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No. 10—R.P.A.CHEAP REPRINTS.
INCLUDING THE
Famous Belfast Address
LECTURES
AND
ESSAYS
By PROFESSOR TYNDALL
WATTS & Co.,
17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.
(issued for the rationalist press
association, limited)
SECOND IMPRESSION, completing’ 35,000 copies.
D,
« ST
��Ife,
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
LECTURES AND ESSAYS
�CONTENTS
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94
Reflections on Prayer and Natural Law ■
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Biographical Sketch of
The Belfast Address
Apology for
ti-ie
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Author
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Belfast Address
the
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Scientific Materialism Scientific Use of
Science
Man
and
Vitality
Miracles
and
On Prayer
Imagination
the
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Special Providences
as a
Science and
the
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Form of Physical Energy“ Spirits
117
�LECTURES
>
AND ESSAYS
BY
JOHN TYNDALL
(Cullings from “ Fragments of Science ”)
[issued
for the rationalist press association, ltd.]
WATTS & CO.,
17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.
1909
��BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH1
John Tyndall, natural philosopher,
son of John Tyndall and his wife Sarah
(Macassey), was born at Leighlin Bridge,
co. Carlow, Ireland, on August 2nd,
1820. The Tyndalls, who claimed rela
tionship with the family of William
Tyndale the martyr, had crossed from
Gloucestershire to Ireland in the seven
teenth century. The elder John Tyndall,
son of a small landowner, although poor,
was a man of superior intellect, and he
gave his son the best education which
his circumstances could afford. At the
local national school young Tyndall
acquired a thorough knowledge of
elementary mathematics, which quali
fied him to. enter as civil assistant
(in 1839) the ordnance survey of Ireland.
In 1842 he was selected, as one of the
best draughtsmen in his department, for
employment on the English survey.
While quartered at Preston in Lanca
shire he joined the mechanics’ institute,
and attended its lectures. He was at
this time much impressed by Carlyle’s
Past and Present, and to the stimula
ting influence of Carlyle’s works was in
part' due his later resolve to follow a
scientific career. On quitting the survey
Tyndall was employed for three years as
a railway engineer.
In 1847 he accepted an offer from
George Edmondson, principal of Queen
wood College, Hampshire, to join the
college staff as teacher of mathematics
■hi
and surveying.
Mr. (afterwards Sir
Edward) Frankland was lecturer on
chemistry, and the two young men
agreed respectively to instruct each other
in chemistry and mathematics. But
Queenwood did not yield all the oppor
tunities they wished for, and they
presently resolved to take advantage of
the excellent instruction to be enjoyed
at the university of Marburg in HesseCassel. The decision was for Tyndall a
momentous one. He had nothing but
his own work and slender savings to
depend on, and his friends thought him
mad for abandoning the brilliant possi
bilities then open to a railway engineer.
In October, 1848, Tyndall and Frank
land settled at Marburg. Tyndall at
tended Bunsen’s lectures on experimental
and practical chemistry, and studied
mathematics and physics .in the classes
and laboratories of Stegmann, Gerling,
and Knoblauch. By intense application
he accomplished in less than two years
the work usually extended over three,
and thus became doctor of philosophy
early in 1850. Thenceforward he was
free to devote himself entirely to original
research.
x
His first scientific paper was a mathe
matical essay on screw surfaces—“ Die
Schraubenflache mit geneigter Erzeugungslinie und die Bedingungen des
Gleichgewichts fur solche Schrauben
which formed his inaugural dissertation
Smith-E,te-& Co-
- tetolf of
�biographical sketch
6
At Easter, 1851, Tyndall finally left
when he took his degree. His first I
Marburg and went to Berlin, where he
physical paper, published in the Philo
sophical Magazine for February, I^5I> became acquainted with many eminent
was on “The Phenomena of a Water Jet” men of science. In the laboratory of
—a subject comparatively simple, but not Professor Magnus he conducted a second
investigation on “ Diamagnetism and
without scientific interest.
In conjunction with Knoblauch, Tyn Magne-crystallic Action,”1 which formed
a sequel to that previously undertaken
dall executed and published an impor
with Knoblauch. A paper describing his
tant investigation “ On the Magneto
results was read at the Ipswich meeting
optic Properties of Crystals and the
of the British Association. He showed
Relation of Magnetism and Diamag
netism to Molecular Arrangement.”1 that the antithesis of the two forces
was absolute : diamagnetism resembling
They claimed to have discovered the
existence of a relation between the magnetism as to polarity and all other
density of matter and the manifestation characteristics, differing from it only by
the substitution of repulsion for attrac
of the magnetic force. Their funda
mental idea was that the component tion and vice versa.
The question of diamagnetic polarity
molecules of crystals, and other sub
was much discussed. Its existence,
stances, are not in every direction at the
originally asserted by Faraday, and
same distance from each other. The
superior magnetic energy of a crystal in reaffirmed by Weber in 1848, had been
subsequently denied by Faraday, who
a given direction, when suspended
still continued doubtful. To meet all
between the poles, they attributed
objections, Tyndall, at a later date, again
to the greater closeness of its mole
took up the subject, and in three con
cules in that direction. In support
clusive investigations, the second of
of their assumption they showed that, by
which formed the subject of the Bakenan
pressure, the magnetic axis of a bismuth
crystal could be shifted 909 in azimuth, lecture delivered before the Royal Society
in 1855, he put the polarity of bismuth
the line of pressure always setting itself
and other diamagnetic bodies beyond
parallel with, or at right angles to, the
question.2 Five years were. devoted _ by
fine joining the two magnetic poles, ac
him to the investigation of diamagnetism
cording as the crystal was magnetic or
and the influence of crystalline struc
diamagnetic. This explanation differed
ture and mechanical pressure upon the
essentially from that of Faraday and
manifestations of magnetic force. The
Pliicker. In June, 1850, Tyndall went
original papers (with a few omissions in
to England, and at the meeting of the
the last edition) are collected in his book
British Association of that year in Edin
burgh he read an account of his investiga on Diamagnetism (see p. 12).
Before leaving Marburg in 1851,
tion, which excited considerable interest.
Tyndall had agreed to return to Queen
He afterwards returned to Marburg for
wood ; this time as lecturer on matter
six months, and carried out a lengthy
; matics and natural philosophy. Here
inquiry into electro-magnetic attractions
at short distances.2
1 Phil. Mag., September,
„
» lb., November, 1851 1
«Phil. Mag-P^h 1850.
2 lb., April, 1851.
ib., 1856, pt. i.
Trans., x8SSI
�BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
7
■ he remained two years. The first of first to last resembled that of father and
the three investigations just alluded to son. Tyndall’s Faraday as a Discoverer
' was carried out at Queenwood, as was bears striking testimony to their attach
I also a Series of experiments on “The ment. Other sketches of Faraday by
Conduction of Heat through Wood.”1 Tyndall are in his Fragments of Science
On June 3rd, 1852, Tyndall was elected and in the life of Faraday in the
fellow of the Royal Society.
Dictionary of National Biography.
While at Queenwood he applied for
Tyndall’s career was now definitely
several positions which offered a wider marked out. To the end of his active
scope for his abilities. On his way to life his best energies were devoted to the
Ipswich in 1851 he had made the service of the Royal Institution. In
acquaintance of T. H. Huxley, and a 1867, when Faraday died, Tyndall suc
warm and enduring friendship resulted. ceeded him in his position as superin
. They made joint applications for the tendent of the Institution. On his own
chairs respectively of natural history retirement in the autumn of 1887 he
and physics then vacant at Toronto; was elected honorary professor.
but, tn spite of high testimonials, they
In 1854, after attending the British
were unsuccessful. They also failed Association meeting at Liverpool, Tyndall
tn candidatures for chairs in the newly- visited the slate quarries of Penrhyn.
founded university of Sydney, New His familiarity with the effects of pres
South Wales. Meanwhile, soon after sure upon the structure of crystals led
Tyndall’s departure from Berlin, Dr. him to give special attention to the
Henry Bence Jones visited that city, problem of slaty cleavage. By careful
and, hearing much of Tyndall’s labours observation and experiments with white
and personality, caused him to be wax and many other substances which
invited to give a Friday evening lecture develop cleavage in planes perpendicular
at the Royal Institution. The lecture,
to pressure, he satisfied himself that
“On the Influence of Material Aggregation pressure alone was sufficient to produce
Upon the Manifestations of Force,”2 was the cleavage of slate rocks. On June 6th,
delivered on February nth, 1853. It 1856, he lectured on the subject at the
produced an extraordinary impression, Royal Institution.1 Huxley, who was
and Tyndall, hitherto known only among present, suggested afterwards that the
physicists, became famous beyond the same cause might possibly explain the
limits of scientific society. In May, 1853, laminated structure of glacier ice recently
he was unanimously chosen as professor described in Forbes’s Travels in the
of natural philosophy in the Royal Alps. The friends agreed to take a
Institution. The appointment had the holiday and inspect the glaciers together.
special charm of making him the colleague The results of the observations made
of Faraday. Seldom have two men during this and two subsequent visits to
worked together so harmoniously as did Switzerland are given in Tyndall’s classi
Faraday and Tyndall during the years cal work, The Glaciers of the Alps
that followed. Their relationship from (see p. 12). The original memoirs are
in the Philosophical Transactions for
' See “ Molecular Influences,” Phil. Trans.,
Jvmaxy, 1853.
* 2?^/. Inst. Proc., i. 185.
1 See appendix to Glaciers of the Alps.
�8
Biographical
sketch
The very important series of researches
1857 and 1859. Tyndall, assisted by his
on “Radiant Heat in its Relation to
friend, Dr. Thomas Archer Hirst, made
many measurements upon the glaciers in Gases and Vapours,” which occupied him
continuation of the work of Agassiz and on and off for twelve years, and with
J. D. Forbes. He discussed, in particular, which his name will be always especially
the question as to the conditions which associated, were begun in 1859. He
enable a rigid body like ice to move like was led from the consideration of glacier
a river.
He showed very clearly the problems to study the part played by
defects of former theories, proving by aqueous vapour and other constituents
repeated observations on the structure of the atmosphere in producing the
and properties of ice the inefficacy of the remarkable conditions of temperature
generally admitted plastic theory to ac which prevail in mountainous regions.
The inquiry was one of exceptional diffij
count for the phenomena. Through the
direct application of the doctrine of culty. Prior to 1859 no means had been
regelation, he arrived at a satisfactory found of determining by experiment, as
explanation of the nature of glacier Melloni had done for solids and liquids,
the absorption, radiation, and trans
motion. The veined structure he as
cribed to mechanical pressure, and the mission of heat by gases and vapours.
By the invention of new and more deli
formation of crevasses to strains and
cate methods Tyndall succeeded in
pressures occurring in the body of the
glacier. In assigning to Rendu his controlling the refractory gases. . Fie
found unsuspected differences to exist in
position in the history of glacier theories,
their respective powers of absorption.
Tyndall gave offence to Professor
While elementary gases offered practi
Forbes. A controversy followed, in
cally no obstacle to the passage of heat
which the fairness of Tyndall’s attitude
rays, some of the compound gases
was fully vindicated.
absorbed more than eighty per cent, of
The expedition to Switzerland, under
the incident radiation. Allotropic forms
taken for a scientific purpose, had a
came under the same rule; ozone, for
secondary outcome. Tyndall was fasci
example, being a much better absorbent
nated by the mountains, and from that
than oxygen. The temperature of the
time forward yearly sought refreshment
source of heat was found to be of
in the Alps when his labours in London importance: heat of a higher tempAwere over. He became an accomplished
ture was much more penetrative than
mountaineer. In company with Mr.
Vaughan Hawkins he made one of the heat of a lower temperature.
The power to absorb and the power to
earliest assaults upon the Matterhorn in
radiate Tyndall showed to be perfectly
i860. He crossed over its summit from
reciprocal. He also established that, as
Breuil to Zermatt in 1868. The first
regards their powers of absorption and
ascent of the Weisshorn was made by him,
radiation, liquids and their vapours res
in 1861. Tyndall’s descriptions of his
pectively follow the same order. . Thus
Alpine adventures are not only graphic and he was able to determine the position bf
characterised by his keen interest in scien
aqueous vapour, which, on account of
tific problems, but show a poetical appre condensation, could not be experimented
ciation of mountain beauties in which he
[ upon directly. Experiments made with
is approached by few Alpine travellers.
�BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
dry and humid air corroborated the
inference that, as water transcends all
Other liquids, so aqueous vapour is
powerful above all other vapours as a
radiator and absorber. These results,
questioned by Magnus and by a few
liter experimenters, but fully established
by Tyndall, explained a number of
phenomena previously unaccounted for.
Since Wells’s researches on dew, no fact
has been established of greater impor
tance to the science of meteorology than
the high absorptive and radiative power
Of aqueous vapour. Many years later
<n experiment made in his presence by
Mr. Graham Bell suggested to Tyndall
a novel and interesting method of indi
rectly confirming his former results.1
Using a dark solution of iodine in
bisulphide of carbon as a ray-filter,
Tyndall was able approximately to
determine the proportion of luminous
to non-luminous rays in the electric and
Other lights. He also found that the
obscure rays collected by means of a
rock-salt lens would ignite combustible
materials at the invisible focus; while
some non-combustible bodies, exposed at
the same dark focus, became luminous
or calorescent. The astounding change
in the deportment of matter towards heat
»diated from an obscure source which
accompanies the act of chemical com
bination, and many other points of equal
importance, were first established by
these researches, for which Tyndall
received the Rumford medal in 1869.
Nine memoirs on these subjects were
published in the Philosophical Transac
tions^ and many additional papers in
other journals. They have been gathered
together in Contributions to Molecular
* See “Action of Free Molecules on Radiant
Heat, and its Conversion thereby into Sound,”
1882, pt. i.
9
Physics in the Domain of Radiant Heat
(see p. 12). This volume also includes
a series of striking experiments on the
decomposition of vapours by light,
wherein the blue of the firmament and
the polarisation of sky-light—illustrated
on skies artificially produced — were
shown to be due to excessively fine
particles floating in our atmosphere.
While engaged upon the last-mentioned
inquiry, Tyndall observed that a lumi
nous beam, passing through the moteless
air of his experimental tube, was invisible.
It occurred to him that such a beam
might be utilised to detect the presence
of germs in the atmosphere : air incom
petent to scatter light, through the
absence of all floating particles, must be
free from bacteria and their germs.
Numerous experiments showed “opti
cally pure ” air to be incapable of
developing bacterial life. In properly
protected vessels infusions of fish, flesh,
and vegetable, freely exposed after boiling
to air rendered moteless by subsidence,
and declared to be so by the invisible
passage of a powerful electric beam,
remained permanently pure and un
altered ; whereas the identical liquids,
exposed afterwards to ordinary dust
laden air, soon swarmed with bacteria.
Three extensive investigations into the
behaviour of putrefactive organisms were
made by Tyndall, mainly with the view
of removing such vagueness as still lin
gered in the public mind in 1875-6,
regarding the once widely-received doc
trine of spontaneous generation. Among
the new results arrived at the following
are noteworthy.
Bacteria are killed
below ioo° C.; but their desiccated
germs—those of the hay bacillus in par
ticular—may retain their vitality after
several hours’ boiling.
By a process
which he called “ discontinuous heating,”
�IO
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
whereby the germs, in the order of their
development, were successively destroyed
before starting into active life, he suc
ceeded in sterilising nutritive liquids
containing the most resistant germs.
This method, since universally adopted
by bacteriologists, has proved of great
practical value. The medical faculty of
Tubingen gave Tyndall the degree of
M.D. in recognition of these researches.
The original essays, written for the
Philosophical Transactions, are collected
in Floating Matter of the Air (see
p. 12).
In 1866 Tyndall had succeeded
Faraday as scientific adviser to the
Trinity House and Board of Trade. He
held the post for seventeen years, and it
was in connection with the Elder Brethren
that his chief investigations on sound
were undertaken, with a view to the
establishment of fog signals upon our
coasts. Many conflicting opinions were
held as to the respective values of
the various sound signals in use when
Tyndall began his experiments at the
South Foreland (May 19th, 1873). Very
discordant results appeared at first, but
all were eventually traced to variations
of density in the atmosphere. Tyndall
discovered that non-homogeneity of the
atmosphere affects sound as cloudiness
affects light. By streams of air differently
heated, or saturated in different degrees
with aqueous vapour, “acoustic flocculence” is produced. Acoustic clouds,
opaque enough to intercept sound
altogether and to produce echoes of
great intensity, may exist in air of perfect
visual transparency. Rain, hail, snow,
and fog were found not sensibly to
obstruct sound.
The atmosphere was
also shown to exercise a selective and con
tinually varying influence upon sounds,
being favourable to the transmission
sometimes of the longer, sometimes of
the shorter, sonorous waves. Tyndall
recommended the steam siren used in
the South Foreland experiments as, upon
the whole, the most powerful fog signal
yet tried in England.
His memoir on
the subject, presented to the Royal
Society on February 5th, 1874, is sum
marised in the book on Sound (see
p. 12).
Passing mention should be
made of the beautiful experiments on
sensitive flames described in the same
volume.
It was likewise in his capacity of
scientific adviser that Tyndall was called
upon, in 1869 and on many subsequent
occasions, to report upon the gas system
introduced by Mr. John Wigham, of
Dublin, the originator of several impor
tant steps in modern lighthouse illumina
tion. Tyndall’s inability, during a long
series of years, to secure what he con
sidered justice towards Mr. Wigham led
him eventually to sever himself from
colleagues to whom he was sincerely
attached.
He resigned his post on
March 28th, 1883.1
As a lecturer Tyndall was famed for
the charm and animation of his language,
for lucidity of exposition, and singular
skill in devising and conducting beautiful
experimental illustrations. As a writer
he did perhaps more than any other
person of his time for the diffusion of
scientific knowledge. By the publication
of his lectures and essays he aimed espe
cially at rendering intelligible to all, in
non-technical language, the dominant
scientific ideas of the century. His
work has borne abundant fruit in
inciting others to take up the great
interests which possessed so powerful an
1 See Nineteenth Century, July, 1888 ; Fort
nightly Review, December, 1888, and February,
1889 ; New Review, 1892.
�BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
attraction for himself. In Heat as a
Mode of Motion (see p. 12), which has
been regarded as the best of Tyndall’s
books, that difficult subject was for the
first time presented in a popular form.
The book on Light gives the substance
of lectures delivered in the United
States in the winter of 1872-3. The
proceeds of these lectures, which by
jttdiefous investment amounted in a few
years to between ^6,000 and ^7,000,
were devoted to the encouragement of
science in the United States.
His views upon the great question as
to the relation between science and
theological opinions are best given in his
presidential address to the British Asso
ciation at Belfast in 1874, which occa
sioned much controversy at the time
(reprinted, with essays on kindred sub
jects, in Fragments of Science, vol. ii.).
The main purpose of that address was
to maintain the claims of science to
discuss all such questions fully and
freely in all their bearings.
On February 29th, 1876, Tyndall mar
ried Louisa, eldest daughter of Lord
Claud Hamilton, who became his com
panion in all things. In 1877 they built
a cottage at Bel Alp, on the northern
side of the Valaise, above Brieg. There
they spent their summers amid his
favourite haunts.
In 1885 they built
what Tyndall called “a retreat for his
old age” upon the summit of Hind
Head, on the Surrey moors, then a very
retired district. Sleeplessness and weak
ness of digestion—ills from which he
had suffered more or less all his life—
increased upon him in later years, and
Caused him to resign his post at the
Royal Institution in March, 1887. His
later years were for the most part spent
at Hind Head. Repeated attacks of
severe illness, unhappily, prevented the
ii
execution of the many plans he had laid
out for his years of retirement. In 1893
he returned greatly benefited from a
three months’ sojourn in the Alps. But
a dose of chloral, accidentally adminis
tered, brought all to a close on December
4th, 1893.
Tyndall’s single-hearted devotion to
science and indifference to worldly advan
tages were but one manifestation of a noble
and generous nature.
A resolute will
and lofty principles, always pointing to a
high ideal, were in him associated with
great tenderness and consideration for
others. His chivalrous sense of justice
led him not unfrequently—irrespective
of nationality or even of personal ac
quaintance, and often at great cost of
time and trouble to himself—to take up
the cause of men whom he deemed to
have been unfairly treated or overlooked
in respect to their scientific merits. He
thus vindicated the claim of the unfortu
nate German physician, Dr. Julius
Robert Mayer, to have been the first to
lay down clearly the principle of the
conservation of energy and to point out
its universal application ; and succeeded
in obtaining his recognition by the
scientific world in spite of eminent
opposition.
The same spirit appeared
in his defence of Rendu’s title to a share
in the explanation of glacier movement,
and of Wigham’s services in regard to
lighthouses.
Tyndall took a warm interest in some
great political questions.
He sided
strongly with the Liberal Unionists in
opposing Mr. Gladstone’s Home Rule
policy.
Tyndall was of middle height, sparely
built, but with a strength, toughness, and
flexibility of limb which qualified him
to endure great fatigue and achieve the
�12
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
most difficult feats as a mountaineer.
His face was rather stern and strongly
marked, but the sharp features assumed
an exceedingly pleasing expression when
his sympathy was touched ; and the effect
was heightened by the quality of his
voice. His eyes were grey-blue, and his
hair, light-brown in youth, was abundant
and of very fine texture. He had gener
ally, like Faraday, to bespeak a hat on
account of the unusual length of his
head. A medallion of Tyndall, executed
by Woolner in 1876, is, perhaps, the best
likeness that exists of him.
Tyndall’s works have been translated
into most European languages.
In
Germany (where Helmholtz and Wiede
mann undertook the translations and
wrote prefaces) they are read almost as
much as in England. Some thousands of
his books are sold yearly in America, and
a few translations have been made into
the languages of India, China, and Japan.
In the Royal Society’s catalogue of
scientific papers 145 entries appear
under Tyndall’s name between 1850
and 1883, indicating approximately the
number of his contributions to the
Philosophical Transactions, the Philo
sophical Magazine, the Proceedings of the
Royal Society and of the Royal Institu
tion, and other scientific journals. A
great variety of subjects besides those
glanced at above occupied his attention.
They are for the most part dealt with in
the miscellaneous essays collected in
Fragments of Science and New Frag
ments. The essence of his teaching is
contained in the following publications :
1. The Glaciers of the Alps, being a
Narrative of Excursions and Ascents, an
Account of the Origin and Phenomena
of Glaciers, and an Exposition of the
Physical Principles to which they are
Related, i860; reprinted in 1896; trans
lated for the first time into German in
1898. 2. Mountaineering in 1861: A
Vacation Tour, 1862 (mostly repeated in
Hours of Exercise). 3. Pleat Considered
as a Mode of Motion, 1863; fresh
editions, each altered and enlarged,*n
1865, 1868, 1870, 1875 ; the sixth
edition, 1880, was stereotyped. 4. On
Sound, a course of eight lectures, 1867 ;
3rd edit., with additions, 1875 ; 4th
edit., revised and augmented, 1883 ; 5th
edit., revised, 1893. 5. Faraday as a
Discoverer, 1868; 5th edit., revised
1894. 6. Researches on Diamagnetism
and Magne-crystallic Action, including
the Question of Diamagnetic Polarity,
1870; third and smaller edition, 1888.
7. Fragments of Science for Unscientific
People: A Series of Detached Essays,
Lectures, and Reviews, 1871; augmented
in the first five editions; from 6th edit.,
1879, in two vols. 8- Hours of Exercise
in the Alps, 1871 ; 2nd edit., 1871; 3rd
edit., 1873; reprinted in 1899. 9.
Contributions to Molecular Physics in
the Domain of Radiant Heat: A Series
of Memoirs published in the Philosophical
Transactions and Philosophical Magazine,
with additions, 1872. 10. The Forms of
Water in Clouds and Rivers, Ice, and
Glaciers (International Scientific Series),
1872 ; 12th edit., 1897. 11. Six Lectures
on Light, delivered in America in 1872-3,
1873; 5th edit., 1895. 12. Lessons in
Electricity, at the Royal Institution, 1876;
5th edit., 1892. 13. Essays on the Float
ing Matter of the Air in Relation to Putre
faction and Infection, 1881; 2nd edit.,
1883. 14. New Fragments, 1892; last
edit., 1897. 15. Notes on Light: Nine
Lectures delivered in 1869, 1870. 16.
Notes on Electrical Phenomena and
Theories : Seven Lectures delivered in
1870, 1870.
L. C. T.
�LECTURES AND ESSAYS
THE BELFAST ADDRESS1
. § i.
An impulse inherent in primeval man
turned his thoughts and questionings
betimes towards the sources of natural
phenomena.
The same impulse, in
herited and intensified, is the spur of
scientific action to-day. Determined by
it, by a process of abstraction from
experience we form physical theories
which lie beyond the pale of experience,
but which satisfy the desire of the mind
to see every natural occurrence resting
upon a cause. In forming their notions
of the origin of things, our earliest
historic (and doubtless, we might add,
our prehistoric) ancestors pursued, as
far as their intelligence permitted, the
same course. They also fell back upon
experience 5 but with this difference—
that , the particular experiences which
furnished the warp and woof of their
theories were drawn, not from the study
of nature, but from what lay much
closer to them—the observation of men.
Their theories accordingly took an an
thropomorphic form. To supersensual
beings, which, “however potent and
invisible, were nothing but a species of
human creatures, perhaps raised from
among mankind, and retaining all human
passions and appetites,”2 were handed
Over the rule and governance of natural
phenomena.
Tested by observation and reflection,
these early notions failed in the long run I
to satisfy the more penetrating intellects
of our race.
Far in the depths of
history we find men of exceptional
power differentiating themselves from
the crowd, rejecting these anthropo
morphic notions, and seeking to con
nect natural phenomena with their
physical principles. But, long prior to
these purer efforts of the understanding,
the merchant had been abroad, and
rendered the philosopher possible;
commerce had been developed, wealth
amassed, leisure for travel and specula
tion secured, while races educated under
different conditions, and therefore differ
ently informed and endowed, had been
stimulated and sharpened by mutual
contact. In those regions where the
commercial aristocracy of ancient Greece
mingled with their eastern neighbours,
the sciences were born, being nurtured
and developed by free-thinking and
courageous men. The state of things
to be displaced may be gathered from a
passage of Euripides quoted by Hume:
“ There is nothing in the world; no
glory, no prosperity. The gods toss all
into confusion ; mix everything with its
reverse, that all of us, from our ignorance
and uncertainty, may pay them the more
worship and reverence.” Now, as science
demands the radical extirpation of caprice
and the absolute reliance upon law in
nature, there grew, with the growth of
scientific notions, a desire and determina
tion to sweep from the field of theory
Delivered before the British Association on Wednesday, August 10th, 1874.
2 Hume, Natural History of Religion.
�LECTURES AND ESSA YS
this mob of gods and demons, and to
place natural phenomena on a basis more
congruent with themselves.
The problem, which had been pre
viously approached from above, was now
attacked from below; theoretic effort
passed from the super- to the subsensible. It was felt that, to construct
the universe in idea, it was necessary to
have some notion of its constituent parts
_ of what Lucretius subsequently called
the “ First Beginnings.” Abstracting
again from experience, the leaders of
scientific speculation reached at length
the pregnant doctrine of atoms and
molecules, the latest developments of
which were set forth with such power
and clearness at the last meeting of the
British Association. Thought, no doubt,
had long hovered about this doctrine
before it attained the precision and com
pleteness which it assumed in the mind
of Democritus,1 a philosopher who may
well for a moment arrest our attention.
“ Few great men,” says Lange, a non
materialist, in his excellent History of
Materialism, to the spirit and to the
letter of which I am equally indebted,
“ have been so despitefully used by
history as Democritus. In the distorted
Images sent down to us through unscien
tific traditions there remains of him
almost nothing but the name of ‘the
laughing philosopher,’ while figures of im
measurably smaller significance spread
themselves out at full length before us.”
Lange speaks of Bacon’s high apprecia
tion of Democritus—for ample illustra
tions of which I am indebted to my
excellent friend Mr. Spedding, the learned
editor and biographer of Bacon. It is
evident, indeed, that Bacon considered
Democritus to be a man of weightier
metal than either Plato or Aristotle,
though their philosophy “was noised
and celebrated in the schools, amid the
din and pomp of professors.” It was not
they, but Genseric and Attila and the
barbarians, who destroyed the atomic
philosophy. “ For, at a time when all
1 Born 460 B.c.
human learning had suffered shipwreck,
these planks of Aristotelian and Platonic
philosophy, as being of a lighter and
more inflated substance, were preserved
and came down to us, while things
more solid sank and almost passed into
oblivion.”
The son of a wealthy father, Demo
critus devoted the whole of his inherited
fortune to the culture of his mind. He
travelled everywhere; visited Athens
when Socrates and Plato were there, but
quitted the city without making himself
known. Indeed, the dialectic strife in
which Socrates so much delighted had
no charm for Democritus, who held that
“the man who readily contradicts, and
uses many words, is unfit to learn any
thing truly right.” He is said to have
discovered and educated Protagoras the
Sophist, being struck as much by the
manner in which he, being a hewer of
wood, tied up his faggots as by the
sagacity of his conversation. Democritus
returned poor from his travels, was sup
ported by his brother, and _ at length
wrote his great work entitled “Diakosmos,”
which he read publicly before the people
of his native town. He was honoured
by his countrymen in various ways, and
died serenely at a great age.
The principles enunciated by Demo
critus reveal his uncompromising antago
nism to those who deduced the phenomena
of nature from the caprices of the gods.
They are briefly these: 1. From nothing
comes nothing. Nothing that exists can
be destroyed. All changes _ are due to
the combination and separation of mole
cules. 2. Nothing happens by chance j
every occurrence has its cause, from
which it follows by necessity. 3. The
only existing things are the atoms and
empty space; all else is mere opinion.
4. The atoms are infinite in number and
infinitely various in form ; they strike
together, and the lateral motions and
whirlings which thus arise are the begin
nings of worlds. 5- The varieties of all
things depend upon the varieties of their
atoms, in number, size, and aggregation.
6. The soul consists of fine, smooth,
�THE BELFAST ADDRESS
round atoms, like those of fire. These
are the most mobile of all: they inter
penetrate the whole body, and in their
motions the phenomena of life arise.
The first five propositions are a fair
general statement of the atomic philo
sophy, as now held. As regards the
sixth, Democritus made his finer atoms
do duty for the nervous system, whose
functions were then unknown.
The
atoms of Democritus are individually
without sensation; they combine in
obedience to mechanical laws ; and not
only organic forms, but the phenomena
of sensation and thought, are the result
of their combination.
That great enigma, “ the exquisite
adaptation of one part of an organism
to another part, and to the conditions of
life,” more especially the construction of
the human body, Democritus made no
attempt to solve. Empedocles, a man
of more fiery and poetic nature, intro
duced the notion of love and hate
among the atoms to account for their
combination and separation; and, bolder
than Democritus, he struck in with the
penetrating thought, linked, however,
with some wild speculation, that it lay
in the very nature of those combinations
which were suited to their ends (in
other words, in harmony with their
environment) to maintain themselves,
while unfit combinations, having no
proper habitat, must rapidly disappear.
Thus, more than 2,000 years ago, the
doctrine of the “ survival of the fittest,”
which in our day, not on the basis of
vague conjecture, but of positive know
ledge, has been raised to such extra
ordinary significance, had received at all
events partial enunciation.1
Epicurus,2 said to be the son of a poor
schoolmaster at Samos, is the next
dominant figure in the history of the
atomic philosophy.
He mastered the
writings of Democritus, heard lectures
in Athens, went back to Samos, and
subsequently wandered through various
countries. He finally returned to Athens,
* s«e Laxge, 2nd edit., p. 23.
2 Born 342 B.c.
15
where he bought a garden and sur
rounded himself by pupils, in the midst
of whom he lived a pure and serene life,
and died a peaceful death. Democritus
looked to the soul as the ennobling part
of man; even beauty, without under
standing, partook of animalism.
Epi
curus also rated the spirit above the
body; the pleasure of the body being
that of the moment, while the spirit
could draw upon the future and the past.
His philosophy was almost identical
with that of Democritus ; but he never
quoted either friend or foe. One main
object of Epicurus was to free the world
from superstition and the fear of death.
Death he treated with indifference. It
merely robs us of sensation. As long as
we are, death is not; and when death
is, we are not. Life has no more evil
for him who has made up his mind that
it is no evil not to live. He adored the
gods, but not in the ordinary fashion.
The idea of Divine power, properly
purified, he thought an elevating one.
Still he taught: “Not he is godless who
rejects the gods of the crowd, but rather
he who accepts them.” The gods were
to him eternal and immortal beings,
whose blessedness excluded every thought
of care or occupation of any kind. Nature
pursues her course in accordance with
everlasting laws, the gods never inter
fering. They haunt
“ The lucid interspace of world and world
Where never creeps a cloud or moves a wind,
Nor ever falls the least white star of snow,
Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans,
Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar
Their sacred everlasting calm.”1
Lange considers the relation of Epi
curus to the gods subjective ; the indica
tion, probably, of an ethical requirement
of his own nature.
We cannot read
history with open eyes, or study human
nature to its depths, and fail to discern
such a requirement.
Man never has
been, and he never will be, satisfied with
the operations and products of the
Understanding alone; hence physical
1 Tennyson’s Lucretius,
�LECTURES AND ESSA YS
i6
science cannot cover all the demands of
his nature. B at the history of the efforts
made to satisfy these demands might be
broadly described as a history of errors
—the error, in great part, consisting in
ascribing fixity to that which is fluent,
which varies as we vary, being gross when
we are gross, and becoming, as our capa
cities widen, more abstract and sublime.
On one great point the mind of Epicurus
was at peace. He neither sought nor
expected, here or hereafter, any personal
profit from his relation to the gods. And
it is assuredly a fact that loftiness and
serenity of thought may be promoted by
conceptions which involve no idea of
profit of this kind. “ Did I not believe,”
said a great man1 to me once, “ that an
Intelligence is at the heart of things, my
life on earth would be intolerable.” The
utterer of these words is not, in my
opinion, rendered less but more noble
by the fact that it was the need of ethical
harmony here, and not the thought
of personal happiness hereafter, that
prompted his observation.
There are persons, not belonging to
the highest intellectual zone, nor yet to
the lowest, to whom perfect clearness of
exposition suggests want of depth. They
find comfort and edification in an abstract
and learned phraseology. To such people
Epicurus, who spared no pains to rid his
style of every trace of haze and turbidity,
appeared, on this very account, super
ficial. He had, however, a disciple who
thought it no unworthy occupation to
spend his days and nights in the effort
to reach the clearness of his master, and
to whom the Greek philosopher is mainly
indebted for the extension and perpetua
tion ot his fame.
Some two centuries
after the death of Epicurus, Lucretius2
wrote his great poem, On the Nature of
Things, in which he, a Roman, developed
with extraordinary ardour the philosophy
of his Greek predecessor. He wishes to
win over his friend Memnius to the
school of Epicurus ; and although he has
no rewards in a future life to offer,
’ Carlyle.
3 Born 99 B. C.
although his object appears to be a purely
negative one, he addresses his friend with
the heat of an apostle. • His object, like
that of his great forerunner, is the destruc
tion of superstition; and considering that
men in his day trembled before every
natural event as a direct monition from
the gods, and that everlasting torture
was also in prospect, the freedom aimed
at by Lucretius might be deemed a posi
tive good. “ This terror,” he says, “ and
darkness of mind, must be dispelled, not
by the rays of the sun and glittering
shafts of day, but by the aspect and the
law of nature.” He refutes the notion
that anything can come out of nothing,
or that what is once begotten can be
recalled to nothing. The first beginnings,
the atoms, are indestructible, and into
them all things can be resolved at last.
Bodies are partly atoms and partly com
binations of atoms; but the atoms
nothing can quench. They are strong
in solid singleness, and, by their denser
combination, all things can be closely
packed .and exhibit enduring strength.
He denies that matter is infinitely divisi
ble. We come at length to the atoms,
without which, as an imperishable sub
stratum, all order in the generation and
development of things would be des
troyed.
The mechanical shock of the atoms
being, in his view, the all-sufficient cause
of things, he combats the notion that the
constitution of nature has been in any
way determined by intelligent design.
The interaction of the atoms throughout
infinite time rendered all manner of
combinations possible.
Of these, the
fit ones persisted, while the unfit ones
disappeared. Not after sage deliberation
did the atoms station themselves.in their
right places, nor did they bargain what
motions they should assume. From all
eternity they have been driven together,
and, after trying motions and unions of
every kind, they fell at length _ into the
arrangements, out of which this system
of things has been evolved. . “ If you
will apprehend and keep in mind these
things, Nature, free at once and rid of
�THE BELFAST ADDRESS
her haughty lords, is seen to do all
things spontaneously of herself, without
the meddling of the gods.”1
To meet the objection that his atoms
cannot be seen, Lucretius describes a
violent storm, and shows that the in
visible particles of air act in the same
way as the visible particles of water.
We perceive, moreover, the different
smells of things, yet never see them
coming to our nostrils. Again, clothes
hung up on a shore, which waves break
upon, become moist, and then get dry if
spread out in the sun, though no eye can
see either the approach or the escape
of the water-particles. A ring, worn long
on the finger, becomes thinner; a water
drop hollows out a stone; the plough
share is rubbed away in the field; the
street-pavement is worn by the feet; but
the particles that disappear at any
moment we cannot see. Nature acts
through invisible particles. That Lu
cretius had a strong scientific imagina
tion the foregoing references prove. A
fine illustration of his power in this
respect is his explanation of the ap
parent rest of bodies whose atoms are in
motion. He employs the image of a
flock of sheep with skipping lambs,
which, seen from a distance, presents
simply a white patch upon the green hill,
the jumping of the individual lambs
being quite invisible.
His vaguely grand conception of the
atoms falling eternally through space
suggested the nebular hypothesis to
Kant, its first propounder. Far beyond
the limits of our visible world are to be
found atoms innumerable, which have
never been united to form bodies, or
which, if once united, have been again
dispersed—falling silently through im
measurable intervals of time and space.
As everywhere throughout the All the'
same conditions are repeated, so must
the phenomena be repeated also. Above
1 Monro’s translation. In bis criticism of this
work {Contemporary Review, 1867) Dr. Hayman
does not appear to be aware of the really sound
and subtile observations on which the reasoning
of Lucretius, though erroneous, sometimes rests.
17
us, below us, beside us, therefore, are
worlds without end; and this, when
considered, must dissipate every thought
of a deflection of the universe by the
gods. The worlds come and go, attract
ing new atoms out of limitless space, or
dispersing their own particles.
The
reputed death of Lucretius, which forms
the basis of Mr. Tennyson’s noble poem,
is in strict accordance with his philo
sophy, which was severe and pure.
§ 2-
Still earlier than these three philoso
phers, and during the centuries between
the first of them and the last, the human
intellect was active in other fields than
theirs. Pythagoras had founded a school
of mathematics, and made his experi
ments on the harmonic intervals. The
Sophists had run through their career.
At Athens had appeared Socrates, Plato,
and Aristotle, who ruined the Sophists,
and whose yoke remains to some extent
unbroken to the present hour. Within
this period also the School of Alexandria
was founded, Euclid wrote his Elements,
and made some advance in optics.
Archimedes had propounded the theory
of the lever and the principles of
hydrostatics. Astronomy was immensely
enriched by the discoveries of Hippar
chus, who was followed by the historically
more celebrated Ptolemy.
Anatomy
had been made the basis of scientific
medicine; and it is said by Draper1 that
vivisection had begun.
In fact, the
science of ancient Greece had already
cleared the world of the fantastic images of
divinities operating capriciously through
natural phenomena. It had shaken itself
free from that fruitless scrutiny “ by the
internal light of the mind alone,” which
had vainly sought to transcend experi
ence, and to reach a knowledge of
ultimate causes. Instead of accidental
observation, it had introduced observa
tion with a purpose; instruments were
employed to aid the senses, and scientific
1 History of the Intellectual Development 0]
Europe, p. 295.
�i8
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
method was rendered in a great measure
complete by the union of Induction and
Experiment.
What, then, stopped its victorious
advance ?
Why was the scientific
intellect compelled, like an exhausted
soil, to lie fallow for nearly two millen
niums, before it could regather the
elements necessary to its fertility and
strength ?
Bacon has already let us
know one cause; Whewell ascribes this
stationary period to four causes—obscu
rity of thought, servility, intolerance of
disposition, enthusiasm of temper; and
he gives striking examples of each.1 But
these characteristics must have had their
antecedents in the circumstances of the
time. Rome, and the other cities of the
Empire, had fallen into moral putrefac
tion. Christianity had appeared, offer
ing the Gospel to the poor, and by
moderation, if not asceticism of life,
practically protesting against the pro
fligacy of the age. The sufferings of the
early Christians, and the extraordinary
exaltation of mind which enabled them
to triumph over the diabolical tortures to
which they were subjected,2 must have
left traces not easily effaced. They
scorned the earth, in view of that “build
ing of God, that house not made with
hands, eternal in the heavens.” The
Scriptures which ministered to their
spiritual needs were also the measure of
their science.
When, for example, the
celebrated question of Antipodes came
to be discussed, the Bible was with many
the ultimate court of appeal. Augustine,
who flourished a.d. 400, would not deny
the rotundity of the earth; but he would
deny the possible existence of inhabi
tants at the other side, “ because no
such race is recorded in Scripture among
the descendants of Adam.” Archbishop
Boniface was shocked at the assumption
of a “ world of human beings out of
the reach of the means of salvation.”
Thus reined in, Science was not likely to
make much progress. Later on, the
’ History of the Inductive Sciences, vol. i.
* Described with terrible vividness in Renan’s
Antichrist.
political and theological strife between
the Church and civil governments, so
powerfully depicted by Draper, must
have done much to stifle investigation.
Whewell makes many wise and brave
remarks regarding the spirit of the Middle
Ages.
It was a menial spirit.
The
seekers after natural knowledge had for
saken the fountain of living waters, the
direct appeal to nature by observation
and experiment, and given themselves
up to the remanipulation of the notions
of their predecessors.
It was a time
when thought had become abject, and
when the acceptance of mere authority
led, as it always does in science, to
intellectual death. Natural events, in
stead of being traced to physical, were
referred to moral, causes; while an
exercise of the phantasy, almost as degra
ding as the spiritualism of the present
day, took the place of scientific specula
tion. Then came the mysticism of the
Middle Ages, Magic, Alchemy, the Neo
platonic philosophy, with its visionary
though sublime abstractions, which caused
men to look with shame upon their own
bodies, as hindrances to the absorption
of the creature in the blessedness of the
Creator.
Finally came the scholastic
philosophy, a fusion, according to Lange,
of the least mature notions of Aristotle
with the Christianity of the West. Intel
lectual immobility was the result. As' a
traveller without a compass in a fog may
wander long, imagining he is making
way, and find himself after hours of toil
at his starting-point, so the schoolmen,
having “ tied and untied the same knots,
and formed and dissipated the same
clouds,”1 found themselves at the end of
centuries in their old position.
With regard to the influence wielded
by Aristotle in the Middle Ages, and
which, to a less extent, he still wields, I
would ask permission to make one
remark.
When the human mind has
achieved greatness and given evidence
of extraordinary power in one domain,
there is a tendency to credit it with
’ Whewell.
�THE BELFAST ADDRESS
similar power in all other domains. Thus
theologians have found comfort and as
surance in the thought that Newton dealt
with the question of revelation—forgetful
of the fact that the very devotion of his
powers, through all the best years of his
life, to a totally different class of ideas,
not to speak of any natural disqualifica
tion, tended to render him less, instead
of more, competent to deal with theo
logical and historic questions.
Goethe,
starting from his established greatness as
a poet, and indeed from his positive dis
coveries in Natural History, produced a
profound impression among the painters
of Germany, when he published his
“ Farbenlehre,” in which he endeavoured
to overthrow Newton’s theory of colours.
This theory he deemed so obviously
absurd that he considered its author a
charlatan, and attacked him with a corre
sponding vehemence of language. In
the domain of Natural History Goethe
had made really considerable discoveries;
and we have high authority for assuming
that, had he devoted himself wholly to
that side of science, he might have
reached an eminence comparable with
that which he attained as a poet. In
sharpness of observation, in the detection
of analogies apparently remote, in the
Classification and organisation of facts
according to the analogies discerned,
Goethe possessed extraordinary powers.
These elements of scientific inquiry fall
in with the disciplines of the poet. But,
on the other hand, a mind thus richly
endowed in the direction of Natural His
tory may be almost shorn of endowment
as regards the physical and mechanical
sciences. Goethe was in this condition.
He could not formulate distinct mecha
nical conceptions; he could not see the
force of mechanical reasoning; and, in
regions where such reasoning reigns
Supreme, he became a mere ignis fatuus
to those who followed him.
I have sometimes permitted myself to
compare Aristotle with Goethe—to credit
the Stagirite with an almost superhuman
power of amassing and systematising
facts, but to consider him fatally defective
T9
on that side of the mind in respect to
which incompleteness has been just
ascribed to Goethe. Whewell refers the
errors of Aristotle not to a neglect of
facts, but to “a neglect of the idea
appropriate to the facts; the idea of
Mechanical cause, which is Force, and
the substitution of vague or inapplicable
notions, involving only relations of space
or emotions of wonder.” This is doubt
less true; but the word “ neglect
implies mere intellectual misdirection,
whereas in Aristotle, as in Goethe, it
was not, I believe, misdirection, but
sheer natural incapacity, which lay at the
root of his mistakes. As a physicist,
Aristotle displayed what we should con
sider some of the worst of attributes in
a modern physical investigator—indis
tinctness of ideas, confusion of mind,
and a confident use of language which
led to the delusive notion that he had
really mastered his subject, while he
had, as yet, failed to grasp even the
elements of it. He put words in the
place of things, subject in the place of
object. He preached Induction without
practising it, inverting the true order of
inquiry by passing from the general to
the particular, instead of from the par
ticular to the general. He made of the
universe a closed sphere, in the centre
of which he fixed the earth, proving from
general principles, to his own satisfaction
and to that of the world for near 2,000
years, that no other universe was possible.
His notions of motion were entirely
unphysical. It was natural or unnatural,
better or worse, calm or violent—no
real mechanical conception regarding it
lying at the bottom of his mind. He
affirmed that a vacuum could not exist,
and proved that if it did motion in it
would be impossible. He determined
a priori how many species of animals
must exist, and showed on general prin
ciples why animals must have such and
such parts. When an eminent contem
porary philosopher, who is far removed
from errors of this kind, remembers
these abuses of the a prion method, he
will be able to make allowance for the
�20
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
jealousy of physicists as to the accep
tance of so-called 4 priori truths. Aris
totle’s errors of detail, as shown by
Eucken and Lange, were grave and
numerous. He affirmed that only in
man we had the beating of the heart,
that the left side of the body was colder
than the right, that men have more teeth
than women, and that there is an empty
space at the back of every man’s head.
There is one essential quality in physical
conceptions which was entirely wanting
in those of Aristotle and his followers—
a capability of being placed as coherent
pictures before the mind. The Germans
express the act of picturing by the word
vorstellen, and the picture they call
a Vorstellung. We have no word in
English which comes nearer to our
requirements than Imagination ; and,
taken with its proper limitations, the
word answers very well. But it is tainted
by its associations, and therefore objec
tionable to some minds. Compare, with
reference to this capacity of mental
presentation, the case of the Aristotelian,
who refers the ascent of water in a pump
to Nature’s abhorrence of a vacuum,
with that of Pascal when he proposed
to solve the question of atmospheric
pressure by the ascent of the Puy de
Dome. In the one case the terms of
the explanation refuse to fall into place
as a physical image; in the other the
image is distinct, the descent and rise
of the barometer being clearly figured
beforehand as the balancing of two
varying and opposing pressures.
§3During the drought of the Middle
Ages in Christendom, the Arabian in
tellect, as forcibly shown by Draper, was
active. With the intrusion of the Moors
into Spain, order, learning, and refine
ment took the place of their opposites.
