JOHN TYNDALL

Science^ Frontis — Vol. 6

FRAGMENTS OF
SCIENCE

BY

JOHN TYNDALL, F.R.S.

PART TWO

NEW YORK
P. F. COLLIER & SON

M C M I I
6

6?

7i

(1

or

SCIENCE

?iV^^

CONTENTS

OF

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

VOLUME TWO

iQBAP. PAOB

I. Reflections on Prayer and Natural Law . . e 5

II. Miracles and Special Providences .... .12

III. On Prayer as a Form op Physical ENEBaY , «, c 44

IV. Vitality .61

V. Matter and Force .58

VI. Scientific Materialism . ♦ < 82

Vn. An Address to Students .99

VIII. Scientific Use of the Imagination . . . , . 109

IX. The Belfast Address 145

X. Apology for the Belfast Address ..... 213

XI. The Rev. James Martineau and the Belfast Address . 238
XII. Fermentation, and its Bearings on Surgery and

Medicine 266

XIII. Spontaneous Generation 306

XIV. Science and Man » 352

XV. Professor Virchow and Evolution 392

XVI. The Electric Light . 440

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FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

In the bright sky they perceived an iUuminator; in the all-encircling firma-
ment an embracer ; in the roar of thunder and in the violence of the storm they
felt the presence of a shouter and of furious strikers ; and out of the rain they
created an ludra, or giver of rain. — Max Muller.

REFLECTIONS ON PRAYER AND NATURAL LAW

1861

AMID the apparent confusion and caprice of natural
phenomena, which roused emotions hostile to calm
investigation, it must for ages have seemed hope-
less to seek for law or orderly relation; and before the
thought of law dawned upon the unfolding human mind
these otherwise inexplicable effects were referred to per-
sonal agency. In the fall of a cataract the savage saw
the leap of a spirit, and the echoed thunder-peal was to
him the hammer- clang of an exasperated god. Propitia-
tion of these terrible powers was the consequence, and
sacrifice was offered to the demons of earth and air.

But observation tends to chasten the emotions and to
check those structural efforts of the intellect which have
emotion for their base. One by one natural phenomena
came to be associated with their proximate causes; the
idea of direct personal volition mixing itself with the
economy of nature retreating more and more. Many of
us fear this change. Our religious feelings are dear to

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6 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

US, and we look with suspicion and dislike on any phi-
losophy, the apparent tendency of which is to dry them
up. Probably every change from ancient savagery to our
present enlightenment has excited, in a greater or less de-
gree, fears of this kind. But the fact is, that we have
not yet determined whether its present form is necessary
to the life and warmth of religious feeling. We may err
in linking the imperishable with the transitory, and con-
found the living plant with the decaying pole to which it
clings. My object, however, at present is not to argue,
but to mark a tendency. We have ceased to propitiate
the powers of nature — ceased even to pray for things in
manifest contradiction to natural laws. In Protestant
countries, at least, I think it is conceded that the age
of miracles is past.

At an auberge near the foot of the Khone glacier, I
met, in the summer of 1858, an athletic young priest,
who, after a solid breakfast, including a bottle of wine,
informed me that he had come up to *' bless the moun-
tains/' This was the annual custom of the place. Year
by year the Highest was entreated, by official intercessors,
to make such meteorological arrangements as should in-
sure food and shelter for the flocks and herds of the
Valaisians. A diversion of the Ehone, or a deepening of
the river's bed, would, at the time I now mention, have
been of incalculable benefit to the inhabitants of the val-
ley. But the priest would have shrunk from the idea of
asking the Omnipotent to open a new channel for the
river, or to cause a portion of it to flow over the Grimsel
pass, and down the valley of Oberhasli to Brientz. This
he would have deemed a miracle, and he did not come
to ask the Creator to perform miracles, but to do some-

ON PRAYER AND NATURAL LAW 7

thing which he manifestly thought lay quite within the
bounds of the natural and non-miraculous. A Protestant
gentleman who was present at the time smiled at this re-
cital. He had no faith in the priest's blessing; still, he
deemed his prayer different in kind from a request
to open a new river-cut, or to cause the water to flow
up-hill.

In a similar manner the same Protestant gentleman
would doubtless smile at the honest Tyrolese priest, who,
when he feared the bursting of a glacier dam, offered the
sacrifice of the Mass upon the ice as a means of averting
the calamity. That poor man did not expect to convert
the ice into adamant, or to strengthen its texture, so as
to enable it to withstand the pressure of the water; nor
did he expect that his sacrifice would cause the stream to
roll back upon its source and relieve him, by a miracle,
of its presence. But beyond the boundaries of his knowl-
edge lay a region where rain was generated, he knew not
how. He was not so presumptuous as to expect a mira-
cle, but he firmly believed that in yonder cloud-land mat
ters could be so arranged, without trespass on the miracu-
lous, that the stream which threatened him and his people
should be caused to shrink within its proper bounds.

Both these priests fashioned that which they did not
understand to their respective wants and wishes. In their
case imagination came into play, uncontrolled by a knowl-
edge of law. A similar state of mind was long prevalent
among mechanicians. Many of these, among whom were
to be reckoned men of consummate skill, were occupied a
century ago with the question of perpetual motion. They
aimed at constructing a machine which should execute
work without the expenditure of power; and some of

8 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

them went mad in the pursuit of this object. The faith
in such a consummation, involving, as it did, immense
personal profit to the inventor, was extremely exciting,
and every attempt to destroy this faith was met by bitter
resentment on the part of those who held it. Gradually,
however, as men became more and more acquainted with
the true functions of machinery, the dream dissolved.
The hope of getting work out of mere mechanical com-
binations diaappeared: but still there remained for the
speculator a cloud-land denser than that which filled the
imagination of the Tyrolese priest, and out of which he
still hoped to evolve perpetual motion. There was the
mystic store of chemic force, which nobody understood;
there were heat and light, electricity and magnetism, all
competent to produce mechanical motion.' Here, then,
was the mine in which our gem must be sought. A mod-
ified and more refined form of the ancient faith revived;
and, for aught I know, a remnant of sanguine designers
may at the present moment be engaged on the problem
which like-minded men in former ages left unsolved.

And why should a perpetual motion, even under mod-
ern conditions, be impossible? The answer to this ques-
tion is the statement of that great generalization of modern
science, which is known under the name of the Conserva-
tion of Energy. This principle asserts that no power can
make its appearance in nature without an equivalent ex-
penditure of some other power; that natural agents are
so related to each other as to be mutually convertible,
but that no new agency is created. Light runs into heat;
heat into electricity; electricity into magnetism; magne-

» See Helmholtz : '*Wechselwirkung der Naturkrafte."

ON PRAYER AND NATURAL LAW 9

tism into mechanical force; and mechanical force again
into light and heat. The Proteus changes, but he is ever
the same; and his changes in nature, supposing no miracle
to supervene, are the expression, not of spontaneity, but
of physical necessity. A perpetual motion, then, is deemed
impossible, because it demands the creation of energy,
whereas the principle of Conservation is — no creation, but
infinite conversion. It is an old remark that the law
which molds a tear also rounds a planet. In the applica-
tion of law in nature the terms great and small are un-
known. Thus the principle referred to teaches us that
the Italian wind, gliding over the crest of the Matterhorn,
is as firmly ruled as the earth in its orbital revolution round
the sun; and that the fall of its vapor into clouds is ex-
actly as much a matter of necessity as the return of the sea-
sons. The dispersion, therefore, of the slightest mist by
the special volition of the Eternal, would be as much a
miracle as the rolling of the Ehone over the Grimsel pre-
cipices, down the valley of Hasli to Meyringen and Brientz.
It seems to me quite beyond the present power of
science to demonstrate that the Tyrolese priest, or his
colleague of the Rhone valley, asked for an * 'impossi-
bility" in praying for good weather; but Science can
demonstrate the incompleteness of the knowledge of nat-
ure which limited their prayers to this narrow ground;
and she may lessen the number of instances in which we
*'ask amiss," by showing that we sometimes pray for the
performance of a miracle when we do not intend it. She
does assert, for example, that without a disturbance of
natural law, quite as serious as the stoppage of an eclipse,
or the rolling of the river Niagara up the Falls, no act of
humiliation, individual or national, could call one shower

10 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

from heaven, or deflect toward us a single beam of the
sun. Those, therefore, who believe that the miraculous
is still active in nature, may, with perfect consistency,
join in our periodic prayers for fair weather and for rain:
while those who hold that the age of miracles is past will,
if they be consistent, refuse to join in these petitions.
And these latter, if they wish to fall back upon such a
justification, may fairly urge that the latest conclusions
of science are in perfect accordance with the doctrine of
the Master Himself, which manifestly was that the dis-
tribution of natural phenomena is not affected by moral
or religious causes. "He maketh His sun to rise on the
evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on
the unjust." Granting "the power of Free Will in man,'*
so strongly claimed by Professor Mansel in his admirable
defence of the belief in miracles, and assuming the efficacy
of free prayer to produce changes in external nature, it
necessarily follows that natural laws are more or less at
the mercy of man's volition, and no conclusion founded
on the assumed permanence of those laws would be worthy
of confidence.

It is a wholesome sign for England that she numbers
among her clergy men wise enough to understand all this,
and courageous enough to act up to their knowledge.
Such men do service to public character, by encouraging
a manly and intelligent conflict with the real causes of
disease and scarcity, instead of a delusive reliance on su-
pernatural aid. But they have also a value beyond this
local and temporary one. They prepare the public mind
for changes which, though inevitable, could hardly, with-
out such preparation, be wrought without violence. Iron
is strong; stilly water in crystallizing will shiver an iron

ON PRAYER AND NATURAL LAW 11

envelope, and the more unyielding the metal is, the worse
for its safety. There are in the world men who would
encompass philosophic speculation by a rigid envelope,
hoping thereby to restrain it, but in reality giving it ex-
plosive force. In England, thanks to men of the stamp to
which I have alluded, scope is gradually given to thought
for changes of aggregation, and the envelope slowly alters
its form, in accordance with the necessities of the time.

The proximate origin of the foregoing slight article, and probably the re-
moter origin of the next following one, was this. Some years ago, a day
of prayer and humiliation, on account of a bad harvest, was appointed by the
proper religious authorities ; but certain clergymen of the Church of England,
doubting the wisdom of the demonstration, dechned to Join in the services of
the day. For this act of nonconformity they were severely censured by some
of their brethren. Rightly or wrongly, my sympathies were on the side of
these men ; and, to lend them a helping hand in their struggle against odds,
I inserted the foregoing chapter in a little book entitled "Mountaineering in
1861." Some time subsequently I received from a gentleman of great weight
and distinction in the scientific world, and, I believe, of perfect orthodoxy in
the religious one, a note directing my attention to an exceedingly thoughtful
article on Prayer and Cholera, in the "Pall Mall Gazette." My eminent corre-
spondent deemed the article a fair answer to the remarks made by me in 1861.
I, also, was struck by the temper and ability of the article, but I could not
deem its arguments satisfactory, and in a short note to the editor of the "Pall
Mall G-azette" I ventured to state so much. This letter elicited some very able
replies, and a second leading article was also devoted to the subject. In answer
to all, I risked the publication of a second letter, and soon afterward, by an
extremely courteous note from the editor, the discussion was closed.

Though thus stopped locally, the discussion flowed in other directions. Ser-
mons were preached, essays were published, articles were written, while a
copious correspondence occupied the pages of some of the religious newspapers.
It gave me sincere pleasure to notice that the discussion, save in a few cases
where natural coarseness had the upper hand, was conducted with a minimum
of vituperation. The severity shown was hardly more than sufficient to demon-
strate earnestness, while gentlemanly feeling was too predominant to permit
that earnestness to contract itself to bigotry or to clothe itself in abuse. It was
probably the memory of this discussion which caused another excellent friend
of mine to recommend to my perusal the exceedingly able work which in the
next article I have endeavored to review.

Mr. Mozley'e book belongs to that class of writing of which Butler may be
taken as the type. It is strong, genuine argument about difficult matters, fairly
tracing what is difficult, fairly trying to grapple, not with what appears the gist
and strong point of a question, but with what really at bottom is the knot of
it. It is a book the reasoning of which may not satisfy every one. . . . But
we think it is a book for people who wish to see a great subject handled on a
scale which befits it, and with a perception of its real elements. It is a book
which will have attractions for those who like to see a powerful mind applying
itself, without shrinking or holding back, without trick or reserve or show of
any kind, as a wrestler closes body to body with his antagonist, to the strength
of an adverse and powerful argument. — Times, Tuesday, June 5, 1866.

"We should add, that the faults of the work are whoUy on the surface and in
the arrangement; that the matter is as solid and as logical as that of any book
within recent memory, and that it abounds in striking passages, of which we
have scarcely been able even to give a sample. No future arguer against
miracles can afford to pass it over. — Saturday Review, September J.5. 1866.

II

MIKACLES AND SPECIAL PBOVIDElf CES '

1867

IT is my privilege to enjoy the friendship of a select
number of religious men, with whom I converse
frankly upon theological subjects, expressing without
disguise the notions and opinions I entertain regarding
their tenets, and hearing in return these notions and opin-
ions subjected to criticism. I have thus far found them
liberal and loving men, patient in hearing, tolerant in
reply, who know how to reconcile the duties of courtesy
with the earnestness of debate. From one of these, nearly
a year ago, I received a note, recommending strongly to
my attention the volume of "B amp ton Lectures" for 1865,

» "Fortnightly Review," New Series, voL i p. 645.

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MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES 13

in whicli the question of miracles is treated by Mr. Mozlej.
Previous to receiving this note, I had in part made the
acquaintance of the work through an able and elaborate
review of it in the "Times." The combined effect of the
letter and the review was to make the book the companion
of my summer tour in the Alps. There, during the wet
and snowy days which were only too prevalent in 1866,
and during the days of rest interpolated between days of
toil, I made myself more thoroughly conversant with Mr.
Mozley's volume. I found it clear and strong — an intel-
lectual tonic, as bracing and pleasant to my mind as the
keen air of the mountains was to my body. From time
to time I jotted down thoughts regarding it, intending
afterward to work them up into a coherent whole. Other
duties, however, interfered with the complete carrying
out of this intention, and what I wrote last summer I now
publish, not hoping to be able, within any reasonable time,
to render my defence of scientific method more complete.

Mr. Mozley refers at the outset of his task to the move-
ment against miracles which of late years has taken place,
and which determined his choice of a subject. He acquits
modern science of having had any great share in the pro-
duction of this movement. The objection against miracles,
lie says, does not arise from any minute knowledge of the
laws of nature, but simply because they are opposed to
that plain and obvious order of nature which everybody
sees. The present movement is, he thinks, to be ascribed
to the greater earnestness and penetration of the present
age. Formerly miracles were accepted without question,
because without reflection; but the exercise of the "his-
toric imagination'* is a characteristic of oar own time.
Men are now accustomed to place before themselves vivid

14 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

images of historic facts ; and when a miracle rises to view,
they halt before the astounding occurrence, and, realizing
it with the same clearness as if it were now passing before
their eyes, they ask themselves, *'Can this have taken
place?" In some instances the effort to answer this ques-
tion has led to a disbelief in miracles, in others to a
strengthening of belief. The aim of Mr. Mozley's lectures
is to show that the strengthening of belief is the logical re-
sult which ought to follow from the examination of the facts.
Attempts have been made by religious men to bring
the Scripture miracles within the scope of the order of
nature, but all such attempts are rejected by Mr. Mozley
as utterly futile and wide of the mark. Kegarding mir-
acles as a necessary accompaniment of a revelation, their
evidential value in his eyes depends entirely upon their
deviation from the order of nature. Thus deviating, they
suggest and illustrate a power higher than nature, a "per-
sonal will"; and they commend the person in whom this
power is vested as a messenger from on high. Without
these credentials such a messenger would have no right to
demand belief, even were his assertions regarding his
Divine mission backed by a holy life. Nor is it by mir-
acles alone that the order of nature is, or may be, dis-
turbed. The material universe is also the arena of "spe-
cial providences." Under these two heads Mr. Mozley
distributes the total preternatural. One form of the pre-
ternatural may shade into the other, as one color passes
into another in the rainbow; but, while the line which
divides the specially providential from the miraculous can-
not be sharply drawn, their distinction broadly expressed
is this: that, while a special providence can only excite
surmise more or less probable, it is *'the nature of a mir-

MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES 15

acle to give proof, as distinguished from mere surmise,
of Divine design."

Mr. Mozley adduces various illustrations of what he
regards to be special providences, as distinguished from
miracles. "The death of Arius," he says, "was not mi-
raculous, because the coincidence of the death of a here-
siarch taking place when it was peculiarly advantageous
to the orthodox faith . . . was not such as to compel
the inference of extraordinary Divine agency; but it was
a special providence, because it carried a reasonable ap-
pearance of it. The miracle of the Thundering Legion
was a special providence, but not a miracle, for the same
reason, because the coincidence of an instantaneous fall of
rain, in answer to prayer, carried some appearance, but
not proof, of preternatural agency." The eminent lec-
turer's remarks on this head brought to my recollection
certain narratives published in Methodist magazines, which
I used to read with avidity when a boy. The general
title of these exciting stories, if I remember right, was
"The Providence of God Asserted," and in them the most
extraordinary escapes from peril were recounted and as-
cribed to prayer, while equally wonderful instances of
calamity were adduced as illustrations of Divine retribu-
tion. In such magazines, or elsewhere, I found recorded
the case of the celebrated Samuel Hick, which, as it illus-
trates a whole class of special providences approaching in
conclusiveness to miracles, is worthy of mention here. It
is related of this holy man that, on one occasion, flour was
lacking to make the sacramental bread. Grain was pres-
ent, and a windmill was present, but there was no wind
to grind the corn. With faith undoubting, Samuel Hick
prayed to the Lord of the winds: the sails turned, the

16 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

corn was ground, after which the wind ceased. Accord-
ing to the canon of the Bampton Lecturer, this, though
carrying a strong appearance of an immediate exertion of
Divine energy, lacks by a hair-breadth the quality of a
miracle. For the wind might have arisen, and might have
ceased, in the ordinary course of nature. Hence the oc-
currence did not "compel the inference of extraordinary
Divine agency." In like manner Mr. Mozley considers
that "the appearance of the cross to Ccnstantine was a
miracle, or a special, providence, according to what ac-
count of it we adopt. As only a meteoric appearance in
the shape of a cross it gave some token of preternatural
agency, but not full evidence."

In the Catholic canton of Switzerland where I now
w^rite, and still more among the pious Tyrolese, the moun-
tains are dotted with shrines, containing offerings of all
kinds, in acknowledgment of special mercies — legs, [eet,
arms, and hands — of gold, silver, brass, and wood, accord-
ing as worldly possessions enabled the grateful heart to
express its indebtedness. Most of these offerings are made
to the Virgin Mary. They are recognitions of "special
providences," wrought through, the instrumentality ol; the
Mother of God. Mr. Mozley' s belief, that of the Meth-
odist chronicler, and that of the Tyrolese peasant, are sub-
stantially the same. Each of them assumes that nature,
instead of flowing ever onward in the uninterrupted
rhythm of cause and effect, is mediately ruled by the
free human will. As regards direct action upon natural
phenomena, man's wish and will, as expressed in prayer,
are confessedly powerless; but prayer is the trigger which
liberates the Divine power, and to this extent, if the will
be free, man, of course, commands nature.

MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES 17

Did the existence of this belief depend solely npon
the material benefits derived from it, it could not, in my
opinion, last a decade. As a purely objective fact, we
should soon see that the distribution of natural phenom-
ena is unaffected by the merits or the demerits of men;
that the law of gravitation crushes the simple worshippers
of Ottery St. Mary, while singing their hymns, just as
surely as if they were engaged in a midnight brawl. The
hold of this belief upon the human mind is not due to
outward verification, but to the inner warmth, force, and
elevation with which it is commonly associated. It is
plain, however, that these feelings may exist under the
most various forms. They are not limited to Church of
England Protestantism — they are not even limited to
Christianity. Though less refined, they are certainly not
less strong in the heart of the Methodist and the Tyrol ese
peasant than in the heart of Mr. Mozley. Indeed, those
feelings belong to the primal powers of man's nature. A
*' sceptic" may have them. They find vent in the battle-
cry of the Moslem. They take hue and form in the hunt-
ing-grounds of the Eed Indian; and raise all of them, as
they raise the Christian, upon a wave of victory, above
the terrors of the grave.

The character, then, of a miracle, as distinguished from
a special providence, is that the former furnishes proofs
while in the case of the latter we have only surmise.
Dissolve the element of doubt, and the alleged fact passes
from the one class of the preternatural into the other. In
other words, if a special providence could be proved to
be a special providence, it would cease to be a special
providence and become a miracle. There is not the least
cloudiness about Mr. Mozley 's meaning here. A special

18 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

providence is a doubtful miracle. Why, then, not call it
eo ? The term employed by Mr. Mozley conveys no nega-
tive suggestion, whereas the negation of certainty is the
peculiar characteristic of the thing intended to be ex-
pressed. There is an apparent unwillingness on the part
of the lecturer to call a special providence what his own
definition makes it to be. Instead of speaking of it as a
doubtful miracle, he calls it "an invisible miracle." He
speaks of the point of contact of supernatural power with
the chain of causation being so high up as to be wholly,
or in part, out of sight, whereas the essence of a special
providence is the uncertainty whether there is any con-
tact at all, either high or low. By the use of an incor-
rect term, however, a grave danger is avoided. For the
idea of doubt, if kept systematically before the mind,
would soon be fatal to the special providence, considered
as a means of edification. The term employed, on the
contrary, invites and encourages the trust which is neces-
sary to supplement the evidence.

This inner trust, though at first rejected by Mr. Mozley
in favor of external proof, is subsequently called upon to
do momentous duty in regard to miracles. Whenever the
evidence of the miraculous seems incommensurate with
the fact which it has to establish, or rather when the fact
is so amazing that hardly any evidence is sufl5.cient to es-
tablish it, Mr. Mozley invokes "the affections." They
must urge the reason to accept the conclusion, from which
unaided it recoils. The affections and emotions are emi-
nently the court of appeal in matters of real religion,
which is an affair of the heart; but they are not, I sub-
mit, the court in which to weigh allegations regarding the
credibilitv of phvsical facts. These must be iudered bv

MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES 19

the dry light of the intellect alone, appeals to the affec-
tions being reserved for cases where moral elevation, and
not historic conviction, is the aim. It is, moreover, be-
cause the result, in the case under consideration, is
deemed desirable that the affections are called upon to
back it. If undesirable, they would, with equal right,
be called upon to act the other way. Even to the disci-
plined scientific mind this would be a dangerous doctrine.
A favorite theory — the desire to establish or avoid a cer-
tain result — can so warp the mind as to destroy its powers
of estimating facts. I have known men to work for years
under a fascination of this kind, unable to extricate them-
selves from its fatal influence. They had certain data,
but not, as it happened, enough. By a process exactly
analogous to that invoked by Mr. Mozley, they supple-
mented the data, and went wrong. From that hour their
intellects were so blinded to the perception of adverse
phenomena that they never reached truth. If, then, to
the disciplined scientific mind, this incongruous mixture
of proof and trust be fraught with danger, what must it
be to the indiscriminate audience which Mr. Mozley ad-
dresses? In calling upon this agency he acts the part
of Frankenstein. It is a monster thus evoked that we
see stalking abroad, in the degrading spiritualistic phe-
nomena of the present day. Again, I say, where the aim
is to elevate the mind, to quicken the moral sense, to
kindle the fire of religion in the soul, let the affections
by all means be invoked; but they must not be permitted
to color our reports, or to influence our acceptance of re-
ports of occurrences in external nature. Testimony as to
natural facts is worthless when wrapped in this atmos-
phere of the affections; the most earnest subjective truth

20 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

being thus rendered perfectly compatible with tbe most
astounding objective error.

There are questions in judging of which the affections
or sympathies are often our best guides, the estimation of
moral goodness being one of these. But at this precise
point, where they are really of use, Mr. Mozley excludes
the affections and demands a miracle as a certificate of
character. He will not accept any other evidence of the
perfect goodness of Christ. "No outward life and con-
duct," he says, "however irreproachable, could prove His
perfect sinlessness, because goodness depends upon the
inward motive, and the perfection of the inward motive
is not proved by the outward act. ' ' But surely the mira-
cle is an outward act, and to pass from it to the inner
motive imposes a greater strain upon logic than that in-
volved in our ordinary methods of estimating men. There
is, at least, moral congruity between the outward goodness
and the inner life, but there is no such congruity between
the miracle and the life within. The test of moral good-
ness laid down by Mr. Mozley is not the test of John,
who says, "He that doeth righteousness is righteous";
nor is it the test of Jesus: '*By their fruits ye shall
know them: do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of
thistles?" But it is the test of another: "If thou be the
Son of God, command that these stones be made bread."
For my own part, I prefer the attitude of Fichte to that of
Mr. Mozley. "The Jesus of John," says this noble and
mighty thinker, "knows no other God than the True God,
in whom we all are, and live, and may be blessed, and
out of whom there is only Death and Nothingness.
And," continues Fichte, "he appeals, and rightly ap-
peals, in support of this truth, not to reasoning, but to

MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES 21

the inward practical sense of truth in man, not even
knowing any other proof than this inward testimony, 'If
any man will do the will of Him who sent Me, he shall
know of the doctrine whether it be of God.' "

Accepting Mr. Mozley's test, with which alone I am
now dealing, it is evident that, in the demonstration of
moral goodness, the quantity of the miraculous comes into
play. Had Christ, for example, limited himself to the
conversion of water into wine, He would have fallen short
of the performance of Jannes and Jambres; for it is a
smaller thing to convert one liquid into another than to
convert a dead rod into a living serpent. But Jannes and
Jambres, we are informed, were not good. Hence, if Mr.
Mozley's test be a true one, a point must exist, on the
one side of which miraculous power demonstrates good-
ness, while on the other side it does not. How is this
"point of contrary flexure'' to be determined? It must
lie somewhere between the magicians and Moses, for
within this space the power passed from the diabolical
to the Divine. But how to mark the point of passage —
how, out of a purely quantitative difference in the visible
manifestation of power, we are to infer a total inversion
of quality — it is extremely difficult to see. Moses, we are
informed, produced a large reptile; Jannes and Jambres
produced a small one. I do not possess the intellectual
faculty which would enable me to infer, from those data,
either the goodness of the one or the badness of the
other; and in the highest recorded manifestations of the
miraculous I am equally at a loss. Let us not play fast
and loose with the miraculous; either it is a demonstra-
tion of goodness in all cases or in none. If Mr. Mozley
accepts Christ's goodness as transcendent, because He did

22 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

such works as no other man did, he ought, logically
speaking, to accept the works of those who, in His name,
had cast out devils, as demonstrating a proportionate good-
ness on their part. But it is people of this class who are
consigned to everlasting fire prepared for the devil and
his angels. Such zeal as that of Mr. Mozley for miracles
tends, I fear, to eat his religion up. The logical threatens
to stifle the spiritual. The truly religious soul needs no
miraculous proof of the goodness of Christ. The words
addressed to Matthew at the receipt of custom required
no miracle to produce obedience. It was by no stroke of
the supernatural that Jesus caused those sent to seize Him
to go backward and fall to the ground. It was the sub-
lime and holy effluence from within, which needed no
prodigy to command it to the reverence even of his foes.
As regards the function of miracles in the founding of
a religion, Mr. Mozley institutes a comparison between the
religion of Christ and that of Mahomet; and he derides
the latter as "irrational" because it does not profess to
adduce miracles in proof of its supernatural origin. But
the religion of Mahomet, notwithstanding this drawback,
has thriven in the world, and at one time it held sway
over larger populations than Christianity itself. The
spread and influence of Christianity are, however, brought
forward by Mr. Mozley as "a permanent, enormous, and
incalculable practical result" of Christian miracles; and he
makes use of this result to strengthen his plea for the
miraculous. His logical warrant for this proceeding is
not clear. It is the method of science, when a phe-
nomenon presents itself, toward the production of which
several elements may contribute, to exclude them one
by one, so as to arrive at length at the truly effective

MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES 23

cause. Heat, for example, is associated with, a phe-
nomenon; we exclude heat, but the phenomenon re-
mains: hence, heat is not its cause. Magnetism is
associated with a phenomenon; we exclude magnetism,
but the phenomenon remains: hence, magnetism is not
its cause. Thus, also, when we seek the cause of a
diffusion of a religion — whether it be due to miracles,
or to the spiritual force of its founders — we exclude the
miracles, and, finding the result unchanged, we infer
that miracles are not the effective cause. This impor-
tant experiment Mohammedanism has made for us. It
has lived and spread without miracles; and to assert, in
the face of this, that Christianity has spread because
of miracles, is, I submit, opposed both to the spirit of
science and the common-sense of mankind.

The incongruity of inferring moral goodness from
miraculous power has been dwelt upon above; in an-
other particular also the strain put by Mr. Mozley upon
miracles is, I think, more than they can bear. In con-
sistency with his principles, it is difficult to see how he
is to draw from the miracles of Christ any certain conclu-
sion as to His Divine nature. He dwells very forcibly
on what he calls "the argument from experience," in
the demolition of which he takes obvious delight. He
destroys the argument, and repeats it, for the mere pleas-
ure of again and again knocking the breath out of it.
Experience, he urges, can only deal with the past; and
the moment we attempt to project experience a hair-
breadth beyond the point it has at any moment reached,
we are condemned by reason. It appears to me that
when he infers from Christ's miracles a Divine and alto-
gether superhuman energy, Mr. Mozley places himself

24 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

precisely under this condemnation. For what is his log-
ical ground for concluding that the miracles of the New
Testament illustrate Divine power ? May they not be the
result of expanded human power? A miracle he defines
as something impossible to man. But how does he know
that the miracles of the New Testament are impossible
to man? Seek as he may, he has absolutely no reason
to adduce save this — that man has never hitherto accom-
plished such things. But does the fact that man has
never raised the dead prove that he can never raise the
dead? "Assuredly not," must be Mr. Mozley's reply;
*'for this would be pushing experience beyond the limit
it has now reached— which I pronounce unlawful. ' ' Then
a period may come when man will be able to raise the
dead. If this be conceded — and I do not see how Mr.
Mozley can avoid the concession — it destroys the neces-
sity of inferring Christ's Divinity from His miracles.
He, it may be contended, antedated the humanity of
the future; as a mighty tidal wave leaves high upon
the beach a mark which by-and-by becomes the general
level of the ocean. Turn the matter as you will, no
other warrant will be found for the all-important con-
clusion that Christ's miracles demonstrate Divine power
than an argument which has been stigmatized by Mr.
Mozley as a "rope of sand" — the argument from expe-
rience.

The learned Bampton Lecturer would be in this posi-
tion, even had he seen with his own eyes every miracle
recorded in the New Testament. But he has not seen
these miracles; and his intellectual pligfit is therefore
worse. He accepts these miracles on testimony. Why
does he believe that testimony ? How does he know that

MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES 25

it is not delusion; liow is he sure that it is not even
fraud ? He will answer that the writing bears the marks
of sobriety and truth; and that in many cases the bearers
of this message to mankind sealed it with their blood.
Granted with all my heart; but whence the value of all
this? Is it not solely derived from the fact that men,
as ive know them, do not sacrifice their lives in the attesta-
tion of that which they know to be untrue ? Does not the
entire value of the testimony of the Apostles depend ulti-
mately upon our experience of human nature ? It ap-
pears, then, that those said to have seen the miracles
based their inferences from what they saw on the argu-
ment from experience; and that Mr. Mozley bases his
belief in their testimony on the same argument. The
weakness of his conclusion is quadrupled by this double
insertion of a principle of belief, to which he flatly denies
rationality. His reasoning, in fact, cuts two ways — if it
destroys our trust in the order of nature, it far more effect-
ually abolishes the basis on which Mr. Mozley seeks to
found the Christian religion.

Over this argument from experience, which at bottom

is his argument, Mr. Mozley rides rough- shod. There

is a dash of scorn in the energy with which he tramples

on it. Probably some previous writer had made too much

of it, and thus invited his powerful assault. Finding the

difficulty of belief in miracles to rise from their being in

contradiction to the order of nature, he sets himself to

examine the grounds of our belief in that order. With

a vigor of logic rarely equalled, and with a confidence

in its conclusions never surpassed, he disposes of this

belief in a manner calculated to startle those who, with-

Science — Yl — 2

26 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

out due examination, had come to the conclusion that
the order of nature was secure.

What we mean, he sajs, by our belief in the order of
nature, is the belief that the future will be like the past.
There is not, according to Mr. Mozlej, the slightest ra-
tional basis for this belief.

*'That any cause in nature is more permanent than its existing and known
effects, extending further, and about to produce other and more instances
besides what it has produced already, we have no evidence. Let us imagine,"
he continues, "the occurrence of a particular physical phenomenon for the first
time. Upon that single occurrence we should have but the very faintest ex-
pectation of another. If it did occur again, once or twice, so far from count-
ing on another occurrence, a cessation would occur as the most natural event
to us. But let it continue one hundred times, and we should find no hesitation
in inviting persons from a distance to see it ; and if it occurred every day for
years, its occurrence would be a certainty to us, its cessation a marvel. . . .
"What ground of reason can we assign for an expectation that any part of the
course of nature will be the next moment what it has been up to this moment,
i.e. for our belief in the uniformity of nature? None. No demonstrative reason
can be given, for the contrary to the recurrence of a fact of nature is no con-
tradiction. No probable reason can be given ; for all probable reasoning respect-
ing the course of nature is founded upon this presumption of likeness, and
therefore cannot be the foundation of it. No reason can be given for this beliet
It is without a reason. It rests upon no rational grounds, and can be traced to
no rational principle."

"Everything/* Mr. Mozley, however, adds, ** depends
upon this belief, every provision we make for the future,
every safeguard and caution we employ against it, all
calculation, all adjustment of means to ends, supposes this
belief; and yet this belief has no more producible reason
for it than a speculation of fancy. ... It is necessary,
all-important for the purposes of life, but solely practical,
and possesses no intellectual character. . . . The proper
function," continues Mr. Mozley, "of the inductive prin-
ciple, the argument from experience, the belief in the
order of nature — ^by whatever phrase we designate the same

MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES 27

instinct — ^is to operate as a practical basis for the affairs
of life and the carrying on of human society.*' To sum
up, the belief in the order of nature is general, but it is
**an unintelligent impulse, of which we can give no
rational account." It is inserted into our constitution
solely to induce us to till our fields, to raise our winter
fuel, and thus to meet the future on the perfectly gratui-
tous supposition that it will be like the past.

"Thus, step by step," says Mr. Mozley, with the em-
phasis of a man who feels his position to be a strong one,
**has philosophy loosened the connection of the order of
nature with the ground of reason, befriending in exact
proportion as it has done this the principle of miracles."
For **this belief not having itself a foundation in reason,
the ground is gone upon which it coald be maintained that
miracles, as opposed to the order of nature, are opposed
to reason." When we regard this belief in connection
with science, **in which connection it receives a more im-
posing name, and is called the inductive principle," the
result is the same. "The inductive principle is only this
unreasoning impulse applied to a scientifically ascertained
fact. . . . Science has led up to the fact; but there it
stops, and for converting this fact into a law, a totally
unscientific principle comes into play, the same as that
which generalizes the commonest observation of nature."

The eloquent pleader of the cause of miracles passes
over without a word the results of scientific investigation,
as proving anything rational regarding the principles or
method by which such results have been achieved. Here,
as elsewhere, he declines the test, "By their fruits shall
ye know them." Perhaps our best way of proceeding will
be to give one or two examples of the mode in which men

28 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

of science apply the unintelligent impulse with which Mr.
Mozley credits them, and which shall show, by illustra-
tion, the surreptitious method whereby they climb from
the region of facts to that of laws.

Before the sixteenth century it was known that water rises
in a pump; the effect being then explained by the maxim
that ** Nature abhors a vacuum.*' It was not known that
there was any limit to the height to which the water would
ascend, until, on one occasion, the gardeners of Florence,
while attempting to raise water to a very great elevation,
found that the column ceased at a height of thirty-two
feet. Beyond this all the skill of the pump-maker could
not get it to rise. The fact was brought to the notice of
Galileo, and he, soured by a world which had not treated
his science over-kindly, is said to have twitted the philos-
ophy of the time by remarking that Nature evidently
abhorred a vacuum only to a height of thirty-two feet.
Galileo, however, did not solve the problem. It was taken
up by his pupil Torricelli, to whom, after due pondering,
the thought occurred, that the water might be forced into
the tube by a pressure applied to the surface of the liquid
outside. But where, under the actual circumstances, was
such a pressure to be found? After much reflection, it
flashed upon Torricelli that the atmosphere might pos-
sibly exert this pressure; that the impalpable air might
possess weight, and that a column of water thirty-two feet
high might be of the exact weight necessary to nold the
pressure of the atmosphere in equilibrium.

There is much in this process of pondering and its
results which it is impossible to analyze. It is by a kind
of inspiration that we rise from the wise and sedulous
contemplation of facts to the principles on which they

MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES 29

depend. The mind is, as it were, a pliotographic plate,
which is gradually cleansed by the effort to think rightly,
and which, when so cleansed, and not before, receives
impressions from the light of truth. This passage from
facts to principles is called induction; and induction, in
its highest form, is, as I have just stated, a kind of in-
spiration. But, to make it sure, the inward sight must
be shown to be in accordance with outward fact. To
prove or disprove the induction we must resort to deduc-
tion and experiment.

Torricelli reasoned thus: If a column of water thirty-
two feet high holds the pressure of the atmosphere in
equilibrium, a shorter column of a heavier liquid ought
to do the same. Now, mercury is thirteen times heavier
than water; hence, if my induction be correct, the atmos-
phere ought to be able to sustain only thirty inches of
mercury. Here, then, is a deduction which can be imme-
diately submitted to experiment. Torricelli took a glass
tube a yard or so in length, closed at one end and open
at the other, and filling it with mercury, he stopped the
open end with his thumb, and inverted it into a basin
filled with the liquid metal. One can imagine the feeling
with which Torricelli removed his thumb, and the de-
light he experienced on finding that his thought had fore-
stalled a fact never before revealed to human eyes. The
column sank, but it ceased to sink at a height of thirty
inches, leaving the Torricellian vacuum overhead. From
that hour the theory of the pump was established.

The celebrated Pascal followed Torricelli with another
deduction. He reasoned thus: If the mercurial column be
"supported by the atmosphere, the higher we ascend in the
air, the lower the column ought to sink, for the less will

80 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

be the weight of the air overhead. He caused a friend
to ascend the Puy de Dome, carrying with him a baro-
metric column; and it was found that during the ascent
the column sank, and that during the subsequent descent
the column rose.

Between the time here referred to and the present, mil-
lions of experiments have been made upon this subject.
Every village pump is an apparatus for such experiments.
In thousands of instances, moreover, pumps have refused
to work; but on examination it has infallibly been found
that the well was dry, that the pump required priming,
or that some other defect in the apparatus accounted for
the anomalous action. In every case of the kind the skill
of the pump -maker has been found to be the true remedy.
In no case has the pressure of the atmosphere ceased;
constancy, as regards the lifting of pump-water, has been
hitherto the demonstrated rule of nature. So also as re-
gards Pascal's experiment. His experience has been the
universal experience ever since. Men have climbed moun-
tains, and gone up in balloons; but no deviation from
Pascal's result has ever been observed. Barometers, like
pumps, have refused to act; but instead of indicating any
suspension of the operations of Nature, or any interference
on the part of its Author with atmospheric pressure, ex-
amination has in every instance fixed the anomaly upon
the instruments themselves. It is this welding, then, of
rigid logic to verifying fact that Mr. Mozley refers to an
' ' unreasoning impulse. ' '

Let us now briefly consider the case of Newton. Be-
fore his time men had occupied themselves with the
problem of the solar system. Kepler had deduced, from
a vast mass of observations, those general expressions of

MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES 81

planetary motion known as *' Kepler's laws/* It had
been observed that a magnet attracts iron; and by one
of those flashes of inspiration which reveal to the human
mind the vast in the minute, the general in the particu-
lar, it had been inferred that the force by which bodies
fall to the earth might also be an attraction. Newton
pondered all these things. He looked, as was his wont,
into the darkness until it became entirely luminous.
How this light arises we cannot explain; but, as a mat-
ter of fact, it does arise. Let me remark here that this
kind of pondering is a process with which the ancients
could have been but imperfectly acquainted. They, for
the most part, found the exercise of fantasy more pleas-
ant than careful observation, and subsequent brooding
over facts. Hence it is that when those whose educa-
tion has been derived from the ancients speak of *'the
reason of man,'* they are apt to omit from their concep-
tion of reason one of its most important factors. Well,
Newton slowly marshalled his thoughts, or rather they
came to him while he ** intended his mind," rising like
a series of intellectual births out of chaos. He made this
idea of attraction his own. But, to apply the idea to the
solar system, it was necessary to know the magnitude of
the attraction, and the law of its variation with the dis-
tance. His conceptions first of all passed from the action
of the earth as a whole to that of its constituent particles.
And persistent thought brought more and more clearly
out the final conclusion that every particle of matter at-
tracts every other particle with a force varying inversely
as the square of the distance between the particles.

Here we have the flower and outcome of Newton's
induction; and how to verify it, or to disprove it, was

32 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

the next question. The first step of the philosopher in
this direction was to prove, mathematically, that if this
law of attraction be the true one; if the earth be con-
stituted of particles which obey this law; then the action
of a sphere equal to the earth in size on a body outside
of it is the same as that which would be exerted if the
whole mass of the sphere were contracted to a point at
its centre. Practically speaking, then, the centre of the
earth is the point from which. ^distances must be measured
to bodies attracted by the earth.

From experiments executed before his time, Newton
knew the amount of the earth's attraction at the earth's
surface, or at a distance of 4,000 miles from its centre.
His object now was to measure the attraction at a greater
distance, and thus to determine the law of its diminution.
But how was he to find a body at a sufficient distance?
He had no balloon? and even if he had, he knew that
any height to which he could attain would be too small
to enable him to solve his problem. What did he do ?
He fixed his thoughts upon the moon — a body 240,000
miles, or sixty times the earth's radius, from the earth's
centre. He virtually weighed the moon, and found that
weight to be ^oth of what it would be at the earth's
surface. This is exactly what his theory required. I
will not dwell here upon the pause of Newton after his
first calculations, or speak of his self-denial in withhold-
ing them because they did not quite agree with the ob-
servations then at his command. Newton's action in this
matter is the normal action of the scientific mind. If it
were otherwise — if scientific men were not accustomed to
demand verification — if they were satisfied with the im-
perfect while the perfect is attainable, their science,

MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES 33

instead of being, as it is, a fortress of adamant, wonld
be a house of clay, ill-fitted to bear the buffetings of the
theologic storms to which it is periodically exposed.

Thus we see that Newton, like Torricelli, first pon-
dered his facts, illuminated them with persistent thought,
and finally divined the character of the force of grav-
itation. But, having thus travelled inward to the
principle, he reversed his steps, carried the principle
outward, and justified it by demonstrating its fitness
to external nature.

And here, in passing, I would notice a point which
is well worthy of attention. Kepler had deduced his
laws from observation. As far back as those observa-
tions extended, the planetary motions had obeyed these
laws; and neither Kepler nor Newton entertained a doubt
as to their continuing to obey them. Year after year, as
the ages rolled, they believed that those laws would con-
tinue to illustrate themselves in the heavens. But this
was not sufficient. The scientific mind can find no re-
pose in the mere registration of sequence in nature. The
further question intrudes itself with resistless might,
Whence comes the sequence? What is it that binds
the consequent to its antecedent in nature? The truly
scientific intellect never can attain rest until it reaches
the forces by which the observed succession is produced.
It was thus with Torricelli; it was thus with Newton; it
is thus pre-eminently with the scientific man of to-day.
In common with the most ignorant, he shares the belief
that spring will succeed winter, that summer will succeed
spring, that autumn will succeed summer, and that winter
will succeed autumn. But he knows still further — and
this knowledge is essential to his intellectual repose — that

84 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

this succession, besides being permanent, is, under the
circumstances, necessary; that the gravitating force ex-
erted between the sun and a revolving sphere with an
axis inclined to the plane of its orbit, must produce the
observed succession of the seasons. Not until this rela-
tion between forces and phenomena has been established
is the law of reason rendered concentric with the law of
nature; and not until this is effected does the mind of
the scientific philosopher rest in peace.

The expectation of likeness, then, in the procession
of phenomena, is not that on which the scientific mind
founds its belief in the order of nature. If the force be
permanent the phenomena are necessary^ whether thej re-
semble or do not resemble anything that has gone before.
Hence, in judging of the order of nature, our inquiries
eventually relate to the permanence of force. From
Galileo to Newton, from Newton to our own time,
eager eyes have been scanning the heavens, and clear
heads have been pondering the phenomena of the solar
system. The same eyes and minds have been also ob-
serving, experimenting, and reflecting on the action of
gravity at the surface of the earth. Nothing has occurred
to indicate that the operation of the law has for a mo-
ment been suspended; nothing has ever intimated that
nature has been crossed by spontaneous action, or that
a state of things at any time existed which could not be
rigorously deduced from the preceding state.

Griven the distribution of matter, and the forces in
operation, in the time of Galileo, the competent mathe-
matician of that day could predict what is now occur-
ring in our own. "We calculate eclipses in advance, and
find our calculations true to the second. We determine

MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES 35

the dates of those that have occurred in the early times
of history, and find calculation and history in harmony.
Anomalies and perturbations in the planets have been
over and over again observed; but these, instead of
demonstrating any inconstancy on the part of natural
law, have invariably been reduced to consequences of
that law. Instead of referring the perturbations of Ura-
nus to any interference on the part of the Author of
nature with the law of gravitation, the question which
the astronomer proposed to himself was, "How, in ac-
cordance with this law, can the perturbation be pro-
duced?" Guided by a principle, he was enabled to fix
the point of space in which, if a mass of matter were
placed, the observed perturbiitions would follow. We
know the result. The practical astronomer turned his
telescope toward the region which the intellect of the
theoretic astronomer had already explored, and the planet
now named Keptune was found in its predicted place. A
very respectable outcome, it will be admitted, of an im-
pulse which "rests upon no rational grounds, and can
be traced to no rational principle"; which possesses "no
intellectual character"; which "philosophy" has uprooted
from "the ground of reason," and fixed in that "large
irrational department" discovered, for it, by Mr. Mozley,
in the hitherto unexplored wilderness of the human mind.
The proper function of the inductive principle, or the
belief in the order of nature, says Mr. Mozley, is "to act
as a practical basis for the affairs of life, and the carry-
ing on of human society." But what, it may be asked,
has the planet Neptune, or the belts of Jupiter, or the
whiteness about the poles of Mars, to do with the affairs
of society? How is society affected by the fact that the

38 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

sun's atmospliere contains sodium, or that the nebula of
Orion contains hydrogen gas? Nineteen-twentieths of the
force employed in the exercise of the inductive principle,
which, reiterates Mr. Mozley, is "purely practical," have
been expended upon subjects as unpractical as these.
What practical interest has society in the fact that the
spots on the sun have a decennial period, and that when
a magnet is closely watched for half a century it is
found to perform small motions which synchronize with
the appearance and disappearance of the solar spots?
And yet, I doubt not, Sir Edward Sabine would deem
a life of intellectual toil amply rewarded by being privi-
leged to solve, at its close, these infinitesimal motions.

The inductive principle is founded in man's desire to
know — a desire arising from his position among phenom-
ena which are reducible to order by his intellect. The
material universe is the complement of the intellect; and,
without the study of its laws, reason could never have
awakened to the higher forms of self-consciousness at
all. It is the Non-ego through and by which the Ego
is endowed with self -discernment. We hold it to be an
exercise of reason to explore the meaning of a universe to
which we stand in this relation, and the work we have
accomplished is the proper commentary on the methods
we have pursued. Before these methods were adopted
the unbridled imagination roamed through nature, put-
ting in the place of law the figments of superstitious
dread. For thousands of years witchcraft, and magic,
and miracles, and special providences, and Mr. Mozley's
"distinctive reason of man," had the world to themselves.
They made worse than nothing of it — worse^ I say, be-
cause they let and hindered those who might have made

MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES 37

something of it. Hence it is that, during a single life-
time of this era of "unintelligent impulse," the progress
in knowledge is all but infinite as compared with that of
the ages which preceded ours.

The believers in magic and miracles of a couple of
centuries ago had all the strength of Mr. Mozley's present
logic on their side. They had done for themselves what
he rejoices in having so effectually done for us — cleared
the ground of the belief in the order of nature, and de-
clared magic, miracles, and witchcraft to be matters for
"ordinary evidence" to decide. "The principle of mir-
acles" thus "befriended" had free scope, and we know
the result. Lacking that rock- barrier of natural knowl-
edge which we now possess, keen jurists and cultivated
men were hurried on to deeds, the bare recital of which
makes the blood run cold. Skilled in all the rules of hu-
man evidence, and versed in all the arts of cross-examina-
tion, these men, nevertheless, went systematically astray,
and committed the deadliest wrongs against hiimanity.
And why? Because they could not put Nature into the
witness-box, and question her — of her voiceless "testi-
mony' ' they knew nothing. In all cases between man and
man, their judgment was to be relied on; but in all cases
between man and nature, they were blind leaders of the
blind.*

* *'In 1664 two -women were hung in Suffolk, under a sentence of Sir
Matthew Hale, who took the opportunity of declaring that the reality of witch-
craft was unquestionable ; 'for first, the Scriptures had affirmed so much ; and
secondly, the wisdom of all nations had provided laws against such persons,
which is an argument of their confidence of such a crime. ' Sir Thomas Browne,
who was a great physician as well as a great writer, was called as a witness,
and swore 'that he was clearly of opinion that the persons were bewitched.' "
— Lecky's "History of Rationalism," vol. i. p. 120.

38 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

Mr. Mozley concedes that it would be no great result
if miracles were only accepted by the ignorant and super-
stitious, "because it is easy to satisfy those who do not
inquire." But he does consider it *'a great result" that
they have been accepted by the educated. In what sense
educated? Like those statesmen, jurists and church dig-
nitaries whose education was unable to save them from
the frightful errors glanced at above? Not even in this
sense; for the great mass of Mr. Mozley 's educated people
had no legal training, and must have been absolutely de-
fenceless against delusions which could set even that train-
ing at naught. Like nine-tenths of our clergy at the pres-
ent day, they were versed in the literature of Greece,
Eome and Judea; but as regards a knowledge of nature,
which is here the one thing needful, they were "noble
savages," and nothing more. In the case of miracles,
then, it behooves us to understand the weight of the nega-
tive, before we assign a value to the positive ; to compre-
hend the depositions of nature, before we attempt to meas-
ure, with them, the evidence of men. We have only to
open our eyes to see what honest and even intellectual
men and women are capable of, as to judging evidence,
in this nineteenth century of the Christian era, and in lati-
tude fifty-two degrees north. The experience thus gained
ought, I imagine, to influence our opinion regarding the
testimony of people inhabiting a sunnier clime, with a
richer imagination, and without a particle of that restraint
which the discoveries of physical science have imposed
upon mankind.

Having thus submitted Mr. Mozley 's views to the ex-
amination which they challenged at the hands of a student

ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON MIRACLES 89

of nature, I am unwilling to quit his book without ex-
pressing my admiration of his genius, and my respect for
his character. Though barely known to him personally,
his recent death affected me as that of a friend. With
regard to the style of his book, I heartily subscribe to the
description with which the *' Times" winds up its able and
appreciative review. "It is marked throughout with the
most serious and earnest conviction, but is without a sin-
gle word from first to last of asperity or insinuation against
opponents; and this not from any deficiency of feeling as
to the importance of the issue, but from a deliberate and
resolutely maintained self-control, and from an over-ruling,
ever-present sense of the duty, on themes like these, of a
more than judicial calmness."

[To the argument regarding the quantity of the mirac-
ulous, introduced at page 21, Mr. Mozley has done me
the honor of publishing a Beply in the seventh volume
of the *' Contemporary Review." — J. T.]

ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON MIRACLES

Among the scraps of manuscript, written at the time
when Mr. Mozley's work occupied my attention, I find
the following reflections:

With regard to the influence of modern science which
Mr. Mozley rates so low, one obvious effect of it is to
enhance the magnitude of many of the recorded miracles,
and to increase proportionably the difficulties of belief.
The ancients knew but little of the vastness of the uni-
verse. The Rev. Mr. Kirkman, for example, has shown
what inadequate notions the Jews entertained regarding

40 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

the "firmament of heaven"; and Sir George Airy refers
to the case of a Grreek philosopher who was persecuted for
hazarding the assertion, then deemed monstrous, that the
sun might be as large as the whole country of Greece.
The -concerns of a universe, regarded from this point of
view, were much more commensurate with man and his
concerns than those of the universe which science now re-
veals to us; and hence that to suit man's purposes, or that
in compliance with his prayers, changes should occur in the
order of the universe, was more easy of belief in the an-
cient world than it can be now. In the very magnitude
which it assigns to natural phenomena, science has aug-
mented the distance between them and man, and increased
the popular belief in their orderly progression.

As a natural consequence the demand for evidence is
more exacting than it used to be, whenever it is a£Q.rmed
that the order of nature has been disturbed. Let us take
as an illustration the miracle by which the victory of
Joshua over the Amorites was rendered complete. In
this case the sun is reported to have stood still for ** about
a whole day*' upon Gibeon, and the moon in the valley
of Ajalon. An Englishman of average education at the
present day would naturally demand a greater amount of
evidence to prove that this occurrence took place, than
would have satisfied an Israelite in the age succeeding
that of Joshua. For, to the one, the miracle probably con-
sisted in the stoppage of a fiery ball less than a yard in
diameter, while to the other it would be the stoppage
of an orb fourteen hundred thousand times the earth in
size. And even accepting the interpretation that Joshua
dealt with what was apparent merely, but that what really
occurred was the suspension of the earth's rotation, I

ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON MIRACLES 41

think the right to exercise a greater reserve in accepting
the miracle, and to demand stronger evidence in support
of it than that which would have satisfied an ancient
Israelite, will still be conceded to a man of science.

There is a scientific as well as a historic imagination;
and when, by the exercise of the former, the stoppage of
the earth's rotation is clearly realized, the event assumes
proportions so vast, in comparison with the result to be
obtained by it, that belief reels under the reflection. The
energy here involved is equal to that of six trillions of
horses working for the whole of the time employed by
Joshua in the destruction of his foes. The amount of
power thus expended would be sufficient to supply every
individual of an army a thousand times the strength of
that of Joshua, with a thousand times the fighting power
of each of Joshua's soldiers, not for the few hours neces-
sary to the extinction of a handful of Amorites, but for
millions of years. All this wonder is silently passed over
by the sacred historian, manifestly because he knew noth*
ing about it. Whether, therefore, we consider the miracle
as purely evidential, or as a practical means of vengeance,
the same lavish squandering of energy stares us in the
face. If evidential, the energy was wasted, because the
Israelites knew nothing of its amount; if simply destruc-
tive, then the ratio of the quantity lost to the quantity
employed may be inferred from the foregoing figures.

To other miracles similar remarks apply. Transferring
our thoughts from this little sand -grain of an earth to the
immeasurable heavens, where countless worlds with freights
of life probably revolve unseen, the very suns which warm
them being barely visible across abysmal space; reflecting
that beyond these sparks of solar fire* suns innumerable

42 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

may burn, whose light can never stir the optic nerve at
all; and bringing these reflections face to face with the
idea of the Builder and Sustainer of it all showing Him-
self in a burning bush, exhibiting His hinder parts, or
behaving in other familiar ways ascribed to Him in the
Jewish Scriptures, the incongruity must appear. Did this
credulous prattle of the ancients about miracles stand
alone; were it not associated with words of imperishable
wisdom, and with examples of moral grandeur unmatched
elsewhere in the history of the human race, both the mir-
acles and their "evidences" would have long since ceased
to be the transmitted inheritance of intelligent men. In-
fluenced by the thoughts which this universe inspires, well
may we exclaim in David's spirit, if not in David's words:
*'When I consider the heavens, the work of Thy fingers,
the moon, and the stars, which Thou hast ordained; what
is man that Thou shouldst be mindful of him, or the son
of man that Thou shouldst so regard him?"

If you ask me who is to limit the outgoings of Al-
mighty power, my answer is, Not I. If you should urge
that if the Builder and Maker of this universe chose to
stop the rotation of the earth, or to take the form of a
burning bush, there is nothing to prevent Him from doing
so, I am not prepared to contradict you. I neither agree
with you nor differ from you, for it is a subject of which
I know nothing. But I observe that in such questions
regarding Almighty power, your inquiries relate, not to
that power as it is actually displayed in the universe, but
to the power of your own imagination. Your question is,
not has the Omnipotent done so and so? or is it in the
least degree likely that the Omnipotent should do so and
so? but, is my imagination competent to picture a Being

ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON MIRACLES 43

able and willing to do so and so ? I am not prepared to
deny your competence. To the human mind belongs the
faculty of enlarging and diminishing, of distorting and
combining, indefinitely the objects revealed by the senses.
It can imagine a mouse as large as an elephant, an ele-
phant as large as a mountain, and a mountain as high as
the stars. It can separate congruities and unite incongru-
ities. We see a fish and we see a woman; we can drop
one half of each, and unite in idea the other two halves
to a mermaid. We see a horse and we see a man; we are
able to drop one half of each, and unite the other two
halves to a centaur. Thus also the pictorial representa-
tions of the Deity, the bodies and wings of cherubs and
seraphs, the hoofs, horns, and tail of the Evil One, the
joys of the blessed, and the torments of the damned, have
been elaborated from materials furnished to the imagina-
tion by the senses. It behooves you and me to take care
that our notions of the Power which rules the universe
are not mere fanciful or ignorant enlargements of human
power. The capabilities of what you call your reason are
not denied. By the exercise of the faculty here adverted
to, you can picture to yourself a Being able and willing
to do any and every conceivable thing. You are right
in saying that in opposition to this Power science is of no
avail — ^that it is "a weapon of air." The man of science,
however, while accepting the figure, would probably re-
verse its application, thinking it is not science which is
here the thing of air, but that unsubstantial pageant of the
imagination to which the solidity of science is opposed.

Prayer as a means to effect a private end is theft and meanness. — Emerson.

Ill

ON PRAYER AS A FORM OF PHYSICAL ENERGY

THE Editor of the "Contemporary Keview" is liberal
enough to grant me space for some remarks upon
a subject which, though my relation to it was
simply that of a vehicle of transmission, has brought
down upon me a considerable amount of animadversion.
It may be interesting to some of my readers if I
glance at a few cases illustrative of the history of the
human mind, in relation to this and kindred questions.
In the fourth century the belief in Antipodes was deemed
unscriptural and heretical. The pious Lactantius was as
angry with the people who held this notion as my censors
are now with me, and quite as unsparing in his denunci-
ations of their "Monstrosities." Lactantius was irritated
because, in his mind, by education and habit, cosmogony
and religion were indissolubly associated, and, therefore,
simultaneously disturbed. In the early part of the seven-
teenth century the notion that the earth was fixed, and
that the sun and stars revolved round it daily, was inter-
woven with religious feeling, the separation then at-
tempted by Galileo rousing the animosity and kindling
the persecution of the Church. Men still living can re-

PRAYER AS A FORM OF PHYSICAL ENERGY 45

member the indignation excited by the first revelations
of geology regarding the age of the earth, the association
between chronology and religion being for the time in-
dissoluble. In our day, however, the best-informed the-
ologians are prepared to admit that our views of the Uni-
verse and its Author are not impaired, but improved, by
the abandonment of the Mosaic account of the Creation.
Look, finally, at the excitement caused by the publication
of the "Origin of Species"; and compare it with the calm
attendant on the appearance of the far more outspoken,
and, from the old point of view, more impious, "Descent
of Man."

Thus religion survives after the removal of what had
been long considered essential to it. In our day the
Antipodes are accepted; the fixity of the earth is given
up; the period of Creation and the reputed age of the
world are alike dissipated; Evolution is looked upon
without terror; and other changes have occurred in the
same direction too numerous to be dwelt upon here. In
fact, from the earliest times to the present, religion has
been undergoing a process of purification, freeing itself
slowly and painfully from the physical errors which the
active but uninformed intellect mingled with the aspira-
tions of the soul. Some of us think that a final act of
purification is needed, while others oppose this notion
with the confidence and the warmth of ancient times.
The bone of contention at present is the physical value
of prayer. It is not my wish to excite surprise, much
less to draw forth protest, by the employment of this
phrase. I would simply ask any intelligent person to
look the problem honestly in the face, and then to say
whether, in the estimation of the great body of those who

46 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

sincerely resort to it, prayer does not, at ail events upon
special occasions, invoke a Power which checks and aug-
ments the descent of rain, which changes the force and
direction of winds, which affects the growth of corn and
the health of men and cattle — a Power, in short, which,
when appealed to under pressing circumstances, produces
the precise effects caused by physical energy in the ordi-
nary course of things. To any person who deals sin-
cerely with the subject, and refuses to blur his moral
vision by intellectual subtleties, this, I think, will appear
a true statement of the case.

It is under this aspect alone that the scientific student,
so far as I represent him, has any wish to meddle with
prayer. Forced upon his attention as a form of physical
energy, or as the equivalent of such energy, he claims
the right of subjecting it to those methods of examina-
tion from which all our present knowledge of the phys-
ical universe is derived. And if his researches lead him
to a conclusion adverse to its claims — ^if his inquiries rivet
him still closer to the philosophy implied in the words,
**He maketh His sun to shine on the evil and on the
good, and sendeth rain upon the just and upon the un-
just"— he contends only for the displacement of prayer,
not for its extinction. He simply says, physical nature
is not its legitimate domain.

This conclusion, moreover, must be based on pure
physical evidence, and not on any inherent unreason-
ableness in the act of prayer. The theory that the sys-
tem of nature is under the control of a Being who
changes phenomena in compliance with the prayers of
men is, in my opinion, a perfectly legitimate one. It
may of course be rendered futile by being associated

PRAYER AS A FORM OF PHYSICAL ENERGY 47

with conceptions which contradict it; but such concep-
tions form no necessary part of the theory. It is a mat-
ter of experience that an earthly father, who is at the
same time both wise and tender, listens to the requests
of his children, and, if they do not ask amiss, takes
pleasure in granting their requests. We know also that
this compliance extends to the alteration, within certain
limits, of the current of events on earth. With this sug-
gestion offered by experience, it is no departure from
scientific method to place behind natural phenomena a
Universal Father, who, in answer to the prayers of His
children, alters the currents of those phenomena. Thus
far Theology and Science go hand in hand. The concep-
tion of an ether, for example, trembling with the waves
of light, is suggested by the ordinary phenomena of wave-
motion in water and in air; and in like manner the con-
ception of personal volition in nature is suggested by the
ordinary action of man upon earth. I therefore urge no
impossibilities^ though I am constantly charged with doing
so. I do not even urge inconsistency, but, on the con-
trary, frankly admit that the theologian has as good a
right to place his conception at the root of phenomena
as I have to place mine.

But without verification a theoretic conception is a
mere figment of the intellect, and I am sorry to find
us parting company at this point. The region of theory,
both in science and theology, lies behind the world of the
senses, but the verification of theory occurs in the sensi-
ble world. To check the theory we have simply to com-
pare the deductions from it with the facts of observation.
If the deductions be in accordance with the facts, we
accept the theory: if in opposition, the theory is given

48 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

up. A single experiment is frequently devised, by whicli
the theory must stand or fall. Of this character was the
determination of the velocity of light in liquids, as a
crucial test of the Emission Theory. According to it,
light travelled faster in water than in air; according to
the Undulatory Theory, it travelled faster in air than in
water. An experiment suggested by Arago, and exe-
cuted by Fizeau and Foucault, was conclusive against
Newton's theory.

But while science cheerfully submits to this ordeal, it
seems impossible to devise a mode of verification of their
theories which does not rouse resentment in theological
minds. Is it that, while the pleasure of the scientific
man culminates in the demonstrated harmony between
theory and fact, the highest pleasure of the religious
man has been already tasted in the very act of pray-
ing, prior to verification, any further effort in this direc-
tion being a mere disturbance of his peace ? Or is it that
we have before us a residue of that mysticism of the
Middle Ages, so admirably described by Whewell — that
"practice of referring things and events not to clear and
distinct notions, not to general rules capable of direct
verification, biit to notions vague, distant, and vast,
which we cannot bring into contact with facts; as when
we connect natural events with moral and historic
causes?" "Thus," he continues, "the character of mys-
ticism is that it refers particulars, not to generalizations,
homogeneous and immediate, but to such as are hetero-
geneous and remote; to which we must add that the
process of. this reference is not a calm act of the intel-
lect, but is accompanied with a glow of enthusiastic
feeling. ^ '

PRAYER AS A FORM OF PHYSICAL ENERGY 49

Every feature here depicted, and some more ques-
tionable ones, have shown themselves of late; most con-
spicuously, I regret to say, in the "leaders" of a weekly
journal of considerable influence, and one, on many
grounds, entitled to the respect of thoughtful men. In
the correspondence, however, published by the same jour-
nal, are to be found two or three letters well calculated
to correct the temporary flightiness of the journal itself.

It is not my habit of mind to think otherwise than
solemnly of the feeling which prompts prayer. It is a
power which I should like to see guided, not extin-
guished— devoted to practicable objects instead of wasted
upon air. In some form or other, not yet evident, it
may, as alleged, be necessary to man's highest culture.
Certain it is that, while I rank many persons who resort
to prayer low in the scale of being — natural foolishness,
bigotry, and intolerance being in their case intensified by
the notion that they have access to the ear of God — I
regard others who employ it as forming part of the very
cream of the earth. The faith that adds to the folly and
ferocity of the one is turned to enduring sweetness, holi-
ness, abounding charity, and self-sacrifice by the other.
Keligion, in fact, varies with the nature upon which it
falls. Often unreasonable, if not contemptible, prayer,
in its purer forms, hints at disciplines which few of us
can neglect without moral loss. But no good can come
of giving it a delusive value, by claiming for it a power
in physical nature. It may strengthen the heart to meet
life's losses, and thus indirectly promote physical well-
being, as the digging of ^sop's orchard brought a treas-
ure of fertility greater than the golden treasure sought.
Such indirect issues we all admit; but it would be sim-

SCIENCE — YI — 3

50 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

ply dishonest to affirm that it is such issues that are
always in view. Here, for the present, I must end. I
ask no space to reply to those railers who make such free
use of the terms insolence, outrage, profanity, and blas-
phemy. They obviously lack the sobriety of mind nec-
essary to give accuracy to their statements, or to render
their charges worthy of serious refutation.

IV

VITALITY

THE origin, growth, and energies of living things are
subjects which have always engaged the attention
of thinking men. To account for them it was usual
to assume a special agent, free to a great extent from the
limitations observed among the powers of inorganic nat-
ure. This agent was called vital force; and, under its
influence, plants and animals were supposed to collect
their materials and to assume determinate forms. Within
the last few years, however, our ideas of vital processes
have undergone profound modifications; and the interest,
and even disquietude, which the change has excited are
amply evidenced by the discussions and protests which
are now common regarding the phenomena of vitality.
In tracing these phenomena through all their modifica-
tions, the most advanced philosophers of the present day
declare that they ultimately arrive at a single source of
power, from which all vital energy is derived; and the
disquieting circumstance is that this source is not the di-
rect fiat of a supernatural agent, but a reservoir of what,
if we do not accept the creed of Zoroaster, must be re-
garded as inorganic force. In short, it is considered as
proved that all the energy which we derive from plants
and animals is drawn from the sun.

A few years ago, when the sun was affirmed to be the

(51)

52 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

source of life, nine out of ten of those who are alarmed
by the form which this assertion has latterly assumed
would have assented, in a general way, to its correctness.
Their assent, however, was more poetic than scientific,
and they were by no means prepared to see a rigid me-
chanical signification attached to their words. This, how-
ever, is the peculiarity of modern conclusions — that there
is no creative energy whatever in the vegetable or animal
organism, but that all the power which we obtain from
the muscles of man and animals, as much as that which
we develop by the combustion of wood or coal, has been
produced at the sun's expense. The sun is so much the
colder that we may have our fires; he is also so much
the colder that we may have our horse-racing and Alpine
climbing. It is, for example, certain that the sun has
been chilled to an extent capable of being accurately ex-
pressed in numbers, in order to furnish the power which
lifted this year a certain number of tourists from the vale
of Chamouni to the summit of Mont Blanc.

To most minds, however, the energy of light and heat
presents itself as a thing totally distinct from ordinary
mechanical energy. Either of them can nevertheless be
derived from the other. Wood can be raised by friction
to the temperature of ignition; while by properly strik-
ing a piece of iron a skilful blacksmith can cause it to
glow. Thus, by the rude agency of his hammer, he gen-
erates light and heat. This action, if carried far enough,
would produce the light and heat of the sun. In fact,
the sun's light and heat have actually been referred to
the fall of meteoric matter upon his surface; and whether
the sun is thus supported or not, it is perfectly certain
that he might be thus supported. Whether, moreover, the

VITALITY SS

whilom molten condition of our planet was, as supposed
bj eminent men, due to the collision of cosmic masses or
not, it is perfectly certain that the molten condition might
be thus brought about. If, then, solar light and heat can
be produced by the impact of dead matter, and if from
the light and heat thus produced we can derive the ener-
gies which we have been accustomed to call vital, it indu-
bitably follows that vital energy may have a proximately
mechanical origin.

In what sense, then, is the sun to be regarded as the
origin of the energy derivable from plants and animals ?
Let us try to give an intelligible answer to this question.
Water may be raised from the sea-level to a high eleva-
tion, and then permitted to descend. In descending it
may be made to assume various forms — to fall in cas-
cades, to spurt in fountains, to boil in eddies, or to flow
tranquilly along a uniform bed. It may, moreover, be
caused to set complex machinery in motion, to turn mill-
stones, throw shuttles, work saws and hammers, and
drive piles. But every form of power here indicated
would be derived from the original power expended in
raising the water to the height from which it fell. There
is no energy generated by the machinery: the work per-
formed by the water in descending is merely the parcel-
ling out and distribution of the work expended in raising
it. In precisely this sense is all the energy of plants and
animals the parcelling out and distribution of a power
originally exerted by the sun. In th« case of the water,
the source of the power consists in the forcible separation
of a quantity of the liquid from a low level of the earth's
surface, and its elevation to a higher position, the power
thus expended being returned by the water in its descent.

54 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

In the case of vital phenomena, the source of power con-
sists in the forcible separation of the atoms of compound
substances by the sun. We name the force which draws
the water earthward "gravity," and that which draws
atoms together "chemical affinity"; but these different
names must not mislead us regarding the qualitative
identity of the two forces. They are both attractions;
and, to the intellect, the falling of carbon atoms against
oxygen atoms is not more difficult of conception than the
falling of water to the earth.

The building up of the vegetable, then, is effected by
the sun, through the reduction of chemical compounds.
The phenomena of animal life are more or less compli-
cated reversals of these processes of reduction. We eat
the vegetable, and we breathe the oxygen of the air;
and in our bodies the oxygen, which had been lifted
from the carbon and hydrogen by the action of the sun,
again falls toward them, producing animal heat and de-
veloping animal forms. Through the most complicated
phenomena of vitality this law runs — the vegetable is
produced while a weight rises, the animal is produced
while a weight falls. But the question is not exhausted
here. The water employed in our first illustration gen-
erates all the motion displayed in its descent, but the
form of the motion depends on the character of the ma-
chinery interposed in the path of the water. In a simi-
lar way, the primary action of the sun's rays is qualified
by the atoms and molecules among which their energy is
distributed. Molecular forces determine the form which
the solar energy will assume. In the separation of the
carbon and oxygen this .energy may be so conditioned
as to result in one case in the formation of a cabbage,

VITALITY 55

and in another case in the formation of an oakc So also,
as regards the reunion of the carbon and the oxygen, the
molecular machinery through which the combining energy
acts may, in one case, weave the texture of a frog, while
in another it may weave the texture of a man.

The matter of the animal body is that of inorganic
nature. There is no substance in the animal tissues
which is not primarily derived from the rocks, the
water, and the air. Are the forces of organic matter,
then, different in kind from those of inorganic matter?
The philosophy of the present day negatives the ques-
tion. It is the compounding, in the organic world, of
forces belonging equally to the inorganic, that consti-
tutes the mystery and the miracle of vitality. Every
portion of every animal body may be reduced to purely
inorganic matter. A perfect reversal of this process of
reduction would carry us from the inorganic to the or-
ganic; and such a reversal is at least conceivable. The
tendency, indeed, of modern science is to break down the
wall of partition between organic and inorganic, and to
reduce both to the operation of forces which are the same
in kind, but which are differently compounded.

Consider the question of personal identity, in relation
to that of molecular form. Thirty-four years ago, Mayer
of Heilbronn, with that power of genius which breathes
large meanings into scanty facts, pointed out that the
blood was "the oil of the lamp of life," the combustion
of which sustains muscular action. The muscles are the
machinery by which the dynamic power of the blood is
brought into play. Thus the blood is consumed. But
the whole body, though more slowly than the blood,
wastes also, so that after a certain number of years it

156 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

is entirely renewed. How is the sense of personal iden-
tity maintained across this flight of molecules? To man,
as we know him, matter is necessary to consciousness;
but the matter of any period may be all changed, while
consciousness exhibits no solution of continuity. Like
changing sentinels, the oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon
that depart, seem to whisper their secret to their com-
rades that arrive, and thus, while the Non-ego shifts,
the Ego remains the same. Constancy of form in the
grouping of the molecules, and not constancy of the
molecules themselves, is the correlative of this constancy
of perception. Life is a wave which in no two consecu-
tive moments of its existence is composed of the same
particles.

Supposing, then, the molecules of the human body,
instead of replacing others, and thus renewing a pre-
existing form, to be gathered first hand from nature and
put together in the same relative positions as those which
they occupy in the body. Supposing them to have the
self-same forces and distribution of forces, the self-same
motions and distribution of motions — would this organ-
ized concourse of molecules stand before us as a sentient
thinking being? There seems no valid reason to believe
that it would not. Or, supposing a planet carved from
the sun, set spinning round an axis, and revolving round
the sun, at a distance from him equal to that of our
earth, would one of the consequences of its refrigeration
be the development of organic forms? I lean to the
affirmative. Structural forces are certainly in the mass,
whether or not those forces reach to the extent of form-
ing a plant or an animal. In an amorphous drop of
water lie latent all the marvels of crystalline force;

VITALITY 57

and who will set limits to the possible play of mole-
cules in a cooling planet? If these statements startle,
it is because matter has been defined and maligned
bj philosophers and theologians, who were equally un-
aware that it is, at bottom, essentially mystical and
transcendental.

Questions such as these derive their present interest
in great part from their audacity, which is sure, in due
time, to disappear. And the sooner the public dread is
abolished with reference to such questions the better for the
cause of truth. As regards knowledge, physical science
is polar. In one sense it knows, or is destined to know,
everything. In another sense it knows nothing. Science
understands much of this intermediate phase of things
that we call nature, of which it is the product; but
science knows nothing of the origin or destiny of nature.
Who or what made the sun, and gave his rays their al-
leged power? Who or what made and bestowed upon
the ultimate particles of matter their wondrous power of
varied interaction? Science does not know: the mystery,
though pushed back, remains unaltered. To many of us
who feel that there are more things in heaven and earth
than are dreamed of in the present philosophy of science,
but who have been also taught, by baffled efforts, how
vain is the attempt to grapple with the Inscrutable, the
ultimate frame of mind is that of Groethe:

"Who dares to name His name,

Or belief in Him proclaim,

Veiled in mystery as He is, the All-enfolder?

Gleams across the mind His light,

Feels the lifted soul His might.

Dare it then deny His reign, the All-upliolder?

As I rode through the Schwarzwald, I said to myself: That little fire which
glows star-like across the dark-growing moor, where the sooty smith bends over
his anvil, and thou hopest to replace thy lost horseshoe — is it a detached, sepa-
rated speck, cut off from the whole Universe; or indissolubly joined to the whole?
Thou fool, that smithy- fire was primarily kindled at the Sun ; is fed by air that
circulates from before Noah's Deluge, from beyond the Dogstar; therein, with
Iron Force, and Coal Force, and the far stranger Force of Man, are cunning
affinities and battles and victories of Force brought about; it is a little ganglion,
or nervous centre, in the great vital system of Immensity. Call it, if thou wilt,
an unconscious Altar, kindled on the bosom of the All . . . Detached, sepa-
rated! I say there is no such separation: nothing hitherto was ever stranded,
cast aside ; but all, were it only a withered leaf, works together with all ; ia
borne forward on the bottomless, shoreless flood of action, and lives through
perpetual metamorphoses. — Caeltle

V

MATTER AND FORCE '

IT is the custom of the Professors in the Royal School
of Mines in London to give courses of evening lect-
ures every year to working men. The lecture-room
holds 600 people; and tickets to this amount are dis-
posed of as quickly as they can be handed to those who
apply for them. So desirous are the working men of
London to attend these lectures that the persons who
fail to obtain tickets always bear a large proportion to
those who succeed. Indeed, if the lecture-room could
hold 2,000 instead of 600, I do not doubt that every
one of its benches would be occupied on these occasions.

* A Lecture delivered to the working men of Dundee, September 5, 1867$
with additions.

(58)

MATTER AND FORCE 59

It is, moreover, worthy of remark that the lectures are
but rarely of a character which could help the working
man in his daily pursuits. The information acquired is
hardly ever of a nature which admits of being turned
into money. It is, therefore, a pure desire for knowl-
edge, as a thing good in itself, and without regard to its
practical application, which animates the hearers of these
lectures.

It is also my privilege to lecture to another audience
in London, composed in part of the aristocracy of rank,
while the audience just referred to is composed wholly of
the aristocracy of labor. As regards attention and court-
esy to the lecturer, neither of these audiences has any-
thing to learn of the other; neither can claim superiority
over the other. It would not, perhaps, be quite correct
to take those persons who flock to the School of Mines
as average samples of their class; they are probably
picked men — the aristocracy of labor, as I have just
called them. At all events, their conduct demonstrates
that the essential qualities of what we in England under-
stand by a gentleman are confined to no class; and they
have often raised in my mind the wish that the gentle-
men of all classes, artisans as well as lords, could, by
some process of selection, be sifted from the general mass
of. the community, and caused to know each other better.

"When pressed some months ago by the Council of the
British Association to give an evening lecture to the
working men of Dundee, my experience of the working
men of London naturally rose to my mind; and, though
heavily weighted with other duties, I could not bring
myself to decline the request of the Council. Hitherto,
the evening discourses of the Association have been de-

60 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

livered before its members and associates alone. But
after the meeting at Nottingham, last year, where the
working men, at their own request, were addressed by
our late President, Mr. Grove, and by my excellent
friend. Professor Huxley, the idea arose of incorporat-
ing with all subsequent meetings of the Association an
address to the working men of the town in which the
meeting is held. A resolution to that effect was sent to
the Committee of Eecommendations; the Committee sup-
ported the resolution; the Council of the Association rati-
fied the decision of the Committee; and here I am to
carry out to the best of my ability their united wishes.

