CHAPTER V.HOW TO GET A COGITATIVE NOSE.
It is a great and prevalent mistake to imagine that a Cogitative mind (and Nose) is to be acquired by reading alone. It is almost certain that, as books multiply, Cogitative Minds decrease, for how is a man to think, if all his thinking is done for him? The mind, when constantly supplied with extraneous thoughts must, without great care, lose the habit of generating internal ones. All the greatest thinkers have been the first in their department of thought. Homer, Dante, Chaucer, Shakspere, Bacon, &c. These men, as compared with even mediocre men in our day, had very little learning,—but they had vast wisdom.
Read Bacon’s Novum Organum and Sylva for instance, and see how few facts there are in them but such as are either now known to, or laughed at, by every school-boy; yet direct your attention to the train of thought, to the generalizations from these simple facts, to the originality of the deductions, and behold how the dwarf in Knowledge becomes a giant in Wisdom! It is even true that Bacon was behind his cotemporaries in many matters of mere knowledge; yet the majesty of his wisdom was so vast that it still rules, and ever must rule, the world of science.
So, as on the one hand, a man may have wisdom and yet want knowledge; on the other, he may have all knowledge and be able to discourse of all things, from the hyssop to the cedar, and yet want wisdom. It is of no use to read and accumulate facts if we do not alsothink. Better indeed to think and never read, than read and not think. If a man does not think for himself, if he does not originate ideas, if books are not to himonlythe elements of thought, if he is not fully and immoveably impressed with the conviction that two and two make five, or any greater number which the Cogitative Mind canevolve, he has no chance of becoming a wise man, whatever his learning, and however profound his acquaintance with the thoughts of other men.
But you reply, two and two do not, and cannot make five, &c. We rejoin, they as certainly and unquestionably do in metaphysics, as they certainly and unquestionably do not in physics. True, in physics, two and two things, two and two facts make four, and only four; but if the mind, when in possession of those four, can generate nothing more from them, it is a hopeless case with that mind. If, upon the recipience of such four facts the mind remains contented with the arithmetical fact that, from four units it has segregated four, it is, and for ever will, remain stationary; it has gained nothing, and might as well have left those four facts in their original units, for their addition has not added to it one particle of wisdom.
Facts are, or ought to be, only the generators of ideas. Facts in themselves are utterly worthless; it is in their associations, in their consequences, their bearings on each other; it is as they support or refute systems, theories and other mind-born facts, that they are of value. Now, it is only by the action of mind upon them that they have associations, consequences, &c. Without mind, facts must for ever remain units; even though added together,ad infinitum, they have no natural co-unity, no cohesion, no affinity for each other. A thousand facts added together are still but a thousand units, unless mind has cohered them into a system. This done, you clearly have the thousand facts still, but you havealsosomething infinitely more valuable, you have a mind-born fact, a deduction, a system, hypothesis, theory, axiom, or whatever you please to call it.
Cordially as we hate coining new words, we still more cordially hate the German fashion of hooking together two vernacular words and calling the junction an addition to the language. But we are compelled, in order to save circumlocution, to coin a word to express those facts which spring from Mind, whether, as in moral philosophy, purely metaphysical, or as in natural philosophy, generated by Mind from Matter, by Reason from Experience. Such facts we would beg to call noögenisms (νοος,mens,cogitatio, andγενος,natus,progenies); therein including allmental offsprings or deductions, whether called hypotheses, theories, systems, sciences, axioms, aphorisms, &c.
Noögenisms, therefore, are those facts which mind generates from other facts without annihilating the latter; hence it is said that, metaphysically, two and two make five. Thus, mind, contemplating the physical facts of the super-position of strata, deduces from and adds to them this metaphysical fact or noögenism;—Strata were deposited successively.
Herein appears too an essential difference between Mind and Matter. If diverse substances, having a natural affinity, be amalgamated, a new substance is obtained, but the elements are lost. Of hydrogen and oxygen water may be made, but the gases are forthwith lost in the fluid; the procedure may be reversed and the water be converted into gases, but the water has disappeared. This is not so with mind and noögenisms; for however closely, by a mental synthesis, divers facts may be united into a new fact or noögenism, the latter is obtained without losing the former or elementary facts, which remain as Knowledge, elements of Wisdom, to support the noögenism or create others.
We see then, that while Mind is crescive, Matter is not. Matter is neither crescive nor decrescive. It may be changed into divers forms, animal, vegetable, or mineral, but it never can be varied inquantity. The six feet of animated clay dies, it rots in the silent tomb; years pass by. The hand of affection which protected the loathsome, yet—for the once animating spirit’s sake—beloved, remains is cold and rotted too. The sepulchre, so long forgotten and deserted, again becomes of interest to the brother of the hyæna and the resurrectionist—the antiquarian. He, in his cool, business-like phraseology, opens a barrow or exhumes a tomb, and finds—what? A pound of dust! The sole visible remains of a gigantic hero or a stalwart king. Yet is not one particle of that ancient demigod perished. Every atom is, in some shape or other, in the universe. Some atoms may “have gone a passage through the guts of a beggar,” and so have nurturedan other human form; some may have stopped a beer-barrel and so
“Imperious Cæsar dead, and turned to clay,Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.”
“Imperious Cæsar dead, and turned to clay,Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.”
“Imperious Cæsar dead, and turned to clay,Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.”
“Imperious Cæsar dead, and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.”