When smitten with disease, the Christian
peasant resorted to a shrine, the Moorish
one to an instructed physician. The
Arabs encouraged translations from the
Greek philosophers, but not from the
Greek poets. They turned in disgust
“ from the lewdness of our classical
mythology, and denounced as an un
pardonable blasphemy all connection
between the impure Olympian Jove and
the Most High God.” Draper traces
still farther than Whewell the Arab
elements in our scientific terms. He
gives examples of what Arabian men of
science accomplished, dwelling particu
larly on Alhazen, who was the first to
correct the Platonic notion that rays of
light are emitted by the eye. Alhazen
discovered atmospheric refraction, and
showed that we see the sun and the
moon after they have set. He explained
the enlargement of the sun and moon,
and the shortening of the vertical
diameters of both these bodies when
near the horizon. He was aware that
the atmosphere decreases in density with
increase of elevation, and actually fixed
its height at 58^ miles. In the Book of
the Balance of Wisdom he sets forth the
connection between the weight of the
atmosphere and its increasing density.
He shows that a body will weigh differ
ently in a rare and dense atmosphere,
and he considers the force with which
plunged bodies rise through heavier
media. He understood the doctrine of
the centre of gravity, and applied it to
the investigation of balances and steel
yards. He recognised gravity as a force,
though he fell into the error of assuming
it to diminish simply as the distance, and
of making it purely terrestrial. He knew
the relation between the velocities,
spaces, and times of falling bodies, and
had distinct ideas of capillary attraction.
He improved the hydrometer. The deter
minations of the densities of bodies, as
given by Alhazen, approach very closely
to our own. “I join,” says Draper, “in
the pious prayer of Alhazen, that in the
day of judgment the All-Merciful will
take pity on the soul of Abur-Raihan,
because he was the first of the race of
men to construct a table of specific
gravities.” If all this be historic truth
(and I have entire confidence in Dr.
Draper), well may he “ deplore the
�THE BELFAST ADDRESS
systematic manner in which the litera
ture of Europe has contrived to put out
of sight our scientific obligations to the
Mohammedans.”1
The strain upon the mind during the
stationary period towards ultra-terrestrial
things, to the neglect of problems close
at hand, was sure to provoke reaction.
But the reaction was gradual; for the
ground was dangerous, and a power was
at hand competent to crush the critic
who went too far. To elude this power,
and still allow opportunity for the ex
pression of opinion, the doctrine of “two
fold truth ” was invented, according to
which an opinion might be held “theo
logically,” and the opposite opinion
“philosophically.”2 Thus, in the thir
teenth century, the creation of the world
in six days, and the unchangeableness
of the individual soul, which had been
so distinctly affirmed by St. Thomas
Aquinas, were both denied philoso
phically, but admitted to be true as
articles of the Catholic faith. When
^Protagoras uttered the maxim which
brought upon him so much vituperation,
that “opposite assertions are equally
true,” he simply meant to affirm men’s
differences to be so great that what was
subjectively true to the one might be
subjectively untrue to the other. The
great Sophist never meant to play fast
and loose with the truth by saying that
one of two opposite assertions, made by
the same individual, could possibly
escape being a lie. It was not “ sophis
try,” but the dread of theologic ven
geance, that generated this double deal
tag with conviction; and it is astonishing
to notice what lengths were allowed to
men who were adroit in the use of
[artifices of this kind.
Towards the close of the stationary
period a word-weariness, if I may so
express it, took more and more possession
of men’s minds.
Christendom had
become sick of the School Philosophy
and its verbal wastes, which led to no
1 Intellectual Development of Europe, p. 359.
2 Lange, 2nd edit., pp. 181, 182.
issue, but left the intellect in everlasting
haze. Here and there was heard the
voice of one impatiently crying in the
wilderness: “Not unto Aristotle, not unto
subtle hypothesis, not unto church, Bible,
or blind tradition, must we turn for a
knowledge of the universe, but to the
direct investigation of nature by obser
vation and experiment.” In 1543 the
epoch-marking work of Copernicus on
the paths of the heavenly bodies appeared.
The total crash of Aristotle’s closed
universe, with the earth at its centre,
followed as a consequence, and “The
earth moves 1” became a kind of watch
word among intellectual freemen. Coper
nicus was Canon of the church of
Frauenburg in the diocese of Ermeland.
For three-and-thirty years he had with
drawn himself from the world, and
devoted himself to the consolidation of
his great scheme of the solar system.
He made its blocks eternal; and even to
those who feared it, and desired its over
throw, it was so obviously strong that
they refrained for a time from meddling
with it. In the last year of the life of
Copernicus his book appeared; it is said
that the old man received a copy of it a
few days before his death, and then
departed in peace.
The Italian philosopher, Giordano
Bruno, was one of the earliest converts
to the new astronomy. Taking Lucretius
as his exemplar, he revived the notion of
the infinity of worlds ; and, combining
with it the doctrine of Copernicus,
reached the sublime generalisation that
the fixed stars are suns, scattered number
less through space, and accompanied by
satellites, which bear the same relation
to them that our earth does to our sun,
or our moon to our earth. This was an
expansion of transcendent import; but
Bruno came closer than this to our
present line of thought. Struck with
the problem of the generation and
maintenance of organisms, and duly
pondering it, he came to the conclusion
that Nature, in her productions, does
not imitate the technic of man. Her
process is one of unravelling and unfolding.
�LECTURES AND ESSA YS
22
The infinity of forms under which
matter appears was not imposed upon it
by an external artificer; by its own
intrinsic force and virtue it brings these
forms forth. Matter is not the mere
naked empty capacity which philosophers
have pictured her to be, but the universal
mother, who brings forth all things as
the fruit of her own womb.
This outspoken man was originally a
Dominican monk.
He was accused of
heresy and had to fly, seeking refuge in
Geneva, Paris, England, and Germany.
In 1592 he fell into the hands of the
Inquisition at Venice. He was im
prisoned for many years, tried, degraded,
excommunicated, and handed over to
the civil power, with the request that he
should be treated gently, and “without
the shedding of blood.” This meant
that he was to be burnt; and burnt
accordingly he was, on February 16th,
1600. To escape a similar fate Galileo,
thirty-three years afterwards, abjured
upon his knees, with his hands upon the
holy Gospels, the heliocentric doctrine,
which he knew to be true. After Galileo
came Kepler, who from his German
home defied the ultramontane power. He
traced out from pre-existing observations
the laws of planetary motion. Materials
were thus prepared for Newton, who
bound those empirical laws together by
the principle of gravitation.
§ 4*
In the seventeenth century Bacon and
Descartes, the restorers of philosophy,
appeared in succession. Differently edu
cated and endowed, their philosophic
tendencies were different. Bacon held
fast to Induction, believing firmly in the
existence of an external world, and
making collected experiences the basis
of all knowledge.
The mathematical
studies of Descartes gave him a bias
towards Deduction; and his fundamental
principle was much the same as that of
Protagoras, who made the individual man
the measure of all things.
“ I think,
therefore I am,” said Descartes.
Only
his own identity was sure to him ; and
the full development of this system
would have led to an idealism, in which
the outer world would have been re
solved into a mere phenomenon of con
sciousness. Gassendi, one of Descartes’s
contemporaries, of whom we shall hear
more presently, quickly pointed out that
the fact of personal existence would be
proved as well by reference to any other
act as to the act of thinking. I eat,
therefore I am, or I love, therefore I am,
would be quite as conclusive. Lichten
berg, indeed, showed that the very thing
to be proved was inevitably postulated in
the first two words, “ I think
and it is
plain that no inference from the postulate
could, by any possibility, be stronger
than the postulate itself.
But Descartes deviated strangely from
the idealism implied in his fundamental
principle. He was the first to reduce,
in a manner eminently capable of bearing
the test of mental presentation, vital
phenomena to purely mechanical prin
ciples. Through fear or love, Descartes
was a good Churchman ; he accordingly
rejected the notion of an atom, because
it was absurd to suppose that God, if He
so pleased, could not divide an atom; he
puts in the place of the atoms small
round particles, and light splinters, out
of which he builds the organism. .He
sketches with marvellous physical insight
a machine, with water for its motive
power, which shall illustrate vital actions.
He has made clear to his mind that such
a machine would be competent to carry
on the processes of digestion, nutrition,
growth, respiration, and the beating of
the heart. It would be competent to
accept impressions from the external
sense, to store them up in imagination
and memory, to go through the internal
movements of the appetites and passions,
and the external movements of the limbs.
He deduces these functions of his
machine from the mere arrangement of
its organs, as the movement of a clock,
or other automaton, is deduced from its
weights and wheels.
“ As far as these
functions are concerned,” he says, “ it is
�THE BELFAST ADDRESS
not necessary to conceive any other
vegetative or sensitive soul, nor any other
principle of motion or of life, than the blood
and the spirits agitated by the fire which
burns continually in the heart, and which
is in nowise different from the fires exist
ing in inanimatebodies.” Had Descartes
been acquainted with the steam-engine,
he would have taken it, instead of a fall
of water, as his motive power. He would
have shown the perfect analogy which
exists between the oxidation of the food
in the body and that of the coal in
the furnace.
He would assuredly
have anticipated Mayer in calling the
blood, which the heart diffuses, “ the oil
of the lamp of life,” deducing all animal
motions from the combustion of this oil,
as the motions of a steam-engine are
deduced from the combustion of its coal.
As the matter stands, however, and con
sidering the circumstances of the time,
the boldness, clearness, and precision
with which Descartes grasped the prob
fem of vital dynamics constitute a
marvellous illustration of intellectual
power.1
During the Middle Ages the doctrine
of atoms had to all appearance vanished
from discussion. It probably held its
ground among sober-minded and thoughtful men, though neither the church nor
the world was prepared to hear of it with
tolerance. Once, in the year 1348, it
received distinct expression. But re
tractation by compulsion immediately
followed; and, thus discouraged, it
Slumbered till the seventeenth century,
when it was revived by a contemporary
and friend of Hobbes of Malmesbury,
the orthodox Catholic provost of Digne,
Gassendi. But, before stating his rela
tion to the Epicurean doctrine, it will be
well to say a few words on the effect, as
regards science, of the general introduc
tion of monotheism among European
nations.
“ Were men,” says Hume, “ led into
the apprehension of invisible intelligent
’ See Huxley’s admirable Essay on Descartes.
Sermons, pp. 364, 365.
«3
power by contemplation of the works of
Nature, they could never possibly enter
tain any conception but of one single
Being, who bestowed existence and order
on this vast machine, and adjusted all
its parts to one regular system.” Refer
ring to the condition of the heathen, who
sees a god behind every natural event,
thus peopling the world with thousands
of beings whose caprices are incalculable,
Lange shows the impossibility of any
compromise between such notions and
those of science, which proceeds on the
assumption of never-changing law and
causality. “ But,” he continues, with
characteristic penetration, “ when the
great thought of one God, acting as a
unit upon the universe, has been seized,
the connection of things in accordance
with the law of cause and effect is not
only thinkable, but it is a necessary con
sequence of the assumption. For when
I see ten thousand wheels in motion,
and know, or believe, that they are all
driven by one motive power, then I
know that I have before me a mecha
nism, the action of every part of which
is determined by the plan of the whole.
So much being assumed, it follows that
I may investigate the structure of that
machine, and the various motions of its
parts. For the time being, therefore,
this conception renders scientific action
free.” In other words, were a capricious
god at the circumference of every wheel
and at the end of every lever, the action
of the machine would be incalculable by
the methods of science. But the actions
of all its parts being rigidly determined
by their connections and relations, and
these being brought into play by a
single motive power, then, though this
last prime mover may elude me, I am
still able to comprehend the machinery
which it sets in motion. We have here
a conception of the relation of Nature
to its Author, which seems perfectly
acceptable to some minds, but perfectly
intolerable to others.
Newton and
Boyle lived and worked happily under
the influence of this conception ; Goethe
rejected it with vehemence, and the same
�24
LECTUEES AND ESSA FS
repugnance to accepting it is manifest in
Carlyle.1
The analytic and synthetic tendencies
of the human mind are traceable through
out history, great writers ranging them
selves sometimes on the one side, some
times on the other. Men of warm
feelings, and minds open to the elevating
impressions produced by nature as a
whole, whose satisfaction, therefore, is
rather ethical than logical, lean to the
synthetic side; while the analytic har
monises best with the more precise and
more mechanical bias which seeks the
satisfaction of the understanding. Some
form of pantheism was usually adopted
by the one, while a detached Creator,
working more or less after the manner of
men, was often assumed by the other.
Gassendi, as sketched by Lange, is
hardly to be ranked with either. Having
formally acknowledged God as the great
first cause, he immediately dropped the
idea, applied the known laws of mechanics
to the atoms, and deduced from them
all vital phenomena.
He defended
Epicurus, and dwelt upon his purity,
both of doctrine and of life. True he
was a heathen, but so was Aristotle.
Epicurus assailed superstition and re
ligion, and rightly, because he did not
know the true religion. He thought
that the gods neither rewarded nor
punished, and he adored them purely in
consequence of their completeness : here
we see, says Gassendi, the reverence of
the child, instead of the fear of the slave.
The errors of Epicurus shall be corrected,
and the body of his truth retained.
Gassendi then proceeds, as any heathen
might have done, to build up the world,
and all that therein is, of atoms and
molecules. God, who created earth and
water, plants and animals, produced in
the first place a definite number of
1 Boyle’s model of the universe was the Stras
burg clock with an outside Artificer. Goethe,
on the other hand, sang :—
“ Ihm ziemt’s die Welt im Innern zu bewegen,
Natur in sich, sich in Natur zu hegen.”
See also Carlyle, Fast and Present, chap. v.
atoms, which constituted the seed of all
things. Then began that series of com
binations and decompositions which
now goes on, and which will continue in
future. The principle of every change
resides in matter. In artificial produc
tions the moving principle is different
from the material worked upon; but in
nature the agent works within, being the
most active and mobile part of the
material itself. Thus this bold ecclesiastic,
without incurring the censure of the
Church or the world, contrives to outstrip
Mr. Darwin. The same cast of mind
which caused him to detach the Creator
from his universe led him also to detach
the soul from the body, though to the
body he ascribes an influence so large as
to render the soul almost unnecessary.
The aberrations of reason were, in his
view, an affair of the material brain.
Mental disease is brain-disease; but then
the immortal reason sits apart, and can
not be touched by the disease. The
errors of madness are those of the instru
ment, not of the performer.
It may be more than a mere result of
education, connecting itself, probably,
with the deeper mental structure of the
two men, that the idea of Gassendi,
above enunciated, is substantially the
same as that expressed by Professor
Clerk Maxwell, at the close of the very
able lecture delivered by him at Bradford
in 1873. According to both philoso
phers, the atoms, if I understand aright,
are prepared materials, which, formed
once for all by the Eternal, produce by
their subsequent interaction all the
phenomena of the material world. There
seems to be this difference, however,
between Gassendi and Maxwell. The one
postulates, the other infers, his first cause.
In his “ manufactured articles,” as he
calls the atoms, Professor Maxwell finds
the basis of an induction which enables
him to scale philosophic heights con
sidered inaccessible by Kant, and to
take the logical step from the atoms to
their Maker.
Accepting here the leadership of Kant,
I doubt the legitimacy of Maxwell’s
�THE BELFAST ADDRESS
25
draws the sharpest distinction between
our real selves and our bodily instru
ments.
He does not, as far as I
remember, use the word “soul,” possibly
because the term was so hackneyed in
his day, as it had been for many genera
tions previously.
But he speaks of
“living powers,” “perceiving or percipient
powers,” “moving agents,”“ourselves,” in
the same sense as we should employ the
term “ soul.” He dwells upon the fact
that limbs may be removed, and mortal
diseases assail the body, the mind,
almost up to the moment of death, re
maining clear. He refers to sleep and
to swoon, where the “ living powers ” are
suspended but not destroyed. He con
siders it quite as easy to conceive of
existence out of our bodies as in them ;
that we may animate a succession of
bodies, the dissolution of all of them
having no more tendency to dissolve
our real selves, or “ deprive us of living
faculties—the faculties of perception and
action—than the dissolution of any
foreign matter which we are capable of
receiving impressions from, or making
use of for the common occasions of life.”
This is the key of the Bishop’s position :
“ our organised bodies are no more a
part of ourselves than any other matter
around us.” In proof of this he calls
attention to the use of glasses, which
“prepare objects” for the “percipient
power ” exactly as the eye does. The
eye itself is no more percipient than the
glass; is quite as much the instrument
of the true self, and also as foreign to
the true self, as the glass is. “ And if
we see with our eyes only in the same
manner as we do with glasses, the like
§ 5<
may justly be concluded from analogy
of all our senses.”
Ninety years subsequent to Gassendi
Lucretius, as you are aware, reached a
the doctrine of bodily instruments, as it
may be called, assumed- immense im precisely opposite conclusion: and it
certainly would be interesting, if not
portance in the hands of Bishop Butler,
profitable, to us all to hear what he
who, in his famous Analogy of Religion^
would or could urge in opposition to the
developed, from his own point of view,
reasoning of the Bishop.
As a brief
and with consummate sagacity, a similar
discussion of the point will enable us to
idea. The Bishop still influences many
see the bearings of an important question,
superior minds; and it will repay us to
I will here permit a disciple of Lucretius
dwell for a moment on his views. He
logic; but it is impossible not to feel the
ethic glow with which his lecture con
cludes. There is, moreover, a very noble
strain of eloquence in his description of
the steadfastness of the atoms : “Natural
causes, as we know, are at work, which
tend to modify, if they do not at length
destroy, all the arrangements and dimen
sions of the earth and the whole solar
system. But though in the course of
ages catastrophes have occurred and
may yet occur in the heavens, though
ancient systems may be dissolved and
new systems evolved out of their ruins,
the molecules out of which these systems
are built—the foundation stones of the
material universe—remain unbroken and
unworn.”
The atomic doctrine, in whole or in
part, was entertained by Bacon, Des
cartes, Hobbes, Locke, Newton, Boyle,
and their successors, until the chemical
law of multiple proportions enabled
Dalton to confer upon it an entirely
new significance. In our day there are
secessions from the theory, but it still
stands firm. Loschmidt, Stoney, and
Sir William Thomson have sought to
determine the sizes of the atoms, or
rather to fix the limits between which
their sizes lie; while the discourses of
Williamson and Maxwell delivered in
Bradford in 1873 illustrate the present
hold of the doctrine upon the foremost
scientific minds. In fact, it may be
doubted whether, wanting this funda
mental conception, a theory of the
material universe is capable of scientific
statement.
�26
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
to try the strength of the Bishop’s posi
tion, and then allow the Bishop to
retaliate, with the view of rolling back,
if he can, the difficulty upon Lucretius.
The argument might proceed in this
fashion :—
“ Subjected to the test of mental pre
sentation (Vorstellungj, your views, most
honoured prelate, would offer to many
minds a great, if not an insuperable,
difficulty. You speak of ‘ living powers,’
• percipient or perceiving powers,’ and
‘ ourselves ’; but can you form a mental
picture of any of these, apart from the
organism through which it is supposed
to act ? Test yourself honestly, and see
whether you possess any faculty that
would enable you to form such a concep
tion. The true self has a local habitation
in each of us; thus localised, must it not
possess a form ? If so, what form ?
Have you ever for a moment realised it ?
When a leg is amputated the body is
divided into two parts; is the true self
in both of them or in one? Thomas
Aquinas might say in both; but not
you, for you appeal to the consciousness
associated with one of the two parts, to
prove that the other is foreign matter.
Is consciousness, then, a necessary ele
ment of the true self ? If so, what do you
say to the case of the whole body being
deprived of consciousness ? If not, then on
what grounds do you deny any portion of
the true self to the severed limb? It seems
very singular that, from the beginning to
the end of your admirable book (and no
one admires its sober strength more than
I do), you never once mention the brain
or nervous system. You begin at one
end of the body, and show that its parts
may be removed without prejudice to the
perceiving power. What if you begin at
the other end, and remove, instead of the
leg, the brain ? The body, as before, is
divided into two parts; but both are
now in the same predicament, and neither
can be appealed to to prove that the
other is foreign matter. Or, instead of
going so far as to remove the brain itself,
let a certain portion of its bony covering
be removed, and let a rhythmic series of
pressures and relaxations of pressure be
applied to the soft substance. At every
pressure ‘ the faculties of perception and
of action ’ vanish; at every relaxation of
pressure they are restored. Where, dur
ing the intervals of pressure, is the per
ceiving power ? I once had the discharge
of a large Leyden battery passed unex
pectedly through me : I felt nothing, but
was simply blotted out of conscious
existence for a sensible interval. Where
was my true self during that interval? Men
who have recovered from lightning-stroke
have been much longer in the same state;
and, indeed, in cases of ordinary con
cussion of the brain, days may elapse
during which no experience is registered
in consciousness.
Where is the man
himself during the period of insensibility ?
You may say that I beg the question
when I assume the man to have been
unconscious, that he was really conscious
all the time, and has simply forgotten
what had occurred to him. In reply to
this, I can only say that no one need
shrink from the worst tortures that super
stition ever invented, if only so felt and
so remembered. I do not think your
theory of instruments goes at all to the
bottom of the matter.
A telegraph
operator has his instruments, by means
of which he converses with the world ;
our bodies possess a nervous system,
which plays a similar part between the
perceiving power and external things.
Cut the wires of the operator, break his
battery, demagnetise his needle; by this
means you certainly sever his connection
with the world; but, inasmuch as these
are real instruments, their destruction
does not touch the man who uses them.
The operator survives, and he knows that
he survives. What is there, I would ask,
in the human system that answers to
this conscious survival of the operator
when the battery of the brain is so
disturbed as to produce insensibility, or
when it is destroyed altogether ?
“ Another consideration, which you
may regard as slight, presses upon me
with some force. The brain may change
from health to disease, and through such
�THE BELFAST ADDRESS
a change the most exemplary man may
be converted into a debauchee or a mur
derer. My very noble and approved
good master had, as you know, threatenings of lewdness introduced into his
brain by his jealous wife’s philter; and
sooner than permit himself to run even
the risk of yielding to these base prompt
ings he slew himself. How could the
hand of Lucretius have been thus turned
against himself if the real Lucretius
remained as before ? Can the brain or
can it not act in this distempered way
without the intervention of the immortal
reason? If it can, then it is a prime
mover which requires only healthy regu
lation to render it reasonably self-acting,
and there is no apparent need of your
immortal reason at all. If it cannot,
then the immortal reason, by its mis
chievous activity in operating upon a
broken instrument, must have the credit
of committing every imaginable extrava
gance and crime. I think, if you will
allow me to say so, that the gravest
consequences are likely to flow from
your estimate of the body. To regard
'th® brain as you -would a staff or an
-eyeglass—to shut your eyes to all its
aiystery, to the perfect correlation of its
condition and our consciousness, to the
fact that a slight excess or defect of
blood in it produces the very swoon to
which you refer, and that in relation to
it our meat, and drink, and air, and
exercise have a perfectly transcendental
value and significance—to forget all
this does, I think, open a way to innu
merable errors in our habits of life, and
may possibly, in some cases, initiate and
ffoster that very disease, and consequent
mental ruin, which a wiser appreciation
©f this mysterious organ would have
^voided.”
I can imagine the Bishop thoughtful
after hearing this argument. He was
not the man to allow anger to mingle
with the consideration of a point of this
kind. After due reflection, and having
Strengthened himself by that honest
Contemplation of the facts which was
habitual with him, and which includes
27
the desire to give even adverse reasonings
their due weight, I can suppose the
Bishop to proceed thus : “ You will
remember that in the Analogy of Religion,
of which you have so kindly spoken, I
did not profess to prove anything abso
lutely, and that I over and over again
acknowledged and insisted on the small
ness of our knowledge, or rather the
depth of our ignorance, as regards the
whole system of the universe. My object
was to show my deistical friends, who
set forth so eloquently the beauty and
beneficence of Nature and the Ruler
thereof, while they had nothing but scorn
for the so-called absurdities of the Chris
tian scheme, that they were in no better
condition than we were, and that, for
every difficulty found upon our side,
quite as great a difficulty was to be found
upon theirs. I will now, with your per
mission, adopt a similar line of argument.
You are a Lucretian, and from the com
bination and separation of insensate
atoms deduce all terrestrial things, includ
ing organic forms and their phenomena.
Let me tell you in the first instance how
far I am prepared to go with you. I
admit that you can build crystalline
forms out of this play of molecular force;
that the diamond, amethyst, and snow
star are truly wonderful structures which
are thus produced. I will go farther, and
acknowledge that even a tree or flower
might in this way be organised. Nay, if
you can show me an animal without
sensation, I will concede to you that it
also might be put together by the
suitable play of molecular force.
“ Thus far our way is clear, but now
comes my difficulty. Your atoms are
individually without sensation; much
more are they without intelligence. May
I ask you, then, to try your hand upon
this problem ? Take your dead hydrogen
atoms, your dead oxygen atoms, your
dead carbon atoms, your dead nitrogen
atoms, your dead phosphorus atoms, and
all the other atoms, dead as grains of
shot, of which the brain is formed.
Imagine them separate and sensationless;
observe them running together and
�28
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
forming alt imaginable combinations.
This, as a purely mechanical process, is
seeable by the mind. But can you see, or
dream, or in any way imagine, how out
of that mechanical act, and from these
individually dead atoms, sensation,
thought, and emotion are to rise ? Are
you likely to extract Homer out of the
rattling of dice, or the Differential Cal
culus out of the clash of billiard-balls ?
I am not all bereft of this VorstellungsKraft of which you speak, nor am I, like
so many of my brethren, a mere vacuum
as regards scientific knowledge. I can
follow a particle of musk until it reaches
the olfactory nerve; I can follow the
waves of sound until thei> tremors reach
the water of the labyrinth, and set the
otoliths and Corti’s fibres in motion; I
can also visualise the waves of ether as
they cross the eye and hit the retina.
Nay more, I am able to pursue to the
central organ the motion thus imparted
at the periphery, and to see in idea the
very molecules of the brain thrown into
tremors. My insight is not baffled by
these physical processes. What baffles
and bewilders me is the notion that from
those physical tremors things so utterly
incongruous with them as sensation,
thought, and emotion can be derived.
You may say, or think, that this issue of
consciousness from the clash of atoms is
not more incongruous than the flash of
light from the union of oxygen and
hydrogen. But I beg to say that it is.
For such incongruity as the flash possesses
is that which I now force upon your
attention.
The ‘ flash ’ is an aflair of
consciousness, the objective counterpart
of which is a vibration. It is a flash
only by your interpretation. You are
the cause of the apparent incongruity;
and you are the thing that puzzles me.
I need not remind you that the great
Leibnitz felt the difficulty which I feel;
and that to get rid of this monstrous
deduction of life from death he displaced
your atoms by his monads, which were
more or less perfect mirrors of the
universe, and out of the summation and
integration of which he supposed all the
phenomena of life—sentient, intellectual,
and emotional—to arise.
“ Your difficulty then, as I see you
are ready to admit, is quite as great as
mine. You cannot satisfy the human
understanding in its demand for logical
continuity between molecular processes
and the phenomena of consciousness.
This is a rock on which Materialism
must inevitably split whenever it pre
tends to be a complete philosophy of life.
What is the moral, my Lucretian ? You
and I are not likely to indulge in illtemper in the discussion of these great
topics, where we see so much room for
honest differences of opinion. But there
are people of less wit or more bigotry (I
say it with humility), on both sides, who
are ever ready to mingle anger and vitu
peration with such discussions. There
are, for example, writers of note and in
fluence at the present day who are not
ashamed publicly to assume the ‘ deep
personal sin ’ of a great logician to be
the cause of his unbelief in a theologic
dogma.1 And there are others who hold
that we, who cherish our noble Bible,
wrought as it has been into the constitu
tion of our forefathers, and by inherit
ance into us, must necessarily be hypo
critical and insincere. Let us disavow
and discountenace such people, cherish
ing the unswerving faith that what is
good and true in both our arguments
will be preserved for the benefit of
humanity, while all that is bad or false
will disappear.”
I hold the Bishop’s reasoning to be
unanswerable, and his liberality to be
worthy of imitation.
It is worth remarking that in one re
spect the Bishop was a product of his
age. Long previous to his day the nature
1 This is the aspect under which the late
Editor of the Dublin Review presented to his
readers the memory of John Stuart Mill. I can
only say that I would as soon take my chance in
the other world, in the company of the “un
believer,” as in that of his Jesuit detractor. In
Dr. Ward we have an example of a wholesome
and vigorous nature soured and perverted by a
poisonous creed.
�THE BELFAST ADDRESS
29
of the soul had been so favourite and I
The lode of discovery once struck,
general a topic of discussion that, when
those petrified forms in which life was at
the students of the Italian Universities
one time active increased to multitudes
wished to know the leanings of a new
and demanded classification. They were
Professor, they at once requested him to
grouped in genera, species, and varie
lecture-upon the soul. About the time
ties, according to the degree of similarity
of Bishop Butler the question was not
subsisting between them. Thus confu
only agitated but extended. It was seen
sion was avoided, each object being
by the clear-witted men who entered this
found in the pigeon-hole appropriated to
arena that many of their best arguments
it and to its fellows of similar morpho
applied equally to brutes and men. The
logical or physiological character.
The
Bishop’s arguments were of this character.
general fact soon became evident that
He saw it, admitted it, took the conse none but the simplest forms of life lie
quence, and boldly embraced the whole
lowest down; that, as we climb higher
animal world in his scheme of immor among the superimposed strata, more per
tality.
fect forms appear. The change, however,
§ 6.
from form to form was not continuous, but
by steps—some small, some great. “ A
Bishop Butler accepted with unwaver section,” says Mr. Huxley, “ a hundred
ing trust the chronology of the Old Tes feet thick will exhibit at different heights
tament, describing it as “ confirmed by
a dozen species of Ammonite, none of
the natural and civil history of the world,
which passes beyond the particular zone
collected from common historians, from
of limestone, or clay, into the zone below
the state of the earth, and from the late
it, or into that above it.”
In the
inventions of arts and sciences.” These
presence of such facts it was not possible
words mark progress; and they must to avoid the question: Have these forms,
seem somewhat hoary to the Bishop’s
showing, though in broken stages, and
successors of to-day. It is hardly neces with many irregularities, this unmistak
sary to inform you that since his time the
able general advance, been subjected to
domain of the naturalist has been im no continuous law of growth or variation ?
mensely extended—the whole science of Had our education been purely scientific,
geology, with its astounding revelations
or had it been, sufficiently detached from
regarding the life of the ancient earth,
influences which, however ennobling in
having been created. The rigidity of old
another domain, have always proved
conceptions has been relaxed, the public
hindrances and delusions when intro
mind being rendered gradually tolerant
duced as factors into the domain of
of the idea that not for six thousand, nor
physics, the scientific mind never could
for sixty thousand, nor for six thousand
have swerved from the search for a law
thousand, but for seons embracing untold
of growth, or allowed itself to accept the
millions of years, this earth has been the
anthropomorphism which regarded each
theatre of life and death. The riddle of successive stratum as a kind of mechanic’s
the rocks has been read by the geologist
bench for the manufacture of new species
and palaeontologist from subcambrian
out of all relation to the old.
depths to the deposits thickening over
Biassed, however, by their previous
the sea-bottoms of to-day. And upon
education, the great majority of natural
the leaves of that stone book are, as you
ists invoked a special creative act to
know, stamped the characters, plainer
account for the appearance of each new
and surer than those formed by the ink
group of organisms. Doubtless numbers
of history, which carry the mind back
of them were clear-headed enough to see
into abysses of past time, compared with
that this was no explanation at all—that,
which the periods which satisfied Bishop
in point of fact, it was an attempt, by the
Butler cease to have a visual angle.
introduction of a greater difficulty, to
�3°
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
These papers were followed in 1859
by the publication of the first edition of
the Origin of Species. All great things
come slowly to the birth. Copernicus,
as I informed you, pondered his great
work for thirty-three years. Newton for
nearly twenty years kept the idea of
Gravitation before his mind ; for twenty
years also he dwelt upon his discovery of
Fluxions, and doubtless would have
continued to make it the object of his
private thought had he not found
Leibnitz upon his track. Darwin for
two-and-twenty years pondered the
problem of the origin of species, and
doubtless he would have continued to
do so had he not found Wallace upon,
his track.1 A concentrated, but full and
powerful, epitome of his labours was the
consequence. The book was by no
means an easy one; and prooably not
one in every score of those who then
attacked it had read its pages through,
or were competent to grasp their signifi
cance if they had. I do not say this
merely to discredit them ; for there were
in those days some really eminent
scientific men, entirely raised above the
heat of popular prejudice, and willing tc
accept any conclusion that science had
to offer, provided it was duly backed by
fact and argument, who entirely mistook
Mr. Darwin’s views. In fact, the woik
needed an expounder, and it found one
in Mr. Huxley. I know nothing more
admirable in the way of scientific exposi
tion than those early articles of his on
the origin of species. He swept the
curve of discussion through the really
significant points of the subject, en
riched his exposition with profound
original remarks and reflections, often
summing up in a single pithy sentence
an argument which a less compact mind
would have spread over pages. But
there is one impression made by the
book itself which no exposition of it,
1 Zoonomia, vol. i., pp- 5°°‘510,
_
however luminous, can convey ? and
2 In 1855 Mr. Herbert Spencer {Principles of
account for a less. But, having nothing I
to offer in the way of explanation, they
for the most part held their peace. Still,
the thoughts of reflecting men naturally
and necessarily simmered round the
question. De Maillet, a contemporary
of Newton, has been brought into notice
by Professor Huxley as one who “had a
notion of the modifiability of living
forms.” The late Sir Benjamin Brodie,
a man of highly philosophic mind, often
drew my attention to the fact that, as
early as 1794, Charles Darwin’s grand
father was the pioneer of Charles Darwin.1
In 1801, and in subsequent years, the
celebrated Lamarck, who, through the
vigorous exposition of his views by the
author of the Vestiges of Creation, gen
dered the public mind perfectly familiar
with the idea of evolution, endeavoured
to show the development of species out
of changes of habit and external con
dition. In 1813 Dr. Wells, the founder
of our present theory of Dew, read before
the Royal Society a paper in which, to
use the words of Mr. Darwin, “ he dis
tinctly recognises the principle of natural
selection ; and this is the first recognition
that has been indicated.” The thorough
ness and skill with which Wells pursued
his work, and the obvious independence
of his character, rendered him long ago a
favourite with me; and it gave me the
liveliest pleasure to alight upon this
additional testimony to his penetration.
Professor Grant, Mr. Patrick Matthew,
Von Buch, the author of the Vestiges,
D’Halloy, and others, by the enunciation
of opinions more or less clear and correct,
showed that the question had been fer
menting long prior to the year 1858,
when Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace
simultaneously, but independently, placed
their closely concurrent views before the
Linnean Society.2
Psychology, 2nd edit., vol. i., p. 465) expressed
“the belief that life under all its forms has
arisen by an unbroken evolution, and through
the instrumentality of what are called natural
causes.” This was my belief also at that time.
1 The behaviour of Mr. Wallace in relation to
this subject has been dignified in the highest
degree.
. .
�THE BELFAST ADDRESS
that is the impression of the vast amount
of labour, both of observation and of
thought, implied in its production. Let
US glance at its principles.
It is conceded on all hands that what
are called “varieties” are continually
produced. The rule is probably with
out exception. No chick, or child, is in
all respects and particulars the counter
part of its brother and sister; and in
such differences we have “ variety ” in
cipient. No naturalist could tell how far
this variation could be carried ; but the
great mass of them held that never, by
any amount of internal or external
change, nor by the mixture of both,
could the offspring of the same progenitor
so far deviate from each other as to con
stitute different species. The function
of the experimental philosopher is to
combine the conditions of Nature and
to produce her results; and this was the
method of Darwin.1 He made himself
acquainted with what could, without
any manner of doubt, be done in the
way of producing variation. He asso
ciated himself with pigeon-fanciers—
bought, begged, kept, and observed
every breed that he could obtain. Though
derived, from a common stock, the
diversities of these pigeons were such
that “ a score of them might be chosen
which, if shown to an ornithologist, and
he were told that they were wild birds,
would certainly be ranked by him as welldefined species.” The simple principle
which guides the pigeon-fancier, as it
does the cattle-breeder, is the selection
of some variety that strikes his fancy,
and the propagation of this variety
by inheritance. With his eye still directed
to the particular appearance which he
wishes to exaggerate, he selects it as it
re-appears in successive broods, and thus
adds . increment to increment until an
astonishing amount of divergence from
the parent type is effected. The breeder
The first step only towards experimental
demonstration has been taken. Experiments
now begun might, a couple of centuries hence,
ftimish data of incalculable value, which ought
to be supplied to the science of the future.
3«
in this case does not produce the elements
of the variation. He simply observes
them, and by selection adds them together
until the required result has been ob
tained. “No man,” says Mr. Darwin,
“ would ever try to make a fantail till he
saw a pigeon with a tail developed in
some slight degree in an unusual manner,
or a pouter until he saw a pigeon with a
crop of unusual size.” Thus nature gives
the hint, man acts upon it, and by the law
of inheritance exaggerates the deviation.
. Having thus satisfied himself by indu
bitable facts that the organisation of an
animal or of a plant (for precisely the
same treatment applies to plants) is to
some extent plastic, he passes from varia
tion under domestication to variation
under nature. Hitherto we have dealt
with the adding together of small
changes by the conscious selection of
man. Can Nature thus select ? Mr.
Darwin’s answer is, “Assuredly she can.”
The number of living things produced is
far in excess of the number that can be
supported ; hence at some period or
other of their lives there must be a
struggle for existence. And what is the
infallible result ? If one organism were
a perfect copy of the other in regard to
strength, skill, and agility, external con
ditions would decide. But this is not
the case. Here we have the fact of
variety offering itself to nature, as in the
former instance it offered itself to man ;
and those varieties which are least com
petent to cope with surrounding con
ditions will infallibly give way to those
that are most competent. To use a
familiar proverb, the weakest goes to the
wall. But the triumphant fraction again
breeds to over-production, transmitting
the qualities which secured its main
tenance, but transmitting them in different
degrees. The struggle for food again
supervenes, and those to whom the
favourable quality has been transmitted
in excess will triumph as before.
It is easy to see that we have here the
addition of increments favourable to the
individual, still more rigorously carried
out than in the case of domestication;
�32
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
for not only are unfavourable specimens
not selected by nature, but they are
destroyed. This is what Mr. Darwin
calls “ Natural Selection,” which acts by
the preservation and accumulation of
small inherited modifications, each profit
able to the preserved being. With this
idea he interpenetrates and leavens the
vast store of facts that he and others
have collected. We cannot, without
shutting our eyes through fear or preju
dice, fail to see that Darwin is here
dealing, not with imaginary, but. with
true causes; nor can we fail to discern
what vast modifications may be produced
by natural selection in periods sufficiently
long. Each individual increment may
resemble what mathematicians call a
“differential” (a quantity indefinitely
small)but definite and great changes
may obviously be produced by the inte
gration of these infinitesimal quantities,
through practically infinite time.
If Darwin, like Bruno, rejects the
notion of creative power,, acting after
human fashion, it certainly is not because
he is unacquainted with the numberless
exquisite adaptations on which this
notion of a supernatural. Artificer, has
been founded. His book is a repository
of the most startling facts of this descrip
tion. Take the marvellous observation
which he cites from Dr. Kruger, where a
bucket with an aperture . serving as a
spout is formed in an orchid. Bees visit
the flower; in eager search of material
for their combs they push each other
into the bucket, . the drenched ones
escaping from their involuntary , bath by
the spout. Here they rub their backs
against the viscid stigma, of the flower
and obtain glue; then against the pollenmasses, which are thus stuck to the back
of the bee and carried away. “ When the
bee, so provided, flies to another flower,
or to the same flower a second time, and
is pushed by its comrades into the
bucket, and then crawls out. by the
passage, the pollen-mass upon its back
necessarily comes first into contact with
the viscid stigma,” which takes up the
pollen; and this is how that orchid is
fertilised. Or take this other case of the
Catasetum. “Bees visit these flowers
in order to gnaw the labellum; in doing
this they inevitably touch a long, taper
ing, sensitive projection. This, when
touched, transmits a sensation or vibra
tion to a certain membrane, which is
instantly ruptured, setting free a spring,
by which the pollen-mass is shot forth
like an arrow in the right direction, and
adheres by its viscid extremity to the
back of the bee.” In this way the fer
tilising pollen is spread abroad.
It is the mind thus stored with the
choicest materials of the teleologist that
rejects teleology, seeking to refer these
wonders to natural causes. They illus
trate, according to him, the method of
nature, not the “ technic ” of a manlike
Artificer. The beauty of flowers is due
to natural selection. Those that distin
guish themselves by vividly contrasting
colours from the surrounding green leaves
are most readily seen, most frequently
visited by insects, most often fertilised, and
hence most favoured by natural selection.
Coloured berries also readily attract the
attention of birds and beasts, which feed
upon them, spread their manured seeds
abroad, thus giving trees and shrubs pos
sessing such berries a greater chance in
the struggle for existence.
With profound analytic and synthetic
skill, Mr. Darwin investigates the cell
making instinct of the hive-bee. His
method of dealing with it is representa
tive. He falls back from the more per
fectly to the less perfectly developed in
stinct—from the hive-bee to the humblebee, which uses its own cocoon as a
comb, and to classes of bees of interme
diate skill endeavouring to show how the
passage might be gradually made from
the lowest to the highest. The saving
of wax is the most important point in
the economy of bees. Twelve.to fifteen
pounds of dry sugar are said to be
needed for the secretion of a single
pound of wax. The quantities of nectar
necessary for the wax must therefore be
vast, and every improvement of construc
tive instinct which results in the saving
�THE BELFAST ADDRESS
of wax is a direct profit to the insect’s
life. The time that would otherwise be
devoted to the making of wax is devoted
to the gathering and storing of honey for
winter food. Mr. Darwin passes from
the humble-bee, with its rude cells,
through the Melipona, with its more
artistic cells, to the hive-bee with its
astonishing architecture. The bees place
themselves at equal distances apart upon
the wax, sweep and excavate equal
spheres round the selected points. The
spheres intersect, and the planes of inter
section are built up with thin laminae.
Hexagonal cells are thus formed. This
mode of treating such questions is, as I
have said, representative. The expositor
habitually retires from the more perfect
and complex, to the less perfect and
simple, and carries you with him through
stages of perfecting—adds increment to
increment of infinitesimal change, and in
this way gradually breaks down your
reluctance to admit that the exquisite
climax of the whole could be a result of
natural selection.
Mr. Darwin shirks no difficulty; and,
Saturated as the subject was with his
own thought, he must have known,
better than his critics, the weakness as
well as the strength of his theory. This
of course would be of little avail were
his object a temporary dialectic victory,
instead of the establishment of a truth
which he means to be everlasting. But
he takes no pains to disguise the weak
ness he has discerned; nay, he takes
every pains to bring it into the strongest
light. His vast resources enable him to
cope with objections started by himself
and others, so as to leave the final
impression upon the reader’s mind that,
if they be not completely answered, they
certainly are not fatal. Their negative
force being thus destroyed, you are free
to be influenced by the vast positive
mass of evidence he is able to bring
before you. This largeness of know
ledge and readiness of resource render
Mr. Darwin the most terrible of antago
nists.
Accomplished naturalists have
levelled heavy and sustained criticisms
33
against him—not always with the view
of fairly weighing his theory, but with
the express intention of exposing its
weak points only. This does not irritate
him. He treats every objection with a
soberness and thoroughness which even
Bishop Butler might be proud to imitate,
surrounding each fact with its appropriate
detail, placing it in its proper relations,
and usually giving it a significance which,
as long as it was kept isolated, failed to
appear. This is done without a trace of
ill-temper. He moves over the subject
with the passionless strength of a glacier;
and the grinding of the rocks is not
always. without a counterpart in the
logical pulverisation of the objector.
But though in handling this mighty
theme all passion has been stilled, there
is an emotion of the intellect, incident
to the discernment of new truth, which
often colours and warms the pages of
Mr. Darwin.
His success has been
great; and this implies not only the
solidity of his work, but the preparedness
of the public mind for such a revelation.
On this head a remark of Agassiz
impressed me more than anything else.
Sprung from a race of theologians, this
celebrated man combated to the last the
theory of natural selection. One of the
many times I had the pleasure of meeting
him in the United States was at Mr.
Winthrop’s beautiful residence at Brook
line, near Boston. Rising from luncheon,
we all halted as if by common consent
in front of a window, and continued
there a discussion which had been started
at table. The maple was in its autumn
glory, and the exquisite beauty of the
scene outside seemed, in my case, to
interpenetrate without disturbance the
intellectual action.
Earnestly, almost
sadly, Agassiz turned, and said to the
gentlemen standing round : “ I confess
that I was not prepared to see this
theory received as it has been by the
best intellects of our time. Its success
is greater than I could have thought
possible.”
B
�LECTURES AND ESSA YS
34
§ 7-
In our day grand generalisations have
been reached. The theory of the origin
of species is but one of them. Another,
of still wider grasp and more radical
significance, is the doctrine of the Con
servation of Energy, the ultimate philo
sophical issues of which are as yet
but dimly seen—that doctrine which
“ binds nature fast in fate,” to an extent
not hitherto recognised, exacting from
every antecedent its equivalent conse
quent, from every consequent its equiva
lent antecedent, and bringing vital as
well as physical phenomena under the
dominion of that law of causal con
nection which, so far as the human
understanding has yet pierced, asserts
itself everywhere in nature. Long in
advance of all definite experiment upon
the subject, the constancy and in
destructibility of matter had been
affirmed; and all subsequent experi
ence justified the affirmation. Mayer
extended the attribute of indestructi
bility to energy, applying it in the first
instance to inorganic,1 and afterwards
with profound insight to organic nature.
The vegetable world, though drawing
all its nutriment from invisible sources,
was proved incompetent to generate
anew either matter or force. Its matter
is for the most part transmuted gas ; its
force transformed solar force.
The
animal world was proved to be equally
uncreative, all its motive energies being
referred to the combustion of its food.
The activity of each animal, as a whole,
was proved to be the transferred activity
of its molecules. The muscles were
shown to be stores of mechanical energy,
potential until unlocked by the nerves,
and then resulting in muscular con
tractions. The speed at which messages
fly to and fro along the nerves was deter
mined by Helmholtz, and found to be,
not, as had been previously supposed,
1 Dr. Berthold has shown that Leibnitz had
sound views regarding the conservation of energy
in inorganic nature.
equal to that of light or electricity, but
less than the speed of sound—less even
than that of an eagle.
This was the work of the physicist:
then came the conquests of the com
parative anatomist and physiologist, re
vealing the structure of every animal and
the function of every organ in the whole
biological series, from the lowest zoo
phyte up to man. The nervous system
had been made the object of profound
and continued study, the wonderful, and,
at bottom, entirely mysterious controlling
power which it exercises over the whole
organism, physical and mental, being
recognised more and more. Thought
could not be kept back from a subject
so profoundly suggestive. Besides the
physical life dealt with by Mr. Darwin,
there is a psychical life presenting similar
gradations, and asking equally for a
solution. How are the different grades
and orders of Mind to be accounted for?
What is the principle of growth of that
mysterious power which on our planet
culminates in Reason ?
These are
questions which, though not thrusting
themselves so forcibly upon the attention
of the general public, had not only
occupied many reflecting minds, but had
been formally broached by one of them
before the Origin of Species appeared.
With the mass of materials furnished
by the physicist and physiologist in his
hands, Mr. Herbert Spencer, twenty
years ago, sought to graft upon this basis
a system of psychology; and two years
ago a second and greatly amplified
edition of his work appeared. Those
who have occupied themselves with the
beautiful experiments of Plateau will
remember that when two spherules of
olive-oil, suspended in a mixture of alcohol
and water of the same density as the oil,
are brought together, they do not imme
diately unite. Something like a pellicle
appears to be formed around the drops,
the rupture of which is immediately
followed by the coalescence of the
globules into one. There are organisms
whose vital actions are almost as purely
physical as the coalescence of such drops
�THE BELFAST ADDRESS
of oil. They come into contact and fuse
themselves thus together. From such
organisms to others a shade higher, from
these to others a shade higher still, and
on through an ever-ascending series, Mr.