Whether it be a consequence of long- continued de-
velopment, or an endowment conferred once for all on
man at his creation, we find him here gifted with a
mind curious to know the causes of things, and sur-
rounded by objects which excite its questionings, and
raise the desire for an explanation. It is related of a
young Prince of one of the Pacific islands that when he
first saw himself in a looking-glass he ran round the glass
to see who was standing at the back. And thus it is
with the general human intellect, as regards the phenom-
ena of the external world. It wishes to get behind and
learn the causes and connections of these phenomena.
What is the sun, what is the earth, what should we see
if we came to the edge of the earth and looked over?
What is the meaning of thunder and lightning, of hail,
rain, storm, and snow? Such questions presented them-
selves to early men, and by and by it was discovered
that this desire for knowledge was not implanted in vain.
After many trials it became evident that man's capacities

MATTER AND FORCE 61

•

were, so to speak, the complement of nature's facts, and
that, within certain limits, the secret of the universe was
open to the human understanding. It was found that the
mind of man had the power of penetrating far beyond
the boundaries of his five senses; that the things which
are seen in the material world depend for their action
upon things unseen; in short, that besides the phenom-
ena which address the senses, there are laws and prin-
ciples and processes which do not address the senses at
all, but which must be, and can be, spiritually discerned.
To the subjects which require this discernment belong
the phenomena of molecular force. But to trace the
genesis of the notions now entertained upon this sub-
ject, we have to go a long way back. In the drawing
of a bow, the darting of a javelin, the throwing of a
stone — in the lifting of burdens, and in personal com-
bats— even savage man became acquainted with the
operation of force. Ages of discipline, moreover, taught
him foresight. He laid by at the proper season stores
of food, thus obtaining time to look about him, and to
become an observer and inquirer. Two things which he
noticed must have profoundly stirred his curiosity. He
found that a kind of resin dropped from a certain tree
possessed, when rubbed, the power of drawing light
bodies to itself, and of causing them to cling to it;
and he also found that a particular stone exerted a
similar power over a particular kind of metal. I allude,
of course, to electrified amber, and to the loadstone, or
natural magnet, and its power to attract particles of iron.
Previous experience of his own muscles had enabled our
early inquirer to distinguish between a push and a pull.
Augmented experience showed him that in the case oi

62 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

•

the magnet and the amber, pulls and pushes — ^attractions
and repulsions — were also exerted; and, by a kind of
poetic transfer, he applied to things external to himself
conceptions derived from himself. The magnet and the
rubbed amber were credited with pushing and pulling,
or, in other words, with exerting force.

In the time of the great Lord Bacon the margin of
these pushes and pulls was vastly extended by Dr. Gil-
bert, a man probably of firmer scientific fibre, and of finer
insight, than Bacon himself. Gilbert proved that a mul-
titude of other bodies, when rubbed, exerted the power
which, thousands of years previously, had been observed
in amber. In this way the notion of attraction and re-
pulsion in external nature was rendered familiar. It was
a matter of experience that bodies, between which no
visible link or connection existed, possessed the power
of acting upon each other; and the action came to be
technically called '* action at a distance."

But out of experience in science there grows some-
thing finer than mere experience. Experience furnishes
the soil for plants of higher growth; and this observa-
tion of action at a distance provided material for specu-
lation upon the largest of problems. Bodies were ob-
served to fall to the earth. Why should they do so?
The earth was proved to revolve round the sun; and
the moon to revolve round the earth. Why should they
do so? What prevents them from flying straight off
into space? Supposing it were ascertained that from a
part of the earth's rocky crust a firmly fixed and tightly
stretched chain started toward the sun, we might be
inclined to conclude that the earth is held in its orbit
by the chain — that the sun twirls the earth around him,

MATTER AND FORCE 63

as a boy twirls round his head a bullet at the end of a
string. But why should the chain be needed? It is
a fact of experience that bodies can attract each other
at a distance, without the intervention of any chain.
Why should not the sun and earth so attract each
other? and why should not the fall of bodies from a
height be the result of their attraction by the earth?
Here then we reach one of those higher speculations
which grow out of the fruitful soil of observation.
Having started with the savage, and his sensations of
muscular force, we pass on to the observation of force
exerted between a magnet and rubbed amber and the
bodies which they attract, rising, by an unbroken growth
of ideas, to a conception of the force by which sun and
planets are held together.

This idea of attraction between sun and planets had
become familiar in the time of Newton. He set himself
to examine the attraction; and here, as elsewhere, #e
find the speculative mind falling back for its materials
upon experience. It had been observed, in the case of
magnetic and electric bodies, that the nearer they were
brought together the stronger was the force exerted be-
tween them; while, by increasing the distance, the force
diminished until it became insensible. Hence the infer-
ence that the assumed pull between the earth and the
sun would be influenced by their distance asunder.
Guesses had been made as to the exact manner in
which the force varied with the distance; but Newton
supplemented the guess by the severe test of experiment
and calculation. Comparing the pull of the earth upon
a body close to its surface, with its pull upon the moon,
240,000 miles away, Newton rigidly established the law

64 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

of variation with the distance. But on his way to this
result Newton found room for other conceptions, some
of which, indeed, constituted the necessary stepping-
stones to his result. The one which here concerns us
is, that not only does the sun attract the earth, and the
earth attract the sun, as wholes^ but every particle of
the san attracts every particle of the earth, and the re-
verse. His conclusion was that the attraction of the
masses was simply the sum of the attractions of their
constituent particles.

This result seems so obvious that you will perhaps
wonder at my dwelling upon it; but it really marks a
turning point in our notions of force. You have prob-
ably heard of certain philosophers of the ancient world
named Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius. These men
adopted, developed, and diffused the doctrine of atoms
and molecules, which found its consummation at the
hands of the illustrious John Dal ton. But the Greek
and Eoman philosophers I have named, and their fol-
lowers, up to the time of Newton, pictured their atoms
as falling and flying through space, hitting each other,
and clinging together by imaginary hooks and claws.
They missed the central idea that atoms and molecules
could come together, not by being fortuitously knocked
against each other, but by their own mutual attractions.
This is one of the great steps taken by Newton. He
familiarized the world with the conception of molecular
force.

Newton, you know, was preceded by a grand fellow
named John Kepler — a true working man — who, by ana-
lyzing the astronomical observations of his master, Tycho
Brahe, had actually found that the planets moved as they

MATTER AND FORCE 65

are now known to move. Kepler knew as much about
the motion of the ph\nets as Newton did; in fact, Kepler
taught Newton and the world generally the facts of plan-
etary motion. But this was not enough. The question
arose — Why should the facts be so? This was the great
question for Newton, and it was the solution of it which
renders his name and fame immortal. Starting from the
principle that every particle of matter in the solar system
attracts every other particle by a force which varies as
the inverse square of the distance between the particles,
he proved that the planetary motions must be what ob-
servation makes them to be. He showed that the moon
fell toward the earth, and that the planets fell toward the
sun, through the operation of the same force that pulls
an apple from its tree. This all-pervading force, which
forms the solder of the material universe, and the con-
ception of which was necessary to Newton's intellectual
peace, is called the force of gravitation.

Gravitation is a purely attractive force, but in elec-
tricity and magnetism, repulsion had been always seen
to accompany attraction. Electricity and magnetism are
double or polar forces. In the case of magnetism, expe-
rience soon pushed the mind beyond the bounds of ex-
perience, compelling it to conclude that the polarity of
the magnet was resident in its molecules. I hold a mag-
netized strip of steel by its centre, and find that one half
of the strip attracts, and the other half repels, the north
end of a magnetic needle. I break the strip in the mid-
dle, find that this half, which a moment ago attracted
throughout its entire length the north pole of a mag-
netic needle, is now divided into two new halves, one
of which wholly attracts, and the other of which wholly

66 FRAGMENTS Oi SCIENCE

repels, the north pole of the needle. The half proves to
be as perfect a magnet as the whole. You may break
this half and go on till further breaking becomes impos-
sible through the very smallness of the fragments; the
smallest fragment is found endowed with two poles, and
is, therefore, a perfect magnet. But you cannot stop
here: you imagine where you cannot experiment; and
reach the conclusion entertained by all scientific men,
that the magnet which you see and feel is an assem-
blage of molecular magnets which you cannot see and
feel, but which, as before stated, must be intellectually
discerned.

Magnetism then is a polar force; and experience hints
that a force of this kind may exert a certain structural
power. It is known, for example, that iron filings
strewn round a magnet arrange themselves in definite
lines, called, by some, ** magnetic curves," and, by oth-
ers, * 'lines of magnetic force." Over two magnets now
before me is spread a sheet of paper. Scattering iron
filings over the paper, polar force comes into play, and
every particle of the iron responds to that force. We
have a kind of architectural effort — ^if I may use the
term — exerted on the part of the iron filings. Here
then is a fact of experience which, as you will see
immediately, furnishes further material for the mind to
operate upon, rendering it possible to attain intellectual
clearness and repose, while speculating upon apparently
remote phenomena.

The magnetic force has here acted upon particles visi-
ble to the eye. But, as already stated, there are numer-
ous processes in nature which entirely elude the eye of
the body, and must be figured by the eye of the mind.

MATTER AND FORCE 67

The processes of chemistry are examples of these. Long
thinking and experimenting has led philosophers to con-
clude that matter is composed of atoms from which,
whether separate or in combination, the whole material
world is built up. The air we breathe, for example, is
mainly a mechanical mixture of the atoms of oxygen and
nitrogen. The water we drink is also composed of oxy-
gen and hydrogen. But it differs from the air in this
particular, that in water the oxygen and hydrogen are
not mechanically mixed, but chemically combined. The
atoms of oxygen and those of hydrogen exert enormous
attractions on each other, so that when brought into
sufficient proximity they rush together with an almost
incredible force to form a chemical compound. But
powerful as is the force with which these atoms lock
themselves together, we have the means of tearing them
asunder, and the agent by which we accomplish this may
here receive a few moments' attention.

Into a vessel containing acidulated water I dip two
strips of metal, the one being zinc and the other plati-
num, not permitting them to touch each other in the
liquid. I connect the two upper ends of the strips by
a piece of copper wire. The wire is now the channel of
what, for want of a better name, we call an "electric cur-
rent." What the inner change of the wire is we do not
know, but we do know that a change has occurred, by
the external effects produced by the wire. Let me show
you one or two of these effects. Before you is a series
of ten vessels, each with its pair of metals, and I wish
to get the added force of all ten. The arrangement is
called a voltaic battery. I plunge a piece of copper wire
among these iron filings; they refuse to cling to it. I

68 , FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

employ the self-same wire to connect the two ends of
the battery, and subject it to the same test. The iron
filings now crowd round the wire and cling to it. I
interrupt the current, and the filings immediately fall;
the power of attraction continues only so long as the
wire connects the two ends of the battery.

Here is a piece of similar wire, overspun with cotton,
to prevent the contact of its various parts, and formed
into a coil. I make the coil part of the wire which con-
nects the two ends of the voltaic battery. By the attrac-
tive force with which it has become suddenly endowed,
it now empties this tool-box of its iron nails. I twist a
covered copper wire round this common poker; connect-
ing the wire with the two ends of the voltaic battery, the
poker is instantly transformed into a strong magnet. Two
flat spirals are here suspended facing each other, about
six inches apart. Sending a current through both spi-
rals, they clash suddenly together; reversing what is
called the direction of the current in one of the spirals,
they fly asunder. All these efiects are due to the power
which we name an electric current, and which we figure
as flowing through the wire when the voltaic circuit is
complete.

By the same agent we tear asunder the locked atoms
of a chemical compound. Into this small cell, contain-
ing water, dip two thin wires. A magnified image of the
cell is thrown upon the screen before you, and you see
plainly the images of the wires. From a small battery I
send an electric current from wire to wire. Bubbles of
gas rise immediately from each of them, and these are
the two gases of which the water is composed. The
oxygen is always liberated on the one wire, the hydro-

MATTER AND FORCE 69

gen on the other. The gases may be collected either
separately or mixed. I place upon my hand a soap
bubble filled with the mixture of both gases. Apply-
ing a taper to the bubble, a loud explosion is heard.
The atoms have rushed together with detonation, and
without injury to my hand, and the water from which
they were extracted is the result of their reunion.

One consequence of the rushing together of the atoms
is the development of heat. What is this heat? Here
are two ivory balls suspended from the same point of
support by two short strings. I draw them thus apart
and then liberate them. They clash together, but, by
virtue of their elasticity, they quickly recoil, and a sharp
vibratory rattle succeeds their collision. This experiment
will enable you to figure to your mind a pair of clashing
atoms. We have, in the first place, a motion of the one
atom toward the other — a motion of translation, as it is
usually called — then a recoil, and afterward a motion of
vibration. To this vibratory motion we give the name
of heat. Thus, three things are to be kept before the
mind — first, the atoms themselves; secondly, the force
with which they attract each other; and, thirdly, the
motion consequent upon the exertion of that force. This
motion must be figured first as a motion of translation,
and then as a motion of vibration, to which latter we
give the name of heat. For some time after the act of
combination this motion is so violent as to prevent the
molecules from coming together, the water being main-
tained in a state of vapor. But as the vapor cools, or,
in other, words, loses its motion, the molecules coalesce
to form a liquid.

70 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

And now we approach a new and wonderful display
of force. As long as the substance remains in a liquid
or vaporous condition, the play of this force is alto-
gether masked and hidden. But as the heat is gradually
withdrawn, the molecules prepare for new arrangements
and combinations. Solid crystals of water are at length
formed, to which we give the familiar name of ice.
Looking at these beautiful edifices and their internal
structure, the pondering mind has forced upon it the
question, How are they built up? We have obtained
clear conceptions of polar force; and we infer from our
broken magnet that polar force may be resident in the
molecules or smallest particles of matter, and that by
the play of this force structural arrangement is possible.
What, in relation to our present question, is the natural
action of a mind furnished with this knowledge? It is
compelled to transcend experience, and endow the atoms
and molecules of which crystals are built with definite
poles whence issue attractions and repulsions. In virtue
of these forces some poles are drawn together, while
some retreat from each other; atom is added to atom,
and molecule to molecule, not boisterously or fortui-
tously, but silently and symmetrically, and in accord-
ance with laws more rigid than those which guide a
human builder when he places his materials together.
Imagine the bricks and stones of this town of Dundee
endowed with structural power. Imagine them attracting
and repelling, and arranging themselves into streets and
houses and Kinnaird Halls — would not that be wonderful?
Hardly less wonderful is the play of force by which the
molecules of water build themselves into the sheets of ice
which every winter roof your ponds and lakes.

MATTER AND FORCE 71

If I could show you the actual progress of this mo-
lecular architecture, its beauty would delight and astonish
you. A reversal of the process of crystallization may be
actually shown. The molecules of a piece of ice may
be taken asunder before your eyes; and from the man-
ner in which they separate, you may to some extent
infer the manner in which they go together. When a
beam is sent from our electric lamp through a plate of
glass, a portion of the beam is intercepted, and the glass
is warmed by the portion thus retained within it. When
the beam is sent through a plate of ice, a portion of the
beam is also absorbed; but instead of warming the ice,
the intercepted heat melts it internally. It is to the
delicate silent action of this beam within the ice that I
now wish to direct your attention. Upon the screen is
thrown a magnified image of the slab of ice: the light
of the beam passes freely through the ice without melt-
ing it, and enables us to form the image; but the heat
is in great part intercepted, and that heat now applies
itself to the work of internal liquefaction. Selecting cer-
tain points for attack, round about those points the beam
works silently, undoing the crystalline architecture, and
reducing to the freedom of liquidity molecules which had
been previously locked in a solid embrace. The liquefied
spaces are rendered visible by strong illumination. Ob-
serve those six-petalled flowers breaking out over the white
surface, and expanding in size as the action of the beam
continues. These flowers are liquefied ice. Under the
action of the heat the molecules of the crystals fall asun-
der, so as to leave behind them these exquisite forms.
We have here a process of demolition which clearly re-
veals the reverse process of construction. In this fashion^

72 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

and in strict accordance with this hexangular type, every
ice moleciile takes its place upon our ponds and lakes
during the frosts of winter. To use the language of an
American poet, "the atoms march in tune," moving to
the music of law, which thus renders the commonest
substance in nature a miracle of beauty.

It is the function of science, not, as some think, to
divest this universe of its wonder and mystery, but, as
in the case before us, to point out the wonder and the
mystery of common things. Those fern-like forms, which
on a frosty morning overspread your window-panes, illus-
trate the action of the same force. Breathe upon such a
pane before the fires are lighted, and reduce the solid
crystalline film to the liquid condition; then watch its
subsequent resolidification. You will see it all the better
if you look at it through a common magnifying glass.
After you have ceased breathing, the film, abandoned
to the action of its own forces, appears for a moment
to be alive. Lines of motion run through it; molecule
closes with molecule, until finally the whole film passes
from the state of liquidity, through this state of motion,
to its final crystalline repose.

I can show you something similar. Over a piece of
perfectly clean glass I pour a little water in which cer-
tain crystals have been dissolved. A film of the solu-
tion clings to the glass. By means of a microscope and a
lamp, an image of the plate of glass is thrown upon the
screen. The beam of the lamp, besides illuminating the
glass, ^Iso heats it; evaporation sets in, and at a certain
moment, when the solution has become supersaturated,
splendid branches of crystal shoot out over the screen.
A dozen square f^et of surface are now covered by those

MATTER AND FORCE 73

beautiful forms. With another solution we obtain crys-
talline spears, feathered right and left bj other spears.
From distant nuclei in the middle of the field of view
the spears shoot with magical rapidity in all directions.
The film of water on a window-pane on a frosty morning
exhibits effects quite as wonderful as these. Latent in
these formless solutions, latent in every drop of water,
lies this marvellous structural power, which only requires
the withdrawal of opposing forces to bring it into action.

The clear liquid now held up before you is a solution
of nitrate of silver — a compound of silver and nitric acid.
When an electric current is sent through this liquid the
silver is severed from the acid, as the hydrogen was sep-
arated from the oxygen in a former experiment; and I
would ask you to observe how the metal behaves when
its molecules are thus successively set free. The image
of the cell, and of the two wires which dip into the
liquid of the cell, are now clearly shown upon the
screen. Let us close the circuit, and send the current
through the liquid. From one of the wires a beautiful
silver tree commences immediately to sprout. Branches
of the metal are thrown out, and umbrageous foliage
loads the branches. You have here a growth, appar-
ently as wonderful as that of any vegetable, perfected
in a minute before your eyes. Substituting for the ni-
trate of silver acetate of lead, which is a compound of
lead and acetic acid, the electric current severs the lead
from the acid, and you see the metal slowly branching
into exquisite metallic ferns, the fronds of which, as they
become too heavy, break from their roots and fall to the
bottom of the cell.

These experiments show that the common matter of
Science — VI — 4

74 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

our earth — ** brute matter," as Dr. Young, in his ** Night
Thoughts," is pleased to call it — when its atoms and
molecules are permitted to bring their forces into free
play, arranges itself, under the operation of these forces,
into forms which rival in beauty those of the vegetable
world. And what is the vegetable world itself but the
result of the complex play of these molecular forces?
Here, as elsewhere throughout nature, if matter moves
it is force that moves it, and if a certain structure, vege-
table or mineral, is produced, it is through the operation
of the forces exerted between the atoms and molecules.
The solid matter of which our lead and silver trees
were formed was, in the first instance, disguised in a
transparent liquid; the solid matter of which our woods
and forests are composed is also, for the most part, dis-
guised in a transparent gas, which is mixed in small
quantities with the air of our atmosphere. This gas is
formed by the union of carbon and oxygen, and is
called carbonic acid gas. The carbonic acid of the air
being subjected to an action somewhat analogous to that
of the electric current in the case of our lead and silver
solutions, has its carbon liberated and deposited as woody
fibre. The watery vapor of the air is subjected to simi-
lar action; its hydrogen is liberated from its oxygen, and
lies down side by side with the carbon in the tissues of
the tree. The oxygen in both cases is permitted to wan-
der away into the atmosphere. But what is it in nature
that plays the part of the electric current in our experi-
ments, tearing asunder the locked atoms of carbon, oxy-
gen, and hydrogen? The rays of the sun. The leaves
of plants, which absord both the carbonic acid and the
aqueous vapor of the air, answer to the cells in which

MATTER AND FORCE 75

our decompositions took place. And just as tlie molecu-
lar attractions of the silver and tlie lead found expression
in those beautiful branching forms seen in our experi-
ments, so do the molecular attractions of the liberated
carbon and hydrogen find expression in the architecture
of grasses, plants, and trees.

In the fall of a cataract and the rush of the wind we
have examples of mechanical power. In the combina-
tions of chemistry and in the formation of crystals and
vegetables we have examples of molecular power. You
have learned how the atoms of oxygen and hydrogen
rush together to form water. I have not thought it nec-
essary to dwell upon the mighty mechanical energy of
their act of combination; but it may be said, in passing,
that the clashing together of 1 lb. of hydrogen and 8 lbs.
of oxygen to form 9 lbs. of aqueous vapor is greater
than the shock of a weight of 1,000 tons falling from a
height of 20 feet against the earth. Now, in order that
the atoms of oxygen and hydrogen should rise by their
mutual attractions to the velocity corresponding to this
enormous mechanical effect, a certain distance must exist
between the particles. It is in rushing over this that the
velocity is attained.

This idea of distance between the attracting atoms is
of the highest importance in our conception of the sys-
tem of the world. For the matter of the world may be
classified under two distinct heads i atoms and molecules
which have already combined and thus satisfied their
mutual attractions, and atoms and molecules which have
not yet combined, and whose mutual attractions are,
therefore, unsatisfied. Now, as regards motive power,

76 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

we are entirely dependent on atoms and molecules of
the latter kind. Their attractions can produce motion,
because sufficient distance intervenes between the attract-
ing atoms, and it is this atomic motion that we utilize in
our machines. Thus we can get power out of oxygen
and hydrogen by the act of their union; but once they
are combined, and once the vibratory motion consequent
on their combination has been expended, no further
power can be got out of their mutual attraction. As
dynamic agents they are dead. The materials of the
earth's crust consist for the most part of substances
whose atoms have already closed in chemical union —
whose mutual attractions are satisfied. Granite, for in-
stance, is a widely diffused substance; but granite con-
sists, in great part, of silicon, oxygen, potassium, cal-
cium, and aluminium, whose atoms united long ago,
and are therefore dead. Limestone is composed of car-
bon, oxygen, and a metal called calcium, the atoms of
which have already closed in chemical union, and are
therefore finally at rest. In this way we might go over
nearly the whole of the materials of the earth's crust,
and satisfy ourselves that though they were sources of
power in ages past, and long before any creature ap-
peared on the earth capable of turning their power to
account, they are sources of power no longer. And here
we might halt for a moment to remark on that tendency,
so prevalent in the world, to regard everything as made
for human use. Those who entertain this notion, hold,
I think, an overweening opinion of their own impor-
tance in the system of nature. Flowers bloomed before
men saw them, and the quantity of power wasted before
man could utilize it is all but infinite compared with

MATTER AND FORCE 77

what now remains. We are truly heirs of all the ages;
but as honest men it behooves us to learn the extent of
our inheritance, and as brave ones not to whimper if it
should prove less than we had supposed. The healthy
attitude of mind with reference to this subject is that
of the poet, who, when asked whence came the rhodora,
joyfully acknowledged his brotherhood with the flower —

Why thou wert there, 0 rival of the rose !
I never thought to ask, I never knew.
But in my simple ignorance supposed
The self-same power that brought me there
brought you.^

A few exceptions to the general state of union of the
molecules of the earth's crust — vast in relation to us, but
trivial in comparison to the total store of which they are
the residue — still remain. They constitute our main
sources of motive power. By far the most important
of these are our beds of coal. Distance still intervenes
between the atoms of carbon and those of atmospheric
oxygen, across which the atoms may be urged by their
mutual attractions; and we can utilize the motion thus
produced. Once the carbon and the oxygen have rushed
together, so as to form carbonic acid, their mutual attrac-
tions are satisfied; and, while they continue in this con-
dition, as dynamic agents they are dead. Our woods and
forests are also sources of mechanical energy, because they
have the power of uniting with the atmospheric oxygen.
Passing from plants to animals, we find that the source
of motive power just referred to is also the source of

Emerson.

78 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

muscular power. A horse can perform work, and so can
a man; but this work is at bottom the molecular work of
the transmuted food and the oxygen of the air. We in-
hale this vital gas, and bring it into sufficiently close
proximity with the carbon and the hydrogen of the body.
These unite in obedience to their mutual attractions; and
their motion toward each other, properly turned to ac-
count by the wonderful mechanism of the body, becomes
muscular motion.

One fundamental thought pervades all these state-
ments: there is one tap-root from which they all spring.
This is the ancient maxim that out of nothing nothing
comes; that neither in the organic world nor in the in-
organic is power produced without the expenditure of
power; that neither in the plant nor in the animal is
there a creation of force or motion. Trees grow, and
so do men and horses; and here we have new power
incessantly introduced upon the earth. But its source,
as I have already stated, is the sun. It is the sun that
separates the carbon from the oxygen of the carbonic
acid, and thus enables them to recombine. Whether
they recombine in the furnace of the steam-engine or
in the animal body, the origin of the power they pro-
duce is the same. In this sense we are all "souls of fire
and children of the sun." But, as remarked by Helm-
holtz, we must be content to share our celestial pedigree
with the meanest of living things.

Some estimable persons, here present, very possibly
shrink from accepting these statements; they may be
frightened by their apparent tendency toward what is
called materialism — a word which, to many minds, ex-
presses something very dreadful. But it ought to be

MATTER AND FORCE 79

known and avowed that the physical philosopher, as
such, must be a pure materialist. His inquiries deal
with matter and force, and. with them alone. And
whatever be the forms which matter and force assume,
whether in the organic world or the inorganic, whether
in the coal-beds and forests of the earth, or in the brains
and muscles of men, the physical philosopher will make
good his right to investigate them. It is perfectly vain
to attempt to stop inquiry in this direction. Depend
upon it, if a chemist, by bringing the proper materials
together in a retort or crucible, could make a baby, he
would do it. There is no law, moral or physical, forbid-
ding him to do it. At the present moment there are,
no doubt, persons experimenting on the possibility of
producing what we call life out of inorganic materials.
Let them pursue their studies in peace; it is only by
such trials that they will learn the limits of their own
powers and the operation of the laws of matter and
force.

But while thus making the largest demand for free-
dom of investigation — while I consider science to be alike
powerful as an instrument of intellectual culture and as a
ministrant to the material wants of men; if you ask me
whether it has solved, or is likely in our day to solve,
the problem of this universe, I must shake my head in
doubt. You remember the first Napoleon's question,
when the savans who accompanied him to Egypt dis-
cussed in his presence the origin of the universe, and
solved it to their own apparent satisfaction. He looked
aloft to the starry heavens, and said, "It is all very well,
gentlemen; but who made these?" That question still
remains unanswered, and science makes no attempt to

80 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

answer it. As far as I can see, there is no quality in
the human intellect which is fit to be applied to the so-
lution of the problem. It entirely transcends ns. The
mind of man may be compared to a musical instrument
with a certain range of notes, beyond which in both di-
rections we have an infinitude of silence. The phenom-
ena of matter and force lie within our intellectual range,
and as far as they reach we will at all hazards push our
inquiries. But behind, and above, and around all, the
real mystery of this universe lies unsolved, and, as far as
we are concerned, is incapable of solution. Fashion this
mystery as you will, with that I have nothing to do.
But let your conception of it not be an unworthy one.
Invest that conception with your highest and holiest
thought, but be careful of pretending to know more
about it than is given to man to know. Be careful,
above all things, of professing to see in the phenomena
of the material world the evidences of Divine pleasure or
displeasure. Doubt those who would deduce from the
fall of the tower of Siloam the anger of the Lord against
those who were crushed. Doubt equally those who pre-
tend to see in cholera, cattle- plague, and bad harvests,
evidences of Divine anger. Doubt those spiritual guides
who in Scotland have lately propounded the monstrous
theory that the depreciation of railway scrip is a conse-
quence of railway travelling on Sundays. Let them not,
as far as you are concerned, libel the system of nature
with their ignorant hypotheses. Looking from the soli-
tudes of thought into this highest of questions, and see-
ing the puerile attempts often made to solve it, well
might the mightiest of living Scotchmen — that strong
and earnest soul, who has made every soul of like nat-

MATTER AND FORCE 81

ure in these islands his debtor— well, I say, might jour
noble old Carljle scornfully retort on such interpreters of
the ways of God to men:

The Builder of this universe was wise,

He formed all souls, all systems, planets, particles;

The plan he formed his worlds and ^ons by,
Wa8— Heavens !— was thy small nine- and- thirty articles!

Here, indeed, we arrive at the barrier which needs to be perpetually pointed
out; ahke to those who seek materialistic explanations of mental phenomena,
and to those who are alarmed lest such explanations may be found. The last
class prove by their fear, almost as much as the first prove by their hope, that
they believe Mind may possibly be interpreted in terms of Matter; whereas
many whom they vituperate as materialists are profoundly convinced that there
is not the remotest possibility of so interpreting them, — Herbert Spencer.

VI

SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM *

1SG8

THE celebrated Fichte, in Lis lectures on the "Voca-
tion of the Scholar," insisted on a culture which
should be not one-sided, but all-sided. The schol-
ar's intellect was to expand spherically, and not in a sin-
gle direction only. In one direction, however, Fichte
required that the scholar should apply himself directly
to nature, become a creator of knowledge, and thus re-
pay, by original labors of his own, the immense debt he
owed to the labors of others. It was these which enabled
him to supplement the knowledge derived from his own
researches, so as to render his culture rounded and not
one-sided.

As regards science, Fichte' s idea is to some extent
illustrated by the constitution and labors of the British
Association. We have here a body of men engaged in
the pursuit of Natural Knowledge, but variously engaged.

' President's Address to the Mathematical and Physical Section of the
British Association at Norwich.

(82)

SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM 88

While sympathizing with each of its departments, and
supplementing his culture bj knowledge drawn from all
of them, each student among us selects one subject for
the exercise of his own original faculty — one line, along
which he may carry the light of his private intelligence
a little way into the darkness by which all knowledge is
surrounded. Thus, the geologist deals with the rocks;
the biologist with the conditions and phenomena of life;
the astronomer with stellar masses and motions ; the math-
ematician with the relations of space and number; the
chemist pursues his atoms; while the physical investiga-
tor has his own large field in optical, thermal, electrical,
acoustical, and other phenomena. The British Associa-
tion then, as a whole, faces physical nature on all sides,
and pushes knowledge centrifugally outward, the sum of
its labors constituting what Fichte might call the sphere
of natural knowledge. In the meetings of the Associa-
tion it is found necessary to resolve this sphere into its
component parts, which take concrete form under the
respective letters of our Sections.

Mathematics and Physics have been long accustomed
to coalesce, and here they form a single section. No
matter how subtle a natural phenomenon may be, whether
we observe it in the region of sense, or follow it into
that of imagination, it is in the long run reducible to
mechanical laws. But the mechanical data once guessed
or given, mathematics are all-powerful as an instrument
of deduction. The command of Greometry over the rela-
tions of space, and the far-reaching power which Analy-
sis confers, are potent both as means of physical dis-
covery, and of reaping the entire fruits of discovery.
Indeed, without mathematics, expressed or implied, our

84 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

knowledge of physical science would be botli friable and
incomplete.

Side by side witli tbe mathematical method we have
the method of experiment. Here from a starting-point
furnished by his own researches or those of others, the
investigator proceeds by combining intuition and verifi-
cation. He ponders the knowledge he possesses, and
tries to push it further; he guesses, and checks his
guess; he conjectures, and confirms or explodes his con-
jecture. These guesses and conjectures are by no means
leaps in the dark; for knowledge once gamed casts a
faint light beyond its own immediate boundaries. There
is no discovery so limited as not to illuminate something
beyond itself. The force of intellectual penetration into
this penumbral region which surrounds actual knowledge
is not, as some seem to think, dependent upon method,
but upon the genius of the investigator. There is, how-
ever, no genius so gifted as not to need control and veri-
fication. The profoundest minds know best that Nature's
ways are not at all times their ways, and that the bright-
est flashes in the world of thought are incomplete until
they have been proved to have their counterparts in the
world of fact. Thus the vocation of the true experimen-
talist may be defined as the continued exercise of spirit-
ual insight, and its incessant correction and realization.
His experiments constitute a body, of which his purified
intuitions are, as it were, the soul.

Partly through mathematical and partly through ex-
perimental research, physical science has, of late years,
assumed a momentous position in the world. Both in a
material and in an intellectual point of view it has pro-
duced, and it is destined to produce, immense changes —

SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM 85

rast social ameliorations, and vast alterations in tlie pop-
ular conception of the origin, rule, and governance of
natural things. By science, in the physical world, mir-
acles are wrought, while philosophy is forsaking its an-
cient metaphysical channels, and pursuing others which
have been opened, or indicated, by scientific research.
This must become more and more the case as philosoph-
ical writers become more deeply imbued with the meth-
ods of science, better acquainted with the facts which
scientific men have established, and with the great the-
ories which they have elaborated.

If you look at the face of a watch, you see the hour
and minute hands, and possibly also a second hand, moving
over the graduated dial. Why do these hands move ?
and why are their relative motions such as they are ob-
served to be ? These questions cannot be answered with-
out opening the watch, mastering its various parts, and
ascertaining their relationship to each other. When this
is done, we find that the observed motion of the hands
follows of necessity from the inner mechanism of the watch
when acted upon by the force invested in the spring.
The motion of the hands may be called a phenomcxion
of art, but the case is similar with the phenomena of
nature. These also have their inner mechanism and
their store of force to set that mechanism going. The
ultimate problem of physical science is to reveal this
mechanism, to discern this store, and to show that, from
the combined action of both, the phenomena of which
they constitute the basis, must, of necessity, flow.

I thought an attempt to give you even a brief and
sketchy illustration of the manner in which scientific
thinkers regard this problem would not be uninteresting.

86 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

to you on the present occasion; more especially as it will
give me occasion to say a word or two on the tendencies
and limits of modern science; to point out the region
which men of science claim as their own, and where it
is futile to oppose their advance; and also to define, if
possible, the bourne between this and that other region,
to which the questionings and yearnings of the scientific
intellect are directed in vain.

But here your tolerance will be needed. It was the
American Emerson, I think, who said that it is hardly
possible to state any truth strongly, without apparent in-
justice to some other truth. Truth is often of a dual
character, taking the form of a magnet with two poles;
and many of the differences which agitate the thinking
part of mankind are to be traced to the exclusiveness
with which partisan reasoners dwell upon one half of the
duality in forgetfulness of the other. The proper course
appears to be to state both halves strongly, and allow
each its fair share in the formation of the resultant con-
viction. But this waiting for the statement of the two
sides of a question implies patience. It implies a resolu-
tion to suppress indignation, if the statement of the one
half should clash with our convictions; and to repress
equally undue elation, if the half-statement should hap-
pen to chime in with our views. It implies a determina-
tion to wait calmly for the statement of the whole, before
we pronounce judgment in the form of either acquiescence
or dissent.

This premised, and I trust accepted, let us enter upon
our task. There have been writers who affirmed that the
Pyramids of Egypt were natural productions; and in his
early youth Alexander von Humboldt wrote a learned

SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM 87

essay with the express object of refuting this notion.
We now regard the Pyramids as the work of men's
hands, aided probably by machinery of which no record
remains. We picture to ourselves the swarming workers
toiling at those vast erections, lifting the inert stones,
and, guided by the volition, the skill, and possibly at
times by the whip of the architect, placing them in their
proper positions. The blocks, in this case, were moved
and posited by a power external to themselves, and the
final form of the pyramid expressed the thought of its
human builder.

Let us pass from this illustration of constructive
power to another of a different kind. When a solution
of common salt is slowly evaporated, the water which
holds the salt in solution disappears, but the salt itself
remains behind. At a certain stage of concentration the
salt can no longer retain the liquid form; its particles,
or molecules, as they are called, begin to deposit them-
selves as minute solids — so minute, indeed, as to defy all
microscopic power. As evaporation continues, solidifica-
tion goes on, and we finally obtain, through the cluster-
ing together of innumerable molecules, a finite crystalline
mass of a definite form. What is this form? It some-
times seems a mimicry of the architecture of Egypt. We
have little pyramids built by the salt, terrace above ter-
race from base to apex, forming a series of steps resem-
bling those up which the traveller in Egypt is dragged
by his guides. The human mind is as little disposed to
look without questioning at these pyramidal salt-crystals,
as to look at the Pyramids of Egypt, without inquiring
whence they came. How, then, are those salt-pyramids
built up?

88 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

Gruided by analogy, you may, if you like, suppose
that, swarming among the constituent molecules of the
salt, there is an invisible population, controlled and co-
erced by some invisible master, placing the atomic blocks
in their positions. This, however, is not the scientific
idea, nor do I think your good sense will accept it as
a likely one. The scientific idea is that the molecules
act upon each other without the intervention of slave
labor; that they attract each other, and repel each other,
at certain definite points, or poles, and in certain definite
directions; and that the pyramidal form is the result of
this play of attraction and repulsion. While, then, the
blocks of Egypt were laid down by a power external to
themselves, these molecular blocks of salt are self-posited,
being fixed in their places by the inherent forces with
which they act upon each other.

I take common salt as an illustration, because it is so
familiar to us all; but any other crystalline substance
would answer my purpose equally well. Everywhere, in
fact, throughout inorganic nature, we have this formative
power, as Fichte would call it — this structural energy
ready to come into play, and build the ultimate par-
ticles of matter into definite shapes. The ice of our
winters, and of our polar regions, is its handiwork, and
so also are the quartz, felspar, and mica of our rocks.
Our chalk-beds are for the most part composed of minute
shells, which are also the product of structural energy;
but behind the shell, as a whole, lies a more remote and
subtle formative act. These shells are built up of little
crystals of calc-spar, and, to form these crystals, the
structural force had to deal with the intangible mole-
cules of carbonate of lime. This tendency on the part

SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM 89

of matter to organize itself, to grow into shape, to as-
sume definite forms in obedience to tlie definite action of
force, is, as I have said, all- pervading. It is in the
ground on which you tread, in the water you drink, in
the air you breathe. Incipient life, as it were, manifests
itself throughout the whole of what we call inorganic
nature.

The forms of the minerals resulting from this play of
polar forces are various, and exhibit different degrees of
complexity. Men of science avail themselves of all pos-
sible means of exploring their molecular architecture.
For this purpose they employ in turn, as agents of ex-
ploration, light, heat, magnetism, electricity, and sound.
Polarized light is especially useful and powerful here.
A beam of such light, when sent in among the mole-
cules of a crystal, is acted on by them, and from this
action we infer with more or less clearness the manner in
which the molecules are arranged. That differences, for
example, exist between the inner structure of rock-salt
and that of crystallized sugar or sugar- candy is thus
strikingly revealed. These actions often display them-
selves in chromatic phenomena of great splendor, the
play of molecular force being so regulated as to cause
the removal of some of the colored constituents of white
light, while others are left with increased intensity
behind.

And now let us pass from what we are accustomed
to regard as a dead mineral, to a living grain of com.
"When this is examined by polarized light, chromatic
phenomena similar to those noticed in crystals are ob-
served. And why ? Because the architecture of the
grain resembles that of the crystal. In the grain also

90 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

the molecules are set in definite positions, and in accord-
ance with their arrangement they act upon the light.
But what has built together the molecules of the corn?
Eegarding crystalline architecture, I have already said
that you may, if you please, consider the atoms and
molecules to be placed in position by a Power external
to themselves. The same hypothesis is open to you now.
But if in the case of crystals you have rejected this no-
tion of an external architect, I think you are bound to
reject it in the case of the grain, and to conclude that
the molecules of the corn, also, are posited by the forces
with which they act upon each other. It would be poor
philosophy to invoke an external agent in the one case,
and to reject it in the other.

Instead of cutting our grain of corn into slices and
subjecting it to the action of polarized light, let us place
it in the earth, and subject it to a certain degree of
warmth. In other words, let the molecules, both of the
corn and of the surrounding earth, be kept in that state
of agitation which we call heat. Under these circum-
stances, the grain and the substances which surround it
interact, and a definite molecular architecture is the re-
sult. A bud is formed; this bud reaches the surface,
where it is exposed to the sun's rays, which are also to
be regarded as a kind of vibratory motion. And as the
motion of common heat, with which the grain and the
substances surrounding it were first endowed, enabled
the grain and these substances to exercise their mutual
attractions and repulsions, and thus to coalesce in defi-
nite forms, so the specific motion of the sun's rays now
enables the green bud to feed upon the carbonic acid and
the aqueous vapor of the air. The bud appropriates

SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM 91

those constituents of both for which it has an elective
attraction, and permits the other constituent to return to
the atmosphere. Thus the architecture is carried on.
Forces are active at the root, forces are active in the
blade, the matter of the air and the matter of the atmos-
phere are drawn upon, and the plant augments in size.
We have in succession the stalk, the ear, the full corn
in the ear; the cycle of molecular action being completed
by the production of grains, similar to that with which
the process began.

Now there is nothing in this process which necessarily
eludes the conceptive or imagining power of the human
mind. An intellect the same in kind as our own would,
if only sufficiently expanded, be able to follow the whole
process from beginning to end. It would see every mole-
cule placed in its position by the specific attractions and
repulsions exerted between it and other molecules, the
whole process, and its consummation, being an instance
of the play of molecular force. Given the grain and its
environment, with their respective forces, the purely hu-
man intellect might, if sufficiently expanded, trace out
ci priori every step of the process of growth, and, by
the application of purely mechanical principles, demon-
strate that the cycle must end, as it is seen to end, in the
reproduction of forms like that with which it began. A
necessity rules here, similar to that which rules the plan-
ets in their circuits round the sun.

You will notice that I am stating the truth strongly,
as at the beginning we agreed it should be stated. But
I must go still further, and affirm that in the eye of
science the animal body is just as muck the product
of molecular force as the chalk and the ear of corn, or

92 FRAG 31 E NTS OF SCIENCE

as the crystal of salt or sugar. Many of the parts of the
body are obviously mechanical. Take the human heart,
for example, with its system of valves, or take the ex-
quisite mechanism of the eye or hand. Animal heat,
moreover, is the same in kind as the heat of a fire, be-
ing produced by the same chemical process. Animal
motion, too, is as certainly derived from the food of the
animal as the motion of Trevethyck's walking-engine
from the fuel in its furnace. As regards matter, the
animal body creates nothing; as regards force, it creates
nothing. Which of you by taking thought can add one
cubit to his stature ? All that has been said, then, re-
garding the plant, may be restated with regard to the
animal. Every particle that enters into the composition
of a nerve, a muscle, or a bone has been placed in its
position by molecular force. And, unless the existence
of law in these matters be denied, and the element of
caprice introduced, we must conclude that, given the
relation of any molecule of the body to its environment,
its position m the body might be determined mathemat-
ically. Our difficulty is not with the quality of the prob-
lem, but with its complexity ; and this difficulty might be
met by the simple expansion of the faculties we now pos-
sess. Given this expansion, with the necessary molecu-
lar data, and the chick might be deduced as rigorously
and as logically from the egg as the existence of Neptune
from the disturbances of Uranus, or as conical refraction
from the undulatory theory of light.

You see I am not mincing matters, but avowing
nakedly what many scientific thinkers more or less dis-
tinctly believe. The formation of a crystal, a plant, or
an animal, is, in their eyes, a purely mechanical prob-

SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM 93

lem, which differs from the problems of ordinary mechan-
ics, in the smallness of the masses, and the complexity
of the processes involved. Here you have one half of
our dual truth; let us now glance at the other half. As-
sociated with this wonderful mechanism of the animal
body we have phenomena no less certain than those of
physics, but between which and the mechanism we dis-
cern no necessary connection. A man, for example, can
say, "I feel," "I think," "I love"; but how does con-
sciousness infuse itself into the problem? The human
brain is said to be the organ of thought and feeling:
when we are hurt, the brain feels it; when we ponder,
or when our passions or affections are excited, it is
through the instrumentality of the brain. Let us en-
deavor to be a little more precise here. I hardly imag-
ine there exists a profound scientific thinker, who has
reflected upon the subject, unwilling to admit the ex-
treme probability of the hypothesis, that for every fact
of consciousness, whether in the domain of sense,
thought, or emotion, a definite molecular condition, of
motion or structure, is set up in the brain; or who
would be disposed even to deny that if the motion, or
structure, be induced by internal causes instead of ex-
ternal, the effect on consciousness will be the same ? Let
any nerve, for example, be thrown by morbid action into
the precise state of motion which would be communicated
to it by the pulses of a heated body, surely that nerve
will declare itself hot — the mind will accept the subject-
ive intimation exactly as if it were objective. The retina
may be excited by purely mechanical means. A blow on
the eye causes a luminous flash, and the mere pressure of
the finger on the external ball produces a star of light,

't4 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

which Newton compared to the circles on a peacock's
tail. Disease makes people see visions and dream
dreams; but, in all such cases, could we examine the
organs, implicated, we should, on philosophical grounds,
expect to find them in that precise molecular condition
which the real objects, if present, would superinduce.

The relation of physics to consciousness being thus
invariable, it follows that, given the state of the brain,
the corresponding thought or feeling might be inferred;
or, given the thought or feeling, the corresponding state
of the brain might be inferred. But how inferred? It
would be at bottom not a case of logical inference at all,
but of empirical association. You may reply that many
of the inferences of science are of this character — the in-
ference, for example, that an electric current, of a given
direction, will deflect a magnetic needle in a definite way.
But the cases differ in this, that the passage from the
current to the needle, if not demonstrable, is conceiv-
able, and that we entertain no doubt as to the final me-
chanical solution of the problem. But the passage from
the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of
consciousness is inconceivable as a result of mechanics.
Granted that a definite thought, and a definite molecular
action in the brain, occur simultaneously; we do not pos-
sess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment
of the organ, which would enable us to pass, by a
process of reasoning, from the one to the other. They
appear together, but we do not know why. Were our
minds and senses so expanded, strengthened, and illumi-
nated, as to enable us to see and feel the very molecules
of the brain; were we capable of following all their mo-
tions, all their groupings, all their electric discharges, if

SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM 95

such there be; and were we intimately acquainted with
the corresponding states of thought and feeling, we
should be as far as ever from the solution of the prob-
lem, ''How are these physical processes connected with
the facts of consciousness?" The chasm between the
two classes of phenomena would still remain intellect-
ually impassable. Let the consciousness of love, for ex-
ample, be associated with a right-handed spiral motion of
the molecules of the brain, and the consciousness of hate
with a left-handed spiral motion. We should then know,
when we love, that the motion is in one direction, and,
when we hate, that the motion is in the other; but the
*'WHY?'* would remain as unanswerable as before.

In affirming that the growth of the body is mechan-
ical, and that thought, as exercised by us, has its cor-
relative in the physics of the brain, I think the position
of the "Materialist" is stated, as far as that position is
a tenable one. I think the materialist will be able finally
to maintain this position against all attacks; but I do not
think, in the present condition of the human mind, that
he can pass beyond this position. I do not think he is
entitled to say that his molecular groupings, and motions,
explain everything. In reality they explain nothing.
The utmost he can affirm is the association of two classes
of phenomena, of whose real bond of unioa he is in ab-
solute ignorance. The problem of the connection of body
and soul is as insoluble, in its modern form, as it was in
the pre-scientific ages. Phosphorus is known to enter
into the composition of the human brain, and a trench-
ant German writer has exclaimed, "Ohne Phosphor, kein
Gedanke!" That may or may not be the case; but even
if we knew it to be the case, the knowledge would not

^6 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

lighten our darkness. On both sides of the zone here
assigned to the materialist he is equally helpless. If you
ask him whence is this "Matter" of which we have been
discoursing — who or what divided it into molecules, who
or what impressed upon them this necessity of running
into organic forms — he has no answer. Science is mute
in reply to these questions. But if the materialist is con-
founded and science rendered dumb, who else is prepared
with a solution ? To whom has this arm of the Lord
been revealed? Let us lower our heads, and acknowl-
edge our ignorance, priest and philosopher, one and all.

Perhaps the mystery may resolve itself into knowledge
at some future day. The process of things upon this
earth has been one of amelioration. It is a long way
from the Iguanodon and his contemporaries to the Presi-
dent and Members of the British Association. And
whether we regard the improvement from the scientific
or from the theological point of view — as the result of
progressive development, or of successive exhibitions of
creative energy — neither view entitles us to assume that
man's present faculties end the series, that the process of
amelioration ends with him. A time may therefore come
when this ultra- scientific region, by which we are now
enfolded, may offer itself to terrestrial, if not to human,
investigation. Two- thirds of the rays emitted by the sun
fail to arouse the sense of vision. The rays exist, but
the visual organ requisite for their translation into light
does not exist. And so from this region of darkness and
mystery which surrounds us, rays may now be darting
which require but the development of the proper intel-
lectual organs to translate them into knowledge as far
surpassing oars, as ours surpasses that of the wallowing

8CIENTIFTO MATERIALISM 97

reptiles which once held possession of this planet. Mean-
while the mystery is not without its uses. It certainly
may be made a power in the human soul; but it is a
power which has feeling, not knowledge, for its base. It
may be, will be, and I hope is turned to account, both
in steadying and strengthening the intellect, and in rescu-
ing man from that littleness to which, in the struggle for
existence, or for precedence in the world, he is contin-
ually prone.

Musings on the Matierhorn, July 27, 1868

Hacked and hurt by time, the aspect of the mountain
from its higher crags saddened me. Hitherto the impres-
sion it made was that of savage strength; here we had
inexorable decay. But this notion of decay implied a
reference to a period when the Matterhorn was in the
full strength of mountainhood. Thought naturally ran
back to its remoter origin and sculpture. Nor did
thought halt there, but wandered on through molten
worlds to that nebulous haze which philosophers have
regarded, and with good reason, as the proximate source
of all material things. I tried to look at this universal
cloud, containing within itself the prediction of all that
has since occurred; I tried to imagine it as the seat of
those forces whose action was to issue in solar and stellar
systems, and all that they involve. Did that formless
fog contain potentially the sadness with which I regarded
the Matterhorn? Did the thought which now ran back to
it simply return to its primeval home? If so, had we
not better recast our definitions of matter and force; for,

if life and thought be the very flower of both, any defi-

Science — VI — 5

98 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

nition which omits life and thought must be inadequate,
if not untrue. Are questions like these warranted?
Why not? If the final goal of man has not been yet
attained; if his development has not been yet arrested,
who can say that such yearnings and questionings are
not necessary to the opening of a finer vision, to the
budding and the growth of diviner powers? When I
look at the heavens and the earth, at my own body,
at my strength and weakness, even at these ponderings,
and ask myself, Is there no being or thing in the uni-
verse that knows more about these matters than I do;
what is my answer? Supposing our theologic schemes
of creation, condemnation, and redemption to be dissi-
pated; and the warmth of denial which they excite, and
which, as a motive force, can match the warmth of af-
firmation, dissipated at the same time; would the unde-
flected human mind return to the meridian of absolute
neutrality as regards these ultra-physical questions? Is
such a position one of stable equilibrium? The channels
of thought being already formed, such are the questions,
without replies, which could run athwart consciousness
during a ten minutes* halt upon the weathered crest of
the Matterhorn.

Self -reverence, self -knowledge, self-control,

These three alone lead life to sovereign power.

Yet not for power (power of herself

Would come uncalled foi-), but to live by law,

Acting the law we live by without fear ;

And, because right is right, to follow right

Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence. — TennysoK".

YII

THEEE is an idea regarding the nature of man
which modern philosophy has sought, and is still
seeking, to raise into clearness; the idea, namely,
of secular growth. Man is not a thing of yesterday; nor
do I imagine that the slightest controversial tinge is im-
ported into this address when I say that he is not a
thing of 6,000 years ago. Whether he came originally
from stocks or stones, from nebulous gas or solar fire, I
know not; if he had any such origin, the process of his
transformation is as inscrutable to you and me as that of
the grand old legend, according to which "the Lord God
formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into
his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living
soul." But, however obscure man's origin may be, his
growth is not to be denied. Here a little and there a
little added through the ages have slowly transformed
him from what he was into what he is. The doctrine
has been held that the mind of the child is like a sheet

^ Delivered at University College, London, Session 1868-G9.

(99)

100 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

of white paper, on which by education we can write
what characters we please. This doctrine assuredly
needs qualification and correction. In physics, when an
external force is applied to a body with a view of
affecting its inner texture, if we wish to predict the re-
sult, we must know whether the external force conspires
with or opposes the internal forces of the body itself;
and in bringing the influence of education to bear upon
the new-born man his inner powers also must be taken
into account. He comes to us as a bundle of inherited
capacities and tendencies, labelled ''from the indefinite
past to the indefinite future"; and he makes his transit
from the one to the other through the education of the
present time. The object of that education is, or ought
to be, to provide wise exercise for his capacities, wise
direction for his tendencies, and through this exercise
and this direction to furnish his mind with such knowl-
edge as may contribute to the usefulness, the beauty, and
the nobleness of his life.

How is this discipline to be secured, this knowledge
imparted? Two rival methods now solicit attention — the
one organized and equipped, the labor of centuries hav-
ing been expended in bringing it to its present state of
perfection; the other, more or less chaotic, but becoming
daily less so, and giving signs of enormous power, both
as a source of knowledge and as a means of discipline.
These two methods are the classical and the scientific
method. I wish they were not rivals; it is only bigotry
and short-sightedness that make them so; for assuredly
it is possible to give both of them fair play. Though
hardly authorized to express an opinion upon the sub-
ject, I nevertheless hold the opinion that the proper

AN ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 101

study of a language is an intellectual discipline of the
highest kind. If I except discussions on the compara-
tive merits of Popery and Protestantism, English gram-
mar was the most important discipline of my boyhood.
The piercing through the involved and inverted sen-
tences of ' ' Paradise Lost' ' ; the linking of the verb to its
often distant nominative, of the relative to its distant an-
tecedent, of the agent to the object of the transitive verb,
of the preposition to the noun or pronoun which it gov-
erned, the study of variations in mood and tense, the
transpositions often necessary to bring out the true gram-
matical structure of a sentence — all this was to my young
mind a discipline of the highest value, and a source of
unflagging delight. How I rejoiced when I found a great
author tripping, and was fairly able to pin him to a cor-
ner from which there was no escape! As I speak, some
of the sentences which exercised me when a boy rise to
my recollection. For instance, "He that hath ears to
hear, let him hear"; where the "He" is left, as it were,
floating in mid-air without any verb to support it. I
speak thus of English because it was of real value to me.
I do not speak of other languages because their educa-
tional value for me was almost insensible. But knowing
the value of English so well, I should be the last to
deny, or even to doubt, the high discipline involved in
the proper study of Latin and Greek.

That study, moreover, has other merits and recom-
mendations. It is, as I have said, organized and sys-
tematized by long- continued use. It is an instrument
"wielded by some of our best intellects in the education of
youth; and it can point to results in the achievements
of our foremost men. What, then, has science to offer

102 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

which is in the least degree likely to compete with such
a system? I cannot better reply than by recurring to the
grand old story from which I have already quoted. Speak-
ing of the world and all that therein is, of the sky and the
stars around it, the ancient writer says, "And God saw all
that He had made, and behold it was very good." It is
the body of things thus described which science offers to
the study of man. There is a very renowned argument
much prized and much quoted by theologians, in which
the universe is compared to a watch. Let us deal practi-
cally with this comparison. Supposing a watch-maker,
having completed his instrument, to be so satisfied with
his work as to call it very good, what would you under-
stand him to mean? You would not suppose that he re-
ferred to the dial-plate in front and the chasing of the case
behind, so much as to the wheels and pinions, the springs
and jewelled pivots of the works within — to those quali-
ties and powers, in short, which enable the watch to per-
form its work as a keeper of time. With regard to the
knowledge of such a watch he would be a mere ignoramus
who would content himself with outward inspection. I do
not wish to say one severe word here to-day, but I fear
that many of those who are very loud in their praise of
the works of the Lord know them only in this outside and
superficial way. It is the inner works of the universe
which science reverently uncovers; it is the study of these
that she recommends as a discipline worthy of all accep-
tation.

The ultimate problem of physics is to reduce matter by
analysis to its lowest condition of divisibility, and force
to its simplest manifestations, and then by synthesis to
construct from these elements the world as it stands. We

AN ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 103

are still a long way from the final solution of this prob-
lem; and when the solution comes, it will be more one of
spiritual insight than of actual observation. But though
we are still a long way from this complete intellectual mas-
tery of nature, we have conquered vast regions of it, have
learned their polities and the play of their powers. We
live upon a ball of 8,000 miles in diameter, swathed by
an atmosphere of unknown height. This ball has been
molten by heat, chilled to a solid, and sculptured by water.
It is made up of substances possessing distinctive proper-
ties and modes of action, which offer problems to the
intellect, some profitable to the child, others taxing the
highest powers of the philosopher. Our native sphere
turns on its axis, and revolves in space. It is one of a
band which all do the same. It is illuminated by a sun
which, though nearly a hundred millions of miles distant,
can be brought virtually into our closets and there sub-
jected to examination. It has its winds and clouds, its
rain and frost, its light, heat, sound, electricity, and mag-
netism. And it has its vast kingdoms of animals and
vegetables. To a most amazing extent the human mind
has conquered these things, and revealed the logic which
runs through them. Were they facts only, without logical
relationship, science might, as a means of discipline, suffer
in comparison with language. But the whole body of
phenomena is instinct with law; the facts are hung on
principles, and the value of physical science as a means
of discipline consists in the motion of the intellect, both
inductively and deductively, along the lines of law marked
out by phenomena. As regards the discipline to which I
have already referred as derivable from the study of lan-
guages— that, and more, is involved in the study of phys-

104 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

ical science. Indeed, I believe it would be possible so to
limit and arrange the study of a portion of physics as
to render the mental exercise involved in it almost quali-
tatively tbe same as that involved in the unravelling of a
language.

I have thus far confined myself to the purely intellect-
ual side of this question. But man is not all intellect. If
he were so, science would, I believe, be his proper nutri-
ment. But he feels as well as thinks; he is receptive of
the sublime and beautiful as well as of the true. Indeed,
I believe that even the intellectual action of a complete
man is, consciously or unconsciously, sustained by an un-
dercurrent of the Amotions. It is vain to attempt to sep-
arate the moral and emotional from the intellectual. Let
a man but observe himself, and he will, if I mistake not,
find that, in nine cases out of ten, the emotions constitute
the motive force which pushes his intellect into action.
The reading of the works of two men, neither of them im-
bued with the spirit of modern science — neither of them,
indeed, friendly to that spirit — has placed me here to-day.
These men are the English Carlyle and the American
Emerson. I must ever gratefully remember that through
three long cold German winters Carlyle placed me in my
tub, even when ice was on its surface, at five o'clock
every morning— not slavishly, but cheerfully, meeting each
day's studies with a resolute will, determined whether vic-
tor or vanquished not to shrink from difficulty. I never
should have gone through Analytical Geometry and the
Calculus had it not been for those men. I never should
have become a physical investigator, and hence without
them I should not have been here to-day. They told me
what I ought to do in a way that caused me to do it, and

AN ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 105

all my consequent intellectual action is to be traced to
this purely moral source. To Carlyle and Emerson I
ought to add Fichte, the greatest representative of pure
idealism. These three unscientific men made me a prac-
tical scientific worker. They called out *'Actr' I heark-
ened to the summons, taking the liberty, however, of de-
termining for myself the direction which effort was to
take.

And I may now cry "Act I" but the potency of action
must be yours. I may pull the trigger, but if the gun be
not charged there is no result. We are creators in the
intellectual world as little as in the physical. "We may
remove obstacles, and render latent capacities active, but
we cannot suddenly change the nature of man. The "new
birth'' itself implies the pre-existence of a character which
requires not to be created but brought forth. You cannot
by any amount of missionary labor suddenly transform the
savage into the civilized Christian. The improvement of
man is secular — not the work of an hour or of a day. But
though indubitably bound by our organizations, no man
knows what the potentialities of any human mind may be,
requiring only release to be brought into action. There are
in the mineral world certain crystals — certain forms, for
instance, of fluor-spar, which have lain darkly in the earth
for ages, but which nevertheless have a potency of light
locked up within them. In their case the potential has
never become actual — the light is in fact held back by a
molecular detent. When these crystals are warmed, the
detent is lifted, and an outflow of light immediately begins.
I know not how many of you may be in the condition of
this fluor-spar. For aught I know, every one of you may
be in this condition, requiring but the proper agent to be

106 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

applied — the proper word to be spoken — to remove a de-
tent, and to render you conscious of light and warmtli
within yourselves and soiirces of both, to others.

The circle of human nature, then, is not complete with-
out the arc of the emotions. The lilies of the field have
a value for us beyond their botanical ones — a pertain
lightening of the heart accompanies the declaration that
*' Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of
these. ' ' The sound of the village bell has a value beyond
its acoustical one. The setting sun has a value beyond its
optical one. The starry heavens, as you know, had for
Immanuel Kant a value beyond their astronomical one.
I think it very desirable to keep this horizon of the emo-
tions open, and not to permit either priest or philosopher
to draw down his shutters between you and it. Here the
dead languages, which are sure to be beaten by science
in the purely intellectual fight, have an irresistible claim.
They supplement the work of science by exalting and
refining the aesthetic faculty, and must on this account be
cherished by all who desire to see human culture complete.
There must be a reason for the fascination which these
languages have so long exercised upon powerful and ele-
vated minds — a fascination which will probably continue
for men of Greek and Koman mold to the end of time.

In connection with this question one very obvious
danger besets many of the more earnest spirits of our day
— the danger of haste in endeavoring to give the feelings
repose. We are distracted by systems of theology and
philosophy which were taught to us when young, and
which now excite in us a hunger and a thirst for knowl-
edge not proved to be attainable. There are periods when
the judgment ought to remain in suspense, the data on

AN ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 107

wliicli a decision might be based being absent. This dis-
cipline of suspending the judgment is a common one in
science, but not so common as it ought to be elsewhere.
I walked down Eegent Street some time ago with a man
of great gifts and acquirements, discussing with him vari-
ous theological questions. I could not accept his views
of the origin and destiny of the universe, nor was I pre-
pared to enunciate any definite views of my own. He
turned to me at length and said, "You surely must have
a theory of the universe." That I should in one way or
another have solved this mystery of mysteries seemed
to my friend a matter of course. "I have not even a
theory of magnetism" was my reply. We ought to learn
to wait. We ought assuredly to pause before closing with
the advances of those expounders of the ways of God to
men, who ofEer us intellectual peace at the modest cost
of intellectual life.

The teachers of the world ought to be its best men, and
for the present at all events such men must learn self-
trust. By the fulness and freshness of their own lives
and utterances they must awaken life in others. The
hopes and terrors which influenced our fathers are passing
away, and our trust henceforth must rest on the innate
strength of man's moral nature. And here, I think, the
poet will have a great part to play in the future culture
of the world. To him, when he rightly understands his
mission, and does not flinch from the tonic discipline
which it assuredly demands, we have a right to look fgr
that heightening and brightening of life which so many
of us need. To him it is given for a long time to come
to fill those shores which the recession of the theologic tide
has left exposed. Void of offence to science, he may freely

108 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

deal with conceptions whicli science shuns, and become
the illustrator and interpreter of that Power which, as

•'Jehovah, Jove, or Lord,"

has hitherto filled and strengthened the human heart.

Let me utter one practical word in conclusion — take
care of your health. There have been men who by wise
attention to this point might have risen to any eminence —
might have made great discoveries, written great poems,
commanded armies, or ruled states, but who by unwise
neglect of this point have come to nothing. Imagine Her-
cules as oarsman in a rotten boat; what can Le do there
but by the very force of his stroke expedite the ruin of
his craft? Take care then of the timbers of your boat,
and avoid all practices likely to introduce either wet or
dry rot among them. And this is not to be accomplished
by desultory or intermittent efforts of the will, but by the
formation of habits. The will no doubt has sometimes to
put forth its strength in order to crush the special temp-
tation. But the formation of right habits is essential to
your permanent security. They diminish your chance
of falling when assailed, and they augment your chance
of recovery when overthrown.

K thou would'st know the mystic song

Chauuted when the sphere was young.

Aloft, abroad, the peaa swells,

O wise man hear'st thou half it tells?

To the open ear it sings

The early genesis of things ;

Of tendency through endless ages.

Of star-dust and star pilgrimages,

Of rounded worlds, of space and time.

Of the old floods' subsiding shme.

Of chemic matter, force and form.

Of poles and powers, cold, wet, and warm.

The rushing metamorphosis

Dissolving all that fixture is.

Melts things that be to things that seem.

And solid nature xo a dream.— Emerson

Was war' ein Gott der nur von ausseu stiesae,
Im Kreis das All am Finger laufen liesse
Ihm ziemt's, die Welt im Innern zu bewegen,
Natur ia Sich, Sich in ITatur au h^gen.— Gobthb

VIII

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION'

'•Lastly, physical investigation, more than anything besides, helps to teo<^
SB the actual value and right use of the Imagination — of that wondrous faculty,
which, left to ramble uncontrolled, leads us astray into a wilderness of perplexi-
ties and errors, a land of mists and shadows; but which, properly controlled by
experience and reflection, becomes the noblest attribute of man ; the source of
poetic genius, the instrument of discovery in Science, without the aid of which
Newton would never have invented fluxions, nor Davy have decomposed the
earths and alkalies, nor would Columbus have found another Continent." —
Address to the Royal Society by its Pi^esident Sir Benjamin Brodie, Nov. SO, 1859

CAKEIED with me to the Alps this year the burden
of this evening's work. Save from memory I had no
direct aid upon the mountains; but to spur up the emo-
tions, on which so much depends, as well as to nourish

* Discourse delivered before the British Association at Liverpool, Septeml)^
13, 1870.

009)

110 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

indirectly tlie intellect and will, I took with me four
works, comprising two volumes of poetry, Goethe's "Far-
benlehre," and the work on "Logic" recently published
by Mr. Alexander Bain. In Goethe, so noble otherwise,
I chiefly noticed the self-inflicted hurts of genius, as it
broke itself in vain against the philosophy of Newton.
Mr. Bain I found, for the most part, learned and practical,
shining generallj with a dry light, but exhibiting at times
a flush of emotional strength, which proved that even
log! ians share the common fire of humanity. He inter-
ested me most when he became the mirror of my own con-
dition. Neither intellectually nor socially is it good for
man to be alone, and the sorrows of thought are more
patiently borne when we find that they have been ex-
perienced by another. From certain passages in his
book I could infer that Mr. Bain was no stranger to such
sorrows.

Speaking for example of the ebb of intellectual force,
which we all from time to time experience, Mr. Bain
says: "The uncertainty where to look for the next open-
ing of discovery brings the pain of conflict and the debility
of indecision." These words have in them the true ring
of personal experience. The action of the investigator is
periodic. He grapples with a subject of inquiry, wrestles
with it, and exhausts, it may be, both himself and it for
the time being. He breathes a space, and then renews
the struggle in another field. Now this period of halting
between two investigations is not always one of pure re-
pose. It is often a period of doubt and discomfort — of
gloom and ennui. "The uncertainty where to look for
the next opening of discovery brings the pain of conflict
and the debility of indecision." It was under such con-

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION 111

ditions tliat I bad to equip myself for the hour and the
ordeal that are now come.

The disciplines of common life are, in great part, exer-
cises in the relations of space, or in the mental grouping
of bodies in space; and, by such exercises, the public mind
is, to some extent, prepared for the reception of physical
conceptions. Assuming this preparation on your part, the
wish gradually grew within me to trace, and to enable
you to trace, some of the more occult features and opera-
tions of Light and Color. I wished, if possible, to take
you beyond the boundary of mere observation, into a
region where things are intellectually discerned, and to
show you there the hidden mechanism of optical action.

But how are those hidden things to be revealed ? Phi-
losophers may be right in affirming that we cannot tran-
scend experience: we can, at all events, carry it a long
way from its origin. We can magnify, diminish, qualify,
and combine experiences, so as to render them fit for pur-
poses entirely new. In explaining sensible phenomena,
we habitually form mental images of the ultra- sensible.
There are Tories even in science who regard Imagination
as a faculty to be feared and avoided rather than em-
ployed. They have observed its action in weak vessels,
and are unduly impressed by its disasters. But they
might with equal justice point to exploded boilers as an
argument against the use of steam. With accurate ex-
periment and observation to work upon, Imagination
becomes the architect of physical theory. Newton's
passage from a falling apple to a falling moon was an
act of the prepared imagination, without which the "laws
of Kepler" could never have been traced to their founda-

112 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCS

tions. Out of the facts of chemistry the constructive
imagination of Dalton formed the atomic theory. Davy
was richly endowed with the imaginative faculty, while
with Faraday its exercise was incessant, preceding, ac-
companying and guiding all his experiments. His
strength and fertility as a discoverer is to be referred
in great part to the stimulus of his imagination. Scien-
tific men fight shy of the word because of its ultra-
scientific connotations; but the fact is, that, without the
exercise of this power, our knowledge of nature would
be a mere tabulation of co-existences and sequences. We
should still believe in the succession of day and night, of
summer and winter; but the conception of Force would
vanish from our universe; causal relations would disap-
pear, and with them that science which is now binding
the parts of nature to an organic whole.

I should like to illustrate by a few simple instances
the use that scientific men have already made of this
power of imagination, and to indicate afterward some of
the further uses that they are likely to make of it. Let
us begin with the rudimentary experiences. Observe the
falling of heavy rain-drops into a tranquil pond. Each
drop as it strikes the water becomes a centre of disturb-
ance, from which a series of ring-ripples expand outward.
Gravity and inertia are the agents by which this wave-
motion is produced, and a rough experiment will suffice
to show that the rate of propagation does not amount to
a foot a second. A series of slight mechanical shocks is
experienced by a body plunged in the water, as the wave-
lets reach it in succession. But a finer motion is at the
same time set up and propagated. If the head and ears
be immersed in the water, as in an experiment of Frai:k-

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION 113

Hn's, tlie iick of the drop is heard. Now, this sonorous
impulse is propagated, not at the rate of a foot, but at the
rate of 4,700 feet a second. In this case it is not the grav-
ity, but the elasticity of the water that comes into play.
Every liquid particle pushed against its neighbor delivers
up its motion with extreme rapidity, and the pulse is
propagated as a thrill. The incompressibility of water,
as illustrated by the famous Florentine experiment, is a
measure of its elasticity; and to the possession of this
property, in so high a degree, the rapid transmission of
a sound-pulse through water is to be ascribed.

But water, as you know, is not necessary to the con-
duction of sound; air is its most common vehicle. And
you know that when the air possesses the particular den-
B-'Xj and elasticity corresponding to the temperature of
"freezing water, the velocity of sound in it is 1,090 feet
a second. It is almost exactly one-fourth of the velocity
in water; the reason being that though the greater weight
of the water tends to diminish the velocity, the enormous
molecular elasticity of the liquid far more than atones for
the disadvantage due to weight. By various contrivances
we can compel the vibrations of the air to declare them-
selves; we know the length and frequency of the sonorous
waves, and we have also obtained great mastery over the
various methods by which the air is thrown into vibra-
tion. We know the phenomena and laws of vibrating
rods, of organ-pipes, strings, membranes, plates, and bells.
We can abolish one sound by another. We know the
physical meaning of music and noise, of harmony and dis-
cord. In short, as regards sound in general, we have a
very clear notion of the external physical processes which
correspond to our sensations.

114 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

In the phenomena of sound, we travel a very little way
from downright sensible experience. Still the imagina-
tion is to some extent exercised. The bodily eye, for ex-
ample, cannot see the condensations and rarefactions of
the waves of sound. We construct them in thought, and
we believe as firmly in their existence as in that of the
air itself. But now our experience is to be carried into a
new region, where a new use is to be made of it. Having
mastered the cause and mechanism of sound, we desire to
know the cause and mechanism of light. We wish to ex-
tend our inquiries from the auditory to the optic nerve.
There is in the human intellect a power of expansion — I
might almost call it a power of creation — which is brought
into play by the simple brooding upon facts. The legend
of the spirit brooding over chaos may have originated in
experience of this power. In the case now before us it has
manifested itself by transplanting into space, for the pur-
poses of light, an adequately modified form of the mechan-
ism of sound. We know intimately whereon the veloc-
ity of sound depends. When we lessen the density of
the aerial medium, and preserve its elasticity constant, we
augment the velocity. When we heighten the elasticity,
and keep the dcDsity constant, we also augment the veloc-
ity. A small density, therefore, and a great' elasticity, are
the two things necessary to rapid propagation. Now light
is known to move with the astounding velocity of 186,000
miles a second. How is such a velocity to be obtained?
By boldly diffusing in space a medium of the requisite
tenuity and elasticity.

Let us make such a medium our starting-point, and,
endowing it with one or two other necessary qualities, let
us handle it in accordance with strict mechanical laws.

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION 115

Let us then carry our results from the world of theory
into the world of sense, and see whether our deductions
do not issue in the very phenomena of light which ordi-
nary knowledge and skilled experiment reveal. If in all
the multiplied varieties of these phenomena, including
those of the most remote and entangled description, this
fundamental conception always brings us face to face with
the truth; if no contradiction to our deductions from it
be found in external nature, but on all sides agreement
and verification; if, moreover, as in the case of Conical
Eefraction and in other cases, it actually forces upon our
attention phenomena which no eye had previously seen,
and which no mind had previously imagined — such a con-
ception must, we think, be something more than a mere
figment of the scientific fancy. In forming it, that com-
posite and creative power, in which reason and imagina-
tion are united, has, we believe, led us into a world not
less real than that of the senses, and of which the world
of sense itself is the suggestion and, to a great extent, the
outcome.

Far be it from me, however, to wish to fix you im-
movably in this or in any other theoretic conception.
With all our belief of it, it will be well to keep the
theory of a luminiferous ether plastic and capable of
change. You may, moreover, urge that, although the
phenomena occur as if the medium existed, the absolute
demonstration of its existence is still wanting. Far be it
from me to deny to this reasoning such validity as it may
fairly claim. Let us endeavor, by means of analogy, to
form a fair estimate of its force. You believe that in so-
ciety you are surrounded by reasonable beings like your-
self. You are, perhaps, as firmly convinced of this as of

116 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

anything. What is your warrant for this conviction?
Simply and solely this: your fellow-creatures behave as
if they were reasonable; the hypothesis, for it is nothing
more, accounts for the facts. To take an eminent exam-
ple: you believe that our President is a reasonable being.
Why? There is no known method of superposition by
which any one of us can apply himseK intellectually to
any other, so as to demonstrate coincidence as regards the
possession of reason. If, therefore, you hold our Presi-
dent to be reasonable, it is because he behaves as if he
were reasonable. As in the case of the ether, beyond the
**a5 ^/" you cannot go. Nay, I should not wonder if a
close comparison of the data on which both inferences rest
caused many respectable persons to conclude that the
ether had the best of it.

This universal medium, this light-ether, as it is called,
is the vehicle, not the origin, of wave-motion. It receives
and transmits, but it does not create. Whence does it
derive the motions it conveys? For the most part from
luminous bodies. By the motion of a luminous body I
do not mean its sensible motion, such as the flicker of a
candle, or the shooting out of red prominences from the
limb of the sun. I mean an intestine motion of the atoms
or molecules of the luminous body. But here a certain
reserve is necessary. Many chemists of the present day
refuse to speak of atoms and molecules as real things.
Their caution leads them to stop short of the clear, sharp,
mechanically intelligible atomic theory enunciated by Dal-
ton, or any form of that theory, and to make the doctrine
of *' multiple proportions" their intellectual bourne. I re-
spect the caution, though I think it is here misplaced.
The chemists who recoil from these notions of atoms and

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION 117

molecules accept, without hesitation, the Undulatorj The-
ory of Light. Like you and me, they one and all believe
in an ether and its light-producing waves. Let us con-
sider what this belief involves. Bring your imaginations
once more into play, and figure a series of sound waves
passing through air. Follow them up to their origin,
and what do you there find ? A definite, tangible, vibrat-
ing body. It may be the vocal chords of a human being,
it may be an organ-pipe, or it may be a stretched string.
Follow in the same manner a train of ether- waves to their
source; remembering at the same time that your ether is
matter, dense, elastic, and capable of motions subject to,
and determined by, mechanical laws. What then do you
expect to find as the source of a series of ether- waves?
Ask your imagination if it will accept a vibrating mul-
tiple proportion — a numerical ratio in a state of oscilla-
tion? I do not think it will. You cannot crown the
edifice with this abstraction. The scientific imagination,
which is here authoritative, demands, as the origin and
cause of a series of ether-waves, a particle of vibrating
matter quite as definite, though it may be excessively
minute, as that which gives origin to a musical sound.
Such a particle we name an atom or a molecule. I think
the intellect, when focused so as to give definition without
penumbral haze, is sure to realize this image at the last.

With the view of preserving thought continuous
throughout this discourse, and of preventing either fail-
ure of knowledge or of memory, from causing any rent in
our picture, I here propose to run rapidly over a bit of
ground which is probably familiar to most of you, but
which I am anxious to make familiar to you all. The

118 FRAGMENTS OF SCIEyCE

waves generated in the ether by the swinging atoms of
luminous bodies are of different lengths and amplitudes.
The amplitude is the width of swing of the individual
particles of the waves. In water-waves it is the vertical
height of the crest above the trough, while the length of
the wave is the horizontal distance between two consecu-
tive crests. The aggregate of waves emitted by the sun
may be broadly divided into two classes: the one class
competent, the other incompetent, to excite vision. But
the ligbt-producing waves differ markedly among them-
selves in size, form, and force. The length of the largest
of these waves is about twice that of the smallest, but the
amplitude of the largest is probably a hundred times that
of the smallest. Now the force of energy of the wave,
which, expressed with reference to sensation, means the
intensity of the light, is proportional to the square of the
amplitude. Hence, the amplitude being one-hundredfold,
the energy of the largest light- gi\dng waves would be
ten-thousandfold that of the smallest. This is not im-
probable. I use these figures not with a view to numer-
ical accuracy, but to give you definite ideas of the differ-
ences that probably exist among the light-giving waves.
And if we take the whole range of solar radiation into
account — its non- visual as well as its visual waves — I
think it probable that the force, or energy, of the larg-
est wave is more than a million times that of the smallest.
Turned into their equivalents of sensation, the differ-
ent light-waves produce different colors. Ked, for ex-
ample, is produced by the largest waves, violet by the
smallest, while green is produced by a wave of inter-
mediate length and amplitude. On entering from air into
a more highly refracting substance, such as glass or water,

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION 119

or the sulphide of carbon, all the waves are retarded, but
the smallest ones most. This furnishes a means of sepa-
rating the different classes of waves from each other; in
other words, of analyzing the light. Sent through a re-
fracting prism, the waves of the sun are turned aside in
different degrees from their direct course, the red least, the
violet most. They are virtually pulled asunder, and they
paint upon a white screen placed to receive them **the
solar spectrum.'* Strictly speaking, the spectrum em-
braces an infinity of colors; but the limits of language,
and of our powers of distinction, cause it to be divided
into seven segments: red, orange, yellow, green, blue,
indigo, violet. These are the seven primary or prismatic
colors.

Separately, or mixed in various proportions, the solar
waves yield all the colors observed in nature and em-
ployed in art. Collectively, they give us the impression
of whiteness. Pure unsifted solar light is white; and, if
all the wave-constituents of such light be reduced in the
same proportion, the light, though diminished in inten-
sity, will still be white. The whiteness of snow with the
sun shining upon it is barely tolerable to the eye. The
same snow under an overcast firmament is still white.
Such a firmament enfeebles the light by reflecting it up-
ward; and when we stand above a cloud-field — on an
Alpine summit, for instance, or on the top of Snowdon
— and see, in the proper direction, the sun shining on the
clouds below us, they appear dazzlingly white. Ordinary
clouds, in fact, divide the solar light impinging on them
into two parts — a reflected part and a transmitted part — m
each of which the proportions of wave-motion which pro-
duce the impression of whiteness are sensibly preserved.

120 FRAG:\IEyTS OF SCIENCE

It will be understood tlmt the condition of whiteness
would fail if all the waves were diminished equally, or by
the same absolute quantity. They must be reduced pro-
portionately, instead of equally. If by the act of reflec-
tion the waves of red light are split into exact halves,
then, to preserve the light white, the waves of yellow,
orange, green, and blue, must also be split into exact
halves. In short, the reduction must take place, not by
absolutely equal quantities, but by equal fractional parts.
In white light the preponderance, as regards energy, of
the larger over the smaller waves must always be im-
mense. Were the case otherwise, the visual correlative,
blue, of the smaller waves would have the upper hand in
our sensations.

