“Tea doth our fancy aid,Repress those vapors which the head invadeAnd keep the palace of the soul.”
“Tea doth our fancy aid,Repress those vapors which the head invadeAnd keep the palace of the soul.”
“Tea doth our fancy aid,Repress those vapors which the head invadeAnd keep the palace of the soul.”
“Tea doth our fancy aid,
Repress those vapors which the head invade
And keep the palace of the soul.”
Tea is extensively adulterated in many ways. In China exhausted tea leaves and foliage of other trees are employed by millions of pounds each year. Willow leaves are among the principal ones used for mixing with tea. A British consul once related that at Shanghai there were at one time 53,000 pounds of willow leaves in preparation to be sold as tea. Mineral matters are used to color or “face” the tea. “The common test,” states Mr. Felker, in his work “What the Grocers Sell Us,” “is by infusion; this is poured off the leaves and examined for color, taste, and odor, all of which are characteristic.… Impurities like sand, iron filings and dirt may be seen among the leaves or at the bottom of the cups. The leaves, too, betray by their coarseness and botanical character, the nature and quality of the tea, for although the leaves of the genuine tea differ much in form and size, yet their venation and general structure are very distinctive.… ‘Lie tea,’ used to adulterate Gunpowder tea, consists of tea dust mixed with mineral substances, starch and gum, and then formed into little masses resembling tea.” Large tea houses employ professional tea tasters who make steepings and judge upon the flavor, purity, etc.
Coffee.—The coffee of commerce is the seed of a shrub,Coffea Arabica,[14]belonging to the order Rubiaceæ,[15]which is represented in the United States by the charming little “bluets” of our pastures in spring. The cape jessamine and bouvardias[16]of the green house are near relatives of the coffee plant. The name coffee is probably derived from the Arabic wordKahwah, although some authorities contend that it is traced to Caffa, a province of Abyssinia, where the coffee plant flourishes in the wild state. The coffee shrub is an evergreen, growing to the height of twenty feet, with long, smooth, shining leaves. The pure white flowers are produced in clusters in the axils of the leaves and followed by fleshy berries which, when ripe, resemble small, dark red cherries. Each berry usually contains two seeds embedded in the yellowish pulp. These seeds, when separated from the pulp and papery covering, form the raw coffee of the stores. Each seed—improperly called a berry—is somewhat hemispherical, with a groove running through the middle of the flat side. Sometimes one seed is abortive in the berry, and the other becomes round, as in the Wynaad coffee from India, sometimes called “male berry” coffee.
Coffee is cultivated in many countries lying between fifteen north and fifteen south latitude. It may be successfully grown thirty degrees from the equator. Like the tea plant, the coffee shrub favors the well watered mountain slopes. The trees are set in long, straight rows, six feet apart, and six feet from each other in the row. The coffee tree is naturally a plant with long, straggling shoots, but under cultivation it is pruned to make a shrub not exceeding six feet in height, with long, lateral branches. A full crop should be obtained the third year. The berries are gathered when the pulp begins to shrivel, and are at once taken to the store-house, where they are pulped. The berries are passed between large, rough rollers, which remove the pulp, but not the parchment-like covering of the seeds. The berries with the pulp removed are heaped up, covered with old sacking, and allowed to ferment for two days. Water is turned on and all glutinous matter removed. The seeds are spread out to dry, after which they are passed between wooden cylinders that remove the thin, dry covering. The coffee seeds, after being winnowed, are assorted into various sizes and packed ready for shipment. A thrifty shrub yields two pounds of marketable coffee. The raw coffee seed has a horny texture, without the peculiar aroma characteristic of the roasted berry.
The early history of coffee is obscure. It has been in use for over a thousand years. The knowledge of its use was first brought into Arabia from Abyssinia in the fifteenth century. “Its peculiar property of dissipating drowsiness and preventing sleep was taken advantage of in connection with the prolonged religious services of the Mohametans, and its use as a devotional antisoporific stirred up a fierce opposition on the part of the priests. Coffee was by them held to be an intoxicant beverage, and therefore prohibited by the Koran;[17]and the dreadful penalties of an outraged sacred law were laid over the heads of all who became addicted to its use. Notwithstanding the threats of divine retribution, and though all manner of devices were adopted to check its growth, the coffee-drinking habit spread rapidly among the Arabians, Mohametans, and the growth of coffee as well as its use as a national beverage became as inseparably associated with Arabia as tea is with China.” Coffee reached Great Britain in the seventeenth century. Charles II. attempted to suppress coffee houses by proclamation, because they “devised and spread abroad divers false, malicious and scandalous reports to the defamation of his Majesty’s government and to the peace and quiet of the nation.” How different is this view from that held by those interested in good government, peace and prosperity at the present day! We now rejoice in the establishment of coffee houses, hoping that they may supplant the much dreaded rum shops.