Spencer conducts his argument. There
are two obvious factors to be here taken
into account — the creature and the
medium in which it lives, or, as it is
often expressed, the organism and its
environment.
Mr. Spencer’s funda
mental principle is, that between these
two factors there is incessant interaction.
The organism is played upon by the
environment, and is modified to meet
the requirements of the environment.
Life he defines to be “ a continuous
adjustment of internal relations to external
relations.”
In the lowest organisms we have a
kind of tactual sense diffused over the
entire body; then, through impressions
from without and their corresponding
adjustments, special portions of the sur
face become more responsive to stimuli
than others. The senses are nascent,
the basis of all of them being that simple
tactual sense which the sage Democritus
recognised 2,300 years ago as their
common progenitor. The action of light,
in,the first instance, appears to be a
mere disturbance of the chemical pro
cesses in the animal organism, similar to
that which occurs in the leaves of plants.
By degrees the action becomes localised
in a few pigment-cells, more sensitive to
light than the surrounding tissue. The
eye is incipient. At first it is merely
capable of revealing differences of light
and shade produced by bodies close at
hand. Followed, as the interception of
the light commonly is, by the contact of
the closely adjacent opaque body, sight
in this condition becomes a kind of
“anticipatory touch.” The adjustment
continues; a slight bulging out of the
epidermis over the pigment-granules
supervenes. A lens is incipient, and,
through the operation of infinite adjust
ments, at length reaches the perfection
that it displays in the hawk and eagle.
So of the other senses; they are special
35
differentiations of a tissue which was
originally vaguely sensitive all over.
With the development of the senses,
the adjustments between the organism
and its environment gradually extend in
space., a multiplication of experiences and
a corresponding modification of conduct
being the result. The adjustments also
extend in time, covering continually
greater intervals. Along with this exten
sion in space and time the adjustments
also increase in speciality and complexity,
passing through the various grades of
brute life, and prolonging themselves
into the domain of reason. Very striking
are Mr. Spencer’s remarks regarding the
influence of the sense of touch upon the
development of intelligence. This is, so
to say, the mother-tongue of all the
senses, into which they must be trans
lated to be of service to the organism.
Hence its importance. The parrot is
the most intelligent of birds, and its
tactual power is also greatest. From this
sense it gets knowledge, unattainable by
birds which cannot employ their feet as
hands. The elephant is the most saga
cious of quadrupeds—its tactual range
and skill, and the consequent multiplica
tion of experiences, which it owes to its
wonderfully adaptable trunk, being the
basis of its sagacity. Feline - animals,
for a similar cause, are more sagacious
than hoofed animals—atonement being
to some extent made in the case of the
horse by' the possession of sensitive
prehensile lips. In the Primates the
evolution of intellect and the evolution
of tactual appendages go hand in hand.
In the most intelligent anthropoid apes
we find the tactual range and delicacy
greatly augmented, new avenues of know
ledge being thus opened to the animal.
Man crowns the edifice here, not only in
virtue of his own manipulatory power,
but through the enormous extension of
his range of experience, by the invention
of instruments of precision, which serve
as supplemental senses and supplemental
limbs. The reciprocal action of these is
finely described and illustrated. That
chastened intellectual emotion, to which
�3&
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
I have referred in connection with Mr.
Darwin, is not absent in Mr. Spencer.
His illustrations possess at times exceed
ing vividness and force; and from his
style on such occasions it is to be in
ferred that the ganglia of this Apostle of
the Understanding are sometimes the
seat of a nascent poetic thrill.
It is a fact of supreme importance that
actions, the performance of which at first
requires even painful effort and delibera
tion, may, by habit, be rendered auto
matic. Witness the slow learning of its
letters by a child, and the subsequent
facility of reading in a man, when each
group of letters which forms a word is
instantly, and without effort, fused to a
single perception. Instance the billiardplayer,. whose muscles of hand and eye,
when he reaches the perfection of his art,
are unconsciously co-ordinated. Instance
the musician, who, by practice, is enabled
to fuse a multitude of arrangements,
auditory, tactual, and muscular, into a
process of automatic manipulation. Com
bining such facts with the doctrine of
hereditary transmission, we reach a theory
of Instinct. A chick, after coming out
of the egg, balances itself correctly, runs
about, picks up food, thus showing that
it possesses a power of directing its move
ments to definite ends. How did the
chick learn this very complex co-ordina
tion of eyes, muscles, and beak ? It has
not been individually taught; its per
sonal experience is nil, but it has the
benefit of ancestral experience. In its
inherited organisation are registered the
powers which it displays at birth. So
also as regards the instinct of the hive
bee, already referred to. The distance
at which the insects stand apart when
they sweep their hemispheres and build
their cells is “ organically remembered.”
Man also carries with him the physical
texture of his ancestry, as well as the
inherited intellect bound up with it.
The defects of intelligence during in
fancy and youth are probably less due to
a lack of individual experience than to
the fact that in early life the cerebral
organisation is still incomplete. The
period necessary for completion varies
with the race and with the individual.
As a round shot outstrips the rifled bolt
on quitting the muzzle of the gun, so the
lower race, in childhood, may outstrip
the higher. But the higher eventually
overtakes the lower, and surpasses it in
range. As regards individuals, we do
not always find the precocity of youth
prolonged to mental power in maturity;
while the dulness of boyhood is some
times strikingly contrasted with the intel
lectual energy of after years. Newton,
when a boy, was weakly, and he showed
no particular aptitude at school; but in
his eighteenth year he went to Cam
bridge, and soon afterwards astonished
his teachers by his power of dealing with
geometrical problems. During his quiet
youth his brain was slowly preparing
itself to be the organ of those energies
which he subsequently displayed.
By myriad blows (to use a Lucretian
phrase) the image and superscription of
the external world are stamped as states
of consciousness upon the organism, the
depth of the impression depending on
the number of the blows. When two or
more phenomena occur in the environ*
ment invariably together, they are stamped
to the same depth or to the same relief,
and indissolubly connected. And here
we come to the threshold of a great ques
tion. Seeing that he could in no way
rid himself of the consciousness of Space
and Time, Kant assumed them to be
necessary “forms of intuition,” the moulds
and shapes into which our intuitions are
thrown belonging to ourselves, and with
out objective existence. With unexpected
power and success, Mr. Spencer brings
the hereditary experience theory, as he
holds it, to bear upon this question.
“ If there exist certain external relations
which are experienced by all organisms
at all instants of their waking lives—
relations which are absolutely constant
and universal—there will be established
answering internal relations, that are
absolutely constant and universal. Such
relations we have in those of Space and
Time. As the substratum of all other
�THE BELFAST ADDRESS
relations of the Non-Ego, they must be
responded to by conceptions that are the
substrata of all other relations in the
Ego. Being the constant and infinitely
repeated elements of thought, they must
become the automatic elements of
thought—the elements of thought which
it is impossible to get rid of—the “ forms
of intuition.”
Throughout this application and ex
tension of Hartley’s and Mill’s “ Law of
Inseparable Association,” Mr. Spencer
stands upon his own ground, invoking,
instead of the experiences of the indi
vidual, the registered experiences of the
race. His overthrow of the restriction of
experience to the individual is, I think,
complete. That restriction ignores the
power of organising experience, furnished
at the outset to each-individual; it ignores
the different degrees of this power pos
sessed by different races, and by different
individuals of the same race. Were there
not in the human brain a potency ante
cedent to all experience, a dog or a cat
ought to be as capable of education as a
man. These predetermined internal re
lations are independent of the experi
ences of the individual. The human
brain is the “ organised register of infi
nitely numerous experiences received
during the evolution of life, or rather
during the evolution of that series of
organisms through which the human
organism has been reached. The effects
of the most uniform and frequent of
these experiences have been successively
bequeathed, principal and interest, and
have slowly mounted to that high intelli
gence which lies latent in the brain of
the infant. Thus it happens that the
European inherits from twenty to thirty
cubic inches more of brain than the
Papuan. Thus it happens that faculties,
as of music, which scarcely exist in some
inferior races, become congenital in
superior ones. Thus it happens that out
of savages unable to count up to the
number of their fingers, and speaking a
language containing only nouns and
verbs, arise at length our Newtons and
.Shakespeares.”
37
§ 8.
At the outset of this Address it was
stated that physical theories which lie
beyond experience are derived by a pro
cess of abstraction from experience. It
is instructive to note from this point of
view the successive introduction of new
conceptions. The idea of the attraction
of gravitation was preceded by the obser
vation of the attraction of iron by a
magnet, and of light bodies by rubbed
amber. The polarity of magnetism and
electricity also appealed to the senses.
It thus became the substratum of the
conception that atoms and molecules are
endowed with attractive and repellent
poles, by the play of which definite forms
of crystalline architecture are produced.
Thus molecular force becomes structural.'1
It required no great boldness of thought
to extend its play into organic nature,
and to recognise in molecular force the
agency by which both plants and animals
are built up. In this way, out of expe
rience arise conceptions which are wholly
ultra-experiential. None of the atomists
of antiquity had any notion of this play
of molecular polar force, but they had
experience of gravity, as manifested by
falling bodies. Abstracting from this,
they permitted their atoms to fall eter
nally through empty space. Democritus
assumed that the larger atoms moved
more rapidly than the smaller ones, which
they therefore could overtake, and with
which they could combine. Epicurus,
holding that empty space could offer no
resistance to motion, ascribed to all the
atoms the same velocity; but he seems
to have overlooked the consequence
that under such circumstances the atoms
could never combine. Lucretius cut the
knot by quitting the domain of physics
altogether, and causing the atoms to
move together by a kind of volition.
Was the instinct utterly at fault which
1 See Fragments of Science, vol. ii., article on
“ Matter and Force
or Lectures on Light, No.
�38
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
caused Lucretius thus to swerve from
his own principles ? Diminishing gradu
ally the number of progenitors,. Mr.
Darwin comes at length to one “ primor
dial form
but he does not say, so far
as I remember, how he supposes this
form to have been introduced. He
quotes with satisfaction the words of a
celebrated author and divine who had
“gradually learnt to see that it was just
as noble a conception of the Deity to
believe He created a few original forms,
capable of self-development into other
and needful forms, as to believe He
required a fresh act of creation to supply
the voids caused by the action of His
laws.” What Mr. Darwin thinks of this
view of the introduction of life I do
not know. But the anthropomorphism,
which it seemed his object to set asioe,
is as firmly associated with the creation
of a few forms as with the creation of a
multitude.
We need clearness and
thoroughness here. Two courses, and
two only, are possible. Either let _ us
open our doors freely to the conception
of creative acts, or, abandoning them, let
us radically change our notions of matter.
If we look at matter as pictured by
Democritus, and as defined for genera
tions in our scientific text-books, the
notion of conscious life coming out of it
cannot be formed by the mind. . The
argument placed in the mouth of Bishop
Butler suffices, in my opinion, to crush
all such materialism as this. . Those,
however, who framed these definitions of
matter were but partial students. . They
were not biologists, but mathematicians,
whose labours referred only to such
accidents and properties of matter as
could be expressed in their formulae.
Their science was mechanical science,
not the science of life. With matter in
its wholeness they never dealt; and,
denuded by their imperfect definitions,
“ the gentle mother of all ” became the
object of her children’s dread. Let us
reverently, but honestly, look the ques
tion in the face. Divorced from matter,
where is life ? Whatever our faith may
say, our knowledge shows them to be
indissolubly joined. Every meal we eat,
every cup we drink, illustrates the
mysterious control of mind by matter.
On tracing the line of life backwards,
we see it approaching more and more to
what we call the purely physical con
dition. We come at length to those
organisms which I have compared to
drops of oil suspended in a mixture of
alcohol and water. We reach the pro
togenes of Haeckel, in which we have “ a
type distinguishable from a fragment of
albumen only by its finely granular
character.” Can we pause here? We
break a magnet, and find two poles in
each of its fragments. We continue the
process of breaking ; but, however small
the parts, each carries with it, though
enfeebled, the polarity of the whole.
And when we can break no longer, we
prolong the intellectual vision to the
polar molecules. Are we not urged to
do something similar in the case of life ?
Is there not a temptation to close to
some extent with Lucretius, when he
affirms that “Nature is seen to do all
things spontaneously of herself without
the meddling of the gods”? or with
Bruno, when he declares that matter is
not “ that mere empty capacity which
philosophers have pictured her to be,
but the universal mother who brings
forth all things as the fruit of her own
womb ”? Believing, as I do, in the con
tinuity of nature, I cannot stop abruptly
where our microscopes cease to be of
use.
Here the vision of the mind
authoritatively supplements the vision of
the eye. By a necessity engendered and
justified by science I cross the boundary
of the experimental evidence, and dis
cern in that matter which we, in our
ignorance of its latent powers, and not
withstanding our professed reverence for
its Creator, have hitherto covered with
opprobrium, the promise and potency of
all terrestrial life.
If you ask me whether there exists the
least evidence to prove that any form of
life can be developed out of matter,
without demonstrable antecedent life,
my reply is that evidence considered
�THE BELFAST ADDRESS
perfectly conclusive by many has been
adduced; and that were some of us who
have pondered this question to follow a
very common example and accept testi
mony because it falls in with our belief,
we also should eagerly close with the
evidence referred to. But there is in the
true man of science a desire stronger
than the wish to have his beliefs upheld
—namely, the desire to have them true.
And this stronger wish causes him to
reject the most plausible support, if he
has reason to suspect that it is vitiated
by error. Those to whom I refer as
having studied this question, believing
the evidence offered in favour of “ spon
taneous generation ” to be thus vitiated,
cannot accept it. They know full well
that the chemist now prepares from in
organic matter a vast array of substances,
which were some time ago regarded as
the sole products of vitality. They are
intimately acquainted with the structural
power of matter, as evidenced in the
phenomena of crystallisation. They can
justify scientifically their belief in its
potency, under the proper conditions, to
produce organisms. But, in reply to
your question, they will frankly admit
their inability to point to any satisfactory
experimental proof that life can be
developed, save from demonstrable an
tecedent life. As already indicated, they
draw the line from the highest organisms
through lower ones down to the lowest;
and it is the prolongation of this line by
the intellect, beyond the range of the
senses, that leads them to the conclusion
which Bruno so boldly enunciated.1
The “materialism”, here professed
may be vastly different from what you
suppose, and I therefore crave your
gracious patience to the end. “The
'question of an external world,” says
J. S. Mill, “ is the great battle-ground of
metaphysics.”2 Mr. Mill himself reduces
•external phenomena to “ possibilities of
sensation. ’
Kant, as we have seen,
1 Bruno was a " Pantheist,” not an “ Atheist ”
•Oi a “ Materialist.”
’ Examination of Hamilton, p. 154,
39
made time and space “ forms ” of our
own intuitions. Fichte, having first by
the inexorable logic of his understanding
proved himself to be a mere link in that
chain . of eternal causation which holds
so rigidly in nature, violently broke the
chain by making nature, and all that it
inherits, an apparition of the mind.1
And it is by no means easy to combat
such notions. For when I say “ I see
you,” and that there is not the least doubt
about it, the obvious reply is, that what
I am really conscious of is an affection
of my own retina. And if I urge that
my sight can be checked by touching
you, the retort would be that I am equally
transgressing the limits of fact; for what I
am really conscious of is, not that you are
there, but that the nerves of my hand
have undergone a change. All we hear,
and see, and touch, and taste, and smell
are, it would be urged, mere variations
of our own condition, beyond which,
even, to the extent of a hair’s breadth,’
we cannot go. That anything answering
to our impressions exists outside of our
selves is not a fact, but an inference, to
which all validity would be denied by
an idealist like Berkeley, or by a sceptic
like Hume. Mr. Spencer takes another
line. With him, as with the uneducated
man, there is no doubt or question as to
the existence of an external world. But
he differs from the uneducated, who
think that the world really is what con
sciousness represents it to be.
Our
states of consciousness are mere symbols
of an outside entity which produces
them and determines the order of their
succession, but the real nature of which
we can never know.2 _ In fact, the whole
process of evolution is the manifestation
of a power absolutely inscrutable to the
1 Bestimmung des Menschen.
2 In a paper, at once popular and profound,
enhUed, “ Recent Progress in the Theory of
Vision, contained in the volume of lectures by
Helmholtz, published by Longmans, this sym
bolism of our states of consciousness is also
dwelt upon. The impressions of sense are the
mere signs of external things. In this paper
Helmholtz contends strongly against the view
that the consciousness of space is inborn; and
�40
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
intellect of man. As little in our day as
in the days of Job can man by searching
find this Power out. Considered funda
mentally, then, it is by the operation of
an insoluble mystery that life on earth is
evolved, species differentiated, and mind
unfolded, from their prepotent elements
in the immeasurable past,
The strength of the doctrine of Evolu
tion consists, not in an experimental
demonstration (for the subject is hardly
accessible to this mode of proof), but
in its general harmony with scientific
thought. From contrast, moreover, it
derives enormous relative cogency. On
the one side we have a theory (if it could
with any propriety be so called) derived,
as were the theories referred to at the
beginning of this Address, not from the
study of nature, but from the observa
tion of men—a theory which converts
the Power whose garment is seen in
the visible universe into an Artificer,
fashioned after the human model, and
acting by broken efforts as man is seen
to act. On the other side we have the
conception that all we see around us,
and all we feel within us—the phenomena
of physical nature as well as those of the
human mind—have their unsearchable
roots in a cosmical life, if I dare apply
the term, an infinitesimal span of which
is offered to the investigation of man.
And even this span is only knowable in
part. We can trace the development of
a nervous system, and correlate with it
the parallel phenomena of sensation and
thought. We see with undoubting cer
tainty that they go hand in hand. But
we try to soar in a vacuum the moment
we seek to comprehend the connection
he evidently doubts the power of the chick to
pick up grains of corn without preliminary
lessons. On this point, he says, further expertments are needed.
Such experiments have
been since made by Mr. Spalding, and they
seem to prove conclusively that the chick does
not need a single moment’s tuition to enable it
to stand, run, govern the muscles of its eyes,
and peck. Helmholtz, however, is contending
against the notion of pre-established harmony,
and I am not aware of his views as to the
organisation of experiences of race or breed.
between them. An Archimedean fulcrum
is here required which the human mind
cannot command ; and the effort to
solve the problem—to borrow a com
parison from an illustrious friend of
mine—is like that of a man trying to lift
himself by his own waistband. All that
has been said in this discourse is to be
taken in connection with this funda
mental truth. When £< nascent senses
are spoken of, when “ the differentiation
of a tissue at first vaguely sensitive all
over” is spoken of, and when these
possessions and processes are associated
with “ the modification of an organism
by its environment,” the same parallelism,
without contact, or even approach to
contact, is implied. Man the object is
separated by an impassable gulf from
man the subject.
There is no motor
energy in the human intellect to carry
it, without logical rupture, from the one
to the other.
§ 9The doctrine of Evolution derives man,
in his totality, from the interaction of
organism and environment through
countless ages past. The Human Under
standing, for example—that faculty which
Mr. Spencer has turned so skilfully round
upon its own antecedents—is itself a
result of the play between organism and
environment through cosmic ranges_ of
time. Never, surely, did prescription
plead so irresistible a claim. But then
it comes to pass that, over and above
his understanding, there are many other
things appertaining to man whose pre
scriptive rights are quite as strong as
those of the understanding itself. It is
a result, for example, of the play of
organism and environment that sugar is
sweet, and that aloes are bitter 5 that the
smell of henbane differs from the perfume
of a rose. Such facts of consciousness
(for which, by the way, no adequate
reason has ever been rendered) are quite
as old as the understanding; and many
other things can boast an equally ancient
origin. Mr. Spencer at one place refers
�THE BELFAST ADDRESS
to that most powerful of passions—the
amatory passion—as one which, when it
first occurs, is antecedent to all relative
experience whatever; and we may press
its claim as being at least as ancient, and
as valid, as that of the understanding
itself. Then there are such things woven
into the texture of man as the feeling of
Awe, Reverence, Wonder—and not alone
the sexual love just referred to, but the
love of the beautiful, physical, and moral,
in Nature, Poetry, and Art. There is
also that deep-set feeling, which, since
the earliest dawn of history, and pro
bably for ages prior to all history, incor
porated itself in the religions of the
world. You, who have escaped from
these religions into the high-and-dry light
of the intellect, may deride them; but
in so doing you deride accidents of form
merely, and fail to touch the immovable
basis of the religious sentiment in the
nature of man. To yield this sentiment
reasonable satisfaction is the problem of
problems at the present hour.
And
grotesque in relation to scientific culture
as many of the religions of the world
have been and are—dangerous, nay,
destructive, to the dearest privileges of
freemen as some of them undoubtedly
have been, and would, if they could, be
again—it will be wise to recognise them
as the forms of a force, mischievous if
permitted to intrude on the region of
objective knowledge, over which it holds
no command, but capable of adding, in
the region of poetry and emotion, inward
completeness and dignity to man.
Feeling, I say again, dates from as old
an origin and as high a source as intelli
gence, and it equally demands its range
of play. The wise teacher of humanity
will recognise the necessity of meeting
this demand, rather than of resisting it
on account of errors and absurdities of
form.
What we should resist, at all
hazards, is the attempt made in the past,
and now repeated, to found upon this
elemental bias of man’s nature a system
which should exercise despotic sway over
his intellect.
I have no fear of such a
consummation. Science has already to
41
some extent leavened the world; it will
leaven it more and more. I should look
upon the mild light of science breaking
in upon the minds of the youth of Ireland,
and strengthening gradually to the per
fect day, as a surer check to any intel
lectual or spiritual tyranny which may
threaten this island than the laws of
princes or the swords of emperors. We
fought and won our battle even in the
Middle Ages : should we doubt the issue
of another conflict with our broken foe ?
The impregnable position of science
may be described in a few words. We
claim, and we shall wrest from theology,
the entire domain of cosmological theory.
All schemes and systems which thus
infringe upon the domain of science must,
in so far as they do this, submit to its
control, and relinquish all thought of
controlling it. Acting otherwise proved
always disastrous in the past, and it is
simply fatuous to-day. Every system
which would escape the fate of an
organism too rigid to adjust itself to its
environment must be plastic to the
extent that the growth of knowledge
demands. When this truth has been
thoroughly taken in, 'rigidity will be
relaxed, exclusiveness diminished, things
now deemed essential will be dropped,
and elements now rejected will be assimi
lated. The lifting of the life is the
essential point, and as long as dogma
tism, fanaticism, and intolerance are kept
out, various modes of leverage may be
employed to raise life to a higher level.
Science itself not unfrequently derives
motive power from an ultra-scientific
source. Some of its greatest discoveries
have been made under the stimulus of a
non-scientific ideal. This was the case
among the ancients, and it has been so
among ourselves. Mayer, Joule, and
Colding, whose names are associated
with the greatest of modern generalisa
tions, were thus influenced. With his
usual insight, Lange at one place remarks
that “it is not always the objectively
correct and intelligible that helps man
most, or leads most quickly to the
fullest and truest knowledge. As the
�42
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
sliding body upon the brachystochrone
reaches its end sooner than by the
straighter road of the inclined plane, so,
through the swing of the ideal, we often
arrive at the naked truth more rapidly
than by the processes of the understand
ing.” Whewell speaks of enthusiasm of
temper as a hindrance to science; but
he means the enthusiasm of weak heads.
There is a strong and resolute enthu
siasm in which science finds an ally; and
it is to the lowering of this fire, rather
than to the diminution of intellectual
insight, that the lessening productiveness
of men of science, in their mature years,
is to be ascribed. Mr. Buckle sought to
detach intellectual achievement from
moral force. He gravely erred; for with
out moral force to whip it into action
the achievement of the intellect would
be poor indeed.
It has been said by its opponents that
science divorces itself from literature;
but the statement, like so many others,
arises from lack of knowledge. A glance
at the less technical writings of its leaders
—of its Helmholtz, its Huxley, and its
Du Bois-Reymond—would show what
breadth of literary culture they com
mand. Where among modern writers
can you find their superiors in clearness
and vigour of literary style? Science
desires not isolation, but freely combines
with every effort towards the bettering of
man’s estate. Single-handed, and sup
ported, not by outward sympathy, but by
inward force, it has built at least one
great wing of the many-mansioned home
which man in his totality demands. And
if rough walls and protruding rafter-ends
indicate that on one side the edifice is
still incomplete, it is only by wise com
bination of the parts required, with those
already irrevocably built, that we can
hope for completeness. There is no
necessary incongruity between what has
been accomplished and what remains to
be done. The moral glow of Socrates,
which we all feel by ignition, has in . it
nothing incompatible with the physics
of Anaxagoras which he so much
scorned, but which he would hardly
scorn to-day. And here I am reminded
of one among us, hoary, but still strong,
whose prophet-voice some thirty years
ago, far more than any other of this age,
unlocked whatever of life and nobleness
lay latent in its most gifted minds—one
fit to stand beside Socrates or the
Maccabean Eleazar, and to dare and
suffer all that they suffered and dared—
fit, as he once said of Fichte, “ to have
been the teacher of the Stoa, and to
have discoursed of Beauty and Virtue in
the groves of Academe.” With a capacity
to grasp physical principles which his
friend Goethe did not possess, and which
even total lack of exercise has not been
able to reduce to atrophy, it is the
world’s loss that he, in the vigour of his
years, did not open his mind and sym
pathies to science, and make its conclu
sions a portion of his message to mankind.
Marvellously endowed as he was—equally
equipped on the side of the Heart and
of the Understanding—he might have
done much towards teaching us how to
reconcile the claims of both, and to
enable them in coming times to dwell
together, in unity of spirit and in the
bond of peace.
And now the end is come. With
more time, or greater strength and know
ledge, what has been here said might
have been better said, while worthy
matters, here omitted, might have re
ceived fit expression. But there would
have been no material deviation from
the views set forth. As regards myself,
they are not the growth of a day; and
as regards you, I thought you ought to
know the environment which, with or
without your consent, is rapidly surround
ing you, and in relation to which some
adjustment on your part may be neces
sary.
A hint of Hamlet’s, however,
teaches us how the troubles of common
life may be ended; and it is perfectly
possible for you and me to purchase
intellectual peace at the price of intel
lectual death. The world is not without
refuges of this description; nor is it
wanting in persons who seek their
�APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS
shelter, and try to persuade others to do
the same. The unstable and the weak
have yielded and will yield to this per
suasion, and they to whom repose is
sweeter than the truth. But I would
exhort you to refuse the offered shelter,
and to scorn the base repose—to accept,
if the choice be forced upon you, com
motion before stagnation, the breezy leap
of the torrent before the foetid stillness
of the swamp. In the course of this
Address I have touched on debatable
questions, and led you over what will be
deemed dangerous ground—and this
partly with the view of telling you that,
as regards these questions, science
claims unrestricted right of search. It
is not to the point to say that the views
of Lucretius and Bruno, of Darwin and
Spencer, may be wrong. Here I should
agree with you, deeming it indeed
certain that these views will undergo
modification.
But the point is that,
whether right or wrong, we claim the
right to discuss them.
For science,
however, no exclusive claim is here
made; you are not urged to erect it into
an idol.
The inexorable advance of
man’s understanding in the path of
knowledge, and those unquenchable
claims of his moral and emotional nature
which the understanding can never satisfy,
43
are here equally set forth. The world em
braces not only a Newton, but a Shake
speare—not only a Boyle, but a Raphael
—not only a Kant, but a Beethoven—
not only a Darwin, but a Carlyle. Not
in each of these, but in all, is human
nature whole. They are not opposed,
but supplementary—not mutually exclu
sive, but reconcilable. And if, unsatis
fied with them all, the human mind, with
the yearning of a pilgrim for his distant
home, will still turn to the Mystery from
which it has emerged, seeking so to
fashion it as to give unity to thought and
faith ; so long as this is done, not only
without intolerance or bigotry of any
kind, but with the enlightened recogni
tion that ultimate fixity of conception is
here unattainable, and that each suc
ceeding age must be held free to fashion
the mystery in accordance with its own
needs—then, casting aside all the restric
tions of Materialism, I would affirm this
to be a field for the noblest exercise of
what, in contrast with the knowing facul
ties, may be called the creative faculties
of man. Here, however, I touch a theme
too great for me to handle, but which
will assuredly be handled by the loftiest
minds, when you and I, like streaks of
morning cloud, shall have melted into
the infinite azure of the past.
APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS'
1874
The world has been frequently informed
of late that I have raised up against
myself a host of enemies ; and consider
ing, with few exceptions, the deliverances
of the Press, and more particularly, of the
religious Press, I am forced to admit
that the statement is only too true. I
derive some comfort, nevertheless, from
..
the reflection of Diogenes, transmitted
to us by Plutarch, that “he who would
be saved must have good friends or
violent enemies ; and that he is best off
who possesses both.” This “best” con
dition, I have reason to believe, is mine.
Reflecting on the fraction I have
read of recent remonstrances, appeals,
The word “Apology” is here used in its original sense, as signifying “Vindication” 01
Defence”; no retractation is implied.— Ed.
�44
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
has himself told us how and where this
menaces, and judgments—covering not
Address of his was composed. It was
only the world that now is, but that
written among the glaciers and the soli
which is to come—I have noticed with
tudes of the Swiss mountains. It was
mournful interest how trivially men seem
no hasty, hurried, crude production; its
to be influenced by what they call their
every sentence bore marks of thought
religion, and how potently by that
and care.”
“ nature ” which it is the alleged province
My critic intends to be severe: he is
of religion to eradicate or subdue. From
simply just.
In the “ solitudes ” to
fair and manly argument, from the tenwhich he refers I worked with delibera
derest and holiest sympathy on the part
tion, endeavouring even to purify my
of those who desire my eternal good, I
pass by many gradations, through deli intellect by disciplines similar to those
berate unfairness, to a spirit of bitter enjoined by his own Church for the
ness, which desires with a fervour inex sanctification of the soul. I tried, more
over, in my ponderings to realise not
pressible in words my eternal ill. Now,
only the lawful, but the expedient; and
were religion the potent factor, we might
to permit no fear to act upon my mind,
expect a homogeneous utterance from
save that of uttering a single word on
those professing a common creed, while,
which I could not take my stand, either
if human nature be the really potent
in this or in any other world.
factor, we may expect utterances as
Still my time was so brief, the diffi
heterogeneous as the characters of men.
culties arising from my isolated position
As a matter of fact, we have the latter;
suggesting to my mind that the common were so numerous, and my thought and
expression so slow, that, in a literary
religion, professed and defended by
point of view, I halted, not only behind
these different people, is merely the
the ideal, but behind the possible.
accidental conduit through which they
Hence, after the delivery of the Address,
pour their own tempers, lofty or low,
I went over it with the desire, not to
courteous or vulgar, mild or ferocious,
as the case may be. Pure abuse, how revoke its principles, but to improve it
verbally, and above all to remove any
ever, as serving no good end, I have,
word which might give colour to the
wherever possible, deliberately avoided
reading, wishing, indeed, to keep, not notion of “ crudeness, hurry, or haste.”
In connection with the charge of
only hatred, malice, and uncharitable
Atheism my critic refers to the Preface
ness, but even every trace of irritation,
to the second issue of the Belfast
far away from my side of a discussion
Address. “ Christian men,” I there say,
which demands not only good-temper,
but largeness, clearness, and many-sided “are proved by their writings to have
their hours of weakness and of doubt, as
ness of mind, if it is to guide us to even
well as their hours of strength and of
provisional solutions.
It has been stated, with many varia conviction; and men like myself share,
in their own way, these variations of
tions of note and comment, that in
mood and tense.
Were the religious
the Address as subsequently published
moods of many of my assailants the only
by Messrs. Longman I have retracted
alternative ones, I do not know how
opinions uttered at Belfast. A Roman
strong the claims of the doctrine of
Catholic writer is specially strong upon
‘ Material Atheism ’ upon my allegiance
this point. Startled by the deep chorus
might be. Probably they would be very
of dissent which my “ dazzling fallacies ”
strong. But, as it is, I have noticed
have evoked, I am now trying to retreat.
during years of self-observation that it is
This he will by no means tolerate. “ It
not in hours of clearness and vigour
is too late now to seek to hide from
that this doctrine commends itself to my
the eyes of mankind one foul blot, one
mind; that in the presence of stronger
ghastly deformity.
Professor Tyndall
�APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS
and healthier thought it ever dissolves
and disappears, as offering no solution
of the mystery in which we dwell, and
of which we form a part.”
With reference to this honest and
reasonable utterance my censor exclaims:
“ This is a most remarkable passage.
Much as we dislike seasoning polemics
with strong words, we assert that this
apology only tends to affix with links
of steel, to the name of Professor Tyndall,
the dread imputation against which he
struggles.”
Here we have a very fair example of
subjective religious vigour.
But my
quarrel with such exhibitions is that they
do not always represent objective fact.
No atheistic reasoning can, I hold, dis
lodge religion from the human heart.
Logic cannot deprive us of life, and
religion is life to the religious. As an
experience of consciousness it is beyond
the assaults of logic. But the religious
life is often projected in external forms
—I use the word in its widest sense—
and this embodiment of the religious
sentiment will have to bear more and
more, as the world becomes more en
lightened, the stress of scientific tests.
We must be careful of projecting into
external nature that which belongs to
ourselves. My critic commits this mis
take : he feels, and takes delight in
feeling, that I am struggling, and he
obviously experiences the most exquisite
pleasures of “the muscular sense” in
holding me down. His feelings are as
real as if his imagination of what mine
are were equally real. His picture of
my “ struggles ” is, however, a mere
delusion. I do not struggle. I do not
fear the charge of Atheism; nor should
I even disavow it, in reference to any
definition of the Supreme which he, or
his order, would be likely to frame. His
“ links ” and his “ steel ” and his “dread
imputations ” are, therefore, even more
unsubstantial than my “streaks of morn
ing cloud,” and they may be permitted
to vanish together.
These minor and more purely personal
45
matters at an end, the weightier allegation
remains, that at Belfast I misused my
position by quitting the domain of
science, and making an unjustifiable raid
into the domain of theology. This I
fail to see. Laying aside abuse, I hope
my accusers will consent to reason with
me. Is it not lawful for a scientific man
to speculate on the antecedents of the
solar system ? Did Kant, Laplace, and
William Herschel quit their legitimate
spheres when they prolonged the intellec
tual vision beyond the boundary of
experience, and propounded the nebular
theory ? Accepting that theory as prob
able, is it not permitted to a scientific
man to follow up, in idea, the series of
changes associated with the condensation
of the nebulae; to picture the successive
detachment of planets and moons, and
the z relation of all of them to the sun ?
If I look upon our earth, with its orbital
revolution and axial rotation, as one
small issue of the process which made
the solar system what it is, will any theo
logian deny my right to entertain and
express this theoretic view ? Time was
when a multitude of theologians would
have been found to do so—when that
arch-enemy of science which now vaunts
its tolerance would have made a speedy
end of the man who might venture to
publish any opinion of the kind.
But
that time, unless the world is caught
strangely slumbering, is for ever past.
As regards inorganic nature, then, we
may traverse, without let or hindrance,
the whole distance which separates the
nebulae from the worlds of to-day. But
only a few years ago this now conceded
ground of science was theological ground.
I could by no means regard this as the
final and sufficient concession of theo
logy ; and, at Belfast, I thought it not
only my right but my duty to state that,
as regards the organic world, we must
enjoy the freedom which we have already
won in regard to the inorganic. I could
not discern the shred of a title-deed
which gave any man, or any class of men,
the right to open the door of one of these
worlds to the scientific searcher and to
�46
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
close the other against him. And I con
sidered it frankest, wisest, and in the
long run most conducive to permanent
peace, to indicate, without evasion or
reserve, the ground that belongs to
Science, and to which she will assuredly
make good her claim.
I have been reminded that an eminent
predecessor of mine in the Presidential
chair expressed a totally different view of
the Cause of things from that enunciated
by me. In doing so he transgressed the
bounds of science at least as much as I
did; but nobody raised an outcry against
him. The freedom he took I claim.
And looking at what I must regard as
the extravagances of the religious world;
at the very inadequate and foolish notions
concerning this universe which are enter
tained by the majority of our authorised
religious teachers; at the waste of energy
on the part of good men over things
unworthy, if I may say it without dis
courtesy, of the attention of enlightened
heathens ; the fight about the fripperies
of Ritualism, and the verbal quibbles of
the Athanasian Creed ; the forcing on the
public view of Pontigny Pilgrimages ; the
dating of historic epochs from the defini
tion of the Immaculate Conception; the
proclamation of the Divine Glories of the
Sacred Heart—standing in the midst of
these chimeras, which astound all think
ing men, it did not appear to me extra
vagant to claim the public tolerance for
an hour and a half, for the statement of
more reasonable views, views more in
accordance with the verities which science
has brought to light, and which many
weary souls would, I thought, welcome
with gratification and relief.
But to come to closer quarters. The
expression to which the most violent ex
ception has been taken is this: “ Aban
doning all disguise, the confession I feel
bound to make before you is that I pro
long the vision backward across the
boundary of the experimental evidence,
and discern in that Matter which we, in
our ignorance, and notwithstanding our
professed reverence for its Creator, have
hitherto covered with opprobrium, the
promise and potency of every form and
quality of life.” To call it a “chorus of
dissent,” as my Catholic critic does, is a
mild way of describing the storm of
opprobrium with which this statement
has been assailed. But the first blast of
passion being past, I hope I may again
ask my opponents to consent to reason.
First of all, I am blamed for crossing the
boundary of the experimental evidence.
This, I reply, is the habitual action of
the scientific mind—at least of that por
tion of it which applies itself to physical
investigation. Our theories of light, heat,
magnetism, and electricity, all imply the
crossing of this boundary. My paper on
the “ Scientific Use of the Imagination,”
and my “Lectures on Light,” illustrate
this point in the amplest manner ; and in
the article entitled “ Matter and Force ” I
have sought, incidentally, to make clear
that in physics the experiential incessantly
leads to the ultra-experiential; that out
of experience there always grows some
thing finer than mere experience, and
that in their different powers of ideal
extension consists, for the most part, the
difference between the great and the
mediocre investigator. The kingdom of
science, then, cometh not by observation
and experiment alone, but is completed
by fixing the roots of observation and
experiment in a region inaccessible to
both, and in dealing with which we are
forced to fall back upon the picturing
power of the mind.
Passing the boundary of experience,
therefore, does not, in the abstract, con
stitute a sufficient ground for censure.
There must have been something in my
particular mode of crossing it which pro
voked this tremendous “chorus of dis
sent.”
Let us calmly reason the point out.
I hold the nebular theory as it was held
by Kant, Laplace, and William Herschel,
and as it is held by the best scientific
intellects of to-day. According to it, our
sun and planets were once diffused
through space as an impalpable haze, out
of which, by condensation, came the
I solar system.
What caused the haze to
�APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS
condense ? Loss of heat. What rounded
the sun and planets ? That which rounds
a tear—molecular force. For seons, the
immensity of which overwhelms man’s
conceptions, the earth was unfit to main
tain what we call life. It is now covered
with visible living things. They are not
formed of matter different from that of
the earth around them. They are, on
the contrary, bone of its bone, and flesh
of its flesh. How were they introduced?
Was life implicated in the nebula—as
part, it may be, of a vaster and wholly
Unfathomable Life; or is it the work of
a Being standing outside the nebula,
who fashioned it, and vitalised it; but
whose own origin and ways are equally
past finding out ? As far as the eye of
science has hitherto ranged through
nature, no intrusion of purely creative
power into any series of phenomena has
ever been observed. The assumption
of such a power to account for special
phenomena, though often made, has
always proved a failure. It is opposed
to the very spirit of science ; and I there
fore assumed the responsibility of holding
up, in contrast with it, that method of
nature which it has been the vocation
and triumph of science to disclose, and
in the application of which we can alone
hope for further light.
Holding, then,
that the nebulae and the solar system,
life included, stand to each other in the
relation of the germ to the finished
organism, I reaffirm here, not arrogantly
or defiantly, but without a shade of indis
tinctness, the position laid down at
Belfast.
Not with the vagueness belonging to
the emotions, but with the definiteness
belonging to the understanding, the
scientific man has to put to himself these
questions regarding the introduction of
life upon the earth. He will be the last
to dogmatise upon the subject, for he
knows best that certainty is here for the
present unattainable. His refusal of the
creative hypothesis is less an assertion of
knowledge than a protest against the
assumption of knowledge which must
long, if not for ever, lie beyond us, and
47
the claim to which is the source of per
petual confusion upon earth. With a
mind open to conviction he asks his
opponents to show him an authority for
the belief they so strenuously and so
fiercely uphold. They can do no more
than point to the Book of Genesis, or
some other portion of the Bible. Pro
foundly interesting, and indeed pathetic,
to me are those attempts of the opening
mind of man to appease its hunger for a
Cause. But the Book of Genesis has no
voice in scientific questions. To the
grasp of geology, which it resisted for a
time, it at length yielded like potter’s
clay; its authority as a system of cosmo
gony being discredited on all hands by
the abandonment of the obvious meaning
of its writer. It is a poem, not a scien
tific treatise. In the former aspect it is
for ever beautiful: in the latter aspect it
has been, and it will continue to be,
purely obstructive and hurtful.
To
knowledge its value has been negative,
leading, in rougher ages than ours, to
physical, and even in our own “free”
age to moral, violence.
No incident connected with the pro
ceedings at Belfast is more instructive
than the deportment of the Catholic
hierarchy of Ireland; a body usually too
wise to confer notoriety upon an adver
sary by imprudently denouncing him.
The Times, to which I owe a great deal
on the score of fair play, where so much
has been unfair, thinks that the Irish
Cardinal, Archbishops, and Bishops, in
a recent manifesto, adroitly employed a
weapon which I, at an unlucky moment,
placed in their hands. The antecedents
of their action cause me to regard it in
a different light; and a brief reference
to these antecedents will, I think, illu
minate not only their proceedings regard
ing Belfast, but other doings which have
been recently noised abroad.
Before me lies a document bearing
the date of November, 1873, which, after
appearing for a moment, unaccountably
vanished from public view.
It is a
Memorial addressed by seventy of the
�4»
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
Students and Ex-students of the Catholic
University in Ireland to the Episcopal
Board of the University ; and it consti
tutes the plainest and bravest remon
strance ever addressed by Irish laymen
to their spiritual pastors and masters. . It
expresses the profoundest dissatisfaction
with the curriculum marked out for the
students of the University, setting forth
the extraordinary fact that the lecture
list for the faculty of Science, published
a month before they wrote, did not
contain the name of a single Professor
of the Physical or Natural Sciences.
The memorialists forcibly deprecate
this, and dwell upon the necessity of
education in science : “The distinguish
ing mark of this age is its ardour for
science.
The natural sciences have,
within the last fifty years, become the
chiefest study in the world; they
are in our time pursued with an activity
unparalleled in the history of mankind.
Scarce a year now passes without some
discovery being made in these sciences
which, as with the touch of the magician’s
wand, shivers to atoms theories formerly
deemed unassailable. It is through the
physical and natural sciences that the
fiercest assaults are now made on our
religion. No more deadly weapon is
used against our faith than the facts
incontestably proved by modern re
searches in science.”
Such statements must be the reverse
of comfortable to a number of gentle
men who, trained in the philosophy of
Thomas Aquinas, have been accustomed
to the unquestioning submission of all
other sciences to their divine science of
Theology. But this is not all: “ One thing
seems certain,” say the memorialists,
“ viz., that if chairs for the physical and
natural sciences be not soon founded in
the Catholic University, very many young
men will have their faith exposed to
dangers which the creation of a school
of science in the University would defend
them from. For our generation of Irish
Catholics are writhing under the sense
of their inferiority in science, and are
determined that such inferiority shall
not long continue; and so, if scientific
training be unattainable at our University,
they will seek it at Trinity or at the
Queen’s Colleges, in not one of which is
there a Catholic Professor of Science.” .
Those who imagined the Catholic
University at Kensington to be due to
the spontaneous recognition, on the part
of the Roman hierarchy, of the intel
lectual needs of the age will derive
enlightenment from this, and still more
from what follows : for the most formid
able threat remains. To the picture of
Catholic students seceding to Trinity
and the Queen’s Colleges the memo
rialists add this darkest stroke of all:
“ They will, in the solitude of their own
homes, unaided by any guiding advice,
devour the works of Haeckel, Darwin,
Huxley, Tyndall, and Lyell: works in
nocuous if studied under a professor
who would point out the difference
between established facts and erroneous
inferences, but which are calculated
to sap the faith of a solitary student
deprived of a discriminating judgment to
which he could refer for a solution of his
difficulties.”
In the light of the knowledge given by
this courageous memorial, and of similar
knowledge otherwise derived, the recent
Catholic manifesto did not at all strike
me as a chuckle over the mistake of a
maladroit adversary, but rather as an
evidence of profound uneasiness on the
part of the Cardinal, the Archbishops,
and the Bishops who signed it. They
acted towards the Students’ Memorial,
however, with their accustomed practical
wisdom. As one concession to the spirit
which it embodied, the Catholic Univer
sity at Kensington was brought forth,
apparently as the effect of spontaneous
inward force, and not of outward pressure
becoming too formidable to be success
fully opposed.
.
The memorialists point with bitterness
to the fact that “the name of no Irish
Catholic is known in connection with the
physical and natural sciences.” But this,
they ought to know, is the complaint
of free and cultivated minds wherever
�APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS
a Priesthood exercises dominant power.
Precisely the same complaint has been
made with respect to the Catholics
of Germany. The great national litera
ture and the scientific achievements
of that country, in modern times, are
almost wholly the work of Protestants.
A vanishingly small fraction of it only is
derived from members of the Roman
Church, although the number of these in
Germany is at least as great as that of the
Protestants. “ The question arises,” says
a writer in an able German periodical,
“ what is the cause of a phenomenon so
humiliating to the Catholics ? It cannot
be referred to want of natural endowment
due to climate (for the Protestants of
Southern Germany have contributed
powerfully to the creations of the German
intellect), but purely to outward circum
stances. And these are readily discovered
in the pressure exercised for centuries by
the Jesuitical system, which has crushed
out of Catholics every tendency to free
mental productiveness.” It is, indeed,
in Catholic countries that the weight of
Ultramontanism has been most severely
felt. It is in such countries that the very
finest spirits, who have dared, without
quitting their faith, to plead for freedom
or reform, have suffered extinction. The
extinction, however, was more apparent
than real, and Hermes, Hirscher, and
Gunther, though individually broken and
subdued, prepared the way, in Bavaria,
for the persecuted but unflinching
Frohschammer, for Dollinger, and for
the remarkable liberal movement of
which Dollinger is the head and guide.
Though moulded for centuries to an
obedience unparalleled in any other
country, except Spain, the Irish intellect
is beginning to show signs of indepen
dence; demanding a diet more suited
to its years than the pabulum of the
Middle Ages. As for the recent mani
festo in which Pope, Cardinal, Arch
bishops, and Bishops are united in one
grand anathema, its character and faith
are shadowed forth by the Vision of
Nebuchadnezzar recorded in the Book
of Daniel.
It resembles the image
49
whose form was terrible, but the gold,
and silver, and brass, and iron of which
rested upon feet of clay. And a stone
smote the feet of clay ; and the iron, and
the brass, and the silver, and the gold,
were broken in pieces together, and
became like the chaff of the summer
threshing-floors, and the wind carried
them away.
Monsignor Capel has recently been
good enough to proclaim at once the
friendliness of his Church towards true
science, and her right to determine what
true science is. Let us dwell for a
moment on the proofs of her scientific
competence.
When Halley’s comet
appeared in 1456 it was regarded as
the harbinger of God’s vengeance, the
dispenser of war, pestilence, and famine,
and by order of the Pope the church
bells of Europe were rung to scare the
monster away.
An additional daily
prayer was added to the supplications of
the faithful. The comet in due time
disappeared, and the faithful were com
forted by the assurance that, as in
previous instances relating to eclipses,
droughts, and rains, so also as regards
this “nefarious” comet, victory had been
vouchsafed to the Church.