The theory of the metempsychosis is true of matter; and as the ancient sages believed the soul to be material, that theory, so far from being violently absurd (as we in the pride of better knowledge are apt to term it), was almost the only theory which the thinking and observant mind could of itself elaborate. Hence the adoption of that system by far-distant nations is no proof of inter-communication. What the Brahmin in India found a natural result of the doctrine of the materiality of the soul and its consequent analogy to everything else material, the Druid in Britain would arrive at with equal ease.
But Mind is both crescive and decrescive; and it is another peculiar property of Mind, that it is never stationary,—it is always changing, increasing or decreasing. This is an important consideration; a fearful responsibility cast upon it. If the one talent (and God has so benignly ordered it, that no sane, and therefore responsible, mind is devoid of at least one talent,) is hid in a napkin, the servant is condemned and his talent taken from him. But if the talent is put out to use, it will increase and grow, and make other talents, and the lord of that servant will receive his own again with usury. For, having endowed man with this crescive power, He justly demands that power to be exercised and the mind to be enlarged and expanded “by every one according to his several ability,” so that He may reap the harvest which his well-rewarded servants have gathered in, “reaping where He hath not sown, and gathering where He hath not strewed.”
The very cause of this crescive power of mind is, that the sum of the units aggregated by mind is greater than the arithmetical sum of the units; and the cause of this is, that facts, the elements of noögenisms, are not, like chemical elements, lost in the fact compounded from them, but retain likewise a separate, independent existence,capable of being again compounded into other noögenisms, and still ever without losing their original forms.
It will now be understood what is meant by two and two making five, &c.; and until a man is incontrovertibly convinced of the possibility of this he will in vain multiply facts. Facts must be added together, not for their arithmetical product, which is Knowledge, but for their metaphysical product, which is Wisdom. You will frequently hear asked by utilitarians, what is the use (cui bono?) of such and such Knowledge? Remember that the use of all Knowledge is to feed the mind and to generate Wisdom, and you will always have this ready and sufficient reply, “It is food for thought.”
And here it may not be out of place to endeavour to point out by an example the difference between knowledge and wisdom, and at the same time elucidate more clearly how the former is to be made subservient to and the genetrix of the latter. We observe that a certain quartz-stone is round. We have learnt two facts, the nature and form of the stone. Now what is the value of those factsper se? The recipience of them has increased ourknowledge, but is the mind strengthened or rendered one jotwiser? We trow not. But as a key or foundation to an aqueoustheoryof geology they are almost infinitely important. The Cogitative Mind perceives that the round stone must have once been an angular fragment broken off from some rock of quartz, and asks, “How came it broken off? and how came it round?” The answers are a whole system of geology; nay, perhaps an entire system of the universe a noögenism of the sublimest kind.[25]Have not these facts generated? Is it not clear that, if the physical units had remained metaphysical units they would havebeen valueless? but being submitted to the powerful energy of intense thought they become the parents of a noögenism, into which “the angels desired to look,” and at the first dawn of which, from the primæval chaos, “the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.”
Neither is this instance fanciful; for, while we write, it reminds us that this identical simple fact,—a round pebble on a common,—appeared to Paley to be one from which the mind could evolve nothing, and therefore he contrasted it with a watch, whose mechanism led the mind to theorize on its causes and origin; whereas, a recent commentator thereon justly observes, that the stone was as fertile a source of cogitation and as able a guide “from Nature up to Nature’s God,” as the watch was from itself toitsmaker.
From this example let us take warning, that facts be not to us nothing more than round stones. Let us be careful never to let our minds rest content with the mere accumulation of facts, but ever strive to build them up into something more useful and ennobling. Let us use them as bricks—mere logs of burnt clay in themselves, but fit to build glorious monuments of the sublime power of human invention. Let us remember that Ideas are the only things of real permanent value in this world; and that, though we may store our brain with Facts till our heads burst, unless those facts are to us only generators of Ideas, we have not, and cannot acquire a Cogitative mind; we may have Knowledge, but we have not Wisdom. A wise man hath wisely said, that “the wise man is”—not he who knoweththings, but—“he who knoweth theinterpretationof a thing” [Eccles.viii. 21]; and for this purpose only it is that, “Wise men lay up knowledge” [Prov.x. 14], for “Wisdom finds out knowledge of witty inventions” [Prov.viii. 12].
In order to effectually discipline the mind to attentive study, and to save it from the strong temptation which is offered to desultory reading, it is advisable for the adult and partially educated student to form an hypothesis and read up to it. To reverse, in fact, the Baconian principlesof philosophy, and to study from hypothesis to facts, and not from facts to hypothesis. This is, it is true, opposed to modern philosophical principles, but properly modified and carefully guarded against self-conceit and dogmatism, it is almost the only proper and effective mode of study. It is the ancient or Aristotelian mode; and though, when refuted by Bacon, as a mode of “discovering the sciences,” it had become shamefully abused and degenerate, it has produced more great original thinkers than the modern. Observe, that we recommend it only as a mode ofstudy,i. e., of disciplining and exercising the mind, for beyond the purpose oftrainingit should not be pursued. It is too dangerous to be prosecuted far, for the mind which has long formed and nursed up a favourite hypothesis is unwilling to abandon it, and is too apt to force all facts into accordance with it, instead of modifying or abandoning it as new facts arise.[26]
But the great advantages of this plan, as a training process, would appear to be—1st. That the mind being thus occupied with an hypothesis has always that to direct its researches in a settled, uniform, and definite course. 2nd. That every new fact accumulated is immediately compared with the hypothesis, and is incorporated or written off ascontra, after this mental exercise, as occasion may require. Thus no fact ever comes into the mind without being subjected to thought and giving exercise to the important faculty of comparison. And this process of comparing, to which every fact must be subjected, will not only impress the fact and its comparatives on the memory, but will powerfully tend to exercise and strengthen the Cogitative powers; for there is no operation of mind which more actively calls into energy all the faculties at once than comparing, because to compare two things fairly we must (so to speak) know the length, breadth, depth, density and powers of each. 3rd. A steady habit of reading is acquired; we read with a definite aim—the establishment or refutation (we ought not to care which) of our hypothesis, and, however wide and discursive our reading, there is little danger of its becoming desultory—thatcurse and bane of modern mind. The Baconian process of accumulating facts before hypothesising, almost demands desultory reading, for the mind sees no fixed end towards which it shall arrive; it is not permitted to guess what may be the result of its studies, and hence too often loses all interest in them, and remains content with the barren accumulation of things.