It is worthy of note here that the three dietetic beverages treated in this article were all introduced into Europe at nearly the same time. Tea came through the Dutch; cocoa was brought from South America to Spain, and coffee came from Arabia by the way of Constantinople.
Coffee was for some time supplied only by Arabia, but near the beginning of the eighteenth century its culture was introduced into Java and the West India islands. At the present day its culture is general within the tropics, Brazil leading the list in amount annually produced. In the Eastern hemisphere the principal coffee regions are Java and Ceylon, where a superior article is produced. The amount of coffee imported into the United States during the year ending June 30th, 1884, was 534,785,542 pounds, and 18,907,627 pounds in excess of the previous year. It is seen that these figures give nearly ten pounds for each individual in this vast country. This amount per capita is exceeded by only a few countries. Holland leads all European states, with an average of twenty-one pounds per head, followed closely by Belgium, Denmark and Norway.
The dietetic value of coffee depends principally upon the alkaloid caffeine or theine which it contains in common with tea and cocoa or chocolate. Good coffee contains nearly one per cent. of this substance. When obtained in a pure state it crystallizes in slender needles. The peculiar aroma of coffee is due to the presence of caffeone,[18]which develops in the process of roasting. It may be isolated as a brown oil, heavier than water, by distilling roasted coffee with water. The roasting of coffee is an operation requiring much good judgment, for by carrying the process beyond a certain point the aroma is destroyed and a disagreeable flavor is produced.
Roasted coffee when ground quickly deteriorates unless kept in close vessels. Mocha coffee, which is brought from Arabia, is the best, and that from Java ranks next. Much of the so-called Mocha coffee is raised in Brazil, or elsewhere, and shipped to Arabia, after which it finds its way into the markets. The berries of the true Mocha coffee are small, dark and yellow; those of Java are a paler yellow, while the West India and Brazilian coffees have a greenish-gray tint. The last named coffee is usually sold under the name of Rio, an abbreviation of the leading coffee exporting port of Brazil, namely, Rio de Janeiro; Martinique and St. Domingo coffees are two other kinds but little known.
Coffee is principally valuable for its stimulating effects upon the system. It produces a buoyancy of feeling, lightens the sensation of fatigue, and sustains the muscles when under prolonged exertion. A cup of rich, hot coffee seems to infuse new life into an o’er-tired body. Equally with tea it is “the cup that cheers, but not inebriates.”
“Coffee which makes the politician wiseAnd see through all things with his half-shut eyes.”
“Coffee which makes the politician wiseAnd see through all things with his half-shut eyes.”
“Coffee which makes the politician wiseAnd see through all things with his half-shut eyes.”
“Coffee which makes the politician wise
And see through all things with his half-shut eyes.”
Coffee is the subject of many adulterations, usually when sold in the ground state. Several kinds of seeds resembling coffee in size have been employed to adulterate the whole coffee, some of which need to be colored before they will pass for the genuine. Many kinds of roots are sliced, dried and roasted for the adulteration of coffee, among the leading ones of which are chicory, carrot and the beet. Spent tanbark and even dried beef’s liver have been thus employed. Many of these fraudulent additions can be detected with the microscope. Ground coffee floats on water, while most of the adulterations will sink or discolor the water. There is said to be a machine in England for making false berries out of vegetable substance.