Both Pythagoras and Copernicus had
taught the heliocentric doctrine—that
the earth revolves round the sun. In
the exercise of her right to determine
what true science is, the Church, in the
Pontificate of Paul V., stepped in and,
by the mouth of the Holy Congregation
of the Index, delivered, on March 5th,
1616, the following decree :—
And whereas it hath also come to the
knowledge of the said Holy Congregation
that the false Pythagorean doctrine of the
mobility of the earth and the immobility
of the sun, entirely opposed to Holy writ,
which is taught by Nicolas Copernicus, is
now published abroad and received by
many. In order that this opinion may not
further spread, to the damage of Catholic
truth, it is ordered that this and all other
books teaching the like doctrine be sus
pended, and by this decree they are all respec
tively suspended, forbidden, and condemned.
�5o
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
But why go back to 1456 and 1616 ?
Far be it from me to charge bygone sins
upon Monsignor Capel, were it not for
the practices he upholds to-day. The
most applauded dogmatist and champion
of the Jesuits is, I am informed, Perrone.
No less than thirty editions of a work of
his have been scattered abroad for the
healing of the nations. His notions of
physical astronomy are virtually those of
1456.
He teaches boldly that “God
does not rule by universal law....... that
when God orders a given planet to stand
still He does not detract from any law
passed by Himself, but orders that
planet to move round the sun for such
and such a time, then to stand still, and
then again to move, as His pleasure may
be.” Jesuitism proscribed Frohschammer
for questioning its favourite dogma, that
every human soul was created by a
direct supernatural act of God, and for
asserting that man, body and soul, came
from his parents. This is the system
that now strives for universal power; it
is from it, as Monsignor Capel graciously
informs us, that we are to learn what is
allowable in science, and what is not 1
In the face of such facts, which might
be multiplied at will, it requires extra
ordinary bravery of mind, or a reliance
upon public ignorance almost as extra
ordinary, to make the claims made by
Monsignor Capel for his Church.
Before me is a very remarkable letter
addressed in 18751 by the Bishop of
Montpellier to the Deans and Professors
of Faculties of Montpellier, in which the
writer very clearly lays down the claims
of his Church. He had been startled
by an incident occurring in a course of
lectures on Physiology given by a pro
fessor, of whose scientific capacity there
was no doubt, but who, it was alleged,
rightly or wrongly, had made his course
the vehicle of materialism. “Je ne me
suis point donne,” says the Bishop, “ la
mission que je remplis au milieu de
1 The next four paragraphs, as this date indi
cates, were inserted only in the subsequent
reprints.—Ed.
vous.
‘ Personne, au temoignage de
saint Paul, ne s’attribue & soi-meme un
pared honneur; il y faut etre appele de
Dieu, comme Aaron.’ Et pourquoi en
est-il ainsi ? C’est parce que, selon le
meme Apotre, nous devons' etre les
ambassadeurs de Dieu; et il n’est pas
dans les usages, pas plus qu’il n’est dans
la raison et le droit, qu’un envoye
s’accredite lui-meme.
Mais, si j’ai regu
d’En-Haut une mission; si l’Eglise, au
nom de Dieu lui-meme, a souscrit mes
lettres de creance, me sierait-il de manquer aux instructions qu’elle m’a donnees et d’entendre, en un sens different
du sien, le role qu’elle m’a confie ?
“ Or, Messieurs, la sainte Eglise se
croit investie du droit absolu d’enseigner
les hommes; elle se croit depositaire de
la verite, non pas de la verite fragmentaire, incomplete, melee de certitude et
d’hesitation, mais de la verite totale,
complete, au point de vue religieux.
Bien plus, elle est si sfire de l’infaillibilite que son Fondateur divin lui a
communiquee, comme la dot magnifique
de leur indissoluble alliance, que, meme
dans l’ordre naturel, - scientifique ou
philosGphique, moral ou politique, elle
n’admet pas qu’un systeme puisse etre
soutenu et adopte par des chretiens, s’il
contredit a des dogmes definis. Elle
considere que la negation volontaire et
opiniatre d’un seul point de sa doctrine
rend coupable du peche d’heresie; et
elle pense que toute heresie formelie, si
on ne la rejette pas courageusement
avant de paraitre devant Dieu, entraine
avec soi la perte certaine de la grace et
de l’eternite.”
The Bishop recalls those whom he
addresses from the false philosophy of
the present to the philosophy of the past,
and foresees the triumph of the latter.
“Avant que le dix-neuvieme siecle
s’acheve, la vieille philosophic scolastique aura repris sa place dans la juste
admiration du monde.
Il lui faudra
pourtant bien du temps pour guerir les
maux de tout genre, causes par son
indigne rivale; et pendant de longues
annees encore, ce nom de philosophic le
�APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS
plus grand de la langue humaine apres
celui de religion, sera suspect aux ames
qui se souviendront de la science impie
et materialiste de Locke, de Condillac
ou d’Helvetius.
L’heure actuelle est
aux sciences naturelies : c’est maintenant
l’instrument de combat contre l’Eglise et
contre toute foi religieuse. Nous ne les
redoutons pas.” Further on the Bishop
warns his readers that everything can be
abused. Poetry is good, but in excess it
“ Les
may injure practical conduct.
mathematiques sont excellentes : et B ossuet les a louees ‘ comme etant ce qui
sert le plus a la justesse du raisonnement ’; mais si on s’accoutume exclusivement a leur methode, rien de ce qui
appartient a l’ordre moral ne parait plus
pouvoir etre demontre ; et Fenelon a pu
parler de rensorcellement et des attraits
diaboliques de la geometrie.”
The learned Bishop thus finally accen
tuates the claims of the Church:—
“ Comme le definissait le Pape Leon X,
au cinquieme concile cecumenique de
Latran, ‘ Le vrai ne peut pas etre contraire
a lui-meme : par consequent, toute asser
tion contraire a une verite de foi revelee
est necessairement et absolument fausse.’
Il suit de la que, sans entrer dans l’examen
scientifique de telle ou telle question de
physiologie, mais par la seule certitude
de nos dogmes, nous pouvons juger du
sort de telle ou telle hypothese, qui est
une machine de guerre anti-chretienne
plutot qu’une conquete serieuse sur les
secrets et les mysteres de la nature.........
C’est un dogme que l’homme a ete forme
et fagonne des mains de Dieu. Done
il est faux, heretique, contraire a la
dignite du Createur et offensant pour son
chef-d’oeuvre, de dire que l’homme constitue la sepiieme espece des singes.
....... Heresie encore de dire que le genre
humain n’est pas sorti d’un seul couple,
et qu’on y peut compter jusqu’a douze
races distinctes 1”
The course of life upon earth, as far
as Science can see, has been one of
amelioration—a steady advance on the
whole from the lower to the higher. The
Si
continued effort of animated nature is to
improve its condition and raise itself
to a loftier level. In man improvement
and amelioration depend largely upon
the growth of conscious knowledge, by
which the errors of ignorance are con
tinually moulted, and truth is organised.
It is the advance of knowledge that has
given a materialistic colour to the philo
sophy of this age. Materialism is there
fore not a thing to be mourned over, but
to be honestly considered—accepted if
it be wholly true, rejected if it be wholly
false, wisely sifted and turned to account
if it embrace a mixture of truth and
error. Of late years the study of the
nervous system, and its relation to
thought and feeling, have profoundly
occupied inquiring minds.
It is our
duty not to shirk—it ought rather to be
our privilege to accept—the established
results of such inquiries, for here assur
edly our ultimate weal depends upon our
loyalty to the truth. Instructed as to the
control which the nervous system exer
cises over man’s moral and intellectual
nature, we shall be better prepared, not
only to mend their manifold defects, but
also to strengthen and purify both. Is
mind degraded by this recognition of its
dependence ? Assuredly not. Matter,
on the contrary, is raised to the level it
ought to occupy, and from which timid
ignorance would remove it.
But the light is dawning, and it will
become stronger as time goes on. Even
the Brighton “Church Congress” affords
evidence of this. From the manifold
confusions of that assemblage my
memory has rescued two items, which it
would fain preserve : the recognition of
a relation between Health and Religion,
and the address of the Rev. Harry Jones.
Out of the conflict of vanities his words
emerge wholesome and strong, because
undrugged by dogma, coming directly
from the warm brain of one who knows
what practical truth means, and who has
faith in its vitality and inherent power of
propagation. I wonder whether he is
less effectual in his ministry than his
more embroidered colleagues ? It surely
�52
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
behoves our teachers to come to some
definite understanding as to this question
of health; to see how, by inattention to
it, we are defrauded, negatively and
positively : negatively, by the privation of
that “ sweetness and light ” which is the
natural concomitant of good health;
positively, by the insertion into life of
cynicism, ill-temper, and a thousand
corroding anxieties which good health
would dissipate. We fear and scorn
“ materialism.” But he who knew all
about it, and could apply his knowledge,
might become the preacher of a new
gospel. Not, however, through the
ecstatic moments of the individual does
such knowledge come, but through the
revelations of science, in connection with
the history of mankind.
Why should the Roman Catholic
Church call gluttony a mortal sin ? Why
should fasting occupy a place in the dis
ciplines of religion ? What is the mean
ing of Luther’s advice to the young
clergyman who came to him, perplexed
with the difficulties of predestination and
election, if it be not that, in virtue of its
action upon the brain, when wisely
applied, there is moral and religious
virtue even in a hydro-carbon ? To use
the old language, food and drink are
creatures of God, and have therefore a
spiritual value. Through our neglect of
the monitions of a reasonable materialism
we sin and suffer daily. I might here
point to the train of deadly disorders
over which science has given modern
society such control—disclosing the lair
of the material enemy, ensuring his
destruction, and thus preventing that
moral squalor and hopelessness which
habitually tread on the heels of epidemics
in the case of the poor.
Rising to higher spheres, the visions
of Swedenborg, and the ecstasy of
Plotinus and Porphyry, are phases of
that psychical condition, obviously con
nected with the nervous system and state
of health, on which is based the Vedic
doctrine of the absorption of the indi
vidual into the universal soul. Plotinus
taught the devout how to pass into a
condition of ecstasy. Porphyry com
plains of having been only once united
to God in eighty-six years, while his
master Plotinus had been so united six
times in sixty years.1
A friend who
knew Wordsworth informs me that the
poet, in some of his moods, was accus
tomed to seize hold of an external object
to assure himself of his own bodily exist
ence. As states of consciousness such
phenomena have an undisputed reality
and a substantial identity ; but they are
connected with the most»heterogeneous
objective conceptions. The subjective
experiences are similar, because of the
similarity of the underlying organisations.
But for those who wish to look beyond
the practical facts there will always
remain ample room for speculation.
Take the argument of the Lucretian in
troduced in the Belfast Address. As
far as I am aware, not one of my
assailants has attempted to answer it.
Some of them, indeed, rejoice over the
ability displayed by Bishop Butler in
rolling back the difficulty on his oppo
nent ; and they even imagine that it is
the Bishop’s own argument that is there
employed. But the raising of- a new
difficulty does not abolish—does not
even lessen—the old one, and the argu
ment of the Lucretian remains untouched
by anything the Bishop has said or can
say.
And here it may be permitted me to
add a word to an important controversy
now going on: and which turns on the
question: Do states of consciousness
enter as links into the chain of ante
cedence and sequence, which give rise
to bodily actions, and to other states of
consciousness; or are they merely by
products, which are not essential to the
physical processes going on in the brain ?
Speaking for myself, it is certain that I
have no power of imagining states of
* I recommend to the reader’s particular
attention Dr. Draper’s important work entitled
History of the Conflict between Religion and
Science (Messrs. H. S. King and Co.).
�APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS
consciousness, interposed between the
molecules of the brain, and influencing
the transference of motion among the
molecules.
The thought “ eludes all
mental presentation
and hence the
logic seems of iron strength which claims
for the brain an automatic action, unin
fluenced by states of consciousness.
But it is, I believe, admitted by those
who hold the automaton-theory, that
states of consciousness are produced by
the marshalling of the molecules of the
brain : and this production of conscious
ness by molecular motion is to me quite
as inconceivable on mechanical princi
ples as the production of molecular
motion by consciousness. If, therefore,
I reject one result, I must reject both.
I, however, reject neither, and thus stand
in the presence of two Incomprehensibles,
instead of one Incomprehensible. While
accepting fearlessly the facts of mate
rialism dwelt upon in these pages, I bow
my head in the dust before that mystery
of mind which has hitherto defied its
own penetrative power, and which may
ultimately resolve itself into a demon
strable impossibility of self-penetration.
But the secret is an open one—the
practical monitions are plain enough,
which declare that on our dealings with
matter depend our weal and woe, phy
sical and moral.
The state of mind
which rebels against the recognition of
the claims of “ materialism” is not un
known to me. I can remember a time
when I regarded my body as a weed, so
much more highly did I prize the
53
conscious strength and pleasure derived
from moral and religious feeling—which,
I may add, was mine without the inter
vention of dogma. The error was not
an ignoble one, but this did not save it
from the penalty attached to error.
Saner knowledge taught me that the
body is no weed, and that, treated as
such, it would infallibly avenge itself.
Am I personally lowered by this change
of front ? Not so. Give me their health,
and there is no spiritual experience of
those earlier years—no resolve of duty,
or work of mercy, no work of self
renouncement, no solemnity of thought,
no joy in the life and aspects of nature
—that would not still be mine; and this
without the least reference or regard to
any purely personal reward or punish
ment looming in the future.
And now I have to utter a “ farewell ”
free from bitterness to all my readers ;
thanking my friends for a sympathy
more steadfast, I would fain believe, if
less noisy, than the antipathy of my foes;
and commending to these a passage
from Bishop Butler, which they have
either not read or failed to lay to heart.
“ It seems,” saith the Bishop, “that men
would be strangely headstrong and selfwilled, and disposed to exert themselves
with an impetuosity which would render
society insupportable, and the living in
it impracticable, were it not for some
acquired moderation and self-govern
ment, some aptitude and readiness in
restraining themselves, and concealing
their sense of things.”
�54
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM1
1868
The celebrated Fichte, in his lectures on
the “Vocation of the Scholar,” insisted
on a culture which should be not one
sided, but all-sided. The scholar’s in
tellect was to expand spherically, and
not in a single direction only. In one
direction, however, Fichte required that
the scholar should apply himself directly
to nature, become a creator of know
ledge, and thus repay, by original labours
of his own, the immense debt he owed
to the labours of others. It was these
which enabled him to supplement the
knowledge derived from his own re
searches, so as to render his culture
rounded and not one-sided.
As regards science, Fichte’s idea is to
some extent illustrated by the constitu
tion and labours of the British Associa
tion. We have here a body of men
engaged in the pursuit of Natural Know
ledge, but variously engaged. While
sympathising with each of its departments,
and supplementing his culture by know
ledge drawn from all of them, each
student amongst us selects one subject
for the exercise of his own original faculty
—one line, along which he may carry
the light of his private intelligence a
little way into the darkness by which all
knowledge is surrounded. Thus, the
geologist deals with the rocks; the biolo
gist with the conditions and phenomena
of life; the astronomer with stellar
masses and motions ; the mathematician
with the relations of space and number;
the chemist pursues his atoms ; while
the physical investigator has his own
large field in optical, thermal, electrical,
acoustical, and other phenomena. The
British Association then, as a whole,
faces physical nature on all sides, and
pushes knowledge centrifugally outwards,
the sum of its labours constituting what
Fichte might call the sphere of natural
knowledge. In the meetings of the
Association it is found necessary to
resolve this sphere into its component
parts, which take concrete form under
the respective letters of our Sections.
Mathematics and Physics have been
long accustomed to coalesce, and here
they form a single section. No matter
how subtle a natural phenomenon may
be, whether we observe it in the
region of sense or follow it into that of
imagination, it is in the long run reducible
to mechanical laws. But the mechanical
data once guessed or given, mathematics
are all-powerful as an instrument of
deduction. The command of Geometry
over the relations of space, and the farreaching power which Analysis confers,
are potent both as means of physical
discovery and of reaping the entire fruits
of discovery. Indeed, without mathe
matics, expressed or implied, our know
ledge of physical science would be both
friable and incomplete.
Side by side with the mathematical
method we have the method of experi
ment. Here, from a starting-point fur
nished by his own researches or those of
others, the investigator proceeds _ by
combining intuition and verification.
He ponders the knowledge he possesses,
and tries to push it further; he guesses,
and checks his guess; he conjectures,
and confirms or explodes his conjecture.
These guesses and conjectures are by no
means leaps in the dark; for knowledge
once gained casts a faint light beyond
its own immediate boundaries. There
is no discovery so limited as not to
1 President’s Address to the Mathematical and Physical Section of the British Association at
Norwich.
�SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM
55
illuminate something beyond itself. The
relationship to each other. When this
force of intellectual penetration into this
is done, we find that the observed
penumbral region which surrounds actual
motion of the hands follows of necessity
knowledge is not, as some seem to think,
from the inner mechanism of the watch
dependent upon method, but upon the
when acted upon by the force invested
genius of the investigator. There is,
in the spring. The motion of the hands
however, no genius so gifted as not to
may be called a phenomenon of art, but
need control and verification. The prothe case is similar with the phenomena
foundest minds know best that Nature’s
of nature. These also have their inner
ways are not at all times their ways, and
mechanism and their store of force to
that the brightest flashes in the world of set that mechanism going. The ultimate
thought are incomplete until they have
problem of physical science is to reveal
been proved to have their counterparts
this mechanism, to discern this store,
in the world of fact. Thus the vocation
and to show that, from the combined
of the true experimentalist may be
action of both, the phenomena of which
defined as the continued exercise of they constitute the basis must, of neces
spiritual insight, and its incessant cor
sity, flow.
rection and realisation. His experiments
I thought an attempt to give you even
constitute a body, of which his purified
a brief and sketchy illustration of the
intuitions are, as it were, the soul.
manner in which scientific thinkers
Partly through mathematical and
regard this problem would not be un
partly through experimental research,
interesting to you on the present occa
physical science has, of late years,
sion ; more especially as it will give me
assumed a momentous position in the
occasion to say a word or two on the
world. Both in a material and in an
tendencies and limits of modern science;
intellectual point of view it has produced,
to point out the region which men of
and it is destined to produce, immense
science claim as their own, and where it
changes—vast social ameliorations, and
is futile to oppose their advance; and
vast alterations in the popular conception
also to define, if possible, the bourne
of the origin, rule, and governance of between this and that other region to
natural things.
By science, in the
which the questionings and yearnings of
physical world, miracles are wrought,
the scientific intellect are directed in vain.
while philosophy is forsaking its ancient
But here your tolerance will be needed.
metaphysical channels, and pursuing
It was the American Emerson, I think,
others which have been opened or
who said that it is hardly possible to state
indicated by scientific research.
This
any truth strongly, without apparent in
must become more and more the case as justice to some other truth. Truth is
philosophical writers become more deeply
often of a dual character, taking the form
imbued with the methods of science,
of a magnet with two poles; and many
better acquainted with the facts which
of the differences which agitate the think
scientific men have established, and with
ing part of mankind are to be traced to
the great theories which they have elabo the exclusiveness with which partisan
rated.
reasoners dwell upon one half of the
I f you look at the face of a watch, you
duality, in forgetfulness of the other.
see the hour and minute-hands, and
The proper course appears to be to state
possibly also a second-hand, moving
both halves strongly, and allow each its
over the graduated dial. Why do these
fair share in the formation of the resul
hands move; and why are their relative
tant conviction. But this waiting for the
motions such as they are observed to be?
statement of the two sides of a question
These questions cannot be answered
implies patience. It implies a resolution
without opening the watch, mastering its
to suppress indignation, if the statement
various parts, and ascertaining their
of the one half should clash with our
�56
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
convictions, and to repress equally undue
elation, if the half-statement should
happen to chime in with our views. It
implies a determination to wait calmly
for the statement of the whole before we
pronounce judgment in the form of either
acquiescence or dissent.
This premised, and I trust accepted,
let us enter upon our task. There have
been writers who affirmed that the Pyra
mids of Egypt were natural productions;
and in his early youth Alexander von
Humboldt wrote a learned essay with the
express object of refuting this notion.
We now regard the pyramids as the work
of men’s hands, aided probably by
machinery of which no record remains.
We picture to ourselves the swarming
workers toiling at those vast erections,
lifting the inert stones, and, guided by
the volition, the skill, and possibly _ at
times by the whip of the architect, placing
them in their proper positions. The
blocks, in this case, were moved and
posited by a power external to them
selves, and the final form of the pyramid
expressed the thought of its human
builder.
Let us pass from this illustration of
constructive power to another of a dif
ferent kind. When a solution of common
salt is slowly evaporated, the water which
holds the salt in solution disappears, but
the salt itself remains behind. At a
certain stage of concentration the salt
can no longer retain the liquid form; its
particles, or molecules, as they are called,
begin to deposit themselves as minute
solids—so minute, indeed, as to defy all
microscopic power. As evaporation con
tinues, solidification goes on, and we
finally obtain, through the clustering
together of innumerable molecules, a
finite crystalline mass of a definite form.
What is this form ? It sometimes seems
a mimicry of the architecture of Egypt.
We have little pyramids built by the salt,
terrace above terrace from base to apex,
forming a series of steps resembling those
up which the traveller in Egypt is dragged
by his guides. The human mind is as
little disposed to look without question
ing at these pyramidal salt-crystals as to
look at the pyramids of Egypt, without
inquiring whence they came. How,
then, are those salt-pyramids built up ?
Guided by analogy, you may, if you
like, suppose that, swarming among the
constituent molecules of the salt, there is
an invisible population, controlled and
coerced by some invisible master, placing
the atomic blocks in their positions.
This, however, is not the scientific idea,
nor do I think your good sense will
accept it as a likely one. The scientific
idea is that the molecules act upon each
other without the intervention of slave
labour; that they attract each other, and
repel each other, at certain definite
points or poles, and in certain definite
directions ; and that the pyramidal form
is the result of this play of attraction and
repulsion. While, then, the blocks of
Egypt were laid down by a power external
to themselves, these molecular blocks of
salt are self-posited, being fixed in their
places by the inherent forces with which
they act upon each other.
I take common salt as an illustration,
because it is so familiar to us all; but
any other crystalline substance would
answer my purpose equally well. Every
where, in fact, throughout inorganic
nature, we have this formative power, as
Fichte would call it—this structural
energy ready to come into play, and
build the ultimate particles of matter
into definite shapes. The ice of our
winters and of our polar regions is its
handiwork, and so also are the quartz,
felspar, and mica of our rocks. Our
chalk-beds are for the most part composed
of minute shells, which are also the pro
duct of structural energy; but behind
the shell, as a whole, lies a more remote
and subtle formative act. These shells
are built up of little crystals of calc-spar,
and, to form these crystals, the structural
force had to deal with the intangible
molecules of carbonate of line. This
tendency on the part of matter to organise
itself, to grow into shape, to assume defi
nite forms in obedience to the definite
action of force, is, as I have said, all-
�SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM
pervading. It is in the ground on which
you tread, in the water you drink, in the
air you breathe. Incipient life, as it
were, manifests itself throughout the
whole of what we call inorganic nature.
The forms of the minerals resulting
from this play of polar forces are various,
and exhibit different degrees of com
plexity. Men of science avail themselves
of all possible means of exploring their
molecular architecture. For this purpose
they employ in turn, as agents of explora
tion, light, heat, magnetism, electricity,
and sound. Polarised light is especially
useful and powerful here. A beam of
such light, when sent in among the
molecules of a crystal, is acted on by
them, and from this action we infer with
more or less clearness the manner in
which the molecules are arranged. That
differences, for example, exist between
the inner structure of rock-salt and that
of crystallised sugar or sugar-candy is
thus strikingly revealed. These actions
often display themselves in chromatic
phenomena of great splendour, the play
of molecular force being so regulated as
to cause the removal of some of the
coloured constituents of white light,
while others are left with increased
intensity behind.
And now let us pass from what we
are accustomed to regard as a dead
mineral, to a living grain of corn. When
this is examined by polarised light,
chromatic phenomena similar to those
noticed in crystals are observed. And
why? Because the architecture of the
grain resembles that of the crystal. In
the grain also the molecules are set in
definite positions, and in accordance
with their arrangement they act upon
the light. But what has built together
the molecules of the corn ? Regarding
crystalline architecture, I have already
said that you may, if you please, consider
the atoms and molecules to be placed
in position by a Power external to them
selves. The same hypothesis is open to
you now. But if in the case of crystals
you have rejected this notion of an
external architect, I think you are bound
57
to reject it in the case of the grain, and
to conclude that the molecules of the
corn, also, are posited by the forces with
which they act upon each other. It
would be poor philosophy to invoke an
external agent in the one case, and to
reject it in the other.
Instead of cutting our grain of corn
into slices and subjecting it to the action
of polarised light, let us place it in the
earth, and subject it to a certain degree
of warmth.
In other words, let the
molecules, both of the corn and of the
surrounding earth, be kept in that state
of agitation which we call heat. Under
these circumstances, the grain and the
substances which surround it interact,
and a definite molecular architecture is
the result. A bud is formed; this bud
reaches the surface, where it is exposed
to the sun’s rays, which are also to be
regarded as a kind of vibratory motion.
And as the motion of common heat,
with which the grain and the substances
surrounding it were first endowed, enabled
the grain and these substances to exer
cise their mutual attractions and repul
sions, and thus to coalesce in definite
forms, so the specific motion of the sun’s
rays now enables the green bud to feed
upon the carbonic acid and the aqueous
vapour of the air. The bud appropriates
those constituents of both for which it
has an elective attraction, and permits
the other constituent to return to the
atmosphere. Thus the architecture is
carried on. Forces are active at the
root, forces are active in the blade, the
matter of the air and the matter of the
atmosphere are drawn upon, and the
plant augments in size.
We have in
succession the stalk, the ear, the full
corn in the ear; the cycle of molecular
action being completed by the produc
tion of grains similar to that with which
the process began.
Now there is nothing in this process
which necessarily eludes the conceptive
or imagining power of the human mind.
An intellect the same in kind as our
own would, if only sufficiently expanded,
be able to follow the whole process from
�§8
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
beginning to end. It would see every
molecule placed in its position by the
specific attractions and repulsions exerted
between it and other molecules, the
whole process, and its consummation,
being an instance of the play of molecular
force. Given the grain and its environ
ment, with their respective forces, the
purely human intellect might, if suffi
ciently expanded, trace out a priori
every step of the process of growth, and,
by the application of purely mechanical
principles, demonstrate that the cycle
must end, as it is seen to end, in the
reproduction of forms like that with
which it began. A necessity rules here,
similar to that which rules the planets
in their circuits round the sun.
You will notice that I am stating the
truth strongly, as at the beginning we
agreed it should be stated. But I must
go still further, and affirm that in the
eye of science the animal body is just as
much the product of molecular force as
the chalk and the ear of corn, or as
the crystal of salt or sugar. Many of
the parts of the body are obviously
mechanical. Take the human heart, for
example, with its system of valves, or
take the exquisite mechanism of the eye
or hand. Animal heat, moreover, is
the same in kind as the heat of a fire,
being produced by the same chemical
process. Animal motion, too, is as cer
tainly derived from the food of the
animal as the motion of Trevethyck’s
walking-engine from the fuel in its fur
nace. As regards matter, the animal
body creates nothing; as regards force,
it creates nothing. Which of you by
taking thought can add one cubit to his
stature? All that has been said, then,
regarding the plant may be restated with
regard to the animal. Every particle
that enters into the composition of a
nerve, a muscle, or a bone has been
placed in its position by molecular force.
And unless the existence of law in these
matters be denied, and the element of
caprice introduced, we must conclude
that, given the relation of any molecule
of the body to its environment, its posi
tion in the body might be determined
mathematically.
Our difficulty is not
with the quality of the problem, but with
its complexity ; and this difficulty might
be met by the simple expansion of the
faculties we now possess.
Given this
expansion, with the necessary molecular
data, and the chick might be deduced
as rigorously and as logically from the
egg as the existence of Neptune from
the disturbances of Uranus, or as conical
refraction from the undulatory theory of
light.
You see I am not mincing matters, but
avowing nakedly what many scientific
thinkers more or less distinctly believe.
The formation of a crystal, a plant, or
an animal is, in their eyes, a purely
mechanical problem, which differs from
the problems of ordinary mechanics in
the smallness of the masses, and the
complexity of the processes involved.
Here you have one half of our dual
truth; let us now glance at the other
half.
Associated with this wonderful
mechanism of the animal body we have
phenomena no less certain than those of
physics, but between which and the
mechanism we discern no necessary con
nection. A man, for example, can say
“I feel,” “I think,” “I love”; but how
does consciousness infuse itself into the
problem ? The human brain is said to
be the organ of thought and feeling:
when we are hurt, the brain feels it;
when we ponder, or when our passions
or affections are excited, it is through
the instrumentality of the brain. Let us
endeavour to be a little more precise
here. I hardly imagine there exists a
profound scientific thinker, who has
reflected upon the subject, unwilling to
admit the extreme probability of the
hypothesis, that for every fact of con
sciousness, whether in the domain of
sense, thought, or emotion, a definite
molecular condition, of motion or struc
ture, is set up in the brain; or who
would be disposed even to deny that, if
the motion, or structure, be induced by
internal causes instead of external, the
effect on consciousness will be the same?
�SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM
Let any nerve, for example, be thrown
by morbid action into the precise state
of motion which would be communicated
to it by the pulses of a heated body,
surely that nerve will declare itself hot—
the mind will accept the subjective inti
mation exactly as if it were objective.
The retina may be excited by purely
mechanical means. A blow on the eye
causes a luminous flash, and the mere
pressure of the finger on the external
ball produces a star of light, which
Newton compared to the circles on a
peacock’s tail.
Disease makes people
see visions and dream dreams; but, in
all such cases, could we examine the
organs implicated, we should, on philo
sophical grounds, expect to find them in
that precise molecular condition which
the real objects, if present, would super
induce.
The relation of physics to conscious
ness being thus invariable, it follows that,
given the state of the brain, the corres
ponding thought or feeling might be
inferred : or, given the thought or feel
ing, the corresponding state of the brain
might be inferred. But how inferred ?
It would be at bottom not a case of
logical inference at all, but of empi
rical association. You may reply that
many of the inferences of science are of
this character—the inference, for ex
ample, that an electric current, of a given
direction, will deflect a magnetic needle
in a definite way. But the cases differ
in this, that the passage from the current
to the needle, if not demonstrable, is
conceivable, and that we entertain no
doubt as to the final mechanical solution
of the problem. But the passage from
the physics of the brain to the corre
sponding facts of consciousness is in
conceivable as a result of mechanics.
Granted that a definite thought and a
definite molecular action in the brain
occur simultaneously, we do not possess
the intellectual organ, nor apparently any
rudiment of the organ, which would
enable us to pass, by a process of reason
ing, from the one to the other. They
appear together, but we do not know why.
59
Were our minds and senses so expanded,
strengthened, and illuminated, as to
enable us to see and feel the very mole
cules of the brain; were we capable of
following all their motions, all their
groupings, all their electric discharges, if
such there be; and were we intimately
acquainted with the corresponding states
of thought and feeling ; we should be as
far as ever from the solution of the prob
lem, “How are these physical processes
connected with the facts of conscious
ness ?” The chasm between the two
classes of phenomena would still remain
intellectually impassable. Let the con
sciousness of love, for example, be asso
ciated with a right-handed spiral motion
of the molecules of the brain, and the
consciousness of hate with a left-handed
spiral motion. We should then know,
when we love, that the motion is in one
direction, and, when we hate, that the
motion is in the other; but the “ why ?”
would remain as unanswerable as before.
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;
but I do not think, in the present condi
tion of the human mind, that he can pass
beyond this position. I do not think he
is entitled to say that his molecular
groupings and motions explain every
thing. In reality they explain nothing.
The utmost he can affirm is the associa
tion of two classes of phenomena, of
whose real bond of union he is in abso
lute ignorance. The problem of the con
nection of body and soul is as insoluble
in its modern form as it was in the prescientific ages. Phosphorus is known to
enter into the composition of the human
brain, and a trenchant German writer
has exclaimed, “ Ohne Phosphor, kein
Gedanke !” That may or may not be the
case; but even if we knew it to be the
case, the knowledge would not lighten
our darkness. On both sides of the zone
�6o
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
here assigned to the materialist he is
equally helpless. If you ask him whence
is this “ Matter ” of which we have been
discoursing, who or what divided it into
molecules, who or what impressed upon
them this necessity of running into
organic forms, he has no answer. Science
is mute in reply to these questions. But
if the materialist is confounded and
science rendered dumb, who else is pre
pared with a solution? To whom has
this arm of the Lord been revealed? Let
us lower our heads and acknowledge our
ignorance, priest and philosopher, one
and all.
Perhaps the mystery may resolve itself
into knowledge at some future day. The
process of things upon this earth has
been one of amelioration. It is a long
way from the Iguanodon and his contem
poraries to the President and Members
of the British Association. And whether
we regard the improvement from the
scientific or from the theological point of
view—as the result of progressive deve
lopment, or of successive exhibitions of
creative energy—neither view entitles us
to assume that man’s present faculties
end the series, that the process of
amelioration ends with him. A time
may therefore come when this ultra-scien
tific region, by which we are now
enfolded, may offer itself to terrestrial, if
not to human, investigation. Two-thirds
of the rays emitted by the sun fail to
arouse the sense of vision. The rays
exist, but the visual organ requisite for
their translation into light does not exist.
And so, from this region of darkness and
mystery which surrounds us, rays may
now be darting, which require but the
development of the proper intellectual
organs to translate them into knowledge
as far surpassing ours as ours surpasses
that of the wallowing reptiles which once
held possession of this planet. Mean
while the mystery is not without its uses.
It certainly may be made a power in the
human soul; but it is a power which has
feeling, not knowledge, for its base. It
may be, will be, and I hope is turned to
account, both in steadying and strengthen
ing the intellect, and in rescuing man
from that littleness to which, in the
struggle for existence, or for precedence
in the world, he is continally prone.
Musings on the Matterhorn^
July 2ytht 1868.
Hacked and hurt by time, the aspect
of the mountain from its higher crags
saddened me. Hitherto the impression
it made was that of savage strength;
here we had inexorable decay. But this
notion of decay implied a reference to a
period when the Matterhorn was in the
full strength of mountainhood. Thought
naturally ran back to its remoter origin
and sculpture. Nor did thought halt
there, but wandered on through molten
worlds to that nebulous haze which
philosophers have regarded, and with
good reason, as the proximate source of
all material things. I tried to look at
this universal cloud, containing within
itself the prediction of all that has since
occurred; I tried to imagine it as the
seat of those forces whose action was to
issue in solar and stellar systems, and all
that they involve. Did that formless
fog contain potentially the sadness with
which I regarded the Matterhorn ? Did
the thought which now ran back to it
simply return to its primeval home ? If
so, had we not better recast our defini
tions of matter and force; for, if life and
thought be the very flower of both, any
definition which omits life and thought
must be inadequate, if not untrue. Are
questions like these warranted? Why
not ? If the final goal of man has not
been yet attained; if his development
has not been yet arrested, who can say
that such yearnings and questionings are
not necessary to the opening of a finer
vision, to the budding and the growth of
diviner powers ? When I look at the
heavens and the earth, at my own body,
at my strength and weakness, even at
these ponderings, and ask myself, I§
�SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION
there no being or thing in the universe
that knows more about these matters
than I do; what is my answer ? Suppos
ing our theologic schemes of creation,
condemnation, and redemption to be
dissipated; and the warmth of denial
which they excite, and which, as a motive
force, can match the warmth of affirma
tion, dissipated at the same time ; would
the undeflected human mind return to
61
the meridian of absolute neutrality as
regards these ultra-physical questions?
Is such a position one of stable equi
librium ? The channels of thought being
already formed, such are the questions,
without replies, which could run athwart
consciousness during a ten minutes’ halt
upon the weathered crest of the Matter
horn.
SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION1
“Lastly, physical investigation, more than anything besides, helps to teach us the actual value and
right use of the Imagination—of that wondrous faculty which, left to ramble uncontrolled, leads us
astray into a wilderness ofperplexities and errors, a land of mists and shadows ; but which, properly
controlled by experience and reflection, becomes the noblest attribute of man ; the source ofpoetic genius,
the instrument of discovery in Science, without the aid of which Newton would never have invented
fluxions, nor Davy have decomposed the earths and alkalies, nor would Columbus have found another
Continent.”—Address to the Royal Society by its President, Sir Benjamin Brodie, Nov. 30th, 1859.
I carried with me to the Alps this year
the burden of this evening’s work. Save
from memory I had no direct aid upon
the mountains; but to spur up the
emotions, on which so much depends, as
well as to nourish indirectly the intellect
and will, I took with me four works,
comprising two volumes of poetry,
Goethe’s Farbenlehre, and the work on
Logic recently published by Mr. Alex
ander Bain. In Goethe, so noble other
wise, I chiefly noticed the self-inflicted
hurts of genius, as it broke itself in vain
against the philosophy of Newton. Mr.
Bain I found, for the most part, learned
and practical, shining generally with a
dry light, but exhibiting at times a flush
of emotional strength, which proved that
even logicians share the common fire of
humanity. He interested me most when
he became the mirror of my own condi
tion. Neither intellectually nor socially
is it good for man to be alone, and the
sorrows of thought are more patiently
borne when we find that they have been
experienced by another. From certain
passages in his book I could infer that
Mr. Bain was no stranger to such
sorrows. Speaking, for example, of the
ebb of intellectual force, which we all
from time to time experience, Mr. Bain
says: “The uncertainty where to look for
the next opening of discovery brings the
pain of conflict and debility of in
decision.” These words have in them
the true ring of personal experience.
The action of the investigator is periodic.
He grapples with a subject of inquiry,
wrestles with it, and exhausts, it may be,
both himself and it for the time being.
He breathes a space, and then renews
the struggle in another field. Now this
period of halting between two investi
gations is not always one of pure repose.
It is often a period of doubt and dis
comfort—of gloom and ennui. “ The
uncertainty where to look for the next
opening of discovery brings the pain of
* Discourse delivered before the British Association at Liverpool, September 16th, 1870.
�62
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
conflict and the debility of indecision.”
It was under such conditions that I had
to equip myself for the hour and the
ordeal that are now come.
The disciplines of common life are, in
great part, exercises in the relations of
space, or in the mental grouping of
bodies in space; and by such exercises
the public mind is, to some extent,
prepared for the reception of physical
conceptions. Assuming this preparation
on your part, the wish gradually grew
within me to trace, and to enable you to
trace, some of the more occult features
and operations of Light and Colour. I
wished, if possible, to take you. beyond
the boundary of mere observation, into
a region where things are intellectually
discerned, and to show you there the
hidden mechanism of optical action.
But how are those hidden things to
be revealed? Philosophers may be right
in affirming that we cannot transcend
experience: we can, at all events, carry
it a long way from its origin. We can
magnify, diminish, qualify, and combine
experiences, so as to render them fit for
purposes entirely new. In explaining
sensible phenomena, we habitually form
mental images of the ultra-sensible.
There are Tories even in science who
regard Imagination as a faculty to be
feared and avoided rather than employed.
They have observed its action in weak
vessels, and are unduly impressed by its
disasters. But they might with equal
justice point to exploded boilers as an
argument against the use of steam.
With accurate experiment and observa
tion to work upon, Imagination becomes
the architect of physical theory. Newton’s
passage from a falling apple to a falling
moon was an act of the prepared imagina
tion, without which the “laws of Kepler
could never have been traced to their
foundations.
Out of the facts of
chemistry the constructive imagination
of Dalton formed the atomic . theory.
Davy was richly endowed with the
imaginative faculty, while with Faraday
its exercise was incessant, preceding,
accompanying, and guiding all his experi
ments. His strength and fertility as a
discoverer is to be referred in great part
to the stimulus of his imagination.
Scientific men fight shy of the word
because of its ultra-scientific connota
tions ; but the fact is that without the
exercise of this power our knowledge of
nature would be a mere tabulation of
co-existences and sequences. We should
still believe in the succession of day and
night, of summer and winter; but the
conception of Force would vanish from
our universe; causal relations would
disappear, and with them that science
which is now binding the parts of nature
to an organic whole.
I should like to illustrate by a few
simple instances the use that scientific
men have already made of this power of
imagination, and to indicate afterwards
some of the further uses that they are
likely to make of it. Let us begin with
the rudimentary experiences. Observe
the falling of heavy rain-drops into a
tranquil pond. Each drop as it strikes
the water becomes a centre of distur
bance, from which a series of ring-ripples
expand outwards. Gravity and inertia
are the agents by which this wave-motion
is produced, and a rough experiment
will suffice to show that the rate of
propagation does not amount to a foot
a second. A series of slight mechanical
shocks is experienced by a body plunged
in the water, as the wavelets reach it in
succession. But a finer motion is at the
same time set up and propagated. If
the head and ears be immersed in the
water, as in an experiment of Franklin’s,
the tick of the drop is heard. Now, this
sonorous impulse is propagated, not at
the rate of a foot, but at the rate of 4,700
feet a second. In this case it is not the
gravity but the elasticity of the water
that comes into play. . Every liquid
particle pushed against its neighbour
delivers up its motion with extreme
rapidity, and the pulse is. propagated as
a thrill. The incompressibility of water,
as illustrated by the famous Florentine
experiment, is a measure of its elasticity ;
�SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION
and to the possession of this property,
in so high a degree, the rapid trans
mission of a sound-pulse through water
is to be ascribed.
But water, as you know, is not neces
sary to the conduction of sound; air is
its most common vehicle.
And you
know that when the air possesses the
particular density and elasticity corre
sponding to the temperature of freezing
water, the velocity of sound in it is
1,090 feet a second. It is almost exactly
one-fourth of the velocity in water; the
reason being that, though the greater
weight of the water tends to diminish
the velocity, the enormous molecular
elasticity of the liquid far more than
atones for the disadvantage due to weight.
By various contrivances we can compel
the vibrations of the air to declare them
selves; we know the length and fre
quency of the sonorous waves, and we
have also obtained great mastery over
the various methods by which the air is
thrown into vibration. We know the
phenomena and laws of vibrating rods,
of organ-pipes, strings, membranes, plates,
and bells. We can abolish one sound
by another. We know the physical
meaning of music and noise, of harmony
and discord. In short, as regards sound
in general, we have a very clear notion
of the external physical processes which
correspond to our sensations.
In the phenomena of sound, we travel
a very little way from downright sensible
experience. Still the imagination is to
some extent exercised. The bodily eye,
for example, cannot see the condensations
and rarefactions of the waves of sound.
We construct them in thought, and we
believe as firmly in their existence as
in that of the air itself. But now our
experience is to be carried into a new
region, where a new use is to be made
of it. Having mastered the cause and
mechanism of sound, we desire to know
the cause and mechanism of light. We
wish to extend our inquiries from the
auditory to the optic nerve. There is
in the human intellect a power of expan
sion—I might almost call it a power of
63
creation—which is brought into play by
the simple brooding upon facts. The
legend of the spirit brooding over chaos
may have originated in experience of
this power. In the case now before us
it has 'manifested itself by transplanting
into space, for the purposes of light, an
adequately modified form of the mecha
nism of sound.
We know intimately
whereon the velocity of sound depends.
When we lessen the density of the
aerial medium, and preserve its elasticity
constant, we augment the velocity. When
we heighten the elasticity and keep the
density constant we also augment the
velocity. A small density, therefore, and
a great elasticity, are the two things
necessary to rapid propagation. Now
light is known to move with the astound
ing velocity of 186,000 miles a second.
How is such a velocity to be obtained ?
By boldly diffusing in space a medium
of the requisite tenuity and elasticity.
Let us make such a medium our
starting-point, and, endowing it with one
or two other necessary qualities, let us
handle it in accordance with strict
mechanical laws. Let us then carry our
results from the world of theory into the
world of sense, and see whether our
deductions do not issue in the very
phenomena of light which ordinary
knowledge and skilled experiment reveal.
If in all the multiplied varieties of these
phenomena, including those of the most
remote and entangled description, this
fundamental conception always brings
us face to face with the truth; if no con
tradiction to our deductions from it be
found in external nature, but on all sides
agreement and verification; if, more
over, as in the case of Conical Refraction
and in other cases, it actually forces
upon our attention phenomena which
no eye had previously seen, and which
no mind had previously imagined—such
a conception must, we think, be some
thing more than a mere figment of the
scientific fancy.
In forming it, that
composite and creative power, in which
reason and imagination are united, has,
we believe, led us into a world not less
�64
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
real than that of the senses, and of which
the world of sense itself is the suggestion
and, to a great extent, the outcome.
Far be it from me, however, to wish
to fix you immovably in this or in any
other theoretic conception.
With all
our belief of it, it will be well to keep
the theory of a luminiferous ether plastic
and capable of change.
You may,
moreover, urge that, although the phe
nomena occur as if the. medium existed,
the absolute demonstration of its exist
ence is still wanting. Far be it from me
to deny to this reasoning such validity
as it may fairly claim. Let us endeavour
by means of analogy to form a fair
estimate of its force. You believe that
in society you are surrounded by reason
able beings like yourself.
You are,
perhaps, as firmly convinced of this as of
anything. What is your warrant for this
conviction ? Simply and solely this: your
fellow-creatures behave as if they were
reasonable; the hypothesis, for it is
nothing more, accounts for the facts. To
take an eminent example : you believe
that our President is a reasonable being.
Why? There is no known method of
superposition by which any one of us
can apply himself intellectually to any
other, so as to demonstrate coincidence
as regards the possession of reason, If,
therefore, you hold our President to be
reasonable, it is because he behaves as if
he were reasonable. As in the case of
the ether, beyond the “ as if” you can
not go. Nay, I should not wonder if
a close comparison of the data on which
both inferences rest caused many re
spectable persons to conclude that the
ether had the best of it.
This universal medium, this light-ether
as it is called, is the vehicle, not the
origin, of wave-motion. It receives and
transmits, but it does not create. Whence
does it derive the motions it conveys ?
For the most part from luminous bodies.
By the motion of a luminous body I do
not mean its sensible motion, such, as
the flicker of a candle, or the shooting
out of red prominences from the limb
of the sun. I mean an intestine motion
of the atoms or molecules of the lumin
ous body. But here a certain reserve is
necessary. Many chemists of the pre
sent day refuse to speak of atoms and
molecules as real things. Their caution
leads them to stop short of the clear,
sharp, mechanically intelligible atomic
theory enunciated by Dalton, or any
form of that theory, and to make the
doctrine of “ multiple proportions ” their
intellectual bourne.
I respect the
caution, though I think it is here mis
placed. The chemists who recoil from
these notions of atoms and molecules
accept, without hesitation, the Undulatory Theory of Light. Like you and me,
they one and all believe in an e ther and
its light-producing waves. Let us consider
what this belief involves. Bring your
imaginations once more into play, and
figure a series of sound-waves passing
through air. Follow them up to their
origin, and what do you there find ? A
definite, tangible, vibrating body. It may
be the vocal chords of a human being, it
may be an organ-pipe, or it may be a
stretched string. Follow in the same
manner a train of ether-waves to their
source, remembering at the same time
that your ether is matter, dense, elastic,
and capable of motions subject to, and
determined by, mechanical laws. What
then do you expect to find as the source
of a series of ether-waves ? Ask your
imagination if it will accept a vibrating
multiple proportion—a numerical ratio
in a state of oscillation ? I do not think
it will. You cannot crown the edifice
with this abstraction. The scientific
imagination, which is here authoritative,
demands, as the origin and cause of a
series of ether-waves, a particle of vibrat
ing matter quite as definite, though it
may be excessively minute, as that which
gives origin to a musical sound. Such a
particle we name an atom or a molecule.
I think the intellect, when focussed so as
to give definition without penumbral
haze, is sure to realise this image at the
last.
