but a variety of mental disease or some
kind of delusion. In some instances the appearances were a
result of atmospheric refraction, but generally they were nothing
more than the phantoms of a morbid and overexcited fancy. The
progress of education and intelligence has almost everywhere
banished such delusions.
28
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
ILLUSIONS
FROM
DERANGEMENT
OF
THE
EYES.
In our preliminary observations, it was shewn that spectral appear
ances produced by mental disorder were really formed or daguerreotyped on the eye; but an unsound state of the eye itself may
also cause these phantoms. Dr Abercrombie mentions two cases
strikingly illustrative of this fact. In one of these, a gentleman of
high mental endowments, and of the age of eighty, enjoying unin
terrupted health, and very temperate in his habits, was the person
subject to the illusions. For twelve years this gentleman had
daily visitations of spectral figures, attired often in foreign dresses,
such as Roman, Turkish, and Grecian, and presenting all varieties
of the human countenance, in its gradations from childhood to old
age. Sometimes faces only were visible, and the countenance of
the gentleman himself not unfrequently appeared among them.
One old and arch-looking lady was the most constant visitor, and
she always wore a tartan plaid of an antique cut. These illusory
appearances were rather amusing than otherwise, being for the most
part of a pleasing character. The second case mentioned by Dr
Abercrombie was one even more remarkable than the preceding.
‘ A gentleman of sound mind, in good health, and engaged in active
business, has all his life been the sport of spectral illusions, tosuch an extent that, in meeting a friend on the street, he has first
to appeal to the sense of touch before he can determine whether
or not the appearance is real. He can call up figures at will by
a steady process of mental conception, and the figures may either
be something real, or the composition of his own fancy? Another
member of the family was subject to the same delusive impressions.
These very curious cases indicate, we think, a defective condition,
of the retina, which may be held as one distinct and specific source
of spectral deceptions. That defective condition seems to consist
in an unusual sensitiveness, rendering the organ liable to have
figures called up upon it by the stimulus of the fancy, as if impressed
by actual external objects. In ordinary circumstances, on a friend
being vividly called to one’s remembrance, one can mentally form
a complete conception of his face and figure in their minutest
lineaments. ‘ My father ! ’ says Hamlet; ‘ methinks I see him now !’’
‘Where, my lord?’ ‘In my mind's eye, Horatio? In Hamlet’s
case, an apparition is described as having followed this delineation
by the memory, and so may a vivid impression of any figure or
object be transferred from the mind to the retina, where the latter
organ is permanently or temporarily in a weak or peculiarly sensitive
state. In this way the spectral illusions seem to have been
habitually caused in the two cases described. There the defect in
the retina was the fundamental or ultimate cause of their existence,
and the fancy of the individual the power which regulated their
23 •
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
frequency and character. Slighter cases of this nature are of com
paratively common occurrence—cases in which the retina is for a
short time so affected as to give the impression of an apparition.
Every one is aware that a peculiarly bright or shining object, if long
gazed upon, does not leave the retina as soon as the eye is with
drawn from it. It remains upon the nerve for a considerable time
afterwards, at least in outline, as may be observed by closing the
eyelids on such occasions. This retentive power, when aided by
the imagination, and perhaps by a little bodily derangement with
which the senses sympathise, may be carried so far as to produce
an actual and forcible spectral illusion. A gentleman, who had
gazed long and earnestly on a small and beautiful portrait of the
Virgin and Child, was startled, immediately on turning his eye
from the picture, by seeing a woman and infant at the other end
of his chamber of the full size of life. A particular circumstance,
however, disclosed in a moment the source of the appearance.
The picture was a three-parts length, and the apparitional figures
also wanted the lower fourth of the body, thus shewing that the
figures had merely been retained on the tablet of the eye. But
the retina may retain an impression much longer than in this case;
or rather may recall, after a considerable time, an impression that
has been very vividly made at the first. A celebrated oculist in
London mentioned to us that he had been waited on by a gentle
man who laboured under an annoying spectral impression in his
eye. He stated that, having looked steadfastly on a copy of the
Lord’s Prayer, printed in minute characters within a circle the size
of a sixpence, he had ever since had the impression of the Lord’s
Prayer in his eye. On whatever object he turned his organs of
vision, there was the small round copy of the Lord’s Prayer present,
and partly covering it.
It appears, then, from the cases described, that the eye, through
defectiveness of its parts, or through the power of the retina in
retaining or recalling vivid impressions, may itself be the main
agent in producing spectral illusions. From one particular circum
stance, we may generally tell at once whether or not the eye is the
organ in fault on such occasions. In Dr Abercrombie’s cases,
the spectral figures never spoke. This is equivalent to a positive
indication that the sense of hearing was not involved in the derange
ment ; in short, that the eye, and not the whole of the senses, or
general system, constituted the seat of the defect.
ILLUSIONS EXPLAINED BY PHRENOLOGY.
In previous sections, it has been stated that maladies of various
kinds are capable of producing spectral illusions by their effects on
the brain and nervous system. In some cases, it was stated that the
brain is directly diseased; in other cases, that the perceptions made
24
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
by that organ are only indirectly deranged by sympathy with some
bodily malady. Madness, for example, having its origin in diseased
cerebral structure, may be attended with spectral illusions ; and
disorder of the alimentary organs, caused by dissipation, may be an
indirect source of them; the senses, and the brain which forms per
ceptions through their reports, being functionally disordered from
sympathy. That a peculiar temperament of body, and, in part, a
particular mental constitution, are requisite to give a predisposition
to the affection, there can be little doubt. Some mental philosophers
go a great way further. The phrenologists hold that it is chiefly on
a particular development of one portion of the brain, which they
describe as the seat of the sentiment of Wonder, that the tendency
to see visions depends. It is observed by them that this ‘sentiment,
when in a state of extreme exaltation (great development and high
excitement), may stimulate the perceptive faculties to perceive objects
fitted to gratify it; and that spectres, apparitions, spirits, &c. are
the kind of ideas suited to please an inordinate Wonder.’ They
class pretenders to supernatural messages and missions, the seers of
visions and dreamers of dreams, and workers of miracles, among
such patients. Separating the remark just quoted from its reference
to the organology of the phrenological science, we may hold it to
signify that the sentiment of wonder, when predominant in an
individual’s mind, will stimulate those faculties which take cognizance
of the forms, colours, sizes, &c. of material existences, to such a
pitch of activity, that illusory perceptions of objects, characterised by
qualities fitted to gratify wonder, will be formed in the brain. The
following case, contributed by Mr Simpson to the Phrenological
Journal, No. 6, affords an interesting example of the manner in
which spectral illusions are accounted for by the strict rules of this
science.
‘Miss S. L., a young lady under twenty years of age, of good
family, well educated, free from any superstitious fears, and in perfect
general health of body and soundness of mind, has, nevertheless,
been for some years occasionally troubled, both in the night and in
the day, with visions of persons and inanimate objects, in numerous
modes and forms. She was early subject to such illusions occasion
ally, and the first she remembers was that of a carpet spread out in
the air, which descended near her, and vanished away.
‘ After an interval of some years, she began to see human figures
in her room as she lay wide awake in bed, even in the daylight of
the morning. These figures were whitish, or rather gray, and trans
parent like cobweb, and generally above the size of life. At this
time she had acute headaches, very singularly confined to one small
spot of the head. On being asked to point out the spot, the utmost
care being taken not to lead her to the answer, our readers may
judge of our feelings as phrenologists when she touched with her
forefinger and thumb each side of the root of the nose, the com
as
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
mencement of the eyebrows, and the spot immediately over the top
of the nose—the ascertained seats of the organs of Form, Size, and
Individuality! Here, particularly on each side of the robt of the
nose, she said the sensation could only be compared to that of
running sharp knives into the part. The pain increased when she
held her head down, and was much relieved by holding'her face
upwards. Miss S. L., on being asked if the pain was confined to
that spot, answered, that ‘ some time afterwards the pain extended
to right and left along the eyebrows, and a little above them, and
completely round the eyes, which felt often as if they would have
burst from their sockets.’ When this happened, her visions were
varied precisely as the phrenologist would have anticipated, and she
detailed the progress without a single leading question. Weight,
Colouring, Order, Number, Locality, all became affected-; and let us
■observe what happened. The whitish or cobweb spectres assumed
the natural colour of the objects, but they continued often to present
themselves, though not always, above th'e size of life. She saw a
beggar one day out of doors, natural in size and colour, who
vanished as she came up to the spot. Colouring being overexcited,
began to occasion its specific and fantastical illusions. Bright spots,
like stars on a black ground, filled the room in the dark, and even in
daylight; and sudden and sometimes gradual illumination of the
room during the night seemed to take place. Innumerable balls of
fire seemed one day to pour like a torrentjjout of one of the rooms
of the house down the staircase. On onefbccasion the pain between
the eyes, and along the lower ridge of l^te brow, struck her suddenly
with great violence—when instantly thfe room filled with stars and
bright spots. On attempting on that occasion to go to bed, she said
she was conscious of an inability to balance herself, as if she had
been tipsy; and she fell, having made repeated efforts to seize the
bedpost, which, in the most unaccountable manner, eluded her
grasp, by shifting its place, and also by presenting her with a number
of bedposts instead of one. If the organ of Weight, situated between
Size and Colouring, be the organ of the instinct to preserve, and
power of preserving equilibrium, it must be the necessary consequence
of the derangement of that organ to overset the balance of the person.
Overexcited Number we should expect to produce multiplication of
objects, and the first experience she had of this illusion was the
multiplication of the bedposts, and subsequently of any inanimate
object she looked at, that object being in itself real and single : a
book, a footstool, a work-box, would increase to twenty, or fifty,
sometimes without order or arrangement, and at other times piled
regularly one above another. Such objects deluded her in another
way, by increasing in size, as she looked at them, to the most
amazing excess—again resuming their natural size—less than which
they never seemed to become—and again swelling out Locality,
overexcited, gave her the illusion of objects, which she had been
26
1
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
accustomed to regard as fixed, being out of their places; and she
thinks, but is not sure, that on one occasion a door and window in
one apartment seemed to have changed places; but, as she added,
she might have been deceived by a mirror. This qualification gave
us the more confidence in her accuracy, when, as she did with regard
to all her other illusions, she spoke more positively. She had not
hitherto observed a great and painful confusion in the visions which
visited her, so as to entitle us to infer the derangement of Order.
Individuality, Form, Size, Weight, Colouring, Locality, and Number
only seemed hitherto affected.
. ‘For nearly two years Miss S. L. was free from her frontal head
aches, and—mark the coincidence—untroubled by visions or any
other illusive perceptions. Some months ago, however, all her
distressing symptoms returned in great aggravation, when she was
conscious of a want of health. The pain was more acute than before
along the frontal bone, and round and in the eyeballs; and all the
organs there situated recommenced their game of illusion. Single
figures of absent and deceased friends were terribly real to her, both
in the day and the night, sometimes cobweb, but generally coloured.
She sometimes saw friends on the street, who proved phantoms
when she approached to speak to them; and instances occurred
where, from not having thus satisfied herself of the illusion, she
affirmed to such friends that she had seen them in certain places,
at certain times, when they proved to her the clearest alibi. The
confusion of her spectral forms now distressed her. (Order affected.)
The oppression and perplexity was intolerable when figures presented
themselves before her in inextricable disorder, and still more when
they changed—as with Nicolai—from whole figures to parts of
figures, faces and half faces, and limbs—sometimes of inordinate
size and dreadful deformity. One instance of illusive disorder which
she mentioned is curious, and has the further effect of exhibiting
what cannot be put in terms, except those of the derangement of the
just perception of gravitation or equilibrium. (Weight.) One night,
as she sat in her bedroom, and was about to go to bed, a stream of
spectres, persons’ faces, and limbs, in the most shocking confusion,
seemed to her to pour into her room from the window, in the manner
of a cascade ! Although the cascade continued apparently in rapid
descending motion, there was no accumulation of figures in the room,
the supply unaccountably vanishing after having formed the cascade.
Colossal figures are her frequent visitors. (Size.)
‘Real but inanimate objects have assumed to her the form of
animals ; and she has often attempted to lift articles from the
ground, which, like the oysters in the pothouse cellar, eluded her
grasp.
‘ More recently, she has experienced a great aggravation of her
alarms ; for, like Nicolai, she began to hear her spectral visitors
speak! (The organs of Language and Tune, or Sound, affected.)
87
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
At first her crowds kept up a buzzing and indescribable gibbering,
and occasionally joined in a loud and terribly disagreeable laugh,
which she could only impute to fiends. These unwelcome sounds
were generally followed by a rapid and always alarming advance of
the figures, which often on those occasions presented very large and
fearful faces, with insufferable glaring eyes close to her own. All
self-possession then failed her, and the cold sweat of terror stood
on her brow. Her single figures of the deceased and absent then
began to gibber, and soon more distinctly to address her ; but terror
has hitherto prevented her from understanding what they said.
‘ She went, not very wisely, to see that banquet of demonology,.
Der Freischutz ; and of course, for some time afterwards, the dram
atis persona of that edifying piece, not excepting his Satanic
majesty in person, were her nightly visitors. Some particular
figures are persevering in their visits to her. A Moor, with a turban,
frequently looks over her shoulder, very impertinently, when she uses
a mirror.
‘ Of the other illusive perceptions of Miss S. L., we may mention
the sensation of being lifted up, and of sinking down and falling
forward, with the puzzling perception of objects off their perpendic
ular ; for example, the room, floor, and all, sloping to one side.
(Weight affected.)
‘ Colours in her work, or otherwise, long looked at, are slow to
quit her sight. She has noises in her head, and a sensation of heat
all over it; and, last of all, when asked if she ever experienced acute
pain elsewhere about the head than in the lower range of the fore
head, she answered that three several times she was suddenly affected
with such excruciating throbbing pain on the top of the head, that
she had almost fainted; and when asked to put her finger on the
spot, she put the points of each forefinger precisely on the organ of
Wonder, on each side of the coronal surface I’
In the same paper Mr Simpson adduces the singular illusive
perceptions suffered occasionally by Mr John Hunter, the great
anatomist, several of which are identical with Miss S. L.’s. In the
eighteenth and other numbers of the Phrenological Journal, other
cases of spectral illusions are mentioned, several with local pain,
which are held to corroborate the inferences drawn from that of Miss
S. L. But the case of that lady seems to us the most comprehensive
on the subject.
In a subsequent paper by Mr Simpson (in No. 7), the most brief
and satisfactory explanation of the illusions of the English OpiumEater is given. The forms and faces that persecuted him in millions
(Form diseased)—the expansion of a night into a hundred years
(Time)—his insufferable lights and splendours (Colour)—his descent
for millions of miles without finding a bottom (Weight or Resistance,
giving the feeling of support, diseased)—all described by him with
an eloquence that startled the public—are only aggravated illusions,
28
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
•due to his irregularities. It is extremely probable that the intoxi
cating gas affects the same organs.
ILLUSIONS FROM ARTIFICE.
Illusions from the use of phantasmagoria, magic lanterns, mirrors,
and other means of deception connected with professed jugglery,
need not here be more than alluded to. Illusions arising from the
alleged appearance of, and intercourse with, spirits, are of a different
kind, and a regular notice of such would form a dark chapter in the
history of our popular superstitions. In all ages, there have been
persons who lived by imposing on the vulgar, and pretending to
possess supernatural powers. Others, either through heedlessness or
a wanton spirit of mischief, have inflicted scarcely less injury on
society by terrifying children and weak-minded persons with tales of
ghosts and other spectral appearances. It is little more than a cen
tury since the metropolis was thrown into a state of extraordinary
excitement by the Cock Lane ghost; and as the history of this affair
will best illustrate the absurdity of this class of illusions, we may be
allowed to add it to our list of apparition anecdotes.
About the year 1759, Mr Kempe, a gentleman from the county of
Norfolk, came to reside with the sister of his deceased wife, in the
house of a Mr Parsons in Cock Lane, near Smithfield. The lady, it
appears, slept with a girl, the daughter of Parsons, and complained
of being disturbed with very unaccountable noises. From this or
some other cause, Mr Kempe and his sister-in-law removed to
another lodging in Bartlett Street. Here, unfortunately, the lady,
who passed by the name of Mrs Kempe, was attacked with small-pox,
and died ; and on the 2d of February 1760, her body was interred in
a vault in St John’s Church, Clerkenwell.
From this event two years elapsed, when a report was propagated
that a great knocking and scratching had been heard in the night at
the house of Parsons, to the great terror of all the family ; all methods
employed to discover the cause of it being ineffectual. This noise
was always heard under the bed in which lay two children, the
eldest of whom had slept with Mrs Kempe, as already mentioned,
during her residence in this house. To find out whence it proceeded,
Mr Parsons ordered the wainscot to be taken down ; but the knocking
and scratching, instead of ceasing, became more violent than ever.
The children were then removed into the two pair of stairs room,
whither they were followed by the same noise, which sometimes
continued during the whole night.
From these circumstances, it was apprehended that the house was
haunted ; and the elder child declared that she had, some time
before, seen the apparition of a woman, surrounded, as it were, by a
blazing light. But the girl was not the only person who was favoured
with a sight of this luminous lady. A publican in the neighbour29
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
hood, bringing a pot of beer into the house, about eleven o’clock at
night, was so terrified that he let the beer fall, upon seeing on the
stairs, as he was looking up, the bright shining figure of a woman,
which cast such a light that he could see the dial in the charityschool, through a window in that building. The figure passed by him,
and beckoned him to follow ; but he was too much terrified to obey
its directions, ran home as fast as possible, and was taken very ill.
About an hour after this Mr Parsons himself, having occasion to go
into another room, saw the same apparition.
As the knocking and scratching only followed the children, the
girl who had seen the supposed apparition was interrogated what
she thought it was like. She declared it was Mrs Kempe, who about
two years before had lodged in the house. On this information,
the circumstances attending Mrs Kempe’s death were recollected,
and were pronounced by those who heard them to be of a dark and
disagreeable nature. Suspicions were whispered about, tending to
inculpate Mr Kempe ; fresh circumstances were brought to light, and
it was hinted that the deceased had not died a natural death ; that,
in fact, she had been poisoned.
The knocking and scratching now began to be more violent; they
seemed to proceed from underneath the bedstead of the child, who
was sometimes thrown into violent fits and agitations. In a word,
Parsons gave out that the spirit of Mrs Kempe had taken possession
of the girl. The noises increased in violence, and several gentle
men were requested to sit up all night in the child’s room. On the
13th of January, between eleven and twelve o’clock at night, a
respectable clergyman was sent for, who, addressing himself to the
supposed spirit, desired that, if any injury had been done to the
person who had lived in that house, he might be answered in the
affirmative, by one single knock ; if the contrary, by two knocks.
This was immediately answered by one knock. He then asked
several questions, which were all very rationally answered in the
same way. Crowds now went to hear the ghost; among others, Dr
Johnson, ‘the Colossus of British literature,’ who was imposed on like
the rest. Many persons, however, would not be duped. Suspecting
a trick, with the sanction of the lord mayor, they set themselves
carefully to watch the movements of the girl. The supposed ghost
having announced that it would attend any gentleman into the vault
under St John’s Church, in which the body of Mrs Kempe was
entombed, and point out the coffin by knocking on the lid, several
persons proceeded to the vault accordingly, there to await the result.
On entering this gloomy receptacle at midnight, the party waited
for some time in silence for the spirit to perform its promise, but
nothing ensued. . The person accused by the ghost then went down,
with several others, into the vault, but no effect was perceived.
Returning to the bedroom of the girl, the party examined her closely,
but could draw no confession from her; on their departure, however,
30
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
towards morning, they arrived at the conviction that the girl possessed
the art of counterfeiting noises. Further examinations took place, and
ultimately it was discovered that she was a finished impostor. They
found that she had been in the habit of taking with her to bed a thin
and sonorous piece of wood, on which she produced the noises that
had deceived such crowds of credulous individuals. Parsons, who had
been privy to the plot for injuring the reputation of Mr Kempe, with
his daughter and several accomplices, were now taken into custody;
and after a trial before Lord Mansfield, were condemned to variousterms of imprisonment; Parsons being, in addition, ordered to stand,
in the pillory. Such was the termination of an affair which not
only found partisans among the weak and credulous, but' even stag
gered many men reputed for possessing sound understandings. A
worthy clergyman, whose faith was stronger than his reason, and
who had warmly interested himself in behalf of the reality of the
spirit, was so overwhelmed with grief and chagrin, that he did not
long survive the detection of the imposture.
CONCLUSION.
A word of advice may now be given in conclusion to those whoare subject to illusions of a spectral kind. If hysteria, epilepsy,
or any well-marked bodily affection be an accompaniment of these
illusions, of course remedial measures should be used which have
a reference to these maladies, and the physician is the party to be
applied to. If, however, no well-defined bodily ailment exists, a
word of counsel may be useful from ourselves. We believe that,
in general, spectral illusions are caused by disorders originating
in the alimentary system, and that the continued use of stimulating
liquors is to be most commonly blamed for the visitation. If the
patient is conscious that this- is the case, his path to relief lies open
before him. The removal of the cause will almost always remove
the effect. At the same time, the process of cure may be slow.
The imagination becomes morbidly active in such cases, and many
maintain the illusions after the digestive system is restored to order.
But this will not be the case long, for the morbidity of the imagina
tion does not usually survive, for any length of time, the restoration
of the sanity of the body. To effect a cure of the fundamental
derangement of the alimentary system, aperient medicines may be
used in the first instance, and afterwards tonics—nourishing food,
in small quantities, at the outset—and gentle but frequent exercise
in the open air. Last, but not least, for the cure of the sufferer
from spectral illusions, the indulgence in cheerful society is to be
recommended. Solitude infallibly nurses the morbidity of the
imagination. The notion that the use of ardent spirits should only
be dropped by degrees, is found to be a mistake. Even in instances
of the most inveterate drunkards, no harm follows from instantaneous
31
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
abstinence. Therefore, as a little too often leads to much in the
matter of drinking, those who would break off the practice should
not be over-indulgent to themselves, through fear of the consequences
•of change. If opium have been the cause of the illusions, a gradual
cessation from its use may be advisable.
Should the sufferer from spectral illusions be conscious of no error
as regards the use of stimulants or narcotics, some affection of
the brain may be suspected, and headaches will corroborate this
suspicion. . Local or general blood-letting will prove in most cases
the best remedy. Leeches or cupping may be tried in the first place,
and, if tried ineffectively, the lancet may then be employed.
With rdspect to the demonstrable truthfulness of stories of appari
tions, we consider that the whole may be referred to natural causes.
Let us think of the apparent reasons for the majority of spectral
communications, supposing them to be supernatural. Can we deem
it accordant with the dignity of that great Power which orders
the universe, that a spirit should be sent to warn a libertine of
his death ? Or that a spiritual messenger should be commissioned
to walk about an old manor-house, dressed in a white sheet, and
dragging clanking chains, for no better purpose than to frighten
old women and servant-girls, as said to be done in all hauntedchamber cases? Or that a supernatural being should be charged
with the notable task of tapping on bed-heads, pulling down plates,
and making a clatter among tea-cups, as in the case of the Stockwell ghost, and a thousand others ? The supposition is monstrous.
If to any one inhabitant of this earth—a petty atom, occupying a
speck of a place on a ball which is itself an insignificant unit among
millions of spheres—if .to such a one a supernatural communication
was deigned, certainly it would be for some purpose worthy, of the
all-wise Communicator, and fraught with importance to the recipient
of the message, as well, perhaps, as to his whole race.
32
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�
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KJ 4^
MODERN SCIENCE
AND MODERN THOUGHT
BY
S. LAING
AUTHOR OF “PROBLEMS OF THE FUTURE," »A MODERN ZOROASTRIAN,” “HUMAN ORIGINS,’’ ETC.
WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ON THE AUTHOR BY
EDWARD CLODD
*
■
*
(ISSUED FOR THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, Ltd.)
LONDON
WATTS AND CO., 17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.
��INTRODUCTORY NOTE
The career of the author of this book was long, varied, and distinguished.
His father, Samuel Laing, after service in the Peninsular War, became, on the
death of an elder brother, Malcolm Laing, who was author of a meritorious
“ History of Scotland,” owner of the family estates in Orkney, where, for a time,
he developed the kelp industry with success. He is remembered as the author of
“Travels in Sweden and Norway,” which may still be read with advantage for its
trustworthy sketches of the general conditions of life in Scandinavia sixty years
ago. But, from the standpoint of scholarship, he did more valuable work in
translating the “ Heimskringla,” or chronicles of the kings of Norway, compiled in.
the twelfth century by an Icelandic poet-historian, Snorri Sturleson. The lyrical
portions of this old saga were translated by the subject of this brief notice.
After some vicissitudes of fortune, the father settled in Edinburgh, where
Samuel Laing was bom on 17th December, 1811. That is the date given by his
friend Mr. C. C. Macrae, in a privately-printed memoir issued in 1899, and may
be accepted as against the date 12th December, 1812, which is given in the
“ Dictionary of National Biography.”1 His education.was begun at Houghton-leSpring Grammar School, whence he passed as a “ pensioner” (the term means one
who pays for his commons out of his own income) to St. John’s College, Cambridge.
He graduated as second wrangler and second Smith’s prizeman, and in 1834 was
elected a Fellow of his College. For three years he was a mathematical “ coach,” and
in June, 1837, was called to the bar, where his acumen seized an opening as counsel
in connection with the many railway schemes then agitating the community. The
place and prominence which he thus secured led to his start in political life as
secretary to Mr. Henry Labouchere (afterwards Lord Taunton) who was then
(1839) President of the Board of Trade, and in the following year he was appointed
Counsel to the newly created Railway Department of that Board. Insistence on
the detail of the enormous volume of work which this involved is needless here,
but an example of its onerous nature may be cited from Mr. Macrae. “ In one
session, 1845, the Board reported on 331 separate Bills for various railways, and
on these no less than 240 separate reports were presented, each of which, supplying
’In the ninth edition of “ Men of the Time” (1875) the date 1810 is given.
�vi
INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
exhaustive analyses and criticisms, was entirely drafted by Mrs Laing.” His
reputation as a great railway administrator was yet to be made, but his influence
was manifest in many ways, notably in securing the daily running of the
“ Parliamentary ” or penny a mile trains, and it is admitted that had his counsels
been heeded, the results of the crisis which followed the wild railway speculation!
of that time would have been less disastrous.
In 1848, he accepted the Chairmanship and Managing Directorship of the
London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway, a position which, in the first instance,
he held till 1855. Three years before his retirement therefrom he entered Parliament
as Liberal member for Wick, but in 1857 his farsighted and creditable opposition
to the war against China cost him his seat. Two years afterwards he regained it,
becoming in June, 1860, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, a position which was
exchanged for the important post of Finance Minister of India, in succession to
the eminent economist James Wilson, father-in-law of Walter Bagehot, a man
never to be named without words of regret for the grievous loss to literature and
economics which his early death involved. Wilson had been carried-off by
dysentery in August, 1860, and Samuel Laing’s reputation marked him as the
fittest man to continue the task of reform rendered necessary by the financial
disorganisation into which the Mutiny and other serious causes had thrown the
revenue and expenditure of India. By prudent economies and readjustment of
taxes, Laing converted a deficit into a surplus, but the laborious work so told upon
his health that his return to England was compulsory. In 1865 he re-entered
Parliament, and in 1867 resumed his old position as Chairman of the Brighton
Railway, from which he retired only three years before his death, which occurred on
the 6th August, 1897. He lost his seat in 1868, and four years passed before he
was back at St. Stephen’s; this time as representative of Orkney and Shetland, for
which constituency he sat until his final retirement from political life in 1885.
It was then, when most men have warrant for margin of rest as fringe to
an active career, that Samuel Laing began the writing of a series of volumes
popularising the discoveries of modern science and the conclusions based on
those discoveries. Of these, “ Modern Science and Modern Thought ” was the
earliest, and remains the most acceptable. The veteran author wrote with no
prentice hand. .From time to time he had published pamphlets on political and
social questions ; his long training in the drafting of reports, and in the clear and
compendious presentment of abstruse matters, was enviable qualification for the
self-imposed task of his old age. Hence his skilful disentanglement of essentials
from accidentals, and of the general from the particular, rendered his books as
useful as they were opportune. Some twenty years before this he had done good
and original work in science. Under the title of “ Prehistoric Remains in
Caithness,” he published, in 1866, an account of stone implements, rude pottery,
human and other bones found in “kists ” in burial mounds, and in “middens ” or
shell-refuse heaps, in the neighbourhood of Keiss Castle. To this Professor Huxley
�INTRODUCTORY NOTE
vii
added a supplement of fifty pages, describing and illustrating the human skulls,
nine in all, and other portions of skeletons, some of which were grouped as
Thaymn or pre-Celtic. Mr. Laing expressed an opinion, warranted by the split
bones discovered among miscellaneous witnesses of feasting, that “ these aboriginal
savages were occasionally cannibals.
His interest in science was, therefore, no new-born thing, and the prominence
given to the human theme in all his books was the sequence (interrupted by
the claims of important commercial undertakings on his time) of years of
observation, of reading, and of reflection.
The main part of the book now
reprinted deals with man physically and psychically, and the titles of three out of
its four successors—namely, “A Modern Zoroastrian ” (1887), Antiquity of
Man” (1891), and “Human Origins” (1892)—evidence what a foremost place
the large question of man’s evolution and destiny filled in his mind.
The first part of “ Modern Science and Modern Thought ” is now sub
jected only to such revision as is required by the advance of knowledge during
the last seventeen years. The portions thus affected are those dealing with the
continuity of Palaeolithic and Neolithic man in Continental Europe; with the
recent discovery of remains, probably of an intermediate form between man and
ape, in Java ; and with the remarkable discoveries in Babylonia, which appear to
accord to that empire an earlier civilisation than that of Egypt. But the general
conclusions, as stated by the venerable author, are strengthened by the newer
evidence. In the second part, only a few verbal corrections have been made,'
since the arguments which are therein advanced against the theory of the
supernatural origin of the several documents making-up the New Testament, and,
consequently, against the claims as to revelation advanced on its behalf, need
neither addition or revision. And for the rest, we have the author’s confession of j
faith, and sage remarks on motives to right conduct, making appeal to minds of
the most opposite beliefs in a spirit which must ensure sympathy, if it does not
win assent.
The writer of this note had not the advantage of Samuel Laing’s personal
acquaintance, and it is, therefore, permissible to draw upon Mr. Macrae’s memoir
for some presentment of the man.
“He had the healthy body as well as the healthy mind; from youth till
advanced age he delighted in all field sports. He was fond of good art and music ;
his tastes in both were classical and old-fashioned.
Beethoven and the Italian
Operatic composers were his favourites; ‘ but he could not tolerate the formless
ness of the modern school led by Wagner.’ His conversation had distinction; he
detested gossip and idle talk. He had a retentive memory, and- ‘his accuracy,
even to historical details, was astonishing.’ His favourite authors were Scott and
Tennyson; in latter life, however, his reading was mainly restricted to scientific
books. His charities, always unostentatious, ‘ were, in proportion to his means,
liberal,’ and their variety manifested his toleration. Open-minded, he harboured
�INTRODUCTORY NOTE
viii
never a prejudice : nor was his equanimity ever ruffled, ‘ so that the idea of a Stoic
sage had become with him a habit of daily life and conduct.’ ... ‘He believed
in the people—in the masses—in their broad common-sense and honest judgment on
large questions which they understood, and it was mainly to their instruction
that he looked in the books that he wrote. His ideals were a plain, simple manner
of life, manly conduct and honest- work. His own long life was throughout an
example of these things, and as he had lived, so he continued to the end.’ ”
Edward Clodd.
June 21 st, 1902.
�AUTHOR’S PREFACE
The object of this book is to give a clear and concise view of the principal
Jesuits of Modern Science, and of the revolution which they have effected in
Modern Thought. I do not pretend to discover fresh facts or to propound new
theories, but simply to discharge the humbler though still useful task of present
ing what has become the common property of thinking minds, in a popular shape,
which may interest those who lack time and opportunity for studying special
subjects in more complete and technical treatises.
I have endeavoured also to give unity to the subjects treated of, by connecting
them with leading ideas; in the case of Science, that of the gradual progress
from human standards to those of almost infinite space and duration, and the
prevalence of law throughout the universe to the exclusion of supernatural inter
ference; in the case of Thought, the bearings of these discoveries on old creeds
and philosophies, and on the practical conduct of life. The endeavour to show
how much of religion can be saved from the shipwreck of theology has been the
main object of the second part. Those who are acquainted with the scientific
literature of the day will at once see how much I have been indebted to Darwin,
Lyell, Lubbock, Huxley, Proctor, and other well-known writers. In fact, the
first part of this book does not pretend to be more than a compendious popular
abridgment of their works. I prefer, therefore, acknowledging my obligations to
them once for all, rather than encumbering each page by detailed references.
The second part contains more of my own reflections on the important sub.
jects discussed, and must stand or fall on its own merits rather than on authority.
I can only say that I have endeavoured to treat these subjects in a reverential
spirit* and that the conclusions arrived at are the result of a conscientious and
dispassionate endeavour to arrive' at the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth.”
��CONTENTS
PART I
MODERN
SCIENCE
CHAPTER I
PAGE
1
Comets, and Meteors—Has acted through all Time.
CHAPTER II
8
Modern Thought.
CHAPTER III
19
Sd Motion-Conservation of Energy-Electricity, Magnetism, and Chemical Action
_ Dissipation of Heat—Birth and Death of Worlds.
CHAPTER IV
29
L
-n
f
t
<51Tnr>lpqt Form Protoplasm—Monera and Protista—Animal and
VeZabh°f ?'ri“
'T’f or
Supernatural Theory-Zoological Provinces-Separate Creations-Law ’::
OpHs
MSde-DarwSn Theory-Struggle for Life-Survival of the Fittest-Development
and Design—The Hand—Proof required to establish Darwin s Theory as a Law
Species—Hybrids—Man subject to Law.
CHAPTER V
39
ANTIQUITY OF MAN..........................................................................................................
.
„
„
a
,
■Rplipf in Man’s Recent Origin—Boucher de Perthes’ Discoveries—Confirmed by
moth, etc.—Human Types—Neanderthal, SPY’^^^^Dwdfings^lacia^
—Bronze Age—Neolithic—Danish Kitchen-middens—Swiss Lake-Dwellings Glacial
Period—Traces of Ice—Causes of Glaciers-Croll’s Theory-Gulf Stream-Dates of
Glacial Period-Rise and Submergence of Land-Tertiary Man-Eocene PenodMiocene—Evidence for Pliocene and Miocene Man—Conclusions as to Antiquity.
�xii
CONTENTS
CHAPTER VI
man’s place in nature...............................................
Origin of Man from an Egg—Like other Mammals—Development of the EmbryoBackbone—Eye and other Organs*of Sense—Fish, Reptile, and Mammalian Stages—
Comparison with Apes and Monkeys—Germs of Human Faculties in Animals—The
Dog-Insects—Helplessness of Human Infant-Instinct-Heredity and EvolutionThe Missing Link—Races of Men—Leading Types and Varieties—Common Origin
Distant-Language-How formed-Grammar-Chinese, Aryan, Semitic, etc.-Con
clusions from Language-Evolution and Antiquity-Religions of Savage RacesGhosts and Spirits—Anthropomorphic Deities—Traces in Neolithic and Palaeolithic
limes—Development by Evolution—Primitive Arts—Tools and Weapons-Fire—
Hint Impiements—Progress from Paleolithic to Neolithic Times—Domestic Animals
—Clothing—Ornaments—Conclusion, Man a Product of Evolution
PASS
65
<
PART II
MODERN
THOUGHT
CHAPTER VII
MODERN THOUGHT
....................................................................
83
Lines from Tennyson-The Gospel of Modern Thought—Change exemplified by
Carlyle, Renan, and George Eliot—Science becoming Universal—Attitude of
Orthodox Writers—Origin of Evil—First Cause unknowable—New Philosophies and
Religions—Herbert Spencer and Agnosticism—Comte and Positivism—PessimismMormonism—Spiritualism—Dreams and Visions—Somnambulism—Mesmerism.
CHAPTER VIII
Q2
MIRACLES..............................................
Origin of Belief in the Supernatural—Thunder—Belief in Miracles formerly Universal
—St. Pauls Testimony—Now Incredible—Christian Miracles—Apparent Miracles—
Beal Miracles—Absurd Miracles—-Worthy Miracles—The Resurrection and Ascension
mK tU/^e °* ®v’^ence required—Inspiration—Prophecy—Direct Evidence—St Paul
—The Gospels—What is Known of Them—The Synoptic Gospels—Resemblances and
Differences—Their Origin—Papias—Gospel of St. John—Evidence rests on Matthew,
Mark, and Luke—What each states—Compared with one another and with St John
—Hopelessly Contradictory—Miracle of the Ascension—Silence of Mark—Probable
Early Date of Gospels—But not in their Present Form.
CHAPTER IX
CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT MIRACLES........................................................................................................................
Practical and Theoretical Christianity—Example and Teaching of Christ—Christian
Dogma—Moral Objections—Inconsistent with Facts—Must be accepted as Parables—
Fall and Redemption—Old Creeds must be Transformed or Die—Mahometanism_
Decay of Faith—Balance of Advantages—Religious Wars and Persecutions_ In
tolerance—Sacrifice—Prayer—Absence of Theology in Synoptic Gospels—Opposite
Pole to Christianity—Courage and Self-reliance—Belief in God and a Future LifeBased mainly on Christianity—Science gives no Answer—Nor Metaphysics—So-called
Intuitions—Development of Idea of God—Best Proof afforded by Christianity—
Evolution is Transforming it—Reconciliation of Religion and Science.
CHAPTER X
PRACTICAL LIEB........................................................................................................................................................................
Conscience—Right is Right—Self-reverence—Courage—Respectability—Influence of
Press—Respect for Women—Self-respect of Nations—Democracy and Imperialism—•
Self-knowledge—Conceit—Luck—Speculation—Money-making—Practical Aims of
Life—Self-control—Conflict of Reason and Instinct—Temper—Manners—Good Habits
in Youth—Success in Practical Life—Education—Stoicism—Conclusion.
113
�MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
PART I.—MODERN SCIENCE
CHAPTER I
SPACE
Ideas—Natural Standards—Dimensions of the Earth— Of Sun and Solar
System—Distance of Fixed Stars—Their
Order and Size—Nebulae and other Universes—The Telescope and the Infinitely
Great—The Microscope and the Infinitely
Small—Uniformity of Law—Law of Gravity
-«-Acts through all Space—Double Stars,
Comets, and Meteors—Has acted through
all Time.
The first ideas of space were naturally
taken from the standard of man’s own
impressions. The inch, the foot, the cubit,
the fathom, were the lengths of portions
of his own body, obviously adapted for
measuring objects with which he came in
direct contact. The mile was the dis
tance traversed in 1,000 double paces; the
league the distance walked in an hour.
The visible horizon suggested the idea
that the earth was a flat, circular surface
like a round table; and as experience
shewed that it extended beyond the
limits of a single horizon, the conception
was enlarged and the size of the table
increased so as to take in all the countries
known to the geography of successive
periods.
In like manner the sun, moon, and
stars were taken to be at the distance at
which they appeared ; that is, first of the
•visible horizon, and then of the larger
circle to which it had been found neces:sary to expand it. It was never doubted
that they really revolved, as they seemed
to do, round this flat earth circle, dipping
under it in the west at night, and re,appealing in the east with the day. The
conception of the universe, therefore,
was of a flat, circular earth, surrounded
by an ocean stream, in the centre of a
crystal sphere which revolved in twenty*
four hours round the earth, and in which
the heavenly bodies were fixed as lights
for man’s use to distinguish days and
seasons. The maximum idea of space was
therefore determined by the size of th#
earth circle which was necessary to takein all the regions known at the time, with
a little margin beyond for the ocean
stream, and the space between it and the
crystal vault, required to enable the latter
to revolve freely. In the time of Homer,
and the early Greek philosophers, this
would probably require a maximum of
space of from 5,000 to 10,000 miles. This
dimension has been expanded by modern
science into one of as many millions, or
rather hundreds of millions, as there were
formerly single miles, and there is no sign
that the limit has been reached.
How has this wonderful result been
attained, and how do we feel certain that
it is true ? Those who wish thoroughly
to understand it must study standard
works on Astronomy, but it may be
possible to give some clear idea of the
processes by which it has been arrived
at, and of the cogency of the reasoning
by which we are compelled to accept
facts so contrary to the first impressions
of our natural senses.
The fundamental principle upon which
all measurements of space, which are
beyond the actual application of human
standards, depend, is this : that distant
objects change their bearings for a given
change of base, more or less in propor
tion as they are less or more distant.
�2
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
Suppose I am on. board a steamer’ sailing
down the Thames, and I see two churches
on the Essex coast directly opposite to
me, or bearing due north, the first of
which is one mile, and the other ten miles,
distant. I sail one mile due east and
again take the bearings. It is evident
that the first church will now bear north
west, or have apparently moved through
45 , i.e., one-eighth part of the circumfer
ence of a complete circle, assuming this
circumference to be divided into 360 equal
parts or degrees ; while the more distant
church will only have altered its bearing
by a much less amount, easily determined
by calculation, but which may be taken
roughly at 5° instead of 45°.
The branch of mathematics known as
Trigonometry enables us in all cases,
without exception, where we know the
apparent displacement or change of bear
ing of a distant object produced by taking
it from the opposite ends of a known base,
to calculate the distance of that object
with as much ease and certainty as if we
were working a simple sum of rule of
three. The first step is to know our base,
and for this purpose it is essential to
know the size and form of the earth on
which we live. These are determined by
very simple considerations.
If I walk a mile in a straight line, an
object at a vast distance like a star will
not change its apparent place perceptibly.
But if I walk the same distance in a semi
circle, what was originally on my left
hand will now be on my right, or will
have changed its apparent place by 180°.
If I walk my mile on the circumference
of a circle of twice the size, I shall have
traversed a quadrant or one-fourth part
of it, and changed the bearing of the
distant object exactly half as much, or
90°, and so on, according to the size of
the circle, which may therefore be readily
calculated from the length that must be
travelled along it to shift the bearing of
the remote object by a given amount,
say of 1°.
’
If, for instance, by travelling 65 miles
from north to south we lower the ap
parent height of the Pole star 1°, it is
mathematically certain that we have
travelled this 65 miles, not along a flat
surface, but along a circle which is 360
times 65, or, in round numbers, 24,000
miles in circumference and 8,000 miles in
diameter. And if, whenever we travel
the same distance on a meridian or line
drawn on the circumference from north
to south, we find the same displacement
of 1°, we may be sure that our journey
has been in a true circle, and that the
form of the earth is a perfect sphere of
these dimensions.
�SPACE
Now, this is very nearly what actually
occurs when we apply methods of scientific accuracy to measure the earth. The
true form of the earth is not exactly
spherical, but slightly oval or flatter at the
poles, being almost precisely the form it
would have assumed if it had been a fluid
XftMS rotating about a north and south
axis. But it is very nearly spherical, the
true polar diameter being 7,899 miles,
and the true equatorial diameter 7,926
miles, so that for practical purposes we
may say roughly that the earth is a
spherical body, 24,000 miles round and
8,000 miles across.
This gives us a fresh standard from
which to start in measuring greater
distances. Precisely as we inferred the
distance of the church from the steamer
in our first illustration, we can infer the
distance of the sun from its displacement
caused by observing it from two opposite
ends of a base of known length on the
garth’s surface. This is the essential
principle of all the calculations, though
when great accuracy is sought for, very
refined methods of applying the principle
are required, turning mainly on the
extent to which the apparent occurrence
of the same event—such as the transit of
Venus over the sun’s disc—is altered by
observing it from different points at
known distances from one another on
the earth’s surface. The result is to show
that the sun’s distance from the earth is,
in round numbers, 93,000,000 miles. This
is not an exact statement, for the earth’s
orbit is not an exact circle, but the sun
and earth really revolve in ellipses about
the common centre of gravity. The sun,
however, is so much larger than the earth
that this centre of gravity falls within
the sun’s surface, and, practically, the
earth describes an ellipse about the sun,
the 93,000,000 miles being the mean distance, and the eccentricity or deviation
irom the exact circular orbit, being about
one-sixtieth part of that mean distance.
This distance, again, gives us the size of
the sun, for it is easily calculated how
large the sun must be to look as large as it
does at a distance of 93,000,000 miles.
The result is, that it is a sphere of about
865,000 miles in diameter. Its bulk, there
fore, exceeds that of the earth in the pro
portion of 1,300,000 to 1. Its density, or
the quantity of matter in it, may be
calculated from the effect of its action on
the earth under the law of gravity at the
3
distance of 93,000,000 miles. It weighs
as much as 332,000 earths.
The same method gives us the distance,
size, and weight of the moon and planets;
and it gives us a fresh standard or base
from which to measure still greater dis
tances. The distance of the earth from the
sun being 93,000,000 miles, and its orbit
an ellipse nearly circular, it follows that
it is in mid-winter, in round numbers,
186,000,000 miles distant from the spot
where it was at midsummer. What
difference in the bearings of the fixed
stars is caused by traversing this enor
mous base ?
The answer is, in the immense majority
of cases, no difference at all; i.e., their dis
tance is so vastly greater than 186,000,000
miles that a change of base to this extent
makes no change perceptible to the most
refined instruments in their bearings as
seen from the earth. But the perfection
of modern instruments is such, that a
change of even one second, or g/g^th part
of one degree, in the annual parallax, as
it is called, of any fixed star, would
certainly be detected.
This corresponds to a distance of 206,265
times the length of the base of 186,000,000
miles, or of 20,000,000,000,000 miles,
a distance which it would take light)
moving at the rate of 186,000 miles per
second, three years and eighty-three days
to traverse. There is only one star in
the whole heavens, a bright star called
Alpha, in the constellation of the Centaur,
which is known to be as near as this. Its
annual parallax is 0'976", or very nearly
1", and therefore its distance very nearly
20 millions of millions of miles. All the
other stars, of which many millions are
visible through powerful telescopes, are
further off than this.
There are about eight other stars which
have been estimated by astronomers to
give indications of an annual parallax of
less than half a second, and therefore
whose distances may be somewhere from
twice to ten times as great as that of
Alpha Centauri. From the quantity of
light sent to us from these distances,
some approximation has been made to
their intrinsic splendour as compared
with our sun. That of Alpha Centauri
is computed to be nearly 2| times ; that
of Sirius, the brightest star in the
heavens, 393 times ; greater than that of
the sun. These figures may or may not
represent greater size or greater intensity
B 2
�4
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
of light, and they are quoted only to give
some idea of the vastness of the scale of
the universe of which our solar system
forms a minute part.
Nor does even this nearly fathom the
depth of the abysses of space. Telescopes
enable us to see a vast multitude of stars
of varying size and brilliancy. It is com
puted by astronomers that'there are at
least one hundred millions of stars within
the range of the telescopes used by
Herschel for gauging the depth of space,
and a thousand millions within the range
of the great reflecting telescope of Lord
Bosse. As many as eighteen different
orders of magnitude have been counted,
and the more the power of telescopes is
increased the more stars are seen. Now,
as there is no reason to suppose that this
extreme variety of brilliancy arises from
extreme difference of size of one star
from another, it must be principally
owing to difference of distance, so that a
star of the eighteenth magnitude is pre
sumably many times further off than any
of the first magnitude, the distance of
the nearest of which has been proved to
be something certainly not less than
20,000,000,000,000 miles. In fact, these
stellar distances are so great that in
order to bring them at all within the
range of human imagination we are
obliged to apply another standard, that
of the velocity of light. Light can be
shown to travel at the rate of about 178
millions of miles in 16 minutes, for this
is the difference of the time at which we
see the same periodical occurrence, as for
instance the eclipses of Jupiter’s satel
lites, according as the earth happens to
be at the point of its orbit nearest to
Jupiter, or at that farthest away. The
velocity of light is therefore about
186,000 miles per second, a velocity which
has been fully confirmed by direct ex
periments made on the earth’s surface.
These enormous distances are reckoned,
therefore, by the number of years which
it would take light to come from them,
travelling as it does at the rate of
186,000 miles a second. The nearest fixed
star, Alpha Centauri, is seen by a ray
which left it three years and eighty-three
days ago, and has been travelling ever
since at the rate of 186,000 miles per
second. Sirius, the brightest of the fixed
stars, if the determination of its annual
parallax, is correct, is six times further
off, and is seen, not as it exists to-day,
but as it existed nearly twenty years
ago ; and the light we now see from some
of the stars of the eighteenth magnitude
can hardly have left them less than 2,000
years ago.
Even this, however, is far from ex
hausting our conception of the magnitude
of space. Beyond the stars which are
near enough to be seen separately, power
ful. telescopes show a galaxy in which the
united lustre of myriads of stars is only
perceptible as a faint nebulous gleam.
And in addition to stars the telescope
shows us a number of nebulae, or faint
patches of. light, sometimes globular,
sometimes in wreaths, spiral wisps, and
other fantastic shapes, scattered about
the heavens. Some of these are resolved
by powerful telescopes into clusters of
stars inconceivably numerous and re
mote, which appear to be separate
universes, like that of which our sun and
fixed stars form one. Others again
cannot be so resolved, and are shown by
the spectroscope to be enormous masses
of glowing gas, or cosmic matter, out of
which other universes are in process of
formation.
We are thus led, step by step, to enlarge
our ideas of space from the primitive
conception of miles and leagues, until
the imagination fails to grasp the infinite
vastness of the scale upon which the
material universe is really constructed.
If the telescope takes us thus far
beyond the standards of unaided sense in
the direction of the infinitely great,
the microscope, aided by calculations as
to the nature of light, heat, electricity,
and chemical action, takes us as far in
the opposite direction of the infinitely
small. The microscope enables us actu
ally to see magnitudes of the order of
Too&ooJh of an inch as clearly as the
naked eye can see those of Wth. This
introduces us into a new world, where we
can see a whole universe of things both
dead and alive of whose existence our
forefathers had no suspicion. A glass of
water is seen to swarm with life, and be
the abode of bacteria, amoebae, rotifers,
and other minute creatures, which dart
about, feed, digest, and propagate their
species in this small world of their own,
very much as jelly-fish and other humble
organisms do in the larger seas. The air
also is shown to be full of innumerable
germs and spores floating in it, and ready
to be deposited and spring into life,
�SPACE
5
wherever they find a seed-bed fitted to periods, in obedience to the same law.
receive them. Given a favourable soil in Clouds of meteoric dust revolve in fixed
the human frame, and the invisible seeds orbits, determined by the law of gravity
of scarlet fever, cholera, and small-pox as surely as the moon revolves round the
ripen into full crops, just as the germs of earth, and the earth round the sun.
This is a conclusion of such funda
a fungus invade the potato crops of a
whole district, and lead to Irish famines mental importance that it is desirable to
fejMt the extermination of more than a give the uninitiated reader some clear
idea of what it means, and how it is
yaillion of human beings.
The microscope also enables us to see arrived at. Newton’s great discovery,
the very beginnings of life and watch its the law of gravity, is this—that all
primitive element, protoplasm, in the matter acting in the mass attracts other
form of a minute speck of jelly-like matter directly as the amount of attract
matter, through which pulsations are ing matter, and inversely as the square
constantly passing, and we can watch the of the distance. That is, 2 or 2,000,000
transformations by which an elementary tons attract with twice the force of 1 OF
cell of this substance splits up, multi- 1,000,000 tons at the same distance, but
plies, and by a continued process of with only one-fourth, of the same force
development builds up with these cells at double, and one-ninth at triple _thfe
all the diversified forms of vegetable and distance.
How is this law proved 1 This will be
animal life.
But far as the microscope carries us best answered by explaining how. it was
Sown to dimensions vastly smaller than discovered. The force of gravity^ or
those of which the ordinary senses can attraction of the earth on bodies at the
take cognizance, the modern sciences of earth’s surface, is a known quantity^
light, heat, and chemistry carry us as The whole matter in a spherical body
much farther downwards, as the telescope attracts exactly as if it were all collected
parries us upwards beyond the boundaries at the centre. The force of gravity at the
of our solar system into the expanses of earth’s surface is, therefore, that of the
stars and nebulae. We are transported earth’s mass exerted at a distance of
Into a world of atoms, molecules, and about 4,000 miles, and this can be easily
iight-waves, where the standard of measured by observing the space fallen
Measurement is no longer in feet or through, and the velocity acquired,
Inches, oreven in one-hundred-thousandth by a falling body in a given tim^ such
part of an inch, but in millionths of as 1".
Does the same force act at the distance
Millimetres, i.e., in
of an
inch. The dimensions are such that, as of the moon, or 238,850 miles 1 This was
we shall see when we come to deal with the question Newton asked himself, and
matter, if the drop of water in which the the answer was got at in the following
Microscope shows us living animalcula way. If we swing a stone in a sling round
were magnified to the size of the earth, our head, it describes a circle as long.aS
the atoms of which it is composed would we keep the string tight, and its pull in
appear of a size intermediate between wards just balances the pull of the stone
to fly outwards, i.e., to use scientific
that of a rifle-bullet and a cricket-ball.
This, then, is Nature’s scale of space, language, as long as the centripetal just
from millionths of a millimetre up to balances the centrifugal force. But if
millions of millions of miles. Through we let go the string the stone darts off in
out the whole of this enormous range of the direction in which, and with the vel®^
city with which, it was moving when the
space the laws of Nature prevail.
Mattei’ attracts matter by the same law centripetal force ceased to act.
The moon is such a sling-stone re
of gravity in the case of double stars revolving about each other at a distance at volving about the earth. At each instant
which a base of 186,000,000 miles has it is moving in the direction of a tangent
long since become a vanishing point, and to its orbit, and would move on m a
in the case of atoms which form the sub- straight line along this tangent if it were
stance of a gas, as in that of an apple not deflected from it by some other force.
falling from a tree at the earth’s surface. That is, if the moon were now at Mt, it
Comets, darting off into the remote would, after a given interval of time, be
regions of space, return after long at M2 if no force had acted on it. But
�6
modern science and modern thought
in point of fact it is not at M2 but at M3.
Therefore it has been pulled down from
M2 to M3, or, if you like, fallen through
the space M2 M3 in the
time in which it would
have travelled over Mx
M2 with its velocity at
Mj. How does this space
correspond with the
space through which a
heavy body would have
fallen in the same time
at the earth’s surface ?
It corresponds exactly,
assuming the law of
gravity to be that it
. decreases with
the
square of the distance.
This may be taken as the first appro
ximation, but the more accurate and
universal proofs of the law are derived
from mathematical calculations of what
the nature of the attractions must be, in
the case of the sun, earth, moon, and
planets, to. make them describe such
elliptic orbits and observe such laws, as
from Kepler s observations we know
actually to be the case. The answer here
again is the law of gravity, and no other
possible law, and this is confirmed in
piactice. by tlie fact that we are able, by
calculations based on it, to satisfy the
requisite of safe prophecy—that of know
ing beforehand, and to predict eclipses,
comets, transits, and occultations, and
generally to.compile Hautical Almanacs,
by which ships know their whereabouts
in pathless oceans.
. This, then, affords us a first firm stand
ing-point in any speculations as to the
nature of the universe. One great law,
at any rate, is universal throughout all
space, and, as we shall see later, suns,
stars, and nebulae are composed of the
same matter as the earth and its in
habitants.
In like manner comets and meteors,
though presenting in other respects
phenomena not yet fully understood, are
proved to obey the same laws and to
consist . of the same matter. Comets
are bodies which revolve round the sun,
and are attracted by it and by the
planets, in obedience to the ordinary law
of gravity, though their density is so
slight, that although often of enormous
volume, they produce no perceptible
effect on the planets, even when en
tangled amidst the satellites of a planet,
as Lexell’s comet was amongst those of
Jupiter.
Their dimensions may be judged of
when it is stated that the comet of 1811
had a tail 120 millions of miles in length
and 15 millions of miles in diameter at
the widest part, while the diameter of the
nucleus was about 127,000 miles, or more
than 15 times that of the earth. In order
that bodies of this magnitude, passing
near the earth, should not affect its
motion or change the length of the year
by even a single second, their actual
substance must be inconceivably rare.
If the tail, for instance, of the comet of
1843 had consisted of the lightest sub
stance known to us, hydrogen gas, its
mass would have exceeded that of the
sun, and every planet would have been
dragged from its. orbit. As Proctor says :
“A jar-full of air would probably have
outweighed hundreds of cubic miles of
that vast appendage which blazed across
the skies to the terror of the ignorant
and superstitious.”
. The extreme tenuity of a comet’s mass
is also proved by the phenomenon of the
tail, which, as the comet approaches the
sun, is thrown out sometimes to a length
of 90 millions of miles in a few hours.
And what is remarkable, this tail is
thrown out against the force of gravity
by some repulsive force, probably elec
trical, so that it always points away from
the sun. Thus a comet which approaches
the sun with a tail behind it, will, after
passing its perihelion, recede from the
sun with its tail before it, and this
although the tail may be of the length of
200 millions of miles, as in the comet of
1843. In the course of a few hours,
therefore, this enormous tail has been
absorbed and a new one started out in an
opposite direction. And yet, thin as the
matter of comets must be, it obeys the
common law of gravity, and whether the
comet revolves in an orbit within that of
the outer planets, or shoots off into the
abysses of space and returns only after
hundreds of years, its path is, at each
instant, regulated by the same force as
that which causes an apple to fall to the
ground; and its matter, however atten
uated, is ordinary matter, and does not
consist of any unknown elements. The
spectroscope shows that comets shine
partly by reflected sunlight and partly
by light of their own, the latter part
being gaseous, and this gas, in most
�SPACE
comets, contains carbon and hydrogen,
■possibly also oxygen, in the form of
Kydrocarbons or marsh gas, cyanogen
and possibly oxygen compounds of carbon. One comet has recently given the
line of sodium, and the presence of iron
is strongly suspected.
As regards meteors, which include
shooting stars and aerolites, it has been
long known, from actual masses which
have fallen on the earth, that they are
composed of terrestrial matter, princi
pally of iron, which has been partially
fused by the heat engendered by the
friction of the rapid passage through the
air. The recurrence of brilliant displays
at regular intervals, as for instance those
of August and November, when the whole
sk'y often seems alive with shooting stars,
had also been noticed ; but it was re
served for recent times to prove that
these«meteor streams are really composed
of small planetary bodies revolving round
the sun in fixed orbits by the force of
gravity, and that their display, as seen
by us, arises from the earth in its revolu
tion round the sun happening to intersect
some of these meteoric orbits, and the
friction of our atmosphere setting fire to
and consuming the smaller meteors which
appear as shooting stars. This shows
the enormous number of meteors by
which space must be tenanted. It is
proved that the earth encounters more
than a hundred meteor systems, but the
chance of any one ring or system being
intersected by the earth is extremely
small, as the earth is such a minute speck
in the whole sun-surrounding space of
the solar system. On a scale on which
the earth’s orbit was represented by a
circle of 10 feet diameter, the earth itself
would be only about T|oth of an inch in
diameter, so that if, as astronomers say,
the earth encounters about a hundred
meteor systems in the course of its
annual revolution, space must swarm
with an innumerable number of these
minute bodies all revolving round the
sun by the force of gravity.
Has this law of gravity been uniform
through all time as it undoubtedly is
through all space ? We have every
reason to believe so. The law of gravity,
which is the foundation of most of what
we call the natural laws of geological
action, has certainly prevailed, as will be
shown later, through tin enormous periods
of geological time, and far beyond this
we can discern it operating in those
astronomical changes by which cosmic
matter has been condensed into nebulae,
nebulae into suns throwing off planets,
and planets throwing off satellites, as
they cooled and contracted. Double stars
at a distance exceeding 20 millions of
millions of miles revolve round their
common centre of gravity by this Jaw.
Atoms and molecules almost infinitely
smaller than millionths of millimetres
derive from it their specific weights with
as much certainty as if they were pounds
or hundredweights.
We cannot speak with quite the same
certainty of infinite time as we can
of infinite space, for we have.no tele
scopes to gauge the abysses of time, and
no certain standards, like those of th©
known dimensions of our solar system,
to apply to periods too vast for the
imagination.
