Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!I never thought to ask, I never knew,But in my simple ignorance supposedThe self-same power that brought me there brought you.
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!I never thought to ask, I never knew,But in my simple ignorance supposedThe self-same power that brought me there brought you.
Emerson.
Emerson.
A few exceptions to the general state of union of the molecules of the earth's crust — vast in relation to us, but trivial in comparison to the total store of which they are the residue — still remain. They constitute our main sources of motive power. By far the most important of these are our beds of coal. Distance still intervenes between the atoms of carbon and those of atmospheric oxygen, across which the atoms may be urged by their mutual attractions; and we can utilise the motion thus produced. Once the carbon and the oxygen have rushed together, so as to form carbonic acid, their mutual attractions are satisfied; and, while they continue in this condition, as dynamic agents they are dead. Our woods and forests are also sources of mechanical energy, because they have the power of uniting with the atmospheric oxygen. Passing from plants to animals, we find that the source of motive power just referred to is also the source of muscular power. A horse can perform work, and so can a man; but this work is at bottom the molecular work of the transmuted food and the oxygen of the air. We inhale this vital gas, and bring it into sufficiently close proximity with the carbon and the hydrogen of the body. These unite in obedience to their mutual, attractions; and their motion towards each other, properly turned to account by the wonderful mechanism of the body, becomes muscular motion.
One fundamental thought pervades all these statements: there is one tap root from which they all spring. This is the ancient maxim that out of nothing nothing comes; that neither in the organic world nor in the inorganic is power produced without the expenditure of power; that neither in the plant nor in the animal is there a creation of force or motion. Trees grow, and so do men and horses; and here we have new power incessantly introduced upon the earth. But its source, as I have already stated, is the sun. It is the sun that separates the carbon from the oxygen of the carbonic acid, and thus enables them to recombine. Whether they recombine in the furnace of the steam-engine or in the animal body, the origin of the power they produce is the same. In this sense we are all 'souls of fire and children of the sun.' But, as remarked by Helmholtz, we must be content to share our celestial pedigree with the meanest of living things.
Some estimable persons, here present, very possibly shrink from accepting these statements; they may be frightened by their apparent tendency towards what is called materialism — a word which, to many minds, expresses something very dreadful. But it ought to be known and avowed that the physical philosopher, as such, must be a pure materialist. His enquiries deal with matter and force, and with them alone. And whatever be the forms which matter and force assume, whether in the organic world or the inorganic, whether in the coal-beds and forests of the earth, or in the brains and muscles of men, the physical philosopher will make good his right to investigate them. It is perfectly vain to attempt to stop enquiry in this direction. Depend upon it, if a chemist by bringing the proper materials together, in a retort or crucible, could make a baby, he would do it. There is no law, moral or physical, forbidding him to do it. At the present moment there are, no doubt, persons experimenting on the possibility of producing what we call life out of inorganic materials. Let them pursue their studies in peace; it is only by such trials that they will learn the limits of their own powers and the operation of the laws of matter and force.
But while thus making the largest demand for freedom of investigation — while I consider science to be alike powerful as an instrument of intellectual culture and as a ministrant to the material wants of men; if you ask me whether it has solved, or is likely in our day to solve, the problem of this universe, I must shake my head in doubt. You remember the first Napoleon's question, when the savants who accompanied him to Egypt discussed in his presence the origin of the universe, and solved it to their own apparent satisfaction. He looked aloft to the starry heavens, and said, 'It is all very well, gentlemen; but who made these?' That question still remains unanswered, and science makes no attempt to answer it. As far as I can see, there is no quality in the human intellect which is fit to be applied to the solution of the problem. It entirely transcends us. The mind of man may be compared to a musical instrument with a certain range of notes, beyond which in both directions we have an infinitude of silence. The phenomena of matter and force lie within our intellectual range, and as far as they reach we will at all hazards push our enquiries. But behind, and above, and around all, the real mystery of this universe lies unsolved, and, as far as we are concerned, is incapable of solution. Fashion this mystery as you will, with that I have nothing to do. But let your conception of it not be an unworthy one. Invest that conception with your highest and holiest thought, but be careful of pretending to know more about it than is given to man to know. Be careful, above all things, of professing to see in the phenomena of the material world the evidences of Divine pleasure or displeasure. Doubt those who would deduce from the fall of the tower of Siloam the anger of the Lord against those who were crushed. Doubt equally those who pretend to see in cholera, cattle-plague, and bad harvests, evidences of Divine anger. Doubt those spiritual guides who in Scotland have lately propounded the monstrous theory that the depreciation of railway scrip is a consequence of railway travelling on Sundays. Let them not, as far as you are concerned, libel the system of nature with their ignorant hypotheses. Looking from the solitudes of thought into this highest of questions, and seeing the puerile attempts often made to solve it, well might the mightiest of living Scotchmen — that strong and earnest soul, who has made every soul of like nature in these islands his debtor — well, I say, might your noble old Carlyle scornfully retort on such interpreters of the ways of God to men :—
The Builder of this universe was wise,He formed all souls, all systems, planets, particles;The plan he formed his worlds and Aeons by,Was — Heavens! — was thy small nine-and-thirty articles!