What we would suggest may be thus illustrated: Let a man, intending to study history, first adopt an hypothesis—of course he must have some pre-knowledge. It matters not what the hypothesis, so that it is likely to involve a very wide field of inquiry. If he contemplate primæval history, let him adopt some such proposition as this, “Whether we can infer from the institutions of mankind that they all spring from one common ancestor?” Or this, “Whether any nation whose national records have been preserved were the first owners of the soil?”
Is it not obvious, that with some such proposition before the mind it will take much more interest in and more steadily direct its studies, and that facts will be more easily remembered, from their bearing on the hypothesis, than if merely received as naked, isolated units?
The only precautions to be taken are, not to be too strongly wedded to either side of our hypothesis, nor to sit down too soon satisfied that it is proved or disproved, nor to set up for teachers and discoverers, while we are only learners and making discoveries.
It will be seen hereafter that, notwithstanding what has been said, we differ not at all from Bacon himself; we differ only from his pseudo-disciples, who have no more in common with his enlarged views of the uses of science than the schools had with Aristotle, or the New Academy with Plato. Nevertheless, we well know that we shall be well abused by these disciples as an impugner of Bacon, and as a heretic to his philosophy, just as your pious people condemn as an infidel or atheist every one who denies any dogma which their wild enthusiasm has grafted on the Bible. It is not in religion alone that bigotry is to be found.
Bacon himself pursued the mode of study which wesuggest. At fifteen he formed an hypothesis, and devoted his whole life to its elucidation. The hypothesis round which, as a centre, he gathered every fact within his reach was this: Whether or not the Aristotelian was the best mode of cultivating the mind, and of discovering the sciences?
He seems at first to have been disposed to think that it was neither; but the conclusion to which he finally came, after many years of close thought and arduous study, was, that it was the best mode of cultivating the mind, but the worst mode of discovering the sciences. He did not soon sit down satisfied that he was right, and set up for a dogmatic teacher of his new philosophy. He waited patiently for any new light which years and experience might throw upon it, either bringing out more brightly its beauties or disclosing more satisfactorily its errors. Once in each year he reviewed it and tested it by the new facts which he had gleaned during the year’s studies. Once in each year, for twelve long years, he wrote out with his own hand, altering, condensing and verifying hisNovum Organumbefore he published it.
So much stress has, notwithstanding this illustrious example of the master, been laid, ever since the publication of the Baconian or inductive philosophy, upon the bare accumulation of facts, and so much has been written against generalizing and hypothesizing, that it may be as well, before quitting the subject, to point out wherein the disciples of Bacon have neglected the precepts of their master; and to inquire whether this neglect, and the onlypartialadoption of his teachings, have not contributed greatly to the advancement of mere Knowledge at the expense of true Wisdom, and thus been very important causes of the degeneracy of modern mind.
Bacon seems to have foreseen this effect of the exclusive adoption of the experimental part of his philosophy—the only part which men have yet had the courage to adopt—when he said, “Our way ofdiscovering the sciencesalmostlevels the capacitiesof men, and leaves little room for excellence, as it performs all things by sure rules and demonstrations, and therefore these discoveries of ours are,as we have often said, rather owing to felicity than to any great talent, and are rather the production of time than of genius.”[27]It was for this reason that he so earnestly, as we shall see hereafter, insisted against its use by young and common minds, or as a means of mental cultivation. And too truly has the prophetic caution been fulfilled! Nevertheless, as it will be loudly denied that modern mind is degenerate, it may be as well to ask how much we are in anything, except physical science (facts, or what Bacon calls “Experience”), in advance of our two hundred years’ dead ancestors. Array the names in our list of Cogitatives, chronologically and analytically, or do so by any list of great thinkers, and you will scarcely find a proportion of one since 1700, to three who lived between 1550 and that date.
Nevertheless, though there is this falling off in Wisdom, how vast has been the accession of Knowledge. Bacon, in his day, complained that the former, (Reason) had gone on without the latter (Experience); so that, while mind had attained the highest flights of which it seemed capable, the arcana of nature were yet unexplored, and little or nothing had been done to advance man’s physical welfare. He said that, hitherto, reason and experience were as new gifts of the gods:—the one laid on the back of a light bird, the other on a dull ass, and that as yet they had not been united. His object was to unite them; to this purpose he devoted his gifted mind and strained his utmost energies. Yet if he were living now he would be compelled to make the same complaint, with this variation however, that men have abandoned the burden of the bird, and have loaded themselves with that of the ass.