With the view of preserving thought
�SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION
continuous throughout this discourse,
and of preventing either failure of know
ledge or of memory from causing any
rent in our picture, I here propose to run
rapidly over a bit of ground which is
probably familiar to most of you, but
which I am anxious to make familiar to
you all. The waves generated in the
ether by the swinging atoms of luminous
bodies are of different lengths and ampli
tudes. The amplitude is the width of
swing of the individual particles of the
waves. In water-waves it is the vertical
height of the crest above the trough,
while the length of the wave is the hori
zontal distance between two consecutive
crests. The aggregate of waves emitted
by the sun may be broadly divided into
two classes: the one class competent,
the other incompetent, to excite vision.
But the light-producing waves differ
markedly among themselves in size, form,
and force. The length of the largest of
these waves is about twice that of the
smallest, but the amplitude of the largest
is probably a hundred times that of the
smallest. Now the force or energy of
the wave, which, expressed with reference
to sensation, means the intensity of the
light, is proportional to the square of the
amplitude. Hence the amplitude being
one-hundred-fold, the energy of the
largest light-giving waves would be tenthousand-fold that of the smallest. This
is not improbable. I use these figures
not with a view to numerical accuracy,
but to give you definite ideas of the dif
ferences that probably exist among the
light-giving waves. And if we take the
whole range of solar radiation into
account—its non-visual as well as its
visual waves—I think it probable that
the force, or energy, of the largest wave
is more than a million times that of the
smallest.
Turned into their equivalents of sensa
tion, the different light-waves produce
different colours. Red, for example, is
produced by the largest waves, violet by
the smallest, while green is produced by
a wave of intermediate length and ampli
tude. On entering from air into a more
65
highly refracting substance, such as glass
or water, or the sulphide of carbon, all
the waves are retarded, but the smallest
ones most. This furnishes a means of
separating the different classes of waves
from each other; in other words, of
analysing the light. Sent through a re
fracting prism, the waves of the sun are
turned aside in different degrees from
their direct course, the red least, the
violet most. They are virtually pulled
asunder, and they paint upon a white
screen placed to receive them “ the solar
spectrum.” Strictly speaking, the spec
trum embraces an infinity of colours ;
but the limits of language, and of our
powers of distinction, cause it to be
divided into seven segments: red, orange,
yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. These
are the seven primary or prismatic colours.
Separately, or mixed in various pro
portions, the solar waves yield all the
colours observed in nature and employed
in art. Collectively, they give us the
impression of whiteness. Pure unsifted
solar light is white ; and, if all the wave
constituents of such light be reduced in
the same proportion, the light, though
diminished in intensity, will still be white.
The whiteness of snow with the sun
shining upon it is barely tolerable to the
eye. The same snow under an overcast
firmament is still white. Such a firma
ment enfeebles the light by reflecting it
upwards : and when we stand above a
cloud-field—on an Alpine summit, for
instance, or on the top of Snowdon—
and see, in the proper direction, the
sun shining on the clouds below us, they
appear dazzlingly white. Ordinary clouds,
in fact, divide the solar light impinging
on them into two parts—a reflected part
and a transmitted part—in each of which
the proportions of wave-motion which
produce the impression of whiteness are
sensibly preserved.
It will be understood that the con
dition of whiteness would fail if all the
waves were diminished equally, or by the
same absolute quantity. They must
be reduced proportionately, instead of
equally. If by the act of reflection the
c
�66
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
waves of red light are split into exact
halves, then, to preserve the light white,
the waves of yellow, orange, green, and
blue must also be split into exact halves.
In short, the reduction must take place,
not by absolutely equal quantities, but
by equal fractional parts. In white light
the preponderance, as regards energy, of
the larger over the smaller waves must
always be immense.
Were the case
otherwise, the visual correlative, blue, of
the smaller waves would have the upper
hand in our sensations.
Not only are the waves of ether re
flected by clouds, by solids, and . by
liquids, but when they pass from light
air to dense, or from dense, air to light,
a portion of the wave-motion is always
reflected. Now, our atmosphere changes
continually in density from top to bottom.
It will help our conception if we regard
it as made up of a series of thin con
centric layers, or shells of air, each shell
being of the same density throughout, a
small and sudden change of density
occurring in passing from shell to shell.
Light would be reflected at the limiting
surfaces of all these shells, and their
action would be practically the same as
that of the real atmosphere. And now
I would ask your imagination to picture
this act of reflection. What must become
of the reflected light ? The atmospheric
layers turn their convex surfaces towards
the sun; they are so many convex
mirrors of feeble power; and you will
immediately perceive that the light regu
larly reflected from these surfaces cannot
reach the earth at all, but is dispersed in
space. Light thus reflected cannot, there
fore, be the light of the sky..
But, though the sun’s light is not
reflected in this fashion from the aerial
layers to the earth, there is indubitable
evidence to show that the light of our
firmament is scattered light. Proofs of
the most cogent description could be
here adduced; but we need only con
sider that we receive light at . the same
time from all parts of the hemisphere of
heaven. The light of the firmament
comes to us across the direction of the
solar rays, and even against the direction
of the solar rays ; and this lateral and
opposing rush of wave-motion can only
be due to the rebound of the waves from
the air itself, or from something sus
pended in the air. It is also evident
that, unlike the action of clouds, the
solar light is not reflected by the sky. in
the proportions which produce white.
The sky is blue, which indicates an
excess of the shorter waves. In account
ing for the colour of the sky, the first
question suggested by analogy would
undoubtedly be, Is not the air blue?
The blueness of the air has, in fact, been
given as a solution of the blueness of the
sky. But how, if the air be blue, can
the light of sunrise and sunset, which
travels through vast distances of air, be
yellow, orange, or even red ? The
passage of white solar light through, a
blue medium could by no possibility
redden the light. The hypothesis of a
blue air is therefore untenable. In fact,
the agent, whatever it is, which sends us
the light of the sky, exercises in. so
doing a dichroitic action. The light
reflected is blue, the light transmitted is
orange or red. A marked distinction is
thus exhibited between the matter of the
sky and that of an ordinary cloud, which
exercises no such dichroitic action.
By the scientific use of the imagina
tion we may hope to penetrate this
mystery. The cloud takes no note of
size on the part of the waves of ether,
but reflects them all alike. It exercises
no selective action. Now, the cause of
this may be that the cloud particles are
so large, in comparison with, the waves of
ether, as to reflect them all indifferently.
A broad cliff reflects an Atlantic roller as
easily as a ripple produced by a sea-bird s
wing; and in the presence of large
reflecting surfaces the existing differences
of magnitude among the waves of ether
may disappear. But supposing the re
flecting particles, instead of being very
large, to be very small in comparison
with the size of the waves. In this case,
instead of the whole wave being fronted
and thrown back, a small portion only is
�SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION
shivered off. The great mass of the
wave passes over such a particle without
reflection. Scatter, then, a handful of
such minute foreign particles in our
atmosphere, and set imagination to watch
their action upon the solar waves. Waves
of all sizes impinge upon the particles,
and you see at every collision a portion
of the impinging wave struck off; all the
waves of the spectrum, from the extreme
red to the extreme violet, being thus
acted upon.
Remembering that the red waves stand
to the blue much in the relation of
billows to ripples, we have to consider
whether those extremely small particles
are competent to scatter all the waves in
the same proportion. If they be not—
and a little reflection will make it clear
that they are not—the production of
colour must be an incident of the scatter
ing. Largeness is a thing of relation;
and the smaller the wave, the greater is
the relative size of any particle on which
the wave impinges, and the greater also
the ratio of the portion scattered to the
total wave. A pebble, placed in the
way of the ring-ripples produced by
heavy rain-drops on a tranquil pond, will
scatter a large fraction of each ripple,
while the fractional part of a larger wave
thrown back by the same pebble might
be infinitesimal. Now we have already
made it clear to our minds that, to
preserve the solar light white, its con
stituent proportions must not be altered;
but in the act of division performed by
these very small particles the proportions
are altered; an undue fraction of the
smaller waves is scattered by the particles,
and, as a consequence, in the scattered
light blue will be the predominant
colour.
The other colours of the
spectrum must, to some extent, be
associated with the blue. They are not
absent, but deficient. We ought, in
fact, to have them all, but in diminishing
proportions, from the violet to the red.
We have here presented a case to the
imagination, and, assuming the undulatory theory to be a reality, we have, I
think, fairly reasoned our way to the
conclusion, that were particles, small in
comparison to the sizes of the ether
waves, sown in our atmosphere, the light
scattered by those particles would be
exactly such as we observe in our azure
skies. When this light is analysed, all
the colours of the spectrum are found,
and they are found in the proportions
indicated by our conclusion. Blue is
not the sole, but it is the predominant
colour.
Let us now turn our attention to the
light which passes unscattered among
the particles. How must it be finally
affected ? By its successive collisions
with the particles the white light is more
and more robbed of its shorter waves;
it therefore loses more and more of its
due proportion of blue. The result may
be anticipated. The transmitted light,
where short distances are involved, will
appear yellowish. But as the sun sinks
towards the horizon the atmospheric
distances increase, and consequently the
number of the scattering particles. They
abstract in succession the violet, the
indigo, the blue, and even disturb the pro
portions of green. The transmitted light
under such circumstances must pass from
yellow through orange to red.
This
also is exactly what we find in nature.
Thus, while the reflected light gives us
at noon the deep azure of the Alpine
skies, the transmitted light gives us at
sunset the warm crimson of the Alpine
snows. The phenomena certainly occur
as if our atmosphere were a medium
rendered slightly turbid by the mecha
nical suspension of exceedingly small
foreign particles.
Here, as before, we encounter our
sceptical “as if."
It is one of the
parasites of science, ever at hand, and
ready to plant itself and sprout, if it can,
on the weak points of our philosophy.
But a strong constitution defies the
parasite, and in our case, as we question
the phenomena, probability grows like
growing health, until in the end the
malady of doubt is completely extirpated,
fl he first question that naturally arises is
this: Can small particles be really proved
�68
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
to act in the manner indicated? No
doubt of it.
Each one of you can
submit the question to an experimental
test. Water will not dissolve resin, but
spirit will dissolve it; and when spirit
holding resin in solution is dropped into
water, the resin immediately separates
in solid particles, which render the water
milky. The coarseness of this precipitate
depends on the quantity of the dissolved
resin.
You can cause it to separate
either in thick clots or in exceedingly
fine particles. Professor Briicke has
given us the proportions which produce
particles particularly suited to our present
purpose. One gramme of clean mastic
is dissolved in eighty-seven grammes of
absolute alcohol, and the transparent
solution is allowed to drop into a beaker
containing clear water, kept briskly
stirred. An exceedingly fine precipitate
is thus formed, which declares its pre
sence by its action upon light. Placing
a dark surface behind the beaker, and
permitting the light to fall into it from
the top or front, the medium is seen to
be distinctly blue. It is not perhaps so
perfect a blue as may be seen on excep
tional days among the Alps, but it is. a
very fair sky-blue. A trace of soap in
water gives a tint of blue. London, and
I fear Liverpool, milk makes an approxi
mation to the same colour, through the
operation of the same cause; and Helm
holtz has irreverently disclosed the fact
that the deepest blue eye is simply a
turbid medium.
The action of turbid media upon light
was illustrated by Goethe, who, though
unacquainted with the undulatory theory,
was led by his experiments to regard
the firmament as an illuminated turbid
medium, with the darkness of space
behind it. He describes glasses showing
a bright yellow by transmitted, and a
beautiful blue by reflected, light. Pro
fessor Stokes, who was probably the first
to discern the real nature of the action
of small particles on the waves of ether,1
1 This is inferred from conversation.
I am
describes a glass of a similar kind.’
Capital specimens of such glass are to
be found at Salviati’s, in St. James’s
Street. What artists call “ chill ” is no
doubt an effect of this description.
Through the action of minute particles,
the browns of a picture often present
the appearance of the bloom of a plum.
By rubbing the varnish with a silk hand
kerchief optical continuity is established
and the chill disappears. Some years
ago I witnessed Mr. Hirst experimenting
at Zermatt on the turbid water of the
Visp. When kept still for a day or so,
the grosser matter sank, but the finer
particles remained suspended, and gave
a distinctly blue tinge to the water. The
blueness of certain Alpine lakes has
been shown to be in part due to this
cause. Professor Roscoe has noticed
several striking cases of a similar kind.
In a very remarkable paper the late
Principal Forbes showed that steam
issuing from the safety-valve of a locomo
tive, when favourably observed, exhibits
at a certain stage of its condensation
the colours of the sky. It is blue by
reflected light, and orange or red by
transmitted light. The same effect, as
pointed out by Goethe, is to some extent
exhibited by peat-smoke.
More than
ten years ago, I amused . myself by
observing, on a calm day at Killarney, the
straight smoke-columns rising from the
cabin-chimneys. It was easy to project
the lower portion of a column against a
dark pine, and its upper portion against
a bright cloud.
The smoke in the
former case was blue, being seen mainly
by reflected light; in the latter case it
was reddish, being seen mainly by trans
mitted light.
Such smoke was not in
not aware that Professor Stokes has published
anything upon the subject.
1 This glass, by reflected light, had a colour
“strongly resembling that of a decoction o
horse-chesnut bark.” Curiously enough, Goethe
refers to this very decoction :
^'Ianr) ne^me
einen Streifen frischer Rinde von der Rosskastanie, man stecke denselben in ein Gias Wasser,
und in der kurzesten Zeit werden wir das vollkommenste Himmelblau entstehen sehen. —Goethe s
Werke, B. xxix., p. 24.
�SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION
exactly the condition to give us the glow
of the Alps, but it was a step in this
direction. Briicke’s fine precipitate, above
referred to, looks yellowish by transmitted
light; but, by duly strengthening the
precipitate, you may render the white
light of noon as ruby-coloured as the
sun, when seen through Liverpool smoke
or upon Alpine horizons. I do not,
however, point to the gross smoke arising
from coal as an illustration of the action
of small particles, because such smoke
soon absorbs and destroys the waves of
blue, instead of sending them to the eyes
of the observer.
These multifarious facts, and number
less others which cannot now be referred
to, are explained by reference to the
single principle, that, where the scatter
ing particles are small in comparison
to the ethereal waves, we have in the
reflected light a greater proportion of
the smaller waves, and in the trans
mitted light a greater proportion of
the larger waves, than existed in the
original white light. The consequence, as
regards sensation, is that in the one case
blue is predominant, and in the other
orange or red. Our best microscopes
can readily reveal objects not more than
s^Loth of an inch in diameter. This
is less than the length of a wave of red
light. Indeed, a first-rate microscope
would enable us to discern objects not
exceeding in diameter the length of the
smallest waves of the visible spectrum.1
By the microscope, therefore, we can
test our particles. If they be as large as
the light-waves, they will infallibly be
seen; and if they be not so seen, it is
because they are smaller. Some months
ago I placed in the hands of our Presi
dent a liquid containing Briicke’s pre
cipitate. The liquid was milky blue, and
Mr. Huxley applied to it his highest
microscopic power. He satisfied me that,
had particles of even nrsWath of an
inch in diameter existed in the liquid,
1 Dallinger and Drysdale have recently
measured cilia -^Ars^th of an inch in diameter.
1878.
69
they could not have escaped detection.
But no particles were seen. Under the
microscope the turbid liquid was not to
be distinguished from distilled water.1
But we have it in our power to imitate,
far more closely than we have hitherto
done, the natural conditions of this prob
lem. We can generate, in air, artificial
skies, and prove their perfect identity
with the natural one, as regards the exhi
bition of a number of wholly unexpected
phenomena. By a continuous process of
growth, moreover, we are able to connect
sky-matter, if I may use the term, with
molecular matter on the one side, and
with molar matter, or matter in sensible
masses, on the other. In illustration ot
this, I will take an experiment suggested
by some of my own researches, and
described by M. Morren of Marseilles at
the Exeter meeting of the British Asso
ciation. Sulphur and oxygen combine
to form sulphurous acid gas, two atoms
of oxygen and one of sulphur constitut
ing the molecule of sulphurous acid. It
has been recently shown that waves of
ether issuing from a strong source, such
as the sun or the electric light, are com
petent to shake asunder the atoms of
gaseous molecules.2 A chemist would
call this “ decomposition ” by light; but
it behoves us, who are examining the
power and function of the imagination,
to keep constantly before us the physical
images which underlie our terms. There
fore I say, sharply and definitely, that
the components of the molecules of
sulphurous acid are shaken asunder by
the ether-waves. Enclosing sulphurous
acid in a suitable vessel, placing it in a
dark room, and sending through it a
powerful beam of light, we at first see
nothing : the vessel containing the gas
seems as empty as a vacuum. Soon,
1 Like Dr. Burdon Sanderson’s “ pyrogen/'
the particles of mastic passed, without sensible
hindrance, through filtering-paper. By such
filtering no freedom from suspended particles is
secured. The application of a condensed beam
to the filtrate renders this at once evident.
2 See article on “New Chemical Reactions
Produced by Light,"Fragments of Science, vol. i.
�70
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
however, along the track of the beam a
beautiful sky-blue colour is observed,
which is due to light scattered by the
liberated particles of sulphur. For a
time the blue grows more intense; it
then becomes whitish, and ends in a
more or less perfect white. When the
action is continued long enough, the
tube is filled with a dense cloud of sul
phur particles, which by the application
of proper means may be rendered indi
vidually visible.1
Here, then, our ether-waves untie the
bond of chemical affinity, and liberate a
body—sulphur—which at ordinary tem
peratures is a solid, and which therefore
soon becomes an object of the senses.
We have first of all the free atoms of
sulphur, which are incompetent to stir
the retina sensibly with scattered light.
But these atoms gradually coalesce and
form particles, which grow larger by con
tinual accretion, until after a minute or
two they appear as sky-matter.. In this
condition they are individually invisible;
but collectively they send an amount of
wave-motion to the retina, sufficient to
produce the firmamental blue.
The
particles continue, or may be caused to
continue, in this condition for a con
siderable time, during which no micro
scope can cope with them. But they
grow slowly larger, and pass by in
sensible gradations into the state of cloud,
when they can no longer elude the armed
eye.
Thus, without solution of con
tinuity, we start with matter in the atom,
and end with matter in the mass ; sky
matter being the middle term of the
series of transformations.
Instead of sulphurous acid, we might
choose a dozen other substances, and
produce the same effect with all of them.
In the case of some—probably in the
case of all—it is possible to preserve
* M. Morren was mistaken in supposing that
& modicum of sulphurous acid, in the drying
tubes, had any share in the production of the
“ actinic clouds” described by me. A beautiful
case of molecular instability in the presence of
light is furnished by peroxide of chlorine, as
proved by Professor Dewar. 1878.
matter in the firmamental condition for
fifteen or twenty minutes under the con
tinual operation of the light. During
these fifteen or twenty minutes the
particles constantly grow larger, without
ever exceeding the size requisite to the
production of the celestial blue. Now,
when two vessels are placed before us,
each containing sky-matter, it is possible
to state with great distinctness which
vessel contains the largest particles.
The eye is very sensitive to differences
of light, when, as in our experiments, it
is placed in comparative darkness, and
the wave-motion thrown against the
retina is small. The larger particles
declare themselves by the greater white
ness of their scattered light. Call now
to mind the observation, or effort at
observation, made by our President,
when he failed to distinguish the particles
of mastic in Briicke’s medium, and when
you have done this, please follow me.
A beam of light is permitted to act upon
a certain vapour. In two minutes the
azure appears, but at the end of fifteen
minutes it has not ceased to be azure.
After fifteen minutes its colour, and some
other phenomena, pronounce it to be a
blue of distinctly smaller particles than
those sought for in vain by Mr. Huxley.
These particles, as already stated, must
have been less than nroVoth of an inch
in diameter. And now I want you to
consider the following question : Here
are particles which have been growing
continually for fifteen minutes, and at
the end of that time are demonstrably
smaller than those which defied the
microscope of Mr. Huxley— What must
have been the size of these particles at the
beginning of their growth I What notion
can you form of the magnitude of such
particles ?
The distances of stellar
space give us simply a bewildering, sense
of vastness, without leaving any distinct
impression on the mind; and the mag
nitudes with \yhich we have here to. do,
bewilder us equally in the opposite direc
tion. We are dealing with infinitesimals,
compared with which the test objects of
the microscope are literally immense.
�SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION
Small in mass, the vastness in point of
number of the particles of our sky may be
inferred from the continuity of its light.
It is not in broken patches, nor at scat
tered points, that the heavenly azure is
revealed.
To the observer on the
summit of Mont Blanc, the blue is as
uniform and coherent as if it formed the
surface of the most close-grained solid.
A marble dome would not exhibit a
stricter continuity. And Mr. Glaisher
will inform you that, if our hypothetical
shell were lifted to twice the height of
Mont Blanc above the earth’s surface,
we should still have the azure overhead.
By day this light quenches the stars;
even by moonlight it is able to exclude
from vision all stars between the fifth
and the eleventh magnitude. It may be
likened to a noise, and the feebler stellar
radiance to a whisper drowned by the
noise.
What is the nature of the particles
which shed this light ? The celebrated
De la Rive ascribes the haze of the Alps
in fine weather to floating organic germs.
Now the possible existence of germs in
such profusion has been held up as an
absurdity.
It has been affirmed that
they would darken the air, and on the
assumed impossibility of their existence
in the requisite numbers, without invasion
of the solar light, an apparently powerful
argument has been based by believers in
spontaneous generation. Similar argu
ments have been used by the opponents
of the germ theory of epidemic disease,
who have triumphantly challenged an
appeal to the microscope and the
chemist’s balance to decide the question.
Such arguments, however, are founded
on a defective acquaintance with the
powers and properties of matter. Without
committing myself in the least to De la
Rive’s notion, to the doctrine of spon
taneous generation, or to the germ theory
of disease, I would simply draw attention
to the demonstrable fact, that in the
atmosphere we have particles which defy
both the microscope and the balance,
which do not darken the air, and which
exist, nevertheless, in multitudes suffi
7i
cient to reduce to insignificance the
Israelitish hyperbole regarding the sands
upon the sea-shore.
The varying judgments of men on
these and other questions may perhaps
be, to some extent, accounted for by that
doctrine of Relativity which plays so im
portant a part in philosophy. This doc
trine affirms that the impressions made
upon us by any circumstance, or com
bination of circumstances, depend upon
our previous state. Two travellers upon
the same height, the one having ascended
to it from the plain, the other having
descended to it from a higher elevation,
will be differently affected by the scene
around them.
To the one nature is
expanding, to the other it is contracting;
and impressions which have two such
different antecedent states are sure to
differ. In our scientific judgments the
law of relativity may also play an impor
tant part. To two men, one educated
in the school of the senses, having mainly
occupied himself with observation; the
other educated in the school of imagina
tion as well, and exercised in the con
ceptions of atoms and molecules to which
we have so frequently referred, a bit of
matter, say yvfonrth of an inch in dia
meter, will present itself differently. The
one descends to it from his molar heights,
the other climbs to it from his molecular
lowlands. To the one it appears small,
to the other large. So, also, as regards
the appreciation of the most minute
forms of life revealed by the microscope.
To one of the men these naturally appear
conterminous with the ultimate particles
of matter; there is but a step from
the atom to the organism. The other
discerns numberless organic gradations
between both. Compared with his atoms,
the smallest vibrios and bacteria of the
microscopic field are as behemoth and
leviathan. The law of relativity may to
some extent explain the different atti
tudes of two such persons with regard to
the question of spontaneous generation.
An amount of evidence which satisfies
the one entirely fails to satisfy the other;
�72
LECTURES AND ESSA FS
and while to the one the last bold defence
and startling expansion of the doctrine
by Dr. Bastian will appear perfectly con
clusive, to the other it will present itself
as merely imposing a labour of demo
lition on subsequent investigators.1
Let me say here that many of our
physiological observers appear to form a
very inadequate estimate of the distance
which separates the microscopic from
the molecular limit, and that, as a con
sequence, they sometimes employ a
phraseology calculated to mislead. When,
for example, the contents of a cell are
described as perfectly homogeneous or
as absolutely structureless, because the
microscope fails to discover any struc
ture; or when two structures are pro
nounced to be without difference, because
the microscope can discover none, then,
I think, the microscope begins to play a
mischievous part. A little consideration
will make it plain that the microscope
can have no voice in the question of
germ structure. Distilled water is more
perfectly homogeneous than any possible
organic germ. What is it that causes
the liquid to cease contracting at 39°
Fahr., and to expand until it freezes?
We have here a structural process of
which the microscope can take no note,
nor is it likely to do so by any con
ceivable extension of its powers. Place
distilled water in the field of an electro
magnet, and bring a microscope to bear
upon it. Will any change be observed
when the magnet is excited ? Absolutely
none ; and, still, profound and complex
changes have occurred. First of all, the
particles of water have been rendered
diamagnetically polar; and secondly, in
virtue of the structure impressed upon it
by the magnetic whirl of its. molecules,
the liquid twists a ray of light in a fashion
perfectly determinate both as to quantity
and direction.
Have the diamond, the amethyst, and
the countless other crystals formed in
1 When these words were uttered I did not
imagine that the chief labour of demolition would
fall upon myself. 1878.
the laboratories of nature and of man no
structure ? Assuredly they have ; but
what can the microscope make of it?
Nothing. It cannot be too distinctly
borne in mind that between the micro
scopic limit and the true molecular limit
there is room for infinite permutations
and combinations. It is in this region
that the poles of the atoms are arranged,
that tendency is given to their powers;
so that when these poles and powers
have free action, proper stimulus, and a
suitable environment, they determine,
first the germ, and afterwards the com
plete organism. This first marshalling
of the atoms, on which all subsequent
action depends, baffles a keener power
than that of the microscope. When
duly pondered, the complexity of the
problem raises the doubt, not of the
power of our instrument, for that is
but whether we ourselves possess the
intellectual elements which will . ever
enable us to grapple with the ultimate
structural energies of nature.1
In more senses than one Mr. Darwin
has drawn heavily upon the scientific
tolerance of his age. He has drawn
heavily upon time in his development of
species, and he has drawn adventurously
upon matter in his theory of pangenesis.
According to this theory, a germ, already
microscopic, is a world of minor germs.
Not only is the organism as a whole
wrapped up in the germ, but every organ
of the organism has there its special seed.
This, I say, is an adventurous draft on
the power of matter to divide itself and
distribute its forces. But, unless we are
perfectly sure that he is overstepping the
bounds of reason, that he is unwittingly
1 “ In using the expression, ‘ one sort of living
substance,’ I must guard against being supposed
to mean that any kind of living protoplasm is
homogeneous. Hyaline though it may appear,
we are not at present able to assign any
limit to its complexity of structure.”—Burd on
Sanderson, in the British Medical Journal.,
January 16th, 1875. We have here scientific
insight, and its correlative caution.
In tact,
Dr. Sanderson’s important researches are a
continued illustration of the position laid down
above.
�SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION
sinning against observed fact or demon
strated law—for a mind like that of
Darwin can never sin wittingly against
either fact or law—we ought, I think, to
be cautious in limiting his intellectual
horizon. If there be the least doubt in
the matter, it ought to be given in favour
of the freedom of such a mind. To it a
vast possibility is in itself a dynamic
power, though the possibility may never
be drawn upon. It gives me pleasure to'
think that the facts and reasonings of
this discourse tend rather towards the
justification of Mr. Darwin than towards
his condemnation; for they seem to show
the perfect competence of matter and
force, as regards divisibility and distribu
tion, to bear the heaviest strain that he
has hitherto imposed upon them.
In the case of Mr. Darwin, observa
tion, imagination, and reason combined
have run back with wonderful sagacity
and success over a certain length of the
line of biological succession. Guided by
analogy, in his Origin of Species he placed
at the root of life a primordial germ, from
which he conceived the amazing variety
of the organisms now upon the earth’s
surface might be deduced. If this hypo
thesis were even true, it would not be
final. The human mind would infallibly
look behind the germ, and, however
hopeless the attempt, would inquire into
the history of its genesis. In this dim
twilight of conjecture the searcher wel
comes every gleam, and seeks to augment
his light by indirect incidences.
He
studies the methods of nature in the
ages and the worlds within his reach, in
order to shape the course of speculation
in antecedent ages and worlds. And
though the certainty possessed by experi
mental inquiry is here shut out, we are
not left entirely without guidance. From
the examination of the solar system, Kant
and Laplace came to the conclusion that
its various bodies once formed parts of
the same undislocated mass; that matter
in a nebulous form preceded matter in
its present form ; that, as the ages rolled
away, heat was wasted, condensation
followed, planets were detached; and
73
that finally the chief portion of the hot
cloud reached, by self-compression, the
magnitude and density of our sun. The
earth itself offers evidence of a fiery
origin; and in our day the hypothesis of
Kant and Laplace receives the indepen
dent countenance of spectrum analysis,
which proves the same substances to be
common to the earth and sun.
Accepting some such view of the con
struction of our system as probable, a
desire immediately arises to connect the
present life of our planet with the past.
We wish to know something of our
remotest ancestry. On its first detach
ment from the central mass, life, as we
understand it, could not have been
present on the earth. How, then, did
it come there ? The thing to be encou
raged here is a reverent freedom—a free
dom preceded by the hard discipline
which checks licentiousness in specula
tion—while the thing to be repressed,
both in science and out of it, is dog
matism. And here I am in the hands
of the meeting—willing to end, but ready
to go on. I have no right to intrude
upon you. unasked, the unformed notions
which are floating like clouds, or gather
ing to more solid consistency, in the
modern speculative scientific mind. But
if you wish me to speak plainly, honestly,
and undisputatiously, I am willing to do
so. On the present occasion—
“ You are ordained to call, and I to come.”
Well, your answer is given, and I obey
your call.
Two or three years ago, in an ancient
London College, I listened to a discus
sion at the end of a lecture by a very
remarkable man. Three or four hundred
clergymen were present at the lecture.
The orator began with the civilisation of
Egypt in the time of Joseph; pointing
out the very perfect organisation of the
kingdom, and the possession of chariots,
in one of which Joseph rode, as proving
a long antecedent period of civilisation.
He then passed on to the mud of the
Nile, its rate of augmentation, its present
thickness, and the remains of human
�74
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
handiwork found therein : thence to the
rocks which bound the Nile valley, and
which teem with organic remains. Thus
in his own clear way he caused the idea
of the world’s age to expand itself indefi
nitely before the minds of his audience,
and he contrasted this with the age
usually assigned to the world. During
his discourse he seemed to be swimming
against a stream ; he manifestly thought
that he was opposing a general convic
tion. He expected resistance in the
subsequent discussion; so did I. But
it was all a mistake; there was no
adverse current, no opposing conviction,
no resistance; merely here and there a
half-humorous but unsuccessful attempt
to entangle him in his talk. The meeting
agreed with all that had been said
regarding the antiquity of the earth and
of its life. They had, indeed, known it
all long ago, and they rallied the lecturer
for coming among them with so stale a
story. It was quite plain that this large
body of clergymen, who were, I should
say, to be ranked among the finest
samples of their class, had entirely given
up the ancient landmarks, and trans
ported the conception of life’s origin to
an indefinitely distant past.
■ This leads us to the gist of our present
inquiry, which is this : Does life belong
to what we call matter, or is it an inde
pendent principle inserted into matter
at some suitable epoch—say when the
j hysical conditions became such as to
permit of the development of life ? Let
us put the question with the reverence
due to a faith and culture in which we
all were cradled, and which are the
undeniable historic antecedents of our
present enlightenment. I say, let us put
the question reverently, but let us also
put it clearly and definitely. There are
the strongest grounds for believing that
during a certain period of its history the
earth was not, nor was it fit to be, the
theatre of life. Whether this was ever a
nebulous period, or merely a molten
period, does not signify much ; and if
we revert to the nebulous condition, it
is because the probabilities are really on
its side. Our question is this : Did
creative energy pause until the nebulous
matter had condensed, until the earth
had been detached, until the solar fire
had so far withdrawn from the earth’s
vicinity as to permit a crust to gather
round the planet ? Did it wait until the
air was isolated ; until the seas were
formed; until evaporation, condensation,
and the descent of rain had begun; until
the eroding forces of the atmosphere
had weathered and decomposed the
molten rocks so as to form soils; until
the sun’s rays had become so tempered
by» distance, and by waste, as to be
chemically fit for the decomposition
necessary to vegetable life ? Having
waited through these seons until the
proper conditions had set in, did it send
the fiat forth, “ Let there be Life! ”?
These questions define a hypothesis not
without its difficulties, but the dignity of
which in relation to the world’s know
ledge was demonstrated by the nobleness
of the men whom it sustained.
Modern scientific thought is called
upon to decide between this hypothesis
and another; and public thought gene
rally will afterwards be called upon to
do the same. But, however the convic
tions of individuals here and there may
be influenced, the process must be slow
and secular which commends the hypo
thesis of Natural Evolution to the public
mind. For what are the core and essence
of this hypothesis ? Strip it naked, and
you stand face to face with the notion
that not alone the more ignoble forms of
animalcular or animal life, not alone the
nobler forms of the horse and lion, not
alone the exquisite and wonderful mecha
nism of the human body, but that the
human mind itself—emotion, intellect,
will, and all their phenomena—were once
latent in a fiery cloud. Surely the mere
statement of such a notion is more than
a refutation. But the hypothesis would
probably go even farther than this.
Many who hold it would probably
assent to the position that, at the present
moment, all our philosophy, all our
poetry, all our science, and all our art—
�SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION
Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, and Raphael
—are potential in the fires of the sun.
We long to learn something of our origin.
If the Evolution hypothesis be correct,
even this unsatisfied yearning must have
come to us across the ages which separate
the primeval mist from the consciousness
of to-day. I do not think that any holder
of the Evolution hypothesis would say
that I overstate or overstrain it in any
way. I merely strip it of all vagueness,
and bring before you, unclothed and
unvarnished, the notions by which it
must stand or fall.
Surely these notions represent an
absurdity too monstrous to be enter
tained by any sane mind. But why are
such notions absurd, and why should
sanity reject them ? The law of Rela
tivity, of which we have previously
spoken, may find its application here.
These Evolution notions are absurd,
monstrous, and fit only for the intel
lectual gibbet, in relation to the ideas
concerning matter which were drilled
into us when young. Spirit and matter
have ever been presented to us in the
rudest contrast, the one as all-noble, the
other as all-vile. But is this correct?
Upon the answer to this question all
depends.
Supposing that, instead of
having the foregoing antithesis of spirit
and matter presented to our youthful
minds, we had been taught to regard
them as equally worthy, and equally
wonderful; to consider them, in fact, as
two opposite faces of the self-same
mystery. Supposing that in youth we
had been impregnated with the notion
of the poet Goethe, instead of the notion
of the poet Young, and taught to look
upon matter, not as “ brute matter,” but
as the “ living garment of God ”; do you
not think that under these altered cir
cumstances the law of Relativity might
have had an outcome different from its
present one? Is it not probable that
our repugnance to the idea of primeval
union between spirit and matter might
be considerably abated? Without this
total revolution of the notions now preva
lent, the Evolution hypothesis must stand
75
condemned; but in many profoundly
thoughtful minds such a revolution has
already taken place. They degrade neither
member of the mysterious duality referred
to ; but they exalt one of them from its
abasement, and repeal the divorce hitherto
existing between them. In substance, if
not in words, their position as regards
the relation of spirit and matter is:
“ What God hath joined together, let not
man put asunder.”
You have been thus led to the outer
rim of speculative science, for beyond
the nebulae scientific thought has never
hitherto ventured. I have tried to state
that which I considered ought, in fair
ness, to be outspoken. I neither think
this Evolution hypothesis is to be flouted
away contemptuously, nor that it ought
to be denounced as wicked. It is to be
brought before the bar of disciplined
reason, and there justified or condemned.
Let us hearken to those who wisely sup
port it, and to those who wisely oppose
it; and let us tolerate those, whose
name is legion, who try foolishly to do
either of these things. The only thing
out of place in the discussion is dogma
tism on either side.
Fear not the
Evolution hypothesis. Steady yourselves,
in its presence, upon that faith in the
ultimate triumph of truth which was
expressed by old Gamaliel when he said:
“ If it be of God, ye cannot overthrow
it; if it be of man, it will come to
nought.”
Under the fierce light of
scientific inquiry, it is sure to be dissi
pated if it possess not a core of truth.
Trust me, its existence as a hypothesis
is quite compatible with the simultaneous
existence of all those virtues to which
the term “ Christian ” has been applied.
It does not solve—it does not profess to
solve—the ultimate mystery of this uni
verse. It leaves, in fact, that mystery
untouched. For, granting the nebula
and its potential life, the question,
whence they came, would still remain to
baffle and bewilder us. At bottom, the
hypothesis does nothing more than
“ transport the conception of life’s origin
to an indefinitely distant past.”
�76
LECTURES AND ESSA VS
Those who hold the doctrine of Evo
lution are by no means ignorant of the
uncertainty of their data, and they only
yield to it a. provisional assent. They
regard the nebular hypothesis as pro
bable, and, in the utter absence of any
evidence to prove the act illegal, they
extend the method of nature from the
present into the past. Here the observed
uniformity of nature is their only guide.
Within the long range of physical
inquiry they have never discerned in
nature the insertion of caprice. Through
out this range the laws of physical and
intellectual continuity have run side by
side. Having thus determined the
elements of their curve in a world of
observation and experiment, they prolong
that curve into an antecedent world,
and accept as probable the unbroken
sequence of development from the nebula
to the present time. You never hear
the really philosophical defenders of the
doctrine of Uniformity speaking of
impossibilities in nature. They never
say, what they are constantly charged
with saying, that it is impossible for the
Builder of the universe to alter His
work. Their business is not with the
possible, but the actual—not with a
world which might be, but with a world
that is. This they explore with a courage
not unmixed with reverence, and accord
ing to methods which, like the quality
of a tree, are tested by their fruits. They
have but one desire—to know the truth.
They have but one fear—to believe a
lie. And if they know the strength of
science, and rely upon it with unswerving
trust, they also know the limits beyond
which science ceases to be strong. They
best know that questions offer themselves
to thought which science, as now prose
cuted, has not even the tendency to
solve. They have as little fellowship
with the atheist who says there is no
God as with the theist who professes
to know the mind of God. “ Two
things,” said Immanuel Kant, “ fill me
with awe : the starry heavens, and the
sense of moral responsibility in man.”
And in his hours of health and strength
and sanity, when the stroke of action
has ceased, and the pause of reflection
has set in, the scientific investigator
finds himself overshadowed by the same
awe. Breaking contact with the hamper
ing details of earth, it associates him
with a Power which gives fulness and
tone to his existence, but which he can
neither analyse nor comprehend.
SCIENCE AND MAN'
A magnet attracts iron; but when we
analyse the effect we learn that the
metal is not only attracted but repelled,
the final approach to the magnet being
due to the difference of two unequal
and opposing forces. Social progress is
for the most part typified by this duplex
or polar action. As a general rule, every
advance is balanced by a partial retreat,
every amelioration is associated more or
less with deterioration. No great mecha
nical improvement, for example, is intro
duced for the benefit of society at large
that does not bear hardly upon indivi
duals. Science, like other things, is
subject to the operation of this polar
law, what is good for it under one aspect
being bad for it under another.
1 Presidential Address, delivered before the Birmingham and Midland Institute, October 1st,
1877 ; with additions.
�SCIENCE AND MAN
Science demands above all things per
sonal concentration.
Its home is the
study of the mathematician, the quiet
laboratory of the experimenter, and the
cabinet of the meditative observer of
nature. Different atmospheres are re
quired by the man of science, as. such,
and the man of action.
Thus the
facilities of social and international inter
course, the railway, the telegraph, and
the post-office, which are such undoubted
boons to the man of action, re-act, to
some extent injuriously, on the man of
science. Their tendency is to break up
that concentrativeness which, as I have
said, is an absolute necessity to the
scientific investigator.
The men who have most profoundly
influenced the world from the scientific
side have habitually sought isolation.
Faraday, at a certain period of his career,
formally renounced dining out. Darwin
lives apart from the bustle of the world
in his quiet home in Kent. Mayer and
Joule dealt in unobtrusive retirement
with the weightiest scientific questions.
There is, however, one motive power in
the world which no man, be he a scien
tific student or otherwise, can afford to
treat with indifference; and that is, the
cultivation of right relations with his
fellow-men—the performance of his duty,
not as an isolated individual, but as a
member of society. It is duty in this
aspect, overcoming alike the sense of
possible danger and the desire for repose,
that has placed me in your presence here
to-night.
.
To look at his picture as a whole, a
painter requires distance ; and to judge
of the total scientific achievement of any
age, the standpoint of a succeeding age
is desirable. We may, however, trans
port ourselves in idea into the future,
and thus survey with more or Jess com
pleteness the science of our time. We
sometimes hear it decried, and contrasted
to its disadvantage with the science of
other times. I do not think that this
will be the verdict of posterity. I think,
on the contrary, that posterity will
acknowledge that in the history of
77
science no higher samples of intellectual
conquest are recorded than those which
this age has made its own. One of the
most salient of these I propose, with
your permission, to make the subject of
our consideration during the coming
hour.
It is now generally admitted that the
man of to-day is the child and product
of incalculable antecedent time.
His
physical and intellectual textures have
been woven for him during his passage
through phases of history and forms of
existence which lead the mind back to
an abysmal past. One of the qualities
which he has derived from that past is
the yearning to let in the light of prin
ciples on the otherwise bewildering flux
of phenomena. He has been described
by the German Lichtenberg as “ das
rastlose Ursachenthier ” — the restless
cause-seeking animal—in whom facts
excite a kind of hunger to know the
sources from which they spring. Never,
I venture to say, in the history of the
world has this longing been more liberally
responded to, both among men of science
and the general public, than during the
last thirty or forty years. - I say “ the
general public,” because it is a feature of
our time that the man of science no
longer limits his labours to the society of
his colleagues and his peers, but shares,
as far as it is possible to share, with the
world at large the fruits of inquiry.
The celebrated Robert Boyle regarded
the universe as a machine; Mr. Carlyle
prefers regarding it as a tree. He loves
the image of the umbrageous Igdrasil
better than that of the Strasburg clock. . A
machine may be defined as an organism
with life and direction outside; a tree
may be defined as an organism with life
and direction within. In the light of
these definitions, I close with the con
ception of Carlyle.
The order and
energy of the universe I hold to be
inherent, and not imposed from without,
the expression of fixed law and not of
arbitrary will, exercised by what Carlyle
would call an Almighty Clockmaker. But
the two conceptions are not so much
�78
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
opposed to each other after all. In one
fundamental particular they at all events
agree. They equally imply the inter
dependence and harmonious interaction
of parts, and the subordination of the in
dividual powers of the universal organism
to the working of the whole.
Never were the harmony and inter
dependence just referred to so clearly
recognised as now. Our insight regard
ing them is not that vague and general
insight to which our fathers had attained,
and which, in early times, was more
frequently affirmed by the synthetic poet
than by the scientific man.
The inter
dependence of our day has become
quantitative—expressible by numbers—
leading, it must be added, directly into
that inexorable reign of law which so
many gentle people regard with dread.
In the domain now under review men of
science had first to work their way from
darkness into twilight, and from twilight
into day.
There is no solution of con
tinuity in science.
It is not given to
any man, however endowed, to rise
spontaneously into intellectual splendour
without the parentage of antecedent
thought. Great discoveries grow. Here,
as in other cases, we have first the seed,
then the ear, then the full corn in the
ear, the last member of the series imply
ing the first. Thus, as regards the dis
covery of gravitation with which the
name of Newton is identified, notions
more or less clear concerning it had
entered many- minds before Newton’s
transcendent mathematical genius raised
it to the level of a demonstration. The
whole of his deductions, moreover, rested
upon the inductions of Kepler. Newton
shot beyond his predecessors; but his
thoughts were rooted in their thoughts,
and a just distribution of merit would
assign to them a fair portion of the
honour of discovery.
Scientific theories sometimes float like
rumours in the air before they receive
complete expression.
The doom of a
doctrine is often practically sealed, and
the truth of one is often practically ac
cepted, long prior to the demonstration
of either the error or the truth. Per
petual motion was discarded before it
was proved to be opposed to natural
law; and, as regards the connection and
interaction of natural forces, intimations
of modern discoveries are strewn through
the writings of Leibnitz, Boyle, Hooke,
Locke, and others.
Confining ourselves to recent times,
Dr. Ingleby has pointed out to me some
singularly sagacious remarks bearing
upon this question, which were published
by an anonymous writer in 1820. Roget’s
penetration was conspicuous in 1829.
Mohr had grasped in 1837 some deep
lying truth. The writings of Faraday
furnish frequent illustrations of his pro
found belief in the unity of nature. “ I
have long,” he writes in 1845, “ held an
opinion almost amounting to conviction,
in common, I believe, with other lovers
of natural knowledge, that the various
forms under which the forces of matter
are made manifest have one common
origin, or, in other words, are so directly
related and mutually dependent that
they are convertible, as it were, one
into another, and possess equivalence
of power in their action.”
His own
researches on magneto-electricity, on
electro-chemistry, and on the “ magneti
sation of light,” led him directly to this
belief. At an early date Mr. Justice
Grove made his mark upon this question.
Colding, though starting from a meta
physical basis, grasped eventually the
relation between heat and mechanical
work, and sought to determine it experi
mentally. And here let me say, that
to him who has only the truth at heart,
and who in his dealings with scientific
history keeps his soul unwarped by envy,
hatred, or malice, personal or national,
every fresh accession to historic know
ledge must be welcome.
For every
new-comer of proved merit, more espe
cially if that merit should have been
previously overlooked, he makes ready
room in his recognition or his reverence.
But no retrospect of scientific literature
has as yet brought to light a claim which
can sensibly affect the positions accorded
�SCIENCE AND MAN
* to two great Path-hewers, as the Germans
call them, whose names in relation to
this subject are linked in indissoluble
association.
These names are Julius
Robert Mayer and James Prescott Joule.
In his essay on “Circles” Mr. Emerson,
if I remember rightly, pictured intel
lectual progress as rhythmic.
At a
given moment knowledge is surrounded
by a barrier which marks its limit. It
gradually gathers clearness and strength
until by-and-by some thinker of excep
tional power bursts the barrier and wins
a wider circle, within which thought
once more entrenches itself.
But the
internal force again accumulates, the
new barrier is in its turn broken, and the
mind finds itself surrounded by a still
wider horizon.
Thus, according to
Emerson, knowledge spreads by inter
mittent victories instead of progressing
at a uniform rate.
When Dr. Joule first proved that a
weight of one pound, falling through a
height of 7 7 2 feet, generated an amount of
heat competent to warm a pound of water
one degree Fahrenheit, and that in lifting
the weight so much heat exactly dis
appeared, he broke an Emersonian
“ circle,” releasing by the act an amount
of scientific energy which rapidly overran
a vast domain, and embodied itself in
the great doctrine known as the “ Con
servation of Energy.”
This doctrine
recognises in the material universe a
constant sum of power made up of items
among which the most Protean fluctua
tions are incessantly going on. It is as
if the body of Nature were alive, the
thrill and interchange of its energies
resembling those of an organism. The
parts of the “stupendous whole” shift and
change, augment and diminish, appear
and disappear, while the total of which
they are the parts remains quantitatively
immutable. Immutable, because when
change occurs it is always polar—plus
accompanies minus, gain accompanies
loss, no item varying in the slightest
degree without art absolutely equal change
of some other item in the opposite direc
tion.
79
The sun warms the tropical ocean,
converting a portion of its liquid into
vapour, which rises in the air and is
recondensed on mountain heights, return
ing in rivers to the ocean from which it
came. Up to the point where condensa
tion begins, an amount of heat exactly
equivalent to the molecular work of
vaporisation and the mechanical work
of lifting the vapour to the mountaintops has disappeared from the universe.
What is the gain corresponding to this
loss ? It will seem when mentioned to
be expressed in a foreign currency. The
loss is a loss of heat; the gain is a gain
of distance, both as regards masses and
molecules. Water which was formerly
at the sea-level has been lifted to a
position from which it can fall; mole
cules which have been locked together
as a liquid are now separate as vapour
which can recondense. After condensa
tion gravity comes into effectual play,
pulling the showers down upon the hills,
and the rivers thus created through their
gorges to the sea. Every raindrop which
smites the mountain produces its definite
amount of heat; every river in its course
developes heat by the clash of its cataracts
and the friction of its bed. In the act
of condensation, moreover, the molecular
work of vaporisation is accurately re
versed.