The Builder of this universe was wise,He formed all souls, all systems, planets, particles;The plan he formed his worlds and Aeons by,Was — Heavens! — was thy small nine-and-thirty articles!
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Here, indeed, we arrive at the barrier which needs to be perpetually pointed out; alike to those who seek materialistic explanations of mental phenomena, and to those who are alarmed lest such explanations may be found. The last class prove by their fear almost as much as the first prove by their hope, that they believe Mind may possibly be interpreted in terms of Matter; whereas many whom they vituperate as materialists are profoundly convinced that there is not the remotest possibility of so interpreting them.-HERBERT SPENCER.
Here, indeed, we arrive at the barrier which needs to be perpetually pointed out; alike to those who seek materialistic explanations of mental phenomena, and to those who are alarmed lest such explanations may be found. The last class prove by their fear almost as much as the first prove by their hope, that they believe Mind may possibly be interpreted in terms of Matter; whereas many whom they vituperate as materialists are profoundly convinced that there is not the remotest possibility of so interpreting them.
-HERBERT SPENCER.
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VI. SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM.
[Footnote:President's Address to the Mathematical and Physical Section of the British Association at Norwich.]
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 intellect 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 knowledge, 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 researches, so as to render his culture rounded and not one-sided.
As regards science, Fichte's idea is to some extent illustrated by the constitution and labours of the British Association. We have here a body of men engaged in the pursuit of Natural Knowledge, but variously engaged. While sympathising with each of its departments, and supplementing his culture by knowledge 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 biologist 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 far-reaching power which Analysis confers, are potent both As means of physical discovery, and of reaping the entire fruits of discovery. Indeed, without mathematics, expressed or implied, our knowledge of physical science would be both friable and incomplete.
Side by side with the mathematical method we have the method of experiment. Here from a starting-point furnished by his own researches or those of others, the investigator proceeds by combining intuition and verication. 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 illuminate something beyond itself. The force of intellectual penetration into this penumbral region which surrounds actual knowledge is not, as some seem to think, dependent upon method, but upon the genius of the investigator. There is, however, no genius so gifted as not to need control and verification. The profoundest minds know best that Nature's ways are not at all times their ways, and that the brightest flashes in the world of thought are incomplete until they have been proved to have their counterparts in the world of fact. Thus the vocation of the true experimentalist may be defined as the continued exercise of spiritual insight, and its incessant correction and realisation. His experiments constitute a body, of which his purified intuitions are, as it were, the soul.
Partly through mathematical and partly through experimental research, physical science has, of late years, assumed a momentous position in the world. Both in a material and in an intellectual point of view it has produced, and it is destined to produce, immense changes — vast social ameliorations, and vast alterations in the popular conception of the origin, rule, and governance of natural things. By science, in the physical world, miracles are wrought, while philosophy is forsaking its ancient metaphysical channels, and pursuing others which have been opened, or indicated by, scientific research. This must become more and more the case as philosophical writers become more deeply imbued with the methods of science, better acquainted with the facts which scientific men have established, and with the great theories which they have elaborated.