But we can say this with certainty,
that the present law of gravity must
have prevailed when the outermost
planet of our system, Neptune, was con
densed into a separate body and began
revolving in its present orbit, and that it
has continued to act ever since; while,
as a matter of probability, it is as nearly
certain as anything can be, that the law
by which the apple falls to the ground is
an original condition of matter.
What space and matter really may be,
we do not know, and if we attempt to
reason about the limits of the one and th©
origin of the other, if origin it had, we
get into the misty realms of metaphysics,
where, like Milton’s fallen angels, we
Find no end in wandering mazes lost.
�&
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
boulders and coarse gravel, sometime!
shingle, sand, or fine mud, and, carrying
CHAPTER II
this material sometimes to a greater and
* TIME
sometimes to a less distance, according
to the velocity of the stream.
Evidence of Geology—Stratification—Denu
Ages hence, when the lake has been
dation—Strata identified by Superposition
converted into dry land, it will be as
—By Fossils—Geological Record shown by ceitain, whenever a pit is dug or a well
Upturned Strata—General Result—Palaeosunk in it, that it was the work of a
ane and Primary Periods—Secondary—
river flowing into a lake, as it is to-day,
lertmry—Plme required-Coal Formation
—Chalk-Elevations and Depressions of when we can see them at work.
Band—Internal Heat of Earth—Earth T 1 nd 7r!at is tr^e of the Rhone and the
quakes and Volcanoes-Changes of Fauna if+ k of Geneva, is true on a larger scale
®md P lora—Astronomical Time—Tides and of the Ganges, the Mississippi, and of
every sea or ocean, with every river or
the Moon—Sun’s Radiation—Earth’s Cooltorrent pouring into it.
\nrSrGem?Sy and Astronomy-BearingS on
Modern Thought.
Again, the sea is perpetually wearing
the
of
Geology has done for time what as- awaycliff's coasts soft all lands, and, where
the
are
and the tides and
ti onomy has for space—it has expanded currents strong, at a very rapid rate,
the limited ideas derived from natural
lhe materials swallowed-up are rolled as
impression and early tradition into those shingle, ground into sand, or floated as
of an almost infinite duration. This 1
Jnud, an
result is so important that it is desirable laid down at d all finallyofassorted and
the bottom
the sea, not
that all educated persons, without being in a confused heap, but in regular sucprofessed geologists, should have some
clear idea of the nature of the con ^^n- Gn some of them generations
of shell-fish and other marine creatures
clusions and of the evidences on which live and die, and their remains are
they rest.
covered over by fresh sands or clays, and
This I will endeavour to give.
preserved for future geologists. All this
When we come to examine the struc is
examine
ture of the earth-or rather of the outer thegoing on now, and when we the same
find that precisely
erust of the earth which we inhabit— sort rocks we has been going on from the
of
with the care and precision of scientific newest thing
to
methods, we find that it is not of uniform exception the oldest strata. With the
Composition, but consists mainly of dis amount of of a comparatively small
igneous rock, which has
tinct layers, or strata, lying one over the
other. This is true not only of the boiled-up from deep sources of molten
larger beds, or distinct formations, but matter, and been poured-out in sheets of
lava, or
porphyry,
°! ,. details of each formation, many granite, masses of trap,the amountand
according to
of
of which are built up as regularly as the pressure it has undergone and the time
layers of the Great Pyramid, while others it has taken to cool and crystallise, all the
are made up of layers no thicker than e&rth s surface may be said to consist of
the leaves of a book.
Now consider what this fact of strati stratified matter, showing clear signs of
fication implies. In the first place it having been deposited from water. Some
implies deposit from water, for there is of the oldest rocks, such as gneiss, may
no other agency by which materials can be a little doubtful, as they have clearly
be sorted out and thrown down in hori been subjected to great heat under great
zontal layers, while this agency is now pressure, until they became plastic
doing the same thing every day and all enough to crystallise as they cooled, and
over the world. The Rhone flows into thus destroy any fossils embedded in them
the Bake of Geneva a turbid stream, and and obliterate most of the ordinary signs
tiows out of it as clear as crystal. AU of stratification. But the opinion of the
the matter it brings in is deposited at best geologists is that they were originthe bottom of the lake, and in course of a iT stratified, and have become what is
time will fill it up. This deposit varies called metamorphic,” or changed by
with every alternation of flood and heat and pressure into the semblance of
igneous rocks. But even
drought; the river depositing sometimes included, enough remains if these are not
to justify the
�TIME
general assertion that th® outer crust of
the earth, as known to us, is made up
mainly of stratified materials which have
been deposited from water.
Now this implies another most im
portant fact, viz., that there must, have
been waste or denudation of existing
land corresponding to the deposit of
Stratified materials under water. Water
cannot generate these materials, and
every square mile of such strata, say 10
feet thick, implies the removal of 10 feet
from a square mile of land surface by
rains and rivers, or of an equivalent
amount of cubical content in some other
way, as by the erosion of a coast line.
This is a very important consideration
wThen we come to estimate the time re
quired for the formation of such a thick
ness of stratified beds as we find existing.
There must have been a fundamental
crystalline rock as the earth cooled-down
from a fluid state and acquired a solid
©rust, and this rock must have been worn
down by primeval seas and rivers as the
progressive cooling admitted of the con
densation of aqueous vapour into water.
The waste of this primitive crust must
have been deposited in strata at the
bottom of those seas in thick masses,
covering the original rock, and these
again must have been partly crystallised
by heat and pressure, and over and over
again upheaved and submerged, and
themselves worn down by fresh erosion,
forming fresh deposits which underwent
a repetition of the same process.
A third important inference from the
fact of stratification is that all strata
must have been originally deposited
horizontally, or very nearly so, and in
such order that the lowest is the oldest.
Suppose we fill a jar with water, and
put some white sand into it, and when
that has subsided to the bottom and the
water is clear, some yellow sand, and
again some red sand, it is clear that we
shall have at the bottom of the jar three
horizontal deposits or strata, one white,
one yellow, and one red, and that by no
conceivable means can the order in which
they were deposited have been other
than first white, secondly yellow, and
lastly red. This law, therefore, is invari
able, that wherever it is possible to trace
a series of strata lying one above the
Other, the lowest is the oldest, and the
highest the youngest in point of time.
If, therefore, all the great formations,
9
from the old Lauren tian up to the newest
Tertiary, had been deposited uniformly
all over the world, and had remained
undisturbed, and we could have seen
them in one vertical section in a dift
twenty-five miles high—for that is about
their total known thickness—we should
have been able without further difficulty
to determine their order of succession
and respective magnitudes.
But this is plainly impossible, for the
deposits going on at any one time are of
very different character. For instancy
we have at present the Globigerina ooze
gradually filling the depths of the
Atlantic with a deposit resembling chalk;
the Gulfs of Bengal and Mexico silting
up with fine clay from river deposits;
vast tracts in the Pacific, Indian Ocean,
and Red Sea, covered with coral and tire
debris of coral-reefs. How could these, if
upheaved into dry land and explored.by
future geologists, be identified as having
been formed contemporaneously 1.
Suppose that coins of Victoria had
been dropped in each of them, the geo
logist who discovered these coins would
have no difficulty in concluding that th®
strata in which they, were found were
all formed in the nineteenth century,
The petrified shells and other remains
found in geological strata are such coins.
Every great formation has had its own
characteristic fauna and flora, or aggre
gate of animal and vegetable life, vary
ing slowly from one geological age to
another, and linked to the past and
future by some persistent types and,
forms, but still with such a preponder
ance of characteristic fossils as to enable
us to assign the rocks in which they
occur to their proper place in the volume
of the geological record. Innumerable
observations have shown that we can
rely, with absolute confidence, on the
fossils embedded in the different strata
of the earth’s crust as tests of the period
to which they belong, however different
the strata may be in mineral composi
tion.
The next question is how we can ascer
tain the thickness and order of succes
sion of these strata. We have seen that
all stratified rocks are due to the action
of water, and therefore were originally
deposited horizontally. Had they remained so, in the first place, the process
of forming stratified rocks must long ago
have come to an end, for all the land
�modern science and modern thought
surface must have been worn down to
the sea level, and, with no more land to
be denuded, deposition must have ceased
at an early period of the earth’s history.
In the second place, we could have known
nothing more of the earth’s crust than
we saw on the surface, and in the shallow
pits and borings which we could sink
below it. But earthquakes and volcanoes
and the various fractures and pressures
due to subterranean heat and secular
contraction and cooling, have been at
work counteracting the effects of denu
dation, and causing elevations and de
pressions by which the inequalities of
s
have been renewed
thp balance between sea and land maintained, and strata, originally horizontal
at the bottom of the ocean, upheaved
until sea-shells are found at the top of
high mountains, so that we can walk for
miles over their upturned edges.
Any one who wishes to understand
how geologists have been able to measure
such a thickness of the earth’s crust has
only to take a book open at page 1 and
lay it flat before him. He can see
nothing but that one page; but if he
turns up the pages on the right-hand side
of the book until their edges become
horizontal, he can pass over them and
count perhaps 500 pages in the space of
a couple of inches.
This is precisely what geologists have
been able to do at various points of the
earth s surface where the upturned edges
°* j n PaSes
history are exposed,
and they come out, one behind the other
in the due succession in which they were
written by Nature. For instance, in
travelling from east to west in England
we pass continually from newer to older
formations—Chalk comes in from below
tertiary ; Oolite and Lias from below
Chalk; then Permian or New Red
Sandstone ; Carboniferous, including the
Coal Measures; Devonian or Old Red
bandstone ; Silurian, Cambrian, and in
xv ®^Ireme north-west of Scotland and
the Hebrides, oldest of all, the Laurentian.
There are some omissions and inter
polations, but, in a general way, it may
be said that within the bounds' of the
British Empire we have such a view of
Nature’s volume as would be got, in the
case I have supposed, by travelling over
its upturned edges from page 1 to page
500. And if each of the great formations
be taken as a separate chapter, each
chapter will be found to be made-up of
a number of pages, each with its own
letterpress and illustrations, though con
nected with the pages before and after
it by the thread of the continuous com
mon subject of their proper chapter; as
the chapters again are connected by the
continuous common subject-matter of the
complete volume. It must not be sup
posed that the volume is anything like
perfect. We have to piece it together
irom the fragments found in the limited
number of countries which have thus far
been scientifically explored, and which
do not constitute more than a small part
of the earth’s surface. We know nothing
of what is below the oceans which cover
m°re
three-fourths of that surface,
and there are great gaps in the record
during the times when portions of the
surface were dry land, and when, con
sequently, no deposit of strata or
preservation of fossils was possible. Still
a great deal lias been accomplished, and
the general result, as given by common
consent of the best geologists, is as
follows :
The total thickness of known strata is
about 130,000 feet or twenty-five miles,
or the iJoth part of the distance from the
earth’s surface to its centre. Of this,
about 30,000 feet belong to the Laurentian, which is the oldest known stratified
deposit; 18,000 to the Cambrian, and
22,000 to the Silurian. These earliest
formations, which are grouped as the
Primary or Palaeozoic Epoch, have been
so changed by slow crystallisation under
great heat and pressure that all fossils
and nearly all traces of stratification
have been well-nigh obliterated.
In the Cambrian and Lower Silurian
traces of life become more frequent,
especially of low forms of seaweeds, and
in the Upper Silurian we find an abun
dance of fossils, consisting of Crustacea,
shell-fish, and a few true fish in the
upper strata. Some of the shells, as the
Lingula, have continued without much
change up to the present time ; and on
the whole we find ourselves in the Silu
rian period, if not earlier, in presence of
a state of things in which substantially
present causes operated and present con
ditions were in force. Rains fell, winds
blew, rivers ran, waves eroded cliffs,
shell-fish lived and died, and crabs and
sand-worms crawled about on shores left
�TIME
dry by each tide, very much as is the
case at present.
. .
.
.
The next great division, to which the
nam® of Primary, was given before the
existence of fossils was known m the
older or Palaeozoic division, comprises
the Devonian or Old Red Sandstone ;
the Carboniferous, which includes the
coal; and the Permian or New Red Sand
stone. The average thickness of these
three systems, taken together, is about
42 000 feet. It may be called the era of
Fern Forests and of Fish, the former
being the principal source of our supplies
of coal, and the latter being extremely
abundant within the Devonian and Per
mian formations.
The third great division is formed by
the Secondary group, which includes the
Triassic, the Jura, and the Cretaceous or
Chalk systems, and has an average thick
ness of about 15,000 feet. This epoch is
emphatically the age of Reptiles as the
preceding one was that of Fish, and the
prevailing vegetation is no longer one of
ferns and mosses, but of Gymnosperms,
or plants having naked seeds, the most
important class of which is that of the
Coniferae or Pine tribe. During this pe
riod the Plesiosauri, Ichthyosauri, and
other gigantic sea-dragons abounded in
the oceans ; colossal land-dragons, such
as the Dinosauri, occupied the continents,
and Pterodactyls, a remarkable form of
carnivorous flying lizards, ruled the air.
Swarms of other reptiles, nearly related
to the present lizards, crocodiles, and
turtles, abounded both in the sea and
land. A few traces of mammals and birds
show that these orders had then come
into existence, just as a few traces of
reptiles are found in the Primary, and of
fish in the Palaeozoic, strata, but the few
mammalian remains found are of small
animals of the marsupial or lowest type,
and the birds are of a transition type
between reptiles and true birds. This
epoch concludes with the Chalk forma
tion, which is one of relatively deep-sea
deposit, where no trace of terrestrial life
can be expected.
Above this comes the Tertiary epoch,
when the present order, both of veget
able and animal life, is fairly inaugur
ated ; mammals predominate over other
forms of vertebrate animals; existing
orders and species begin to appear and
increase rapidly ; and vegetation consists
mainly of Angiosperms, or plants with
n
covered seeds, as in our present forests.
The total thickness of these strata, from
the lowest, or Eocene, to the end of the
uppermost, or Pliocene, is about 3,000 feet.
Above this comes the Quaternary, or re
cent period, which comprises the super
ficial strata of modern formation,.and is
characterised by the undoubted existence
of man, and of animals which either now
exist, or which have become extinct m
quite recent geological times.
The details of this and of the Tertiary
Epoch will be more fully considered when,
we come to treat of the antiquity of man,
with which they are closely connected^!
But for the present object, which is that
of ascertaining some standard of time for
the immense series of ages proved by geol
logy to have elapsed since the earth as
sumed its present condition, became sub
ject to existing laws and fitted to be the
abode of life, it will be sufficient to refefif
to the older strata.
.
The best idea of the enormous intervals
of time required for geological changes
will be derived from the coal measures.
These consist of part only of one geo
logical formation known as the Carbon
iferous. They are made up of sheets, or
seams, of condensed vegetable matter,
varying in thickness from less than.an
inch to as much as thirty feet, and lying
one above another, separated by beds of
rock of various composition. As a rule,
every seam of coal rests upon a bed of
clay, known as the “under-clay, and is
covered by a bed of sandstone or shale.1
These alternations of clay, coal, and rockJ
are often repeated a. great ma,ny times,
and in some sections in South Wales and
Nova Scotia there are as many as eighty
or a hundred seams of coal, each with its
own under-clay below and sandstone or
shale above. Some of the coal seams are
as much as thirty feet thick, and the
total thickness of the coal measures is,
in some cases, as much as 14,000 feet.
Now consider what these facts mean.
Every under-clay was clearly once a sur
face soil on which the forest vegetation
grew, whose accumulated dsbi is forms the
overlying seam of coal. The under-clays
are full of the fibres of roots, and the
stools of trees which once grew on them
are constantly found in situ, with their
roots attached just as they stood when
the tree fell, and added to the accumula
tion of vegetable matter, which in modern
times forms peat, and in more ancient
�12
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
days, under different conditions of heat
and pressure, took the more consolidated
form of coal.
When these vegetable remains are ex
amined with the aid of the microscope it
is found that these ancient forests con
sisted mainly of trees like gigantic club
mosses, mares’-tails, and tree ferns, with
a few resembling yews and firs. But in
many cases the bulk of the coal is com
posed of the spores and seeds of these
ferns and club-mosses, which were ripened
and shed every year, and gradually ac
cumulated into a vegetable mould, just
M fallen leaves, beech-mast, and other
Mbris, gradually form a soil in our exist
ing forests.
The time required must have been
very great. to accumulate vegetable mat
ter, principally composed of fine spore
dust, to a, depth sufficient under great
compression to give even a foot of solid
coal. Sir J. W. Dawson, who has devoted
great attention to the coal-fields of
America, says : “ We may safely assert
that every foot, of thickness of pure
bituminous coal implies the quiet growth
least fifty generations of
Sigillaria, and therefore an undisturbed
condition of forest growth, enduring
through many centuries.” But this is
only the first step in the measure of the
time required for the formation of the
coal measures. Each seam of coal is as
we have seen, covered by a bed of sand
or shale, t.e., of water-borne materials.
Dow can this be accounted for? Evi
dently m one way only—that the land
8uDace in which the forest grew sub®ded gradually until it became first a
marsh, and. then a lagoon or shallow
estuary, which silted up by degrees with
deposits of sand or mud, and, finally was
upraised until its surface became dry
land, in which a second forest grew
whose debris formed a second coal seam.’
And so on, over and over again, until
the whole series of coal measures had
been, accumulated, when this alternation
of slight submergences and slight rises
Came to an end, and some more decided
movement of the earth’s surface in the
locality brought, on a different state of
things. . This is in fact exactly what we
see taking place on a smaller scale in
recent times in such deposits as those of
the delta of the Mississippi, where a well
sunk at New Orleans passes through a
succession of cypress swamps and forest
growths, exactly like those now growing
on the surface, which are piled one above
the other, and separated by deposits of
river silt, showing a long alternation of
periods of rest when forests grew, fol
lowed by periods of subsidence when they
were flooded and their remains were
embedded in silt.
Starting on the foregoing assumption
tnat one root of coal represents fifty
generations of coal plants, and that each
generation of coal plants took ten years
p^me to maturity, an assumption
which is certainly very moderate; and
taking the actually measured thickness
or the coal measures in some localities at
\2’°P2 Jeet’. Professor Huxley calculates
that the time represented by the Coal
formation alone would be six millions
of years. Such a figure is, of course
only a rough approximation, but it is
sufficient to show that when we come to
deal with geological time, the standard
by which we must measure is one of
which the unit is a million of years.
This standard is confirmed by a variety
N °™er1 considerations. Take the case of
the Chalk formation.
Chalk is almost entirely composed of
the microscopic shells of minute organ
isms, such as now float in the upper strata
of our great oceans, and by their subsld®llc1e> in Die form of an impalpable
shell-dust, accumulate what is called the
Globigerina ooze,” which is brought up
by soundings in the Atlantic and Pacific
from great depths. . In fact, we may say
that a chalk formation is now going on in
the depths of existing oceans, and con
versely that the old chalk, which now
forms hills and elevated downs, was
certainly deposited at the bottom of
Cretaceous seas. The rate of deposit
must have been extremely slow, certainly
much slower than that of the deposit of
the much grosser matter brought down
by the Nile in. its annual inundations, the
growth of which has been estimated from
actual measurement at about three inches
per century. If one inch per century
were the rate of accumulation of this
microscopic shell-dust, subsiding slowly
to depths of two or three miles over
areas as large as Europe, it would take
1,200 years to form a foot of chalk, and
1,200,000 years to form 1,000 feet. Now
there are places where the thickness of
the Cretaceous formation, exposed by
the edges of its upturned strata, exceeds
�TIME
5,000 feet, so that this gives an approxima
tion very similar to that furnished by the
coal measures.
We have thus, on a rough approximation, a
period of about 6,000,000
year’s for ^©accumulation of a singlememtoar ofone of the separate formations into
'vrilidh the total 130,000 feet of. measured
strata are subdivided. But this takes.no
of the long periods during which
no accumulation took place at the
legalities in question, and of the long
pauses which must have ensued between
each movement of elevation and sub
mergence, and especially between the dis
appearance of an old, and the appearance
of an almost entirely new, epoch, with
different forms of animal and vegetable
life. We may be certain also that. we
ar® far from knowing the total thick
ness of strata which will be disclosed
when the whole surface of the earth
comes to be explored. All we can say
is that we have fragmentary pages
left in the geological record, speaking
broadly, for 100 millions of years, and
that probably the lost pages are quite as
numerous as those of which we have an
imperfect knowledge.
Sir Charles Lyell, the highest authority
on the subject, is inclined to estimate
the minimum of geological time at 200
millions of years, and few geologists , will
say that his estimate appears excessive.
Another test of the vast duration of
geological time is afforded by the oscil
lations of the earth’s surface. At first
sight we are apt to consider the earth
as the stable and the sea as the un
stable element. But in reality it is
exactly the reverse. Land has. been
perpetually rising and falling while the
level of the sea has remained the same.
This is easily proved by the presence
of sea-shells and other marine remains
in strata which now form high moun
tains. In the case of chalk, for instance,
there must have been in England a
change of relative level of sea and land
of more than two miles of vertical
height, between the original formation
of the chalk at the bottom of a deep ocean
and its present position in the North
and South Downs. In other cases the
change of level is even more conspicuous.
The Num mul ite lim eston e, which is formed
like, chalk from an accumulation of the
minute shells of low organisms floating
in the oceans of the early Tertiary
n
period, is found in mountain masses, and b
has been elevated to a height of 10,000
feet and more in the Alps »d Hima
layas.
,
On a smaller scale, and in mor® went
times, raised beaches with existing shells I
and lines of cliffs and caves, are found I
at various heights above the existing 1
sea-level of many of the coasts of Britain, 1
Scandinavia, Italy, South America
I
other countries.
Now the first question is, were these
changes caused by the land rising or by
the sea falling? The answer is, by toe
land rising. Had they been caused by
the sea standing at a higher level it must
have stood everywhere at this level, at
any rate in the same hemisphere and
anywhere near the same latitude. But
there are large tracts of land which have
never been submerged since remote geo
logical periods ; and in recent times thgya
is conclusive evidence that the changes
of level of sea and land.have been parUal
and not general. Thus in the well-known,
instance of the columns of the ruined
temple of Serapis at Pozzuoli in the Bay
of Naples, which forms the illustration
on the title-page of Lyell’s “ Principle# of
Geology,” there can be no doubt that
since the temple was built, either the
sea must have risen and since fallen, OF
the land sunk and since risen, at least
twenty feet since the temple was built
less than 2,000 years ago, for up to this
height the marble columns are riddled by
borings of marine shells, whose valyw
are still to be seen in the holes they
excavated. But an elevation of the level
of the Mediterranean of twenty feet
would have submerged, a great part of
Egypt, and other low-lying lands on the
borders of that sea, where we klWW
that no such irruptions of . salt, water
have taken place within historical, Or
even within recent geological, times.
The conclusion is therefore certain, that
the land at this particular spot must have
sunk twenty feet, and again risen as
much, so as to bring back.the floor of the
temple to its present position, which stood,
one hundred years ago just above the
sea-level, and that so gradually as not
to throw down the three columns which
are still standing. A slow subside®®®
has since set in and is now going on, so
that the floor is now two or three feet
below the sea-level.
Similar proofs may be multiplied to
�14
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
any extent. Along the coasts of the
British.Islands we find, in some places
submarine forests showing subsidence, in
others raised beaches showing elevation,
but they are not continuous at the same
level. Along the east coast of Scotland
there is a remarkable raised beach at
a level of about twenty-four feet above
the present one, showing in many places
lines of cliff, sea-worn caves, and outlying
stacks and skerries, exactly like those of
the present coast, though with green
fields or sandy links at their base, instead
of the waves of the German Ocean. But
as we go north this inland cliff gets lower
and gradually dies out, and when we get
into the extreme north, among the Orkney
and Shetland Islands, there are no signs
of raised beaches, and everything points
towards the recent period having been
one of subsidence.
Again, in Sweden, where marks were
cut in rocks in sheltered situations on the
well-nigh tideless Baltic more than a
century ago, so as to test the question of
an alleged elevation of the land, it has
been clearly shown that in the extreme
north of Sweden, the marks have risen
nearly seven feet, while in the central
portion of the country they have neither
risen nor fallen, and in the southern
province of Scania they have fallen.
This would be clearly impossible if the
sea and not the land had been the un
stable element, and apparent elevations
and depressions had been due to a gene
ral fall or rise in the level of all the seas
of the northern hemisphere.
In fact, the more we study geology the
more we are impressed with the fact that
the normal state of the earth is, and has
always been, one of incessant changes.
Water, raised by evaporation from the
seas, falls as rain or snow on land, wastes
it away and carries it down from higher
to lower levels, to be ultimately deposited
at the bottom of the sea. This goes on
constantly, and if there were no compen
sating action, as the seas cover a much
larger area than the lands, all land would
ultimately disappear, and one universal
ocean cover the globe. But inward heat
supplies the compensating action, and
new lands rise and new mountain chains
are upheaved to supply the place of those
which disappear.
This inward heat of the earth is an
ascertained fact; for as we descend from
the surface in deep mines or borings, we
find that the temperature actually does
increase at a rate which varies somewhat
in different localities, but which averages
about 1° Fahrenheit for every 60 feet of
depth. At this rate of increase water
would boil at a depth of 10,000 feet, and
iron and all other metals be melted before
we reached 100,000 feet. What actually
occurs at great depths we do not know
with any certainty, for we are not suffi
ciently acquainted with the laws under
which matter may behave when under
enormous heat combined with enormous
pressure. But we do know from volca
noes and earthquakes, that masses of
molten rocks and of imprisoned gases
exist in certain localities, at depths below
the surface which, although large com
pared with our deepest pits, are almost
infinitesimally small compared with the
total depth of 4,000 miles from that sur
face to the earth’s centre.
This much is clear, that, in order to
account for observed facts, we must con
sider the extreme outer crust, or surface
of the earth as known to us, as resting on
something which is liable to expand and
contract slowly with variations of heat,
and occasionally, when the tension be
comes great, to give violent shocks to the
outer crust, sending earthquake waves
through it, and to send up gases and
molten lava through volcanoes, along
lines of fissure, and at points of least
resistance. It is clear, also that these
movements are not uniform, but that
one part of the earth’s surface may be
rising while another is sinking, and
portions of it may be slowly tilting over,
so that as one end sinks the other rises.
The best comparison that can be made
is to a sheet of ice which has been much
skated over and cracked in numerous
directions, so as to have become a sort
of mosaic of ice fragments, which, when
a thaw sets in and the ice gets sloppy,
rise and fall with slightly different mo
tions as a skater, gliding over them,
varies the pressure, and occasionally
give a crack and let water rise through
from below in the line of fissure. The
difficulty will not seem so great if we
consider that the rocks which form the
earth’s crust are for the most part elastic,
and that an amount of elevation which
seems large in itself does not necessarily
imply a very steep gradient. Thus, if
the elevation which towards the close of
the Glacial period carried a bed of exist-
�TIMB
jpgaaMhells of Arctic type to the top or
the hill, Moel Tryfon, in North Wales,
which is 1,200 feet high, were, say, one
of 1,500 feet, this would be given by a
gradient of 15 feet a mile, or 1 m 333
for 100 miles. Such a gradient would not
be perceptible to the eye, and would certainly not be sufficient to cause any ten
sion likely to rupture rocks or disturb
Such movements are as a. rule ex
tremely slow. In volcanic regions thei e
a» occasionally shocks which raise ex
tensive regions a few feet at a blow, and
partial elevations and subsidences which
throw up cones of lava and cinders, or
let mountains down into chasms, in a
single explosion. The most noted of
these are the instances of Monte Nuovo,
near Naples, 800 feet high, and Jorullo,
in Mexico, thrown up in one eruption,
and the disappearance of a mountain
2,000 feet high in the Straits of Sunda
during an earthquake. The largest rise
recorded of an extensive area from the
shock of an earthquake, is that wdiich
occurred in South America in 1835, when
a range of coast of 500 miles from
Copiapo to Chiloe was permanently raised
five or six feet by a single shock, as was
shown by the beds of dead mussels and
other shells which had been hoisted, up in
some places as much as ten feet. It is pro
bable that the great chain of the Andes,
whose highest summits reach 27,000
feet, has been raised in a great measure
by a succession of similar shocks.
But for the most part these move
ments, whether of elevation or depression,
go on so slowly and quietly that they
escape observation. Scandinavia is ap
parently now rising and Greenland
sinking, but most countries have re
mained appreciably steady, or nearly
so, during the historical period. St.
Michael’s Mount, in Cornwall, is still
connected with the mainland by a spit,
dry at ebb tide and covered at flood, as
it was more than 2,000 years ago when
the old Britons carted their tin across to
Phoenician traders. Egypt, during a
period of 7,000 years, has preserved the
same level, or at the most has sunk as
slowly as the Nile mud has accumulated.
Parts of the English and Scotch coast
have risen perhaps twenty feet since the
prehistoric period, when canoes were
wrecked under what are now the streets
of Glasgow, and whales were stranded in
15
the Carse of Stirling. There is even
some evidence that the latest rise may
have occurred since the Roman wall was
built from the Forth to the Clyde. In
any case, however, the movements have
been extremely slow, and there have
been frequent oscillations, and long
pauses when the level of land and sea
remained stationary. The evidence,
therefore, from the great changes which
have occurred during each geological
period, points to the same conclusion as
that drawn from the thickness of forma
tions, such as the coal measures and
chalk, which must have been accumulated
very slowly, viz., that geological, time
must be measured by a scale of millions
of years.
Another test of the vast duration of
geological time is afforded by the change^
which have taken place in animal life as
we pass from one formation to another,
and even within the limits of the same
formation. The fauna, or form of exist
ing life at a given period, changes with
extreme slowness. During the historical
period there has been no perceptible
change, and even since the Pliocene
period, which cannot be placed at a less
distance from us than 200,000 years, and
probably at much more, the change has
been very small. In the limited class of
large land animals it has been con
siderable ; but if we take the far more
numerous forms of shell-fish and other
marine life, the old species which have
become extinct and the new ones which
have appeared, do not exceed five per
cent, of the whole. This is the more re
markable as great vicissitudes of climatri
and variations of sea-level have occurred,
during tlie interval. The whole of the
Glacial period has come and gone, and
Britain has been by turns an archipelago
of frozen islands, and part of a continent
extending over what is now the German
Ocean, and pushing out into the Atlantic
up to the one hundred fathom line.
Reasoning from these facts, assuming
the rate of change in the forms of life to
have been the same formerly, and sum
ming up the many complete changes of
fauna which have occurred during the
separate geological formations, Lyell has
arrived at the conclusion that geology
requires a period of , not less than 200
millions of years to account for the
phenomena which it discloses.
Long as the record is of geological
�16
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
time, it is only that of one short chapter three hours. In this state of things the
in , the volume of the history of the moon is supposed to, have been thrown
universe. Geology only begins when the ofi from the earth, either by one great
earth had cooled down into a state re convulsion, or, more probably, by small
sembling the present; when winds blew, masses at a time forming a ring like that
rains fell, rivers and seas eroded rocks of featurn, which ended by coalescing
and formed deposits, and when the con
single satellite. With
ditions were such that life became into a is the principal cause of the moon ’
which
the tides
possible by the remains of which those so much nearer the earth, their rise and
deposits can be identified.
enormous
But before this period began, which tall must have been somethingbore
may be called that of the maturity or and huge tidal waves like the500 orof the
Bay of Fundy, but perhaps
1,000
middle age of our planet, a much vaster feet high, must have swept twice during
time must be allowed for the contraction each revolution of the earth on its axis
and cooling of the vaporous matter of i.e., twice every, three or four hours, along
which it is formed, into the state in all the narrower seas and channels and
which the phenomena of geology became over all except the mountainous lands
possible. And if vast in the case of the adjoining.
earth, how much vaster must be the life
Now these conclusions
be true or
periods of the larger planets, such as not as regards phases of mayearth’s life
the
Jupiter, which from their much greater prior to the Silurian period, from which
size cool and contract much more slowly, downwards geology
unmistakably
and are not yet advanced beyond the that nothing of the showsor in the least
sort,
stage of intense youthful heat and
to it, has occurred
glowing luminosity which was left behind degree approaching point out is that ali
But
by our earth a great many tens of this, what I wish to of theory rests on a
millions of years ago ! And how vastly basissuperstructure
which, really does admit of definite
vaster must be that of the sun, whose
mass and volume exceed those of Jupiter demonstration and calculation.
Halley found
when
in a far higher ratio than Jupiter sur sun, recorded thatancienteclipses of the
in
annals, are
passes the earth !
compared
a
And beyond all this in a third degree discrepancywith recent observations of
is discovered in the rate
of vastness come the life-periods of those the moon’s motion, which must have been
stars or distant suns, which we know to slightly slower then than it is now
be in some cases as much as three Laplace apparently solved the difficulty
hundred times larger than oui*sun, and by showing
was an inevitable
not nearly so far advanced as it in the result of thethat this gravity, when the
law of
process of emergence from the fiery varying eccentricity of the earth’s orbit
nebulous into the solar stage.
To give some idea of the vast intervals was properly taken into account; and
of time required for these changes, a few the calculated amount of the variation
cause was shown to be exactly
facts and figures may be given.
what was
obser
One of, the latest speculations of vations. required to reconcile themathe
great
mathematical science is that the rotation matician, But our havingEnglish gone
Adams,
recently
or the earth is becoming slower, or, in over Laplace s calculations anew, dis
other words, that the day is becomin°' covered that some factors in the problem
longer, owingtotheretardingaction of the had been omitted, which reduced Laplace’s
tides, which act as a brake on a revolving acceleration of the moon’s motion by
wheel. If so, the effect of the reaction
to
on the moon of this action of the moon about one-half, leaving the other halfthe
be explained by a real
on the earth, must be that as the length of the sidereal day,increase in one
or time
earth rotates more slowly, the moon complete revolution of the earth of
about
recedes to a greater distance. And its axis.
required
viceversd, when the earth rotated more sufficient The retardation the total is one
to account for
accu
rapidly the moon was nearer to it
of an hour and a
until at length, when the process is mulated loss or, in other words, quarter in
the length
carried back far enough, we arrive at a 2 000 years,; now
time when the moon was at the earth’s of the day is than more by about Arth part
a
it was 2,000 years ago.
surface and the length of the day about of At second
this rate it would require 168,000
�TIME
years to wake a difference of 1 second in
lhelength of the day; 10,080,000 years for
a tlifferencs of 1 minute: and 604,800,000
years for a difference of 1 hour. The
r&towould not be uniform for the past,
for as the moon got nearer it would cause
higher tides and more retardationstill,
the abyss of time seems almost incon
ceivable to get back to the state in which
the earth could have rotated in three
hours and thrown off the moon.
It is right, however, to state that all
mathematical calculations of time, based
on the assumed rate at which cosmic
matter cools into suns and planets, and
these into solid and habitable globes, are
in the highest degree uncertain. If the
original data are right, mathematical
calculation inevitably gives right conclu
sions. But if the data are wrong, or,
what is the same thing, partial and im
perfect, the conclusions will, with equal
certainty, be wrong also. Now in this
■case we certainly do not know “the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth” respecting these processes.
Take what is perhaps the most difficult
problem presented by science—how the
sun keeps up so uniformly the enormous
amount of heat which it is constantly
radiating into space. This radiation is
going on in every direction, and the solar
heat received by the earth is only that
minute portion of it which is intercepted
by our little speck of a planet. All the
planets together receive less than one
230,000,000th part of the total heat ra
diated away by the sun and apparently
lost in space. Knowing the amount of
heat from the sun’s rays received at the
earth’s surface in a given time, we can
calculate the total amount of heat ra
diated from the sun in that time. It
amounts to this, that the sun in each
second of time parts with as much heat
as would be given out by the burning of
16,436 millions of millions of tons of the
best anthracite coal. And radiation cer
tainly at this rate, if not a higher one,
has been going on ever since the com
mencement of the geological record, which
must certainly be reckoned by a great
many tens of millions of years.
What an illustration does this afford of
that apparent “ waste of Nature ” which
made Tennyson “ falter where he firmly
trod” when he came to consider “her
secret meaning in her deeds ” 1
Yet there can be no doubt that vast as
17
these figures are, they are all the result of
natural laws, just as we find the law of
gravity prevailing throughout space at
distances expressed by figures equally
vast. The question is, what laws ? The
only one we know of at present at all
adequate to account for such a generation
of heat, is the transformation into heat
of the enormous amount of mechanical
force or energy, resulting from the con
densation of the mass of nebulous matter
from which the sun was formed, into a
mass of its present dimensions. This is
no doubt a true cause as far as it goes.
It is true that as the mass contracts, heat
would be, so to speak, squeezed out of it,
very much as water is squeezed out of _a
wet sponge by compressing it. But it is
a question whether it is the sole and
sufficient cause. Mathematicians have
calculated that even if we suppose the
original cosmic matter to have had an
infinite extension, its condensation into
the present sun would only have been
sufficient to keep up the actual supply of
solar heat for about 15 millions of year®;
Of this a large portion must have been
exhausted before the earth was formed
as a separate planet,and had cooled down
into a habitable globe. But even if we
took the whole it would be altogether in
sufficient. All competent geologists are
agreed in requiring at least 100 millions
of years to account for the changes which
have taken place in the earth’s surface
since the first dawn of life recorded in
the older rocks.
Various attempts have been made to
reconcile the discrepancy. For instance,
it has been said that the constantly re
peated impact of masses of meteoric and
cometic matter falling into the sun must
have caused the destruction of a . vast
amount of mechanical energy whhA
would be converted into heat. This is
true as far as it goes, but it is impossible
to conceive of the sun as a target kept at
a perpetual and uniform white heat for
millions of years by a rain of meteoric
bullets constantly fired upon it. More
plausibly it is said that we know nothing
of the interior constitution of the sun,
and that its solid nucleus may be vastly
more compressed than is inferred from
the dimensions of its visible disc, which
is composed of glowing flames and
vapours. This also may be a true cause,
but, after making every allowance, we
must fall back on the statement that the
c
�18
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THONGUT
continuance for such enormous periods of
such an enormous waste of energy as is
given out by the sun, though certainly
explainable by laws of Nature, depends
on laws not yet thoroughly understood
and explained.
Even in the case, comparatively small
and near to us, of the earth, the condition
of the interior and the rate of secular
cooling afford problems which as yet wait
for solution. The result of a number of
careful experiments in mines and deep
sinkings shows that the temperature, as
we descend below the shallow superficial
crust which is affected by the seasons, i.e.,
by the solar radiation, increases at the
average rate of 1° Fahrenheit for every
60 feet of depth. That is the average
rate, though it varies a good deal in dif
ferent localities. Now, at this rate we
should soon reach a depth at which all
known substances would be melted.
But astronomical considerations, de
rived from the Precession of the Equi
noxes, favour the idea that the earth is a
solid and not a fluid body, and require
us in any case to assume a rigid crust of
not less than ninety miles in thickness.
And if the whole earth below a thin
superficial crust were in an ordinary
state of fluidity from heat, it is difficult
to see how it could do otherwise than
boil, that is, establish circulating cur
rents throughout its mass with disen
gagement of vapour, in which case the
surface crust must be very soon broken
up and melted down, just as the super
ficial crust of a red-hot stream of lava is,
if an infusion of fresh lava raises the
stream below to white heat, or as a thin
film of ice would be if boiling water were
poured in below it.
All we can say is, that the laws under
which matter behaves under conditions
of heat pressure, chemical action, and
electricity so totally different. as must
prevail in the interior of the earth, and
a fortiori in that of the sun, are as yet
very partially known to us. In the
meantime the safest course is to hold by
tliose conclusions of geology which, as far
as they go, depend on laws really known
to us. For instance, the quantity of mud
carried, down in a year by the Ganges or
Mississippi, is a quantity which can be
calculated within certain approximate
limits. We can tell with certainty how
much the deposit cf this amount of mud
would raise an area, say of 100 square
miles, and how long it would take, at this
rate, to lower the area of India drained
by the Ganges a sufficient number of feet
to give matter enough to fill up the Gulf
of Bengal. And if among the older for
mations we find one, like the Wealden
for instance, similar in character to that
now forming by the Ganges, we can ap
proximate from its thickness to the time
that may have been required to form it.
In calculations of this sort there is no
theory, they are based on positive facts,
limited only by a certain possible amount
of error either way In short, the con
clusions of geology, at any rate up to the
Silurian period, when the present order
of things was fairly inaugurated, are
approximate facts and not theories, while
the astronomical conclusions are theories
based on data so uncertain, that while in
some cases they give results incredibly
short, like that of 15 millions of years for
the whole past process of the formation
of the solar system, in others they give
results almost incredibly long, as in that
which supposes the moon to have been
thrown off when the earth was rotating
in three hours, while the utmost actual
retardation claimed from observation
would require 600 millions of years to
make it rotate in twenty-three hours in
stead of twenty-four.
To one who looks at these discussions
between geologists and astronomers not
from the point of view of a specialist in
either science, but from that of a dis
passionate spectator, the safest course, in
the present state of our knowledge, seems
to be to assume that geology really proves
the duration of the present order of
things to have been somewhere over 100
millions of years, and that astronomy
gives an enormous though unknown time
beyond in the past, and to come in the
future, for the birth, growth, maturity,
decline, and death of the solar system of
which our earth is a small planet now
passing through the habitable phase.
So far, however, as the immediate
object of this work is concerned, viz., the
bearings of modern scientific discovery
on modem thought, it is not very
material whether the shortest or longest
possible standards of time are adopted.
The conclusions as to man’s position in
the universe, and the historical truth or
falsehood of old beliefs, are the same
whether man has existed in a state of
constant though slow progression for the.
�MATTER
last 50,000 years of a period of 15 millions,
or for the last 500,000 years of a period of
millions. It is a matter of the deepest scientific interest to arrive at the
truth, both as to the age of the solar
system, the age of the earth as a body
capable of supporting life, the successive
orders and dates at which life actually
appeared, and the manner and date of
the appearance of the most highly organ
ised form of life endowed with new capa
cities for developing reason and con
science in the form of Man. Those who
wish to prove themselves worthy of their
great good luck in having been born in
a civilised country of the nineteenth
century, and not in Palaeolithic periods,
will do well to show that curiosity, or
appetite for knowledge, which mainly
distinguishes the clever from the stupid
and the civilised from the savage man,
by studying the works of such writers as
Lyell, Huxley, Tyndall, and Proctor,
where they will find the questions which
here are only briefly stated, developed at
fuller length with the most accurate
Science and in the clearest and most
attractive style. But for the moral,
philosophical, and religious bearings of
these discoveries on the current _ of
modern thought, there is such a wide
margin that it becomes almost immaterial
whether the shortest possible or longest
possible periods should be ultimately
established.
CHAPTER III
MATTER
Matter and Motion—Light, Colour, and Heat
—Matter and its Elements—Molecules and
Atoms—Spectroscope—Uniformity of Mat
ter throughout the Universe—Force and
Motion—Conservation of Energy—Elec
tricity, Magnetism, and Chemical Action—Dissipation of Heat—Birth and Death of
Worlds.
The contents of the material universe
may be expressed in terms of Matter and
of Motion. Matter exists in the three
fold and interrelated states known as
solid, liquid, and gaseous, and it is con
venient to include with these the appa
rently fourth state called the ethereal.
The existence of this last-named is an
If)
hypothesis by which alone can we
account for the phenomena of light and
heat, and, as the marvellous researches of
Hertz have shown, of the electro-magnetic
waves which confirm the theory of con
nection between electricity, magnetism,
light, and radiant heat. More than this
we cannot assume regarding ether, for all
ponderable matter,—solids, liquids, gases
-—consists of ultimate molecules, and w®
do not know whether ether is nonmolecular or imponderable.
Dealing with Motion, it has been shown
that light radiates in all directions from
a luminous centre, travelling at the rate
of 186,000 miles per second. Now what
is light ? It is a sensation produced on
the brain by something which has been
concentrated by the lens of the eye on
the retina, and thence transmitted along
the optic nerve to the brain, where it sets
certain molecules vibrating. What is the
something which produces this effect ? Is
it a succession of minute particles, shot
like rifle-bullets from the luminous body
and impinging on the retina as on a tar
get ? Or is it a succession of tiny waves
breaking on the retina as the waves of
the sea break on a shore 1 Analogy sug
gests the latter, for in the case of the
sister sense, sound, we know as a fact
that the sensation is produced on the
brain by waves of air concentrated by
the ear, and striking on the auditory
nerve. But we have a more conclusive
proof. If one of a series of particles shot
out like bullets overtakes another, the
force of impact of the two is increased ;
but if one wave overtakes another when
the crest of the pursuing wave just coin
cides with the hollow of the wave before
it the effect is neutralised, and if the two
are of equal size it will be exactly
neutralised and both waves . will be
effaced. In other words, two lights will
make darkness. This, therefore, affords
an infallible test. If two lights can
make darkness, light is propagated, like
sound, by waves. Now two lights do
constantly make darkness, as is proved,
every day by numerous experiments.
Therefore light is caused by waves.
But to have waves there must be a
medium through which the waves are
propagated. Without water you could
not have ocean waves ; without air you
could not have sound-waves. Waves are
in fact nothing but the successive forms
assumed by a set of particles whichf
c 2
�20
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
when forced from a position of rest, tend
to return to that position, and oscillate
about it. Place a cork on the surface of
a still pond, and then throw in a stone ;
what follows 1 Waves are propagated,
which seem to travel outwards in circles,
but if you watch the cork, you will see
that it does not really travel outwards, but
simply rises and falls in the same place.
This is equally true of waves of sound and
waves of light. But the velocity with
which the waves travel depends on the
nature of the medium. In a dense
medium of imperfect elasticity they
travel slowly, in a rare and elastic
medium quickly. Now the velocity of a
sound-wave in air is about 1,100 feet a
second, that of the light-wave about
186,000 miles a second or about one
million times greater. It is proved by
mathematical calculation that, if the
density of two media are the same, their
elasticities are in proportion to the
squares of the velocities with which a
wave travels. The elasticity of ether,
therefore, would be a million million
times greater than that of air, which, as
we know, is measured by its power of
resisting a pressure of about 15 lbs. to
the square inch. But the ether must in
fact be almost infinitely rare, as well as
almost infinitely elastic, for it causes no
perceptible retardation in the motions of
the earth and planets. It must be almost
infinitely rare also because it permeates
freely the interior of substances like
glass and crystals, through which light
waves pass, showing that the atoms or
ultimate particles of which these sub
stances are composed, minute as they
are, must be floating in ether like
buoys floating on water or balloons in
the air.
The dimensions of the light-waves
which travel through this ether at the
rate of 186,000 miles a second can be
accurately measured by strict mathe
matical calculations, depending mainly
on the phenomena of interferences, i.e.,
of the intervals required between suc
cessive waves for the crest of one to
overtake the depression of another
and thus make two lights produce
darkness.
These calculations are much too intri
cate to admit of popular explanation,
but they are as certain as those of the
"Nautical Almanac, based on the law of
gravity, which enable ships to find their
way across the pathless ocean, and they
give the following results :
Dimensions
of
Light-Waves,
Colours.
Number of
Waves in One
Inch.
Red
Orange
Yellow
Green
Blue
Indigo
Violet
39,000
42 000
44,000
47,000
51,000
54,000
57,000
Number of
cillations in
Second.
Os
One
477,000,000,000,000
506,000,000,000,000
535,000,000,000,000
575,000,000,000.000
622,000,000,000,000
658,000.000,000,000
699,000,000,000,010
These are the colours whose vibrations
affect the brain through the eye with the
sensation of light, and which cause the
sensation of white light when their
different vibrations reach the eye simul
taneously. But there are waves and
vibrations on each side of these limits,
which produce different effects, the longer
waves with slower oscillations beyond
the red, though no longer causing light
causing heat, while the shorter and
quicker waves beyond the violet cause
chemical action, and are the most effec
tive agents in photography.
We must refer our readers to works
treating specially of light for further
details, and for an account of the vast
variety of beautiful and interesting ex
periments with polarised light, coloured
rings, and otherwise, to which the theory
of waves propagated through ethsf
affords the key. For the present purpose
it is sufficient to say that modern science
compels us to assume such an ether ex
tending everywhere, from the faintest
star seen at a distance which requires
thousands of years for its rays, travelling
at the rate of 186,000 miles a second, to
reach the earth, down to the infini
tesimally small interspace between the
atoms of the minutest matter. And
throughout the whole of this enormous
range law prevails, ether vibrates and has
always vibrated in the same definite
manner, just as air vibrates by definite
laws when the strings of a piano are
struck by the hammers.
I now return to the consideration of
matter.
What is matter 1 In the most general
sense it is that which has weight, or is
subject to the law of gravity, and, as
shown above, it exists, as ponderable
stuff, in the three forms of solid, liquid,
�MATTER
Or gas, according to the amount of heat.
Diminish heat, and the particles approach
closer and are linked together.by mutual
attraction, so as not to be readily parted ;
this is a solid. Increase the heat up to a
certain point, and the particles recede.
until their mutual attractions m the
interior of the mass neutralise one an
other, SO that the particles can move
fredy, though still held together as a
mass by the sum of all these attractions
acting as if concentrated at the centre of
gravity ; this is the liquid state. Increase
the heat still more, and the particles
Separate until they get beyond the sphere
of their mutual attraction and tend to
dart off into space, unless confined by
some surface on which they exert pres
sure ; this is a gas.
. .
The most familiar instance of this is
afforded by water, which, as we all know,
SKists in the three forms of ice, water,
and vapour or steam, according to the
dose of heat which has been incorporated
with it.
Pursuing our inquiry further, the next
great fact in regard to matter fs that it
is not all uniform. While most of the
jfommon forms with which we are con
versant are made up of mixed materials,
^vhich can be taken to pieces and shown
separately, there are, as at present ascer
tained, some seventy-six substances which
defy chemical analysis to decompose
them, and must therefore be taken as
elementary substances. A great majority
of these consist of substances existing
in minute quantities, and hardly known
Outside the laboratories of chemists
The world of matter, as known to the
senses, is mainly composed of combina
tions, more or less complex, of a few
elements. Thus, water is a compound of
two simple gases, oxygen and hydrogen ;
air, speaking broadly, of oxygen and
nitrogen; the solid framework of the
Mrtli, mainly of combinations of oxygen
With carbon, calcium, aluminium, silicon,
and a few other bases ; salt, of chlorine
^nd sodium ; the vegetable world directly
and the animal world indirectly, mainly
of complex combinations of oxygen,
hydrogen, and nitrogen with carbon, and
With smaller quantities of silicon, sulphur,
(potassium, sodium, and phosphorus. . The
ordinary metals, such as iron, gold, silver,
stopper, tin, lead, mercury, zinc, nearly
complete the list of what may be called
Ordinary elements.
21
Now let us push our analysis a step
further. How is matter made up of
these elements ; Up to and beyond the
furthest point visible by aid of the microscope, matter is divisible. We can break
a crystal into fragments, or divide a drop
into drops, until they cease to be visibly
though still retaining all the properties
of the original substance. Can we carry
on this process indefinitely, and is matter
composed of something, that can b®
divided and subdivided into fractional
parts ad infinitum? The answer is, No,
it consists of ultimate but still definite
particles which cannot be further sub*
divided. How is this kno wn ? Becaus®
we find by experience that substances 1
will only combine in certain definite pro I
portions either of weight or measure,*
For instance, in forming water exactly
eight grains by weight of oxygen combine with exactly one grain of hydrogen,
and if there is any excess or fractional
part of either gas, it remains over , in
its original form uncombined. In like
manner, matter in. the form of gag
always combines with other matter in
the same form by volumes which, bear
a definite and very simple proportion to
each other, and the compound formed
bears a definite and very simple ratio to
the sum of the volumes of the combining
gases. Thus two volumes of hydrogen
combine with one of oxygen to form two
volumes of water in the state of vapour.
From these facts certain inferences can
be drawn. In the first place it is clear
that matter really does consist of minute
particles, which do not touch and form a
continuous solid, but are. separated by
intervals which increase with increase of
temperature. This is evident from the
fact that we can pour a second or third
gas into a space already occupied by a
first one. Each gas occu pies the enclosed
space just as if there were no other gas
present, and exerts its own proper pres
sure on the containing vessel, so that the
total pressure on it is exactly the sum of
the partial pressures. It is easy to see
what this means. If a second regiment
can be marched into a limited.space of
ground on which a first regiment is
already drawn up, it is evident that the
first regiment must be drawn up in loose
order, i.e., the soldier-units of which it is
composed must stand so far apart that
other soldier-units can find room be
tween them without disturbing the for-
�22
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
mation. But the effect will be that the
fire from the front will be increased, as
for instance if a soldier of the second
regiment, armed with a six-shooter re
peating rifle, takes his stand between two
soldiers of the first regiment armed with
single-barrelled rifles, the effective fire
will be increased in the ratio of 8 to 2.
And this is precisely what is meant by
the statement that the pressure of two
gases in the same space is the sum of the
separate pressures of each. It is clearly
established that the pressure of a gas on
a containing surface is caused by the
bombarding to which it is subjected from
the impacts of an almost infinite number
of these almost infinitely small atoms,
which, when let loose from the mutual
attractions which hold them together in
the solid and fluid state, dart about in all
directions, colliding with one another
and rebounding, like a set of little
billiard-balls gone mad, and producing a
certain average resultant of momentum
outwards which is called pressure.
Another simile may help us to conceive
how the indivisibility of atoms is inferred
from the fact that they only combine in
definite proportions. Suppose a number
of gentlemen and ladies promenading
promiscuously in a room. The band
strikes up a waltz, and they at once pro
ceed to group themselves in couples
rotating with rhythmical motion in defi
nite orbits. Clearly, if there are more
ladies than gentlemen, some of them will
be left without partners. So, if instead
of a waltz it were a threesome reel, in
which each gentleman led out two ladies,
there must be exactly twice as many
ladies as gentlemen for all to join in the
dance. But if a gentleman could be cut
up into fractional parts, and each frac
tion developed into a dancing gentleman,
as primitive cells split up and produce
fresh cells, it would not matter how many
ladies there were, as each could be pro
vided with a partner.. Now this is
strictly analogous to what occurs in
chemical combination. Water is formed
by each gentleman atom of oxygen
taking out a lady atom of hydrogen in
each hand, and the sets thus formed com
mence to dance threesome reels in defi
nite time and measure, any surplus
oxygen or hydrogen atoms being left
out in the cold. Wonderful as it may
appear, science enables us not only to
say of these inconceivably minute atoms
that they have a real existence, but to
count and weigh them. This fact has
been accomplished by mathematical cal
culations based on laws which have been
ascertained by a long series of experi
ments on the constitution of gases.
It is found that all substances, when in
the form of gas, conform to three laws :
1. Their volume is inversely propor
tional to the pressure to which
they are subjected.
2. Their volume is directly proportional
to the temperature.
3. At the same pressure and tempera
ture all gases have the same num
ber of molecules in the same
volume.
From the last law it is obvious that if
equal volumes of two gases are of different
weight, the cause must be that the mole
cules of the one are heavier than those of
the other. This enables us to express the
weight of the molecule of any other gas
in some multiple of the unit afforded by
the weight of the molecule of the lightest
gas, whiqfi is hydrogen. Thus, the density
of watery vapour being nine times that of
hydrogen, we infer that the molecule of
water weighs nine times as much as the
molecule of hydrogen, and that of oxygen
being eight times greater, we infer that
the oxygen molecule is eight times heavier
than that of hydrogen.
These weights are checked by the other
law which has been stated, that chemical
combination between different substances
always takes place in certain definite pro
portions. Thus, whenever in a chemical
process the original substances or the pro
duct are or might exist in the state of gas,
it is always found that the definite pro
portions observed in the chemical process
are either the proportions of the densities
of the respective gases or some simple
multiple of these proportions. Thus, the
weight of hydrogen being 2, which com
bines with a weight of oxygen equal to 16
to form a weight of watery vapour equal
to 18, the density of the latter is to that
of hydrogen as 9 to 1, i.e., as 18 to 2.
But to get to the bottom of the matter
we must go a step further, and as we have
decomposed substances into molecules,
we must take the molecules themselves
to pieces and see what they are made of.
The molecule is the ultimate particle into
which any substance can be divided re
taining its own peculiar qualities. A mole
cule of water is as truly water as a drop
�MATTER
or a tumblerful. But when chemical de
composition takes place, instead of the
molecule of water we have molecules of
two entirely different substances, oxygen
and hydrogen. Nothing can well be more
unlike than the product water and the
component parts of which it is made up.
Water is a fluid, oxygen a gas ; water ex
tinguishes fire, oxygen creates it. Water
is a harmless drink, oxygen the base of
the most corrosive acids. It is evident
that the water-molecule is a composite,
and that its qualities depend, not on the
essential qualities of the atoms which
have combined to make it, but on the
manner of the combination, and the new
modes of action into which these atoms
have been forced. In his native war-paint
oxygen is a furious savage ; with a hydro
gen atom in each hand he is a polished
gentleman.
Our theory, therefore, leads beyond
molecules to atoms, and we have to con
sider these particles of a still smaller
order than molecules, as the ultimate
indivisible units of matter of which we
have been in search. And even these we
must conceive of as corks, as it were,
.floating in an ocean of ether, causing
waves in it by their own proper move
ments, and agitated by all the successive
waves which vibrate through this etherocean in the form of light and heat.
Working on these data, a variety of
refined mathematical calculations made
by Clausius, Clerk Maxwell, Sir W. Thom
son (now Lord Kelvin), and other eminent
mathematicians, have given us approxi
mate figures for the actual size, weight,
and velocities of atoms and molecules.
The results are truly marvellous. A mil
limetre is the one-thousandth part of a
metre, or roughly one twenty-fifth of an
inch. The magnitudes with which we
have to deal are all of an order where the
standard of measurement is expressed by
the millionth part of a millimetre. The
volume of a molecule of air is only a small
fraction of that of a cube whose side would
be the millionth of a millimetre. A cubic
centimetre, or say a cube whose side is
between one-third and one-half of an inch,
contains 21,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
molecules. The number of impacts re
ceived by each molecule of air during
one second will be 4,700 millions. The
distance traversed between each impact
averages 95 millionths of a millimetre.
It may assist in forming some concep
23
tion of these almost infinitely small mag
nitudes, to quote an illustration given by
Sir W. Thomson as the result of mathe
matical calculation. Suppose a drop of
water were magnified so as to appear of
the size of the earth or with a diameter
of 8,000 miles, the atoms of which it is
composed, magnified on the same scale,
would appear of a size intermediate
between that of a rifle-bullet and of a
cricket-ball.
These figures show that space and mag
nitude extend beyond the standards of
ordinary human sense, such as miles, feet,
and inches, as far downwards into the
region of the infinitely small as they do
upwards into that of the infinitely great.
And throughout the whole of this enor
mous range law prevails. The same law
of gravity gives weight to molecules and
atoms, makesan apple fall to the ground,
and causes double stars to revolve round
their centre of gravity in elliptic orbits.
The law of polarity which converts ironfilings into small magnets under the in
fluence of a permanent magnet or electric
current, animates the smallest atom.
Atoms arrange themselves into molecules,
and molecules into crystals, very much
as magnetised iron-filings arrange them
selves into regular curves. And the great
law seems to prevail universally through
out the material, as it does also through
out the moral world, that you cannot
have a North without a South Pole, a
positive without a negative, a right with
out a wrong; and that error consists
mainly in what the poet calls, “the false
hood of extremes ”—that is, in allowing
the attraction of one pole, oi* of one
opinion,- so to absorb us as to take no
account of its opposite.
The universality of law has received
wonderful confirmation of late years from
the discovery made by the spectroscope
that the sun, the planets, and the re
motest stars are all composed of matter
identical with that into which chemical
analysis has resolved the constituent
matter of the earth. This has been proved
in the following way :
If a beam of light is admitted into a
darkened room through a small hole or
narrow slit, and a triangular piece of
glass, called a prism, is interposed in its
path, the image, thrown on a screen is
a rainbow tinted streak, intersected by
numerous fine dark lines, whieh is called
a spectrum. If, instead of solar light, light
�24
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
from other luminous sources is similarly
treated, it is found that all elementary
substances have their peculiar spectra.