Not only are the waves of ether reflected by clouds,
by solids, and by liquids, but when they pass from light
air to dense, or from dense air to light, a portion of the
wave-motion is always reflected. Now our atmosphere
changes continually in density from top to bottom. It
will help our conceptions if we regard it as made up of
a series of thin concentric layers, or shells of air, each
shell being of the same density throughout, a small and
sudden change of density occurring in passing from shell
to shell. Light would be reflected at the limiting surfaces
of all these shells, and their action would be practically
the same as that of the real atmosphere. And now I
would ask your imagination to picture this act of reflec-
tion. What must become of the reflected light ? The at-
mospheric layers turn their convex surfaces toward the
sun; they are so many convex mirrors of feeble power;
and you will immediately perceive that the light regularly
reflected from these surfaces cannot reach the earth at all,

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION 121

but is dispersed in space. Light thus reflected cannot,
therefore, be the light of the sky.

But, though the sun's light is not reflected in this
fashion from the aerial layers to the earth, there is in-
dubitable evidence to show that the light of our firmament
is scattered light. Proofs of the most cogent description
could be here adduced; but we need only consider that
we receive light at the same time from all parts of the
hemisphere of heaven. The light of the firmament comes
to us across the direction of the solar rays, and even
against the direction of the solar rays; and this lateral
and opposing rush of wave-motion can only be due to the
rebound of the waves from the air itself, or from some-
thinsj suspended in the air. It is also evident that, unlike
the action of clouds, the solar light is not reflected bj the
sky in the proportions which produce white. The sky-
is blue, which indicates an excess of the shorter waves.
In accounting for the color of the sky, the first question
suggested bj analogy would undoubtedly be. Is not the
air blue ? The blueness of the air has, in fact, been given
as a solution of the blueness of the sky. But how, if the
air be blue, can the light of sunrise and sunset, which
travels through vast distances of air, be yellow, orange,
or even red ? The passage of white solar light through
a blue medium could by no possibility redden the light.
The hypothesis of a blue air is therefore untenable. In
fact the agent, whatever it is, which sends us the light
of the sky, exercises in so doing a dichroitic action. The
light reflected is blue, the light transmitted is orange or
red. A marked distinction is thus exhibited between the
matter of the sky and that of an ordinary cloud, which

exercises no such dichroitic action.
Science— YI— 6

122 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

By the scientific use of the imagination we may hope
to penetrate this mystery. The cloud takes no note of
size on the part of the waves of ether, but reflects them
all alike. It exercises no selective action. Now the cause
of this may be that the cloud particles are so large, in
comparison with the waves of ether, as to reflect them all
indifferently. A broad cliff reflects an Atlantic roller as
easily as a ripple produced by a seabird's wing; and in
the presence of large reflecting surfaces, the existing dif-
ferences of magnitude among the waves of ether may
disappear. But supposing the reflecting particles, instead
of being very large, to be very small in comparison with
the size of the waves. In this case, instead of the whole
wave being fronted and thrown back, a small portion only
is shivered off. The great mass of the wave passes over
such a particle without reflection. Scatter, then, a hand-
ful of such minute foreign particles in our atmosphere,
and set imagination to watch their action upon the solar
waves. Waves of all sizes impinge upon the particles,
and you see at every collision a portion of the impinging
wave struck off; all the waves of the spectrum, from the
extreme red to the extreme violet, being thus acted upon.

Kemembering that the red waves stand to the blue
much in the relation of billows to ripples, we have to
consider whether those extremely small particles are com-
petent to scatter all the waves in the same proportion. If
they be not — and a little reflection will make it clear that
they are not — the production of color must be an incident
of the scattering. Largeness is a thing of relation; and
the smaller the wave, the greater is the relative size of
any particle on which the wave impinges, and the greater
also the ratio of the portion scattered to the total wave.

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION 123

A pebble, placed in the way of the ring-ripples prodnced
by heavy raindrops on a tranquil pond, will scatter a large
fraction of each ripple, while the fractional part of a larger
wave thrown back by the same pebble might be infini-
tesimal. Now we have already made it clear to our minds
that to preserve the solar light white its constituent pro-
portions must not be altered; but in the act of division
performed by these very small particles the proportions
are altered; an undue fraction of the smaller waves is scat-
tered by the particles, and, as a consequence, in the scat-
tered light, blue will be the predominant color. The
other colors of the spectrum must, to some extent, be
associated with the blue. They are not absent, but defi-
cient. We ought, in fact, to have them all, but in dimin-
ishing proportions, from the violet to the red.

We have here presented a case to the imagination, and,
assuming the undulatory theory to be a reality, we have,
I think, fairly reasoned our way to the conclusion, that
were particles, small in comparison to the sizes of the ether
waves, sown in our atmosphere, the light scattered by
those particles would be exactly such as we observe in
our azure skies. When this light is analyzed, all the
colors of the spectrum are found, and they are found in
the proportions indicated by our conclusion. Blue is not
the sole, but it is the predominant color.

Let us now turn our attention to the light which passes
unscattered among the particles. How must it be finally
affected? By its successive collisions with the particles
the white light is more and more robbed of its shorter
waves; it therefore loses more and more of its due pro-
portion of blue. The result may be anticipated. The
transmitted light, where short distances are involved, will

124 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

appear yellowish. But as the sun sinks toward the hori-
zon the atmospheric distances increase, and consequently
the number of the scattering particles. They abstract in
succession the violet, the indigo, the blue, and even dis-
turb the proportions of green. The transmitted light un-
der such circumstances must pass from yellow through
orange to red. This also is exactly what we find in nat-
ure. Thus, while the reflected light gives us at noon the
deep azure of the Alpine skies, the transmitted light gives
us at sunset the warm crimson of the Alpine snows. The
phenomena certainly occur as if our atmosphere were a
medium rendered slightly tarbid by the mechanical sus-
pension of exceedingly small foreign particles.

Here, as before, we encounter our sceptical "as t/.'*
It is one of the parasites of science, ever at hand, and
ready to plant itself and sprout, if it can, on the weak
points of our philosophy. But a strong constitution defies
the parasite, and in our case, as we question the phe-
nomena, probability grows like growing health, until in
the end the malady of doubt is completely extirpated.
The first question that naturally arises is this: Can small
particles be really proved to act in the manner indicated?
No doubt of it. Each one of you can submit the question
to an experimental test. Water will not dissolve resin,
but spirit will dissolve it; and when spirit holding resin
in solution is dropped into water, the resin immediately
separates in solid particles, which render the water milky.
The coarseness of this precipitate depends on the quantity
of the dissolved resin. You can cause it to separate either
in thick clots or in exceedingly fine particles. Professor
Brlicke has given us the proportions which produce par-
ticles particularly suited to our present purpose. One

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION 125

gram of clean mastic is dissolved in eighty-seven grams
of absolute alcohol, and the transparent solution is allowed
to drop into a beaker containing clear water, kept briskly
stirred. An exceedingly fine precipitate is thus formed,
which declares its presence by its action upon light.
Placing a dark surface behind the beaker, and permitting
the light to fall into it from the top or front, the medium
is seen to be distinctly blue. It is not perhaps so perfect
a blue as may be seen on exceptional days among the
Alps, but it is a very fair sky-blue. A trace of soap in
water gives a tint of blue. London, and I fear Liver-
pool, milk makes an approximation to the same color,
through the operation of the same cause; and Helmholtz
has irreverently disclosed the fact that the deepest blue
eye is simply a turbid medium.

The action of turbid media upon light was illustrated
by Goethe, who, though unacquainted with the undulatory
theory, was led by his experiments to regard the firma-
ment as an illuminated turbid medium, with the darkness
of space behind it. He describes glasses showing a bright
yellow by transmitted, and a beautiful blue by reflected,
light. Professor Stokes, who was probably the first to dis-
cern the real nature of the action of small particles on the
waves of ether, ^ describes a glass of a similar kind.^ Capi-

^ This is inferred from conversation. I am not aware that Professor Stokes
lias published anything upon the subject.

2 This glass, by reflected light, had a color "strongly resembling that of a
decoction of horse-chestnut bark." Curiously enough, Goethe refers to this
very decoction : "Man nehme einen Streifen frischer Rinde von der Rosska-
stanie, man stecke denselben in ein Glas Wasser, und in der kiirzesten Zeit
werden wir das voUkommenste Himmelblau entstehen sehen." — Goethe's
"Werke," B. xxix. p. 24.

126 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

tal specimens of such glass are to be found at Salviati's, in
St. James's Street. What artists call "chill" is no doubt
an effect of this description. Through the action of mi-
nute particles, the browns of a picture often present the
appearance of the bloom of a plum. Bj rubbing the var-
nish with a silk handkerchief optical continuity is estab-
lished and the chill disappears. Some years ago I wit-
nessed Mr. Hirst experimenting at Zermatt on the turbid
water of the Yisp. When kept still for a day or so, the
grosser matter sank, but the finer particles remained sus-
pended, and gave a distinctly blue tinge to the water.
The blueness of certain Alpine lakes has been shown to
be in part due to this cause. Professor Roscoe has noticed
several striking cases of a similar kind. In a very re-
markable paper the late Principal Forbes showed that
steam issuing from the safety-valve of a locomotive, when
favorably observed, exhibits at a certain stage of its con-
densation the colors of the sky. It is blue by reflected
light, and orange or red by transmitted light. The same
effect, as pointed out by Groethe, is to some extent ex-
hibited by peat-smoke. More than ten years ago, I amused
myself by observing, on a calm day at Killarney, the
straight smoke-columns rising from the cabin-chimneys.
It was easy to project the lower portion of a column
against a dark pine, and its upper portion against a bright
cloud. The smoke in the former case was blue, being
seen mainly by reflected light; in the latter case it was
reddish, being seen mainly by transmitted light. Such
smoke was not in exactly the condition to give us the
glow of the Alps, but it was a step in this direction.
Briicke's fine precipitate above referred to looks yellow-
ish by transmitted light; but, by duly strengthening the

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION 127

precipitate, you may render the white light of noon as
ruby-colored as the sun, when seen through Liverpool
smoke, or upon Alpine horizons. I do not, however,
point to the gross smoke arising from coal as an illustra-
tion of the action of small particles, because such smoke
soon absorbs and destroys the waves of blue, instead of
sending them to the eyes of the observer.

These multifarious facts, and numberless others which
cannot now be referred to, are explained by reference to
the single principle that, where the scattering particles are
small in comparison to the ethereal waves, we have in the
reflected light a greater proportion of the smaller waves,
and in the transmitted light a greater proportion of the
larger waves, than existed in the original white light.
The consequence, as regards sensation, is that in the one
case blue is predominant, and in the other orange or red.
Our best microscopes can readily reveal objects not more
than yir^th of an inch in diameter. This is less than the
length of a wave of red light. Indeed a first-rate micro-
scope would enable us to discern objects not exceeding in
diameter the length of the smallest waves of the visible
spectrum.' By the microscope, therefore, we can test our
particles. If they be as large as the light-waves they will
infallibly be seen; and if they be not so seen, it is be-
cause they are smaller. Some months ago I placed in the
hands of our President a liquid containing Briicke's pre-
cipitate. The liquid was milky blue, and Mr. Huxley ap-
plied to it his highest microscopic power. He satisfied
me that had particles of even lo^^oooth of an inch in diam-
eter existed in the liquid, they could not have escaped

' Dallinger and Drysdale have recently measured cilia ^^nsWd*^ ^^ ^^ ^^^^
in diameter. 1878.

i28 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

detection. But no particles were seen. Under the micro-
scope the turbid liquid was not to be distinguished from
distilled water.*

But we have it in our power to imitate, far more
closely than we have hitherto done, the natural conditions
of this problem. We can generate, in air, artificial skies,
and prove their perfect identity with the natural one, as
regards the exhibition of a number of wholly unexpected
phenomena. By a continuous process of growth, more-
over, we are able to connect sky-matter, if I may use the
term, with molecular matter on the one side, and with
molar matter, or matter in sensible masses, on the other.
In illustration of this, I will take an experiment suggested
by some of my own researches, and described by M. Mor-
ren of Marseilles at the Exeter meeting of the British As-
sociation. Sulphur and oxygen combine to form sulphur-
ous acid gas, two atoms of oxygen and one of sulphur
constituting the molecule of sulphurous acid. It has been
recently shown that waves of ether issuing from a strong
source, such as the sun or the electric light, are competent
to shake asunder the atoms of gaseous molecules. * A
chemist would call this "decomposition" by light; but it
behooves us, who are examining the power and function
of the imagination, to keep constantly before us the phys-
ical images which underlie our terms. Therefore I say,
sharply and definitely, that the components of the mole-
cules of sulphurous acid are shaken asunder by the ether-

* Like Dr. Burdon Sanderson's ''pyrogen," the particles of mastic passed,
without sensible hinderance, through filtering- paper. By such filtering no free-
dom from suspended particles is secured. The application of a condensed beam
to the filtrate renders this at once evident.

^ See "New Chemical Reactions produced by Light," vol. i. p. 103.

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION 129

waves. Enclosing sulphurous acid in a suitable vessel,
placing it in a dark room, and sending through it a pow-
erful beam of light, we at first see nothing: the vessel
containing the gas seems as empty as a vacuum. Soon,
however, along the track of the beam a beautiful sky-blue
color is observed, which is due to light scattered by the
liberated particles of sulphur. For a time the blue grows
more intense; it then becomes whitish; and ends in a
more or less perfect white. When the action is continued
long enough, the tube is filled with a dense cloud of sul-
phur particles, which by the application of proper means
may be rendered individually visible.*

Here, then, our ether-waves untie the bond of chem-
ical affinity, and liberate a body — sulphur — which at ordi-
nary temperatures is a solid, and which therefore soon
becomes an object of the senses. We have first of all
the free atoms of sulphur, which are incompetent to stir
the retina sensibly with scattered light. But these atoms
gradually coalesce and form particles, which grow larger
by continual accretion, until after a minute or two they
appear as sky -matter. In this condition they are individ-
ually invisible; but collectively they send an amount of
wave-motion to the retina sufficient to produce the firma-
mental blue. The particles continue, or may be caused to
continue, in this condition for a considerable time, during
which no microscope can cope with them. But they grow
Blowly larger, and pass by insensible gradations into the
state of cloud, when they can no longer elude the armed

* M. Morren was mistaken in supposing that a modicum of sulphurous acid,
in the drying tubes, had any share in the production of the "actinic clouds'*
described by me. A beautiful case of molecular instability in the presence of
light is furnished by peroxide of chlorine as proved by Professor Dewar. 1878.

130 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

eye. Thus, without solution of continuity, we start with
matter in the atom, and end with matter in ihe mass;
sky-matter being the middle term of the series of trans-
formations.

Instead of sulphurous acid, we might choose a dozen
other substances, and produce the same effect with all of
them. In the case of some — probably in the case of all —
it is possible to preserve matter in the firmamental condi-
tion for fifteen or twenty minutes under the continual
operation of the light. During these fifteen or twenty
minutes the particles constantly grow larger, without ever
exceeding the size requisite to the production of the celes-
tial blue. Now when two vessels are placed before us,
each containing sky-matter, it is possible to state with
great distinctness which vessel contains the largest par-
ticles. The eye is very sensitive to differences of light,
when, as in our experiments, it is placed in comparative
darkness, and the wave-motion thrown against the retina
is small. The larger particles declare themselves by the
greater whiteness of their scattered light. Call now to
mind the observation, or effort at observation, made by
our President, when he failed to distinguish the particles
of mastic in Brucke's medium, and when you have done
this, please follow me. A beam of light is permitted to
act upon a certain vapor. In two minutes the azure ap-
pears, but at the end of fifteen minutes it has not ceased
to be azure. After fifteen minutes its color, and some
other phenomena, pronounce it to be a blue of distinctly
smaller particles than those sought for in vain by Mr.
Huxley. These particles, as already stated, must hafe
been less than -nnrWth of an inch in diameter. And now
I want you to consider the following question: Here are

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION 131

particles which have been growiog continually for fifteen
minutes, and at the end of that time are demonstrably
smaller than those which defied the microscope of Mr.
Huxley — Wliat must have been the size of these particles at
the beginning of their growth? What notion can you form
of the magnitude of such particles? The distances of
stellar space give us simply a bewildering sense of vast-
ness, without leaving any distinct impression on the mind;
and the magnitudes with which we have here to do bewil-
der us equally in the opposite direction. We are dealing
with infinitesimals, compared with which the test objects
of the microscope are literally immense.

Small in mass, the vastness in point of number of the
particles of our sky may be inferred from the continuity
of its light. It is not in broken patches, nor at scattered
points, that the heavenly azure is revealed. To the ob-
server on the summit of Mont Blanc, the blue is as uni-
form and coherent as if it formed the surface of the most
close-grained solid. A marble dome would not exhibit a
stricter continuity. And Mr. Glaisher will inform you,
that if our hypothetical shell were lifted to twice the
height of Mont Blanc above the earth's surface, we should
still have the azure overhead. By day this light quenches
the stars; even by moonlight it is able to exclude from
vision all stars between the fifth and the eleventh magni-
tude. It may be likened to a noise, and the feebler stellar
radiance to a whisper drowned by the noise.

What is the nature of the particles which shed this
light? The celebrated De la Rive ascribes the haze of
the Alps in fine weather to floating organic germs. Now
the possible existence of germs in such profusion has been
held up as an absurdity. It has been affirmed that they

182 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

would darken tlie air, and on the assumed impossibility
of tlieir existence in the requisite numbers, without inva-
sion of the solar light, an apparently powerful argument
has been based by believers in spontaneous generation.
Similar arguments have been used by the opponents of
the germ theory of epidemic disease, who have triumph-
antly challenged an appeal to the microscope and the
chemist's balance to decide the question. Such argu-
ments, however, are founded on a defective acquaintance
with the powers and properties of matter. Without com-
mitting myself in the least to De la Kive's notion, to the
doctrine of spontaneous generation, or to the germ theory
of disease, I woukl simply draw attention to the demon-
strable fact that, in the atmosphere, we have particles
which defy both the microscope and the balance, which
do not darken the air, and which exist, nevertheless, in
multitudes sufficient to reduce to insignificance the Israel-
itish hyperbole regarding the sands upon the sea-shore.

The varying judgments of men on these and other
questions may perhaps be, to some extent, accounted for
by that doctrine of Relativity which plays so important a
part in philosoph}^ This doctrine affirms that the impres-
sions made upon us by any circumstance, or combination
of circiimstances, depend upon our previous state. Two
travellers upon the same height, the one having ascended
to it from the plain, the other having descended to it
from a higher elevation, will be differently affected by
the scene around them. To the one nature is expanding,
to the other it is contracting, and impressions which have
two such different antecedent states are sure to differ.
In our scientihc judgments the law of relativity may also

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION 133

play an important part. To two men, one educated in
the school of tlie senses, Laving mainly occupied himself
with observation; the other educated in the school of
imagination as well, and exercised in the conceptions of
atoms and molecules to which we have so frequently re-
ferred, a bit of matter, say 50000th of an inch in diameter,
will present itself differently. The one descends to it from
his molar heights, the other climbs to it from his molecu-
lar lowlands. To the one it appears small, to the other
large. So, also, as regards the appreciation of the most
minute forms of life revealed by the microscope. To one
of the men these naturally appear conterminous with the
ultimate particles of matter; there is but a step from the
atom to the organism. The other discerns numberless
organic gradations between both. Compared with his
atoms, the smallest vibrios and bacteria of the micro-
scopic field are as behemoth and leviathan. The law of
relativity may to some extent explain the different atti-
tudes of two such persons with regard to the question of
spontaneous generation. An amount of evidence which
satisfies the one entirely fails to satisfy the other; and
while to the one the last bold defence and startling ex-
pansion of the doctrine by Dr. Bastian will appear per-
fectly conclusive, to the other it will present itself as
merely imposing a labor of demolition on subsequent
investigators. ^

Let me say here that many of our physiological ob-
servers appear to form a very inadequate estimate of the
distance which separates the microscopic from the mo-
lecular limit, and that, as a consequence, they sometimes

' When these words were uttered I did not imagine that the chief labor
of demolition would fall upon myself. 1878.

134 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

employ a phraseology calculated to mislead. When, for
example, the contents of a cell are described as perfectly
homogeneous or as absolutely structureless, because the
microscope fails to discover any structure; or when two
structures are pronounced to be without difference, be-
cause the microscope can discover none, then, I think, the
microscope begins to play a mischievous part. A little
consideration will make it plain that the microscope can
have no voice in the question of germ structure. Distilled
water is more perfectly homogeneous than any possible
organic germ. What is ilr that causes the liquid to cease
contracting at 39° Fahr., and to expand until it freezes?
We have here a structural process of which the microscope
can take no note, nor is it likely to do so by any conceiv-
able extension of its powers. Place distilled water -in the
field of an electro-magnet, and bring a microscope to bear
upon it. Will any change be observed when the magnet
is excited? Absolutely none; and still profound and
complex changes have occurred. First of all, the par-
ticles of water have been rendered diamagnetically polar;
and secondly, in virtue of the structure impressed upon
it by the magnetic whirl of its molecules, the liquid twists
a ray of light in a fashion perfectly determinate both as
to quantity and direction.

Have the diamond, the amethyst, and the countless
other crystals formed in the laboratories of nature and of
man no structure? Assuredly they have; but what can
the microscope make of it? Nothing. It cannot be too
distinctly borne in mind that between the microscopic limit,
and the true molecular limit, there is room for infinite
permutations and combinations. It is in this region that
the poles of the atoms are arranged, that tendency is given

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION 135

to their powers; so that when these poles and powers
have free action, proper stimulus, and a suitable environ-
ment, they determine, first the germ, and afterward the
complete organism. This first marshalling of the atoms,
on which all subsequent action depends, baffles a keener
power than that of the microscope. When duly pondered,
the complexity of the problem raises the doubt, not of the
power of our instrument, for that is nil, but whether we
ourselves possess the intellectual elements which will ever
enable us to grapple with the ultimate structural ener-
gies of nature.*

In more senses than one Mr. Darwin has drawn heavily
upon the scientific tolerance of his age. He has drawn
heavily upon time in his development of species, and he
has drawn adventurously upon matter in his theory of
pangenesis. According to this theory, a germ, already
microscopic, is a world of minor germs. Not only is the
organism as a whole wrapped up in the germ, but every
organ of the organism has there its special seed. This,
I say, is an adventurous draft on the power of matter to
divide itself and distribute its forces. But, unless we are
perfectly sure that he is overstepping the bounds of rea-
son, that he is unwittingly sinning against observed fact
or demonstrated law — for a mind like that of Darwin can
never sin wittingly against either fact or law — we ought.

^ **In using the expression *one sort of Kving substance' I must guard
against being supposed to mean that any kind of living protoplasm is homo-
geneous. Hyaline though it may appear, we are not at present able to assign
any limit to its complexity of structure." — ^Burden Sanderson, in the "British
Medical Journal," January 16, 1875.

"We have here scientific insight, and its correlative caution. In fact Dr.
Sanderson's important researches are a continued illustration of the position laid
do^n above.

136 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

I think, to be cautious in limiting his intellectual horizon.
If there be the least doubt in the matter, it ought to be
given in favor of the freedom of such a mind. To it a
vast possibility is in itself a dynamic power, though the
possibility may never be drawn upon. It gives me pleas-
ure to think that the facts and reasonings of this discourse
tend rather toward the justification of Mr. Darwin, than
toward his condemnation; for they seem to show the per-
fect competence of matter and force, as regards divisi-
bility and distribution, to bear the heaviest strain that
he has hitherto imposed upon them.

In the case of Mr. Darwin, observation, imagination,
and reason combined have run back with wonderful sagac-
ity and success over a certain length of the line of biolog-
ical succession. Guided by analogy, in his "Origin of
Species" he placed at the root of life a primordial germ,
from which he conceived the amazing variety of the or-
ganisms now upon the earth's surface might be deduced.
If this hypothesis were even true, it would not be final.
The human mind would infallibly look behind the germ,
and however hopeless the attempt, would inquire into the
history of its genesis. In this dim twilight of conjecture
the searcher welcomes every gleam, and seeks to augment
his light by indirect incidences. He studies the methods
of nature in the ages and the worlds within his reach, in
order to shape the course of speculation in antecedent ages
and worlds. And though the certainty possessed by ex-
perimental inquiry is here shut out, we are not left entirely
without guidance. From the examination of the solar
system, Kant and Laplace came to the conclusion that its
various bodies once formed parts of the same undislocated
mass; that matter in a nebulous form preceded matter in

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION 137

its present form; that as the ages rolled away, heat was
wasted, condensation followed, planets were detached;
and that finally the chief portion of the hot cloud reached,
by self-compression, the magnitude and density of our
sun. The earth itself offers evidence of a fiery origin;
and in our day the hypothesis of Kant and Laplace re-
ceives the independent countenance of spectrum analysis,
which proves the same substances to be common to the
earth and sun.

Accepting some such view of the construction of our
system as probable, a desire immediately arises to con-
nect the present life of our planet with the past. We
wish to know something of our remotest ancestry. On
its first detachment from the central mass, life, as we
understand it, could not have been present on the earth.
How, then, did it come there ? The thing to be encour-
aged here is a reverent freedom — a freedom preceded by
the hard discipline which checks licentiousness in specula-
tion— while the thmg to be repressed, both in science and
out of it, is dogmatism. And here I am in the hands of
the meeting — willing to end, but ready to go on. I have
no right to intrude upon you, unasked, the unformed no-
tions which are floating like clouds, or gathering to more
solid consistency, in the modern speculative scientific
mind. But if you wish me to speak plainly, honestly
and undisputatiously, I am willing to do so. On the
present occasion —

You are ordained to call, and I to come.

"Well, your answer is given, and I obey your call.
Two or three years ago, in an ancient London college,
I listened to a discussion at the end of a lecture by a very

138 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

remarkable man. Three or four hundred clergymen were
present at the lecture. The orator began with the civiliza-
tion of Egypt in the time of Joseph; pointing out the
very perfect organization of the kingdom, and the posses-
sion of chariots, in one of which Joseph rode, as proving
a long antecedent period of civilization. He then passed
on to the mud of the Nile, its rate of augmentation, its
present thickness, and the remains of human handiwork
found therein; thence to the rocks which bound the Nile
valley, and which teem with organic remains. Thus in
his own clear way he caused the idea of the world's age
to expand itself indefinitely before the minds of his audi-
ence, and he contrasted this with the age usually assigned
to the world. During his discourse he seemed to be swim-
ming against a stream, he manifestly thought that he was
opposing a general conviction. He expected resistance in
the subsequent discussion; so did I. But it was all a
mistake; there was no adverse current, no opposing con-
viction, no resistance; merely here and there a half -humor-
ous but unsuccessful attempt to entangle him in his talk.
The meeting agreed with all that had been said regarding
the antiquity of the earth and of its life. They had, in-
deed, known it all long ago, and they rallied the lecturer
for coming among them with so stale a story. It was quite
plain that this large body of clergymen, who were, I should
say, to be ranked among the finest samples of their class,
had entirely given up the ancient landmarks, and trans-
ported the conception of life's origin to an indefinitely
distant past.

This leads us to the gist of our present inquiry, which
is this : Does life belong to what we call matter, or is it
an independent principle inserted into matter at some suit-

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION 139

nble epoch — say wlien the physical conditions became such
as to permit of the development of life? Let us put the
question with the reverence due to a faith and culture in
which we all were cradled, and which are the undeniable
historic antecedents of our present enlightenment. I say,
let us put the question reverently, but let us also put it
clearly and definitely. There are the strongest grounds
for believing that during a certain period of its history the
earth was not, nor was it fit to be, the theatre of life.
Whether this was ever a nebulous period, or merely a
molten period, does not signify much; and if we revert
to the nebulous condition, it is because the probabilities
are really on its side. Our question is this: Did creative
energy pause until the nebulous matter had condensed,
until the earth had been detached, until the solar fire had
so far withdrawn from the earth's vicinity as to permit
a crust to gather round the planet? Did it wait until the
air was isolated; until the seas were formed; until evap-
oration, condensation, and the descent of rain had begun;
until the eroding forces of the atmosphere had weathered
and decomposed the molten rocks so as to form soils;
until the sun's rays had become so tempered by distance,
and by waste, as to be chemically fit for the decomposi-
tions necessary to vegetable life? Having waited through
these eons until the proper conditions had set in, did it
send the fiat forth, "Let there be Life!"? These ques-
tions define a hypothesis not without its difficulties, but
the dignity of which in relation to the world's knowledge
was demonstrated by the nobleness of the men whom it
sustained.

Modern scientific thought is called upon to decide
between this hypothesis and another; and public thought

140 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

generally will afterward be called upon to do tlie same.
But, however the convictions of individuals here and there
may be influenced, the process must be slow and secular
which commends the hypothesis of Natural Evolution to
the public mind. For what are the core and essence of
this hypothesis ? Strip it naked, and you stand face
to face with the notion that not alone the more ignoble
forms of animalcular or animal life, not alone the nobler
forms of the horse and lion, not alone the exquisite and
wonderful mechanism of the human body, but that the
human mind itself — emotion, intellect, will, and all their
phenomena — were once latent in a fiery cloud. Surely the
mere statement of such a notion is more than a refutation.
But the hypothesis would probably go even further than
this. Many who hold it would probably assent to the
position that, at the present moment, all our philosophy,
all our poetry, all our science, and all our art — Plato,
Shakespeare, Newton, and Raphael — are potential in the
fires of the sun. We long to learn something of our ori-
gin. If the Evolution hypothesis be correct, even this
unsatisfied yearning must have come to us across the ages
which separate the primeval mist from the consciousness
of to-day. I do not think that any holder of the Evolu-
tion hypothesis would say that I overstate or overstrain
it in any way. I merely strip it of all vagueness, and
bring before you, unclothed and unvarnished, the notions
by which it must stand or fall.

Surely these notions represent an absurdity too mon-
strous to be entertained by any sane mind. But why are
such notions absurd, and why should sanity reject them ?
The law of Relativity, of which we have previously
spoken, may find its application here. These Evolution

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION 141

notions are absurd, monstrous, and fit only for the intel-
lectual gibbet, in relation to the ideas concerning matter
which were drilled into us when young. Spirit and mat-
ter have ever been presented to us in the rudest contrast,
the one as all-noble, the other as all-vile. But is this
correct? Upon the answer to this question all depends.
Supposing that, instead of having the foregoing antithesis
of spirit and matter presented to our youthful minds, we
had been taught to regard them as equally worthy, and
equally wonderful ; to consider them, in fact, as two oppo-
site faces of the self-same mystery. Supposing that in
youth we had been impregnated with the notion of the
poet Groethe, instead of the notion of the poet Young, and
taught to look upon matter, not as ''brute matter," but
as the "living garment of Grod"; do you not think that
under these altered circumstances the law of Relativity
might have had an outcome different from its present one ?
Is it not probable that our repugnance to the idea of pri-
meval union between spirit and matter might be consider-
ably abated? Without this total revolution of the notions
now prevalent, the Evolution hypothesis must stand con-
demned; but in many profoundly thoughtful minds such
a revolution has already taken place. They degrade
neither member of the mysterious duality referred to;
but they exalt one of them from its abasement, and repeal
the divorce hitherto existing between them. In sub-
stance, if not in words, their position as regards the rela-
tion of spirit and matter is: "What Grod hath joined to-
gether, let no man put asunder."

You have been thus led to the outer rim of speculative
science, for beyond the nebulae scientific thought has never
hitherto ventured. I have tried to state that which I con-

142 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

sidered onglit, in fairness, to be outspoken. I neither
think this Evolution hypothesis is to be flouted away
contemptuously, nor that it ought to be denounced as
wicked. It is to be brought before the bar of disciplined
reason, and there justified or condemned. Let us hearken
to those who wisely support it, and to those who wisely
oppose it; and let us tolerate those, whose name is legion,
who try foolishly to do either of these things. The only
thing out of place in the discussion is dogmatism on either
side. Fear not the Evolution hypothesis. Steady your-
selves, in its presence, upon that faith in the ultimate
triumph of truth which was expressed by old Gamaliel
when he said: *'If it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it;
if it be of man, it will come to naught." Under the fierce
light of scientific inquiry, it is sure to be dissipated if it
possess not a core of truth. Trust me, its existence as a
hypothesis is quite compatible with the simultaneous ex-
istence of all those virtues to which the term *' Christian'*
has been applied. It does not solve — it does not profess
to solve — the ultimate mystery of this universe. It
leaves, in fact, that mystery untouched. For, granting
the nebula and its potential life, the question, whence
they came, would still remain to baffle and bewilder us.
At bottom, the hypothesis does nothing more than * 'trans-
port the conception of life's origin to an indefinitely dis-
tant past."

Those who hold the doctrine of Evolution are by no
means ignorant of the uncertainty of their data, and they
only yield to it a provisional assent. They regard the
nebular hypothesis as probable, and, in the utter absence
of any evidence to prove the act illegal, they extend the
method of nature from the present into the past. Here

SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION 143

the observed uniformity of nature is their only guide.
Within the long range of physical inquiry, they have
never discerned in nature the insertion of caprice.
Throughout this range, the laws of physical and intel-
lectual continuity have run side by side. Having thus
determined the elements of their curve in a world of ob-
servation and experiment, they prolong that curve into
an antecedent world, and accept as probable the unbroken
sequence of development from the nebula to the present
time. You never hear the really philosophical defenders
of the doctrine of Uniformity speaking of impossibilities
in nature. They never say, what they are constantly
charged with saying, that it is impossible for the Builder
of the universe to alter His work. Their business is not
with the possible, but the actual — not with a world which
might be, but with a world that is. This they explore
with a courage not unmixed with reverence, and accord-
ing to methods which, like the quality of a tree, are tested
by their fruits. They have but one desire — to know the
truth. They have but one fear — ^to believe a lie. And
if they know the strength of science, and rely upon it
with unswerving trust, they also know the limits beyond
which science ceases to be strong. They best know that
questions offer themselves to thought, which science, as
now prosecuted, has not even the tendency to solve. They
have as little fellowship with the atheist who says there
is no Grod, as with the theist who professes to know the
mind of God. "Two things," said Immanuel Kant, "fill
me with awe: the starry heavens, and the sense of moral
responsibility in man." And in his hours of health and
strength and sanity, when the stroke of action has ceased,
and the pause of reflection has set in, the scientific in-

144 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

vestigator finds himself overshadowed by the same awe.
Breaking contact with the hampering details of earth, it
associates him with a Power which gives fulness and tone
to his existence, but which he can neither analyze nor
comprehend.

There is one God supreme over all gods, diviner than mortals,

"Whose form is not like unto man's, and as unlike his nature;
But vain mortals imagine that gods like themselves are begotten,
"With human sensations and voice and corporeal members;
So, if oxen or lions had hands and could work m man's fashion,
And trace out with chisel or brush their conception of Godhead,
Then would horses depict gods like horses, and oxen hke oxen.
Each kind the divine with its own form and nature endowing.

Xenophanes of Colophon (six centuries b.o.X
Supernatural Eeligion, voL i. p. 76.

IX

THE BELFAST ADDEESS '
§ 1

AN impulse inherent in primeval man turned his
thoughts and questionings betimes toward the
sources of natural phenomena. The same impulse,
inherited and intensified, is the spur of scientific action
to-day. Determined by it, by a process of abstraction
from experience we form physical theories which lie
beyond the pale of experience, but which satisfy the
desire of the mind to see every natural occurrence
resting upon a cause. In forming their notions of
the origin of things, our earliest historic (and doubt-
less, we might add, our prehistoric) ancestors pursued,
as far as their intelligence permitted, the same course.
They also fell back upon experience; but with this
diiference — that the particular experiences which fur-
nished the warp and woof of their theories were drawn,

* Delivered before the British Association on Wednesday evening, August
19, 1874.

Science — —7 (145)

146 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

not from the study of nature, but from what lay much
closer to them — the observation of men. Their theories
accordingly took an anthropomorphic form. To super-
sensual beings, which, "however potent and invisible,
were nothing but a species of human creatures, perhaps
raised from among mankind, and retaining all human
passions and appetites,"' were handed over the rule and
governance of natural phenomena.

Tested by observation and reflection, these early no-
tions failed in the long run to satisfy the more penetrating
intellects of our race. Far in the depths of history we
find men of exceptional power differentiating themselves
from the crowd, rejecting these anthropomorphic notions,
and seeking to connect natural phenomena with their phy-
sical principles. But, long prior to these purer efforts
of the understanding, the merchant had been abroad, and
rendered the philosopher possible; commerce had been
developed, wealth amassed, leisure for travel and specula-
tion secured, while races educated under different condi-
tions, and therefore differently informed and endowed,
had been stimulated and sharpened by mutual contact.
In those regions where the commercial aristocracy of
ancient Grreece mingled with their Eastern neighbors, the
sciences were born, being nurtured and developed by free-
thinking and courageous men. The state of things to be
displaced may be gathered from a passage of Euripides
quoted by Hume. "There is nothing in the world; no
glory, no prosperity. The gods toss all into confusion;
mix everything with its reverse, that all of us, from our
ignorance and uncertainty, may pay them the more wor-

* Hume, "Natural History of Religion."

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 147

ship and reverence." Now as science demands the radical
extirpation of caprice, and the absolute reliance upon law
in nature, there grew, with the growth of scientific no-
tions, a desire and determination to sweep from the field
of theory this mob of gods and demons, and to place nat-
ural phenomena on a basis more congruent with them-
selves.

The problem which had been previously approached
from above was now attacked from below; theoretic effort
passed from the super- to the sub-sensible. It was felt
that to construct the universe in idea it was necessary to
have some notion of its constituent parts — of what Lu-
cretius subsequently called the "First Beginnings." Ab-
stracting again from experience, the leaders of scientific
speculation reached at length the pregnant doctrine of
atoms and molecules, the latest developments of which
were set forth with such power and clearness at the last
meeting of the British Association. Thought, no doubt,
had long hovered about this doctrine before it attained
the precision and completeness which it assumed in the
mind of Democritus,' a philosopher who may well for a
moment arrest our attention. "Few great men," says
Lange, a non-materialist, in his excellent "History of
Materialism," to the spirit and to the letter of which I
am equally indebted, "have been so despitefully used by
history as Democritus. In the distorted images sent down
to us through unscientific traditions, there remains of him
almost nothing but the name of *the laughing philoso-
pher,' while figures of immeasurably smaller significance
spread themselves out at full length before us." Lange

* Born 460 B.C.

148 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

m

speaks of Bacon's liigh appreciation of Democritus — ^for
ample illustrations of which I am indebted to my excel-
lent friend Mr. Spedding, the learned editor and biog-
rapher of Bacon. It is evident, indeed, that Bacon con-
sidered Democritus to be a man of weightier metal than
either Plato or Aristotle, though their philosophy "was
noised and celebrated in the schools, amid the din and
pomp of professors." It was not they, but Grenseric and
Attila and the barbarians, who destroyed the atomic phi-
losophy. "For, at a time when all human learning had
suffered shipwreck, these planks of Aristotelian and Pla-
tonic philosophy, as being of a lighter and more inflated
substance, were preserved and came down to us, while
things more solid sank and almost passed into oblivion."

The son of a wealthy father, Democritus devoted the
whole of his inherited fortune to the culture of his mind.
He travelled everywhere; visited Athens when Socrates
and Plato were there, but quitted the city without mak-
ing himself known. Indeed, the dialectic strife in which
Socrates so much delighted had no charm for Democritus,
who held that "the man who readily contradicts, and uses
many words, is unfit to learn anything truly right." He
is said to have discovered and educated Protagoras the
Sophist, being struck as much by the manner in which
he, being a hewer of wood, tied up his fagots, as by the
sagacity of his conversation. Democritus returned poor
from his travels, was supported by his brother, and at
length wrote his great work entitled "Diakosmos," which
he read publicly before the people of his native town.
He was honored by his countrymen in various ways, and
died serenely at a great age.

The principles enunciated by Democritus reveal his un-

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 149

compromising antagonism to those who deduced the phe-
nomena of nature from the caprices of the gods. They
are briefly these: 1. From nothing comes nothing. Noth-
ing that exists can be destroyed. All changes are due to
the combination and separation of molecules. 2. Nothing
happens by chance; every occurrence has its cause, from
which it follows by necessity. 3. The only existing things
are the atoms and empty space; all else is mere opinion.

4. The atoms are infinite in number and infinitely various
in form; they strike together, and the lateral motions and
whirlings which thus arise are the beginnings of worlds.

5. The varieties of all things depend upon the varieties
of their atoms, in number, size, and aggregation. 6. The
soul consists of fine, smooth, round atoms, like those of
fire. These are the most mobile of all: they interpene-
trate the whole body, and in their motions the phenomena
of life arise.

The first five propositions are a fair general statement
of the atomic philosophy, as now held. As regards the
sixth, Democritus made his finer atoms do duty for the
nervous system, whose functions were then unknown.
The atoms of Democritus are individually without sensa-
tion; they combine in obedience to mechanical laws; and
not only organic forms, but the phenomena of sensation
and thought, are the result of their combination.

That great enigma, "the exquisite adaptation of one
part of an organism to another part, and to the conditions
of life,** more especially the construction of the human
body, Democritus made no attempt to solve. Empedocles,
sk man of more fiery and poetic nature, introduced the no-
tion of love and hate among the atoms, to account for
their combination and separation; and bolder than De-

150 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

mocritus, lie struck in with the penetrating thought,
linked, however, with some wild speculation, that it lay
in the very nature of those combinations which were
suited to their ends (in other words, in harmony with
their environment) to maintain themselves, while unfit
combinations, having no proper habitat, must rapidly dis-
appear. Thus, more than 2,000 years ago, the doctrine of
the "survival of the fittest," which in our day, not on
the basis of vague conjecture, but of positive knowledge,
has been raised to such extraordinary significance, had
received at all events partial enunciation.*

Epicurus,' said to be the son of a poor schoolmaster at
Samos, is the next dominant figure in the history of the
atomic philosophy. He mastered the writings of Democri-
tus, heard lectures in Athens, went back to Samos, and
subsequently wandered through various countries. He fi-
nally returned to Athens, where he bought a garden, and
surrounded himself by pupils, in the midst of whom he
lived a pure and serene life, and died a peaceful death.
Democritus looked to the soul as the ennobling part of
man; even beauty, without understanding, partook of ani-
malism. Epicurus also rated the spirit above the body;
the pleasure of the body being that of the moment, while
the spirit could draw upon the future and the past. His
philosophy was almost identical with that of Democritus;
but he never quoted either friend or foe. One main ob-
ject of Epicurus was to free the world from superstition
and the fear of death. Death he treated with indifference.
It merely robs us of sensation. As long as we are, death
is not; and when death is, we are not. Life has no more

» See "Lange," 2d edit., p. 23. 2 ^^^^ 342 b.o.

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 151

evil for him who has made up his mind that it is no evil
not to live. He adored the gods, but not in the ordinary-
fashion. The idea of Divine power, properly purified, he
thought an elevating one. Still he taught, "Not he is
godless who rejects the gods of the crowd, but rather he
who accepts them." The gods were to him eternal and
immortal beings, whose blessedness excluded every thought
of care or occupation of any kind. Nature pursues her
course in accordance with everlasting laws, the gods never
interfering. They haunt

The lacid interspace of world and world
Where never creeps a cloud or moves a wind,
Nor ever falls the least white star of snow,
Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans,
Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar
^ Their sacred everlasting calm.^

Lange considers the relation of Epicurus to the gods
subjective; the indication, probably, of an ethical require-
ment of his own nature. We cannot read history with
open eyes, or study human nature to its depths, and fail
to discern such a requirement. Man never has been, and
he never will be, satisfied with the operations and prod-
ucts of the Understanding alone; hence physical science
cannot cover all the demands of his nature. But the his-
tory of the efforts made to satisfy these demands might
be broadly described as a history of errors — the error, in
great part, consisting in ascribing fixity to that which is
fluent, which varies as we vary, being gross when we are
gross, and becoming, as our capacities widen, more ab-
stract and sublime. On one great point the mind of Epi-

* Tennj'sons "Lucretius."

152 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

curus was at peace. He neither sought nor expected, here
or hereafter, any personal profit from his relation to the
gods. And it is assuredly a fact that loftiness and seren-
ity of thought may be promoted by conceptions which in-
volve no idea of profit of this kind. "Did I not believe,'*
said a great man* to me once, "that an Intelligence is at
the heart of things, my life on earth would be intoler-
able." The utterer of these words is not, in my opinion,
rendered less, but more, noble by the fact that it was the
need of ethical harmony here, and not the thought of per-
sonal happiness hereafter, that prompted his observation.
There are persons, not belonging to the highest intel-
lectual zone, nor yet to the lowest, to whom perfect clear-
ness of exposition suggests want of depth. They find
comfort and edification in an abstract and learned phrase-
ology. To such people Epicurus, who spared no pains to
rid his style of every trace of haze and turbidity, ap-
peared, on this very account, superficial. He had, how-
ever, a disciple who thought it no unworthy occupation to
spend his days and nights in the effort to reach the clear-
ness of his master, and to whom the Greek philosopher is
mainly indebted for the extension and perpetuation of his
fame. Some two centuries after the death of Epicurus,
Lucretius' wrote his great poem, "On the Nature of
Things," in which he, a Roman, developed with extraor-
dinary ardor the philosophy of his Greek predecessor. He
wishes to win over his friend Memnius to the school of
Epicurus; and although he has no rewards in a future life
to offer, although his object appears to be a purely nega-
tive one, he addresses his friend with the heat of an

* Carlyle. ' Born 99 B.C.

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 153

apostle. His object, like that of his great forerunner, is
the destruction of superstition; and considering that men
in his day trembled before every natural event as a direct
monition from the gods, and that everlasting torture was
also in prospect, the freedom aimed at by Lucretius might
be deemed a positive good. "This terror," he says, "and
darkness of mind, must be dispelled, not by the rays of
the sun and glittering shafts of day, but by the aspect
and the law of nature." He refutes the notion that any-
thing can come out of nothing, or that what is once be-
gotten can be recalled to nothing. The first beginnings,
the atoms, are indestructible, and into them all things can
be resolved at last. Bodies are partly atoms and partly
combinations of atoms; but the atoms nothing can quench.
They are strong in solid singleness, and, by their denser
combination, all things can be closely packed and exhibit
enduring strength. He denies that matter is infinitely di-
visible. We come at length to the atoms, without which,
as an imperishable substratum, all order in the generation
and development of things would be destroyed.

The mechanical shock of the atoms being, in his view,
the all-sufficient cause of things, he combats the notion
that the constitution of nature has been in any way deter-
mined by intelligent design. The interaction of the atoms
throughout infinite time rendered all manner of combina-
tions possible. Of these, the fit ones persisted, while the
unfit ones disappeared. Not after sage deliberation did
the atoms station themselves in their right places, nor did
they bargain what motions they should assume. From all
eternity they have been driven together, and, after trying
motions and unions of every kind, they fell at length into
the arrangements out of which this system of things has

154 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

been evolved. "If you will apprehend and keep in mind
these things, Nature, free at once, and rid of her haughty
lords, is seen to do all things spontaneously of herself,
without the meddling of the gods." *

To meet the objection that his atoms cannot be seen,
Lucretius describes a violent storm, and shows that the in-
visible particles of air act in the same way as the visible
particles of water. We perceive, moreover, the different
smells of things, yet never see them coming to our nos-
trils. Again, clothes hung up on a shore which waves
break upon, become moist, and then get dry if spread out
in the sun, though no eye can see either the approach or
the escape of the water- particles. A ring, worn long on
the finger, becomes thinner; a water-drop hollows out a
stone; the plowshare is rubbed away in the field; the
street-pavement is worn by the feet; but the particles
that disappear at any moment we cannot see. Nature acts
through invisible particles. That Lucretius had a strong
scientific imagination the foregoing references prove. A
fine illustration of his power in this respect is his ex-
planation of the apparent rest of bodies whose atoms are
in motion. He employs the image of a flock of sheep
with skipping lambs, which, seen from a distance, pre-
sents simply a white patch upon the green hill, the jump-
ing of the individual lambs being quite invisible.

His vaguely grand conception of the atoms falling eter-
nally through space, suggested the nebular hypothesis to
Kant, its first propounder. Far beyond the limits of our

* Monro's translation. In his crilicism of this work ("Contemporary Re-
view," 1867) Dr. Hayman does not appear to be aware of the really sound and
subtile observations on which the reasoning of Lucretius, though erroneous,
sometimes rest«.

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 155

risible world are to be found atoms innumerable, which
nave never been united to form bodies, or which, if once
united, have been again dispersed — falling silently through
immeasurable intervals of time and space. As everywhere
throughout the All the same conditions are repeated, so
must the phenomena be repeated also. Above us, below
us, beside us, therefore, are worlds without end; and this,
when considered, must dissipate every thought of a de-
flection of the universe by the gods. The worlds come
and go, attracting new atoms out of limitless space, or dis-
persing their own particles. The reputed death of Lucre-
tius, which forms the basis of Mr. Tennyson's noble
poem, is in strict accordance with his philosophy, which
was severe and pure.

§2

Still earlier than these three philosophers, and during
the centuries between the first of them and the last, the
human intellect was active in other fields than theirs.
Pythagoras had founded a school of mathematics, and
made his experiments on the harmonic intervals. The
Sophists had run through their career. At Athens had
appeared Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, who ruined the
Sophists, and whose yoke remains to some extent un-
broken to the present hour. Within this period also the
School of Alexandria was founded, Euclid wrote his "Ele-
ments" and made some advance in optics. Archimedes
had propounded the theory of the lever, and the prin-
ciples of hydrostatics. Astronomy was immensely enriched
by the discoveries of Hipparchus, who was followed by
the historically more celebrated Ptolemy. Anatomy had
been made the basis of scientific medicine; and it is said

156 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

by Draper ' that vivisection had begun. In fact, the
science of ancient Grreece had already cleared the world
of the fantastic images of divinities operating capriciously
through natural phenomena. It had shaken itself free
from that fruitless scrutiny *'by the internal light of the
mind alone," which had vainly sought to transcend expe-
rience, and to reach a knowledge of ultimate causes. In-
stead of accidental observation, it had introduced observa-
tion with a purpose; instruments were employed to aid
the senses; and scientific method was rendered in a great
measure complete by the union of Induction and Experi-
ment.

"What, then, stopped its victorious advance ? Why was
the scientific intellect compelled, like an exhausted soil, to
lie fallow for nearly two millenniums, before it could re-
gather the elements necessary to its fertility and strength ?
Bacon has already let us know one cause; Whewell as-
cribes this stationary period to four causes — obscurity of
thought, servility, intolerance of disposition, enthusiasm
of temper; and he gives striking examples of each." But
these characteristics must have had their antecedents in
the circumstances of the time. Eome, and the other cities
of the Empire, had fallen into moral putrefaction. Chris-
tianity had appeared, offering the Gospel to the poor, and
by moderation, if not asceticism of life, practically protest-
ing against the profligacy of the age. The sufferings of
the early Christians, and the extraordinary exaltation of
mind which enabled them to triumph over the diabolical
tortures to which they were subjected, ^ must have left

* "History of the Intellectual Development of Europe," p. 295,

' "History of the Inductive Sciences," vol. i.

^ Described with terrible vividness in Renan's "Antichrist,"

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 157

traces not easily effaced. They scorned the earth, in view
of that "building of God, that house not made with hands,
eternal in the heavens. ' ' The Scriptures which ministered
to their spiritual needs were also the measure of their
Science. When, for example, the celebrated question of the
Antipodes came to be discussed, the Bible was with many
the ultimate court of appeal. Augustine, who flourished
A.D. 400, would not deny the rotundity of the earth; but
he would deny the possible existence of inhabitants at the
other side, *' because no such race is recorded in Scripture
among the descendants of Adam/' Archbishop Boniface
was shocked at the assumption of a "world of human be-
ings out of the reach of the means of salvation." Thus
reined in. Science was not likely to make much progress.
Later on, the political and theological strife between the
Church and civil governments, so powerfully depicted by
Draper, must have done much to stifle investigation.

Whewell makes many wise and brave remarks regard-
ing the spirit of the Middle Ages. It was a menial spirit.
The seekers after natural knowledge had forsaken the
fountain of living waters, the direct appeal to Nature by
observation and experiment, and given themselves up to
the remanipulation of the notions of their predecessors.
It was a time when thought had become abject, and when
the acceptance of mere authority led, as it always does in
science, to intellectual death. Natural events, instead of
being traced to physical, were referred to moral, causes;
while an exercise of the fantasy, almost as degrading as
the spiritualism of the present day, took the place of scien-
tific speculation. Then came the mysticism of the Middle
Ages, Magic, Alchemy, the Neoplatonic philosophy, with
its visionary though sublime abstractions, which caused

158 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

men to look with shame upon their own bodies, as hin-
derances to the absorption of the creature in the blessed-
ness of the Creator. Finally came the scholastic philoso-
phy, a fusion, according to Lange, of the least mature
notions of Aristotle with the Christianity of the West. In-
tellectual immobility was the result. As a traveller with-
out a compass in a fog may wander long, imagining he is
making way, and find himself after hours of toil at his
starting-point, so the schoolmen, having "tied and untied
the same knots, and formed and dissipated the same
clouds," ' found themselves at the end of centuries in
their old position.

With regard to the influence wielded by Aristotle in
the Middle Ages, and which, to a less extent, he still
wields, I would ask permission to make one remark.
When the human mind has achieved greatness and given
evidence of extraordinary power in one domain, there is
a tendency to credit it with similar power in all other do-
mains. Thus theologians have found comfort and assur-
ance in the thought that Newton dealt with the question
of revelation — forgetful of the fact that the very devotion
of his powers, through all the best years of his life, to a
totally different class of ideas, not to speak of any natural
disqualification, tended to render him less, instead of more,
competent to deal with theological and historic questions.
Goethe, starting from his established greatness as a poet,
and indeed from his positive discoveries in Natural His-
tory, produced a profound impression among the painters
of Grermany, when he published his "Farbenlehre," in
which he endeavored to overthrow Newton's theory of

» WhewelL

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 159

colors. This theory he deemed so obviously absurd that
he considered its author a charlatan, and attacked him
with a corresponding vehemence of language. In the do-
main of Natural History, Groethe had made really consid-
erable discoveries ; and we have high authority for assum-
ing that, had he devoted himself wholly to that side of
science, he might have reached an eminence comparable
with that which he attained as a poet. In sharpness of
observation, in the detection of analogies apparently re-
mote, in the classification and organization of facts accord-
ing to the analogies discerned, Goethe possessed extraordi-
nary powers. These elements of scientific inquiry fall in
with the disciplines of the poet. But, on the other hand, a
mind thus richly endowed in the direction of natural his-
tory, may be almost shorn of endowment as regards the
physical and mechanical sciences. Goethe was in this
condition. He could not formulate distinct mechanical
conceptions; he could not see the force of mechanical
reasoning; and, in regions where such reasoning reigns
supreme, he became a mere ignis fatuus to those who
followed him.

I have sometimes permitted myself to compare Aris-
totle with Goethe — to credit the Stagirite with an almost
superhuman power of amassing and systematizing facts,
but to consider him fatally defective on that side of the
mind, in respect to which incompleteness has been just
ascribed to Goethe. Whewell refers the errors of Aris-
totle not to a neglect of facts, but to "a neglect of the
idea appropriate to the facts: the idea of Mechanical
cause, which is Force, and the substitution of vague or
inapplicable notions, involving only relations of space or
emotions of wonder." This is doubtless true; but the

160 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

word "neglect" implies mere intellectual misdirection,
whereas in Aristotle, as in Groethe, it was not, I believe,
misdirection, but sheer natural incapacity which lay at
the root of his mistakes. As a physicist, Aristotle dis-
played what we should consider some of the worst of
attributes in a modern physical investigator — indistinct-
ness of ideas, confusion of mind, and a confident use
of language which led to the delusive notion that he
had really mastered his subject, while he had, as yet,
failed to grasp even the elements of it. He put words
in the place of things, subject in the place of ob-
ject. He preached Induction without practicing it, in-
verting the true order of inquiry, by passing from
the general to the particular, instead of from the par-
ticular to the general. He made of the universe a closed
sphere, in the centre of which he fixed the earth, prov-
ing from general principles, to his own satisfaction and
to that of the world for near 2,000 years, that no other
universe was possible. His notions of motion were en-
tirely unphysical. It was natural or unnatural, better or
worse, calm or violent — no real mechanical conception re-
garding it lying at the bottom of his mind. He afiirmed
that a vacuum could not exist, and proved that if it did
motion in it would be impossible. He determined a priori
how many species of animals must exist, and showed on
general principles why animals must have such and such
parts. When an eminent contemporary philosopher, who
is far removed from errors of this kind, remembers these
abuses of the d priori method, he will be able to make
allowance for the jealousy of physicists as to the accept-
ance of so-called d priori truths. Aristotle's errors of de-
tail, as shown by Eucken and Lange, were grave and

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 161

numerous. He affirmed that only in man we had the beat-
ing of the heart, that the left side of the body was colder
than the right, that men have more teeth than women, and
that there is an empty space at the back of every man's
head.

There is one essential quality in physical conceptions
which was entirely wanting in those of Aristotle and his
followers — a capability of being placed as coherent pictures
before the mind. The Germans express the act of pictur-
ing by the word vorstellen, and the picture they call a Vor-
stelliLng. We have no word in English which comes nearer
to our requirements than Imagination ; and, taken with its
proper limitations, the word answers very well. But it is
tainted by its associations, and therefore objectionable to
some minds. Compare, with reference to this capacity
of mental presentation, the case of the Aristotelian, who
refers the ascent of water in a pump to Nature's abhor-
rence of a vacuum, with that of Pascal when he proposed
to solve the question of atmospheric pressure by the ascent
of the Puy de Dome. In the one case the terms of the
explanation refuse to fall mto place as a physical image;
in the other the image is distinct, the descent and rise
of the barometer being clearly figured beforehand as the
balancing of two varying and opposing pressures.

§3
During the drought of the Middle Ages in Christen-
dom, the Arabian intellect, as forcibly shown by Draper,
was active. With the intrusion of the Moors into Spain,
order, learning, and refinement took the place of their
opposites. When smitten with disease, the Christian peas-
ant resorted to a shrine, the Moorish one to an instructed

162 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

physician. The Arabs encouraged translations from the
Greek philosophers, but not from the Greek poets. They
turned in disgust "from the lewdness of our classical
mythology, and denounced as an unpardonable blasphemy
all connection between the impure Olympian Jove and the
Most High God." Draper traces still further than Whew-
ell the Arab elements in our scientific terms. He gives
examples of what Arabian men of science accomplished,
dwelling particularly on Alhazen, who was the first to
correct the Platonic notion that rays of light are emitted
by the eye. Alhazen discovered atmospheric refraction,
and showed that we see the sun and the moon after they
have set. He explained the enlargement of the sun and
moon, and the shortening of the vertical diameters of both
these bodies when near the horizon. He was aware that
the atmosphere decreases in density with increase of eleva-
tion, and actually fixed its height at 583^ miles. In the
*'Book of the Balance of Wisdom," he sets forth the con-
nection between the weight of the atmosphere and its in-
creasing density. He shows that a body will weigh differ-
ently in a rare and dense atmosphere, and he considers
the force with which plunged bodies rise through heavier
media. He understood the doctrine of the centre of grav-
ity, and applied it to the investigation of balances and
steelyards. He recognized gravity as a force, though he
fell into the error of assuming it to diminish simply as
the distance, and of making it purely terrestrial. He
knew the relation between the velocities, spaces, and times
of falling bodies, and had distinct ideas of capillary attrac-
tion. He improved the hydrometer. The determinations
of the densities of bodies, as given by Alhazen, approach
very closely to our own. *'I join," says Draper, "in the

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 163

pious prayer of Alhazen, that in the day of judgment the
All-Merciful will take pity on the soul of Abur-Kaihan,
because he was the first of the race of men to construct
a table of specific gravities." If all this be historic truth
(and L have entire confidence in Dr. Draper), well may
he "deplore the systematic manner in which the literature
of Europe has contrived to put out of sight our scientific
obligations to the Mohammedans. ' ' *

The strain upon the mind during the stationary period
toward ultra -terrestrial things, to the neglect of problems
close at hand, was sure to provoke reaction. But the re-
action was gradual; for the ground was dangerous, and
a power was at hand competent to crush the critic who
went too far. To elude this power, and still allow oppor-
tunity for the expression of opinion, the doctrine of "two-
fold truth" was invented, according to which an opinion
might be held "theologically," and the opposite opinion
"philosophically." ' Thus, in the thirteenth century, the
creation of the world in six days, and the unchangeable -
ness of the individual soul, which had been so distinctly
affirmed by St. Thomas Aquinas, were both denied phil-
osophically, but admitted to be true as articles of the
Catholic faith. When Protagoras uttered the maxim which
brought upon him so much vituperation, that "opposite
assertions are equally true," he simply meant to affirm
men's differences to be so great, that what was subject-
ively true to the one might be subjectively untrue to the
other. The great Sophist never meant to play fast and
loose with the truth by saying that one of two opposite

* "Intellectual Development of Europe," p. 359.
8 "Lange, 2d edit, pp. 181, 182.

164 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

assertions, made by the same individual, could possibly
escape being a lie. It was not ''sophistry," but tbe dread
of tbeologic vengeance, tbat generated this double dealing
with conviction; and it is astonishing to notice what
lengths were allowed to men who were adroit in the use
of artifices of this kind.

Toward the close of the stationary period a word- weari-
ness, if I may so express it, took more and more posses-
sion of men's minds. Christendom had become sick of
the School Philosophy and its verbal wastes, which led
to no issue, but left the intellect in everlasting haze. Here
and there was heard the voice of one impatiently crying
in the wilderness, *'!N'ot unto Aristotle, not unto subtle
hypothesis, not unto Church, Bible, or blind tradition,
must we turn for a knowledge of the universe, but to the
direct investigation of Nature by observation and experi-
ment." In 1543 the epoch-marking work of Copernicus
on the paths of the heavenly bodies appeared. The total
crash of Aristotle's closed universe, with the earth at its
centre, followed as a consequence, and **The earth moves!"
became a kind of watchword among intellectual freemen.
Copernicus was Canon of the church of Frauenburg in the
diocese of Ermeland. For three -and- thirty years he had
withdrawn himself from the world, and devoted himself
to the consolidation of his great scheme of the solar sys-
tem. He made its blocks eternal; and even to those who
feared it, and desired its overthrow, it was so obviously
strong that they refrained for a time from meddling with
it. In the last year of the life of Copernicus his book
appeared: it is said that the old man received a copy
of it a few days before his death, and then departed in
peace.

THE BELFAST ADDREbS 165

The Italian philosopher, Giordano Bruno, was one of
the earliest converts to the new astronomy. Taking Lu-
cretius as his exemplar, he revived the notion of the in-
finity of worlds; and, combining with it the doctrine of
Copernicus, reached the sublime generalization that the
fixed stars are suns, scattered numberless through space,
and accompanied by satellites, which bear the same rela-
tion to them that our earth does to our sun, or our moon
to our earth. This was an expansion of transcendent im-
port; but Bruno came closer than this to our present line
of thought. Struck with the problem of the generation
and maintenance of organisms, and duly pondering it, he
came to the conclusion that Nature, in her productions,
does not imitate the technic of man. Her process is one
of unravelling and unfolding. The infinity of forms un-
der which matter appears was not imposed upon it by an
external artificer; by its own intrinsic force and virtue
it brings these forms forth. Matter is not the mere naked,
empty capacity which philosophers have pictured her to
be, but the universal mother, who brings forth all things
as the fruit of her own womb.

This outspoken man was originally a Dominican monk.
He was accused of heresy and had to fly, seeking refuge
in Geneva, Paris, England and Germany. In 1592 he fell
into the hands of the Inquisition at "Venice. He was im-
prisoned for many years, tried, degraded, excommunicated,
and handed over to the Civil power, with the request that
he should be treated gently, and "without the shedding
of blood." This meant that he was to be burned; and
burned accordingly he was, on February 16, 1600. To
escape a similar fate Galileo, thirty-three years afterward,
abjured upon his knees, with his hands upon the holy

166 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

Gospels, the heliocentric doctrine, which he knew to be
true. After Galileo came Kepler, who from his German
home defied the ultramontane power. He traced out from
pre-existing observations the laws of planetary motion.
Materials were thus prepared for Newton, who bound those
empiricar laws together by the principle of gravitation.

§4
In the seventeenth century Bacon and Descartes, the
restorers of philosophy, appeared in succession. Differ-
ently educated and endowed, their philosophic tendencies
were different. Bacon held fast to Induction, believing
firmly in the existence of an external world, and making
collected experiences the basis of all knowledge. The
mathematical studies of Descartes gave him a bias toward
Deduction; and his fundamental principle was much the
same as that of Protagoras, who made the individual man
the measure of all things. *'I think, therefore I am," said
Descartes. Only his own identity was sure to him; and
the full development of this system would have led to an
idealism, in which the outer world would have been re-
solved into a mere phenomenon of consciousness. Gas-
sendi, one of Descartes's contemporaries, of whom we
shall hear more presently, quickly pointed out that the
fact of personal existence would be proved as well by ref-
erence to any other act, as to the act of thinking. I eat,
therefore I am, or I love, therefore I am, would be quite
as conclusive. Lichtenberg, indeed, showed that the very
thing to be proved was inevitably postulated in the first
two words, "I think"; and it is plain that no inference
from the postulate could, by any possibility, be stronger
than the postulate itself.

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 167

But Descartes deviated strangely from the idealism im-
plied in his fundamental principle. He was the first to
reduce, in a manner eminently capable of bearing the test
of mental presentation, vital phenomena to purely mechan-
ical principles. Through fear or love, Descartes was a
good churchman; he accordingly rejected the notion of an
atom, because it was absurd to suppose that God, if He so
pleased, could not divide an atom; he puts in the place
of the atoms small round particles, and light splinters, out
of which he builds the organism. He sketches with mar-
vellous physical insight a machine, with water for its mo-
tive power, which shall illustrate vital actions. He has
made clear to his mind that such a machine would be
competent to carry on the processes of digestion, nutri-
tion, growth, respiration, and the beating of the heart. It
would be competent to accept impressions from the ex-
ternal sense, to store them up in imagination and mem-
ory, to go through the internal movements of the appe-
tites and passions, and the external movements of the
limbs. He deduces these functions of his machine from
the mere arrangements of its organs, as the movement of
a clock, or other automaton, is deduced from its weights
and wheels. "As far as these functions are concerned,"
he says, "it is not necessary to conceive any other vegeta-
tive or sensitive soul, nor any other principle of motion
or of life, than the blood and the spirits agitated by the
fire which burns continually in the heart, and which is
in nowise different from the fires existing in inanimate
bodies." Had Descartes been acquainted with the steam-
engine, he would have taken it, instead of a fall of water,
as his motive power. He would have shown the perfect
analogy which exists between the oxidation of the food in

168 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

the body, and that of the coal in the furnace. He would
assuredly have anticipated Mayer in calling the blood
which the heart diffuses '*the oil of the lamp of life,"
deducing all animal motions from the combustion of this
oil, as the motions of a steam-engine are deduced from
the combustion of its coal. As the matter stands, how-
ever, and considering the circumstances of the time, the
boldness, clearness, and precision, with which Descartes
grasped the problem of vital dynamics constitute a mar-
vellous illustration of intellectual power.*

During the Middle Ages the doctrine of atoms had
to all appearance vanished from discussion. It probably
held its ground among sober-minded and thoughtful men,
though neither the church nor the world was prepared to
hear of it with tolerance. Once, in the year 1348, it re-
ceived distinct expression. But retractation by compulsion
immediately followed; and, thus discouraged, it slumbered
till the seventeenth century, when it was revived by a con-
temporary and friend of Hobbes of Malmesbury, the or-
thodox Catholic provost of Digne, Gassendi. But, before
stating his relation to the Epicurean doctrine, it will be
well to say a few words on the effect, as regards science,
of the general introduction of monotheism among Eui'o-
pean nations.

"Were men," says Hume, **led into the apprehension
of invisible intelligent power by contemplation of the
works of Nature, they could never possibly entertain any
conception but of one single Being, who bestowed exist-
ence and order on this vast machine, and adjusted all its

> See Huxley's admirable "Essay on Descartes.*' — **Lay Sermons," pp.
364, 365.

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 169

parts to one regular system." Kef erring to tte condition
of the heatlien, who sees a god behind every natural event,
thus peopling the world with thousands of beings whose
caprices are incalculable, Lange shows the impossibility
of any compromise between such notions and those of
science, which proceeds on the assumption of never- chang-
ing law and causality. **But,'* he continues, with charac-
teristic penetration, '*when the great thought of one God,
lacting as a unit upon the universe, has been seized, the
connection of things in accordance with the law of cause
and effect is not only thinkable, but it is a necessary con-
sequence of the assumption. For when I see ten thou-
sand wheels in motion, and know, or believe, that they
are all driven by one motive power, then I know that I
have before me a mechanism, the action of every part of
which is determined by the plan of the whole. So much
being assumed, it follows that I may investigate the struct-
ure of that machine, and the various motions of its parts.
For the time being, therefore, this conception renders
scientific action free.'* In other words, were a capricious
God at the circumference of every wheel and at the end
of every lever, the action of the machine would be incal-
culable by the methods of science. But the actions of all
its parts being rigidly determined by their connections and
relations, and these being brought into play by a single
motive power, then, though this last prime mover may
elude me, I am still able to comprehend the machinery
which it sets in motion. We have here a conception of
the relation of Kature to its Author, which seems per-
fectly acceptable to some minds, but perfectly intolerable
to others. Newton and Boyle lived and worked happily

under the influence of this conception; Goethe rejected it

Science — VI — 8

I70 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

with, vehemence, and the same repugnance to accepting
it is manifest in Carlyle.'

The analytic and synthetic tendencies of the human
mind are traceable throughout history, great writers rang-
ing themselves sometimes on the one side, sometimes on
the other. Men of warm feelings, and minds open to the
elevating impressions produced by nature as a whole,
whose satisfaction, therefore, is ratlier ethical than log-
ical, lean to the synthetic side; while the analytic har-
monizes best with the more precise and more mechanical
bias which seeks the satisfaction of the understanding.
Some form of pantheism was usually adopted by the one,
while a detached Creator, working more or less after the
manner of men, was often assumed by the other. Gas-
sendi, as sketched by Lange, is hardly to be ranked with
either. Having formally acknowledged God as the great
first cause, he immediately dropped the idea, applied the
known laws of mechanics to the atoms, and deduced from
them all vital phenomena. He defended Epicurus, and
dwelt upon his purity, both of doctrine and of life. True
he was a heathen, but so was Aristotle. Epicurus assailed
superstition and religion, and rightly, because he did not
know the true religion. He thought that the gods neither
rewarded nor punished, and he adored them purely in
consequence of their completeness: here we see, says Gas-
sendi, the reverence of the child, instead of the fear of

' Boyle's model of the universe was the Strasburg clock with an outside
Artificer. Goethe, on the other hand, sang —

*'Ihm ziemt's die Welt im Innem zu bewegen,
Natur in sich, sich in Natur zu hegen."

See also Carlyle, "Past and Present," chap. v.

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 171

tlie slave. The errors of Epicurus shall be corrected, and
the body of his truth retained. Gassendi then proceeds,
as any heathen might have done, to build up the world,
and all that therein is, of atoms and molecules. God,
who created earth and water ^ plants and animals, produced
in the first place a definite number of atoms, which con-
stituted the seed of all things. Then began that series of
combinations and decompositions which now goes on, and
which will continue in future. The principle of every
change resides in matter. In artificial productions the
moving principle is different from the material worked
upon; but in nature the agent works within, being the
most active and mobile part of the material itself. Thus
this bold ecclesiastic, without incurring the censure of the
church or the world, contrives to outstrip Mr. Darwin.
The same cast of mind which caused him to detach the
Creator from his universe, led him also to detach the soul
from the body, though to the body he ascribes an influ-
ence so large as to render the soul almost unnecessary.
The aberrations of reason were, in his view, an affair of
the material brain. Mental disease is brain-disease; but
then the immortal reason sits apart, and cannot be touched
by the disease. The errors of madness are those of the
instrument, not of the performer.

It may be more than a mere result of education, con-
necting itself, probably, with the deeper mental structure
of the two men, that the idea of Gassendi, above enunci-
ated, is substantially the same as that expressed by Pro-
fessor Clerk Maxwell, at the close of the very able lect-
ure delivered by him at Bradford in 1873. According to
both philosophers, the atoms, if I understand aright, are
prepared materials^ which, formed once for all by the

172 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

Eternal, produce by their subsequent interaction all the
phenomena of the material world. There seems to be this
difference, however, between G-assendi and Maxwell. The
one postulates^ the other infers his first cause. In his
*' manufactured articles," as he calls the atoms. Professor
Maxwell finds the basis of an induction, which enables
him to scale philosophic heights considered inaccessible
by Kant, and to take the logical step from the atoms to
their Maker.

Accepting here the leadership of Kant, I doubt the
legitimacy of Maxwell's logic; but it is impossible not
to feel the ethic glow with which his lecture concludes.
There is, moreover, a very noble strain of eloquence in
his description of the steadfastness of the atoms: "Natu-
ral causes, as we know, are at work, which tend to modify,
if they do not at length destroy, all the arrangements and
dimensions of the earth and the whole solar system. But
though in the course of ages catastrophes have occurred
and may yet occur in the heavens, though ancient systems
may be dissolved and new systems evolved out of their
ruins, the molecules out of which these systems are built
— the foundation stones of the material universe — remain
unbroken and unworn."

The atomic doctrine, in whole or in part, was enter-
tained by Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Newton,
Boyle, and their successors, until the chemical law of
multiple proportions enabled Dalton to confer upon it an
entirely new significance. In our day there are secessions
from the theory, but it still stands firm. Loschmidt,
Stoney, and Sir William Thomson have sought to deter-
mine the sizes of the atoms, or rather to fix the limits
between which their sizes lie ; while the discourses cf Wil-

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 173

liamson and Maxwell delivered in Bradford in 1873 illus-
trate the present hold of the doctrine upon the foremost
scientific minds. In fact, it may be doubted whether,
wanting this fundamental conception, a theory of the ma-
terial universe is capable of scientific statement.

§6

Ninety years subsequent to Gassendi the doctrine of
bodily instruments, as it may be called, assumed immense
importance in the hands of Bishop Butler, who, in his
famous "Analogy of Eeligion,'* developed, from his own
point of view, and with consummate sagacity, a similar
idea. The Bishop still influences many superior minds;
and it will repay us to dwell for a moment on his views.
He draws the sharpest distinction between our real selves
and our bodily instruments. He does not, as far as I re-
member, use the word soul, possibly because the term was
so hackneyed in his day, as it had been for many gener-
ations previously. But he speaks of '^living powers,'*
"perceiving or percipient powers,'' "moving agents,'*
"ourselves," in the same sense as we should employ the
term soul. He dwells upon the fact that limbs may be
removed and mortal diseases assail the body, the mind,
almost up to the moment of death, remaining clear. He
refers to sleep and to swoon, where the "living powers'*
are suspended but not destroyed. He considers it quite
as easy to conceive of existence out of our bodies as in
them; that we may animate a succession of bodies, the
dissolution of all of them having no more tendency to dis-
solve our real selves, or "deprive us of living faculties —
the faculties of perception and action — than the dissolution
of any foreign matter which we are capable of receiving

174 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

impressions from, or making use of for the common occa-
sions of life." This is the key of the Bishop's position:
*'our organized bodies are no more a part of ourselves
than any other matter around us." In proof of this he
calls attention to the use of glasses, which "prepare ob-
jects" for the "percipient power" exactly as the eye does.
The eye itself is no more percipient than the glass; is
quite as much the instrument of the true self, and also
as foreign to the true self, as the glass is. "And if we see
with our eyes only in the same manner as we do with
glasses, the like may justly be concluded from analogy
of all our senses."

Lucretius, as you are aware, reached a precisely oppo-
site conclusion: and it certainly would be interesting, if
not profitable, to us all, to hear what he would or could
urge in opposition to the reasoning of the Bishop. As a
brief discussion of the point will enable us to see the bear-
ings of an important question, I will here permit a dis-
ciple of Lucretius to try the strength of the Bishop's posi-
tion, and then allow the Bishop to retaliate, with the view
of rolling back, if he can, the difficulty upon Lucretius.
The argument might proceed in this fashion:
"Subjected to the test of mental presentation {Yorstel-
lung), your views, most honored prelate, would offer to
many minds a great, if not an insuperable, difficulty. You
speak of 'living powers,' 'percipient or perceiving powers,'
and 'ourselves'; but can you form a mental picture of any
of these, apart from the organism through which it is sup-
posed to act? Test yourself honestly, and see whether you
possess any faculty that would enable you to form such
a conception. The true self has a local habitation in each
of us; thus localized, must it not possess a form? If so,

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 175

what form? Have you ever for a moment realized it?
When a leg is amputated the body is divided into two
parts; is the true self in both of them or in one? Thomas
Aquinas might say in both; but not you, for you appeal
to the consciousness associated with one of the two parts,
to prove that the other is foreign matter. Is conscious-
ness, then, a necessary element of the true self? If so,
what do you say to the case of the whole body being de-
prived of consciousness? If not, then on what grounds
do you deny any portion of the true self to the severed
limb? It seems very singular that, from the beginning
to the end of your admirable book (and no one admires
its sober strength more than I do), you never once men-
tion the brain or nervous system. You begin at one end
of the body, and show that its parts may be removed
without prejudice to the perceiving power. What if you
begin at the other end, and remove, instead of the leg,
the brain? The body, as before, is divided into two
parts; but both are now in the same predicament, and
neither can be appealed to to prove that the other is for-
eign matter. Or, instead of going so far as to remove
the brain itself, let a certain portion of its bony covering
be removed, and let a rhythmic series of pressures and
relaxations of pressure be applied to the soft substance.
At every pressure "the faculties of perception and of ac-
tion" vanish; at every relaxation of pressure they are
restored. Where, during the intervals of pressure, is the
perceiving power? I once had the discharge of a large
Leyden battery passed unexpectedly through me: I felt
nothing, but was simply blotted out of conscious existence
for a sensible interval. Where was my true self during
that interval? Men who have recovered from lightning-

176 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

Stroke have been mucli longer in the same state; and in-
deed in cases of ordinary concussion of the brain, days
may elapse during which no experience is registered in
consciousness. Where is the man himself during the
period of insensibility ? You may say that I beg the ques-
tion when I assume the man to have been unconscious,
that he was really conscious all the time, and has simply
forgotten what had occurred to him. In reply to this,
I can only say that no one need shrink from the worst
tortures that superstition ever invented, if only so felt and
so remembered. I do not think your theory of instru-
ments goes at all to the bottom of the matter. A tele-
graph operator has his instruments, by means of which he
converses with the world; our bodies possess a nervous
system, which plays a similar part between the perceiving
power and external things. Cut the wires of the operator,
break his battery, demagnetize his needle; by this means
you certainly sever his connection with the world: but,
inasmuch as these are real instruments, their destruction
does not touch the man who uses them. The operator
survives, and he knows that he survives. What is there,
I would ask, in the human system that answers to this
conscious survival of the operator when the battery of the
brain is so disturbed as to produce insensibility, or when
it is destroyed altogether?