Compare, then, the primitive
loss of solar warmth with the heat gene
rated by the condensation of the vapour,
and by the subsequent fall of the water
from cloud to sea. They are mathemati
cally equal to each other. No particle
of vapour was formed and lifted without
being paid for in the currency of solar
heat; no particle returns as water to the
sea without the exact quantitative resti
tution of that heat There is nothing
gratuitous in physical nature, no expen
diture without equivalent gain, no gain
without equivalent expenditure. With
inexorable constancy the one accom
panies the other, leaving no nook or
crevice between them for spontaneity to
mingle with the pure and necessary play
of natural force.
Has this uniformity
�80 '
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
of nature ever been broken ? The reply
blood-heat, then to redness, and finally
is : “Not to the knowledge of science.”
to a white heat. The heat under these
What has been here stated regarding
circumstances generated in the battery
heat and gravity applies to the whole of by the combustion of a fixed quantity of
inorganic nature. Let us take an illus zinc is no longer constant, but it varies
tration from chemistry. The metal zinc
inversely as the heat generated outside.
may be burnt in oxygen, a perfectly
If the outside heat be tzz’Z, the inside heat
definite amount of heat being produced
is a maximum; if the external wire be
by the combustion of a given weight of raised to a blood-heat, the internal heat
the metal. But zinc may also be burnt
falls slightly short of the maximum. If
in a liquid which contains a supply of the wire be rendered red-hot, the quantity
oxygen—in water, for example. It does
of missing heat within the battery is
not in this case produce flame or fire,
greater, and if the external wire be ren
but it does produce heat which is capable
dered white-hot the defect is greater
of accurate measurement. But the heat
still. Add together the internal and
of zinc burnt in water falls short of that
external heat produced by the combus
produced in pure oxygen, the reason
tion of a given weight of zinc, and
being that to obtain its oxygen from the
you have an absolutely constant total.
water the zinc must first dislodge the
The heat generated without is so much
hydrogen. It is in the performance of lost within, the heat generated within is
this molecular work that the missing heat
so much lost without, the polar changes
is absorbed. Mix the liberated hydrogen
already adverted to coming here con
with oxygen and cause them to recom spicuously into play. Thus in a variety
bine ; the heat developed is mathemati of ways we can distribute the items of a
cally equal to the missing heat. Thus, in
never-varying sum, but even the subtle
pulling the oxygen and hydrogen asunder
agency of the electric current places no
an amount of heat is consumed which is
creative power in our hands.
accurately restored by their reunion.
Instead of generating external heat,
This leads up to a few remarks upon
we may cause the current to effect
the Voltaic battery. It is not my design
chemical decomposition at a distance
to dwell upon the technical features of from the battery. Let it, for example,
this wonderful instrument, but simply,
decompose water into oxygen and hydro
by means of it, to show what varying
gen. The heat generated in the battery
shapes a given amount of energy can
under these circumstances by the com
assume while maintaining unvarying
bustion of a given weight of zinc falls
quantitative stability. When that form
short of what is produced when there is
of power which we call an electric cur no decomposition. How far short ? The
rent passes through Grove’s battery, zinc
question admits of a perfectly exact
is consumed in acidulated water; and in
answer. When the oxygen and hydrogen
the battery we are able so to arrange
recombine, the heat absorbed in the de
matters that when no current passes no
composition is accurately restored, and it
zinc shall be consumed.
Now the cur is exactly equal in amount to that missing
rent, whatever it may be, possesses the
in the battery. We may, if we like,
power of generating heat outside the
bottle up the gases, carry in this form
battery. We can fuse with it iridium,
the heat of the battery to the polar
the most refractory of metals, or we can regions, and liberate it there.
The
produce with it the dazzling electric light,
battery, in fact, is a hearth on which
and that at any terrestrial distance from
fuel is consumed; but the heat of the
the battery itself.
combustion, instead of being confined
We will now, however, content our in the usual manner to the hearth itself,
selves with causing the current to raise a
may be first liberated at the other side of
given length of platinum wire, first to a
the world.
�SCIENCE AND MAN
And here we are able to solve an
enigma which long perplexed scientific
men, and which could not be solved
until the bearing of the mechanical
theory of heat upon the phenomena of
the Voltaic battery was understood. The
puzzle was, that a single cell could not
decompose water. The reason is now
plain enough. The solution of an equi
valent of zinc in a single cell developes
not much more than half the amount of
heat required to decompose an equivalent
of water, and the single cell cannot cede
an amount of force which it does not
possess. But by forming a battery of
two cells instead of one, we develop an
amount of heat slightly in excess of that
needed for the decomposition of the
water. The two-celled battery is there
fore rich enough to pay for that decom
position, and to maintain the excess
referred to within its own cells.
Similar reflections apply to the thermo
electric pile, an instrument usually com
posed of small bars of bismuth and
antimony soldered alternately together.
The electric current is here evoked by
warming the soldered junctions of one
face of the pile. Like the Voltaic current,
the thermo-electric current can heat
wires, produce decomposition, magnetise
iron, and deflect a magnetic needle at
any distance from its origin. You will
be disposed, and rightly disposed, to
refer those distant manifestations of
power to the heat communicated to the
face of the pile, but the case is worthy
of closer examination. In 1826 Thomas
Seebeck discovered thermo-electricity,
and six years subsequently Peltier made
an observation which comes with singular
felicity to our aid in determining the
material used up in the formation of the
thermo-electric current. He found that
when a weak extraneous current was
sent from antimony to bismuth the
junction of the two metals was always
heated, but that when the direction was
from bismuth to antimony the junction
was chilled. Now the current in the
thermo-pile itself is always from bismuth
to antimony, across the heated junction
—a direction in which it cannot possibly
establish itself without consuming the
heat imparted to the junction. This
heat is the nutriment of the current.
Thus the heat generated by the thermo
current in a distant wire is simply that
originally imparted to the pile which has
been first transmuted into electricity, and
then retransmuted into its first form at a
distance from its origin. As water in
a state of vapour passes from a boiler
to a distant condenser, and there assumes
its primitive form without gain or loss,
so the heat communicated to the thermo
pile distils into the subtler electric
current, which is, as it were, recondensed
into heat in the distant platinum wire.
In my youth I thought an electro
magnetic engine which was shown to me
a veritable perpetual motion—a machine,
that is to say, which performed work
without the expenditure of power. Let
us consider the action of such a machine.
Suppose it to be employed to pump
water from a lower to a higher level.
On examining the battery which works
the engine we find that the zinc consumed
does not yield its full amount of heat.
The quantity of heat thus missing within
is the exact thermal equivalent of the
mechanical work performed without.
Let the water fall again to the lower
level; it is warmed by the fall.
Add
the heat thus produced to that generated
by the friction, mechanical and mag
netical, of the engine; we thus obtain
the precise amount of heat missing in
the battery.
All the effects obtained
from the machine are thus strictly paid
for; this “ payment for results ” being,
I would repeat, the inexorable method
of nature.
No engine, however subtly devised,
can evade this law of equivalence, or
perform on its own account the smallest
modicum of work. The machine distri
butes, but it cannot create.
Is the
animal body, then, to be classed among
machines? When I lift a weight, or
throw a stone, or climb a mountain, or
wrestle with my comrade, am I not con
scious of actually creating and expending
�82
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
force ? Let us look at the antecedents
of this force.
We derive the muscle
and fat of our bodies from what we eat.
Animal heat you know to be due to the
slow combustion of this fuel. My arm
is now inactive, and the ordinary slow
combustion of my blood and tissue is
going on. For every grain of fuel thus
burnt a perfectly definite amount of heat
has been produced. I now contract my
biceps muscle without causing it to
perform external work. The combustion
is quickened, and the heat is increased;
this additional heat being liberated in
the muscle itself. I lay hold of a 56 lb.
weight, and by the contraction of my
biceps lift it through the vertical space
of a foot. The blood and tissue con
sumed during this contraction have not
developed in the muscle their due
amount of heat. A quantity of heat is
at this moment missing in my muscle
which would raise the temperature of an
ounce of water somewhat more than one
degree Fahrenheit. I liberate the weight:
it falls to the earth, and by its collision
generates the precise amount of heat
missing in the muscle.
My muscular
heat is thus transferred from its local
' hearth to external space. The fuel is
consumed in my body, but the heat of
combustion is produced outside my
body.
The case is substantially the
same as that of the Voltaic battery when
it performs external work, or produces
external heat. All this points to the
conclusion that the force we employ in
muscular exertion is the force of burning
fuel and not of creative will.
In the
light of these facts the body is seen to
be as incapable of generating energy
without expenditure, as the solids and
liquids of the Voltaic battery.
The
body, in other words, falls into the
category of machines.
We can do with the body all that we
have already done with the battery—
heat platinum wires, decompose water,
magnetise iron, and deflect a magnetic
needle.
The combustion of muscle
may be made to produce all these
effects, as the combustion of zinc may
be caused to produce them. By turning
the handle of a magneto-electric machine
a coil of wire may be caused to rotate
between the poles of a magnet. As long
as the two ends of the coil are uncon
nected we have simply to overcome
the ordinary inertia and friction of the
machine in turning the handle. But the
moment the two ends of the coil are
united by a thin platinum wire a sudden
addition of labour is thrown upon the
turning arm. When the necessary labour
is expended, its equivalent immediately
appears. The platinum wire glows. You
can readily maintain it at a white heat,
or even fuse it. This is a very remark
able result. From the muscles of the
arm, with a temperature of ioo°, we
extract the temperature of molten plati
num, which is nearly four thousand
degrees. The miracle here is the reverse
of that of the burning bush mentioned
in Exodus. There the bush burned,
but was not consumed : here the body
is consumed, but does not burn. The
similarity of the' action with that of
the Voltaic battery when it heats an
external wire is too obvious to need
pointing out.
When the machine is
used to decompose water, the heat of
the muscle, like that of the battery, is
consumed in molecular work, being fully
restored when the gases recombine. As
before, also, the transmuted heat of the
muscles may be bottled up, carried to
the polar regions, and there restored to
its pristine form.
The matter of the human body is the
same as that of the world around us;
and here we find the forces of the
human body identical with those of
inorganic nature. Just as little as the
Voltaic battery is the animal body a
creator of force. It is an apparatus ex
quisite and effectual beyond all others in
transforming and distributing the energy
with which it is supplied, but it possesses
no creative power. Compared with the
notions previously entertained regarding
the play of “vital force ” this is a great
result. The problem of vital dynamics
�SCIENCE AND MAN
has been described by a competent
authority as “ the grandest of all.” I
subscribe to this opinion, and honour
correspondingly the man who first suc
cessfully grappled with the problem.
He was no pope, in the sense of being
infallible, but he was a man of genius
whose work will be held in honour as
long as science endures. I have already
named him in connection with our
illustrious countryman Dr. Joule. Other
eminent men took up this subject subse
quently and independently, but all that
has been done hitherto enhances instead
of diminishing the merits of Dr. Mayer.
Consider the vigour of his reasoning.
“ Beyond the power of generating in
ternal heat, the animal organism can
generate heat external to itself. A
blacksmith by hammering can warm a
nail, and a savage by friction can heat
wood to its point of ignition. Unless,
then, we abandon the physiological
axiom that the animal body cannot create
heat out of nothing, we are driven to the
conclusion that it is the total heat., within
and without, that ought to be regarded as
the real calorific effect of the oxidation
within the body A Mayer, however, not
only states the principle, but illustrates
numerically the transfer of muscular heat
to external space. A bowler who imparts
a velocity of 30 feet to an 8-lb. ball con
sumes in the act one-tenth of a grain of
carbon. The heat of the muscle is here
distributed over the track of the ball,
being developed there by mechanical
friction. A man weighing 150 lbs. con
sumes in lifting his own body to a height
of 8 feet the heat of a grain of carbon.
Jumping from this height the heat is
restored. The consumption of 2 ozs.
4 drs. 20 grs. of carbon would place the
same man on the summit of a mountain
10,000 feet high. In descending the
mountain an amount of heat equal to
that produced by the combustion of
the foregoing amount of carbon is
restored. The muscles of a labourer
whose weight is 150 lbs. weigh 64 lbs.
When dried they are reduced to 15 lbs.
Were the oxidation corresponding to a
83
day-labourer’s ordinary work exerted on
the muscles alone, they would be wholly
consumed in 80 days. Were the oxida
tion necessary to sustain the heart’s
action concentrated on the heart itself,
it would be consumed in 8 days. And
if we confine our attention to the two
ventricles, their action would consume
the associated muscular tissue in 3%
days. With a fulness and precision of
which this is but a sample did Mayer,
between 1842 and 1845, deal with the
great question of vital dynamics.
In direct opposition, moreover, to the
foremost scientific authorities of that day,
with Liebig at their head, this solitary
Heilbronn worker was led by his calcu
lations to maintain that the muscles, in
the main, played the part of machinery,
converting the fat, which had been
previously considered a mere heat-pro
ducer, into the motive power of the
organism. Mayer’s prevision has been
justified by events, for the scientific
world is now upon his side.
We place, then, food in our stomachs
as so much combustible matter. It is
first dissolved by purely chemical pro
cesses, and the nutritive fluid is poured
into the blood. Here it comes into con
tact with atmospheric oxygen admitted by
the lungs. It unites with the oxygen as
wood or coal might unite with it in a
furnace. The matter-products of the
union, if I may use the term, are the
same in both cases, viz. carbonic acid
and water. The force-products are also
the same—heat within the body, or heat
and work outside the body. Thus far
every action of the organism belongs to
the domain either of physics or of
chemistry. But you saw me cohtract
the muscle of my arm. What enabled
me to do so? Was it or was it not the
direct action of my will? The answer
is, the action of the will is mediate, not
direct. Over and above the muscles the
human organism is provided with long
whitish filaments of medullary matter,
which issue from the spinal column,
being connected by it on the one side
with the brain, and on the other side
�84
LECTURES AND ESSA VS
losing themselves in the muscles. Those
filaments or cords are the nerves, which
you know are divided into two kinds,
sensor and motor, or, if you like the
terms better, afferent and efferent nerves.
The former carry impressions from the
external world to the brain; the latter
convey the behests of the brain to the
muscles. Here, as elsewhere, we find
ourselves aided by the sagacity of Mayer,
who was the first clearly to formulate the
part played by the nerves in the organism.
Mayer saw that neither nerves nor brain,
nor both together, possessed the energy
necessary to animal motion ; but he also
saw that the nerve could lift a latch and
open a door, by which floods of energy
are let loose.
“As an engineer,” he
says with admirable lucidity, “ by the
motion of his finger in opening a valve
or loosening a detent, can liberate an
amount of mechanical energy almost
infinite compared with its exciting cause;
so the nerves, acting on the muscles, can
unlock an amount of power out of all
proportion to the work done by the
nerves themselves.” The nerves, accord
ing to Mayer, pull the trigger, but the
gunpowder which they ignite is stored in
the muscles.
This is the view now
universally entertained.
The quickness of thought has passed
into a proverb, and the notion that any
measurable time elapsed between the
infliction of a wound and the feeling of
the injury would have been rejected as
preposterous thirty years ago. Nervous
impressions, notwithstanding the results
of Haller, were thought to be transmitted,
if not instantaneously, at all events with
the rapidity of electricity. Hence, when
Helmholtz, in 1851, affirmed, as the
result of experiment, nervous transmis
sion to be a comparatively sluggish
process, very few believed him. His
experiments may now be made in the
lecture-room. Sound in air moves at
the rate of 1,100 feet a second; sound
in water moves at the rate of 5,000 feet
a second; light in ether moves at the
rate of 186,000 miles a second, and elec
tricity in free wires moves probably at the
same rate.
But the nerves transmit
their messages at the rate of only 70 feet
a second, a progress which in these
quick times might well be regarded as
inordinately slow.
Your townsman, Mr. Gore, has pro
duced by electrolysis a kind of antimony
which exhibits an action strikingly analo
gous to that of nervous propagation. A
rod of this antimony is in such a mole
cular condition that when you scratch or
heat one end of the rod the disturbance
propagates itself before your eyes to the
other end, the onward march of the dis
turbance being announced by the develop
ment of heat and fumes along the line of
propagation.
In some such way the
molecules of the nerves are successively
overthrown ; and if Mr. Gore could only
devise some means of winding up his
exhausted antimony, as the nutritive
blood winds up exhausted nerves, the
comparison would be complete. The
subject may be summed up, as Du BoisReymond has summed it up, by reference
to the case of a whale struck by a harpoon
in the tail. If the animal were seventy
feet long, a second would elapse before
the disturbance could reach the brain.
But the impression after its arrival has
to diffuse itself and throw the brain into
the molecular condition necessary to
consciousness. Then, and not till then,
the command to the tail to defend itself
is shot through the motor nerves.
Another second must elapse before the
command can reach the tail, so that
more than two seconds transpire between
the infliction of the wound and the
muscular response of the part wounded.
The interval required for the kindling of
consciousness would probably more than
suffice for the destruction of the brain by
lightning, or even by a rifle-bullet. Before
the organ can arrange itself it may, there
fore, be destroyed, and in such a case we
may safely conclude that death is pain
less.
The experiences of common life supply
us with copious instances of the libera
tion of vast stores of muscular power
�SCIENCE AND MAN
by an infinitesimal “priming” of the
muscles by the nerves. We all know the
effect produced on a “ nervous ” organi
sation by a slight sound which causes
affright. An aerial wave, the energy. of
which would not reach a minute fraction
of that necessary to raise the thousandth
of a grain through the thousandth of an
inch, can throw the whole human frame
into a powerful mechanical spasm, fol
lowed by violent respiration and palpita
tion. The eye, of course, may be
appealed to as well as the ear. Of this
the lamented Lange gives the following
vivid illustration:—
A merchant sits complacently in his
easy chair, not knowing whether smoking,
sleeping, newspaper reading, or the diges
tion of food occupies the largest portion
of his personality. A servant enters the
room with a telegram, bearing the words,
“Antwerp, etc........ Jonas and Co. have
failed.” “Tell James to harness the
horses 1” The servant flies. Up starts
the merchant, wide awake, makes a dozen
paces through the room, descends to the
counting-house, dictates letters, and for
wards despatches. He jumps into his
carriage, the horses snort, and their
driver is immediately at the Bank, on the
Bourse, and among his commercial
friends. Before an hour has elapsed he
is again at home, where he throws him
self once more into his easy chair with a
deep-drawn sigh : “ Thank God I am pro
tected against the worst, and now for
further reflection.”
This complex mass of action, emo
tional, intellectual, and mechanical, is
evoked by the impact upon the retina of
the infinitesimal waves of light coming
from a few pencil marks on a bit of paper.
We have, as Lange says, terror, hope,
sensation, calculation, possible ruin, and
victory compressed into a moment. What
caused the merchant to spring out of his
chair ? The contraction of his muscles.
What made his muscles contract ? An
impulse of the nerves, which lifted the
proper latch, and liberated the muscular
power. Whence this impulse ? From
the centre of the nervous system. But
85
how did it originate there ? This is the
critical question, to which some will
reply that it had its origin in the human
soul.
The aim and effort of science is to
explain the unknown in terms of the
known. Explanation, therefore, is con
ditioned by knowledge. You have pro
bably heard the story of the German
peasant who, in early railway days, was
taken to see the performance of a loco
motive. He had never known carriages
to be moved except by animal power.
Every explanation outside of this concep
tion lay beyond his experience, and could
not be invoked. After long reflection,
therefore, and seeing no possible escape
from the conclusion, he exclaimed con
fidently to his companion, “ Es miissen
doch Pferdedarin sein”—“There must be
horses inside.” Amusing as this locomo
tive theory may seem, it illustrates a
deep-lying truth.
With reference to our present question,
some may be disposed to press upon me
such considerations as these :—Your
motor-nerves are so many speakingtubes, through which messages are sent
from the man to the world; and your
sensor nerves are so many conduits
through which the whispers of the world
are sent back to the man. But you have
not told us where is the man. Who or
what is it that sends and receives those
messages through the bodily organism ?
Do not the phenomena point to the
existence of a self within the self, which
acts through the body as through a
skilfully constructed instrument? You
picture the muscles as hearkening to the
commands sent through the motor nerves,
and you picture the sensor nerves as the
vehicles of incoming intelligence; are
you not bound to supplement this
mechanism by the assumption of an
entity which uses it ? In other words,
are you not forced by your own exposition
into the hypothesis of a free human soul ?
This is fair reasoning now, and at a
certain stage of the world’s knowledge
it might well have been deemed con
clusive. Adequate reflection, however,
�86
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
shows that, instead of introducing light
into our minds, this hypothesis con
sidered scientifically increases our dark
ness. You do not in this case explain
the unknown in terms of the known,
which, as stated above, is the method of
science, but you explain the unknown
in terms of the more unknown. Try
to mentally visualise this soul as an
entity distinct from the body, and the
difficulty immediately appears.
From
the side of science all that we are war
ranted in stating is that the terror, hope,
sensation, and calculation of Lange’s
merchant are psychical phenomena pro
duced by, or associated with, the mole
cular processes set up by waves of light
in a previously prepared brain.
When facts present themselves let us
dare to face them, but let the man of
science equally dare to confess ignorance
where it prevails. What then is the
causal connection, if any, between the
objective and subjective—between mole
cular motions and states of conscious
ness ? My answer is : I do not see the
connection, nor have I as yet met any
body who does. It is no explanation to
say that the objective and subjective
effects are two sides of one and the same
phenomenon. Why should the pheno
menon have two sides ? This is the very
core of the difficulty. There are plenty
of molecular motions which do not
exhibit this two-sidedness. Does water
think or feel when it runs into frost-ferns
upon a window-pane ? If not, why
should the molecular motion of the brain
be yoked to this mysterious companion
—consciousness ? We can form a cohe
rent picture of the physical processes—
the stirring of the brain, the thrilling
of the nerves, the discharging of the
muscles, and all the subsequent mecha
nical motions of the organism. But we
can present to our minds no picture
ef the process whereby consciousness
emerges, either as a necessary link or as
an accidental by-product of this series of
actions. Yet it certainly does emerge—
the prick of a pin suffices to prove that
molecular motion can produce conscious
ness. The reverse process of the pro
duction of motion by consciousness is
equally unpresentable to the mind. We
are here, in fact, upon the boundary line
of the intellect, where the ordinary
canons of science fail to extricate us
from our difficulties. If we are true to
these canons, we must deny to subjective
phenomena all influence on physical
processes. Observation proves that they
interact, but in passing from one to the
other we meet a blank which mechanical
deduction is unable to fill.
Frankly
stated, we have here to deal with facts
almost as difficult to seize mentally as
the idea of a soul.
And if you are
content to make your “ soul ” a poetic
rendering of a phenomenon which refuses
the yoke of ordinary physical laws, I,
for one, would not object to this exercise
of ideality. Amid all our speculative
uncertainty, however, there is one prac
tical point as clear as the day; namely,
that the brightness and the usefulness of
life, as well as its darkness and disaster,
depend to a great extent upon our own
use or abuse of this miraculous organ.
Accustomed as I am to harsh lan
guage, I am quite prepared to hear my
“ poetic rendering ” branded as a “ false
hood ” and a “ fib.” The vituperation is
unmerited, for poetry or ideality and
untruth are assuredly very different
things. The one may vivify, while the
other kills. When St. John extends the
notion of a soul to “souls washed in
the blood of Christ ” does he “ fib ” ?
Indeed, if the appeal to ideality is cen
surable, Christ himself ought not to
have escaped censure. Nor did he
escape it. “ How can this man give us
his flesh to eat ?” expressed the sceptical
flouting of unpoetic natures. Such are
still among us.
Cardinal Manning
would doubtless tell any Protestant who
rejects the doctrine of transubstantiation
that he “ fibs ” away the plain words of.
his Saviour when he reduces “ the Body
of the Lord ” in the sacrament to a mere
figure of speech.
Though misuse may render it grotesque
or insincere, the idealisation of ancient
�SCIENCE AND MAN
conceptions, when done consciously and
above board, has, in my opinion, an im
portant future. We are not radically
different from our historic ancestors, and
any feeling which affected them pro
foundly requires only appropriate, cloth
ing to affect us. The world will not
lightly relinquish its heritage of poetic
feeling, and metaphysic will be welcomed
when it abandons its pretensions to
scientific discovery and consents to be
ranked as a kind of poetry. “A good
symbol,”says Emerson, “is a missionary
to persuade thousands. The Vedas, the
Edda, the Koran, are each remembered
by its happiest figure. There is no more
welcome gift to men than a new symbol.
They assimilate themselves to it, deal
with it in all ways, and it will last a
hundred years.
Then comes a . new
genius and brings another.” Our ideas
of God and the soul are obviously sub
ject to this symbolic mutation. They
are not now what they were a century
ago. They will not be a century hence
what they are now. Such ideas consti
tute a kind of central energy in the
human mind, capable, like the energy of
the physical universe, of assuming various
shapes and undergoing various trans
formations. They baffle and elude the
theological mechanic who would carve
them to dogmatic forms. They offer
themselves freely to the poet who under
stands his vocation, and whose function
is, or ought to be, to find “ local habita
tion ” for thoughts woven into our sub
jective life, but which refuse to be
mechanically defined.
We now stand face to face with the
final problem. It is this : Are the brain,
and the moral and intellectual processes
known to be associated with the brain—
and, as far as our experience goes, in
dissolubly associated—subject to the
laws which we find paramount in physical
nature? Is the will of man, in other
words, free, or are it and nature equally
“ bound fast in fate ” ? From this latter
conclusion, after he had established it to
the entire satisfaction of his understand
87
ing, the great German thinker Fichte
recoiled. You will find the record of
this struggle between head and heart in
his book, entitled Die. Bestimmung des
Menschen — The Vocation of Man.1
Fichte was determined at all hazards to
maintain his freedom, but the price he
paid for it indicates the difficulty of the
task. To escape from the iron necessity
seen everywhere reigning in physical
nature, he turned defiantly round upon
nature and law, and affirmed both of
them to be the products of his own mind.
He was not going to be the slave of a
thing which he had himself created.
There is a good deal to be said in
favour of this view, but few of us prob
ably would be able to bring into play the
solvent transcendentalism whereby Fichte
melted his chains.
Why do some regard this notion of
necessity with terror, while others do not
fear it at all ? Has not Carlyle some
where said that a belief in destiny is the
bias of all earnest minds ? “ It is not
Nature,” says Fichte, “it is Freedom
itself, by which the greatest and most
terrible disorders incident to our race are
produced. Man is the cruellest enemy
of man.” But the question of moral
responsibility here emerges, and it is the
possible loosening of this responsibility
that so many of us dread. The notion
of necessity certainly failed to frighten
Bishop Butler. He thought it untrue
—even absurd—but he did not fear its
practical consequences. He showed, on
the contrary, in the Analogy, that as
far as human conduct is concerned the
two theories of free-will and necessity
would come to the same in the end.
What is meant by free-will ? Does it
imply the power of producing events
without antecedents?—of starting, as it
were,, upon a creative tour of occurrences
without any impulse from within or from
without ? Let us consider the point.
If there be absolutely or relatively no
reason why a tree should fall, it will not
1 Translated by Dr. William Smith, of Edin
burgh ; Triibner, 1873.
�LECTURES AND ESSA YS
fall; and if there be absolutely or rela
tively no reason why a man should act,
he will not act. It is true that the
united voice of this assembly could not
persuade me that I have not, at this
moment, the power to lift my arm if I
wished to do so. Within this range the
conscious freedom of my will cannot be
questioned. But what about the origin
of the “ wish ” ? Are we, or are we not,
complete masters of the circumstances
which create our wishes, motives, and
tendencies to action ? Adequate reflec
tion will, I think, prove that we are not.
What, for example, have I had to do
with the generation and development of
that which some will consider my total
being, and others a most potent factor of
my total being—the living, speaking
organism which now addresses you ?
As stated at the beginning of this dis
course, my physical and intellectual
textures were woven for me, not
me.
Processes in the conduct or regulation
of which I had no share have made me
what I am. Here, surely, if anywhere,
we are as clay in the hands of the potter.
It is the greatest of delusions to suppose
that we come into this world as sheets of
white paper, on which the age can write
anything it likes, making us good or bad,
noble or mean, as the age pleases. The
age can stunt, promote, or pervert pre
existent capacities, but it cannot create
them. The worthy Robert Owen, who
saw in external circumstances the great
moulders of human character, was
obliged to supplement his doctrine by
making the man himself one of the
circumstances. It is as fatal as it is
cowardly to blink facts because they are
not to our taste. How many disorders,
ghostly and bodily, are transmitted to us
by inheritance ? In our courts of law,
whenever it is a question whether a crime
has been committed under the influence
of insanity, the best guidance the judge
and jury can have is derived from the
parental antecedents of the accused. If
among these insanity be exhibited in any
marked degree, the presumption in the
prisoner’s favour is enormously enhanced,
because the experience of life has taught
both judge and jury that insanity is fre
quently transmitted from parent to child.
I met, some years ago, in a railway
carriage the governor of one of our largest
prisons. He was evidently an observant
and reflective man, possessed of wide
experience gathered in various parts of
the world, and a thorough student of the
duties of his vocation. He told me that
the prisoners in his charge might be
divided into three distinct classes. The
first class consisted of persons who ought
never to have been in prison. External
accident, and not internal taint, had
brought them within the grasp of the
law, and what had happened to them
might happen to most of us. They
were essentially men of sound moral
stamina, though wearing the prison garb.
Then came the largest class, formed of
individuals possessing no strong bias,
moral or immoral, plastic to the touch of
circumstances, which could mould them
into either good or evil members of
society. Thirdly came a class—happily
not a large one—whom no kindness
could conciliate and no discipline tame.
They were sent into this world labelled
“incorrigible,’’wickedness being stamped,
as it were, upon their organisations. It
was an unpleasant truth, but, as a truth,
it ought to be faced. For such criminals
the prison over which he ruled was
certainly not the proper place. If con
fined at all, their prison should be on a
desert island, where the deadly contagium
of their example could not taint the
moral air. But the sea itself he was
disposed to regard as a cheap and appro
priate substitute for the island.
It
seemed to him evident that the State
would benefit if prisoners of the first
class were liberated ; prisoners of the
second class educated; and prisoners of
the third class put compendiously under
water.
It is not, however, from the observa
tion of individuals that the argument
against “ free-will,” as commonly under
stood, derives its principal force. It is, as
already hinted, indefinitely strengthened
�SCIENCE AND MAN
when extended to the race. Most of
you have been forced to listen to the
outcries and denunciations which rang
discordant through the land for some
years after the publication of Mr. Darwin’s
Origin of Species. Well, the world—even
the clerical world—has for the most part
settled down in the belief that Mr.
Darwin’s book simply reflects the truth
of nature : that we who are now “ fore
most in the files of time ” have come to
the front through almost endless stages
of promotion from lower to higher forms
of life.
If to any one of us were given the
privilege of looking back through the
aeons across which life has crept towards
its present outcome, his vision, according
to Darwin, would ultimately reach a
point when the progenitors of this
assembly could not be called human.
From that humble society, through the
interaction of its members and the
storing up of their best qualities, a better
one emerged; from this again a better
still; until at length, by the integration
of infinitesimals through ages of ameliora
tion, we came to be what we are to-day.
We of this generation had no conscious
share in the production of this grand
and beneficent result. Any and every
generation which preceded us had just
as little share. The favoured organisms
whose garnered excellence constitutes
our present store owed their advantages,
first, to what we in our ignorance are
obliged to call “accidental variation”;
and, secondly, to a law of heredity in
the passing of which our suffrages were
not collected. With characteristic felicity
and precision Mr. Matthew Arnold lifts
this question into the free air of poetry,
but not out of the atmosphere of truth,
when he ascribes the process of ameliora
tion to “a power not ourselves which
makes for righteousness.” If, then, our
organisms, with all their tendencies and
capacities, are given to us without our
being consulted; and if, while capable
of acting within certain limits in accord
ance with our wishes, we are not masters
of the circumstances in which motives
89
and wishes originate; if, finally, our
motives and wishes determine our actions
—in what sense can these actions be
said to be the result of free-will ?
Here, again, we are confronted with
the moral responsibility, which, as it has
been much talked of lately, it is desirable
to meet. With the view of removing
the fear of our falling back into the con
dition of “ the ape and tiger,” so sedu
lously excited by certain writers, I propose
to grapple with this question in its
rudest form, and in the most uncom
promising way. “ If,” says the robber,
the ravisher, or the murderer, “ I act
because I must act, what right have you
to hold me responsible for my deeds ?”
The reply is, “ The right of society to
protect itself against aggressive and
injurious forces, whether they be bond
or free, forces of nature or forces of
man.”
“ Then,” retorts the criminal,
“ you punish me for what I cannot help.”
“ Let it be granted,” says society ; “ but
had you known that the treadmill or the
gallows was certainly in store for you,
you might have ‘helped.’ Let us reason
the matter fully and frankly out. We
may entertain no malice or hatred against
you; it is enough that with a view to
our own safety and purification we are
determined that you and such as you
shall not enjoy liberty of evil action in
our midst. You, who have behaved as
a wild beast, we claim the right to cage
or kill as we should a wild beast. The
public safety is a matter of more impor
tance than the very limited chance of
your moral renovation, while the know
ledge that you have been hanged by the
neck may furnish to others about to do
as you have done the precise motive
which will hold them back. If your act
be such as to invoke a minor penalty, then
not only others, but yourself, may profit
by the punishment which we inflict. On
the homely principle that ‘ a burnt child
dreads the fire,’ it will make you think
twice before venturing on a repetition of
your crime. Observe, finally, the con
sistency of our conduct. You offend,
�90
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
you say, because you cannot help offend
ing, to the public detriment. We punish,
is our reply, because we cannot help
punishing, for the public good. Practi
cally, then, as Bishop Butler predicted,
we act as the world acted when it sup
posed the evil deeds of its criminals to
be the products of free-will.”1
“ What,” I have heard it argued, “ is
the use of preaching about duty if a
man’s predetermined position in the
moral world renders him incapable of
profiting by advice ?” Who knows that
he is incapable? The preacher’s last
word is a factor in the man’s conduct,
and it may be a most important factor,
unlocking moral energies which might
otherwise remain imprisoned and unused.
If the preacher thoroughly feel that words
of enlightenment, courage, and admoni
tion enter into the list of forces employed
by Nature herself for man’s amelioration,
since she gifted man with speech, he
will suffer no paralysis to fall upon his
tongue. Dung the fig-tree hopefully,
and not until its barrenness has been
demonstrated beyond a doubt let the
sentence go forth, “Cut it down, why
cumbereth it the ground ?”
I remember when a youth in the town
of Halifax, some two and thirty years
ago, attending a lecture given by a young
man to a small but select audience. The
aspect of the lecturer was earnest and
practical, and his voice soon rivetted
attention. He spoke of duty, defining
it as a debt owed, and there was a kind
ling vigour in his words which must have
strengthened the sense of duty in the
minds of those who heard him.
No
speculations regarding the freedom of the
will could alter the fact that the words of
that young man did me good. His
name was George Dawson. He also
spoke, if you will allow me to allude to
it, of a social subject much discussed at
the time—the Chartist subject of “ level
ling.” Suppose, he says, two men to be
1 An eminent Church dignitary describes all
this, not unkindly, as “ truculent logic.” I think
it worthy of his Grace’s graver consideration.
equal at night, and that one rises at six,
while the other sleeps till nine next
morning, what becomes of your level
ling? And, in so speaking, he made
himself the mouthpiece of Nature, which,
as we have seen, secures advance, not by
the reduction of all to a common level,
but by the encouragement and conserva
tion of what is best.
It may be urged that, in dealing as
above with my hypothetical criminal, I
am assuming a state of things brought
about by the influence of religions which
include the dogmas of theology and the
belief in free-will—a state, namely, in
which a moral majority control and keep
in awe an immoral minority. The heart
of man is deceitful above all things, and
desperately wicked. Withdraw, then, our
theologic sanctions, including the belief
in free-will, and the condition of the race
will be typified by the samples of indi
vidual wickedness which have been
above adduced. We shall, that is, become
robbers, and ravishers, and murderers.
From much that has been written of late
it would seem that this astounding infe
rence finds house-room in many minds.
Possibly, the people who hold such views
might be able to illustrate them by indi
vidual instances.
“ The fear of hell’s a hangman’s whip,
To keep the wretch in order.”
Remove the fear, and the wretch, follow
ing his natural instinct, may become
disorderly; but I refuse to accept him as
a sample of humanity. “ Let us eat and
drink, for to-morrow we die ” is by no
means the ethical consequence of a
rejection of dogma. To many of you
the name of George Jacob Holyoake is
doubtless familiar, and you are probably
aware that at no man in England has the
term “ atheist ” been more frequently
pelted. There are, moreover, really few
who have more completely liberated
themselves from theologic notions.
Among working-class politicians Mr.
Holyoake is a leader. Does he exhort
his followers to “ Eat and drink, for
to-morrow we die”? Not so. In the
�SCIENCE AND MAN
August number of the Nineteenth Cen
tury you will find these words from his
pen : “ The gospel of dirt is bad enough,
but the gospel of mere material comfort
is much worse.” He contemptuously
calls the Comtist championship of the
working man “ the championship of the
trencher.” He would place “the leanest
liberty which brought with it the dignity
and power of self-help ” higher than
“ any prospect of a full plate without it.”
Such is the moral doctrine taught by
this “atheistic” leader; and no Christian,
I apprehend, need be ashamed of it.
Most heartily do I recognise and
admire the spiritual radiance, if I may
use the term, shed by religion on
the minds and lives of many personally
known to me. At the same time I can
not but observe how signally, as regards
the production of anything beautiful,
religion fails in other cases. Its pro
fessor and defender is sometimes at
bottom a brawler and a clown. These
differences depend upon primary dis
tinctions of character which religion does
not remove. It may comfort some to
know that there are among us many
whom the gladiators of the pulpit would
call “ atheists ” and “ materialists,” whose
lives, nevertheless, as tested by any ac
cessible standard of morality, would con
trast more than favourably with the
lives of those who seek to stamp them
with this offensive brand. When I say
“ offensive,” I refer simply to the inten
tion of those who use such terms, and
not because atheism or materialism,
when compared with many of the notions
ventilated in the columns of religious
newspapers, has any particular offensive
ness for me. If I wished to find men
who are scrupulous in their adherence to
engagements, whose words are their bond,
and to whom moral shiftiness of any kind
is subjectively unknown; if I wanted a
loving father, a faithful husband, an
honourable neighbour, and a just citizen
—I should seek him, and find him, among
the band of “ atheists ” to which I refer.
I have known some of the most pro
nounced among them not only in life but
9i
in death—seen them approaching with
open eyes the inexorable goal, with no
dread of a “ hangman’s whip,” with no
hope of a heavenly crown, and still as
mindful of their duties, and as faithful in
the discharge of them, as if their eternal
future depended upon their latest deeds.
In letters addressed to myself, and in
utterances addressed to the public, Fara
day is often referred to as a sample of
the association of religious faith with
moral elevation. I was locally intimate
with him for fourteen or fifteen years of
my life, and had thus occasion to observe
how nearly his character approached
what might, without extravagance, be
called perfection. He was strong but
gentle, impetuous but self-restrained; a
sweet and lofty courtesy marked his
dealings with men and women; and
though he sprang from the body of the'
people, a nature so fine might well have
been distilled from the flower of antece
dent chivalry. Not only in its broader
sense was the Christian religion necessary
to Faraday’s spiritual peace, but in what
many would call the narrow sense held
by those described by Faraday himself
as “ a very small and despised sect of
Christians, known, if known at all, as
Sandemanians,” it constituted the light
and comfort of his days.
Were our experience confined to such
cases, it would furnish an irresistible
argument in favour of the association of
dogmatic religion with moral purity and
grace. But, as already intimated, our
experience is not thus confined. In
further illustration of this point, we may
compare with Faraday a philosopher of
equal magnitude, whose character, in
cluding gentleness and strength, candour
and simplicity, intellectual power and
moral elevation, singularly resembles that
of the great Sandemanian, but who has
neither shared the theologic views nor
the religious emotions which formed so
dominant a factor in Faraday’s life. I
allude to Mr. Charles Darwin, the Abra
ham of scientific men—a searcher as
obedient to the command of truth as was
the patriarch to the command of God.
�92
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
I cannot, therefore, as so many desire,
look upon Faraday’s religious belief as
the exclusive source of qualities shared
so conspicuously by one uninfluenced by
that belief. To a deeper virtue belonging
to human nature in its purer forms I am
disposed to refer the excellence of both.
Superstition may be defined as con
structive religion, which has grown incon
gruous with intelligence. We may admit,
with Fichte, “that superstition has un
questionably constrained its subjects to
abandon many pernicious practices and
to adopt many useful ones the real loss
accompanying its decay at the present
day has been thus clearly stated by the
same philosopher: “ In so far as these
lamentations do not proceed from the
priests themselves—whose grief at the
loss of their dominion over the human
mind we can well understand—but from
the politicians, the whole matter resolves
itself into this, that government has
thereby become more difficult and expen
sive. The judge was spared the exercise
of his own sagacity and penetration
when, by threats of relentless damnation,
he could compel the accused to make
confession. The evil spirit formerly per
formed without reward services for which
in later times judges and policemen have
to be paid.”
No man ever felt the need of a high
and ennobling religion more thoroughly
than this powerful and fervid teacher,
who, by the way, did not escape the
brand of “atheist.” But Fichte asserted
emphatically the power and sufficiency
of morality in its own sphere. “ Let us
consider,” he says, “the highest which
man can possess in the absence of
religion—I mean pure morality.
The
moral man obeys the law of duty in his
breast absolutely, because it is a law unto
him; and he does whatever reveals itself
to him as his duty simply because it is
duty. Let not the impudent assertion
be repeated that such an obedience,
without regard to consequences, and
without desire for consequences, is in
itself impossible and opposed to human
nature.” So much for Fichte. Faraday
was equally distinct. “ I have no inten
tion,” he says, “ of substituting anything
for religion, but I wish to take that part
of human nature which is independent
of it. Morality, philosophy, commerce,
the various institutions and habits of
society, are independent of religion and
may exist without it.” These were the
words of his youth, but they expressed
his latest convictions. I would add that
the muse of Tennyson never reached a
higher strain than when it embodied the
sentiment of duty in ./Enone :—
“And, because right is right, to follow right
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.”
Not in the way assumed by our dog
matic teachers has the morality of human
nature been built up. The power which
has moulded us thus far has worked
with stem tools upon a very rigid stuff.
What it has done cannot be so readily
undone; and it has endowed us with
moral constitutions which take pleasure
in the noble, the beautiful, and the true,
just as surely as it has endowed us with
sentient organisms, which find aloes
bitter and sugar sweet. That power did
not work with delusions, nor will it stay
its hand when such are removed. Facts,
rather than dogmas, have been its
ministers—hunger and thirst, heat and
cold, pleasure and pain, fervour, sym
pathy, aspiration, shame, pride, love,
hate, terror, awe—such were the forces
whose interaction and adjustment through
out an immeasurable past wove the triplex
web of man’s physical, intellectual, and
moral nature, and such are the forces
that will be effectual to the end.
You may retort that even on my own
showing “ the power which makes for
righteousness ” has dealt in delusions;
for it cannot be denied that the beliefs
of religion, including the dogmas of
theology and the freedom of the will,
have had some effect in moulding the
moral world. Granted; but I do not
think that this goes to the root of the
matter. Are you quite sure that those
beliefs and dogmas are primary, and not
derived ?—that they are not the products,
�SCIENCE AND MAN
instead of being the creators, of man’s
moral nature ?
I think it is in one of
the Latter-Day Pamphlets that Carlyle
corrects a reasoner, who deduced the
nobility of man from a belief in heaven,
by telling him that he puts the cart
before the horse, the real truth being
that the belief in heaven is derived from
the nobility of man. The bird’s instinct
to weave its nest is referred to by Emerson
as typical of the force which built cathe
drals, temples, and pyramids :—
“ Knowest thou what wove yon woodbird’s nest
Of leaves and feathers from her breast,
Or how the fish outbuilt its shell,
Painting with morn each annual cell ?
Such and so grew these holy piles
While love and terror laid the tiles;
Earth proudly wears the Parthenon
As the best gem upon her zone;
And Morning opes with haste her lids
To gaze upon the Pyramids;
O’er England’s abbeys bends the sky
As on its friends with kindred eye;
For ut of Thought’s interior sphere
These wonders rose to upper air,
And nature gladly gave them place,
Adopted them into her race,
And granted them an equal date
With Andes and with Ararat.”
Surely, many utterances which have been
accepted as descriptions ought to be
interpreted as aspirations, or as having
their roots in aspiration instead of in
objective knowledge. Does the song of
the herald angels, “ Glory to God in the
highest, and on earth peace, goodwill
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 posses
sion—a ferment long confined to indivi
duals, but which may by-and-by become
the leaven of the race. If the latter,
then belief in the entire transaction is
93
wrecked by non-fulfilment. Look to the
East at the present moment as a com
ment on the promise of peace on earth
and goodwill toward men. That promise
is a dream ruined by the experience of
eighteen centuries, and in that ruin is
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 purer and less shadowy
forms in the poetry, philosophy, and
practice of the future.
Thus, following the lead of physical
science, we are brought without solution
of continuity into the presence of pro
blems which, as usually classified, lie
entirely outside the domain of physics.
To these problems thoughtful and pene
trative minds are now applying those
methods of research which in physical
science have proved their truth by their
fruits. There is on all hands a growing
repugnance to invoke the supernatural
in accounting for the phenomena of
human life; and the thoughtful minds
just referred to, finding no trace of
evidence in favour of any other origin,
are driven to seek in the interaction of
social forces the genesis and development
of man’s moral nature. If they succeed
in their search—and I think they are
sure to succeed—social duty will be
raised to a higher level of significance,
and the deepening sense of social duty
will, it is to be hoped, lessen, if not
obliterate, the strifes and heartburnings
which now beset and disfigure our social
life. Towards this great end it behoves
us one and all to work; and devoutly
wishing its consummation, I have the
honour, ladies and gentlemen, to bid you
a friendly farewell.
�94
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
VITALITY
[i863]
The origin, growth, and energies of
living things are subjects which have
always engaged the attention of thinking
men. To account for them it was usual
to assume a special agent, free to a great
extent from the limitations observed
among the powers of inorganic nature.
This agent was called vital force ; and,
under its influence, plants and- animals
were supposed to collect their materials
and to assume determinate forms. Within
the last few years, however, our ideas of
vital processes have undergone profound
modifications ; and the interest, and
even disquietude, which the change has
excited are amply evidenced by the dis
cussions and protests which are now
common regarding the phenomena of
vitality. In tracing these phenomena
through all their modifications, the most
advanced philosophers of the present
day declare that they ultimately arrive
at a single source of power, from which
all vital energy is derived ; and the dis
quieting circumstance is that this source
is not the direct fiat of a supernatural
agent, but a reservoir of what, if we do
not accept the creed of Zoroaster, must
be regarded as inorganic force. In short,
it is considered as proved that all the
energy which we derive from plants and
animals is drawn from the sun.
A few years ago, when the sun was
affirmed to be the source of life, nine
out of ten of those who are alarmed by
the form which this assertion has latterly
assumed would have assented, in a general
way, to its correctness. Their assent,
however, was more poetic than scientific,
and they were by no means prepared to
see a rigid mechanical signification
attached to their words. This, however,
is the peculiarity of modern conclusions:
that there is no creative energy whatever
in the vegetable or animal organism, but
that all the power which we obtain from
the muscles of man and animals, as much
as that which we develop by the combus
tion of wood or coal, has been produced
at the sun’s expense. The sun is so much
the colder that we may have our fires; he
is also so much the colder that we may
have our horse-racing and Alpine climb
ing. It is, for example, certain that the
sun has been chilled to an extent capable
of being accurately expressed in num
bers, in order to furnish the power which
lifted this year a certain number of
tourists from the vale of Chamouni to
the summit of Mont Blanc.