Chocolate.—The chocolate of the shops is derived from a small evergreen tree, native of South America, Mexico, and West Indias. This tree,Theobroma cacao, has large, pointed leaves and rose-colored flowers, which are followed by fruit pods six to ten inches long. The first part of the botanical name is from the Greek meaning “food for the gods,” and the second or specific wordcacaois the old Mexican name for the tree. The order Sterculiaceæ[19]to which the theobroma or chocolate tree belongs is not represented in our flora. It however is known to many by a species of Mahernia[20]from the cape of Good Hope, cultivated in conservatories. The order contains about 520 species, nearly all of which are tropical. The long pods, while green, resemble cucumbers, and when ripe contain from thirty to an hundred seeds, arranged in rows, and of the size of sweet almonds. During the season of ripening the pods are gathered daily, laid in heaps until they have fermented, when they are opened by hand and the seeds spread in the sun to dry, after which they are ready for market. Before the Spaniards visited Mexico the natives made a beverage from the seeds, which they calledchocalat, and from this we derived our word chocolate. The Spaniards have the credit of introducing this beverage into Europe. In the manufacture of chocolate thecocoa(which is a corruption of the original Mexicancacao) beans are roasted similar to the roasting of coffee, and after the husk is removed they are reduced to a paste. This paste is afterward mixed with equal quantities of sugar and heated and turned into cakes of variousshapes familiar to all housekeepers. Cacao nibs are the bruised and broken seeds, and cocoa shells are the thin coverings of the seeds or beans which are separated before the seeds are ground to powder. Broma is chocolate prepared for the market in a certain way, and is a trade name.
The importations of chocolate for the year ending June 30th were 12,235,304 pounds, being an increase of nearly thirty-five per cent. over the previous year.
Of the three leading beverages herein briefly described tea is the only one that has been grown as a crop in the United States. In a reply to an inquiry recently addressed to the Commissioner of Agriculture, it was stated that the tea plant is hardy at Washington, D. C., and that the tea plantations near Summerville, South Carolina, are doing well. “There is no trouble about growing the plant, but the question of profitable culture for the manufacture of tea is quite another thing.… The purpose of the Department of Agriculture … is to cheapen the present methods or possibly suggest the placing of the teas on the market in a wholly different shape from what is done at present.” We may be able to supply our own demands for tea, but it is not likely that the same will be true of coffee and chocolate.
At the breakfast table of a friend not long ago I heard the gentleman of the house remark over his fragrant coffee:
“I laughed at my wife when she went into the cooking school last summer, I thought her a model cook before; but for some reason she has improved. I never tasted such coffee as this.”
My hostess answered: “The reason is simple enough. I had always cooked by rule before. I learned in my studies in cookery to reason. It makes a great difference.”
It does make a difference, and never a greater than in preparing tea, coffee and chocolate. There is rarely a cup of any one of these beverages on our tables which is fit to drink; our coffee is bitter and muddy, tea is either insipid or too strong, and chocolate has failed to become the popular drink which it deserves to be, because so rarely well prepared.
Few cooks understand the nature of either the coffee berry or the tea leaf, and consequently do not know how to treat them in order to extract their delicious flavor, aroma, and nerve-bracing qualities.
Few cooks have an idea of the extreme delicacy of these articles, of how scientifically, even artistically, they must be treated. To extract an oil or flavor is one of the nicest experiments of the laboratory, and one for which a chemist selects his materials with the greatest care, attends strictly to the cleanliness of his vessels, watches every change in temperature, and counts even seconds in time. Making these beverages is nothing less than performing a delicate chemical experiment, and yet we are so ignorant or careless about this important work that we attend strictly to neither heat nor time, and often take just what we can most easily get to work with.
If you would have good tea, coffee and chocolate begin your care with your buying. Tea is a most troublesome article to purchase. There are so many varieties on the market, and so much adulteration that the probability is that unless you are taking extreme precautions you are getting an inferior article. Adulteration is astonishingly common, poor teas being manipulated to make them appear like the first-class grades; inferior black teas colored to look like high-priced green teas, “lie tea” sold in vast quantities, and made-over teas[1]made to pass for fresh. How to obtain the genuine article is the housewife’s first problem. Careful examination may be made under the microscope for coloring matter, the tea may be soaked to see if it unrolls into true leaves, or after washing it in a little water the liquid may be tested with chemicals for foreign substances. But all this means trouble that few housewives care to take. Probably the most practical plan is to find by careful experiment a thoroughly reliable[2]tea-house and then confine your patronage to it. A pound of tea bought here and another there, as convenience may dictate or some friend advise, will insure you nothing but adulteration. The only safe plan is to find a house which sells good tea. Your tea bought, it must be prepared. In making a cup of tea the chemical composition and the effect of each step in its preparation must be observed or your draught will be ruined. The constituents in the leaf which you must look after are the theine, the aromatic oil, and the tannin. Your tea must be treated in such a way that the first two, which give to the drink its flavor and aroma, will be extracted, but that the bitter tannin will be left undeveloped. The theine and oil are both volatile substances, so that if your tea is steeped too long, or if it is boiled, they will literally fly away, while the tannin extracted will turn your cup into a bitter, herby drink. A rule is easily formulated from this bit of science:
Into a perfectly clean tea-pot, just scalded with boiling hot water, put a heaping tablespoonful of tea for each person, and upon it pour a cup and a half of boiling water for each spoonful. Cover your pot with a “cosy”[3]if you have one, and let it stand on the back of the range, where it will not boil, for from five to ten minutes. The length of time required to steep each variety of tea must be determined by experiment, some varieties taking longer than others. The exact length each housewife must determine when she tries a new kind; and it may be said of the exact proportion of tea to water that it as well must be determined by experiment. No rule in cooking is inflexible. It must always be modified by the good sense and the scientific care of the cook.