While then we admit the rapid advancement of Knowledge, let us pause a moment and inquire if it is not a proof of the degeneracy of mind and the decay of Wisdom, that, in that which is purely mental or dependent on mind, we have no names of equal note with the names of those who lived before the exclusive adoption of the experimental part of the Baconian philosophy. Where is the name in poetry to set against Shakspere and Milton; in metaphysicsto match with Locke, Hobbes, &c.; in deduction from facts and generalization with Bacon, Newton, Halley, &c.; in theology, with the hundreds of names which yet eclipse all modern commentators? It may perhaps be said in reply, if we have not such great minds, we have a larger number of thinkers of lesser magnitude. This is doubtful. Time has obliterated the swarms of lesser fry who, like their congeners of the nineteenth century, lived their day and gained a temporary fame in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But further, it is easy to be a triton among minnows. It is as easy now-a-days to set up for a literary character and “write a book” without an idea, as it is for an insolvent man to pass for a rich one and live sumptuously on borrowed capital and paper money. Our thousands of authors are but the minnows which sport in the shallow brooks and live their little day in glorious self-gratulation on the laudations of their brother minnows; but if they happen to get out into the deep strong waters, and a triton turns his stern eye upon them—pop—they turn their tailsround, dive to the bottom and are seen no more. Thus it was with our novelists; they shone and blazed away—happy, glorious book-wrights—till the triton Scott came athwart their path, and straightway they were gone. And surely, surely, we now again want another Scott to demolish the rapidly increasing tribe of cachinnators, who appear to deem that the proper end of light literature is just to raise a temporary laugh and be forgotten. Heaven send us salvation from more Jerrolds, à Beckets and the whole tribe of ephemeral laughing-stocks! It is the same in other and more important departments of literature. Our historians are mere compilers of old letters; we fly to Germany for historical criticism and acute generalizations from facts, contenting ourselves with laboriously picking up a few obscure facts for the use of our more deeply-thinking neighbours; who are treading in the paths which our own sages trod two hundred and fifty years ago, because they have not yet placed the exact sciences at the head of intellectual pursuits, and abandoned thought formechanisms, generalizations from facts for the barren accumulation of facts.
The complaint of Lord Bacon is truer now than it was in his time: “If a man turn his eyes to libraries, he may perhaps be surprised at the immense variety of books he finds; but upon examining and diligently weighing their matters and contents, he will be struck with amazement on the other side; and after finding no end of repetitions, but that men continually treat and speak the same things over and over again, fall from admiration of the variety into a wonder at the want and scantiness of those things which have hitherto detained and possessed the minds of men.” Unhappily his system, by the universal and indiscriminate adoption of only its lower and material offices to the exclusion of those higher ends which he contemplated from it, and by its being used as a mode of cultivating the mind, as well as a means of discovering the sciences, has rather strengthened than weakened the justice of these censures. Our Augustan age of thought is still that of Elizabeth and James I.; the latter part of the sixteenth, and the early part of the seventeenth centuries still outshine the nineteenth in loftiness of thought and solidity of learning; yet we complacently boast of our progress, because we rattle through the fields of learning at ten times the speed of our ancestors, as we do over our railway-sected country, gleaning about as little information of the one as of the other. We dash through the deep cuttings and dark tunnels of literature at railway speed, taking assertions for facts, and empty declamation and tawdry immorality for sense and religion; and then, like the nervous lady who rides through a railway tunnel without fainting, congratulate ourselves on having accomplished some gigantic feat; though we have learnt just as much about the subject of our studies as she has of the construction of the tunnel; but having, like her, fretted and fumed for a few minutes at some dark difficulty, we unite with her in thinking ourselves very valiant and clever people.
We avail ourselves of the roads and paths which othershave made, and never stop to examine their solidity or foundations, or the principles on which they are constructed. We lose the habits of deep investigation and close thinking by a long and entire reliance on others, and our minds become dissipated, and a prey to all the silly novelties which spring like ephemera from the almost stagnant pools of modern brains.
This mental dissipation and its concomitant evil, reading for the purpose of killing time,—with far more baneful effects than never reading at all, but relying merely on our own serious excogitations,—are curses from which we ought earnestly to endeavour to save ourselves. This we can only do by sternly exercising the mind in settled definite habits of thought, by placing before it a determinate aim and end to its cogitations. It must know beforehand whither it is tending, so that, as it proceeds, it may note its progress, and be able to judge whether it is advancing or receding. It would be as absurd for a man to start on a journey without knowing whither he was going, but to be continually trying first one road and then another, in hopes it would bring him somewhere, as it is for a student to sit down to study without any definite purpose or view before him. True, the traveller might pick up many facts and get some knowledge in his desultory course, and so might the student; but neither would be advanced on his journey or have gained any true wisdom. Yet this is the course of modern study. Loose, desultory reading: a vague acquisition of unconnected facts is alone aimed at. “Witness the transactions of our scientific bodies—a huge undigestive mass of valuable facts; mere raw materials, knowledge-bricks, which no one has dared yet to generalize or build up into a harmonious and well-proportioned temple of wisdom.”