Light from solid or liquid substances
gives a continuous spectrum, light from
gases or glowing vapours gives a spect
rum of bright lines separated from each
other, but always in definite positions
according to the nature of the substance.
The next great step in the discovery was
that these bright lines become dark lines
when a light of greater intensity, coming
from a solid nucleu s, is transmitted through
an atmosphere of such gases or vapours.
We can thus photograph the spectrum of
glowing hydrogen, sodium, iron, or other
substances, and placing it below a photo
graph of a solar or stellar spectrum, see
if any of the dark lines of the latter are
coincident in position with the bright
lines of the former. If they are, we may
be.certain that these substances actually
exist in the sun or star. It is, in fact,
just the same thing as if we had been able
to bring down a jar-full of the solar or
stellar matter and analyse it in our labo
ratories.
It is difficult to convey any adequate
description of these grand discoveries
made by the new science of spectroscopy
without referring to special works on the
subject; but it may be possible to give
some general idea of the principles on
which they are based.
As has been shown, light consists of
waves propagated through ether. These
waves are started by the vibrations of
the ultimate particles of matter, which,
whether in the simplest form of atoms,
in the more complex form of molecules,
or in the still more complex form of com
pound molecules, have their own peculiar
and ciistinct vibrations. These vibrations
are increased, diminished, or otherwise
modified by variations of heat and by the
collisions which occur between the par
ticles from their own proper motions. If
we take the simplest case, that of matter
in the form of a gas or vapour composed
of single atoms, at a temperature just
sufficient to become luminous and at a
pressure small enough to keep the atoms
widely apart, the vibrations are all of one
sort, viz., that peculiar to the elementary
substance to which they belong, and one
set of waves only is propagated by them
f hrough the ether. The spectrum, there
fore. of such a gas is a single line of light,
in the definite position which is due to its
refrangibility, i.e., to the velocity of the
particular wave of light which the par
ticular vibration of those particular atoms
is able to propagate.
When pressure is increased so that the
particles are brought closer together,
their vibrations made more energetic
and their collisions more frequent, more
waves, and waves of different qualities
are started, and more lines appear in the
spectrum and the lines widen out, until
at length when the gas becomes very
dense, some of the lines overlap and an
approach is made towards a continuous
spectrum. Finally, when the particles
are brought so near together that the
substance assumes a fluid or solid state,
the number of wave-producing vibrations
becomes so great that a complete system
of different light-waves is propagated,
and the lines of the spectrum are multi
plied until they coalesce and form a con
tinuous band of rainbow-tinted light. If
the particles of the gas, instead of being
single atoms, are more complex, as mole
cules or compound molecules, the vibra
tions are more complex and the different
resulting light-waves more numerous, so
that the lines in the spectrum are more
numerous, and in some cases they coalesce
so as to form, shaded bands, or what are
called fluted lines, instead of simple lines.
Moreover, whatever light-waves are
originated by the vibrations of the par
ticles of gas are absorbed into those
vibrations and extinguished, if they
originate from the vibrations of some
more energetic particles of another sub
stance outside of it, whose light-waves,
travelling along the ether, pass through
the gas, and are thus shown as dark lines
in the spectrum of the other source of
light.
. We can now understand how the asser
tion is justified that we can analyse the
composition of the sun and stars as cer
tainly as if we had a jar full of their
substance to analyse in our laboratory.
The first glance at a spectrum tells us
whether the luminous source is solid,
fluid, or gaseous. If its spectrum is con
tinuous it is solid or fluid ; we know this
for certain, but can tell nothing more.
But if it consists of bright lines, we know
that it comes direct from matter in the
form of luminous gas, and knowing from
experiments in the laboratory the exact
colours and situations of the lines formed
by the different elements of which earthly
�MATTER
matter is composed, we can see whether
the lines in the spectra of heavenly matter
do or do not correspond with any of them.
if bright lines correspond we are sure
that the substances correspond, both as
to their elementary atoms and their con
dition as glowing gas. If dark lines in
the spectrum of the heavenly body corre
spond with bright lines in that of . a
known earthly substance, we are certain
that the substances are the same and in
the same state of gas, but that the solar
or stellar spectrum proceeds from an
Intensely heated interior solid or fluid
nucleus, whose waves have passed through
an outer envelope or atmosphere of this
gas.
Applying these principles, although the
science is still in its infancy and many
interesting discoveries remain to be made,
this grand discovery has become an
axiomatic fact—Matter is alike every
where. The light of stars up to the ex
treme boundary of the visible universe
is composed mainly of glowing hydrogen,
the same identical hydrogen as we get by
decomposing water by a voltaic battery.
Of the 76 elementary substances enu
merated by chemists, 36 are known cer
tainly to exist in the sun’s atmosphere.
The elements whose presence is proved
comprise many of those which are most
common in the composition of the earth,
as hydrogen, carbon, iron (represented
by about 2,000 lines in the. solar spec
trum), lead, calcium, aluminium, magne
sium, sodium, potassium, etc.; and if
others, such as oxygen, nitrogen, and
chlorine have not yet been found, the
explanation is that when a mixture of
the incandescent vapours of the metals
and metalloids (or non-metallic elemen
tary substances, to which class both oxy
gen and nitrogen belong), or their com
pounds, is examined with the spectroscope,
the spectra of the metalloids always yield
before that of the metals. Hence the
absence of the lines of oxygen and other
metalloids, carbon and silicon excepted,
among the vast crowd of lines in the solar
spectrum. Then, too, in extreme states
of rarefaction of the sun’s absorbing layer,
the absorption of the oxygen is too small
to be sensible to us. The main fact is
firmly established that matter is the same
throughout all space, from the minutest
atom to the remotest star.
Thus far we have been treating of
matter only, and of force and motion but
25
incidentally. These, however, are equally
essential components of the phenomena
of the universe. What is force ? In the
last analysis it is the unknown causa
which we assume for motion, or the term
in which we sum up whatever produces
or tends to produce it. The idea of foreej
like so many other of our ideas, is take©
from our own sensations. If we lift a
weight or bend a bow, we are conscious
of doing so by an effort. Something
which we call will produces a motion in
the molecules of the brain, which is trans
mitted by the nerves to. the muscles
where it liberates a certain amount of
energy stored up by the chemical com
position and decomposition of. the atoms
of food which we consume. This contracts
the muscle, and the force of its contrac
tion, transmitted by a system of pulleys
and levers to the hand, lifts the weighty
If we let go the weight it falls, and th®
force which lifted it reappears in th®
force with which it strikes the ground.
If we do not let go the weight but. plac®
it on a support at the height to which we
have raised it, it does not fall, no motion!
ensues, but the lifting force remain
stored-up in a tendency to motion, and
can be made to reappear as motion at
any time by withdrawing the support^
when the weight will fall. It is evident
therefore, that force may exist in two
forms, either as actually causing motion^
or as causing a tendency to motion.
In this generalised form it has been
agreed to call it energy, as less liable to
be obscured by the ordinary impressions
attached to the word force, which are
mainly derived from experiences of actual
motion cognizable by the senses.
speak, therefore, of energy as of some
thing which is the basis or primum mobiii
of all motion or tendency to motion,
whether it be in the grosser forms of
gravity and mechanical work, or in the
subtler forms of molecular and atonii®
motions causing the phenomena of heat,
light, electricity, magnetism, and chemi
cal action. This energy may exist either
in the form of actual motion, when it is
called energy of motion, or in that of
tendency to motion, when it is called
energy of position. Thus the bent bow
has energy of position which, when , the
string is let go, is at once converted into
energy of motion in the flight of the arrow.
Respecting this energy modern science
has arrived at this grand generalisation^
�26
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
that it is one and the same in all its
different manifestations, and can neither
be created nor destroyed, so that all these
varied manifestations are mere transfor
mations of the same primitive energy
from one form to another. This is what
is meant by the principle of the “Con
servation of Energy.”
It was arrived at in this 'way. Speak
ing roughly, it has long been known that
heat could generate mechanical power, as
seen in the steam-engine ; and conversely
that mechanical power could generate
heat, as is seen when a sailor, in a chill
north-easter, claps his arms together on
his breast to warm himself. But it was
reserved for Dr. Joule to give this fact
the scientific precision of a natural law,
by actually measuring the amount of heat
that was added to a given weight of water
by a given expenditure of mechanical
power, and conversely the amount of
mechanical work that could be got from
a given expenditure of heat.
A vast number of carefully-conducted
experiments have led to the conclusion
that if a kilogramme be allowed to fall
through 424 metres and its motion be
then suddenly stopped, sufficient heat
will be generated to raise the tempera
ture of one kilogramme of water by 1°
Centigrade ; and conversely this amount
of heat would be sufficient to raise one
kilogramme to a height of 424 metres.
If, therefore, we take as our unit of
work that of raising one kilogramme
one metre, and as our unit of heat that
necessary to raise one kilogramme of
water 1° Centigrade, we may express
the proportion of heat to work by saying
that one unit of beat is equal to 424 units
of work ; or, as it is sometimes expressed,
that the number 424 is the mechanical
equivalent of heat.
But the question may be asked, what
does this mean, how c^n mechanical work
be really transformed into heat or viceversa 1 The answer is, the energy which
was supplied by chemical action to the
muscles of the man or horse, or to the
water converted into steam by combus
tion of coal, which originated the me
chanical work, was first transformed into
its equivalent amount of mechanical
energy of motion, and then, when that
motion was arrested, was transformed
into heat, which is simply the same
energy transformed into increased mole
cular motion.
we wish to carry our inquiry a step
further back and ask where the original
energy came from which has undergone
these transformations, the answer must
be, .mainly from the sun. The sun’s rays,
acting on the chlorophyl or green matter
of the plants of the coal era, rore asunder
the atoms of carbon and oxygen which
formed the carbonic acid in the atmosphere, and locked up a store of energy
in the form of carbon in the coal which
is burned to produce the steam. In
like manner it stored-up the energy in
the form .of carbon in the vegetable pro
ducts winch, either directly, or indirectly
after having passed through the body of
some animal, supplied the food, whose
slow combustion in the man or horse
supplied the energy which did the work.
But where did the energy come from
which the sun has been pouring forth for
countless ages in the form of light and
heat, and of which our earth only inter
cepts the minutest portion 1 This is a
mystery not yet completely solved, but
one real cause we can see, which has
certainly operated and perhaps been the
only one, viz., the mechanical energy of
the. condensation by gravity of the atoms
which originally , formed the nebulous
matter out of which the sun was made.
If . we ask, how came the atoms into
existence endowed with this marvellous
energy, we have reached the furthest
bounds of human knowledge, and can
only reply in the words of the poet:
“Behind the veil, behind the veil.”
We can only form metaphysical con
ceptions, or I might rather call them the
vaguest guesses. One is, that they were
created and endowed with their ele
mentary properties by an all-wise and
all-powerful Creator. This is Theism.
Another, that thought is the only
reality, and that all the phenomena of
the universe are thoughts or ideas of one
universal, all-pervading Mind. This is
Pantheism.
Or again, we may frankly acknow
ledge that the real essence and origin of
things are “ behind the. veil,” and not
knowable or even conceivable by any
faculties with which the human mind is
endowed in its present state of existence.
This is Agnosticism.
There is another conception, of which
we may certainly say that it is not ten
able.—that is Atheism. For it is the
spirit that denies without warrant for
�MATTER
denial, and pronounces a verdict which
fen arrived at without evidence*
But these speculations lead us into the
misty regions where, like Milton’s fallen
angels, “we find no end in wandering
mazes lost.” Let us return to the solid
ground of fact, on which alone the
human mind can stand firmly, and, like
Ant-mu s, gather fresh vigour every time
it touches it for further efforts to enlarge
the boundaries of knowledge and extend
the domain of Cosmos over Chaos.
The transformation of energy which
we have seen to exist in the case of
mechanical work and heat, is not con
fined to those two cases only, but is a
universal law applicable to all actions
<nd arrangements of matter which in
volve motions of atoms, molecules, or
masses, and therefore imply the existence
of energy. In heat we have had an
Example of energy exerted in molecular
Biotion and molecular separation. In
chemical action we have energy exerted
in the separation of atoms, severing
them from old combinations and mutual
attractions, and bringing them within
the sphere of new ones.. In electricity,
and magnetism, which is another form
of electricity, we have energy of position
which manifests itself in electrical
separation, by which matter becomes
charged with two opposite energies,
positive and negative, which accumulate
at separate poles, or on separate surfaces,
with an amount of tension which may be
reconverted into the original amount of
energy of motion when the spark, passing
between them, restores their electrical
equilibrium. Of this we have an ex
ample in the ordinary electrical machine,
where the original energy comes from the
mechanical force which turns the.handle,
and is given back when the electric spark
brings things back to their original
state.
We have also energy of motion, when
Instead of electrical separation and
tension we have a flow or current of
electricity producing the effect of the
electric spark in a slow, quiet, and con
tinuous manner. Thus, in the voltaic
battery, the free energy created by the
difference of chemical action of an acid
on plates of different metals, is trans
formed into a current which charges two
poles with opposite electricities, and
when the poles are brought together and
the circuit is closed, flows through it in
a continuous current. This current is
an energetic agent which produces
various effects. It deflects the magnetic
needle, as is seen in the electric telegraph.
It creates magnetism, as is seen whoa the]
poles of the battery are connected by a
wire wrapped round and round a cylinder
of soft iron, so as to make the current
circulate at right angles to the axis
formed by the cylinder. In fact, all
magnetism may be considered as the
summing up at the two opposite ex
tremities or poles of an axis, of the
effects of electric currents circulating!
round it; as, for instance, the earth is a
great magnet because currents caused by
the action of the sun circulate round it
nearly parallel to the equator. Electric
currents further show their energy by
attracting and repelling one another,]
those flowing in the same direction at
tracting, and those in opposite di
rections repelling, the same effect show
ing itself in magnets, which are in sub
stance collections of circular currents
flowing from right to left or left to right
according as they are positive or negative.
Again, currents produce an effect by
inducing currents in other bodies placed
near them, very much as the vibrations!
of a tuning-fork- induce vibrations and
bring out a corresponding note from the
strings of a piano or violin ready to
sound it. When a coil of wire W con
nected with a battery and a current
passes through it, if it is brought near toj
another isolated coil it induces a CfUmnil
in an opposite direction, which, when it
recedes from it, is changed into a cur
rent in the same direction.
These principles are illustrated by the
ordinary dynamo, by which the energy
of mechanical work exerted in making
magnets revolve in presence of currents,
and by various devices accumulating!
electric energy, is made available either ’
for doing other mechanical work, such as
driving a wheel, or for doing molecular
or atomic work by producing heat and
light.
Another transformation of the energy
of electric currents is into heat, light, or
chemical action. If the two poles.of a
battery are connected by a thin platinum
wire it will be heated to redness in ft few
seconds, the friction or resistance to the
current in passing through the limited;
section of the thin wire producing;
great heat. If the wire is thicker heat
�28
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
will equally be produced, but more
slowly.
If the poles of the battery are made of
carbon, or some substance the particles
of which remain solid during intense
heat, when they are brought nearly to
gether the current will be completed by
an arc of intensely brilliant light, and
the carbon will slowly burn away. This
is the electric light so commonly used when
great illuminating power is wanted.
Again, the electric current may employ
its energy in effecting chemical action.
If the poles of a battery, instead of being
brought together, are plunged into a
vessel of water, decomposition will begin.
Oxygen will rise in small bubbles at the
positive pole, and hydrogen at the
negative. If these two gases are col
lected together in the same vessel, and
an electric current, in the intense and
momentary form of a spark, passed
through them, they will combine with
explosion into the exact amount of
water which was decomposed in their
formation.
Everywhere, therefore, we find the
same law of universal application.
Energy, like matter, cannot be created
or destroyed,. but only transformed. It
is therefore, in one sense, eternal. But
there is another point of view from which
this has to be regarded.
Mechanical work, as we have seen,
can always be converted into heat, and
heat can, under certain conditions, be
reconverted into mechanical work ; but
not under all conditions. The heat
must pass from something at a higher
temperature into something at a lower.
If the condenser of a steam-engine were
always at the same temperature as
the boiler, we should get no work out of
it. It is.easy to understand how this is
the case if we figure to ourselves a river
running down into a lake. If the stream
is dammed up at two different levels,
each dam, as long as there is water in it,
will turn a mill-wheel. But if all the
water runs down into the lake and,
owing to a dry season, there is no fresh
supply, the wheels will stop and we can
get no more work done. So with heat,
if it all runs down to one uniform tem
perature it can no longer be made
available to do work. In the case of
the river, fresh water is supplied at the
higher levels, by the sun’s energy rais
ing it by evaporation from the seas to
the clouds, from which it is deposited
as rain or snow. But in the case of
heat there is no such self-restoring process,
and. the. tendency is always towards its
dissipation;. or in other words, towards
a more uniform distribution of heat
throughout all existing matter. The
process is very slow ; the original fund
of high-temperature heat is enormous,
and as long as matter goes on condens
ing fresh supplies of heat are, so to
speak, squeezed out of it.
Still there is a limit to condensation,
while there is no limit to the tendency
of heat to diffuse itself from hotter to
colder matter until all temperatures are
equalized. The energy is not destroyed ;
it is still there in the same average
amount of total heat, though no longer
differentiated into greater and lesser
heats, and
therefore
no
longer
available for life, motion, or any other
form of transformation. This seems to
be the case with the moon, which, being
so much smaller, has sooner equalised its
heat with surrounding space, and is ap
parently a burnt-out and dried-up cinder
without air or water. And this, as far as
we can see, must be the ultimate fate of
all planets, suns, and solar systems.
Fortunately the process is extremely
slow, for even our small earth has en
joyed air, water, sunshine, and all the
present conditions necessary for life for
the whole geological period, certainly
from the Silurian epoch downwards, if
not earlier, which cannot well be less
than 100 millions of years, and may be
much more. Still time, even if reckoned
by hundreds of millions of years, is not
eternity; and as, looking through the
telescope at nebulae which appear to be
condensing about central nuclei, we
perchance dimly discern a beginning, so,
looking at the moon and reasoning from
established principles as to the dissipa
tion of heat, we can dimly discern an
end. What we really can see is that
throughout the whole of this enormous
range of space and time law prevails •,
that, given the original atoms and
energies with their original qualities,
everything else follows in a regular and
and inevitable succession; and that the
whole material universe is a clock, so
perfectly constructed from the beginning
as to require no outside interference
during the time it has to run to keep
it going with absolute correctness.
�LIFE
CHAPTER IV
LIFE.
Essence of Life—Simplest Form, Protoplasm
—Monera and Protista—Animal and Vege
table Life—Spontaneous Generation—De
velopment of Species from Primitive Cells
-—Supernatural Theory—Zoological . Pro
vinces-—Separate Creations—Law or Miracle
—Darwinian Theory—Struggle for LifeSurvival of the Fittest—Development and
Design—The Hand—Proof required to es
tablish Darwin’s Theory as a Law—Species
—Hybrids—Man subject to Law.
The universe is divided into two worlds
—the inorganic, or world of dead matter;
and the organic, or world of life. What
is life 1 In its essence it is a state of
matter in which the particles are in a
continued state of flux, and the indi
vidual existence depends, not on the same
particles remaining in the same definite
shape, but on the permanence of a definite
mould or form through which fresh par
ticles are continually entering, forming
new combinations and passing away. It
may assist in forming a conception of this
if we imagine ourselves to be looking at
a mountain the top of which is enveloped
in a driving mist. The mountain is dead
matter, the particles of which continue
fixed in the rocks. But the cloud-form
which envelops it is a mould into which
fresh particles of vapour are continually
entering and becoming visible on the
windward side, and passing away and
disappearing to leeward. If we add to
this the conception that the particles do
not, as in the case of the cloud, simply
enter in and pass away without change,
but are digested, that is, undergo chemical
changes by which they- are partly assimi
lated and worked-up into component
parts of the mould, and partly thrown off
in new combinations, we shall arrive at
something which is not far off the.ulti
mate idea of what constitutes living
matter, in its simplest form of the pro
toplasm, or speck of jelly-like substance,
which is shown to be the primitive basis
or raw material of all the more, complex
forms both of vegetable and animal life.
Digestion, therefore, is the primary attri
bute. A crystal grows from without, by
taking on fresh particles and building
them up in regular layers according to
fixed laws, just as the pyramids of Egypt
were built up by layer upon layer of
squared stones upon surfaces formed of I
regular figures, and inclined to each other
at determinate angles.
The living plant or animal grows from U
within by taking supplies of fresh matter
into its inner laboratory, where it is
worked up into a variety of comptoj^l
products needed for the existence and
reproduction of life. After supplying •]
these, the residue is given back in various
forms to the inorganic world, and the
final residue of all is given back by death,
which is the ultimate end of all life.
The simplest form of life, in which it I
first emerges from the inorganic into the J
organic world, consists of protoplasm, or,
as it has been called, the physical basis Of I
life. Protoplasm is a colourless semi-fluid!
or jelly-like substance, which consists of I
albuminoid matter, or in other words, of
a heterogeneous carbon-compound of very
complex chemical composition. It exist^J
in every living cell, and performs the
functions of nutrition and reproductlcy.^
as well as of sensation and motion. In^|
its simplest form, that of the microscopic
monera or protista, the lowest of living
beings, we find an apparently homo
geneous structureless piece of protoplasm,
without any differentiation of parts. The
monera are simple living globules of
jelly, without even a nucleus or any sort
of organ, and yet they perform all the
essential functions of life without any
different parts being told off for par
ticular functions. Every particle or mole
cule is of the same chemical composition.
and a facsimile of the whole body, as in
the case of a crystal. They are, there
fore, the first step from the inorganic
into the organic world, and if spontaneow
generation takes place anywhere, it is
in the passage of the chemical elements!
from the simple and stable combinations
of the former into the complex and plastic
combinations of the latter.
The next step upwards is to the cell in
which the protoplasm is enclosed in a
skin or membrane of modified protoplasm,
and a nucleus, or denser spot, is developed
in the enclosed mass. This is the primary
element from which all the more coni’
plicated forms of life are built-up. Each
cell seems to have an independent life of
its own, and a faculty of reproduction by
splitting into fresh cells similar to itself,
which multiply in geometrical progres
sion, assimilating the elements of their
�30
MODERN SCIENCE’ AND MODERN THOUGHT
substance from the inorganic world so
rapidly as to provide the requisite raw
material for higher structures.
The first organised living forms are
extremely minute, and can only be re
cognised by powerful microscopes. A
filtered infusion of hay, allowed to stand
r for two days, will swarm with living
r tilings, a number of which do not exceed
of an inch in diameter. Minute
as these animalcula are, they are tho
roughly alive. They dart about and
digest; the smallest speck of jelly-like
subalance shoots out branches or processes
to.seize food, and if these come in collision
with other substances they withdraw
them. They exist in countless myriads,
and perform a very important part in the
£ economy of nature. They are the scav
engers of the universe, and remove the
remains of living matter after death,
which would otherwise accumulate until
they choked-up the earth. This they do
by the process of putrefaction, which is
due mainly to the multiplication of little
rod-like creatures known as bacteria,
which work up the once living, now dead,
matter into, fresh elements, again fitted
to play their part in the inorganic and
organic worlds.
One of the simplest of these forms is
the amoeba, which is nothing but a naked
little , lump of cell-matter, or plasma,
containing a nucleus ; and yet this little
Jfcpeck of jelly moves freely, it shoots out
tongues or processes and gradually draws
itself up. to them with a sort of wave
like motion; it eats and grows, and in
I growing reproduces itself by contracting
in the middle and splitting up into two
Bndependent amoebae.
Th© germs of these various animalcula
swarm in the air, and carry seeds of
infection wherever they find a soil fitted
to receive them; and thus assist the
survival of the fittest in the struggle of
life, by eliminating weak and unhealthy
individuals and species. Thus when the
potato, the vine, or the silkworm has had
its constitution enfeebled by prolonged
artificial culture, there are germs always
ready to revenge the violation of natural
laws, and bring the survivors back to a
more heathy condition. In like manner
the germs of cholera, typhoid, and scarlet
fever, enforce the observance of sanitary
principles.
In this simple form the lowest forms of
life are not yet sufficiently differentiated
to enable us to distinguish clearly between
animal and vegetable, and they have been
called by some naturalists Protista, while
Amceba.
Amceba dividing into two.
others designate them as Protozoa or
Protophyta, according as they show more
resemblance to one or the other form of
life.. But it is often so doubtful that in
looking at the same organism through a
microscope, Huxley was inclined to
consider it as a plant, while Tyndall
exclaimed that he could as soon believe
that a sheep was a vegetable.
In the next stage upwards, however, life
subdivides itself into two great kingdoms,
that of the vegetable and of the animal
world. Alike in their general definition
as contrasted with inorganic matter, and
in their common origin from an embryo
cell, which divides and subdivides until
cell-aggregates are formed, from which
the living form is built up by a process
of evolution, the plant differs from the
animal in this : that the former feeds
directly on inorganic matter, while the
latter can only feed on it indirectly, after
it has been manufactured by the plant
into vegetable substance.
This is universally true, for if we dine
on beef, we dine practically on the grass
which the ox ate ; that is, on the carbon,
oxygen, hydrogen, and other simple ele
ments which the grass, under the stimulus
of light and sunshine, manufactured into
complex compounds ; and which the ox
again, by a second process, manufactured
from these compounds into others still
more complex, and more easily assimilated
by us in the process of digestion. But in
no case can we dine, as the plant does,
on the simple elements, and thrive on a
diet, of air and water, with a small
admixture of nitrate of ammonia, and of
phosphates, sulphates and chlorides, of
a few primitive metals. Vegetable life,
�LIFE
f-herefora, is the producer, and animal
life the consumer, of the organic world.
Practically the plant derives most of
its substance from the carbonic acid gas
in the atmosphere, which green leaves
under the stimulus of light and heat have
the faculty of decomposing, and abstract
the carbon giving out the oxygen ; while
the animal, by a reverse process, burns
up the compounds manufactured by the
plant, principally out of this carbon, by
the oxygen obtained from the air by the
process of respiration, exhaling the sur
plus carbon in the form of carbonic
acid gas.
The balancing effect of these two pro
cesses may be seen in any aquarium,
where animals and vegetables live to
gether in water which is kept pure, while
it would become stagnant and poisonous
in a few hours, if one of the two forms of
life were removed. All that the animal
requires therefore for its existence—ma
terials with which to build up its frame
and supply waste ; heat with which to
maintain its circulating fluids and other
substances at a proper temperature;
motive power or energy to enable it to
move, feel, and, in the case of the higher
animals, to think—are all proceeds of
the slow combustion of materials derived
from the vegetable world in the oxygen
breathed from the air, just as the work
done by a steam-engine is the product of
a similar combustion, or chemical com
bination of the oxygen of the air with
the coal shovelled into the fire-box. These
distinctions, however, between animals
and vegetables are not quite absolute,
for, even in the more highly-organised
forms of life, there is a border-land where
some plants seem to perform the functions
of animals, as in those which catch, and
consume flies and eat and digest pieces
of raw meat.
Those who wish to pursue this interest
ing subject further will do well to read
the Chapter on Living Matter in Huxley’s
“ Physiography,” where they will find it
toore fully explained, with the inimit
able clearness which characterises all the
writings of an author who was at the same
tirna one of the first scientific authorities
and one of the greatest masters, of
English prose. But my present, object
is not to write a scientific treatise, but
shortly to sum up the ascertained results
of modern science, with a view to their
bearings on modern thought; and from
3f
this point of view the immediate question,
is, how far unbroken sequence, which
has been shown to prevail universally
throughout space, time, and inorganic J
matter, can be shown to prevail equally
throughout the world of life..
Up to a certain point this admits of
positive proof. It is as certain that all
individual life, from the most elementary
protoplasm up to the highest organism,
Man, originates in a minute or embryo
cell, as it is that oxygen and. hydrogen,
combined in certain proportions make
water. But if we try to go back one step
further, behind the cell, we are stopped.
In the inorganic world we can reason OUT
way beyond the microscopic matter to the
molecule, and from the molecule to the
atom, and are only arrested when we
come to the ultimate form of matter, and
of energy, out of which the universe is
built up. But, in the case of life, we are
stopped two steps short of this, and can*
not tell how the cell containing the germ d
of life is built up out of the simpler 1
elements.
Many attempts have been made to
bridge over this gulf, and to show how life
may originate in chemical compound#,
but hitherto without success. Experi
ments have been made which, for a time,
seemed to show that spontaneous genera
tion was a scientific fact, i.e., that the
lowest forms of life, such as bacteria arid
amoebae, really did originate in infusion#
containing no germs of life; but they
have been met by counter experiments
confirmingHarvey’s dictum, “Omnevivttm
ex ovo,” or, all life comes from an egg,
i.e., from antecedent germs of life, and the
verdict of the best authorities, sueh as
Pasteur, Tyndall, and Huxley is, thatspontaneous generation has been “defeated
along the whole line.” This verdict is
perhaps too unqualified, for it appear®
that, on the assumption with which both
sides started, all organic life wag de
stroyed by exposure to a heat of 212'’, or
the boiling-point of water, the advocate®
of spontaneous generation had the best
of it, as low forms of life did appear in
infusions which had been exposed to this
heat, and then hermetically sealed, So as
to prevent any germs from entering.
But it was replied that, as a hard pea
takes more boiling than a soft one, it
might very well be that heat sufficient to
destroy life in any moist organism of
sufficient size to be seen by the microscope,
�32
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
• might not destroy the germinating power
of ultra-microscopic germs in a very dry
state. And this position seems to have
been confirmed by various experiments,
showing that such ultra - microscopic
germs really do exist, and are given forth
in the last life stage of the bacteria which
cause putrefaction ; and that if they are
absent or destroyed by repeated applica
tions of heat, infusions will keep sweet
for ever in optically pure air.
Above all, the germ theory has re
ceived confirmation from the brilliant
practical results to which it has led in
the hands of Pasteur, enabling him to
detect, and to a great extent eradicate,
the causes which had led to the oidium
of the vine and the pebrine of the silk
worm, thereby saving millions to the
industries of France. The germ theory
has also led to important results in
medical science, and is pointing towards
the possibility of combating the most
fatal diseases by processes analogous to
that by which vaccination has almost
freed the human race from the scourge of'
small-pox.
On the whole, therefore, we must be
content to accept a verdict of “Not
proven ” in the case of spontaneous
generation, and admit that as regards
the first origin of life, science fails us,
and that there is at present no known
law that will account for it.
Should spontaneous generation ever be
proved to be a fact, it will doubtless be in
creating living protoplasm from inorganic
elements at its earliest stage, before it
has been differentiated even into the
primitive form of a nucleated cell or that
of an amoeba. This is what the doctrine
of evolution would lead us to expect, for
it would be in contradiction to it to
suppose that the starting-point could be
interpolated at any stage subsequent to
the lowest. It may be also that this step
could only be made under conditions of
heat, pressure, and otherwise, which
existed in the earlier stage of the earth’s
existence, but have longed since passed
away.
This, however, is only a small part of
the difficulty we have to encounter in
reducing life to law.
These primeval embryo cells, like as
they are in appearance, contain within
them the germs of an almost infinite
diversity of evolutions, each running its
separate course distinct from the others.
The world of life is not one and uniform,
but consists of a vast variety of different
species, from the speck of protoplasm up
to the forest tree, and from the humble
amoeba up to man, each one, at any rate
within long intervals of time, breeding
true and keeping to its own separate
and peculiar path along the line of
evolution.
The first germ, or nucleated cell, of a
bacterium develops into other bacteria
and nothing else, thatof a coral into corals,
of an oak into oaks, of an elephant into
elephants, of a man into man. In the
latter case we can trace the embryo in
its various stages of growth th rough forms
having a certain analogy to those of the
fish, the reptile, and the lower mammals,
until it finally takes that of the human
infant. But we have no experience of a
fish, a frog, or a dog, born of human
parents, or of any of the lower animals
ever producing anything resembling a
man.
How can this be explained ? Naturally
the first attempt at explanation was by
miracle. At a time when everything
was explained by miracle, when all
unusual occurrences were attributed to
supernatural agency, and men lived in
an atmosphere of providential inter
ferences, witchcraft, magic, and all sorts
of divine and diabolic agencies, nothing
seemed easier than to say that the beasts of
the field, the birds of the air, and the fishes
of the sea, are all distinct after their
kind, because God created them so.
But as the supernatural faded away
and disappeared in other departments
where it had so long reigned supreme,
and science began to classify, arrange,
and accumulate facts as they really are,
it became more and more difficult, or
rather impossible, to accept this simple
explanation. The very first step de
stroyed the validity of all the traditional
myths which described the origin of life
from one simultaneous act of creation at
a single centre. The earth is divided
into separate zoological provinces, each
with its own peculiar animal and vege
table world. The kangaroo, for instance,
is found in Australia and there only. By
no possibility could the aboriginal kan
garoo have jumped at one bound from
Mount Ararat to Australia, leaving no
trace of his passage in any intermediate
district. This isolation of life in separate
provinces applies so rigidly, that we may
�83
sum it up by saying generally that there
art no forms of life common to two
provinces unless where migration is
possible, or has been possible in past
geological periods.
In islands at a distance from conEnents, we find common forms of marine
life, for the sea affords a means of com
munication ; and often common forms of
bird, insect, and vegetable life, where
they may have been wafted by the winds ;
(but forms which neither in the adult nor
germ state could swim, or fly, or be
transported by something which did
Swim or fly, are invariably wanting.
&ew Zealand affords a most conspicuous
Instance of this. Here is a large country
with a soil and climate exceptionally well
Adapted to support a large amount of
animal life of the higher orders, and yet,
with the exception of two species of bats,
it had absolutely no mammal before they
were introduced by man, the dog being
probably introduced by the Maoris. If
special creations took place to replenish
the earth as soon as any portion of its
surface becomes fit to. sustain it, why
were there no animals in New Zealand ?
Or, in the Andaman Islands, in the Gulf
of Bengal, which are as large as Ireland,
covered with luxuriant vegetation, and
within 300 miles of the coast of Asia, where
similar jungles swarm with elephants,
tigers, deer, and all the varied forms of
mammalian life, there are no mammalia
except a pigmy black savage and a pigmy
©lack pig, the latter probably introduced
by man.
The sharpness of the division between
Zoological provinces is well illustrated by
that drawn by the Straits of Lombok,
Kvhere a channel, not twenty miles wide,
separates the fauna of Asia and Australia
so completely that there are no species of
land animals, and only a few of birds and
insects, common to the two sides, of a
channel not so wide as the Straits of
Dover.
There is no possibility of accounting
for this, except by supposing that the
deep water fissure of the Straits of
Eombok has existed from remote geo
logical periods, and barred the migration
southwards of those Asiatic animals,
which, as long as they found dry land,
migrated northwards and westwards till
they were stopped by the Polar and
Atlantic Oceans. This difficulty of re
quiring special creations for separate
provinces is enormously enhanced if we
look beyond the existing condition of
things, and trace back the geological
record. We must suppose separate crea
tions for all the separate provinces of
the separate successive formations from
the Silurian upwards. And the more w«
investigate the conditions of life either
under existing circumstances or in tliOSO
of past geological epochs, the mor®
are we driven to enormously multiply
the number of separate creations wliida
would be necessary to account for the
diversity of species. We find life shading
off into an infinite variety of almost im
perceptible gradations from the highest
organism, man, to the lowest, or speck of
protoplasm, and we can draw no hard
and fast line and say, up to this point
life originated by natural processes, and
beyond it we must have recourse
miracle. Either all life or none is a
product of evolution acting by defined
law, and the affirmation of law is the
negation of miracle.
Every day brings us an account of
some new discovery linking forms of life
nearer together and bridging over
tervals thought to be impassable. Tho
discovery of insectivorous plants, which
also devour and digest pieces of raw
meat, has added to the difficulty which
has been long felt, particularly, in the
humbler forms of life, of drawing any
clear line of demarcation between th®
animal and vegetable worlds.
Microscopic research brings to light
fresh facts confounding our fixed ideas
as to the permanence of particular modes
of reproducing life, and showing that
the same organism may run through
various metamorphoses in the course of
its life-cycle, during some of which it
may be sexual and in others asexual,
i.e., it may reproduce itself alternately
by the co-operation of two beings, of
opposite sex, and by fissure or budding
from one being only which is of no sex.
These, and a multitude of other similar
facts, complicate enormously the pro
blems of life and its developments,
whether we attempt to solve.it by calling
in aid a perpetual series of innumerable
miraculous interpositions, or by ap
pealing to ordinary known laws of
Nature.
Is the latter solution possible, and can
the organic world be reduced, as the
inorganic world has been with all its
�S4
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
mysteries and the infinities of space, time,
and matter, from chaos into cosmos, and
shown to depend on permanent and
harmonious laws 1 Is the world of life,
like that of matter, a clock, so perfectly
constructed from the first that it goes
without winding up or regulating ? or is
it a clock which would never have started
going, or having started would soon
cease to go, if the hand of the watch
maker were not constantly interfering
with it ? This is the question which the
celebrated Darwinian theory attempts to
answer, of which I now proceed to give a
short general outline.
The varieties among domestic animals
are obvious to every one. The race-horse
is a very different creature from the
dray-horse; the short-horned ox from
the Guernsey cow; the greyhound from
ths Skye terrier. How has this come to
pass ? Evidently by man’s intervention,
causing long-continued selection in breed
ing for certain objects. The English
race-horse is the product of mating
animals distinguished for speed for some
fifteen or twenty generations. The grey
hound is a similar dog-product by breed
ing for a longer period with the same
object: as the Skye terrier is of selection
in order to _ get a dog which can
follow a fox into a cairn of rocks and
fight him w’hen he gets there. In all
these cases it is evident that the final
result was not attained at once, but by
taking advantage of small accidental
variations and accumulating them from
one generation to another by the princi
ple of heredity, which makes offspring
reproduce the qualities of their parents.
The most precise and scientific experi
ments on this power of integrating, or
summing up, a progressive series of
differentials, or minute differences, be
tween successive generations, are those
conducted by Darwin on pigeons. He
has shown conclusively that all the races
of domestic pigeons, of which there are
two or three hundred, are derived from
one common ancestor, the wild or blue
rock pigeon, and that the pigeon-fancier
can always obtain fresh varieties in a few
generations by careful interbreeding. Of
the existing varieties many now differ
widely from one another, both in size,
appearance, and even in anatomical
structure, so that if they were now
discovered for the first time in a fossil
state or in a new country, they would
assuredly be classed by naturalists as
separate species.
This is the work of man ; is there any
thing similar to it going on in Nature 1
Yes, says Darwin, there is a tendency in
all life, and especially in the lower forms
of life, to reproduce itself vastly quicker
than the supply of food and the existence
of other life can allow, and the balance
of existence is only preserved by the
wholesale waste of individuals in what
may be called the “ struggle for life.” In
this struggle, which goes on incessantly
and on the largest scale, the slightest
advantage must tell in the long run, and
on the average, in selecting the few who
are to survive, and such slight advantages
must tend to accumulate from one gener
ation to another under the law of heredity.
The cumulative power of selection exer
cised by man in the breeding of races is
therefore necessarily exercised in Nature
by the struggle for life, and in the course
of time, by the cumulation of advantages
originally slight, small and fluctuating
variations are hardened into large and
permanent ones, and new species are
formed.
Darwin illustrates this principle of the
“struggle for life” with a vast variety
of instances, showing how the balance of
animal and vegetable life may be pre
served or destroyed in the most un
expected manner. For instance, the
fertilisation of red clover is effected by
humble-bees, and depends on their
number ; the number of bees in a given
district depends mainly on the number
of field-mice which destroy their combs
and nests ; the number of mice depends
on the number of cats; and thus the
presence or absence of a carnivorous
animal may decide the question whether
a particular sort of flora shall prevail
over others or be extirpated.
The countless profusion with which any
one species, unchecked by its natural foes,
may multiply in a given district, is
illustrated by the potato disease, which
in a few days invades whole countries ;
and by the rabbit plague in Australia and
New Zealand, where, in less than twenty
years, the descendants of a few imported
pairs have rendered whole provinces
useless for sheep pasture, and stoats are
now being imported to restore the balance
of life. The tendency in species to pro
duce varieties which by selection may
become exaggerated .and fixed, is illus-
�SB
LIEF
trated by the case of the Ancon herd of
sheep A ram lamb was born in Massa
chusetts in 1791, which had short crooked
legs and a long back like a turnspit dog.
Being unable to jump over fences like the
ordinary sheep, it was thought to possess
certain advantages to the farmer, and the
breed was established by artificial
selection in pairing this ram with its
descendants who possessed the. same
peculiarities. The introduction of the
Merino superseded the Ancon by giving
a tame sheep not given to jump fences,
with a better fleece, and so the breed was
not continued, but it is certain that it
might have been established as a per
manent variety differing from the
ordinary sheep as much as the turnspit
or Skye terrier differs from the ordinary
dog. The tendency of Nature to variation
is apparent in the fact that of the many
hundred millions of human beings living
on the earth, no two are precisely alike,
and varieties often appear, as in giants
and dwarfs, six-fingered or toed children,
hairy and other families, which might
doubtless be fixed and perpetuated by
artificial or natural selection, until they
became strongly marked and permanent.
It is evident that if the theory of
development is true it excludes the old
theory of design, or rather, it thrusts it
back in the organic, as it has been thrust
back in the inorganic, world, to the first
atoms or origins which were made so
perfect as to carry within them all
subsequent phenomena by necessary
evolution. Design and development lead
to the same result, that of producing
organs adapted for the work they have
to do, but they lead to it in totally
different ways. Development works from
the less to the more perfect, and from
the simpler to the more complicated, by
incessant changes, small in themselves,
but constantly accumulating in the re
quired direction. Design supposes that
organisms were created specially on a
predetermined plan, very much as the
sewing-machine or self-binding reaper
were constructed by their inventors.
Until quite recently all adaptations of
m eans to ends were considered as evidences
of design. A series of treatises, for which
prizes were left by a late Duke of Bridge
water, was published some thirty years
ago, to illustrate this theme. Among these
one by Sir Charles Bell on the Hand at
tracted a good deal of attention. It was
shown what an admirable machine the
human hand is for the various purposesfor
which it is used, and the inference was
drawn that it must have been created so
by a designer who adapted means to ends
in much the same way as is done by a
human inventor. But more complete
knowledge has dispelled this idea, and
shown that the design, if there be any,
must be placed very much farther back,
and is in fact involved in the primitive
germ from which all vertebrate life
certainly, and probably all life, animal or
vegetable, has been slowly developed.
The human hand is in effect the last
stage of a development of the vertebrate
type, or type of life in which a series of
jointed vertebrse form a backbone, which
protects a spinal cord containing the
nervous centres, gives points of attach
ment for the muscles, and forms an axis
of support for the looser tissues. Certain
of these vertebrse throw out bony spines
or rays ; at first, by a sort of simple
process of vegetable growth, which
formed the fins of fishes; then some of
these rays dropped off and others coalesced
into more complex forms, which made
the rudimentary limbs of reptiles ; and
finally, the continued process of develop
ment fashioned them into the more
perfect limbs of birds and mammals. In
this last stage a vast variety of combin
ations was developed. Sometimes the
bones of the extremities spread out, so as
to form long fingers supporting the
feathered wings of birds and the mem
braneous wings of bats ; sometimes they
coalesced into the solid limbs supporting
the bodies of large animals, as in the
case of the horse ; and finally, at the end
of the series, they formed that marvellous
instrument, the hand, as it appears in
the allied genera of monkeys, apes, and
man.
Any theory of secondary design and
special miraculous creation must evi
dently account for all the intermediate
forms as well as for the final result. We
must suppose not one but many thous
ands of special creations, at a vast
variety of places and over a vast extent
of time ; we must take into acount not
the successes only, but the failures, where
organs appear in a rudimentary form
which are perfectly useless, or in some
cases even injurious, to the creature in
which they are found. For instance, in
the case of the so-called wingless birds,
D 2
�36
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
like the dodo of the Mauritius, and the
apteryxof New Zealand, which werefound
in oceanic islands, evolution accounts
readily for the atrophy or want of develop
ment of organs which were not wanted
where the birds had no natural enemies
and found their food on the ground ; but
why should they have been created with
rudimentary wings, useless while they
remained isolated, and insufficient to
prevent their extermination as soon
as man, or any other natural enemy,
reached the islands where they had lived
secure ?
If we are apt to adopt the theory of
design and special creation, we must be
prepared to take Burns’s poetical fancy as
a scientific truth, and believe that Nature
had to try its “prentice hand,” and grope
its way through repeated trials , and fail
ures from the less to the more perfect.
Again, the theory of special creation
must account not only for the higher
organs and forms of life, but for the lower
forms also. Are the bacteria, amoebae,
and other forms of life which the micro
scope shows in a drop of water all in
stances of a miraculous creation ? And
still more hard to believe, is this the
origin of the whole parasitic world of life
which is attached to and infests each its
own peculiar form of higher life ? Is the
human tape-worm a product of design, or
that wonderful parasite the trichina,
which oscillates between man and the pig,
being capable of being born only in the
muscles of the one, and of living only in
the intestines of the other ?
These are the sort of difficulties which
have led the scientific world, I may say
universally, to abandon the idea of separ
ate special creations, and to substitute
for it that which has been proved to be
true of the whole inorganic world of
stars, suns, planets, and all forms of
matter ; the idea of an original -creation
(whatever creation may mean and behind
which we cannot go) of ultimate atoms or
germs, so perfect that they carried within
them all the phenomena of the universe
by a necessary process of evolution.
This is the idea to which the Darwinian
theory _ leads up, by showing natural
causes in operation which must inevit
ably tend to originate and to accumulate
slight varieties, until they become large
in amount and permanent, thus develop
ing new races within old species, new
species within old families, new families
within old types, and new and complex
types from old and simple ones.
The theory is up to a certain point
undoubtedly true, and beyond that point
in the highest degree probable, but scien
tific caution obliges us to add that it is
still to a considerable extent a “ theory,”
and not a “law.” That is, it is not like
the law of gravity, a demonstrated cer
tainty throughout the whole universe,
but a provisional law which accounts for
a great number of undoubted facts, and
supplies a framework into which all other
similar facts, as at present ascertained,
appear to fit with a probability not ap
proached by any other theory, and which
is enhanced by every fresh discovery
made, and by the analogy of what we
know to be the laws which regulate the
whole inorganic world.
To enable us to talk of the “ Darwinian
law,” and not of the “ Darwinian theory,”
we require two demonstrations :
1. That living matter really can origi
nate from inorganic matter.
2. That new species really can be formed
from previously existing species.
As regards the first, we have seen that
the efforts of science have hitherto failed
to produce an instance of spontaneous
generation, and all we can say is that it
is probable that such instances have oc
curred in earlier ages of our planet, under
conditions of light, heat, chemical action,
and electricity, different from anything
we can now reproduce in our laboratories.
This, however, falls short of demonstra
tion and for the present we must be con
tent to leave the origin of life as one of
the mysteries not yet brought within the
domain of law.
As regards the second point, we are
farther advanced towards the possibility
of proof. But here also we are met by
two difficulties. If we appeal to historical
evidence, we are met by the fact that a
much greater time than is embraced by
any historical record is almost necessarily
required for the dying out of any old
species and introduction of any new one,
by natural selection. And if we appeal
to fossil remains we are met by the im
perfection of the geological record. As
to this, it must be remembered that only
a very small portion of the earth’s surface
has been explored, and of this a very
small portion consists of ancient land
surfaces or fresh water formations, where
alone we can expect to meet with traces
�hips
R the higher forms of animal life. And
even these have been so imperfectly exthat where we now meet with
thousands and tens of thousands of undoubted human remains in the shape of
rudely-fashioned stone tools and weapons
lying almost under our feet, it is only
Kithin the last thirty years that their
(existence has even been suspected. Cuvier,
the greatest authority of the last genera
tion, laid it down as an incontrovertible
fact that neither men nor monkeys had
existed in the fossil state, or in anything
more ancient than the most superficial
and recent deposits. We have now at least
twenty specimens of fossil monkeys, from
bne locality alone of the Miocene period,
that of Pikermi, near Athens, and many
thousands of human remains, contem
porary with extinct animals of the Qua
ternary period, if not earlier. We must be
Content, therefore, with approximate
solutions pointing up to but not abso
lutely demonstrating the truth.
What is a species ? Speaking generally
it is an assemblage of individuals who
maintain a separate family type by
breeding freely among themselves, and
refusing to breed with other species.
There can be no doubt that this repre
sents what, at the first view and for a
limited range of time, is in accordance
with actual facts. The animal and vege
table worlds are practically mapped-out
into distinct species, and do not present
the mass of confusion which would result
from indiscriminate cross-breeding. It
is clear also that this state of things has
lasted for a considerable time, for the
paintings on Egyptian tombs and monu
ments carry us back more than 4,000
years, and show us the most strongly
marked varieties of the human race,
such as the Semitic, the Egyptian, and
the Negro, existing just as they do at
the present day. They show us also such
extreme varieties of the dog species as
the greyhound and the turnspit, then in
Existence ; and the skeletons of animals
SUch as the ox, cat, and crocodile, which
have been preserved as mummies, show
no appreciable difference from those of
their modern descendants.
When we come to look closely, however,
into the matter, our faith in this absolute
rule of the entire independence of species
is greatly modified. In the lower grades
of life we see everywhere species shading
off into one another by insensible grada
$7
tions, and every extension of our know
ledge, both of the existing animal, v®g<e»
table, and microscopic worlds, and of
those of past geological periods, multiplies instances of intermediate forms,
differing from one another far less than
do many of the individual varieties of
recognised species. In the case of sponges,
for instance, the latest conclusion of
scientific research is this: that if you
rely on minute distinctions as consti
tuting distinct species, there are at least
300 species of one family of. sponges,
while if you disregard slight differences,
which graduate into one another, and ana
found partly in one and partly in another
variety, you must designate them all as
forming only one species. Even in higher
grades, as species are multipled, it be
comes more and more difficult to say
where one ends and the other begins,
Take the familiar instance of the grouse
and ptarmigan. The red grouse is believed
to be peculiar to the British Island^
while the ptarmigan is a very wid^W
spread inhabitant of. Arctic regions and
high mountains. Which is more probable
—that the grouse was specially created
in the British Islands, apparently for
the final cause of bringing sessions of
Parliament to wind-up business in August,
or that, as the rigour of the Glacial period
abated, and heather began to grow, cer
tain ptarmigan by degrees modified their
habits and took to feeding on heather
tops instead of lichens, and by so doing
gradually became larger birds and as
sumed the colour best adapted for pro
tection in their new habitation ? In point
of fact, grouse showing traces of this
descent in smaller size and much whiter
plumage are still to be met with. It would
be easy to multiply instances, but this
consideration seems conclusive.
If we reject the Darwinian theory aim
adopt that of independent species de
scended from a specially created ancestor
or pair of ancestors, we are driven by
each discovery of intermediate or slightly
modified forms, into the assumption of
more and more special acts of creation,
until the number breaks down under its
own weight, and belief becomes impos*
sible.
For instance, in the Madeira Islands
alone, 134 species of air-breathing land
snails have been discovered by naturalists,
of which twrenty-one only are found in
Africa or Europe, and 113 are peculiar to
�38
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
this small group of islands, where they
are mostly confined to narrow districts
and single valleys. Are we to suppose
that each of these 113 species was sepa
rately created ? Is it not almost certain
that they are the modified descendants
of the twenty-one species which had
found their way there in a former geolo
gical period, when Madeira was united
to Africa and Spain ?
There remains only the argument from
the fertility of species inter se and their
refusal to breed with other species.
This also, when closely examined, ap
pears to be a prima facie deduction, rather
than an absolute law. Different species
do, in fact, often breed together, as is
seen in the familiar instance of the horse
and ass. It is true that in this case the
mule is sterile and no new race is estab
lished. . But this rule is not universal,
and quite recently one new hybrid race,
that of the leporine, or hare-rabbit, has
been created, which is perfectly fertile.
The progeny of dog and wolf has also
been proved to be perfectly fertile during
the four generations for which the expe
riment was continued. In the case of
cultivated plants and domestic animals,
thore can be little doubt that new races,
which breed true and are perfectly fertile’
have been created within recent times
from distinct wild species. The Esquimaux dog is so like the Arctic wolf
that there can be little doubt he is either
a direct descendant, or that both are
descendants from a common stock. The
same is true of the jackal and some
breeds of dogs in the East and Africa,
and other races of dogs are closely akin
to foxes. But all dogs breed freely to
gether, and can with difficulty be mated
with the wild species which they so
closely resemble. The modern Swiss
cattle are pronounced by Rutimeyer to
show undoubted marks of descent from
three distinct species of fossil oxen, the
Bos primigenius, Bos longifrons and Bos
frontosus.
. There is n°w1 in the Zoological Gardens,
in Regent s Park, a hybrid cow, whose
sire was an American bison and its
mother a hybrid between a zebu and a
gayal. This animal is perfectly fertile,
and has bred again to the bison; but
what is singular is, that this hybrid
resembles much more an ordinary domes? 1888.
tic English cow than it does any of its pro
genitors. It is totally unlike the bison,
both in appearance and disposition, and
except in having a projecting ridge
over the withers, it might be mistaken
for a coarse, bony, common cow. If a
hybrid bull had been born of the same
type, and mated with this hybrid cow,
there is little doubt that a new race
have been established, extremely
different from its ancestors.
In fact, nearly all the domesticated
animals have the essential characters of
new races. We cannot point to wild pro
genitors existing in any part of the world
which they are descended, and when
they run wild they do not revert to any
common ancestral form.
In the vegetable world instances of
fertile hybrids are still more abundant,
and the introduction and establishment
of new varieties is a matter of very-day
occurrence.
Now, whatever artificial selection can
do in a short time, natural selection can
certainly do in a longer time, and noth
ing short of absolute proof of the im
possibility of species coming into ex
istence by natural laws should induce us
to fall back on the supernatural theory
with all its enormous difficulties of an
innumerable multitude of special
creations, most of them obviously im
perfect and tentative—or rather, useless
and senseless on any supposition except
that of a necessary and progressive
evolution. In fact, if it were not for its
bearing on the nature and origin of man,
few would be found to maintain the
theory of miraculous creations, or to
doubt that the world of life is regulated
by fixed laws as well as the world of
matter. But whatever touches man
touches us closely, and brings into play a
host of cherished aspirations and beliefs,
which are too powerful to be displaced
£eacW by calm, scientific reasoning,
phall man, who, we are told, was created
in God’s image and only “ a little lower
than the angels,” be degraded into relationship with the brutes, and shown to
be. only the last development of an
animal type which, in the case of apes
and .monkeys, approaches singularly near
to him in physical structure ? Are the
saints and heroes whom we revere,
and. the beautiful women whom we
admire, descended, not from an allglorioiis Adam and all-lovely Eve, ag
�ANTIQUITY OF MAN
portrayed in Milton’s u Paradise Lost,
but ftoin Palaeolithic gavages, more rude
and bestial than the lowest tribe of
Bushmen or Australians ? Is the ac
count of man’s creation and fall in the
Hebrew Scriptures as pure a myth as
that of Noah’s ark, or of Deucalion and
Pyrrha ?
The only answer to these questions is
that truth is truth, and fact is fact, and
tW it is always better to act and to
believe in conformity with truth and
fact, than to indulge in illusions. There
are many things in Nature which jar on
our feelings and seem harsh and dis
agretable, but yet are hard facts, which
we have to recognise and make the best
of. Childhood does not pass into man
hood without exchanging much that is
innocent and attractive for much that is
stern and prosaic. Death, with its pro
digal waste of immature life, its sudden
extinction of mature life in the pleni
tude of its powers, its . heart-rendinr
separations from loved objects, is a most
disagreeable fact. But it would not im
provematters to keep grown-up lads in
nurseries for fear of their meeting with
accidents, or of becoming hardened by
contact with the world. Progress, not
happiness, is the law of the world ; and to
improve himself and others by constant
struggles upwards is the true destiny of
man.
.
e
.
In working out this destiny the tear
less recognition of truth is essential.
Facts are the spokes of the ladder by
which we climb from earth to heaven,
and any individual, nation, or religion,
which, from laziness or prejudice, re
fuses to recognise fresh facts, has ceased
to climb and will end by falling asleep
and dropping to a lower level.
“ Prove everything, hold fast that
which is true,” is the maxim which has
raised mankind from savagery to civi
lisation, and which we must be prepared
to act upon at all hazards and at all
sacrifices, if we wish to retain that civi
lisation unimpaired and to extend it
further.
3f
CHAPTER V
ANTIQUITY OF MAN
Belief in Man’s Recent Origin—Boucher de
Perthes’ Discoveries—Confirmed by Prestwich—Nature of Implements—Celts, Scra
pers, and Flakes—Human Remains in River
Drifts—Great Antiquity—Implements from ||
Drift at Bournemouth—Bone Caves—Kent’s
Cavern—Victoria, Creswell, and other j
Caves—Caves of France and Belgium— J
Ages of Cave Bear, Mammoth, and Rata*
deer—Artistic Race—Drawings of Ma®.moth, etc.—Human Types—Neanderthal—- 1
—Attempts to fix Dates—History—-Spy,
Trinil — Bronze Age — Neolithic — Danish
Kitchen-middens—Swiss La ke- Dwellings-—- J
Glacial Period—Traces of Ice—Causes of
Glaciers—Croll’s Theory—Gulf StreamDates of Glacial Period—Rise and Sub
mergence of Land—Tertiary Man—Eooeo®
Period—Miocene—Evidence for Pliocene 1
and Miocene Man—Conclusions as to
Antiquity.
Great as the effect has been of the
wonderful discoveries of modern science of
which I have attempted to give a general
view in the preceding chapters, there ]
remains one which has had the greatest !
effect of all in changing the . whole cur
rent of modern thought, viz., the dis
covery of the enormous antiquity of man!
upon earth, and his slow progress Op
wards from the rudest savagery to in»j
telligence, morality, and civilisation. It
is needless to point out in what flagrant
and direct opposition this stands to the
theory that man is of recent miraculous
creation, and that he was originally en
dowed with a glorious nature and high
faculties, which were partially forfeited
by an act of disobedience. It is im
portant, therefore, to understand clearly
the evidence upon which rests a con
clusion so startling and unexpected as
that which traces the origin of man back
into the remote periods of geological
time.
It had been long known that a stona
period preceded the use of metals. Flints
arrow-heads, stone axes, knives, and
chisels, rude pottery, and other human
remains lie scattered almost everywhere,
on or near the existing surface, and are
found in the. sepulchral mounds and
monuments which abound in all countries
I until they are destroyed by the pro-
�40
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
gress of agriculture. These are certainly
fuel, and afford many remains of the
ancient, for their origin was so com
pletely forgotten that the stone hatchets■ wallo-Koman and pre-Boman or Celtic
or celts (from the Latin celtis, or chisel)‘ Peri<ld-n Hipher UP> on the slopes of the
were universally believed to be thunderi low hills which bound the wide vallev
bolts which had fallen from heaven. are numerous beds of gravel, sand, and
brick-earth, winch
But there was no proof that they were worked for road andare also extensively
building materials,
very ancient, they were always found at
or. near the present surface, and if in these pits remains of the mammoth,
animal remains were associated with rhinoceros, and other extinct animals are
frequently found, and the workmen had
them, they were those of the dog ox
occasionally . certain
sheep, red deer, and other wild ’ and noticed flints, to which they curiouslygave the
domestic species, now found in the same shaped
district. Historical record was not sup name of langues du chat,” or cats’
posed to extend beyond the 4,000 or 5 000 tongues. Some of these were taken to
Monsieur Boucher de Perthes as curiJ
years assigned to it by Bible chronology
and it was thought that this might be osities for his museum, and he at once
sufficient to account for all the changes recognised them as showing marks of
which had occurred since man first be human workmanship. This put him on
came an inhabitant of the earth. Above the track, and in the year 1841 he him
all, the negative evidence was relied self discovered, in situ, in a seam of sand
on, that geologists had explored far and containing remains of the mammoth, a
wideband although they had found fossil flint rudeiy but unmistakably fashioned
remains which enabled them to restore by human hands into a cutting instru
ment. During the next few years a
the characteristic fauna of so many dif large quantity of gravel was removed
ferent formations, they had found no trace
of man or his works anywhere below the to form the Champ de Mars at Abbeville
and
these
or hatchets
present surface. This seemed so con were many ofIn 1847,celts Boucher de
found.