. To most minds, however, the energy
of light and heat presents itself as a
thing totally distinct from ordinary
mechanical energy. Either of them can
nevertheless be derived from the other.
Wood can be raised by friction to the
temperature of ignition; while by properly
striking a piece of iron a skilful black
smith can cause it to glow. Thus, by
the rpde agency of his hammer, he gene
rates light and heat. This action, if
carried far enough, would produce the
light and heat of the sun. In fact, the
sun’s light and heat have actually been
referred to the fall of meteoric matter
upon his surface; and, whether the sun
is thus supported or not, it is perfectly
certain that he might be thus supported.
Whether, moreover, the whilom molten
condition of our planet was, as supposed
by eminent men, due to the collision of
cosmic masses or not, it is perfectly
certain that the molten condition might
be thus brought about. If, then, solar
light and heat can be produced by the
impact of dead matter, and if from the
light and heat thus produced we can
derive the energies which we have been
accustomed to call vital, it indubitably
follows that vital energy may have a
proximately mechanical origin.
In what sense, then, is the sun to be
regarded as the origin of the energy de
rivable from pLnts and animals? Let
�VITALITY
us try to give an intelligible answer to
this question. Water may be raised from
the sea-level to a high elevation, and
then permitted to descend. In descend
ing it may be made to assume various
forms—to fall in cascades, to spurt in
fountains, to boil in eddies, or to flow
tranquilly along a uniform bed. It may,
moreover, be caused to set complex
machinery in motion, to turn millstones,
throw shuttles, work saws and hammers,
and drive piles. But every form of
power here indicated would be derived
from the original power expended in
raising the water to the height from which
it fell. There is no energy generated by
the machinery ; the work performed by
the water in descending is merely the
parcelling out and distribution of the
work expended in raising it. In precisely
this sense is all the energy of plants and
animals the parcelling out and distribu
tion of a power originally exerted by the
sun. In the case of the water, the source
of the power consists in the forcible
separation of a quantity of the liquid
from a low level of the earth’s surface
and its elevation to a higher position, the
power thus expended being returned by
the water in its descent. In the case of
vital phenomena, the source of power
consists in the forcible separation of the
atoms of compound substances by the
sun. We name the force which draws
the water earthward “ gravity,” and that
which draws atoms together “ chemical
affinity
but these different names must
not mislead us regarding the qualitative
identity of the two forces. They are
both attractions ; and to the intellect the
falling of carbon atoms against oxygen
atoms is not more difficult of concep
tion than the falling of water to the
earth.
The building up of the vegetable, then,
is effected by the sun, through the reduc
tion of chemical compounds. The phe
nomena of animal life are more or less
complicated reversals of these processes
of reduction. We eat the vegetable and
we breathe the oxygen of the air ; and in
our bodies the oxygen, which has been
95
lifted from the carbon and hydrogen
by the action of the sun, again falls
towards them, producing animal heat and
developing animal forms. Through the
most complicated phenomena of vitality
this law runs: the vegetable is pro
duced while a weight rises; the animal is
produced while a weight falls. But the
question is not exhausted here. The
water employed in our first illustration
generates all the motion displayed in its
descent, but the form of the motion
depends on the character of the machinery
interposed in the path of the water. In a
similar way the primary action of the
sun’s rays is qualified by the atoms and
molecules among which their energy is
distributed. Molecular forces determine
the form which the solar energy will
assume. In the separation of the carbon
and oxygen this energy may be so con
ditioned as to result in one case in the
formation of a cabbage and in another
case in the formation of an oak. So also,
as regards the reunion of the carbon and
the oxygen, the molecular machinery
through which the combining energy
acts may in one case weave the texture
of a frog, while in another it may weave
the texture of a man.
The matter of the animal body is that
of inorganic nature. There is no sub
stance in the animal tissues which is not
primarily derived from the rocks, the
water, and the air. Are the forces of
organic matter, then, different in kind
from those of inorganic matter ? The
philosophy of the present day negatives
the question. It is the compounding,
in the organic world, of forces belonging
equally to the inorganic that constitutes
the mystery and the miracle of vitality.
Every portion of every animal body may
be reduced to purely inorganic matter.
A perfect reversal of this process of
reduction would carry us from the inor
ganic to the organic; and such a reversal
is at least conceivable. The tendency,
indeed, of modern science is to break
down the wall of partition between
organic and inorganic, and to reduce
both to the operation of forces which
�9o
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
are the same in kind, but which are
differently compounded.
Consider the question of personal
identity in relation to that of molecular
form. Thirty-four years ago Mayer, of
Heilbronn, with that power of genius
which breathes large meanings into
scanty facts, pointed out that the blood
was “the oil of the lamp of life,” the
combustion of which sustains muscular
action. The muscles are the machinery
by which the dynamic power of the
blood is brought into play. Thus the
blood is consumed. But the whole body,
though more slowly than the blood,
wastes also, so that after a certain number
of years it is entirely renewed. How is
the sense of personal identity maintained
across this flight of molecules ? To man,
as we know him, matter is necessary to
consciousness ; but the matter of any
period may be all changed, while con
sciousness exhibits no solution of con
tinuity. Like changing sentinels, the
oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon that depart
seem to whisper their secret to. their
comrades that arrive, and thus, while the
Non-ego shifts, the Ego remains the
same.
Constancy of form in the
grouping of the molecules, and not con
stancy of the molecules themselves, is
the correlative of this constancy of per
ception. Life is a wave which in no
two consecutive moments of its existence
is composed of the same particles.
Supposing, then, the molecules of the
human body, instead of replacing others,
and thus renewing a pre-existing form,
to be gathered first hand from nature
and put together in the same relative
positions as those which they occupy in
the body. Supposing them to have the
self-same forces and distribution of forces,
the self-same motions and distribution
of motions—would this organised con
course of molecules stand before us as a
sentient thinking being? There seems
no valid reason to believe that it would
not. Or, supposing a planet carved
from the sun, set spinning round an
axis, and revolving round the sun at a
distance from him equal to that of our
earth, would one of the consequences
of its refrigeration be the development
of organic forms ? I lean to the affirma
tive. Structural forces are certainly in
the mass, whether or not those forces
reach to the extent of forming a plant
or an animal. In an amorphous drop
of water lie latent all the marvels of
crystalline force; and who will set limits
to the possible play of molecules in a
cooling planet ? If these statements
startle, it is because matter has been
defined and maligned by philosophers
and theologians who were equally
unaware that it is, at bottom, essentially
mystical and transcendental.
Questions such as these derive their
present interest in great part from their
audacity, which is sure, in due time, to
disappear. And the sooner the public
dread is abolished with reference to such
questions the better for the cause of truth.
As regards knowledge, physical science
is polar. In one sense it knows, or
is destined to know, everything. In
another sense it knows nothing. Science
understands much of this intermediate
phase of things that we call nature, of
which it is the product; but science
knows nothing of the origin or destiny
of nature. Who or what made the
sun and gave his rays their alleged
power? Who or what made and bestowed
upon the ultimate particles of matter
their wondrous power of varied inter
action ? Science does not know : the
mystery, though pushed back, remains
unaltered. To many of us who feel
that there are more things in heaven
and earth than are dreamt of in the
present philosophy of science, but who
have been also taught, by baffled efforts,
how vain is the attempt to grapple with
the Inscrutable, the ultimate frame of
mind is that of Goethe :—
“ Who dares to name His name,
Or belief in Him proclaim,
Veiled in mystery as He is, the All-enfolder ?
Gleams across the mind His light,
Feels the lifted soul His might,
Dare it then deny His reign, the All-up
holder ?”
�REFLECTIONS ON PRA YER AND NA TURAL LA W
REFLECTIONS ON PRAYER AND NATURAL LAW
1861
Amid the apparent confusion and caprice
of natural phenomena, which roused
emotions hostile to calm investigation, it
must for ages have seemed hopeless to
seek for law or orderly relation; and
before the thought of law dawned upon
the unfolding human mind these other
wise inexplicable effects were referred to
personal agency. In the fall of a cataract
the savage saw the leap of a spirit, and
the echoed thunder-peal was to him the
hammer-clang of an exasperated god.
Propitiation of these terrible powers was
the consequence, and sacrifice was offered
to the demons of earth and air.
But observation tends to chasten the
emotions and to check those structural
efforts of the intellect which have emotion
for their base.
One by one natural
phenomena came to be associated with
their proximate causes; the idea of direct
personal volition mixing itself with the
economy of nature retreating more and
more. Many of us fear this change. Our
religious feelings are dear to us, and we
look with suspicion and dislike on any
philosophy the apparent tendency of
which is to dry them up. Probably every
change from ancient savagery to our
present enlightenment has excited, in a
greater or less degree, fears of this
kind. But the fact is, that we have not
yet determined whether its present form
is necessary to the life and warmth of
religious feeling. We may err in linking
the imperishable with the transitory, and
confound the living plant with the decay
ing pole to which it clings. My object,
however, at present is not to argue, but
to mark a tendency. We have ceased
to propitiate the powers of nature—
ceased even to pray for things in manifest
contradiction to natural laws. In Pro
testant countries, at least, I think it is
conceded that the age of miracles is
past.
At an auberge near the foot of the
Rhone glacier I met, in the summer of
1858, an athletic young priest, who, after
a solid breakfast, including a bottle of
wine, informed me that he had come up
to “ bless the mountains.” This was the
annual custom of the place. Year by
year the Highest was entreated, by official
intercessors, to make such meteorological
arrangements as should ensure food and
shelter for the flocks and herds of the
Valaisians. A diversion of the Rhone,
or a deepening of the river’s bed, would,
at the time I now mention, have been of
incalculable benefit to the inhabitants of
the valley. But the priest would have
shrunk from the idea of asking the
Omnipotent to open a new channel for
the river, or to cause a portion of it to
flow over the Grimsel pass, and down the
valley of Oberhasli to Brientz. This he
would have deemed a miracle, and he
did not come to ask the Creator to per
form miracles, but to do something which
he manifestly thought lay quite within
the bounds of the natural and nonmiraculous.
A Protestant gentleman
who was present at the time smiled at
this recital. He had no faith in the
priest’s blessing; still, he deemed his
prayer different in kind from a request
to open a new river-cut, or to cause the
water to flow up-hill.
In a similar manner the same Pro
testant gentleman would doubtless smile
at the honest Tyrolese priest who, when
he feared the bursting of a glacier dam,
offered the sacrifice of the Mass upon
the ice as a means of averting the
calamity. That poor man did not expect
to convert the ice into adamant, or to
strengthen its texture, so as to enable it
D
�LECTURES AND ESSA YS
98
then, was the mine in which our gem
must be sought. A modified and more
refined form of the ancient faith revived;
and, for aught I know, a remnant of
sanguine designers may at the present
moment be engaged on the problem
which like-minded men in former ages
left unsolved.
And why should a perpetual motion,
even under modern conditions, be impos
sible? The answer to this question is
the statement of that great generalisation
of modern science which is known under
the name of the Conservation of Energy.
This principle asserts that no power can
make its appearance in nature without
an equivalent expenditure of some other
power ; that natural agents are so related
to each other as to be mutually con
vertible, but that no new agency is
created. Light runs into heat; heat into
electricity; electricity into magnetism ;
magnetism into mechanical force; and
mechanical force again into light and
heat. The Proteus changes, but he is
ever the same; and his changes in
nature, supposing no miracle to super
vene, are the expression, not of spon
taneity, but of physical necessity. A
perpetual motion, then, is deemed impos
sible because it demands the creation
of energy, whereas the principle of Con
servation is—no creation, but infinite
conversion.
It is an old remark that the law which
moulds a tear also rounds a planet. In
the application of law in nature the
terms “great” and “small” are unknown.
Thus the principle referred to teaches us
that the Italian wind, gliding over the
crest of the Matterhorn, is as firmly
ruled as the earth in its orbital revolution
round the sun; and that the fall of its
vapour into clouds is exactly as much a
matter of necessity as the return of the
seasons. The dispersion, therefore,, of
the slightest mist by the special volition
of the Eternal would be as much a
miracle as the rolling of the Rhone over
the Grimsel precipices, down the valley
of Hasli to Meyringen and Brientz.
■ See Helmholtz, Wechselwirkung der NaturIt seems to me quite beyond the
to withstand the pressure of the water;
nor did he expect that his sacrifice would
cause the stream to roll back upon its
source and relieve him, by a miracle, of
its presence. But beyond the boundaries
of his knowledge lay a region where rain
was generated, he knew not how. He
was not so presumptuous as to expect , a
miracle, but he firmly believed that in
yonder cloud-land matters could be so
arranged, without trespass on the miracu
lous, that the stream which threatened
him and his people should be caused to
shrink within its proper bounds.
Both these priests fashioned that
which they did not understand to their
respective wants and wishes. In their
case imagination came into play, uncon
trolled by a knowledge of law.
A
similar state of mind was long prevalent
among mechanicians. Many of these,
among whom were to be reckoned men
of consummate skill, were occupied a
century ago with the question of per
petual motion. They aimed at con
structing a machine which should execute
work without the expenditure of power;
and some of them went mad in the
pursuit of this object. The faith in such
a consummation, involving, as it did,
immense personal profit to the inventor,
was extremely exciting, and every attempt
to destroy this faith was met by bitter
resentment on the part of those who
held it. Gradually, however, as men
became more and more acquainted with
the true functions of machinery, the
dream dissolved. The hope of getting
work out of mere mechanical com
binations disappeared; but still there
remained for the speculator a cloudland denser than that which filled the
imagination of the Tyrolese priest, and
out of which he still hoped to evolve
perpetual motion. There was the mystic
store of chemic force, which nobody
understood ; there were heat and light,
electricity and magnetism, all competent
to produce mechanical motion.1 Here,
kriifie.
�REFLECTIONS ON FRA YER AND NATURAL LAW
present power of science to demonstrate
that the Tyrolese priest, or his colleague
of the Rhone valley, asked for an “ im
possibility ” in praying for good weather ;
but Science can demonstrate the incom
pleteness of the knowledge of nature
which limitqfl their prayers to this narrow
ground ; and she may lessen the number
of instances in which we “^.sk amiss ” by
showing that we sometimes pray for the
performance of a miracle when we do
not intend it. She does assert, for
example, that without a disturbance of
natural law, quite as serious as the stop
page of an eclipse or the rolling of the
river Niagara up the Falls, no act of
humiliation, individual or national, could
call one shower from heaven or deflect
towards us a single beam of the sun.
Those, therefore, who believe that the
miraculous is still active in nature may,
with perfect consistency, join in our
periodic prayers for fair weather and for
rain; while those who hold that the age
of miracles is past will, if they be con
sistent, refuse to join in these petitions.
And these latter, if they wish to fall back
upon such a justification, may fairly urge
that the latest conclusions of science are
in perfect accordance with the doctrine
of the Master himself, which manifestly
was that the distribution of natural
phenomena is not affected by moral or
religious causes. “ He maketh His sun
to rise on the evil and on the good,
and sendeth rain on the just and on the
unjust.” Granting “the power of Free Will
in man,” so strongly claimed by Professor
Mansel in his admirable defence of the
belief in miracles, and assuming the
efficacy of free prayer to produce
changes in external nature, it necessarily
follows that natural laws are more or less
at the mercy of man’s volition, and no
conclusion founded on the assumed per
manence of those laws would be worthy
of confidence.
It is a wholesome sign for England
that she numbers among her clergy men
wise enough to understand all this, and
courageous enough to act up to their
knowledge. Such men do service to
99
public character by encouraging a manly
and intelligent conflict with the real
causes of disease and scarcity, instead of
a delusive reliance on supernatural aid.
But they have also a value beyond this
Local and temporary one. They prepare
the public mind for changes which,
though inevitable, could hardly, without
such preparation, be wrought without
violence. Iron is strong; still, water in
crystallising will shiver an iron envelope,
and the more unyielding the metal is
the worse for its safety. There are in the
world men who would encompass philo
sophic speculation by a rigid envelope,
hoping thereby to restrain it, but in
reality giving it explosive force. In
England, thanks to men of the stamp to
which I have alluded, scope is gradually
given to thought for changes of aggrega
tion, and the envelope slowly alters its
form, in accordance with the necessities
of the time.
The proximate origin of the foregoing slight
article, and probably the remoter origin of the
next following one, was this. Some years ago
a day of prayer and humiliation, on account of
a bad harvest, was appointed by the proper
religious authorities; but certain clergymen of
the Church of England, doubting the wisdom
of the demonstration, declined to join in the
services of the day. For this act of noncon
formity they were severely censured by some
of their brethren. Rightly or wrongly, my
sympathies were on the side of these men ; and,
to lend them a helping hand in their struggle
against odds, I inserted the foregoing chapter
in a little book entitled Mountaineering in
1861. Some time subsequently I received from a
gentleman of great weight and distinction in the
scientific world, and, I believe, of perfect ortho
doxy in the religious one, a note directing my
attention to an exceedingly thoughtful article on
Prayer and Cholera in the Pall Mall Gazette.
My eminent correspondent deemed the article
a fair answer to the remarks made by me in
i86r. I, also, was struck by the temper and
ability of the article; but I could not deem its
arguments satisfactory, and in a short note to
the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette I ventured
to state so much. The letter elicited some very
able replies, and a second leading article was
also devoted to the subject. In answer to all,
I risked the publication of a second letter, and
soon afterwards, by an extremely courteous note
from the editor, the discussion was closed.
Though thus stopped locally, the discussion
flowed in other directions.
Sermons were
�TOO
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
demonstrate earnestness, while gentlemanly
feeling was too predominant to permit that
earnestness to contract itself to bigotry or to
clothe itself in abuse. It was probably the
memory of this discussion which caused another
excellent friend of mine to recommend to my
perusal the exceedingly able work which in the
next article I have endeavoured to review.
*
preached, essays were published, articles were
written, while a copious correspondence occupied
the pages of some of the religious newspapers.
It gave me sincere pleasure to notice that the
discussion, save in a few cases where natural
coarseness had the upper hand, was conducted
with a minimum of vituperation. The severity
shown was hardly more than sufficient to
MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES'
1867
It is my privilege to enjoy the friendship
of a select number of religious men,
with whom I converse freely upon theo
logical subjects, expressing without dis
guise the notions and opinions I enter
tain regarding their tenets, and hearing
in return these notions and opinions
subjected to criticism. I have thus far
found them liberal and loving men,
patient in hearing, tolerant in reply, who
know how to reconcile the duties of
courtesy with the earnestness of debate.
From one of these, nearly a year ago, I
received a note, recommending strongly
to my attention the volume of Bamp ton
Lectures for 1865, in which the question
of miracles is treated by Mr. Mozley.
Previous to receiving this note, I had in
part made the acquaintance of the work
through an able and elaborate review of
it in the Times. The combined effect
of the letter and the review was to make
the book the companion of my summer
tour in the Alps. There, during the wet
and snowy days which were only too
prevalent in 1866, and during the days
of rest interpolated between days of toil,
I made myself more thoroughly con
versant with Mr. Mozley’s volume. I
found it clear and strong—an intellectual
tonic, as bracing and pleasant to my mind
as the keen air of the mountains was to
my body. From time to time I jotted
down thoughts regarding it, intending
afterwards to work them up into a
coherent whole. Other duties, however,
interfered with the complete carrying out
of this intention, and what I wrote last
summer I now publish, not hoping to
be able, within any reasonable time, to
render my defence of scientific method
more complete.
Mr. Mozley refers at the outset of his
task to the movement against miracles
which of late years has taken place, and
which determined his choice of a subject.
He acquits modern science of having had
any great share in the production of
this movement. The objection against
miracles, he says, does not arise from
any minute knowledge of the law of
nature, but simply because they are
opposed to that plain and obvious order
of nature which everybody sees. The
present movement is, he thinks, to be
ascribed to the greater earnestness and
penetration of the present age. _ For
merly miracles were accepted without
question, because without reflection; but
the exercise of the “historic imagina
tion ” is a characteristic of our own time.
Men are now accustomed to place before
themselves vivid images of historic facts;
and when a miracle rises to view, they
halt before the astounding occurrence,
and, realising it with the same clearness
1 Fortnightly Review, New Series, vol. i., p. 645.
�MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES
as if it were now passing before their
eyes, they ask themselves, “ Can this
have taken place ?” In some instances
the effort to answer this question has led
to a disbelief in miracles, in others to a
strengthening of belief.
The aim of
Mr. Mozley’s lectures is to show that the
strengthening of belief is the logical
result which ought to follow from the
examination of the facts.
Attempts have been made by religious
men to bring the Scripture miracles
within the scope of the order of nature,
but all such attempts are rejected by Mr.
Mozley as utterly futile and wide of the
mark. Regarding miracles as a necessary
accompaniment of a revelation, their
evidential value in his eyes depends
entirely upon their deviation from the
order of nature. Thus deviating, they
suggest and illustrate a power higher
than nature, a “ personal will ”; and they
commend the person in whom this power
is vested as a messenger from on high.
Without these credentials such a mes
senger would have no right to demand
belief, even were his assertions regarding
his Divine mission backed by a holy life.
Nor is it by miracles alone that the order
of nature is, or may be, disturbed. The
material universe is also the arena of
‘ ‘ special providences. ” Under these two
heads Mr. Mozley distributes the total
preternatural. One form of the pre
ternatural may shade into the other, as
one colour passes into another in the
rainbow; but while the line which
divides the specially providential from
the miraculous cannot be sharply drawn,
their distinction broadly expressed is this:
that, while a special providence can only
excite surmise more or less probable, it
is “ the nature of a miracle to give proof,
as distinguished from mere surmise, of
Divine design.”
Mr. Mozley adduces various illustra
tions of what he regards to be special
providences
as distinguished from
miracles. “The death of Arius,” he
says, “ was not miraculous, because the
coincidence of the death of a heresiarch
taking place when it was peculiarly
IOI
advantageous to the orthodox faith.......
was not such as to compel the inference
of extraordinary Divine agency; but it
was a special providence, because it
carried a reasonable appearance of it.
The miracle of the Thundering Legion
was a special providence, but not a
miracle, for the same reason, because
the coincidence of an instantaneous fall
of rain, in answer to prayer, carried
some appearance, but not proof, of
preternatural agency.” The eminent
lecturer’s remarks on this head brought
to my recollection certain narratives
published in Methodist magazines, which
I used to read with avidity when a
boy. The general title of these exciting
stories, if I remember right, was “The
Providence of God Asserted,” and in
them the most extraordinary escapes
from peril were recounted and ascribed
to prayer, while equally wonderful
instances of calamity were adduced as
illustrations of Divine retribution. In
such magazines, or elsewhere, I found
recorded the case of the celebrated
Samuel Hick, which, as it illustrates a
whole class of special providences ap
proaching in conclusiveness to miracles,
is worthy of mention here. It is related
of this holy man that, on one occasion,
flour was lacking to make the sacra
mental bread. Grain was present, and
a windmill was present, but there was
no wind to grind the corn. With faith
undoubting, Samuel Hick prayed to the
Lord of the winds : the sails turned, the
corn was ground, after which the wind
ceased. According to the canon of the
Bampton Lecturer, this, though carrying
a strong appearance of an immediate
exertion of Divine energy, lacks by a
hair’s-breadth the quality of a miracle.
For the wind might have arisen, and
might have ceased, in the ordinary
course of nature. Hence the occurrence
did not “ compel the inference of extra
ordinary Divine agency.” In like manner
Mr. Mozley considers that “ the appear
ance of the cross to Constantine was a
miracle, or a special providence, according
to what account of it we adopt. As
�102
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
dist and the Tyrolese peasant than in the
only a meteoric appearance in the shape
heart of Mr. Mozley. Indeed, those
of a cross, it gave some token of preter
feelings belong to the primal powers of
natural agency, but not full evidence.”
man’s nature. A “sceptic” may have
In the Catholic canton of Switzerland
them. They find vent in the battle-cry of
where I now write, and still more among
the Moslem. They take hue and form in
the pious Tyrolese, the mountains are
the hunting-grounds of the Red Indian ;
dotted with shrines, containing offerings
of all kinds, in acknowledgment of and raise all of them, as they raise the
Christian, upon a wave of victory, above
special mercies—legs, feet, arms, and
the terrors of the grave.
hands—of gold, silver, brass, and wood,
The character then of a miracle, as
according as worldly possessions enabled
the grateful heart to express its indebted distinguished from a special providence,
is that the former furnishes proof, while
ness. Most of these offerings are made
to the Virgin Mary. They are recogni in the case of the latter we have only
surmise. Dissolve the element of doubt,
tions of “ special providences,” wrought
and the alleged fact passes from the one
through the instrumentality of the Mother
class of the preternatural into the other.
of God. Mr. Mozley’s belief, that of the
In other words, if a special providence
Methodist chronicler, and that of the
could be proved to be a special provi
Tyrolese peasant, are substantially the
dence, it would cease to be a special
same. Each of them assumes that
providence and become a miracle. There
nature, instead of flowing ever onward
is not the least cloudiness about Mr.
in the uninterrupted rhythm of cause
Mozley’s meaning here. A special pro
and effect, is mediately ruled by the free
vidence is a doubtful miracle. Why,
human will. As regards direct action
then, riot call it so ? The term employed
upon natural phenomena, man’s wish
by Mr. Mozjey conveys no negative sug
and will, as expressed in prayer, are
gestion, whereas the negation of certainty
confessedly powerless; but prayer is the
is the peculiar characteristic of the thing
trigger which liberates the Divine power,
intended to be expressed. There is an
and to this extent, if the will be free, man,
apparent unwillingness on the part of
of course, commands nature.
the lecturer to call a special providence
Did the existence of this belief depend
what his own definition makes it to be.
solely upon the material benefits derived
Instead of speaking of it as a doubtful
from it, it could not, in my opinion, last
miracle, he calls it “ an invisible miracle.”
a decade. As a purely objective fact,
He speaks of the point of contact of
we should soon see that the distribution
supernatural power with the chain of
of natural phenomena is unaffected by
causation being so high up as to be
the merits or the demerits of men; that
wholly, or in part, out of sight, whereas
the law of gravitation crushes the simple
the essence of a special providence is
worshippers of Ottery St. Mary, while
the uncertainty whether there is any con
singing their hymns, just as surely as if
tact at all, either high or low. By the
they were engaged in a midnight brawl.
use of an incorrect term, however, a
The hold of this belief upon the human
grave danger is avoided. For the idea
mind is not due to outward verification,
of doubt, if kept systematically before
but to the inner warmth, force, and
the mind, would soon be fatal to the
elevation with which it is commonly
special providence, considered as a means
associated. It is plain, however, that
of edification. The term employed, on
these feelings may exist under the most
the contrary, invites and encourages the
various forms. They are not limited to
trust which is necessary to supplement the
Church of England Protestantism—they
evidence.
are not even limited to Christianity.
This inner trust, though at first rejected
Though less refined, they are certainly
by Mr. Mozley in favour of external proof,
not less strong in the heart of the Metho
�MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES
is subsequently called upon to do momen
tous duty in regard to miracles. When
ever the evidence of the miraculous seems
incommensurate with the fact which it
has to establish, or rather when the fact
is so amazing that hardly any evidence
is sufficient to establish it, Mr. Mozley
invokes “ the affections.” They must
urge the reason to accept the conclusion,
from which unaided it recoils.
The
affections and emotions are eminently
the court of appeal in matters of real
religion, which is an affair of the heart;
but they are not, I submit, the court in
which to weigh allegations regarding the
credibility of physical facts. These must
be judged by the dry light of the intellect
alone, appeals to the affections being
reserved for cases where moral elevation,
and not historic conviction, is the aim.
It is, moreover, because the result, in
the case under consideration, is deemed
desirable that the affections are called
upon to back it. If undesirable, they
would, with equal right, be called upon to
act the other way. Even to the disciplined
scientific mind this would be a dangerous
doctrine. A favourite theory—the desire
to establish or avoid a certain result—
can so warp the mind as to destroy its
powers of estimating facts.
I have
known men to work for years under a
fascination of this kind, unable to extri
cate themselves from its fatal influence.
They had certain data, but not, as it
happened, enough. By a process exactly
analogous to that invoked by Mr.
Mozley, they supplemented the data,
and went wrong. From that hour their
intellects were so blinded to the percep
tion of adverse phenomena • that they
never reached truth. If, then, to the
disciplined scientific mind this incon
gruous mixture of proof and trust be
fraught with danger, what must it be to
the indiscriminate audience which Mr.
Mozley addresses ? In calling upon
this agency he acts the part of Franken
stein. It is a monster thus evoked that
we see stalking abroad in the degrading
spiritualistic phenomena of the present
day. Again, I say, where the aim is to
elevate the mind, to quicken the moral
sense, to kindle the fire of religion in
the soul, let the affections by all means
be invoked ; but they must not be per
mitted to colour our reports, or to influ
ence our acceptance of reports, of occur
rences in external nature. Testimony
as to natural facts is worthless when
wrapped in this atmosphere of the affec
tions, the most earnest subjective truth
being thus rendered perfectly compatible
with the most astounding objective error.
There are questions in judging of
which the affections or sympathies are
often our best guides, the estimation of
moral goodness being one of these.
But at this precise point, where they are
really of use, Mr. Mozley excludes the
affections and demands a miracle as a
certificate of character. He will not
accept any other evidence of the perfect
goodness of Christ. “No outward life
and conduct,” he says, “ however irre
proachable, could prove His perfect sin
lessness, because goodness depends
upon the inward motive, and the per
fection of the inward motive is not
proved by the outward act.” But surely
the miracle is an outward act, and to
pass from it to the inner motive imposes
a greater strain upon logic than that
involved in our ordinary methods of
estimating men. There is, at least,
moral congruity between the outward
goodness and the inner life, but there is
no such congruity between the miracle
and the life within. The test of moral
goodness laid down by Mr. Mozley is
not the test of John, who says: “He
that doeth righteousness is righteous
nor is it the test of Jesus: “By their
fruits ye shall know them; do men
gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ?”
But it A the test of another: “ If thou
be the Son of God, command that these
stones be made bread.” For my own
part, I prefer the attitude of Fichte to
that of Mr. Mozley. “The Jesus of
John,” says this noble and mighty
thinker, “ knows no other God than
the true God, in whom we all are, and
live, and may be blessed, and out of
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LECTURES AND ESSA VS
whom there is only death and nothing
ness.
And,” continues Fichte, “ he
appeals, and rightly appeals, in support
of this truth, not to reasoning, but to
the inward practical sense of truth in
man, not even knowing any other proof
than this inward testimony: ‘ If any
man will do the will of Him who sent
Me, he shall know of the doctrine
whether it be of God.’ ”
Accepting Mr. Mozley’s test, with
which alone I am now dealing, it is
evident that, in the demonstration of
moral goodness, the quantity of the
miraculous comes into play. Had Christ,
for example, limited himself to the con
version of water into wine, He would
have fallen short of the performance of
Jannes and Jambres; for it is a smaller
thing to convert one liquid into another
than to convert a dead rod into a living
serpent. But Jannes and Jambres, we
are informed, were not good. Hence,
if Mr. Mozley’s test be a true one, a
point must exist on the one side of
which miraculous power demonstrates
goodness, while on the other side it does
not. How is this “point of contrary
flexure ” to be determined ? It . must
lie somewhere between the magicians
and Moses, for within this space the
power passed from the diabolical to the
Divine. But how to mark the point of
passage—how, out of a purely quantita
tive difference in the visible manifestation
of power, we are to infer a total inversion
of quality—it is extremely difficult to
see. Moses, we are informed, produced
a large reptile; Jannes and Jambres
produced a small one. I do not possess
the intellectual faculty which would
enable me to infer, from those data, either
the goodness of the one or the badness
of the other ; and in the highest recorded
manifestations of the miraculous I am
equally at a loss. Let us not play fast
and loose with the miraculous; either it
is a demonstration of goodness in all
cases or in none. If Mr. Mozley accepts
Christ’s goodness as transcendent be
cause He did such works as no other
man did, he ought, logically speaking, to
accept the works of those who, in His
name, had cast out devils, as demon
strating a proportionate goodness on
their part. But it is people of this class
who are consigned to everlasting fire
prepared for the devil and his angels.
Such zeal as that of Mr. Mozley for
miracles tends, I fear, to eat his religion
up. The logical threatens to stifle the
spiritual. The truly religious soul needs
no miraculous proof of the goodness of
Christ. The words addressed to Matthew
at the receipt of custom required no
miracle to produce obedience. It was
by no stroke of the supernatural that
Jesus caused those sent to seize Him to
go backward and fall to the ground. It
was the sublime and holy effluence from
within, which needed no prodigy to
commend it to the reverence even of
his foes.
As regards the function of miracles in
the founding of a religion, Mr. Mozley
institutes a comparison between the
religion of Christ and that of Mohammed;
and he derides the latter as “irrational”
because it does not profess to adduce
miracles in proof of its supernatural
origin. But the religion of Mohammed,
notwithstanding this drawback, has
thriven in the world, and at one time it
held sway over larger populations than
Christianity itself.
The spread and
influence of Christianity are, however,
brought forward by Mr. Mozley as “a
permanent, enormous, and incalculable
practical result” of Christian miracles;
and he makes use of this result to
strengthen his plea for the miraculous.
His logical warrant for this proceeding
is not clear. It is the method of science,
when a phenomenon presents itself to
wards the production of which several
elements may contribute, to exclude
them one by one, so as to arrive at length
at the truly effective cause. Heat, for
example, is associated with a phenome
non; we exclude heat, but the phenome
non remains : hence, heat is not its cause.
Magnetism is associated with a pheno
menon; we exclude magnetism, but the
phenomenon remains: hence, magnetism
�MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES
is not its cause. Thus, also, when we
seek the cause of the diffusion of a religion
—whether it be due to miracles or to
the spiritual force of its founders—we
exclude the miracles, and, finding the
result unchanged, we infer that miracles
are not the effective cause. This impor
tant experiment Mohammedanism has
made for us. It has lived and spread
without miracles; and to assert, in the
face of this, that Christianity has spread
because of miracles is, I submit, opposed
both to the spirit of science and the
common sense of mankind.
The incongruity of inferring moral
goodness from miraculous power has
been dwelt upon above; in another
particular also the strain put by Mr.
Mozley upon miracles is, I think, more
than they can bear. In consistency
with his principles, it is difficult to see
how he is to draw from the miracles of
Christ any certain conclusion as to His
Divine nature. He dwells very forcibly
on what he calls “ the argument from
experience,” in the demolition of which
he takes obvious delight. He destroys
the argument, and repeats it, for the
mere pleasure of again and again knock
ing the breath out of it. Experience, he
urges, can only deal with the past; and
the moment we attempt to project expe
rience a hair’s-breadth beyond the point
it has at any moment reached we are
condemned by reason. It appears to
me that, when he infers from Christ’s
miracles a Divine and altogether super
human energy, Mr. Mozley places himself
precisely under this condemnation. For
what is his logical ground for concluding
that the miracles of the New Testament
illustrate Divine power ? May they not
be the result of expanded human power ?
A miracle he defines as something impos
sible to man. But how does he know
that the miracles of the New Testament
are impossible to man ? Seek as he may,
he has absolutely no reason to adduce
save this—that man has never hitherto
accomplished such things. But does the
fact that man has never raised the dead
prove that he can never raise the dead ?
io5
“ Assuredly not,” must be Mr. Mozley’s
reply; “ for this would be pushing ex
perience beyond the limit it has now
reached—which I pronounce unlawful.”
Then a period may come when man will
be able to raise the dead. If this be
conceded—and I do not see how Mr.
Mozley can avoid the concession—it
destroys the necessity of inferring Christ’s
Divinity from His miracles. He, it may
be contended, antedated the humanity
of the future; as a mighty tidal wave
leaves high upon the beach a mark which
by-and-by becomes the general level of
the ocean. Turn the matter as you will,
no other warrant will be found for the
all-important conclusion that Christ’s
miracles demonstrate Divine power than
an argument which has been stigmatised
by Mr. Mozley as a “ rope of sand ”—the
argument from experience.
The learned Bampton Lecturer would
be in this position, even had he seen
with his own eyes every miracle recorded
in the New Testament. But he has not
seen these miracles; and his intellectual
plight is, therefore, worse. He accepts
these miracles on testimony. Why does
he believe that testimony? How does
he know that it is not delusion; how is
he sure that it is not even fraud ? He
will answer that the writing bears the
marks of sobriety and truth ; and that in
many cases the bearers of this message
to mankind sealed it with their blood.
Granted with all my heart; but whence
the value of all this? Is it not solely
derived from the fact that men, as we
know them, do not sacrifice their lives in
the attestation of that which they know
to be untrue ? Does not the entire value
of the testimony of the Apostles depend
ultimately upon our experience of human
nature ? It appears, then, that those said
to have seen the miracles based their
inferences from what they saw on the
argument from experience, and that Mr.
Mozley bases his belief in their testimony
on the same argument. The weakness
of his conclusion is quadrupled by this
double insertion of a principle of belief
to which he flatly denies rationality. His
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LECTURES AND ESSA YS
reasoning, in fact, cuts two ways—if it
destroys our trust in the order of nature,
it far more effectually abolishes the basis
on which Mr. Mozley seeks to found the
Christian religion.
Over this argument from experience,
which at bottom is his argument, Mr.
Mozley rides rough-shod. There is a
dash of scorn in the energy with which
he tramples on it. Probably some pre
vious writer had made too much of it,
and thus invited his powerful assault.
Finding the difficulty of belief in miracles
to rise from their being in contradiction
to the order of nature, he sets himself to
examine the grounds of our belief in
that order. With a vigour of logic rarely
equalled, and with a confidence in its
conclusions never surpassed, he disposes
of this belief in a manner calculated to
startle those who, without due examina
tion, had come to the conclusion that the
order of nature was secure.
What we mean, he says, by our belief
in the order of nature is the belief that
the future will be like the past. There
is not, according to Mr. Mozley, the
slightest rational basis for this belief :—
That any cause in nature is more permanent
than its existing and known effects, extending
further, and about to produce other and more
instances besides what it has produced already,
we have no evidence. Let us imagine [he con
tinues] the occurrence of a particular physical
phenomenon for the first time. Upon that single
occurrence we should have but the very faintest
expectation of another. If it did occur again,
once or twice, so far from counting on another
occurrence, a cessation would occur as the most
natural event to us. But let it continue one
hundred times, and we should find no hesitation
in inviting persons from a distance to see it; and
if it occurred every day for years, its occurrence
would be a certainty to us, its cessation a marvel.
....... What ground of reason can we assign for an
expectation that any part of the course of nature
will be the next moment what it has been up to
this moment—i.e., for our belief in the uniformity
of nature ? None. No demonstrative reason
can be given, for the contrary to the recurrence
of a fact of nature is no contradiction. No pro
bable reason can be given; for all probable
reasoning respecting the course of nature is
founded upon this presumption of likeness, and
therefore cannot be the foundation of it. No
reason can be given for this belief. It is without
a reason. It rests upon no rational grounds,
and can be traced to no rational principle.
“ Everything,” Mr. Mozley, however,
adds, “ depends upon this belief; every
provision we make for the future, every
safeguard and caution we employ against
it, all calculation, all adjustment of means
to ends, supposes this belief; and yet
this belief has no more producible reason
for it than a speculation of fancy.........It
is necessary, all-important for the pur
poses of life, but solely practical, and
possesses no intellectual character.........
The proper function,” continues Mr.
Mozley, “ of the inductive principle, the
argument from experience, the belief in
the order of nature—by whatever phrase
we designate the same instinct—is to
operate as a practical basis for the affairs
of life and the carrying on of human
society.” To sum up, the belief in the
order of nature is general, but it is “an
unintelligent impulse, of which we can
give no rational account.” It is inserted
into our constitution solely to induce us
to till our fields, to raise our winter fuel,
and thus to meet the future on the per
fectly gratuitous supposition that it will
be like the past.
“ Thus, step by step,” says Mr. Mozley,
with the emphasis of a man who feels
his position to be a strong one, “ has
philosophy loosened the connection of
the order of nature with the ground . of
reason, befriending in exact proportion
as it has done this the principle of
miracles.” For “this belief not having
itself a foundation in reason, the ground
is gone upon which it could be main
tained that miracles, as opposed to the
order of nature, are opposed to reason.”
When we regard this belief in connec
tion with science, “ in which connection
it receives a more imposing name, and
is called the inductive principle,” the
result is the same.
“The inductive
principle is only this unreasoning impulse
applied to a scientifically ascertained
fact.........Science has led up to the fact;
but there it stops, and for converting
this fact into a law a totally unscientific
principle comes into play, the same as
�MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES
that which generalises the commonest
observation of nature.”
The eloquent pleader of the cause of
miracles passes over without a word the
results of scientific investigation, as
proving anything rational regarding the
principles or method by which such
results have been achieved. Here, as
elsewhere, he declines the test: “ By
their fruits shall ye know them,” Perhaps
our best way of proceeding will be to
give one or two examples of the mode in
which men of science apply the unintel
ligent impulse with which Mr. Mozley
credits them, and which shall show, by
illustration, the surreptitious method
whereby they climb from the region of
facts to that of laws.
Before the sixteenth century it was
known that water rises in a pump, the
effect being then explained by the
maxim that “ Nature abhors a vacuum.”
It was not known that there was
any limit to the height to which the
water would ascend, until, on one occa
sion, the gardeners of Florence, while
attempting to raise water to a very great
elevation, found that the column ceased
at a height of thirty-two feet. Beyond
this all the skill of the pump-maker
could not get it to rise. The fact was
brought to the notice of Galileo, and he,
soured by a world which had not treated
his science over kindly, is said to have
twitted the philosophy of the time by
remarking that nature evidently abhorred
a vacuum only to a height of thirty-two
feet. Galileo, however, did not solve
the problem. It was taken up by his
pupil Torricelli, to whom, after due
pondering, the thought occurred that
the water might be forced into the tube
by a pressure applied to the surface of
the liquid outside. But where, under
the actual circumstances, was such a
pressure to be found ? After much
reflection, it flashed upon Torricelli that
the atmosphere might possibly exert this
pressure ; that the impalpable air might
possess weight; and that a column of
water thirty-two feet high might be of
the exact weight necessary to hold the
107
pressure of the atmosphere in equili
brium.
There is much in this process of
pondering and its results which it is
impossible to analyse. It is by a kind
of inspiration that we rise from the wise
and sedulous contemplation of facts to
the principles on which they depend.
The mind is, as it were, a photographic
plate, which is gradually cleansed by the
effort to think rightly, and which, when
so cleansed, and not before, receives
impressions from the light of truth.
This passage from facts to principles is
called induction; and induction, in its
highest form, is, as I have just stated, a
kind of inspiration. But, to make it
sure, the inward sight must be shown to
be in accordance with outward fact. To
prove or disprove the induction, we must
resort to deduction and experiment.
Torricelli reasoned thus : If a column
of water thirty-two feet high holds the
pressure of the atmosphere in equili
brium, a shorter column of a heavier
liquid ought to do the same. Now,
mercury is thirteen times heavier than
water; hence, if my induction be correct,
the atmosphere ought to be able to sus
tain only thirty inches of mercury. Here,
then, is a deduction which can be imme
diately submitted to experiment. Torri
celli took a glass tube a yard or so in
length, closed at one end and open at
the other, and, filling it with mercury, he
stopped the open end with his thumb,
and inverted it into a basin filled with
the liquid metal. One can imagine the
feeling with which Torricelli removed his
thumb, and the delight he experienced
on finding that his thought had forestalled
a fact never before revealed to human
eyes. The column sank, but it ceased
to sink at a height of thirty inches, leav
ing the Torricellian vacuum over head.
From that hour the theory of the pump
was established.
The celebrated Pascal followed Tor
ricelli with another deduction. He
reasoned thus : If the mercurial column
be supported by the atmosphere, the
higher we ascend in the air, the lower
�108
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
the column ought to sink, for the less
will be the weight of the air over head.
He caused a friend to ascend the Puy
de Dome, carrying with him a barometric
column; and it was found that during
the ascent the column sank, and that
during the subsequent descent the column
rose.
Between the time here referred to and
the present, millions of experiments have
been made upon this subject. Every
village pump is an apparatus for such
experiments. In thousands of instances,
moreover, pumps have refused to work;
but on examination it has infallibly been
found that the well was dry, that the
pump required priming, or that some
other defect in the apparatus accounted
for the anomalous action. In every case
of the kind the skill of the pump-maker
has been found to be the true remedy.
In no case has the pressure of the
atmosphere ceased; constancy, as re
gards the lifting of pump-water, has been
hitherto the demonstrated rule of nature.
So also as regards Pascal’s experiment.
His experience has been the universal
experience ever since. Men have climbed
mountains, and gone up in balloons;
but no deviation from Pascal’s result has
ever been observed. Barometers, like
pumps, have refused to act; but instead
of indicating any suspension of the
operations of nature, or any interference
on the part of its author with atmospheric
pressure, examination has in every in
stance fixed the anomaly upon the
instruments themselves. It is this weld
ing, then, of rigid logic to verifying fact
that Mr. Mozley refers to an “unreasoning
impulse.”
Let us now briefly consider the case
of Newton. Before his time men had
occupied themselves with the problem of
the solar system. Kepler had deduced,
from a vast mass of observations, those
general expressions of planetary motion
known as “ Kepler’s laws.” It had
been observed that a magnet attracts
iron; and by one of those flashes of
inspiration which reveal to the human
mind the vast in the minute, the general
in the particular, it had been inferred
that the force by which bodies fall to
the earth might also be an attraction.
Newton pondered all these things. He
looked, as was his wont, into the dark
ness until it became entirely luminous.
How this light arises we cannot explain;
but, as a matter of fact, it does arise.
Let me remark here, that this kind of
pondering is a process with which the
ancients could have been but imperfectly
acquainted. They, for the most part,
found the exercise of fantasy more
pleasant than careful observation and
subsequent brooding over facts. Hence
it is that, when those whose education
has been derived from the ancients speak
of “ the reason of man,” they are apt to
omit from their conception of reason one
of its most important factors. Well,
Newton slowly marshalled his thoughts,
or, rather, they came to him while he
“ intended his mind,” rising like a series
of intellectual births out of chaos. He
made this idea of attraction his own.
But, to apply the idea to the solar system,
it was necessary to know the magnitude
of the attraction, and the law of its
variation with the distance. His con
ceptions first of all passed from the
action of the earth as a whole to that of
its constituent particles. And persistent
thought brought more and more clearly
out the final conclusion, that every par
ticle of matter attracts every other particle
with a force varying inversely as the
square of the distance between the
particles.
Here we have the flower and outcome
of Newton’s induction; and how to
verify it, or to disprove it, was the next
question. The first step of the philo
sopher in this direction was to prove,
mathematically, that if this law of attrac
tion be the true one, if the earth be con
stituted of particles which obey this law,
then the action of a sphere equal to the
earth in size on a body outside of it is
the same as that which would be exerted
if the whole mass of the sphere were
contracted to a point at its centre. Prac
tically speaking, then, the centre of the
�MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES
109
tions extended, the planetary motions
earth is the point from which distances
had obeyed these laws; and neither
must be measured to bodies attracted by
Kepler nor Newton entertained a doubt
the earth.
as to their continuing to obey them.