"Another consideration, which you may regard as
slight, presses upon me with some force. The brain may
change from health to disease, and through such a change
the most exemplary man may be converted into a de-
bauchee or a murderer. My very noble and approved
good master had, as you know, threatenings of lewdness
inta-oduced into his brain by his jealous wife's philter; and

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 177

sooner than permit himself to run even the risk of yield-
ing to these base promptings he slew himseK. How could
the hand of Lucretius have been thus turned against him-
self if the real Lucretius remained as before? Can the
brain, or can it not, act in this distempered way without
the intervention of the immortal reason? If it can, then
it is a prime mover which requires only healthy regula-
tion to render it reasonably self-acting, and there is no
apparent need of your immortal reason at all. If it can-
not, then the immortal reason, by its mischievous activity
in operating upon a broken instrument, must have the
credit of committing every imaginable extravagance and
crime. I think, if you will allow me to say so, that the
gravest consequences are likely to flow from your esti-
mate of the body. To regard the brain as you would a
staff or an eyeglass — to shut your eyes to all its mystery,
to the perfect correlation of its condition and our con-
sciousness, to the fact that a slight excess or defect of
blood in it produces the very swoon to which you refer,
and that in relation to it our meat, and drink, and air, and
exercise, have a perfectly transcendental value and sig-
nificance— to forget all this does, I think, open a way to
innumerable errors in our habits of life, and may possibly,
in some cases, initiate and foster that very disease, and
consequent mental ruin, which a wiser appreciation of this
mysterious organ would have avoided."

I can imagine the Bishop thoughtful after hearing this
argument. He was not the man to allow anger to mingle
with the consideration of a point of this kind. After due
reflection, and having strengthened himself by that hon-
est contemplation of the facts which was habitual with
him, and which includes the desire to give even adverse

178 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

reasonings their due weight, I can suppose the Bishop
to proceed thus: *'You will remember that in the 'Anal-
ogy of Eeligion,' of which you have so J^indly spoken,
I did not profess to prove anything absolutely, and that I
over and over again acknowledged and insisted on the
smallness of our knowledge, or rather the depth of our
ignorance, as regards the whole system of the universe.
My object was to show my deistical friends, who set forth
so eloquently the beauty and beneficence of Nature and
the Kuler thereof, while they had nothing but scorn for
the so-called absurdities of the Christian scheme, that they
were in no better condition than we were, and that, for
every difficulty found upon our side, quite as great a diffi-
culty was to be found upon theirs. I will now, with your
permission, adopt a similar line of argument. You are
a Lucretian, and from the combination and separation of
insensate atoms deduce all terrestrial things, including
organic forms and their phenomena. Let me tell you in
the first instance how far I am prepared to go with you.
I admit that you can build crystalline forms out of this
play of molecular force; that the diamond, amethyst, and
snow-star are truly wonderful structures which are thus
produced. I will go further and acknowledge that even
a tree or flower might in this way be organized. Nay,
if you can show me an animal without sensation, I will
concede to you that it also might be put together by the
suitable play of molecular force.

**Thu8 far our way is clear, but now comes my dif-
ficulty. Your atoms are individually without sensation,
much more are they without intelligence. May I ask
you, then, to try your hand upon this problem. Take
your dead hydrogen atoms, your dead oxygen atoms,

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 179

your dead carbon atoms, your dead nitrogen atoms, your
dead phosphorus atoms, and all the other atoms, dead as
grains of shot, of which the brain is formed. Imagine
them separate and sensationless ; observe them running
together and forming all imaginable combinations. This,
as a purely mechanical process, is seeable by the mind.
But can you see, or dream, or in any way imagine, how
out of that mechanical act, and from these individually
dead atoms, sensation, thought, and emotion are to rise?
Are you likely to extract Homer out of the rattling
of dice, or the Differential Calculus out of the clash of
billiard-balls? I am not all bereft of this Yorstellungs-
Kraft of which you speak, nor am I, like so many of my
brethren, a mere vacuum as regards scientific knowledge.
I can follow a particle of musk until it reaches the olfac-
tory nerve; I can follow the waves of sound until their
tremors reach the water of the labyrinth, and set the oto-
liths and Corti's fibres in motion; I can also visualize the
waves of ether as they cross the eye and hit the retina.
Nay more, I am able to pursue to the central organ the
motion thus imparted at the periphery, and to see in idea
the very molecules of the brain thrown into tremors. My
insight is not bafiled by these physical processes. What
baffies and bewilders me is the notion that from those
physical tremors things so utterly incongruous with them,
as sensation, thought, and emotion, can be derived. You
may say, or think, that this issue of consciousness from
the clasli of atoms is not more incongruous than the flash
of light from the union of oxygen and hydrogen. But I
beg to say that it is. For such incongruity as the flash
possesses is that which I now force upon your attention.
The "flash" is an affair of consciousness, the objective

180 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

counterpart of wliicli is a vibration. It is a flasli only by
your interpretation. You are the cause of the apparent
incongruity; and you are the thing that puzzles me. I
need not remind you that the great Leibnitz felt the diffi-
culty which I feel; and that, to get rid of this monstrous
deduction of life from death, he displaced your atoms by
his monads, which were more or less perfect mirrors of
the universe, and out of the summation and integration
of which he supposed all the phenomena of life — sentient,
intellectual, and emotional — to arise.

"Your difficulty, then, as I see you are ready to admit,
is quite as great as mine. You cannot satisfy the human
understanding in its demand for logical continuity between
molecular processes and the phenomena of consciousness.
This is a rock on which Materialism must inevitably split
whenever it pretends to be a complete philosophy of life.
What is the moral, my Lucretian? You and I are not
likely to indulge in ill- temper in the discussion of these
great topics, where we see so much room for honest differ-
ences of opinion. But there are people of less wit or more
bigotry (I say it with humility), on both sides, who are
ever ready to mingle anger and vituperation with such dis-
cussions. There are, for example, writers of note and in-
fluence at the present day who are not ashamed publicly
to assume the *deep personal sin' of a great logician to be
the cause of his unbelief in a theologic dogma.' And

* This is the aspect under which the late Editor of the "Dublin Review"
presented to his readers the memory of John Stuart Mill. I can only say that
I would as soon take my chance in the other world, in the company of the
"unbeUever, " as in that of his Jesuit detractor. In Dr. "Ward we have au
example of a wholesome and vigorous nature, soured and perverted by a
poisonous creed.

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 181

there are others who hold that we, who cherish our noble
Bible, wrought as it has been into the constitution of our
forefathers, and by inheritance into us, must necessarily
be hypocritical and insincere. Let us disavow and dis-
countenance such people, cherishing the unswerving faith
that what is good and true in both our arguments will be
preserved for the benefit of humanity, while all that is
bad or false will disappear."

I hold the Bishop's reasoning to be unanswerable, and
his liberality to be worthy of imitation.

It is worth remarking that in one respect the Bishop
was a product of his age. Long previous to his day the
nature of the soul had been so favorite and general a
topic of discussion that, when the students of the Italian
Universities wished to know the leanings of a new Pro-
fessor, they at once requested him to lecture upon the
soul. About the time of Bishop Butler the question was
not only agitated, but extended. It was seen by the
clear-witted men who entered this arena that many of
their best arguments applied equally to brutes and men.
The Bishop's arguments were of this character. He saw
it, admitted it, took the consequence, and boldly embraced
the whole animal world in his scheme of immortality.

§ 6
Bishop Butler accepted with unwavering trust the
chronology of the Old Testament, describing it as "con-
firmed by the natural and civil history of the world, col-
lected from common historians, from the state of the
earth, and from the late inventions of arts and sciences.'*
These words mark progress; and they must seem some-
what hoary to the Bishop's successors of to-day. It is

182 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

hardly necessary to inform you tliat since his time the do-
main of the naturalist has been immensely extended — the
whole science of geology, with its astounding revelations
regarding the life of the ancient earth, having been
created. The rigidity of old conceptions has been re-
laxed, the public mind being rendered gradually toler-
ant of the idea that not for six thousand, nor for sixty
thousand, nor for six thousand thousand, but for . eons
embracing untold millions of years, this earth has been
the theatre of life and death. The riddle of the rocks
has been read by the geologist and paleontologist, from
sub-cambrian depths to the deposits thickening over the
sea-bottoms of to-day. And upon the leaves of that stone
book are, as you know, stamped the characters, plainer
and surer than those formed by the ink of history, which
carry the mind back into abysses of past time, compared
with which the periods which satisfied Bishop Butler
cease to have a visual angle.

The lode of discovery once struck, those petrified forms
in which life was at one time active, increased to multi-
tudes and demanded classification. They were grouped in
genera, species, and varieties, according to the degree of
similarity subsisting between them. Thus confusion was
avoided, each object being found in the pigeon-hole ap-
propriated to it and to its fellows of similar morpholog-
ical or physiological character. The general fact soon be-
came evident that none but the simplest forms of life lie
lowest down; that, as we climb higher among the super-
imposed strata, more perfect forms appear. The change,
however, from form to form was not continuous, but by
steps — some small, some great. *'A section," says Mr.
Huxley, "a hundred feet thick will exhibit at different

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 183

ieiglits a dozen species of Ammonite, none of wiiicli
passes beyond the particular zone of limestone, or clay,
into tlie zone below it, or into tliat above it.*' In tbe
presence of such facts it was not possible to avoid the
question: Have these forms, showing, though in broken
stages, and with many irregularities, this unmistakable
general advance, been subjected to no continuous law of
growth or variation? Had our education' been purely
scientific, or had it been sufficiently detached from influ-
ences which, however ennobling in another domain, have
always proved hinderances and delusions when introduced
as factors into the domain of physics, the scientific mind
never could have swerved from the search for a law of
growth, or allowed itself to accept the anthropomorphism
which regarded each successive stratum as a kind of me-
chanic's bench for the manufacture of new species out of
all relation to the old.

Biased, however, by their previous education, the great
majority of naturalists invoked a special creative act to ac-
count for the appearance of each new group of organisms.
Doubtless numbers of them were clear-headed enough to
see that this was no explanation at all — that, in point of
fact, it was an attempt, by the introduction of a greater
difficulty, to account for a less. But, having nothing to
offer in the way of explanation, they for the most part
held their peace. Still the thoughts of reflecting men nat-
urally and necessarily simmered round the question. De
Maillet, a contemporary of Newton, has been brought into
notice by Professor Huxley as one who **had a notion of
the modifiability of living forms.'* The late Sir Benjamin
Brodie, a man of highly philosophic mind, often drew my
attention to the fact that, as early as 1794, Charles Dar-

184 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

win's grandfather was the pioneer of Charles i)arwin.' In
1801, and in subsequent years, the celebrated Lamarck,
who, through the vigorous exposition of his views bj the
author of the *'Yestiges of Creation,** rendered the public
mind perfectly familiar with the idea of evolution, endeav-
ored to show the development of species out of changes
of habit and external condition. In 1813 Dr. Wells, the
founder of our present theory of Dew, read before the
Eoyal Society a paper in which, to use the words of Mr.
Darwin, **he distinctly recognizes the principle of natural
selection; and this is the first recognition that has been
indicated." The thoroughness and skill with which Wella
pursued his work, and the obvious independence of his
character, rendered him long ago a favorite with me; and
it gave me the liveliest pleasure to alight upon this addi-
tional testimony to his penetration. Professor Grrant, Mr.
Patrick Matthew, Yon Buch, the author of the "Yestiges,*'
D'Halloy, and others, by the enunciation of opinions more
or less clear and correct, showed that the question had
been fermenting long prior to the year 1858, when Mr.
Darwin and Mr. Wallace simultaneously, but independ-
ently, placed their closely concurrent views before the
Linnean Society.'

These papers were followed in 1859 by the publication
of the first edition of the "Origin of Species." All great
things come slowly to the birth. Copernicus, as I in-
formed you, pondered his great work for thirty-three years.

* "Zoonomia," vol. i. pp. 500-510.

» In 1855 Mr. Herbert Spencer ("Principles of Paychology," 2d edit. vol.
I. p. 465) expressed *'the belief that life under all its forms has arisen by an
unbroken evolution, and through the instrumentality of what are called naturai
causes." This was my belief also at that time.

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 185

Newton for nearly twenty years kept the idea of Gravita-
tion before his mind; for twenty years also he dwelt upon
his discovery of Fluxions, and doubtless would have con-
tinued to make it the object of his private thought, had
he not found Leibnitz upon his track. Darwin for two-
and- twenty years pondered the problem of the origin of
species, and doubtless he would have continued to do so
had he not found Wallace upon his track.' A concen-
trated, but full and powerful, epitome of his labors was
the consequence. The book was by no means an easy
one; and probably not one in every score of those who
then attacked it, had read its pages through, or were com-
petent to grasp their significance if they had. I do not
say this merely to discredit them: for there were in those
days some really eminent scientific men, entirely raised
above the heat of popular prejudice, and willing to accept
any conclusion that science had to offer, provided it was
duly backed by fact and argument, who entirely mistook
Mr. Darwin's views. In fact, the work needed an ex-
pounder, and it found one in Mr. Huxley. I know noth-
ing more admirable in the way of scientific exposition than
those early articles of his on the origin of species. He
swept the curve of discussion through the really signifi-
cant points of the subject, enriched his exposition with
profound original remarks and reflections, often summing
up in a single pithy sentence an argument which a less
compact mind would have spread over pages. But there
is one impression made by the book itself which no ex-
position of it, however luminous, can convey; and that

> The behavior of Mr. Wallace in relation to this subject has been dignified
in the highest degree.

186 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

is the impression of the vast amount of labor, both of
observation and of thought, implied in its production.
Let us glance at its principles.

It is conceded on all hands that what are called "va-
rieties" are continually produced. The rule is probably
without exception. No chick, or child, is in all respects
and particulars the counterpart of its brother and sister;
and in such differences we have "variety" incipient. No
naturalist could tell how far this variation could be car-
ried; but the great mass of them held that never, by any
amount of internal or external change, nor by the mixture
of both, could the offspring of the same progenitor so far
deviate from each other as to constitute different species.
The function of the experimental philosopher is to com-
bine the conditions of Nature and to produce her results;
and this was the method of Darwin.' He made himself
acquainted with what could, without any manner of doubt,
be done in the way of producing variation. He associated
himself with pigeon-fanciers — bought, begged, kept, and
observed every breed that he could obtain. Though de-
rived from a common stock, the diversities of these pigeons
were such that "a score of them might be chosen which,
if shown to an ornithologist, and he were told that they
were wild birds, would certainly be ranked by him as
well-defined species." The simple principle which guides
the pigeon-fancier, as it does the cattle-breeder, is the
selection of some variety that strikes his fancy, and the
propagation of this variety by inheritance. With his eye

* The first step only toward experimental demonstration has been taken.
Experiments now begun might, a couple of centuries hence, furnish data of
incalculable value, which ought to be supplied to the science of the futurei

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 187

still directed to the particular appearance which he wishes
to exaggerate, he selects it as it reappears in successive
broods, and thus adds increment to increment until an
astonishing amount of divergence from the parent type is
effected. The breeder in this case does not produce the
elements of the variation. He simply observes them, and
by selection adds them together until the required result
has been obtained. "No man," says Mr. Darwin, "would
ever try to make a fantail till he saw a pigeon with a tail
developed in some slight degree in an unusual manner,
or a pouter until he saw a pigeon with a crop of unusual
size." Thus nature gives the hint, man acts upon it, and
by the law of inheritance exaggerates the deviation.

Having thus satisfied himself by indubitable facts that
the organization of an animal or of a plant (for precisely
the same treatment applies to plants) is to some extent
plastic, he passes from variation under domestication to
variation under nature. Hitherto we have dealt with the
adding together of small changes by the conscious selec-
tion of man. Can Nature thus select? Mr. Darwin's
answer is, "Assuredly she can." The number of living
things produced is far in excess of the number that can
be supported ; hence at some period or other of their lives
there must be a struggle for existence. And what is the
infallible result ? If one organism were a perfect copy of
the other in regard to strength, siiill, and agility, external
conditions would decide. But this is not the case. Here
we have the fact of variety offering itself to nature, as in
the former instance it offered itself to man; and those
varieties which are least competent to cope with surround-
ing conditions will infallibly give way to those that are
most competent. To use a familiar proverb, the weakest

188 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

goes to the wall. But the triumphant fraction again
breeds to over-production, transmitting the qualities which
secured its maintenance, but transmitting them in differ-
ent degrees. The struggle for food again supervenes, and
those to whom the favorable quality has been transmitted
in excess, will triumph as before.

It is easy to see that we have here the addition of in-
crements favorable to the individual, still more rigorously
carried out than in the case of domestication; for not only
are unfavorable specimens not selected by nature, but they
are destroyed. This is what Mr. Darwin calls "Natural
Selection," which acts by the preservation and accumula-
tion of small inherited modifications, each profitable to
the preserved being. With this idea he interpenetrates
and leavens the vast store of facts that he and others have
collected. We cannot, without shutting our eyes through
fear or prejudice, fail to see that Darwin is here dealing,
not with imaginary, but with true causes; nor can we fail
to discern what vast modifications may be produced by
natural selection in periods sufiiciently long. Each indi-
vidual increment may resemble what mathematicians call
a ** differential" (a quantity indefinitely small); but definite
and great changes may obviously be produced by the
integration of these infinitesimal quantities, through prac-
tically infinite time.

If Darwin, like Bruno, rejects the notion of creative
power, acting after human fashion, it certainly is not be-
cause he is unacquainted with the numberless exquisite
adaptations, on which this notion of a supernatural Artifi-
cer has been founded. His book is a repository of the
most startling facts of this description. Take the marvel-
lous observation which he cites from Dr. Kriiger, where

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 189

a bucket, with an aperture serving as a spout, is formed
in an orchid. Bees visit the flower: in eager search of
material for their combs, they push each other into the
bucket, the drenched ones escaping from their involuntary
bath by the spout. Here they rub their backs against the
viscid stigma of the flower and obtain glue; then against
the pollen-masses, which are thus stuck to the back of the
bee and carried away. *'"When the bee, so provided, flies
to another flower, or to the same flower a second time, and
is pushed by its comrades into the bucket, and then crawls
out by the passage, the pollen-mass upon its back neces-
sarily comes first into contact with the viscid stigma,"
which takes up the pollen; and this is how that orchid
is fertilized. Or take this other case of the Catasetum,
*'Bees visit these flowers in order to gnaw the labellum;
in doing this they inevitably touch a long, tapering, sensi-
tive projection. This, when touched, transmits a sensa-
tion or vibration to a certain membrane, which is instantly
ruptured, setting free a spring, by which the pollen-mass
is shot forth like an arrow in the right direction, and ad-
heres by its viscid extremity to the back of the bee. * ' In
this way the fertilizing pollen is spread abroad.

It is the mind thus stored with the choicest materials
of the teleologist that rejects teleology, seeking to refer
these wonders to natural causes. They illustrate, accord-
ing to him, the method of nature, not the "technic" of
a manlike Artificer. The beauty of flowers is due to nat-
ural selection. Those that distinguish themselves by viv
idly contrasting colors from the surrounding green leaves
are most readily seen, most frequently visited by insects,
most often fertilized, and hence most favored by natural
selection. Colored berries also readily attract the atten-

190 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

tion of birds and beasts, wMcb feed upon them, spread
tlieir manured seeds abroad, thus giving trees and shrubs
possessing such berries a greater chance in the struggle
for existence.

With profound analytic and synthetic skill, Mr. Dar-
win investigates the cell-making instinct of the hive-bee.
His method of dealing with it is representative. He falls
back from the more perfectly to the less perfectly devel-
oped instinct — 'from the hive-bee to the humble-bee, which
uses its own cocoon as a comb, and to classes of bees of
intermediate skill, endeavoring to show how the passage
might be gradually made from the lowest to the highest.
The saving of wax is the most important point in the
economy of bees. Twelve to fifteen pounds of dry sugar
are said to be needed for the secretion of a single pound
of wax. The quantities of nectar necessary for the wax
must therefore be vast; and every improvement of con-
structive instinct which results in the saving of wax is
a direct profit to the insect's life. The time that would
otherwise be devoted to the making of wax is devoted
to the gathering and storing of honey for winter food.
Mr. Darwin passes from the humble-bee with its rude
cells, through the Melipona with its more artistic cells,
to the hive-bee with its astonishing architecture. The
bees place themselves at equal distances apart upon the
wax, sweep and excavate equal spheres round the selected
points. The spheres intersect, and the planes of intersec-
tion are built up with thin laminae. Hexagonal cells are
thus formed. This mode of treating such questions is,
as I have said, representative. The expositor habitually
retires from the more perfect and complex, to the less per-
fect and simple, and carries you with him through stages

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 191

of perfecting — adds increment to increment of infinitesimal
change, and in this way gradually breaks down your re-
luctance to admit that the exquisite climax of the whole
CO aid be a result of natural selection.

Mr. Darwin shirks no difficulty; and, saturated as the
subject was with his own thought, he must have known,
better than his critics, the weakness as well as the strength
of his theory. This of course would be of little avail were
his object a temporary dialectic victory, instead of the es-
tablishment of a truth which he means to be everlasting.
But he takes no pains to disguise the weakness he has
discerned; nay, he takes every pains to bring it into the
strongest light. His vast resources enable him to cope
with objections started by himself and others, so as to
leave the final impression upon the reader's mind that, if
they be not completely answered, they certainly are not
fatal. Their negative force being thus destroyed, you are
free to be influenced by the vast positive mass of evidence
he is able to bring before you. This largeness of knowl-
edge, and readiness of resource, render Mr. Darwin the
most terrible of antagonists. Accomplished naturalists
have levelled heavy and sustained criticisms against him
— not always with the view of fairly weighing his theory,
but with the express intention of exposing its weak points
only. This does not irritate him. He treats every objec-
tion with a soberness and thoroughness which even Bishop
Butler might be proud to imitate, surrounding each fact
with its appropriate detail, placing it in its proper rela-
tions, and usually giving it a significance which, as long
as it was kept isolated, failed to appear. This is done
without a trace of ill-temper. He moves over the subject
with the passionless strength of a glacier; and the grind-

192 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

ing of the rocks is not always without a counterpart in
the logical pulverization of the objector. But though in
handling this mighty theme all passion has been stilled,
there is an ^emotion of the intellect, incident to the dis-
cernment of new truth, which often colors and warms the
pages of Mr. Darwin. His success has been great; and
this implies not only the solidity of his work, but the pre-
paredness of the public mind for such a revelation. On
this head, a remark of Agassiz impressed me more than
anything else. Sprung from a race of theologians, this
celebrated man combated to the last the theory of natural
selection. One of the many times I had the pleasure of
meeting him in the United States was at Mr. Winthrop's
beautiful residence at Brookline, near Boston. Rising
from luncheon, we all halted, as if by common consent,
in front of a window, and continued there a discussion
which had been started at table. The maple was in its
autumn glory, and the exquisite beauty of the scene out-
side seemed, in my case, to interpenetrate without disturb-
ance the intellectual action. Earnestly, almost sadly, Agas-
siz turned, and said to the gentlemen standing round, "I
confess that I was not prepared to see this theory received
as it has been by the best intellects of our time. Its suc-
cess is greater than I could have thought possible."

§7

In our day grand generalizations have been reached.
The theory of the origin of species is but one of them.
Another, of still wider grasp and more radical signifi-
cance, is the doctrine of the Conservation of Energy, the
ultimate philosophical issues of which are as yet but
dimly seen — that doctrine which *' binds nature fast in

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 198

fate,** to an extent not hitlierto recognized, exacting from
every antecedent its equivalent consequent, from every
consequent its equivalent antecedent, and bringing vital
as well as physical phenomena under the dominion of
that law of causal connection which, so far as the human
understanding has yet pierced, asserts itself everywhere
in nature. Long in advance of all definite experiment
upon the subject, the constancy and indestructibility of
matter had been affirmed; and all subsequent experience
justified the affirmation. Mayer extended the attribute of
indestructibility to energy, applying it in the first instance
to inorganic,* and afterward with profound insight to or-
ganic nature. The vegetable world, though drawing all
its nutriment from invisible sources, was proved incom-
petent to generate anew either matter or force. Its mat-
ter is for the most part transmuted gas; its force trans-
formed solar force. The animal world has proved to be
equally uncreative, all its motive energies being referred
to the combustion of its food. The activity of each ani-
mal, as a whole, was proved to be the transferred activity
of its molecules. The muscles were shown to be stores of
mechanical energy, potential until unlocked by the nerves,
and then resulting in muscular contractions. The speed
at which messages fly to and fro along the nerves was de-
termined by Helmholtz, and found to be, not, as had been
previously supposed, equal to that of light or electricity,
but less than the speed of sound — less even than that of
an eagle.

This was the work of the physicist: then came the

* Dr. Berthold has shown that Leibnitz had sound views regarding the
conservation of energy in inorganic nature.

Science — VI — 9

194 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

conquests of the comparative anatomist and physiologist,
revealing the structure of every animal, and the function
of every organ in the whole biological series, from the
lowest zoophyte up to man. The nervous system had
been made the object of profound and continued study,
the wonderful and, at bottom, entirely mysterious control-
ling power which it exercises over the whole organism,
physical and mental, being recognized more and more.
Thought could not be kept back from a subject so pro-
foundly suggestive. Besides the physical life dealt with
by Mr. Darwin, there is a psychical life presenting similar
gradations, and asking equally for a solution. How are
the different grades and orders of Mind to be accounted
for? What is the principle of growth of that mysterious
power which on our planet culminates in Reason? These
are questions which, though not thrusting themselves so
forcibly upon the attention of the general public, had not
only occupied many reflecting minds, but had been for-
mally broached by one of them before the "Origin of
Species" appeared.

With the mass of materials furnished by the physicist
and physiologist in his hands, Mr. Herbert Spencer, twenty
years ago, sought to graft upon this basis a system of psy-
chology; and two years ago a second and greatly ampli-
fied edition of his work appeared. Those who have occu-
pied themselves with the beautiful experiments of Plateau
will remember that when two spherules of olive-oil, sus-
pended in a mixture of alcohol and water of the same
density as the oil, are brought together, they do not im-
mediately unite. Something like a pellicle' appears to be
formed around the drops, the rupture of which is imme-
diately followed by the coalescence of the globules into

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 195

one. There are organisms whose vital actions are almost
as purely physical as the coalescence of such drops of oil.
They come into contact and fuse themselves thus together.
From such organisms to others a shade higher, from these
to others a shade higher still, and on through an ever-
ascending series, Mr. Spencer conducts his argument.
There' are two obvious factors to be here taken into ac-
count— the creature and the medium in which it lives, or,
as it is often expressed, the organism and its environment.
Mr. Spencer's fundamental principle is, that between these
two factors there is incessant interaction. The organism
is played upon by the environment, and is modified to
meet the requirements of the environment. Life he de-
fines to be *'a continuous adjustment of internal relations
to external relations."

In the lowest organisms we have a kind of tactual
sense diSused over the entire body; then, through im-
pressions from without and their corresponding adjust-
ments, special portions of the surface become more re-
sponsive to stimuli than others. The senses are nascent,
the basis of all of them being that simple tactual sense
which the sage Democritus recognized 2,800 years ago as
their common progenitor. The action of light, in the first
instance, appears to be a mere disturbance of the chemical
processes in the animal organism, similar to that which
occurs in the leaves of pk.nts. By degrees the action be-
comes localized in a few pigment- cells, more sensitive to
light than the surrounding tissue. The eye is incipient
At first it is merely capable of revealing differences of
light and shade produced by bodies close at hand. Fol-
lowed, as the interception of the light commonly is, by^
the contact of the closely adjacent opaque body, sight in

196 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

this condition becomes a kind of "anticipatory touch."
The adjustment continues; a slight bulging out of the
epidermis over the pigment-granules supervenes. A lens
is incipient, and, through the operation of infinite adjust-
ments, at length reaches the perfection that it displays in
the hawk and eagle. So of the other senses; they are
special differentiations of a tissue which was originally
vaguely sensitive all over.

With the development of the senses, the adjustments
between the organism and its environment gradually ex-
tend in space^ a multiplication of experiences and a corre-
sponding modification of conduct being the result. The
adjustments also extend in time^ covering continually
greater intervals. Along with this extension in space
and time the adjustments also increase in speciality and
complexity, passing through the various grades of brute
life, and prolonging themselves into the domain of rea-
son. Very striking are Mr. Spencer's remarks regarding
the influence of the sense of touch upon the development
of intelligence. This is, so to say, the mother- tongue of
all the senses, into which they must be translated to be
of service to the organism. Hence its importance. The
parrot is the most intelligent of birds, and its tactual
power is also greatest. From this sense it gets knowl-
edge, unattainable by birds which cannot employ their
feet as hands. The elephant is the most sagacious of
quadrupeds — its tactual range and skill, and the conse-
quent multiplication of experiences, which it owes to its
wonderfully adaptable trunk, being the basis of its sagac-
ity. Feline animals, for a similar cause, are more saga-
cious than hoofed animals — atonement being to some ex-
tent made, in the case of the horse, by the possession of

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 197

sensitive prehensile lips. In tlie Primates tlie evolution
of intellect and the evolution of tactual appendages go
hand in hand. In the most intelligent anthropoid apes
we find the tactual range and delicacy greatly augmented,
new avenues of knowledge being thus opened to the ani-
mal. Man crowns the edifice here, not only in virtue of
his own manipulatory power, but through the enormous
extension of his range of experience, by the invention of
instruments of precision, which serve as supplemental
senses and supplemental limbs. The reciprocal action
of these is finely described and illustrated. That chas-
tened intellectual emotion to which I have referred in con-
nection with Mr. Darwin is not absent in Mr. Spencer.
His illustrations possess at times exceeding vividness and
force; and from his style on such occasions it is to be
inferred that the ganglia of this Apostle of the Under-
standing are sometimes the seat of a nascent poetic thrill.
It is a fact of supreme importance that actions, the
performance of which at first requires even painful effort
and deliberation, may, by habit, be rendered automatic.
Witness the slow learning of its letters by a child, and
the subsequent facility of reading in a man, when each
group of letters which forms a word is instantly, and with-
out effort, fused to a single perception. Instance the bil-
liard-player, whose muscles of hand and eye, when he
reaches the perfection of his art, are unconsciously co-
ordinated. Instance the musician who, by practice, is
enabled to fuse a multitude of arrangements, auditory,
tactual, and muscular, into a process of automatic manipu-
lation. Combining such facts with the doctrine of heredi-
tary transmission, we reach a theory of Instinct. A chick,
after coming out of the egg, balances itself correctly, runs

198 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

about, picks up food, thus showing that it possesses ft
power of directing its movements to definite ends. How
(lid the chick learn this very complex co-ordination of
eyes, muscles, and beak? It has not been individually
taught; its personal experience is nil; but it has the ben-
efit of ancestral experience. In its inherited organization
are registered the powers which it displays at birth. So
also as regards the instinct of the hive-bee, already re-
ferred to. The distance at which the insects stand apart
when they sweep their hemispheres and build their cells
is "organically remembered." Man also carries with him
the physical texture of his ancestry, as well as the in-
herited intellect bound up with it. The defects of intelli-
gence during infancy and youth are probably less due to
a lack of individual experience than to the fact that in
early life the cerebral organization is still incomplete. The
period necessary for completion varies with the race, and
with the individual. As a round shot outstrips the rifled
bolt on quitting the muzzle of the gun, so the lower race,
in childhood, may outstrip the higher. But the higher
eventually overtakes the lower, and surpasses it in range.
As regards individuals, we do not always find the pre-
cocity of youth prolonged to mental power in maturity;
while the dulness of boyhood is sometimes strikingly con-
trasted with the intellectual energy of after years. Kew-
ton, when a boy, was weakly, and he showed no particu-
lar aptitude at school; but in his eighteenth year he went
to Cambridge, and soon afterward astonished his teachers
by his power of dealing with geometrical problems. Dur-
ing his quiet youth his brain was slowly preparing itself
to be the organ of those energies which he subsequently
displayed.

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 199

By myriad blows (to use a Lucretian phrase) the image
and superscription of the external world are stamped as
states of consciousness upon the organism, the depth of
the impression depending on the number of the blows.
When two or more phenomena occur in the environment
invariably together, they are stamped to the same depth
or to the same relief, and indissolubly connected. And
here we come to the threshold of a great question. See-
ing that he could in no way rid himself of the conscious-
ness of Space and Time, Kant assumed them to be nec-
essary "forms of intuition," the molds and shapes into
which our intuitions are thrown belonging to ourselves,
and without objective existence. With unexpected power
and success, Mr. Spencer brings the hereditary experience
theory, as he holds it, to bear upon this question. "Ij;
there exist certain external relations which are experienced
by all organisms at all instants of their waking lives — re-
lations which are absolutely constant and universal — there
will be established answering internal relations that are
absolutely constant and universal. Such relations we
have in those of Space and Time. As the substratum
of all other relations of the Non-ego, they must be re-
sponded to by conceptions that are the substrata of all
other relations in the Ego. Being the constant and infi-
nitely repeated elements of thought, they must become the
automatic elements of thought — the elements of thouglit
which it is impossible to get rid of — the * forms of intui-
tion.' "

Throughout this application and extension of Hartley's
and Mill's "Law of Inseparable Association," Mr. Spencer
stands upon his own ground, invoking, instead of the ex-
periences of the individual, the registered experiences of

200 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

the race. His overthrow of the restriction of experience
to the individual is, 1 think, complete. That restriction
ignores the power of organizing experience, furnished at
the outset to each individual; it ignores the different de-
grees of this power possessed by different races, and by
different individuals of the same race. Were there not
in the human brain a potency antecedent to all experi-
ence, a dog or a cat ought to be as capable of education
as a man. These predetermined internal relations are in-
dependent of the experiences of the individual. The
human brain is the "organized register of infinitely nu-
merous experiences received during the evolution of life,
or rather during the evolution of that series of organisms
through which the human organism has been reached.
The effects of the most uniform and frequent of these
experiences have been successively bequeathed, principal
and interest, and have slowly mounted to that high intel-
ligence which lies latent in the brain of the infant. Thus
it happens that the European inherits from twenty to
thirty cubic inches more of brain than the Papuan. Thus
it happens that faculties, as of music, which scarcely exist
in some inferior races, become congenital in superior ones.
Thus it happens that out of savages unable to count up
to the number of their fingers, and speaking a language
containing only nouns and verbs, arise at length our New-
tons and Shakespeares. ' *

§8

At the outset of this Address it was stated tfiat phys-
ical theories which lie beyond experience are derived by
a process of abstraction from experience. It is instructive
to note from this point of view the successive introduction

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 2U1

of new conceptions. The idea of the attraction of gravita-
tion was preceded bj the observation of the attraction of
iron by a magnet, and of light bodies by rubbed amber.
The polarity of magnetism and electricity also appealed to
the senses. It thus became the substratum of the concep-
tion that atoms and molecules are endowed with attractive
and repellent poles, by the play of which definite forms
of crystalline architecture are produced. Thus molecular
force becomes structural.^ It required no great boldness
of thought to extend its play into organic nature, and to
recognize in molecular force the agency by which both
plants and animals are built up. In this way, out of ex-
perience arise conceptions which are wholly ultra-experi-
ential. None of the atomists of antiquity had any notion
of this play of molecular polar force, but they had experi-
ence of gravity, as manifested by falling bodies. Abstract-
ing from this, they permitted their atoms to fall eternally
through empty space. Democritus assumed that the larger
atoms moved more rapidly than the smaller ones, which
they therefore could overtake, and with which they could
combine. Epicurus, holding that empty space could offer
no resistance to motion, ascribed to all the atoms the same
velocity; but he seems to have overlooked the conse-
quence that under such circumstances the atoms could
never combine. Lucretius cut the knot by quitting the
domain of physics altogether, and causing the atoms to
move together by a kind of volition.

Was the instinct utterly at fault which caused Lucre-
tius thus to swerve from his own principles? Diminish-
ing gradually the number of progenitors, Mr. Darwin

* See Art. ou Matter and Force, or "Lectures ou Light," No. III.

202 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

comes at length to one *' primordial form"; but lie does
not say, so far as I remember, how he supposes this form
to have been introduced. He quotes with satisfaction the
words of a celebrated author and divine who had *' grad-
ually learned to see that it was just as noble a conception
of the Deity to believe He created a few original forms,
capable of self- development into other and needful forms,
as to believe He required a fresh act of creation to supply
the voids caused by the action of His laws." What Mr.
Darwin thinks of this view of the introduction of life I
do not know. But the anthropomorphism, which it
seemed his object to set aside, is as firmly associated
with the creation of a few forms as with the creation
of a multitude. We need clearness and thoroughness
here. Two courses and two only are possible. Either let
us open our doors freely to the conception of creative
acts, or abandoning them, let us radically change our no-
tions of Matter. If we look at matter as pictured by
Democritus, and as defined for generations in our scien-
tific text-books, the notion of conscious life coming out
of it cannot be formed by the mind. The argument
placed in the mouth of Bishop Butler suffices, in my
opinion, to crush all such materialism as this. Those,
however, who framed these definitions of matter were but
partial students. They were not biologists, but mathema-
ticians, whose labors referred only to such accidents and
properties of matter as could be expressed in their for-
mulae. Their science was mechanical science, not the
science of life. With matter in its wholeness they never
dealt; and, denuded by their imperfect definitions, "the
gentle mother of all" became the object of her children's
dread. Let us reverently, but honestly, look the question

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 208

in the face. Divorced from matter, where is life? What-
ever OUT faith may say, our knowledge shows them to be indis-
solubly joined. Every meal we eat, and every cup we drink,
illustrates the mysterious control of Mind by Matter.

On tracing the line of life backward, we see it ap-
proaching more and more to what we call the purely
physical condition. We come at length to those organ-
isms which I have compared to drops of oil suspended
in a mixture of alcohol and water. We reach the pro-
togenes of Haeckel, in which we have "a type distinguish-
able from a fragment of albumen only by its finely granu-
lar character." Can we pause here? We break a magnet,
and find two poles in each of its fragments. We continue
the process of breaking; but, however small the parts,
each carries with it, though enfeebled, the polarity of the
whole. And when we can break no longer, we prolong
the intellectual vision to the polar molecules. Are we not
urged to do something similar in the case of life? Is
there not a temptation to close to some extent with Lu-
cretius, when he affirms that "Nature is seen to do all
things spontaneously of herself without the meddling of
the gods?" or with Bruno, when he declares that Matter
is not "that mere empty capacity which philosophers have
pictured her to be, but the universal mother who brings
forth all things as the fruit of her own womb?" Believ-
ing, as I do, in the continuity of nature, I cannot stop
abruptly where our microscopes cease to be of use. Here
the vision of the mind authoritatively supplements the
vision of the eye. By a necessity engendered and justi-
fied by science I cross the boundary of the experimental
evidence,' and discern in that Matter which we, in our

* This mode of procedure was not invented in Belfast.

204 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

ignorance of its latent powers, and notwithstanding our
professed reverence for its Creator, liave hitherto covered
with opprobrium, the promise and potency of all terres-
trial Life.

If you ask me whether there exists the least evidence
to prove that any form of life can be developed out of
matter, without demonstrable antecedent life, my reply
is that evidence considered perfectly conclusive by many
has been adduced; and that were some of us who have
pondered this question to follow a very common example,
and accept testimony because it falls in with our belief,
we also should eagerly close with the evidence referred
to. But there is in the true man of science a desire
stronger than the wish to have his beliefs upheld; namely,
the desire to have them true. And this stronger wish
causes him to reject the most plausible support, if he has
reason to suspect that it is vitiated by error. Those to
whom I refer as having studied this question, believing
the evidence offered in favor of "spontaneous generation"
to be thus vitiated, cannot accept it. They know full well
that the chemist now prepares from inorganic matter a
vast array of substances, which were some time ago re-
garded as the sole products of vitality. They are inti-
mately acquainted with the structural power of matter, as
evidenced in the phenomena of crystallization. They can
justify scientifically their belief in its potency, under the
proper conditions, to produce organisms. But, in reply
to your questions, they will frankly admit their inability
to point to any satisfactory experimental proof that life
can be developed, save from demonstrable antecedent life.
As already indicated, they draw the line from the highest
organisms through lower ones down to the lowest; and

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 205

it is tlie prolongation of this line by the intellect, beyond
the range of the senses, that leads them to the conclusion
which Bruno so boldly enunciated.*

The "materialism" here professed may be vastly differ-
ent from what you suppose, and I therefore crave your
gracious patience to the end. **The question of an ex-
ternal world,'* says J. S. Mill, *'is the great battleground
of metaphysics. * ' ' Mr. Mill himself reduces external
phenomena to "possibilities of sensation." Kant, as we
have seen, made time and space "forms" of our own
intuitions. Fichte, having first by the inexorable logic
of his understanding proved himself to be a mere link in
that chain of eternal causation which holds so rigidly in
nature, violently broke the chain by making nature, and
all that it inherits, an apparition of the mind.' And it
is by no means easy to combat such notions. For when
I say "I see you," and that there is not the least doubt
about it, the obvious reply is, that what I am really con-
scious of is an affection of my own retina. And if I urge
that my sight can be checked by touching you, the retort
would be that I am equally transgressing the limits of
fact; for what I am really conscious of is, not that you
are there, but that the nerves of my hand have undergone
a change. All we hear, and see, and touch, and taste,
and smell, are, it would be urged, mere variations of our
own condition, beyond which, even to the extent of a
hair-breadth, we cannot go. That anything answering to
our impressions exists outside of ourselves is not a /acr,
but an inference^ to which all validity would be denied by

» Bruno was a "Pantheist," not an ** Atheist" or a * 'Materialist."

• **Exaniination of Hamilton," p. 154.

• "Bestimmung des Menschen."

206 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

an idealist like Berkeley, or by a sceptic like Hume, Mr.
Spencer takes another line. With, him, as with the un-
educated man, there is no doubt or question as to the
existence of an external world. But he differs from the
uneducated, who think that the world really is what con-
sciousness represents it to be. Our states of conscious-
ness are mere symbols of an outside entity which produces
them and determines the order of their succession, but the
real nature of which we can never know.* In fact, the
whole process of evolution is the manifestation of a Power
absolutely inscrutable to the intellect of man. As little
in our day as in the days of Job can man by searching
find this Power out. Considered fundamentally, then, it
is by the operation of an insoluble mystery that life on
earth is evolved, species differentiated, and mind unfolded,
from their prepotent elements in the immeasurable past.

The strength of the doctrine of Evolution consists, not
in an experimental demonstration (for the subject is hardly
accessible to this mode of proof), but in its general har-
mony with scientific thought. From contrast, moreover,
it derives enormous relative cogency. On the one side

* In a paper, at once popular and profound, entitled "Recent Progress in the
Theory of Vision," contained in the volume of lectures by Helmholtz, pub-
lished by Longmans, this symbolism of our states of consciousness is also dwelt
upon. The impressions of sense are the mere signs of external things. In this
paper Helmholtz contends strongly against the view that the consciousness of
space is inborn ; and he evidently doubts the power of the chick to pick up
grains of com without preliminary lessons. On this point, he says, further
experiments are needed. Such experiments have been since made by Mr.
Spalding, aided, I believe, in some of his observations by the accomplished and
deeply lamented Lady Amberly ; and they seem to prove conclusively that the
chick does not need a single moment's tuition to enable it to stand, run, govern
the muscles of its eyes, and peck. Helmholtz, however, is contending against
the notion of pre-established harmony ; and I am not aware of his views as to
the organization of experiences of race or breed.

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 207

we have a theory (if it could with any propriety be so
called) derived, as were the theories referred to at the
beginning of this Address, not from the study of nature,
but from the observation of men — a theory which converts
the Power whose garment is seen in the visible universe
into an Artificer, fashioned after the human model, and
acting by broken efforts as man is seen to act. On the
other side we have the conception that all we see around
us, and all we feel within us — the phenomena of physical
nature as well as those of the human mind — have their
unsearchable roots in a cosmical life, if I dare apply the
term, an infinitesimal span of which is offered to the in-
vestigation of man. And even this span is only knowable
in part. "We can trace the development of a nervous sys-
tem, and correlate with it the parallel phenomena of sensa-
tion and thought. We see with undoubting certainty that
they go hand in hand. But we try to soar in a vacuum
the moment we seek to comprehend the connection be-
tween them. An Archimedean fulcrum is here required
which the human mind cannot command; and the effort
to solve the problem — to borrow a comparison from an
illustrious friend of mine — is like that of a man trying
to lift himself by his own waistband. All that has been
said in this discourse is to be taken in connection with
this fundamental truth. When * 'nascent senses" are
spoken of, when "the differentiation of a tissue at first
vaguely sensitive all over" is spoken of, and when these
possessions and. processes are associated with "the modi-
fication of an organism by its environment," the same
parallelism, without contact, or even approach to contact,
is implied. Man the object is separated by an impassable
gulf from man the subject. There is no motor energy in

208 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

the Imman intellect to carry it, without logical rupture,
from the one to the other.

§9

The doctrine of Evolution derives man, in his totality,
from the interaction of organism and environment through
countless ages past. The Human Understanding, for ex-
ample— that faculty which Mr. Spencer has turned so skil-
fully round upon its own antecedents — is itself a result of
the play between organism and environment through cos-
mic ranges of time. Never, surely, did prescription plead
so irresistible a claim. But then it comes to pass that,
over and above his understanding, there are many other
things appertaining to man, whose prescriptive rights are
quite as strong as those of the understanding itself. It is
a result, for example, of the play of organism and environ-
ment that sugar is sweet, and that aloes are bitter; that
the smell of henbane differs from the perfume of a rose.
Such facts of consciousness (for which, by the way, no
adequate reason has ever been rendered) are quite as old
as the understanding; and many other things can boast
an equally ancient origin. Mr. Spencer at one place refers
to that most powerful of passions — the amatory passion —
as one which, when it first occurs, is antecedent to all
relative experience whatever; and we may press its claim
as being at least as ancient, and as valid, as that of the
understanding itself. Then there are such things woven
into the texture of man as the feeling of Awe, Eeverence,
Wonder — and not alone the sexual love just referred to,
but the love of the beautiful, physical, and moral, in Nat-
ure, Poetry, and Art. There is also that deep-set feeling,
which, since the earliest dawn of history, and probably

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 209

for ages prior to all history, incorporated itself in the Ee-
ligions of the world. You, who have escaped from these
religions into the high- and- dry light of the intellect, may
deride them; but in so doing you deride accidents of form
merely, and fail to touch the immovable basis of the
religious sentiment in the nature of man. To yield this
sentiment reasonable satisfaction is the problem of prob-
lems at the present hour. And grotesque in relation to
scientific culture as many of the religions of the world
have been and are — dangerous, nay, destructive, to the
dearest privileges of freemen as some of them undoubtedly
have been, and would, if they could, be again — it will be
wise to recognize them as the forms of a force, mischievous
if permitted to intrude on the region of objective knowl-
edge, over which it holds no command, but capable of
adding, in the region of poetry and emotion, inward com-
pleteness and dignity to man.

Feeling, I say again, dates from as old an origin and
as high a source as intelligence, and it equally demands
its range of play. The wise teacher of humanity will
recognize the necessity of meeting this demand, rather
than of resisting it on account of errors and absurdities
of form. What we should resist, at all hazards, is the
attempt made in the past, and now repeated, to found
upon this elemental bias of man's nature a system which
should exercise despotic sway over his intellect. I have
no fear of such a consummation. Science has already to
some extent leavened the world; it will leaven it more
and more. I should look upon the mild light of science
breaking in upon the minds of the youth of Ireland, and
strengthening gradually to the perfect day, as a surer
check to any intellectual or spiritual tyranny which may

210 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

threaten this island, than the laws of princes or the swords
of emperors. We fought and won our battle even in the
Middle Ages; should we doubt the issue of another con-
flict with our broken foe?

The impregnable position of science may be described
in a few words. We claim, and we shall wrest from the-
ology, the entire domain of cosmological theory. All
schemes and systems which thus infringe upon the do-
main of science must, in so far as they do this, submit
to its control, and relinquish all thought of controlling it.
Acting otherwise proved always disastrous in the past,
and it is simply fatuous to-day. Every system which
would escape the fate of an organism too rigid to adjust
itself to its environment, must be plastic to the extent
that the growth of knowledge demands. When this truth
has been thoroughly taken in, rigidity will be relaxed,
exclusiveness diminished, things now deemed essential will
be dropped, and elements now rejected will be assimi-
lated. The lifting of the life is the essential point; and
as long as dogmatism, fanaticism, and intolerance are kept
out, various modes of leverage may be employed to raise
life to a higher level.

Science itself not infrequently derives motive power
from an ultra -scientific source. Some of its greatest dis-
coveries have been made under the stimulus of a non-
scientific ideal. This was the case among the ancients,
and it has been so among ourselves. Mayer, Joule, and
Oolding, whose names are associated with the greatest of
modern generalizations, were thus influenced. With his
usual insight, Lange at one place remarks that "it is not
always the objectively correct and intelligible that helps
man most, or leads most quickly to the fullest and truest

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 211

knowledge. As the sliding body upon the brachysto-
chrone reaches its end sooner than by the straighter road
of the inclined plane, so, through the swing of the ideal,
we often arrive at the naked truth more rapidly than by
the processes of the understanding." Whewell speaks of
enthusiasm of temper as a hinderance to science; but he
means the enthusiasm of weak heads. There is a strong
and resolute enthusiasm in which science finds an ally;
and it is to the lowering of this fire, rather than to the
diminution of intellectual insight, that the lessening pro-
ductiveness of men of science, in their mature years, is
to be ascribed. Mr. Buckle sought to detach intellectual
achievement from moral force. He gravely erred, for
without moral force to whip it into action, the achieve-
ment of the intellect would be poor indeed.

It has been said by its opponents that science divorces
itself from literature; but the statement, like so many oth-
ers, arises from lack of knowledge. A glance at the less
technical writings of its leaders — of its Helmholtz, its
Huxley, and its Du Bois-Reymond — would show what
breadth of literary culture they command. "Where among
modern writers can you find their superiors in clearness
and vigor of literary style? Science desires not isolation,
but freely combines with every effort toward the bettering
of man's estate. Single-handed, and supported, not by
outward sympathy, but by inward force, it has built at
least one great wing of the many-mansioned home which
man in his totality demands. And if rough walls and
protruding rafter- ends indicate that on one side the edi-
fice is still incomplete, it is only by wise combination of
the parts required, with those already irrevocably built,
that we can hope for completeness. There is no neces-

212 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

sary incongruity between what has been accomplished and
what remains to be done. The moral glow of Socrates,
which we all feel by ignition, has in it nothing incompati-
ble with the physics of Anaxagoras which he so much
"scorned, but which he would hardly scorn to-day. And
here I am reminded of one among us, hoary, but still
strong, whose prophet-voice some thirty years ago, far
more than any other of this age, unlocked whatever of
life and nobleness lay latent in its most gifted minds —
one fit to stand beside Socrates or the Maccabean Eleazar,
and to dare and suffer all that they suffered and dared —
fit, as he once said of Fichte, "to have been the teacher
of the Stoa, and to have discoursed of Beauty and Virtue
in the groves of Academe." With a capacity to grasp
physical principles which his friend Goethe did not pos-
sess, and which even total lack of exercise has not been
able to reduce to atrophy, it is the world's loss that he,
in the vigor of his years, did not open his mind and sym-
pathies to science, and make its conclusions a portion of
his message to mankind. Marvellously endowed as he
was — equally equipped on the side of the Heart and of
the Understanding — he might have done much toward
teaching us how to reconcile the claims of both, and to
enable them in coming times to dwell together, in unity
of spirit and in the bond of peace.

And now the end is come. With more time, or
greater strength and knowledge, what has been here said
might have been better said, while worthy matters, here
omitted, might have received fit expression. But there
would have been no material deviation from the views
set forth. As regards myself, they are not the growth

THE BELFAST ADDRESS 213

of a day; and as regards you, I thought you ought to
know the environment which, with or without your con-
sent, is rapidly surrounding you, and in relation to which
some adjustment on your part may be necessary. A hint
of Hamlet's, however, teaches us how the troubles of com-
mon life may be ended; and it is perfectly possible for
you and me to purchase intellectual peace at the price
of intellectual death. The world is not without refuges of
this description; nor is it wanting in persons who seek
their shelter, and try to persuade others to do the same.
The unstable and the weak have yielded and will yield to
this persuasion, and they to whom repose is sweeter than
the truth. But I would exhort you to refuse the offered
shelter, and to scorn the base repose — to accept, if the
choice be forced upon you, commotion before stagnation,
the breezy leap of the torrent before the fetid stillness of
the swamp. In the course of this Address I have touched
on debatable questions, and led you over what will be
deemed dangerous ground — and this partly with the view
of telling you that, as regards these questions, science
claims unrestricted right of search. It is not to the point
to say that the views of Lucretius and Bruno, of Darwin
and Spencer, may be wrong. Here I should agree with
you, deeming it indeed certain that these views will un-
dergo modification. But the point is that, whether right
or wrong, we claim the right to discuss them. For
science, however, no exclusive claim is here made; you
are not urged to erect it into an idol. The inexorable
advance of man's understanding in the path of knowl-
edge, and those unquenchable claims of his moral and
emotional nature, which the understanding can never sat-
isfy, are here equally set forth. The world embraces not

214 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

only a Newton, but a Shakespeare — not only a Boyle,
but a Kaphael — not only a Kant, but a Beethoven — not
only a Darwin, but a Carlyle. Not in each of these, but
in all, is human nature whole. They are not opposed,
but supplementary — not mutually exclusive, but reconcil-
able. And if, unsatisfied with them all, the human mind,
with the yearning of a pilgrim for his distant home, will
still turn to the Mystery from which it has emerged, seek-
ing so to fashion it as to give unity to thought and faith;
so long as this is done, not only without intolerance or
bigotry of any kind, but with the enlightened recognition
that ultimate fixity of conception is here unattainable, and
that each succeeding age must be held free to fashion
the mystery in accordance with its own needs — then,
casting aside all the restrictions of Materialism, I would
afiirm this to be a field for the noblest exercise of what,
in contrast with the knowing faculties, may be called the
creative faculties of man. Here, however, I touch a theme
too great for me to handle, but which will assuredly be
handled by the loftiest minds, when you and I, like
streaks of morning cloud, shall have melted into the
infinite azure of the past.

APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS
18U

THE world has been frequently informed of late that
I have raised up against myself a host of enemies ;
and considering, with few exceptions, the deliver-
ances of the Press, and more particularly of the religious
Press, I am forced to admit that the statement is only too
true. I derive some comfort, nevertheless, from the re-
flection of Diogenes, transmitted to us by Plutarch, that
"he who would be saved must have good friends or vio-
lent enemies; and that he is best off who possesses both.''
This "best" condition, I have reason to believe, is mine
Eeflecting on the fraction I have read of recent remon-
strances, appeals, menaces, and judgments — covering not
only the world that now is, but that which is to come — I
have noticed with mournful interest how trivially men
seem to be influenced by what they call their religion,
and how potently by that "nature" which it is the alleged
province of religion to eradicate or subdue. From fair
and manly argument, from the tenderest and holiest sym-
pathy on the part of those who desire my eternal good, I
pass by many gradations, through deliberate unfairness, to
a spirit of bitterness, which desires with a fervor inex-
pressible in words my eternal ill. ISTow, were religion the
potent factor, we might expect a homogeneous utterance
from those professing a common creed, while, if human

(215)

216 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

nature be the really potent factor, we may expect utter-
ances as heterogeneous as the characters of men. As a
matter of fact we have the latter; suggesting to my mind
that the common religion, professed and defended by these
different people, is merely the accidental conduit through
which they pour their own tempers, lofty or low, courte-
ous or vulgar, mild or ferocious, as the case may be.
Pure abuse, however, as serving no good end, I have,
wherever possible, deliberately avoided reading, wishing,
indeed, to keep, not only hatred, malice, and uncharita-
bleness, but even every trace of irritation, far away from
my side of a discussion which demands not only good-
temper, but largeness, clearness, and many-sidedness of
mind, if it is to guide us to even provisional solutions.

It has been stated, with many variations of note and
comment, that in the Address as subsequently published
by Messrs. Longman I have retracted opinions uttered at
Belfast. A Roman Catholic writer is specially strong upon
this point. Startled by the deep chorus of dissent which
my "dazzling fallacies" have evoked, I am now trying to
retreat. This he will by no means tolerate. "It is too
late now to seek to hide from the eyes of mankind one
foul blot, one ghastly deformity. Professor Tyndall has
himself told us how and where this Address of his was
composed. It was written among the glaciers and the
solitudes of the Swiss mountains. It was- no hasty, hur-
ried, crude production; its every sentence bore marks of
thought and care."

My critic intends to be severe: he is simply just. In
the "solitudes" to which he refers I worked with delib-
eration, endeavoring even to purify my intellect by dis-
ciplines similar to those enjoined by his own Church for

APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS 217

the sanctification of the soul. I tried, moreover, in my
ponderings to realize not only the lawful, but the expedi-
ent; and to permit no fear to act upon my mind, save
that of littering a single word on which I could not take
my stand, either in this or in any other world.

Still my time was so brief, the difficulties arising from
my isolated position were so numerous, and my thought
and expression so slow, that, in a literary point of view,
I halted, not only behind the ideal, but behind the pos-
sible. Hence, after the delivery of the Address, I went
over it with the desire, not to revoke its principles, but
to improve it verbally, and above all to remove any word
which might give color to the notion of *'crudeness, hurry,
or haste. ' '

In connection with the charge of Atheism my critic
refers to the Preface to the second issue of the Belfast
Address: *' Christian men," I there say, "are proved by
their writings to have their hours of weakness and of
doubt, as well as their hours of strength and of convic-
tion; and men like myself share, in their own way, these
variations of mood and tense. Were the religious moods
of many of my assailants the only alternative ones, I do
not know how strong the claims of the doctrine of * Ma-
terial Atheism' upon my allegiance might be. Probably
they would be very strong. But, as it is, I have noticed
during years of self-observation that it is not in hours
of clearness and vigor that this doctrine commends itself
to my mind ; that in the presence of stronger and healthier
thought it ever dissolves and disappears, as offering no
solution of the mystery in which we dwell, and of which
we form a part."

With reference to this honest and reasonable utterance
Science — YI — 10

218 FBAQMENTS OF SCIENCE

mj censor exclaims, "This is a most remarkable passage.
Much, as we dislike seasoning polemics with strong words,
we assert that this Apology only tends to affix with links
of steel to the name of Professor Tyndali the dread impu-
tation against which he struggles. ' '

Here we have a very fair example of subjective relig-
ious vigor. But my quarrel with such exhibitions is that
they do not always represent objective fact. No atheistic
reasoning can, I hold, dislodge religion from the human
heart. Logic cannot deprive us of life, and religion is life
to the religious. As an experience of consciousness it is
beyond the assaults of logic. But the religious life is
often projected in external forms — I use the word in its
widest sense — and this embodiment of the religious senti-
ment will have to bear more and more, as the world be-
comes more enlightened, the stress of scientific tests. We
must be careful of projecting into external nature that
which belongs to ourselves. My critic commits this mis-
take: he feels, and takes delight in feeling, that I am
struggling, and he obviously experiences the most ex-
quisite pleasures of "the muscular sense" in holding me
down. His feelings are as real as if his imagination of
what mine are were equally real. His picture of my
"struggles" is, however, a mere delusion. I do not
struggle. I do not fear the charge of Atheism; nor
should I even disavow it, in reference to any definition
of the Supreme which he, or his order, would be likely
to frame. His "links" and his "steel" and his "dread
imputations" are, therefore, even more unsubstantial than
my "streaks of morning cloud," and they may be per-
mitted to vanish together.

APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS 219

These minor and more purely personal matters at an
end, the weightier allegation remains that at Belfast I
misused my position by quitting the domain of science,
and making an unjustifiable raid into the domain of the-
ology. This I fail to see. Laying aside abuse, I hope
my accusers will consent to reason with me. Is it not
lawful for a scientific man to speculate on the antecedents
of the solar system? Did Kant, Laplace, and William
Herschel quit their legitimate spheres, when they pro-
longed the intellectual vision beyond the boundary of
experience, and propounded the nebular theory? Ac-
cepting that theory as probable, is it not permitted to a
scientific man to follow up, in idea, the series of changes
associated with the condensation of the nebulso; to pict-
ure the successive detachment of planets and moons, and
the relation of all of them to the sun ? If I look upon
our earth, with its orbital revolution and axial rotation, as
one small issue of the process which made the solar sys-
tem what it is, will any theologian deny my right to en-
tertain and express this theoretic view? Time was when
a multitude of theologians would have been found to do
so — when that arch-enemy of science which now vaunts its
tolerance would have made a speedy end of the man who
might venture to publish any opinion of the kind. But
that time, unless the world is caught strangely slumber-
ing, is forever past.

As regards inorganic nature, then, we may traverse,
without let or hinderance, the whole distance which sepa-
rates the nebulae from the worlds of to-day. But only a
few years ago this now conceded ground of science was
theological ground. I could by no means regard this as
the final and sufficient concession of theology; and, at

220 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

Belfast, T thought it not only my right, but my duty, to
state that, as regards the organic world, we must enjoy
the freedom which we have already won in regard to the
inorganic. I could not discern the shred of a title-deed
which gave any man, or any class of men, the right to
open the door of one of these worlds to the scientific
searcher and to close the other against him. And I con-
sidered it frankest, wisest, and in the long run most
conducive to permanent peace, to indicate, without eva-
sion or reserve, the ground that belongs to Science, and
to which she will assuredly make good her claim.

I have been reminded that an eminent predecessor of
mine in the Presidential chair expressed a totally different
view of the Cause of things from that enunciated by me.
In doing so he transgressed the bounds of science at least
as much as I did; but nobody raised an outcry against
him. The freedom he took I claim. And looking at
what I must regard as the extravagances of the religious
world; at the very inadequate and foolish notions con-
cerning this universe which are entertained by the major-
ity of our authorized religious teachers; at the waste of
energy on the part of good men over things unworthy, if
I may say it without discourtesy, of the attention of en-
lightened heathens; the fight about the fripperies of Kit-
ualism, and the verbal quibbles of the Athanasian Creed;
the forcing on the public view of Pontigny Pilgrimages;
the dating of historic epochs from the definition of the
Immaculate Conception; the proclamation of the Divine
Glories of the Sacred Heart — standing in the midst of
these chimeras, which astound all thinking men, it did
not appear to me extravagant to claim the public toler-
ance for an hour and a haK, for the statement of more

APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS 221

reasonable views — views more in accordance with tlie veri-
ties wMcli science lias brought to light, and which many
weary souls would, I thought, welcome with gratification
and relief.

But to come to closer quarters. The expression to
which the most violent exception has been taken is this:
*' Abandoning all disguise, the confession I feel bound to
make before you is, that I prolong the vision backward
across the boundary of the experimental evidence, and
discern in that Matter which we, in our ignorance, and
notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator,
have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and
potency of every form and quality of life.'* To call it a
*' chorus of dissent," as my Catholic critic does, is a mild
way of describing the storm of opprobrium with which this
statement has been assailed. But the first blast of passion
being past, I hope I may again ask my opponents to con-
sent to reason. First of all, I am blamed for crossing the
boundary of the experimental evidence. This, I reply,
is the habitual action of the scientific mind — at least of
that portion of it which applies itself to physical investi-
gation. Our theories of light, heat, magnetism, and elec-
tricity, all imply the crossing of this boundary. My paper
on the "Scientific Use of the Imagination,'* and my "Lect-
ures on Light," illustrate this point in the amplest man-
ner; and in the Article entitled "Matter and Force" in
the present volume I have sought, incidentally, to make
clear, that in physics the experiential incessantly leads to
the ultra-experiential; that out of experience there always
grows something finer than mere experience, and that in
their different powers of ideal extension consists, for the
most part, the difference between the great and the medi-

222 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

ocre investigator. The kingdom of science, then, cometh
not by observation and experiment alone, but is completed
bj fixing the roots of observation and experiment in a
Tegion inaccessible to both, and in dealing with which we
are forced to fall back upon the picturing power of the
mind.

Passing the boundary of experience, therefore, does
not, in the abstract, constitute a sufficient ground for cen-
sure. There must have been something in my particular
mode of crossing it which provoked this tremendous
*' chorus of dissent."

Let us calmly reason the point out. I hold the nebular
theory as it was held by Kant, Laplace, and William Her-
schel, and as it is held by the best scientific intellects of
to-day. According to it, our sun and planets were once
diffused through space as an impalpable haze, out of
which, by condensation, came the solar system. What
caused the haze to condense? Loss of heat. What
rounded the sun and planets? That whicb^ rounds a tear
— molecular force. For eons, the immensity of which
overwhelms man's conceptions, the earth was unfit to
maintain what we call life. It is now covered with visible
living things. They are not formed of matter different
from that of the earth around them. They are, on the
contrary, bone of its bone, and flesh of its flesh. How
were they introduced? Was life implicated in the nebula
— as part, it may be, of a vaster and wholly Unfathomable
Life; or is it the work of a Being standing outside the
nebula, who fashioned it, and vitalized it; but whose own
origin and ways are equally past finding out? As far as
the eye of science has hitherto ranged through nature,
no intrusion of purely creative power into any series of

APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS 223

phenomena lias ever been observed. The assumption of
Bucli a power to account for special phenomena, though
often made, has always proved a failure. It is opposed
to the very spirit of science; and I therefore assumed the
responsibility of holding up, in contrast with it, that method
of nature which it has been the vocation and triumph of
science to disclose, and in the application of which we can
alone hope for further light. Holding, then, that the
nebulae and the solar system, life included, stand to each
other in the relation of the germ to the finished organism,
I reaffirm here, not arrogantly, or defiantly, but without
a shade of indistinctness, the position laid down at Belfast.
Not with the vagueness belonging to the emotions, but
with the definiteness belonging to the understanding, the
scientific man has to put to himself these questions regard-
ing the introduction of life upon the earth. He will be
the last to dogmatize upon the subject, for he knows best
that certainty is here for the present unattainable. His
refusal of the creative hypothesis is less an assertion of
knowledge than a protest against the assumption of knowl-
edge which must long, if not forever, lie beyond us, and
the claim to which is the source of perpetual confusion
upon earth. With a mind open to conviction he asks his
opponents to show him an authority for the belief they
so strenuously and so fiercely uphold. They can do no
more than point to the Book of Genesis, or some other
portion of the Bible. Profoundly interesting, and indeed
pathetic, to me are those attempts of the opening mind of
man to appease its hunger for a Cause. But the Book
of Grenesis has no voice in scientific questions. To the
grasp of geology, which it resisted for a time, it at length
yielded like potter's clay; its authority as a system of cos-

224 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

mogony being discredited on all hands, by the abandon-
ment of the obvious meaning of its writer. It is a poem,
not a scientific treatise. In the former aspect it is forever
beautiful: in the latter aspect it has been, and it will con-
tinue to be, purely obstructive and hurtful. To knowledge
its value has been negative, leading, in rougher ages than
ours, to physical, and even in our own "free" age to
moral, violence.

No incident connected with the proceedings at Belfast
is more instructive than the deportment of the Catholic
hierarchy of Ireland; a body usually too wise to confer
notoriety upon an adversary by imprudently denouncing
him. The "Times," to which I owe a great deal on the
score of fair play, where so much has been unfair, thinks
that the Irish Cardinal, Archbishops, and Bishops, in a
recent manifesto, adroitly employed a weapon which I, at
an unlucky moment, placed in their hands. The antece-
dents of their action cause me to regard it in a different
light; and a brief reference to these antecedents will, I
think, illuminate not only their proceedings regarding Bel-
fast, but other doings which have been recently noised
abroad.

Before me lies a document bearing the date of Novem-
ber, 1873, which, after appearing for a moment, unaccount-
ably vanished from public view. It is a Memorial ad-
dressed, by Seventy of the Students and Ex-students of
the Catholic University in Ireland, to the Episcopal Board
of the University ; and it constitutes the plainest and brav-
est remonstrance ever addressed by Irish laymen to their
spiritual pastors and masters. It expresses the profound-
est dissatisfaction with the curriculum marked out for the

APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS 225

students of the University; setting forth the extraordinary
fact that the ]ectui*e-list for the faculty of Science, pub-
lished a month before they wrote, did not contain the
name of a single Professor of the Physical or Natural
Sciences.

The memorialists forcibly deprecate this, and dwell
upon the necessity of education in science: "The distin-
guishing mark of this age is its ardor for science. The
natural sciences have, within the last fifty years, become
the chief est study in the world ; they are in our time pur-
sued with an activity unparalleled in the history of man-
kind. Scarce a year now passes without some discovery
being made in these sciences which, as with the touch of
the magician's wand, shivers to atoms theories formerly
deemed unassailable. It is through the physical and nat-
ural sciences that the fiercest assaults are now made on
our religion. No more deadly weapon is used against our
faith than the facts incontestably proved by modern re-
searches in science."

Such statements must be the reverse of comfortable to
a number of gentlemen who, trained in the philosophy
of Thomas Aquinas, have been accustomed to the unques-
tioning submission of all other sciences to their divine
science of Theology. But this is not all: "One thing
seems certain," say the memorialists, viz., "that if chairs
for the physical and natural sciences be not soon founded
in the Catholic University, very many young men will
have their faith exposed to dangers which the creation of
a school of science in the University would defend them
from. For our generation of Irish Catholics are writhing
under the sense of their inferiority in science, and are de-
termined that such inferiority shall not long continue ; and

226 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

SO, if scientific training be unattainable at our University,
they will seek it at Trinity or at the Queen's Colleges, in
not one of which is there a Catholic Professor of Science.'*

Those who imagined the Catholic University at Ken-
sington to be due to the spontaneous recognition, on the
part of the Eoman hierarchy, of the intellectual needs of
the age, will derive enlightenment from this, and still
more from what follows: for the most formidable threat
remains. To the picture of Catholic students seceding to
Trinity and the Queen's Colleges, the memorialists add
this darkest stroke of all: "They will, in the solitude of
their own homes, unaided by any guiding advice, devour
the works of Haeckel, Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, and
Lyell; works innocuous if studied under a professor who
would point out the difierence between established facts
and erroneous inferences, but which are calculated to sap
the faith of a solitary student, deprived of a discriminat-
ing judgment to which he could refer for a solution of his
diflS-Culties. "

In the light of the knowledge given by this courageous
memorial, and of similar knowledge otherwise derived,
the recent Catholic manifesto did not at all strike me as
a chuckle over the mistake of a maladroit adversary, but
rather as an evidence of profound uneasiness on the part
of the Cardinal, the Archbishops, and the Bishops who
signed it. They acted toward the Students' Memorial,
however, with their accustomed practical wisdom. As
one concession to the spirit which it embodied, the Cath-
olic University at Kensington was brought forth, appar-
ently as the effect of spontaneous inward force, and not
of outward pressure becoming too formidable to be suc-
cessfully opposed.

APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS 227

The memorialists point with bitterness to the fact, that
**the name of no Irish Catholic is known in connection
with the physical and natural sciences." But this, they
ought to know, is the complaint of free and cultivated
minds wherever a Priesthood exercises dominant power.
Precisely the same complaint has been made with respect
to the Catholics of Germany. The great national litera-
ture and the scientific achievements of that country, in
modern times, are almost wholly the work of Protestants.
A vanishingly small fraction of it only is derived from
members of the Eoman Church, although the number of
these in Grermany is at least as great as that of the Prot-
estants. "The question arises," says a writer in an able
German periodical, "what is the cause of a phenomenon
so humiliating to the Catholics? It cannot be referred
to want of natural endowment due to climate (for the Prot-
estants of Southern Germany have contributed powerfully
to the creations of the German intellect), but purely to
outward circumstances. » And these are readily discovered
in the pressure exercised for centuries by the Jesuitical
system, which has crushed out of Catholics every tendency
to free mental productiveness." It is, indeed, in Catholic
countries that the weight of Ultramontanism has been most
severely felt. It is in such countries that the very finest
spirits, who have dared, without quitting their faith, to
plead for freedom or reform, have suffered extinction.
The extinction, however, was more apparent than real,
and Hermes, Hirscher, and Giinther, though individually
broken and subdued, prepared the way, in Bavaria, for
the persecuted but unflinching Frohschammer, for Bol-
linger, and for the remarkable liberal movement of which
Bollinger is the head and guide.

228 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE'

Thoiigli molded for centuries to an obedience unparal-
leled in any other country, except Spain, the Irish intel-
lect is beginning to show signs of independence; demand-
ing a diet more suited to its years than the pabulum of
the Middle Ages. As for the recent manifesto in which
Pope, Cardinal, Archbishops, and Bishops are united in
one grand anathema, its character and fate are shadowed
forth by the Vision of Nebuchadnezzar recorded in the
Book of Daniel. It resembles the image, whose form was
terrible, but the gold, and silver, and brass, and iron of
which rested upon feet of clay. And a stone smote the
feet of clay; and the iron, and the brass, and the silver,
and the gold, were broken in pieces together, and became
like the chaff of the summer threshing-floors, and the wind
carried them away.

Monsignor Capel has recently been good enough to
proclaim at once the friendliness of his Church toward
true science, and her right to determine what true science
is. Let us dwell for a moment on the proofs of her scien-
tific competence. When Halley's comet appeared in 1456
it was regarded as the harbinger of God's vengeance, the
dispenser of war, pestilence, and famine, and by order of
the Pope the church bells of Europe were rung to scare
the monster away. An additional daily prayer was added
to the supplications of the faithful. The comet in due
time disappeared, and the faithful were comforted by the
assurance that, as in previous instances relating to eclipses,
droughts, and rains, so also as regards this "nefarious'*
comet, \dctory had been vouchsafed to the Church.

Both Pythagoras and Copernicus had taught the helio-
centric doctrine — that the earth revolves round the sun.
In the exercise of her right to determine what true science

APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS 229

is, tlie Clmrcli, in the Pontificate of Paul Y., stepped in,
and by the mouth of the holy Congregation of the Index,
delivered, on March 5, 1616, the following decree:

"And whereas it hatn also come to the knowledge of
the said holy congregation that the false Pythagorean doc-
trine of the mobility of the earth and the immobility of
the sun, entirely opposed to Holy Writ, which is taught
by Nicolas Copernicus, is now published abroad and re-
ceived by many. In order that this opinion may not
further spread, to the damage of Catholic truth, it is
ordered that this and all other books teaching the like
doctrine be suspended, and by this decree they are all
respectively suspended, forbidden, and condemned."

But why go back to 1456 and 1616? Far be it from
me to charge bygone sins upon Monsignor Capel, were
it not for the practices he upholds to-day. The most ap-
plauded dogmatist and champion of the Jesuits is, I am
informed, Perrone. No less than thirty editions of a work
of his have been scattered abroad for the healing of the
nations. His notions of physical astronomy are virtually
those of 1456. He teaches boldly that "God does not rule
by universal law . . . that when God orders a given
planet to stand still He does not detract from any law
passed by Himself, but orders that planet to move round
the sun for such and such a time, then to stand still, and
then again to move, as His pleasure may be." Jesuitism
proscribed Frohschammer for questioning its favorite dog-
ma, that every human soul was created by a direct super-
natural act of God, and for asserting that man, body and
soul, came from his parents. This is the system that now
strives for universal power; it is from it, as Monsignor

280 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

Capel graciously informs us, that we are to learn what is
allowable in science, and what is not!

In the face of such facts, which might be multiplied
at will, it requires extraordinary bravery of mind, or a
reliance upon public ignorance almost as extraordinary,
to make the claims made by Monsignor Capel for bis
Church.

Before me is a very remarkable letter addressed in
1875 by the Bishop of Montpellier to the Deans and Pro-
fessors of Faculties of Montpellier, in which the writer
very clearly lays down the claims of his Church. He had
been startled by an incident occurring in a course of lec-
tures on Physiology given by a professor, of whose scien-
tific capacity there was no doubt, but who, it was alleged,
rightly or wrongly, had made his course the vehicle of
materialism. *'Je ne me suis point donn^," says the
Bishop, *'la mission que je remplis au milieu de vous.
*Personne, au temoignage de saint Paul, ne s'attribue a
soi-meme un pareil honneur; il y faut 6tre appeld de Dieu,
comme Aaron/ Et pourquoi en est-il ainsi? C'est parce
que, selon le m^me Apotre, nous devons ^tre les ambassa-
deurs de Dieu; et il n'est pas dans les usages, pas plus
qu'il n'est dans la raison et le droit, qu'un envoyd s'ac-
credite lui-meme. Mais, si j'ai re^u d'En-Haut une mis-
sion; si I'Eglise, au nom de Dieu lui-mtoe, a souscrit mes
'''ettres de cr^ance, me sierait-il de manquer aux instructions
qu'elle m'a donndes et d'entendre, en un sens different du
sien, le r61e qu'elle m'a confid?

**0r. Messieurs, la sainte Eglise se croit investie du
droit absolu d'enseigner les hommes; elle se croit d^posi-
taire de la v^rit^, non pas de la v^ritd fragmentaire, in-
complete, m^l^e de certitude et d' hesitation, mais de la

APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS 231

verite totale, complete, an point de vne religienx. Bien
pins, elle est si siire de I'infaillibilite qne son Fondatenr
divin Ini a commnniquee, comme la dot magnifiqne de
lenr indissolnble alliance, qne, meme dans I'ordre natnrel,
scientifiqne on philosopMqne, moral on politiqne, elle
n'admet pas qn'nn syst^me pnisse etre sontenn et adopts
par des Chretiens, s'il contredit a des dogmes definis. Elle
consid^re qne la negation volontaire et opiniatre d'nn senl
point de sa doctrine rend conpable dn p^chd d'h^resie;
et elle pense que tonte heresie formelle, si on ne la rejette
pas conragensement avant de paraitre devant Dien, entraine
avec soi la perte certaine de la grace et de I'eternite. "

The Bishop recalls those whom he addresses from the
false philosophy of the present to the philosophy of the
past, and foresees the trinmph of the latter. "Avant qne
le dix-nenvi^me si^cle s'ach^ve, la vieille philosophic
scolastiqne aura repris sa place dans la jnste admiration
dn monde. II Ini fandra ponrtant bien dn temps ponr
gnerir les manx de tont genre, canses par son indigne
rivale; et pendant de longnes annees encore, ce nom de
philosophie, le pins grand de la langne hnmaine apr^s celni
de religion J sera snspect anx ames qui se sonviendront de
la science impie et materialiste de Locke, de Condillac on
d'Helvetins. L'henre actnelle est anx sciences natnrelles:
c'est maintenant 1' instrument de combat contre I'Eglise et
contre tonte foi religiense. Nons ne les redontons pas."
Further on the Bishop warns his readers that everything
can be abused. Poetry is good, but in excess it may in-
jure practical conduct. "Les math^matiques sont excel-
lentes: et Bossnet les a louees 'comme etant ce qui sert
le plus a la justesse dn raisonnement' ; mais si on s'accou-
tume exclusivement a lenr methode, rien de ce qui appar-

232 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

tient a I'ordre moral ne parait plus pouvoir 6tre d^montr^;
et Fenelon a pu parler de V ensorcellement et des attraits
diaboliques de la gdomdtrie."

The learned Bishop thus finally accentuates the claims
of the Church: *'Oomme le ddfinissait le Pape Ldon X.,
au cinqui^me concile oecumdnique de Latran, *Le vrai ne
pent pas ^tre contraire ^ lui-m^me; par consequent, toute
assertion contraire k une veritd de foi revelde est ndces-
sairement et absolument fausse.' II suit de la que, sans
entrer dans I'examen scientifique de telle ou telle question
de physiologic, mais par la seule certitude de nos dogmes,
nous pouvons juger du sort de telle ou telle hypoth^se,
qui est une machine de guerre anti-chr^tienne plutot qu'une
conqu^te serieuse sur les secrets et les myst^res de la na-
ture. . . . C'est un dogme que I'homme a 6i6 form^ et
fagonnd des mains de Dieu. Done il est faux, heretique,
contraire k la dignite du Createur et offensant pour son
chef-d'oeuvre, de dire que I'homme constitue la septi^me
esp^ce des singes . . . Heresie encore de dire que le genre
humain n'est pas sorti d'un seul couple, et qu'on y peut
compter jusqu'a douze races distinctesi'*

The course of life upon earth, as far as Science can
see, has been one of amelioration — a steady advance on
the whole from the lower to the higher. The continued
effort of animated nature is to improve its condition and
raise itself to a loftier level. In man improvement and
amelioration depend largely upon the growth of conscious
knowledge, by which the errors of ignorance are contin-
ually moulted, and truth is organized. It is the advance
of knowledge that has given a materialistic color to the
philosophy of this age. Materialism is therefore not a

APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS 233

thing to be mourned over, but to be honestly considered
- — accepted if it be wholly true, rejected if it be wholly
false, wisely sifted and turned to account if it embrace a
mixture of truth and error. Of late years the study of
the nervous sj^stem, and its relation to thought and feel-
ing, have profoundly occupied inquiring minds. It is our
duty not to shirk — it ought rather to be our privilege to
accept — the established results of such inquiries, for here
assuredly our ultimate weal depends upon our loyalty to
the truth. Instructed as to the control which the nervous
system exercises over man's moral and intellectual nature,
we shall be better prepared, not only to mend their mani-
fold defects, but also to strengthen and purify both. Is
mind degraded by this recognition of its dependence?
Assuredly not. Matter, on the contrary, is raised to the
level it ought to occupy, and from which timid ignorance
would remove it.