Run your memory over the records of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and what do you find? Is it not exactly the same as that which the witty author of “Hudibras” castigated two hundred years ago, in his satire on the Royal Society,—a mere chronicle of the feats of butterfly-hunters and fly-catchers? Is there to be found in the eighteen years’ “Transactions” of thehundreds of scientific men, whose combined knowledge is many hundred times more extensive than that of thesavansof any past age, a single attempt at a generalization of their immense field of facts? Is there any effort at what Solomon calls the “interpretation of things?”—at gathering the “fruits” of the Baconian system? Are they not only a barren addition to the mountain of facts already accumulated? Alas! it is too true.
Modernsavansshrink from using the materials which, for several centuries, thousands of laborious literary ants have been collecting. Like the unhappy Psyche, doomed by the inexorable Venus to arrange and sort into respective heaps a confused mass of wheat, barley, rye, millet and other kinds of grain, they sit down in despair of accomplishing the apparently hopeless task. Frightened at the gigantic labour, they not only fly from it themselves but condemn every one who attempts to arrange systematically the grains which, assorted, would afford valuable seed for fresh crops of food, but which, while thus intermingled, are utterly useless and unproductive. With an insane determinationnotto see the work which it is the duty imposed on the soul (Psyche) by the prolific powers of nature (Venus) to accomplish, they go on adding to the heterogeneous heap, and endeavour, by loud and clamorous applauses of those who are mere collectors like themselves, to drown the voice of those who would incite them to the enjoined and higher duty of assorting and arranging.
Should any one, like the able but mistaken author of the “Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation,” endeavour to bring Thought to bear upon these dry bones and make them live, to generalize and build up a system from them, great is the outcry and terrible are the denunciations. The modern Prometheus who would animate with the celestial fire of forethought the clay which lies a dead and useless mass at his feet, is clamourously damned by his timid brethren the Epimethei, the after or past-thinkers; and, unless he is endowed with more than mortal power, he must submit to have his heart daily devoured by the racking fiends—envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness.
One of the laborious ants of whom we have been speaking asks, “For what do we read?” and complacently answers, “To knowfacts.”[28]Indeed! The highest office of mind is to make itself a barren storehouse! To us it appears, on the contrary, that we should read and study generally, not toknowfacts, but tobe wisefrom facts, to make the head wiser and the heart better. The mind is not to be considered as a mere granary and barren receptacle of literary food, but rather as the stomach which converts into a new substance—assimilating good healthy flesh and blood—the heterogeneous materials which are put into it. Another ant, of no mean pretensions among his brethren, enthusiastically endeavours, by promises of “literary glory,” to incite some of them to pile up into one heap the confused materials they have collected. “Let us see,” he says with childish glee, “how much we’ve got! You John, and you Willy, and you Bobby bring what you’ve collected! There pile it up! Make a snow man; cut him eyes, and nose, and mouth.” There he is with a pipe in his white lips. Doesn’t he look sage, and grave, and solemn? Dance round him, ye children; clap your hands and be merry. Rejoice over your work while it lasts. The first warm breath of spring will melt it away. It is no man, it has no life, it is cold and dead. The snow, give it what shape you will, is snow still. You have collected much, but you have got nothing new out of your collection. But lest it should be supposed that we belie this celebrated ant—this collector of grain—we will quote his own words: “Within the last two hundred years (says Professor Playfair), or since Galileo and Bacon taught us this great lesson,we have been employed in recording factsin ten thousand several volumes. But thus scattered, they lose so much of their value and importance, that, in another age, we may hope some aspirant after literary glory will perform the Herculean labour of condensing the whole into (What?—a system of the universe?a better knowledge of nature? No!)a volume!” Avolume!that is to say, gather the scattered masses into one heap as heterogeneous as the scattered masses; pile up the snow, strewed over pathway and field, hedge and ditch, into a snow man. That is the highest aspiration of this Professor of divers learned societies. His grovelling soul soars not to the hope that any new fact may be extracted by mind from this vast heap of raw materials. He knows not that, metaphysically, two and two make five, and that without any other material additions, without any more ant-collections, the heap may be made to grow and swell, that the spirit of life may be breathed into it, and that, wedded to mind, it may even become the prolific parent of new facts of a far higher and more enduring nature than any in his boasted volume. Facts, which, having mind for one of their parents, will with filial love pay back in tenfold blessings the life given them; facts which will lead that parent to unravel the mysterious secrets of nature, and enable her to behold the wonderful arcana of its Holy of Holies.
This is the purpose for which we should read, and this the glorious end for which we should collect facts; instead of merely contenting ourselves with being employed, as Playfair too truly says we have been since the time of Bacon, “in recording facts in ten thousand several volumes,” with no higher aspiration than that some laborious stable-cleaner may sweep them up, hay and straw, corn and rubbish, into one vast heap.
Since this was written, it pleases us to see that the able author of “Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation” has in his “Explanations” spoken to the same effect and added another instance of the low estimate formed by modern scientific minds of the uses of facts. “From year to year and from age to age we see scientific men at work, adding, no doubt, much to the known, and advancing many important interests, but at the same time doing little for the establishment of comprehensive views of nature. Experiments, in however narrow a walk, facts, of whatever minuteness, make reputations in scientific societies. All beyond is regarded with suspicionfind distrust. The consequence is, thatphilosophy, as it exists among us,does nothing to raise its votaries above the common ideas of their time. Let me call upon the reader to bring to his remembrance the impressions which have been usually made upon him by the transactions of learned societies, and the pursuits of individual men of science. Did he not always feel that while there was laudable industry and zeal there was also an intellectual timidity, rendering all the results philosophically barren?