M.
clusive that Cuvier, the greatest Perthes published his “Antiquites
authority of the day, pronounced an emphatic verdict that man had not existed Celtiques et Antediluviennes,” giving an
contemporaneously with any of the ex account of these discoveries, but no one
tinct animals, and probably not for more would, listen to him. The united
than 5,000 or 6,000 years. Here, then, authority of theologians and geologists
opposed
infallible
appeared to be an edifice based on ception ansuch ideas, veto on the re
and
scientific fact, in which geologists and admittedofthat M. Boucher it must be
de Perthes
theologians could dwell together com himself did his best to discredit his own
fortably, and the weight of their united discoveries by associating them with
authority was sufficient to silence all
objections, and ignore or explain away visionary speculations about successive
the instances which occasionally cropped deluges and creations of pre-Adamite
up, of human remains found in situations men. At length Dr. Falconer, the wellknown paleontologist, who had brought
implying greater antiquity.
Suddenly, I may almost say in a single to light so many wonderful fossil remains
dajq this edifice collapsed like a house of from the Sewalik hills in India, happened
through Abbeville and
cards, and the fact became apparent that ™
visited
the duration of human life on the earth He was M. Boucher de Perthes’ collection.
he saw
must be measured by periods of tens, if that on so much struck by whatspoke to
arriving in London he
not of hundreds of thousands of years
It happened thus: A retired French Mr- f re^twl<?h, the first living authority
On > i?
physician, Monsieur Boucher de Perthes and Mr.Tertiary and Quaternary strata,
whose
residing at Abbeville, in the valley of authority(now Sir John) Evans, every
was equally great on
tfie. Somme, had a hobby for antiquar thing relating to the stone implements
ian ism as decided as that of Monkbarns found m such numbers in the more
mm.self. Abbeville afforded him a
recent
He urged
capita.! collecting-ground ror the indul them toor Neolithic period. examine for
go to Abbeville and
gence of his tastes, as the sluggish themselves whether there was anything
feomme flows through a series of peat m these alleged discoveries. They did
mosses, which are extensively worked jso, and the result was that on their
�ANTIQUITY OF NAN
return to England Air. Prestwick read a
paper to the Royal Society on the 19th
Aiay, 1859, which conclusively and for
fever established the fact that flint imple
ments of unmistakable human workman
ship had been found, associated with the
remains of extinct species, in beds of the
Quaternary period deposited at a time
when the Somme ran at a level more
than 100 feet higher than at present, and
Flint HAche,
41
have been found from Western Europe to
Tibet; in Africa, and Central Australia j
in fact wherever they have been lookedfor, except in northern countries which
were buried under ice during the Glacial
period. The ea rliest known authentic wit
ness to man’s presence in Britain are som<
rudely-worked flints which were founds
mingled with bones of huge extinct anti*
mals, at a great depth in brick-earth at
Flint IIAchk,
From St. Aclieul, Valley of the Somme.
From Moulin Quignon, Abbeville.
(Half the actual size.)
(Half the actual size.)
(From Lubbock's ‘ Prehistoric Times.”)
was only beginning to excavate its
valley.
The spell once broken, evidence poured
in from all quarters, and although twentyfive years1 only have elapsed since Mr.
Prestwich’s paper was read, the number
of stone and other implements worked
by man, deposited in museums, is already
counted by tens of thousands, and they
Written in 1884.
Hoxne, in Suffolk. Some idea of the im
mense number of these rude implements
may be formed from the fact that the
valley system of one small river, the
Little Ouse, which rises near Thetford
and flows into the Wash after a course of
twenty-five miles, has within little more
than ten years yielded about 7,000 speci
mens.
They have been found in great abun
dance also in the valley gravels of the
�42
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
Thames, Ouse, Wiltshire Avon, and in
fact in all the river-gravels and brick
earths of the south and south-east of
England; and in those of the Somme,
Flint HAchb,
From Hoxne.
(Half the actual size.)
From Lubbock’s “ Prehistoric Times.”)
Oise, Seine, Loire, and all the principal
river systems of France ; and only in less
numbers, probably because they have
been less looked-for, in similar .situations
over an area extending from Central and
Southern Europe to the Far East. It is
a remarkable fact about these river-drift
implements that they are all nearly of the
same type and found under similar cir
cumstances, that is to say, in the gravels,
sands, brick-earths, and fine silt or loess
deposited by rivers which have either
ceased to run, or which ran at levels
higher than their present ones and were
only beginning to excavate their present
valleys. . Also they are always found in
association with remains of what is known
as the Quaternary (as distinguished from
recent or existing fauna) represented by
the mammoth or woolly-haired elephant,
thethick-nosed rhinoceros, and other wellknown types of extinct animals. The
general character of these implements is
very rude, implying a social condition
at least as low as that of the Australian
savages of the present day. They consist
mainly of the flake ; the chopper, or peb
ble roughly chipped to an edge on one
side ; the scraper, used probably for pre
paring skins ; pointed flints used for bor
ing ■ and by far the most abundant and
characteristic, of all, the hdche or celt, a
sharp or oval implement, roughly chipped
from flint or, in its absence, from any of
the hard stones of the district, such as
chert or quartzite, and intended to be
held in the hand and used without any
haft or handle.
These ketches are evidently the first rude
type of human tools from which the later
forms of the axe, adze, chisel, wedge, etc.,
have been derived by a very slow and
lengthened process of evolution. They
differ, however, in many essential re
spects, from the more perfect stone celts
of later periods and of modern savages.
The chipping is very rude, they are never
ground or polished, the pointed end is
that intended for use, the butt end being
left blunt, showing
that the hdche was
not hafted but held
in the hand; while
the converse is al
ways the case with
the finely-chipped or
polished stone celts
and hatchets of the
Neolithic period,
which, in its later
stages, are to all in
tents and purposes
similar to modern im
plements, only made
of stone instead of
metal.
But these
Palaeolithic laches are Polished Stone Axe.
only one step in ad
Neolithic.
vance of the rude (Half the actual size.)
(From Lubbock’s
natural stone which
an intelligent orang “ Prehistoric Times.”)
or chimpanzee might
pick up to crack a cocoa-nut with, or to
grub up a root from the earth, or an
insect from a rotten tree.
At the same time there is not the r§-
�43
ANTIQUITY OF MAN
mo test doubt as to their being the work
of human hands. When placed side by
side with the rudest forms of stone batchets actually used by the Australian and
otiler savages, it is difficult to detect any
difference. If placed in an ascending
series, from the oldest and rudest, to the
finely-finished axes and arrow-heads of
the period immediately preceding the use
of metal, the progress may be clearly traced
by insensible gradations. The blows given
to bring the block to the desired shape by
intentional chipping have left distinct
marks; and archaeologists have succeeded,
ferith a little practice, in fashioning sim
ilar implements from modern flints In
Flint Adze,
From Danish Kitchen-middens.
(From Lubbock’s
fact, forgeries have been made by work
men in localities where collectors were
eager and credulous, though fortunately
such forgeries are easily distinguished
from genuine antiquities by the different
appearance of the old and recent frac
tures, and other signs which make it
almost impossible to deceive an experienced eye. The conclusion, therefore,
of one of our best archaeologists may be
safely accepted, that it is as impossible
to doubt that these rude stone flakes and
hatchets are works of human art, as it
would be if we had found clasp-knives
and carpenters’ adzes.
The remains of human skeletons are,
as might be expected, very rare in these
river drifts, since they have been formed
under conditions where the preservation
of such remains would be very unlikely.
In fact, as Sir John Lubbock (now Lord
Avebury) points out, the bones found, in
the river-gravels are almost invariaoly
those of animals larger than man, such
as the mammoth and rhinoceros. Still a
few human bones have been found, suffi
cient to show that these river-drift iuen
were probably a dolichocephalic or long
and narrow-headed race, with prominent
jaws, massive bones, and great muscular
strength, but still, although rude ana
savage, of an essentially human type,
and going a very little way towards bridg-
Modern Stone Adze,
New Zealand.
Prehistoric Times.”)
ing over the gap between the savage and
the ape.
A more complete view, however, of the
conditions of human life at these remoto
periods is afforded by the evidence given
by caves, where naturally the remains of
man are more abundant and much better
preserved. Before entering, however, on
the examination of this class of evidence,
it may be well to give an instance which
may help to familiarise the imagination
with the vast periods of time which must
have elapsed since Palaeolithic man left
these rude implements within reach of
river floods.
Among the gravels in which Palaeolithic
hdches have been found, are some which
��ANTIQUITY OF MAN
the cliff at Bournemouth at a height
of about 130 feet above the sea. This
gravel can be traced in a gradual fall
from west to east, along the Hampshire
coast and the shores of the. Solent to
beyond Spithead, and was evidently de
posited by a river which carried the
drainage of the Dorsetshire and Hamp
shire downs into the sea to the eastward,
and of which the present Avon, Test, and
Itchen were tributaries. But for such a
river to run in such a course the whole of
Poole and Christchurch bays must have
been dry land, and the range of chalk
downs now broken through at the Needles
must have been continuous. To borrow
the words of Evans in his “Ancient Stone
Implements,” “Who, standing on the
edge of the lofty cliff at Bournemouth,
and gazing over the wide expanse of
waters between the present shore and a
line connecting the Needles on the one
hand and the Ballard Down Foreland on
the other, can fully comprehend how
immensely remote was the epoch when
what is now that vast bay was high and
dry land, and a long range of chalk
downs, 600 feet above the sea, bounded
the horizon on the south ? And yet this
must have been the sight that met the
eyes of those primeval men who fre
quented the banks of that ancient river
which buried their handiworks in gravels
that now cap the cliffs, and of the course
of which so strange but indubitable a
memorial subsists in what has now be
come the Solent Sea.”.
Any attempt to assign a more precise
date than the vague one of immense
antiquity to these early traces of primeval
man, had better be postponed until we
have examined the more detailed and
extensive body of evidence which has
been afforded by the exploration of caves,
to which the great discovery at Abbeville
at once gave an immense impulse, and
which has since been prosecuted in
England, France, Belgium, and Germany,
with the greatest ardour and success.
The caves in which fossil remains are
found occur principally in limestone
districts. They are due to the property
which water possesses, when. charged
with a small quantity of carbonic acid, of
dissolving lime. Rain falling on the
earth’s surface takes up carbonic acid
from contact with vegetable matter, and
a portion of it finds its way through
cracks and crevices in the subjacent rock
48
to lower levels, where it comes out in
springs of hard water charged with carb
onate of lime from the rock which it has
dissolved. It has been calculated that
the average rainfall on a square mile of
chalk thus carries away about 140 tons
of solid matter in a year. In this way
underground channels are formed, some
of which become large enough to admit
of streams flowing through them, and
even rivers, as is seen in the limestone
district of Carinthia, where considerable
rivers are swallowed up and run for miles
beneath the surface. In this way caverns
are formed, or sometimes a series of
caverns, which represent the pools of the
rivers which formerly flowed through
them. Accumulations of whatever may
have been brought down by the stream
were formed at the bottom of these pools,
and when, owing to changes in level or
denudation of the gathering grounds, the
rivers ceased to flow in the old channel,
the pools became dry and were converted
into caves, in which wild beasts and man
found shelter and left their remains. . The
debris thus formed accumulated with a
mixture of blocks which fell from the
roof, and of red loamy earth consisting
of the residue of the limestone rock in
soluble in water, and of dust and mud
brought in by winds and floods, and
occasionally interstratified by beds of
stalagmite, composed of thin films of
crystalline carbonate of lime, deposited
drop by drop by drippings through the
rock forming the roof of the cave. These
drippings form what are called stalactites,
which hang like pendent icicles from the
roof of caves, and as the drip falls from
these it forms a corresponding deposit,
known as stalagmite, on the floor below.
The formation of this deposit is neces
sarily extremely slow, and it only goes
on when the drops of water charged with
a minute excess of carbonate of lime
come in contact with the air; so that
whenever the floor of the cave was under
water no stalagmite could be formed.
The alternations, therefore, of deposits of
stalagmite represent alternations of long
periods during which the cave was
generally dry or. generally flooded.
During the dry periods, when the cave
happened to be inhabited, the treadings
on the floor would prevent the accumula
tion of an unbroken deposit of pure
stalagmite, and the crystalline matter
would be employed in forming a solid
�46
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
cement of the various dtbris into what is
known as a breccia.
Another class of caves, or rock-shelters,
has been formed along the sides of
valleys bounded by cliffs, where the
stratification is horizontal or nearly so
but the different beds vary much in
hardness and permeability to water.
The softer strata weather away more
rapidly than the others, and thus form
shallow caves or deep recesses in the face
of the cliffs, with a floor of hard rock
below and a roof of hard rock above,
which afford dry and commodious shelters
tor any sort of animal, including man.
In other respects they resemble the first
cmss of caves in having their contents
cemented into a breccia by the dripping
of water charged with carbonate of lime
from the roof, and, if the cave happened
to be deserted, for a long period, this
deposit would in the same way form a
bed of stalagmite and seal up securely
everything below it. In some cases, also,
the roof would fall in, and thus preserve
everything previously existing in the
ca"ve for the investigation of future
geologists.
^iese general remarks readers
will be able to understand the evidence
afforded by the remains of man found in
caverns. I will begin by taking as a
typical case that of Kent’s Cavern, near
lorquay, because it is one of the earliest
and best known, and all the facts con
cerning it have been verified by explora
tions, carefully conducted by a committee
appointed by the British Association in
1864, which comprised, the names of the
most eminent authorities in geology and
paleontology, including those of Sir
Charles Lyell, Sir John Lubbock, Mr.
Evans, Mr. Boyd Dawkins, Mr. Pengellv
and others.
65
Hie cave is about a mile east from
lorquay harbour, and runs into a hill of
Devonian limestone in a winding course,
expanding into large chambers connected
by narrow passages. The following is a
series of deposits in descending order in
the large chamber near the entrance :
1. Large blocks of limestone which
have fallen from the roof.
2- A layer of black, muddy mould,
three inches to twelve inches thick.
3. Stalagmite one foot to three feet
thick.
4. Red cave-earth with angular frag
ments of limestone of variable
thickness, but in places five to six
feet thick.
In the black earth above the stalagmite
were found a number of relics of the
Neolithic or polished stone period, with
a few articles of bronze and pottery,
some of which appear to be of a date as
late as that of the Roman occupation of
Britain. Associated with these are bones
of ox, sheep, goat, pig, and other ordinary
forms of existing species, and there is an
entire absence of any older fauna, or of
any of the ruder forms of Paleolithic
implements.. When we get below the
stalagmite into the underlying cave
earth, the case is entirely reversed. Not
a single specimen of polished or finelywrought stone, or of pottery, is to be
found j a vast number of celts or haches,
scrapers, knives, hammer stones, and
other stone implements, are met with
which are all of the rude Palaeolithic type
found in river drifts, with a few bone
implements such as harpoon-heads, a pin,
an awl, and a needle, like those frequently
met with in the caves of France and
Belgium. Associated with these are a
vast number of bones and teeth, all of
which belong to the old Quaternary fauna,
of which many species have become
extinct and others have migrated to
distant latitudes.
The following is a list of the mam
malian remains which have been found
in this cave-earth below the stalagmite : •
Abundant.
The Cave Lion, a large extinct species of
lion.
Cave Hyaena, a large extinct species of
hyaena.
Cave Bear, a large extinct species of bear.
Grizzly Bear.
Mammoth (Elephas primigenius}.
Rhinoceros (Tichorinus), woolly or thicknosed extinct species.
Horse.
Bison.
Irish Elk.
Red Deer.
Reindeer.
Scarce.
Wolf.
Fox.
Glutton.
Brown Bear.
Urus.
Hare.
Lagomys, tailless Arctic hare.
Water Vole.
«
Field Vole.
�ANTIQUITY OF MAN
Bank Vole.
Beaver.
And one specimen of the Machairodus, or
Great Sabre-toothed Tiger, which is one
of the characteristic species of the upper
Miocene and Pliocene formations.
These constitute a fauna which is char
acteristic of the Pleistocene, Quaternary,
or Palaeolithic period, and essentially
different from that of the prehistoric or
Neolithic period, which is practically the
same as that now existing, Wherever
remains of the mammoth, woolly rhino
ceros, and cave bear are found, Paleo
lithic implements may be expected, and
conversely. In fact Paleolithic man is
as essentially part of the characteristic
fauna of the Quaternary period, as the
Paleotherium is of the Eocene, or the
Deinotherium and Hipparion of the
Miocene.
A large number of other caves have
been explored in England, notably the
Victoria Cave near Settle, in Yorkshire,
the Cresswell Caves in Derbyshire, the
Gower Caves in South Wales, the~ Brixham Cave in Devonshire, the Woking
Cave in Somersetshire, and King Arthur’s
Cave in Herefordshire, and the results
have been everywhere practically the
same as those at Kent’s Cavern. The
same class of implements have been
found and the same fauna, with the oc
casional addition of a few species, among
which the hippopotamus and Eleplias
antiquus are the most remarkable.
So far as the river drifts and British
caves are concerned, all that we could, say
of the Palaeolithic period is that it is of
vast antiquity, and must have lasted for
an immense time, as it was in force for
the whole time requisite for rivers like
the Somme or Avon, which drain small
areas, to cut down their present valleys,
often two or three miles wide, from the
level of their upper gravels, which are in
many places 100 to 150 feet above the
level of the highest floods of the present
rivers.
But the caves of France and Belgium
supply us with more evidence, and enable
us to trace the history of long periods of
Palaeolithic time, and study in detail the
succession of changes that have occurred,
and the habits, arts, and industries of the
various tribes of primitive men who
occupied these caves and rock-shelters at
these remote periods. In fact, it may be
said with truth that we know more about
47
the men who chased the mammoth and
reindeer in the South of France perhaps
50,000 years ago, than we do about those
who lived there immediately before the'
classical era, or less than 5,000 years ago.
In certain provinces of France and
Belgium it happens fortunately that
there are extensive districts of limestone,
in which caverns and rock-shelters are
extremely abundant and full of Palaeo
lithic remains in an excellent state of
preservation. The abundance of such
caves may be estimated from the fact
that the cliffs, bounding one small river,
the Vezere, in the department of Dor
dogne in the South of France, contain
in a distance of eight or ten miles no
fewer than nine different stations, each
of which has given a vast variety of
remains embedded in the breccias and
cave-earths of their respective. floors ;
and the small river Lesse in Belgium has
been scarcely less prolific. Of the abun
dance of the human and animal remains
found in such caverns it may be sufficient
to say that one alone, that of Chaleux in
the valley of the Lesse, is computed by
Dumont to have yielded not less than
40,000 distinct objects.
The great abundance of remains thus
collected, both of human bones and im
plements, and of animals contempora
neous with them, have made it possible
to classify and arrange, in relative order
of time, a good many of the subdivisions
of the Palaeolithic period. This has been
done partly by the order of superposition
and partly by the greater or less rude
ness of the implements of stone and
bone, and by the greater or less abund
ance of those animals of the Quaternary
fauna which appeared first and disap
peared soonest. The result has been to
show that the period when vast herds
of reindeer roamed over the plains of
Southern France up to the Pyrenees was
not the earliest, but was preceded by a
long period when the reindeer was scarce,
and the remains of the mammoth, cave
bear, and cave hysena were more abun
dant than in the following ages. The
implements of this period are of the
earlier river-drift type and extremely
rude, and there is an almost entire
absence of instruments of bone.
Gradually as we pass upwards, the
more Southern forms of elephant, rhino
ceros, antelopes, and great carnivora dis
appear, and the mammoth and cave bear
�48
MODERN SCIENGE AND MODERN THOUGHT
become scarcer, while the reindeer be be added rock-carvings in Denmark, and
comes more and more abundant until at ngures on limestone cliffs in the Maritime
length it furnishes the chief source of Alps, while if, as some authorities, among
food, and its horns one of the principal them Arthur Evans and Sergi, think,
materials for the manufacture of imple
ments. Concurrently with this change they point to a primitive script, still
we find a progressive improvement in the more important are the characters
arts of life, as shown by stone imple painted m peroxide of iron on pebbles
ments more carefully chipped into a discovered by Piette in the Mas-d’Azil
greater variety of forms, and arrow and cave, in the South East of France. these
We do not, however, depend on
lance-heads, barbed harpoons, awls, and
needles for sewing skins, made chiefly drawings for evidence of the sort of men
who inhabited these caves in Paleolithic
from the antlers of the reindeer.
large number
. At length we arrive at one of the most days A skeletons have of skulls and
complete
interesting facts disclosed by these re dinerent caves, some ofbeen found in
which have
searches, that during one of the later or
served as sepulchral vaults for families
reindeer periods of the Paleolithic era
many of the caves in the South of France’ and tribes, while in others -individuals
and also in Switzerland and Southern have been crushed by falls of rock, or
otherwise
and in a
Germany were occupied by a race who, skulls and interred,have been few cases
bones
found at
like the Esquimaux of the present day
great depths in river drifts, and in
had a strong artistic tendency, and were loess, or fine glacial mud which fills the
up
constantly drawing with the point of a
flint on stone or bone, or modelling with the valley of the Rhine and other areas
over which the
flint knives from . horns and bones, melting poured great Swiss glaciers when
their turbid streams.
sketches of the animals they hunted
From
more
scenes of the chase, or other objects coveries among the of manimportant dis
of remains
himself, there
which struck their fancy. These are ex
]VaX_, e c^osen as typical: 1. those from
ceedingly well done, so that there is no
difficulty in recognising the animals in the Spy cavern ; 2. from the Neanderthal
tended to be represented, among which c^VmV-a .’,a3. from the pliocene deposits
of Trinil, Java.
are the mammoth, cave bear, reindeer,
t. The Betche . aux Roches cavern at
wild horse, and wild ox. The sketch of
b>py,
two nearly com
the mammoth which is engraved on a • plete. Belgium, yieldedmale and female
skeletons of a
piece of ivory, from the cave of La
number
Madeleine m the valley of the Vezere, is associated with a large somewhatof im
plements
particularly interesting, as it corresponds those of of a character The skullsabove
the Drift.
had
exactly with the mammoth whose body
enormous superciliary (eyebrows) ridges,
was found entire in frozen mud on the receding foreheads, massive jaws, and
ba x
a rV,er *n Liberia, and it sets at other
to which the
rest all possible question of man having generalapelike featuresthe rest of the
been really contemporary with this ex skeletonscharacter of
approximated. These remains
tinct animal m the South of France.
The drawings and carvings of other were discovered in 1886.
•
years earlier there
animals, especially of the reindeer, are m a Quaternary deposit in the was found
often extremely spirited, and. one es- cave of the Neander Valley,Feldhofen
Rhenish
P®c*a-*-V of a reindeer engraved on a bit Prussia, a calvaria, or brain-cap, in
Q 1
^rom a Cr,ve. at Thayngen, near dicating similar features to those of the
Schaffhausen m Switzerland, would do
credit to any modern animal painter. A opy skulls, and pronounced by Huxley
as
very few.human figures are found amono1 that the most apelikeyet discovered to
time,
these primeval drawings, but strangely, the. assumedalthough not approaching
special features of the
while the animals are so well drawn,
missing link.”
those of men are very inferior and
3. More, remarkable than either of
almost infantine in execution. They are
sufficient, however, to show that the naked these specimens are the brain-cap, thigh
in
savage of. Perigord, armed with a stone bone, and two molar teeth, found the
1891-92 by Dr. Eugene Dubois in
lance or javelin, pursued and slew the upper pliocene , beds at Trinil, on the
formidable aurochs. To these may banks of the river Bengavan, in Java,
�Portrait of Mammoth.
Drawn with a flint on a piece of Mammoth’s ivory ; from Cave of La Madeleine, Dordogne, France.
Earliest Portrait
of a
Mast, with Serpent
From Grotto of Les Eyzies.
and
Horses’ Heads.
Reindeer Period.
Reindeer Feeding.
From Grotto of Tliayngen, near Schaffhausen, Switzerland.
�50
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
which he holds to be the fragments of an
animal named by him Pithecanthropus
Erectus, or “upright ape-man.” The
several portions were found adjacent, but
at different times, so that their identity
as parts of the same individual has been
questioned. But although anthropolo
gists are not in agreement as to the
remains being positively human, the
majority hold that opinion, and it is not
without significance to note that the
bones were found in that part of the
globe where it is highly probable that
man and ape became differentiated. A
comparison of the cranium with that of
Neanderthal shows that it is of decidedly
lower type, and that it may be classified
as between the Neanderthal man and the
gorilla.
In trying to fix anything like definite
dates for man’s existence upon earth, we
must reverse the process by which we
have proved the enormous antiquity of
his earliest remains, and ascend step by
step from the known to the unknown.
The first step is that supplied by
history.
Until very recently, the palm of an
tiquity, limiting that term to the historic
period, rested with Egypt. Its chron
ology started with Menes, its reputed ear
liest king, whose date Professor Flinders
Petrie fixes at 4777 B.c. “ with a possible
error of a century.” The old scepticism
as to the actual personality of the ancient
Pharaohs is dispelled by modern research,
Professor Petrie having found traces of
kings before Menes, while there appears
good reason for accepting Dr. Borchardt’s
claims to have discovered the actual
tomb and personal relics of that king at
Nagada, a little north of Thebes.
.But it would seem that Egypt must
yield priority to Babylonia. For in
recent excavations at Nuffar or N ippur,
in Northern Babylonia, Dr. -Hilprecht
has unearthed from the deepest human
deposits in the ruins of the temple of
Bel a number of tablets which he
contends justify him in dating the
founding of that temple, and the first
settlement of the city, “somewhere be
tween 7,000 and 6,000 B.c. and possibly
earlier.” .And as the tablets are in
scribed with cuneiform characters, which
are the slow outcome of picture-writing,
as are. all other alphabetic and syllabic
signs, it may yet be proved that Babylonia
possessed a script at least 1,300 years
before the earliest known Egyptian
hieroglyphs. It is true that their love of
the decorative and their veneration for
what is old may explain the persistence
of the use of primitive modes of writing
among the Egyptians, but this cannot
weigh against the argument that the
more central position of Mesopotamia
gave her advantages which quickened
culture within her borders.
Nor do these two great empires mono
polise the story of antiquity. Explor
ations in Greece and the surrounding
archipelago have brought to light a third
venerable centre, perchance an indigenous
centre of civilisation, whose relics show
that “ we have probably to deal with a
total period of civilisation in the Aegean
not much shorter than that in the Nile
Valley.” So that centuries before the
Phcenicians launched their craft upon
the Midland Sea, or sailed beyond the
Pillars of Hercules, and at a period when
the Iliad and Odyssey were not in
existence, there was active intercourse
between East and West, intercourse, as
evidenced by the discovery of a com
mercial script, even between Arabia and
Iberia. Thus does the epigraphic and
other material which the spade of the
antiquarian has upturned and the skill
of the philologist deciphered, push ever
farthei’ back the horizon of history.
But beyond that receding marge lie the
vast domains of man’s past which it is
the province of the prehistoric archae
ologist, the palaeontologist, and the geol
ogist to explore.
Here, then, we. take leave of the one
and follow the guidance of the other.
The earliest historical civilisations were
all acquainted with metals, chiefly in the
form of bronze, which is an alloy of
copper and tin, very hard, easily cast,
and well adapted for every description of
tool and weapon. Indeed, it has only
been superseded by iron within recent
historical times. But the Bronze Age
was preceded by a long Neolithic period,
when stone, finely wrought and often
ground or polished, was used for the
purposes to which metal was afterwards
applied: The men of this Neolithic
period, who reached Europe from the
east or south, probably from both regions,
were comparatively civilised; they had
all the common domestic animals, the
dog, horse, ox, sheep, goat, and pig; also
some of the cultivated cereals and fruits ;
�51
ANTIQUITY OF MAN
they knew the arts of cooking, spinning,
weaving, and pottery, they were grouped
into clans and tribes, and lived in villages.
Some think the Iberian or Basque people
may be a remnant of this Neolithic race,
who were driven westward by the later
wave of Celtic migration just as the
Celts were driven by the still later waves
of Teutonic and Slavonic immigrants. Be
this as it may, it is certain that a
Neolithic people were spread very widely
over the globe, as -their remains of very
' similar character are found almost every
where in Europe, Asia, and America, and
always in association with the existing
or most recent fauna and configuration
of the earth’s surface.
The difficulty in assigning any precise
date for these remains arises very much
from the fact that the Neolithic passed
into the Bronze or historical civilisation,
at different times in different countries.
The Australians, the Polynesians, and the
Esquimaux were or are still in the. Stone
period, while steam-engines are spinning
cotton at Manchester, and the most
famous cities of Egypt and the East have
been for centuries buried under shapeless
mounds of their own ruins. It is probable
that all Europe remained in the Neolithic
stage for many centuries after the his
torical date of the commencement of the
Egyptian empire.
Still there are some remains which may
enable us to form an approximate con
jecture of the time during which this
Neolithic period may have lasted.
The two principal clues are furnished :
1. By the Danish mosses and kitchen
middens.
2. By the Swiss lake-dwellings.
In Denmark there are a number of peat
mosses varying in depth from ten to thirty
feet, which have been formed by the
filling-up of small lakes or ponds in
hollows of the Glacial drift. Around
the borders of these mosses, and at vari
ous depths in them, lie trunks of trees
which have grown on their margin. At
the present surface are found beech-trees,
which are now, and have been throughout
the whole historical period of 2,000 years,
the prevalent form of forest vegetation
in Denmark. Lower down is found a
zone of oaks, a tree which is now rare
and almost superseded by the beech. And
still lower, towards the bottom of the
mosses, the fallen trees are almost en
tirely Scotch firs, which have been long
unknown in Denmark and when intro
duced will not thrive there. It is evident
therefore, that there have been three
changes of climate, causing three entire
changes in the forest vegetation in Den
mark, since these mosses began to be
formed. The latest has lasted certainly
for 2,000 years, and we cannot tell how
much longer, so that some period of more
than 6,000 years must be assumed for the
three changes.
Now, it is invariably found that remains
of the Iron Age are confined to the pre
sent or beech era, while bronze is found
only in that of oak, and the Age of Stone
coincides with that of the Scotch fir.
The kitchen-middens afford another
memorial of the prehistoric age in Den
mark. There are mounds found all along
the sheltered sea-coasts of the mainland
and islands, consisting chiefly of shells of
the oyster, cockle, limpet, and other shell
fish, which have been eaten by the ancient
dwellers on these coasts. Mixed-up with
these are the bones of various land ani
mals, birds, and fish, and flint flakes,
axes, worked bones and horns, and other
implements, including rude hand-made
pottery. The relics are very much the
same as those found in the fir zone of the
peat mosses, and although old as com
pared with the Iron or historical age,
they do not denote any extreme antiquity.
The shells are all of existing species,
though the larger size of some of those
found on the shores of the Baltic shows
that the salt water of the North Sea had
then a freer access to it than at present.
The bones of animals, birds, and fish are
also all of existing species, and no re
mains of extinct animals, such as the
mammoth, or even of reindeer, have been
found. By far the most common are the
red deer, roe-deer, and wild boar. The
dog was known, and appears to have
been the only domestic animal among the
earliest Neolithic peoples.
Most of the stone implements are rude,
but a few carefully-worked weapons have
been found, and a few specimens of
polished axes, which, with the presence
of pottery and the nature of the fauna,
show conclusively that these Danish re
mains are all of the Neolithic age’ and
subsequent to the close of the Glacial
period. In fact, similar shell mounds are
found in almost all quarters of the globe
where savage tribes have lived on the
sea-coast, subsisting mainly on shell-fish,
£ 2
�52
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
and they are probably still being formed
on the shores of the Greenland and Arctic
Seas, and in Australia, and remote islands
of the Pacific.
Human remains are scarce in these
Danish deposits, but numerous skulls
and skeletons have been found in tumuli
which, from their situation and from
stone implements being buried with the
dead, may be reasonably inferred to be
those of the people of the peat mosses
and shell mounds. They denote a short
race with small and very round heads, in
many respects resembling the present
Lapps, but with a more projecting ridge
over the eye.
On the whole, all we can conclude from
these Danish remains is that at some
period, not less than 6,000 or 7,000 years
ago, when civilisation had already been
long established in the valley of the Nile,
rude races resembling the Lapps or Es
quimaux lived on the shores of the Baltic,
who, although so. much more recent,
and acquainted with the domestic dog,
pottery, and the art of polishing stone,
had not advanced much beyond the con
dition of the later cave-men of the South
of France ; and that this race was suc
ceeded by one which brought in the much
higher civilisation of the Bronze Age.
The lake-dwellings of Switzerland give
still, more detailed and interesting infor
mation as to Neolithic times.
During a very dry summer in 1854, the
Lake of Zurich fell below its usual level
and disclosed the remains of ancient piles
driven into the mud, from which a numof deer-horns and other implements were
dredged up. This led to farther researches,
and the result lias been that a large
number of villages built on these piles
has. been discovered in almost all the
Swiss lakes, as well as in those of Italy
and other countries. On the whole, more
than 200 have been discovered in Swit
zerland, and fresh ones are being con
stantly brought to light. They range
over a long period, a few belonging to
the. Iron Age and even to Boman times ■
while the. greater number are almost
equally divided between the Age of
Bionze and that of Stone. Some of them
are of large size, and must have been
long inhabited and supported a numerous
population, from the immense number of
implements found, which at one station
alone, that of Concise on the Lake of
Neufchatel, amounted to 25,000. These
implements consist mainly of axes, knives
anow-heads, saws, chisels, hammers, awls
and needles, with a quantity of broken
pottery, spindle-whorls, sinkers for nets
and other objects.
’
In the oldest stations, where no trace
of metal is found, and the decay of
the piles to a low’er level shows the
greatest antiquity, the implements are
all of. the Neolithic type, and the animal
remains associated with them are all of
the recent fauna. There are no mam
moths, rhinoceroses, or reindeer; the
wild animals are the red deer and roe, the
urus, bison, elk, bear, wolf, wild cat, fox,
badger, wild boar, ibex, and other exist
ing species ; and of domestic animals, the
uogf, pig, horse, goat, sheep, and at least
two varieties or oxen. Birds, reptiles,
and . fish were all of common existing
species. Carbonised ears of wheat and
barley have been found, as also pears and
apples, and the seeds, stones, and shells
of raspberry, blackberry, wild plum,
hazel-nut, and beech-nut. Twine, and
bits of matting made of flax, as well as
the occurrence of spindle-whorls, show
that the pile dwellers were acquainted
with the art of weaving.
On the whole, these pile-villages show
i
r ^arSe population lived in Switzer
land for a long time before the dawn of
history, and that they had already attained
a considerable amount of civilisation at
their , first appearance, which went on
steadily increasing down to the time of the
Boman conquest. Various attempts have
been made to fix an approximate date for
the earliest of these pile-villages, but they
have not been very successful. They
have been based. mainly on the amount
of silting up which has taken place in
some of the smaller lakes since the piles
were driven in, as compared with that
which has occurred since the Roman
period. The best calculations appear to
show that 6,000 or 7,000 years ago
Switzerland was already inhabited by
men who used polished stone implements,
but how long they had been there we
have no distinct evidence to show
Perhaps 10,000 years may betaken as the
outside limit of time that can be allowed
for the Neolithic period in Switzerland,
Denmark, or any known part of Europe.
In Egypt, however, there is evidence of
a much greater antiquity. Fragments
of pottery, which was entirely unknown
in the Palaeolithic age, have been brought,
�ANTIQUITY OF MAN
53
up by borings in the Nile Valley from it is possible to fix any approximate dates
forthe commencement and durationot the
depths ■which, at the average rate ot ac
cumulation there during the las^ 3,000 Glacial period. place, how do we know
In the
years of three inches and a halt in a that therefirst been any such period ?
has
century, would denote an age of
In England we are more familiar with
13,000 to 18,000 years.. Looking at the water than with ice; we therefore recog
dense population and high civilisation ot nise at once the signs of the action ot
Egypt at the commencement of bistory, water. If we come across a dry channel,
7,000 years ago, it is highly probable that
in alternating curves between
this time at least must have .elapsed windingbanks, and showing deposits, ot
since the country was first occupied by a eroded and silt, we say without hesitation,
settled agricultural population as tar gravel a river formerly ran.’ But it we
“ Here
advanced in the arts of life as the lake had lived in Switzerland, we should
dwellers of Switzerland.
Any calculation, however, of N eolith.ic recognise with equal certainty the signs
Suppose any one
time takes us back a very short step in of glacial action. walks up the valley
visiting Chamouni
the history of the human race, I he to .the foot of the Mer de Glace where
Paleolithic period must evidently have the Arve issues from the glacier, let us
been of vastly longer duration.
Here it is convenient to note that the say in autumn, when the front, of the
back some
theory of an absolute break, through geo glacier has shrunkRounded and distance,
polished
logical changes and subordinate causes, what does he see 1 as. if they had been
between the Palaeolithic and Neolithic rocks, whicha seem
gigantic plane
Ages which long held the field, has dis planed by over them, and on working
downwards
these a
appeared (except in Great Britain) before mass of miscellaneous rubbish shot down
the evidence against tenantless intervals as if from a dust-cart, consisting ot
in prehistoric times. The tools and
weapons found in certain caves, as at stones of all sizes, some of them boulders
house, scattered
Solutr6, in the Ma^on district, and at as big as a of clay and sand. irregulaily
When he
Mentone, show an overlapping of earlier on a mass closely he will see that these
and later specimens, which witness to looks morenot rounded as they would be
fusion in more or less degree between stones are water, but blunted. at then
prehistoric peoples. Doubtless in the by runninga slow grinding action ; and
more northerly parts of the Continent angles bycases, both the stones and the
there were local migrations and retreats, in many which they rest are. scratched
on
but there was no wholesale withdrawal rocksstriated in a direction which is that
or extermination of the . ruder races, andthe glacier’s motion. At the bottom
leaving vacant areas fortheir conquerors. of this rubbish-heap he will find the clay
Europe has been continuously inhabited of which the rock has been ground by
by man since he first set his foot in it, and into full weight of the glacier, very stifi
the proofs of this, ever increasing, come the compact; while if he looks down the
in the shape of the rude specimens of and he will see, on a hot day, a swollen,
art which link Northern with Southern valley,
turbid
Europe, and, what is of the deepest and ice andriver issuing from the melt
flooding the.
interest, both regions with the Eastern ing it will leave a depositmeadows, on
of fine mud.
Mediterranean. For these and other which are effects actually produced by
These
materials, more advanced in character, ice; and wherever he sees them he can
are revolutionising the old theories of infer the former presence of a glacier, as
European civilisation, which held it to certainly as when he sees a bed ot
be a wholly imported product, and are
pebbles, he infers
showing how indigenous that culture rounded of running water. the former
was, originating, mayhap, as shown presence commonly knownIhe planed
as rochet
already, in the islands of the JEgean, and rocks are om a fancied resemblance ot
mo utonnees,fr
diffusing itself, not without Oriental their smooth, rounded hummocks to the
influences upon it, in westerly directions. backs of a flock of sheep lying down;
In carrying our. researches further
back, the possibility of assigning any the rubbish heaps are called moraines ;
clay with
thing like a definite date for the existence and the stiff bottom called theboulders
g^wdof man depends on the question whether embedded in it is
�MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
moraine, till, or boulder clay ; while the
blunted and scratched stones are said to
be glaciated.
These tests, therefore, roches moutonnees,
moraines, boulders, and glaciated stones,
are infallible proofs that wherever we
find them there has been ice-action,
either in the form of glaciers, or of ice
bergs, which are only detached portions
of glaciers floated-off when the glacier
ends in the sea. blow, if our inquirer
extends his view., he will find that these
signs, the meaning of which he has
learned at the head of the valley of
Chamouni, are to be found equally in
every valley and over the whole plain of
Switzerland, up to a height of more than
3,000 feet on the slope of the opposite
Jura range, while on the Italian side the
Glacial drift extends far into the plains
of Piedmont.
Extending our view still more widely,
we find that every high mountain range
m the Northern hemisphere has had its
system . of glaciers; and one great
mountain mass, that of Scandinavia, has
been the nucleus of an enormous ice-cap,
radiating to a distance of not less than
1,000 miles, and thick enough to block up
with solid ice the North Sea, the German
Ocean, the Baltic, and even the Atlantic
up to the 100 fathom line. This ice-cap,
coalescing with local glaciers from the
higher lands of England, Scotland, and
Ireland, swept over their surface, regard
less of minor inequalities of hill and valley,
as far south as to the present Thames
Valley, grinding-down rocks, scattering
drift and boulders, and, in fact, doing
the first rough sub-soil ploughing which
prepared most of our present arable
fields for cultivation. The same ice-sheet
spread masses of similar drift over
Northern Germany, Sweden, Denmark,
and the northern half of European
Russia, and left behind it numerous
boulders which must have travelled all
the way from Norway or Lapland.
If we cross the Atlantic we find the
same thing repeated on a still larger
scale in North America. A still more
gigantic, ice-cap, radiating from the
Laurentian ranges, which extend to
wards the Pole, from Canada, has
glaciated all the minor mountain ranges
to the. south up to heights sometimes
exceeding. 3,000 feet, and coalescing with
vast glaciers thrown off by the Rocky
Mountains from their eastern flanks, has
swept over the whole Continent, leaving
its record in the form of drift and
boulders, down to the 40th parallel of
, latitude. It is difficult to realise the
existence of such gigantic glaciers, but
the proofs they have left are incontro
vertible, and we have only to look to
Greenland to see similar effects actually
in operation. The whole of that vast
country, where at former periods of the
earth’s history, fruit-trees grew and a
genial climate prevailed, is now buried
deep under one solid ice-cap, from
which only a few of the highest
peaks protrude, and which discharges
its surplus accumulation of winter
snow by huge glaciers filling all the
fiords and pushing out into the sea
with a,n ice-wall sometimes forty or fifty
miles in length, from which icebergs are
continually breaking off and floating
away. A still more gigantic ice-wall
surrounds the Southern Pole, and in a
comparatively low latitude presented
an insuperable barrier to the further
progress of the ships of Sir J. Ross’s
expedition.
A. still closer examination of the
Glacial period shows that it was not one
single period of intense cold, but a pro
longed period, during which there were
several alternations, the glaciers having
retreated and advanced several times with
comparatively mild inter-glacial periods,
but finally with a tendency on each suc
cessive advance to contract its area, until
the ice shrank into the recesses of high
mountains, where alone we now find it.
Another noteworthy point is that during
this long Glacial period there were
several great oscillations in the level of
sea and land.
Such, was the Glacial period, and to
assign its date is to fix the date when we
know with certainty that man already
existed, and had for some long though
unknown time previously been an in
habitant of earth. Is this possible ? To
answer this question we must begin by
considering what are the causes, or com
bination of causes, which may have given
rise to such a Glacial period. When we
look at. the causes which actually pro
duce existing glaciers, we find that ex
treme cold alone is not sufficient. In the
coldest known region of the earth, in
Eastern Siberia, there are no glaciers, for
the land is low and level and the air dry.
On the other hand, in New Zealand, in
�AifTIQUITt OF maf
sistent with the general laws of Nature j
and with the leading facts of the actual
generation of glaciers at the present day.
Astronomers believe that they have
discovered such a cause in the theory
first started by Mr. Groll, that the glacia
tion of the Northern hemisphere was due
to a secular change in the shape of th® I
earth’s orbit, combined with the shorter
changes produced by the precession of the
equinoxes. The latter cause is due to the
fact that the earth is not an exact sphere,
but slightly protuberant at the equator,
and that the attraction of the sun on this I
protuberant matter prevents the axis
round which the earth rotates, from re
maining exactly parallel with itself, and
makes it move slowly , round its mean I
position just as we see in the case of a I
schoolboy’s top, which reels round an
imaginary upright axis while spinning
rapidly. This revolution in the* case ot
the earth completes its circle in about
21,000 years, so that if summer, when th|
pole is turned towards the sun, occurred
in the Northern hemisphere when the
earth was in perihelion., or nearest the
S6When the two conditions of high land
sun, and consequently winter when it was
and moist winds are combined, low
in aphelion, or furthest away from the
temperature increases their effect, and
sun, after 10,500 years the position would
the snow-fall consolidates into a great
be exactly reversed, and winter would
ice-cap, from which only, the tops of tne
occur in perihelion and summer in
highest mountains project, and which
aphelion ; the Southern, hemisphere then
pushes out gigantic glaciers far. over
enjoying the same conditions as those, oi
surrounding countries and into adjacent
the Northern one 10,500 years earlier
seas. Such is now the case in Green
And in another 10,500 years things would
land, and was formerly the case in
come back to their original position.
Scandinavia, where a huge sheet of ice
Now if the earth’s orbit were an exact
radiated from it over Northern Germany
circle this would make no difference, all
as far as Dresden, filled up the North
Sea, and, coalescing with smaller ice the four seasons would, be of the same
duration and would receive the same solar
caps from the highlands of Scotland,
heat in both hemispheres, and if the
England, and Wales, buried the British
orbit were nearly circular, so that the
Islands up to the Thames under massive
difference between the perihelion and
ice. At the same period glaciers from
the Alps filled the whole plain of aphelion distances was small, the effect
would be small also. But if the orbit
Switzerland, and in North America the
flattened out or became more eccentric,
icecap extended from Labrador to
the effect would be increased. The fiM
Philadelphia.
of traversing the aphelion portion oi the
The first remark to be made is . that,
annual orbit would become longer and
as these phenomena depend primarily on
that of traversing the perihelion portion
moist winds, and only secondarily on
shorter, as the orbit departed from the
cold, and as moist winds imply great
form of a circle and became more elliptic.
evaporation and therefore great solar
Whenever, therefore, the North Pole was
heat over extensive surfaces of water, all
explanations are worthless which suppose turned away from the sun in aphelion,
the winters would be longer than the
a general prevalence of cold, either from
summers in the Northern hemisphere,
less solar radiation, passage through a
and conversely, the summers would be
colder region of space, or otherwise.
longer than the winters when, after an
We must seek for a cause which is con
the latitude of England and with a
mean annual temperature very similar
to that of the West of Scotland, enormous
glaciers descend to within 700 feet ot the
sea-level. The reason is obvious ; the
Alps of the South Island rise to the height
of 11,000 feet above the sea, and the pre
valent westerly winds strike, on them
laden with moisture from their passage
over a wide expanse of ocean. In like
manner, in the case of the Swiss Alps,
the Himalayas, and other great mountain
ranges, high land and moist winds
everywhere make glaciers. Given the
moist wind, any great depression of
temperature, whether
arising H'om
elevation of land or other causes, wbl
make it deposit its moisture in the form
of snow, and the accumulation of snow
on a large surface of elevated land must
inevitably relieve itself by pushing down
rivers of ice to the point where it melts,
just as the rain-fall relieves itself by
pouring down rivers to the point .where
the surplus water finds its level in the
�56
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
interval of 10,500 years, precession in their operation and given us a constant
brought about the opposite condition of succession of
things, in which winter occurred in commencementGlacial periods since the
of geological time, when
perihelion.
ever the
. At present the earth’s orbit is nearly occurs at eccentricity became great, which
irregular periods, but
circular, and the Northern hemisphere is about three times in everypractically
3,000 000
nearest the sun in winter and furthest years. The answer is
from it in summer, but the difference is would only occur whenthat the effects
the other con
only . about 3,000,000 miles, or a small
fraction of the total mean distance of ditions were present, viz., high land, moist
an absence
93,000,000 miles, which makes the winter winds, andwater like of oceanic currents
of warm
the Gulf Stream,
i
year shorter than the summer lne latter is one of the main causes which
half by nearly eight days.
But mathematical calculations show affect temperature. The difference of
1 un(^er ^ie complicated attractions temperature between the equatorial and
of the sun, moon, and larger planets, the polar regions causes a constant overflow
of heated
eccentricity of the earth’s orbit slowly is replacedair from south to north, which
an indraught of colder air
changes at long.and irregular intervals ri om north by south, which, owing to the
to
but always w.ithin^xed limits, increasing greater velocity of the earth’s rotation
up to a certain point and then diminish towards the equator, takes the form of
ing till it approaches the circular form
trade-winds blowing constantly from a
when it again increases. The maximum more
These
limit of eccentricity makes the difference winds, or less easterly direction. Ocean,
sweeping
the Atlantic
between the greatest and least distances raise its level at overwestern barrier, and
its
of the earth from the sun range between
the
12,000,000 and 14,000,000 miles, which is flowsaccumulation deflected by America
off in
which
tour or five times as great as at present • the western a currentEurope extends to
and with this eccentricity, and winter in mildwintersshores of extreme and carries
into the
North In
aphelion in the Northern hemisphere, the the Orkney and Shetland Islands, which
winter half of the year in Northern are nearly m the same latitude as Cape
latitudes would be twenty-six days longer
than the summer half, instead of eight farewell m Greenland, there is so little
ice
accomplishment
days shorter as at present. In this state of andthat skating is a rare game which is
curling, the roaring
things the quantity of heat received daily popular some degrees further south, so
is
from the sun in winter would be such as quite unknown.
to lower the temperature of the whole diverted, and the Ii the Gulf Stream were
highlands of
Northern hemisphere by 35° Fahrenheit, upheaved to the height of the Scotland
Alps of
and reduce the average January tem New
perature of England from 39 to 4°, while I againZealand, the whole conntry would
be buried under glaciers pushing
the mean summer temperature would be
t into
ar*d German Ocean.
about 60° higher than at present. But oathese ^ie
considerations may show
this summer heat, derived from solar every period of great eccentricity why
was
radiation, would not counteract the cold not necessarily a Glacial period,
of .winter, for all moisture during winter under certain conditions it must though
inevit
1I?3 accumulated in ice and snow, most ably have been so, and geologists are
ot the solar heat of summer would be generally agreed that the last period of the
expended in supplying latent heat to melt
have been one of the main
a portion of this frozen accumulation, sort mustthe great refrigeration which
causes
and dense fogs would intercept a large set m of
over the whole Northern hemiamount of the solar radiation.
sphere
the Pliocene
jer lb,500 years this state of things period, towards the close of recent times.
and continued until
would be entirely reversed, and with But in this case we can fix the date with
twenty-six days more of summer, and
calculation shows that
the earth 12,000,000 miles nearer the sun +k"ea^ accuracy> f°r of great eccentricity
the last period
m winter, the Northern hemisphere would began 240,000 years ago, and lasted
enjoy something like perpetual spring, 160,000 years. For the last 50,000 years
v here can be no doubt that these are real the departure of the earth’s orbit from
causes, and the only difficulty is to account the circular form has been exceptionally
tor their not having been more invariable ;small. We may suppose the Glacial
�ANTIQUITY OF MAN
period, therefore, to have commenced
240,000 years ago, come to its height
160,000 years ago, and finally passed
away 80,000 years before the present
time.
These dates receive much confirmation
from conclusions drawn from a totally
different class of facts. A bed of existing
marine shells of Arctic type, apparently
belonging to one of the latest phases of
the Glacial period, has been found on the
top of a hill in North Wales which is now
1,100 feet above the sea-level, and the
same marine drift seems to extend to a
height of upwards of 2,000 feet. There
must, therefore, have been a depression
of the land sufficient to carry it many
fathoms below the sea, and a subsequent
elevation sufficient to carry the sea
bottom up to a height of certainly 1,100
and probably over 2,000 feet. In all pro
bability, these movements were very
slow and gradual, like those now. going
on in Greenland and Scandinavia, for
there are no signs of earthquakes or
volcanic eruptions in the district; and it
is probable that pauses occurred in the
movements, and a long pause when sub
sidence had ceased before elevation
began. Without taking these pauses
into account, and assuming the elevation
only just completed, and that Sir C.
Lyell’s average of two and a half feet a
century is a fair rate for these slow
movements, it would have required 50,000
years of continued elevation to bring
these shells, and 80,000 years to bring the
marine drifts, up to their present height
above the sea; and a similar period
previously must be allowed for their
submergence. We may fairly conclude,
therefore, that upwards of 100,000 years
have elapsed since these shells lived and
died at the bottom of the sea towards the
close of the Glacial period, which corre
sponds very well with the date assigned
by astronomical calculations.
Again, another attempt to fix a date
for the close of the Glacial period has
been made by Monsieur Forel, a Swiss
geologist, from actual measurements of
the quantity of suspended matter
poured into the Lake of Geneva by the
Rhone, and the area of the lake which
has been silted up since it was filled by
ice. It is evident that this silting up
at the head of the lake could only begin
when the great Rhone glacier, which
once extended to the Jura Mountains,
had shrunk back into its valley far
enough to pour its river into the lake.
M. Forel’s calculations give . 100,000
years as the probable time required for
the river to silt up so much of the lake
as is now converted into dry land. The
data are somewhat vague, as on the one
hand the rate of deposition may have!
been greater when a large mass of
ice and snow was being melted, while
on the other hand it may have been
less, while the glacier still occupied the
valley almost to the head of the lake,
and the Rhone had only a course of a
few miles. All that can be said, there
fore, is that it gives an approximate
date for the close of the Glacial period
which, like that derived from rates
of depression and elevation, corresponds
wonderfully well with the date required
by Croll’s theory.
Now, whether the date be a little
more or a little less, it is clear that man
existed on earth throughout a great
part, if not the whole, of the Glacial
period. He had existed a long while
in conjunction with a fauna of morel
Southern and African aspect, before
the reindeer migrated in vast herds into
Southern France. His remains are found
in caves and river drifts associated with
those of the hippopotamus, an animal
which could by no possibility have lived
in rivers which for half the year were
bound hard in ice. Such remains must
therefore of necessity date either from a
period before the great cold had set. in, or
from some inter-glacial period prior to
the great cold which drove the reindeer,
musk ox, glutton, and Arctic hare as
far south as the slopes of the Pyrenees.
In England we can trace distinctly
at least four successions of boulder clays,
that is of the ground moraines of land
ice, separated by deposits of drifts, sands,
and brick-earths, formed while . the
glaciers were retreating and melting;
and a number of the Palaeolithic imple
ments have been found in what was
undoubtedly part of the period of the
second or great chalky boulder clay,
which overspreads the southern and
eastern counties of England up to the
Thames Valley.
The discovery * of
Palaeolithic remains in the deposit oi St,
Prest, near Chartres, makes it probable
that some at least of the ruder instru
ments date back to the very beginning
of the Glacial period, and a good body
�58
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
of evidence points to the conclusion that
man was living during the many alter
nations of climate of that period, and
whenever the glaciers retreated, followed
them up closely.
In seeking to trace back human origin
to more remote periods, we must begin
by describing shortly the geological
periods during which the existence of
man may have been possible. It is use
less to go back beyond the Chalk, which
was deposited in a deep sea and forms
a great break between the modern and
the Secondary period, in which latter
reptiles predominated, and mammalia
are only known by a few remains of
small insectivorous and
marsupial
animals.
The inauguration of the present state
of things commences with the Tertiary
period. This has been divided into three
stages : the Eocene, in which the first
dawn appears of animal life similar in
type to that now existing ; the Miocene,
in which there is a still greater approxi
mation to existing forms of life; and
the Pliocene, in which existing types and
species become preponderant.
Then
comes the Pleistocene or Quaternary,
including the great Glacial period,
during which the whole marine and
nearly the whole terrestrial fauna are of
existing or recently extinct species,
though very different in their geographi
cal distribution from that of the present
day. And finally we arrive at the recent
period, when the present climate and the
present configuration of lands, seas,
and . rivers prevail with very slight
modifications, and no changes have
taken place either in the specific
character or geographical distribution
of life, except such as can be clearly
traced to existing causes such as the
agency of man.
This is the geological frame-work into
which we have to fit the history of man’s
appearance upon earth. We have traced
him through the recent and Quaternary ;
can we trace him further into the
Tertiary ? Speaking generally, we may
say that the Eocene period was that in
which Europe began to assume some
thing like its present configuration, and
in which mammalian life, of the higher
or placental type, began to supplant the
lower forms of marsupial life which had
preceded. But these higher types were
for the most part of a more primitive
or generalised character than the more
specialised types of later periods, and
u* highest order, that of the primates,
which includes man, ape, and lemur, was,
as far as is yet known, represented only
by two or three extinct lemurian forms.
_ The plan on which Nature has worked
in the evolution of life seems always to
have been this: she begins by laying
down a sort of ground plan, or general
ised sketch of a particular form of life,
say, first of vertebrata, then of fish, then
of reptiles, and finally of mammalian life.
I his sketch resembles the simple theme
of a few notes on which a musician pro
ceeds to work out a series of variations,
each surpassing the other in complication
and . specialised development in some
particular direction. No w, in the Eocene
period we are in the stage of the theme and
first simple variations of the mammalian
melody. It hardly seems likely, there
fore, that a creature so highly specialised
as man, even in his most rudimentary
form, should have existed, and in the
absence of any direct evidence to the
contrary, it is safe to assume that his
first appearance must have been of later
date.
But when we come to the Miocene and
Pliocene periods, the case is different. It
is true that in the Miocene the speciali
sation of certain families, as for instance
that of the horse, had not been carried
out to the full extent, and that all the
species of Miocene land-mammals and
several of the genera are now extinct.
But there were already true apes and
baboons, and even two species of anthro
poid ape, one of which, the Dryopithecus,
whose fossil remains were found in the
South of France, was as large as a man.
Now, wherever anthropoid apes lived
it is clear that, whether as a question of
anatomical structure or of climate and
surroundings, man, or some creature which
was the ancestor of man, might have lived
also. Anatomically speaking, apes and
monkeys are as. much special variations
of the mammalian type as man, whom
they resemble bone for bone and muscle
for. muscle, and the physical animal man
is simply an instance of the quadrumanous
type specialised for erect posture and a
larger brain. The larger brain, implying
greater intelligence, must also have given
him advantages in contending with out
ward circumstances, as for instance, by
fire and clothing against cold, which might
�AMNffllUt OP MAN
enable him to survive when other species
succumbed and became extinct.
If he could survive, as we know he did,
|3ie adverse conditions and. extreme vicissitudes of the Glacial period, there is no
reason why he might not have lived in
the semi-tropical climate of the Miocene
period, when a genial climate extended
even to Greenland and Spitsbergen, and
when ample forests supplied an abundance
of game and edible fruits. The same rea
sons apply, with still greater force, to the
Pliocene period, when existing types and
species had become more common and
feen a mild climate still prevailed. The
JEstence of Tertiary man must antecedently be pronounced highly probable;
but probabilities are not proofs, and the
near Chartres, which were always con
sidered to be Pliocene. Since the dis
covery, however, some geologists have
contended that these strata are not Plio
cene, but of the earliest Quaternary, or
perhaps a transition period between Plio
cene and Quaternary. This evidence canl
not, therefore, be accepted as conclusive for
anything more than proof that man’s ex
istence extends at any rate over the whole
Quaternary period, comprising the vast
glacial and inter-glacial ages which have
effected such changes in the earth’s surface*
Less disputable evidence is supplied by
the Pliocene of Monte Aperto, near Siena,
Italy, where bones of the Bakenotus, a
sort of Pliocene whale, which bear marks
of incisions which to all appearance must
Incised Bones of Bal^notus. Pliocene. From Monte Aperto.
Figured by Quatrefages, <( Homines Fossiles et Homines Sauvages, p. 93.
fact of such existence must be determined
by the evidence. All that can be said is
that while there ought to be great caution
in admitting as established a fact of such
gnportance, there ought to be no.deter
mined predisposition to disbelieve it, like
ghii.t which for so many years retarded
the acceptance of the evidence for Palaeo
lithic man. On the contrary, the fact that
man existed in such numbers and. under
such conditions as have been, described in
theQuaternary period, establishes a strong
foresumption that his first appearance must
date from a much earlier period.
Let us see how the evidence stands.
Undoubted stone implements, and bones
faring traces of cuttings by flint knives,
UKie been found in strata at St. Prest,
have been made by flint knives emplojw
in hacking off the flesh. Doubts
thrown at first on this, as it was thought
that possibly fish, or somegnawing anim^
like the beaver, might have cut the groovw
with their teeth. But later specimens have
been found on which the cuts have a regtt^
lar curvature which could not have been
made by any teeth, and present precisely
the same appearance as the cuts winch
are so commonly found on the bon® of
reindeer and other animals in hundreds
of Palaeolithic caves.