If you look at the face of a watch, you see the hour and minute-hands, and possibly also a second-hand, moving over the graduated dial. Why do these hands move? and why are their relative motions such as they are observed to be? These questions cannot be answered without opening the watch, mastering its various parts, and ascertaining their relationship to each other. When this is done, we find that the observed motion of the hands follows of necessity from the inner mechanism of the watch when acted upon by the force invested in the spring. The motion of the hands may be called a phenomenon of art, but the case is similar with the phenomena of nature. These also have their inner mechanism and their store of force to set that mechanism going. The ultimate problem of physical science is to reveal this mechanism, to discern this store, and to show that from the combined action of both, the phenomena of which they constitute the basis, must, of necessity, flow.
I thought an attempt to give you even a brief and sketchy illustration of the manner in which scientific thinkers regard this problem, would not be uninteresting to you on the present occasion; more especially as it will give me occasion to say a word or two on the tendencies and limits of modern science; to point out the region which men of science claim as their own, and where it is futile to oppose their advance; and also to define, if possible, the bourne between this and that other region, to which the questionings and yearnings of the scientific intellect are directed in vain.
But here your tolerance will be needed. It was the American Emerson, I think, who said that it is hardly possible to state any truth strongly, without apparent injustice to some other truth. Truth is often of a dual character, taking the form of a magnet with two poles; and many of the differences which agitate the thinking part of mankind are to be traced to the exclusiveness with which partisan reasoners dwell upon one half of the duality, in forgetfulness of the other. The proper course appears to be to state both halves strongly, and allow each its fair share in the formation of the resultant conviction. But this waiting for the statement of the two sides of a question implies patience. It implies a resolution to suppress indignation, if the statement of the one half should clash with our 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 Pyramids 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 themselves, 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 different 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 continues, 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 questioning at these pyramidal salt-crystals, as to look at the pyramids of Egypt, without enquiring 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. Everywhere, 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 product 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 talc-spar, and, to form these crystals, the structural force had to deal with the intangible molecules of carbonate of lime. This tendency on the part of matter to organise itself, to grow into shape, to assume definite forms in obedience to the definite action of force, is, as I have said, all-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 complexity. Men of science avail themselves of all possible means of exploring their molecular architecture. For this purpose they employ in turn, as agents of exploration, 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 rocksalt 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 themselves. 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 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 exercise their mutual attractions and repulsions, 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 production 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 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 environment, with their respective forces, the purely human intellect might, if sufficiently expanded, trace outà priorievery 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 certainly derived from the food of the animal, as the motion of Trevethyck's walking-engine from the fuel in its furnace. 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 position in the body might be determined mathematically. Our difficulty is not with thequalityof the problem, but with itscomplexity; 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 connection. A man, for example, can say 'I feel,' 'I think,' 'I love;' but how doesconsciousnessinfuse 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 consciousness, whether in the domain of sense, thought, or emotion, a definite molecular condition, of motion or structure, 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? 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 intimation 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 philosophical grounds, expect to find them in that precise molecular condition which the real objects, if present, would superinduce.
The relation of physics to consciousness being thus invariable, it follows that, given the state of the brain, the corresponding thought or feeling might be inferred: or, given the thought or feeling, 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 empirical association. You may reply, that many of the inferences of science are of this character — the inference, for example, 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 corresponding facts of consciousness is inconceivable 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 reasoning, from the one to the other. They appear together, but we do not know why. Were our minds and senses so expanded, strengthened, and illuminated, as to enable us to see and feel the very molecules 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 problem, 'How are these physical processes connected with the facts of consciousness?' The chasm between the two classes of phenomena would still remain intellectually impassable. Let the consciousness of love, for example, be associated 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 condition 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 everything.
In reality they explain nothing. The utmost he can affirm is the association of two classes of phenomena, of whose real bond of union he is in absolute ignorance. The problem of the connection 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 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 prepared 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 contemporaries, 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 development, 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-scientific 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. Meanwhile the mystery is not without its uses. It certainly may 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 strengthening the intellect, and in; rescuing man from that littleness to which, in the struggle for existence, or for precedence in the world, he is continually prone.
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Musings on the Matterhorn, July 27, 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 thesadnesswith which I regarded the Matterhorn? Did thethoughtwhich now ran back to it simply return to its primeval home? If so, had we not better recast our definitions 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, Is there no being or thing in the universe that knows more about these matters than I do; what is my answer? Supposing 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 affirmation, dissipated at the same time; would the undeflected human mind return to the meridian of absolute neutrality as regards these ultra-physical questions? Is such a position one of stable equilibrium? 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 Matterhorn.