The English custom of making tea on the table is the prettiest and the most satisfactory. They pour upon the tea required a small quantity of boiling water, this is placed upon the table, covered with the “cosy;” a pot of water taken when boiling from the stove is kept hot by a spirit lamp, and when the tea is steeped as much boiling water as the quantity of tea used demands is poured into the tea-pot. It is allowed to stand about three minutes and then poured into the cups and on the cream. Remember, cream should always be poured into the cups first for both tea and coffee, and tea is as much improved by cream as is coffee.
The purchase of coffee is beset with the same trouble as that of tea—adulteration. You may get a manufactured berry, you may get chiccory; to avoid this careful tests must be applied and only reliable firms patronized. Nothing but unbrowned coffee should be bought; the roasting should be done at home. This process requires particular care. The coffee berry is hard and horny, water has no effect upon it even when it has been ground. It must be roasted in order that certain constituents may become soluble. These constituents are a fragrant volatile oil called caffeone, and the caffeine, which is identical with the theine of tea. By roasting the oil is distributed through the berry and so made soluble, while the caffeine is developed so that it may be absorbed by water. Just the right amount of roasting must be done or the essential constituents will be expelled and the bitter qualities will be made to predominate. I have said that the roasting should be done at home. It may be done in the shops, of course, but the operation there is carried on so unscientifically that the aroma is lost on the town instead of being shut up in the berry. Only a few days ago, passing up a business street of a city, I was astonished to find the air heavy with the delicious aroma of coffee. It scented the air for a square, and only when I came to a large grocery store was the mystery explained. The grocerwas browning his coffee, and its odor was serving for an advertisement, effective, perhaps, among the ignorant, but which would warn every wise housewife not to purchase roasted coffee. The process is best carried on in one of the very nearly perfect coffee roasters to be found in the shops; if these are not at hand an ordinary dripping pan may be used. It should be covered to prevent loss of aroma, and should be continually shaken to prevent burning. The entire attention of one person should be given the coffee during this operation. When turned to a rich chestnut brown remove, keeping covered until quite cool. If left open the aroma escapes very rapidly from warm coffee, but if kept covered much of that made volatile by the heat is re-absorbed. A tight dish—an air-tight canister is best—must be ready to keep it in.
When using, grind only what you need, and take care that it is not left coarse, when the strength can not be extracted, or that it is not too fine, when the liquor will be muddy in spite of you; in this, as always, experiment until you know the degree of fineness which ground coffee should have. A heaping tablespoonful of ground coffee to a cup and a half of water is the ordinary proportion for making strong coffee—the only kind which should ever be prepared, by the way, the diluting ought always to take place in the cup; to the required amount of coffee add the white and shell of an egg and cold water to thoroughly wet the whole; stir up these ingredients in your coffee pot and pour upon them the required amount ofboilinghot water. Let it boil from ten to fifteen minutes, pour in half a cup of cold water and remove to the side of the stove where it can not boil. Do not boil longer than the exact time which you have found necessary for the kind of coffee you are using, if you do you lose your flavor and extract in its place a bitter principle which is ruinous. Remember always what one of our famous cooks says: “There comes a time in baking, frying or broiling when injured nature revolts and burns up, but a thing may boil until not a vestige of its original condition remains, and unless the water evaporates, it may go on boiling for hours without reminding one by smell or smoke that it is spoiled.”