“Perhaps a more lively illustration of their deficiency in thelife and soul of nature-seekingcould not be presented than in the view which Sir John Herschel gives of the uses of science, in a Treatise reputed as one of the most philosophical ever produced in our country. These uses, according to the learned knight, are strictly material—it might be said sordid—namely, ‘to show us how to avoid attempting impossibilities, to secure us from important mistakes, in attempting what is in itself possible by means either inadequate or actually opposed to the end in view; to enable us to accomplish our ends in the easiest, shortest and most economical and most effectual manner; to induce us to attempt and enable us to accomplish, objects which, but for such knowledge, we should never have thought of undertaking.’
“Such results, it will be felt, may occasionally be of importance in saving a country gentleman from a hopeless mining speculation, or in adding to the powers and profits of an iron-foundry or a cotton-mill, but nothing more. When the awakened and craving mind asks what science can do for us in explaining the great ends of the author of nature, and our relations to Him, to good and evil, to life and to eternity, the man of science turns to his collection of shells or butterflies, to his electric machine or his retort, and is mute as a child who, sporting on the beach, is asked what lands lie beyond the great ocean which stretches before him.”[29]
This is unhappily too true a picture of modern science. Every effort is made in scientific works to impress the material and sordid money-getting uses of science as itsonly true end, and the highest relation which it bears to humanity. Read any tract on the uses of geology, and is there a word of high hope that the addition which recent discoveries in this department have made to knowledge will assist in raising and elevating the mind, or throw any new light upon the mysteries of nature?
Not a word: but it is carefully detailed how an acquaintance with the order of stratified rocks will facilitate the discovery of minerals, or the boring of Artesian wells.
Are the uses of astronomy dwelt upon, we are taught that it enables the seaman to navigate trackless seas for commerce or for war. Are the purposes of chemistry detailed, we learn that it is fertile in assisting the manufacturer to cheapen his goods, and undersell his less experienced neighbour.
And are we to believe that for these base uses it will be given to man to penetrate the wonders of the universe, and read the unexplained mystery of its creation? Surely not. No, verily, we must raise our souls far above these debasing cares, before the great and beneficentGodwill permit us to understand His sublime works. We must come to the task with clean hands, with pure, holy, unsullied minds, with humble, but high aspirations, with the submission of little children, but with the elevation of pure wisdom.
Is it possible that mind can progress at all, if it is for ever fixed on the earth, grovelling after barren facts and never lifted up to heaven, nor exercised in contemplation of the discoveries it has accumulated? Is it possible that the mind can ever be wise which believes that it must study for facts, and not to ‘weigh and consider?’ Must not the former for ever remain the mere basket of the rag-and-bone collector? the receptacle and dead vehicle of material things? Is it not better that the mind should be exercised, like ‘a light bird,’ in the wildest and most visionary dreams, than be reduced to such a ‘dull ass,’ or dead entity? If the student would avoid the latter, he must abandon the mere accumulation of facts for the comparing and weighing of evidence, the calm looking for results, and the deliberate generalization from the facts collected by the fact-collectors; the rag-and-bone-pickers, the hewers ofwood and drawers of water of the human race. Nevertheless despise them not; they fill their allotted station in the world; they are as necessary to the thinkers as the different ranks in society are to each other. Bear in mind that Bacon never intended his system forstudents, or to be used as a mental exercise. He only proposed it as a means, (and confessedly the only true means) of ‘discovering the sciences,’ and not as a mode of ‘cultivating’ the mind. It was to be the exercise of the experienced and completely cultivated mind only, ‘of the man of riper years, sound in his senses, and of a clear, unbiassed mind.’[30]He foresaw and cautioned against its abuse by ‘vulgar minds.’ And in the sense used by him all young and learning minds are vulgar (common) minds. The specialities which must distinguish them from the common herd, are as yet unknown and hidden beneath the crust of inexperienced ignorance.
He himself earnestly prays that his own and the Aristotelian system may live together, and go hand in hand, the latter to cultivate the mind, the former to discover facts. His words so long forgotten and unheeded by his disciples are: “Let there be therefore, by joint consent, two fountains, or dispensations of doctrine, and two tribes of Philosophers, by no means enemies or strangers, but confederates and mutual auxiliaries to each other; and let therebe one method ofCULTIVATING, andanother ofDISCOVERINGthe sciences. Nor is ours very obvious,and to be taken at once, nor tempting to the understanding, norsuited to vulgar capacities, but solely rests upon its utility and effects” (i. e.upon the way in which it is used and the results which proceed from it). “But no one, sure, can suspect, that we desire to destroy and demolish the philosophy, the arts, and the sciences at present in use; for,on the contrary, we embrace their use, and willingly pay them all due honour and observance. For we openly declare that the things we offer, are not very conducive to these purposes (mental exercises), as they cannot be brought down to vulgar capacities, otherwise than by effects and works.”[31]Therefore in advocating the retention of the Aristotelian mode of thinking for students, we do but follow in the footsteps ofhis great opponent; who yet opposed only when that ancient philosophy was carried beyond, and out of its proper department—the cultivation of the powers of thought, into the discovery of the sciences.