M. Quatrefages, who is a very eminent
and at the same time very cautious autho
rity, says, in his last work on the subject
published in 1884, “Homines Fossiles st
Hommes Sauvages,” that 11 the most in*
�60
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
credulous must be convinced. Had they who appointed a commission of fifteen
been found in Quaternary beds no one
European authori
would have hesitated to regard them as of the most eminent to report upon it
such matters
intentionally caused. The hand of man ties mreported that some of the flints
Nine
armed with a cutting instrument could showed undoubted
alone have left marks of this sort on a traces of human
plain surface. It is evident that some workmanship, five
horde of savages of these remote times were of an opposite
had found the carcase of this great ceta opinion, and one
cean stranded on the shore, and cut the was neutral. Since
flesh off with stone knives just as the sav then fresh obj ects
ages of Australia do at the present day.” have been found,
If these bones of the Baleenotus really and M. Quatrefages,
bear marks of human tools, the spectacle who had formerly
which might have been witnessed on the been doubtful, says
shore of the Pliocene sea perhaps 500,000 in his recent work :
years ago, must, have closely resembled “These new objects,
Flint Scraper.
that given by Sir John Lubbock from a and especially a
description by Captain Grey of a recent scraper which is one From Thenay. Miocene
whale feast in Australia. “ When a whale of the most dis Figured by Quatrefages,
“ Hommes Fossiles et
is washed on shore it is a real godsend to tinctly character Hommes Sauvages," p. 92.
them. Fires are immediately lit, to give ised of that class of
notice of the joyful event. Then they implements, have removed my last
rub themselves all over with blubber, doubts.” And certainly, if the figures
and anoint their favourite wives in the given at Paoe 92 of his “Hommes
same way; after which they cut down I ossiles et Hommes Sauvages ” correctly
through the blubber to the beef, which represent the original implements, and
they sometimes eat raw and sometimes they really came from Miocene strata,
broil on pointed sticks. As other natives doubt.is no longer possible. The evidence
arrive they ‘ fairly eat their way into the of design in chipping into a determinate
whale, and you see them climbing in and shape is quite as clear as in the similar
about the stinking carcase, choosing tit class of implements from Kent’s Cavern
bits.’ For days ‘ they remain by the car or the Cave of La Madeleine. They must
case, rubbed from head to foot with stink either have been chipped by man, or as
ing blubber, gorged to repletion with Mr. Boyd Dawkins supposes, by the
putrid meat—out of temper from indi Dryopithecus or some other anthropoid
gestion, and therefore engaged in con ape which had a dose of intelligence so
stant frays suffering from a cutaneous much superior to the gorilla or chim
disorder by high feeding—and altogether panzee as. to be able to fabricate tools.
a disgusting spectacle. There is no sight But in this case the problem would be
m the.world, Captain Grey adds, ‘ more solved and the missing link discovered,
revolting than to see a young and grace for such an ape might well have been
fully-formed native girl stepping out of the ancestor, of Palaeolithic man.
the carcase of a putrid whale.’ ”
The next instance is from Otta, in the
The evidence for Miocene man is much valley of the Tagus, where flint imple
of the same character: very strong and ments were alleged to have been dis
conclusive as far as it goes, but resting covered by an eminent Portuguese geolo
on too few instances to be universally gist, Senor Kibeiro, in Miocene strata. The
accepted. In 1868 the Abb£ Bourgeois subject was fully discussed on the spot,
laid before the Anthropological Congress at a meeting of the Anthropological Con
at Paris certain flints which he had gress at Lisbon in 1880. The general
found in situ in undoubted Miocene strata opinion seemed to be that some of the
at Thenay, in the Beauce, near Blois, implements showed undoubted traces of
they were received with general incre human design, but some good authorities
dulity, and the traces of human design remained sceptical ; and although there
were denied. The Abbe, however, per was no doubt that they were found in
sisted, and having made fresh discoveries Miocene strata, it was thought possible
the subject was referred to the next that flints of Quaternary age might have
meeting of the Congress at Brussels, fallen into fissures, or been mixed up with
�f™QUATE0^^^^
Miocene.
Borer, of. Awl.
Thenay. Miocene.
Congrfes Prihistorique,
Bruxelles, 1872.
J'C
Quaternary. Chaleux,
Belgium. Reindeer Period.
Congres Prehistorique,
Bruxelles, 1872.
Scraper, or Rude
Knife. Thenay. Mio
cene. Quatrefages,
p. 92.
Scraper. Thenay. Miocene
Quatrefages, p. 92.
Quaternary. Slammoth Period.
River Drift, Mesvin, Belgium.
Congres Prehistorique, Bruxelles, 18.2.
�62
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
Miocene sands by floods at some very
remote period, and thus become encrusted
in a Miocene matrix.
The verdict as to Miocene man in
Europe remains “Not proven.” Leaving
with bones of the extinct Mastodon and
Megalonyx. But, although undoubtedly
of great antiquity, there is no proof that
it does not belong to the Quaternary
period, especially as the mastodon seems
to have lived until comparatively recent
times in America, its remains being often
found in recent bogs and peat mosses.
The same remark will apply to the
skull which was found, in digging a well
at New Orleans, under six distinct layers
of cypress forests such as are now grow
ing on the surface, showing as many
periods of successive subsidences, subse
quent elevations, and stationary periods
long enough to allow of a forest growth
of many generations of large trees. Here
again the antiquity must be very great,
but we have no reason to carry it back
into Tertiary periods, or beyond the
recent periods when the Mississippi began
to flow in its present course and form its
present delta.
Human remains have also been dis
covered in caves in Brazil and Mexico
associated with bones of extinct animals,
but we have no clear information as to
the^ time when these animals became
extinct, or as to the exact order of super
position in which the human skulls and
implements were found, and the occur
rence of a polished stone celt in the same
cave throws still more doubt on their
extreme antiquity.
Although the instances cited might be
multiplied, it must be remembered that
remains of Tertiary man are not likely
to be abundant. . If man was then living,
it was probably in fewer numbers and in
Tertiary Hachb.
more limited areas. The pressure of
From Miocene Strata of TagU3 Valley.
(Half the actual size.)
population had not yet driven wandering
Quatrefages, “ Hommes Fossiles et Homines
hordes to follow sea-coasts and cross rivers
Sauvages. ”
and mountains in pursuit of food. Pro
bably at this early period man lived
the Old World for the Nev/, the same will more on fruits, and therefore required
aPply to the alleged discovery of a human fewer implements, and his intelligence
skull in Calaveras County, California was less, so tnat he had less power of
buried under six distinct layers of har fashioning them. For the purposes for
dened volcanic ashes, and, presumably which his Palaeolithic descendants chipped
of Pliocene date, if not earlier. Whitney stones into shape, he may have used nat
the Director of the Geological Survey of ural stones which would often answer the
the United States, and other American purpose, but which, when thrown away,
geologists, believe this skull to be Plio would leave nothing by which they could
cene, but doubts have been thrown on be recognised.
its authenticity, and European geologists
If the forests now inhabited by the
do not generally accept it.
gorilla and chimpanzee were submerged
A human bone is described by Lyell and again elevated, no trace would be
which was found near Vicksburg in a found of the existence of animals which
side valley of the Mississippi, associated had built rude nests, used broken branches
�ANTIQUITY OF MAN
of trees as clubs, and cracked cocoa-nuts
with hammer stones.
But above all, the surface of these older
strata has been so much denuded, that
the situations in which alone we might
expect to find remains of man have almost
entirely disappeared. Ninety-nine hun
dredths of our Quaternary implements
come from river drifts or caves. Where
are the Pliocene or Miocene rivers or
caves? They have disappeared amidst
the revolutions of the earth’s surface and
the constant denudation which wastes
continents away. The negative evidence
would be strong if we could point to
caves filled with bone-breccias of a Plio
cene or Miocene fauna, in which no
trace was found of human remains. . But
it is weak as against even, a single
well-ascertained instance, if it . merely
amounts to such remains not being fre
quently found where we could hardly
expect to find them. And it . is weak
against the strong presumption that
when Quaternary man is found in such
numbers and under such. conditions,
spread over wide areas in inhospitable
climates, he must have had his first origin
in earlier times. The cradle of that origin
remains undiscovered, perhaps undis
co verable. For in seeking for evidence
about Tertiary man in Europe, we are
off the scent. He must be searched for in
the region or zone where Dr. Dubois found
the fragments already described, and the
search may, nevertheless, be in.vain. For
perchance the area of the parting of the
ways between the ape-like man and the
man-like ape, as lateral descendants of
a pithecoid ancestor, is in some Indo
African land which has long been covered
by the sea, and from which, in the warm
climates of inter-glacial periods, when a
temperate flora grew in northern lati
tudes, the earliest human beings spread
themselves over the then habitable globe,
migrating by way of Africa into Europe,
and by way of both Europe and Asia into
America, while the ancient land-extensions
led him dry-footed, to Australia.
With these high probabilities, is it
possible to assign any approximate date
to man’s appearance ?
Reckoning by the thickness, of the
different stratified deposits which make
up the earth’s crust, and assuming the
average rate of their deposition, or what
is the same thing, the average rate of
waste of land surface, to have been the
63
same throughout, the whole Tertiary
period carries us back barely onetwentieth part of the way towards the
first beginnings of fossil-bearing strata.
That is, if 100,000,000 years have elapsed
since the earth became sufficiently
solidified to support vegetable and
animal life, the Tertiary period may have
lasted for 5,000,000 years;
or for
10,000,000 years, if the life-sustaining
order of things has lasted, as Lyell sup
poses, for U least 200,000,000. years.
Even if we take the shorter period, the
time is ample for the enormous changes
which have taken place since the com
mencement of the Eocene period. The
average rate of denudation over the
globe has been taken at about one foot
in 3,000 years, from actual calculations
of the average amount of solid matter
carried down by the Mississippi and
other great rivers. Now at this rate it
would take only 2,000,000 years to wear
the whole of Europe down to the sea
level, and, in the absence of any com
pensating movements of elevation, the
whole of North America would be washed
away and deposited in strata at the
bottom of the Atlantic and Pacific
Oceans in less than 3,000,000 years.
If, therefore, the origin of man. could
be traced down to the middle Miocene,
or even to the date of the great anthro
poid Dryopithecus of Southern France
(an ape approximating nearest to the
chimpanzee), we should have to assume a
period for his existence of probably
between one and two millions of years, a
mere fraction of the time since the earth
became the abode of life amd existing
causes operated to bring about geological
formations.
As regards the habits and manners of
Quaternary man we know very little
that is positive., and can only gather
some vague indications from the relics
in caves and river drifts. These, how
ever, are sufficient to establish with
certainty that the law of his existence
has been one of continued progress.
The older the remains, the ruder are
the implements and the fewer.the traces
of anything approaching to civilisation.
As already shown, Neolithic man is
comparatively civilised. He has domestic
animals and cultivated plants ; he. has
clothing and ornaments, well-fashioned
tools and pottery,. and. permanent
dwellings. He lives in societies, builds
�64
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
villages, buries his dead, and shows his
faith in a future life by placing with
them food and weapons. As we ascend
the stream of time these indications of
an incipient civilisation disappear.
The first vestige of the domestic animals
is found in the dog which gnawed the
bones of the Danish kitchen-middens,
and of the earliest Swiss lake-dwellings.
When fairly in Palaeolithic times, even
the dog disappears, and man has to
trust to his own unaided efforts in
hunting wild animals for food.
Weapons and implements become
more and more rude until, in the oldest
deposits, wo find nothing but roughlychipped hatchets, arrow-heads, flakes,
and scrapers. Implements of bone,
such as barbed harpoons, borers, and
needles, which are abundant in the
middle Paleolithic or reindeer period, be
come ruder and then disappear. Pottery
which is extremely abundant in the
Neolithic period, either disappears alto
gether or becomes so scarce that it is
a moot question whether a few of the
rudest fragments found in caves are
really Palaeolithic. If so, they clearly
date from the later Palaeolithic, and
pottery was unknown in the earlier
Palaeolithic times.
Judging from the portraits engraved
on bone . during the reindeer period,
Palaeolithic man pursued the chase in
a state of nature, though from the pre
sence of bone needles it is probable
that the skins of animals may have
been occasionally sewed together by
split sinews to provide clothing. There
can be no doubt that his habitual
dwelling was in caves or rock-shelters.
Here was his home, here he took his
meals and allowed the remains of his
food, to accumulate. His staple diet
consisted of the contemporary wild
animals, the mammoth, the rhinoceros,
the caA e bear, the horse, the aurochs, and
the reindeer. Even the great cave lion
was occasionally killed and eaten, and
the fox and other smaller animals were
not despised ; while among tribes skilled
m the use of the bow and arrow, birds
were a common article of food, and fish
were harpooned by those who lived near
rivers. Wild fruit and roots were also
doubtless consumed, and from the forma
tion of their teeth and intestines it is pro
bable that if we could trace the diet of the
earliest races of men we should find them
to have been frugivorous, like their con
geners the anthropoid apes.
The abundance of wild animals and the
•
for which hunting savages
inhabited the same spots may be inferred
fkat at one station alone
that of Solutr6 in Burgundy, it is com
puted that the remains of no less than
40,000 horses have been found. All the
long bones of the larger animals have
been split to extract the marrow, which
was, as with the modern Eskimos and
other savages, a great delicacy, and seems
also to have been used for softening skins
tor the purpose of clothing.
Among the split bones a sufficient
number of human bones have been found
to make it certain that Palaeolithic man
was, occasionally at least, a cannibal;
and m several caves, notably that of
Chaleux, in Belgium, these bones, in
cluding those of women and children
have been found charred by fire, and in
such numbers as to indicate that they
had been the scene of cannibal feasts.
It is a remarkable fact that cannibalism
seems to have become more frequent as
man advanced in civilisation, and that
whne its traces are frequent in Neolithic
times, they become very scarce or alto
gether disappear in the age of the mam
moth and the reindeer.
As regards religious ideas they can
only be inferred from the relics buried
with the dead, and these are scarce and
uncertain for the earlier periods. The
caves in which Palaeolithic man lived on
the flesh of the Quaternary animals,
have been so often used as buryingplaces in long-subsequent ages, that it is
extremely difficult to ascertain whether
the skeletons found in them are those of
the original inhabitants.
Thus the
famous cave of Aurignac, in which Lartet
thought he had discovered the tomb of
men at whose funeral feast mammoths
and rhinoceroses were consumed, is now
generally considered to be a Neolithic
burying-place superimposed on an
abandoned Palaeolithic habitation.
There are not more than five or six
well authenticated instances in which
entire Palaeolithic skeletons have been
found . under, circumstances in which
there is a fair, presumption that they
may have been interred after death, and
these afford no clear proof of articles
intended for use in a future life having
been deposited with them. All we can
�MAN’S PLACE IN NATURE
say, therefore, is that from the commence
ment of the Neolithic period downwards,
there is abundant proof that man had
ideas of a future state of existence very
similar to those of most of the savage
tribes of the present day ; such proof is
wanting for the immensely longer Palaeo
lithic period, and we are left to con
jecture. The only arts which can with
certainty be assigned to our earliest
known ancestors are those of fire and
of fashioning rude implements from stone
by chipping. Everything beyond this is
the product of gradual evolution.
CHAPTER VI.
man’s place in nature
Origin of Man from an Egg—Like other
Mammals—Development of the EmbryoBackbone—Eye and other Organs of Sense
—Fish, Reptile, and Mammalian Stages—
Comparison with Apes and Monkeys—
Germs of Human Faculties in Animals—The
Dog—Insects—Helplessness of Human In
fant—Instinct—Heredity and Evolution—
The Missing Link—Races of Men—Leading
Types and Varieties—Common Origin Dis
tant—Language—How Formed—Grammar
—Chinese, Aryan, Semitic,etc.—Conclusions
from Language—Evolution and Antiquity
—Religions of Savage Races—Ghosts and
Spirits—Anthropomorphic Deities—Traces
in Neolithic and Palaeolithic Times—De
velopment by Evolution—Primitive Arts—
Tools and Weapons—Fire—Flint Imple
ments—Progress from Palaeolithic to Neo
lithic Times—Domestic Animals—Clothing
—Ornaments—Conclusion, Man a Product
of Evolution.
Although the establishment of the
great antiquity of the human race has
attracted more immediate attention,
being a fact at once intelligible to the
general public, the researches of ana
tomists and physiologists, aided by the
microscope, have brought to light results
quite as remarkable as regards the
individual man and his place in Nature.
Until recently it was taken for granted
that man was a special miraculous
creation, altogether superior to and
distinct from the rest of the. animal
world. This assumption, gratifying alike
to our vanity, and our laziness in the
laborious search for truth, has been to a
65
great extent disproved and replaced ny
the Law of Evolution.
The most striking proof of this is found
when we trace scientifically the growth
of each individual man from his first
origin to his final development. Man,
like all other animals, is born of an egg.
The primitive egg, or ovum, which was
the first germ of our existence, is a small
cell about the one-hundred-and-twentyfifth of an inch in diameter, consisting of
a mass of semi-fluid protoplasm enclosed
in a membrane, and containing a small
speck or nucleus
of more con
densed
proto
plasm. This nu
cleated cell is it
self the first form
into which a
mass of simple
jelly-like proto
plasm is differen
tiated in the
course of its evo
Human Egg.
lution from its
Magnified 100 times.
original uniform
composition. The
nucleated cell is the starting-point of
all higher life, and.by splitting up and
multiplying repetitions of itself in geo
metrical progression, provides the cell*
material out of which all the complicated
structures of living things are built up.
In sexual generation, which prevails in
all the higher forms of life, this process
requires, in order to start it, the co*
operation of two such cells or germs of
life, one male, the other female.
The first remarkable fact is that the
human egg is, at its commencement, undistinguishable from that of any other
mammal, and remains so for a long period
of its growth, going through its earlier
stages of development in precisely the
same way. At first the egg behaves
exactly as any. other single-celled
organism, as for instance that of the
amoeba, which is considered the simplest
form of organised life. It contracts in
the middle and divides into two cells,
each with its nucleus and each an exact
counterpart of the original cell. These
two subdivide into four, the four into
eight, and so on, until at last a cluster of
cells is formed which is called a morula
from its resemblance to the fruit of the
mulberry-tree. Development goes on,
a.n4 the globular lump of cells changes
i
F
�66
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
into a globular bladder whose outside
skin is built up of flattened cells. Then
condensation takes place, from the more
rapid growth of cells at particular points,
and the foundation is laid of the actual
body of the germ or embryo, the other
cells of the germ-bladder serving only for
its nutrition. Up to this point the germs
not only of all mammals, including man,
but _ of all vertebrate animals, birds,
reptiles, and fishes, are scarcely dis
tinguishable.
In the next stage the outer surface of
the embryo develops three distinct layers,
the outer one of which, or epidermis, is
modified into the skin, sense-organs, and
nervous system; the inner one, of
epithelium, into the mucous membrane
or lining of all the intestinal organs ;
while the intermediate layer is the raw
material of muscles, bones, and blood
pression in the outer skin extends until
the edges close and form a hollow space
in which the eye is formed- At first it is
a mere black pigment mark on the in
terior surface of the enclosed space,
which develops into the retina, with a
wonderful apparatus of optic nerves for
conveying impressions photographed on
it to the brain. The enclosed space itself
is filled with a fluid, or vitreous humour,
from which a lens is condensed for
collecting the rays of light and con
centrating them on the retina, and by
degrees all the beautiful and complicated
organs are evolved for perfecting the
work of the eye and protecting’it from
injury. But this fact must* be kept
clearly in view : the process is identically
the same as that by which the eyes of
other animals are formed, and its various
stages represent those by which the
Mammalian Egg.
First Stage.
Second Stage.
vessels. The embryo is now contracted
in the middle and assumes the form of a
violin-shaped disc, and a slight longi
tudinal furrow appears, dividing it into
two equal right and left parts, which is
gradually converted into a tube con
taining the spinal marrow, to protect
which a chain of bones or vertebrae is
developed, forming the back-bone.
And now comes what is the most
marvellous part of the process, viz., the
development of the brain, eye, ear, and
other organs of sense, from these simple
elements. The brain begins as a
swelling of the foremost end of the
cylindrical marrow-tube. This divides
itself into five bladders, lying one behind
the other, from which the whole com
plicated structure of the brain and skull
is subsequently developed.
The eye, ear, and other sense-organs,
begin in the same way. A slight de- |
Third Stage.
organs of vision have gradually risen to
the development of a complete eye, in
advancing from the lowest to the higher
forms of life. Thus in the lowest, or
Protista, the eye remains a simple pig
ment spot, which probably perceives
light by being more sensitive to variations
of temperature than the surrounding
white cells. The next higher family
develop a lens, and so on in ascending
order, different families developing dif
ferent contrivances for attaining the same
object, but all starting from the same
origin, development of the cells of the
epidermis, and leading up to the same
result, organs of vision adapted for the
ordinary conditions of life of the creature
which uses them. I say the ordinary
conditions, for there are curious instances
of the eye persisting, dwindling from
disuse, and finally disappearing, in
animals which live underground like the
�MAN’S PLACE IN NATURE
mole, or in subterranean waters like
some fish in the Mammoth Cave of
Kentucky and underground lakes of
Carinthia, where the stimulus of light is
no longer felt for many generations.
The history of the ear and other organs
of sense is the same as that of the eye.
They are all developments of the cell
system of the outer skin, and all pass
through stages of development identical
with those at which it has been arrested
in the progression from lower to higher
forms of life. The same principles apply
to the development of the inner organs,
such as the heart, lungs, liver, etc., a
striking illustration of which is found in
67
of development remains the same as that
of other mammalia. The rudimentary
limbs are exactly similar, the five fingers
and toes develop in the same way, and
the resemblance after the first four
weeks’ growth between the embryo of a
man and a dog is such that it is scarcely
possible to distinguish them. Even at
the age of eight weeks the embryo man is
an animal with a tail, hardly to be
distinguished from an embryo puppy.
As evolution proceeds, the embryo
emerges from the general mammalian
type into the special order of Primates
to which man belongs. This order, be
ginning with the lemur, rises through
Dog (six weeks).
Man (eight weeks).
From Haeckel’s “ Schdpfungsgeschichte.”
the fact that the gill arches, or bones
which support the gills by which fishes
breathe, exist originally in man and all
other vertebrate animals above the ranks
of fish, but, in the development of the
embryo, they are superseded by the air.breathing apparatus of lungs, and con
verted to other purposes in the formation
of the jaws and organ of hearing. In
fact, we may say that every human being
passes through the stage of fish and
reptile before arriving at that of mammal,
and finally of man.
If we take him up at the more ad
vanced stage, where the embryo has
already passed the reptilian form, we
find that for a considerable time the line
the monkey, the baboon, and tailed ape,
up to the anthropoid apes, the chim
panzee, gorilla, orang, and gibbon, which
approach nearest to the human type.
The succession is gradual from the lower
to the higher forms up to the anthropoid
apes, but a considerable gap occurs be
tween these and man. It is true that in
his physical structure man resembles
these apes closely, every bone and muscle
of the one having its counterpart in those
of the other. But even at its birth the
human infant is already specialised by
considerable differences. The brain is
larger, its convolutions more complex, the
spine has a double curvature, adapting it
for an erect posture, and the legs, with a
F 2
�68
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
corresponding object, are longer and
stronger, while the arms are shorter and
less adapted for climbing. The thumb
also is longer, making the hand a better
instrument for all purposes, except that
of clasping the branches of trees, for
which the long, slender fingers of the ape
are more available. The great toe also is
less flexible, and the foot more adapted
for giving the body a firm support and
less for being used as a hand.
As growth proceeds after birth these
differences become more and more ac
centuated. The infant chimpanzee is
not so very unlike the infant negro, but
after a certain age the sutures of the
skull close in the former, making the
skull a solid box, which prevents further
expansion of the brain, and the growth
of the bone is directed towards the lower
part of the face, giving the animal a
projecting muzzle, massive jaws, and a
generally bestial appearance, while at
the same time its intelligence is arrested
and its ferocious instincts become more
prominent. Still these higher apes re
main creatures of very considerable in
telligence and warm affections, as may
be seen in the behaviour of those which
have been caught young and brought up
under the influence of kind treatment.
There is a chimpanzee now1 in the Zoo
logical Gardens at Regent’s Park, which
can do all but speak, which understands
almost every word the keeper says to it,
and when told to sing will purse out its
lips and make an attempt to utter con
nected notes. In the native state they
form societies, obey a chief, and often
show great sagacity in their manner of
foraging for food and escaping from
danger.
Even in lower grades of life than the
anthropoid apes we can see plainly many
of the germs of human faculties in an
undeveloped state. Those who are fond
of dogs, and have lived much with them
and understood their ways, must have
been struck by the many liuman-like
qualities they possess, and especially by
the very great resemblance between
young dogs and young children. They
both like and dislike very much the same
people and the same mode of treatment.
They like those who take notice of them,
caress them, talk to them, and, above all,
those whom they can approach with per1 1888.
feet confidence of receiving uniform kind
treatment. They dislike those who have
no sympathy with them, or whose treat
ment of them is either cold or capricious.
Their great delight is to play with one
another, and often to tease and make a
pretence of quarrelling and fighting.
Both have an instinct for mischief, and
are constantly trying it on how far
they can go without getting into serious
difficulties.
Later in life, and in more serious
matters, the dog has certainly the germs
of higher intelligence, and does a number
or things which require a certain exercise
of reasoning power. He has a good
memory, and imagination enough to
be excited at the prospect of a walk
where there is a chance of finding a rat
or a rabbit, and to dream of chasing
imaginary rabbits when he is lying curledup on the hearthrug. Every dog has
an individual character of his own as
clearly defined as that of an individual
man, nor can the rudiments of reason
ing be denied to the hound who, in a
kennel of twenty others, knows perfectly
well that he is Rover, and not Rattler or
Ranger, and waits till his name is called
to come forward for a biscuit. When he
has got it, his sense of property makes
him appropriate it as his own, and respect
the biscuits appropriated to other dogs,
at any rate to the extent of knowing per
fectly well that he is doing wrong if he
takes them by force or steals them.
In moral qualities the dog approaches
even more closely to man. His fidelity,
affection, and devotion even to death,
are proverbial. He feels shame and re
morse when he has departed from the
canine sense of right and wrong or from
the canine standard of honour, and is
happy when he feels that he has done his
duty. What is this but the working of
an elementary conscience ? Even in the
higher’ sphere of religious feeling, the
dog feels unbounded love and reverence
for the master who is the highest being
conceivable to him, or in other words,
his God ; and he shudders as that master
does in the presence of anything weird
and supernatural. Every good ghost
story begins by describing how the
dogs howled and cringed at their master’s
feet when the first shadow of super
natural presence was cast on the haunted
castle.
Capacity for progressive improvement
�MAN’S PLACE IN NATURE
09
ER hardly be denied to a race which young of other animals, viz., in. the
for which
a
has developed such qualities from ances long period of utter it remains m In
condition
helplessness.
tors who, like the wild and half-wild dogs many of the lower forms of lite the
of Asia and America, had not even learned young creature emerges into the world
to bark, and were as unlike the civilised with many of its necessary faculties com*
and affectionate collie as Palaeolithic
man to his modern successor. In fact, the plete, and has to learn comparatively
The chicken runs
progress of the dog seems only to be little from education.food on the day it
about and picks up
limited by the want of organs of speech,
egg, and the
and of an instrument like the hand by escapes from thefragments of 'the shell
which to place himself in closer relation flycatcher, while
still adhere to it, will peck at flies.
with the outer world.
The same remarks apply to the elephant, As we rise in the scale of creation,
these instinctive aptitudes become fewer*
whose great sagacity seems clearly at and more time is required before, the
tributable to the possession, of such an
instrument in the trunk, inferior .no young animal can shift for itself ; till, at
doubt to the hand, but still very superior length, in the human infant, we arrive
at a stage where for some time it can do
to the paw of the dog or to the hoot- little to preserve its existence except to
enclosed fore-foot of the horse. In all
breathe and suck.
animals the greater or less perfection of
The reason of this is doubtless to be
the instruments by which they act upon found in the higher development which
and are acted upon by the outer world, it is destined to attain. The facul
seems to be the principal factor in deter ties of every animal depend on two
mining the quality of the brain as an causes—first, heredity, or those which have
organ of intelligence.
been evolved from the type, and become
In the insect world we find still more
wonderful exemplifications of the 1 esem fixed by succession through a long series
of ancestors; secondly, adaptation,, or
blance between animal and human in
those which are acquired by education,
telligence.
Ants . live in organised including in the term everything that is
societies, build cities, store-up food for
winter, keep aphides as milk-cows, cariy requisite to place the animal m harmony
on slave-hunting raids, and push the with its surrounding environment, IhB
first are what are called instincts, which
division of labour to such an extent that exist from the birth, and are preserved
some tribes are all workers, others all unconsciously and without an effort.
warriors
and
slave-owners.
These
and reference
actions are not all merely mechanical The last involve an effort, of the senses
from the outer stations
and instinctive, for ants can to a con along the telegraph wires called nerves,
siderable extent adapt themselves to cir to the central office of the brain, wherg
cumstances, and alter their habits and
mode of life when it becomes neces the message is recorded and the reply
considered and transmitted along another
sary in the “struggle for existence.
The same is true of bees, beetles, and set of nerves to the muscles, where it
other insects, but it. is useless to dwell on translates itself into action. In eithfit
case the fundamental fact seems to re
these, for the organisation of the insect
solve itself into a tendency of molecular
world is so different from that of the
follow beaten rather,
mammalian, to which man belongs, that motion to paths. What the brainthan
unknown
has
no safe analogy can be drawn from one once thought or perceived, it will think
to the other. It is from the higher
mammalian types that we can fairly or perceive more readily a second
draw the inference that, if like effects and in like manner, a message which has
transmitted
read
are produced by like causes, the more once beenfrom muscle andbrain off along
a nerve,
to
or from
perfect intelligence and morality of man
brain to muscle, will be transmitted and
must be the same in kind though higher
in degree than the less perfect manifest read off more readily by practice, until
ations of the same qualities in animals at length it ceases to require conscious
of similar though less perfect physical effort and becomes instinctive. We may
see an illustration of this in the facility
organisation.
.
.
with which a piano player, who began
There is one respect m which trie
human infant differs greatly from the by learning the notes with difficulty,
�70
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
acquires such aptitude that the execution
of rapid passages becomes mechanical,
and can be carried on without a mistake,
even when the performer is thinking of
something else or talking to a bystander.
The outer world with which every
animal has to deal from its birth upwards
may be compared to a dense forest or
jungle through which it has to find its
way. A certain number of paths have
been cut by its ancestors, and it finds
them ready made by heredity ; others it
constructs for itself by repeated efforts
until they become as broad and easy as
those which. it inherited ; and finally,
if the forest is thick and its area exten
sive, it can only be. explored by leaving
the beaten paths of inherited or acquired
instinct, and groping the way painfully
by conscious effort and attention.
We can now see why the lower the
animal, or in other words the less exten
sive the forest, the whole vital energy
may be concentrated on the few beaten
paths opened by heredity, and a few
necessary actions may be performed from
the first, instinctively and with great
perfection, while in higher organisms the
vital energy is employed in developing a
great mass of future possibilities rather
than a small number of inferior present
realities. The baby cannot run about the
room and feed itself like the chicken,
because the baby has to growinto a man or
woman, while the chicken has only to
grow into a fowl which can do very little
more in its adult than in its infant state.
w^en we come to analyse the
sum of faculties of the adult man, we find
that they are derived to a surprisingly
small extent from heredity as compared
with education. In saying this, however,
it must be understood that the term
heredity” is limited to that direct
heredity which transmits characters by
instinctive necessity, and not to the far
larger sphere of indirect heredity by
which faculties, arts, modes of thought,
and rules of conduct, are accumulated
m. civilised societies, and become the
principal instrument of education in its
larger sense. If it were possible to
suppose a human infant, born of civilised
parents, left entirely to itself, what would
®?*OY into'? It would have the
physical characters and advantages of
its human ancestry which heredity transP11*8,’ bipedal movement, large, convo
luted brain with potential capacities;
aptness of hand and opposable thumb •
but its solitariness would be fatal to its
progress. It would not learn to speak,
in the sense of using any articulate
language; its arts might not extend
beyond recognising a few articles of food,
and perhaps using stones to crack nuts
and constructing some rude shelter
from branches of trees. It would know
nothing of fire, and on the whole it would
not be so far advanced as its oldest
1 alagolithic ancestor.
As regards a moral sense, and all that
we are accustomed to think the highest
attributes of humanity, it is clear that
its mind would be a blank. Even at a
much more advanced stage, such ideas
evidently come .from education, and are
not the results either of inherited instinct
or of supernatural gift. An English child
kidnapped at an early age by Apache
Indians or head-hunting Dyaks, would,
to a certainty, consider murder one of
• ie«.n® ar^s> and the slaughter of an
inoffensive stranger, especially if accom
plished with a treachery that made the
°n1e
^le risk, an achievement
ot the highest manhood. If brought up
among Mahometans he would consider
polygamy, if among the Todas polyandry,
as the natural and proper relation of the
sexes. All that can be said is, that if
recaptured and brought back to civilised
society, he would perhaps be assisted by
heredity in adopting its ideas more
readily than would be the case if he had
been.born a savage.
It is clear, therefore, that the history
of the individual man tells the same
story of evolution from low beginnings
as is told by that of the human race as
traced from Palaeolithic, through Neo
lithic, into modern times. His law is
progress, worked out by conscious effort
called forth by the environment of out
ward circumstances, and accelerated from
time to time, by the successful efforts of
a few superior men, whose greater sum
of energy or happier organisation for
development, enables them to pioneer
new paths through the vast unexplored
forests of science, art, and morality.
The difficulty of accounting for the
development of intellect and morality by
evolution is not so great as that presented
by the difference in physical structure
between man and the highest animal.
Given a being with man’s brain and man’s
hand and erect stature, it is easy to see
�MANS PLAOE IN NATURE
71
the time is insufficient, and if man and
how intelligence must have been gradually the ape had a common ancestor that
evolved, and rules of conduct best adapted 1 as a highly developed anthropoid ape
for his own good and that of the society certainly, and man probably, already
in which he lived must have been formed <existed in the Miocene period such an
and fixed by successive generations
<cestor must be sought still further back,
according to the Darwinian laws of the at a distance compared with which the
“ struggle for life ” and the survival of ■ whole Quaternary period sinks into in
^ButMt is not so easy to see how this significance. It is said also that the is
covery of man’s antiquity is ot quite
difference of physical structure arose, recent date, and that fifty years ago
and how a being who had such a biam the same negative evidence was quoted
and hand, and such undeveloped capa as conclusive against his existence in
bilities for an almost ^limited pro timesand places which now afford his
gress, came into existence. The difficulty remains by tens of thousands. Ail this
is this: the difference in structure be is true, and it may well make us hesi
tween the lowest existing race of man and tate before we admit that man, whose
the highest existing ape is too great to structure is so analogous to that ot the
admit of the possibility of one being the animal creation, whose embryonic growth
direct descendant of the other. The negro is so strictly accordant with that ot
in some respects makes a slight approxi other mammals, and whose higher
mation towards the Simian type. His skull faculties of intelligence and morality
is narrower, his brain less capacious, his are so clearly not miraculous instincts
muzzle more projecting, his arm longer but the products of evolution and
than those of the average European man. education, is alone an exception to the
Still he is essentially a man, and separated general law of the universe, and is the
bv a wide gulf from the chimpanzee or creature of a special creation.
gorilla Even the idiot or cretin, whose
This is the more difficult to believe,
brain is no larger and intelligence no as the ape family, which man so closely
greater than that of the chimpanzee, is resembles in physical structure, con
an arrested man and not an ape.
tains numerous branches which graduate
If, therefore, the Darwinian theory into one another, but the extremes ot
holds good in the case of man and ape, which differ more widely than man does
we must go back to some common from the highest of the ape series. If a
ancestor from whom both may have special creation is required for man,
originated by pursuing different lines ot must there not have been special
development. But to establish this as a creations for the chimpanzee, the gon a,
fact and not a theory we require to find the orang, and for at least 100 different
that ancestral form, or, at any rate, some species of apes and monkeys which are
intermediate forms tending towards it. all built on the same lines 1
We require to find fossil remains proving
What are the facts really known to us
for the genus man what the Hipparion as to man, his nature, and his origin
and Anchitherium have proved for the
Man is one of a species of which there
genus horse, that is, gradual progressive are in round numbers, according to the
specialisation from a simple, ancestral computations of Wagner and bupan, some
type to more complex existing forms. 1,480 millions of individuals living at the
In other words, we require to discover present time on the earth. Taking thir y
the “ missing link.” Now it must be years as the average duration of each
admitted that hitherto, not only have generation there are thus over 3,600
no such missing links been discovered, millions who are born and die per cen
but the oldest known human skulls and tury, and this has gone on more or less
skeletons show no very decided ap during the period embraced by history,
proximation towards any such pre which extends for a great part of the Old
human type. On the contrary, one oi World over thirty centuries, m the case
the oldest types, that of the men oi of Babylonia perhaps over ninety, and in
the sepulchral cave of Cro-Magnon, Egypt, certainly over seventy centuries.
is that of a fine race, tall in stature,. At the commencement of these historical
large in brain, and on the whole! periods population was dense, probably in
superior to many of the existing races■ Eo-ypt and Western Asia denser than at
of mankind. The reply of course is that
�72
modern science and modern thought
present, and civilisation far advanced. predict with much confidence that they
Ine 1 yramids, which are among the oldest would either not cross, or, if they did,
and the largest buildings in the world
a hybrid ~
prove this conclusively, both from the
mechanical skill and astronomical science
But here he would be wrong, for, in
shown in their construction, and from
tact the
opposite
the great accumulation of capital and together,most produce araces breed freely
and
fertile progeny.
highly artificial arrangements of society
Moreover, when we extend our view
which could alone have rendered such beyond the clearly distinguished types of
works possible. The great mass of the
population in these times lived in what the white, yellow, and black, as seen in
Caucasian
is known as the Old World, and was ac we find Mongoloid, and Negro races
types
into
cumulated mainly in the great valley sub-typesthese shadingbreaking off each
and
off towards
systems of the Nile, and of the various
riversand irrigated plains of the southern other, while a large proportion of the
halt ot the continent of Asia. Northern human race consists of brown, red olive
Asia and Europe were thinly inhabited and copper-coloured people, who may
• by ruder tribes. Of America and the either be original varieties, or descended
interior of Africa we know little until a from crosses between the primitive
much later date, but the population was races. Small _ isolated groups differing
in all probability sparse and savage : in from the mam races also crop un of
Australia, it was still scantier and more whom it is hard to say from whom they
savage-while in New Zealand and are descended or how they got there • as
most of the Pacific Islands it has been tor. instance the Hottentots, in South
introduced by migration only within Africa ; the pigmy b'ack Negritos of the
Andamans and other South Asiatic
comparatively recent times.
The next leading fact we have to islands ; the Papuans and Australians ;
observe is that the human race is not the so-called hairy Ainos of Japan, and
everywhere the same, but is divided some of the aboriginal races of India.
io a certain extent climate seems to
into several well-marked varieties. The
most obvious distinction is that of have had an influence in creating or de
colour In the Old World there are veloping the main typical differences.
hus
line of black races lies
three distinct and clearly characterised . along the mamtropical belt of the earth
the hot
groups-the white the yellow, and the from Old to New Guinea. But the rule
black, these are found mainly in three
separate zoological provinces : the white is not universal, there is no similar type
America, where a
m the temperate and north-temperate m tropical of type and colour singular
prevails
zones of Europe and Western Asia, the uniformity
yellow in those of Eastern Asia, and the throughout the whole continent. Even
black in the tropical zone, principally of m Africa we find the Negro type, while
Central Africa. Where they are pure and retaining its black colour, shading off
unmixed, these race-types differ from one towards higher types and losing its more
another not in coiour only but in many animal-like characteristics. Again, colour,
other important and permanent charac the origin of which remains a perplexing
ters. lhe average size of the brain, the problem to the physiologist, becomes
complexity of its convolutions, tlie shape generally lighter as we pass from tropical
of the skull, the bones of the face and to south-temperate and from south to
jaws, the comparative length of the north-temperate regions, probably be
cause the skin needs less protection from
imbs, the structure of the hair and skin
the characteristic odour, the suscepti the suns rays which the pigmentation
bilities to various diseases, are all es affords. The exceptions supplied bv the
sentially different, so that no observant Esquimaux may be due to their having
naturalist, or even observant child or six months unbroken sunlight, and by
dog, could ever mistake a Chinaman for the now extinct Tasmanians to their
migration from tropical regions.
a £egro, or a Negro for an Englishman.
Even within great and well-defined races
ouch a naturalist, seeing for the first
time typical specimens of the three races, themsel ves there are clearly marked varie
would pronounce them without hesita ties. thus the white race consists of
tion to be distinct species, and would the two distinct types of the fair-whites
and dark-whites, the former prevailing in
�MAN’S PLAGE IN NATURE
Northern Europe and the latter in South
ern Europe, Western Asia, and North
Africa; the contrast between a fair Swede
with flaxen hair and blue eyes, and a
swarthy Spaniard with black hair and
eyes, being almost as marked as between
the latter and some of the higher black
or brown races. Throughout a great part
of Europe, including specially England,
it is evident that the existing population
is derived mainly from repeated crosses
of these two races with one another and
probably with earlier races.
In the existing state of things also it is
evident that if the different races of man
kind ever really did pass into one another
under influences like those of climate, the
time of their doing so is long past. A
colony of English families transported to
tropical Africa would to acertainty dieout
long before they had taken even the first
step towards acquiring the black velvety
skin, the woolly hair, the proj ecting muzzle,
and the long narrow skull of the typical
Negro, while a Negro colony transported
to Scotland or Scandinavia would as cer
tainly disappear from diseases of the chest
and lungs, long before they began to vary
towards the European type. The yellow
race seems to be on the whole the best
fitted to withstand climate and other ex
ternal influences, and it certainly shows
no signs anywhere of passing over either
into the Caucasian or the Negro type.
On the whole, therefore, if the fact of
fertile inter-crossing is to be • taken as
proving the unity of the human race and
their probable descent from a common
ancestor, and we are to assume that all
the great varieties which we find existing
are the result of modifications gradually
introduced by climate and surrounding
circumstances, it is evident that the point
of divergence must be put at an immense
distance.
This is the more certain, as when we
look back for a period of more than 4,000
years, we find from the Egyptian monu
ments that some of the best-marked ex
isting types have undergone no sensible
change. The portraits of negroes and of
Semitic dark-whites painted on the walls
of temples and tombs of the 12th dynasty,
about 2,000 B.C., might be taken as charac
teristic portraits of the negro and Jew of
the present day, and the modern Egyp
tian fellah reproduces with little or no
change the features of the ancient Egyp
tians of the days of Raineses and Ameno-
73
phis. It is evident, therefore, that where
no great change has taken place from
crossing of races, they will maintain their
special characters unaltered for more than
100 generations. Indeed we might say
for 200 generations, for the statues and
wooden statuettes from the tombs, of Sakkara, the ancient Memphis, which cer
tainly date back for more than .5,0.00
years, show us the Egyptian type in its
highest perfection, and with a more intel
lectual and I might say modern expression
than is found 1,000 or 2,000 years later,
when the type of the higher classes had
evidently deteriorated somewhat from a
slight infusion of African elements.
The same conclusion of the great dis
tance at which any common point of
divergence of the various races of man
kind must be placed, is confirmed by a
totally different line of inquiry, that into
the origin of language.
Philologists have clearly proved that
languages did not spring into existence
ready made, like Minerva from the brain
of Jupiter, but have followed the general
law of Nature, and have had their pe
riods of birth, growth, and evolution from
simple into complex organism. Now there
is a vast variety of languages, some say
more than a thousand. A large propor
tion of these are, of course, only what may
be called dialects of the same original lan
guage, as in the case of the whole IndoEuropean family, includingSanscrit, Zend,
Greek, Latin, Teutonic, Celtic, and Sla
vonic, with all their offshoots and derived
branches, as well as many others. . Any
one who wants to be convinced of this has
only to refer to Max Muller’s works and
trace the history of one verb, viz., that
used to denote individual existence.
Asmi in Sanscrit has become eimi in
Greek, sum in Latin (whence sono, suis,
and all the modern derivatives of . Latin
races), and “ am ” in English ; while the
Latin est, the Greek esti, and the German
1st, are clearly akin to the . original asti.
It may help in understanding how lan
guage has been formed if we point out that
“ I am ” originally meant “ I breathe,” and
“ he is ” is the more general and abstract
form of “ he stands.”
But there are a number of languages
between which no such relationship can
be traced, which are constructed on radi
cally different principles, and have no
resemblance with one another in their
roots, or primitive sounds used to express
�74
modern science and modern thought
objects and simple ideas, except in the few
cases where it can be traced to importation
from abroad, or to imitation of naturallysuggested sounds, such as those which
have led so many nations to express the
idea of “mother” by a sound resembling
the bleating of a lamb. Obviously, simi
larity of sound in such words as are used
for the ideas of father, mother, cow, crow,
thunder, crack, splash, and so on, sug
gests no common origin, and as most, or
at any rate a great many roots, were prob
ably derived originally in this manner,
though long since, diverted to express
other ideas by associations which it is im
possible to trace, the wonder rather is
that we should find so many languages
with so few roots in common. The best
authorities tell us that a list of fifty to
one hundred languages could be made
of which no one has been satisfactorily
shown to be related to any other.
The main distinction between lan
guages, however, is. to be found in
their inner .mechanism, or grammar,
rather than in the mere difference of
root-sounds. The result of years of
mechanical training in barbarous Latin
and Greek grammars in our English
public schools has been to leave the
average Englishman completely ignor
ant of the real meaning of the word
“grammar,” and almost incapable of
comprehending that it can mean any
thing else than a string of arbitrary
rules to be learned by heart for the
vexation of small boys.
And yet grammar is really most
interesting, as showing the modes by
which the dawning human intellect has
proceeded, at remote periods and among
different races, in working out the great
problem of articulate speech, by which
man rises into the higher regions of
thought and is mainly distinguished from
the brute creation. Consider first what
the problem is, and then some of the
principal modes which have been in
vented to solve it.
Suppose some primitive race to have
accumulated a certain stock of root
words, or simple sounds to signify definite
objects and simple ideas, they must soon
find that these alone are not sufficient to
convey briefly and clearly to other minds
the ideas which they wish to express.
For instance, suppose a tribe had got
root-words to express the ideas of “man,”
bear,’ and “ kul.” What one of the I
tribe wants to convey from his own mind
to that of his neighbour may be, “ The
man has killed the bear,” or “The bear
has killed the man,” or “The” (or “A)
man has killed a bear,” or “bears,” or
will ” or “ may have ” killed, and so on
through, a vast number of variations on
the original three-note theme. Up to a
certain point, a man might succeed in
making himself understood by using his
three root-sounds in a certain order, aided
by the pantomime of accent and gesture ;
and the Chinese, though one of the oldest
civilised peoples of the world, have
scarcely got beyond this stage. But the
process would be difficult and uncertain,
and. at length it would occur to some
genius that such modifications as those of
definite and indefinite, past and present,
singular, and plural, etc., were of general
application, not to the particular three or
four roots which he wished to connect,
but to all roots. The next step would be
to invent a set of sounds which, attached
in some way to the root-sounds, should
convey, to the hearer the sense in which
it was intended that he should take them.
This is the. fundamental idea of
grammar, but it has been worked out
by different races in the most different
manner. The Chinese and other allied
races in the South-east of Asia, such as
the Burmese and Siamese, have solved it
in the simplest manner. Their languages
are what is called monosyllabic—that is,
each, word consists of a single syllable,
and is a. root expressing the fundamental
idea, without distinction of noun from
verb, active from passive, or other modi
fications. They have to trust, therefore,
to express their meaning, mainly to
syntax, or the order in which words
succeed one another, which, up to a
certain point, is the simplest method,
and is largely adopted in modern English.
Thus, “ Man kill bear,” “ Bear kill man,”
convey the meaning just as clearly as the
classical languages do by cases, when they
distinguish whether, the man is the killer
or the killed by saying homo or hominem.
But. the monosyllabic system limits the
nations who use it to an inconveniently
small number of words, and fails in
expressing their more complex relations,
so that we find the same word in Chinese
or Siamese often expressing the most
different ideas, and the meaning can only
be conveyed by supplementing the root
words and syntax by accent and other
�MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE
conventional signs which are akin to the
primitive devices of gesture language.
Thus, in Siamese, the syllable ha, according to the note in which it is intoned,
may mean a pestilence, the number five,
or the verb “ to seek.”
This very primitive and almost in
fantine form of language is confined to
one family, that of the Chinese and IndoChinese, who, it may be observed, are by
no means simple or primitive in other
respects, but stand and have stood for
centuries at a comparatively high level
of civilisation. All other races, including •
the most savage, have adopted some form
or other of grammar, i.e., of modifying
original root-sounds by additional generic
sounds of definite determination ; but
the devices on which they have hit for
this purpose are most various. Thus, the
grammar of the Aryan family of languages
has been formed by reasoning out such
general categories of thought as articles,
pronouns, and prepositions, coining
sounds for them and prefixing these
sounds to the root-sounds as separate
determinating signs.
More complex
shades of meaning are conveyed prin
cipally by inflections, i.e., by adding
certain generic new sounds to the original
root-word, and incorporating them with
it so as to form modifications which area
sort of secondary words. Thus the ideas
of present, past, and future love, loving,
and being loved, lovely, and so on, are
formed by transforming the root amo into
such modifications as amor, amavi, amabo,
amans, amabilis, etc. We can see this
process in the course of formation in the
change which converted the old English
form “Caesar his” into the modern
genitive “ Caesar’s.”
Other families again obtain the same
results by very different processes. The
Semitic languages, for instance, including
Hebrew, Arabic, Assyrian, and Phcenician,
are what is called “triliteral,” i.e., they
consist of roots mostly of three con
sonants, and express different shades of
grammatical meaning by altering the
internal vowels. Thus, from the root
m-l-k are derived melek, a king ; malak,
he reigned, and so on.
The so-called Turanian family, com
prising Huns, Turks, Finns, Lapps, and
other Mongolian races of Northern Asia,
all speak agglutinative languages, i.e.,
languages in which the root is put first
and is followed by suffixes strung on to
7b
it, but not incorporated, with it and
remaining distinct. Thus in Turkish,, the
root sev, to love, is. expanded into
sevishdirilmedeler, meaning “ incapable of
being brought to love one another.
These are only given as specimens of
some of the most marked of the vast
varieties of language which have been
examined and classified by philologists.
They suggest a great many interesting
reflections, but I confine myself to those
which bear more immediately on the
subject of man’s origin and development.
It is evident that . they imply great
antiquity for the existence, not of man
only, but of separate races of men speak
ing separate languages.
Babylonian inscriptions, estimated by
Dr. Hilprecht to be 9,000 years old, show
that the characteristic features of the
Semitic languages were as clearly estab
lished then as they are now; and the hiero
glyphics of Egyptian monuments, 7,000
years old, show the Coptic language essen
tially the same as modern Coptic, and al
though presenting some points of analogy
with Semitic, too different to be classed
with it. If these are descended from a com
mon ancestor, clearly their origin must be
extremely remote. And even with un
limited time it is difficult to conceive how
such radical differences in the structure of
languages could have arisen unless the dif
ferent races had branched off before any
clear form of articulate speech had be
come fixed. Could a race accustomed
for generations to the free-flowing inflec
tional Aryan, have deserted it for the
cramped forms of the Semitic, or, vice
versa, could the Semite have adopted the
modes of thought and expression of
Sanscrit ? And the same difficulty would
apply in at least twenty or thirty cases
of other families of language.
It must be recollected that language is
not merely the conventional instrument
of thought, but to a great extent, its
creator, and the mould in which it is
cast. The mould may be broken, and
races abandon old and adopt new lan
guages by force of external circumstances,
such as conquest or contact with and
absorption by superior races, but there
is no instance of its being so transformed
from within as to pass into a totally
different type. Nor can we very well
see how root-words once attached to
fundamental ideas, such for instance as
the simpler numerals, should come to be
�76
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
forgotten and new and totally diCerent
words invented.
Of course, the explanation was easy in
the olden days, when everything was
referred to miracle. Languages were
different because God, to baffle the at
tempt of united mankind to build a tower
high enough to reach to heaven, had made
them so. But the theory of special
miraculous creation for each language
cannot stand a moment’s investigation.
As in the. case of the animal world,
special creations, if admitted at all, must
be multiplied to an extent which becomes
absurd. Is every petty tribe of savages
who speak a language unintelligible to
others to be supposed to have had it
conferred upon it as a miraculous gift ?
Was the language of the extinct Brazilian
tribe, of which Humboldt tells us that a
very old parrot spoke the last surviving
words, one of the languages used to
scatter the builders of the Tower of
Babel ? Or, still more conclusively, where
we know and can prove that one part of
a language is the product of natural
laws, can we assume that another part of
the same language is the result of miracle ?
Did it require Divine inspiration to
make the old Egyptians call a cat miaou,
or to teach so many nations to ex
press the idea of mother by imitating
the bleating of a lamb? If not, why
should half the words in a dictionary be
miraculous and half natural ?
And if Caesar is correctly reported to
have been more proud of discovering a
new case than of conquering Gaul, ought
we not to “render unto Caesar the
things that are Caesar’s,” and assign
grammar as well as words to human
invention ? In short, no reasonable man
who studies the subject can doubt that
language is just as much a machine of
human invention for communicating
thought, as the spinning jenny is for
spinning cotton.
8eneral conclusion, then, to be
a'rawn from the study of language points
m the same direction as that of all other
branches of science, viz., that their true
history is that of evolution from simple
origins by the operation of natural laws
over long periods of time into forms of
greater complexity and higher develop
ment. What language really does for us
is to take up the thread where the oldest
history fails us, and show that even at
this date it is impossible to doubt that
the human race must have been already
in existence for a very long period, and
in existence as at the present day in
several sharply distinguished varieties,
so that the common origin, if there be
one, must be placed still further back.
As history verified by the Babylonian
monuments extends over a period of, say
nearly 9,000 years, this, is equivalent to
saying that such a period can only be a
very small part of the total time which
has. elapsed since man became an in
habitant of the earth.
The origin and development of re
ligions have been much discussed, but
too often with a. desire to make theories
square with .wishes. The subject also
does not admit of such precise determina
tion as in treating of arts and languages,
which have left traces of themselves in
the form of primitive implements and
primitive roots.
The history of religions really begins
with written records, or, at the earliest,
. with the older myths which are embodied
in these records. But these are all com
paratively modern, and imply a con
siderable progress in civilisation before
they could have existed. If we wish to
form some idea of what may have been
the primitive elements from which re
ligion was evolved during the long
Neolithic and still longer Palaeolithic
periods which preceded history, we must
look at what are actually the religious
ideas of contemporary savage and semibarbarous races.
As we rise above the level of the lowest
savagery we find ideas of religion be
ginning to grow from two main tap-roots.
One is the idea of ghosts or spirits,
which arises naturally from dreams and
visions and develops itself into ancestor
and hero-worship, and belief in a world
of spirits, good and evil, influencing men’s
lives and fortunes, and in many forms of
sickness taking possession of their bodies.
This spirit-worship also necessarily leads
to some dim perception of a future life.
The. other tap-root is the inevitable
disposition to account for the phenomena
of nature, when men first began to reflect
on. them, by the agency of invisible
beings like themselves ; in other words, of
anthropomorphic gods. Perhaps this is a
higher and later stage of religious belief
than the former, for it implies a certain
disposition to inquire into the causes of
things and a certain amount of reasoning
�MAN'S PLAGE IN NATURE
power to infer like causes from like
results.
But the two often blend together, as m
the religions of the Aryan-speaking
peoples, in which we see deified heroes
and ancestors crowding the courts of
Olympus, with a multitude of anthropoSnorphic gods, who are often merely
obvious personifications of natural pheno
mena or astronomical myths. Thus,
Varuna, Ouranos, or Uranus, are said to
be personifications of the vault of heaven ;
Phoebus, the shining one, of the sun;
Aurora, of the dawn; while Hercules is
half deified hero and half solar myth.
Sometimes, however, of the two stems of
religion one only has flourished, and the
other has either never existed, or been
overshadowed by the first and relegated
to a lower sphere. Thus the great
Chinese civilisation, comprising such a
large portion of the human race, has
apparently developed its popular religion
from the idea of spirits and spirit
worship. The worship of ancestois is its
main feature, and its sacred books are, in
effect, treatises on ethics and political
economy, with rules for rites and cere
monies to enforce decent and decorous
behaviour, rather than what we should
call works of religion.
With other races again, and specially
the Hebrew, the idea of a tribal anthropo
morphic God has gradually swallowed
up that of other gods, developed into
that of one Almighty Being, and dwarfed
that of ghosts and spirits. Their primi
tive God was anthropomorphic,. and
modelled on the idea of an Oriental
sultan—sometimes good and beneficent,
but sometimes cruel and capricious, and
above all jealous of any disrespect and
enraged by any disobedience. Morality
seems at first to have had little or nothing
to do with these conceptions, and there
is not the remotest trace in. the early
history of any religion, of its having
been bom ready-made from the necessary
intuition of one Almighty God of love,
mercy, and justice, which is so. con
fidently assumed by many metaphysicians
and theologians. On the contrary, con
science had to be first evolved, and the
process may be followed step by step by
which, as manners became milder and
ideas purer, the grosser attributes of
Deity gradually yielded to the idea of a
just and merciful God.
These considerations, however, lead us
far from the question of the first dawn
of religion among primitive man. Judg
ing from the earliest facts of history, and
the analogy of modern savage races,
we might look for the first traces of
religious ideas from the contents . of
tombs and from idols. When a tribe
had attained to some definite idea of a
future life it would almost certainly bury
weapons and implements with its dead,
as is the case with modern savages. When
it had reached the stage of worshipping
anthropomorphic deities, it would prob
ably frame images of them, some of which
would be found in their tombs and dwell
ingsThe latter test soon fails us. In the
early Egyptian tombs, and in the remains
of the prehistoric cities excavated by
Dr. Schliemann, images of owl and ox
headed goddesses, and other symbolical
figures or idols, are found in abundance.
But when we ascend into Neolithic times,
such idols are no longer found, or,, if
• found, it is so rarely that archaeologists
still dispute as to their existence. Cer«
tain crescents found in the Swiss lake
dwellings were at one time thought to
indicate a worship of the moon, but the
better opinion seems to be that they were
used as rests for the head during sleep, as
we find similar objects now used in many
parts of the world. Among the many
thousand objects recovered from these
Swiss lake-dwellings and other Neolithic
abodes, there are only a very few which
may possibly have been rude idols or
amulets, and the only ones which may be
said with some certainty to have been
idols, are one or two discovered by Mons,
de Braye in some artificial caves of the
Neolithic period, excavated in the chalk
of Champagne, which appear to be in
tended for female figures of life size with
heads somewhat resembling that of the
owl-headed Minerva.
When we pass to Palaeolithic times the
evidence of idols becomes more faint, and
rests solely on the slender conjecture that
some of the figures carved by the Reindeer
men of La Madeleine.and other caves, may
probably have been intended for amulets.
As they were skilful carvers, and fond of
drawing whatever impressed itself on their
imagination, the presumption is strong
that they had not advanced to the stage
when the worship of gods symbolised by
idols had come into existence, as other
wise more undoubted idols must have
�78
MODERN SGIENGE AND MODERN THOUGHT
been found in the caves which were so viduals, and it may be doubted whether
long their habitations, and which have they were buried there, or merely died in
yielded such a number of remains of works the caves in which they lived, in which
of art.
case any implements found with them
The evidence for a belief in a future ex do not necessarily imply that they were
istence and in spirits is more conclusive. placed there for use in a future life. On
Throughout the whole Neolithic period we the whole it seems doubtful whether any
find objects which were evidently intended certain proofs of burials denoting know
for use in a future life buried with the ledge of a future life can be found in
dead. Wefind alsoinmany Neolithic tombs Palaeolithic times, and if there are, they
a singular fact which points to the exist are certainly few and far between, and
ence of a very long belief in evil spirits. C0^.ned
ie W'er stages of that period.