Your coffee will settle in about five minutes. Now if youmustuse a different coffee urn, gently pour off the liquor so as not to disturb the grounds. The settling of coffee is an essential point. The regulation method of stirring an egg into the freshly ground berry is undoubtedly best, but another and more economical practice may take its place. After your freshly roasted berries are cool enough to be easily handled, add to each pound a fresh egg and stir it in until each kernel is coated smoothly with the mixture. Care must be taken that the coffee be not warm enough to cook the egg. When eggs are expensive an economical method is to wash the shells before they are broken, and use with cold water to settle the coffee.
After all these precautions there are still other points to guard. Not the least is the condition of the inside of the coffee pot; it should never be stained, burnt or coated, but kept perfectly bright by being washed, and, if necessary, scoured after each meal. It would be a gain in aroma if your coffee pot could always be kept perfectly tight so that none could escape, and if it could go to the table in the same dish. The pleasant, suggestive odors which precede a meal are always signs that the most delicious flavors of your coming breakfast, dinner or tea are escaping, that through the unskillfulness of your cook you are losing what should give the greatest charm to your meal.
Café au lait[4]is an excellent drink and easily prepared. Make in the usual way a pint of strong coffee, and into your table urn or a pitcher pour a cup and a half of fresh milk, scalding hot; to this add the coffee and let the whole stand for five minutes in a hot place, or in a kettle of hot water.
Chocolate is a most delicious drink if properly prepared; it is, however, so often raw, muddy and strong that we have not been able to educate ourselves to its peculiar disagreeableness. Make it by the following rule and you will find it both nutritious and pleasant: Select with care the best make of chocolate, and into a little cold water rub smooth five tablespoonfuls of grated chocolate; be sure that it be rubbed in smoothly, a hard particle of chocolate is as unwelcome a visitor in your cup as floating tea leaves or black bobbing bits of coffee berries. So rub it smooth and stir it slowly into five cups of boiling water. Let it boil for about five minutes, and in the meantime heat two cups of milk; this must be stirred into the boiling chocolate and the whole allowed to simmer for a few minutes longer. You may sweeten it on the fire or in the cup.
All the time that we are awake we are learning by means of our senses something about the world in which we live and of which we form a part; we are constantly aware of feeling, or hearing, or smelling, and, unless we happen to be in the dark, of seeing; at intervals we taste. We call the information thus obtained sensation.
When we have any of these sensations we commonly say that we feel, or hear, or smell, or see, or taste something. A certain scent makes us say we smell onions; a certain flavor, that we taste apples; a certain sound, that we hear a carriage; a certain appearance before our eyes, that we see a tree; and we call that which we thus perceive by the aid of our senses a thing or an object.
Moreover, we say of all these things, or objects, that they are the causes of the sensations in question, and that the sensations are the effects of these causes. For example, if we hear a certain sound, we say it is caused by a carriage going along the road, or that it is the effect, or the consequence, of a carriage passing along. If there is a strong smell of burning, we believe it to be the effect of something on fire, and look about anxiously for the cause of the smell. If we see a tree, we believe that there is a thing, or object, which is the cause of that appearance in our field of view.
In the case of the smell of burning, when we find on looking about, that something actually is on fire, we say indifferently either that we have found out the cause of the smell, or that we know the reason why we perceive that smell; or that we have explained it. So that to know the reason why of anything, or to explain it, is to know the cause of it. But that which is the cause of one thing is the effect of another. Thus, suppose we find some smouldering straw to be the cause of the smell of burning, we immediately ask what set it on fire, or what is the cause of its burning? Perhaps we find that a lighted lucifer match has been thrown into the straw, and then we say that the lighted match was the cause of the fire. But a lucifer match would not be in that place unless some person had put it there. That is to say, the presence of the lucifer match is an effect produced by somebody as cause. So we ask, why did any one put the match there? Was it done carelessly, or did the person who put it there intend to do so? And if so, what was his motive, or the cause which led him to do such a thing? And what was the reason for his having such a motive? It is plain that there is no end to the questions, one arising out of the other, that might be asked in this fashion.
Thus we believe that everything is the effect of something which preceded it as its cause, and that this cause is the effect of something else, and so on, through a chain of causes and effects which goes back as far as we choose to follow it. Anything is said to be explained as soon as we have discovered its cause, or the reason why it exists; the explanation is fuller, if we can find out the cause of that cause; and the further we can trace the chain of causes and effects, the more satisfactory is the explanation. But no explanation of anything can be complete, because human knowledge, at its best, goes but a very little way back toward the beginning of things.