“The two faculties of reason and experience,” says Bacon, “should be properly joined and coupled together.” Reason without experience (facts) he compares to a light bird; Experience, without reason to a dull ass. It is better to be the bird than the ass; it is best to be neither, and yet both. It is only by joining experience with reason that the “sober certainty” of the quadruped can be coupled with the “waking bliss,” the ecstatic heavenward flight, of the light and joyous bird. If, like Bacon, we were to endeavour to read the fable of the Sphinx, we would say that it represents the wise mind, which has united reason and experience into a beautiful form; comprehendible by man, but most hard to be comprehended. Its human head portrays that to intellectual man alone it is given to join together its other forms, the wings of a bird, reason; and the body of a quadruped, experience. It is beautiful, for such union is the perfection of wisdom, and ‘O how comely is wisdom!’ It is cruel, for many lives must be sacrificed ’ere it can be discovered, or the problem of its nature be solved.
Far different from the master himself, who saw in his philosophy the attainment of high and holy purposes, his pseudo-disciples shrink not from avowing that the material uses of philosophy are of higher import than the metaphysical. And it is because writers of no mean powers have, while setting themselves up as encomiasts and expounders of Baconism, utterly lost sight of the higher and godlike purposes which Bacon hoped to see his system promote, and have exalted only the simply mean and sordid uses, which, as tending to man’s temporal comforts, Bacon’s large heart also desired to increase, that we have so far enlarged our observations hereon; and shall, ere we conclude, set a few extracts from these modern views of Baconism in opposition to those of Bacon himself. From these we shall see that, with regard to their views of the objects of philosophy, no two systemscan be more opposed than that of Bacon himself, and that of the modern utilitarians, who dare to dub themselves his disciples. The latter seek in science nothing higher than base utilitarianism, thus elevating the body at the expense of the soul; the former sought utilitarianism in company with the attainment of pure truth and the investigation of the hidden secrets of nature, thus elevating both soul and body.
It was the fault of the ancient philosophy that it endeavoured to elevate the soul at the expense of the body, and to separate that which God has joined together; it is equally the fault—but a far more baneful one—of modern utilitarianism that it endeavours to elevate the body above the soul, and treats the comfort of the former as of far higher importance than the exaltation of the latter.
Bacon alone, truly wise, sought the well-being of both; and he alone pointed out that the well-being of both lay in the same path, and might be prosecuted simultaneously. While the ancient philosophy feared to defile the soul by contact with what was falsely called the base in nature, and the utilitarian dreads to have his sordid soul elevated above the same operations,—which he equally terms base, yet loves to degrade himself to—Bacon acknowledged nothing base in nature, and feared not to study her simplest and meanest operations in the pursuit of truth. He knew that whatever advances the soul makes in knowledge and wisdom, must be made through and by means of the body; therefore, the latter was not to be despised, but by all possible ways and means to be made the efficient handmaid of the former. He knew that though the eye sees not, and the ear hears not, yet that the soul, in this mortal state, could neither see nor hear without them, and that by increasing their fact-transmitting powers, he was developing the fact-generating powers of the mind.
It was for this reason that he contemned not to give his mind to experience, to making telescopes and ear-trumpets; but nevertheless he did not regard them as the ultimate and sole end and aim of his philosophy. His views of the ends of philosophy were, as we shall presentlysee, to the full as high and lofty as those of Plato and the Grecian philosophers; he only sought to arrive at those ends by means different from those which they pursued. They both sought the same objects—Truth, and the discovery of the secrets of nature; but while the one foolishly did this by opposing nature, and acting in contradiction to her mandates, the other did it by following her patiently through all her devious windings.
The modern Baconian school of utilitarians errs in stopping half-way, and in mistaking what Bacon merely deemed media, for the ultimate ends of his philosophy. Whirled along by a steam-engine, informed by a telegraph, freed from pain by chloroform, the utilitarian deems suchlike products of the inductive philosophy, to be thesummum bonumof its founder; forgetful that he considered such to be but the means to a higher end, and has said that “thesummum bonumof human nature is the possession of Truth, for this is a heaven upon earth.”
But the better to understand this, let us contrast modern Baconism with Bacon,—“ab uno disce omnes.”
Mr. T. B. Macaulay, a masterly and deservedly popular writer, has undertaken to give a more correct analysis of the objects of Baconism than is usually entertained; but as it happens to be only an analysis of modern utilitarianism, we will avail ourselves of it as a contrast with Bacon’s own aspirations of the benefits to be derived from his system.[32]
Hear the utilitarian’s version of Baconism in contrast with the ancient philosophy.
“Plato, after speaking slightly of the convenience of arithmetic in the ordinary transactions of life, as to make men shop-keepers or pedlars, passes to what he considers as a far more important advantage. It habituates the mind, he tells us, to the contemplation ofpure truth, and raises us above the material universe; and he advises his disciples to this study, in order that they may learn to fix their minds on theimmutable essences of things. Baconon the other hand, valued this branch of knowledgeonlyon account of its uses with reference to the visible and tangible world.
“Of mathematics, Plato says the real use is to lead men to the knowledge of abstractessential, eternal truth. Bacon valued mathematics chiefly, if not solely, on account of those uses which Plato deemed so base—its application to mechanics, &c. If Bacon erred here, we must acknowledge that we greatly prefer his error to the opposite error of Plato.