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Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,These three alone lead life to sovereign power.Yet not for power (power of herselfWould come uncalled for), but to live by law,Acting the law we live by without fear;And, because right is right, to follow rightWere wisdom in the scorn of consequence.
Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,These three alone lead life to sovereign power.Yet not for power (power of herselfWould come uncalled for), but to live by law,Acting the law we live by without fear;And, because right is right, to follow rightWere wisdom in the scorn of consequence.
TENNYSON.
TENNYSON.
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VII. AN ADDRESS TO STUDENTS.
[Footnote:Delivered at University College, London, Session 1968-69.]
THERE is an idea regarding the nature of man which modern philosophy has sought, and is still seeking, to raise into clearness; the idea, namely, of secular growth. Man is not a thing of yesterday; nor do I imagine that the slightest controversial tinge is imported into this address when I say that he is not a thing of 6,000 years ago. Whether he came originally from stocks or stones, from nebulous gas or solar fire, I know not; if he had any such origin the process of his transformation is as inscrutable to you and me as that of the grand old legend, according to which 'the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.' But however obscure man's origin may be, his growth is not to be denied. Here a little and there a little added through the ages have slowly transformed him from what he was into what he is. The doctrine has been held that the mind of the child is like a sheet of white paper, on which by education we can write what characters we please. This doctrine assuredly needs qualification and correction. In physics, when an external force is applied to a body with a view of affecting its inner texture, if we wish to predict the result, we must know whether the external force conspires with or opposes the internal forces of the body itself; and in bringing the influence of education to bear upon the new-born man his inner powers also must be taken into account. He comes to us as a bundle of inherited capacities and tendencies, labelled 'from the indefinite past to the indefinite future;' and he makes his transit from the one to the other through the education of the present time. The object of that education is, or ought to be, to provide wise exercise for his capacities, wise direction for his tendencies, and through this exercise and this direction to furnish his mind with such knowledge as may contribute to the usefulness, the beauty, and the nobleness of his life.
How is this discipline to be secured, this knowledge imparted? Two rival methods now solicit attention, — the one organised and equipped, the labour of centuries having been expended in bringing it to its present state of perfection; the other, more or less chaotic, but becoming daily less so, and giving signs of enormous power, both as a source of knowledge and as a means of discipline. These two methods are the classical and the scientific method. I wish they were not rivals; it is only bigotry and short-sightedness that make them so; for assuredly it is possible to give both of them fair play. Though hardly authorised to express an opinion upon the subject, I nevertheless hold the opinion that the proper study of a language is an intellectual discipline of the highest kind. If I except discussions on the comparative merits of Popery and Protestantism, English grammar was the most important discipline of my boyhood. The piercing through the involved and inverted sentences of 'Paradise Lost'; the linking of the verb to its often distant nominative, of the relative to its distant antecedent, of the agent to the object of the transitive verb, of the preposition to the noun or pronoun which it governed, the study of variations in mood and tense, the transpositions often necessary to bring out the true grammatical structure of a sentence — all this was to my young mind a discipline of the highest value, and a source of unflagging delight. How I rejoiced when I found a great author tripping, and was fairly able to pin him to a corner from which there was no escape! As I speak, some of the sentences which exercised me when a boy rise to my recollection. For instance, 'He that hath ears to hear, let him hear;' where the 'He' is left, as it were, floating in mid air without any verb to support it. I speak thus of English because it was of real value to me. I do not speak of other languages because their educational value for me was almost insensible. But knowing the value of English so well, I should be the last to deny, or even to doubt, the high discipline involved in the proper study of Latin and Greek.