But the light is dawning, and it will become stronger
as time goes on. Even the Brighton ''Church Congress"
affords evidence of this. From the manifold confusions
of that assemblage my memory has rescued two items,
which it would fain preserve: the recognition of a relation
between Health and Eeligion, and the address of the Eev.
Harry Jones. Out of the conflict of vanities his words
emerge wholesome and strong, because undrugged by dog-
ma, coming directly from the warm brain of one who
knows what practical truth means, and who has faith in
its vitality and inherent power of propagation. I wonder
whether he is less effectual in his ministry than his more
embroidered colleagues ? It surely behooves our teachers
to come to some definite understanding as to this question
of health; to see how, by inattention to it, we are de-

234 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

frauded, negatively and positively: negatively, by the
privation of that *' sweetness and light" which is the nat-
ural concomitant of good health; positively, by the inser-
tion into life of cynicism, ill- temper, and a thousand cor-
roding anxieties which good health would dissipate. We
fear and scorn ** materialism." But he who knew all about
it, and could apply his knowledge, might become the
preacher of a new gospel. Not, however, through the
ecstatic moments of the individual does such knowledge
come, but through the revelations of science, in connection
with the history of mankind.

Why should the Koman Catholic Church call gluttony
a mortal sin? Why should fasting occupy a place in the
disciplines of religion? What is the meaning of Luther's
advice to the young clergyman who came to him, per-
plexed with the difficulties of predestination and election,
if it be not that, in virtue of its action upon the brain,
when wisely applied, there is moral and religious virtue
even in a hydro-carbon? To use the old language, food
and drink are creatures of God, and have therefore a
spiritual value. Through our neglect of the monitions of
a reasonable materialism we sin and suffer daily. I might
here point to the train of deadly disorders over which
science has given modern society such controls—disclosing
the lair of the material enemy, insuring his destruction,
and thus preventing that moral squalor and hopelessness
which habitually tread on the heels of epidemics in the
case of the poor.

Eising to higher spheres, the visions of Swedenborg,
and the ecstasy of Plotinus and Porphyry, are phases of
that psychical condition, obviously connected with the
nervous system and state of health, on which is based

APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS 235

the Vedic doctrine of the absorption of the individual
into the universal soul. Plotinus taught the devout how
to pass into a condition of ecstasy. Porphyry complains
of having been only once united to God in eighty-six
years, while his master Plotinus had been so united six
times in sixty years.' A friend who knew Wordsworth
informs me that the poet, in some of his moods, was ac-
customed to seize hold of an external object to assure
himself of his own bodily existence. As states of con-
sciousness such phenomena have an undisputed reality,
and a substantial identity; but they are connected with
the most heterogeneous objective conceptions. The sub-
jective experiences are similar, because of the similarity
of the underlying organizations.

But for those who wish to look beyond the practical
facts, there will always remain ample room for specula-
tion. Take the argument of the Lucretian introduced in
the Belfast Address. As far as I am aware, not one of
my assailants has attempted to answer it. Some of them,
indeed, rejoice over the ability displayed by Bishop But-
ler in rolling back the difficulty on his opponent; and
they even imagine that it is the Bishop's own argument
that is there employed. But the raising of a new diffi-
culty does not abolish — does not even lessen — the old one,
and the argument of the Lucretian remains untouched by
anything the Bishop has said or can say.

And here it may be permitted me to add a word to an
Important controversy now going on: and which turns on

' I recommend to the reader's particular attention Dr. Draper's important
•work entitled, "History of the Conflict between "Religion and Science" (Messrs.
a S. King & Co.).

286 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

the question: Do states of consciousness enter as links
into the chain of antecedents and sequence, which give
rise to bodily actions, and to other states of conscious-
ness; or are they merely by-products^ which are not essen-
tial to the physical processes going on in th« brain?
Speaking for myself, it is certain that I have no power
of imagining states of consciousness, interposed between
the molecules of the brain, and influencing the transfer-
ence of motion among the molecules. The thought
"eludes all mental presentation"; and hence the logic
seems of iron strength which claims for the brain an
automatic action, uninfluenced by states of consciousness.
But it is, I believe, admitted by those who hold the
automaton-theory, that states of consciousness are pro-
duced by the marshalling of the molecules of the brain:
and this production of consciousness by molecular motion
is to me quite as inconceivable on mechanical principles
as the production of molecular motion by consciousness.
If, therefore, I reject one result, I must reject both. I,
however, reject neither, and thus stand in the presence of
two Incomprehensibles, instead of one Incomprehensible.
While accepting fearlessly the facts of materialism dwelt
upon in these pages, I bow my head in the dust before
that mystery of mind, which has hitherto defied its own
penetrative power, and which may ultimately resolve itself
into a demonstrable impossibility of self- penetration.

But the secret is an open one — the practical monitions
are plain enough, which declare that on our dealings with
matter depend our weal and woe, physical and moral.
The state of mind which rebels against the recognition of
the claims of "materialism" is not unknown to me. I can
remember a time when I regarded my body as a weed, so

APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS 237

much more highly did I prize the conscious strength and
pleasure derived from moral and religious feeling — which,
I may add, was mine without the intervention of dogma.
The error was not an ignoble one, but this did not save
it from the penalty attached to error. Saner knowledge
taught me that the body is no weed, and that treated as
such it would infallibly avenge itself. Am I personally
lowered by this change of front? Not so. Give me their
health, and there is no spiritual experience of those ear-
lier years — no resolve of duty, or work of mercy, no work
of self -renouncement, no solemnity of thought, no joy in
the life and aspects of nature — that would not still be
mine; and this without the least reference or regard to
any purely personal reward or punishment looming in the
future.

And now I have to utter a "farewell" free from bitter-
ness to all my readers; thanking my friends for a sym-
pathy more steadfast, I would fain believe, if less noisy,
than the antipathy of my foes; and commending to these
a passage from Bishop Butler, which they have either not
read or failed to lay to heart. "It seems," saith the
Bishop, "that men would be strangely headstrong and
self-willed, and disposed to exert themselves with an im-
petuosity which would render society insupportable, and
the living in it impracticable, were it not for some ac-
quired moderation and self-government, some aptitude
and readiness in restraining themselves, and concealing
their sense of things."

XI

THE REV. JAMES MARTINEAU AND THE BELFAST
ADDRESS *

PKIOK to tlie publication of tlie Fifth Edition of
these "Fragments" my attention had been directed
by several estimable, and indeed eminent, persons,
to an essay by the Rev. James Martineau, as demanding
serious consideration at my hands. I tried to give the
essay the attention claimed for it, and published my views
of it as an Introduction to Part 11. of the "Fragments."
I there referred, and here again refer with pleasure, to
the accord subsisting between Mr. Martineau and myself
on certain points of biblical Cosmogony. "In so far,"
says he, "as Church belief is still committed to a given
Cosmogony and natural history of man, it lies open to
scientific refutation." And again: "It turns out that
with the sun and moon and stars, and in and on the
earth, before and after the appearance of our race, quite
other things have happened than those which the sacred
Cosmogony recites." Once more: "The whole history of
the genesis of things Religion must surrender to the
Sciences." Finally, still more emphatically: "In the in-
vestigation of the genetic order of things, Theology is an
intruder, and must stand aside." This expresses, only in
words of fuller pith, the views which I ventured to enun-

» "Fortniglitly Review."

(238)

REV MARTINS AU AND BELFAST ADDRESS 239

ciate in Belfast. "The impregnable position of Science,'*
I there say, "may be stated in a few words. We claim,
and we shall wrest from Theology, the entire domain of
Cosmological theory." Thu« Theology, so far as it is
represented by Mr. Martinean, and Science, so far as 1
understand it, are in absolute harmony here.

But Mr. Martineau would have just reason to complain
of me if, by partial citation, I left my readers under the
impression that the agreement between us is complete.
At the opening of the eighty-ninth Session of the Man-
chester New College, London, on October 6, 1874, he, its
principal, delivered an Address bearing the title "Eelig-
ion as affected by Modern Materialism"; the references
and general tone of which make evident the depth of its
author's discontent with my previous deliverance at Bel-
fast. I find it difficult to grapple with the exact grounds
of this discontent. Indeed, logically considered, the im-
pression left upon my mind by an essay of great sesthetic
merit, containing many passages of exceeding beauty, and
many sentiments which none but the pure in heart could
utter as they are uttered here, is vague and unsatisfactory.
The author appears at times so brave and liberal, at times
so timid and captious, and at times, if I dare say it, so
imperfectly informed, regarding the position he assails.

At the outset of his Address Mr. Martineau states with
some distinctness his "sources of religious faith." They
are two — "the scrutiny of Nature" and "the interpreta-
tion of Sacred Books." It would have been a theme
worthy of his intelligence to have deduced from these
two sources his religion as it stands. But not another
word is said about the "Sacred Books." Having swept
with the besom of Science various "books" contemptu-

240 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

ously away, lie does not define the Sacred residue; mucli
less give us the reasons why he deems them sacred. * His
references to "Nature," on the other hand, are magnifi-
cent tirades against Nature, intended, apparently, to show
the wholly abominable character of man's antecedents if
the theory of evolution be true. Here also his mood
lacks steadiness. While joyfully accepting, at one place,
"the widening space, the deepening vistas of time, the
detected marvels of physiological structure, and the rapid
filling- in of the missing links in the chain of organic
life," he falls, at another, into lamentation and mourn-
ing over the very theory which renders "organic life" "a
chain." He claims the largest liberality for his sect, and
avows its contempt for the dangers of possible discovery.
But immediately afterward he damages the claim, and
ruins all confidence in the avowal. He professes sym-
pathy with modern Science, and almost in the same
breath he treats, or certainly will be understood to treat,
the Atomic Theory, and the doctrine of the Conservation
of Energy, as if they were a kind of scientific thimble-
riggery.

His ardor, moreover, renders him inaccurate; causing
him to see discord between scientific men where nothing
but harmony reigns. In his celebrated Address to the
Congress of German Naturforscher, delivered at Leipzig,
three years ago, Du Bois-Reymond speaks thus: "What
conceivable connection subsists between definite move-
ments of definite atoms in my brain, on the one hand,

* Mr. Martineau's use of the term **sacred" is unintentionally misleading.
In his later essays we are taught that he does not mean to restrict it to the
Bible. He does not, however, mention the * 'books" beyond those of the Bible
to which he would apply the term. 1879.

REV. MARTINEAU AND BELFAST ADDRESS 241

and, on the other hand, such primordial, indefinable, un-
deniable, facts as these: I feel pain or pleasure; I expe-
rience a sweet taste, or smell a rose, or hear an organ, or
see something red. . . It is absolutely and forever incon-
ceivable that a number of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and
oxygen atoms should be otherwise than indifferent as to
their own position and motion, past, present, or future.
It is utterly inconceivable how consciousness should result
from their joint action. ' '

This language, which was spoken in 1872, Mr. Marti-
neau "freely" translates, and quotes against me. The act
is due to misapprehension. Evidence is at hand to prove
that I employed similar language twenty years ago. It
is to be found in the "Saturday Review" for 1860; but a
sufficient illustration of the agreement between my friend
Du Bois-Reymond and myself is furnished by the dis-
course on "Scientific Materialism," delivered in 1868,
then widely circulated, and reprinted here. The reader
who compares the two discourses will see that the same
line of thought is pursued in both, and that perfect agree-
ment reigns between my friend and me. In the very Ad-
dress he criticises, Mr. Martineau might have seen that
precisely the same position is maintained. A quotation
will prove this : ' ' Thus far, ' ' I say, ' ' our way is clear, but
now comes my difficulty. Your atoms are individually
without sensation, much more are they without intelli-
gence. May I ask you, then, to try your hand upon this
problem? Take your dead hydrogen atoms, your dead
oxygen atoms, your dead carbon atoms, your dead nitro-
gen atoms, your dead phosphorus atoms, and all the other
atoms, dead as grains of shot, of which the brain is
formed. Imagine them separate and sensationless ; ob-

SCIENCE — YI — 11

242 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

serve them ruaning together and forming all imaginable
combinations. This, as a purely mechanical process, is
seeable bj the mind. But can you see, or dream, or in
any way imagine, how out of that mechanical act, and
from these individually dead atoms, sensation, thought,
and emotion are to rise? Are you likely to extract
Homer out of the rattling of dice, or the Differential Cal-
culus out of the clash of billiard-balls? ... I can fol-
low a particle of musk until it reaches the olfactory nerve;
I can follow the waves of sound until their tremors reach
the water of the labyrinth, and set the otoliths and Corti's
fibres in motion; I can also visualize the waves of ether
as they cross the eye and hit the retina. Nay, more, I
am able to pursue to the central organ the motion thus im-
parted at the periphery, and to see in idea the very mole-
cules of the brain thrown into tremors. My insight is not
baffled by these physical processes. What baffles and be-
wilders me is the notion that from these physical tremors
things so utterly incongruous with them as sensation,
thought, and emotion can be derived." It is only a
complete misapprehension of our true relationship that
could induce Mr. Martineau to represent Du Bois-Key-
mond and myself as opposed to each other.

"The affluence of illustration," writes an able and sym-
pathetic reviewer of this essay, in the New York "Trib-
une," "in which Mr. Martineau delights often impairs the
distinctness of his statements by diverting the attention of
the reader from the essential points of his discussion to
the beauty of his imagery, and thus diminishes their power
of conviction." To the beauties here referred to I bear
willing testimony; but the reviewer is strictly just in his
estimate of their effect upon my critic's logic. The "afflu-

REV. MARTINEAU AND BELFAST ADDRESS 248

ence of illustration," and tlie heat, and haze, and haste,
generated by its reaction upon Mr. Martineau's own mind,
often produce vagueness where precision is the one thing
needful — poetic fervor where we require judicial calm; and
practical unfairness where the strictest justice ought to be,
and I willingly believe is meant to be, observed.

In one of his nobler passages Mr. Martineau tells us
how the pupils of his college have been educated hitherto:
*'They have been trained under the assumptions (1) that
the Universe which includes us and folds us round is the
life- dwelling of an Eternal Mind; (2) that the world of our
abode is the scene of a moral government, incipient but
not complete; and (3) that the upper zones of human affec-
tion, above the clouds of self and passion, take us into the
sphere of a Divine Communion. Into this over- arching
scene it is that growing thought and enthusiasm have ex-
panded to catch their light and fire."

Alpine summits seem to kindle above us as we read
these glowing words; we see their beauty and feel their
life. At the close of one of the essays here printed,* I
thus refer to the "Communion" which Mr. Martineau calls
*'Divine": '* 'Two things,' said Immanuel Kant, 'fill me
with awe — the starry heavens, and the sense of moral re-
sponsibility in man.' And in his hours of health and
strength and sanity, when the stroke of action has ceased,
and the pause of reflection has set in, the scientific in-
vestigator finds himself overshadowed by the same awe.
Breaking contact with the hampering details of earth, it
associates him with a Power which gives fulness and tone
to his existence, but which he can neither analyze nor

* "Scientific Use of the Imagination.'

244 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

comprehend.'' Though. '* knowledge" is here disavowed,
the "feelings" of Mr. Martineau and myself are, I think,
very much alike. He, nevertheless, censures me — almost
denounces me — for referring Keligion to the region of
Emotion. Surely he is inconsistent here. The foregoing
words refer to an inward hue or temperature, rather than
to an external object of thought. When I attempt to give
the Power which I see manifested in the Universe an ob-
jective form, personal or otherwise, it slips away from me,
declining all intellectual manipulation. I dare not, save
poetically, use the pronoun *'He" regarding it; I dare not
call it a "Mind"; I refuse to call it even a "Cause." Its
mystery overshadows me ; but it remains a mystery, while
the objective frames which some of my neighbors try to
make it fit seem to me to distort and desecrate it.

It is otherwise with Mr. Martineau, and hence his dis-
content. He professes to Tcnow where I only claim to feel.
He could make his contention good against me if, by a
process of verification, he would transform his assump-
tions into "objective knowledge." But he makes no at-
tempt to do so. They remain assumptions from the begin-
ning of his Address to its end. And yet he frequently
uses the word "unverified," as if it were fatal to the posi-
tion on which its incidence falls. "The scrutiny of Nat-
ure" is one of his sources of "religious faith"; what
logical foothold does that scrutiny furnish, on which any
one of the foregoing three assumptions could be planted?
Nature, according to his picturing, is base and cruel: what
IS the inference to be drawn regarding its Author? If
Nature be "red in tooth and claw," who is responsible?
On a Mindless nature Mr. Martineau pours the full torrent
of his gorgeous invective; but could the "assumption" of

REV. MARTINEAU AND BELFAST ADDRESS 245

*'an Eternal Mind" — even of a Beneficent Eternal Mind — ■
render the world objectively a whit less mean and ugly
than it is? Not an iota. It is man's feelings, and not
external phenomena, that are influenced by the assump-
tion. It adds not a ray of light nor a strain of music to
the objective sum of things. It does not touch the phe-
nomena of physical nature — storm, flood, or fire — ncr di-
minish by a pang the bloody combats of the animal world.
But it does add the glow of religious emotion to the hu-
man soul, as represented by Mr. Martineau. Beyond this
I defy him to go; and yet he rashly — it might be said
petulantly — kicks away the only philosophic foundation on
which it is possible for him to build his religion.

He twits incidentally the modern scientific interpreta-
tion of nature because of its want of cheerfulness. "Let
the new future," he says, "preach its own gospel, and de-
vise, if it can, the means of making the tidings glad.^^
This is a common argument: "If you only knew the com-
fort of belief!" My reply is that I choose the nobler part
of Emerson, when, after various disenchantments, he ex-
claimed, "I covet truth r^ The gladness of true heroism
visits the heart of him who is really competent to say
this. Besides, "gladness" is an emotion, and Mr. Marti-
neau theoretically scorns the emotional. I am not, how-
ever, acquainted with a writer who draws more largely
upon this source, while mistaking it for something objec-
tive. "To reach the Cause," he says, "there is no need
to go into the past, as though, being missed here. He
could be found there. But when once He has been appre-
hended by the proper organs of divine apprehension, the
whole life of Humanity is recognized as the scene of His
agency. ' ' That Mr. Martineau should have lived so long,

246 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

thought so much, and failed to recognize the entirely sub-
jective character of this creed, is highly instructive. His
**proper organs of divine apprehension" — given, we must
assume, to Mr. Martineau and his pupils, but denied to
many of the greatest intellects and noblest men in this
and other ages — lie at the very core of his emotions.

In fact, it is when Mr. Martineau is most purely emo-
tional that he scorns the emotions; it is when he is most
purely subjective that he rejects subjectivity. He pays a
just and liberal tribute to the character of John Stuart
Mill. But in the light of Mill's philosophy, benevolence,
honor, purity, having '* shrunk into mere unaccredited sub-
jective susceptibilities, have lost all support from Omnis-
cient approval, and all presumable accordance with the
reality of things.'* If Mr. Martineau had given them any
inkling of the process by which he renders the *' subjec-
tive susceptibilities" objective, or how he arrives at an
objective ground of *' Omniscient approval," gratitude from
his pupils would have been his just meed. But, as it is,
he leaves them lost in an iridescent cloud of words, after
exciting a desire which he is incompetent to appease.

*'We are," he says, in another place, "forever shaping
our representations of invisible things into forms of defi-
nite opinion, and throwing them to the front, as if they
were the photographic equivalent of our real faith. It is
a delusion which affects us all. Yet somehow the essence
of our religion never finds its way into these frames of
theory: as we put them together it slips away, and, if we
turn to pursue it, still retreats behind ; ever ready to work
with the will, to unbind and sweeten the affections, and
bathe the life with reverence, but refusing to be seen, or
to pass from a divine hue of thinking into a human pat*

REV. MARTINEAU AND BELFAST ADDRESS 247

tern of thought." This is very beautiful, and mainlj so
because the man who utters it obviously brings it all out
of the treasury of his own heart. But the "hue" and
**pattern" here so finely spoken of, the former refusing to
pass into the latter, are neither more nor less than that
** emotion," on the one hand, and that "objective knowl-
edge," on the other, which have drawn this suicidal fire
from Mr. Martineau*s battery.

I now come to one of the most serious portions of Mr.
Martineau's pamphlet — serious far less on account of its
"personal errors" than of its intrinsic gravity, though its
author has thought fit to give it a witty and sarcastic
tone. He analyzes and criticises "the materialist doctrine,
which, in our time, is proclaimed with so much pomp,
and resisted with so much passion. * Matter is all I want,'
says the physicist; 'give me its atoms alone, and I will
explain the universe.' " It is thought, even by Mr. Mar-
tineau's intimate friends, that in this pamphlet he is an-
swering me. I must therefore ask the reader to contrast
the foregoing travesty with what I really do say regarding
atoms: "I do not think that he [the materialist] is en-
titled to say that his molecular groupings and motions
explain everything. In reality, they explain nothing.
The utmost he can affirm is the association of two classes
of phenomena, of whose real bond of union he is in ab-
solute ignorance." ' This is very different from saying,
"Give me its atoms alone, and I will explain the uni-
verse." Mr. Martineau continues his dialogue with the
physicist: " 'Grood,' he says; 'take as many atoms as you
please. See that they have all that is requisite to Body

* Address on "Scientific Materialism."

248 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

[a metaphysical B], being homogeneous extended solids.'
'That is not enough,' his physicist replies; 'it might do
for Democritus and the mathematicians, but I must have
something more. The atoms must not only be in motion,
and of various shapes, but also of as many kinds as there
are chemical elements; for how could I ever get water if
I had only hydrogen elements to work with?' 'So be it,*
Mr. Martineau consents to answer, 'only this is a consid-
erable enlargement of your specified datum [where, and
by whom specified ?] — in fact, a conversion of it into sev-
eral; yet, even at the cost of its monism [put into it by
Mr. Martineau], your scheme seems hardly to gain its
end; for by what manipulation of your resources will
you, for example, educe Consciousness?' "

This reads like pleasantry, but it deals with serious
things. For the last seven years the question here pro-
posed by Mr. Martineau, and my answer to it, have been
accessible to all. The question, in my words, is briefly
this: "A man can say, 'I feel, I think, I love,* but how
does consciousness infuse itself into the problem?'* And
here is my answer: "The passage from the physics of the
brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is un-
thinkable. Granted that a definite thought and a definite
molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously; we
do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any
rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to pass,
by a process of reasoning, from the one to the other.
They appear together, but we do not know why. Were
our minds and senses so expanded, strengthened, and
illuminated, as to enable us to see and feel the very mole-
cules of the brain; were we capable of following all their
motions, all their groupings, all their electric discharges,

BEV. MARTINEAU AND BELFAST ADDRESS 249

if such there be; and were we intimately acquainted with
the corresponding states of thought and feeling, we should
be as far as ever from the solution of the problem, 'How
are these physical processes connected with the facts of
consciousness?' The chasm between the two classes of
phenomena would still remain intellectually impassable. ' ' *

Compare this with the answer which Mr. Martineau puts
into the mouth of his physicist, and with which I am gen-
erally credited by Mr. Martineau's readers, both in Eng-
land and America: '* 'It [the problem of consciousness]
does not daunt me at all. Of course you understand that
all along my atoms have been affected by gravitation and
polarity; and now I have only to insist with Fechner on
a difference among molecules: there are the inorganic,
which can change only their place^ like the particles in an
undulation; and there are the organic^ which can change
their order^ as in a globule that turns itself inside out.
With an adequate number of these our problem will be
manageable.' 'Likely enough,* we may say ['entirely un-
likely,' say I], 'seeing how careful you are to provide for
all emergencies; and if any hitch should occur in the next
step, where you will have to pass from mere sentiency to
thought and will, you can again look in upon your atoms,
and fling among them a handful of Leibnitz's monads,
to serve as souls in little, and be ready, in a latent form,
with that Yorstellungs-fahigkeit which our picturesque
interpreters of nature so much prize.'"

*'But surely," continues Mr. Martineau, "you must
observe that this 'matter' of yours alters its style with

* Bishop Butler's reply to the Lucretian in the "Belfast Address'* Is all la
the same strain.

250 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

every change of service: starting as a beggar witli scarce
a rag of 'property' to cover its bones, it turns np as a
prince wben large undertakings are wanted. 'We must
radically cbange our notions of matter,' says Professor
Tyndall; and then, lie ventures to believe, it will answer
all demands, carrying 'the promise and potency of all terres-
trial life.' If the measure of the required 'change in our
notions' had been specified, the proposition would have
had a real meaning, and been susceptible of a test. It is
easy travelling through the stages of such a hypothesis;
you deposit at your bank a round sum ere you start, and,
drawing on it piecemeal at every pause, complete your
grand tour without a debt."

The last paragraph of this argument is forcibly and
ably stated. On it I am willing to try conclusions with
Mr. Martineau. I may say, in passing, that I share his
contempt for the picturesque interpretation of nature, if
accuracy of vision be thereby impaired. But the term
Yorstellungs-fahigkeit, as used by me, means the power
of definite mental presentation, of attaching to words the
corresponding objects of thought, and of seeing these in
their proper relations, without the interior haze and soft
penumbral borders which the theologian loves. To this
mode of "interpreting nature" I shall to the best of my
ability now adhere.

Neither of us, I trust, will be afraid or ashamed to
begin at the alphabet of this question. Our first effort
must be to understand each other, and this mutual under-
standing can only be insured by beginning low down.
Physically speaking, however, we need not go below the
sea level. Let us then travel in company to the Caribbean
Sea, and halt upon the heated water. What is that sea,

REV. MARTINEAU AND BELFAST ADDRESS 251

and what is the sun that heats it? Answering for my-
self, I say that they are both matter. I fill a glass with
the sea- water and expose it on the deck of the vessel;
after some time the liquid has all disappeared, and left
a solid residue of salt in the glass behind. We have mo-
bility, invisibility — apparent annihilation. In virtue of

The glad and secret aid

The sun unto the ocean paid,

the water has taken to itself wings and flown off as vapor.
From the whole surface of the Caribbean Sea such vapor
is rising: and now we must follow it — not upon our legs,
however, nor in a ship, nor even in a balloon, but by the
mind's eye — in other words, by that power of Yorstellung
which Mr. Martineau knows so well, and which he so
justly scorns when it indulges in loose practices.

Compounding, then, the northward motion of the vapor
with the earth's axial rotation, we track our fugitive
through the higher atmospheric regions, obliquely across
the Atlantic Ocean to Western Europe, and on to our
familiar Alps. Here another wonderful metamorphosis
occurs. Floating on the cold calm air, and in presence
of the cold firmament, the vapor condenses, not only to
particles of water, but to particles of crystalline water.
These coalesce to stars of snow, which fall upon the moun-
tains in forms so exquisite that, when first seen, they
never fail to excite rapture. As to beauty, indeed, they
put the work of the lapidary to shame, while as to accu-
racy they render concrete the abstractions of the geom-
eter. Are these crystals "matter"? Without presuming
to dogmatize, I answer for myself in the affirmative.

Still, a formative jpower has obviously here come into

252 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

play which did not manifest itself in either the liquid or
the vapor. The question now is, Was not the power
*' potential" in both of them, requiring only the proper
conditions of temperature to bring it into action? Again
I answer for myself in the affirmative. I am, however,
quite willing to discuss with Mr. Martineau the alternative
hypothesis, that an imponderable formative soul unites
itself with the substance after its escape from the liquid
state. If he should espouse this hypothesis, then I should
demand of him an immediate exercise of that Yorstellungs-
fahigkeit, with which, in my efforts to think clearly, I
can never dispense. I should ask. At what moment did
the soul come in? Did it enter at once or by degrees;
perfect from the first, or growing and perfecting itself
contemporaneously with its own handiwork? I should
also ask whether it is localized or diffused ? Does it move
about as a lonely builder, putting the bits of solid water
in their places as soon as the proper temperature has set
in? or is it distributed through the entire mass of the
crystal? If the latter, then the soul has the shape of
the crystal; but if the former, then I should inquire after
its shape. Has it legs or arms? If not, I would ask it
to be made clear to me how a thing without these appli-
ances can act so perfectly the part of a builder ? (I insist
on definition, and ask unusual questions, if haply I might
thereby banish unmeaning words.) What were the condi-
tion and residence of the soul before it joined the crystal?
What becomes of it when the crystal is dissolved? Why
should a particular temperature be needed before it can
exercise its vocation? Finally, is the problem before us
in any way simplified by the assumption of its existence?
I think it probable that, after a full discussion of the ques-

REV. MARTINEAU AND BELFAST ADDRESS 253

tion, Mr. Martineau would agree with me in ascribing the
building power displayed in the crystal to the bits of
water themselves. At all events, I should count upon his
sympathy so far as to believe that he would consider any
one unmannerly who would denounce me for rejecting this
notion of a separate soul, and for holding the snow-crystal
to be *' matter."

But then what an astonishing addition is here made to
the powers of matter I Who would have dreamed, without
actually seeing its work, that such a power was locked up
in a drop of water? All that we needed to make the
action of the liquid intelligible was the assumption of
Mr. Martineau's **homogeneous extended atomic solids,"
smoothly gliding over one another. But had we sup-
posed the water to be nothing more than this, we should
have ignorantly defrauded it of an intrinsic architectural
power, which the art of man, even when pushed to its
utmost degree of refinement, is incompetent to imitate.
I would invite Mr. Martineau to consider how inappro-
priate his figure of a fictitious bank deposit becomes under
these circumstances. The "account current" of matter
receives nothing at my hands which could be honestly
kept back from it. If, then, "Democritus and the mathe-
maticians" so defined matter as to exclude the powers here
proved to belong to it, they were clearly wrong, and Mr.
Martineau, instead of twitting me with my departure from
them, ought rather to applaud me for correcting them.*

' Definition implies previous examination of the object defined, and is open
to correction or modification as knowledge of the object increases. Such in-
creased knowledge has radically changed our conceptions of the luminiferoua
ether, converting its vibrations from longitudinal into transverse. Such changes
also Mr. Martineau's conceptions of matter are doomed to undergo.

254 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

The reader of my small contributions to the literature
which deals with the overlapping margins of Science and
Theology, will have noticed how frequently I quote Mr.
Emerson. I do so mainly because in him we have a poet
and a profoundly religious man, who is really and entirely
undaunted by the discoveries of Science, past, present,
or prospective. In his case Poetry, with the joy of a
bacchanal, takes her graver brother Science by the hand,
and cheers him with immortal laughter. By Emerson
scientific conceptions are continually transmuted into the
finer forms and warmer hues of an ideal world. Our
present theme is touched upon in the lines —

The journeying atoms, primordial wholes

Firmly draw, finnly drive by their animate poles.

As regards veracity and insight these few words outweigh,
in my estimation, all the formal learning expended by Mr.
Martineau in those disquisitions on Force, where he treats
the physicist as a conjurer, and speaks so wittily of atomic
polarity. In fact, without this notion of polarity — this
*' drawing" and "driving" — this attraction and repulsion,
we stand as stupidly dumb before the phenomena of Crys-
tallization as a Bushman before the phenomena of the
Solar System. The genesis and growth of the notion I
have endeavored to make clear in my third Lecture on
Light, and in the article on "Matter and Force" published
in this volume.

Our further course is here foreshadowed. A Sunday
or two ago I stood under an oak planted by Sir John
Moore, the hero of Corunna. On the ground near the
tree little oaklets were successfully fighting for life with
the surrounding vegetation. The acorns had dropped into

REV. MARTINEAU AND BELFAST ADDRESS 255

the friendly soil, and this was the result of their interac-
tion. What is the acorn? what the earth? and what the
sun, without whose heat and light the tree could not be-
come a tree, however rich the soil, and however healthy
the seed? I answer for myself as before — all *' matter.**
And the heat and light which here play so potent a part
are acknowledged to be motions of matter. By taking
something much lower down in the vegetable kingdom
than the oak, we might approach much more nearly to
the case of crystallization already discussed; but this is
not now necessary.

If, instead of conceding the suJB&ciency of matter here,
Mr. Martineau should fly to the hypothesis of a vegetative
soul, all the questions before asked in relation to the
snow-star become pertinent. I would invite him to go
over them one by one, and consider what replies he will
make to them. He may retort by asking me, *'Who in-
fused the principle of life into the tree?" I say, in an-
swer, that our present question is not this, but another —
not who made the tree, but what is it? Is there anything
besides matter in the tree? If so, what, and where? Mr.
Martineau may have begun by this time to discern that it
is not ''picturesqueness," but cold precision, that my Vor-
stellungs-fahigkeit demands. How, I would ask, is this
vegetative soul to be presented to the mind ? where did it
flourish before the tree grew? and what will become of
it when the tree is sawn into planks, or consumed in fire ?

Possibly Mr. Martineau may consider the assumption of
this soul to be as untenable and as useless as I do. But
then if the power to build a tree be conceded to pure mat-
ter, what an amazing expansion of our notions of the "po-
tency of matter" is implied in the concession! Think of

256 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

the acorn, of the earth, and of the solar light and heat —
was ever such necromancy dreamed of as the production
of that massive trunk, those swaying boughs and whisper-
ing leaves, from the interaction of these three factors ? In
this interaction, moreover, consists what we call life. It
will be seen that I am not in the least insensible to the
wonder of the tree; nay, I should not be surprised if, in
the presence of this wonder, I feel more perplexed and
overwhelmed than Mr. Martineau himself.

Consider it for a. moment. There is an experiment,
first made by Wheatstone, where the music of a piano is
transferred from its sound-board, through a thin wooden
rod, across several silent rooms in succession, and poured
out at a distance from the instrument. The strings of the
piano vibrate, not singly, but ten at a time. Every string
subdivides, yielding not one note, but a dozen. All these
vibrations and subvibrations are crowded together into a
bit of deal not more than a quarter of a square inch in
section. Yet no note is lost. Each vibration asserts its
individual rights; and all are, at last, shaken forth into
the air by a second sound-board, against which the dis-
tant end of the rod presses. Thought ends in amazement
when it seeks to realize the motions of that rod as the
music flows through it. I turn to my tree and observe its
roots, its trunk, its branches, and its leaves. As the rod
conveys the music, and yields it up to the distant air, so
does the trunk convey the matter and the motion — the
shocks and pulses and other vital actions — which event-
ually emerge in the umbrageous foliage of the tree. I
went some time ago through the greenhousJ of a friend.
He had ferns from Ceylon, the branches of which were in
some cases not much thicker than an ordinary pin — hard,

EEV. MARTINEAU AND BELFAST ADDRESS 257

smooth, and cylindrical — often leafless for a foot or more.
But at the end of every one of them the unsightly twig
unlocked the exuberant beauty hidden within it, and broke
forth into a mass of fronds, almost large enough to fill the
arms. We stand here upon a higher level of the wonder-
ful: we are conscious of a music subtler than that of the
piano, passing unheard through these tiny boughs, and
issuing in what Mr. Martineau would opulently call the
** clustered magnificence" of the leaves. Does it lessen
my amazement to know that every cluster, and every leaf
— their form and texture — lie, like the music in the rod,
in the molecular structure of these apparently insignificant
stems? Not so. Mr. Martineau weeps for* 'the beauty of
the flower fading into a necessity." I care not whether it
comes to me through necessity or through freedom, my
delight in it is all the same. I see what he sees with a
wonder superadded. To me, as to him, not even Solomon
in all his glory was arrayed like one of these.

I have spoken above as if the assumption of a soul
would save Mr. Martineau from the inconsistency of cred-
iting pure matter with the astonishing building power dis-
played in crystals and trees. This, however, would not
be the necessary result; for it would remain to be proved
that the soul assumed is not itself matter. "When a boy I
learned from Dr. Watts that the souls of conscious brutes
are mere matter. And the man who would claim for mat-
ter the human soul itself, would find himself in very or-
thodox company. *'A11 that is created," says Fauste, a
famous French bishop of the fifth century, **is matter.
The soul occupies a place; it is enclosed in a body; it
quits the body at death, and returns to it at the resurrec-
tion, as in the case of Lazarus; the distinction between

258 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

Hell and Heaven, between eternal pleasures and eternal
pains, proves that, even after death, souls occupy a place
and are corporeal. God only is incorporeal." Tertullian,
moreover, was quite a physicist in the definiteness of his
conceptions regarding the soul. *'The materiality of the
soul," he says, "is evident from the evangelists. A hu-
man soul is there expressly pictured as suffering in hell;
it is placed in the middle of a flame, its tongue feels a
cruel agony, and it implores a drop of water at the hands
of a happier soul. Wanting materiality ^^^ adds Tertullian,
*'aZ? this would be without meaning.'" *

I have glanced at inorganic nature — at the sea, and the
sun, and the vapor, and the snow-flake, and at organic
nature as represented by the fern and the oak. That
same sun which warmed the water and liberated the
vapor exerts a subtler power on the nutriment of the
tree. It takes hold of matter wholly unfit for the pur-
poses of nutrition, separates its nutritive from its non-
nutritive portions, gives the former to the vegetable, and
carries the others away. Planted in the earth, bathed by
the air, and tended by the sun, the tree is traversed by
its sap, the cells are formed, the woody fibre is spun, and
the whole is woven to a texture wonderful even to the
naked eye, but a million-fold more so to microscopic vis-

* The foregoing extracts, •which M. Alglave recently brought to light for the
benefit of the Bishop of Orleans, are taken from the sixth Lecture of the "Cours
d'Histoire Moderne" of that most orthodox of statesmen, M, G-uizot. "] could
multiply," continues M. Guizot, "these citations to infinity, and they prove that
in the first centuries of our era the materiality of the soul was an opinion
not only permitted, but dominant." Dr. Moriarty, and the synod which he
recently addressed, obviously forget their own antecedents. Their boasted suc-
cession from the early Church renders them the direct offspring of a "material-
ism" more "brutal" than any ever enunciated by me.

REV. MARTINEAU AND BELFAST ADDRESS 259

ion. Does consciousness mix in any way with these proc-
esses? No man can tell. Our only ground for a negative
conclusion is the absence of those outward manifestations
from which feeling is usually inferred. But even these
are not entirely absent. In the greenhouses of Kew we
may see that a leaf can close, in response to a proper
stimulus, as promptly as the human fingers themselves;
and while there Dr. Hooker will tell us of the wondrous
fly-catching and fly-devouring power of the Dionaea. No
man can say that the feelings of the animal are not repre-
sented by a drowsier consciousness in the vegetable world.
At all events, no line has ever been drawn between the
conscious and the unconscious; for the vegetable shades
into the animal by such fine gradations that it is impos-
sible to say where the one ends and the other begins.

In all such inquiries we are necessarily limited by our
own powers: we observe what our senses, armed with the
aids furnished by Science, enable us to observe; nothing
more. The evidences as to consciousness in the vegetable
world depend wholly upon our capacity to observe and
weigh them. Alter the capacity, and the evidence would
alter too. Would that which to us is a total absence of
any manifestation of consciousness be the same to a being
with our capacities indefinitely multiplied? To such a
being I can imagine not only the vegetable, but the min-
eral world, responsive to the proper irritants, the response
differing only in degree from those exaggerated manifesta-
tions, which, in virtue of their magnitude, appeal to our
weak powers of observation.

Our conclusion, however, must be based, not on pow-
ers that we imagine, but upon those that we possess.
What do they reveal? As the earth and atmosphere of-

^260 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

fer themselves as tlie nutriment of the vegetable world, so
does the latter, which contains no constituent not found
in inorganic nature, offer itself to the animal world.
Mixed with certain inorganic substances — water, for ex-
ample— the vegetable constitutes, in the long run, the sole
sustenance of the animal. Animals may be divided into
two classes, the first of which can utilize the vegetable
world immediately, having chemical forces strong enough
to cope with its most refractory parts; the second class
use the vegetable world mediately; that is to say, after its
finer portions have been extracted and stored up by the
first. But in neither class have we an atom newly created.
The animal world is, so to say, a distillation through the
vegetable world from inorganic nature.

From this point of view all three worlds would con-
stitute a unity, in which I picture life as immanent every-
where. Nor am I anxious to shut out the idea that the
life here spoken of may be but a subordinate part and
function of a Higher Life, as the living, moving blood is
subordinate to the living man. I resist no such idea as
long as it is not dogmatically imposed. Left for the hu-
man mind freely to operate upon, the idea has ethical
vitality; but, stiffened into a dogma, the inner force dis-
appears, and the outward yoke of a usurping hierarchy
takes its place.

The problem before us is, at all events, capable of
definite statement. We have on the one hand strong
grounds for concluding that the earth was once a molten
mass. We now find it not only swathed by an atmos-
phere, and covered by a sea, but also crowded with living
things. The question is, How were they introduced?
Certainty may be as unattainable here as Bishop Butler

REV. MARTINEAU AND BELFAST ADDRESS 261

held it to be in matters of religion ; but in the contempla-
tion of probabilities the thoughtful mind is forced to take
a side. The conclusion of Science, which recognizes un-
broken causal connection between the past and the pres-
ent, would undoubtedly be that the molten earth contained
within it elements of life, which grouped themselves into
their present forms as the planet cooled. The difficulty
and reluctance encountered by this conception arise solely
from the fact that the theologic conception obtained a
prior footing in the human mind. Did the latter depend
upon reasoning alone, it could not hold its ground for an
hour against its rival. But it is warmed into life and
strength by associated hopes and fears — and not only by
these, which are more or less mean, but by that loftiness
of thought and feeling which lifts its possessor above the
atmosphere of self, and which the theologic idea, in its
nobler forms, has engendered in noble minds.

Were not man's origin implicated, we should accept
without a murmur the derivation of animal and vegetable
life from what we call inorganic nature. The conclusion
of pure intellect points this way and no other. But the
purity is troubled by our interests in this life, and by our
hopes and fears regarding the life to come. Eeason is
traversed by the emotions, anger rising in the weaker
heads to the height of suggesting that the suppression of
the inquirer by the arm of the law would be an act agree-
able to God, and serviceable to man. But this foolish-
ness is more than neutralized by the sympathy of the wise;
and in England at least, so long as the courtesy which
befits an earnest theme is adhered to, such sympathy is
ever ready for an honest man. Kone of us here need
shrink from saying all that he has a right to say. We

262 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

ought, however, to remember that it is not only a band
of Jesuits, weaving their schemes of intellectual slavery,
under the innocent guise "of education," that we are
opposing. Our foes are to some extent of our own house-
hold, including not only the ignorant and the passionate,
but a minority of minds of high calibre and culture, lovers
of freedom moreover, who, though its objective hull be
riddled by logic, still find the ethic life of their religion
unimpaired. But while such considerations ought to influ-
ence the form of our argument, and prevent it from ever
slipping out of the region of courtesy into that of scorn
or abuse, its substance^ I think, ought to be maintained
and presented in unmitigated strength.

In the year 1855 the chair of philosophy in the Uni-
versity of Munich happened to be filled by a Catholic
priest of great critical penetration, great learning, and
great courage, who had borne the brunt of battle long be-
fore DSllinger. His Jesuit colleagues, he knew, incul-
cated the belief that every human soul is sent into the
world from God by a separate and supernatural act of
creation. In a work entitled the "Origin of the Human
Soul," Professor Frohschammer, the philosopher here al-
luded to, was hardy enough to question this doctrine,
and to affirm that man, body and soul, comes from his
parents, the act of creation being, therefore, mediate and
secondary only. The Jesuits keep a sharp lookout on
all temerities of this kind; and their organ, the "Civility
Cattolica," immediately pounced upon Frohschammer.
His book was branded as "pestilent," placed in the Index,
and stamped with the condemnation of the Church.* The

' King Maximilian II. brought Liebig to Munich, he helped HelmhoUz in
Jhis researches, and loved to liberate and foster science. But through his liberal

REV. MARTINEAU AND BELFAST ADDRESS 263

Jesuit notion does not err on the score of indefiniteness.
According to it, the Power whom Goethe does not dare
to name, and whom Gassendi and Clerk Maxwell present
to lis nnder the guise of a "Manufacturer" of atoms, turns
out annually, for England and Wales alone, a quarter
of a million of new souls. Taken in connection with the
dictum of Mr. Carlyle, that this annual increment to our
population are "mostly fools," but little profit to the
human heart seems derivable from this mode of regarding
the Divine operations.

But if the Jesuit notion be rejected, what are we to
accept? Physiologists say that every human being comes
from an egg not more than the jhth. of an inch in diam-
eter. Is this egg matter? I hold it to be so, as much
as the seed of a fern or of an oak. Nine months go to
the making of it into a man. Are the additions made
during this period of gestation drawn from matter? I
think so undoubtedly. If there be anything besides mat-
ter in the egg, or in the infant subsequently slumbering
in the womb, what is it? The questions already asked
with reference to the stars of snow may be here repeated.
Mr. Martineau will complain that I am disenchanting the
babe of its wonder; but is this the case? I figure it grow-
ing in the womb, woven by a something not itself, without
conscious participation on the part of either father or
mother, and appearing in due time a living miracle, with
all its organs and all their implications. Consider the
work accomplished during these nine months in forming

concession of power to the Jesuits in the schools, he did far more damage to tho
intellectual freedom of his country than his superstitious predecessor Ludwig I.
Priding himself on being a G-erman Prince, Ludwig would not tolerate the inter-
ference of the Roman party with the poUtical afEairs of Bavaria.

264 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

the eye alone — with its lens, and its humors, and its mi-
raculous retina behind. Consider the ear with its tym-
panum, cochlea, and Corti's organ — an instrument of three
thousand strings, built adjacent to the brain, and employed
by it to sift, separate, and interpret, antecedent to all con-
sciousness, the sonorous tremors of the external world.
All this has been accomplished, not only without man's
contrivance, but without his knowledge, the secret of his
own organization having been withheld from him since
his birth in the immeasurable past, until these latter days.
Matter I define as that mysterious thing by which all this
is accomplished. How it came to have this power is a
question on which I never ventured an opinion. If, then,
Matter starts as "a beggar," it is, in my view, because the
Jacobs of theology have deprived it of its birthright. Mr.
Marti neau need fear no disenchantment. Theories of evo-
lution go but a short way toward the explanation of this
mystery; the Ages, let us hope, will at length give us
a Poet competent to deal with it aright.

There are men, and they include among them some of
the best of the race of man, upon whose minds this mys-
tery falls without producing either warmth or color. The
*'dry light" of the intellect suffices for them, and they
live their noble lives untouched by a desire to give the
mystery shape or expression. There are, on the other
hand, men whose minds are warmed and colored by its
presence, and who, under its stimulus, attain to moral
heights which have never been overtopped. Different
spiritual climates are necessary for the healthy existence
of these two classes of men; and different climates must
be accorded them. The history of humanity, however,
proves the experience of the second class to illustrate the

REV. MARTINEAU AND BELFAST ADDRESS 265

most pervading need. The world will liave religion of
some kind, even though it should flj for it to the intel-
lectual whoredom of ' ' spiritualism. ' ' What is really wanted
is the lifting power of an ideal element in human life. But
the free play of this power must be preceded by its release
from the practical materialism of the present, as well as
from the torn swaddling bands of the past. It is now in
danger of being stupefied by the one, or strangled by the
other. I look, however, forward to a time when the
strength, insight, and elevation which now visit us in
mere hints and glimpses, during moments "of clearness
and vigor," shall be the stable and permanent possession
of purer and mightier minds than ours — purer and might-
ier, partly because of their deeper knowledge of matter
and their mare faithful conformity to its laws.

Science— YI— 12

XII

FERMENTATION, AND ITS BEARINGS ON SURGERY AND
MEDICINE *

ONE of the most remarkable characteristics of the
age in which we live, is its desire and tendency
to connect itself organically with preceding ages
— to ascertain how the state of things that now is came to
be what it is. And the more earnestly and profoundly
this problem is studied, the more clearly comes into view
the vast and varied debt which the world of to-day owes
to that fore- world, in which man by skill, valor, and well-
directed strength first replenished and subdued the earth.
Our prehistoric fathers may have been savages, but they
were clever and observant ones. They founded agricult-
ure by the discovery and development of seeds whose
origin is now unknown. They tamed and harnessed their
animal antagonists, and sent them down to us as min-
isters, instead of rivals in the fight for life. Later on,
when the claims of luxury added themselves to those of
necessity, we find the same spirit of invention at work.
"We have no historic account of the first brewer, but we
glean from history that his art was practiced, and its
produce relished, more than two thousand years ago.
Theophrastus, who was born nearly four hundred years

* A Discourse delivered before the Glasgow Science Lectures As80ciatioH|
October 19, 1876.

(266) - . ^. ■ -

FERMENTATION 2^

before Christ, described beer as the wine of barley. It is
extremely difficult to preserve beer in a hot country, still,
Egypt was the land in which it was first brewed, the desire
of man to quench his thirst with this exhilarating bever-
age overcoming all the obstacles which a hot climate threw
in the way of its manufacture.

Our remote ancestors had also learned by experience
that wine maketh glad the heart of man. Noah, we are
informed, planted a vineyard, drank of the wine, and
experienced the consequences. But, though wine and
beer possess so old a history, a very few years ago no man
knew the secret of their formation. Indeed, it might be
said that until the present year no thorough and scientific
account was ever given of the agencies which come into
play in the manufacture of beer, of the conditions neces-
sary to its health, and of the maladies and vicissitudes to
which it is subject. Hitherto the art and practice of the
brewer have resembled those of the physician, both being
founded on empirical observation. By this is meant the
observation of facts, apart from the principles which ex-
plain them, and which give the mind an intelligent mas-
tery over them. The brewer learned from long experience
the conditions, not the reasons, of success. But he had
to contend, and has still to contend, against unexplained
perplexities. Over and over again his care has been ren-
dered nugatory; his beer has fallen into acidity or rotten-
ness, and disastrous losses have been sustained, of which
he has been unable to assign the cause. It is the hidden
enemies against which the physician and the brewer have
hitherto contended, that recent researches are dragging
into the light of day, thus preparing the way for their
final extermination.

268 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

Let us glance for a moment at the outward and visible
signs of fermentation. A few weeks ago I paid a visit to
a private still in a Swiss chalet; and this is what I saw.
In the peasant's bedroom was a cask with a very large
bunghole carefully closed. The cask contained cherries
which had lain in it for fourteen days. It was not en-
tirely filled with the fruit, an air-space being left above
the cherries when they were put in. I had the bung re-
moved, and a small lamp dipped into this space. Its flame
was instantly extinguished. The oxygen of the air had
entirely disappeared, its place being taken by carbonic
acid gas.' I tasted the cherries: they were very sour,
though when put into the cask they were sweet. The
cherries and the liquid associated with them were then
placed in a copper boiler, to which a copper head was
closely fitted. From the head proceeded a copper tube
which passed straight through a vessel of cold water, and
issued at the other side. Under the open end of the tube
was placed a bottle to receive the spirit distilled. The
flame of small wood-splinters being applied to the boiler,
after a time vapor rose into the head, passed through the
tube, was condensed by the cold of the water, and fell in a
liquid fillet into the bottle. On being tasted, it proved
to be that fiery and intoxicating spirit known in com-
merce as Kirsch or Kirschwasser.

The cherries, it should be remembered, were left to
themselves, no ferment of any kind being added to them.
In this respect what has been said of the cherry applies
also to the grape. At the vintage the fruit of the vine is

' The gas which is exhaled from the lungs after the oxygen of the air has
done its duty in purifying the blood, the same also which effervesces from soda-
water and champagne.

FERMENTATION 269

placed in proper vessels, and abandoned to its own action.
It ferments, producing carbonic acid; its sweetness disap-
pears, and at the end of a certain time the unintoxicating
grape-juice is converted into intoxicating wine. Here, as
in the case of the cherries, the fermentation is spontaneous
— in what sense spontaneous will appear more clearly by
and by.

It is needless for me to tell a Glasgow audience that
the beer-brewer does not set to work in this way. In the
first place the brewer deals not with the juice of fruits,
but with the juice of barley. The barley having been
steeped for a sufficient time in water, it is drained and
subjected to a temperature sufficient to cause the moist
grain to germinate; after which it is completely dried upon
a kiln. It then receives the name of malt. The malt is
crisp to the teeth, and decidedly sweeter to the taste than
the original barley. It is ground, mashed up in warm
water, then boiled with hops until all the soluble portions
have been extracted; the infusion thus produced being
called the wort. This is drawn off, and cooled as rapidly
as possible; then, instead of abandoning the infusion, as
the wine-maker does, to its own action, the brewer mixes
yeast with his wort, and places it in vessels each with
only one aperture open to the air. Soon after the addi-
tion of the yeast, a brownish froth, which is really new
yeast, issues from the aperture, and falls like a cataract
into troughs prepared to receive it. This frothing and
foaming of the wort is a proof that the fermentation is
active.

Whence comes the yeast which issues so copiously
from the fermenting tub? What is this yeast, and how
did the brewer become possessed of it? Examine its

270 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

quantity before and after fermentation. The brewer in-
troduces, say, 10 cwts. of yeast; lie collects 40, or it
may be 50, cwts. The yeast has, therefore, augmented
from four to five fold during the fermentation. Shall we
conclude that this additional yeast has been spontaneously
generated by the wort? Are we not rather reminded of
that seed which fell into good ground, and brought forth
fruit, some thirty-fold, some sixty-fold, some a hundred-
fold? On examination, this notion of organic growth
turns out to be more than a mere surmise. In the year
1680, when the microscope was still in its infancy, Leeu-
wenhoek turned the instrument upon this substance, and
found it composed of minute globules suspended in a
liquid. Thus knowledge rested until 1835, when Cagniard
de la Tour in France, and Schwann in Grermany, inde-
pendently, but animated by a common thought, turned
microscopes of improved definition and heightened powers
upon yeast, and found it budding and sprouting before
their eyes. The augmentation of the yeast alluded to
above was thus proved to arise from the growth of a
minute plant now called Torula (or Saccharomyces) Gere-
visioe. Spontaneous generation is therefore out of the
question. The brewer deliberately sows the yeast-plant,
which grows and multiplies in the wort as its proper
soil. This discovery marks an epoch in the history of
fermentation.

But where did the brewer find his yeast? The reply
to this question is similar to that which must be given if
it were asked where the brewer found his barley. He has
received the seeds of both of them from preceding gen-
erations. Could we connect without solution of continu-
ity the present with the past, we should probably be able

FERMENTATION 271

to trace back the yeast employed by my friend Sir Fowell
Buxton to-day to that employed by some Egyptian brewer
two thousand years ago. But you may urge that there
must have been a time when the first yeast-cell was gen-
erated. Granted — exactly as there was a time when the
first barley-corn was generated. Let not the delusion lay
hold of you that a living thing is easily generated because
it is small. Both the yeast-plant and the barley-plant
lose themselves in the dim twilight of antiquity, and in
this our day there is no more proof of the spontaneous
generation of the one than there is of the spontaneous gen-
eration of the other.

I stated a moment ago that the fermentation of grape-
juice was spontaneous; but I was careful to add, "in what
sense spontaneous will appear more clearly by and by."
Now this is the sense meant. The wine-maker does not,
like the brewer and distiller, deliberately introduce either
yeast, or any equivalent of yeast, into his vats; he does
not consciously sow in them any plant, or the germ of any
plant; indeed, he has been hitherto in ignorance whether
plants or germs of any kind have had anything to do with
his operations. Still, when the fermented grape-juice is
examined, the living Torula concerned in alcoholic fer-
mentation never fails to make its appearance. How is
this? If no living germ has been introduced into the
wine-vat, whence comes the life so invariably dereloped
there ?

You may be disposed to reply, with Turpin and oth-
ers, that, in virtue of its own inherent powers, the grape-
juice, when brought into contact with the vivifying atmos-
pheric oxygen, runs spontaneously and of its own accord
into these low forms of life. I have not the slightest ob-

272 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

jection to this explanation, provided proper evidence can
be adduced in support of it. But the evidence adduced
in its favor, as far as I am acquainted with it, snaps asun-
der under the strain of scientific criticism. It is, as far as
I can see, the evidence of men, who, however keen and
clever as observers^ are not rigidly trained experimenters.
These alone are aware of the precautions necessary in in-
vestigations of this delicate kind. In reference, then, to
the life of the wine-vat, what is the decision of experiment
when carried out by competent men? Let a quantity of
the clear, filtered **must" of the grape be so boiled as to
destroy such germs as it may have contracted from the air
or otherwise. In contact with germless air the uncontami-
nated must never ferments. All the materials for sponta-
neous generation are there, but so long as there is no seed
sown there is no life developed, and no sign of that fer-
mentation which is the concomitant of life. Nor need you
resort to a boiled liquid. The grape is sealed by its own
skin against contamination from without. By an ingen-
ious device, Pasteur has extracted from the interior of the
grape its pure juice, and proved that in contact with pure
air it never acquires the power to ferment itself, nor to
produce fermentation in other liquids.* It is not, there-
fore, in the interior of the grape that the origin of the life
observed in the vat is to be sought.

What then is its true origin? This is Pasteur's an-
swer, which his well-proved accuracy renders worthy of
all confidence. At the time of the vintage microscopic
particles are observed adherent, both to the outer surface

* The liquids of the healthy animal body are also sealed from external con-
tamination. Pure blood, for example, drawn with due precautions from the
veins, will never ferment or putrefy in contact with pure air.

FERMENTATION 273

of the grape and of the twigs which support the grape.
Brush these particles into a capsule of pure water. It is
rendered turbid by the dust. Examined by a microscope,
some of these minute particles are seen to present the ap-
pearance of organized cells. Instead of receiving them in
water, let them be brushed into the pure inert juice of the
grape. Forty-eight hours after this is done, our familiar
Torula is observed budding and sprouting, the growth of
the plant being accompanied by all the other signs of ac-
tive fermentation. What is the inference to be drawn
from this experiment? Obviously that the particles ad-
herent to the external surface of the grape include the
germs of that life which, after they have been sown in
the juice, appears in such profusion. Wine is sometimes
objected to on the ground that fermentation is "artificial";
but we notice here the responsibility of nature. The fer-
ment of the grape clings like a parasite to the surface of
the grape; and the art of the wine-maker from time im-
memorial has consisted in bringing — and it may be added,
ignorantly bringing — two things thus closely associated by
nature into actual contact with each other. For thousands
of years, wbat has been done consciously by the brewer
has been done unconsciously by the wine-grower. The
one has sown his leaven just as much as the other.

Nor is it necessary to impregnate the beer-wort with
yeast to provoke fermentation. Abandoned to the con-
tact of our common air, it sooner or later ferments; but
the chances are that the produce of that fermentation, in-
stead of being agreeable, would be disgusting to the taste.
By a rare accident we might get the true alcoholic fer-
mentation, but the odds against obtaining it would be
enormous. Pure air acting upon a lifeless liquid will

274 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

never provoke fermentation; but our ordinary air is tlie
vehicle of numberless germs wbich act as ferments wben
tbey fall into appropriate infusions. Some of them pro-
duce acidity, some putrefaction. The germs of our yeast-
plant are also in the air; but so sparingly distributed that
an infusion like beer-wort, exposed to the air, is almost
sure to be taken possession of by foreign organisms. In
fact, the maladies of beer are wholly due to the admixture
of these objectionable ferments, whose forms and modes of
nutrition differ materially from those of the true leaven.
"Working in an atmosphere charged with the germs of
these organisms, you can understand how easy it is to fall
into error in studying the action of any one of them. In-
deed it is only the most accomplished experimenter, who,
moreover, avails himself of every means of checking his
conclusions, that can walk without tripping through this
land of pitfalls. Such a man the French chemist Pasteur
has hitherto proved himself to be. He has taught us how
to separate the commingled ferments of our air, and to
study their pure individual action. Guided by him, let
us fix our attention more particularly upon the growth and
action of the true yeast- plant under different conditions.
Let it be sown in a fermentable liquid, which is supplied
with plenty of pure air. The plant will flourish in the
aerated infusion, and produce large quantities of carbonic
acid gas — a compound, as you know, of carbon and oxy-
gen. The oxygen thus consumed by the plant is the free
oxygen of the air, which we suppose to be abundantly
supplied to the liquid. The action is so far similar to the
respiration of animals, which inspire oxygen and expire
carbonic acid. If we examine the liquid even when the
vigor of the plant has reached its maximum, we hardly

FERMENTATION 275

find in it a trace of alcohol. The yeast iias grown and
flourished, but it has almost ceased to act as a ferment.
And could every individual yeast-cell seize, without any
impediment, free oxygen from the surrounding liquid, it
is certain that it would cease to act as a ferment altogether.

What, then, are the conditions under which the yeast-
plant must be placed so that it may display its character-
istic quality? Eeflection on the facts already referred to
suggests a reply, and rigid experiment confirms the sug-
gestion. Consider the Alpine cherries in their closed
vessel. Consider the beer in its barrel, with a single small
aperture open to the air, through which it is observed not
to imbibe oxygen, but to pour forth carbonic acid.
Whence come the volumes of oxygen necessary to the
production of this latter gas? The small quantity of at-
mospheric air dissolved in the wort and overlying it would
be totally incompetent to supply the necessary oxygen. In
no other way can the yeast-plant obtain the gas necessary
for its respiration than by wrenching it from surrounding
substances in which the oxygen exists, not free, but in a
state of combination. It decomposes the sugar of the
solution in which it grows, produces heat, breathes forth
carbonic acid gas, and one of the liquid products of the
decomposition is our familiar alcohol. The act of fer-
mentation, then, is a result of the effort of the little plant
to maintain its respiration by means of combined oxygen,
when its supply of free oxygen is cut off. As defined by
Pasteur, fermentation is life without air.

But here the knowledge of that thorough investigator
comes to our aid to warn us against errors which have been
committed over and over again. It is not all yeast-cells
that can thus live without air and provoke fermentation.

276 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

They must be young cells whicli have caught their vegeta-
tive vigor from contact with free oxygen. But once pos-
sessed of this vigor the yeast may be transplanted into a
saccharine infusion absolutely purged of air, where it will
continue to live at the expense of the oxygen, carbon, and
other constituents of the infusion. Under these new con-
ditions its life, as a plants will be by no means so vigorous
as when it had a supply of free oxygen, but its action as
a ferment will be indefinitely greater.

Does the yeast- plant stand alone in its power of pro-
voking alcoholic fermentation ? It would be singular if
amid the multitude of low vegetable forms no other could
be found capable of acting in a similar way. And here
again we have occasion to marvel at that sagacity of ob-
servation among the ancients to which we owe so vast a
debt. Not only did they discover the alcoholic ferment
of yeast, but they had to exercise a wise selection in pick-
ing it out from others, and giving it special prominence.
Place an old boot in a moist place, or expose common
paste or a pot of jam to the air; it soon becomes coated
with a blue-green mould, which is nothing else than the
fructification of a little plant called Penicillium glaucum.
Do not imagine that the mould has sprung spontaneously
from boot, or paste, or jam; its germs, which are abun-
dant in the air, have been sown, and have germinated, in
as legal and legitimate a way as thistle- seeds wafted by
the wind to a proper soil. Let the minute spores of
Penicillium be sown in a fermentable liquid, which has
been previously so boiled as to kill all other spores or
seeds which it may contain; let pure air have free access
to the mixture; the Penicillium will grow rapidly, striking
long filaments into the liquid, and fructifying at its sur-

FERMENTATION 277

face. Test the infusion at various stages of the plant's
growth, you will never find in it a trace of alcohol. But
forcibly submerge the .little plant, push it down deep into
the liquid, where the quantity of free oxygen that can
reach it is insufficient for its needs, it immediately begins
to act as a ferment, supplying itself with oxygen by the
decomposition of the sugar, and producing alcohol as one
of the results of the decomposition. Many other low
microscopic plants act in a similar manner. In aerated
liquids they flourish without any production of alcohol,
but cut off from free oxygen they act as ferments, pro-
ducing alcohol exactly as the real alcoholic leaven pro-
duces it, only less copiously. For the right apprehension
of all these facts we are indebted to Pasteur.

In the cases hitherto considered, the fermentation is
proved to be the invariable correlative of life^ being pro-
duced by organisms foreign to the fermentable substance.
But the substance itself may also have within it, to some
extent, the motive power of fermentation. The yeast-
plant, as we have learned, is an assemblage of living cells;
but so at bottom, as shown by Schleiden and Schwann,
are all living organisms. Cherries, apples, peaches,
pears, plums, and grapes, for example, are composed of
cells, each of which is a living unit. And here I have
to direct your attention to a point of extreme interest. In
1821, the celebrated French chemist, Berard, established
the important fact that all ripening fruit, exposed to the
free atmosphere, absorbed the oxygen of the atmosphere
and liberated an approximately equal volume of car-
bonic acid. He also found that when ripe fruits were
placed in a confined atmosphere, the oxygen of the at-
mosphere was first absorbed, and an equal volume of car-

278 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

bonic acid given out. But the process did not end here.
After the oxygen had vanished, carbonic acid, in consid-
erable quantities, continued to be exhaled by the fruits,
which at the same time lost a portion of their sugar, be-
coming more acid to the taste, though the absolute quan-
tity of acid was not augmented. This was an observation
of capital importance, and Berard had the sagacity to re-
mark that the process might be regarded as a kind of
fermentation.

Thus the living cells of fruits can absorb oxygen and
breathe out carbonic acid, exactly like the living cells of
the leaven of beer. Supposing the access of oxygen sud-
denly cut off, will the living fruit-cells as suddenly die,
or will they continue to live as yeast lives, by extracting
oxygen from the saccharine juices round them? This is
a question of extreme theoretic significance. It was first
answered affirmatively by the able and conclusive experi-
ments of Lechartier and Bellamy, and the answer was
subsequently confirmed and explained by the experiments
and the reasoning of Pasteur. Berard only showed the
absorption of oxygen and the production of carbonic acid ;
Lechartier and Bellamy proved the production of alcohol,
thus completing the evidence that it was a case of real
fermentation, though the common alcoholic ferment was
absent. So full was Pasteur of the idea that the cells of
a fruit would continue to live at the expense of the sugar
of the fruit, that once in his laboratory, while conversing
on these subjects with M. Dumas, he exclaimed, "I will
wager that if a grape be plunged into an atmosphere of
carbonic acid, it will produce alcohol and carbonic acid
by the continued life of its own cells — that they will act
for a time like the cells of the true alcoholic leaven. ' ' He

FERMENTATION 279

made the experiment, and found tlie result to be what he
had foreseen. He then extended the inquiry. Placing
under a bell-jar twenty-four plums, he filled the jar with
carbonic acid gas; beside it he placed twenty-four similar
plums uncovered. At the end of eight days, he removed
the plums from the jar, and compared them with the
others. The difference was extraordinary. The uncov-
ered fruits had become soft, watery, and very sweet; the
others were firm and hard, their fleshy portions being not
at all watery. They had, moreover, lost a considerable
quantity of their sugar. They were afterward bruised,
and the juice was distilled. It yielded six and a half
grams of alcohol, or one per cent of the total weight of
the plums. Neither in these plums, nor in the grapes first
experimented on by Pasteur, could any trace of the or-
dinary alcoholic leaven be found. As previously proved
by Lechartier and Bellamy, the fermentation was the work
of the living cells of the fruit itseK, after air had been
denied to them. When, moreover, the cells were de-
stroyed by bruising, no fermentation ensued. The fer-
mentation was the correlative of a vital act, and it ceased
when life was extinguished.

Liidersdorf was the first to show by this method that
yeast acted, not, as Liebig had assumed, in virtue of its
organic^ but in virtue of its organized character. He de-
stroyed the cells of yeast by rubbing them on a ground
glass plate, and found that with the destruction of the
organism, though its chemical constituents remained, the
power to act as a ferment totally disappeared.

One word more in reference to Liebig may find a place
here. To the philosophic chemist thoughtfully pondering
these phenomena, familiar with the conception of molec-

280 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

ular motion, and tlie changes produced by the interao
tions of purely chemical forces, nothing could be mor^
natural than to see in the process of fermentation a simple
illustration of molecular instability, the ferment propagat-
ing to surrounding molecular groups the overthrow of its
own tottering combinations. Broadly considered, indeed,
there is a certain amount of truth in this theory; but
Liebig, who propounded it, missed the very kernel of the
phenomena when he overlooked or contemned the part
played in fermentation by microscopic life. He looked
at the matter too little with the eye of the body, and too
much with the spiritual eye. He practically neglected the
microscope, and was unmoved by the knowledge which
its revelations would have poured in upon his mind. His
hypothesis, as I have said, was natural — nay it was a
striking illustration of Liebig 's power to penetrate and
unveil molecular actions ; but it was an error, and as such
has proved an ignis fatuus instead of a pharos to some of
his followers.

I have said that our air is full of the germs of fer-
ments differing from the alcoholic leaven, and sometimes
seriously interfering with the latter. They are the weeds
of this microscopic garden which often overshadow and
choke the flowers. Let us take an illustrative case. Ex-
pose milk to the air. It will, after a time, turn sour, sepa-
rating like blood into clot and serum. Place a drop of
this sour milk under a powerful microscope and watch it
closely. You see the minute butter-globules animated by
that curious quivering motion called the Brownian motion.
But let not this attract your attention too much, for it is
another motion that we have now to seek. Here and

FERMENTATION 281

there you observe a greater disturbance than ordinary
among the globules; keep your eye upon the place of
tumult, and you will probably see emerging from it a
long eel-like organism, tossing the globules aside and
wriggling more or less rapidly across the field of the
microscope. Familiar with one sample of this organism,
which from its motions receives the name of vibrio, you
soon detect numbers of them. It is these organisms, and
other analogous, though apparently motionless, ones, which
by decomposing the milk render it sour and putrid. They
are the lactic and putrid ferments, as the yeast -plant is
the alcoholic ferment of sugar. Keep them and their
germs out of your milk and it will continue sweet. But
milk may become patrid without becoming sour. Exam-
ine such putrid milk microscopically, and you find it
swarming with shorter organisms, sometimes associated
with the vibrios, sometimes alone, and often manifesting
a wonderful alacrity of motion. Keep these organisms
and their germs out of your milk and it will never pu-
trefy. Expose a mutton-chop to the air and keep it moist;
in summer weather it soon stinks. Place a drop of the
juice of the fetid chop under a powerful microscope; it is
seen swarming with organisms resembling those in the pu-
trid milk. These organisms, which receive the common
name of bacteria,^ are the agents of all putrefaction. Keep
them and their germs from your meat and it will remain
forever sweet. Thus we begin to see that within the
world of life to which we ourselves belong, there is an-
other living world requiring the microscope for its dis-

* Doubtless organisms exhibiting grave specific differences are grouped to
gether under this common name.

282 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

cernment, but which, nevertheless, has the most important
bearing on the welfare of the higher life-world.

And now let us reason together as regards the origin
of these bacteria. A granular powder is placed in your
hands, and you are asked to state what it is. You exam-
ine it, and have, or have not, reason to suspect that seeds
of some kind are mixed up in it. To determine this point
you prepare a bed in your garden, sow in it the powder,
and soon after find a mixed crop of docks and thistles
sprouting from your bed. Until this powder was sown
neither docks nor thistles ever made their appearance in
your garden. You repeat the experiment once, twice, ten
times, fifty times. From fifty different beds after the sow-
ing of the powder, you obtain the same crop. What will
be your response to the question proposed to you? "I
am not in a condition," you would say, "to afiirm that
every grain of the powder is a dock-seed, or a thistle-
seed; but I am in a condition to affirm that both dock
and thistle seeds form, at all events, part of the powder.'*
Supposing a succession of such powders to be placed in
your hands with grains becoming gradually smaller, until
they dwindle to the size of impalpable dust particles; as-
suming that you treat them all in the same way, and
that from every one of them in a few days you obtain
a definite crop — it may be clover, it may be mustard,
it may be mignonette, it may be a plant more minute
than any of these, the smallness of the particles, or of
the plants that spring from them, does not afEect the
validity of the conclusion. Without a shadow of mis-
giving you would conclude that the powder must have
contained the seeds or germs of the life observed. There
is not in the range of physical science an experi-

FERMENTATION 283

ment more conclusive nor an inference safer than this
one.

Supposing the powder to be light enough to float in
the air, and that you are enabled to see it there just as
plainly as you saw the heavier powder in the palm of
your hand. If the dust sown by the air instead of by the
hand produce a definite living crop, with the same logical
rigor you would conclude that the germs of this crop
must be mixed with the dust. To take an illustration:
the spores of the little plant Penicillium glaucum^ to
which I have already referred, are light enough to float
in the air. A cut apple, a pear, a tomato, a slice of vege-
table marrow, or, as already mentioned, an old moist boot,
a dish of paste, or a pot of jam, constitutes a proper soil
for the Penicillium, Now, if it could be proved that the
dust of the air when sown in this soil produces this plant,
while, wanting the dust, neither the air, nor the soil, nor
both together can produce it, it would be obviously just
as certain in this case that the floating dust contains the
germs of Penicillium as that the powders sown in your
garden contained the germs of the plants which sprung
from them.

But how is the floating dust to be rendered visible?
In this way. Build a little chamber and provide it with
a door, windows, and window-shutters. Let an aperture
be made in one of the shutters through which a sunbeam
can pass. Close the door and windows so that no light
shall enter save through the hole in the shutter. The
track of the sunbeam is at first perfectly plain and vivid
in the air of the room. If all disturbance of the air of
the chamber be avoided, the luminous track will become
fainter and fainter, until at last it disappears absolutely,

284 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

and no trace of the beam is to be seen. What rendered
the beam visible at first? The floating dust of the air,
which, thus illuminated and observed, is as palpable to
sense as dust or powder placed on the palm of the hand.
In the still air the dust gradually sinks to the floor or
sticks to the walls and ceiling, until finally, by this self-
cleansing process, the air is entirely freed from mechan-
ically suspended matter.

Thus far, I think, we have made our footing sure. Let
us proceed. Chop up a beefsteak and allow it to remain
for two or three hours just covered with warm water; you
thus extract the juice of the beef in a concentrated form.
By properly boiling the liquid and filtering it, you can
obtain from it a perfectly transparent beef -tea. Expose a
number of vessels containing this tea to the moteless air
of your chamber; and expose a number of vessels con-
taining precisely the same liquid to the dust-laden air.
In three days every one of the latter stinks, and, exam-
ined with the microscope, every one of them is found
swarming with the bacteria of putrefaction. After three
months, or three years, the beef-tea within the chamber
is found in every case as sweet and clear, and as free
from bacteria, as it was at the moment when it was first
put in. There is absolutely no difl:erence between the air
within and that without save that the one is dustless and
the other dust-laden. Clinch the experiment thus: Open
the door of your chamber and allow the dust to enter it.
In three days afterward you have every vessel within the
chamber swarming with bacteria, and in a state of active
putrefaction. Here, also, the inference is quite as certain
as in the case of the powder sown in your garden. Mul-
tiply your proofs by building fifty chambers instead of

FERMENTATION 285

one, and by employing every imaginable infusion of wild
animals and tame; of flesh, fish, fowl, and viscera; of
vegetables of the most various kinds. If in all these
cases you find the dust infallibly producing its crop of
bacteria, while neither the dustless air nor the nutritive
infusion, nor both together, are ever able to produce this
crop, your conclusion is simply irresistible that the dust
of the air contains the germs of the crop which has ap-
peared in your infusions. I repeat there is no inference
of experimental science more certain than this one. In
the presence of such facts, to use the words of a paper
lately published in the "Philosophical Transactions," it
would be simply monstrous to affirm that these swarming
crops of bacteria are spontaneously generated.

Is there then no experimental proof of spontaneous
generation? I answer without hesitation, none! But to
doubt the experimental proof of a fact, and to deny its
possibility, are two different things, though some writers
confuse matters by making them synonymous. In fact,
this doctrine of spontaneous generation, in one form or
another, falls in with the theoretic beliefs of some of the
ioremost workers of this age; but it is exactly these men
who have the penetration to see, and the honesty to ex-
pose, the weakness of the evidence adduced in its support.

And here observe how these discoveries tally with the
common practices of life. Heat kills the bacteria, cold
numbs them. When my housekeeper has pheasants in
charge which she wishes to keep sweet, but which threaten
to give way, she partially cooks the birds, kills the infant
bacteria, and thus postpones the evil day. By boiling her
milk she also extends its period of sweetness. Some weeks

286 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

ago in tlie Alps I made a few experiments on tbe influ-
ence of cold upon ants. Thougli the sun was strong,
patches of snow still maintained themselves on the moun-
tain slopes. The ants were found in the warm grass and
on the warm rocks adjacent. Transferred to the snow the
rapidity of their paralysis was surprising. In a few sec-
onds a vigorous ant, after a few languid struggles, would
wholly lose its power of locomotion and lie practically
dead upon the snow. Transferred to the warm rock, it
would revive, to be again smitten with death- like numb-
ness when retransf erred to the snow. What is true of the
ant is specially true of our bacteria. Their active life is
suspended by cold, and with it their power of produciog
or continuing putrefaction. This is the whole philoso-
phy of the preservation of meat by cold. The fishmon-
ger, for example, when he surrounds his very assailable
wares by lumps of ice, stays the process of putrefaction
by reducing to numbness and inaction the organisms which
produce it, and in the absence of which his fish would re-
main sweet and sound. It is the astonishing activity into
which these bacteria are pushed by warmth that renders a
single summer's day sometimes so disastrous to the great
butchers of London and Glasgow. The bodies of guides
lost in the crevasses of Alpine glaciers have come to the
surface forty years after their interment, without the flesh
showing any sign of putrefaction. But the most astonish-
ing case of this kind is that of the hairy elephant of Si-
beria which was found incased in ice. It had been buried
for ages, but when laid bare its flesh was sweet, and for
some time afforded copious nutriment to the wild beasts
which fed upon it.

Beer is assailable by all the organisms here referred to,

FERMENTATION 287

some of which produce acetic, some lactic, and some bu-
tyric acid, while yeast is open to attack from the bacteria
of putrefaction. In relation to the particular beverage
the brewer wishes to produce, these foreign ferments have
been properly called ferments of disease. The cells of the
true leaven are globules, usually somewhat elongated.
The other organisms are more or less rod-like or eel-like
in shape, some of them being beaded so as to resemble
necklaces. Each of these organisms produces a fermenta-
tion and a flavor peculiar to itself. Keep them out of
your beer and it remains forever unaltered. Never with-
out them will your beer contract disease. But their germs
are in the air, in the vessels employed in the brewery;
even in the yeast used to impregnate the wort. Con-
sciously or unconsciously, the art of the brewer is directed
against them. His aim is to paralyze, if he cannot anni-
hilate them.