When a thing is found always to cause a particular effect, we call that effect sometimes a property, sometimes a power of the thing. Thus the odor of onions is said to be a property of onions, because onions always cause that particular sensation of smell to arise, when they are brought near the nose; lead is said to have the property of heaviness, because it always causes us to have the feeling of weight when we handle it; a stream is said to have the power to turn a waterwheel, because it causes the waterwheel to turn; and a venomous snake is said to have the power to kill a man, because its bite may cause a man to die. Properties and powers, then, are certain effects caused by the things which are said to possess them.
A great many of the things brought to our knowledge by our senses, such as houses and furniture, carriages and machines, are termed artificial things or objects, because they have been shaped by the art of man; indeed, they are generally said to be made by man. But a far greater number of things owe nothing to the hand of man, and would be just what they are if mankind did not exist—such as the sky and the clouds; the sun, moon and stars; the sea with its rocks and shingly or sandy shores; the hills and dales of the land; and all wild plants and animals. Things of this kind are termed natural objects, and to the whole of them we give the name of Nature.
Although this distinction between nature and art, between natural and artificial things, is very easily made and very convenient, it is needful to remember that, in the long run, we owe everything to nature; that even those artificial objects which we commonly say are made by men, are only natural objects shaped and moved by men; and that, in the sense of creating, that is to say, of causing something to exist which did not exist in some other shape before, man can make nothing whatever. Moreover, we must recollect that what men do in the way of shaping and bringing together or separating natural objects, is done in virtue of the powers which they themselves possess as natural objects.
Artificial things are, in fact, all produced by the action of that part of nature which we call mankind, upon the rest.
We talk of “making” a box, and rightly enough, if we mean only that we have shaped the pieces of wood and nailed them together; but the wood is a natural object and so is the iron of the nails. A watch is “made” of the natural objects gold and other metals, sand, soda, rubies, brought together, and shaped in various ways; a coat is “made” of the natural object, wool; and a frock of the natural objects, cotton or silk. Moreover, the men who make all these things are natural objects.
Carpenters, builders, shoemakers, and all other artisans and artists, are persons who have learned so much of the powers and properties of certain natural objects, and of the chain of causes and effects in nature, as enables them to shape and put together those natural objects, so as to make them useful to man.
A carpenter could not, as we say, “make” a chair unless he knew something of the properties and powers of wood; a blacksmith could not “make” a horseshoe unless he knew that it is a property of iron to become soft and easily hammered into shape when it is made red-hot; a brickmaker must know many of the properties of clay; and a plumber could not do his work unless he knew that lead has the properties of softness and flexibility, and that a moderate heat causes it to melt.
So that the practice of every art implies a certain knowledge of natural causes and effects; and the improvement of the arts depends upon our learning more and more of the properties and powers of natural objects, and discovering how to turn the properties and the powers of things and the connections of cause and effect among them to our own advantage.
Among natural objects, as we have seen, there are some that we can get hold of and turn to account. But all the greatest things in nature and the links of cause and effect which connect them, are utterly beyond our reach. The sun rises and sets; the moon and the stars move through the sky; fine weather and storms, cold and heat, alternate. The sea changes from violent disturbance to glassy calm, as the winds sweep over it with varying strength or die away; innumerable plants and animals come in being and vanish again, without our being able to exert the slightest influence on the majestic procession of the series of great natural events. Hurricanes ravage one spot; earthquakes destroy another; volcanic eruptions lay waste a third. A fine season scatters wealth and abundance here, and a long drought brings pestilence and famine there. In all such cases, the direct influence of man avails him nothing; and, so long as he is ignorant, he is the mere sport of the greater powers of nature.
But the first thing that men learned, as soon as they began to study nature carefully, was that some events take place in regular order and that some causes always give rise to the same effects. The sun always rises on one side and sets on the other side of the sky; the changes of the moon follow one another in the same order and with similar intervals; some stars never sink below the horizon of the place in which we live; the seasons are more or less regular; water always flows down-hill; fire always burns; plants grow up from seed and yield seed, from which like plants grow up again; animals are born, grow, reach maturity, and die, age after age, in the same way. Thus the notion of an order of nature and of a fixity in the relation of cause and effect between things gradually entered the minds of men. So far as such order prevailed it was felt that things were explained; while the things that could not be explained were said to have come about by chance, or to happen by accident.