That study, moreover, has other merits and recommendations. It is, as I have said, organised and systematised by long-continued use. It is an instrument wielded by some of our best intellects in the education of youth; and it can point to results in the achievements of our foremost men. What, then, has science to offer which is in the least degree likely to compete with such a system? I cannot better reply than by recurring to the grand old story from which I have already quoted. Speaking of the world and all that therein is, of the sky and the stars around it, the ancient writer says, 'And God saw all that he had made, and behold it was very good.' It is the body of things thus described which science offers to the study of man. There is a very renowned argument much prized and much quoted by theologians, in which the universe is compared to a watch. Let us deal practically with this comparison. Supposing a watchmaker, having completed his instrument, to be so satisfied with his work as to call it very good, what would you understand him to mean? You would not suppose that he referred to the dial-plate in front and the chasing of the case behind, so much as to the wheels and pinions, the springs and jewelled pivots of the works within — to those qualities and powers, in short, which enable the watch to perform its work as a keeper of time. With regard to the knowledge of such a watch he would be a mere ignoramus who would content himself with outward inspection. I do not wish to say one severe word here to-day, but I fear that many of those who are very loud in their praise of the works of the Lord know them only in this outside and superficial way. It is the inner works of the universe which science reverently uncovers; it is the study of these that she recommends as a discipline worthy of all acceptation.
The ultimate problem of physics is to reduce matter by analysis to its lowest condition of divisibility, and force to its simplest manifestations, and then by synthesis to construct from these elements the world as it stands. We are still a long way from the final solution of this problem; and when the solution comes, it will be more one of spiritual insight than of actual observation. But though we are still a long way from this complete intellectual mastery of nature, we have conquered vast regions of it, have learned their polities and the play of their powers. We live upon a ball of 8,000 miles in diameter, swathed by an atmosphere of unknown height. This ball has been molten by heat, chilled to a solid, and sculptured by water. It is made up of substances possessing distinctive properties and modes of action, which offer problems to the intellect, some profitable to the child, others taxing the highest powers of the philosopher. Our native sphere turns on its axis, and revolves in space. It is one of a band which all do the same. It is illuminated by a sun which, though nearly a hundred millions of miles distant, can be brought virtually into our closets and there subjected to examination. It has its winds and clouds, its rain and frost, its light, heat, sound, electricity, and magnetism. And it has its vast kingdoms of animals and vegetables. To a most amazing extent the human mind has conquered these things, and revealed the logic which runs through them. Were they facts only, without logical relationship, science might, as a means of discipline, suffer in comparison with language. But the whole body of phenomena is instinct with law; the facts are hung on principles, and the value of physical science as a means of discipline consists in the motion of the intellect, both inductively and deductively, along the lines of law marked out by phenomena. As regards the discipline to which I have already referred as derivable from the study of languages, — that, and more, is involved in the study of physical science. Indeed, I believe it would be possible so to limit and arrange the study of a portion of physics as to render the mental exercise involved in it almost qualitatively the same as that involved in the unravelling of a language.
I have thus far confined myself to the purely intellectual side of this question. But man is not all intellect. If he were so, science would, I believe, be his proper nutriment. But he feels as well as thinks; he is receptive of the sublime and beautiful as well as of the true. Indeed, I believe that even the intellectual action of a complete man is, consciously or unconsciously, sustained by an undercurrent of the emotions. It is vain to attempt to separate the moral and emotional from the intellectual. Let a man but observe himself, and he will, if I mistake not, find that in nine cases out of ten, the emotions constitute the motive force which pushes his intellect into action. The reading of the works of two men, neither of them imbued with the spirit of modern science — neither of them, indeed, friendly to that spirit — has placed me here to-day. These men are the English Carlyle and the American Emerson. I must ever gratefully remember that through three long cold German winters Carlyle placed me in my tub, even when ice was on its surface, at five o'clock every morning — not slavishly, but cheerfully, meeting each day's studies with a resolute will, determined whether victor or vanquished not to shrink from difficulty. I never should have gone through Analytical Geometry and the Calculus had it not been for those men. I never should have become a physical investigator, and hence without them I should not have been here to-day. They told me what I ought to do in a way that caused me to do it, and all my consequent intellectual action is to be traced to this purely moral source. To Carlyle and Emerson I ought to add Fichte, the greatest representative of pure idealism. These three unscientific men made me a practical scientific worker. They called out 'Act!' I hearkened to the summons, taking the liberty, however, of determining for myself the direction which effort was to take.