“To sum up the whole,” says this eulogist of what he deems Baconism against the ancient philosophy as explained by Plato, “we should say that the aim of the Platonic philosophy was to exalt man into a god. The aim of the Baconian philosophy, was to provide man with what he requires, while he continues to be man, and to supply his vulgar wants. The former aim was noble; but the latter was attainable. Plato drew a good bow, but he aimed at the stars; therefore the shot was thrown away. Bacon fixed his eye on a mark, which was placed onthe earth, and within bow-shot, and hit it in the white.”[33]
If this were a true picture of Bacon’s mind, how sad, and low, and grovelling, must it have been. Accustomed to grieve that he suffered his soul to be polluted by contact with the world, and bowed his heart beneath the love of ill-gotten gold, we have yet found consolation in the thought that the man and the philosopher were two; and that we might dwell with rapture on the latter, take him to our heart, and make him our mind’s companion without defiling ourselves with the former. But if this were a true picture of the philosopher, we must turn from him with disgust, as one whose soul was so imbued with the low and sordid, that no intellectual powers, how sublime soever, could elevate it above what was low and sordid, mean and base.
Sick at heart and disgusted with humanity, we must turn with joy to him who sought “to exalt man into a god,” who urged us “to the contemplation of pure truth,”“to fix our minds on the immutable essences of things,” and “the knowledge of the abstract, essential, eternal truth.”
But thank God, it is not a true picture of Bacon’s mind and purpose in revealing to the world a new philosophy.
At most it is but one half the picture, and that the lower half. It exhibits the mouth only, the vehicle of the material things which sustain the body. Yet nevertheless not to be despised; for without it the body could not live, and without the body the mind could have no communion with mortal minds, and as to them must be dead also. But it entirely cuts off and conceals the upper half of the man; the skull, the seat of mind, the residence of that God-inspired particle, which alone ennobles and makes valuable the whole body.
It is true that Bacon hoped by his philosophy to supply man’s vulgar wants, and to make his sojourn here as easy and comfortable as was possible; but he sought this only as a necessary and blessed accident by the way, and not as the end of his new learning.
While he laboured to benefit mankind as mortal man, he also strove to elevate him as an immortal soul; mindful of the origin which, he dared, like Plato, to hope to exalt man into a god, by leading the divine spirit, breathed into him when he was made in the image of God, to a contemplation and discovery of the secrets of the Great Artificer.
It was a favourite text of Bacon’s, “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; it is the glory of the King (a man) to find it out.” [Prov.xxv. 2.]
Was not this very much like placing man almost on a parity with God, and exalting him into a god? And again, even misquoting to suit his lofty notions of man’s capabilities: “The spirit of man is as the lamp of God, wherewith He searches every secret.”[34][Prov.xx. 27.] Surely, too, the aim of him who describes the sole end of his philosophy in the following words, is not different from that of him who urges his disciples “to fix their minds on the contemplation of the immutable essences of things.”“The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things, and the enlarging the bounds of human empire to the effecting of all things possible.”[35]
Neither does he differ at all from the philosophy of the Academy in his appreciation of pure truth. “Truth, which only doth judge itself, teacheth that the inquiry of Truth, which is the love-making or wooing of it; the knowledge of Truth, which is the presence of it; and the belief of Truth, which is the enjoying of it—is the sovereign good of human nature. The poet saith excellently well: ‘It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below; but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of Truth, and to see the errors and wanderings, and mist and tempests in the sea below;’[36]so always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride. Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man’s mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of Truth.”[37]Is this the language of one who had no higher aim than “to supply man’s vulgar wants, and whose eye was ever on a mark which was placed on earth and within bow-shot?” No! long since must Bacon have been forgotten, if his philosophy had had no higher end than that which modern utilitarianism deems its proudest boast.
One more extract will suffice to evince, that in promoting the proper study of his favourite science, Natural Philosophy, he had far higher views than mere utilitarianism; though this was to be regarded by the way and as an accident of no mean importance. “All knowledge, and especially that of natural philosophy, tendeth highlyto the glory of God in His power, providence and benefits appearing and engraven in His works, which without this knowledge are beheld but as through a veil, for if the heavens in the body of them do declare the glory of God to the eye, much more do they in the rule and decrees of them declare it to the understanding.”[38]
An apology is needed for this long episode on Bacon, and our apology must be an anxious desire to direct the student back from the false school of Baconism to the master himself. Leave the Macaulays, the Herschels and the Playfairs to the work—and an important and useful work it is—for which they are fitted; but do you endeavour so to mind earthly things that you forget not heavenly things.[39]We say not, as did the ancient philosophers, disregard earthly things; but, while attending to them, forget not the heavenly, as the utilitarians do. Neither would it have been necessary to have entered so fully into the matter had we not been aware that of the thousands who pretend to tread in the steps of Bacon, not above one or two have ever read his more important works, but take their notions of his philosophy from such crude and partial views as the merest utilitarians choose to enunciate as Baconian.
We require no other proof of the degeneracy of modern mind from the close habits of intense thought which distinguished the predecessors and cotemporaries of Bacon, than the melancholy fact, that while theNovum OrganumandDe Augmentiswere, in the author’s time, eagerly read by every one pretending to a liberal education, and at once elevated him to a high rank among literary men, they are scarcely ever opened in the present day, “and though much talked of are but little read. They have produced, indeed, a vast effect on the opinions of mankind, but they have produced it through the operation of intermediateagents.”[40]Of these intermediate agents we have given a few specimens; and as long as the world submits to receive their version of Baconism, so long will Baconism elevate Knowledge at the expense of True Wisdom. Let men return to Bacon, and takeallthat he teaches instead of part—the inferior part—and there will be nothing for Wisdom or Knowledge to fear.