From experiments executed before his
Year after year, as the ages rolled, they
time, Newton knew the amount of the
believed that those laws would continue
earth’s attraction at the earth’s surface,
to illustrate themselves in the heavens.
or at a distance of 4,000 miles from its
But this was not sufficient. The scien
centre. His object now was to measure
tific mind can find no repose in the mere
the attraction at a greater distance, and
thus to determine the law of its diminu registration of sequence in nature. The
further question intrudes itself with
tion. But how was he to find a body
resistless might, Whence comes the
at a sufficient distance? He had no
sequence ? What is it that binds the
balloon, and, even if he had, he knew
consequent to its antecedent in nature ?
that any height to which he could attain
The truly scientific intellect never can
would be too small to enable him to
attain rest until it reaches the forces by
solve his problem. What did he do ?
which the observed succession is pro
He fixed his thoughts upon the moon, a
duced. It was thus with Torricelli; it
body 240,000 miles, or sixty times the
was thus with Newton; it is thus pre
earth’s radius, from the earth’s centre.
eminently with the scientific man of
He virtually weighed the moon, and
to-day. In common with the most
found that weight to be ^ab-oth of what
ignorant, he shares the belief that spring
it would be at the earth’s surface. This
will succeed winter, that summer will
is exactly what his theory required. I
will not dwell here upon the pause of succeed spring, that autumn will succeed
summer, and that winter will succeed
Newton after his first calculations, or
autumn. But he knows still further—
speak of his self-denial in withholding
and this knowledge is essential to his
them because they did not quite agree
with the observations then at his com intellectual repose—that this succession,
besides being permanent, is, under the
mand. Newton’s action in this matter is
circumstances, necessary ; that the gravi
the normal action of the scientific mind.
tating force exerted between the sun and
If it were otherwise—if scientific men
were not accustomed to demand verifica a revolving sphere with an axis inclined
tion—if they were satisfied with the im to the plane of its orbit must produce
the observed succession of the seasons.
perfect while the perfect is attainable,
Not until this relation between forces
their science, instead of being, as it is, a
fortress of adamant, would be a house of and phenomena has been established is
clay, ill-fitted to bear the buffetings of the law of reason rendered concentric
with the law of nature ; and not until
the theologic storms to which it is
this is effected does the mind of the
periodically exposed.
Thus we see that Newton, like Torri scientific philosopher rest in peace.
The expectation of likeness, then, in
celli, first pondered his facts, illuminated
the procession of phenomena is not that
them with persistent thought, and finally
divined the character of the force of on which the scientific mind founds its
belief in the order of nature. - If the
gravitation. But, having thus travelled
force be permanent, the phenomena are
inward to the principle, he reversed his
necessary, whether they resemble or do
steps, carried the principle outwards, and
not resemble anything that has gone
justified it by demonstrating its fitness to
before. Hence, in judging of the order
external nature.
of nature, our inquiries eventually relate
And here, in passing, I would notice a
to the permanence of force. From
point which is well worthy of attention.
Kepler had deduced his laws from obser Galileo to Newton, from Newton to our
vation. As far back as those observa 1 own time, eager eyes have been scanning
�Ito
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
the heavens, and clear heads have been
pondering the phenomena of the solar
system. The same eyes and minds have
been also observing, experimenting, and
reflecting on the action of gravity at
the surface of the earth. Nothing has
occurred to indicate that the operation
of the law has for a moment been sus
pended ; nothing has ever. intimated
that nature has been crossed by spon
taneous action, or that a state of things
at any time existed which could not be
rigorously deduced from the preceding
state.
Given the distribution of matter, and
the forces in operation, in the time of
Galileo, the competent mathematician
of that day could predict what is now
occurring in our own.
We calculate
eclipses in advance, and find our calcu
lations true to the second. We deter
mine the dates of those that have
occurred in the early times of history,
and find calculation and history in
harmony. Anomalies and perturbations
in the planets have been over and over
again observed; but these, instead of
demonstrating any inconstancy on the
part of natural law, have invariably
been reduced to consequences of that
law. Instead of referring the perturba
tions of Uranus to any interference on
the part of the author of nature with the
law of gravitation, the question which
the astronomer proposed to himself was :
“ How, in accordance with this law, can
the perturbation be produced ?” Guided
by a principle, he was enabled to fix the
point of space in which, if a mass of
matter were placed, the observed per
turbations would follow. We know the
result. The practical astronomer turned
his telescope towards the region which
the intellect of the theoretic astronomer
had already explored, and the planet
now named Neptune was found in its
predicted place.
A very respectable
outcome, it will be admitted, of an
impulse which “rests upon no rational
grounds, and can be traced to no rational
principle,” which possesses “no intel
lectual character,” which “ philosophy ”
has uprooted fiom “the ground of
reason,” and fixed in that “large irra
tional department ” discovered for it, by
Mr. Mozley, in the hitherto unexplored
wilderness of the human mind.
The proper function of the inductive
principle, or the belief in the order of
nature, says Mr. Mozley, is “ to act as a
practical basis for the affairs of life and
the carrying on of human society.” But
what, it may be asked, has the planet
Neptune, or the belts of Jupiter, or the
whiteness about the poles of Mars, to
do with the affairs of society ? How is
society affected by the fact that the sun’s
atmosphere contains sodium, or that the
nebula of Orion contains hydrogen gas ?
Nineteen-twentieths of the force employed
in the exercise of the inductive principle,
which, reiterates Mr. Mozley, is “ purely
practical,” have been expended upon
subjects as unpractical as these. What
practical interest has society in the fact
that the spots on the sun have a
decennial period, and that, when a magnet
is closely watched for half a century, it
is found to perform small motions which
synchronise with the appearance and
disappearance of the solar spots ? And
yet, I doubt not, Sir Edward Sabine
would deem a life of intellectual toil
amply rewarded by being privileged to
solve, at its close, these infinitesimal
motions.
The inductive principle is founded in
man’s desire to know—a desire arising
from his position among phenomena
which are reducible to order by his
intellect. The material universe is the
complement of the intellect; and, without
the study of its laws, reason could never
have awakened to the higher forms of
self-consciousness at all. It is the Non
ego through and by which the Ego is
endowed with self-discernment. We hold
it to be an exercise of reason to explore
the meaning of a universe to which we
stand in this relation, and the work we
have accomplished is the proper com
mentary on the methods we have pursued.
Before these methods were adopted the
unbridled imagination roamed through
�MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROViDENCES
nature, putting in the place of law the
figments of superstitious dread. For
thousands of years witchcraft, and magic,
and miracles, and special providences,
and Mr. Mozley’s “ distinctive reason of
man,” had the world to themselves.
They made worse than nothing of it—
worse, I say, because they let and
hindered those who might have made
something of it. Hence it is that during
a single lifetime of this era of “ unintel
ligent impulse” the progress in know
ledge is all but infinite, as compared with
that of the ages which preceded ours.
The believers in magic and miracles
of a couple of centuries ago had all the
strength of Mr. Mozley’s present logic
on their side. They had done for them
selves what he rejoices in having so
effectually done for us—cleared the
ground of the belief in the order of
nature, and declared magic, miracles,
and witchcraft to be matters for “ordi
nary evidence” to decide. “The principle
of miracles” thus “befriended” had
free scope, and we know the result.
Lacking that rock-barrier of natural
knowledge which we now possess, keen
jurists and cultivated men were hurried
on to deeds the bare recital of which
makes the blood run cold. Skilled in
all the rules of human evidence, and
versed in all the arts of cross-examination,
these men, nevertheless, went systemati
cally astray, and committed the deadliest
wrongs against humanity. And why?
Because they could not put Nature into
the witness-box, and question her—of
her voiceless “testimony” they knew
nothing. In all cases between man and
man their judgment was to be relied
on; but in all cases between man and
nature they were blind leaders of the
blind.1
' “In 1664 two women were hung in Suffolk,
under a sentence of Sir Matthew Hale, who
took the opportunity of declaring that the
reality of witchcraft was unquestionable ; ‘ for
first, the Scriptures had affirmed so much ; and
secondly, the wisdom of all nations had pro
vided laws against such persons, which is an
argument of their confidence of such a crime.’
Sir Thomas Browne, who was a great physician
hi
Mr. Mozley concedes that it would be
no great result if miracles were only
accepted by the ignorant and super
stitious, “because it is easy to satisfy
those who do not inquire.” But he
does consider it “ a great result ” that
they have been accepted by the edu
cated. In what sense educated ? Like
those statesmen, jurists, and Church
dignitaries whose education was unable
to save them from the frightful errors
glanced at above? Not even in this
sense; for the great mass of Mr. Mozley’s
educated people had no legal training,
and must have been absolutely defence
less against delusions which could set
even that training at naught. Like ninetenths of our clergy at the present day,
they were versed in the literature of
Greece, Rome, and Judea; but as
regards a knowledge of nature, which is
here the one thing needful, they were
“ noble savages,” and nothing more. In
the case of miracles, then, it behoves us
to understand the weight of the negative
before we assign a value to the positive;
to comprehend the depositions of nature
before we attempt to measure, with them,
the evidence of men. We have only to
open our eyes to see what honest and
even intellectual men and women are
capable of, as to judging evidence, in
this nineteenth century of the Chris
tian era, and in latitude fifty-two
degrees north.
The experience thus
gained ought, I imagine, to influence
our opinion regarding the testimony of
people inhabiting a sunnier clime, with
a richer imagination and without a
particle of that restraint which the dis
coveries of physical science have imposed
upon mankind.
Having thus submitted Mr. Mozley’s
views to the examination which they chal
lenged at the hands of a student of nature,
I am unwilling to quit his book without
expressing my admiration of his genius
as well as a great writer, was called as a witness,
and swore ‘ that he was clearly of opinion that
the persons were bewitched.’ ”—Lecky’s History
of Rationalism, vol. i., p. 120.
�I 12
LECTURES AND ESSA VS
and my respect for his character. Though
barely known to him personally, his
recent death affected me as that of a
friend. With regard to the style of his
book, I heartily subscribe to the descrip
tion with which the Times winds up its
able and appreciative review: “ It is
marked throughout with the most serious
and earnest conviction, but is without a
single word from first to last of asperity
or insinuation against opponents ; and
this not from any deficiency of feeling as
to the importance of the issue, but from
a deliberate and resolutely maintained
self-control, and from an over-ruling,
ever-present sense of the duty, on themes
like these, of a more than judicial calm
ness.”
ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON
MIRACLES
Among the scraps of manuscripts,
written at the time when Mr. Mozley’s
work occupied my attention, I find the
following reflections :—
With regard to the influence of modern
science, which Mr. Mozley rates so low,
one obvious effect of it is to enhance the
magnitude of many of the recorded
miracles, and to increase proportionably
the difficulties of belief. The ancients
knew but little of the vastness of the
universe. The Rev. Mr. Kirkman, for
example, has shown what inadequate
notions the Jews entertained regarding
the “ firmament of heaven
and Sir
George Airy refers to the case of a Greek
philosopher who was persecuted for
hazarding the assertion, then deemed
monstrous, that the sun might be as large
as the whole country of Greece. The
concerns of a universe, regarded from
this point of view, were much more com
mensurate with man and his concerns
than those of the universe which science
now reveals to us; and hence that to
suit man’s purposes, or that in compli
ance with his prayers, changes should
occur in the order of the universe, was
more easy of belief in the ancient world
than it can be now. In the very magni
tude which it assigns to natural pheno
mena, science has augmented the dis
tance between them and man, and in
creased the popular belief in their orderly
progression.
As a natural consequence, the demand
for evidence is more exacting than it
used to be whenever it is affirmed that
the order of nature has been disturbed.
Let us take as an illustration the miracle
by which the victory of Joshua over the
Amorites was rendered complete. In
this case the sun is reported to have
stood still for “ about a whole day ” upon
Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of
Ajalon. An Englishman of average edu
cation at the present day would naturally
demand a greater amount of evidence to
prove that this occurrence took place
than would have satisfied an Israelite in
the age succeeding that of Joshua. For
to the one the miracle probably con
sisted in the stoppage of a fiery ball less
than a yard in diameter, while to the other
it would be the stoppage of an orb fourteen
hundred thousand times the earth in size.
And even accepting the interpretation
that Joshua dealt with what was apparent
merely, -but that what really occurred was
the suspension of the earth’s rotation, I
think the right to exercise a greater
reserve in accepting the miracle, and to
demand stronger evidence in support of
it than that which would have satisfied
an ancient Israelite, will still be con
ceded to a man of science.
There is a scientific as well as an
historic imagination; and when, by the
exercise of the former, the stoppage of
the earth’s rotation is clearly realised,
the event assumes proportions so vast, in
comparison with the result to be obtained
by it, that belief reels under the reflec
tion. The energy here involved is equal
to that of six trillions of horses working
for the whole of the time employed by
Joshua in the destruction of his foes.
The amount of power thus expended
would be sufficient to supply every indi
vidual of an army a thousand times the
strength of that of Joshua, with a thousand
�MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES
times the fighting power of each of
Joshua’s soldiers, not for the few hours
necessary to the extinction of a handful
of Amorites, but for millions of years.
All this wonder is silently passed over by
the sacred historian, manifestly because
he knew nothing about it. Whether,
therefore, we consider the miracle as
purely evidential, or as a practical means
of vengeance, the same lavish squander
ing of energy stares us in the face. If
evidential, the energy was wasted because
the Israelites knew nothing of its amount;
if simply destructive, then the ratio of
the quantity lost to the quantity em
ployed may be inferred from the fore
going figures.
To other miracles similar remarks
apply. Transferring our thoughts from
this little sand-grain of an earth to the
immeasurable heavens, where countless
worlds with freights of life probably
revolve unseen, the very suns whicb
warm them being barely visible across
abysmal space, reflecting that beyond
these sparks of solar fire suns innumer
able may burn, whose light can never
stir the optic nerve at all, and bringing
these reflections face to face with the
idea of the Builder and Sustainer of it
all showing Himself in a burning bush,
exhibiting His hinder parts, or behaving
in other familiar ways ascribed to Him in
the Jewish Scriptures, the incongruity
mus.t appear. Did this credulous prattle
of the ancients about miracles stand
alone; were it not associated with words
of imperishable wisdom, and with ex
amples of moral grandeur unmatched
elsewhere in the history of the human
race, both the miracles and th^ir “ evi
dences ” would have long since ceased to
be the transmitted inheritance of intelli
gent men. Influenced by the thoughts
which this universe inspires, well may we
exclaim in David’s spirit, if not in David’s
words : “ When I consider the heavens,
the work of thy fingers, the moon, and
the stars, which thou hast ordained,
what is man that thou shouldst be mind
ful of him, or the son of man that thou
shouldst so regard him ?”
J13
If you ask me who is to limit the out
goings of Almighty power, my answer is,
Not I. If you should urge that, if the
Builder and Maker of this universe chose
to stop the rotation of the earth, or to
take the form of a burning bush, there is
nothing to prevent Him from doing so,
I am not prepared to contradict you. I
neither agree with you nor differ from
you, for it is a subject of which I know
nothing. But I observe that in such
questions regarding Almighty power your
inquiries relate, not to that power as
*it is actually displayed in the universe,
but to the power of your own imagina
tion. Your question is, not Has the
Omnipotent done so and so ? or Is it in
the least degree likely that the Omni
potent should do so and so ? but, Is my
imagination competent to picture aBeing
able and willing to do so and so ? I am
not prepared to deny your competence.
To the human mind belongs the faculty
of enlarging and diminishing, of distort
ing and combining, indefinitely the
objects revealed by the senses. It can
imagine a mouse as large as an elephant,
an elephant as large as a mountain, and
a mountain as high as the stars. It can
separate congruities and unite incon
gruities. We see a fish and we see a
woman ; we can drop one half of each,
and unite in idea the other two halves to
a mermaid. We see a horse and we see
a man; we are able to drop one half of
each, and unite the other two halves to
a centaur. Thus also the pictorial repre
sentations of the Deity, the bodies and
wings of cherubs and seraphs, the hoofs,
horns, and tail of the Evil One, the joys
of the blessed, and the torments of the
damned, have been elaborated from
materials furnished to the imagination
by the senses. It behoves you and me
to take care that our notions of the
Power which rules the universe are not
mere fanciful or ignorant enlargements
of human power. The capabilities of
what you call your reason are not denied.
By the exercise of the faculty here ad
verted to, you can picture to yourself a
Being able and willing to do any and
�114
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
every conceivable thing. You are right
in saying that in opposition to this Power
science is of no avail—that it is “ a
weapon of air.” The man of science,
however, while accepting the figure,
would probably reverse its application,
thinking it is not science which is nere
the thing of air, but that unsubstantial
pageant of the imagination to which the
solidity of science is opposed.
ON PRAYER AS A FORM OF PHYSICAL ENERGY
fct_S72]
The Editor of the Contemporary Review
is liberal enough to grant me space
for some remarks upon a subject which,
though my relation to it was simply
that of a vehicle of transmission, has
brought down upon me a consider
able amount of animadversion.
It may be interesting to some of my
readers if I glance at a few cases illustra
tive of the history of the human mind
in relation to this and kindred questions.
In the fourth century the belief in
Antipodes was deemed unscriptural and
heretical. The pious Lactantius was as
angry with the people who held this
notion as my censors are now with me,
and quite as unsparing in his denuncia
tions of their “ Monstrosities.” Lactan
tius was irritated because, in his mind,
by education and habit, cosmogony and
religion were indissolubly associated, and,
therefore, simultaneously disturbed. In
the early part of the seventeenth century
the notion that the earth was fixed, and
that the sun and stars revolved round
it daily, was interwoven with religious
feeling, the separation then attempted
by Galileo rousing the animosity and
kindling the persecution of the Church.
Men still living can remember the indig
nation excited by the first revelations of
geology regarding the age of the earth,
the association between chronology and
religion being for the time indissoluble.
In our day, however, the best informed
theologians are prepared to admit that
our views of the Universe and its Author
are not impaired, but improved, by the
abandonment of the Mosaic account of
the Creation. Look, finally, at the
excitement caused by the publication of
the Origin of Species, and compare it
with the calm attendant on the appear
ance of the far more outspoken and,
from the old point of view, more impious
Descent of Man.
Thus religion survives after the removal
of what had been long considered essen
tial to it. In our day the Antipodes are
accepted; the fixity of the earth is given
up; the period of Creation and the
reputed age of the world are alike dissi
pated ; Evolution is looked upon with
out terror; and other changes have
occurred in the same direction too
numerous to be dwelt upon here. In
fact, from the earliest times to the pre
sent, religion has been undergoing a
process of purification, freeing .itself
slowly and painfully from the physical
errors which the active but uninformed
intellect mingled with the aspirations of
the soul. Some of us think that a final
act of purification is needed, while others
oppose ihis notion with the confidence
and the warmth of ancient times. The
bone of contention at present is the
physical value of prayer. It is not my
wish to excite surprise, much less to
draw forth protest, by the employment
of this phrase. I would simply ask any
intelligent person to look the problem
honestly in the face, and then to say
whether, in the estimation of the great
body of those who sincerely resort to it,
prayer does not, at all events upon special
�ON PRA YER AS A FORM OF PHYSICAL ENERGY
occasions, invoke a Power which checks
andlaugments the descent of rain, which
changes the force and direction of
winds, which affects the growth of corn
and the health of men and cattle—a
Power, in short, which, when appealed
to under pressing circumstances, pro
duces the precise effects caused by
physical energy in the ordinary course
of things. To any person who deals
sincerely with the subject, and refuses to
blur his moral vision by intellectual sub
tleties, this, I think, will appear a true
statement of the case.
It is under this aspect alone that the
scientific student, so far as I represent
him, has any wish to meddle with prayer.
Forced upon his attention as a form of
physical energy, or as the equivalent of
such energy, he claims the right of sub
jecting it to those methods of examina
tion from which all our present knowledge
of the physical universe is derived. And
if his researches lead him to a conclusion
adverse to its claims—if his inquiries
rivet him still closer to the philosophy
implied in the words, “ He maketh His
sun to shine on the evil and on the good,
and sendeth rain upon the just and upon
the unjust”—he contends only for the
displacement of prayer, not for its
extinction. He simply says, physical
nature is not its legitimate domain.
This conclusion, moreover, must be
based on pure physical evidence, and not
on any inherent unreasonableness in the
act of prayer- The theory that the
system of nature is under the control of
a Being who changes phenomena in
compliance with the prayers of men is,
in my opinion, a perfectly legitimate one.
It may, of course, be rendered futile by
being associated with conceptions which
contradict it; but such conceptions form
no necessary part of the theory. It is a
matter of experience that an earthly
father, who is at the same time both
wise and tender, listens to the requests
of his children, and, if they do not ask
amiss, takes pleasure in granting their
requests. We know also that this com
pliance extends to the alteration, within I
115
certain limits, of the current of events
on earth. With this suggestion offered
by experience, it is no departure from
scientific method to place behind natural
phenomena a Universal Father, who, in
answer to the prayers of his children,
alters the currents of those phenomena.
Thus far theology and science go hand
in hand. The conception of an aether,
for example, trembling with the waves of
light, is suggested by the ordinary phe
nomena of wave-motion in water and in
air; and in like manner the conception
of personal volition in nature is suggested
by the ordinary action of man upon
earth. I, therefore, urge no impossi
bilities, though I am constantly charged
with doing so. I do not even urge
inconsistency, but, on the contrary,
frankly admit that the theologian has as
good a right to place his conception at
the root of phenomena as I have to
place mine.
But without verification a theoretic
conception is a mere figment of the
intellect, and I am sorry to find us
parting company at this point. The
region of theory, both in science and
theology, lies behind the world of the
senses, but the verification of theory
occurs in the sensible world. To check
the theory, we have simply to compare
the deductions from it with the facts of
observation. If the deductions be in
accordance with the facts, we accept the
theory; if in opposition, the theory is
given up.
A single experiment is
frequently devised by which the theory
must stand or fall. Of this character
was the determination of the velocity of
light in liquids as a crucial test of the
Emission Theory. According to it, light
travelled faster in water than in air;
according to the Undulatory Theory, it
travelled faster in air than in water.
An experiment suggested by Arago, and
executed by Fizeau and Foucault, was
conclusive against Newton’s theory.
But while science cheerfully submits to
this ordeal, it seems impossible to devise
a mode of verification of their theories
which does not rouse resentment in
�116
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
theological minds. Is it that, while the
pleasure of the scientific man culminates
in the demonstrated harmony between
theory and fact, the highest pleasure of
the religious man has been already tasted
in the very act of praying prior to verifi
cation, any further effort in this direction
being a mere disturbance of his peace ?
Or is it that we have before us a residue
of that mysticism of the Middle Ages,
so admirably described by Whewell—
that “practice of referring things and
events, not to clear and distinct notions,
not to general rules capable of direct
verification, but to notions vague, distant,
and vast, which we cannot bring into
contact with facts, as when we connect
natural events with moral and historic
causes”? “Thus,” he continues, “the
character of mysticism is that it refers
particulars not to generalisations homo
geneous and immediate, but to such as
are heterogeneous and remote; to which
we must add, that the process of this
reference is not a calm act of the intellect,
but is accompanied with a glow of enthu
siastic feeling.”
Every feature here depicted, and some
more questionable ones, have shown
themselves of late; most conspicuously,
I regret to say, in the “ leaders ” of a
weekly journal of considerable influence,
and one, on many grounds, entitled
to the respect of thoughtful men. In
the correspondence, however, published
by the same journal, are to be found two
or three letters well calculated to correct
the temporary flightiness of the journal
itself.
It is not my habit of mind to think
otherwise than solemnly of the feeling
which prompts prayer. It is a power I
which I should like to see guided, not
extinguished — devoted to practicable
objects instead of wasted upon air. In
some form or other, not yet evident, it
may, as alleged, be necessary to man’s
highest culture. Certain it is that,
while I rank many persons who resort
to prayer low in the scale of being
natural foolishness, bigotry, and intoler
ance being in their case intensified by
the notion that they have access to the
ear of God—I regard others who employ
it as forming part of the very cream of
the earth. The faith that adds to the
folly and ferocity of the one is turned to
enduring sweetness, holiness, abounding
charity, and self-sacrifice by the other.
Religion, in fact, varies with the nature
upon which it falls. Often unreasonable,
if not contemptible, prayer, in its purer
forms, hints at disciplines which few of
us can neglect without moral loss. But
no good can come of giving it a delusive
value, by claiming for it a power in
physical nature. It may strengthen the
heart to meet life’s losses, and thus
indirectly promote physical well-being,
as the digging of 2Esop’s orchard brought
a treasure of fertility greater than the
golden treasure sought. Such indirect
issues we all admit; but it would be
simply dishonest to affirm that it is such
issues that are always in view. Here,
for the present, I must end. I ask no
space to reply to those railers who make
such free use of the terms “insolence,”
“outrage,”“profanity,’’and “ blasphemy.”
They obviously lack the sobriety of mind
necessary to give accuracy to their state
ments, or to render their charges worthy
of serious refutation.
�SCIENCE AND THE “SPIRITS
”
11?
______________________________________ —------------------ *---------------------------—
:
SCIENCE AND THE “SPIRITS”
[1864]
TtlEiR refusal to investigate “ spiritual
phenomena” is often urged as a reproach
against scientific men. I here propose
to give a sketch of an attempt to apply
to the “ phenomena ” those methods of
inquiry which are found available in
dealing with natural truth.
Some years ago, when the spirits
were particularly active in this country,
Faraday was invited, or rather entreated,
by one of his friends to meet and ques
tion them. He had, however, already
made their acquaintance, and did not
wish to renew it. I had not been so
privileged, and he therefore kindly
arranged a transfer of the invitation to
me. The spirits themselves named the
time of meeting, and I was conducted to
the place at the day and hour appointed.
Absolute unbelief in the facts was by
no means my condition of mind. On
the contrary, I thought it probable that
some physical principle, not evident to
the spiritualists themselves, might under
lie their manifestations. Extraordinary
effects are produced by the accumulation
of small impulses. Galileo set a heavy
pendulum in motion by the well-timed
puffs of his breath. Ellicot set one
dock going by the ticks of another, even
when the two clocks were separated by
a wall. Preconceived notions can, more
over, vitiate, to an extraordinary degree,
the testimony of even veracious persons.
Hence my desire to witness those extra
ordinary phenomena, the existence of
which seemed placed beyond a doubt by
the known veracity of those who had
witnessed and described them.
The
Sheeting took place at a private residence
ia the neighbourhood of London. My
host, his intelligent wife, and a gentleman
who may be called X. were in the house
when I arrived. I was informed that
the ** medium ” had not vet made her
appearance ; that she was sensitive, and
might resent suspicion. It was therefore
requested that the tables and chairs
should be examined before her arrival,
in order to be assured that there was no
trickery in the furniture.
This was
done; and I then first learned that my
hospitable host had arranged that the
stance should be a dinner-party. This
was to me an unusual form of investiga
tion •, but I accepted it, as one of the
accidents of the occasion.
The “ medium ” arrived—a delicatelooking young lady, who appeared to
have suffered much from ill-health. I
took her to dinner and sat close beside
her. Facts were absent for a consider
able time, a series of very wonderful
narratives supplying their place. The
duty of belief on the testimony of wit
nesses was frequently insisted on. X.
appeared to be a chosen spiritual agent,
and told us many surprising things. He
affirmed that, when he took a pen in his
hand, an influence ran from his shoulder
downwards, and impelled him to write
oracular sentences.
I listened for a
time, offering no observation.' “ And
now,” continued X., “ this power has so
risen as to reveal to me the thoughts of
others. Only this morning I told a
friend what he was thinking of, and what
he intended to do during the day.”
Here, I thought, is something that can
be at once tested. I said immediately
to X.: “If you wish to win to your cause
an apostle, who will proclaim your
principles to the world from the house
top, tell me what I am now thinking of.”
X. reddened, and did not tell me my
thought.
Some time previously I had visited
Baron Reichenbach, in Vienna, and I
> now asked the young lady who sat beside
me whether she could see any of the
�118
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
curious things which he describes—the
be able to see the interior of my own
light emitted by crystals, for example ?
eyes. The medium affirmed that she
Here is the conversation which followed,
could see actual waves of light coming
as extracted from my notes, written on
from the sun. I retorted that men of
the day following the stance :—
science could tell the exact number of
Medium.—“ Oh, yes ; but I see light
waves emitted in a second, and also their
around all bodies.”
exact length.
The medium spoke of
I.—“ Even in perfect darkness ?”
the performances of the spirits on
Medium.—“Yes; I see luminous atmo musical instruments. I said that such
spheres round all people. The atmo performance was gross, in comparison
sphere which surrounds Mr. R. C.
with a kind of music which had been
would fill this room with light.”
discovered some time previously by a
I.—“You are aware of the effects
scientific man. Standing at a distance
ascribed by Baron Reichenbach to
of twenty feet from a jet of gas, he could
magnets ?”
command the flame to emit a melodious
Medium.—“ Yes; but a magnet makes
note; it would obey, and continue its
me terribly ill.”
song for hours. So loud was the music
I.—“ Am I to understand that, if this
emitted by the gas-flame that it might
room were perfectly dark, you could tell
be heard by an assembly of a thousand
whether it contained a magnet, without
people. These were acknowledged to
being informed of the fact ?”
be as great marvels as any of those of
Medium.—“ I should know of its pre
spiritdom. The spirits were then con
sence on entering the room.”
sulted, and I was pronounced to be a
I.—“ How ?”
first-class medium.
Medium.—“I should be rendered
During this conversation a low knock
instantly ill.”
ing was heard from time to time under
I.—“ How do you feel to-day ?”
the table. These, I was told, were the
Medium.—“ Particularly well; I have
spirits’ knocks. I was informed that one
not been so well for months.”
knock, in answer to a question, meant
I.—“ Then, may I ask you whether
“No”; that two knocks meant “Not
there is, at the present moment, a
yet ”; and that three knocks meant
magnet in my possession ?”
“Yes.” In answer to a question whether
The young lady looked at me, blushed,
I was a medium, the response was three
brisk and vigorous knocks. I noticed
and stammered :
“ No ; I am not en rapport with you.”
that the knocks issued from a particular
I sat at her right hand, and a left locality, and therefore requested the
spirits to be good enough to answer
hand pocket, within six inches of her
from another corner of the table. They
person, contained a magnet.
did not comply; but I was assured that
Our host here deprecated discussion,
as it “exhausted the medium.”
The
they would do it, and much more, byand-by.
The knocks continuing, I
wonderful narratives were resumed; but
turned a wine-glass upside down, and
I had narratives of my own quite as
placed my ear upon it, as upon a stetho
wonderful. These spirits, indeed, seemed
scope. The spirits seemed disconcerted
clumsy creations, compared with those
by the act; they lost their playfulness,
with which my own work had made me
and did not recover it for a considerable
familiar. I therefore began to match
the wonders related to me by other
time.
Somewhat weary of the proceedings, I
wonders. A lady present discoursed on
once threw myself back against my chair
spiritual atmospheres, which she could
and gazed listlessly out of the window.
see as beautiful colours when she closed
While thus engaged, the table was rudely
her eyes. I professed myself able to see
pushed. Attention was drawn to the
similar colours, and, more than that, to
�SCIENCE AND THE “SPIRITS”
wine, still oscillating in the glasses, and
I was asked whether that was not con
vincing. I readily granted the fact of
motion, and began to feel the delicacy of
my position. There were several pairs
of arms upon the table, and several pairs
of legs under it; but how was I, without
offence, to express the conviction which
I really entertained ? To ward off the
difficulty, I again turned a wine-glass
upside down and rested my ear upon it.
The rim of the glass was not level,, and
my hair, on touching it, caused it. to
vibrate, and produce a peculiar buzzing
sound. A perfectly candid and warm
hearted old gentleman at the opposite
Side of the table, whom I may call A.,
drew attention to the sound, and ex
pressed his entire belief that it was
spiritual. I, however, informed him that
it was the moving hair acting on the
glass. The explanation was not well
received; and X., in a tone of severe
pleasantry, demanded whether it was the
hair that had moved the table. The
promptness of my negative probably
satisfied him that my notion was a very
different one.
The superhuman power of the spirits
was next dwelt upon. The strength of
man, it was stated, was unavailing in
opposition to theirs. No human power
could prevent the table from moving
when they pulled it. During the evening
this pulling of the table occurred, or
rather was attempted, three times.
Twice the table moved when my atten
tion was withdrawn from it; on a third
occasion, I tried whether the act could
be provoked by an assumed air of
inattention. Grasping the table firmly
between my knees, I threw myself back
in the chair, and waited, with eyes fixed
on vacancy, for the pull. It came. For
some seconds it was pull spirit, hold
muscle; the muscle, however, prevailed,
and the table remained at rest. Up to
the present moment, this interesting fact
is known only to the particular spirit in
question and myself.
A species of mental scene-painting,
with which my own pursuits had long
,
119
rendered me familiar, was employed to
figure the changes and distribution of
spiritual power.
The spirits, it was
alleged, were provided with atmospheres,
which combined with and interpenetrated
each other, and considerable ingenuity
was shown in demonstrating the neces
sity of time in effecting the adjustment
of the atmospheres.
A re-arrange
ment of our positions was proposed
and carried out; and soon afterwards
my attention was drawn to a scarcely
sensible vibration on the part of the
table. Several persons were leaning on
the table at the time, and I asked per
mission to touch the medium’s hand.
“ Oh 1 I know I tremble,” was her reply.
Throwing one leg across the other, I
accidentally nipped a muscle, and pro
duced thereby an involuntary vibration
of the free leg. This vibration, I knew,
must be communicated to the floor, and
thence to the chairs of all present. I
therefore intentionally promoted it. My
attention was promptly drawn to the
motion; and a gentleman beside me,
whose value as a witness I was particu
larly desirous to test, expressed his belief
that it was out of the compass of human
power to produce so strange a tremor.
“ I believe,” he added, earnestly, “ that
it is entirely the spirits’ work.” “ So do
I,” added, with heat, the candid and
warm-hearted old gentleman A. “Why,
sir,” he continued, “ I feel them at this
moment shaking my chair.” I stopped
the motion of the leg. “ Now, sir,” A.
exclaimed, “they are gone.” I began
again, and A. once more affirmed their
presence. I could, however, notice that
there were doubters present, who did not
quite know what to think of the mani
festations. I saw their perplexity ; and,
as there was sufficient reason to believe
that the disclosure of the secret would
simply provoke anger, I kept it to myself.
Again a period of conversation inter
vened, during which the spirits became
animated. The evening was confessedly
a dull one, but matters appeared to
brighten towards its close. The spirits
were requested to spell the name by
�120
LECTURES AND ESSA YS
which I was known in the heavenly
world. Our host commenced repeating
the alphabet, and when he reached the
letter “ P ” a knock was heard. He
began again, and the spirits knocked at
the letter “0.”
1 was puzzled, but
waited for'the end. The next letter
knocked down was “E.” I laughed, and
remarked that the spirits were going to
make a poet of me. Admonished for
my levity, I was informed that the frame
of mind proper for the occasion ought to
have been superinduced by a perusal of
the Bible immediately before the seance.
The spelling, however, went on, and
sure enough I came out a poet. But
matters did not end here. Our host
continued his repetition of the alphabet,
and the next letter of the name proved
to be “ O.” Here was manifestly an
unfinished word ; and the spirits were
apparently in their most communicative
mood. The knocks came from under
the table, but no person present evinced
the slightest desire to look under it. I
asked whether I might go underneath;
the permission was granted ; so I crept
under the table. Some tittered; but the
candid old A. exclaimed: “ He has a
right to look into the very dregs of it, to
convince himself.” Having pretty well
assured myself that no sound could be
produced under the table without its
origin being revealed, I requested our
host to continue his questions. He did
so, but in vain. He adopted a tone of
tender entreaty ; but the “dear spirits ”
had become dumb dogs, and refused to
be entreated. I continued under that
table for at least a quarter of an hour,
after which, with a feeling of despair as
regards the prospects of humanity never
before experienced, I regained my chair.
Once there, the spirits resumed their
loquacity, and dubbed me “ Poet of
Science.”
This, then, is the result of an attempt
made by a scientific man to look into
these spiritual phenomena.
It is not
encouraging ; and for this reason. The
present promoters of spiritual pheno
mena divide themselves into two classes,
one of which needs no demonstration,
while the other is beyond the reach of
proof. The victims like to believe, and
they do not like to be undeceived.
Science is perfectly powerless in the
presence of this frame of mind. It is,
moreover, a state perfectly compatible
with extreme intellectual subtlety and a
capacity for devising hypotheses which
only require the hardihood engendered
by strong conviction, or by callous
mendacity, to render them impregnable.
The logical feebleness of science is not
sufficiently borne in mind. It keeps
down the weed of superstition, not by
logic, but by slowly rendering the mental
soil unfit for its cultivation.
When
science appeals to uniform experience,
the spiritualist will retort : “ How do you
know that a uniform experience will
continue uniform ? You tell me that
the sun has risen for six thousand years :
that is no proof that it will rise to
morrow ; within the next twelve hours it
may be puffed out by the Almighty.**
Taking this ground, a man may maintain
the story of “ Jack and the Beanstalk ” in
the face of all the science in the world.
You urge, in vain, that science has given
us all the knowledge of the universe
which we now possess, while spiritualism
has added nothing to that knowledge.
The drugged soul is beyond the reach of
reason. It is in vain that impostors are
exposed, and the special demon cast out.
He has but slightly to change his shape,
return to his house, and find it “ empty,
swept, and garnished.”
Since the time when the foregoing
remarks were written I have been more
than once among the spirits, at their own
invitation.
They do not improve on
acquaintance. Surely no baser delusion
ever obtained dominance over the weak
mind of man.
�THE
RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION,
LIMITED.
Registered Office—Nos. 5 and 6, Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, London, E.C.
Chairman :
EDWARD CLODD.
Alfred William Benn
Bjornstjerne Bjornson
George Brandes
Dr. Charles Callaway
Dr. Paul Carus
Prof. B. H. Chamberlain
Dr. Stanton Coit
Honorary Associates:
Dr. F. J. Furnivall
F. J. Gould
Prof. Ernst Haeckel
Leonard Huxley
Prof. Cesare Lombroso
Joseph McCabe
Eden Phillpotts
John M. Robertson
Dr. _W. R. Washington
Sullivan
Prof. Lester F. Ward
Prof. Ed. A.Westermarck
and
Thomas Whittaker
A Brief Statement of the Objects and Methods of the
Association.
The “Spirit of Rationalism.”
The prevalence of the “spirit of Rationalism,” as Mr. Lecky has called it, is one of
the chief features distinguishing modern from mediaeval thought and life. This
spirit has permeated all nations and all classes comprised in the world of Western
civilisation. It is not any definite and reasoned doctrine, but simply a sceptical
attitude towards magic and miracles, assumptions of occult power and insight on the
part of men, and alleged divine interferences.
We believe that this spirit of Rationalism is closely connected with the progress
of modern science and critical research. The “ spirit ” assumes unconsciously and
as a general, practical rule that uniformity of nature which science and research
repeatedly prove to exist in particular cases. In other words, it assumes that
exceptional occurrences are due to unfamiliar combinations of familiar conditions,
and do not require superhuman conscious agency to account for them. But the
spirit of Rationalism is, after all, only a mental tendency. As such, it is liable, to
exist in the modern mind side by side with the supernaturalism of a pre-scientific
age. It does so conspicuously under present-day Protestantism. Most Protestants
are Rationalists in their attitude towards contemporary instances of alleged miracle
and inspiration. They are Rationalists in their attitude towards the sacred literatures
of Buddhists, Brahmans, Parsees, and Mohammedans, and towards the distinctive
teachings of the Church of Rome. As regards the narrative and theology contained
in the Bible, however, they are not Rationalists, but at best compromisers between
traditional reverence and scientific inquiry. Thus, while the spirit of Rationalism
is rife, the attempt to raise Rationalism into a consistent rule of the intellectual life
is extremely unpopular,, having to face both active opposition and widespread
indifference. That, nevertheless, is the aim which the Association keeps steadily
in view.
�THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, Limited
Embodiment of the Rationalistic Spirit.
The physical sciences are, within their respective limits, the most consistent
embodiments of the spirit of Rationalism. Astronomy, geology, and biology have
successively broken away from Biblical tradition. They have become genuine
sciences through an exercise of the freest and most serious inquiry, combined with
the expectation of discovering natural uniformities where men formerly saw nothing
but supernatural mysteries. But the special sciences belong primarily to specialists.
What the average thinking man requires is a good synopsis of the object-matter and
results of science, an insight into its nature and methods, and a habit of mind which
will enable him to form sensible and serviceable judgments as to the many questions
which cannot yet (and perhaps never can) be decided with scientific accuracy.
Thus the spirit of Rationalism has needed to embody itself, not only in science
and exact research, but in certain types of human thought which form, as it were,
the atmosphere of science. Among the more highly-cultivated intellects it has given
rise to the various schools of modern philosophy. Among the people and certain
of their democratic leaders it has given rise to the various parties of modern
Freethought. . Philosophy is, on the whole, somewhat conservative, although it is
far more anxious to conserve the wide outlook of Plato and Aristotle than the
theology of Paul and Augustine. The tendency of popular Freethought is more
revolutionary and impatient for a new start in human ideas. With the spread of
education and democracy, however, these two types of advanced thought must
increasingly coalesce. In coalescing, Freethought should gain breadth of view and
lose the “ scoffing ” habit which only hardens foes and alienates many who would
otherwise be friends. Philosophy, on the other hand, should gain a certain down
rightness and relation to practical life which it generally lacks, and at the same time
learn to relinquish such speculations as are not even possessed of probability in the
light of experience and science. To temper Freethought with philosophy, and to
assist in freeing philosophy from all academic trammels and fanciful excrescences,
are among the objects for which the R. P. A. has been formed.
The Limits of Compromise.
The semi-philosophic works which have acquired wide popularity in recent years
are those which have set forth some new compromise (or what has really amounted
to a compromise) between certain tenets of Christianity and certain views of
modem science. We believe that this accommodating spirit, though a long way in
advance of the spirit of sheer intolerance, lags equally far behind the philosophic
spirit of truth seeking.
Compromise is inevitable, and, to a certain extent, salutary, in politics. This is
because political measures have to be adjusted to the existing views of the most
influential body of citizens, no matter whether those views be sound or the reverse.
But the very fact which makes compromise legitimate in politics makes it illegitimate
as regards religious and abstract social questions. Thus a consistent Rationalism is
the direct antithesis, the uncompromising rejection, of that religious faith which deems
it necessary to accept traditional and reputedly sacred opinions, without seriously
inquiring into their evidential value. In saying this, we do not, of course, mean
that all traditional religious opinions are necessarily to be rejected, nor do we
pretend to be in a position to teach the whole philosophy of Rationalism. That is
still in the making, and it is that which the R. P. A. must help, directly or
indirectly, to make.
Our contention is that the appeal to experience and
reason must alone decide what elements of traditional Christianity are worthy
to be retained, and that theological dogmas and scriptural prejudices must be
�THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, Limited
allowed no more influence over the philosophic thinker than has the legend
of creation contained in the book of Genesis over the present-day astronomer or
gwlogist.
After careful consideration, aided by the advice of several well-known thinkers,
tile following definition of Rationalism has been adopted and embodied in the
Memorandum of Association :—
9
“ Rationalism may be defined as the mental attitude which unreservedly accepts
the supremacy of reason and aims at establishing a system of philosophy and
ethics verifiable by experience and independent of all arbitrary assumptions or
authority.”
In making direct mention of ethics we wish to accentuate the fact that the philosophy
of Rationalism cannot fail to have important bearings on human conduct, which
will, we believe, be far more beneficent in the long run than those of traditional
theology.
The Need of Propaganda.
Although the spirit of Rationalism has permeated the Protestant clergy, con
forming and non-conformist alike, and, in many cases, the preachers are more
liberal-minded than their flocks, professional needs naturally make them, as a body,
hostile to Rationalism in any consistent shape. They and their lay supporters spare
neither pains nor money in promulgating views which, though differing widely
according to the church or sect from which they proceed, agree in attributing
unique authority and surpassing excellence to the Christian religion, and defending,
rather than dispassionately inquiring into, its supposed essentials. Many powerful
associations, among which the Religious Tract Society and the Society for Promoting,
IChristian Knowledge are perhaps the most widely known, are carried on largely with
the object of vindicating Christian tradition against Rationalist criticism.
Philosophic Rationalists, on the other hand, have been disposed to trust to the
progress of science and the ultimate triumph of truth, and have made comparatively
little effort to propagate their opinions. It is believed that the R. P. A. will
be a means of arousing and directing the energies of such torpid sympathisers.
Concerted action among Rationalists was never more needed than now, in
face of the present widespread reaction towards relatively irrational beliefs
and practices. This reaction shows itself in the disposition to assert the
sufficiency of instinct and sentiment, as well as to magnify the claims of custom,
I ritual, and authority, while making light of reason, evading the duty of critical
inquiry, and ignoring the need of a broad human and scientific outlook, such as
constructive philosophic thought alone can give.
The cause of Rationalism cannot be assisted more materially than by promoting
the publication and distribution of works which the organised weight of religious
prejudice, the stolid indifference of the general public to philosophic inquiry, and
the consequent policy of the popular press and the booksellers, all tend to discourage,
if not to taboo—provided, of course, that such works have intrinsic value.
Publications of the R. P. A., Ltd.
Works of a serious, and especially those of a seriously philosophic character, are
■ heavily handicapped in the competition for popular favour. Still more is this the
case when such works soberly advocate unpopular views. The notion that the most
successful books are the best may be partially true as regards works of imagination.
It is very far indeed from being true as regards works of research and reflection.
�THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, Limited
Thus one of the objects of the Association is to assist in issuing the works of
competent authors whose religious heterodoxy places them at a disadvantage in
approaching the ordinary publishing firms. Another object, equally important to
the cause of Rationalism, and in carrying out which the Association has already
met with striking success, is to re-issue, in cheap and convenient form, standard or
notable books of a scientific, critical, ethical, or philosophical character.
Conditions of Membership.
The Rationalist Press Association, Ltd., is “a Company Limited by Guarantee,
and not having a Capital divided into shares.” It is a propagandist, not a com
mercial, undertaking. Each member becomes liable for a sum not exceeding one
pound, in the case of the Association being wound up; but even should the
necessity for winding up occur (a highly improbable contingency), it is not likely
that the members would be called upon for the amount of their guarantee, as the
Directors are careful to refrain from embarking on any undertaking for which
pecuniary provision has not been made.
Any person above the age of twenty-one may, with the consent of the Board,
become a member, on payment of an annual subscription of not less than five
shillings. The subscription is payable in advance on the first of January of each
year. A member may retire from the Association upon giving notice in writing ft)
the Secretary.
Members are entitled to receive, post free, publications of the Association within
the value of their annual subscriptions, and it is usual to send the new publications
as issued. Those, however, who prefer to specify “ Books by request ” can make
their own selection from the R. P. A. lists which are issued from time to time.
Donations and Bequests.
It is hoped that all who are in fact Rationalists will give their open support to
the Association, and take part so far as possible in its meetings; but sympathisers
who do not wish to be incorporated as members, or who prefer to conceal their
identity, can aid the funds by informal annual subscriptions or special donations,
strict confidence being observed when desired. Donations, no matter hoy small,
will be welcome from members who can spare such sums at the present time, but
do not care to include them in the amount of their annual subscription.
Rationalists and sympathisers with Rationalism should, when making their.wills,
bear in mind the work which the Association is doing. As a legally-constituted
body, having stringent rules to prevent any possible misapplication of funds, it is
eminently fitted to carry out the wishes or instructions of persons who bequeath
sums of money for specified objects—-literary, scientific, or educational—which are in
accord with its general principles. A suggested form of bequest will be sent to any
applicant.
For further particulars address the Secretary—Charles E. Hooper,
Nos. y and 6, Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, London, E.C.
�List of Publications
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No work of the same size and dealing with this important theme contains
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The First Volume treats of the superstitions of savages and primitive man, and
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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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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>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
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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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Lectures and essays (Cullings from "Fragments of Science")
Creator
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Tyndall, John [1820-1893]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 120, [8] p. ; 22 cm.
Series title: R.P.A. Cheap Reprints
Series number: No. 10
Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Includes bibliographical references. Issued for the Rationalist Press Association, Ltd. Printed in double columns. Fragments of science first published in 1871. Brief statement of RPA's objects and methods, and publisher's list on unnumbered pages at the end.
Contents: Biographical sketch -- The Belfast address -- Apology for the Belfast address -- Scientific materialism -- Scientific use of the imagination -- Science and man -- Vitality -- Reflections on prayer and natural law -- Miracles and special providences -- On prayer as a form of physical energy -- Science and the "spirits".
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Watts & Co.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1903
Identifier
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RA1800
N647
Subject
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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 (Lectures and essays (Cullings from "Fragments of 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
essays
Imagination
Lectures
Materialism
NSS
Prayer
Psychic phenomena
Science
Science-Addresses