Many of the skulls, especially of young
All we can say is, that religion certainly
people, have been trepanned, that is, a did not descend ready-made among these
piece of the skull has been cut out, making aboriginal savages, butthat, like language,
a hole, apparently, to let out the evil spirit it was slowly developed from beginnings
which was supposed to be causing epilepsy as rude as those we now find among the
or convulsions ; and where the patient had lowest races of savages.
recovered and the wound healed, when he
It may be well, however, to say here,
died long afterwards, a piece of the skull, once for all, what is applicable to many
including this trepanned portion, was other. passages in this book, that the
sometimes cut out and used apparently question of the origin of any religion is
as an amulet. The objects deposited in entirely different from that of its truth
graves show that the idea of a future life, or falsehood. To explain a thing is not
as with most savages of the present day’ to disprove it; on the contrary, a thing
was that of a continuation of the same only really becomes true to us when we
life as he had led here, though perhaps in understand it. A stately oak, with widehappier hunting-grounds. In some cases spreading branches, that give shade and
a great chief seems to have had wives shelter to the cattle of the fields, is not
and slaves slaughtered and buried with the less a fact because we know that it
him, though the proofs of this are did not drop ready-made from heaven,
more clear and abundant in later times but grew from, an acorn. The intrinsic
than during the Neolithic period. Can truth of a religion must be tested by the
nibalism, however, seems to have occasion conformity which, in a given stage of its
ally prevailed both in Palaeolithic, Neo evolution, it bears to the facts of the
lithic, and prehistoric times, as it did so universe as disclosed by science, and to
extensively among modern savage races the feelings and moral perceptions which
before they came under civilising influ have been equally developed by evolution
ences. This is clearly proved by the num in the contemporary world.
ber of human bones, chiefly of women and
All I contend for is, that all religions
young persons, which have been found have grown and been developed from
charred by fire and split open for extrac humble origins, and that their history,
tion of the marrow.
impartially considered, does not contra
The evidence of belief in a future life dict, but on the contrary greatly confirms
becomes more rare and uncertain in Palaeo the law of natural evolution.
lithic times. Perhaps it may be because
Of the two faculties by which man is
we have so few authentic discoveries of commonly distinguished from the brute
Palaeolithic burying-places, and so many creation, viz., that, of being the speaking
instances of caves, once inhabited by and, the tool-making animal, the former
Palaeolithic races, being used long after attribute has been shown to be the pro
wards as Neolithic sepulchres. After the duct of evolution from origins long
famous cave of Aurignac it is difficult to since lost in the far-off distance of remote
trust any evidence as to the discovery of a ages.
real Palaeolithic sepulchre which has not
The same remark is even more certainly
been subsequently disturbed.
true.as regards the other attribute of tool
In the few cases also where Palaeolithic making, or, in its widest sense, adapting
skeletons have been found, as in that of natural laws and. natural objects to the
the men of Neanderthal and Mentone, arts of life by intelligent application.
they have often been those of single indi The primitive roots, so to speak, of this
�MAN’S PLACE IN NATURE
industrial language, which in the case of
spoken language for the most part elude
our search, are here furnished by the
Palaeolithic remains found so abundantly
in river drifts and caves. There can be no
doubt whatever that the modern wood
cutter’s axe and carpenter’s adze are the
lineal descendants of the rudely-chipped
haches, or celts, which are dug out of the
gravels of St, Acheul, or from below the
stalagmite of Kent’s Cavern. The regu
lar progression can be traced from the
mass of flint rudely chipped to a point,
with a butt-end left rough to grasp in
the hand, up to more symmetrical and
carefully-chipped forms ; to implements
intended to be hafted or fastened to
a handle; to implements ground and
polished to a sharp edge and pierced for
the handle; and finally to the finished
specimens of the later Neolithic period,
which exactly represent the adze and
battle-axe, and are almost identical with
those used quite recently by the Polyne
sians and other semi-civilised races who
had no access to metals. From these the
transition to metals is easily traced, the
first bronze implements and weapons be
ing facsimiles of those of polished stone
which they superseded, and the gradual
development of bronze, and from bronze
to the cheaper and more generally use
ful metal, iron, being a matter of quite
modern history.
In like manner, the development of
the knife, sword, and all cutting instru
ments, from the primitive flint-flake,
can be traced step by step, and is
beyond doubt; and equally so the
development of all missiles, from the
primitive chipped flint, used as a javelin
or arrow-head, up to the modern rifle.
When we catch the first glimpse of the
beginnings of human art or industry, the
furniture or stock-in-trade of Palaeolithic
man appears to have been as follows :
He was acquainted with fire. This
seems to be clearly established by the
charred bones, charcoal, and other traces
of fire which are found in the oldest
Palaeolithic caves, and even in the. far
distant Miocene period, if we can believe
in the flints discovered by the Abbe Bour
geois in the strata of Thenay, some of
which appear to have been split by the
action of fire.
This is a remarkable
fact, for a knowledge of the means of
kindling fire is by no means a very
simple or obvious attainment. Apes
79
and monkeys will sit before a fire and
enjoy its warmth, but no monkey has yet
developed intelligence enough even to
put fresh sticks on to keep up the fire,
much less to rekindle it when extinct.
Primaeval man must often have had
experience of fire from natural causes,
as from forests and prairies scorched by
a tropical sun being set on fire by light
ning, or from volcanic eruptions ; but
how he learned from these to kindle
fire for himself is not so obvious. Savage
races, as a rule, do so by converting
mechanical energy into heat, by. the
friction of a stick twirled round in a
hole, or rubbed backwards, and forwards
in a groove in another piece of wood ;
and there are old observances among
civilised nations which show that this
was the mode practised by their an
cestors, as when the sacred fire, in the
Temple of Vesta was relighted in this
manner by the old Romans if. it had
chanced to be extinguished. It is prob
able, therefore, that . this was the
original mode of obtaining fire, but if so,
it must have required a good deal of
intelligence and observation, for. the dis
covery is by no means an obvious one,
nor is it easy to see any natural process
that might suggest it.
Neither ancient history nor the
accounts of existing savage races throw
much light on the question.
The
narratives of the discovery of fire con
tained in the oldest records are obviously
mythical, like the fable of Prometheus,
which is itself a version of the older
Vedic myth of the god Agni (cognate
with Latin ignis or fire) having been
taken from a casket and given to the
first man, Manou, by Pramantha, which
in the old Vedic language means taking
forcibly by means of friction. Of the
same character are the mythical legends
of savage races of fire having been first
brought by some wonderful bird or
animal; and there is nowhere anything
like an authentic tradition of the fact
of its first introduction. There have
been reports of savages who were unac
quainted with'"fire., but they have never
been well authenticated, and the nearest
approach to such a state of things was
probably furnished by the aborigines
of Van Diemen’s Land, of whom it is said
that in all their wanderings they were
particularly careful to bear in their hands
the materials for kindling a fire, in the
�80
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
shape of a firebrand, which it was the
duty of the women to carry, and to keep
carefully refreshed from time to time
as it became dull.
On the whole, traditions all point to fire
having been first obtained from friction,
and it is possible that the first idea may
have been derived from the boughs of
trees, or silicious stalks of bamboos, having
been set on fire when rubbed together by
the action of the wind, or by the rubbing
of the hands together.
It is easier to see the origin of the
remaining equipment of primitive man,
viz., chipped stones, for flints splintered
by frost or fire often take naturally the
forms of sharp-edged flakes and rude
hatchets or hammers, and very little
invention was required to improve these
specimens, or endeavour to imitate them
by artificial chippings. It is rather
surprising that this art did not improve
more rapidly, for it is evident that the
old Palaeolithic period must have lasted
a long time before any decided progress
began to show itself. And during this
long period a singular uniformity
appears to have prevailed throughout
the Palaeolithic world. The rude form of
the celt or hache, with a blunt butt and
chipped roughly to a point, is found in
the oldest river gravels and caves wher
ever they have been investigated, and
the forms of the Somme and the Thames
specimens are repeated in the quartzite
implements of the Madras laterite.
In the very oldest caves and river
deposits the tool-equipment of man seems
to have been very much limited to these
rude celts, used probably for smashing
skulls in war and the chase, and splitting
bones to get at the marrow; sharpedged flakes for cutting ; rude javelin
heads ; and stones chipped to a rounded
edge, very like those used by the Esqui
maux for scraping bones and skins. As
we ascend in time we find arrow-heads
of stone and bone, at first unbarbed and
gradually becoming barbed, showing that
the bow had been discovered ; harpoons
of bone and fish-hooks; bone pins and
needles; and a much greater variety
and more carefully-chipped forms of
flint tools and weapons ; until we finally
reach the upper reindeer stage of caves
like that of La Madeleine, where artistic
drawings and carvings are found, and
the equipment generally is superior to
that of many existing savage tribes, and |
not much inferior to that of the Esqui
maux and other Arctic races.
We then pass into Neolithic times,
when many of the chief elements of
civilisation are already in full force.
Man has emerged in many localities
from the hunter into the pastoral stage,
the principal domestic animals are
known, and in some of the later lake
dwellings he has advanced a stage
further, and has become an agriculturist
living in villages.. From this to the
Bronze and early historical periods, there
is no great break, and the ruder tribes of
barbarians described by Caesar and
Tacitus may well have. been the lineal
descendants of the Neolithic men whose
polished axes and finely-shaped arrow
heads lie scattered over the surface of
Europe and are found in innumerable
burial-mounds and dolmens.
But in Palaeolithic times, though we
can see constant progress, mankind is
still.in a state of unmitigated barbarism.
Agriculture was clearly unknown, for
the. hand mills, pestles, and mortars,
which are among the most enduring and
abundant relics where grain was used for
food, are never met with. Pottery was
unknown in. all the earlier periods, and
it is questionable whether even the
rudest forms of baked clay, moulded by
hand, are found where there is no inter
mixture of a subsequent Neolithic habi
tation. The dog was clearly not a
companion of man prior to the era of
the Danish kitchen-middens, for the
spongy parts of bones which are always
gnawed by dogs when dogs are present,
are invariably preserved in the debris
of Palaeolithic caves, and the few bones
of dogs, wolves, and foxes found with
human remains in these caves almost
always show that the animals had formed
part of the food of the inhabitants.
Other. domestic animals were, in all
probability, equally unknown, although
it has been thought possible that some of
the tribes of the reindeer period may
have had herds of the half-tame deer,
like the modern Laplanders. This con
jecture, however, appears to rest solely
on the large number of bones and horns
found at certain stations, which may
have arisen from their having been occu
pied for a very long period, and as the
dog was unknown, it seems probable that
no other animals had been domesticated.
As regards clothing, the first certain
�DEVELOPMENT OE THE ARROW.
Flint Arrow
in
Vertebra
of
Reindeer.
Palaeolithic. La Madeleine.
Mammoth Period. Le Moustier.
Palaeolithic.
Reindeer Period.
Palaeolithic.
Reindeer Period.
First vestige of barb.
Palaeolithic
Reindeer Period.
Neolithic.
Recent.
Denmark.
Esquimaux.
a
�82
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
proofs of its use are afforded by the bone
pins and needles, which were evidently
employed for fastening the skins of
animals together, while the scrapers
were used for scraping these skins
and fashioning the bone implements. It
is probable, therefore, that the use of
skins as a protection against the cold of
the Glacial period, was known at a very
early period.
Ornaments, also, are of very early date.
Perforated shells, sometimes fossil, and
pierced teeth of the bear and other ani
mals are frequently found under circum
stances which show that they must have
been strung together as necklaces. The
skeleton found in a cave at Mentone had
a number of perforated shells of Nassa,
and a few stags’ teeth also perforated,
dispersed about the skull, evidencing
that they had formed some sort of head
ornament. Lumps of red hematite, also,
probably used for paint, have been found
in some of the caves of the reindeer
period.
Captain Cook’s description of the sav
ages of Tierra del Fuego would have ap
plied to the men of that period, “although
content to be naked, they were very am
bitious to be tine; ” and probably like
these poor Fuegians, they adorned them
selves with streaks of red, black, and
white, and wore bracelets and anklets of
shell and bone.
If we wish to form some ideas of the
manners and customs of our Palaeolithic
ancestors, we must look for them among
existing savage races whose mode of
life, and equipment of tools and weapons,
most nearly resemble those of the earliest
cave-dwellers. The Australians, the Bush
men of South Africa, the Mincopies of
the Andaman Islands, and the Fuegians
are probably the lowest specimens of the
human race known in modern times ; but
even these are in some respects further
advanced in the arts than Palaeolithic
man. The Bushmen are skilled in the
use of the bow, and have discovered
the art of poisoning their arrows. The
Australians, Mincopies, and Fuegians
have canoes, harpoons, and fish-hooks.
The latter approach more nearly to the
conditions of life of the savages who ac
cumulated the kitchen-middens on the
coasts of Denmark at a much later
period, and the Bushmen probably re
present _ those of the cave-men who
lived principally on the produce of the
chase of large animals, such as the mam
moth, rhinoceros, cave bear, horse, and
deer. The pigmy Bushman will attack
the elephant, the rhinoceros, and even
the lion, and often succeed in killing
them by pitfalls or poisoned arrows.
The inferences, therefore, to be drawn,
alike from the physical development of
the individual man, and from the origin
and growth of all the faculties which
specially distinguish him from the brute
creation—language, religion, arts, and
science—point to the conclusion that he
is a product of laws of evolution, and
not of special or miraculous creation.
Still, granting this, we must admit on
the other hand, that until more of the
“ missing links ” are discovered, and the
origin of man thus placed on a basis of
scientific certainty, there is an opening
left for the belief that here, if nowhere
else, there was some supernatural inter
ference with the laws of Nature, and
that the finger of the clock-maker did
here alter the hands of the clock from
the position which they would have occu
pied under the original law of its con
struction. But if this were so, it must
equally in candour be admitted that the
miracle did not consist in placing man
and woman upon earth, at any recent
period, or with faculties in any way de
veloped, but could only have consisted in
causing a germ or germs to come into
existence, different from any that could
have been formed by natural evolution,
and containing within them the possi
bilities of conscious and civilised man, to
be developed from the rudest origins by
slow and painful progress over countless
ages.
�PART II.—MODERN THOUGHT
That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deedsj
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,
I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares,
Upon the great world’s altar-stairs
That slope thro’ darkness up to God,
I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.
CHAPTER VII
MODERN THOUGHT
Lines from Tennyson—The Gospel of Modern
Thought—Change exemplified by Carlyle,
Renan, and George Eliot—Science becom
ing Universal—Attitude of Orthodox Writ
ers—Origin of Evil—First Cause unknow
able—New Philosophies and Religions—
Herbert Spencer and Agnosticism—Comte
and Positivism—Pessimism—Mormonism—
Spiritualism—Dreams and Visions Som
nambulism-Mesmerism.
LVI.
“ So careful of the type ? ” but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, “ A thousand types are gone :
I care for nothing, all shall gof
“ Thou makest thine appeal to me :
I bring to life, I bring to death :
The spirit does but mean the breath :
I know no more.” And he, shall he,
LIV.
Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood ;
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroy'd,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete ;
Man, her last work, who seem’d so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who roll’d the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,
That not a worm is cloven in vain ;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivel’d in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another’s gain.
Who trusted God was love indeed,
And love Creation’s final law—
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek’d against his creed—
Behold, we know not anything.
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last—far off—at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.
Who loved, who suffer’d countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or seal’d within the iron hills ?
So runs my dream : but what am I ?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.
No more ? A monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music match’d with him.
LV.
The wish, that of the living whole
No life may fail beyond the grave,
Derives it not from what we have
The likest God within the soul ?
Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams ?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;
0 life as futile, then, as frail !
0 for thy voice to soothe and bless 1
What hope of answer, or redress ?
Behind the veil, behind the veil.
Tennyson, Tn Jifemoriam.
I
(By kind permission of Lord Tennyson.
G 2
�Si
modern science and modern thought
These noble and solemn lines of a great
poet sum up in a few words what may be
called “ the Gospel of Modern Thought.”
They describe what is the real attitude
of most of the thinking and earnest
minds of the present generation. On
the one hand, the discoveries of science
have so far established the universality
of law, as to make it impossible for sin
cere men to retain the faith of their an
cestors in dogmas and miracles. On the
other, larger views of man and of history
have shown that religious sentiment is
an essential element of human nature,
and that many of our best feelings, such
as love, hope, conscience, and reverence,
will always seek to find reflections of
themselves in the unseen world. Hence
faith in dogma has diminished and charity
increased. Fewer believe old creeds, and
those who do, believe more faintly ; while
fewer denounce them, or are insensible to
the good they have done in the past and
to the truth and beauty of the essential
ideas that underlie them.
On the Continent, and especially in
Catholic countries, where religion inter
feres more, with politics and social life,
there is still a large amount of active
hostility to it, as shown by the massacre
of priests by the French Communists;
but, in this country, the old Voltairean
infidelity has died out, and no one of
ordinary culture thinks of denouncing
Christianity as an invention of priest
craft. On the contrary, many of our lead
ing minds are at the same time sceptical
and religious, and exemplify the truth
of another profound saying of Tennyson:
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
The change which has come over modern
thought cannot be better exemplified
than by. taking the instance of three
great writers whose workshave produced
a powerful influence—Carlyle, Eenan,
and George Eliot. They were all three
born and brought up in the very heart
of different phases of the old beliefs—
Carlyle, in a family which might be taken
as a type of the best qualities of Scottish
Presbyterianism, bred in a Lowland farm
house, under the eye of a father and
mother whom he loved and revered, w*ho
might have been the originals of Burns’
“Cotter’s Saturday Night,” or the de
scendants of the martyrs of Claverhouse.
His own temperament strongly inclined to
a stern Puritanical piety; his favourite
heroe? were Cromwell and John Knox;
his whole nature was antipathetic to
science. As his biographer, Froude, re
ports. of him, “He liked ill men like
Humboldt, Laplace, and the author of
the ‘Vestiges.’ He refused Darwin’s
transmutation of species as unproved;
he fought against it, though I could see
he dreaded that it might turn out true.”
And yet the deliberate conclusion at
which he arrived was that “He did not
think it possible that educated honest
men could even profess much longer to
believe in historical Christianity.”
The case of Eenan was equally remark
able. He was born in the cottage of
Breton peasants of the purest type of
simple, pious, Catholic faith. Their one
idea of rising above the life of a peasant
was to become a priest, and their great
ambition for their boy was that he might
be so far honoured as one day to become
a country curd. Young Eenan, accord
ingly, from the first day he showed
cleverness, and got to the top of his class
in the village school, was destined for the
priesthood. He was taken in hand' by
priests, and found in them his kindest
friends ; they sent him to college, and in
due time to the Central Seminary where
young men were trained for orders.' All
his traditions,, all his affections, all his
interests, led in that direction, and yet
he gave up everything rather than sub
scribe to what he no longer believed to
be true. His conversion was brought
about in this way. Having been ap
pointed assistant to a professor of Heb
rew he became a profound scholar in
Oriental languages; this led to his
studying the Scriptures carefully in the
original, and the conclusion forced itself
upon him that the miraculous part of the
narrative had no historical foundation.
Like Carlyle, the turn of his mind was
not scientific, and while denying miracles
he remained keenly appreciative of all
that was beautiful and poetical in the
life and teaching of Jesus, which he has
brought more vividly before the ’world in
his writings than had ever been done by
orthodox commentators.
George Eliot, again, was brought up
in yet another phase of orthodox Chris
tianity—that of middle-class nonconform
ist Evangelicalism. She embraced this
creed fervently, and, as we see in her
“Dinah,” retained a keen appreciation
�MODERN TH OUGHT
of all its best elements. But as her
intellect expanded and her knowledge
widened, she too found it impossible to
rest in the old belief, and, with a painful
wrench from a revered father and loving
friends, she also passed over from the
ranks of orthodoxy. She also, after a life
of profound and earnest thought, came
.to the conclusion recorded of her by an
intimate friend and admirer, M”. Myers :
“I remember how at Cambridge, I
walked with her once in the Fellows’
Garden of Trinity, on an evening of
rainy May; and she, stirred somewhat
beyond her wont, and taking as her text
the three words which have been used so
often as the inspiring trumpet-calls of
men—the words God, Immortality, Duty—pronounced, with terrible earnestness,
how inconceivable was the first, how un
believable the second, and yet how per
emptory and absolute the third. Never,
perhaps, had sterner accents affirmed the
sovereignty of impersonal and unrecom
pensing law. I listened, and night fell;
her grave, majestic countenance turned
toward me like a Sibyl’s in the gloom ; it
was as though she withdrew from my
grasp, one by one, the two scrolls of pro
mise, and left me the third scroll only,
awTful. with inevitable fates.”
Such instances as these cannot be the
result of mere accident. As long as scep
ticism was confined to a limited number
of scientific men it might be possible to
think that it was merely the exaggera
tion of a particular train of thought pur
sued too exclusively. But when science
has become the prevailing mode of
thought, and has been brought home to
the minds of all educated persons, it is
no longer possible to represent it as an
exceptional aberration. And where the
bell-wethers of thought lead the way, the
flock will follow. What the greatest
thinkers think to-day, the company of
thinkers will think to-morrow, and the
great army of non-thinkers will treat as
self-evident the day after. This is very
nearly the case at the present day ; the
great thinkers have gone before, the mass
of thinkers have followed, and the still
greater mass of non-thinkers are waver
ing and about to follow. It is no longer,
with those who think at all. a question
of absolute faith against absolute dis
belief, but of the more or less shade of
“ faintness ” with which they cling to the
“ larger hope,”
85
This is nowhere more apparent than
in the writings of those who attempt to
stem the tide which sets so strongly
against orthodoxy. They resolve them
selves mainly into one long wail of “oh
the pity of it, the pity of it 1 ” if th®
simple faith of olden times should dis
appear from the world. They show
eloquently and conclusively that science
and philosophy cannot satisfy the as
pirations or afford the consolations of
religion. They expose the hollowness of
the substitutes which have been pro
posed, such as the worship of the un
knowable, or the cult of humanity.
They win an easy triumph over the ex
aggerations of those who resolve all the
historical records of Christianity into
myths or fabulous fulfilment of pro
phecies, and they wage fierce battles over
minor points, as, for example, whether
the first quotations from the Gospels are
met with in the first or second half of the
second century. But they nowhere at
tempt to grapple with the real diffi
culties, or to show that the facts and
arguments which converted men like
Carlyle and Kenan are mistaken facts
and unsound arguments. Attempts to
harmonise the Gospels and to prove the
inspiration of writings which contain
manifest errors and contradictions, have
gone the way of Buckland’s proof of a
universal deluge, and of Hugh Miller’s
attempt to reconcile Noah’s ark and the
Genesis account of creation with the
facts of geology and astronomy. Not a®
inch of ground that has been conquered
by science has ever been reconquered in
fair fight by theology
This great scientific movement _ is
of comparatively recent date. Darwin’s
“ Origin of Species ” was published only
in 1859, and his views as to evolution,
development, natural selection, and the
prevalence of universal law, have already
annexed nearly the whole world of
modern thought and become the founda
tion of all philosophical speculation and
scientific inquiry.
Not only has faith been shaken in the
supernatural as a direct and immediate
agent in the phenomena of the worlds of
matter and of life, but the demonstration
of the “ struggle for life ’’ and “ survival
of the fittest ” has raised anew, and with
vastly augmented force, those questions
as to the moral constitution of the uni
verse and the origin of evil, which have
�MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
so long exercised the highest minds. Is
it true that “ love ” is “ Creation’s final
law,” when we find this enormous and
apparently prodigal waste of life going
on; these cruel internecine battles be
tween individuals and species in the
struggle for existence; this cynical in
difference of Nature to suffering ? There
are, approximately, 3,600 millions of
deaths of human beings in every century,
of whom at least 20 per cent., or 720
millions, die before they have attained
to clear self-consciousness. What be
comes of them ? Why were they born ?
Are they Nature’s failures, and “cast as
rubbish to the void ” ?
To such questions there is no adequate
answer. We are obliged to admit that
as the material universe is not, as we once
fancied, measured by our standards and
regulated at every turn by an intelligence
resembling ours ; so neither is the moral
universe to be explained by simply mag
nifying our own moral ideas, and explain
ing everything by the action of a Being
who does what we should have done in
his place. If we insist on this anthropo
morphic conception we are driven to this
dilemma. Carlyle bases his belief in a
God, “the infinite Good One,” on this
argument: “All that is good, generous,
wise, right—whatever I deliberately and
for ever love in others and myself, who
or what could by any possibility have
given it to me but One who first had
it to give 1 This is not logic; this is
axiom.”
But how of the evil 1 No sincere man
looking into the depths of his own soul,
or at the facts of the world around, can
doubt that along with much that is good,
generous, wise, and right, there is much
that is bad, base, foolish, and wrong. If
logic compels us to receive as an axiom a
good author for the former, does not the
same logic equally compel us to accept
the axiom that the author of the latter
must have been one who “ first had it in
himself to give ” ? That is, we must ac
cept the theory of a God who is half
good, half evil; or adopt the Zoroastrian
conception of a universe contested by an
Ormuzd and Ahriman—a good and evil
principle, whose power is, for the present
at any ratoj equally balanced.
From this dilemma there is no escape,
unless we give up altogether the idea
of an anthropomorphic God, and adopt
frankly the scientific idea of an “ Infinite |
and Eternal Energy,” inscrutable and
past finding out; and of a universe whose
processes we can trace, but of whose ulti
mate essence we know nothing, only
suspecting, or faintly discerning, a funda
mental law which may make the polarity
of good and evil a necessary condition of
existence. This is a more sublime as well
as more rational belief than the old
orthodox conception ; but there is no
doubt that it requires more strength of
mind to embrace it, and that it appears
cold and cheerless to those who have
been accustomed to see special provi
dences in every ordinary occurrence, and
to fancy themselves the special objects
of supernatural. supervision in all the
details of daily life. Hopes and fancies,
however, are powerless against facts; and
the world is as surely passing from the
phase of orthodox into that of scientific
belief as youth is passing into manhood ;
and as the planet which we inhabit is
passing from the more fiery state into
that of temperate heat, progressive cool
ing, and final extinction as the abode of
life. In the meantime, what can we do
but possess our souls in patience, follow
truth wherever it leads us, and trust, as
Tennyson advises, that in the long run
everything will be for the best, and
“every winter turn to spring ” ?
The decay of old religious beliefs, and
the introduction of new conceptions
based on scientific discovery, have given
rise to many attempts to found new
philosophies, and in some cases hew sects
and religions, of some of the principal of
which a short account may be given.
, One of the greatest thinkers of modern
times, Herbert Spencer, has expanded
the theories of modern science, especially
those of the conservation of energy and
of Darwinian evolution, into a general
ised philosophy, embracing not only
the phenomena of the material and liv
ing universe, but also history, religion,
politics, and all the complex relations of
social life. He starts from the principle
that throughout the universe, in general
apd in detail, there is an unceasing re
distribution of matter and motion. This
shows itself as evolution where there
is a predominant aggregation of matter
and diminution of motion, and as dissolu
tion where matter is disintegrated and
motion increased. Thus, in the formation
of coal, the motion of the sun’s rays is
fixed in the condensed matter of the
�MODERN THOUGHT
chemical products of vegetation, and is
dissipated when, after, countless ages,
the coal is burned and its substance dis
solved into its elements. . These changes
constitute a transformation of the uni
form or homogeneous into the differenti
ated or heterogeneous, as seen in rhe con
densation of nebulous or cosmic matter
into suns and planets; in the varied
elements of the inorganic world ; in
each organism, vegetable or animal , in
the aggregate of organisms, thought and
geologic time ; in the mind ; in society ;
in all products of social activity.” These
changes are all in the direction of
passage from an indefinite whole to de
finite parts, and they are inevitable, un
less the original substance were so absolutely uniform as to Bo absolutely stable.
Once started, this process of differen
tiation tends necessarily to go on, the sur
rounding conditions being ever at work,
whether by aggregation or dissolution,
by joining like to like, or separating un
like from unlike, to sharpen and make
more definite existing differences.
This is in effect a generalised conception
of Darwin’s laws of the “ struggle for life
and “survival of the fittest.” J inally, however, the result of all these changes is that
an ultimate equilibrium will be reached,
which is rest in the inorganic and death
in the organic world ; as when the sun
with all its planets shall have parted
with all its heat, and all its energy shall
have run down to one uniform level.
From this state it can only be roused by
some fresh shock from without, dissipat
ing it again into a mass of diffused matter
and unbalanced motions.
Hence we come to the final statements
of the Spencerian philosophy, as given in
the words of its author
11 This rhythm of evolution and dissolu
tion, completing itself duringshortperiods
in small aggregates, and in the vast aggre
gates distributed through space com
pleting itself in periods which are im
measurable by human thought, is, so far
as W0 can. sec, universal and eternal, each
alternating phase of the process predo
minating, now in this region of space and
now in that, as local conditions determine.
All these phenomena, from their great
features even to their minutest details,
are necessary results of the persistence
of force under its forms of matter and
motion.
Given these as distributed
through space, and their quantities being
8?
unchangeable either by increase or de
crease, there inevitably result the con
tinuous redistributions distinguishable as
evolution and dissolution, as well as those
special traits above enumerated. That
which persists, unchanging in quantity,
but ever changing in form, under these
sensible appearances which the universe
presents to us, transcends human know
ledge and conception, is an unknown
and unknowable power,. which we are
obliged to recognise as without limit in
space and without beginning or end in
time.”
This is, in its highest form, the philo
sophy of Agnosticism. A very different
thing, be it observed, from Atheism, for
it distinctly recognises an underlying
power which, although “ unknown and
unknowable,” may be anything harmon
ising with the feelings and aspirations
in which all religious sentiment has its
origin, so long as it fulfils tne condition
of not, by too precise definition, coming
into collision with something which is
not “ unknown ” but “ known ” and irre
concilable with it.
For instance, there is nothing in Agnos
ticism to negative the possibility of a
future state of existence. Behind tae
veil there may be a-nything, and no
one can say that individual conscious
ness may not remain or be restored
after death, and that our condition may
not be in some way better or worse, ac
cording to the use we have made of the
opportunities of life. But if any one at
tempts to define this future state and say
we shall have spiritual bodies, live in
the skies, sing psalms, and wave palm
branches, we say at once, “This is partly
unknowable and partly known to be im
possible.”
.
That which has given the philosophy
of Spencer a wide influence is the manner
in which he applies it to the subjects
which more immediately concern the
mass of thinking minds, such as history,
politics, and the problems of social life.
What Darwin shows in animal life and
the origin of species, Spencer traces in
the rise and fall of empires, the growth
and decline of religions, the increasing
complexity of social relations, the con
flicting forces of evolution and dissolution
at work around us in our every-day life
in the relations of science and theology,
capital and. labour, state socialism and
lai&s.sz-faire. For instance, the decline of
�8»
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
the Roman Empire and its overthrow by homely proverb that “ charity begins at
the barbarians is analogous to the de home, and as we widen the sphere of
cay of a planet from loss of internal heat patriotism or philanthropy we are very
and its dissipation into matter capable of apt to diminish their intensity and find
fresh evolution, by the shock of a comet. them evaporate in a mist of high-sound
The ever-increasing gulf between wealth ing phrases. The “ friend of man ” is
and poverty, science and superstition, very apt to be the friend of no one man
resembles the process by which the one in particular, and to make universal
toed ho rsebecame gradually differentiated philanthropy an excuse for neglecting
more and more from the common five-toed individual charity.
type of its remote ancestor.
Apart, however, from this objection
These speculations of Spencer, pursued and granting that with increased inter
with vast acuteness and research through course and increased culture “Humanity”
all branches of social science, though they might become a more practical idea, we
have not founded a new religion or es
be.
tablished a new sect, have undoubtedly it the .basis of a a l°ng waY from making
new religion. It is here
exercised a great influence on modern that Comte has laid himself open to such
thought, especially among the rising criticism as that of Huxley, who defined
generation.
Positivism as “Catholicism without Chris
Another “ism” which, although it has tianity.” With the narrow systematising
exercised a much narrower influence than logic so characteristic of the French inthe philosophy of Spencer, has founded a tellect Comte has worked out a complete
sect.and put forward more definite claims scheme of ritual, hierarchy, and all the
to give the world a new religion is that apparatus of an old religion. A supreme
which is known as “Positivism,” or pontiff at its head, associated with a
“ Comtism,” from the.name of its founder, supreme priestess to represent the female
Auguste Comte. It is not easy to under element; for saints, the distinguished
stand, but its essence seems to be this :— men of philosophy, theology, art and
Admitting that science has killed theo science ; for days of worship, fete days of
logy, and that the old forms of super these saints, and meetings to commemo
natural religion, inevitable in the child rate their merits, and to observe certain
hood of the world, have become incredible,
sacraments.”
Comte cast about for some idea which
All this savours too much of the “ God
should be at the same time “ positive,” dess of Liberty,” and of the theo-philanor based on ascertained fact, and fervid thropy of the French Revolution, when
enough to satisfy the cravings of re the disciples of Rousseau cut off heads
ligious sentiment. He thought he found in the name of universal benevolence, to
it in “ Humanity ; ” that is, in love and find much acceptance in a sceptical age
veneration for the abstract idea of the and among, a practical people. Robuster
human race, taken collectively, and con intellects,, like George Eliot, even where
sidered in its past, present, and future they incline to accept Humanity as an
relations. As patriotism, a very ardent ennobling idea, and to recognise Comte
feeling, is the love of a limited section as an original thinker, reject all the con
of the human race; and as it has been structive and ceremonial part of his new
gradually enlarged from the limits of a religion as unworthy of notice; while
tribe to those of a city, and from those to the mass of thoughtful persons the
of a city to those of a country or nation whole thing appears unreal and para
ality, he conceived that it might be still doxical.
further enlarged so as to embrace all
One more “ ism ”—Pessimism, the
mankind. . So far it may be admitted gospel of feebleness and failure—has had
that there is a germ of truth in Comte’s a considerable effect on the Continent,
idea, and. that elevated minds may en though little in this country. It is based
large their view beyond the narrow on.the fact that, in accordance with the
bounds of a particular country at a par universal law of polarity, progress is not
ticular period, and may derive fresh an unmixed good, but develops a corre
incentives to action, and fresh sub sponding negative of failure. In simple
jects for ennobling thought, from a con forms of society the distinctions between
templation of the past progress, present wealth and poverty, capital and labour,
condition, and future possibilities of the culture and ignorance, are not so sharply
collective human race. But there is a defined, and the lot of those who fail in
�MODERN THOUGHT
the battle of life is not so hard as when
men are congregated in crowded cities,
exposed to temptations, and tantalised
by the sight of wealth and luxury before
their eyes and yet beyond their reach.
A mass of misery and discontent is thus
created, which in lower natures.translates
itself into anarchism and fanatical hatred
of all above them, while in higher ones it
takes the form of theories for the re
generation of the world by levelling
everything that exists, and .building
anew on fresh foundations. Still higher
minds see the futility of these theories,
and take refuge in a philosophy which
pronounces the world a mistake, life an
evil, and universal suicide the only possible
solution of what is radically bad. This
is, in substance, the philosophy of Scho
penhauer and the school of Continental
Pessimists. It has something in common
with Buddhism, which regards all personal
existence as a painful dream or illusion,
and places supreme happiness in escape
from it by annihilation of individuality.
To understand how such a doctrine can
have found acceptance, we must remem
ber that the tendency of modem civil
isation is to throw more and more work
on the brain and nervous system and less
on other organs. This of itself tends, to
produce more ill-health both of mind
and body, especially of those digestive
organs upon which the sensation of
health and well-being so mainly depends.
A dyspeptic man is of necessity an un
happy and desponding man. Moreover,
in ruder states of society such weaklings
were got rid of by the summary process
of being killed off, while with the more
humane and refined arrangements of
modern times they live on and “ weary
deaf heaven with their fruitless cries.”
It is among such men, with cultivated
intellects, sensitive nerves, and bad
digestion, that we find the prophets and
disciples of the gospel of Pessimism.
They feel, and feel truly,. that as far as
they are concerned life is an evil, the
pains of which far outweigh its pleasures,
and, having lost faith in a future life
where the balance will be redressed, they
see no remedy for the miseries of the
world but that of ceasing to be, or
annihilation.
This affords another illustration of the
extent to which religions and philoso
phies are, like the spectre of the Brocken,
reflections of our own selves on dissolving
mists, clothed with our own clothes and
89
repeating our own gestures.
To a
healthy man or to a strong man the
pessimist view of the universe is simply
impossible. If he has experienced, a fair
average of happiness and success in life,
he instinctively rejects a creed which
tells him that there are no lights as well
as shadows. If he has a mind of average
strength, he feels that suffering is a thing
to be avoided prudently, borne stoically,
or grappled with courageously, and not
to be run away from by moral or physical
suicide.
Accordingly Pessimism is not a creed
which is ever likely to exert much in
fluence on the strong, practical AngloSaxon race, and we can discern some
faint traces of it only in the tendency of
certain very limited cliques of so-called
fiEstheticism to admire morbid and selfconscious ideals, both in poetry and
painting.
.
It is a very curious and remarkable
fact, that while so many highly intellec
tual attempts have been made in vain in
modern times to found new sects and
religions, the only one which has had any
real success is that which is based on the
most gross and vulgar imposture—Mor
monism. Mormonism is a fact which,
without the vestige of a reasonable argu
ment to show for itself, originating in
the vulgar ravings and forgeries of a
vulgar Yankee, and violating the first
instincts of the family and of. society
by polygamy, still flourishes, in spite
of persecutions and prohibitions, llie
reason seems to be that, instead of being
a theory in the air or over the heads of
the masses, it is, with all its faults, a prac
tical system in contact with the actual
realities of life. Its success is mainly
owing to its being an organised system
of emigration, and a faith which places
its Paradise here on earth and not in the
skies. A poor ignorant labourer in Wales
or Norway, who becomes a convert to
Mormonism, is taken in hand at once,
forwarded to his destination, and when
he arrives there looked after and put in
a way of earning an honest livelihood and
probably becoming a landed proprietor.
The ideal set before him is not a very
high one, that of becoming a sober,
industrious, respectable, narrow-minded
citizen of the State of Utah, and a cre
ditable member of the community of
Latter Day Saints. But to a poor
labourer from the slums of Liverpool, to
lead such a life, in the pure mountain air
�90
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
in the valley of the Salt Lake, and see
his flocks and herds increasing and his
family growing up, without care for the
future, is indeed the realisation of an
earthly Paradise. The moral to draw
from this is, that the success of a religion,
under the conditions of modern society,
does not depend so much on its theory as
on the way in which it takes hold of the
practical problems of life and shows an
aptitude for grappling with them.
Another wide-spread modern delusion,
that of Spiritualism, is akin to Mormonism, as showing how little reason has to
do with the beliefs which are most readily
propagated among large classes of the
community.
Nothing but the most
morbid appetite for the supernatural,
combined with the most absolute ignor
ance of the laws of evidence, could induce
sane people to believe that, if a corner
of that mysterious and awful veil were
lifted which separates the living from
the dead, we shall discover what? —
spirits whose vocation it is to turn tables
and talk twaddle.
In vain, medium after medium is de
tected, and the machinery by which
ghosts are manufactured exposed in
police-courts ; in vain, the manifestations
of the so-called spirits are repeated by
professional conjurors like Maskelyne
and Cooke, who disclaim any assistance
from the unseen world. People are still
found to believe the unbelievable because
it gratifies their taste for the marvellous,
and enables them to fancy themselves
the favoured recipients of supernatural
communications.
The explanation that Spiritualism has
received a certain amount of acceptance
from men of a very different order, like
Crookes and Wallace, may be found in
the phenomena associated with it, such
as mesmerism and clairvoyance, which
have a certain basis of fact, and open up
interesting fields for scientific investi
gation. The working of the nervous
apparatus in certainabnormal conditions,
and the physical effects of imagination,
are subjects imperfectly understood, but
well deserving accurate inquiry.
Take, for instance, dreams, which
afford the first certain starting-point
towards a theory of visions and appari
tions. It is as certain that we dream as
that we sleep, and that in our sleeping
state we often live a sort of second life,
which is different from our ordinary
waking life. Dreams are made up of im
pressions which have been recorded by
the brain in its waking state, and which
are revived in new combinations and
imaginary scenes, when consciousness is
suspended. These impressions are thus
0-ten worked, up into a succession of
dreams so vivid as to be scarcely distin
guishable from reality. It happened to
mo, about th© middle period of my life,
to be sent, almost at a day’s notice, to
India, where for more than two years I
had a period of intensely hard work and
great responsibility, as Finance Minister,
this naturally leit a number of strong
impressions on my brain, which for
years afterwards kept reviving in a
series of connected dreams, in which I
fancied myself back in India. I had
thus a dream life as well as a real life of
Indian experiences, and the former was
so vivid that, if I were writing remini
scences, I should sometimes find it difficult to distinguish between the two.
This enables me to realise how dreams
may reaclily pass into visions. If I had
dozed oft" in an arm-chair after dinner,
and fallen into one of my Indian dreams,
I might have seen Lord Canning, who
had been dead for years, walk into the
room as distinctly as if he had been
present in person. In a less critical age,
and with a less sceptical turn of mind, I
might readily have been convinced that
I had seen his ghost.
There can be no doubt that, in this way,
dreams must often, in pre-scientific ages,
have originated a bona fide belief in
spirits. Herbert Spencer traces to this
cause the origin of all religious belief.
Perhaps this may be carrying it too far,
but doubtless it was one of the main
causes, especially of that portion of
religion which took the form of offerings
to the dead, and ancestor-worship.
But a still further step may be taken
from the ordinary dream to the waking
dream or vision. It is a well-established
fact that under peculiar and rare circum
stances. the brain may dream, that is,
revive impressions where there is no
corresponding reality, without losing its
consciousness. There was a celebrated
case of a Berlin bookseller in the last
century, who, having fallen into bad
health, lived formore than a year in the
company of ghosts—that is, he constantly
saw men and women, with every
appearance of being alive, enter the
�MODERN THOUGHT
room and come and go as. if they had
been ordinary visitors. Being a man of
a scientific turn of mind he never sup
posed that these were really ghosts, but
reasoned on them and recorded his ex
periences.
Instead of sending for a
priest and resorting to exorcisms, he
called in a physician and took a course of
medicine, with the result that after a
considerable time the ghostly visitors
gradually became dim and finally disappeared.
.
Numerous other cases are recorded m
which there is no doubt that visions have
been seen, especially under the influence
of religious excitement, and a large
number of so-called miraculous appear
ances and ghost stories are probably
owing to this cause rather than to con
scious imposture.
When we consider the enormous num
ber of dreams, and probably considerable
number of visions, which occur, instead
of being surprised at occasional coinci
dences, the wonder rather is that they
are not more frequent. If only one per
cent, of the 30,000,000 inhabitants of the
British Isles dream every night, that
would give 109,500,000 dreams per
annum, a large proportion of which are
made up of vivid impressions of actual
persons and events. It is impossible that
some of the combinations of these im
pressions should not form pictures which
are subsequently realised, and we. may
be sure that the successes only will be
noted, and the failures forgotten. It is
strange, therefore, that the researches of
the Psychical Society should not have
brought to light more instances of death
warnings and other remarkable coinci
dences. To take the vulgar instance of
horse-racing. A number of minds are
greatly exercised over the problem of
picking out winners, and doubtless a vast
number of dreams show colours flashing
past winning-posts, and numbers hoisted
on the telegraph board. And yet I re
member only two tolerably well-authenti
cated instances in the last half-century,
in which any one is said to have backed
a winner on the faith of a dream. . .The
only positive result of dreams and visions
is that they frequently occur under cir
cumstances where they are almost certain
to be mistaken, by unscientific persons
in unscientific ages, for actual super
natural appearances.
Another field of inquiry is opened out
91
by the effects which are undoubtedly
produced under certain abnormal con
ditions of the brain and nervous system,
as in epilepsy, somnambulism, and mes
merism.
In the simplest case, that of epilepsy,
the effect is mainly shown by a more
intense action of nerve-currents, causing
convulsive motions and an unnatural
increase of muscular strength and
rigidity, so that two strong men may be
scarcely able to hold one weak woman.
In somnambulism, the effects are more
complex. The reception of outward im
pressions seems to be limited, so that the
whole consciousness and vital energy are
concentrated on particular actions, which
are thus performed safely, while in the
ordinary waking state they would be im
possible. Thus a somnambulist walks
securely along a plank spanning an abyss,
because the impressions of surrounding
space do not reach the brain and confuse
it with a sense of danger. In this state
also past impressions photographed on
the brain, which in the ordinary waking
state are obscured by other impressions,
seem to come out occasionally .as in
dreams, enabling the somnambulist to
do and remember things which would
otherwise be beyond his faculties.
Mesmerism is closely akin to somnam
bulism. Apart from delusion and char
latanism the fact seems to be established
that it is possible, by artificial means,, to
induce a state resembling somnambulism
in persons of a peculiar nervous tempera
ment. As regards the means, the essen
tial point seems to be to throw the brain
into this abnormal state partly by keep
ing an unnatural strain on the attention,
and partly by acting on it through the
imagination. The experiments of Dr.
Braid showed that the mesmeric sleep
could be induced just as well by keeping
the eye strained on a black wafer stuck
on a white wall, as by the manipulations
of an operator. This experiment dis
poses of a great deal of mysterious non
sense about magnetic fluids, overpower
ing wills, and other supposed attributes
of professional mesmerisers, and reduces
the question to the plain matter-of-fact
level of the relations between the brain,
will, imagination, and nervous system,
which exist in natural and in artificial
somnambulism. These are undoubtedly
very curious, and open up a wide field for
physiological and mental research. As
�92
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
far as I have seen or read, they seem to
turn mainly on the reflex effects of an
excited imagination on other organs and
faculties. I do not believe that any one
could be mesmerised who was absolutely
ignorant of the subject and unconscious
that any one was operating. On the
other hand, any one who had frequently
been mesmerised would fall into the sleep1
if led to believe that an operator was1
at work when there was really not one.
And the peculiar effects shown in the
mesmeric state are attributable mainly,
to the imagination acting
with, morbid activity on the slightest
hint or suggestion of what is expected,
ihus the will disappears in the more
powerful suggestion of the imagination
that the patient has to obey the will of
the operator, or do certain things which
are. m the programme. I can readily
believe also that in this state the imagination can perform feats which would be
impossible to it in a natural state when
it is kept in check by other faculties, and
that a good deal of what is called clair
voyance may be explained by the way
in which the slightest hint from expresSi.?n’ involuntary muscular motion, or
otherwise, is taken advantage of as a
substitute for the ordinary modes of com
munication. Such a faculty may also
doubtless be cultivated by practice, and
thus explain many of the phenomena of
what are called spiritual communications
and thought-reading. But that imp ressions can be made on the brain, or that
one mind can communicate with another
without some physical medium between
object and subject, is unproved and
remains incredible.
CHAPTER VIII
MIRACLES
Origin of Belief in the Supernatural—Thunef in Miracles formerly Universal
—bt. Paul s Testimony—Now Incredible—
Christian Miracles—Apparent Miracles—
Real Miracles—Absurd Miracles—Worthy
Miracles—The Resurrection and Ascension
—.Nature of Evidence required—Inspiration
—Prophecy—Direct Evidence—St. Paul—
lhe Gospels—What is Known of Them—
® Synoptic Gospels—Resemblances and
th Terences—Their Origin—Papias—Gospel
of St. John—Evidence rests on Matthew,
Mark, and Luke—What each states—Com*
pared with one another and with St. John
— Hopelessly Contradictory—Miracle of
the Ascension-Silence of Mark-Probable
i» their
When men began to reason on the phenoplena of the world around them, it was
inevitable that they should begin bv
referring all striking occurrences to
supernatural causes. Just as they mea
sured space by feet and inches, and time
by days and years, they referred unusual
events to. personal agencies. They knew
by experience that certain effects were
produced by their own wills, muscular
energies, and .passions ; and when they
saw effects which seemed to be of a like
nature, they inferred that they must
have been produced by like causes.
lo take the familiar instance of
thunder. The first savage who thought
about it must have said : “The sound is
very like the roar with which I spring on
a wild beast or an enemy ; the flash of
lightning, is very like the flash of the
arrow or javelin with which I strike him :
the effect is often the same, that he is
killed. Surely there must be some one
m the clouds, very strong, very angry,
very able to do me harm, unless I can
propitiate him by prayers or offerings.”
But aiter long centuries, science steps in
An elderly gentleman at Philadelphia,
.Benjamin Franklin by name, sends up a
silk kite during a thunder-storm, and
behold . the lightning is drawn down
tiom the skies, tamed, and made to emit
harmless sparks, or to follow the course
of a conducting wire, at our will and
pleasure. There is no more room left for
the supernatural in. the fiercest tropical
-storm than there is in turning
the handle of an electrical machine, or
sending-in a tender to light the streets of
London by electricity. And the result
is absolutely certain. In the contest
between the natural and the super
natural, the latter has not only been re
pulsed but annihilated. The most ortho
dox believer in miracles, if his faith
were, brought to. the practical test of
.backing his opinions by his money,
would, rather insure a gin-palace or
gambling saloon protected by a light
ning-conductor than a chapel protected
by the prayers of a pious preacher.
�MIRACLES
This instance of thunder is a type of
the revolution of thought which has been
brought about by modern science in the
whole manner of viewing the phenomena
of the surrounding universe. Former
ages saw miracles everywhere, the age
in which we live sees them nowhere,
except possibly in the single instance of
the miracles recorded in the. Bible. In
the annals of grave Roman historians,
In every page locutus bos.
Not a Caesar or a Consul died, without
an ox speaking, or a flaming sword in the
skies predicting portents. If the moon
happened to pass between the sun and
the earth the dim eclipse
With fear of change perplexes monarchs.
If the winds blow it is because tEoIus
releases them from the cave ; if the rains
fall it is because Jupiter opens the win
dows of heaven, or Indra causes the
cloud-cows to drop their milk on the
parched earth. Perhaps no better proof
can be afforded of the universal belief
that miracles were considered matters of
every-day occurrence than is given by
the passage in St. Paul’s Epistle to the
Corinthians, in which he enumerates the
principal Christian gifts, and assigns, as
it were, their comparative order and the
number of marks that should be given
to each in a competitive examination.
The power of “ working miracles ”
comes low in the list. “.First apostles,
secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers,
after that miracles, then gifts of healings,
helps,
governments, ' diversities of
tongues.” And he goes on to say, in
words that come home to every heart in
all centuries, that all those things are
worthless as compared with that true
Christian charity which “suffereth long,
and is kind ; envieth not; vaunteth not
itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave
itself unseemly, seeketh not her own,, is
not easily provoked, thinketh.no evil;
rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in
the truth ; beareth all things, believeth
all things, hopeth all things, endureth all
things.”
This is in the true spirit of modern
thought, which, when the externals of
religion fail, strives to look below them
at its essence, and to retain wha,t is
eternally true and beautiful as the ideal
of a spiritual and the guide of a practi
cal life, while rejecting all the outward
apparatus of metaphysical creeds and
93
incredible miracles, which had only a
temporary value, and can no longer be
believed without shutting one’s eyes to
facts and becoming guilty of conscious
or unconscious insincerity.
But to return to miracles. Almost the
entire world of the supernatural fades
away of itself with an extension of our
knowledge of the laws of Nature, as surely
as the mists melt from the valley before the
rays of the morning sun. We have seen
how, throughout the wide domains of space,
time, and matter, law, uniform, universal,
and inexorable, reigns supreme; and there
is absolutely, no room for the interference
of any outside personal agency to sus
pend its operations. The last remnant
of supernaturalism, therefore, apart from
the Christian miracles which we shall
presently consider, has shrunk into that
doubtful and shady border-land of ghosts,
spiritualism and mesmerism, where vision
and fact, and partly real, partly imagin
ary, effects of abnormal nervous condi
tions, are mixed up in a nebulous haze
with a large dose of imposture and
credulity.
Even this region is being contracted
every day by every fresh revelation in a
police-court; in every fresh discovery, of
the laws which regulate the transmission
of nervous energy to and from the brain ;
and in the abnormal state which con
stitutes epilepsy and somnambulism, and
which enables an excited imagination to
produce physical effects, such as those
of drastic drugs on a patient who has
actually taken nothing but pills of harm
less paste.
.
.
The question of Christian miracles,
however, rests on a different and more
serious ground. They have been accepted
for ages as the foundation and proof of
a religion which has been for. nineteen
centuries that of the highest civilisation
and purest morality, and for this reason
alone they deserve the most reverent
treatment and the most careful con
sideration.
Of a large class of these miracles it
may be said that there is no reason to
doubt them, but none to consider them as
violations of law, or anything but . the
expression, in the language of the time,
qf natural effects and natural causes.
When a large class of maladies were
universally attributed to the agency of
evil spirits which had taken possession of
the patient’s body, it was inevitable that
�04
Modern science and modern thought
many cures would be effected, and that
these cures would be set down as the
casting-out of devils. In many cases also
a strong impulse communicated to the
brain may send a current along a nerve
which may temporarily, or even per
manently, restore motion to a paralysed
limb, or give fresh vitality to a paralysed
nerve. Thus, the lame may walk, the
dumb speak, and the blind see, with no
more occasion to invoke supernatural
agency than if the same effects had been
produced by a current of electricity from
a voltaic battery. There is no reason to
doubt that miracles of this sort have been
frequentlj wrought by saints and relics,
and that even at the present day they
may possibly be wrought at Lourdes and
other shrines of Catholic faith. Only at
the present day we scrutinise the evi
dence and count the failures, and admit
nothing to be supernatural which can be
explained as within a fair average result
of exceptional cases under the operation
of natural laws. In like manner we set
down all visions or apparitions as having
. no objective reality if they can be ex
plained by the known laws of dreams or
other vivid revivals of impressions, on the
brain of the person who perceives them.
There remains the class of really super
natural miracles, or miracles which could
by no possibility have occurred as they
are described, unless some outward agency
had suspended or reversed the laws of
Nature. As regards such miracles, a
knowledge of these laws enormously in
creases the difficulty in believing in them
as actual facts. Take for instance the
conversion of water into wine. When
nothing was known of the constitution
of water or of wine, except that they
were both fluids, it was comparatively
easy to accept the statement that such a
conversion really took place. But now
we know that water consists of oxygen
and hydrogen combined in a certain
simple proportion, and of these and
nothing else; while wine contains in
addition nitrogen, carbon, and other ele
ments combined in very complicated
proportions. If the water was not really
changed into wine, but only seemed to
be so, it was a mere juggling trick, such
as the Wizard of the North can show us
any day for a shilling. But if it was
really changed, something must have
been created out of nothing to supply
the elements which were not in the
original water and were not put into it
from without.
Again, those who have followed the
question of spontaneous generation, and
witnessed the failure of the ablest
chemists to produce the lowest forms of
protoplasmic life from inorganic ele
ments, will hardly believe that such a
highly organised form of life as a serpeilt
could have been really produced from a
wooden rod. And this, be it observed,
not only by Moses the prophet of God,
but by the jugglers who amused the
court of Pharaoh by their conjuring
tricks ; and for an object of no greater
moment than to persuade a king to allow
some of his subjects to emigrate, which
object, moreover, notwithstanding the
miracle, entirely failed, as the king
simply “hardened his heart” and per
sisted in his refusal.
But passing from this class of grotesque
and incredible miracles, let us examine
those which may be called worthy
miracles; that is, miracles disfigured by
no absurd details, and wrought for ob
jects of sufficient importance to justify
supernatural interference, if ever such
interference were to take place. At the
head of such miracles must undoubtedly
be placed those of the Kesurrection of
Jesus. The appearances to the Apostles,
and above all the bodily Ascension to
heaven in the presence of more than 500
witnesses, were a fitting termination to
the drama of his life and sufferings, and
afforded a conclusive test of the fact
which was the foundation-stone of the
new religion.
“If Christ be not risen, then is our
preaching vain,” says St. Paul; and he
proceeds to argue that the whole ques
tion of the reality of a future life hinges
on the fact that Christ really rose from
the dead. His theory is that death came
into the world by the sin of the first
man, Adam, and has been destroyed and
swallowed up in immortality by the
victory of the second man, Christ. This
theory has, from that day to this, been
the key-stone of Christian theology.
There can be no doubt, therefore, that
if any miracle is true this must be the
one, and, on the other hand, if this
miracle cannot be established by suffi
cient proof, it is idle to discuss the evi
dence for other miracles. In order to go
to the root of the matter therefore, it
is necessary to consider, in a calm and
�MIRACLES
judicial spirit, the evidence upon which
this-miracle of the Resurrection really
In the first place we must consider
what sort of evidence is required to prove
a miracle. Clearly it must be evidence
of the most cogent and unimpeachable
character, far more conclusive than would
be sufficient to establish, an ordinary
occurrence. The discoveries of modern
science have shown beyond the possi
bility of doubt that the miracles which
former ages fancied they saw around
them every day had no real existence,
and that, except possibly in the solitary
instance of the Christian miracles, there
has been no supernatural interference
with the laws of Nature throughout the
enormous ranges of space, time, and
matter. It may be going too far to say
with Hume that no amount of evidence
can prove a miracle, since it must always
remain more probable that human testi
mony should be false than that the laws
of Nature should have been violated.
But it is not going too far to say that
the evidence to establish such a viola
tion must be altogether overwhelming
and open to no other possible construc
tion.
Consider, now, the significance of the
statement that a dead man rose in the
body from the grave, ate, drank, and
held intercourse with . living persons.
There are some 1,500 millions of human
beings living in the world, and somewhat
more than three generations in each
century, that is, there are some 3,600
millions of deaths per century, and this
has been going on for some forty or fifty
centuries, or longer. It is certain, there
fore, that at least 150,000 millions of
deaths must have taken place, and a
large proportion of these under circum
stances involving the most heart-rending
separations, and the most intense longing
on the part of the dying to give, and of the
living to receive, some token of affection
from beyond the grave. And yet no such
. token has ever been given, and the veil
which separates the dead from the.living
has never been lifted, except possibly in
one case out of this 150,000,000,000. Surely
it must require very different evidence
to establish the reality of such an excep
tion, from that which would be sufficient
to prove the signature to a will or the
date of a battle.
But just when the new views opened
95
up by modem science made it more diffi
cult "to believe in miracles, and more
exacting in the demand for stronger evi
dence to support them, the old evidence
became greatly weakened. The main evi
dence which satisfied our forefathers was
that the Bible was inspired, and that it
asserted the reality of the miracles. This,
when critically examined, was really no
evidence at all, for how did we know that
the Bible was inspired ? Because it was
proved to be so by miracles. The argu
ment was therefore in a circle, and re
sembled that of the Hindoo mythology,
which rested the earth on an elephant
and the elephant on a tortoise. But what
did the tortoise rest on ?
To examine the matter more closely,
what is the meaning of inspiration ? It
means that a certain book was not
written, as all other books in the world
have been written, by writers who were
fallible, and whose statements and opi
nions, however admirable in the main
and made in perfect good faith, inevit
ably reflected the views of. the age in
which they lived and contained matters
which subsequent ages found to be
obsolete or erroneous, but that this
particular book was miraculously dic
tated by an infallible God, and there
fore absolutely and for all time true.
But, as a chain cannot be stronger than
its weakest link, if any one of these
statements was proved not to be true, the
theory of inspiration failed, and human
reason was called on to decide by the
ordinary methods, whether any, and if
any, what parts of the volume were
inspired and what uninspired.
Now it is absolutely certain that
portions of the Bible, and those import
ant portions relating to the creation of
the world and of man, are not true, and
therefore not inspired. It is certain that
the sun, moon, stars, and earth, were not
created as the author of Genesis supposed
them to have been created, and that the
first man, whose Paleolithic implements
are found in caves and river gravels of
immense antiquity, was a very different
being from the Adam who was created in
God’s likeness and placed in the Garden
of Eden. It is certain that no universal
deluge ever took place since man existed,
and that the animal life existing in the
world, and shown by fossil remains to
have existed for untold ages, could by no
possibility have originated from pairs of
�96
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
animals living together for forty days in
the ark.