For beer, moreover, the question of temperature is one
of supreme importance; indeed, the recognized influence
of temperature is causing on the continent of Europe a
complete revolution in the manufacture of beer. When
I was a student in Berlin, in 1851, there were certain
places specially devoted to the sale of Bavarian beer,
which was then making its way into public favor. This
beer is prepared by what is called the process of low fer-
mentation; the name being given partly because the yeast
of the beer, instead of rising to the top and issuing through
the bunghole, falls to the bottom of the cask; but partly,
also, because it is produced at a low temperature. The
other and older process, called high fermentation^ is far
more handy, expeditious, and cheap. In high fermenta-
tion eight days suffice for the production of the beer; in

1865

1870

81

18

459

831

288 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

low fermentation, ten, fifteen, even twenty days are found
necessary. Vast quantities of ice, moreover, are consumed
in the process of low fermentation. In the single brewery
of Dreher, of Vienna, a hundred million pounds of ice are
consumed annually in cooling the wort and beer. Not-
withstanding these obvious and weighty drawbacks, the
low fermentation is rapidly displacing the high upon
the Continent. Here are some statistics which show the
number of breweries of both kinds existing in Bohemia
in 1860, 1865, and 1870:

1800

High Fermentation *281

Low Fermentation 135

Thus in ten years the number of high-fermentation
breweries fell from 281 to 18, while the number of low-
fermentation breweries rose from 135 to 881. The sole
reason for this vast change — a change which involves a
great expenditure of ' time, labor and money — is the addi-
tional command which it gives the brewer over the for-
tuitous ferments of disease. These ferments, which, it
is to be remembered, are living organisms, have their ac-
tivity suspended by temperatures below 10° C, and as
long as they are reduced to torpor the beer remains un-
tainted either by acidity or putrefaction. The beer of low
fermentation is brewed in winter, and kept in cool cellars;
the brewer being thus enabled to dispose of it at his
leisure, instead of forcing its consumption to avoid the
loss involved in its alteration if kept too long. Hops,
it may be remarked, act to some extent as an antiseptic
to beer. The essential oil of the hop is bactericidal : hence
the strong impregnation with hop juice of all beer intended
for exportation.

FERMENTATION 289

These low organisms, wliich one miglit be disposed to
regard as the beginnings of life, were we not warned that
the microscope, precious and perfect as it is, has no power
to show us the real beginnings of life, are by no means
purely useless or purely mischievous in the economy of
nature. They are only noxious when out of their proper
place. They exercise a useful and valuable function as
the burners and consumers of dead matter, animal and
vegetable, reducing such matter, with a rapidity otherwise
unattainable, to innocent carbonic acid and water. Fur-
thermore, they are not all alike, and it is only restricted
classes of them that are really dangerous to man. One
difference in their habits is worthy of special reference
here. Air, or rather the oxygen of the air, which is
absolutely necessary to the support of the bacteria of
putrefaction, is, according to Pasteur, absolutely deadly
to the vibrios which provoke the butyric acid fermenta-
tion. This has been illustrated by the following beautiful
observation.

A drop of the liquid containing those small organisms
is placed upon glass, and on the drop is placed a circle
of exceedingly thin glass; for, to magnify them suffi-
ciently, it is necessary that the object-glass of the micro-
scope should come very close to the organisms. Eound
the edge of the circular plate of glass the liquid is in con-
tact with the air, and incessantly absorbs it, including the
oxygen. Here, if the drop be charged with bacteria, we
have a zone of very lively ones. But through this living
zone, greedy of oxygen and appropriating it, the vivifying
gas cannot penetrate to the centre of the film. In the
middle, therefore, the bacteria die, while their peripheral

colleagues continue active. If a bubble of air chance to

Science — VI— 13

290 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

be enclosed in the film, round it the bacteria will pirou-
ette and wabble until its oxygen has been absorbed, after
which all their motions cease. Precisely the reverse of all
this occurs with the vibrios of butyric acid. In their case
it is the peripheral organisms that are first killed, the cen-
tral ones remaining vigorous while ringed by a zone of
dead. Pasteur, moreover, filled two vessels with a liquid
containing these vibrios; through one vessel he led air,
and killed its vibrios in half an hour; through the other
he led carbonic acid, and after three hours found the vib-
rios fully active. It was while observing these differences
of deportment fifteen years ago that the thought of life
without air, and its bearing upon the theory of fermenta-
tion, flashed upon the mind of this admirable investigator.

We now approach an aspect of this question which con-
cerns us still more closely, and will be best illustrated
by an actual fact. A few years ago I was bathing in an
Alpine stream, and returning to my clothes from the cas-
cade which had been my shower-bath, I slipped upon a
block of granite, the sharp crystals of which stamped them-
selves into my naked shin. The wound was an awkward
one, but being in vigorous health at the time, I hoped
for a speedy recovery. Dipping a clean pocket-handker-
chief into the stream, I wrapped it round the wound,
limped home, and remained for four or five days quietly
in bed. There was no pain, and at the end of this time
I thought myself quite fit to quit my room. The wound,
when uncovered, was found perfectly clean, uninflamed,
and entirely free from matter. Placing over it a bit of
goldbeater' s-skin, I walked about all day. Toward even-
ing itching and heat were felt; a large accumulation of

FERMENTATION- 291

matter followed, and I was forced to go to bed again.
The water bandage was restored, but it was powerless to
check the action now set up; arnica was applied, but it
made matters worse. The inflammation increased alarm-
ingly, until finally I had to be carried on men's shoulders
down the mountain and transported to Geneva, where,
thanks to the kindness of friends, I was immediately
placed in the best medical hands. On the morning after
my arrival in Greneva, Dr. Gautier discovered an abscess
in my instep, at a distance of five inches from the wound.
The two were connected by a channel, or sinus^ as it is
technically called, through which he was able to empty
the abscess, without the application of the lance.

By what agency was that channel formed — what was
it that thus tore asunder the sound tissue of my instep,
and kept me for six weeks a prisoner in bed? In the
very room where the water dressing had been removed
from my wound and the goldbeater's-skin applied to it,
I opened this year a number of tubes, containing perfectly
clear and sweet infusions of fish, flesh, and vegetable.
These hermetically sealed infusions had been exposed for
weeks, both to the sun of the Alps and to the warmth
of a kitchen, without showing the slightest turbidity or
sign of life. But two days after they were opened the
greater number of them swarmed with the bacteria of
putrefaction, the germs of which had been contracted from
the dust-laden air of the room. And had the matter from
my abscess been examined, my memory of its appearance
leads me to infer that it would have been found equally
swarming with these bacteria — that it was their germs
which got into my incautiously opened wound, and that
they were the subtile workers that burrowed down my

292 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

shin, dug the abscess in mj instep, and produced effects
which might easily have proved fatal.

This apparent digression brings us face to face with the
labors of a man who combines the penetration of the true
theorist with the skill and conscientiousness of the true ex-
perimenter, and whose practice is one continued demon-
stratiou of the theory that the putrefaction of wounds is
to be averted by the destruction of the germs of bacteria.
Not only from his own reports of his cases, but from the
reports of eminent men who have visited his hospital, and
from the opinions expressed to me by continental surgeons,
do I gather that one of the greatest steps ever made in the
art of surgery was the introduction of the antiseptic sys-
tem of treatment, introduced by Professor Lister.

The interest of this subject does not slacken as we
proceed. We began with the cherry -cask and beer- vat;
we end with the body of man. There are persons born
with the power of interpreting natural facts, as there are
others smitten with everlasting incompetence in regard to
such interpretation. To the former class in an eminent
degree belonged the illustrious philosopher Eobert Boyle,
whose words in relation to this subject have in them the
forecast of prophecy. "And let me add," writes Boyle
in his "Essay on the Pathological Part of Physik," "that
he that thoroughly understands the nature of ferments
and fermentations shall probably be much better able than
he that ignores them, to give a fair account of divers
phenomena of several diseases (as well fevers as others),
which will perhaps be never properly understood without
an insight into the doctrine of fermentations."

Two hundred years have passed since these pregnant
words were written, and it is only in this our day that

FERMENTATION 293

men are beginning to fully realize their truth. In the
domain of surgery the justice of Boyle's surmise has been
most strictly demonstrated. But we now pass the bounds
of surgery proper, and enter the domain of epidemic dis-
ease, including those fevers so sagaciously referred to by
Boyle. The most striking analogy between a contagium
and a ferment is to be found in the power of indefinite
self-multiplication possessed and exercised by both. You
know the exquisitely truthful figures regarding leaven em-
ployed in the Kew Testament. A particle hid in three
measures of meal leavens it all. A little leaven leaveneth
the whole lump. In a similar manner, a particle of con-
tagium spreads through the human body and may be so
multiplied as to strike down whole populations. Consider
the effect produced upon the system by a microscopic
quantity of the virus of smallpox. That virus is, to all
intents and purposes, a seed. It is sown as yeast is sown,
it grows and multiplies as yeast grows and multiplies, and
it always reproduces itself. To Pasteur we are indebted
for a series of masterly researches, wherein he exposes the
looseness and general baselessness of prevalent notions re-
garding the transmutation of one ferment into another.
He guards himself against saying it is impossible. The
true investigator is sparing in the use of this word, though
the use of it is unsparingly ascribed to him; but, as a
matter of fact, Pasteur has never been able to effect the
alleged transmutation, while he has been always able to
point out the open doorways through which the affirmers
of such transmutations had allowed error to march in
upon them.*

* Those who wish for an illustration of the care necessary in these re-
searches, and of the carelessness with which they have in some cases been

294 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

'The great source of error here has been already al-
luded to in this discourse. The observers worked in an
atmosphere charged with the germs of different organisms;
the mere accident of first possession rendering now one
organism, now another, triumphant. In different stages,
moreover, of its fermentative or putrefactive changes, the
same infusion may so alter as to be successively taken
possession of by different organisms. Such cases have
been adduced to show that the earlier organisms must
have been transformed into the later ones, whereas they
are simply cases in which different germs, because of
changes in the infusion, render themselves valid at differ-
ent times.

By teaching us how to cultivate each ferment in its
purity — in other words, by teaching us how to rear the
individual organism apart from all others — Pasteur has en-
abled us to avoid all these errors. And where this isola-
tion of a particular organism has been duly effected it
grows and multiplies indefinitely, but no change of it
into another organism is ever observed. In Pasteur's re-
searches the Bacterium remained a Bacterium, the Vibrio
a Yibrio, the Penicillium a Penicillium, and the Torula a
Torula. Sow any of these in a state of purity in an ap-
propriate liquid; you get it, and it alone, in the subse-
quent crop. In like manner, sow smallpox in the human
body, your crop is smallpox. Sow there scarlatina, and
your crop is scarlatina. Sow typhoid virus, your crop is
typhoid — cholera, your crop is cholera. The disease bears
as constant a relation to its contagium as the microscopic
organisms just enumerated do to their germs, or indeed as

conducted, will do well to consult the Rev. "W. H. Dallinger's excellent "Notea
on Heterogenesis" in the October number of the "Popular Science E,eview."

FERMENTATION 295

a thistle does to its seed. ISTo wonder then, with analogies
so obvious and so striking, that the conviction is spread-
ing and growing daily in strength, that reproductive para-
sitic life is at the root of epidemic disease — that living
ferments finding lodgment in the body increase there and
multiply, directly ruining the tissue on which they sub-
sist, or destroying life indirectly by the generation of
poisonous compounds within the body. This conclusion,
which comes to us with a presumption almost amounting
to demonstration, is clinched by the fact that virulently
infective diseases have been discovered with which living
organisms are as closely and as indissolubly asLOciated as
the growth of Torula is with the fermentation of beer.

And here, if you will permit me, I would utter a word
of warning to well-meaning people. We have now reached
a phase of this question when it is of the very last impor-
tance that light should once for all be thrown upon the
manner in which contagious and infectious diseases take
root and spread. To this end the action of various fer-
ments upon the organs and tissues of the living body must
be studied ; the habitat of each special organism concerned
in the production of each specific disease must be deter-
mined, and the mode by which its germs are spread
abroad as sources of further infection. It is only by such
rigidly accurate inquiries that we can obtain final and
complete mastery over these destroyers. Hence, while
abhorring cruelty of all kinds, while shrinking sympa-
thetically from all animal suffering — suffering which my
own pursuits never call upon me to inflict — an unbiased
survey of the field of research now opening out before
the physiologist causes me to conclude that no greater
calamity could befall the human race than the stoppage

296 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

of experimental inquiry in tiiis direction. A lady whose
philanthropy has rendered her illustrious said to me some
time ago that science was becoming immoral; that the re-
searches of the past, unlike those of the present, were car-
ried on without cruelty. I replied to her that the science
of Kepler and Newton, to which she referred, dealt with
the laws and phenomena of inorganic nature; but that one
great advance made by modern science was in the direc-
tion of biology, or the science of life; and that in this
new direction scientific inquiry, though at the outset pur-
sued at the cost of some temporary suffering, would in the
end prove a thousand times more beneficent than it had
ever hitherto been. I said this because I saw that the
very researches which the lady deprecated were leading
us to such a knowledge of epidemic diseases as will en-
able us finally to sweep these scourges of the human race
from the face of the earth.

This is a point of such capital importance that I should
like to bring it home to your intelligence by a single trust-
worthy illustration. In 1850, two distinguished French
observers, MM. Davainne and Kayer, noticed in the blood
of animals which had died of the virulent disease called
splenic fever small microscopic organisms resembling trans-
parent rods, but neither of them at that time attached any
significance to the observation. In 1861, Pasteur pub-
lished a memoir on the fermentation of butyric acid,
wherein he described the organism which provoked it;
and after reading this memoir it occurred to Davainne
that splenic fever might be a case of fermentation set up
within the animal body by the organisms which had been
observed by him and Kayer. This idea has been placed
beyond all doubt by subsequent reseai:u:a.

FERMENTATION 207

Observations of the highest importance have also been
made on splenic fever by Pollender and Brauell. Two
years ago, Dr. Burdon Sanderson gave ns a very clear
account of what was known up to that time of this dis-
order. With regard to the permanence of the contagium,
it had been proved to hang for years about localities
where it had once prevailed; and this seemed to show
that the rod-like organisms could not constitute the con-
tagium, because their infective power was found to vanish
in a few weeks. But other facts established an intimate
connection between the organisms and the disease, so that
a review of all the facts caused Dr. Sanderson to conclude
that the contagium existed in two distinct forms: the one
* 'fugitive" and visible as transparent rods; the other per-
manent but "latent," and not yet brought within the
grasp of the microscope.

At the time that Dr. Sanderson was writing this re-
port, a young German physician named Koch,* occupied
with the duties of his profession in an obscure country
district, was already at work, applying, during his spare
time, various original and ingenious devices to the in-
vestigation of splenic fever. He studied the habits of
the rod-like organisms, and found the aqueous humor of
an ox's eye to be particularly suitable for their nutrition.
With a drop of the aqueous humor he mixed the tiniest
speck of a liquid containing the rods, placed the drop un-
der his microscope, warmed it suitably, and observed the
subsequent action. During the first two hours hardly any
change was noticeable; but at the end of this time the
rods began to lengthen, and the action was so rapid that

' This, I believe, was the first reference to the researches of Koch made in
this country. 1879.

298 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

at tlie end of three or four hours thej attained from ten
to twenty times their original length. At the end of a
few additional hours they had formed filaments in many
cases a hundred times the length of the original rods.
The same filament, in fact, was frequently observed to
stretch through several fields of the microscope. Some-
times they lay in straight lines parallel to each other, in
other cases they were bent, twisted, and coiled into the
most graceful figures; while sometimes they formed knots
of such bewildering complexity that it was impossible for
the eye to trace the individual filaments through the con-
fusion.

Had the observation ended here an interesting scien-
tific fact would have been added to our previous store,
but the addition would have been of little practical value.
Koch, however, continued to watch the filaments, and after
a time noticed little dots appearing within them. These
dots became more and more distinct, until finally the whole
length of the organism was studded with minute ovoid
bodies, which lay within the outer integument like peas
within their shell. By and by the integument fell to
pieces, the place of the organisms being taken by a long
row of seeds or spores. These observations, which were
confirmed in all respects by the celebrated naturalist, Cohn
of Breslau, are of the highest importance. They clear up
the existing perplexity regarding the latent and visible
contagia of splenic fever; for in the most conclusive man-
ner Koch proved the spores, as distinguished from the
rods, to constitute the contagium of the fever in its most
deadly and persistent form.

How did he reach this important result? Mark the
answer. There was but one way open to him to test the

FERMENTATION 299

activity of the contagium, and that was the inoculation
with it of living animals. He operated upon guinea-pigs
and rabbits, but the vast majority of his experiments were
made upon mice. Inoculating them with the fresh blood
of an animal suffering from splenic fever, they invariably
died of the same disease within twenty or thirty hours
after inoculation. He then sought to determine how the
contagium maintained its vitality. Drying the infectious
blood containing the rod-like organisms, in which, how-
ever, the spores were not developed, he found the con-
tagium to be that which Dr. Sanderson calls "fugitive."
It maintained its power of infection for five weeks at the
furthest. He then dried blood containing the fully-devel-
oped spores, and exposed the substance to a variety of
conditions. He permitted the dried blood to assume the
form of dust; wetted this dust, allowed it to dry again,
permitted it to remain for an indefinite time in the midst
of putrefying matter, and subjected \t to various other
tests. After keeping the spore-charged blood which had
been treated in this fashion for four years, he inoculated a
number of mice with it, and found its action as fatal as that
of blood fresh from the veins of an animal suffering from
splenic fever. There was no single escape from death after
inoculation by this deadly contagium. Uncounted millions
of these spores are developed in the body of every animal
which has died of splenic fever, and every spore of these
millions is competent to produce the disease. The name
of this formidable parasite is Bacillus anihracis.^

^ Koch found that to produce its characteristic ejffects the contagium of
splenic fever must enter the blood ; the virulently infective spleen of a diseased
animal may be eaten with impunity by mice. On the other hand, the disease
refuses to be communicated by inoculation to dogs, partridges, or sparrows. In

800 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

Now the very first step toward the extirpation of these
contagia is the knowledge of their nature; and the knowl-
edge brought to ns by Dr. Koch will render as certain the
stamping out of splenic fever as the stoppage of the plague
of pShrine by the researches of Pasteur.* One small item
of statistics will show what this implies. In the single
district of Novgorod in Kussia, between the years 1867
and 1870, over fifty-six thousand cases of death by splenic
fever, among horses, cows, and sheep were recorded. Nor
did its ravages confine themselves to the animal world, for
during the time and in the district referred to, five hun-
dred and twenty-eight human beings perished in the ago-
nies of the same disease.

A description of the fever will help you to come to a
right decision on the point which I wish to submit to
your consideration. "An animal," says Dr. Burdon San-
derson, "which perhaps for the previous day has declined
food and sho\m §igns of general disturbance, begins to
shudder and to have twitches of the muscles of the back,
and soon after becomes weak and listless. In the mean-
time the respiration becomes frequent and often difficult,
and the temperature rises three or four degrees above the
normal; but soon convulsions, affecting chiefly the muscles
of the back and loins, usher in the final collapse of which

their blood Bacillus anfhracis ceases to act as a ferment. Pasteur announced
more than six years ago the propagation of the vibrios of the silkworm disease
called flacherie, both by fission and by spores. He also made some remarkable
experiments on the permanence of the contagium in the form of spores. See
"iStudes sur la Maladie des Vers a Sole," pp. 168 and 256.

^ Surmising that the immunity enjoyed by birds might arise from the heat
of their blood, which destroyed the bacillus, Pasteur lowered their temperature
artificially, inoculated them, and killed them. He also raised the temperature
of guinea-pigs after inoculation, and saved them. It is needless to dwell for a
moment on the importance of this experiment.

FERMENTATION 301

the progress is marked by the loss of all power of moving
the trunk or extremities, diminution of temperature, mu-
cous and sanguinolent alvine evacuations, and similar dis-
charges from the mouth and nose." In a single district
of Russia, as above remarked, fifty- six thousand horses,
cows, and sheep, and five hundred and twenty- eight men
and women, perished in this way during a period of two
or three years. What the annual fatality is throughout
Europe I have no means of knowing. Doubtless it must
be very great. The question, then, which I wish to sub-
mit to your judgment is this: Is the knowledge which re-
veals to us the nature, and which assures the extirpation,
of a disorder so virulent and so vile, worth the price paid
for it ? It is exceedingly important that assemblies like
the present should see clearly the issues at stake in such
questions as this, and that the properly informed sense of
the community should temper, if not restrain, the rashness
of those who, meaning to be tender, become agents of
cruelty by the imposition of short-sighted restrictions upon
physiological investigations. It is a modern instance of
zeal for God, but not according to knowledge, the ex-
cesses of which must be corrected by an instructed public
opinion.

And now let us cast a backward glance on the field we
have traversed, and try to extract from our labors such
further profit as they can yield. For more than two thou-
sand years the attraction of light bodies by amber was the
sum of human knowledge regarding electricity, and for
more than two thousand years fermentation was effected
without any knowledge of its cause. In science one dis-
covery grows out of another, and cannot appear without

802 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

its proper antecedent. Thus, before fermentation could
be understood, the microscope had to be invented, and
brought to a considerable degree of perfection. Note the
growth of knowledge. Leeuwenhoek, in 1680, found yeast
to be a mass of floating globules, but he had no notion
that the globules were alive. This was proved in 1835 by
Cagniard de la Tour and Schwann. Then came the ques-
tion as to the origin of such microscopic organisms, and
in this connection the memoir of Pasteur, published in
the *'Annales de Chimie" for 1862, is the inauguration of
a new epoch.

On that investigation all Pasteur's subsequent labors
were based. Ravages had over and over again occurred
among French wines. There was no guarantee that they
would not become acid or bitter, particularly when ex-
ported. The commerce in wines was thus restricted, and
disastrous losses were often inflicted on the wine-grower.
Every one of these diseases was traced to the life of an
organism. Pasteur ascertained the temperature which
killed these ferments of disease, proving it to be so low
as to be perfectly harmless to the wine. By the simple
expedient of heating the wine to a temperature of fifty
degrees Centigrade, he rendered it unalterable, and thus
saved his country the loss of millions. He then went on
to vinegar — vin aigre^ acid wine — which he proved to be
produced by a fermentation set up by a little fungus called
Mycoderma aceti. Torula, in fact, converts the grape juice
into alcohol, and Mycoderma aceti converts the alcohol
into vinegar. Here also frequent failures occurred, and
severe losses were sustained. Through the operation of
unknown causes, the vinegar often became unfit for use.,
sometimes indeed falling into utter putridity. It had been

FERMENTATION .:\ 803

long known tliat mere exposure to the air was sufficient
to destroy it. Pasteur studied all these changes, traced
them to their living causes, and showed that the perma-
nent health of the vinegar was insured by the destruction
of this life. He passed from the diseases of vinegar to the
study of a malady which a dozen years ago had all but
ruined the silk husbandry of France. This plague, which
received the name of yebrine^ was the product of a parasite
which first took possession • of the intestinal canal of the
silkworm, spread throughout its body, and filled the sack
which ought to contain the viscid matter of the silk. Thus
smitten, the worm would go automatically through the
process of spinning when it had nothing to spin. Pasteur
followed this parasitic destroyer from year to year, and
led by his singular power of combining facts with the logic
of facts, discovered eventually the precise phase in the de-
velopment of the insect when the disease which assailed
it could with certainty be stamped out. Pasteur's devo-
tion to this inquiry cost him dear. He restored to France
her silk husbandry, rescued thousands of her population
from ruin, set the looms of Italy c«,lso to work, but emerged
from his labors with one of his sides permanently para-
lyzed. His last investigation is embodied in a work en-
titled *' Studies on Beer," in which he describes a method
of rendering beer permanently unchangeable. That method
is not so simple as those found effectual with wine and
vinegar, but the principles which it involves are sure to
receive extensive application at some future day.

There are other reflections connected with this subject
which, even were they now passed over without remark,
would sooner or later occur to every thoughtful mind in
this assembly. I have spoken of the floating dust of the

304 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

air, of the means of rendering it visible, and of the perfect
immunity from putrefaction which accompanies the contact
of germless infusions and moteless air. Consider the woes
which these wafted particles, during historic and prehis-
toric ages, have inflicted on mankind; consider the loss
of life in hospitals from putrefying wounds; consider the
loss in places where there are plenty of wounds, but no
hospitals, and in the ages before hospitals were anywhere
founded; consider the slaughter which has hitherto fol-
lowed that of the battlefield, when those bacterial destroy-
ers are let loose, often producing a mortality far greater
than that of the battle itself; add to this the other concep-
tion that in times of epidemic disease the self-same float-
ing matter has frequently, if not always, mingled with it
the special germs which produce the epidemic, being thus
enabled to sow pestilence and death over nations and con-
tinents— consider all this, and you will come with me to
the conclusion that all the havoc of war, ten times multi-
plied, would be evanescent if compared with the ravages
due to atmospheric dust.

This preventible destruction is going on to-day, and
it has been permitted to go on for ages, without a whisper
of information regarding its cause being vouchsafed to
the suffering sentient world. We have been scourged by
invisible thongs, attacked from impenetrable ambuscades,
and it is only to-day that the light of science is being let
in upon the murderous dominion of our foes. Facts like
these excite in me the thought that the rule and governance
of this universe are different from what we in our youth
supposed them to be — that the inscrutable Power, at once
terrible and beneficent, in whom we live and move and
have our being and our end, is to be propitiated by means

FERMENTATION 805

different to tliose usually resorted to. The first requisite
toward such propitiation is knowledge; the second is action^
shaped and illuminated by that knowledge. Of knowl-
edge we already see the dawn, which will open out by
and by to perfect day; while the action which is to follow
has its unfailing source and stimulus in the moral and
emotional nature of man— in his desire for personal well-
being, in his sense of duty, in his compassionate sympathy
with the sufferings of his fellow-men. "How often," says
Dr. William Budd in his celebrated work on Typhoid
Fever — "How often have I seen in past days, in the sin-
gle narrow chamber of the day -laborer's cottage the father
in the coffin, the mother in the sick-bed in muttering de-
lirium, and nothing to relieve the desolation of the chil-
dren but the devotion of some poor neighbor, who in too
many cases paid the penalty of her kindness in becoming
herself the victim of the same disorder!" From the van-
tage ground already won I look forward with confident
hope to the triumph of medical art over scenes of misery
like that here described. The cause of the calamity being
once clearly revealed, not only to the physician, but to
the public, whose intelligent co-operation is absolutely
essential to success, the final victory of humanity is only
a question of time. We have already a foretaste of that
victory in the triumphs of surgery as practiced at your
doors.

XIII

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION *

WITHIN ten minutes' walk of a little cottage which
I have recently built in the Alps, there is a
small lake, fed by the melted snows of the up-
per mountains. During the early weeks of summer no
trace of life is to be discerned in this water; but invari-
ably toward the end of July, or the beginning of August,
swarms of tailed organisms are seen enjoying the sun's
warmth along the shallow margins of the lake, and rush-
ing with audible patter into deeper water at the approach
of danger. The origin of this periodic crowd of living
things is by no means obvious. For years I had never
noticed in the lake either an adult frog, or the smallest
fragment of frog spawn; so that, were I not otherwise in-
formed, I should have found the conclusion of Mathiole
a natural one, namely, that tadpoles are generated in lake
mud by the vivifying action of the sun.

The checks which experience alone can furnish being
absent, the spontaneous generation of creatures quite as
high as the frog in the scale of being was assumed for
aares to be a fact. Here, as elsewhere, the dominant mind
of Aristotle stamped its notions on the world at large.
For nearly twenty centuries after him men found no diffi-
culty in believing in cases of spontaneous generation which

» "The Nineteenth Century," January, 1878.

(306)

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 807

would now be rejected as monstrous bj the most fanatical
supporter of the doctrine. Shell-fish of all kinds were
considered to be without parental origin. Eels were sup-
posed to spring spontaneously from the fat ooze of the
Nile. Caterpillars were the spontaneous products of the
leaves on which they fed; while winged insects, serpents,
rats, and mice were all thought capable of being generated
without sexual intervention.

The most copious source of this life without an ancestry
was putrefying flesh ; and, lacking the checks imposed by
fuller investigation, the conclusion that flesh possesses and
exerts this generative power is a natural one. I well re-
member when a child of ten or twelve seeing a joint of
imperfectly salted beef cut into, and coils of maggots laid
bare within the mass. Without a moment's hesitation I
jumped to the conclusion that these maggots had been
spontaneously generated in the meat. I had no knowledge
which could qualify or oppose this conclusion, and for the
time it was irresistible. The childhood of the individual
typifies that of the race, and the belief here enunciated
was that of the world for nearly two thousand years.

To the examination of this very point the celebrated
Francesco Kedi, physician to the Grranddukes Ferdinand
II. and Cosmo III. of Tuscany, and a member of the
Academy del Cimento, addressed himself in 1668. He
had seen the maggots of putrefying flesh, and reflected
on their possible origin. But he was not content with
mere reflection, nor with the theoretic guesswork which
his predecessors had founded upon their imperfect obser-
vations. Watching meat during its passage from fresh-
ness to decay, prior to the appearance of maggots he
invariably observed flies buzzing round the meat and fre-

S08 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

quently alighting on it. The maggots, he thought, might
be the half- developed progeny of these flies.

The inductive guess precedes experiment, by which,
however, it must be finally tested. Eedi knew this, and
acted accordingly. Placing fresh meat in a jar and cover-
ing the mouth with paper, he found that, though the meat
putrefied in the ordinary way, it never bred maggots, while
the same meat placed in open jars soon swarmed with these
organisms. For the paper cover he then substituted fine
gauze, through which the odor of the meat could rise.
Over it the flies buzzed, and on it they laid their eggs,
but, the meshes being too small to permit the eggs to fall
through, no maggots were generated in the meat. They
were, on the contrary, hatched upon the gauze. By a
series of such experiments Eedi destroyed the belief in
the spontaneous generation of maggots in meat, and with
it doubtless many related beliefs. The combat was con-
tinued by Vallisneri, Schwammerdam, and Eeaumur, who
succeeded in banishing the notion of spontaneous genera-
tion from the scientific minds of their day. Indeed, as
regards such complex organisms as those which formed
the subject of their researches, the notion was banished
forever.

But the discovery and improvement of the microscope,
though giving a death-blow to much that had been pre-
viously written and believed regarding spontaneous genera-
tion, brought also into view a world of life formed of in-
dividuals so minute — so close as it seemed to the ultimate
particles of matter — as to suggest an easy passage from
atoms to organisms. Animal and vegetable infusions ex-
posed to the air were found clouded and crowded with
creatures far beyond the reach of unaided vision, but per-

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 309

fectly visible to an eje strengthened by the microscope.
With reference to their origin these organisms were called
*' Infusoria." Stagnant pools were found full of them, and
the obvious difficulty of assigning a germinal origin to ex-
istences so minute furnished the precise condition neces-
sary to give new play to the notion of heterogenesis or
spontaneous generation.

The scientific world was soon divided into two hostile
camps, the leaders of which only can here be briefly al-
luded to. On the one side, we have Buffon and Keed-
ham, the former postulating his "organic molecules," and
the latter assuming the existence of a special "vegetative
force" which drew the molecules together so as to form
living things. On the other side, we have the celebrated
Abb^ Lazzaro Spallanzani, who in 1777 published results
counter to those announced by Needham in 1748, and ob-
tained by methods so precise as to completely overthrow
the convictions based upon the labors of his predecessor.
Charging his flasks with organic infusions, he sealed their
necks with the blowpipe, subjected them in this condition
to the heat of boiling water, and subsequently exposed
them to temperatures favorable to the development of life.
The infusions continued unchanged for months, and when
the flasks were subsequently opened no trace of life was
found.

Here I may forestall matters so far as to say that the
success of Spallanzani 's experiments depended wholly on
the locality in which he worked. The air around him
must have been free from the more obdurate infusorial
germs, for otherwise the process he followed would, as
was long afterward proved by Wyman, have infallibly
yielded life. But his refutation of the doctrine of spon

810 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

taneous generation is not the less valid on this account.
Kor is it in any way upset by tlie fact that others in re-
peating his experiments obtained life where he obtained
none. Eather is the refutation strengthened by such dif-
ferences. Given two experimenters equally skilful and
equally careful, operating in different places on the same
infusion, in the same way, and assuming the one to obtain
life while the other fails to obtain it; then its well-estab-
lished absence in the one case proves that some ingredient
foreign to the infusion must be its cause in the other.

Spallanzani's sealed flasks contained but small quanti-
ties of air, and as oxygen was afterward shown to be gen-
erally essential to life, it was thought that the absence of
life observed by Spallanzani might have been due to the
lack of this vitalizing gas. To dissipate this doubt,
Schulze in 1886 half filled a flask with distilled water to
which animal and vegetable matters were added. First
boiling his infusion to destroy whatever life it might con-
tain, Schulze sucked daily into his flask air which had
passed through a series of bulbs containing concentrated
sulphuric acid, where all germs of life suspended in the
air were supposed to be destroyed. From May to August
this process was continued without any development of
infusorial life.

Here again the {Access of Schulze was due to his work-
ing in comparatively pure air, but even in such air his
experiment is a very risky one. Germs will pass un-
wetted and unscathed through sulphuric acid unless the
most special care is taken to detain them. I have re-
peatedly failed, by repeating Schulze' s experiments, to
obtain his results. Others have failed likewise. The air
passes in bubbles through the bulbs, and to render the

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 311

method secure, the passage of the air must be so slow as
to cause the whole of its floating matter, even to the very
core of each bubble, to touch the surrounding liquid. But
if this precaution be observed, water will be found quite
as effectual as sulphuric acid. Bj the aid of an air-pump,
in a highly infective atmosphere, I have thus drawn air
for weeks without intermission, first through bulbs con-
taining water, and afterward through vessels containing
organic infusions, without any appearance of life. The
germs were not killed by the water, but they were effect-
ually intercepted, while the objection that the air had been
injured by being brought into contact with strongly cor-
rosive substances was avoided.

The brief paper of Schulze, published in Poggendorf's
*'Annalen" for 1836, was followed in 1837 by another
short and pregnant communication by Schwann. Eedi, as
we have seen, traced the maggots of putrefying flesh to the
eggs of flies. But he did not and he could not know the
meaning of putrefaction itself. He had not the instru-
mental means to inform him that it also is a phenomenon
attendant on the development of life. This was first
proved in the paper now alluded to. Schwann placed
flesh in a flask filled to one-third of its capacity with
water, sterilized the flask by boiling, and then supplied
it for months with calcined air. Throughout this time
there appeared no mould, no infusoria, no putrefaction;
the flesh remained unaltered, while the liquid continued
as clear as it was immediately after boiling. Schwann
then varied his experimental argument, with no altera-
tion in the result. His final conclusion was that putrefac-
tion is due to decompositions of organic matter attendant
on the multiplication therein of minute organisms. These

^12 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

organisms were derived not from the air, but from some-
tliing contained in the air, which was destroyed by a suffi-
ciently high temperature. There never was a more deter-
mined opponent of the doctrine of spontaneous generation
than Schwann, though a strange attempt was made a year
and a half ago to enlist him and others equally opposed
to it on the side of the doctrine.

The physical character of the agent which produces
putrefaction was further revealed by Helmholtz in 1843.
By means of a membrane he separated a sterilized putres-
cible liquid from a putrefying one. The sterilized infu-
sion remained perfectly intact. Hence it was not the
liquid of the putrefying mass — for that could freely dif-
fuse through the membrane — but something contained in
the liquid, and which was stopped by the membrane, that
caused the putrefaction. In 1854 Schroeder and Yon
Dusch struck into this inquiry, which was subsequently
followed up by Schroeder alone. These able experiment-
ers employed plugs of cotton -wool to filter the air supplied
to their infusions. Fed with such air, in the great major-
ity of cases the putrescible liquids remained perfectly
sweet after boiling. Milk formed a conspicuous excep-
tion to the general rule. It putrefied after boiling, though
supplied with carefully filtered air. The researches of
Schroeder bring us up to the year 1859.

In that year a book was published which seemed to
overturn some of the best established facts of previous in-
vestigators. Its title was "Heterogenic," and its author
was F. A. Pouchet, Director of the Museum of Natural
History at Eouen. Ardent, laborious, learned, full not
only of scientific, but of metaphysical fervor, he threw his
whole energy into the inquiry. Never did a subject re-

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 313

quire the exercise of the cold critical faculty more than
this one — calm study in the unravelling of complex phe-
nomena, care in the preparation of experiments, care in
their execution, skilful variation of conditions, and inces-
sant questioning of results until repetition had placed
them beyond doubt or question. To a man of Pouchet's
temperament the subject was full of' danger — danger not
lessened by the theoretic bias with which he approached
it. This is revealed by the opening words of his preface:
"Lorsque, par la meditation, il fut evident pour moi que
la generation spontande etait encore I'un des moyens
qu'emploie la nature pour la reproduction des etres, je
m'appliquai a decouvrir par quels proc^des on pouvait
parvenir a en mettre les phenom^nes en evidence." It
is needless to say that such a prepossession required -a
strong curb. Pouchet repeated the experiments of Schulze
and Schwann with results diametrically opposed to theirs.
He heaped experiment upon experiment and argument
upon argument, spicing with the sarcasm of the advocate
the logic of the man of science. In view of the multi-
tudes required to produce the observed results, he ridi-
culed the assumption of atmospheric germs. This was one
of his strongest points. "Si les Proto-organismes que nous
voyons pulluler partout et dans tout, avaient leurs germ.es
dissemin^s dans 1' atmosphere, dans la proportion mathema-
tiquement indispensable a cet effet, I'air en serait totale-
ment obscurci, car ils devraient s'y trouver beaucoup plus
serres que les globules d'eau qui forment nos nuages
epais. II n'y a pas la la moindre exageration. " Eecur-
ring to the subject, he exclaims: *'L'air dans lequel nous
vivons aurait presque la densite du fer." There is often
a virulent contagion in a confident tone, and this hardi-

SCIENCE — YI— 14

814 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

hood of argumentative assertion was sure to influence
minds swayed not by knowledge, but by authority. Had
Pouchet known that *' the blue ethereal sky" is formed of
suspended particles, through which the sun freely shines,
he would hardly have ventured upon this line of argu-
ment.

Pouchet's pursuit of this inquiry strengthened the con-
viction with which he began it, and landed him in down-
right credulity in the end. I do not question his ability
as an observer, but the inquiry needed a disciplined ex-
perimenter. This latter implies not mere ability to look
at things as Nature offers them to our inspection, but to
force her to show herself under conditions prescribed by
the experimenter himself. Here Pouchet lacked the nec-
essary discipline. Yet the vigor of his onset raised clouds
of doubt, which for a time obscured the whole field of in-
quiry. So difl&cult indeed did the subject seem, and so
incapable of definite solution, that when Pasteur made
known his intention to take it up, his friends Biot and
Dumas expressed their regret, earnestly exhorting him to
set a definite and rigid limit to the time he purposed
spending in this apparently unprofitable field.*

Schooled by his education as a chemist, and by special
researches on the closely related question of fermentation,
Pasteur took up this subject under particularly favorable
conditions. His work and his culture had given strength
and finish to his natural aptitudes. In 1862, accordingly,
he published a paper '*0n the Organized Corpuscles exist-

* *'Je ne conseillerais h personne,'* said Dumas to his already famous pupil,
**de rester trop longtemps dans ce sujet.*' — **Annales de Chimie et de Physique,"
1862, vol. Ixiv. p. 22. Since that time the illustrious Perpetual Secretary of th«
Academy of Sciences has had good reason to revise this "counsel."

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 816

ing in the Atmospliere, ' ' whicli must forever remain classi-
cal. By the most ingenious devices he collected the float-
ing particles of the air surrounding his laboratory in the
Kue d'Ulm, and subjected them to microscopic examina-
tion. Many of them he found to be organized particles.
Sowing them in sterilized infusions, he obtained abundant
crops of microscopic organisms. By more refined methods
he repeated and confirmed the experiments of Schwann,
which had been contested by Pouchet, Montegazza, Joly,
and Musset. He also confirmed the experiments of
Schroeder and Von Dusch. He showed that the cause
which communicated life to his infusions was not uni-
formly diffused through the air; that there were aerial
interspaces which possessed no power to generate life.
Standing on the Mer de Glace, near the Montanvert, he
snipped off the ends of a number of hermetically sealed
flasks containing organic infusions. One out of twenty
of the flasks thus supplied with glacier air showed signs
of life afterward, while eight out of twenty of the same
infusions, supplied with the air of the plains, became
crowded with life. He took his flasks into the caves un-
der the Observatory of Paris, and found the still air in
these caves devoid of generative power. These and other
experiments, carried out with a severity perfectly obvious
to the instructed scientific reader, and accompanied by a
logic equally severe, restored the conviction that, even in
these lower reaches of the scale of being, life does not
appear without the operation of antecedent life.

The main position of Pasteur has been strengthened
by practical researches of the most momentous kind. He
has applied the knowledge won from his inquiries to the
preservation of wine and beer, to the manufacture of vin-

816 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

egar, to the staying of the plague which threatened utter
destruction of the silk husbandry of France, and to the
examination of other formidable diseases which assail the
higher animals, including man. His relation to the im-
provements which Professor Lister has introduced into
surgery is shown by a letter quoted in his '* Etudes sur
la Bi^re."' Professor Lister there expressly thanks Pas-
teur for having given him the only principle which could
have conducted the antiseptic system to a successful issue.
The strictures regarding defects of reasoning, to which we
have been lately accustomed, throw abundant light upon
their author, but no shade upon Pasteur.

Redi, as we have seen, proved the maggots of putrefy-
ing flesh to be derived from the eggs of flies; Schwann
proved putrefaction itself to be the concomitant of far
lower forms of life than those dealt with by Redi. Oar
knowledge here, as elsewhere in connection with this sub-
ject, has been vastly extended by Professor Cohn, of Bres-
lau. *'Ko putrefaction," he says, *'can occur in a nitrog-
enous substance if its bacteria be destroyed and new ones
prevented from entering it. Putrefaction begins as soon
as bacteria, even in the smallest numbers, are admitted
either accidentally or purposely. It progresses in direct
proportion to the multiplication of the bacteria, it is re-
tarded when they exhibit low vitality, and is stopped by
all influences which either hinder their development or
kill them. All bactericidal media are therefore antiseptic
and disinfecting."" It was these organisms acting in

» P. 43.

* In his last excellent memoir Cohn expresses himself thus: *'Wer noch
beut die Faulniss von einer spontanen Dissociation der Proteinmolecule, oder
• pn einem unorganisirten Ferment ableitet, oder gar aus 'Stickstoffsplittern'

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 317

wound and abscess whicli so frequently converted our
hospitals into charnel-liouses, and it is their destruction
by the antiseptic system that now renders justifiable opera-
tions which no surgeon would have attempted a few years
ago. The gain is immense — to the practicing surgeon as
well as to the patient practiced upon. Contrast the anx-
iety of never feeling sure whether the most brilliant opera-
tion might not be rendered nugatory by the access of a
few particles of unseen hospital dust, with the comfort
derived from the knowledge that all power of mischief on
the part of such dust has been surely and certainly anni-
hilated. But the action of living contagia extends beyond
the domain of the surgeon. The power of reproduction
and indefinite self-multiplication which is characteristic of
living things, coupled with the undeviating fact of con-
tagia "breeding true," has given strength and consistency
to a belief long entertained by penetrating minds, that
epidemic diseases generally are the concomitants of para-
sitic life. "There begins to be faintly visible to us a
vast and destructive laboratory of nature wherein the dis-
eases which are most fatal to animal life, and the changes
to which dead organic matter is passively liable, appear
bound together by what must at least be called a very
close analogy of causation." * According to this view,
which, as I have said, is daily gaining converts, a con-
tagious disease may be defined as a conflict between the
person smitten by it and a specific organism which multi-
plies at his expense, appropriating his air and moisture,

die Balken zur Stiitze seiner Faulnisstheorie zu zimmem versucht, hat zuerst
den Satz 'keine Faulniss ohne Bacterium Termo' zu widerlegen.'*
* Report of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council, 1874, p. 5.

818 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

disintegrating his tissues, or poisoning him by the decom-
positions incident to its growtk.

During the ten years extending from 1859 to 1869, re-
searches on radiant heat in its relations to the gaseous
form of matter occupied my continual attention. When
air was experimented on, I had to cleanse it effectually
of floating matter, and while doing so I was surprised to
notice that, at the ordinary rate of transfer, such matter
passed freely through alkalies, acids, alcohols, and ethers.
The eye being kept sensitive by darkness, a concentrated
beam of light was found to be a most searching test for
suspended matter both in water and in air — a test indeed
indefinitely more searching and severe than that furnished
by the most powerful microscope. With the aid of such
a beam I examined air filtered by cotton- wool; air long
kept free from agitation, so as to allow the floating matter
to subside; calcined air, and air filtered by the deeper
cells of the human lungs. In all cases the correspondence
between my experiments and those of Schroeder, Pasteur,
and Lister in regard to spontaneous generation was per-
fect. The air which they found inoperative was proved
by the luminous beam to be optically pure and therefore
germless. Having worked at the subject both by experi-
ment and reflection, on Friday evening, January 21, 1870,
I brought it before the members of the Royal Institution.
Two or three months subsequently, for sufficient practical
reasons, I ventured to direct public attention to the sub-
ject in a letter to the *' Times." Such was my first contact
with this important question.

This letter, I believe, gave occasion for the first public
utterance of Dr. Bastian in relation to this subject. He

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 819

did me tlie honor to inform me, as others had informed
Pasteur, that the subject * 'pertains to the biologist and
physician." He expressed ''amazement" at mj reasoning
and warned me that before what I had done could be
undone "much irreparable mischief might be occasioned."
With far less preliminary experience to guide and warn
him, the English heterogenist was far bolder than Pouchet
in his experiments, and far more adventurous in his con-
clusions. With organic infusions he obtained the results
of his celebrated predecessor, but he did much more — the
atoms and molecules of inorganic liquids passing under
his manipulation into those more "complex chemical com-
pounds," which we dignify by calling them "living organ-
isms."' As regards the public who take an interest in
such things, and apparently also as regards a large por-
tion of the medical profession, our clever countryman suc-
ceeded in restoring the subject to a state of uncertainty
similar to that which followed the publication of Pouchet's
volume in 1859.

It is desirable that this uncertainty should be removed
from all minds, and doubly desirable on practical grounds
that it should be removed from the minds of medical men.
In the present article, therefore, I propose discussing this
question face to face with some eminent and fair-minded
member of the medical profession who, as regards sponta-
neous generation, entertains views adverse to mine. Such
a one it would be easy to name; but it is perhaps better
to rest in the impersonal. I shall therefore simply call

^ "It is further held that bacteria or allied organisms are prone to be engen-
dered as correlative products, coming into existence in the several fermenta-
tions, just as independently as other less complex chemical compounds." —
Bastian, "Trans, of Pathological Society, " vol. xxvi. 258.

320 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

mj proposed co-inquirer my friend. With him at my
side, 1 shall endeavor, to the best of my ability, so to
conduct this discussion that he who runs may read and
that he who reads may understand.

Let us begin at the beginning. I ask my friend to
step into the laboratory of the Royal Institution, where
I place before him a basin of thin turnip slices barely cov-
ered with distilled water kept at a tem-
perature of 120° Fahr. After digesting
the turnip for four or five hours we
pour off the liquid, boil it, filter it, and
obtain an infusion as clear as filtered
drinking water. We cool the infusion,
test its specific gravity, and find it to
be 1006 or higher — water being 1000.
A number of small clean empty flasks,
of the shape shown on the margin, are before us. One of
them is slightly warmed with a spirit-lamp, and its open
end is then dipped into the turnip infusion. The warmed
glass is afterward chilled, the air within the flask cools,
contracts, and is followed in its contraction by the infu-
sion. Thus we get a small quantity of liquid into the
flask. We now heat this liquid carefully. Steam is pro-
duced, which issues from the open neck, carrying the air
of the flask along with it. After a few seconds' ebulli-
tion, the open neck is again plunged into the infusion.
The steam within the flask condenses, the liquid enters
to supply its place, and in this way we fill our little flask
to about four-fifths of its volume. This description is
typical; we may thus fill a thousand flasks with a thou-
sand different infusions.

I now ask my friend to notice a trough made of sheet

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 821

copper, with two rows of handy little Bunsen burners un-
derneath it. This trough, or bath, is nearly filled with
oil; a piece of thin plank constitutes a kind of lid for the
oil-bath. The wood is perforated with circular apertures
wide enough to allow our small flask to pass through and
plunge itself in the oil, which has been heated, say, to
250° Fahr. Clasped all round by the hot liquid, the in-
fusion in the flask rises to its boiling point, which is not
sensibly over 212° Fahr. Steam issues from the open
neck of the flask, and the boiling is continued for five
minutes. With a pair of small brass tongs, an assistant
now seizes the neck near its junction with the flask, and
partially lifts the latter out of the oil. The steam does
not cease to issue, but its violence is abated. With a
second pair of tongs held in one hand, the neck of the
flask is seized close to its open end, wlare with the other
hand a Bunsen 's flame or an ordinary spirit flame is
brought under the middle of the neck. The glass red-
dens, whitens, softens, and as it is gently drawn out the
neck diminishes in diameter, until the canal is completely
blocked up. The tongs with the fragment of severed neck
being withdrawn, the flask, with its contents diminished
by evaporation, is lifted from the oil-bath perfectly sealed
hermetically.

Sixty such flasks filled, boiled, and sealed in the man-
ner described, and containing strong infusions of beef,
mutton, turnip, and cucumber, are carefully packed in
sawdust, and transported to the Alps. Thither, to an
elevation of about 7,000 feet above the sea, I invite my
co-inquirer to accompany me. It is the month of July,
and the weather is favorable to putrefaction. We open
our box at the Bel Alp, and count out fifty-four flasks,

322 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

with their liquids as clear as filtered drinking water. In
six flasks, however, the infusion is found muddy. We
closely examine these, and discover that every one of them
has had its fragile end broken off in the transit from Lon-
don. Air has entered the flasks, and the observed mud-
diness is the result. My colleague knows as well as 1 do
what this means. Examined with a pocket-lens, or even
with a microscope of insufficient power, nothing is seen in
the muddy liquid; but regarded with a magnifying power
of a thousand diameters or so, what an astonishing appear-
ance does it present! Leeuwenhoek estimated the popula-
tion of a single drop of stagnant water at 600,000,000;
probably the population of a drop of our turbid infusion
would be this many times multiplied. The field of the
microscope is crowded with organisms, some wabbling
slowly, others shooting rapidly across the microscopic
field. They dart hither and thither like a rain of minute
projectiles; they pirouette and spin so quickly round that
the retention of the retinal impression transforms the little
living rod into a twirling wheel. And yet the most cele-
brated naturalists tell us they are vegetables. From the
rod-like shape which they so frequently assume, these or-
ganisms are called ''bacteria" — a term, be it here remarked,
which covers organisms of very diverse kinds.

Has this multitudinous life been spontaneously gener-
ated in these six flasks, or is it the progeny of living
germinal matter carried into the flasks by the entering
air? If the infusions have a self- generative power, how
are the sterility and consequent clearness of the fifty -four
uninjured flasks to be accounted for? My colleague may
urge — and fairly urge — that the assumption of germinal
matter is by no means necessary; that the air itself may

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 823

be the one thing needed to wake up the dormant infusions.
We will examine this point immediately. But meanwhile
I would remind him that I am working on the exact lines
laid down by our most conspicuous heterogenist. He dis-
tinctly affirms that the withdrawal of the atmospheric
pressure above the infusion favors the production of or-
ganisms ; and he accounts for their absence in tins of pre-
served meat, fruit, and vegetables, by the hypothesis that
fermentation has hegun in such tins, that gases have beeir
generated, the pressure of which has stifled the incipient
life and stopped its further development.* This is the
new theory of preserved meats. Had its author pierced a
tin of preserved meat, fruit, or vegetable under water with
the view of testing its truth, he would have found it erro-
neous. In well-preserved tins he would have found, not
an outrush of gas, but an inrush of water. I have noticed
this recently in tins which have lain perfectly good for
sixty-three years in the Eoyal Institution. Modern tins,
subjected to the same test, yielded the same result. From
time to time, moreover, during the last two years, I have
placed glass tubes, containing clear infusions of turnip,
hay, beef, and mutton, in iron bottles, and subjected them
to air-pressures varying from ten to twenty-seven atmos-
pheres— pressures, it is needless to say, far more than
sufficient to tear a preserved meat tin to shreds. After
ten days these infusions were taken from their bottles rot-
ten with putrefaction and teeming with life. Thus col-
lapses a hypothesis which had no rational foundation, and
which could never have seen the light had the slightest
attempt been made to verify it.

'Beginnings of Life," voL i. p. 418.

82J: FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

Our fifty- four vacuous and pellucid flasks also declare
against the heterogenist. "We expose them to a warm Al-
pine sun by day, and at night we suspend them in a warm
kitchen. Four of them have been accidentally broken;
but at the end of a month we find the fifty remaining
ones as clear as at the commencement. There is no sign
of putrefaction or of life in any of them. We divide these
flasks into two groups of twenty- three and twenty- seven
respectively (an accident of counting rendered the division
uneven). The question now is whether the admission of
air can liberate any generative energy in the infusions.
Our next experiment will answer this question and some-
thing more. "We carry the flasks to a hayloft, and there,
with a pair of steel pliers, snip off the sealed ends of the
group of three-and-twenty. Each snipping off is of course
followed by an inrush of air. We now carry our twenty-
seven flasks, our pliers, and a spirit-lamp, to a ledge over-
looking the Aletsch glacier, about two hundred feet above
the hayloft, from which ledge the mountain falls almost
precipitously to the northeast for about a thousand feet.
A gentle wind blows toward us from the northeast — that
is, across the crests and snow- fields of the Oberland moun-
tains. We are therefore bathed by air which must have
been for a good while out of practical contact with either
animal or vegetable life. I stand carefully to leeward of
the flasks, for no dust or particle from my clothes ol: body
must be blown toward them. An assistant ignites the
spirit-lamp, into the flame of which I plunge the pliers,
thereby destroying all attached germs or organisms. Then
I snip off the sealed end of the flask. Prior to every
snipping the same process is gone through, no flask being
opened without the previous cleansing of the pliers by

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 825

tHe flame. In this way we charge our seven- and -twenty
flasks with clean vivifying mountain air.

We place the fifty flasks, with their necks open, over
a kitchen stove, in a temperature varying from 60° to 90°
Fahr., and in three days find twenty-one out of the
twenty-three flasks opened on the hayloft invaded by
organisms — two only of the group remaining free from
them. After three weeks' exposure to precisely the same
conditions, not one of the twenty- seven flasks opened in
free air had given way. No germ from the kitchen air
had ascended the narrow necks, the flasks being shaped
to produce this result. They are still in the Alps, as
clear, I doubt not, and as free from life as they were
when sent off from London.*

What is my colleague's conclusion from the experi-
ment before us? Twenty-seven putrescible infusions, first
in vacuo, and afterward supplied with the most invigorat-
ing air, have shown no sign of putrefaction or of life.
And as to the others, I almost shrink from asking him
whether the hayloft has rendered them spontaneously
generative. Is not the inference here imperative that it
is not the air of the loft — which is connected through a
constantly open door with the general atmosphere — but
something contained in the air, that has produced the
effects observed? What is this something? A sunbeam
entering through a chink in the roof or wall, and travers-
ing the air of the loft, would show it to be laden with
suspended dust particles. Indeed the dust is distinctly
visible in the diffused daylight. Can it have been the
origin of the observed life? If so, are we not bound by
all antecedent experience to regard these fruitful particles

' An actual experimeut made at the Bel Alp is here described.

826 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

as the germs of tlie life observed ? The name of Baron
Liebig has been constantly mixed up with these discus-
sions. "We have," it is said, "his authority for assum-
ing that dead decaying matter can produce fermentation.'*
True, but with Liebig fermentation was by no means sy-
nonymous with life. It meant, according to him, the shak-
ing asunder by chemical disturbance of unstable molecules.
Does the life of our flasks, then, proceed from dead par-
ticles? If my CO- inquirer should reply "Yes,'' then I
would ask him, ' ' What warrant does Nature offer for such
an assumption ? Where, amid the multitude of vital phe-
nomena in which her operations have been clearly traced,
is the slightest countenance given to the notion that the
sowing of dead particles can produce a living crop?'*
With regard to Baron Liebig, had he studied the revela-
tions of the microscope in relation to these questions, a
mind so penetrating could never have missed the signifi-
cance of the facts revealed. He, however, neglected the
microscope, and fell into error — but not into error so gross
as that in support of which his authority has been in-
voked. Were he now alive, he would, I doubt not, repu-
diate the use often made of his name — Liebig' s view of
fermentation was at least a scientific one, founded on pro-
found conceptions of molecular instability. But this view
by no means involves the notion that the planting of
dead particles — " Sticks tofisplittern" as Cohn contemptu-
ously calls them — is followed by the sprouting of infuso-
rial life.

Let us now return to London and fix our attention on
the dust of its air. Suppose a room in which the house-
maid has just finished her work to be completely closed,

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 327

with the exception of an aperture in a shutter through
which a sunbeam enters and crosses the room. The float-
ing dust reveals the track of the light. Let a lens be
placed in the aperture to condense the beam. Its parallel
rays are now converged to a cone, at the apex of which
the dust is raised to almost unbroken whiteness by the
intensity of its illumination. Defended from all glare,
the eye is peculiarly sensitive to this scattered light. The
floating dust of London rooms is organic, and may be
burned without leaving visible residue. The action of a
spirit-lamp flame upon the floating matter has been else-
where thus described:

In a cylindrical beam which strongly illuminated the
dust of our laboratory, I placed an ignited spirit-lamp.
Mingling with the flame, and round its rim, were seen
curious wreaths of darkness resembling an intensely black
smoke. On placing the flame at some distance below the
beam, the same dark masses stormed upward. They were
blacker than the blackest smoke ever seen issuing from the
funnel of a steamer; and their resemblance to smoke was so
perfect as to prompt the conclusion that the apparently pure
flame of the alcohol-lamp required but a beam of sufficient
intensity to reveal its clouds of liberated carbon.

But is the blackness smoke? This question presented
itself in a moment, and was thus answered: A red-hot poker,
was placed underneath the beam; from it the black wreaths
also ascended. A large hydrogen flame, which emits no
smoke, was next employed, and it also produced with aug-
mented copiousness those whirling masses of darkness.
Smoke being out of the question, what is the blackness ?
It is simply that of stellar space; that is to say, blackness
resulting from the absence from the track of the beam of all
matter competent to scatter its light. When the flame was
placed below the beam, the floating matter was destroyed

828 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

171 situ; and the heated air, freed from this matter, rose into
the beam, jostled aside the illuminated particles, and substi-
tuted for their light the darkness due to its own perfect
transparency. Nothing could more forcibly illustrate the
invisibility of the agent which renders all things visible.
The beam crossed, unseen, the black chasm formed by the
transparent air, while, at both sides of the gap, the thick-
strewn particles shone out like a luminous solid under the
powerful illumination. *

Supposing an infusion intrinsically barren, but readily
susceptible of putrefaction when exposed to common air,
to be brought into contact with this unilluminable air,
what would be the result? It would never putrefy. It
might, however, be urged that the air is spoiled by its
violent calcination. Oxygen passed through a spirit-lamp
flame is, it may be thought, no longer the oxygen suitable
for the development and maintenance of life. "We have
an easy escape from this difficulty, which is based, how-
ever, upon the unproved assumption that the air has been
affected by the flame. Let a condensed beam be sent
through a large flask of bolthead containing common air.
The track of the beam is seen within the flask — the dust
revealing the light, and the light revealing the dust. Cork
the flask, stuff its neck with cotton- wool, or simply turn
it mouth downward and leave it undisturbed for a day or
two. Examined afterward with the luminous beam, no
track is visible; the light passes through the flask as
through a vacuum. The floating matter has abolished
itself, being now attached to the interior surface of the
flask. Were it our object, as it will be subsequently, to
effectually detain the dirt, we might coat that surface with

^ See page 142, voL I

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 329

some sticky substance. Here, then, wittiout ** torturing"
the air in any way, we have found a means of ridding it,
or rather of enabling it to rid itself, of floating matter.

We have now to devise a means of testing the action
of such spontaneously purified air upon putrescible infu-
sions. "Wooden chambers, or cases, are accordingly con-
structed, having glass fronts, side-windows, and back-
doors. Through the bottoms of the chambers test-tubes
pass air-tight; their open ends, for about one-fifth of the
length of the tubes, being within the chambers. Provis-
ion is made for a free connection through sinuous chan-
nels between the inner and the outer air. Through such
channels, though open, no dust will reach the chamber.
The top of each chamber is perforated by a circular hole
two inches in diameter, closed air-tight by a sheet of India-
rabber. This is pierced in the middle by a pin, and
through the pin-hole is pushed the shank of a long pipette
ending above in a small funnel. The shank also passes
through a stuffing-box of cotton- wool moistened with glyc-
erine; so that, tightly clasped by the rubber and wool,
the pipette is not likely in its motions up and down to
carry any dust into the chamber. The illustration (page
830) shows a chamber, with six test-tubes, its side-win-
dows w Wj its pipette p c, and its sinuous channels a b
which connect the air of the chamber with the outer air.

The chamber is carefully closed and permitted to re-
main quiet for two or three days. Examined at the begin-
ning by a beam sent through its windows, the air is found
laden with floating matter, which in three days has wholly
disappeared. To prevent its ever rising again, the internal
surface of the chamber was at the outset coated with glyc-
erine. The fresh but putrescible liquid is introduced into

830

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

the six tubes in succession by means of the pipette. Per-
mitted to remain witliout further precaution, every one
of the tubes would putrefy and fill itself with life. The
liquid has been in contact with the dust- laden air outside
by which it has been infected, and the infection must be

destroyed. This is done by plunging the six tubes into
a bath of heated oil and boiling the infusion. The time
requisite to destroy the infection depends wholly upon
its nature. Two minutes' boiling suffices to destroy some
contagia, whereas two hundred minutes' boiling fails to

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 331

destroy others. After tlie infusion lias been sterilized,
the oil- bath is withdrawn, and the liquid^ whose putresci-
bilitj has been in no way ajffected by the boiling, is aban-
doned to the air of the chamber.

With such chambers I tested, in the autumn and winter
of 1875-76, infusions of the most various kinds, embracing
natural animal liquids, the flesh and viscera of domestic
animals, game, fish, and vegetables. More than fifty
chambers, each with its series of infusions, were tested,
many of them repeatedly. There was no shade of uncer-
tainty in any of the results. In every instance we had,
within the chamber, perfect limpidity and sweetness, which
in some cases lasted for more than a year — without the
chamber, with the same infusion, putridity and its char-
acteristic smells. In no instance was the least countenance
lent to the notion that an infusion deprived by heat of its
inherent life, and placed in contact with air cleansed of
its visibly suspended matter, has any power to generate
life anew.

Eemembering then the number and variety of the in-
fusions employed, and the strictness of our adherence to
the rules of preparation laid down by the heterogenists
themselves; remembering that we have operated upon the
very substances recommended by them as capable of fur-
nishing, even in untrained hands, easy and decisive proofs
of spontaneous generation, and that we have added to
their substances many others of our own — if^this pretended
generative power were a reality, surely it must have mani-
fested itself somewhere. Speaking roundly, I should say
that in such closed chambers at least five hundred chances
have been given to it, but it has nowhere appeared.

The argument is now to be clinched by an experiment

832 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

wMcli will remove every residue of doubt as to the ability
of the infusions here employed to sustain life. "We open
the back-doors of our sealed chambers, and permit the
common air with its floating particles to have access to
our tubes. For three months they have remained pellucid
and sweet — flesh, fish, and vegetable extracts purer than
ever cook manufactured. Three days* exposure to the
dusty air suffices to render them muddy, fetid, and swarm-
ing with infusorial life. The liquids are thus proved, one
and all, ready for putrefaction when the contaminating
agent is applied. I invite my colleague to reflect on these
facts. How will he account for the absolute immunity
of a liquid exposed for months in a warm room to optically
pure air, and its infallible putrefaction in a few days when
exposed to dust-laden air? He must, I submit, bow to
the conclusion that the dust-particles are the cause of
putrefactive life. And unless he accepts the hypothesis
that these particles, being dead in the air, are in the
liquid miraculously kindled into living things, he must
conclude that the life we have observed springs from
germs or organisms diffused through the atmosphere.

The experiments with hermetically sealed flasks have
reached the number of 940. A sample group of 130 of
them were laid before the Koyal Society on January 13,
1876. They were utterly free from life, having been com-
pletely sterilized by three minutes' boiling. Special care
had been taken that the temperatures to which the flasks
were exposed should include those previously alleged to
be efficient. The conditions laid down by the heterogenist
were accurately copied, but there was no corroboration
of his results. Stress was then laid on the question of
warmth, thirty degrees being suddenly added to the tem-

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 383

peratures with wliicli both of us had previously worked.
Waiving all protest against the caprice thus manifested,
I met this new requirement also. The sealed tubes, which
had proved barren in the Koyal Institution, were sus-
pended in perforated boxes, and placed under the super-
vision of an intelligent assistant in the Turkish Bath in
Jermyn Street. From two to six days had been allowed
for the generation of organisms in hermetically sealed
tubes. Mine remained in the washing-room of the bath
for nine days. Thermometers placed in the boxes, and
read off twice or three times a day, showed the temjDcra-
ture to vary from a minimum of 101° to a maximum of
112° Fahr. At the end of nine days the infusions were
as clear as at the beginning. They were then removed
to a warmer position. A temperature of 115° had been
mentioned as particularly favorable to spontaneous genera-
tion. For fourteen days the temperature of the Turkish
Bath hovered about this point, falling once as low as 106°,
reaching 116° on three occasions, 118° on one, and 119°
on two. The result was quite the same as that just re-
corded. The higher temperatures proved perfectly incom-
petent to develop life.

Taking the actual experiment we have made as a basis
of calculation, if our 940 flasks were opened on the hay-
loft of the Bel Alp, 858 of them would become filled with
organisms. The escape of the remaining 82 strengthens
our case, proving as it does conclusively that not in the
air, nor in the infusions, nor in anything continuous dif-
fused through the air, but in discrete particles, suspended
in the air and nourished by the infusions, we are to seek
the cause of life. Our experiment proves these particles
to be in some cases so far apart on the hayloft as to per-

384 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

mit 10 per cent of our flasks to take in air witlioiit con-
tracting contamination. A quarter of a century ago Pasteur
proved the cause of *' so-called spontaneous generation'* to
be discontinuous. I have already referred to his observa-
tion that 12 out of 20 flasks opened on the plains escaped
infection, while 19 out of 20 flasks opened on the Mer de
Glace escaped. Our own experiment at the Bel Alp is
a more emphatic instance of the same kind, 90 per cent
of the flasks opened in the hayloft being smitten, while
not one of those opened on the free mountain ledge was
attacked.

The power of the air as regards putrefactive infection
is incessantly changing through natural causes, and we
are able to alter it at will. Of a number of flasks opened
in 1876 in the laboratory of the Royal Institution, 42 per
cent were smitten, while 58 per cent escaped. In 1877 the
proportion in the same laboratory was 68 per cent smitten,
to 82 intact. The greater mortality, so to speak, of the
infusions in 1877 was due to the presence of hay which
diffused its germinal dust in the laboratory air, causing
it to approximate as regards infective virulence to the
air of the Alpine loft. I would ask my friend to bring
his scientific penetration to bear upon all the foregoing
facts. They do not prove spontaneous generation to be
"impossible.'* My assertions, however, relate not to *' pos-
sibilities,'* but to 'proofs^ and the experiments just de-
scribed do most distinctly prove the evidence on which
the heterogenist relies to be written on waste paper.

My colleague will not, I am persuaded, dispute these
results; but he may be disposed to urge that other able
and honorable men working at the same subject have
arrived at conclusions different from mine. Most freely

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 885

granted; but let me here recur to the remarks already
made in speaking of the experiments of Spallanzani, to
the effect that the failure of others to confirm his results
hy no means upsets their evidence. To fix the ideas, let
us suppose that my colleague comes to the laboratory of
the Eoyal Institution, repeats there my experiments, and
obtains confirmatory results; and that he then goes to
University or King's College where, operating with the
same infusions, he obtains contradictory results. Will he
be disposed to conclude that the self- same substance is
barren in Albemarle Street and fruitful in Grower Street
or the Strand? His Alpine experience has already made
known to him the literally infinite differences existing
between different samples of air as regards their capacity
for putrefactive infection. And, possessing this knowl-
edge, will he not substitute for the adventurous conclusion
that an organic infusion is barren at one place and spon-
taneously generative at another, the more rational and
obvious one that the atmospheres of the two localities
which have had access to the infusion are infective in
different degrees?

As regards workmanship, moreover, he will not fail to
bear in mind that fruitfulness may be due to errors of
manipulation, while harrenness involves the presumption
of correct experiment. It is only the careful worker that
can secure the latter, while it is open to every novice to
obtain the former. Barrenness is the result at which the
conscientious experimenter, whatever his theoretic convic-
tions may be, ought to aim, omitting no pains to secure
it, and resorting only when there is no escape from it to
the conclusion that the life observed comes from no source
which correct experiment could neutralize or avoid.

336 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

Let us again take a definite case. Supposing my col-
league to operate with the same apparent care on 100 in-
fusions— or rather on 100 samples of the same infusion-^
and that 50 of them prove fruitful and 50 barren. Are
we to say that the evidence for and against heterogeny is
equally balanced? There are some who would not only
say this, but who would treasure up the 50 fruitful flasks
as *' positive'* results, and lower the evidential value of
the 50 barren flasks by labelling them *' negative'' results.
This, as shown by Dr. William Roberts, is an exact inver-
sion of the true order of the terms positive and negative.'
Not such, I trust, would be the course pursued by my
friend. As regards the 50 fruitful flasks he would, I
doubt not, repeat the experiment with redoubled care and
scrutiny, and not by one repetition only, but by many, as-
sure himself that he had not fallen into error. Such faithful
scrutiny fully carried out would infallibly lead him to the
conclusion that here, as in all other cases, the evidence in
favor of spontaneous generation crumbles in the grasp of
the competent inquirer.

The botanist knows that different seeds possess differ-
ent powers of resistance to heat.' Some are killed by a
momentary exposure to the boiling temperature, while oth-
ers withstand it for several hours. Most of our ordinary*
seeds are rapidly killed, while Pouchet made known to the
Paris Academy of Sciences in 1866 that certain seeds,
which had been transported in fleeces of wool from Brazil,

* See his truly philosophical remarks on this head in the "British Medical
Journal," 1876, p. 282.

* I am indebted to Dr. Thiselton Dyer for various illustrations of such difEer-
ences. It is, however, surprising that a subject of such high scientific impor-
tance should not have been more thoroughly explored. Here the scoundrela
who deal in killed seeds might be able to add to our knowledge.

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 837

germinated after four hours' boiling. The germs of the
air vary as much among themselves as the seeds of the
botanist. In some localities the diffused germs are so ten-
der that boiling for five minutes, or even less, would be
sure to destroy them all; in other localities the diffused
germs are so obstinate that many hours* boiling would be
requisite to deprive them of their power of germination.
The absence or presence of a truss of desiccated hay
would produce differences as great as those here de-
scribed. The greatest endurance that I have ever ob-
served— and I believe it is the greatest on record — was a
case of survival after eight hours' boiling.

As regards their power of resisting heat, the infusorial
germs of our atmosphere might be classified under the fol-
lowing and intermediate heads: Killed in five minutes;
not killed in five minutes, but killed in fifteen; not killed
in fifteen minutes, but killed in thirty; not killed in thirty
minutes, but killed in an hour; not killed in an hour, but
killed in two hours; not killed in two, but killed in three
hours; not killed in three, but killed in four hours. I
have had several cases of survival after four and five
hours* boiling, some survivals after six, and one after
eight hours' boiling. Thus far has experiment actually
reached; but there is no valid warrant for fixing upon
even eight hours as the extreme limit of vital resistance.
Probably more extended researches (though mine have
been very extensive) would reveal germs more obstinate
still. It is also certain that we might begin earlier, and
find germs which are destroyed by a temperature far be-
low that of boiling water. In the presence of such facts,
to speak of a death- point of bacteria and their germs

would be unmeaning — but of this more anon.
Science — YI— 15

SBS FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

••What present warrant," it lias been asked, **is there
for supposing that a naked, or almost naked, speck of
protoplasm can withstand four, six, or eight hours' boil-
ing?" Regarding naked specks of protoplasm I make no
assertion. I know nothing about them, save as the creat-
ures of fancy. But I do affirm, not as a "supposition,"
nor an ** assumption," nor a "probable guess," nor as "a
wild hypothesis," but as a matter of the most undoubted
fact, that the spores of the hay bacillus, when thoroughly
desiccated by age, have withstood the ordeal mentioned.
And I further affirm that these obdurate germs, under the
guidance of the knowledge that they are germs, can be de-
stroyed by five minutes' boiling, or even less. This needs
explanation. The finished bacterium perishes at a tem-
perature far below that of boiling water, and it is fair to
assume that the nearer the germ is to its final sensitive
condition the more readily will it succumb to heat. Seeds
soften before and during germination. This premised, the
simple description of the following process will suffice to
make its meaning understood.

An infusion infected with the most powerfully resistent
germs, but otherwise protected against the floating matters
of the air, is gradually raised to its boiling-point. Such
germs as have reached the soft and plastic state imme-
diately preceding their development into bacteria are thus
destroyed. The infusion is then put aside in a warm room
for ten or twelve hours. If for twenty-four, we might have
the liquid charged with well-developed bacteria. To an-
ticipate this, at the end of ten or twelve hours we raise
the infusion a second time to the boiling temperature,
which, as before, destroys all germs then appronching
their point of final development. The infusion is again

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 889

put aside for ten or twelve hours, and the process of heat-
ing is repeated. "We thus kill the germs in the order of
their resistance^ and finally kill the last of them. No infu-
sion can withstand this process if it be repeated a suffi-
cient number of times. Artichoke, cucumber, and turnip
infusions, which had proved specially obstinate when in-
fected with the germs of desiccated hay, were completely
broken down by this method of discontinuous heating,
three minutes being found sufficient to accomplish what
three hundred minutes' continuous boiling failed to ac-
complish. I applied the method, moreover, to infusions
of various kinds of hay, including those most tenacious of
life. Not one of them bore the ordeal. These results
were clearly foreseen before they were realized, so that
the germ theory fulfils the test of every true theory, that
test being the power of prevision.

When *' naked or almost naked specks of protoplasm"
are spoken of, the imagination is drawn upon, not the ob-
jective truth of Nature. Such words sound like the words
of knowledge where knowledge is really nil. The possi-
bility of a "thin covering" is conceded by those who
speak in this way. Such a covering may, however, exer-
cise a powerful protective influence. A thin pellicle of
India-rubber, for example, surrounding a pea keeps it
hard in boiling water for a time sufficient to reduce an
uncovered pea to a pulp. The pellicle prevents imbibition,
diffusion, and the consequent disintegration. A greasy or
oily surface, or even the layer of air which clings to cer-
tain bodies, would act to some extent in a similar way.
*'The singular resistance of green vegetables to steriliza-
tion," says Dr. William Koberts, "appears to be due to
some peculiarity of the surface, perhaps their smooth

S40 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

glistening epidermis whicli prevented complete wetting of
their surfaces."

1 pointed out in 1876 that the process by which an
atmospheric germ is wetted would be an interesting sub-
ject of investigation. A dry microscope covering- glass
may be caused to float on water for a year. A sewing-
needle may be similarly kept floating, though its specific
gravity is nearly eight times that of water. Were it
not for some specific relation between the matter of the
germ and that of the liquid into which it falls, wetting
would be simply impossible. Antecedent to all develop-
ment there must be an interchange of matter between the
germ and its environment; and this interchange must ob-
viously depend upon the relation of the germ to its encom-
passing liquid. Anything that hinders this interchange
retards the destruction of the germ in boiling water. In
my paper, published in the "Philosophical Transactions"
for 1877, I add the following remark:

It is not difficult to see that the surface of a seed or germ
may be so afiiected by desiccation and other causes as prac-
tically to prevent contact between it and the surrounding
liquid. The body of a germ, moreover, may be so indu-
rated by time and dryness as to resist powerfully the insinu-
ation of water between its constituent molecules. It would
be difficult to cause such a germ to imbibe the moisture nec-
essary to produce the swelling and softening which precede
its destruction in a liquid of high temperature.

However this may be — whatever be the state of the sur-
face, or of the body, of the spores of Bacillus subtilis,
they do as a matter of certainty resist, under some cir-
cumstances, exposure for hours to the heat of boiling
water. Ko theoretic scepticism can successfully stand in

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 341

the way of this fact, established as it has been by hun-
dreds, if not thousands, of rigidly conducted experiments.

We have now to test one of the principal foundations
of the doctrine of spontaneous generation as formulated in
this country. With this view, I place before my friend
and co-inquirer two liquids which have been kept for six
months in one of our sealed chambers, exposed to opti-
cally pure air. The one is a mineral solution containing
in proper proportions all the substances which enter into
the composition of bacteria, the other is an infusion of
turnip — it might be any one of a hundred other infusions,
animal or vegetable. Both liquids are as clear as distilled
water, and there is no trace of life in either of them.
They are, in fact, completely sterilized. A mutton-chop,
over which a little water has been poured to keep its
juices from drying up, has lain for three days upon a
plate in our warm room. It smells offensively. Placing
a drop of the fetid mutton-juice under a microscope, it is
found swarming with the bacteria of putrefaction. With
a speck of the swarming liquid I inoculate the clear min-
eral solution and the clear turnip infusion, as a surgeon
might inoculate an infant with vaccine lymph. In four-
and-twenty hours the transparent liquids have become
turbid throughout, and instead of being barren as at first
they are teeming with life. The experiment may be re-
peated a thousand times with the same invariable result.
To the naked eye the liquids at the beginning were alike,
being both equally transparent — to the naked eye they are
alike at the end, being both equally muddy. Instead of
putrid mutton- juice, we might take as a source of infec-
tion any one of a hundred other putrid liquids, animal or

842 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

vegetable. So long as the liquid contains living bacteria
a speck of it communicated either to the clear mineral
solution, or to the clear turnip infusion, produces in
twenty- four hours the effect here described.

We now vary the experiment thus: Opening the back-
door of another closed chamber which has contained for
months the pure mineral solution and the pure turnip in-
fusion side by side, I drop into each of them a small pinch
of laboratory dust. The effect here is tardier than when
the speck of putrid liquid was employed. In three days,
however, after its infection with the dust, the turnip in-
fusion is muddy, and swarming as before with bacteria.
But what about the mineral solution which, in our first
experiment, behaved in a manner indistinguishable from
the turnip-juice? At the end of three days there is not
a bacterium to be found in it. At the end of three weeks
it is equally innocent of bacterial life. We may repeat
the experiment with the solution and the infusion a hun-
dred times with the same invariable result. Always in
the case of the latter the sowing of the atmospheric dust
yields a crop of bacteria — never in the former does the
dry germinal matter kindle into active life. * What is the
inference which the reflecting mind must draw from this
experiment? Is it not as clear as day that while both
liquids are able to feed the bacteria and to enable them
to increase and multiply, after they have been once fully
aeveloped^ only one of the liquids is able to develop into
active bacteria the germinal dust of the air?

I invite my friend to reflect upon this conclusion; he

^ This is the deportment of the mineral solution as described by others.
My own experiments would lead me to say that the development of the bac*
teria, though exceedingly slow and difficult, is not impossible.

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 343

will, I think, see that there is no escape from it. He may,
if he prefers, hold the opinion, which I consider errone-
ous, that bacteria exist in the air, not as germs but as
desiccated organisms. The inference remains, that while
the one liquid is able to force the passage from the inac-
tive to the active state, the other is not.