And I may now cry 'Act!' but the potency of action must be yours. I may pull the trigger, but if the gun be not charged there is no result. We are creators in the intellectual world as little as in the physical. We may remove obstacles, and render latent capacities active, but we cannot suddenly change the nature of man. The 'new birth' itself implies the pre-existence of a character which requires not to be created but brought forth. You cannot by any amount of missionary labour suddenly transform the savage into the civilised Christian. The improvement of man issecular— not the work of an hour or of a day. But though indubitably bound by our organisations, no man knows what the potentialities of any human mind may be, requiring only release to be brought into action. There are in the mineral world certain crystals — certain forms, for instance, of fluor-spar, which have lain darkly in the earth for ages, but which nevertheless have a potency of light locked up within them. In their case the potential has never become actual — the light is in fact held back by a molecular detent. When these crystals are warmed, the detent is lifted, and an outflow of light immediately begins. I know not how many of you may be in the condition of this fluor-spar. For aught I know, every one of you may be in this condition, requiring but the proper agent to be applied — the proper word to be spoken — to remove a detent, and to render you conscious of light and warmth within yourselves and sources of both to others.
The circle of human nature, then, is not complete without the arc of the emotions. The lilies of the field have a value for us beyond their botanical ones — a certain lightening of the heart accompanies the declaration that 'Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.' The sound of the village bell has a value beyond its acoustical one. The setting sun has a value beyond its optical one. The starry heavens, as you know, had for Immanuel Kant a value beyond their astronomical one. I think it very desirable to keep this horizon of the emotions open, and not to permit either priest or philosopher to draw down his shutters between you and it. Here the dead languages, which are sure to be beaten by science in the purely intellectual fight, have an irresistible claim. They supplement the work of science by exalting and refining the aesthetic faculty, and must on this account be cherished by all who desire to see human culture complete. There must be a reason for the fascination which these languages have so long exercised upon powerful and elevated minds — a fascination which will probably continue for men of Greek and Roman mould to the end of time.
In connection with this question one very obvious danger besets many of the more earnest spirits of our day — the danger ofhastein endeavouring to give the feelings repose. We are distracted by systems of theology and philosophy which were taught to us when young, and which now excite in us a hunger and a thirst for knowledge not proved to be attainable. There are periods when the judgment ought to remain in suspense, the data on which a decision might be based being absent. This discipline of suspending the judgment is a common one in science, but not so common as it ought to be elsewhere. I walked down Regent Street some time ago with a man of great gifts and acquirements, discussing with him various theological questions. I could not accept his views of the origin and destiny of the universe, nor was I prepared to enunciate any definite views of my own. He turned to me at length and said, 'You surely must have a theory of the universe.' That I should in one way or another have solved this mystery of mysteries seemed, to my friend a matter of course. 'I have not even a theory of magnetism' was my reply. We ought to learn to wait. We ought assuredly to pause before closing with the advances of those expounders of the ways of God to men, who offer us intellectual peace at the modest cost of intellectual life.
The teachers of the world ought to be its best men, and for the present at all events such men must learn self-trust. By the fullness and freshness of their own Jives and utterances they must awaken life in others. The hopes and terrors which influenced our fathers are passing away, and our trust henceforth must rest on the innate strength of man's moral nature. And here, I think, the poet will have a great part to play in the future culture of the world. To him, when he rightly understands his mission, and does not flinch from the tonic discipline which it assuredly demands, we have a right to look for that heightening and brightening of life which so many of us need. To him it is given for a long time to come to fill those shores which the recession of the theologic tide has left exposed. Void of offence to science, he may freely deal with conceptions which science shuns, and become the illustrator and interpreter of that Power which as
'Jehovah, Jove, or Lord,'
has hitherto filled and strengthened the human heart.
Let me utter one practical word in conclusion — take care of your health. There have been men who by wise attention to this point might have risen to any eminence — might have made great discoveries, written great poems, commanded armies, or ruled states, but who by unwise neglect of this point have come to nothing. Imagine Hercules as oarsman in a rotten boat; what can he do there but by the very force of his stroke expedite the ruin of his craft? Take care then of the timbers of your boat, and avoid all practices likely to introduce either wet or dry rot amongst them. And this is not to be accomplished by desultory or intermittent efforts of the will, but by the formation of habits. The will no doubt has sometimes to put forth its strength in order to crush the special temptation. But the formation of right habits is essential to your permanent security. They diminish your chance of falling when assailed, and they augment your chance of recovery when overthrown.
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