Another test of inspiration is afforded
by the presence of contradictions. If
one writer says that certain events
occurred in Galilee, while another says
that they took place at Jerusalem, they
cannot both be inspired. They may be
both reminiscences of real events, but
they are obviously imperfect and not in
spired reminiscences, and require to be
tested by the same process of reasoning
as we should apply in endeavouring to
unravel the truth from the confused
and contradictory evidence of conflicting
historians.
Inspiration is clearly as much a miracle
as any of the miracles which it relates,
and there is only one way conceivable by
which it could be proved, so as to afford
a solid basis for faith and give addi
tional evidence in support of the super
natural occurrences said to have taken
place ; that would be if it carried with
it internal evidence of its truth. Such
evidence might be afforded in one
way, and in one only—by prophecy. If
any volume written many centuries ago
contained a clear, definite, and distinct
prophecy of future events, which the
writer could by no possibility have known
or conjectured, such a prophecy must
have been dictated, by some agency
different from anything known in the
ordinary course of nature; and future
ages, seeing the fulfilment of the pro
phecy, could scarcely doubt that the
volume which contained it was inspired.
But such a prophecy must be quite de
finite, so that there could be no doubt as
to whether it had been fulfilled or not,
and must not consist of vague and mystic
utterances, in which future believers
might find meanings, probably never
thought of by the /prophets themselves,
confirming the faith which, from other
considerations, they thought it a sin to
disbelieve. Nor must it consist of pas
sionate aspirations for deliverance, and
predictions of the downfall of cruel con
querors, wrung from the hearts of an
oppressed people in times of imminent
danger and crushing despair; because
such predictions have been partly veri
fied and partly transformed in future
ages, so as to receive a new and spiritual
significance.
There is one prophecy which affords a
test by which to judge of the value of all
others as a proof of inspiration, for it is
perfectly distinct and definite, and comes
from the highest authority—that of the
approaching end of the world contained
in the New Testament.
St. Matthew reports Jesus to have said :
“ For the Son of man shall come in the
glory of his Father with his angels ; and
then he shall reward every man according
to his works.
“Verily I say unto you, There be some
standing here, which shall not taste of
death, till they seethe Son of man coming
in his kingdom.”
It is certain that all standing there did
taste death without seeing the Son of
Man coming with his angels. The con
clusion is irresistible, that either Jesus
was mistaken in speaking these words,
or else Matthew was mistaken in sup
posing that he spoke them.
St. Paul predicts the same event in
still more definite terms. He says :
“For this we say unto you by the
word of the Lord, that we which are
alive and remain unto the coming of the
Lord shall not prevent them which are
asleep.
“For the Lord himself shall descend
from heaven with a shout, with the voice
of the archangel, and with the trump of
God : and the dead in Christ shall rise
first:
“Then we which are alive and remain
shall be caught up together with them
in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the
air.”
Here is the most distinct prediction
possible, both of the event which was to
happen, and of the limit of time within
which it. was to take place; and, to give
it additional force, it is specially de
clared to be an inspired prophecy uttered
as “ the word of God.”
The time is distinctly stated to be in
the lifetime, of some of the existing
generation, including Paul himself, who
is to be one of the “ we which are alive,”
who are not to “ prevent,” or gain any
precedence over, those who have “ fallen
asleep,” or died, in the interval before
Christ’s coming. By no possibility can
this be construed to mean a coming at
some indefinite future time, long after all
those had died who were to remain and
be caught up alive into the clouds. St.
Paul doubtless meant what he said, and
firmly believed that he was uttering an
inspired prophecy which would certainly
�MIRACLES
be fulfilled. But it is certain that it was
not fulfilled. Paul and all Paul’s con
temporaries have been dead. for 1,800
years, and the shout, the voice of the
archangel, and the trump .of God, have
never been heard. What is this but an
absolutely irresistible demonstration that
prophecy not only fails to prove inspira
tion, but, on the contrary, by its failure
disproves it, and shows that St. Matthew
and St. Paul were as liable to make mis
takes as any of the hundreds of religious
writers who, in later times, have prophe
sied the approaching end of the world or
advent of the millennium.
Turning to the evidence for miracles,
this must be taken on its own merits,
without aid from any preconceived theory
that it is sinful to scrutinise it because
the books in which it is contained are
inspired. Applying to it impartially the
ordinary rules of evidence, let us see
what it amounts to for that which is
really the test case of all other miracles,
that of the Resurrection.
The witnesses are St. Paul and the
authors of the four Gospels according to
St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke, and St.
John. Of these, St. Paul is in some
respects the best. When a witness is
called into court to give evidence, the
first question asked is, “Who are you?
Give your name and description.’' St.
Paul alone gives a clear answer to this
question. There is no doubt that he was
an historical personage, who lived at
the time and in the manner described in
the Acts of the Apostles, and that the
Epistle to the Corinthians is a genuine
letter written by him. In this Epistle
he says :
“For I delivered unto you first of all
that which I also received, how that
Christ died for our sins according to the
scriptures ;
“ And that he was buried, and that he
rose again the third day according to the
scriptures :
“ And that he was seen of Cephas, then
of the twelve :
“ After that, he was seen of above five
hundred brethren at once ; of whom the
greater part remain unto this present, but
some are fallen asleep.
“After that, he was seen of James ;
then of all the apostles.
“ And last of all he was seen of me also,
as of one born out of due time.”
This is undoubtedly very distinct
97
evidence that the appearances described
by St. Paul were currently believed in
the circle of early Christians at Jerusalem
within twenty years of their alleged
occurrence.
This is strong testimony, but it is
weakened by several considerations. In
the first place, we know that Paul’s
frame of mind in regard to miracles was
such as to make it certain that he would
take them for granted, and not attempt
to examine critically the evidence on
which they were founded, and this was
doubtless the frame of mind of those
from whom he received the accounts.
Again, he places all the appearances on
the same footing as that to himself,
which was clearly of the nature of a
vision, or strong internal impression,
rather than of an objective reality.
Upon this vital point, whether the
appearances which led to the belief in
Christ’s resurrection were subjective or
objective—-that is, were visions or phy
sical realities—Paul’s testimony therefore
favours the former view, which is quite
consistent with the laws of Nature and
with experience in other cases.
And finally, St. Paul’s account of the
appearances is altogether different from
those of the other witnesses, viz., the four
Evangelists.
When we come to consider the testi
mony of the four Gospels we are con
fronted by a first difficulty : Who and
what are the witnesses ? What is really
known of them is this : Until the middle
of the second century they are never
quoted, and were apparently unknown.
Somewhere about 150 A.D., for the exact
date is hotly disputed, we find the first
quotations from them, and from that
time forwards the quotations become
more frequent and their authority in*
creases, until finally they superseded all
the other narratives current in the early
Church, such as the “Gospel of the
Hebrews,” and the “ Pastor ” of Hermas,
and are embodied in the New Testament
canon. From the earliest time where
there is any distinct recognition of them,
they appear to have been attributed to
the Evangelists whose names they bear,
viz., Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
When we look to internal evidence to
give us some further clue as to their
authorshipand date, we at oncemeet with
a great difficulty. The three Gospels of
SS. Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are called
H
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MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN INOUGHT
“Synoptic,” because they give what is
substantially the same narrative of the
same facts arranged in the same order,
and the same sayings and parables giving
the same view of the character and teach
ing of Jesus. In whole passages this
resemblance is not merely substantial
but literal, so that w’e cannot suppose it
to arise merely from following the same
oral tradition, and cannot doubt that the
authors must have copied verbatim either
from one another or from some common
manuscript. But then comes-in this per
plexing circumstance.. After passages
of almost literal identity we have state
ments which are inconsistent with those
of the other Gospels, and narratives
of important events which are either
altogether wanting or quite differently
described in them.
Thus, in the vital matter of the Resur
rection, Matthew says that the disciples
were especially commanded to “ go into
Galilee ; there shall you see him,” and
that they did go accordingly, and there
saw Jesus on a mountain where he had
appointed them to meet him ; while Luke
distinctly says that “he commanded
them that they should not depart from
Jerusalem,” and describes them as remain
ing there and witnessing a number of
appearances, including the crowning
miracle of the Ascension (the same,
doubtless, as that which St. Paul describes
as having taken place in the presence of
more than 500 witnesses), of which Mat
thew, Mark, and John apparently know
nothing. And yet the final injunction
of Jesus to preach the gospel in his name
to all nations is given in almost the same
words in Matthew, Mark, and Luke,
showing that they must have had before
them some common tradition describing
the course of events after the Crucifixion.
So in minor matters, Mark mentions
the cure of one blind man, Bartimseus,
who sat by the roadside begging; in
Matthew there are two blind men, and
yet the dialogue that passed—“ What will
ye that I shall do unto you?” “Lord,
that our eyes may be opened ”—is almost
word for word the same. It would seem
that if they did copy from an original
manuscript, they felt themselves free to
take any liberties with it they liked, in
the way of omission and alteration.
The only light thrown on this per
plexing question of the origin of the
Gospels Is that afforded by the celebrated
passage from Papias quoted by Eusebius.
Papias was Bishop of Hieropolis, in Asia
Minor, and suffered martyrdom, when an
aged man, about the year 164. He was
therefore brought-up in personal con
tact, not with the Apostles themselves,
but with those who, like Polycarp and
others, had been their immediate dis
ciples, and had known and conversed
with them. In the passage quoted he
states his preference for oral tradition
over written documents, and his reasons
for it. He says : “ If I found some one
who had followed the first presbyters, I
asked him what he had heard from them :
what said Andrew or Peter, or Philip,
Thomas, James, John, or Matthew ; and
what said Andrew and John the Presbyter,
who were also disciples of the Lord; for
I thought I could not derive as much
advantage from books as from the living
and abiding oral tradition.” And he goes
on to give his reasons for not attaching
more weight to the two written sources
of information which were evidently best
known and looked upon as of most
authority in his time, viz., the Gospels
according to St. Matthew and St, Mark.
He says that Matthew wrote down in
Hebrew the Logia, or principal sayings
and discourses of the Lord, “ which every
one translated as he best could,” evidently
implying that these numerous trans
lations were, in his opinion, loose, in
accurate, and unreliable. As regards
Mark, he says that “ Mark, who had not
known the Lord personally, and had
never heard Him, followed Peter later as
his interpreter ; and when Peter, in the
course of his teaching, mentioned any of
the doings or sayings of Christ, took care
to note them down exactly, but without
any order, and without making a con
tinuous narrative of the discourses of the
Lord, which did not enter into the inten
tion of the Apostle. Thus Mark let
nothing pass, jotting down a certain
number of facts as Peter mentioned them,
but having no other care than to omit
nothing of what he heard, and to change
nothing in it.”
This testimony of Papias is very valu
able and very instructive. In the first
place, it seems conclusive that the Gospel
of St. John was not known to him, and
not received in the early Christian
Churches of Asia Minor as a work of
authority. Had it been so received,
Papias must have known of it, brought
�MIRACLES
up as he was at the feet of men who had
been John’s disciples, and bishop of a
Church closely connected with those of
which, if there is any faith in tradition,
John had been the patriarch and principal
founder. And if he had known of such
a written Gospel as that of St. John, and
believed it to have been really written
by the “ beloved disciple ; ” the Apostle
second only, if second, to St. Peter; it is
inconceivable that he should nave ex
pressed such an unqualified preference
for oral tradition, and made such an
almost contemptuous reference to written
documents. He must have said: “lor,
with the exception of the Gospel of the
blessed John, I found that little was to be
got from books?'
It seems clear, therefore, that although
the Gospel of St. John may contain
genuine reminiscences of an early date,
and possibly some which really came
from the Apostle himself, the work in its
present form could not have been written
by him, and must have been compiled at
such a late date as to have been unknown
in the Christian Churches of the East in
the time of Papias.
The same remark applies to the
Gospel of St. Luke, of which Papias has
equally no knowledge, and which, from
internal evidence, appears to be a later
edition of the two earlier Gospels, or of
the original manuscripts from which they
were taken, altered in places to meet
objections of a later date, as where the
injunction to “go into Galilee; there
shall ye see him,” is changed into “as he
spake unto you when he was yet in
Galilee,” obviously to reconcile the state
ment with the subsequent belief that the
Ascension took place at Jerusalem.
There remain the two original Gospels
according to St. Matthew and St. Mark.
Volumes of erudition have been written
to try and reconcile them with one
another, and with the other two Gospels,
and to explain the extraordinary resem
blances and no less extraordinary differ
ences. Translations have been heaped on
translations, and successive editions and
revisions piled on one another until the
edifice toppled over by its own weight, but
after all, we have nothing better to rely on
than the statement of Papias, which there
is no reason to mistrust. The basis of the
three Synoptic Gospels was probably a
collection of facts and anecdotes written
down in Greek by Mark, and of discourses
99
wi-itten in Hebrew by Matthew. These
have been worked up subsequently, at
unknown dates, and by unknown authors,
aided possibly by oral traditions, into
connected narratives or biographies of
the life and teachings of the Founder of
the religion.
Possibly, though by no means certainly,
we have in the present Gospel according
to St. Matthew the nearest approach to
the original Logia or doctrinal discourses,
and in the present Mark the nearest
approach to the original notes recorded
by Mark from the dictation of St. Peter.
As regards the Gospel according to St.
John, it appears perfectly clear, both
from the silence of Papias, the absence
of any reference to it by other early
Christian Fathers until the end of the
second century, and still more from
internal evidence, that it could not
possibly have been, written by the
Apostle whose name it bears. John, as
we know from St. Paul’s Epistles, was
one of the pillars of the Christian Church
of Jerusalem, whose doctrine was in all
respects Hebraic, and who opposed the
larger idea that a man could be a
Christian without first becoming a Jew.
The writer of the Gospel is not only
ignorant of matters which must have
been well known to every Jew, but he is
positively prejudiced against Judaism,
and represents it in an unfavourable
light. His narrative of the events of the
life of Jesus, including the miracles, is
totally different from that of the Synop
tics, and his view of his character and
report of his speeches wide as the poles
asunder. To the Synoptics Jesus is the
man-Messiah foretold by the prophets ; to
the author of John he is the “Logos,”
the incarnation of a metaphysical attri
bute of the Deity.
The terse and simple clearness of his
sayings recorded by the first, is exchanged
in the latter for an involved and cumbrous
phraseology reminding one of a Papal
Encyclical. The amiablity and “sweet
reasonableness” of the Jesus of the
Synoptics, have become acrimonious un
reasonableness and egotistical self-glori
fication in many of the long harangues
which are introduced on the most
unlikely occasions in the fourth Gospel.
It is evident, therefore, that this
Gospel can afford no aid towards a
critical examination of contemporary
I evidence, and that for this we must look
1
H 2
�100
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
almost entirely to such remains of early
records as are preserved in the Gospels of
St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke.
With these data, how does the evidence
stand as regards the miracle of the
Resurrection which is the test case of all
alleged miracles ?
It is important to observe that the
oldest manuscripts of the Gospel of St.
Mark stop at the Sth verse of the last
chapter, and that the subsequent verses,
9—20, have every appearance of being
a later addition made to reconcile this
Gospel better with the prevailing belief
and with the other Gospels. Comment
ators discover a difference in the style
and language, and the appearances of
Jesus after his resurrection are described
in vague and general language, very
different from the distinct details given
of them in the other Gospels, and in
consistent with the formal statement
twice repeated in the genuine Mark
that they were to take place in Galilee.
Moreover, if these verses were really in
the original Gospel, it is inconceivable
how they should have dropped-out in
the oldest manuscripts, while it is per
fectly conceivable how they should have
been added at a later period, when the
Fathers of the Church began to occupy
themselves with the task of harmonising
the different Gospels.
But if the genuine Mark really termin
ated with the Sth verse, not only is there
no confirmation of the four miraculous
appearances, including the Ascension,
recorded by St. Paul as being currently
believed by the early Christians within
twenty years, of their occurrence, but
there is positively no mention of any ap
pearance at all. A young man, clothed
in white, tells three women who went
to the tomb that Jesus is risen, and that
they were to tell his disciples and Peter
that they would see him in Galilee; an
injunction which was not carried out, for
the women “were afraid, neither said they
anything to any man.”
in St. Matthew the young man has be
come an angel, and as the women return
from the tomb Jesus met them and said,
“All hail,” repeating the injunction to
tell the disciples to go into Galilee, where
the eleven accordingly went into a moun
tain where Jesus had appointed them,
and “when they saw him they worshipped
him : but some doubted.” This is the
whole of Matthew's testimony.
St. Luke, again, in his Gospel and Acts,
amplifies the miraculous appearances
almost up to the extent described by
St. Paul, though with considerable dif
ferences both of addition and omission.
The three women become a number of
women ; the one angel or young man
in shining clothes, two; the appearance
to the women disappears; Peter is
mentioned as running to the sepulchre
but departing without seeing anything
special except that the body had been
removed; the first appearance recorded
is that to the two disciples walking
from Emmaus, who knew him not until
their eyes were opened by the breaking
of bread, when he vanished; the next
appearance is to the eleven sitting at
meat with closed doors; and finally
there is the crowning miracle of the
Ascension, stated somewhat vaguely in
the Gospel, but with more detail in the
Acts, describing how he was taken up
to heaven and received in a cloud, in
the sight of numerous witnesses. This
is probably the same miracle as that
mentioned by St. Paul as having occurred
in the presence of “ more than five hun
dred brethren at once, of whom the
greater part remain alive unto this
present; ” though he mentions two sub
sequent appearances—one to James and
a second to all the Apostles—of which
no trace is found in any other canonical
narative. . It is to be noted that all St.
Luke’s miracles are expressly stated to
have occurred at Jerusalem, where Jesus
had commanded his disciples to remain,
and are, therefore, in direct contradic
tion with the statements of Matthew
and Mark, that whatever occurred was
in Galilee, where the disciples were ex
pressly enjoined to go.
When we come to St. John, we find
the first part of the narrative of the
other . Gospels repeated with several
variations and a great many additional
details. Mary Magdalene is alone, and
finds the stone removed from the sepul
chre. She tells Peter and John, who
run together to the tomb • John outruns
Peter, but Peter first enters and sees the
napkin and linen grave-clothes, but
nothing miraculous, and they return to
their homes. Mary remains weeping and
sees, first two angels, and then Jesus him
self, whom she at first does not recognise,
and mistakes for the gardener. The walk
to Emmaus is not mentioned, and the
�MIRACLES
next appearance is to the disciples sitting
with closed doors. Another takes place
after eight days, for the purpose of con
vincing Thomas of the reality of the
resurrection in the actual body, and here
apparently the narrative closes with the
appropriate ending, “That these things
are written that ye may believe that
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of. God ; and
that believing ye might have life through
his name.” But a supplementary chapter
is added, describing a miraculous draught
of fishes and appearance to Peter, John,
and five other disciples at the Sea of
Tiberias in Galilee, in which the com
mand is given to Peter to “Feed my
sheep,” and an explanation is introduced
of what was doubtless a sore perplexity
to the early Christian world, the death
of St. John before the coming of the
Messiah.
These are the depositions of the five
witnesses, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John,
and Paul, in which the verdict “ proven”
or “ not proven ” must rest in regard to
the issue “miracle” or “no miracle.”
The mere statement of them is enough
to show how insufficient they are . to
establish any ordinary fact, to say nothing
of a fact so entirely opposed to all ex
perience as the return to life of one who
had really died. Suppose it were a
question of proving the signature of a
will, what chance would a plaintiff have
of obtaining a verdict who produced
five witnesses, four of whom could give
no certain account of themselves, while
the fifth spoke only from hearsay, and
the details to which they deposed were
hopelessly inconsistent with one another
as regards time, place, and other par
ticulars ? The account of the Ascension
brings this contradiction into the most
glaring light. According to St. Luke and
St. Paul this miracle took place at Jeru
salem, in the presence of a large number,
St. Paul says over 500 persons, before
whose eyes Jesus was lifted-up in the
body into the clouds, and more than half,
or over 250 of these witnesses, remained
alive for at least twenty years afterwards
to testify to the fact. Consider what this
implies. Such an event occurring
publicly in the presence of 500 wit
nesses is not like an appearance to a
few chosen disciples in a room with
closed doors : m
have been the talk
of all Jerusalem.
The prophet who had shortly before
101
entered the city in triumphal procession
amidst the acclamations of the multi
tude, and who, a few days afterwards,
by some sudden revolution of popular
feeling, had become the object of mob
hatred ; who had been solemnly tried,
condemned, and executed; that this
prophet had been restored to life and
visibly translated in the body to
heaven in the presence of more than 500
witnesses, must inevitably have caused
an immense sensation. However prone
the age might be to believe in miracles,
such a miracle as this must have startled
every one. The most incredulous must
have been converted ; the High Priest
and Pharisees must, in self-defence, have
instituted a rigid inquiry ; the Proconsul
must have reported to Rome ; Josephus,
who, not many years afterwards, wrote
the annals of the Jews during this
period with considerable detail, must
have known of the occurrence and men
tioned it.
And above all, Matthew, Mark, and
John must have been aware of the oc
currence ; and in all probability, Mat
thew, John, and Peter, from whom Mark
derived his information, must have been
among the 500 eye-witnesses. How then
is it possible that, if the event really
occurred, they not only should not have'
mentioned it, but partly by their silence,
and partly by their statement that they
went into Galilee, have virtually contra
dicted it. The Ascension, if true, was a
capital fact, not only crowning and com
pleting the drama of Christ’s life which
they were narrating with its most tri
umphant and appropriate ending, but
confirming, in the strongest possible
manner, the doctrine for which they were
contending, that he was not an ordin
ary man or ordinary prophet, but th®
Messiah, the Son of God, who. had
redeemed the world from its original
curse and conquered sin and death,
One might as well suppose that any
one writing the life of Wellington
would omit the Battle of Waterloo as
that any one writing the life of Christ
would knowingly and wilfully omit all
mention of the Ascension. It must be
evident that whoever wrote the original
manuscripts from which the Gospels of
Matthew, Mark, and John were compiled,
must either never have heard of the
Ascension, or having heard of it did not
believe it to be true. This must algo
�102
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
apply to the other miraculous appear
ances said to have occurred at Jerusalem.
How was it possible for writers who knew
of them to make no mention of them,
and virtually contradict them by assert
ing that they did not remain at Jeru
salem, but went to Galilee in obedience
to a command to that effect, and that
the final parting of Jesus from his dis
ciples took place there ?
The. most unaccountable fact is the
total silence of Mark, who was nearest
the fountain-head if he derived his infor
mation from St. Peter, as to these mira
culous appearances. If his Gospel ended
with verse 8 of chapter, xvi., as the oldest
manuscripts and the internal evidence
of the postscripts afterwards added
appear to prove, there is absolutely no
statement of a,ny such appearance at all.
Nothing is said but that three women
found the tomb empty and saw a young
man clothed in white, who told them
that Jesus had risen and gone into
Galilee. Now, if there is one fact more
certain than another about miraculous
legends, it is that as long as they have
any vitality at all, they increase and
multiply and do not dwindle and dimi
nish.. We have an excellent example of
this in the way in which a whole cycle of
miracles grew up in a short time about
the central fact of the martyrdom of St.
Thomas a Becket.
If, therefore, Matthew and Mark knew
nothing of the series of miracles, which
from St. Paul’s statement we must assume
to have been currently believed by the
early Christians twenty years after the
death of Christ, the only possible ex
planation is that their Gospels were com
piled from narratives which had been
written at a still earlier date, before these
miracles had been heard of.
We must suppose that Mark really
wrote down what he heard from Peter,
and that Peter, being a truthful man,
though he probably had a sincere general
belief that Christ had risen, declined to
state facts which he knew had never
occurred. This is in entire accordance
with what we find in the whole history
of ecclesiastical miracles, from those
recorded in Scripture down to those
of St. Francis of Assisi in the thirteenth
century, and of St. Francis Xavier in the
sixteenth. Innumerable as are the ac
counts of miracles said to have been
wrought by relics or by other holy per
sons, there is no instance of any state
ment by any credible person that he
had himself worked a real miracle. St.
Augustine describes in detail many won
derful miracles, including resurrections
from the dead, which he said had been
wrought to his own knowledge, within
his own diocese of Hippo, by the relics
of the martyr Stephen. In fact, he says
that the number of miracles thus wrought
within the last two years since these
relics had been at Hippo, was at least
seventy. This testimony is far more
precise than any for the Gospel miracles,
for it comes from a well-known man of
high , character, who was on the spot at
the time,, and speaks of these and many
other miracles having occurred to his
own knowledge. But he never asserts that
he himself had ever wrought a miracle.
In like manner Paulinus relates many
miracles of his master, St. Ambrose, in
cluding one of raising the dead ; but
Ambrose himself never asserts that he
performed a miracle. Neither does St.
Francis of Assisi, or any of the 25,000
saints of the Roman calendar to whom
miracles are attributed.
Even Jesus himself seems, on several
occasions, to have disclaimed the power
of working miracles, as when he refused
to comply with the perfectly reasonable
request of the Jews to attest his Messiahship by a sign, if he wished them to
believe in it.
There is every reason, therefore, to
believe that when we find narratives
making no mention of important miracles
which were afterwards commonly re
ceived, they must be taken from records
of an earlier date, and proceeding directly
from those who, if the miracles were true,
would have been the principal eye-wit
nesses to vouch for them. But, if this be
so, how near to the fountain head do
these narratives carry us 1 We lose the
miracles, but in compensation we get
what may be considered fresh and lively
narratives of the life and conversation
of . Jesus, and confirmation both of his
being an historical personage, and of the
many anecdotes and sayings which de
pict his character, and bring him before
us as he really lived, the mythical
theory cannot stand which found in every
saying and action an ex post facto attempt
to show that. he. fulfilled prophecies and
realised Messianic expectations. We can
see him walking through the fields on a
�MIRACLES
Sabbath afternoon with his disciples,
plucking ears of corn, and rebuking the
Pharisees for their puritanical adherence
to the letter of the observance of that
day : we can see him taking little
children in his arms, and talking fami
liarly at the well with the woman of
Samaria ; we can hear him preaching the
Sermon on the Mount, and dropping
parables from his mouth, like precious
pearls of instruction in love, charity, and
all Christian virtues. We can sympathise
with the agony in the garden as with a
real scene, and hear the despairing cry,
My God, my God, why hast thou for
saken me?”
...
...
It seems to me that faith m the reality
of scenes like these is worth a good deal
of faith in the metaphysical conundrums
of the Athanasian Creed, or in the actual
occurrence of incredible miracles.
Another argument in favour of the
early date and genuine character of the
primitive records which have been worked
up in the Synoptic Gospels, is afforded by
the sayings attributed to Jesus. It is
impossible to imagine that these could be
the invention of a later age, when theo
logical questions of faith and doctrine
had absorbed almost the entire attention
of the Christian world. We have already
seen how wide is the difference, both as
regards style and phase of thought, be
tween the discourses reported in the
fourth Gospel and those of the Synoptics.
No one writing in the second or towards
the end of the. first century, or even
earlier in the religious atmosphere of St.
Paul’s Epistles, could have composed the
Sermon on the Mount or the Lord s
Prayer. The parables and maxims, in
stead of teaching nothing but a pure and
sublime morality in simple language,
must have contained references to the
doctrine of the Logos, and the disputes
between the Jewish and the Gentile
Christians. Even if these discourses had
passed long through the fluctuating
medium of oral tradition, they must,
when finally reduced to writing, have
shown many traces of the theological
questions which agitated the Christian
world. The only explanation is that
Apostles like St. Matthew, and St. Peter
through Mark, really recorded these say
ings in writing while they were fresh in
memory, and that their authority secured
them from adulteration.
At the same time it must be borne m
103
mind that while portions of the original
narrative appear to carry us back very
near to the fountain-head, a large part
of the Gospels in their present form is
evidently of much later date and of un
certain origin. It is clear that Papias,
writing about the year 150, knew nothing
of the Gospels of Luke and John^ and
nothing of those of Matthew and Mark
in their present form. The discourses of
Matthew and the disconnected notes, of
Mark, to which he refers, were something
very different from the complete histories
of the life and teaching of Jesus con
tained in the present Gospels. It is
equally clear that Justin Martyr , and
Hegesippus, who wrote about the middle
of tiie second century, and made frequent
quotations of the sayings and doings of
the Lord, made them, not from the pre
sent canonical Gospels, but from. other
sources relating the same thing’s in dif
ferent order and different language. ‘ A
Gospel according to the Hebrews ” and
“ Memoirs of the Apostles ” seem to have
been the principal sources from which
they quoted.
.
It is evident however, that during the
first two centuries there were a great
number of so-called Gospels and Apos
tolic writings floating about in the
Christian world along with oral tradi
tions. The author of Luke tells us this
expressly, and later writers refer to a
number of works now unknown or classed
as apocrypha], and complain of forged
Gospels circulated by heretics. None of
these writings, however, seem to have
had any peculiar authority or been con
sidered as inspired Scripture, winch term
is exclusively confined to the Old Testa
ment, until the middle of the second
century.
At length, by a sort of law of the
survival of the fittest, the present.Gospels
acquired an increasing authority and
superseded the other works which had
competed, with them; but the selection
was determined to a great extent, not by
those principles of criticism which would
now be applied to historical records, but
by doctrinal considerations of the sup
port they gave to prevalent opinions. In
other words, orthodoxy and not authen
ticity was the test applied, and it is pro
bable that no Christian Father of the
second or third century would have hesi
tated to reject an early manuscript trace
able very clearly to an Apostle, in favour
�104
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
of a later compilation of doubtful origin,
if the former contained passages which
seemed to favour heretical views, while the
latter omitted those passages, or altered
them in a sense favourable to orthodoxy.
To sum up the matter, it appears that
apart from the fact that the antecedent
improbability of miracles has been enor
mously increased by the constant and
concurrent proofs of the permanence of
the laws of Nature, the evidence for
tnose recorded in the New Testament,
with which alone we are concerned is
rendered null and void by the discordant
reports of hearsay witnesses.
CHAPTER IX.
CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT MIRACLES
Practical and Theoretical Christianity—Ex
ample and Teaching of Christ—Christian
.
Moral Objections — Inconsistent
with Tacts—Must be accepted as Parables
- t ail and Redemption—Old Creeds must
be Transformed or Die—Mahometanism—
Decay of Faith—Balance of Advantages—
Religious Wars and Persecutions—Intoler
ance—Sacrifice—Prayer—Absence of Theo
logy hi Synoptic Gospels—Opposite Pole to
Christianity—Courage and Self-relianceBelief in God and a Future Life—Based
mainly on Christianity—Science gives no
Answer—Nor Metaphysics—So-called In
tuitions—Development of Idea of GodBest Proof afforded by Christianity—Evo
lution is Transforming it—Reconciliation
of Religion and Science.
their own proof with them, and such
parables as that of the Good Samaritan
require no support, either from historical
evidence or from supernatural signs to
come home to every heart whether in the
hrst or m the nineteenth century. The
tact that the son of a Jewish mechanic
Loin in a small town of an obscure pro
vince, without any special aid from posi
tion, education, or other outward circum
stance, succeeded, by the sheer force of
the purity and loveliness of his life and
teaching, m captivating all hearts and
founding a religion which for nineteen
centuries has been the main civilising
influence of the world and the faith of
its noblest men and noblest races : this
tact I say, is of itself so admirable and
wonderful as not to require the aid of
vulgar miracles and metaphysical puzzles
in order to be recognised as worthy of
the highest reverence. And when such a
lite was crowned by a death which re
mains the highest type of what is noblest
m man, self-sacrifice in the cause of truth
and for the good of others, we may well
call it divine, and not quarrel with any
language or any forms of worship which
tend to keep it in view and hold it up to
life W°rld aS an inducement to a higher
Miracles are not only unnecessary for
a faith of this description, but are a
positive hindrance to it. To put it at
the lowest, miracles, in an age which has
learned the laws of Nature, must always
be open to grave doubts, and thus throw
doubt on the reliability of the narratives
which are supposed to depend on them.
Can Christianity continue to exist with Moreover, the touching beauty and force
of example of the life of Jesus are almost
out miracles ?
. Io answer this question we must dis lost it he is evaporated into a sort of
supernatural being, totally unlike any
tinguish between practical and theoreti conceivable member of the human family
cal Christianity. The essence of practical
W e may strive to model our conduct at
Christianity consists in such a genuine
a humble distance on that of the man
acceptance of its moral teaching, and
love and reverence for the life and char Jesus, the carpenter’s son, whose father
and mother, brothers and
acter of its Founder, as may influence familiar figures in the streetssisters, were
of Nazareth
conduct, and be a guide and support
put hardly on that of a “Logos,” the
m life. Theoretical Christianity is that
metaphysical conception
which professes to teach a complete incarnation of aof the Deity, who existed
o. an attribute
theory of the creation of the world and
before all worlds and by whom all things
P.an’ °* khe relations between man and
were made.
his Creator, and of his position and
But, on the other hand, miracles are in
^e^-ny.la a future state of existence.
dispensable for the dogma, or theoretical
The former needs no miracles. The
side of Christian theology. Let us con
bermon on the Mount, and St. Paul’s
sider frankly what this dogma is, and
description of Christian charity? parry
now tar it is trite—that is, consistent or
�CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT MIRACLES
inconsistent with known and indisput
able facts.
The Christian dogma cannot be better
stated than in the words of St. Paul, who
was its first inventor, or, at any rate, the
first by whom it was elaborated into a
complete theory.
“For as in Adam all die, even so in
Christ shall all be made alive.”
This may be expanded into the follow
ing propositions :
1. That the Old Testament is miracu
lously inspired, and contains a literally
true account of the creation of the world
and of man.
2. That, in accordance with this ac
count, the material universe, earth, sun,
moon, and stars, and all living things on
the earth and in the seas, were created in
six days, after which God rested on the
seventh day.
3. That the first man, Adam, was
created in the image of God and after
His own likeness, and placed, with the
first woman, Eve, in the Garden of Eden,
where they lived for a time in a state of
innocence, and holding familiar converse
with God.
4. That by an act of disobedience they
fell from this high state, were banished
from the Garden, and sin and death were
inflicted as a penalty on them and their
descendants.
5. That after long ages, during which
mankind remained under this curse, God
sent His Son, who assumed human form,
and by His sacrifice on the cross appeased
God’s anger, removed the curse, and de
stroyed the last enemy, death, giving a
glorious resurrection and immortal life
to those who believed on Him.
This theory is a complete one, which
hangs together in all its parts, and of
which no link can be displaced without
affecting the others. It is the theory
which has been accepted by the Christian
world since its first promulgation ; and,
although expounded with metaphysical
refinements in the Athanasian Creed,
and set forth with all the gorgeous sur
roundings of poetical imagination in
Milton’s “ Paradise Lost,” it remains in
substance St. Paul’s theory, that “as in
Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all
be made alive.’’
It is obvious that this theory is open to
grave objections on moral grounds. It
is more in the character of a jealous
Oriental despot than of a loving and
105
merciful Father, to inflict such a punish
ment on hundreds of millions of un
offending creatures for an act of dis
obedience on the part of a remote
ancestor. And it is still more incon
sistent with our modern ideas of justice
and humanity to require the vicarious
sacrifice of an only Son as the condition
of forgiving the offence and removing the
curse.
Nevertheless it must be admitted that,
notwithstanding these objections, and
harsh as the theory is, it has had a
wonderful attraction for many of the
highest intellects and noblest nations.
It was the creed of Luther, Cromwell,
and Milton; and the inspiring spirit, of
Scotch Presbyterianism and English
Puritanism. It has inspired great men
and great deeds, and although responsible
for a good deal of persecution and
fanaticism, it must always be spoken
of with respect, as a creed which has had
a powerful effect in raising men’s minds
from lower to higher things, and has on
the whole done good work in its time.
But the question of its continuance as
a creed which it is possible for sincere
men to believe, as literally and his
torically true, depends not on wishes and
feelings, nor on reverence for the past,
but on hard facts. Is it or is it not con
sistent with what are now known to be
the real truths respecting the constitu
tion of the universe and the origin of
life and of man ?
To state this question is to answer it.
There is hardly one of the facts shown in
the preceding chapters to be the un
doubted results of modern science which
does not shatter to pieces the whole
fabric. It is as certain as that two and
two make four that the world was not
created in the manner described in
Genesis ; that the sun, moon, and stars
are not lights placed in the firmament
or solid crystal vault of heaven to give
light upon the earth ; that animals were
not all created in one or two days, and
spread over the earth from a. common
centre in Armenia, after having been
shut up in pairs for forty days in an ark,
during a universal deluge. And finally,
that man is not descended from an. Adam
created quite recently in God’s image,
and who fell from a high state by an act
of disobedience, but from a long series of
Palaeolithic ancestors, extending back
certainly into the Glacial and probably
�106
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
into the Tertiary period, who have not
fallen but progressed, and by a slow and
painful process of evolution have gradu
ally developed intelligence, language,
arts, and civilisation, from the very
rudest and most animal-like beginnings.
Belief in inspiration, the very key
stone of the system, becomes impossible
when it is shown that the accounts given
of such important matters in the writings
professing to be inspired are manifestly
untrue ; and when the ordinary rules of
criticism are brought to bear upon these
writings it is at once seen that they
are compilations of different ages from
various and uncertain sources.
The improbability of miracles is enor
mously increased by the proof of
the uniform operation of natural law
throughout the vast domains of space,
time, matter, and life; and where the
supernatural was formerly considered to
be a matter of every-day occurrence, it
has vanished step by step, until only the
last vestige of it is left in a possible
belief in some of the more important
and impressive miracles of the Christian
dispensation. Even this faint belief is
manifestly founded more on reverence
for^ tradition, and love of the religion
which the miracles are supposed to sup
port, than on any dispassionate view of
the evidence on which they rest. Tried
by the ordinary rules of evidence, it is
apparent that it is contradictory and
uncertain, and not such as would be
sufficient to establish in a court of law
any ordinary fact, such as the execution
of a deed. It is apparent also that the
evidence for the most crucial and import
ant of all miracles, that of the Ascension,
is not nearly so precise and cogent as
that for. a number of early Christian
and mediaeval miracles which we reject
without hesitation.
What follows? Must we reject these
venerable traditions as old wives’ fables ?
I answer, No; but we can accept them
as parables.
A great deal of the best teaching of the
New Testament is conveyed in the form
of parables. Take for instance that of
Lazarus and Dives. No one supposes
that this.is an historical narrative ; that
this particular Jew, out of the millions
poor and good Jews who have lived
and died, was actually taken up into
Abraham’s bosom j and that the remark
able dialogue across the gulf is a literal
transcript of an actual conversation.
But the moral is taught for all time,
that it is bad for the rich to indulge in
selfish luxury and take no thought of the
mass of poverty and misery weltering
around them ; and that the condition of
the poorest of the poor, borne with piety
and resignation, may really be better
and higher than that of the selfish rich.
Apply the same principle to the dogma of
the.fall and redemption, and we may see
in it a parable of the highest meaning.
Every one of us must be conscious of
having fallen by yielding to temptation
and giving way to animal passions. We
may have fallen so low that without
some redemption, or friendly influence
from without, we cannot raise ourselves
from the lower level and regain our lost
place. We can see that there are thous
ands round us, who, from poverty or
other adverse circumstances, have got
immersed in evil conditions from which
it is hopeless to extricate themselves
without friendly aid. We can see also
that there is nothing more noble and
divine than to make sacrifices in order to
be the redeemer who saves as many souls
as. possible from this entanglement of
pvil, and gives them a chance of rising
into a happier and better life. We may
feel this, and use as an incentive to
attempt some- humble imitation of it,
the parable which presents it to us in its
highest aspect, and has been the efficient
means of stimulating so many good men
to do good works. This is surely better
than paltering with. the truth, and
enervating our conscience and intel
ligence by professing to believe in the
literal historical accuracy of things which
Note.—Since writing this chapter, I have
seen with much pleasure an article entitled
“ Christmas,” by Matthew Arnold, in a recent
number of the Contemporary Review, which
takes exactly the same view of the allegorical
or parabolic sense of miraculous narratives.
He takes the instance of the Immaculate
Conception and Birth of Jesus, and shows
that it was a myth which grew up, almost
inevitably, from the strong impression made
on the minds of early Christians by the idea
of purity set forth by the life and teaching of
Jesus, which stood in such striking contrast
with the corruption of the heathen world.
The same idea led to ,a similar myth in the
case of Gautama, the pure and self-sacrificing
founder of the Buddhist religion, and it
teaches an eternal truth to all who can look
below the letter to the spirit of the parable,
�CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT MIRACLES
have become incredible to all thinking
and educated minds. Of course, I do not
mean that these dogmas and miraculous
narratives were intended by the original
writers to be parables, but only that they
have become so to us .; and the alternative lies between rejecting them altogether or accepting them as having an
allegorical meaning or latent truth, or,
it may be added, as recording the state
of intelligence and knowledge of the age
which produced the stories.
.
At any rate, whether we like it or not,
this is what we shall have to do, for the
conclusions of science are irresistible,
and old forms of faith, however venerable
and however endeared by a thousand
associations, have no more chance m
a collision with science than George
Stephenson’s cow had if it stood on the
rails and tried to stop the progress of a
locomotive. It is not enough to say that
a thing is lovely and amiable, and that
its loss will leave a blank, to ensure its
continuance. The law of Nature is progress and not happiness. Stars, suns,
planets, human individuals, and human
races have their periods of youth,
maturity, and decay, and are continually
being transformed into new phases.
The old order changes, giving place to new,
And God fulfils Himself in many ways.
Childhood, with its innocence and
engaging ways, passes into the sterner
and more prosaic attributes of the grown
up man ; fancy decays as reason ripens ;
simple faith is replaced by larger know
ledge ; and the smooth brow of infancy
becomes often marred by wrinkles of
strife and suffering, impressed during the
more or less successful struggle in the
battle of life ; and yet we could not if we
would, and would not if we could, arrest
the progress of Nature, and say that the
child shall never grow into a man.
Such also is the fate of creeds. They
must be transformed or die ; and the
best test of the vitality and intrinsic
truth of a religion is just that capacity
for transformation against which theo
logians exclaim as sacrilege. In this
respect Christianity has a great ad
vantage over other religions. The pious
souls who are shocked at any denial of
the inspiration of Scripture may console
themselves by considering what has been
the fate of other religions which have been
107
imprisoned too closely within the limits
iof a sacred book. Mahometanism, the
<religion of one God and a succession of
iprophets or great men who have taught
]
his doctrines, is not in theory . incon
Jsistent with progress and civilisation.
►But Mahomet unfortunately, wrote a
book, the Koran, which, while, it con
I
tained much that to the Arab mind was
sublime and beautiful, was of necessity
f
}impregnated with the ideas of the age
he
of much
1in which and lived; an age imperfect
ignorance
superstition, of
isocial arrangements, and of barbarous
s
and ferocious manners. This book came
<
to be accepted as the inspired word of
1Allah, which it was impious to question,
to which nothing could be added, and
•from which nothing could be taken
away. Hence Mahometanism has be
come what we see it—a narrow and
1
fanatical creed, incompatible with pro
:gress and free thought, and stereotyping
•
institutions, such as polygamy and
slavery, which are fatal to any advance
>
towards a higher civilisation. From this
fate Christianity has been saved by the
fortunate circumstance that its. sacred
books are collections of a variety of
writings of different authors and dif
ferent ages, reflecting such various and
often conflicting phases of thought and
belief that of necessity their interpreta
tion was very elastic, and lent itself
readily to the changes required by the
spirit of successive periods and of dif
ferent nationalities. Wherever for a
time a system of infallibility was en
forced, as in Spain by the Inquisition,
Christianity became cruel, barbarous,
unprogressive, and really very little
better than the religion of Islam, to
which it closely approximated. Decay
of faith, therefore, in dogmatic Christi
anity is, like other great revolutions of
thought, a question, not of absolute gain
nor absolute loss, but of a balance between
conflicting advantagesand disadvantages.
The loss is evident enough, and is set
forth with much eloquence and force by
the few remaining champions, of ortho
doxy. The simple, undoubting faith,
which has been for ages the support and
consolation of a large portion ot mankind,
especially of the wTeak, the humble, and
the unlearned, who form an immense
majority, cannot disappear without a
painful wrench, and leaving, for a time,
a great blank behind. But, on the other
�108
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
hand, there are a great many real and
important advantages which have to be
set on the credit side of the account.
Intolerance is the shadow which dogs
the footsteps of faith, and in many cases
more than obscures its benefits. When
we. consider the mass of human misery
which has been occasioned by religious
wars and persecutions ; as in the ruth
less extirpation of the Albigenses ; the
slaughter of the saints
whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold ;
the Thirty Years’ War, which desolated
Germany and threw civilisation back for
a century ; the civil wars of France ; the
Spanish Inquisition; and a thousand
other instances of the baleful effects of
religious hatreds, we can almost sympa
thise with those who pronounce religion
an invention of priests for the promotion
of evil, and exclaim with the Roman
poet:
Religio tantum potuit suadere malorum.
Athanasian Creed less, but we practise
Christian charity more, in the present
than in any former age.
Another great advantage is that as
freer thought has been brought to bear on
the mysteries of religion, we have purged
off the grosser ideas, and arrived at much
more enlarged and spiritual conceptions,
lake, for instance, prayer and sacrifice.
In its crude form, sacrifice was a sort of
bargain struck with an unseen Power, by
which we noped to obtain some favour
which we greatly desired, in exchange
for giving up something which we
greatly valued. ■ This is the form in
which sacrifice appears in the Old
Testament, in Abraham’s offer to kill
his son Isaac, and in the record of the
Moabitish stone, how the king, when
besieged in his capital, sacrificed his son,
and by so doing obtained the favour of his
God and defeated his enemies. In an
other form, sacrifice was considered as a
propitiation to appease the anger of an
offended Deity, pictured as a sort of
Oriental despot, who must have some
one for a victim, and was not particular
who. it might be; and even in the
Christian dogma the merit of the sacrifice
is very closely analogous to that of the
Mayor of Calais who went out to King
Edward with a halter round his neck,
ready to be hanged, so that he might save
the lives of his fellow-citizens.
Nowadays, 'no one thinks of sacrifice
as anything but the sacrifice of lower
instincts, and passing temptations to a
higher ideal, and the voluntary re
nunciation of selfish ease and pleasure
for the good of others.
In like manner, the original idea of
! prayer was that, of obtaining a request
by flattery or importunity, just as a
courtier might do at the court of some
earthly king of kings or sultan. It is
now spiritualised into the conception
that its effect is entirely subjective ; that
it never really obtains any reversal of the
laws of Nature, but that it often exalts the
mind to a frame in which things otherwise
impossible become possible. A German
regiment marches to battle singing
Luther’s grand old hymn—
To this must be added the misery
caused by the belief in demonology and
witchcraft, and the tortures inflicted on
innumerable innocent victims by pre
judices inspired by a literal construction
of passages of the Old Testament. Nor
is it a small matter to have escaped from
the nightmare dreams which must have
oppressed so many minds, especially of
the young and imaginative, in an age
when such a book as Dante’s “Inferno”
could be written, and accepted as a gleam
of prophetic insight into the horrors of
the invisible world.
. Even in more recent and humane
times, intolerance remained as a general
mode of thought, inspiring hatred of
those whose form of belief differed from
that which was generally adopted. It is
only within the present generation that
true tolerance has come to be established
as the law of modern thought, and that
men have learned to live together and
love one another, without reference to
intellectual differences of creed and doc
trine. Surely this is a great advantage,
and.we are nearer to the true spirit of
Christianity than in the days when a
Em feste Burg ist unser Gott.
Birmingham mob sacked Priestley’s house
because he professed his belief in the Half the regiment may be freethinkers,
saying of Jesus, that “my Father is but it is nevertheless true that they are
greater than I.” We may read the more likely to stand firm and win the
�CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT MIRACLES
victory if they chant the hymn, than if
they march in silence.
taking all these things into account,
there is no reason to despair because the
irresistible progress of science has made us
Falter where we firmly trod,
and changed a great deal of what was
once fixed and certain faith into vague
aspirations and less definite, though
larger and more spiritual, conceptions.
There is next to no theology in the
Christianity of the Synoptic Gospels,
which give us by far the nearest and
most authentic record of what its
founder actually taught; and it may be
that in sloughing-off the mythical legends
®nd metaphysical dogmas which have
grown up around it, we shall be, . in
reality, not banishing the Christian
religion from the world, but making it
revert to its more simple and spiritual
ancestral type, in which form all that is
really valuable in its pure and elevated
morality may be incorporated more
readily with practical life, and assimi
lated without difficulty with the pro
gressive evolution of modern thought
and science.
At the same time we must bear in
mind that even Christianity in its purest
form does not escape from the universal
law of polarity, and presents, not the
whole truth, but only one very important
side of truth. It is the religion of love,
purity, gentleness, and charity ; im
portant virtues, but not all that con
stitute the perfection of men or nations.
In fact, if carried to the “falsehood of
Extremes,” its very virtues become vices.
It would not work in practice, if smitten
on one cheek to turn the other ; and any
one who attempted to follow literally the
precept of “taking no thought for the
morrow,” and trusting to be fed like the
sparrows, would, in modern society, come
dangerously near being what we call in
Scotland a “ne’er-do-weel,” that is to
say, a soft, molluscous sort of creature,
who is a burden on his friends, and ends
his days as a pensioner on charity or a
writer of begging letters. The foremost
men and foremost races of modern society
are precisely those who act on the opposite
principle, and do look ahead and steer
wisely and boldly amidst dangers and
difficulties for distant and definite ends.
In one of the old Norse sagas there is a
109
saying which has always impressed me
greatly. An aged warrior, when asked
what he thought of the new religion,
replied: “ I have heard a great deal of talk
of the old Odin and of the new Christ,
but whenever things have come to a real
pinch, I have always found that my
surest trust was in my own right arm
and good sword.”
This strong self-reliance and hardy
courage to do or to endure is, beyond all
doubt, the solid rock foundation upon
which the manly character of individuals
and of nations must be built up. The
softer virtues and graces which are to
refine and adorn, and convert the man
into the gentle man, or one of Nature’s
true gentlemen, come afterwards. But
without the harder gifts of courage and
self-help, a man is not a man, and the
raw material is not there out of which to
fashion a Gordon or Christian hero.
This may be called the Norse pole
as contrasted with the pole of Chris
tianity, and the perfect man is he who
can stand firmly between the two oppo
sites, controlling both while controlled
by neither.
While I have thought it right, however,
to call attention to this counter-pole to
Christianity, I should add that with the
strong, practical Teutonic races there is
not much danger of erring on the side of
too much weakness, humility, or asceti
cism, and therefore the influence of the
Christian religion makes mainly for good.
Modern civilisation has been formed, to
a great extent, by grafting the gentler
virtues of the Gospel on the robust
primitive stock of the barbarians who
overthrew Rome. It is the example and
teaching of Jesus, the son of the car
penter of Nazareth, which have been
mainly instrumental in diffusing ideas of
divine love, charity, and purity through
out the world, and humanising the iron
clad and iron-souled warriors, whose
trust was in their stout hearts and strong
right arms, and who knew no law but
The simple plan,
That he should take who has the power,
And he should keep who can.
In another respect it is most important
that the world should, as far and as long
as possible, hold on to Christianity and
struggle to save its essential spirit from
the shipwreck of its theology, and from
�110
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
the sheer impossibility of believing in been dissolved by death and no longer
the literal and historical truth of many exist. We know as little in the way of
of its dogmas.
accurate and demonstrable knowledge of
The highest and most consoling beliefs our condition after death as we do of our
of the human mind are to a great extent existence—if we had an existence—before
bound up with the Christian religion. birth.
If we ask ourselves frankly how much,
If we turn for an answer to these
apart from this religion, would remain of questions from science to metaphysics,
faith in a God and in a future state of we find ourselves in cloud-land. Mists
existence, the answer must be, very of fine phrases and plausible conjectures
little. Science traces everything back condense into philosophies, and dissolve?
to primeval atoms and germs, and there away again without leaving a vestige
it leaves us. How came these atoms and of positive knowledge. Take Descartes’
energies there, from which this wonderful famous fundamental axiom, “ Cogito,
universe of worlds has been evolved by ergo sum,”—I think, therefore I am. Is
inevitable laws ? What are they in their it really an axiom 1 Does it take us any
essence, and what do they mean ? The nearer to what thought really is, and
only answer is, it is unknowable. It is what is the true meaning of existence ?
“ behind the veil,” and may be anything. If the fact that I am conscious of think
Spirit may be matter, matter may be ing proves the fact that I exist, is the
spirit. We have no faculties by which converse true, that whatever does not
we can even form a conception, from any think does not exist ? Am I existent
discoveries of the telescope or microscope, or non-existent during the seven or
from any experiments in the laboratory, eight hours of dreamless sleep out of
or from any facts susceptible of real every twenty-four, when to a certainty
human knowledge, of what may be the I am not thinking? Does a child only
first cause underlying all these phe begin to exist when it begins to think ?
nomena.
If “Cogito, ergo sum,” is an intuition
In like manner we can already to a to which we can trust, why is not
great extent, and probably in a short “ Non cogito, ergo non sum,” an equally
time shall be able to the fullest extent, good foundation on which to build a
to trace the whole development of life system of philosophy, and spin out of
from the lowest to the highest; from the brain an ideal system of God, man,
protoplasm, through monera, infusoria, and the universe 1
mollusca, fish, reptile, and mammal, up i The so-called intuitions of metaphysics
to man—and the individual man from I seem really to amount to little more than
the microscopic egg, through the various translations into philosophical language
stages of its evolution up to birth, of our own earnest wishes and aspirachildhood, maturity, decline, and death. I tions. We shudder at the notion of anWe can trace also the development of the ! nihilation ; we revolt at the idea that all
human race through enormous periods of the high faculties of the mature and cultime, from the rudest beginnings up to tivated mind are to be extinguished by
its present level of civilisation, and show death ; we long for a future life, in. which
how arts, languages, morals, and religions we may again see beloved faces, and,
have been evolved gradually by natural pondering on these things, we have a
laws from primitive elements, many of strong impression that it must not and
which are common in their ultimate form cannot be, which presently takes the
to man and the animal creation.
form, in some minds of a philosophical
But here also science stops. Science turn, of what is called an intuition, on
can give no account of how these germs which they proceed to build up a demon
and nucleated cells, endowed with these stration of God and immortality.
marvellous capacities for evolution, came
But, again, what do they really know
into existence or got their intrinsic more than science has already told us?
powers. Nor can science enable us to The essence of all spiritual existence, as
form the remotest conception of what far as we know anything of it, is per
will become of life, consciousness, and sonal consciousness. This clearly depends
conscience, when the material conditions on, or is indissolubly associated with, a
with which they are always associated certain condition of a material organ—
while within human experience, have i the brain. With a less active condition
�CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT MIRACLES
of this organ, as in sleep, personal con
sciousness is suspended. In. the case of
a man recovered from drowning by arti
ficial means, it is gone, and the man is to
all intents and purposes dead for per
haps a quarter of an hour, and would
remain dead if warm blankets and arti
ficial respiration did not recall him. to
life. Where and what was he. during
this interval ? and, if his personal identity
and conscious existence were gone for
that quarter of an hour, why and when
did they return ? and, if the Humane
Society’s men had been less prompt,
would they ever have returned 1
These are questions to which no meta
physical system that I have ever seen
can return the semblance of an answer.
Again, how is it possible for philosophy
to lay down as an axiom that man has
an intuitive perception of a Deity, in the
face of the fact that whole races of savage
men have no such perception, and have
not got beyond rude fetichism and a vague
superstitious fear of ghosts and evil
spirits, while others, further advanced,
have made their own anthropomorphic
gods, obviously from reflections of their
own faculties and passions on the distant
mists of the unknown, like the spectres
of the Brocken ? We can trace the idea
of Deity, step by step, from early attempts
to explain phenomena of nature, astro
nomical, legendary, and linguistic myths,
and reverence for departed ancestors ana
heroes, up to the philosophical concep
tions of a Plato or a Marcus Aurelius.
In the same way we can trace, step by
step, the transformation of the tribal
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, into
the national God of Israel, who was
at first only better and stronger than the
gods of the surrounding nations, but
finally became the sole God of the uni
verse, degrading the other gods to the
category of dumb idols. So, also, we can
see the first crude anthropomorphic con
ceptions of this Deity gradually giving
way to purer and nobler ideas. The God
who required rest on the seventh day
becomes the Almighty one at whose word
all things were created. The jealous and
cruel God who withdrew His favour from
the chivalrous Saul, because he would
not hew his captives in pieces before the
Lord, is transformed into the God who
“loves mercy and not sacrifice.” The
God who found after His own heart the
man whose depraved mind could con
111
ceive such an act of foul villainy as David
practised towards Uriah, and who not
only condoned the crime, but rewarded
it by giving the succession to the son of
the adulterous intercourse with Bath
sheba, has become the God of holy love
and purity of the New Testament. At
which of these stages entered that, philo
sophical intuition of God which is said
to be an innate faculty of the human
mind, and the surest base of all our know
ledge of the universe? Where is the
inevitable intuitive perception of a per
sonal Deity in the minds of some of the
deepest thinkers and purest livers of the
present day, who, like Herbert Spencer,
can discern nothing behind the veil but
a great unspeakable and unknowable ?
After all, we must fall back on Chris
tianity for any grounds upon which to
trust, more or less faintly, in the “ larger
hope.” The Christian religion, apart from
auy question of miracles, is an existing
fact. It is a fact which for nineteen cen
turies has proved, on the whole, in accord
ance with other facts and with the deepest
feelings and highest aspirations of the
noblest men and women of the foremost
races in the progressive march of civili
sation. Why do we say that its moral
teachings, such as we find in the Sermon
on the Mount, and in St. Paul’s definition
of Christian charity, carry conviction
with them and prove themselves ? Be
cause they accord with, and. give the
best expression to, feelings which, in the
course of evolution of the human mind
from barbarism to civilisation, have be
come instinctive. We may be able to
trace their origin and development, we
may be able to see that they are not
primary instincts, implanted, at birth,
like those of the lower animals, but
secondary instincts, formed by the action
of a civilised environment on hereditary
aptitudes. Still, there they are, and being
what they are, and living in the age and
society in which we actually live, they
are inevitable and necessary instincts,
and it requires no train of reasoning or
laboured reflection to make us feel that
“ right is right,” and that it is better for
ourselves and others to act on such pre
cepts as those of “ loving our neighbours
as ourselves,” and “doing as we would
be done by,” rathei’ than to reverse these
rules and obey the selfish promptings of
animal nature Of the same order, though
less clear and cogent, are the teachings of
�112
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
the Gospel respecting God and immorta
lity. They are less clear and less cogent,
because the only evidence by which they
could be demonstrated from without, that
of miracles, has broken down and failed
us; and because we cannot verify them
experimentally by an appeal to facts, as
we can in regard to the working of moral
laws and precepts. But it still remains
that they are ideas which have arisen
inevitably in the course of the evolution
of the human mind ; and that they fit in
with and satisfy, in a way which no other
ideas can do, many of the best and deepest
feelings which have equally been deve
loped in that mind, in the course of its
progressive ascent from lower to higher
things.. It remains also true that science,
while it can add nothing to this proof,
takes nothing from it, and that while
it excludes miracles and supernatural
interference after the order of the uni
verse has been once established, it leads
us back step by step to a great Unknown,
in which, from the very fact that it is
unknown, everything is possible.
Further than this it is not possible to
carry the proof. If we are to believe at
all in a God, we must be content to believe
that He knows better than we do what
is right and consistent with the conditions
of our own existence and that of the
universe ; and that part of the scheme is
that at a certain stage of the develop
ment of our race we should have to
exchange the certainty , of simple and
limited faith for the fainter trust in a
larger hope. We may, perhaps, dimly
discern something analogous in the
progress of each individual from child
hood to manhood. He has to part with
many a «simple belief and unhesitating
trust, and climb the hill of life staggering
under many a burden of doubt and
difficulty; and yet it is better for him
to “set a stiff heart to a steep brae,”
and struggle upwards while life is in him
rather than to remain an innocent child
playing at its foot.