But this is not at all the inference which has been
drawn from experiments with the mineral solution. See-
ing its ability to nourish bacteria when once inoculated
with the living active organism, and observing that no
bacteria appeared in the solution after long exposure to
the air, the inference was drawn that neither bacteria nor
their germs existed in the air. Throughout Germany the
ablest literature of the subject, even that opposed to hete-
rogeny, is infected with this error; while heterogenists at
home and abroad have based upon it a triumphant demon-
stration of their doctrine. It is proved, they say, by the
deportment of the mineral solution that neither bacteria
nor their germs exist in the air; hence, if, on exposing
a thoroughly sterilized turnip infusion to the air, bacteria
appear, they must of necessity have been spontaneously
generated. In the words of Dr. Bastian: "We can only
infer that while the boiled saline solution is quite inca-
pable of engendering bacteria, such organisms are able to
arise de novo in the boiled organic infusion." *

I would ask my eminent colleague what he thinks of
this reasoning now? The datum is — "A mineral solution
exposed to common air does not develop bacteria"; the
inference is — "Therefore if a turnip infusion similarly ex-
posed develop bacteria, they must be spontaneously gen-

' **Proceedings of the Royal Society," vol. xxi, p. 130.

344 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

erated." The inference, on the face of it, is an unwar-
ranted one. But while as matter of logic it is inconclusive,
as matter of fact it is chimerical. London air is as surely
charged with the germs of bacteria as London chimneys
are with smoke. The inference just referred to is com-
pletely disposed of by the simple question: "Why, when
your sterilized organic infusion is exposed to optically
pure air, should this generation of life de novo utterly
cease ? Why should I be able to preserve my turnip- juice
side by side with your saline solution for the three hun-
dred and sixty- five days of the year, in free connection
with the general atmosphere, on the sole condition that
the portion of that atmosphere in contact with the juice
shall be visibly free from floating dust, while three days*
exposure to that dust fills it with bacteria?" Am I over-
sanguine in hoping that as regards the argument here set
forth he who runs may read, and he who reads may under-
stand ?

We now proceed to the calm and thorough considera-
tion of another subject, more important if possible than
the foregoing one, but like it somewhat difficult to seize
by reason of the very opulence of the phraseology, logical
and rhetorical, in which it has been set forth. The sub-
ject now to be considered relates to what has been called
"the death-point of bacteria." Those who happen to be
acquainted with the modem English literature of the ques-
tion will remember how challenge after challenge has been
issued to panspermatists in general, and to one or two
home workers in particular, to come to close quarters on
this cardinal point. It is obviously the stronghold of the
English heterogenist. "Water," he says, "is boiling mer-
rily over a fire when some luckless person upsets the ves-

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 345

sel so that the heated fluid exercises its scathing influence
upon an uncovered portion of the body — hand, arm, or
face. Here, at all events, there is no room for doubt.
Boiling water unquestionably exercises a most pernicious
and rapidly destructive effect upon the living matter of
which we are composed. ' ' * And lest it should be sup-
posed that it is the high organization which, in this case,
renders the body susceptible to heat, he refers to the ac-
tion of boiling water on the hen's egg to dissipate the
notion. " The conclusion, " he says, "would seem to force
itself upon us that there is something intiinsically delete-
rious in the action of boiling water upon living matter —
whether this matter be of high or of low organization. ' ' '
Again, at another place: "It has been shown that the
briefest exposure to the influence of boiling water is de-
structive of all living matter. ' ' '

The experiments already recorded plainly show that
there is a marked difference between the dry bacterial
matter of the air, and the wet, soft, and active bacteria
of putrefying organic liquids. The one can be luxuriantly
bred in the saline solution, the others refuse to be born
there, while both of them are copiously developed in a
sterilized turnip infusion. Inferences, as we have already
seen, founded on the deportment of the one liquid cannot
with the warrant of scientific logic be extended to the
other. But this is exactly what the heterogenist has
done, thus repeating as regards the death-point of bacteria
the error into which he fell concerning the germs of the
air. Let us boil our muddy mineral solution with its
swarming bacteria for five minutes. In the soft succulent
condition in which they exist in the solution not one of

> Bastian, "Evolution," p. 133. « j^j^j^^ p^ 135^ 3 i^id., p. 46.

346 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

them escapes destruction. The same is true of the turnip
infusion if it be inoculated with the living bacteria only
— the aerial dust being carefully excluded. In both cases
the dead organisms sink to the bottom of the liquid, and
without reinoculation no fresh organisms will arise. But
the case is entirely different when we inoculate our tur-
nip infusion with the desiccated germinal matter afloat in
the air.

The "death-point" of bacteria is the maximum tem-
perature at which they can live, or the minimum tempera-
ture at which they cease to live. If, for example, they
survive a temperature of 140°, and do not survive a tem-
perature of 150°, the death- point lies somewhere between
these two temperatures. Yaccine lymph, for example, is
proved by Messrs. Braidwood and Vacher to be deprived
of its power of infection by brief exposure to a tempera-
ture between 140° and 150° Fahr. This may be regarded
as the death- point of the lymph, or rather of the particles
diffused in the lymph, which constitute the real conta-
gium. If no time, however, be named for the application
of the heat, the term ** death-point" is a vague one. An
infusion, for example, which will resist five hours' con-
tinuous exposure to the boiling temperature, will succumb
to five days' exposure to a temperature 50° Fahr. below
that of boiling. The fully developed soft bacteria of
putrefying liquids are not only killed by five minutes'
boiling, but by less than a single minute's boiling — in-
deed, they are slain at about the same temperature as the
vaccine. The same is true of the plastic, active bacteria
of the turnip infusion.*

* In my paper in the "Philosophical Transactions" for 18 V6, I pointed out
and illustrated experimentally the difference, as regards rapidity of development.

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 347

But, instead of choosing a putrefying liquid for inocu-
lation, let us prepare and employ our inoculating sub-
stance in the following simple way; Let a small wisp of
hay, desiccated by age, be washed in a glass of water, and
let a perfectly sterilized turnip infusion be inoculated with
the washing liquid. After three hours' continuous boil-
ing the infusion thus infected will often develop luxuri-
ant bacterial life. Precisely the same occurs if a turnip
infusion be prepared in an atmosphere well charged with
desiccated hay-germs. The infusion in this case infects
itself without special inoculation, and its subsequent re-
sistance to sterilization is often very great. On the 1st
of March last I purposely infected the air of our labora-
tory with the germinal dust of a sapless kind of hay mown
in 1875. Ten groups of flasks were charged with turnip
infusion prepared in the infected laboratory, and were after-
ward subjected to the boiling temperature for periods vary-
ing from 15 minutes to 240 minutes. Out of the ten
groups only one was sterilized — that, namely, which had
been boiled for four hours. Every flask of the nine
groups which had been boiled for 15, 80, 45, 60, 75, 90,
105, 120, and 180 minutes respectively, bred organisms
afterward. The same is true of other vegetable infusions.
On the 28th of February last, for example, I boiled six
flasks, containing cucumber infusion prepared in an in-
fected atmosphere, for periods of 15, 30, 45, 60, 120, and
180 minutes. Every flask of the group subsequently de-
veloped organisms. On the same day, in the case of three

between water-germs and air- germs; the growth from the already softened
water-germs proving to be practically as rapid as from developed bacteria. This
preparedness of the germ for rapid development is associated with its prepared-
ness for rapid destruction.

848 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

flasks, the boiling was prolonged to 240, 300, and 360 min-
utes; and these three flasks were completely sterilized.
Animal infusions, which under ordinary circumstances are
rendered infallibly barren by five minutes' boiling, behave
like the vegetable infusions in an atmosphere infected with
hay-germs. On the 30th of March, for example, five flasks
were charged with a clear infusion of beef and boiled for
60 minutes, 120 minutes, 180 minutes, 240 minutes, and 300
minutes respectively. Every one of them became subse-
quently crowded with organisms, and the same happened
to a perfectly pellucid mutton infusion prepared at the
same time. The cases are to be numbered by hundreds
in which similar powers of resistance were manifested by
infusions of the most diverse kinds.

In the presence of such facts I would ask my colleague
whether it is necessary to dwell for a single instant on the
one-sidedness of the evidence which led to the conclusion
that all living matter has its life destroyed by "the brief-
est exposure to the influence of boiling water." An in-
fusion proved to be barren by six months' exposure to
moteless air maintained at a temperature of 90° Fahr., when
inoculated with full-grown active bacteria ^fills itself in
two days with organisms so sensitive as to be killed by a
few minutes' exposure to a temperature much below that
of boiling water. But the extension of this result to the
desiccated germinal matter of the air is without warrant or
justification. This is obvious without going beyond the
argument itself. But we have gone far beyond the argu-
ment, and proved, by multiplied experiment, the alleged
destruction of all living matter by the briefest exposure to
the influence of boiling water to be a delusion. The whole
logical edifice raised upon this basis falls therefore to the

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 349

ground; and tlie argument that bacteria and their germs,
being destroyed at 140°, must, if they appear after ex-
posure to 212°, be spontaneously generated, is, I trust,
silenced forever.

Through the precautions, variations, and repetitions
observed and executed with the view of rendering its
results secure, the separate vessels employed in this in-
quiry have mounted up in two years to nearly ten thou-
sand.

Besides the philosophic interest attaching to the prob-
lem of life's origin, which will be always immense, there
are the practical interests involved in the application of
the doctrines here discussed to surgery and medicine.
The antiseptic system, at which I have already glanced,
illustrates the manner in which . beneficent results of the
gravest moment follow in the wake of clear theoretic in-
sight. Surgery was once a noble art; it is now, as well,
a noble science. Prior to the introduction of the antisep-
tic system, the thoughtful surgeon could not have failed
to learn empirically that there was something in the air
which often defeated the most consummate operative skill.
That something the antiseptic treatment destroys or ren-
ders innocuous. At King's College Mr. Lister operates
and dresses while a fine shower of mixed carbolic acid
and water, produced in the simplest manner, falls upon
the wound, the lint and gauze employed in the subse-
quent dressing being duly saturated with the antiseptic.
At St. Bartholomew's Mr. Callender employs the dilute
carbolic acid without the spray; but, as regards the real
point aimed at — the preventing of the wound from becom-
ing a nidus for the propagation of septic bacteria — the
practice in both hospitals is the same. Commending it-

'650 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

self as it does to the scientifically trained mind, the anti-
septic system has struck deep root in Grermany.

Had space allowed, it would have given me pleasure
to point out the present position of the "germ theory" in
reference to the phenomena of infectious disease, distin-
guishing arguments based on analogy — which, however,
are terribly strong — from those based on actual observa-
tion. I should have liked to follow up the account I
have already given* of the truly excellent researches of
a young and an unknown German physician named Koch,
on splenic fever, by an account of what Pasteur has re-
cently done with reference to the same subject. Here we
have before us a living contagium of the most deadly
power, which we can follow from the beginning to the
end of its life cycle.' We find it in the blood or spleen
of a smitten animal in the state, say, of short motionless
rods. When these rods are placed in a nutritive liquid
on the warm stage of the microscope, we soon see them
lengthening into filaments which lie, in some cases, side
by side, forming in others graceful loops, or becoming
coiled into knots of a complexity not to be unravelled.
We finally see those filaments resolving themselves into
innumerable spores, each with death potentially housed
within it, yet not to be distinguished microscopically from
the harmless germs of Bacillus subtilis. The bacterium of
splenic fever is called Bacillus Anihracis. This formida-
ble organism was shown to me by M. Pasteur in Paris
last July. His recent investigations regarding the part it
plays pathologically certainly rank among the most re-

* "Fortnightly Review," November, 1876; see article "Fermentation."

* Dallinger and Drysdale had previously shown what ski^l and patience can
accomplish, by their admirable observations on the life history of the monads.

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 351

markable labors of that remarkable man. Observer after
observer had strayed and fallen in this land of pitfalls, a
multitude of opposing conclusions and mutually destruc-
tive theories being the result. In association with a
younger physiological colleague, M. Joubert, Pasteur
struck in amid the chaos, and soon reduced it to har-
mony. They proved, among other things, that in cases
where previous observers in France had supposed them-
selves to be dealing solely with splenic fever, another
equally virulent factor was simultaneously active. Splenic
fever was often overmastered by septicaemia, and results
due solely to the latter had been frequently made the
ground of pathological inferences regarding the character
and cause of the former. Combining duly the two fac-
tors, all the previous irregularities disappeared, every re-
sult obtained receiving the fullest explanation. On study-
ing the account of this masterly investigation, the words
wherewith Pasteur himself feelingly alludes to the difficul-
ties and dangers of the experimenter's art came home to
me with especial force: *'J'ai tant de fois ^prouve que
dans cet art difficile de Texp^rimentation les plus habiles
bronchent a chaque pas, et que Tinterpr^tation des faits
n'est pas moins p^rilleuse. " *

* "Comptes-Eendufl," Ixzziii. p. lit.

XIV

SCIENCE AND MAN *

A MAGNET attracts iron; but when we analyze the
effect we learn that the metal is not only attracted,
but repelled, the final approach to the magnet be-
ing due to the difference of two unequal and opposing
forces. Social progress is for the most part typified by
this duplex or polar action. As a general rule, every ad-
vance is balanced by a partial retreat, every amelioration
is associated more or less with deterioration. No great
mechanical improvement, for example, is introduced for
the benefit of society at large that does not bear hardly
upon individuals. Science, like other things, is subject to
the operation of this polar law, what is good for it under
one aspect being bad for it under another.

Science demands above all things personal concentra-
tion. Its home is the study of the mathematician, the
quiet laboratory of the experimenter, and the cabinet of
the meditative observer of nature. Different atmospheres
are required by the man of science, as such, and the man
of action. Thus the facilities of social and international
intercourse, the railway, the telegraph, and the post-office,
which are such undoubted boons to the man of action, re-
act to some extent injuriously on the man of science.

* Presidential Address, delivered before the Birmingham and Midland InstS*
tute, October 1, 1877, with additions.

(352)

SCIENCE AND MAN 358

Their tendency is to break up that concentrativeness
which, as I have said, is an absolute necessity to the
scientific investigator.

The men who have most profoundly influenced the
world from the scientific side have habitually sought iso-
lation. Faraday, at a certain period of his career, for-
mally renounced dining out. Darwin lives apart from the
bustle of the world in his quiet home in Kent. Mayer
and Joule dealt with the weightiest scientific questions in
unobtrusive retirement. There is, however, one motive
power in the world which no man, be he a scientific stu-
dent or otherwise, can afford to treat with indifference;
and that is the cultivation of right relations with his fel-
low-men— the performance of his duty, not as an isolated
individual, but as a member of society. It is duty in this
aspect, overcoming alike the sense of possible danger and
the desire for repose, that has placed me in your presence
here to-night.

To look at his picture as a whole, a painter requires
distance; and to judge of the total scientific achievement
of any age, the standpoint of a succeeding age is desir-
able. We may, however, transport ourselves in idea into
the future, and thus survey with more or less complete-
ness the science of our time. We sometimes hear it de-
cried, and contrasted to its disadvantage with the science
of other times. I do not think that this will be the ver-
dict of posterity. I think, on the contrary, that posterity
will acknowledge that in the history of science no higher
samples of intellectual conquest are recorded than those
which this age has made its own. One of the most salient
of these I propose, with your permission, to make the sub-
ject of our consideration during the coming hour.

854 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

It is now generally admitted that the man of to-day is
the child and product of incalculable antecedent time.
His physical and intellectual textures have been woven
for him during his passage through phases of history and
forms of existence which lead the mind back to an abys-
mal past. One of the qualities which he has derived from
that past is the yearning to let in the light of principles
on the otherwise bewildering flux of phenomena. He has
been described by the German Lichtenberg as "das rast-
lose Ursachenthier" — the restless cause-seeking animal — in
whom facts excite a kind of hunger to know the sources
from which they spring. Never, I venture to say, in the
history of the world has this longing been more liberally
responded to, both among men of science and the general
public, than during the last thirty or forty years. I say
*'the general public," because it is a feature of our time
that the man of science no longer limits his labors to the
society of his colleagues and his peers, but shares, as far
as it is possible to share, with the world at large the
fruits of inquiry.

The celebrated Robert Boyle regarded the universe as
a machine; Mr. Carlyle prefers regarding it as a tree. He
loves the image of the umbrageous Igdrasil better than
that of the Strasburg clock. A machine may be denned
as an organism with life and direction outside ; a tree may
be defined as an organism with life and direction within.
In the light of these definitions, I close with the concep-
tion of Carlyle. The order and energy of the universe
I hold to be inherent, and not imposed from without,
the expression of fixed law and not of arbitrary will,
exercised by what Carlyle would call an Almighty
Clockmaker. But the two conceptions are not so much

BCIENCE AND MAN 855

opposed to each other after all. In one fundamental par-
ticular they at all events agree. They equally imply the
interdependence and harmonious interaction of parts, and
the subordination of the individual powers of the universal
organism to the working of the whole.

Never were the harmony and interdependence just
referred to so clearly recognized as now. Our insight
regarding them is not that vague and general insight to
which our fathers had attained, and which, in early times,
was more frequently affirmed by the synthetic poet than
by the scientific man. The interdependence of our day
has become quantitative — expressible by numbers— lead-
ing, it must be added, directly into that inexorable reign
of law which so many gentle people regard with dread.
In the domain now under review men of science had first
to work their way from darkness into twilight, and from
twilight into day. There is no solution of continuity
in science. It is not given to any man, however en-
dowed, to rise spontaneously into intellectual splendor
without the parentage of antecedent thought. Great dis-
coveries grow. Here, as in other cases, we have first the
seed, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear, the last
member of the series implying the first. Thus, as regards
the discovery of gravitation with which the name of New-
ton j,is identified, notions more or less clear concerning it
had entered many minds before Newton's transcendent
mathematical genius raised it to the level of a demonstra-
tion. The whole of his deductions, moreover, rested upon
the inductions of Kepler. Newton shot beyond his pre-
decessors ; but his thoughts were rooted in their thoughts,
and a just distribution of merit would assign to them a
fair portion of the honor of discovery.

856 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

Scientific theories sometimes float like rumors in the
air before thej receive complete expression. The doom
of a doctrine is often practically sealed, and the truth of
one is often practically accepted, long prior to the demon-
stration of either the error or the truth. Perpetual motion
was discarded before it was proved to be opposed to natu-
ral law; and, as regards the connection and interaction of
natural forces, intimations of modern discoveries are strewn
through the writings of Leibnitz, Boyle, Hooke, Locke and
others.

Confining ourselves to recent times. Dr. Ingleby has
pointed out to me some singularly sagacious remarks bear-
ing upon this question, which were published by an anony-
mous writer in 1820. Boget's penetration was conspicuous
in 1829. Mohr had grasped in 1837 some deep-lying truth.
The writings of Faraday furnish frequent illustrations of
his profound belief in the unity of nature. "I have
long," he writes in 1845, "held an opinion almost amount-
ing to conviction, in common, I believe, with other lovers
of natural knowledge, that the various forms under which
the forces of matter are made manifest have one common
origin, or, in other words, are so directly related and mu-
tually dependent, that they are convertible, as it were, one
into another, and possess equivalence of power in their
action." His own researches on magneto- electricity, on
electro-chemistry, and on the "magnetization of light,"
Ted him directly to this belief. At an early date Mr. Jus-
tice Grove made his mark upon this question. Colding,
though starting from a metaphysical basis, grasped event-
ually the relation between heat and mechanical work, and
sought to determine it experimentally. And here let me
say that to him who has only the truth at heart, and who

SCIENCE AND MAN 857

in his dealings with scientific history keeps his soul un-
warped by envy, hatred, or malice, personal or national,
every fresh accession to historic knowledge must be wel-
come. For every new-comer of proved merit, more espe-
cially if that merit should have been previously over-
looked, he makes ready room in his recognition or his
reverence. But no retrospect of scientific literature has
as yet brought to light a claim which can sensibly affect
the positions accorded to two great Path-hewers , as the
Germans call them, whose names in relation to this sub-
ject are linked in indissoluble association. These names
are Julius Eobert Mayer and James Prescott Joule.

In his essay on "Circles" Mr. Emerson, if I remember
rightly, pictured intellectual progress as rhythmic. At a
given moment knowledge is surrounded by a barrier which
marks its limit. It gradually gathers clearness and strength
until by and by some thinker of exceptional power bursts
the barrier and wins a wider circle, within which thought
once more entrenches itself. But the internal force again
accumulates, the new barrier is in its turn broken, and
the mind finds itself surrounded by a still wider horizon.
Thus, according to Emerson, knowledge spreads by inter-
mittent victories instead of progressing at a uniform rate.

When Dr. Joule first proved that a weight of one
pound, falling through a height of seven hundred and
seventy -two feet, generated an amount of heat competent
to warm a pound of water one degree Fahrenheit, and
that in lifting the weight so much heat exactly disap-
peared, he broke an Emersonian ''circle," releasing by the
act an amount of scientific energy which rapidly overran
a vast domain, and embodied itself in the great doctrine
known as the "Conservation of Energy." This doctrino

658 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

recognizes in the material universe a constant sum of
power made up of items among which the most Protean
fluctuations are incessantly going on. It is as if the body
of Nature were alive, the thrill and interchange of its en-
ergies resembling those of an organism. The parts of the
"stupendous whole" shift and change, augment and di-
minish, appear and disappear, while the total of whicti
they are the parts remains quantitatively immutable. Im-
mutable, because when change occurs it is always polar —
plus accompanies minus, gain accompanies loss, no item
varying in the slightest degree without an absolutely equal
change of some other item in the opposite direction.

The sun warms the tropical ocean, converting a portion
of its liquid into vapor, which rises in the air and is recon-
densed on mountain heights, returning in rivers to the
ocean from which it came. Up to the point where con-
densation begins, an amount of heat exactly equivalent
to the molecular work of vaporization and the mechanical
work of lifting the vapor to the mountain- tops has disap-
peared from the universe. What is the gain correspond-
ing to this loss? It will seem when mentioned to be ex-
pressed in a foreign currency. The loss is a loss of heat;
the gain is a gain of distance, both as regards masses and
molecules. Water which was formerly at the sea-level has
been lifted to a position from which it can fall; molecules
which have been locked together as a liquid are now sep-
arate as vapor which can recondense. After condensation
gravity comes into effectual play, pulling the showers
down upon the hills, and the rivers thus created through
their gorges to the sea. Every raindrop which smites the
mountain produces its definite amount of heat; every river

SCIENCE AND MAN" 359

in its course develops heat by the clash of its cataracts
and the friction of its bed. In the act of condensation,
moreover, the molecular work of vaporization is accurately
reversed. Compare, then, the primitive loss of solar
warmth with the heat generated by the condensation of
the vapor, and by the subsequent fall of the water from
cloud to sea. They are mathematically equal to each
other. No particle of vapor was formed and lifted with-
out being paid for in the currency of solar heat; no
particle returns as water to the sea without the exact
quantitative restitution of that heat. There is nothing
gratuitous in physical nature, no expenditure without
equivalent gain, no gain without equivalent expenditure.
With inexorable constancy the one accompanies the other,
leaving no nook or crevice between them for spontaneity
to mingle with the pure and necessary play of natural force.
Has this uniformity of nature ever been broken? The
reply is: *'Not to the knowledge of science."

What has been here stated regarding heat and gravity
applies to the whole of inorganic nature. Let us take an
illustration from chemistry. The meUl zinc may be burned
in oxygen, a perfectly definite amount of heat being pro-
duced by the combustion of a given weight of the metal.
But zinc may also be burned in a liquid which contains
a supply of oxygen — ^in water, for example. It does not
in this case produce flame or fire, but it does produce
heat which is capable of accurate measurement. But the
heat of zinc burned in water falls short of that produced
in pure oxygen, the reason being that to obtain its oxy-
gen from the water the zinc must first dislodge the hy-
drogen. It is in the performance of this molecular work
that the missing heat is absorbed. Mix the liberated

360 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

hydrogen with oxygen and cause them to recombine; the
heat developed is mathematically equal to the missing heat.
Thus in pulling the oxygen and hydrogen asunder an
amount of heat is consumed which is accurately restored
by their reunion.

This leads up to a few remarks upor the Voltaic bat-
tery. It is not my design to dwell upon the technical
features of this wonderful instrument, but simply, by
means of it, to show what varying shapes a given amount
of energy can assume while maintaining unvarying quanti-
tative stability. When that form of power which we call
an electric current passes through Grove's battery, zinc is
consumed in acidulated water; and in the battery we are
able so to arrange matters that when no current passes no
zinc shall be consumed. Now the current, whatever it
may be, possesses the power of generating heat outside
the battery. We can fuse with it iridium, the most re-
fractory of metals, or we can produce with it the dazzling
electric light, and that at any terrestrial distance from the
battery itself.

We will now, ho\. 3ver, content ourselves with causing
the current to raise a given length of platinum wire, first
to a blood heat, then to redness, and finally to a white
heat. The heat under these circumstances generated in
the battery by the combustion of a fixed quantity of zinc
is no longer constant, but it varies inversely as the heat
generated outside. If the outside heat be m7, the inside
heat is a maximum; if the external wire be raised to a
blood-heat, the internal heat falls slightly short of the
maximum. If the wire be rendered red-hot, the quantity
of missing heat within the battery is greater, and if the
external wire be rendered white-hot, the defect is greater

SCIENCE AND MAN 361

still. Add together the internal and external heat pro-
duced by the combustion of a given weight of zinc, and
you have an absolutely constant total. The heat gen-
erated without is so much lost within, the heat generated
within is so much lost without, the polar changes already
adverted to coming here conspicuously into play. Thus
in a variety of ways we can distribute the items of a never-
varying sum, but even the subtle agency of the electric
current places no creative power in our hands.

Instead of generating external heat, we may cause the
current to effect chemical decomposition at a distance from
the battery. Let it, for example, decompose water into
oxygen and hydrogen. The heat generated in the battery
under these circumstances by the combustion of a given
weight of zinc falls short of what is produced when there
is no decomposition. How far short? The question ad-
mits of a perfectly exact answer. When the oxygen and
hydrogen recombine, the heat absorbed in the decomposi-
tion is accurately restored, and it is exactly equal in
amount to that missing in the battery. We may, if we
like, bottle up the gases, carry in this form the heat of the
battery to the polar regions, and liberate it there. The
battery, in fact, is a hearth on which fuel is consumed;
but the heat of the combustion, instead of being confined
in the usual manner to the hearth itself, may be first lib-
erated at the other side of the' world.

And here we are able to solve an enigma which long
perplexed scientific men, and which could not be solved
until the bearing of the mechanical theory of heat upon
the phenomena of the Voltaic battery was understood.
The puzzle was, that a single cell could not decompose

water. The reason is now plain enough. The solution

Science— — 16

362 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

of an equivalent of zinc in a single cell develops not
much more than half the amount of heat required to de-
compose an equivalent of water, and the single cell can-
not cede an amount of force which it does not possess.
But by forming a battery of two cells instead of one.
we develop an amount of heat slightly in excess of
that needed for the decomposition of the water. The
two -celled battery is therefore rich enough to pay for
that decomposition, and to maintain the excess referred
to within its own cells.

Similar reflections apply to the thermo-electric pile,
an instrument usually composed of small bars of bismuth
and antimony soldered alternately together. The electric
current is here evoked by warming the soldered junctions
of one face of the pile. Like the Yoltaic current, the
thermo-electric current can heat wires, produce decom-
position, magnetize iron, and deflect a magnetic needle at
any distance from its origin. You will be disposed, and
rightly disposed, to refer those distant manifestations of
power to the heat communicated to the face of the pile,
but the case is worthy of closer examination. In 1826
Thomas Seebeck discovered thermo-electricity, and six
years subsequently Peltier made an observation which
comes with singular felicity to our aid in determining the
material used up in the formation of the thermo-electric
current. He found that when a weak extraneous current
was sent from antimony to bismuth the junction of tha
two metals was always heated, but that whea the direc-
tion was from bismuth to antimony the junction wag
chilled. Now the current in the thermo-pile itself is al^
ways from bismuth to antimony, across the heated junc-
tion— a direction in which it cannot possibly establish itself

SCIENCE AND MAN 863

without consuming tlie heat imparted to the junction.
This heat is the nutriment of the current. Thus the heat
generated by the thermo- current in a distant wire is simply
that originally imparted to the pile, which has been first
transmuted into electricity, and then retransmuted into its
first form at a distance from its origin. As water in a
state of vapor passes from a boiler to a distant condenser,
and there assumes its primitive form without gain or loss,
so the heat communicated to the thermo- pile distils into
the subtler electric current, which is, as it were, recon-
densed into heat in the distant platinum wire.

In my youth I thought an electro -magnetic engine
which was shown to me a veritable perpetual motion — a
machine, that is to say, which performed work without the
expenditure of power. Let us consider the action of such
a machine. Suppose it to be employed to pump water
from a lower to a higher level. On examining the battery
which works the engine we find that the zinc consumed
does not yield its full amount of heat. The quantity of
heat thus missing within is the exact thermal equivalent
of the mechanical work performed without. Let the water
fall again to the lower level; it is warmed by the fall.
Add the heat thus produced to that generated by the fric-
tion, mechanical and magnetical, of the engine; we thus
obtain the precise amount of heat missing in the battery.
All the effects obtained from the machine are thus strictly
paid for; this "payment for results" being, I would re-
peat, the inexorable method of nature.

Ko engine, however subtly devised, can evade this
law of equivalence, or perform on its own account the
smallest modicum of work. The machine distributes, but
it cannot create. Is the animal body, then, to be classed

364 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

among machines? When I lift a weight, or throw a stone,
or climb a mountain, or wrestle with my comrade, am I
not conscious of actually creating and expending force?
Let us look at the antecedents of this force. We derive
the muscle and fat of our bodies from what we eat. Ani-
mal heat you know to be due to the slow combustion of
this fuel. My arm is now inactive, and the ordinary slow
combustion of my blood and tissue is going on. For every
grain of fuel thus burned a perfectly definite amount of
heat has been produced. I now contract my biceps muscle
without causing it to perform external work. The com-
bustion is quickened, and the heat is increased; this addi-
tional heat being liberated in the muscle itself. I lay hold
of a 56-lb. weight, and by the contraction of my biceps
lift it through the vertical space of a foot. The blood and
tissue consumed during this contraction have not devel-
oped in the muscle their due amount of heat. A quantity
of heat is at this moment missing in my muscle which
would raise the temperature of an ounce of water some-
what more than one degree Fahrenheit. I liberate the
weight: it falls to the earth, and by its collision generates
the precise amount of heat missing in the muscle. My
muscular heat is thus transferred from its local hearth to
external space. The fuel is consumed in my body, but
the heat of combustion is produced outside my body.
The case is substantially the same as that of the Voltaic
battery when it performs external work, or produces ex-
ternal heat. All this points to the conclusion that the
force we employ in muscular exertion is the force of burn-
ing fuel and not of creative will. In the light of these
facts the body is seen to be as incapable of generating
energy without expenditure, as the solids and liquids of

SCIENCE AND MAN 365

the Voltaic battery. The body, in other words, falls into
the category of machines.

We can do with the body all that we have already
done with the battery — heat platinum wires, decompose
water, magnetize iron, and deflect a magnetic needle.
The combustion of muscle may be made to produce all
these effects, as the combustion of zinc may be caused to
produce them. By turning the handle of a magneto-elec-
tric machine a coil of wire may be caused to rotate be-
tween the poles of a magnet. As long as the two ends of
the coil are unconnected we have simply to overcome the
ordinary inertia and friction of the machine in turning the
handle. But the moment the two ends of the coil are
united by a thin platinum wire a sudden addition of labor
is thrown upon the turning arm. When the necessary
labor is expended, its equivalent immediately appears.
The platinum wire glows. You can readily maintain it
at a white heat, or even fuse it. This is a very remark-
able result. From the muscles of the arm, with a temper-
ature of 100°, we extract the temperature of molten plati-
num, which is nearly four thousand degrees. The miracle
here is the reverse of that of the burning bush mentioned
in Exodus. There the bush burned, but was not con-
sumed: here the body is consumed, but does not burn.
The similarity of the action with that of the Voltaic bat-
tery when it heats an external wire is too obvious to need
pointing out. When the machine is used to decompose
water, the heat of the muscle, like that of the battery, is
consumed in molecular work, being fully restored when
the gases recombine. As before, also, the transmuted heat
of the muscles may be bottled up, carried to the polar re-
gions, and there restored to its pristine form.

S66 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

The matter of the human body is the same as that of
the world around us; and here we find the forces of the
human body identical with those of inorganic nature. Just
as little as the Yoltaic battery is the animal body a cre-
ator of force. It is an apparatus exquisite and effectual
beyond all others in transforming and distributing the
energy with which it is supplied, but it possesses no crea-
tive power. Compared with the notions previously enter-
tained regarding the play of '* vital force" this is a great
result. The problem of vital dynamics has been described
by a competent authority as "the grandest of all." I sub-
scribe to this opinion, and honor correspondingly the man
who first successfully grappled with the problem. He was
no pope, in the sense of being infallible, but he was a
man of genius whose work will be held in honor as long
as science endures. I have already named him in connec-
tion with our illustrious countryman. Dr. Joule. Other
eminent men took up this subject subsequently and inde-
pendently, but all that has been done hitherto enhances
instead of diminishing the merits of Dr. Mayer.

Consider the vigor of his reasoning. "Beyond the
power of generating internal heat, the animal organism
can generate heat external to itself. A blacksmith by
hammering can warm a nail, and a savage by friction can
heat wood to its point of ignition. Unless, then, we aban-
don the physiological axiom that the animal body cannot
create heat out of nothing, we are driven to the conclu-
sion that it is the total heat, within and without, that ought
to he regarded as the real calorific effect of the oxidation,
within the hody.^^ Mayer, however, not only states the
principle, but illustrates numerically the transfer of mus-
cular heat to external space. A bowler who imparts a

SCIENCE AND MAN 867

velocity of 80 feet to an 8-lb. ball consumes in the act tV
of a grain of carbon. The lieat of tbe muscle is here dis-
tributed over the track of tbe ball, being developed there
by mechanical friction. A man weighing 150 lbs. con-
sumes in lifting his own body to a height of 8 feet the
heat of a grain of carbon. Jumping from this height the
heat is restored. The consumption of 2 oz. 4 drs. 20 grs.
of carbon would place the same man on the summit of a
mountain 10,000 feet high. In descending the mountain
an amount of heat equal to that produced by the combus-
tion of the foregoing amount of carbon is restored. The
muscles of a laborer whose weight is 150 lbs. weigh 64
lbs. When dried they are reduced to 15 lbs. Were the
oxidation corresponding to a day-laborer's ordinary work
exerted on the muscles alone, they would be wholly con-
sumed in 80 days. Were the oxidation necessary to sus-
tain the heart's action concentrated on the heart itself, it
would be consumed in 8 days. And if we confine our
attention to the two ventricles, their action would con-
sume the associated muscular tissue in 8J^ days. With a
fulness and precision of which this is but a sample did
Mayer, between 1842 and 1845, deal with ihe great ques-
tion of vital dynamics.

In direct opposition, moreover, to the foremost scien-
tific authorities of that day, with Liebig at their head,
this solitary Heilbronn worker was led by his calculations
to maintain that the muscles, in the main, played the part
■of machinery, converting the fat, which had been previ-
ously considered a mere heat- producer, into the motive
power of the organism. Mayer's prevision has been jus-
tified by events, for the scientific world is now upon his
side.

868 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

We place, tlien, food in our stomaclis as so much com-
bustible matter. It is first dissolved by purely chemical
processes, and the nutritive fluid is poured into the blood.
Here it comes into contact with atmospheric oxygen ad-
mitted by the lungs. It unites with the oxygen as wood
or coal might unite with it in a furnace. The matter-
products of the union, if I may use the term, are the
same in both cases; viz., carbonic acid and water. The
force-products are also the same — heat within the body, or
heat and work outside the body. Thus far every action
of the organism belongs to the domain either of physics
or of chemistry. But you saw me contract the muscle of
my arm. What enabled me to do so? Was it or was it
not the direct action of my will? The answer is, the ac-
tion of the will is mediate, not direct. Over and above
the muscles the human organism is provided with long
whitish filaments of medullary matter, which issue from
the spinal column, being connected by it on the one side
with the brain, and on the other side losing themselves in
the muscles. Those filaments or cords are the nerves,
which you know are divided into two kinds, sensor and
motor, or, if you like the terms better, afferent and effer-
ent nerves. The former carry impressions from the ex-
ternal world to the brain; the latter convey the behests
of the brain to the muscles. Here, as elsewhere, we find
ourselves aided by the sagacity of Mayer, who was the
first clearly to formulate the part played by the nerves in
the organism. Mayer saw that neither nerves nor brain,
nor both together, possessed the energy necessary to ani-
mal motion; but he also saw that the nerve could lift a
latch and open a door, by which floods of energy are let
loose. *'As an engineer," he says with admirable lucid-

SCIENCE AND MAN 369

ity, *'b7 the motion of his finger in opening a valve or
loosening a detent can liberate an amount of mechanical
energy almost infinite compared with its exciting cause;
so the nerves, acting on the muscles, can unlock an
amount of power out of all proportion to the work done
by the nerves themselves." The nerves, according to
Mayer, pull the trigger, but the gunpowder which they
ignite is stored in the muscles. This is the view now
universally entertained.

The quickness of thought has passed into a proverb,
and the notion that any measurable time elapsed between
the infliction of a wound and the feeling of the injury
would have been rejected as preposterous thirty years
ago. Nervous impressions, notwithstanding the results of
Haller, were thought to be transmitted, if not instan-
taneously, at all events with the rapidity of electricity.
Hence, when Helmholtz, in 1851, affirmed, as the result
of experiment, nervous transmission to be a comparatively
sluggish process, very few believed him. His experiments
may now be made in the lecture -room. Sound in air
moves at the rate of 1,100 feet a second; sound in water
moves at the rate of 5,000 feet a second; light in ether
moves at the rate of 186,000 miles a second, and electric-
ity in free wires moves probably at the same rate. But
the nerves transmit their messages at the rate of only 70
feet a second, a progress which in these quick times might
well be regarded as inordinately slow.

Your townsman, Mr. Gore, has produced by electroly-
sis a kind of antimony which exhibits an action strikingly
analogous to that of nervous propagation. A rod of this
antimony is in such a molecular condition that when
you scratch or heat one end of the rod, the disturbance

370 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

propagates itself before your eyes to the other end, the
onward march of the disturbance being announced by the
development of heat and fumes along the line of propaga-
tion. In some such way the molecules of the nerves are
successively overthrown; and if Mr. Gore could only de-
vise some means of winding up his exhausted antimony,
as the nutritive blood winds up exhausted nerves, the
comparison would be complete. The subject may be
summed up, as Du Bois-Keymond has summed it up, by
reference to the case of a whale struck by a harpoon in
the tail. If the animal were 70 feet long, a second would
elapse before the disturbance could reach the brain. But
the impression after its arrival has to diffuse itself and
throw the brain into the molecular condition necessary to
consciousness. Then, and not till then, the command to
the tail to defend itself is shot through the motor nerves.
Another second must elapse before the command can
reach the tail, so that more than two seconds transpire
between the infliction of the wound and the muscular
response of the part wounded. The interval required for
the kindling of consciousness would probably more than
suffice for the destruction of the brain by lightning, or
even by a rifle-bullet. Before the organ can arrange it-
self it may, therefore, be destroyed, and in such a case
we may safely conclude that death is painless.

The experiences of common life supply us with copi-
ous instances of the liberation of vast stores of muscular
power by an infinitesimal "priming" of the muscles by
the nerves. We all know the effect produced on a "ner-
vous" organization by a slight sound which causes affright.
An aerial wave, the energy of which would not reach a

SCIENCE AND MAN 871

minute fraction of that necessary to raise the thousandth
of a grain through the thousandth of an inch, can throw
the whole human frame into a powerful mechanical spasm,
followed by violent respiration and palpitation. The eye,
of course, may be appealed to as well as the ear. Of this
the lamented Lange gives the following vivid illustration:

A merchant sits complacently in his easy-chair, not
knowing whether smoking, sleeping, newspaper reading,
or the digestion of food occupies the largest portion of
his personality. A servant enters the room with a tele-
gram bearing the words, "Antwerp, etc. . . . Jonas and
Co. have failed." "Tell James to harness the horses!"
The servant flies. Up starts the merchant, wide awake;
makes a dozen paces through the room, descends to the
counting-house, dictates letters, and forwards despatches.
He jumps into his carriage, the horses snort, and their
driver is immediately at the bank, on the Bourse, and
among his commercial friends. Before an hour has elapsed
he is again at home, where he throws himself once more
into his easy-chair with a deep-drawn sigh, "Thank God
I am protected against the worst, and now for further
reflection. ' '

This complex mass of action, emotional, intellectual,
and mechanical, is evoked by the impact upon the retina
of the infinitesimal waves of light coming from a few pen-
cil marks on a bit of paper. We have, as Lange says,
terror, hope, sensation, calculation, possible ruin, and vic-
tory compressed into a moment. What caused the mer-
chant to spring out of his chair? The contraction of his
muscles. What made his muscles contract? An impulse
of the nerves, which lifted the proper latch and liberated
the muscular power. Whence this impulse? From the

372 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

centre of the nervous system. But how did it originate
there? This is the critical question, to which some will
reply that it had its origin in the human soul.

The aim and effort of science is to explain the un-
known in terms of the known. Explanation, therefore,
is conditioned by knowledge. You have probably heard
the story of the German peasant, who, in early railway
days, was taken to see the performance of a locomotive.
He had never known carriages to be moved except by
animal power. Every explanation outside of this concep-
tion lay beyond his experience, and could not be invoked.
After long reflection therefore, and seeing no possible
escape from the conclusion, he exclaimed confidently to
his companion, "Es mtlssen doch Pferde darin sein" —
There must be horses inside. Amusing as this locomo-
tive theory may seem, it illustrates a deep-lying truth.

With reference to our present question, some may be
disposed to press upon me such considerations as these:
Your motor nerves are so many speaking-tubes, through
which messages are sent from the man to the world; and
your sensor nerves are so many conduits through which
the whispers of the world are sent back to the man. But
you have not told us where is the man. Who or what
is it that sends and receives those messages through the
bodily organism? Do not the phenomena point to the
existence of a self within the self, which acts through
the body as through a skilfully constructed instrument?
You picture the muscles as hearkening to the commands
sent through the motor nerves, and you picture the sensor
nerves as the vehicles of incoming intelligence; are you
not bound to supplement this mechanism by the assump-
tion of an entity which uses it? In other words, are you

SCIENCE AND MAN 373

not forced by your own exposition into tlie hypothesis of
a free human soul ?

This is fair reasoning now, and, at a certain stage of the
world's knowledge, it might well have been deemed con-
clusive. Adequate reflection, however, shows that instead
of introducing light into our minds, this hypothesis con-
sidered scientifically increases our darkness. You do not
in this case explain the unknown in terms of the known,
which, as stated above, is the method of science, but you
explain the unknown in terms of the more unknown.
Try to mentally visualize this soul as an entity distinct
from the body, and the difficulty immediately appears.
From the side of science all that we are warranted in stat-
ing is that the terror, hope, sensation, and calculation of
Lange's merchant are psychical phenomena produced by,
or associated with, the molecular processes set up by waves
of light in a previously prepared brain.

When facts present themselves let us dare to face them,
but let the man of science equally dare to confess igno-
rance where it prevails. What then is the causal connec-
tion, if any, between the objective and subjective — be-
tween molecular motions and states of consciousness ? My
answer is: I do not see the connection, nor have I as yet
met anybody who does. It is no explanation to say that
the objective and subjective effects are two sides of one
and the same phenomenon. Why should the phenomenon
have two sides? This is the very core of the difficulty.
There are plenty of molecular motions which do not ex-
hibit this two-sidedness. Does water think or feel when
it runs into frost-ferns upon a window-pane ? If not, why
should the molecular motion of the brain be yoked to this
mysterious companion — consciousness? We can form a

374 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

coherent picture of the physical processes — the stirring
of the brain, the thrilling of the nerves, the discharging of
the muscles, and all the subsequent mechanical motions
of the organism. But we can present to our minds no
picture of the process whereby consciousness emerges,
either as a necessary link or as an accidental by-product
of this series of actions. Yet it certainly does emerge — ■
the prick of a pin suffices to prove that molecular motion
can produce consciousness. The reverse process of the
production of motion by consciousness is equally unpre-
sentable to the mind. We are here, in fact, upon the
boundary line of the intellect, where the ordinary canons
of science fail to extricate us from our difficulties. If we
are true to these canons, we must deny to subjective phe-
nomena all influence on physical processes. Observation
proves that they interact, but in passing from one to the
other, we meet a blank which mechanical deduction is un-
able to fill. Frankly stated, we have here to deal with
facts almost as difficult to seize mentally as the idea of a
soul. And if you are content to make your *'sour* a po-
etic rendering of a phenomenon which refuses the yoke of
ordinary physical laws, I, for one, would not object to this
exercise of ideality. Amid all our speculative uncer-
tainty, however, there is one practical point as clear as
the day; namely, that the brightness and the usefulness
of life, as well as its darkness and disaster, depend to a
great extent upon our own use or abuse of this miraculous
organ.

Accustomed as I am to harsh language, I am quite
prepared to hear my ** poetic rendering'* branded as a
**falsehood" and a *'fib." The vituperation is unmerited,
for poetry or ideality, and untruth are assuredly very dif-

SCIENCE AND MAN 375

ferent things. The one may vivify, while the other kills.
When St. John extends the notion of a soul to "souls
washed in the blood of Christ" does he *'fib"? Indeed,
if the appeal to ideality is censurable, Christ himself ought
not to have escaped censure. Kor did he escape it. "How
can this man give us his flesh to eat?" expressed the scep-
tical flouting of unpoetic natures. Such are still among
us. Cardinal Manning would doubtless tell any Protes-
tant who rejects the doctrine of transubstantiation that he
"fibs" away the plain words of his Saviour when he re-
duces "the Body of the Lord" in the sacrament to a mere
figure of speech.

Though misuse may render it grotesque or insincere,
the idealization of ancient conceptions, when done con-
sciously and aboveboard, has, in my opinion, an impor-
tant future. We are not radically different from our
historic ancestors, and any feeling which affected them
profoundly requires only appropriate clothing to affect
us. The world will not lightly relinquish its heritage of
poetic feeling, and metaphysics will be welcomed when
it abandons its pretensions to scientific discovery and con-
sents to be ranked as a kind of poetry. "A good sym-
bol," says Emerson, "is a missionary to persuade thou-
sands. The Yedas, the Edda, the Koran, are each remem-
bered by its happiest figure. There is no more welcome
gift to men than a new symboL They assimilate them-
selves to it, deal with it in all ways, and it will last a
hundred years. Then comes a new genius and brings
another." Our ideas of God and the soul are obviously
subject to this symbolic mutation. They are not now
what they were a century ago. They will not be a cent-
ury hence what they are now. Such ideas constitute a

876 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

kind of central energy in tlie human mind, capable, like
the energy of the physical universe, of assuming various
shapes, and undergoing various transformations. They
baffle and elude the theological mechanic who would carve
them to dogmatic forms. They offer themselves freely to
the poet who understands his vocation, and whose func-
tion is, or ought to be, to find *' local habitation" for
thoughts woven into our subjective life, but which refuse
to be mechanically defined.

We now stand face to face with the final problem.
It is this: Are the brain, and the moral and intellectual
processes known to be associated with the brain — and, as
far as our experience goes, indissolubly associated — sub-
ject to the laws which we find paramount in physical nat-
ure? Is the will of man, in other words, free, or are it
and nature equally ** bound fast in fate"? From this latter
conclusion, after he had established it to the entire satis-
faction of his understanding, the great German thinker
Fichte recoiled. You will find the record of this struggle
between head and heart in his book, entitled *'Die Bestim-
mung des Menschen" — The Vocation of Man.* Fichte
was determined at all hazards to maintain his freedom,
but the price he paid for it indicates the difficulty of the
task. To escape from the iron necessity seen everywhere
reigning in physical nature, he turned defiantly round
upon nature and law, and affirmed both of them to be the
products of his own mind. He was not going to be the
slave of a thing which he had himself created. There is
a good deal to be said in favor of this view, but few of

> Translated by Dr. William Smith of Edinburgh •. Trubner, 1873.

SCIENCE AND MAN 877

US probably would be able to bring into play the solvent
transcendentalism whereby Fichte melted his chains.

Why do some regard this notion of necessity with ter-
ror, while others do not fear it at all? Has not Carlyle
somewhere said that a belief in destiny is the bias of all
earnest minds? "It is not Nature," says Fichte, "it is
Freedom itseK, by which the greatest and most terrible
disorders incident to our race are produced. Man is the
crudest enemy of man." But the question of moral re-
sponsibility here emerges, and it is the possible loosening
of this responsibility that so many of us dread. The no-
tion of necessity certainly failed to frighten Bishop Butler.
He thought it untrue — even absurd — but he did not fear
its practical consequences. He showed, on the contrary,
in the "Analogy," that as far as human conduct is con-
cerned, the two theories of free-will and necessity would
come to the same in the end.

What is meant by free-will ? Does it imply the power
of producing events without antecedents? — of starting,
as it were, upon a creative tour of occurrences without
any impulse from within or from without? Let us con-
sider the point. If there be absolutely or relatively no
reason why a tree should fall, it will not fall; and if there
be absolutely or relatively no reason why a man should
act, he will not act. It is true that the united voice of
this assembly could not persuade me that I have not, at
this moment, the power to lift my arm if I wished to do
so. Within this range the conscious freedom of my will
cannot be questioned. But what about the origin of the
*'wish"? Are we, or are we not, complete masters of
the circumstances which create our wishes, motives, and
tendencies to action? Adequate reflection will, I think,

878 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

prove that we are not. What, for example, have I had
to do with the generation and development of that which
some will consider mj total being, and others a most po-
tent factor 01 my total being — the living, speaking organ-
ism which now addresses you? As stated at the begin-
ning of this discourse, my physical and intellectual textures
were woven for me, not bi/ me. Processes in the conduct
or regulation of which I had no share have made me what
I am. Here, surely, if anywhere, we are as clay in the
hands of the potter. It is the greatest of delusions to
suppose that we come into this world as sheets of white
paper on which the age can write anything it likes, mak-
ing us good or bad, noble or mean, as the age pleases.
The age can stunt, promote, or pervert pre-existent ca-
pacities, but it cannot create them. The worthy Robert
Owen, who saw in external circumstances the great mold-
ers of human character, was obliged to supplement his
doctrine by making the man himself one of the circum-
stances. It is as fatal as it is cowardly to blink facts be-
cause they are not to our taste. How many disorders,
ghostly and bodily, are transmitted to us by inheritance?
In our courts of law, whenever it is a question whether
a crime has been committed under the influence of insan-
ity, the best guidance the judge and jury can have is de-
rived from the parental antecedents of the accused. If
among these insanity be exhibited in any marked degree,
the presumption in the prisoner's favor is enormously en-
hanced, because the experience of life has taught both
judge and jury that insanity is frequently transmitted from
parent to child.

I met, some years ago, in a railway carriage the gov-
ernor of one of our largest prisons. He was eviden^iy an

SCIENCE AND MAN 879

observant and reflective man, possessed of wide experi-
ence gathered in various parts of the world and a thor-
ough student of the duties of his vocation. He told me
th?at the prisoners in his charge might be divided into
three distinct classes. The first class consisted of persons
who ought never to have been in prison. External acci-
dent, and not internal taint, had brought them within the
grasp of the law, and what had happened to them might
happen to most of us. They were essentially men of
sound moral stamina, though wearing the prison garb.
Then came the largest class, formed of individuals pos-
sessing no strong bias, moral or immoral, plastic to the
touch of circumstances, which could mold them into either
good or evil members of society. Thirdly came a class —
happily not a large one — whom no kindness could con-
ciliate and no discipline tame. They were sent into this
world labelled "incorrigible,'* wickedness being stamped,
as it were, upon their organizations. It was an unpleas-
ant truth, but as a truth it ought to be faced. For such
criminals the prison over which he ruled was certainly not
the proper place. If confined at all, their prison should
be on a desert island, where the deadly contagion of their
example could not taint the moral air. But the sea itself
he was disposed to regard as a cheap and appropriate sub-
stitute for the island. It seemed to him evident that the
State would benefit if prisoners of the first class were lib-
erated; prisoners of the second class educated; and prison-
ers of the third class put compendiously under water.

It is not, however, from the observation of individuals
that the argument against "free-will,'* as commonly under-
stood, derives its principal force. It is, as already hinted,
indefinitely strengthened when extended to the race. Most

880 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

of you have been forced to listen to the outcries and de-
nunciations which rang discordant through the land for
some years after the publication of Mr. Darwin's *' Origin
of Species." Well, the world — even the clerical world —
has for the most part settled down in the belief that Mr.
Darwin's book simply reflects the truth of nature: that
we who are now * 'foremost in the files of time" have come
to the front through almost endless stages of promotion
from lower to higher forms of life.

If to any one of us were given the privilege of looking
back through the eons across which life has crept toward
its present outcome, his vision, according to Darwin, would
ultimately reach a point when the progenitors of this as-
sembly could not be called human. From that humble
society, through the interaction of its members and the
storing up of their best qualities, a better one emerged;
from this again a better still; until at length, by the in-
tegration of infinitesimals through ages of amelioration,
we came to be what we are to-day. We of this genera-
tion had no conscious share in the production of this grand
and beneficent result. Any and every generation which
preceded us had just as little share. The favored organ-
isms whose garnered excellence constitutes our present
store owed their advantages, first, to what we in our ig-
norance are obliged to call ^'accidental variation"; and,
secondly, to a law of heredity in the passing of which our
suffrages were not collected. With characteristic felicity
and precision Mr. Matthew Arnold lifts this question into
the free air of poetry, but not out of the atmosphere of
truth, when he ascribes the process of amelioration to *'a
power not ourselves which makes for righteousness." If,
then, our organisms, with all their tendencies and eapaci-

SCIENCE AND MAN 381

ties, are given to us without our being consulted; and if,
while capable of acting within certain limits in accordance
with our wishes, we are not masters of the circumstances
in which motives and wishes originate; if, finally, our
motives and wishes determine our actions — in what sense
can these actions be said to be the result of free-will?

Here, again, we are confronted with the question of
moral responsibility, which, as it has been much talked
of lately, it is desirable to meet. With the view of re-
moving the fear of our falling back into the condition of
"the ape and tiger," so sedulously excited by certain
writers, I propose to grapple with this question in its
rudest form, and in the most uncompromising way. "If,"
says the robber, the ravisher, or the murderer, "I act be-
cause I must act, what right have you to hold me respon-
sible for my deeds?" The reply is, "The right of society
to protect itself against aggressive and injurious forces,
whether they be bond or free, forces of nature or forces
of man." "Then," retorts the criminal, "you punish me
for what I cannot help." "Let it be granted," says so-
ciety, "but had you known that the treadmill or the gal-
lows was certainly in store for you, you might have
*helped.' Let us reason the matter fully and frankly out.
We may entertain no malice or hatred against you; it is
enough that with a view to our own safety and purifica-
tion we are determined that you and such as you shall
not enjoy liberty of evil action in our midst. You, who
have behaved as a wild beast, we claim the right to cage
or kill as we should a wild beast. The public safety is a
matter of more importance than the very limited chance
of your moral renovation, while the knowledge that you

^82 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

have been hanged by the neck may furnish to others
about to do as you have done the precise motive which
will hold them back. If your act be such as to invoke
a minor penalty, then not only others, but yourself, may
profit by the punishment which we inflict. On the homely
principle that *a burned child dreads the fire,* it will make-
you think twice before venturing on a repetition of your
crime. Observe, finally, the consistency of our conduct.
You offend, you say, because you cannot help offending,
to the public detriment. We punish, is our reply, because
we cannot help punishing, for the public good. Practi-
cally, then, as Bishop Butler predicted, we act as the
world acted when it supposed the evil deeds of its crim-
inals to be the products of free-will.** *

"What,** I have heard it argued, **is the use of preach-
ing about duty, if a man*s predetermined position in the
moral world renders him incapable of profiting by ad-
vice?** Who knows that he is incapable? The preach-
er's last word is a factor in the man*s conduct, and it may
be a most important factor, unlocking moral energies which
might otherwise remain imprisoned and unused. If the
preacher thoroughly feel that words of enlightenment,
courage, and admonition enter into the list of forces em-
ployed by Nature herself for man's amelioration, since she
gifted man with speech, he will suffer no paralysis to fall
upon his tongue. Dung the fig-tree hopefully, and not
until its barrenness has been demonstrated beyond a doubt
let the sentence go forth, **Cut it down, why cumbereth it
the ground?'*

' Aa eminent Church dignitary describes all this, not unkindly, as "trucu-
lent logic." I think it worthy of his Grace's graver consideration.

SCIENCE AND MAN 883

I remember wlien a youth in the town of Halifax, some
two-and-thirty years ago, attending a lecture given by a
young man to a small but select audience. The aspect of
the lecturer was earnest and practical, and his voice soon
riveted attention. He spoke of duty, defining it as a debt
owed, and there was a kindling vigor in his words which
must have strengthened the sense of duty in the minds of
those who heard him. No speculations regarding the free-
dom of the will could alter the fact that the words of that
young man did me good. His name was Greorge Dawson.
He also spoke, if you will allow me to allude to it, of a
social subject much discussed at the time — the Chartist
subject of "levelling." Suppose, he says, two men to be
equal at night, and that one rises at six, while the other
sleeps till nine next morning, what becomes of your level-
ling? And in so speaking he made himself the mouth-
piece of Nature, which, as we have seen, secures advance,
not by the reduction of all to a common level, but by the
encouragement and conservation of what is best.

It may be urged that, in dealing as above with my
hypothetical criminal, I am assuming a state of things
brought about by the influence of religions which include
the dogmas of theology and the belief in free-will — a state,
namely, in which a moral majority control and keep in
awe an immoral minority. The heart of man is deceitful
above all things, and desperately wicked. Withdraw, then
our theologic sanctions, including the belief in free-will
and the condition of the race will be typified by the sam
pies of individual wickedness which have been above ad
duced. We shall all, that is, become robbers, and rav
ishers, and murderers. From much that has been written
of late it would seem that this astounding inference finds

384 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

Louse -room in many minds. Possibly, the people who
hold such views might be able to illustrate them by in-
dividual instances.

The fear of hell's a hangman's whip.
To keep the wretch m order.

Eemove the fear, and the wretch, following his natural
instinct, may become disorderly; but I refuse to accept
him as a sample of humanity. "Let us eat and drink, for
to-morrow we die" is by no means the ethical consequence
of a rejection of dogma. To many of you the name of
George Jacob Holyoake is doubtless familiar, and you are
probably aware that at no man in England has the term
*' atheist" been more frequently pelted. There are, more-
over, really few who have more completely liberated them-
selves from theologic notions. Among working-class poli-
ticians Mr. Holyoake is a leader. Does he exhort his
followers to **Eat and drink, for to-morrow we die"?
Not so. In the August number of the *' Nineteenth Cent-
ury" you will find these words from his pen: *'The gospel
of dirt is bad enough, but the gospel of mere material
comfort is much worse." He contemptuously calls the
Comtist championship of the working man, *'the cham-
pionship of the trencher." He would place "the leanest
liberty which brought with it the dignity and power of
seK-help" higher than *'any prospect of a full plate with-
out it." Such is the moral doctrine taught by this
"atheistic" leader; and no Christian, I apprehend, need
be ashamed of it.

Most heartily do I recognize and admire the spiritual
radiance, if I may use the term, shed by religion on the
minds and lives of many personally known to me. At the

SCIEI^CE AND MAN 885

same time I cannot but observe how signally, as regards
the production of anything beautiful, religion fails in other
cases. Its professor and defender is sometimes at bottom
a brawler and a clown. These differences depend upon
primary distinctions of character which religion does not
remove. It may comfort some to know that there are
among us many whom the gladiators of the pulpit would
call "atheists" and "materialists/' whose lives, neverthe-
less, as tested by any accessible standard of morality, would
contrast more than favorably with the lives of those who
seek to stamp them with this offensive brand. When I
say "offensive," I refer simply to the intention of those
who use such terms, and not because atheism or material-
ism, when compared with many of the notions ventilated
in the columns of religious newspapers, has any particular
offensiveness for me. If I wished to find men who are
scrupulous in their adherence to engagements, whose words
are their bond, and to whom moral shiftiness of any kind
is subjectively unknown; if I wanted a loving father, a
faithful husband, an honorable neighbor, and a just citi-
zen— I should seek him, and find him among the band of
"atheists" to which I refer. I have known some of the
most pronounced among them not only in life, but in
death — seen them approaching with open eyes the inex-
orable goal, with no dread of a "hangman's whip," with
no hope of a heavenly crown, and still as mindful of
their duties, and as faithful in the discharge of them,
as if their eternal future depended upon their latest
deeds.

In letters addressed to myself, and in utterances ad-
dressed to the public, Faraday is often referred to as a
sample of the association of religious faith with moral ele-

SCIENCE — . —17

386 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

vation. I was locally intimate with him for fourteen or
fifteen years of my life, and had thus occasion to observe
how nearly his character approached what might, without
extravagance, be called perfection. He was strong but
gentle, impetuous but self -restrained ; a sweet and lofty
courtesy marked his dealings with men and women; and
though he sprang from the body of the people, a nature
so fine might well have been distilled from the flower of
antecedent chivalry. Not only in its broader sense was
the Christian religion necessary to Faraday's spiritual
peace, but in what many would call the narrow sense held
by those described by Faraday himself as "a very small
and despised sect of Christians, known, if known at all,
as Sandemanians,'' it constituted the light and comfort of
his days.

"Were our experience confined to such cases, it would
furnish an irresistible argument in favor of the association
of dogmatic religion with moral purity and grace. But, as
already intimated, our experience is not thus confined. In
further illustration of this point, we may compare with
Faraday a philosopher of equal magnitude, whose char-
acter, including gentleness and strength, candor and sim-
plicity, intellectual power and moral elevation, singularly
resembles that of the great Sandemanian, but who has
neither shared the theologic views nor the religious emo-
tions which formed so dominant a factor in Faraday's life.
I allude to Mr. Charles Darwin, the Abraham of scientific
men — a searcher as obedient to the command of truth as
was the patriarch to the command of Grod. I cannot there-
fore, as so many desire, look upon Faraday's religious be-
lief as the exclusive source of qualities shared so conspic-
uously by one uninfluenced by that belief. To a deeper

SCIENCE AND MAN 387

virtue belonging to human nature in its purer forms I am
disposed to refer the excellence of both.

Superstition may be defined as constructive religion
which has grown incongruous with intelligence. We may
admit, with Fichte, '*that superstition has unquestionably
constrained its subjects to abandon many pernicious prac-
tices and to adopt many useful ones"; the real loss accom-
panying its decay at the present day has been thus clearly
stated by the same philosopher: **In so far as these lamen-
tations do not proceed from the priests themselves — whose
grief at the loss of their dominion over the human mind
we can well understand — but from the politicians, the
whole matter resolves itself into this, that government has
thereby become more difficult and expensive. The judge
was spared the exercise of his own sagacity and penetra-
tion when, by threats of relentless damnation, he could
compel the accused to make confession. The evil spirit
formerly performed without reward services for which in
later times judges and policemen have to be paid."

No man ever felt the need of a high and ennobling
religion more thoroughly than this powerful and fervid
teacher, who, by the way, did not escape the brand of
** atheist." But Fichte asserted emphatically the power
and sufficiency of morality in its own sphere. "Let us
consider," he says, **the highest which man can possess
in the absence of religion — I mean pure morality. The
moral man obeys the law of duty in his breast absolutely,
because it is a law unto him; and he does whatever re-
veals itself to him as his duty simply because it is duty.
Let not the impudent assertion be repeated that such an
obedience, without regard for consequences, and without
desire for consequences, is in itself impossible and op-

888 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

posed to human nature." So much for Fichte. Faraday
was equally distinct. "I have no intention,*' he says, "of
substituting anything for religion, but I wish to take that
part of human nature which is independent of it. Moral-
ity, philosophy, commerce, the various institutions and
habits of society, are independent of religion and may ex-
ist without it." These were the words of his youth, but
they expressed his latest convictions. I would add that
the muse of Tennyson never reached a higher strain than
when it embodied the sentiment of duty in ^none:

And, because right is right, to follow right
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.

Not in the way assumed by our dogmatic teachers has
the morality of human nature been built up. The power
which has molded us thus far has worked with stern tools
apon a very rigid stuff. What it has done cannot be so
readily undone ; and it has endowed us with moral consti-
tutions which take pleasure in the noble, the beautiful,
and the true, just as surely as it has endowed us with
sentient organisms, which find aloes bitter and sugar
sweet.

That power did not work with delusions, nor will it
stay its hand when such are removed. Facts, rather than
dogmas, have been its ministers — hunger and thirst, heat
and cold, pleasure and pain, fervor, sympathy, aspiration,
shame, pride, love, hate, terror, awe — such were the forces
whose interaction and adjustment throughout an immeas-
urable past wove the triplex web of man's physical, in-
tellectual, and moral nature, and such are the forces that
will be effectual to the end.

You may retort that even on my own showing "the

SCIENCE AND MAN 389

power which makes for righteousness" has dealt in delu-
sions; for it cannot be denied that the beliefs of religion,
including the dogmas of theology and the freedom of the
will, have had some efiect in molding the moral world.
Granted; but I do not think that this goes to the root of
the matter. Are you quite sure that those beliefs and
dogmas are primary, and not derived? — that they are not
the products^ instead of being the creators^ of man's moral
nature ? I think it is in one of the Latter-Day Pamphlets
that Carlyle corrects a reasoner, who deduced the nobility
of man from a belief in heaven, by telling him that he
puts the cart before the horse, the real truth being that
the belief in heaven is derived from the nobility of man.
The bird's instinct to weave its nest is referred to by
Emerson as typical of the force which built cathedrals,
temples, and pyramids:

Knowest thou what wove yon woodbird's nest
Of leaves and feathers from her breast,
Or how the fish outbuilt its shell,
Painting with morn each annual cell?
Such and so grew these holy piles
"While love and terror laid the tiles;
Earth proudly wears the Parthenon
As the best gem upon her zone;
And Morning opes with haste her lids
To gaze upon the Pyramids;
O'er England's abbeys bends the sky
As on its friends with kindred eye;
For out of Tliought's interior sphere
These wonders rose to upper air,
■ And nature gladly gave them plao».
Adopted them into her race,
And granted them an equal date
"With Andes and with Ararat

890 FRAGMENW OF SCIENCE

Surely, many utterances which have been accepted as de-
scriptions ought to be interpreted as aspirations, or as hav-
ing their roots in aspiration instead of in objective knowl-
edge. Does the song of the herald angels, "Glory to God
in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men,"
express the exaltation and the yearning of a human soul ?
or does it describe an optical and acoustical fact — a visible
host and an audible song ? If the former, the exaltation
and the yearning are man's imperishable possession — a fer-
ment long confined to individuals, but which may by and
by become the leaven of the race. If the latter, then be-
lief in the entire transaction is wrecked by non-fulfilment.
Look to the East at the present moment as a comment on
the promise of peace on earth and goodwill toward men.
That promise is a dream ruined by the experience of eigh-
teen centuries, and in that ruin is involved the claim of
the "heavenly host" to prophetic vision. But though the
mechanical theory proves untenable, the immortal song and
the feelings it expresses are still ours, to be incorporated,
let us hope, in purer and less shadowy forms in the po-
etry, philosophy, and practice of the future.

Thus, following the lead of physical science, we are
brought without solution of continuity into the presence
of problems which, as usually classified, lie entirely out-
side the domain of physics. To these problems thoughtful
and penetrative minds are now applying those methods of
research which in physical science have proved their truth
by their fruits. There is on all hands a growing repug-
nance to invoke the supernatural in accounting for the
phenomena of human life; and the thoughtful minds just
referred to, finding no trace of evidence in favor of any
other origin, are driven to seek in the interaction of social

SCIENCE AND MAN 391

forces the genesis and development of man's moral nature.
If tliey succeed in their search — and I think they are sure
to succeed — social duty will be raised to a higher level of
significance and the deepening sense of social duty will, it
is to be hoped, lessen, if not obliterate, the strifes and
heartburnings which now beset and disfigure our social
life. Toward this great end it behooves us one and all
to work; and devoutly wishing its consummation, I have
the honor, ladies and gentlemen, to bid you a friendly
farewell.

XV

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION

THIS world of ours has, on the whole, been an in-
clement region for the growth of natural truth;
but it may be that the plant is all the hardier for
the bendings and bufietings it has undergone. The tor-
turing of a shrub, within certain limits, strengthens it.
Through the struggles and passions of the brute, man
reaches his estate; through savagery and barbarism his
civilization; and through illusion and persecution his
knowledge of nature, including that of his own frame.
The bias toward natural truth must have been strong to
have withstood and overcome the opposing forces. Feel-
ing appeared in the world before Knowledge ; and thoughts,
conceptions, and creeds, founded on emotion, had, before
the dawn of science, taken root in man. Such thoughts,
conceptions, and creeds must have met a deep and general
want; otherwise their growth could not have been so lux-
uriant, nor their abiding power so strong. This general
need — this hunger for the ideal and wonderful — led event-
ually to the differentiation of a caste, whose vocation it
was to cultivate the mystery of life and its surroundings,
and to give shape, name, and habitation to the emotions
which that mystery aroused. Even the savage lived, not
by bread alone, but in a mental world peopled with forms
answering to his capacities and needs. As time advanced
(392)

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION 393

— ^in other words, as the savage opened out into civilized
man — these forms were purified and ennobled until they
finally emerged in the mythology and art of Greece:

"Where still the magic robe of Poesy
Wound itself lovingly around the Truth.'

As poets, the priesthood would have been justified,
their deities, celestial and otherwise, with all their retinue
and appliances, being more or less legitimate symbols and
personifications of the aspects of nature and the phases of
the human soul. The priests, however, or those among
them who were mechanics, and not poets, claimed objec-
tive validity for their conceptions, and tried to base upon
external evidence that which sprang from the innermost
need and nature of man. It is against this objective ren-
dering of the emotions — this thrusting into the region of
fact and positive knowledge of conceptions essentially
ideal and poetic — that science, consciously or uncon-
sciously, wages war. Religious feeling is as much a ver-
ity as any other part of human consciousness ; and against
it, on its subjective side, the waves of science beat in vain.
But when, manipulated by the constructive imagination,
mixed with imperfect or inaccurate historic data, and
molded by misapplied logic, this feeling makes claims
which traverse our knowledge of nature, science, as in
duty bound, stands as a hostile power in its path. It is
against the mythologic scenery, if I may use the term,
rather than against the life and substance of religion, that
Science enters her protest. Sooner or later among think-
ing people, that scenery will be taken for what it is worth

* **Da der Dichtung zauberische Hiille

Sich noch lioblich urn die Wahrheit wand." — Schiller.

394 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

— as an effort on the part of man to bring the mystery of
life and nature within the range of his capacities; as a
temporary and essentially fluxional rendering in terms
of knowledge of that which transcends all knowledge, and
admits only of ideal approach.

The signs of the times, I think, point in this direction.
It is, for example, the obvious aim of Mr. Matthew Arnold
to protect, amid the wreck of d6gma, the poetic basis of
religion. And it is to be remembered that under the cir-
cumstances poetry may be the purest accessible truth. In
other influential quarters a similar spirit is at work. In. a
remarkable article published by Professor Knight of St.
Andrews in the September number of the *' Nineteenth
Century," amid other free utterances, we have this one:
*'If matter is not eternal, its first emergence into being
is a miracle beside which all others dwindle into absolute
insignificance. But, as has often been pointed out, the
process is unthinkable; the sudden apocalypse of a ma-
terial world out of blank nonentity cannot be imagined;*
its emergence into order out of chaos when 'without form
and void' of life, is merely a poetic rendering of the doctrine
of its slow evolution.''^ These are all bold words to be
spoken before the moral philosophy class of a Scotch
university, while those I have underlined show a remark-
able freedom of dealing with the sacred text. They re-
peat in terser language what I ventured to utter four years
ago regarding the Book of Grenesis. "Profoundly inter-
esting and indeed pathetic to me are those attempts of the
opening mind of man to appease its hunger for a Cause.

* Professor Knight will have to reckon with the English Marriage Service,
one of whose Collects begins thus: "O God, who by thy mighty power hast
made all things of nothing."

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION 395

But the Book of Genesis has no voice in scientific ques-
tions. It is a poem, not a scientific treatise. In the former
aspect it is forever beautiful; in the latter it has been,
and it will continue to be, purely obstructive and hurt-
ful." My agreement with Professor Knight extends still
further. "Does the vital," he asks, "proceed by a still
remoter development from the non-vital? Or was it cre-
ated by a fiat of volition? Or" — and here he emphasizes
his question — "Aas it always existed in some form or other
as an eternal constituent of the universe? I do not see,"
he replies, "how we can escape from the last alternative."
With the whole force of my conviction I say, Nor do 1,
though our modes of regarding the "eternal constituent"
may not be the same.

When matter was defined by Descartes, he deliberately
excluded the idea of force or motion from its attributes
and from his definition. Extension only was taken into
account. And, inasmuch as the impotence of matter to
generate motion was assumed, its observed motions were
referred to an external cause. God, resident outside of
matter, gave the impulse. In this connection the argu-
ment in Young's "Night Thoughts" will occur to most
readers :

"Wlio Motion foreign to the smallest grain
ShoJ; through vast masses of enormous weight?
Who bid brute Matter's restive lump assume
Such various forms, and gave it wings to fly?

Against this notion of Descartes the great deist John To-
land, whose ashes lie unmarked in Putney Churchyard,
strenuously contended. He affirmed motion to be an in-
herent attribute of matter — that no portion of matter was
at rest, and that even the most quiescent solids were ani-

396 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

mated by a motion of their ultimate particles. The suc-
cess of his contention, according to the learned and labori-
ous Dr. Berthold/ entitles Toland to be regarded as the
founder of that monistic doctrine which is now so rapidly
spreading.

It seems to me that the idea of vitality entertained in
our day by Professor Knight closely resembles the idea
of motion entertained by his opponents in Toland's day.
Motion was then virtually asserted to be a thing sui gen-
eris, distinct from matter, and incapable of being gener-
ated out of matter. Hence the obvious inference when
matter was observed to move. It was the vehicle of an
energy not its own — the repository of forces impressed
on it from without — the purely passive recipient of the
shock of the Divine. The logical form continues, but
the subject-matter is changed. *'The evolution of nat-
ure," says Professor Knight, "may be a fact; a daily
and hourly apocalypse. But we have no evidence of the
non-vital passing into the vital. Spontaneous generation
is, as yet, an imaginative guess, unverified by scientific
tests. And matter is not itself alive. Vitality, whether
seen in a single cell of protoplasm or in the human brain,
is a thing sui generis, distinct from matter, and incapable
of being generated out of matter." It may be, however,
that, in process of time, vitality will follow the example
of motion, and, after the necessary antecedent wrangling,
take its place among the attributes of that ** universal
mother" who has been so often misdefined.

That ** matter is not itself alive" Professor Knight
seems to regard as an axiomatic truth. Let us place in

' "John Toland und der Monismus der Gegenwart,** Heidelberg, Carl Winter.

PBOFESSOR VIROHOW AND EVOLUTION 397

contrast with this the notion entertained by the philos-
opher Ueberweg, one of the subtlest heads that Grermany
has produced. "What occurs in the brain," says Ueber-
weg, "would, in my opinion, not be possible, if the proc-
ess which here appears in its greatest concentration did
not obtain generally, only in a vastly diminished degree.
Take a pair of mice and a cask of flour. By copious
nourishment the animals increase and multiply, and in the
same proportion sensations and feelings augment. The
quantity of these latter possessed by the first pair is not
simply diffused among their descendants, for in that case
the last must feel more feebly than the first. The sensa-
tions and feelings must necessarily be referred back to
the flour, where they exist, weak and pale it is true, and
not concentrated as they are in the brain." ^ We may
not be able to taste or smell alcohol in a tub of fermented
cherries, but by distillation we obtain from them concen-
trated Kirschwasser. Hence Ueberweg's comparison of
the brain to a still, which concentrates the sensation and
feeling, pre-existing, but diluted in the food.

"Definitions," says Mr. Holyoake,' "grow as the hori-
zon of experience expands. They are not inventions, but
descriptions of the state of a question. No man sees all
through a discovery at once." Thus Descartes's notion
of matter, and his explanation of motion, would be put
aside as trivial by a physiologist or a crystallographer of
the present day. They are not descriptions of the state
of the question. And yet a desire sometimes shows itself
in distinguished quarters to bind us down to conceptions

' Letter to Lange: "Geschichte des Materialismus, " zweite Aufl., vol. ii.
p. 621.

' "Nineteenth Century " September, 1878.

898 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

which, passed muster in the infancy of knowledge, but
which are wholly incompatible with our present enlighten-
ment. Mr. Martineau, I think, errs when he seeks to
hold me to views enunciated by "Democritus and the
mathematicians." That definitions should change as
knowledge advances is in accordance both with sound
sense and scientific practice. When, for example, the
undulatory theory was started, it was not imagined that
the vibrations of light could be transverse to the direc-
tion of propagation. The example of sound was at hand,
which was a case of longitudinal vibration. Now the
substitution of transverse for longitudinal vibrations in
the case of light involved a radical change of conception
as to the mechanical properties of the luminiferous me-
dium. But though this change went so far as to fill space
with a substance, possessing the properties of a solid,
rather than those of a gas, the change was accepted, be-
cause the newly discovered facts imperatively demanded
it. Following Mr. Martineau's example, the opponent of
the undulatory theory might effectually twit the holder
of it on his change of front. "This ether of yours," he
might say, "alters its style with every change of service.
Starting as a beggar, with scarce a rag of 'property' to
cover its bones, it turns up as a prince when large under-
takings are wanted. You had some show of reason when,
with the case of sound before you, you assumed your ether
to be a gas in the last extremity of attenuation. But now
that new service is rendered necessary by new facts, you
drop the beggar's rags, and accomplish an undertaking,
great and princely enough in all conscience; for it im-
plies that not only planets of enormous weight, but comets
with hardly any weight at all, fly through your hypothet-

rBOFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION 899

ical solid without perceptible loss of motion." This would
sound very cogent, but it would be very vain. Equally
vain, in my opinion, is Mr. Martineau's contention that
wo are not justified in modifying, in accordance with ad-
vancing knowledge, our notions of matter.

Before parting from Professor Knight, let me commend
his courage as well as his insight. We have heard much
of late of the peril to morality involved in the decay of
religious belief. What Mr. Knight says under this head
is worthy of all respect and attention. *'I admit," he
writes, "that were it proved that the moral faculty was
derived as well as developed, its present decisions would
not be invalidated. The child of experience has a father
whose teachings are grave, peremptory, and august; and
an earthborn rule may be as stringent as any derived from
a celestial source. It does not even follow that a belief in
the material origin of spiritual existence, accompanied by
a corresponding decay of belief in immortality, must nec-
essarily lead to a relaxation of the moral fibre of the race.
It is certain that it has often done so.* But it is equally
certain that there have been individuals, and great histor-
ical communities, in which the absence of the latter belief
has neither weakened moral earnestness nor prevented de-
votional fervor." I have elsewhere stated that some of
the best men of my acquaintance — men lofty in thought
and beneficent in act — belong to a class who assiduously
let the belief referred to alone. They derive from it
neither stimulus nor inspiration, while — I say it with re-
gret— ^were I in quest of persons who, in regard to the

* Is this really certain? Instead of standing in the relation of cause and
effect, may not the "decay" and "relaxation" be merely coexistent, both, per-
haps, flowing from common historic antecedents?

400 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

finer endowments of human character, are to be ranked
with the unendowed, I should find some characteristic
samples among the noisier defenders of the orthodox be-
lief. These, however, are but "hand-specimens" on both
sides; the wider data referred to by Professor Knight con-
stitute, therefore, a welcome corroboration of mj experi-
ence. Again, my excellent critic. Professor Blackie, de-
scribes Buddha as being "a great deal more than a
prophet; a rare, exceptional, and altogether transcenden-
tal incarnation of moral perfection." ' And yet, "what
Buddha preached was a gospel of pure human ethics,
divorced not only from Brahma and the Brahminic Trin-
ity, but even from the existence of Q-od. ' ' ' These civil-
ized and gallant voices from the North contrast pleasantly
with the barbarous whoops which sometimes come to us
along the same meridian.