But the more carefully nature has been studied, the more widely has order been found to prevail, while what seemed disorder has proved to be nothing but complexity; until, at present, no one is so foolish as to believe that anything happens by chance, or that there are any real accidents, in the sense of events which have no cause. And if we say that a thing happens by chance, everybody admits that all we really mean is, that we do not know its cause or the reason why that particular thing happens. Chance and accident are onlyaliases[1]of ignorance.
At this present moment, as I look out of my window, it is raining and blowing hard, and the branches of the trees are waving wildly to and fro. It may be that a man has taken shelter under one of these trees; perhaps, if a stronger gust than usual comes, a branch will break, fall upon the man, and seriously hurt him. If that happens it will be called an “accident,” and the man will perhaps say that by “chance” he went out, and then “chanced” to take refuge under the tree, and so the “accident” happened. But there is neither chance nor accident in the matter. The storm is the effect of causes operating upon the atmosphere, perhaps hundreds of miles away; every vibration of a leaf is the consequence of the mechanical force of the wind acting on the surface exposed to it; if the bough breaks, it will do so in consequence of the relation between its strength and the force of the wind; if it falls upon the man it will do so in consequence of the action of other definite natural causes; and the position of the man under it is only the last term in a series of causes and effects, whichhave followed one another in natural order, from that cause, the effect of which was his setting out, to that the effect of which was his stepping under the tree.
But, inasmuch as we are not wise enough to be able to unravel all these long and complicated series of causes and effects which lead to the falling of the branch upon the man, we call such an event an accident.
When we have made out by careful and repeated observation that something is always the cause of a certain effect, or that certain events always take place in the same order, we speak of the truth thus discovered as a law of nature. Thus it is a law of nature that anything heavy falls to the ground if it is unsupported; it is a law of nature that, under ordinary conditions, lead is soft and heavy, while flint is hard and brittle; because experience shows us that heavy things always do fall if they are unsupported, that, under ordinary conditions, lead is always soft, and that flint is always hard.
In fact, everything that we know about the powers and properties of natural objects and about the order of nature may properly be termed a law of nature. But it is desirable to remember that which is very often forgotten, that the laws of nature are not the causes of the order of nature, but only our way of stating as much as we have made out of that order. Stones do not fall to the ground in consequence of the law just stated, as people sometimes carelessly say; but the law is the way of asserting that which invariably happens when heavy bodies at the surface of the earth, stones among the rest, are free to move.
The laws of nature are, in fact, in this respect, similar to the laws which men make for the guidance of their conduct toward one another. There are laws about the payment of taxes, and there are laws against stealing or murder. But the law is not the cause of a man’s paying his taxes, nor is it the cause of his abstaining from theft and murder. The law is simply a statement of what will happen to a man if he does not pay his taxes, and if he commits theft or murder; and the cause of his paying his taxes, or abstaining from crime (in the absence of any better motive) is the fear of consequences which is the effect of his belief in that statement. A law of man tells what we may expect society will do under certain circumstances; and a law of nature tells us what we may expect natural objects will do under certain circumstances. Each contains information addressed to our intelligence, and except so far as it Influences our intelligence, it is merely so much sound or writing.
While there is this much analogy between human and natural laws, however, certain essential differences between the two must not be overlooked. Human law consists of commands addressed to voluntary agents, which they may obey or disobey; and the law is not rendered null and void by being broken. Natural laws, on the other hand, are not commands, but assertions respecting the invariable order of nature; and they remain laws only so long as they can be shown to express that order. To speak of the violation, or the suspension, of a law of nature is an absurdity. All that the phrase can really mean is that, under certain circumstances the assertion contained in the law is not true; and the just conclusion is, not that the order of nature is interrupted, but that we have made a mistake in stating that order. A true natural law is a universal rule, and, as such, admits of no exceptions.
Again, human laws have no meaning apart from the existence of human society. Natural laws express the general course of nature, of which human society forms only an insignificant fraction.
If nothing happens by chance, but everything in nature follows a definite order, and if the laws of nature embody that which we have been able to learn about the order of nature in accurate language, then it becomes very important for us to know as many as we can of these laws of nature, in order that we may guide our conduct by them.
Any man who should attempt to live in a country without reference to the laws of that country would very soon find himself in trouble. And if he were fined, imprisoned, or even hanged, sensible people would probably consider that he had earned his fate by his folly.