Anyhow, whether we like it or not, this
is. the fact we have to accept; but the
hill is steep, the burden heavy, and we
may well be grateful to anything which,
however vaguely, helps and cheers us
on the way. From this point of view,
the ideas of God and of a future life
taught by the Christian religion, ac
cepted by so many good men, and
hallowed by so many venerable traditions
and. sacred associations, should be
cherished, as far as it is possible to do
so without shutting our eyes to facts
and indulging in conscious insincerity.
For the same reason we shall do well
to be tender with the forms and creeds
2* religion, even when they appear
to be getting obsolete, and their strict
and literal interpretation becomes no
longer consistent with known truths.
It is far better, that the transformation
requisite to bring them into accordance
with the evolution of modern thought
caused by the discoveries of science,
should take place gradually and spon
taneously from within, ratherthanforcibly
and abruptly from without. Evolutionists
specially ought to trust to the healing
influences of time, and the inevitable
though gradual survival of that which
is. most in harmony with its existing en
vironment.
Already a great deal has been quietly
done in this direction. Intolerance and
fanaticism have almost disappeared from
cultured minds. Even in the ranks
of the. clergy themselves, many, in all
denominations, are devoting themselves
more and more to good works, and less
to theological disputes and sectarian
wranglings.
The metaphysical side of Christian
dogma is fast receding into the far
distance. The Athanasian Creed, which
once convulsed, empires and occupied a
foremost place in the thought of the age,
has become a mere form, read once or
twice a year by lukewarm preachers to
indifferent or scandalised audiences, who
would be only too glad to have a decent
excuse for dropping it out of sight alto
gether. Let any sincere Christian put to
himself candidly the question what part
the “Holy Ghost,” or the definition of
the. Logos,”really has in the living faith
which guides his actions, and he will be
astonished to find into what infinitesimal
proportions these once vital dogmas
have actually faded. It will be the same
with all dogmas which, in their literal
and historical interpretation, contradict
established facts. They will be either
forgotten, or, if they contain a kernel of
spiritual meaning, will be transformed
into truths taught by parables.
In the meantime, it behoves those who
see more clearly than others the absolute
certainty of the conclusions of science,
and the inevitably fatal results to
�PRACTICAL LIFE
Wigion of staking its existence on literal
interpretations which have become flatly
incredible, to do their best to assist the
■ransformation of the old dogmatic theo
logy into a new “ Christianity without
jtoiracles,” which shall retain the essential
spirit, the pure morality, the consoling
beliefs, and, as far as possible, the vener
able forms and sacred associations of the
old faith, while placing them in thorough
accordance with freedom of thought, and
with the whole body of other truths,
d&covered and to be discovered, respect
ing the universe and man.
CHAPTER X
PRACTICAL LIFE
Conscience—Right is Right—Self-reverence
—Courage—Respectability—Influence of
Press—Respect for Women—Self-respect of
Nations—Democracy and Imperialism—Self - knowledge—Conceit— Luck— Specula
tion—Money-making—Practical Aims of
Life—Self-control—Conflict of Reason and
Instinct—Temper—Manners—Good Habits
in Youth—Success in Practical Life—Edu
cation—Stoicism—Conclusion.
Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,
These three alone lead life to sovereign power.
Yet not for power (power of herself
Would come uncalled for) but to live by law,
Acting the law we live by without fear ;
And, because right is right, to follow right
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.
Tennyson, (Enone.
In these lines, which he puts into the
mouth of the goddess of wisdom, Tenny
son, the.same poet who has already con
densed the essence of modern thought
in the lines already quoted from “In
Memoriam,” gives us what may be well
palled “ the Gospel of practical life.” It is
clearly our highest wisdom to follow right,
Hot from selfish calculation or hope of
reward, but because “ right is right ” ; in
other words, because we have a standard
pvithin us which tells us, in an unmis
takable voice, what to do and what to
refrain from doing. For practical pur
poses, it is comparatively unimportant
how this standard got there ; whether,
Recording to old creeds, by direct inspira
113
tion or, as modern science tells us, by
the slow evolution of primitive faculties,
and the accumulation through countless
generations of hereditary influences
tending towards the survival of the
fittest, both of individuals and of
societies, in the struggle for life. In either
case the standard is there, not as a vague
and theoretical, but as an absolute and
imperative, rule, and the difficulty is not
to discern it, but to act up to it.
It may be that it is to a great extent
the product of education, and depends on
the environment in which we are brought
up. It is pretty certain that if I had bees
kidnapped when a child by Comanche
Indians, I should have grown up with a
very different moral standard touching
the taking of scalps and the practice of
treacherous murder. But I have not
been so kidnapped, and having been
born and brought up in a civilised country
of the nineteenth century, it is inevitable
that outward influences combined with
inward capacities should give me a con
science, which tells me in clear enough
accents whether I am doing right or
wrong. And it is equally certain that by
acting in accordance with this conscience^
I shall, on the whole, be doing better for
myself and better for others than by
disregarding it. It is none too easy to
make our life even a tolerable approxi
mation towards doing right for the sake
of right, and it would be folly to
allow any theoretical considerations as
to the origin of the idea of right to be an
excuse for relaxing any of the constant
and strenuous effort which is requisite to
keep our feet from straying from the
straight path. It is much wiser to cast
around us for influences and inducements
to strengthen the inward law, and to en*
deavour by clear insight to .bring reason
to the aid of faith, and enable us to see
intelligently the main causes both of our
weakness and of our strength.
This is what the poet does for us in the
lines above quoted. Rightly considered,
“self-reverence, self-knowledge, and self
control ” are the three pillars which sup
port the edifice of a wise and well-ordered
practical life.
Self-reverence, in its widest meaning,
includes the faculty of forming some
ideal standard superior to the lower
nature of animal man, and recognising
in ourselves some power of approximat
ing to it. The higher the standard the
I
�114
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
nobler will be the man who cherishes it
and tries to attain to it, but it is by no
means a rare gift confined to a few select
natures. On the contrary, it is the com
monest and most universal incentive to
good conduct. Even in the rudest and
simplest form of admiration for physical
courage, it makes heroes of many a
common soldier and sailor. If poor
Tommy Atkins, fresh from the plough
tail, stands firm in the shattered squares
of Waterloo, or on the bloody ridge of
Inkermann, it is because he has been
brought up in the fixed idea that a Briton
must not run away from a Frenchman or
a Russian.
In civil life the idea of respectability,
though not a very elevated one and apt
to degenerate into narrowness, and that
which Carlyle and Arnold sneer at as
“ Gigmanity ” and “ Philistinism,” is yet
one of universal and, on the whole, bene
ficial influence. A large majority of the
middle and upper working classes lead
decorous lives very much because they
feel it incumbent on them to be “re
spectable ” in their own eyes and those
of their neighbours. In the case of one
half of the human race, the female half,
the feeling of self-respect and the desire
to be what is called respectable afford the
strongest and most constantly present
securities both for good morals and good
manners. The immense majority of
British women are modest maidens and
faithful wives, not so much from any
cold calculation of the balance of ad
vantages, or from fear of consequences,
as from an instinctive feeling that they
cannot be otherwise without losing caste
and forfeiting their own self-respect and
that of their neighbours.
From these common and universal
forms of “ self-reverence ” we rise, step
by step, to the higher ideals, which, in
every rank and every condition of life,
give us among gifted natures what may
De called the “salt of the earth,” and the
shining examples which guide the world
to higher things—noble men and noble
women. A Sidney, dying on the field of
Zutphen, hands over the cup of water
to a wounded soldier because his soul,
nourished on noble thoughts, and his
fancy, fed by the old ballads which, like
that of “ Chevy Chase,” stirred him like
a trumpet-blast, had led him to conceive
an ideal of a perfect knight which would
have been tarnished by any shade of a
selfish action. Gordon sacrifices his life
at Khartoum, not only cheerfully but
almost instinctively, because the sugges
tion that he might save himself by
abandoning those who had trusted in
him seems an absolute impossibility.
It is a great advantage of the present
day that education and the press bring
such instances of devoted heroism vividly
before millions who would never other
wise have heard of them. The influence
of the press, both in the way of books
and newspapers, is happily in this country
almost entirely one which makes for
good. There is not a noble act done
throughout the world, by high or low, by
private or officer, by soldier or civilian,
which is not held up for praise and
admiration ; while any signal instance of
cowardice or selfishness is held up to
contempt. Newspaper correspondence
and leading articles have, to a great ex
tent, superseded sermons, and do the prac
tical moral work of the world in asserting
the right and rebuking wickedness in
high places. In like manner all the
higher works of poetry, fiction, and
biography, have a good tendency, and are
read by an ever-increasing number of
readers. Enid and Elaine, Jeanie Deans,
Laura Pendennis, Lucy Roberts, are the
sort of models set before girls ; while
boys who have any heroic fibre in their
nature are fed with such lives as those
of Lawrence and Gordon. For all, but
especially for the young, there is no help
to self-improvement so great as to read
good, books in a generous spirit; and
nothing which dwarfs the mind so much
as to debauch it by frivolous reading, and
by the moral dram-drinking of sensational
rubbish, until it loses all natural and
healthy appetite for the pure and ele
vated. An affectation of narrow know
ingness is also a very fatal tendency in
the youthful mind. A man from whose
mouth such words as “rot’’and “hum
bug” are constantly heard is, in nine
cases out of ten, a very poor, rotten
creature himself.
Among the many advantages of selfrespect, not the least important is that it
teaches respect for others. The petty
jealousies and suspicions, the senseless
quarrels, theslanderings and backbitings,
which so often turn sour the wine of life,
disappear of themselves when a proper
standard of self-respect has been firmly
established, and a high ideal of human
�PRACTICAL LIFE
life has become part of our nature. As
Tennyson says:
Like simple noble natures credulous
Of what they wish for, good in friend or
foe;
while on the other hand • '
The long-necked geese of the world
Are always hissing dispraise, because their
natures are little.
There are some who delight in running
down everything and everybody, and
whose appetite for scandal is so great
that they are positively unable to re
frain from believing and spreading an
ill-natured tale, if it affects some emi
nent man, and still more if it affects
a well-known woman. Such are as
suredly not the sort of persons whom we
should like to resemble ourselves, or to
see our sons and daughters resemble. I
have always found through life, a safe
rule to go by was, if you hear an illnatured story of a man, discount ninetenths of it as a lie, and if of a woman,
don’t believe a word of it.
Perhaps the best test of the amount of
real “self-reverence” in an individual or
a nation, is to be found in the tone and
manner in which women are treated. A
low toneinvariablybespeaks a low nature,
and testifies to innate coarseness and
snobbishness, however high may be the
rank and polished the outward varnish
of the person who indulges in it. On the
other hand the roughest miner or back
woodsman is already more than half a
gentleman, if his attitude towards women
is one of chivalrous courtesy. Nothing
looks more hopeful for the future of the
human race than to see that the female
half of it are constant gainers by the
progress of freedom and education. It
goes a long way to reconcile one to the
dangers of democracy, to find that in the
newest and most democratic countries of
the world, such as the United States and
British colonies, women can travel alone
without fear of insult, and have far more
innocent liberty and freedom of thought
and action than they have in older
societies. Whatever may be the case as
regards men, for women there can be no
doubt that there is a progressive scale
upwards from East to West, from despot
ism to freedom, from Turkey to America.
What has been said of individuals is
115
even more true of nations. Self-respect
is the very essence of national life. A great
nation may suffer great disasters, and
survive them, if the spirit of its people
remains intact. England survived the
war of American independence, and
Prussia recovered from the defeat of Jena.
But if a nation loses its vigour and selfrespect, if it begins to groan under the
burdens of extended empire, and to pre
fer comfort to honour, ignoble ease to
noble effort, the hour of its decline has
sounded. Imperial Rome did not long
survive when she began to contract her
frontiers and buy off barbarians. The
most fatal thing any Government can do
for a country is to destroy its sense of
self-respect and teach it to acquiesce in
what is felt to be dishonourable.
Looking forward to the future of the
great British Empire, this is evidently a
turning-point of its destinies. The tri
umph of democracy is an inevitable fact;
for knowledge is power, and whether
for good or evil, the masses have either
acquired, or are fast acquiring know
ledge, and with equal political rights
numbers will tell. How will this demo
cracy of the future affect Imperial
interests, and what will be its attitude
in regal’d to foreign and colonial policy ?
On the one hand it may be hoped
that by making our institutions more
popular, and going down to the heart of
the masses, our policy will acquire fresh
energy and our public men fresh vigour.
The working classes are very patriotic,
and, on the whole, more open to the in
fluence of generous ideas than the class
immediately above them. In the recent
instance of the great civil war in the
United States, we have seen a democracy
making greater sacrifices of men and
moneyfor theideaof maintaining national
greatness, than was probably ever volun
tarily made by any monarchical or aristo
cratic country. The Copper-heads, who
preached peace where there was no
peace, and advised letting the erring
sisters go their way rather than spend
lives and money in the attempt to coerce
them, found no response from a nation
who felt that the union was their union,
and its greatness the separate personal
possession of each individual citizen.
But, on the other hand, demagogues
will never be wanting to flatter the
people, and angle for power by appeal
ing to their lower instincts and advoi 2
�116
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
eating measures of present ease and
popularity. If a necessity arises for
maintaining by the sword an empire
which has been won by the sword, the
army of parochial politicians who gauge
everything by the standard of pounds,
shillings, and pence, will be reinforced
by the far more respectable body of
sentimentalists and humanitarians, who
shrink from the shedding of blood in
wars the abstract justice of which is not
absolutely demonstrated. A large num
ber, perhaps a majority, of platform
orators will therefore be found now, as
it was in the days of Demosthenes, to de
nounce armaments, ridicule precautions,
minimise responsibilities, and look upon
India, the Colonies, and extended empire
generally, as troublesome encumbrances
rather than as glorious possessions. The
t wo conflicting ideals constantly set be
fore our future political rulers, the four
millions whose votes decide the fate of
policies and of ministries, will be, on the
one hand, that our first duty is to hand
down the British Empire to our sons no
less great and glorious than we received
it from pur fathers ; on the other, that
it is better to stay at home, mind our
own affairs, avoid entanglements, con
tract responsibilities, pass reform bills,
and reduce taxes, trusting to the “silver
streak ” and the chapter of accidents to
protect us from invasion. It is the old
story of the fable of Hercules, which pre
sents itself constantly to each individual
and to every nation. Shall we follow the
strait and narrow path which leads up
wards, or the broad and easy one which
leads, with a pleasant slope, to a lower
level 1 Would it have been better for'
Paris to give the golden apple to Minerva,
counselling “ self-reverence, self-know
ledge, self-control,” or to Venus, promising
pleasure ?
SELF-KNOWLEDGE
Oh wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us !
Burns.
A gift -which is unfortunately as rare
as it is necessary. Without self-know
ledge to see our faults how shall we
correct them ? How shall we become
wise if insensible to our follies ? How shall
we achieve success if we learn no lessons
from cur failures ? There are some men
so blinded by vanity that they go through
life committing ungentlemanly actions
while fancying themselves perfect gentle
men ; who are convinced that all men
admire them and all women are in love
with them, while in reality every one
sees through them and laughs at them.
A thoroughly impervious vanity is like
a waterproof, which throws off the
wholesome rain on the outside, while on
the inside it is soaked with unhealthy
exhalations.
Fortunately this type of vanity is not
a common one with our English race,
who are too proud and self-reliant to feel
the petty anxiety of the really vain man
to be always shining in the eyes of others.
With us it takes more the form of priding
ourselves on artificial distinctions, and
attaching an exaggerated importance to
matters of trivial importance. Your
commonplace English swell, for instance,
is apt to class all mankind under two
categories—those who associate with lords
and wear clothes of a fashionable cut,
and those who do not, and to set down all
the former as the “ right sort,” and all
the latter as “ brutes.”
It is a sign of narrowness to make a
fetich of these or any other arbitrary
distinctions between an upper ten and the
rest of mankind, and self-knowledge is
never more required than to show the
hollowness of adventitious advantages
which are not supported by intrinsic
merit. A true gentleman feels
The rank is but the guinea stamp,
The man’s the gowd for a’ that,
and feeling this, he holds out the hand of
hearty human sympathy to peasant as
well as to peer. If born to rank and
riches, self-knowledge tells him that he
is simply placed on a pedestal, where,
if he fails to act on the maxim that
“ noblesse oblige,” the failure will be the
more conspicuous. No man who really
knows himself can ever be conceited, for
he must be aware how far he has fallen
short in practice ofhisown idealstandard,
and how constantly “ he has done things
he ought not to have done, and left un
done things he ought to have done ”
On the other hand, there is an opposite
extreme from which self-knowledge will
save a man : that.of undue despondency
and want of proper confidence and selfreliance, There are men who fail ip
�PRACTICAL LIFE
everything they undertake because they
have not the heart to undertake it
resolutely, and who at last sink down into
the hopeless condition of querulous men
tal invalids, who cherish their ailments
rather than combat them, and are rather
proud than otherwise to be considered as
interesting victims of untoward circum
stances.
For all the relations of practical life the
one essential requisite of success is to see
things as they really are, and not as we
wish them to be ; and for this purpose
self-knowledge is the foundation of clear
insight. If the focus of the glass is
wrongly adjusted it will show only dis
torted images, but if a clear eye looks
through a properly focussed glass, out
ward objects will be truly represented.
Perhaps the commonest of all delusions
is that of being born under a lucky star.
A man gambles, bets, or speculates be
cause he thinks he is lucky and sure to
win. Now, there is in reality no such
thing as luck, it is all a question of
averages. The only approach to what
may be called luck is, that a fool will
probably have more of it than a wise
man, for as the fool foresees nothing,
whenever fortune’s die turns up in his
favour he sets it down to luck, while the
wise man, who has schemed and worked
for the event, calls it foresight. But the
actual average of events, which depend
entirely on chance, will be the same.
If a man plays at rouge et noir with
one chance in a hundred in favour of the
bank, it is certain that if he plays often
enough, he will lose his capital once at
least for every hundred times he plays.
Or, if he speculates on the Stock
Exchange, the turn of the market and
broker’s commission will, in the long run,
certainly swallow up his original capital.
And yet men will gamble and speculate,
because they cannot resist the pleasing
illusion that they are lucky, and that it
would be very nice to win a large stake
without having had to work for it.
There is nothing for which self-know
ledge is more indispensable in practical
life than to enable a man to steer a
straight course between opposite ex
tremes, and to discern clearly the boun
dary line between right and wrong. The
law of polarity, by which things good in
themselves if pushed to extremes become
bad, and every truth develops a corre
II?
sponding error, is of daily and universal
application in practical affairs.
Take, for instance, the much-debated
question of the pursuit of money. Poets
and novelists are never tired of denounc
ing the “ Auri sacra fames,” and there is
no doubt that, when carried to excess, it
is the fertile source of crime ; and even
in a less degree, it leads to meanness and
dishonesty, and has a degrading influence
on the individual or the nation who give
themselves up too exclusively to the
worship of the “almighty dollar.” But,
on the other hand, the desire, or rather
the necessity under the conditions of
civilised society, of making money, is by
far the most powerful and all-pervading
influence of practical life. And, within
due bounds and under proper conditions,
it is a healthy and beneficial influence.
At the lowest stage it obliges men to
work instead of being idle, and this is
an immense advantage both to the com
munity and to the individual. An idle
man, in every grade of society, is
generally a worthless and often a bad
man; while an honest working man,
whether the work be of the head or
hand, is far more likely to be happy
and respectable.
Again, the necessity of earning money
is a wonderful test of the real value of
a man in the world’s market. We should
be all very apt to become pretentious
wind-bags of conceit, if we were not
brought to our senses by the wholesome
douche of having to work for a livelihood.
Many a man who fancies himself intended
for a poet or politician, and some who by
accident of birth or fortune are pitchforked into prominent positions, would
find it difficult to point out any occupa
tion in which they are honestly worth a
couple of hundred a year.
Even in the higher departments of art
and literature, it may be questioned
whether the healthy, natural desire to
turn an honest penny has not inspired
greater works than a morbid appetite
for fame. Shakespeare’s ambition was
to retire to his native town with a
moderate competency ; Walter Scott’s to
become a laird, with a family estate, in
the border-land of the chief of his clan
—“the bold Buccleuch.” And, in the
present day, literature is becoming more
and more an honourable profession,
which men take to, as they do to law
�118
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
or medicine, as a means of earning a
livelihood.
It must always be borne in mind that
under the practical conditions of modern
civilisation, money means not only the
possibility of bare existence, but nearly
all that makes existence tolerablehealth, recreation, culture, and independ
ence. The number and locality of the
rooms a man lives in, the number of cubic
feet, and purity of the air he and his
family breathe, are questions of rent ;
the food they eat, the clothes they wear,
the books they read, the holidays they
enjoy, are all questions of money. And
above all, without money there is no in
dependence. An absolutely penniless
man has to fall back on crime or the
workhouse; a poor man is at the mercy
of a thousand accidents ; sickness, fluc
tuations of trade, caprice of employers,
pressure of creditors, may at any mo
ment reduce him and those who depend
on him to want. It admits of no ques
tion, that the first duty of every one is
to endeavour to raise himself above this
level of ignoble daily cares, and plant
himself in a position where he can face
the present and look forward to the
future with tolerable equanimity. As
we rise in the scale of society the
problem becomes more difficult. Money
making is very apt to be pushed to
excess and lead to gambling and dis
honesty ; while the worship of wealth,
which is perhaps the besetting sin of the
age, is distinctly the cause of much lax
morality and snobbish vulgarity. But
on the other hand, money is power, and
a large fortune honestly acquired and
well spent, gives its possessor unrivalled
opportunities for doing good. He can
assist charities, patronise art, and if
gifted with force of character and fair
abilities may become a legislator and
statesman, and enrol his name in the
annals of his country. It is hard to say
that if a man has an opportunity of
making a large fortune honestly, and
feels that he has it in him to use it nobly,
he should refrain from doing so because
moralists cry “Sour grapes,” and tell
him that riches are deceitful.
But for nothing is “self-knowledge”
more requisite than to enable a man to
see clearly how high he can safely aim,
and what sort of stake he can prudently
play for. The immense majority of man
kind have neither the opportunities nor
the faculties for playing for very high
stakes, and must be contented with the
safe game for moderate and attainable
ends. One such end is within the reach
of almost every one :
To make a happy household clime
For weans and wife,
Is the true pathos and sublime
Of human life.
So says Burns, who has a rare faculty
of hitting the right nail on the head ;
and the ideal he sets before us in these
simple lines is at once the truest and the
most universal. The man who fails in
this is himself a failure; while the man
who by his industry and energy supports
a family in comfort and respectability
according to their station, and who, at
the same time, by control of temper,
kindness, unselfishness, and sweet
reasonableness makes his household a
happy one, may feel, even though fortune
may not have placed him in a position
of higher responsibilities, that he has
not lived in vain, that he has performed
the first duties and tasted the truest
pleasures of mortal existence, and that,
whatever there may be behind the im
penetrable veil, he can face it with head
erect, as one of “Nature’s gentlemen.”
SELF-CONTROL
This is, after all, the vitally import
ant element of a happy and successful
life. The compass may point truly to
the pole, the chart may show the right
channel amidst shoals and rocks, but the
ship will hardly arrive safely in port
Unless the helmsman stands at his post
in all weathers, ready to meet any sheer
of the bow by a timely turn to starboard
or to port. So self-reverence and selfknowledge may point out ever so clearly
the path of duty, unless self-control is
constantly present we shall surely stray
from it. . At every moment of our lives
natural instinct tells us to do one thing,
while reason and conscience tell us to do
another. It is by an effort that we get
up in the morning and go about our
daily work. It is by an effort that we
refrain from indulgences and forego
pleasures, control our passions, restrain
our tempers. The uncultured man is
�PRACTICAL LIFE
violent, selfish, childish ; it is only by the
inherited or acquired practice of self
control that he is transformed into the
civilised man—courteous, considerate,
sensible, and reliable.
The necessity of self-control in all the
more important relations of moral and
practical life is so obvious that it would
be only repeating commonplaces to
enlarge on it. But there is often danger
of its being overlooked, in those minor
morals of conduct which make up the
greater part of life, and determine the
happiness or misery of oneself and
others.
For instance, control over the temper.
A man never shows his cousinship to the
ape so much as when he is in a passion.
The manifestations are so exactly similar
—irrational violence, nervous agitation,
total loss of head, and abdication of all
presence of mind and reasoning power.
To see a grown-up man reduced to the
level of a spoiled child, or of a monkey
who has been disappointed of a nut, is a
spectacle of which it is hard to. say
whether it is more ridiculous or painful.
Even worse than occasional violence is
the habitual ill-temper which makes
life miserable to those who are obliged
to put up with it. We call a man who
strikes a woman or child with his fist a
brute ; what is he if he strikes them
daily and hourly, ten times more cruelly,
with his tongue 1 A ten times greaterbrute. And yet there are men., calling
themselves gentlemen, who do this, either
from sheer brutality of nature, or oftener
from inconsiderateness, coarseness of
fibre, and inability to exercise self
control in minor matters.
There is one very common mistake
made, that of considering relationship
an excuse for rudeness. The members of
a family may relax something of the
stiffness of company manners among
themselves, but they should never forget
that it is just as much ill-breeding to say
a rude thing to a wife, a sister, or a
brother, as it would be to say it to any
other lady or gentleman. In fact, it is
worse, for the other lady can treat you
with contempt and keep out of your way,
while the poor woman who is tied to you
feels it keenly, and has no means of
escape from it. Good manners are, in
practical life, a great part of good
morals ; and there is something to be
119
said for religions which, like the Chinese,
lay down rules of politeness, and make
salvation depend very much on. the ob
servance of rites and ceremonies intended
to ensure courtesy and decorum in the
intercourse of all classes of the com
munity in daily life.
Although not so bad as the indulgence
of a violent or morose temper, a great
deal of unhappiness is caused by a fussy
and fidgety disposition, which makes
mountains out of molehills, and keeps
every one in hot water about trifles. This
is one of the common faults of idleness,
as genuine work both strengthens the
fibre to resist and leaves no time to brood
over petty troubles.
The excuse one commonly hears from
those who give way to these petty
infirmities is, “that they cannot help
it, they are born with thin skins and
excitable tempers.” This is the excuse
of sloth and weakness. If, as the poet
says,
Man is man, and master of his fate,
what sort of an unmanly creature must
he be who cannot master even the
slightest impulse or resist the slightest
temptation, and allows himself to. be
ruffled into a storm by every passing
breath, like a shallow roadside puddle?
If he will not try he certainly will not
learn; but if he will honestly try to
correct faults, he will find it easier
every time, until the fancied impos
sibilities fade away and are forgotten.
A man who is so much afraid of
tumbling off that he will never mount
a horse, may fancy that Nature has dis
qualified him for riding; but for all
that, nine men out of ten, if obliged to
try—say as recruits in a cavalry regi
ment—though they may not all turn out
accomplished horsemen, will all learn to
ride well enough for practical purposes.
It is peculiarly important for the young
to set resolutely about correcting bad
habits and forming good ones, while the
faculties are fresh and the brain supple ;
for, in obedience to the law by which
molecular motions travel by preference
along beaten paths, every year cuts
deeper the channels of thought and
feeling, whether for good or evil. A brain
trained to respond to calls of duty soon
does so with ease and elasticity, just as
�120
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT
the muscles of the blacksmith’s arm or of
the ballet-dancer’s leg acquire strength
and vigour by exercise; while, on the
other hand, motion is a pain and selfcontrol an effort to the soft and flabby
limb or brain which has been weakened
by self-indulgence.
It is scarcely necessary to say-that for
success in practical life, self-control is
the one thing most needful. To take
the simplest case, that of a young
working man beginning life with health,
knowledge of a trade, or even without it
with good, thews and sinews, he is the most
free and independent of mortals, on one
condition—that he has saved £10. With
this, he is a free agent in disposing of his
labour, he can make his contract with an
employer on equal terms, he can carry
his goods to the best market, and is
practically a citizen of the world, ready
to start for San Francisco or Melbourne
if . he thinks he can better himself.
Without it, he is a serf tied to the soil,
he cannot move from place to place, he
must take whatever wages are offered
him or starve.
But how to save the £10? That is a
question of daily and weekly recurrence ;
whether to spend an extra shilling in the
pleasant way of going to a public-house
and sitting with a pipe and a jug of ale
by the fireside among jolly companions,
or. to forego the pleasure and save the
shilling. A shilling a week saved will,
in four years, give him the £10, and go a
good way to establish habits which, if he
is enterprising and goes to a colony, or
is clever and has any luck at home, may
readily make the ten a hundred, or even
a thousand pounds. So in every class of
life, the man who gets on is the man who
has schooled himself never to ask whether
a thing is pleasant, but whether it is
right and reasonable ; who always keeps
a bright look-out ahead, and who does
his best at the task, whatever it may be,
that is set before him.
Education really resolves itself very
much into teaching the young to acquire
this indispensable faculty of self-control.
The amount of positive knowledge, useful
in after life, acquired at our English
public schools, is really very little beyond
the three B’s. A boy who could teach
himself French or German irrfive months
spends five years over Latin and Greek,
and in nine cases out of ten forgets them
as soon as he leaves school or college.
Almost everything we know that is worth
knowing we teach ourselves in after life.
But the discipline of school is invaluable
in teaching the lesson of self-control.
Almost every hour of the day a boy at
school has to do things that are dis
agreeable and abstain from doing things
that nature prompts, under pain of
getting a caning from the master or a
thrashing from other boys. The memory
also is exercised, and the faculty of
fixing the mind on work is developed, by
useless almost as well as by useful studies.
In this point of view even that ne plus
ultra of technical pedantry, the Latin,
grammar, with its “Propria quse maribus’’ and “As in presenti,” may have its
use in teaching a boy that no matter how
absurd or repulsive a task maybe, he has
got to tackle to it or worse will befall
him.
But it is in a moral sense that the
influence of a good school is most valu
able. The average boy learns that he
must not tell lies, he must not be a sneak
or a coward, he must take punishment
bravely, and conform to the school
master’s standard of discipline and the
school-boy’s standard of honour. In this
way the first lesson of life, stoicism,
becomes with most English lads a sort of
instinct or second nature.
For stoicism, after all, is the foundation
and primary element of all useful and
honourable life. Whether as Carlyle’s
“Everlasting No,” or as George Eliot’s
advice, to take the pains and mishaps of
life without resorting to moral opium,
the conclusion of all the greatest minds
is that a man must have something of
the Red Indian in him and be able to
suffer, silently, and burn his own smoke,
if he is to be worth anything. And still
more a woman, who has to bear with and
make the best of a thousand petty an
noyances without complaint. Men can
bear on great occasions, but in the
innumerable petty trials of life women
as a rule show more self-control and
moral fortitude. What would the life of
a woman be who could not stand being
bored with a smiling face, put up with
the worries of children and servants with
cheerful fortitude, and turn away an
angry word by a soft answer ?
There is much more that might be
said, but my object is not to preach or
�PRACTICAL LIFE
moralise, but simply to record a few. of
the practical rules and reflections which
have impressed themselves on me in the
course of a long and busy life. I do so
in the hope that perchance they may
awaken useful thoughts in some, es
pecially of the younger readers, who may
happen to glance over these pages. This
much I may say for them, I have tried
them and found them work well. I have
lived for more than the Scriptural span
of threescore and ten years, a life of
varied fortunes and many experiences. . I
may say, in the words which my favourite
poet, Tennyson, puts into the mouth of
Ulysses:
For ever roaming with a hungry heart,
Much have I seen and known, cities of men,
And councils, climates, governments.
121
And the conclusion I come to is, not that
of the Preacher, “ Vanity of vanities, all
is vanity,” but rather that life, with all
its drawbacks, is worth living ; and that
to have been born in a civilised country
in the nineteenth century is a boon for
which a man can never be sufficiently
thankful. Some may find it otherwise
from no fault of their own; more by
their own fault; but the majority of
men and women may lead useful,
honourable, and on the whole fairly
happy lives, if they will act on the
maxim which I have always en
deavoured, however imperfectly, to
follow—Frar NOTHING ; MAKE THE BEST OE
EVERYTHING.
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Modern science and modern thought: with a biographical note on the author by Edward Clodd
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Laing, Samuel [1812-1897]
Clodd, Edward [1840-1930]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: xii, 121 p. : ill. ; 21 cm.
Notes: Date of publication from introductory note. First published, London: Chapman and Hall, 1885. Issued for the Rationalist Press Association, Ltd. Printed in double columns. Publisher's advertisements on back cover. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Watts and Co.
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[1902]
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N430
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Religion
Science
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Science
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“CHRISTIAN SCIENCE” i
By THE REV. ROBERT HUGH BENSON, M.A
It is extremely easy to make fun of “ Christian Science.”
In fact, if we consider it as it is in itself, or rather as
it appears to present itself to the casual observer, it is
extremely difficult not to do so. It appears to solve
problems by denying that they exist; to remove the
toothache by assuring the sufferer that he is under
a complete misapprehension, for he has neither a tooth
nor an ache ; it claims to be an universal religion, and
at the same time its professors charge heavy fees for
instruction in its tenets ; its founder has written a
slender but expensive volume with the title Science
and Health with Key to the Scriptures, and causes this
to be bound up to resemble the Bible. In fact, the
complete absence of any sense of humour in the pre
sentation of this religion to the world arouses a corre
sponding counterpoise of laughter in ourselves.
But this is a shallow method of meeting the question.
If Christian Science were as ludicrous as it appears_
or, rather, if it were nothing more than ludicrous—we
should have to relinquish to a large extent our faith in
human nature ; for it is beyond a doubt that this system
is making almost unprecedented strides in the modern
1 A paper read at the Catholic Conference at Brighton, 1906.
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“ Christian Science
world. Statistics, especially when they come from
America, where nothing is ever done except on a
gigantic scale, are apt to be misleading, but we are
bound to pay some respect to them when they inform
us that the recently built “Temple” of the Scientists in
Boston cost .£400,000 ; that the organ cost ^8,000,
and thirty thousand of the denomination attended its
opening.
Neither are converts made only among the un
educated. It is true to a large extent, if we may trust
our own observation and the tone of the testimonies
put forth by its adherents, that Christian Science is
chiefly triumphant amongst the partly educated—
amongst those who have sufficient learning to be im
pressed by oracular paradoxes, but not enough to
detect their shallowness ; but it is also true that very
highly educated persons indeed are to be found
amongst its supporters, and those, not only educated
in irrelevant subjects, but qualified exponents of the
very sciences which it claims to supplant. Doctors as
well as classical scholars and mathematicians worship
at the shrine of Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy. Humourists,
philosophers, and Christians seem the only persons un
represented in this body. Lastly, unless we are pre
pared to doubt the word of obviously sincere persons,
and even, in the case of some of us, the evidence of our
own senses, we are bound to admit that the practical
claims of this religion are to a large extent justified ;
and that persons who have hitherto spent much money
on physicians without amendment of health have been
cured by the methods of this curious sect.
Briefly the history of Christian Science is as follows:
It was discovered by Mrs. Eddy in 1866, as a result
of her Scriptural researches ; she began her propaganda
in 1867 ; her Science and Health was published in
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3
1875, and by 1903, 270,000 copies had been sold. In
1879 she organized the “ Church of God Scientist in
Boston,” and in 1881 she was ordained to the ministry
and founded the Massachusetts Metaphysical College ;
in 1883 she founded The Christian Science Journal.
Since that date the denomination has gradually spread,
and in recent years has met with extraordinary success
in England as well as in America. There has been
more than one formidable secession ; but in this paper
I propose to deal rather with the original body from
which all sprang.
Its Tenets : Religious Aspect.
We must now proceed to an examination of its tenets,
and this (as admirably stated by Miss Margaret Benson
in a tract published by the Society for the Promotion of
Christian Knowledge) falls naturally under three heads :
the religious, the philosophical, and the physical.
First, then, its religious aspect, and in particular its
claim to be considered Christian. The famous essay
on “ Snakes in Iceland ” is irresistibly suggested to the
mind. There are no snakes in Iceland ; and Christian
Science is not Christian • and we shall see presently
that it is not scientific either.
It is not Christian, I mean, in the ordinary sense of
the word. It is not more Christian, for example, than
the religion of Mahomet. Mahomet wrote in the Koran
that Mary should “bear the Word proceeding from
God,” and that “ Christ Jesus, the Son of Mary,” was
“ one of those who approach near to the presence of
God” (chap. ii.). Such was his mistaken reverence for
our Blessed Lord that he stated that “the Jews slew
him not . . . but he was represented by one in his like
ness” and that “God took him up unto himself”
(chap, iv.), Mrs. Eddy, however (who, as we should
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“ Christian Science ”
expect, affixes no index to her works—there is none at
least in my copy of Science and Healtti), is as explicit as
her confused mind will allow her to be, that “Jesus
is the human man, and Christ the divine ideal”
(S. and H., 473), she implies by her silence that the
Person of Our Lord was human, not divine ; she
criticises His institution of the Holy Eucharist {ibid.
p. 34), calling it His “ritualism or concessions to
matter” (p. 33). Yet her connection with Christianity
is sufficiently strong to allow of her falling into several
heresies condemned and exploded many centuries ago.
“God never created matter ” (p. 335), we are informed.
That is all a mistake ; it came into its attenuated
shadow of existence through what she calls “ mortal
mind.” “ Temporal things,” she says, “are the thoughts
of mortals and are the unreal, being the opposite of the
real or spiritual and eternal” (p. 337). The conclusion
of such.logic, as Miss Benson points out, is irresistible.
East, which is real, has West for its opposite. There
fore West is unreal. Or, even better, my left ear is the
opposite of my right; but my right ear exists, therefore
my left cannot. I only think that it does. She is a
kind of elementary Gnostic, therefore, in her views of
matter, and a kind of Docetic in her views of the Incar
nate Son of God. She further denies the Atonement,
at least in any sense in which that word has ever been
understood by Christians. “ Does erudite theology,”
she sarcastically asks, “regard the crucifixion of Jesus
as chiefly providing a ready pardon for all sinners who
ask for it and are willing to be forgiven ? . . . Then we
must differ” (p. 24). “Its efficacy,” she continues,
“ lies in the practical affection and goodness it de
monstrated for mankind.”
One wonders, therefore, with all this, why she pays
such deference to the Holy Scriptures at all. But the
�“ Christian Science ”
5
difficulty is less great when we consider that, first, she
would get no hearing from the ill-educated Protestants
who form her sect if she did not; secondly, that her
early Congregational teaching is too strong for her • and,
thirdly and supremely, her method of exegesis. This
last point repays deep study. She makes the Scriptures
mean exactly what she likes. Contemplate if you
please the following passage. It is taken from the 29th
division of the tenth chapter of the work on Science
and Health, beginning at the first verse :—
“ The word Adam is from the Hebrew ‘ Adamah,’
signifying the ‘ red colour of the ground, dust, nothing
ness? Divide the name Adam into two syllables, and
it reads ‘ a dam ’ or obstruction.” (One can only be
thankful that it means nothing worse.) “ This,” proceeds
the oracle, “ suggests the thought of something fluid, of
mortal mind in solution : it further suggests the thought
of that ‘ Darkness . . . upon the face of the deep,’
when matter or dust was deemed the agent of Deity in
creating man—when mattei' stood opposed to Spirit as
that which is accursed. Here ‘ a dam ’ is not a mere
play upon words, for it means much. It illustrates the
separation of man from God, and the obstacle the
serpent, sin, would impose between man and his Creator.
The dissection and definition of words, aside from theii'
metaphysical meaning, is not scientific” (p. 338) . . .
and so and so on.
I beg to assure my hearers that this sublime pas
sage is as I have read it. You will observe that
Moses is also set aside in it as a blind guide to mortal
minds, and that Mrs. Eddy has penetrated mysteries
where the friend of God was at fault. Perhaps the
only point in the passage to which, one is able to give
one’s cordial consent is that the word Adam, as in
terpreted by the American prophetess, does indeed
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“ Christian Science ”
“ suggest the thought of darkness upon the face of
the deep.”
Or consider this comment upon the ninth verse of the
first chapter of Genesis—a verse which would, super
ficially considered, appear to offer at least some little
difficulty to a lady who denies God’s creation of matter,
the goodness and even the reality of matter itself, and
at the same time pledges herself to a belief in the
inspiration of the Scriptures. But Mrs. Eddy is
undaunted.
“ And God called the dryland Earth: and the gather
ing together of the waters called He seas ; and God
saw that it was good.” Here is the comment:—
“ Here the human concept and Divine idea seem
confused by the translator, but they are not so in the
scientifically Christian meaning of the text. Upon Adam
devolves the pleasureable task of finding names for all
material things ; but Adam has not yet appeared in the
narrative. In metaphor, the dry land illustrates the
absolute formations instituted by mind, while water
symbolizes its elements. Spirit duly feeds every object,
as it appears in the line of creation, so that it may
express the fatherhood and the motherhood of God.
Spirit names and blesses all. Without natures par
ticularly defined all things would be alike, and creation
full of nameless children, wanderers from the parent
mind, strangers in a tangled wilderness ” (p. 506).
This is the whole of the comment; and it, as well as
the preceding passage, is an admirable example of Mrs.
Eddy’s style and methods. Upon myself, who have
really attempted to understand what she means, I can
only say that the effect has been one resembling that of
incipient imbecility. They are certainly English words
arranged in tolerably grammatical order ; but they pro
duce to my poor intelligence rather less than no meaning
�“Christian Science"
7
at all. I feel indeed, in her own beautiful expression,
a “ wanderer from the parent mind, a stranger in a
tangled wilderness.”
After these examples we are not surprised to learn the
following facts.
The river Hiddekel means “ Divine Science, under
stood and acknowledged.” “ In ” (i-n) is “ a term obsolete
in Science, if used in reference to Spirit or Deity.”
“ Gad ” means “ Science ; spiritual being understood :
haste toward harmony.” “ Assher ” means “ Hope and
Faith ; spiritual compensation, the ills of the flesh
rebuked.” And lastly—and this is a piece of exegesis
that seems to me significant—Gihon (a river) means
“ The rights of woman acknowledged morally, civilly,
and socially ” (pp. 581-588).
Not
to be
Taken Seriously.
It would be possible to go on for ever quoting
passages of this kind, in illustration of Mrs. Eddy’s
religious position—I think it is the most confused and
intricate that I have ever come across. I picture her
seated at her desk with the Bible before her—with what
is called the Authorized Version—and a small heap of
second-rate Nonconformist commentaries upon the text.
(“ Adamah, red colour of the ground, dust, nothingness,”
irresistibly brings back the memory of the Scripture
lesson on Monday mornings at my private school.)
Seated at her desk, then, absolutely confident that she is
inspired from on high, yet dependent for mere techni
calities of the etymological meaning of words upon the
coarse erudition of dissenting divines, she proceeds to
find her system in the Bible. Gad must mean some
thing, therefore why should it not mean science,
spiritual being, understood, haste towards harmony ?
There is no reason why it should not, therefore it docs.
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“ Christian Science ”
There must be something about women’s rights ; Gihon
seems tolerably unoccupied, therefore Gihon means
women’s rights. Here is Moses saying that God made
mountains and seas and saw that they were good. But
God did nothing of the sort: Moses entirely misunder
stood the situation, or at any rate his translator did.
Therefore this must be set right. And so on.
Now, I sincerely intended when I began this paper to
take Mrs. Eddy seriously, but it is simply impossible.
In religious matters she resembles a bull—or shall we
rather say a well-intentioned cow ?—in a china shop.
She means ever so well; she has grasped the outline of
the idea that Scripture can be allegorically interpreted,
and that there is such a thing as symbolism ; so she
proceeds, as it were, to drink out of the spout of a coffee
pot and put a slop-basin upon the top of her head to
protect her from the sun. These clay objects, she
argues, occasionally resemble other things than those
for which they were designed ; a china apple may serve
as a pepper-pot; then why in the world should not a
slop-basin serve as a hat ?
Hence follows the scene of confusion and the sound
of trampling and breakage, of which I have given you
only the minutest glimpse.
Mrs. Eddy’s Philosophy.
When we turn to her philosophy, we are not in much
better plight • for the most charitable construction that
we can put upon her system is that she provided herself
with the smaller edition of a philosophical dictionary,
asked her friends the meaning of some words and
guessed at the rest.
Briefly stated, her philosophical system, so far as it is
coherent at all, is as follows :—
God is mind, and God alone has true existence in the
�“ Christian Science ”
9
highest sense. Man also is mind (she is not explicit
as to whether man is, therefore, Divine or not ; but we
will be charitable and assume that she is not a sheer
Pantheist, although this is a hard task when we read
that God is “ the only Ego
But we will allow that
man has a secondary kind of personality dependent
upon God. Very well, then. Since God—or shall we
say, “ The Divine ” ?—alone is real, all that is opposed
to the Divine must be unreal. But the Divine is Spirit,
and the opposite of spirit is matter. Therefore matter
is unreal. Again, God is good, therefore the opposite
of good is not God, therefore it is not real; therefore
evil has no existence.
Here, then, is the philosophy with which Mrs. Eddy
sets out to attack the problems of sin and suffering.
“ There is no sin or suffering ” is inscribed upon her
banner. She is quite explicit about this. “There is
but one primal cause,’' she says, “ therefore there can
be no effect from any other cause.” (One notes in
passing that she is apparently unaware of what are
-called secondary causes.) “. . . And there can be no
reality in aught which proceeds not from this great and
only cause.” And again, “ God does not cause man to
sin, to be sick or die.” And the conclusion is, as I
have said, that sin, sickness, and death have no real
existence.
But somehow the world persists in believing in these
things ; and this must be accounted for. This, then, is
her solution. The mind of man has somehow become
rather debased—she does not explain how this is
possible, if deterioration from the primal cause is an
impossibility—but—well, it is so. This debased percep
tion she calls by the name of “ mortal mind,” and sick
ness and death, though not real in themselves, have a
kind of phantom life when regarded by mortal mind.
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“ Christian Science ”
The cure, then, is evident—man must refuse to yield to
the allurements of mortal mind ; he must stoutly deny
its veracity, and thus gradually the idea of sin and sick
ness will be eradicated, and with the eradication of the
idea such an attenuated existence as they possess will
also pass away.
Its Fallacies.
Now in this summary we have really the pith of Mrs.
Eddy’s system. First let us expose the fallacies.
Mrs. Eddy does not understand the meaning of
existence. She is right, in a hazy kind of way, when
she thinks that God alone has existence in the highest
sense ; but she is wrong when she thinks, if she does so
think, that there is no other kind of existence possible.
She ignores the possibility that creation, secondary
causes, and man’s free-will may be capable of modifying
the extension of God’s original idea. She is, that is to
say, an Idealist in such a sense that she denies any sort
of reality to anything except ideas. She does not seem
to be aware that matter may be a product of spirit and
of a different constitution from spirit without thereby
destroying the supremacy of spirit.
She contradicts herself also flatly, as I have already
hinted. If nothing can truly exist except that which is
in harmony with the creative Spirit, how is it, we ask,
that mortal mind exists ? She has no answer to this
except that of saying that it doesn’t. Yet she bases the
existence of the idea of sin and matter upon the fact
that it does, and that it is, moreover, extremely energetic.
Here again is another contradiction. There can be no
effect from any other cause except the Primal Cause,
she tells us : yet almost in the next paragraph she tells
us that sin and matter, so far as they exist, have come
into existence from mortal mind which is certainly any
thing but a Primal Cause.
�“ Christian Science”
11
It is really useless to go on—it is like arguing with a
fog. And her final retort, of course, silences us at once.
We ourselves are in a condition of mortal mind, she
informs us ; therefore, of course, we cannot understand
her. And indeed we cannot.
A True Principle amid Confusion.
But is there nothing in her ideas ? No, I think there
is a good deal in them. There is that truth in them
which the Christian religion has taught for nineteen
centuries ; namely that spirit is superior to matter, and
the original cause of it, and that under certain circum
stances spirit can control matter.
Here is the principle that is true under all her con
fusion. I say that the Christian religion has taught it
for nineteen centuries; I will go further and say that the
mind of man has grasped it since the creation of the
world. It is this that underlies every miracle that God
has overwrought; it is by this that the Saints have lived ;
and it is this that modern psychologists are at last begining to verify by scientific methods. It is the vast and all
dominating principle on which we resist temptation,
namely that spiritual interests are better worth securing
than carnal; it is on that principle that the madman can
perform feats impossible to the sane, and that the
hypnotist can banish a nervous headache, and can,
under certain circumstances, modify the ravages of
organic disease. But it does not therefore follow that
because the master is greater than the servant therefore
the servant is a phantom ; nor that there may not be
occasions when the weary master can deal with matters
better through his servant than himself, as when a
doctor gives a chemical drug instead of hypnotism.
“ All good things are ours,” says Browning, “ nor soul
helps flesh more now than flesh helps souls.”
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“ Christian Science ”
This, then, is our answer to Mrs. Eddy : You are
right, we say, when you declare that God is a Spirit ;
you are wrong when you deny that the Word was made
Flesh. You are right in proclaiming the superiority of
Mind, you are wrong when you deny the existence of
matter. You are right when you say with the Idealists
that the qualities of matter have no existence apart from
mind ; you are wrong when you deduce from that pro
position that if human minds ceased to perceive there is
no Divine Mind to save the situation. You are right,
then, with nearly every other heretic under the sun in
your affirmations ; you are absolutely wrong with ab
solutely every heretic in your negations.
The Practical System.
We will pass on to the practical system of Christian
Science. Now this is chiefly directed to the destruction
of such delusions as bodily suffering by a means other
than that of medical science. The success of this
religion is indeed largely due to its results in this direc
tion ; for there is no question at all that cures are
wrought by this extraordinary philosophy. The close,
indeed, of Mrs. Eddy’s remarkable book consists largely
of testimonies to this effect; and one or two recent trials
are evidences to the fact that, even if these cases were
a little unfortunate owing to the perversion of mortal
mind (which, as we have seen, can have no existence),
yet that there are persons of integrity sufficiently satisfied
as to Mrs. Eddy’s claims to risk and indeed to sacrifice
their lives in her cause.
I must confess that the extracts from rejoicing ex
patients, given in her book, seem to me a little uncon
vincing ; but I am perfectly willing to allow that they
are genuine, and that it is only my cold insular nature,
coupled with my “ mortal mind,” that makes me hesitate.
�“ Christian Science ”
13
“ I wish to say,” writes a lady, “ to those who think
the price of our literature is too high, that if I could not
get another copy, there is no price on earth that would
induce me to part with my Science and Health. Not
mentioning the money paid for doctor’s bills, I gave for
one medical book $3.50, for another, $6.75, and after
studying these I found I had more diseases than before
their purchase.”
(This reminds me of Mr. Jerome’s experience in
similar circumstances ; his was even more shocking, for,
perhaps you will remember that he discovered that he
had every disease enumerated in the book except house
maid’s knee.)
“ For the small sum of $3,” the lady continues, 11 I
purchased a copy of Science and Health, and through
reading it understandingly found I had no diseases. It
always brings a feeling of pity when I hear any one say
our text-book is too costly. Who would not give three
dollars to be freed from all diseases ? I seemed to have
all, or nearly all, the ills that flesh is heir to. I will not
try to enumerate them, but one that I was made free from
—one that had always been with me—was a pain on the
top of my head. . . . The doctors told me that I never
would be freed, as my brain was too large for the space
allotted to it, and that was what caused the pressure
and pain. Soon after reading Science and Health I
forgot that I had a brain that was too large, for all the
pain and pressure was gone. Oh 1 I can never tell
how free I felt, with no pain after so many years of
suffering (p. 613).—M. M. S. Clinton, Iowa.”
But this same lady seems to have been but an imperfect
disciple, for she informs us also that “from being a
shadow of ninety-five pounds, she reached one hundred
and sixty-five pounds” from a perusal of the book.
Surely she should rather have ceased to weigh any
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“ Christian Science ”
pounds at all since matter is a delusion ! Yet we
cannot but rejoice at her liberation even to this extent,
for, previously to this, we learn that she was in the habit
of taking medicine every fifteen minutes throughout
the day.
And this is a tolerably characteristic example of Mrs.
Eddy’s followers. Honestly, I opened the book at
random, when I fell upon this precious passage. Per
haps I was guided to do so. But I do not say they are
all of this nature ; I am quite willing to allow that even
objective diseases may be cured by Mrs. Eddy’s system ;
for the power of self-suggestion is certainly a remarkable
fact; and I should hesitate from attempting to limit the
effect of a convinced mind acting upon the body. But
where I take exception to the system is in the fact that
bodily disease seems to be selected alone for treat
ment from all the manifestations of mortal mind. Food
also, according to the new gospel, ought to be a
delusion ; so is money, so are carriages and horses and
trains and steamboats and clothes—for they are all
manifestations of a thing which does not exist, since
God is Spirit and Spirit is all. Yet I am not aware that
Christian Scientists have less than three square meals a
day—in fact, I am acquainted with one family belonging
to this denomination which joyfully sits down to a late
supper of tinned lobster, exclaiming at the liberating
doctrine which tells them that there is no such thing as
indigestion. Mrs. Eddy herself wears, I believe, a black
silk dress ; she certainly charges three dollars fifty cents
for her miracle-working book, demanding prepayment,
and, I rather fancy, a sum of about twenty pounds
sterling for a course of higher study ; I happen to know
that her followers travel by train—and, in fact, lay
themselves open generally to the charge of not quite
believing what they say.
�“ Christian Science ”
15
Its Inconsistency.
Yet what do they say to this ? They say that at
present concession must be made to these fantastic
ideas, the mortal mind of the rest of the world is still
too strong for the elect, and that they must continue to
wear their chains a little longer. Mrs. Eddy goes even
further, and sadly laments the limiting power of vulgar
credulity. “ Until the advancing age/’ she writes,
“ admits the efficacy and supremacy of mind, it is better
to leave surgery, and the adjustment of broken bones
and dislocations to the fingers of a surgeon, while you
confine yourselves chiefly to mental reconstruction and
the prevention of inflammation.” Another irresistible
parallel suggests itself. When David Copperfield, you
remember, was giving his little supper, ending as it did
in such a lamentable manifestation of mortal mind,
under the delusive influence of non-existent alcohol,
one by one the preparation of the dishes was consigned
to the manipulation of the pastrycook round the corner,
thereby allowing Mrs. Cripps, his landlady, to “giveher
undivided attention to the potatoes ” and “ to serve up
the cheese and the celery as she would wish to see it
done.” But a good time is coming, says the prophetess :
“ The time approaches when mortal mind will forsake
its corporeal, structural, and material basis, when im
mortal mind and its formations will be apprehended in
science, and material beliefs will not interfere with
spiritual facts.”
Yet, until that time comes, we may surely be pardoned
if we continue to see a little inconsistency in all this, and
to explain what successes are attained by the system by
the principle of self-suggestion rather than by a philoso
phical fallacy. It might be otherwise if there was any
really startling evidence that Christian Scientists believed
�16
“ Christian Science"
what they said. When Mrs. Eddy -lscends a pillar like
St. Simon Stylites, or confines her diet to pulse and
water like the holy children—for even we do not ask
that she should subsist entirely on high and noble ideas
—when American professors of this creed cross the
Atlantic on millstones, or even without them, upborne by
their supreme consciousness of the superiority of mind
over matter—even, we might almost say, when the
preachers of this religion go out barefooted and brownfrocked—for we will grant them that concession to mortal
mind for the present—to proclaim the good news of the
kingdom to those who cannot afford three dollars fifty
cents as the price of their liberation—when we see all this,
I say—when we see even one-hundredth part of the self
denial of the meanest among the Christian saints, or the
very faintest sign that God is working among them in a
manner in which He does not work in hypnotic estab
lishments, perhaps then we shall be able to treat them
with more respect and less laughter, and be patient
enough to study their complicated books with something
resembling sympathy.
Neither Christian nor Scientific.
In conclusion, then, we have seen that Christian
Science cannot claim, in any acknowledged sense of
those words, to be either Christian or Scientific. It is a
digest of an emasculated Protestantism and a misunder
stood Idealism manifested in an inconsistent course of
life. Yet Mrs. Eddy has one true principle—namely,
that mind is master of matter ; and she has proclaimed
this principle to an undiscerning and credulous public
who had forgotten it, sunk in materialism, or, at the
very best, in an utterly conventional and de-spiritualised
form of Christianity, in language resembling that of a
Uould-be minor prophet confined in an American asylum
�“ Christian Science "
17
on the charge of thinking himself the Apostle John. To
such people as these, accustomed to regard matter as
supreme, and religion as a kind of pleasing emotion
largely dependent on the state of the liver, her message
has come as a revelation ; and for this, I think, we may
be thankful. Anything in the world—the creed of the
Hottentot or of the Red Indian—I had almost said
even spiritualism itself—is better than materialism. It
is better to be aware of the spiritual world, seeing it
through even Mrs. Eddy’s spectacles, than not to be
aware of it at all; and it is something to know that God
is Love, even if one forgets that He must also have some
attribute corresponding to common sense.
For this, then, we may be thankful, though it is hard
to preserve our gratitude when we consider the huge
superincumbent weight of dross that lies about the
gold ; still more, when we remember the thousands of
immortal souls whom God made for Himself, whom He
endowed with reason, and whom Mrs. Eddy has suc
ceeded in diverting from the path that leads to Him.
But if all roads lead to Rome, at least a great many may
lead to God, and it is impossible to say that many
Americans, and, indeed, English as well, are not better
as cheerful, healthy-bodied, though mind.-deluded,
“ Scientists ” than as narcotic, materialistic, hopeless
invalids. This is, I am afraid, faint praise, but it is all
that I have the heart to utter.
Recommendations.
You will forgive me, perhaps, if I end with two or
three recommendations to any who have to deal with
persons suffering from this distressing form of thought.
First, I am sure that we must keep our tempers ; and,
secondly, our sense of humour. If it is true that Protes
tantism rises in any degree from the absence of this
�18
“ Christian Science"
latter virtue, I am certain that Christian Science, its
latest development, rises almost entirely from it. I do
not say that no scientist possesses a grain of humour
but that such is bound to keep it in a locked cupboard
when he treats of his religion. Let us therefore bring
to bear this genial solvent of laughter and see whether
Christian Science is as impervious to it as to so many
other facts of the world in which we live.
But supremely let us remember that the sacramental
system is the one and only positive scheme which can
be advanced with any hope of success. It is from the
loss of this that this new heresy has had its rise. When
matter was no longer understood to be the divinelyappointed vehicle of spirit, it became its enemy. Let it
be our business, then, so to know our own faith that we
may state it intelligently to others ; that we may show
how fallen matter, evil indeed so far as it is abused, has
been caught up and purified by the divinely-inspired
Revelation of God ; how bread and wine brought forth
from the earth by the labour of man for bodily suste
nance are transformed by divine power into the Bread
that comes down from heaven and the Atoning Blood
of the Son of God ; how human words that in one
man’s mouth may deceive and ruin, in another’s may
convey the message of heavenly pardon ; how the water
that man defiles yet flows from the Paradise of God and
washes souls as well as bodies—how, in fact, the whole
range of matter that had become man’s enemy has
become again his friend—and how that which was an
occasion of falling has turned again to his wealth and
peace ; and how supremely, as the very keystone of the
glorious arch that God has built from earth to heaven,
hangs the doctrine of the Incarnation, by which the
Creator became linked ineffably to the creature, and
the spiritual to the material in bonds that are eternal;
�"Christian Science"
19
and how, finally, the truth that the Word was made
Flesh illustrates, underlies, and emphasizes in a fashion
of which man could never have dreamed, the further
truth of which it is the correlative, that God is a Spirit,
that they who worship Him must worship Him in spirit
and in truth ; that God is Light, and in Him is no
darkness at all.
�PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY
THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, LONDON.
U
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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"Christian science"
Creator
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Benson, Robert Hugh
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 19 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: "A paper read at the Catholic Conference at Brighton, 1906."
Publisher
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Catholic Truth Society
Date
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[1906?]
Identifier
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RA1552
Subject
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Christianity
Science
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work ("Christian science"), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Christian Science-Doctrines
Health
Mary Baker Eddy
Science