In like manner, any one who tries to live upon the face of this earth without attention to the laws of nature will live there for but a very short time, most of which will be passed in exceeding discomfort; a peculiarity of natural laws, as distinguished from those of human enactment, being that they take effect without summons or prosecution. In fact, nobody could live for half a day unless he attended to some of the laws of nature; and thousands of us are dying daily, or living miserably, because men have not yet been sufficiently zealous to learn the code of nature.
It has already been seen that the practice of all our arts and industries depends upon our knowing the properties of natural objects which we can get hold of and put together; and though we may be able to exert no direct control over the greater natural objects and the general succession of causes and effects in nature, yet, if we know the properties and powers of these objects, and the customary order of events, we may elude that which is injurious to us, and profit by that which is favorable.
Thus, though men can nowise alter the reasons or change the process of growth in plants, yet having learned the order of nature in these matters, they make arrangements for sowing and reaping accordingly; they can not make the wind blow, but when it does blow they take advantage of its known powers and probable direction to sail ships and turn wind-mills; they can not arrest the lightning, but they can make it harmless by means of conductors, the construction of which implies a knowledge of some of the laws of that electricity of which lightning is one of the manifestations. Forewarned is forearmed, says the proverb; and knowledge of the laws of nature is forewarning of that which we may expect to happen, when we have to deal with natural objects.
No line can be drawn between common knowledge of things and scientific knowledge; nor between common reasoning and scientific reasoning. In strictness all accurate knowledge is science; and all exact reasoning is scientific reasoning. The method of observation and experiment, by which such great results are obtained in science, is identically the same as that which is employed by every one, every day of his life, but refined and rendered precise. If a child acquires a new toy, he observes its characters and experiments upon its properties; and we are all of us constantly making observations and experiments upon one thing or another.
But those who have never tried to observe accurately will be surprised to find how difficult a business it is. There is not one person in a hundred who can describe the commonest occurrence with even an approach to accuracy. That is to say, either he will omit something which did occur, and which is of importance, or he will imply or suggest the occurrence of something which he did not actually observe, but which he unconsciously infers must have happened. When two truthful witnesses contradict one another in a court of justice, it usually turns out that one or other, or sometimes both, are confounding their inferences from what they saw with that which they actually saw. A swears that B picked his pocket. It turns out that all A really knows is that he felt a hand in his pocket when B was close to him; and that B was not the thief, but C, whom A did not observe. Untrained observers mix up together their inferences from what they see with that which they actually see in the most wonderful way; and even experienced and careful observers are in constant danger of falling into the same error.
Scientific observation is such as is at once full, precise, and free from unconscious inference.
Experiment is the observation of that which happens when we intentionally bring natural objects together, or separatethem, or in any way change the conditions under which they are placed. Scientific experiment, therefore, is scientific observation, performed under accurately known artificial conditions.
It is a matter of common observation that water sometimes freezes. The observation becomes scientific when we ascertain under what exact conditions the change of water into ice takes place. The commonest experiments tell us that wood floats in water. Scientific experiment shows that, in floating, it displaces its own weight of the water.
Scientific reasoning differs from ordinary reasoning in just the same way as scientific observation and experiment differ from ordinary observation and experiment—that is to say, it strives to be accurate; and it is just as hard to reason accurately as it is to observe accurately.
In scientific reasoning general rules are collected from the observation of many particular cases; and, when these general rules are established, conclusions are deduced from them, just as in everyday life. If a boy says that “marbles are hard,” he has drawn a conclusion as to marbles in general from the marbles he happens to have seen and felt, and has reasoned in that mode which is technically termed induction. If he declines to try to break a marble with his teeth, it is because he consciously or unconsciously performs the converse operation of deduction from the general rule “marbles are too hard to break with one’s teeth.”
You will learn more about the process of reasoning when you study logic, which treats of that subject in full. At present, it is sufficient to know that the laws of nature are the general rules respecting the behavior of natural objects, which have been collected from innumerable observations and experiments; or, in other words, that they are inductions from those observations and experiments. The practical and theoretical results of science are the products of deductive reasoning from these general rules.
Thus science and common sense are not opposed, as people sometimes fancy them to be, but science is perfected common sense. Scientific reasoning is simply very careful common reasoning, and common knowledge grows into scientific knowledge as it becomes more and more exact and complete.
The way to science then lies through common knowledge; we must extend that knowledge by common observation and experiment, and learn how to state the results of our investigations accurately, in general rules or laws of nature; finally, we must learn how to reason accurately from these rules, and thus arrive at rational explanations of natural phenomena, which may suffice for our guidance in life.