Looking backward from my present standpoint over the
earnest past, a boyhood fond of play and physical action,
but averse to school work, lies before me. The aversion
did not arise from intellectual apathy or want of appetite
for knowledge, but simply from the fact that my earliest
teachers lacked the power of imparting vitality to what
they taught. Athwart all play and amusement, however,
a thread of seriousness ran through my character; and
many a sleepless night of my childhood has been passed,
fretted by the question "Who made God?" I was well
versed in Scripture; for I loved the Bible, and was
prompted by that love to commit large portions of it to
memory. Later on I became adroit in turning my Script-

1 "Natural History of Atheism," p. 136. * Ibid., p. 125.

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION^ 401

tiral knowledge against the Churcli of Rome, but tlie char-
acteristic doctrines of that Church marked onlj for a time
the limits of inquiry. The eternal Sonship of Christ, for
example, as enunciated in the Athanasian Creed, perplexed
me. The resurrection of the body was also a thorn in my
mind, and here I remember that a passage in Blair' a
** Grave" gave me momentary rest.

Sure the same power
That rear'd the piece at first and took it down

Can reassemble the loose, scattered parts
And put them as they were.

The conclusion seemed for the moment entirely fair, but
with further thought my difficulties came back to me. I
had seen cows and sheep browsing upon churchyard grass,
which sprang from the decaying mould of dead men. The
flesh of these animals was undoubtedly a modification of
human flesh, and the persons who fed upon them were as
undoubtedly, in part, a more remote modification of the
same substance. 1 figured the self- same molecules as be-
longing first to one body and afterward to a different one,
and I asked myself how two bodies so related could pos-
sibly arrange their claims at the day of resurrection. The
scattered parts of each were to be reassembled and set as
they were. But if handed over to the one, how could
they possibly enter into the composition of the other?
Omnipotence itself, I concluded, could not reconcile the
contradiction. Thus the plank which Blair* s mechanical
theory of the resurrection brought momentarily into sight,
disappeared, and I was again cast abroad on the waste
ocean of speculation.

At the same time I could by no means get rid of the

402 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

idea that the aspects of nature and the consciousness of
man implied the operation of a power altogether beyond
my grasp — an energy the thought of which raised the tem-
perature of the mind, though it refused to accept shape,
personal or otherwise, from the intellect. Perhaps the able
critics of the "Saturday Eeview" are justified in speaking
as they sometimes do of Mr. Carlyle. They owe him noth-
ing, and have a right to announce the fact in their own
way. I, however, owe him a great deal, and am also in
honor bound to acknowledge the debt. Few, perhaps,
who are privileged to come into contact with that illus-
trious man have shown him a sturdier front than I have,
or in discussing modern science have more frequently
withstood him. But I could see that his contention at
bottom always was that the human soul has claims and
yearnings which physical science cannot satisfy. England
to come will assuredly thank him for his aflS.rmation of the
ethical and ideal side of human nature. Be this as it
may, at the period now reached in my story the feeling
referred to was indefinitely strengthened, my whole life
being at the same time rendered more earnest, resolute,
and laborious by the writings of Carlyle. Others also
ministered to this result. Emerson kindled me, while
Fichte powerfully stirred my moral pulse.* In this re-
lation I cared little for political theories or philosophic
systems, but a great deal for the propagated life and
strength of pure and powerful minds. In my later school
days, under a clever teacher, some knowledge of mathe-

' The reader will find in the Seventeenth Lecture of Fichte's course on
the "Characteristics of the Present Age" a sample of the vital power of this
philosopher.

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION 403

matics and physics had been picked up: my stock of
both was, however, scanty, and I resolved to augment
it. But it was really with the view of learning whether
mathematics and physics could help me in other spheres,
rather than with the desire of acquiring distinction in
either science, that I ventured, in 1848, to break the
continuity of my life, and devote the meagre funds then
at my disposal to the study of science in Germany.

But science soon fascinated me on its own account.
To carry it duly and honestly out, moral qualities were
incessantly invoked. There was no room allowed for in-
sincerity— no room even for carelessness. The edifice of
science had been raised by men who had unswervingly
followed the truth as it is in nature; and in doing so
had often sacrificed interests which are usually potent in
this world.

Among these rationalistic men of Germany I found
conscientiousness in work as much insisted on as it could
be among theologians. And why, since they had not
the rewards or penalties of the theologian to offer to their
disciples? Because they assumed, and were justified in
assuming, that those whom they addressed had that within
them which would respond to their appeal. If Germany
should ever change for something less noble the simple
earnestness and fidelity to duty, which in those days char-
acterized her teachers, and through them her sons gener-
ally, it will not be because of rationalism. Such a de-
cadent Germany might coexist with the most rampant
rationalism without their standing to each other in the
relation of cause and effect.

My first really laborious investigation, conducted jointly
with my friend Professor Knoblauch, landed me in a re-

404 ' FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

gion which harmonized with my speculative tastes. It was
essentially an inquiry in molecular physics, having refer-
ence to the curious, and then perplexing, phenomena ex-
hibited by crystals when freely suspended in the magnetio
field. I here lived amid the most complex operations of
magnetism in its twofold aspect of an attractive and a res-
pellent force. Iron was attracted by a magnet, bismuth
was repelled, and the crystals operated on ranged them-
selves under these two heads. Faraday and Pliicker had
worked assiduously at the subject, and had invoked the
aid of new forces to account for the phenomena. It was
soon, however, found that the displacement in a crystal
of an atom of the iron class by an atom of the bismuth
class, involving no change of crystalline form, produced a
complete reversal of the phenomena. The lines through
the crystal which were in the one case drawn toward the
poles of the magnet, were driven, in the other case, from
these poles. By such instances and the reasoning which
they suggested, magne-crystallic action was proved to be
due, not to the operation of new forces, but to the modifi-
cation of the old ones by molecular arrangement. Whether
diamagnetism, like magnetism, was a polar force, was in
those days a subject of the most lively contention. It was
finally proved to be so; and the most complicated cases
of magne-crystallic action were immediately shown to be
simple mechanical consequences of the principle of dia-
magnetio polarity.

These early researches, which occupied in all five
years of my life, and throughout which the molecular
architecture of crystals was an incessant subject of men-
tal contemplation, gave a tinge and bias to my sub-
sequent scientific thought, and their influence is easily

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION 405

traced in my subsequent inquiries. For example, during
nine years of labor on the subject of radiation, heat and
light were handled throughout by me, not as ends, but as
instruments by the aid of which the mind might per-
chance lay hold upon the ultimate particles of matter.

Scientific progress depends mainly upon two factors
which incessantly interact — the strengthening of the mind
by exercise, and the illumination of phenomena by knowl-
edge. There seems no limit to the insight regarding phys-
ical processes which this interaction carries in its train.
Through such insight we are enabled to enter and explore
that subsensible world into which all natural phenomena
strike their roots, and from which they derive nutrition.
By it we are enabled to place before the mind's eye
atoms and atomic motions which lie far beyond the range
of the senses, and to apply to them reasoning as stringent
as that applied by the mechanician to the motions and col-
lisions of sensible masses. But once committed to such
conceptions, there is a risk of being irresistibly led be-
yond the bounds of inorganic nature. Even in those early
stages of scientific growth, I found myseK more and more
compelled to regard not only crystals, but organic struct-
ures, the body of man inclusive, as cases of molecular
architecture, infinitely more complex, it is true, than those
of inorganic nature, but reducible, in the long run, to the
same mechanical laws. In ancient journals I find recorded
ponderings and speculations relating to these subjects, and
attempts made, by reference to magnetic and crystalline
phenomena, to present some satisfactory image to the mind
of the way in which plants and animals are built up. Per-
haps I may be excused for noting a sample of these early
speculations, already possibly known to a few of my read-

406 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

ers, but whicli here finds a more suitable place than that
which it formerly occupied.

Sitting, in the summer of 1855, with my friend Dr.
Debus under the shadow of a massive elm on the bank
of a river in Normandy, the current of our thoughts and
conversation was substantially this: We regarded the tree
above us. In opposition to gravity its molecules had
ascended, diverged into branches, and budded into in-
numerable leaves. What caused them to do so — a power
external to themselves, or an inherent force? Science re-
jects the outside builder; let us, therefore, consider from
the other point of view the experience of the present year.
A low temperature had kept back for weeks the life of the
vegetable world. But at length the sun gained power —
or, rather, the cloud- screen which our atmosphere had
drawn between him and us was removed — and life im-
mediately kindled under his warmth. But what is life,
and how can solar light and heat thus affect it? Near
our elm was a silver birch, with its leaves rapidly quiver-
ing in the morning air. We had here motion, but not the
motion of life. Each leaf moved as a mass under the in-
fluence of an outside force, while the motion of life was
inherent and molecular. How are we to figure this mo-
lecular motion — the forces which it implies, and the results
which flow from them ? Suppose the leaves to be shaken
from the tree and enabled to attract and repel each other.
To fix the ideas, suppose the point of each leaf to repel
all the other points and to attract the roots, and the root
of each leaf to repel all other roots, but to attract the
points. The leaves would then resemble an assemblage of
little magnets abandoned freely to the interaction of their

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION 407

own forces. In obedience to these they would arrange
themselves, and finally assume positions of rest, forming
a coherent mass. Let ns suppose the breeze, which now
causes them to quiver, to disturb the assumed equilibrium.
As often as disturbed there would be a constant effort on
the part of the leaves to re-establish it; and in making
this effort the mass of leaves would pass through different
shapes and forms. If other leaves, moreover, were at
hand endowed with similar forces, the attraction would
extend to them — a growth of the mass of leaves being the
consequence.

We have strong reason for assuming that the ultimate
particles of matter — the atoms and molecules of which it
is made up — are endowed with forces coarsely typified by
those here ascribed to the leaves. The phenomena of crys-
tallization, lead, of necessity, to this conception of molecu-
lar polarity. Under the operation of such forces the mole-
cules of a seed, like our fallen leaves in the first instance,
take up positions from which they would never move if
undisturbed by an external impulse. But solar light and
heat, which come to us as waves through space, are the
great agents of molecular disturbance. On the inert mole-
cules of seed and soil these waves impinge, disturbing the
atomic equilibrium, which there is an immediate effort to
restore. The effort, incessantly defeated — for the waves
continue to pour in — is incessantly renewed; in the mo-
lecular struggle matter is gathered from the soil and from
the atmosphere, and built, in obedience to the forces which
guide the molecules, into the special form of the tree. In
a general way, therefore, the life of the tree might be de-
fined as an unceasing effort to restore a disturbed equi-
librium. In the building of crystals Nature makes her

408 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

first structural effort; we have here the earliest groping
of the so-called *' vital force," and the manifestations of
this force in plants and animals, though, as already stated,
indefinitely more complex, are to be regarded of the same
mechanical quality as those concerned in the building of
the crystal.

Consider the cycle of operations by which the seed
produces the plant, the plant the flower, the flower again
the seed, the causal line, returning with the fidelity of a
planetary orbit to its original point of departure. Who
or what planned this molecular rhythm? We do not
know — science fails even to inform us whether it was ever
** planned" at all. Yonder butterfly has a spot of orange
on its wing: and if we look at a drawing made a century
ago, of one of the ancestors of that butterfly, we probably
find the self-same spot upon the wing. For a century the
molecules have described their cycles. Butterflies have
been begotten, have been born, and have died; still we
find the molecular architecture unchanged. Who or what
determined this persistency of recurrence? We do not
know; but we stand within our intellectual range when
we say that there is probably nothing in that wing which
may not yet find its Newton to prove that the principles
involved in its construction are qualitatively the same as
those brought into play in the formation of the solar sys-
tem. We may even take a step further, and affirm that
the brain of man — ^the organ of his reason — ^without which
he can neither think nor feel, is also an assemblage of
molecules, acting and reacting according to law. Here,
however, the methods pursued in mechanical science come
to an end; and if asked to deduce from the physical inter-
action of the brain molecules the least of the phenomena

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION 409

of sensation or thought, I acknowledge my helplessness.
The association of both with the matter of the brain may
be as certain as the association of light with the rising of
the sun. But whereas in the latter case we have un-
broken mechanical connection between the sun and our
organs, in the former case logical continuity disappears.
Between molecular mechanics and consciousness is inter-
posed a fissure over which the ladder of physical rea-
soning is incompetent to carry us. We must, therefore,
accept the observed association as an empirical fact,
without being able to bring it under the yoke of d
'priori deduction.

Such were the ponderings which ran. habitually through
my mind in the days of my scientific youth. They illus-
trate two things — a determination to push physical con-
siderations to their utmost legitimate limit; and an ac-
knowledgment that physical considerations do not lead
to the final explanation of all that we feel and know.
This acknowledgment, be it said in passing, was by no
means made with the view of providing room for the play
of considerations other than physical. The same intel-
lectual duality, if 1 may use the phrase, manifests itself
in the following extract from an article entitled ** Physics
and Metaphysics,*' published in the *' Saturday Eeview'*
for August 4, 1860:

**The philosophy of the future will assuredly take more
account than that of the past of the dependence of thought
and feeling on physical processes; and it may be that the
qualities of the mind will be studied through organic com-
binations as we now study the character of a force through

the affections of ordinary matter. We believe that every

Science— VI— 18

410 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

thought and every feeling has its definite mechanical cor-
relative— that it is accompanied by a certain breaking up
and remarshalling of the atoms of the brain. This latter
process is purely physical; and were the faculties we now
possess sufficiently expanded, without the creation of any
new faculty, it would doubtless be within the range of our
augmented powers to infer from the molecular state of the
brain the character of the thought acting on it, and, con-
versely, to infer from the thought the exact molecular
condition of the brain. We do not say — and this, as will
be seen, is all-important — that the inference here referred
to would be an ci priori one. But by observing, with the
faculties we assume, the state of the brain and the asso-
ciated mental affections, both might be so tabulated side
by side that, if one were given, a mere reference to the
table would declare the other. Our present powers, it is
true, shrivel into nothingness when brought to bear on
such a problem, but it is because of its complexity and
our limits that this is the case. The quality of the prob-
lem and of our powers are, we believe, so related, that a
mere expansion of the latter would enable them to cope
with the former. Why, then, in scientific speculation
should we turn our eyes exclusively to the past? May
it not be that a time is coming — ages no doubt distant,
but still advancing — when the dwellers upon this fair
earth, starting from the gross human brain of to-day as
a rudiment, may be able to apply to these mighty ques-
tions faculties of commensurate extent? Griven the requi-
site expansibility to the present senses and intelligence of
man — ^given also the time necessary for their expansion —
and this high goal may be attained. Development is all
that is required, and not a change of quality. There need

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION 411

be no absolute breacb of continuity between us and our
loftier brothers yet to come.

"We have guarded ourselves against saying that the
inferring of thought from material combinations and ar-
rangements would be an inference d priori. The infer-
ence meant would be the same in kind as that which the
observation of the effects of food and drink upon the mind
would enable us to make, differing only from the latter
in the degree of analytical insight which we suppose
attained. Given the masses and distances of the planets,
we can infer the perturbations consequent on their mutual
attractions. Given the nature of a disturbance in water,
air, or ether— knowing the physical qualities of the me-
dium we can infer how its particles will be affected. In
all this we deal with physical laws. The mind runs with
certainty along the line of thought which connects the
phenomena, and from beginning to end there is no break
in the chain. But when we endeavor to pass by a similar
process from the phenomena of physics to those of thought,
we meet a problem which transcends any conceivable ex-
pansion of the powers which we now possess. We may
think over the subject again and again, but it eludes all
intellectual presentation. We stand at length face to face
with the Incomprehensible. The territory of physics is
wide, but it has its limits from which we look with vacant
gaze into the region beyond. Let us follow matter to its
utmost bounds, let us claim it in all its forms — even in
the muscles, blood, and brain of man himself — as ours to
experiment with and to speculate upon. Casting the term
* vital force' from our vocabulary, let us reduce, if we can,
the visible phenomena of life to mechanical attractions
and repulsions. Having thus exhausted physics, and

412 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

reached its very rim, a mighty Mystery still looms beyond
us. We have, in fact, made no step toward its solution.
And thus it will ever loom, compelling the philosophies
of successive ages to confess that

•* 'We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
la rounded by a sleep.' **

In my work on *'Heat,** published in 1863, and repub-
lished many times since, I employ the precise language
thus extracted from the ** Saturday Review."

The distinction is here clearly brought out which I
had resolved at all hazards to draw — that, namely, be-
tween what men knew or might know, and what they
could never hope to know. Impart simple magnifying
power to our present vision, and the atomic motions of
the brain itself might be brought into view. Compare
these motions with the corresponding states of conscious-
ness, and an empirical nexus might be established; but
"we try to soar in a vacuum when we endeavor to pass
by logical deduction from the one to the other. ' ' Among
these brain-effects a new product appears which defies
mechanical treatment. We cannot deduce motion from
consciousness or consciousness from motion as we deduce
one motion from another. Nevertheless observation is
open to us, and by it relations may be established which
are at least as valid as those of the deductive reason. The
difficulty may really lie in the attempt to convert a datum
into an inference — an ultimate fact into a product of logic.
My desire for the moment, however, is not to theorize,
but to let facts speak in reply to accusation.

The most "materialistic" speculation for which I was

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION 413

responsible, prior to the ** Belfast Address,'* is embodied
in the following extract from a brief article written as far
back as 1865: *' Supposing the molecules of the human
body, instead of replacing others, and thus renewing a
pre-existing form, to be gathered first-hand from nature,
and placed in the exact relative positions which they oc-
cupy in the body. Supposing them to have the same
forces and distribution of forces, the same motions and
distribution of motions — would this organized concourse
of molecules stand before us as a sentient, thinking being ?
There seems no valid reason to assume that it would not.
Or supposing a planet carved from the sun, set spinning
round an axis, and sent revolving round the sun at a dis-
tance equal to that of our earth, would one consequence
of the refrigeration of the mass be the development of
organic forms ? I lean to the affirmative. ' ' This is plain
speaking, but it is without ''dogmatism.'* An opinion is
expressed, a belief, a leaning — not an established "doc-
trine. ' '

The burden of my writings in this connection is as
much a recognition of the weakness of science as an asser-
tion of its strength. In 1867, I told the working men of
Dundee that while making the largest demand for freedom
of investigation; while considering science to be alike pow-
erful as an instrument of intellectual culture, and as a
ministrant to the material wants of men; if asked whether
science has solved, or is likely in our day to solve, "the
problem of the universe," I must shake my head in doubt.
I compare the mind of man to a musical instrument with
a certain range of notes, beyond which in both directions
exists infinite silence. The phenomena of matter and
force come within our intellectual range; but behind, and

414 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

above, and around us the real mystery of the universe lies
unsolved, and, as far as we are concerned, is incapable
of solution.

While refreshing my mind on these old themes I ap-
pear to myself as a person possessing one idea, which so
overmasters him that he is never weary of repeating it.
That idea is the polar conception of the grandeur and the
littleness of man — ^the vastness of his range in some re-
spects and directions, and his powerlessness to take a
single step in others. In 1868, before the Mathematical
and Physical Section of the British Association, then
assembled at Norwich, 1 repeat the same well-worn note:

*'In thus affirming the growth of the human body to
be mechanical, and thought as exercised by us to have its
correlative in the physics of the brain, the position of the
'materialist,* as far as that position is tenable, is stated.
I think the materialist will be able finally to maintain this
position against all attacks, but I do not think he can
pass beyond it. The problem of the connection of body
and soul is as insoluble in its modern form as it was in
the pre-scientific ages. Phosphorus is a constituent of the
human brain, and a trenchant German writer has ex-
claimed, 'Ohne Phosphor kein gedankel' That may or
may not be the case; but, even if we knew it to be the
case, the knowledge would not lighten our darkness. On
both sides of the zone here assigned to the materialist he
is equally helpless. If you ask him whence is this 'mat-
ter' of which we have been discoursing — who or what
divided it into molecules, and impressed upon them this
necessity of running into organic forms — he has no answer.
Science is also mute in regard to such questions. But if
the materialist is confounded and science is rendered

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION 415

dumb, who else is prepared with an answer? Let us
lower our heads and acknowledge our ignorance, priest
and philosopher, one and all."

The roll of echoes which succeeded the Lecture deliv-
ered by Professor Virchow at Munich on September 22,
1877, was long and loud. The ** Times*' published a
nearly full translation of the lecture, and it was eagerly
commented on in other journals. Glances from it to an
Address delivered by me before the Midland Institute in
the autumn of 1877, and published in this volume, were
very frequent. Professor Virchow was held up to me in
some quarters as a model of philosophic caution, who by
his reasonableness reproved my rashness, and by his depth
reproved my shallowness. With true theologic courtesy I
was sedulously emptied, not only of the ** principles of
scientific thought," but of *'common modesty" and **com-
mon sense." And though I am indebted to Professor
Clifford for recalling in the * 'Nineteenth Century" for
April the public mind in this connection from heated
fancy to sober fact, I do not think a brief additional ex-
amination of Virchow 's views, and of my relation to them,
will be out of place here. •

The keynote of his position is struck in the preface to
the excellent English translation of his lecture — a preface
written expressly by himself. ** Nothing," he says, *'wa3
further from his intention than any wish to disparage the
great services rendered by Mr. Darwin to the advancement
of biological science, of which no one has expressed more
admiration than himself. On the other hand, it seemed
high time to him to enter an energetic protest against the
attempts that are made to proclaim the problems of re-
search as actual facts, and the opinions of scientists as

416 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

established science.'* On tlie ground, among others, that
It promotes the pernicious delusions of the Socialist,
Virchow considers the theory of evolution dangerous; but
his fidelity to truth is so great that he would brave the
danger and teach the theory, if it were only proved.
"However dangerous the state of things might be, let the
confederates be as mischievous as they might, still I do
not hesitate to say that from the moment when we had
become convinced that the evolution theory was a per-
fectly established doctrine — so certain that we could pledge
our oath to it, so sure that we could say, *Thus it is* —
from that moment we could not dare to feel any scruple
about introducing it into our actual life, so as not only to
communicate it to every educated man, but to impart it
to every child, to make it the foundation of our whole
ideas of the world, of society, and the State, and to base
upon it our whole system of education. This I hold to
be a necessity.**

It would be interesting to know the persons designated
by the pronoun "we'* in the first sentence of the forego-
ing quotation. No doubt Professor Haeckel would accept
this canon in all its fulness, and found on it his justifica-
tion. He would say without hesitation: "I am convinced
that the theory of evolution is a perfectly established doc-
trine, and hence on your own showing I am justified in
urging its introduction into our schools.** It is plain,
however, that Professor Virchow would not accept this
retort as valid. His "we** must cover something more
than Professor Haeckel. It would probably cover more
even than the audience he addressed; for he would hardly
affirm, even if every one of his hearers accepted the theory
of evolution, that that would be a sufficient warrant for

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION 417

forcing it upon the public at large. His "we," I submit^
needs definition. If he means that the theory of evolu-
tion ought to be introduced into our schools, not when
experts are agreed as to its truth, but when the commu-
nity is prepared for its introduction, then, I think, he is
right, and that, as a matter of social policy. Dr. Haeckel
would be wrong in seeking to antedate the period of its in-
troduction. In dealing with the community great changes
must have timeliness as well as truth upon their side. But
if the mouths of thinkers be stopped, the necessary social
preparation will be impossible; an unwholesome divorce
will be established between the expert and the public, and
the slow and natural process of leavening the social lump
by discovery and discussion will be displaced by some-
thing far less safe and salutary.

The burden, however, of this celebrated lecture is a
warning that a marked distinction ought to be made be-
tween that which is experimentally proved, and that which
is still in the region of speculation. As to the latter,
Virchow by no means imposes silence. He is far too sa-
gacious a man to commit himself, at the present time of
day, to any such absurdity. But he insists that it ought
not to be put on the same evidential level as the former.
*'It ought," as he poetically expresses it, "to be written
in small letters under the text." The audience ought to
be warned that the speculative matter is only possible^ not
actual truth — that it belongs to the region of "belief," and
not to that of demonstration. As long as a problem con-
tinues in this speculative stage it would be mischievous,
he considers, to teach it in our schools. "We ought not,"
he urges, "to represent our conjecture as a certainty, nor
our hypothesis as a doctrine: this is inadmissible." With

418 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

regard to tlie connection between physical processes and
mental phenomena lie says: *'I will, indeed, willingly
grant that we can find certain gradations, certain definite
points at which we trace a passage from mental processes
to processes purely physical, or of a physical character.
Throughout this discourse I am not asserting that it will
never be possible to bring psychical processes into an im-
mediate connection with those that are physical. All I
say is that we have at present no right to set up this pos*
sihle connection as a doctrine of science.'* In the next
paragraph he reiterates his position with reference to the
introduction of such topics into school teaching. **We
must draw," he says, '*a strict distinction between what
we wish to teach^ and what we wish to search for. The
objects of our research are expressed as problems (or hy-
potheses). We need not keep them to ourselves; we are
ready to communicate them to all the worlds and say, * There
is the problem ; that is what we strive for. ' . . . The in-
vestigation of such problems, in which the whole nation
may be interested, cannot be restricted to any one. This
is Freedom of Inquiry. But the problem (or hypothesis) is
not, without further debate, to be made a doctrine,^ ^ He
will not concede to Dr. Haeckel **that it is a question for
the schoolmasters to decide, whether the Darwinian theory
of man's descent should be at once laid down as the basis
of instruction, and the protoplastic soul be assumed as the
foundation of all ideas concerning spiritual being." The
Professor concludes his lecture thus: "With perfect truth
did Bacon say of old ^Scientia est potentia,^ But he also
defined that knowledge ; and the knowledge he meant was
not speculative knowledge, not the knowledge of hypothe-
ses, but it was objective and actual knowledge. Gentle-

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION 419

men, I think we should be abusing our power, we should
be imperilling our power, unless in our teaching we re-
strict ourselves to this perfectly safe and unassailable do-
main. From this domain we may make incursions into the
field of problems^ and I am sure that every venture of that
kind will then find all needful security and support.'* 1
have emphasized by italics two sentences in the foregoing
series of quotations; the other italics are the author's
own.

Virchow's position could not be made clearer by any
comments of mine than he has here made it himself.
That position is one of the highest practical importance.
*' Throughout our whole German Fatherland," he says,
*'men are busied in renovating, extending, and develop-
ing the system of education, and in inventing fixed forms
in which to mold it. On the threshold of coming events
stands the Prussian law of education. In all the German
States larger schools are being built, new educational es-
tablishments are set up, the universities are extended,
'higher' and 'middle' schools are founded. Finally comes
the question. What is to be the chief substance of the
teaching ?' ' What Yirchow thinks it ought and ought not
to be is disclosed by the foregoing quotations. There
ought to be a clear distinction made between science in
the state of hypothesis, and science in the state of fact.
In school teaching the former ought to be excluded. And,
as he assumes it to be still in its hypothetical stage, the
ban of exclusion ought, he thinks, to fall upon the theory
of evolution.

I now freely offer myself for judgment before the tri-
bunal whose law is here laid down. First and foremost,

420 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

then, I liave never advocated the introduction of the
theory of evolution into our schools. I should even be
disposed to resist its introduction before its meaning had
been better understood and its utility more fully recog-
nized than it is now by the great body of the community.
The theory ought, I think, to bide its time until the free
conflict of discovery, argument, and opinion has won for
it this recognition. A necessary condition here, however,
is that free discussion should not be prevented, either by
the ferocity of reviewers or the arm of the law; otherwise,
as I said before, the work of social preparation cannot go
on. On this count, then, I claim acquittal, being for the
moment on the side of Virchow.

Besides the duties of the chair, which 1 have been
privileged to occupy in London for more than a quarter
of a century, and which never involved a word on my
part, pro or con, in reference to the theory of evolution,
I have had the honor of addressing audiences in Liver-
pool, Belfast, and Birmingham; and in these addresses the
theory of evolution, and the connected doctrine of spon-
taneous generation, have been more or less touched upon.
Let us now examine whether in my references I have de-
parted from the views of Virchow or not.

In the Liverpool discourse, after speaking of the theory
of evolution when applied to the primitive condition of
matter, as belonging to "the dim twilight of conjecture,'*
and affirming that "the certainty of experimental inquiry
is here shut out," I sketch the nebular theory as enunci-
ated by Kant and Laplace, and afterward proceed thus:
"Accepting some such view of the construction of our
system as probable, a desire immediately arises to connect
the present life of our planet with the past. We wish to

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION 421

know something of our remotest ancestry. On its first
detachment from the sun, life, as we understand it, could
not have been present on the earth. How, then, did it
come there ? The thing to be encouraged here is a rever-
ent freedom — a freedom preceded bj the hard discipline
which checks licentiousness in speculation — while the
thing to be repressed, both in science and out of it, is
dogmatism. And here I am in the hands of the meet-
ing, willing to end, but ready to go on. / have no right
to intrude wpon you unasked the unformed notions which are
floating like clouds^ or gathering to more solid consistency in
the modern speculative mind.^^

I then notice more especially the basis of the theory.
** Those who hold the doctrine of evolution are by no
means ignorant of the uncertainty of their data, and they
only yield to it a provisional assent. They regard the neb-
ular hypothesis as probable; and, in the utter absence of
any proof of the illegality of the act, they prolong the
method of nature from the present into the past. Here
the observed uniformity of nature is their only guide.
Having determined the elements of their curve in a world
of observation and experiment, they prolong that curve
into an antecedent world, and accept as probable the un-
broken sequence of development from the nebula to the
present time." Thus it appears that, long antecedent to
the publication of his advice, I did exactly what Professor
Virchow recommends, showing myself as careful as he
could be not to claim for a scientific doctrine a certainty
which did not belong to it.

I now pass on to the Belfast Address, and will cite at
once from it the passage which has given rise to the most
violent animadversion. *' Believing as I do in the conti-

422 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

nuity of nature, I cannot stop abruptly where our micro-
scopes cease to be of use. At this point the vision of the
mind authoritatively supplements that of the eye. By an
intellectual necessity I cross the boundary of the experi-
mental evidence, and discern in that * matter' which we,
in our ignorance of its latent powers, and notwithstanding
our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto cov-
ered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of all ter-
restrial life." Without halting for a moment I go on to
do the precise thing which Professor Yirchow declares to
be necessary. "If you ask me," I say, "whether there
exists the least evidence to prove that any form of life
can be developed out of matter independently of antece-
dent life, my reply is that evidence considered perfectly
conclusive by many has been adduced, and that were we
to follow a common example, and accept testimony be-
cause it falls in with our belief, we should eagerly close
with the evidence referred to. But there is in the true
man of science a desire stronger than the wish to have his
beliefs upheld; namely, the desire to have them true.
And those to whom I refer as having studied this ques-
tion, believing the evidence offered in favor of * spontane-
ous generation' to be vitiated by error, cannot accept it.
They know full well that the chemist now prepares from
inorganic matter a vast array of substances, which were
some time ago regarded as the products solely of vitality.
They are intimately acquainted with the structural power
of matter, as evidenced in the phenomena of crystalliza-
tion. They can justify scientifically their belief in its po-
tency, under the proper conditions, to produce organisms.
But, in reply to your question, they will frankly admit
their inability to point to any satisfactory experimental

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION 423

proof tliat life can be developed, save from demonstrable
antecedent life." *

Comparing the theory of evolution with other theories,
I thus express myself; *'The basis of the doctrine of evo-
lution consists, not in an experimental demonstration — for
the subject is hardly accessible to this mode of proof — but
in its general harmony with scientific thought. From con-
trast, moreover, it derives enormous relative strength. On
the one side we have a theory, which converts the Power
whose garment is seen in the visible universe into an Ar-
tificer, fashioned after the human model, and acting by
broken efforts, as man is seen to act. On the other side
we have the conception that all we see around us and feel
within us — the phenomena of physical nature as well as
those of the human mind — have their unsearchable roots
in a cosmical life, if I dare apply the term, an infinitesi-
mal span of which is offered to the investigation of man. "
Among thinking people, in my opinion, this last concep-
tion has a higher ethical value than that of a personal ar-
tificer. Be that as it may, I make here no claim for the
theory of evolution which can reasonably be refused.

**Ten years have elapsed,'' said Dr. Hooker at Nor-
wich in 1868,' "since the publication of 'The Origin of
Species by Natural Selection,' and it is therefore not too
early now to ask what progress that old theory has made
in scientific estimation. Since the 'Origin' appeared it has
passed through four English editions,^ two American, two
German, two French, several Russian, a Dutch, and an

* Quoted by Clifford, "Nineteentli Century," 3, p. 726.

' President's Address to the British Association.

3 Published by Mr. John Murray, the English publisher of Virchow's Lect*

ure. Bane and antidote are thus impartially distributed by the same hand.

424 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

Italian edition. So far from Natural Selection being a
thing of the past [the 'Athenaeum' had stated it to be
so], it is an accepted doctrine with almost every philo-
sophical natmralist, including, it will always be under-
stood, a considerable proportion who are not prepared to
admit that it accounts for all Mr. Darwin assigns to it."
In the following year, at Innsbruck, Helmholtz took up
the same ground.* Another decade has now passed, and
he is simply blind who cannot see the enormous progress
made by the theory during that time. Some of the out-
ward and visible signs of this advance are readily indi-
cated. The hostility and fear which so long prevented
the recognition of Mr. Darwin by his own university have
vanished, and this year Cambridge, amid universal accla-
mation, conferred on him her Doctor's degree. The
Academy of Sciences in Paris, which had so long per-
sistently closed its doors against Mr. Darwin, has also
yielded at last; while sermons, lectures, and published ar-
ticles plainly show that even the clergy have, to a great
extent, become acclimatized to the Darwinian air. My
brief reference to Mr. Darwin in the Birmingham Ad-
dress was based upon the knowledge that such changes
had been accomplished, and were still going on.

That the lecture of Professor Virchow can, to any prac-
tical extent, disturb this progress of public faith in the
theory of evolution, I do not believe. That the special

* "Noch besteht lebliafter Streit um die "Wahrheit oder Wahrscheinlichkeit
von Darwin's Theorie ; er dreht sich aber doch eigentlich nur um die Grenzen,
welche wir fur die Yerauderlichkeit der Arten annehmen diirfen. Dass inner-
halb derselben Species erbliche RacenverscMedenheiten auf die von Darwin
beschriebene Weise zu kommen konnen, ja dass viele der bisher als verschiedene
Species derselben Gattung betrachteten Formen von derselben Urform abslam-
men, warden auch seine G^gner kaum leugnen." — "Populare Yortrage."

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION 425

lessons of caution whicli he inculcates were exemplified
bj me, years before his voice was heard upon this subject,
has been proved in the foregoing pages. In point of fact,
if he had preceded me instead of following me, and if my
desire had been to incorporate his wishes in my words,
I could not have accomplished this more completely. It
is possible, moreover, to draw the coincident lines still
further, for most of what he has said about spontaneous
generation might have been uttered by me. I share his
opinion that the theory of evolution in its complete form
involves the passage from matter which we now hold to
be inorganic into organized matter; in other words, in-
volves the assumption that at some period or other of the
earth's history there occurred what would be now called
"spontaneous generation." I agree with him that "the
proofs of it are still wanting. " "Whoever," he says, "re-
calls to mind the lamentable failure of all the attempts
made very recently to discover a decided support for the
generatio cequivoca in the lower forms of transition from
the inorganic to the organic world will feel it doubly se-
rious to demand that this theory, so [utterly discredited,
should be in any way accepted as the basis of all our views
of life." I hold with Yirchow that the failures have been
lamentable, that the doctrine is utterly discredited. But
my position here is so well known that I need not dwell
upon it further.

With one special utterance of Professor Yirchow his
translator connects me by name. "I have no objection,"
observes the Professor, "to your saying that atoms of car-
bon also possess mind, or that in their connection with
the Plastidule company they acquire mind; only I do not
know ^ow I am to perceive this.^^ This is substantially

426 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

what I had said seventeen years previously in the *' Satur-
day Review." The Professor continues: *'If I explain
attraction and repulsion as exhibitions of mind, as psychi-
cal phenomena, I simply throw the Psyche out of the win-
dow, and the Psyche ceases to be a Psyche." I may say,
in passing, that the Psyche that could be cast out of the
window is not worth house-room. At this point the trans-
lator, who is evidently a man of culture, strikes in with a
foot-note. **As an illustration of Professor Virchow's
meaning, we may quote the conclusion at which Doctor
Tyndall arrives respecting the hypothesis of a human soul,^
offered as an explanation or a simplification of a series
of obscure phenomena — psychical phenomena, as he calls
them. *If you are content to make your soul a poetic
rendering of a phenomenon which refuses the yoke of
ordinary physical law::, I, for one, would not object to this
exercise of ideality.'"* Professor Virchow's meaning, I
admit, required illustration; but I do not clearly see how
the quotation from me subserves this purpose. I do not
even know whether I am cited as meriting praise or de-
serving opprobrium. In a far coarser fashion this utter-
ance of mine has been dealt with in other places: it may
therefore be worth while to spend a few words upon it.

The sting of a wasp at the finger-end announces itself
to the brain as pain. The impression made by the sting
travels, in the first place, with comparative slowness along
the nerves affected; and only when it reaches the brain
have we the fact of consciousness. Those who think most
profoundly on this subject hold that a chemical change.

* Presidential Address delivered before the Birmingham and Midland Insti-
tute, October 1, 1877. "Fortnightly Review," Nov. 1, 1877, p. 607.

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION 427

wMch, strictly interpreted, is atomic motion, is, in such
a case, propagated along the nerve, and communicated to
the brain. Again, on feeling the sting I flap the insect
violently away. What has caused this motion of my hand ?
The command from the brain to remove the insect travels
along the motor nerves to the proper muscles, and, their
force being unlocked, they perform the work demanded
of them. But what moved the nerve molecules which
unlocked the muscle? The sense of pain, it may be re-
plied. But how can a sense of pain, or any other state
of consciousness, make matter move ? Not all the sense of
pain or pleasure in the world could lift a stone or move
a billiard-ball; why should it stir a molecule? Try to
express the motion numerically in terms of the sensation,
and the difficulty immediately appears. Hence the idea
long ago entertained by philosophers, but lately brought
into special prominence, that the physical processes are
complete in themselves, and would go on just as they do
if consciousness were not at all implicated. Conscious-
ness, on this view, is a kind of by-product inexpressible
in terms of force and motion, and unessential to the mo-
lecular changes going on in the brain.

Four years ago, I wrote thus: "Do states of conscious-
ness enter as links into the chain of antecedents and se-
quence, which gives rise to bodily actions ? Speaking for
myself, it is certain that I have no power of imagining
such states interposed between the molecules of the brain,
and influencing the transference of motion among the
molecules. The thing 'eludes all mental presentation.*
Hence an iron strength seems to belong to the logic which
claims for the brain an automatic action uninfluenced by
consciousness. But it is, I believe, admitted by those who

428 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

hold the automaton theory that states of consciousness are
produced by the motion of the molecules of the brain; and
this production of consciousness by molecular motion is
to me quite as unpresentable to the mental vision as the
production of molecular motion by consciousness. If I
reject one result I must reject both. /, however^ reject
neither^ and thus stand in the presence of two Incompre-
hensibles, instead of one Incomprehensible." Here I se-
cede from the automaton theory, though maintained by
friends who have all my esteem, and fall back upon the
avowal which occurs with such wearisome iteration
throughout the foregoing pages; namely, my own utter
incapacity to grasp the problem.

This avowal is repeated with emphasis in the passage
to which Professor Virchow's translator draws attention.
What, I there ask, is the causal connection between the
objective and the subjective — between molecular motions
and states of consciousness? My answer is: I do not see
the connection, nor am I acquainted with anybody who
does. It is no explanation to say that the objective and
subjective are two sides of one and the same phenomenon.
Why should the phenomenon have two sides ? This is the
very core of the difficulty. There are plenty of molecular
motions which do not exhibit this two-sidedness. Does
water think or feel when it runs into frost-ferns upon a
window pane? If not, why should the molecular motion
of the brain be yoked to this mysterious companion — con-
sciousness? We can form a coherent picture of all the
purely physical processes — the stirring of the brain, the
thrilling of the nerves, the discharging of the muscles,
and all the subsequent motions of the organism. We are
here dealing with mechanical problems which are mentally

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION 429

presentable. But we can form no picture of the process
whereby consciousness emerges, either as a necessary link,
or as an accidental by-product, of tbis series of actions.
The reverse process of the production of motion by con-
sciousness is equally unpresentable to the mind. We are
here in fact on the boundary line of the intellect, where
the ordinary canons of science fail to extricate us. If we
are true to these canons, we must deny to subjective phe-
nomena all influence on physical processes. The me-
chanical philosopher, as such^ will never place a state of
consciousness and a group of molecules in the relation
of mover and moved. Observation proves them to inter-
act; but, in passing from the one to the other, we meet
a blank which the logic of deduction is unable to fill.
This, the reader will remember, is the conclusion at which.
I had arrived more than twenty years ago. I lay bare
unsparingly the central difficulty of the materialist, and
tell him that the facts of observation which he considers
so simple are ** almost as difficult to be seized mentally
as the idea of a soul.** I go further, and say, in effect, to
those who wish to retain this idea, **If you abandon the
interpretations of grosser minds, who image the soul as
a Psyche which could be thrown out of the window — an
entity which is usually occupied, we know not how, among
the molecules of the brain, but whicb on due occasion,
such as the intrusion of a bullet or the blow of a club, can
fly away into other regions of space — if, abandoning this
heathen notion, you consent to approach the subject in
the only way in which approach is possible — if you con-
sent to make your soul a poetic rendering of a phenome-
non which, as I have taken more pains than anybody else
to show you, refuses the yoke of ordinary physical laws —

430 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

then I, for one, would not object to this exercise of ideal-
ity." I say it strongly, but with good temper, that the
theologian, or the defender of theology, who hacks and
scourges me for putting the question in this light is guilty
of black ingratitude.

Notwithstanding the agreement thus far pointed out,
there are certain points in Professor Virchow's lecture to
which I should feel inclined to take exception. I think
it was hardly necessary to associate the theory of evolu-
tion with Socialism; it may be even questioned whether
it was correct to do so. As Lange remarks, the aim of
Socialism, or of its extreme leaders, is to overthrow the
existing systems of government, and anything that helps
them to this end is welcomed, whether i\. be atheism or
papal infallibility. For long years the Socialists saw
Church and State united against them, and both were
therefore regarded with a common hatred. But no sooner
does a serious difference arise between Church and State
than a portion of the Socialists begin immediately to dally
with the former.' The experience of the last German
elections illustrates Lange 's position. Far nobler and
truer to my mind than this fear of promoting Socialism
by a scientific theory which the best and soberest heads
in the world have substantially accepted, is the position
assumed by Helmholtz, who in his "Popular Lectures''
describes Darwin's theory as embracing *'an essentially
new creative thought" (einen wesentlich neuen schopfer-
ischen Gedanken), and who illustrates the greatness of
this thought by copious references to the solutions, pre-

» "Geschichte des Materialismus, " 2« Auflage, vol. ii. p. 538.

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION 431

viously undreamed of, which it offers of the enigmas of
life and organization. He points to the clouds of error
and confusion which it has already dispersed, and shows
how the progress of discovery since its first enunciation
is simply a record of the approach of the theory toward
complete demonstration. One point in this *'popular'*
exposition deserves especial mention here. Helmholts
refers to the dominant position acquired by Germany in
physiology and medicine, while other nations have kept
abreast of her in the investigation of inorganic nature.
He claims for Grerman men the credit of pursuing with
unflagging and self-denying industry, with purely ideal
aims, and without any immediate prospect of practical
utility, the cultivation of pure science. But that which
has determined German superiority in the fields referred
to was, in his opinion, something different from this. In-
quiries into the nature of life are intimately connected
with psychological and ethical questions; and he claims
for his countrymen a greater fearlessness of the conse-
quences which a full knowledge of the truth may here
carry along with it, than reigns among the inquirers of
other nations. And why is this the case? ''England and
France," he says, *' possess distinguished investigators —
men competent to follow up and illustrate with vigorous
energy the methods of natural science; but they have
hitherto been compelled to bend before social and theo-
logical prejudices, and could only utter their convictions
under the penalty of injuring their social influence and
usefulness. Germany has gone forward more coura-
geously. She has cherished the trust, which has never
been deceived, that complete truth carries with it the anti-
dote against the bane and danger which follow in the train

432 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

of half knowledge. A cheerfully laborious and temperate
people — a people morally strong — can well afEord to look
truth full in the face. Nor are they to be ruined by the
enunciation of one-sided theories, even when these may
appear to threaten the bases of society.'* These words
of Helmholtz are, in my opinion, wiser and more appli-
cable to the condition of Germany at the present moment
than those which express the fears of Professor Virchow.
It will be remembered that at the time of his lecture his
chief anxieties were directed toward France; but France
has since that time given ample evidence of her ability to
crush, not only Socialists, but anti- Socialists, who would
impose on her a yoke which she refuses to bear.

In close connection with these utterances of Helmholtz,
I place another utterance not less noble, which I trust
was understood and appreciated by those to whom it was
addressed. "If,'* said the President of the British Asso-
ciation in his opening address in Dublin, *'we could lay
down beforehand the precise limits of possible knowledge,
the problem of physical science would be already half
solved. But the question to which the scientific explorer
has often to address himself is, not merely whether he is
able to solve this or that problem ; but whether he can so
far unravel the tangled threads of the matter with which
he has to deal as to weave them into a definite problem
at all. ... If his eye seem dim, he must look stead-
fastly and with hope into the misty vision, until the very
clouds wreathe themselves into definite forms. If his ear
seem dull, he must listen patiently and with sympathetic
trust to the intricate whisperings of Nature — the goddess,
as she has been called, of a hundred voices — until here
and there he can pick out a few simple notes to which his

PROFESSOR V IRC HOW AND EVOLUTION 433

own powers can resound. If, then, at a moment when he
finds himself placed on a pinnacle from which he is called
upon to take a perspective survey of the range of science,
and to tell us what he can see from his vantage-ground;
if, at such a moment, after straining his gaze to the very-
verge of the horizon, and after describing the most distant
of well-defined objects, he should give utterance also to
some of the subjective impressions which he is conscious
of receiving from regions beyond; if he should depict
possibilities which seem opening to his view ; if he should
explain why he thinks this a mere blind alley and that an
open path; then the fault and the loss would be alike ours
if we refused to listen calmly^ and temperately to form our
own judgment on lohat we hear; then assuredly it is we who
would he committing the error of 'confounding matters of fact
with matters of opinion^ if we failed to discriminate betiueen
the various elements contained in sxich a discourse^ arid as'
sumed that they had been all put on the same footing, ^^

While largely agreeing with him I cannot quite accept
the setting in which Professor Yirchow places the con-
fessedly abortive attempts to secure an experimental basis
for the doctrine of spontaneous generation. It is not a
doctrine *'so discredited" that some of the scientific think-
ers of England accept "as the basis of all their views of
life. ' ' Their induction is by no means thus limited. They
have on their side more than the "reasonable probability'*
deemed sufficient by Bishop Butler for practical guidance
in the gravest affairs, that the members of the solar systeni
which are now discrete once formed a continuous mass;
that in the course of untold ages, during which the work

of condensation, through the waste of heat in space, went

Science— YI— 19

434 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

on, the planets were detached; and that our present sun
is the residual nucleus of the flocculent or gaseous ball
from which the planets were successively separated. Life,
as we define it, was not possible for eons subsequent to
this separation. When and how did it appear? I have
already pressed this question, but have received no an-
swer.' If, with Professor Knight, we regard the Bible
account of the introduction of life upon the earth as a
poem, not as a statement of fact, where are we to seek for
guidance as to the fact? There does not exist a barrier
possessing the strength of a cobweb to oppose to the hy-
pothesis which ascribes the appearance of life to that ** po-
tency of matter' ' which finds expression in natural evolu-
tion.' This hypothesis is not without its difficulties, but
they vanish when compared with those which encumber
its rivals. There are various facts in science obviously
connected, and whose connections we are unable to trace;
but we do not think of filling the gap between them by
the intrusion of a separable spiritual agent. In like man-
ner, though we are unable to trace the course of things
from the nebula, when there was no life in our sense, to
the present earth where life abounds, the spirit and prac-
tice of science pronounce against the intrusion of an an-
thropomorphic creator. Theologians must liberate and re-
fine their conceptions or be prepared for the rejection of
them by thoughtful minds. It is they, not we, who lay
claim to knowledge never given to man. Our refusal of

^ In the "Apology for the Belfast Address" the question is reasoned out.

' *'We feel it an undeniable necessity," says Professor Virchow, "not to
sever the organic world from the whole, as if it were something disjoined from
the whole." This grave statement cannot be weakened by the subsequent
pleasantry regarding "Carbon Co."

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION 435

the creative hypothesis is less an assertion of knowledge
than a protest against the assumption of knowledge which
must long, if not always, lie beyond us, and the claim to
which is a source of perpetual confusion." At the same
time, when I look with strenuous gaze into the whole
problem as far as my capacities allow, overwhelming won-
der is the predominant feeling. This wonder has come to
me from the ages just as much as my understanding, and
it has an equal right to satisfaction. Hence I say, if,
abandoning your illegitimate claim to knowledge, you
place, with Job, your forehead in the dust and acknowl-
edge the authorship of this universe to be past finding
out — if, having made this confession, and relinquished the
views of the mechanical theologian, you desire, for the sat-
isfaction of feelings which I admit to be, in great part,
those of humanity at large, to give ideal form to the
Power that moves all things— it is not by me that you
will find objections raised to this exercise of ideality, if
it be only consciously and worthily carried out.

Again, I think Professor Virchow's position, in regard
to the question of contagium animatum is not altogether
that of true philosophy. He points to the antiquity of
the doctrine. *'It is lost,'* he says, '*in the darkness of
the Middle Ages. We have received this name from our
forefathers, and it already appears distinctly in the six-
teenth century. We possess several works of that time
which put forward contagium animatum as a scientific
doctrine, with the same confidence, with the same sort
of proof, with which the *Plastidulic souF is now set
forth."

These speculations of our "forefathers" will appeal

436 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

differently to different minds. By some they will be dis-
missed with a sneer; to others they will appeal as proofs
of genius on the part of those who enunciated them.
There are men, and by no means the minority, who,
however wealthy in regard to facts, can never rise into
the region of principles; and they are sometimes intoler-
ant of those who can. They are formed to plod meritori-
ously on the lower levels of thought, unpossessed of the
pinions necessary to reach the heights. They cannot real-
ize the mental act — the act of inspiration it might well be
called — by which a man of genius, after long pondering
and proving, reaches a theoretic conception which unravels
and illuminates the tangle of centuries of observation and
experiment. There are minds, it may be said in passing,
who at the present moment stand in this relation to Mr.
Darwin. For my part, I should be inclined to ascribe to
penetration rather than to presumption the notion of a
contagium animatum. He who invented the term ought,
I think, to be held in esteem; for he had before him the
quantity of fact, and the measure of analogy, that would
justify a man of genuis in taking a step so bold. ** Nev-
ertheless,*' says Professor Virchow, **no one was able
throughout a long time to discover these living germs
of disease. The sixteenth century did not find them, nor
did the seventeenth, nor the eighteenth." But it may be
urged, in reply to this, that the theoretic conjecture often
legitimately comes first. It is the forecast of genius which
anticipates the fact and constitutes a spur toward its dis-
covery. If, instead of being a spur, the theoretic guess
rendered men content with imperfect knowledge, it would
be a thing to be deprecated. But in modem investigation
this is distinctly not the case; Darwin's theory, for exam-

PROFESSOR VIROHOW AND EVOLUTION 487

pie, like the undulatory theory, Las been a motive power
and not an anodyne. "At last," continues Professor
Virchow, *'in the nineteenth century we have begun lit-
tle by little really to find contagia animata,^'' So much
the more honor, I infer, is due to those who, three cent-
uries in advance, so put together the facts and analogies
of contagious disease as to divine its root and character.
Professor Virchow seems to deprecate the "obstinacy"
with which this notion of a contagium vivum emerged.
Here I should not be inclined to follow him; because I
do not know, nor does he tell me, how much the discov-
ery of facts in the nineteenth century is indebted to the
stimulus derived from the theoretic discussions of preced
ing centuries. The genesis of scientific ideas is a subject
of profound interest and importance. He would be but a
poor philosopher who would sever modern chemistry from
the efforts of the alchemists, who would detach modern
atomic doctrines from the speculations of Lucretius and
his predecessors, or who would claim for our present
knowledge of contagia an origin altogether independent
of the efforts of our "forefathers" to penetrate this enigma.

Finally, I do not know that I should agree with Pro-
fessor Virchow as to what a theory is or ought to be. I
call a theory a principle or conception of the mind which
accounts for observed facts, and which helps us to look
for and predict facts not yet observed. Every new dis-
covery which fits into a theory strengthens it. The theory
is not a thing complete from the first, but a thing which
grows, as it were asymptotically, toward certainty. Dar-
win's theory, as pointed out nine and ten years ago by
Helmholtz and Hooker, was then exactly in this condition.

438 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

of growth; and had they to speak of the subject to-day
they would be able to announce an enormous strengthen-
ing of the theoretic fibre. Fissures in continuity which
then existed, and which left little hope of being ever
spanned, have been since filled in, so that the further
the theory is tested the more fully does it harmonize
with progressive experience and discovery. We shall
probably never fill all the gaps; but this will not pre-
vent a profound belief in the truth of the theory from
taking root in the general mind. Much less will it justify
a total denial of the theory. The man of science who as-
sumes in such a case the position of a denier is sure to
be stranded and isolated. The proper attitude, in my
opinion, is to give to the theory during the phases of its
growth as nearly as possible a proportionate assent; and,
if it be a theory which influences practice, our wisdom is
to follow its probable suggestions where more than prob-
ability is for the moment unattainable. I write thus with
the theory of contagium vivum more especially in my
mind, and must regret the attitude of denial assumed by
Professor Yirchow toward that theory. "I must beg my
friend Klebs to pardon me," he says, "if, notwithstand-
ing the late advances made by the doctrine of infectious
fungi, I still persist in my reserve so far as to admit only
the fungus which is really proved, while I deny all other
fungi so long as they are not actually brought before
me." Professor Yirchow, that is to say, will continue to
deny the Germ Theory, however great the probabilities
on its side, however numerous be the cases of which it
renders a just account, until it has ceased to be a theory
at all, and has become a congeries of sensible facts. Had
he said, "As long as a single fungus of disease remains

PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION 439

to be discovered, it is your bounden duty to search for
it," I should cordially agree with him. But by his un-
reserved denial he quenches the light of probability which
ought to guide the practice of the medical man. Both
here and in relation to the theory of evolution excess
upon one side has begotten excess upon the other.

Note, — As might have been expected, Professor Yirchow shows himself
in practice far too sound a philosopher to be restricted by the canon laid down
in his critique of Dr. Haeckel. In his recent discourse upon the plague, he asks
and answers the question, "What is the contagium?" in the following words :
"Et qu'est-ce que le contagium? A mon avis, I'analogie de la peste avec le
charbon contagieux me paralt si grande qu'il me semble possible de trouver
un organisme microscopique qui contient le germe de I'affection. Mais jus-
qu'd present on a peu cherche k trouver cet organisme." — "Revue Soien-
tifique,*' March, 1879.

XVI

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT*

THE subject of tliis evening's discourse was proposed
by our late honorary secretary.' That word "late"
has for me its own connotations. It implies,
among other things, the loss of a comrade by whose side
I have worked for thirteen years. On the other hand, re-
gret is not without its opposite in the feeling with which
I have seen him rise by sheer intrinsic merit, moral and
intellectual, to the highest official position which it is in
the power of English science to bestow. Well, he, whose
constant desire and practice were to promote the interests
and extend the usefulness of this Institution, thought that
at a time when the electric light occupied so much of
public attention, a few sound notions regarding it, on the
more purely scientific side, might, to use his own pithy
expression, be *' planted'' in the public mind. I am here
to-night with the view of trying, to the best of my abil-
ity, to realize the idea of our friend.

In the year 1800, Volta announced his immortal dis-
covery of the pile. Whetted to eagerness by the previous
conflict between him and Galvani, the scientific men of
the age flung themselves with ardor upon the new discov-

* A Discourse delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain on Friday,
January It, 1879, and introduced here as the latest Fragment.

* Mr. "William Spottiswoode, late President of the Royal Society.

(440,

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT 441

ery, repeating Yolta's experiments, and extending them in
many ways. The light and heat of the voltaic circuit at-
tracted marked attention, and in the innumerable tests and
trials to which this question was subjected, the utility of
platinum and charcoal as means of exalting the light was
on all hands recognized. Mr. Children, with a battery
surpassing in strength all its predecessors, fused platinum
wires eighteen inches long, while "points of charcoal pro-
duced a light so vivid that the sunshine, compared with
it, appeared feeble." * Such effects reached their culmi-
nation when, in 1808, through the liberality of a few mem-
bers of the Eoyal Institution, Davy was enabled to con-
struct a battery of two thousand pairs of plates, with
which he afterward obtained calorific and luminous effects
far transcending anything previously observed. The arc
of flame between the carbon terminals was four inches
long, and by its heat quartz, sapphire, magnesia, and
lime, were melted like wax in a candle flame; while
fragments of diamond and plumbago rapidly disappeared
as if reduced to vapor.'

The first condition to be fulfilled in the development
of heat and light by the electric current is that it shall
encounter and overcome resistance. Flowing through a
perfect conductor, no matter what the strength of the cur-
rent might be, neither heat nor light could be developed.

» Davy, "Chemical Philosophy," p. 110.

2 In the concluding lecture at the Royal Institution jn June, 1810, Davy
showed the action of this battery. He then fused iridium, the alloy of iridium
and osmium, and other refractory substances. "Philosophical Magazine," vol.
XXXV. p. 463. Quetelet assigns the first production of the spark between coal-
points to Ourtet in 1802. Davy certainly in that year showed the carbon light
with a battery of 150 pairs of plates in the theatre of the Royal Institution
("Jour. Roy. Inst." vol. i. p. 166).

442 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

A rod of unresisting copper carries away uninjured and
unwarmed an atmosplieric discliarge competent to shiver
to splinters a resisting oak. I send the self- same current
through a wire composed of alternate lengths of silver
and platinum. The silver offers little resistance, the plati-
num offers much. The consequence is that the platinum
is raised to a white heat, while the silver is not visibly
warmed. The same holds good with regard to the carbon
terminals employed for the production of the electric
light. The interval between them offers a powerful re-
sistance to the passage of the current, and it is by the
gathering up of the force necessary to burst across this
interval that the voltaic current is able to throw the car-
bon into that state of violent intestine commotion which
we call heat, and to which its effulgence is due. The
smallest interval of air usually suffices to stop the current.
But when the carbon points are first brought together and
then separated, there occurs between them a discharge of
incandescent matter which carries, or msLj carry, the cur-
rent over a considerable space. The light comes almost
wholly from the incandescent carbons. The space between
them is filled with a blue flame which, being usually bent
by the earth's magnetism, receives the name of the Voltaic
Arc*

^ The part played by resistance is strikingly illustrated by the deportment
of silver and thallium when mixed together and volatilized in the arc. The
current first selects as its carrier the most volatile metal, which in this case is
thallium. While it continues abundant, the passage of the current is so free —
the resistance to it is so small — that the heat generated is incompetent to volatil-
ize the silver. As the thallium disappears the current is forced to concentrate
its power; it presses the silver into its service, and finally fills the space between
the carbons with a vapor which, as long as the necessary resistance is absent, it
is incompetent to produce. I have on a former occasion drawn attention to a
danger which besets the spectroscopist when operating upon a mixture of con-

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT 443

For seventy years, then, we have been in possession
of this transce-ndent light without applying it to the illu-
mination of our streets and houses. Such applications
suggested themselves at the outset, but there were grave
difficulties in their way. The first difficulty arose from
the waste of the carbons, which are dissipated in part by
ordinary combustion, and in part by the electric transfer
of matter from the one carbon to the other. To keep the
carbons at the proper distance asunder regulators were
devised, the earliest, I believe, by Staite, and the most
successful by Duboscq, Foucault, and Serrin, who have
been succeeded by Holmes, Siemens, Browning, Carr^,
Gramme, Lontin, and others. By such arrangements the
first difficulty was practically overcome ; but the second, a
graver one, is probably inseparable from the construction
of the voltaic battery. It arises from the operation of
that inexorable law which throughout the material uni-
verse demands an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,
refusing to yield the faintest glow of heat or glimmer of
light without the expenditure of an absolutely equal quan-
tity of some other power. Hence, in practice, the desira-
bility of any transformation must depend upon the value
of the product in relation to that of the power expended.
The metal zinc can be burned like paper; it might be
ignited in a flame, but it is possible to avoid the introduc-
tion of all foreign heat and to burn the zinc in air of the
temperature of this room. This is done by placing zinc
foil at the focus of a concave mirror, which concentrates
to a point the divergent electric beam, but which does not

stituents volatile in different degrees. When, in 1872, I first observed the effect
here described, had I not known that silver was present, I should have inferred
its absence.

444 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

warm the air. The zinc burns at the focus with a violet
flame, and we could readily determine the amount of heat
generated by its combustion. But zinc can be burned not
only in air, but in liquids. It is thus burned when acid-
ulated water is poured over it; it is also thus burned in
the voltaic battery. Here, however, to obtain the oxy-
gen necessary for its combustion, the zinc has to dislodge
the hydrogen with which the oxygen is combined. The
consequence is that the heat due to the combustion of
the metal in the liquid falls short of that developed by
its combustion in air, by the exact quantity necessary to
separate the oxygen from the hydrogen. Fully four-fifths
of the total heat are used up in this molecular work, only
one-fifth remaining to warm the battery. It is upon this
residue that we must now fix our attention, for it is solely
out of it that we manufacture our electric light.

Before you are two small voltaic batteries of ten cells
each. The two ends of one of them are united by a thick
copper wire, while into the circuit of the other a thin
platinum wire is introduced. The platinum glows with a
white heat, while the copper wire is not sensibly warmed.
Now an ounce of zinc, like an ounce of coal, produces
by its complete combustion in air a constant quantity of
heat. The total heat developed by an ounce of zinc
through its union with oxygen in the battery is also ab-
solutely invariable. Let our two batteries, then, continue
in action until an ounce of zinc in each of them is con-
sumed. In the one case the heat generated is purely do-
mestic, being liberated on the hearth where the fuel is
burned, that is to say, in the cells of the battery itself.
In the other case, the heat is in part domestic and in
part foreign — ^in part within the battery and in part out-

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT 445

side. One of the fundamental truths to be borne in mind
is that the sum of the foreign and domestic — of the ex-
ternal and internal — heats is fixed and invariable. Hence,
to have heat outside, you must draw upon the heat with-
in. These remarks apply to the electric light. By^ the
intermediation of the electric current the moderate warmth
of the battery is not only carried away, but concentrated,
so as to produce, at any distance from its origin, a heat
next in order to that of the sun. The current might
therefore be defined as the swift carrier of heat. Load-
ing itself here with invisible power, by a process of trans-
mutation which outstrips the dreams of the alchemist, it
can discharge its load, in the fraction of a second, as light
and heat, at the opposite side of the world.

Thus, the light and heat produced outside the battery
are derived from the metallic fuel burned within the bat-
tery; and, as zinc happens to be an expensive fuel, though
we have possessed the electric light for more than sev-
enty years, it has been too costly to come into general
use. But within these walls, in the autumn of 1881, Fara-
day discovered a new source of electricity, which we have
now to investigate. On the table before me lies a coil of
covered copper wire, with its ends disunited. I lift one
side of the coil from the table, and in doing so exert the
muscular effort necessary to overcome the simple weight
of the coil. I unite its two ends and repeat the experi-
ment. The effort now required, if accurately measured,
would be found greater than before. In lifting the coil
I cut the lines of the earth's magnetic force, such cut-
ting, as proved by Faraday, being always accompanied,
in a closed conductor, by the production of an "induced"
electric current which, as long as the ends of the coil re-

446 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

mained separate, had no circuit through which it could
pass. The current here evoked subsides immediately as
heat; this heat being the exact equivalent of the excess
of effort just referred to as over and above that necessary
to overcome the simple weight of the coil. When the
coil is liberated it falls back to the table, and when its
ends are united it encounters a resistance over and above
that of the air. It generates an electric current opposed
in direction to the first, and reaches the table with a di-
minished shock. The amount of the diminution is accu-
rately represented by the warmth which the momentary
current develops in the coil. Various devices were em-
ployed to exalt these induced currents, among which the
instruments of Pixii, Clarke, and Saxton were long con-
spicuous. Faraday, indeed, foresaw that such attempts
were sure to be made; but he chose to leave them in the
hands of the mechanician, while he himself pursued the
deeper study of facts and principles. **I have rather," he
writes in 1831, *'been desirous of discovering new facts
and new relations dependent on magneto -electric induc-
tion, than of exalting the force of those already obtained ;
being assured that the latter would find their full devel*
opment hereafter."

For more than twenty years magneto-electricity had
subserved its first and noblest purpose of augmenting our
knowledge of the powers of nature. It had been discov-
ered and applied to intellectual ends, its application to
practical ends being still unrealized. The Drummond
light had raised thoughts and hopes of vast improvements
in public illumination. Many inventors tried to obtain it
cheaply; and in 1853 an attempt was made to organize
a company in Paris for the purpose of procuring, through

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT 447

the decomposition of water, by a powerful magneto- electric
machine constructed by M. Nollet, the oxygen and hy-
drogen necessary for the lime light. The experiment
failed, but the apparatus by which it was attempted sug-
gested to Mr. Holmes other and more hopeful applica-
tions. Abandoning the attempt to produce the lime light,
with persevering skill Holmes continued to improve the
apparatus and to augment its power, until it was finally
able to yield a magneto- electric light comparable to that
of the voltaic battery. Judged by later knowledge, this
first machine would be considered cumbrous and defective
in the extreme; but judged by the light of antecedent
events, it marked a great step forward.

Faraday was profoundly interested in the growth of his
own discovery. The Elder Brethren of the Trinity House
had had the wisdom to make him their "Scientific Ad-
viser' ' ; and it is interesting to notice in his reports regard-
ing the light, the mixture of enthusiasm and caution which
characterized him. Enthusiasm was with him a motive
power, guided and controlled by a disciplined judgment.
He rode it as a charger, holding it in by a strong rein.
While dealing with Holmes, he states the case of the light
pro and con. He checks the ardor of the inventor, and,
as regards cost, rejecting sanguine estimates, he insists
over and over again on the necessity of continued experi-
ment for the solution of this important question. His
matured opinion was, however, strongly in favor of the
light. With reference to an experiment made at the South
Foreland on the 20th of April, 1859, he thus expresses
himself: "The beauty of the light was wonderful. At
a mile off, the apparent streams of light issuing from the
lantern were twice as long as those from the lower light-

448 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

house, and apparently three or four times as bright. The
horizontal plane in which they chiefly took their way
made all above or below it black. The tops of the hills,
the churches, and the houses illuminated by it were strik-
ing in their effect upon the eye/' Further on in his re-
port he expresses himself thus: "In fulfilment of this
part of my duty, I beg to state that, in my opinion. Pro-
fessor Holmes has practically established the fitness and
sufficiency of the magneto-electric light for lighthouse pur-
poses, so far as its nature and management are concerned.
The light produced is powerful beyond any other that I
have yet seen so applied, and in principle may be accu-
mulated to any degree; its regularity in the lantern is
great; its management easy, and its care there may be
confided to attentive keepers of the ordinary degree of
intellect and knowledge." Finally, as regards the con-
duct of Professor Holmes during these memorable experi-
ments, it is only fair to add the following remark with
which Faraday closes the report submitted to the Elder
Brethren of the Trinity House on the 29th of April, 1859 :
*'I must bear my testimony," he says, *'to the perfect
openness, candor, and honor of Professor Holmes. He
has answered every question, concealed no weak point,
explained every applied principle, given every reason for
a change either in this or that direction, during several
periods of close questioning, in a manner that was very
agreeable to me, whose duty it was to search for real faults
or possible objections, in respect both of the present time
and the future. ' ' *

Soon afterward the Elder Brethren of the Trinity

* Holmes's first offer of his machine to the Trinity House bears date February
2, 1857.

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT 449

House had tlie intelligent courage to establish the ma-
chines of Holmes permanently at Dungeness, where the
magneto-electric light continued to shine for many years.
The magneto-electric machine of the Alliance Company
soon succeeded to that of Holmes, being in various ways
a very marked improvement on the latter. Its currents
were stronger and its light was brighter than those of its
predecessor. In it, moreover, the commutator, the flash-
ing and destruction of which were sources of irregularity
and deterioration in the machine of Holmes, was, at the
suggestion of M. Masson,* entirely abandoned; alternat-
ing currents instead of the direct current being employed.
M. Serrin modified his excellent lamp with the express
view of enabling it to cope with alternating currents.
During the International Exhibition of 1862, where the
machine was shown, M. Berlioz offered to dispose of the
invention to the Elder Brethren of the Trinity House.
They referred the matter to Faraday, and he replied as
follows: *'I am not aware that the Trinity House authori-
ties have advanced so far as to be able to decide whether
they will require more magneto -electric machines, or
whether, if they should require them, they see reason to
suppose the means of their supply in this country, from
the source already open to them, would not be sufficient.
Therefore I do not see that at present they w^nt to pur-
chase a machine." Faraday was obviously swayed by
the desire to protect the interests of Holmes, who had
borne the burden and heat which fall upon the pioneer.
The Alliance machines were introduced with success at
Cape la H^ve, near Havre; and the Elder Brethren of the

» Du Moncel, "1 'Electricity," August, 1878, p. 150.

450 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

Trinity House, determined to have the best available
apparatus, decided, in 1868, on the introduction of ma-
chines on the Alliance principle into the lighthouses at
Souter Point and the South Foreland. These machines
were constructed by Professor Holmes, and they still con-
tinue in operation. With regard, then, to the application
of electricity to lighthouse purposes, the course of events
was this: The Dungeness light was introduced on January
81, 1862; the light at La H^ve on December 26, 1863, or
nearly two years later. But Faraday's experimental trial
at the South Foreland preceded the lighting of Dungeness
by more than two years. The electric light was afterward
established at Cape Grisnez. The light was started at
Souter Point on January 11, 1871 ; and at the South Fore-
land on January 1, 1872. At the Lizard, which enjoys the
newest and most powerful development of the electric
light, it began to shine on January 1, 1878.

I have now to revert to a point of apparently small
moment, but which really constitutes an important step
in the development of this subject. I refer to the form
given in 1857 to the rotating armature by Dr. Werner
Siemens, of Berlin. Instead of employing coils wound
transversely round cores of iron, as in the machine of
Saxton, Siemens, after giving a bar of iron the proper
shape, wound his wire longitudinally round it, and ob-
tained thereby greatly augmented effects between suitably
placed magnetic poles. Such an armature is employed in
the small magneto-electric machine which I now introduce
to your notice, and for which the Institution is indebted
to Mr. Henry Wilde, of Manchester. There are here six-
teen permanent horseshoe magnets placed parallel to each

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT 451

other, and between their poles a Siemens armature. The
two ends of the wire which surrounds the armature are
now disconnected. In turning the handle and causing
the armature to rotate, I simply overcome ordinary me-
chanical friction. But the two ends of the armature coil
can be united in a moment, and when this is done I imme-
diately experience a greatly increased resistance to rota-
tion. Something over and above the ordinary friction of
the machine is now to be overcome, and by the expendi-
ture of an additional amount of muscular force I am able
to overcome it. The excess of labor thus thrown upon
my ai*m has its exact equivalent in the electric currents
generated, and the heat produced by their subsidence in
the coil of the armature. A portion of this heat may be
rendered visible by connecting the two ends of the coil
with a thin platinum wire. When the handle of the ma-
chine is rapidly turned the wire glows, first with a red
heat, then with a white heat, and finally with the heat of
fusion. The moment the wire melts, the circuit round the
armature is broken, an instant relief from the labor thrown
upon the arm being the consequence. Clearly realize the
equivalent of the heat here developed. During the period
of turning the machine a certain amount of combustible
substance was oxidized or burned in the muscles of my
arm. Had it done no external work, the matter consumed
would have produced a definite amount of heat. Kow, the
muscular heat actually developed during the rotation of
the machine fell short of this definite amount, the missing
heat being reproduced to the last fraction in the glowing
platinum wire and the other parts of the machine. Here,
then, the electric current intervenes between my muscles
and the generated heat, exactly as it did a moment ago

452 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

between the voltaic battery and its generated beat. The
electric current is to all intents and purposes a veMcle
which transports the heat both of muscle and battery to
any distance from the hearth where the fuel is consumed.
Not only is the current a messenger, but it is also an in-
tensifier of magical power. The temperature of my arm
is, in round numbers, 100° Fahr., and it is by the intensi-
fication of this heat that one of the most refractory of met-
als, which requires a heat of 8,600^ Fahr. to fuse it, has
been reduced to the molten condition.

Zinc, as I have said, is a fuel far too expensive to per-
mit of the electric light produced by its combustion being
used for the common purposes of life, and you will readily
perceive that the human muscles, or even the muscles of
a horse, would be more expensive still. Here, however,
we can employ the force of burning coal to turn our ma-
chine, and it is this employment of our cheapest fuel,
rendered possible by Faraday's discovery, which opens
out to us the prospect of being able to apply the electric
light to public use.

In 1866 a great step in the intensification of induced
currents, and the consequent augmentation of the magneto-
electric light, was taken by Mr. Henry Wilde. It fell to
my lot to report upon them to the Eoyal Society, but be-
fore doing so I took the trouble of going to Manchester
to witness Mr. Wilde's experiments. He operated in this
way; starting from a small machine like that worked in
your presence a moment ago, he employed its current to
excite an electro-magnet of a peculiar shape, between
whose poles rotated a Siemens armature;' from this ar-

' Page and Moigno had previously shown that the magneto-electric current
could produce powerful electro-magnets.

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT 453

mature currents were obtained vastly stronger than those
generated by the small magneto-electric machine. These
currents might have been immediately employed to pro-
duce the electric light; but instead of this they were
conducted round a second electro-magnet of vast size,
between whose poles rotated a Siemens armature of cor-
responding dimensions. Three armatures therefore were in«
volyed in this series of operations: first, the armature of
the small magneto-electric machine; secondly, the arma-
ture of the first electro-magnet, which was of considerable
size; and, thirdly, the armature of the second electro-mag-
net, which was of vast dimensions. With the currents
drawn from this third armature, Mr. Wilde obtained ef-
fects, both as regards heat and light, enormously tran-
scending those previously known.*

. But the discovery which, above all others, brought the
practical question to the front is now to be considered.
On the 4th of February, 1867, a paper was received by
the Royal Society from Dr. William Siemens bearing the
title, *'0n the Conversion of Dynamic into Electrical Force
without the use of Permanent Magnetism."' On the 14th

* Mr. Wilde's paper is published in the "Philosophical Transactions" for
1867, p. 89. My opinion regarding Wilde's machine was briefly expressed in
a report to the Elder Brethren of the Trinity House on May 17, 1866: "It gives
me pleasure to state that the machine is exceedingly effective, and that it far
transcends in power all other apparatus of the kind."

' A paper on the same subject, by Dr. Werner Siemens, was read on Janu-
aiy 17, 1867, before the Academy of Sciences in Berlin. In a letter to "Engi-
neering," No. 622, p. 45, Mr. Robert Sabine states that Professor Wheatstone's
machines were constructed by Mr. Stroh in the months of July and August,
1866. 1 do not doubt Mr. Sabine's statement; still it would be dangerous in
the highest degree to depart from the canon, in asserting which Faraday wa5
specially strenuous, that the date of a discovery is the date of its publication.
Toward the end of December, 1866, Mr. Alfred Yarley also lodged a provisional
specification (which, I believe, is a sealed document) embodying the principles

454 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

of February a paper from Sir Charles Wheatstone was re-
ceived, bearing the title, **0n the Augmentation of the
Power of a Magnet by the reaction thereon of Currents
induced by the Magnet itself." Both papers, which dealt
with the same discovery, and which were illustrated by
experiments, were read upon the same night; viz., the
14th of February. It would be difficult to find in the
whole field of science a more beautiful example of the in-
teraction of natural forces than that set forth in these two
papers. You can hardly find a bit of iron — you can
hardly pick up an old horseshoe, for example — that does
not possess a trace of permanent magnetism; and from
such a small beginning Siemens and Wheatstone have
taught us to rise by a series of interactions between mag-
net and armature to a magnetic intensity previously un-
approached. Conceive the Siemens armature placed be-
tween the poles of a suitable electro- magnet. Suppose
this latter to possess at starting the faintest trace of mag-
netism; when the armature rotates, currents of infinitesi-
mal strength are generated in its coil. Let the ends of
that coil be connected with the wire surrounding the
electro-magnet. The infinitesimal current generated in
the armature will then circulate round the magnet, aug-
menting its intensity by an infinitesimal amount. The
strengthened magnet instantly reacts upon the coil which
feeds it, producing a current of greater strength. This
current again passes round the magnet, which immedi-
ately brings its enhanced power to bear upon the coil.

of the dynamo-electric machine, but some years elapsed before he made any-
thing public. His brother, Mr. Cromwell Varley, when writing on this subject
in 1867, does not mention him (Proc. Eoy. Soc, March 14, 1867). It probably
marks a national trait, that sealed communications, though allowed in France,
have never been recognized by the scientific societies of England.

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT 455

By this play of mutual give and take between magnet
and armature, the strength of the former is raised in a
very brief interval from almost nothing to complete mag-
netic saturation. Such a magnet and armature are able to
produce currents of extraordinary power, and if an elec-
tric lamp be introduced into the common circuit of mag-
net and armature, we can readily obtain a most powerful
light.' By this discovery, then, we are enabled to avoid
the trouble and expense involved in the employment of
permanent magnets; we are also enabled to drop the ex-
citing magneto- electric machine, and the duplication of the
electro- magnets. By it, in short, the electric generator is
so far simplified, and reduced in cost, as to enable elec-
tricity to enter the lists as the rival of our present means
of illumination.

Soon after the announcement of their discovery by
Siemens and Wheatstone, Mr. Holmes, at the instance of
the Elder Brethren of the Trinity House, endeavored to
turn this discovery to account for lighthouse purposes.
Already, in the spring of 1869, he had constructed a
machine which, though hampered with defects, exhibited
extraordinary power. The light was developed in the
focus of a dioptric apparatus placed on the Trinity Wharf
at Blackwall, and witnessed by the Elder Brethren, Mr.
Douglass, and myself, from an observatory at Charlton,
on the opposite side of the Thames. Falling upon the
suspended haze, the light illuminated the atmosphere for
miles all round. Anything so sunlike in splendor had
not, I imagine, been previously witnessed. The apparatus

* In 1867 Mr. Ladd introduced the modification of dividing the armature into
two separate coils, one of which fed the electro-magnets, while the other yielded
the induced currents.

456

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

of Holmes, however, was rapidly distanced by the safer
and more powerful machines of Siemens and Gramme.

As regards lighthouse illumination, the next step for-
ward was taken by the Elder Brethren of the Trinity
House in 1876-77. Having previously decided on the
establishment of the electric light at the Lizard in Corn-
wall, they instituted, at the time referred to, an elaborate
series of comparative experiments wherein the machines
of Holmes, of the Alliance Company, of Siemens, and of
Gramme, were pitted against each other. The Siemens
and the Gramme machines delivered direct currents, while
those of Holmes and the Alliance Company delivered al-
ternating currents. The light of the latter was of the
same intensity in all azimuths; that of the former was
different in different azimuths, the discharge being so reg-
ulated as to yield a gush of light of special intensity in
one direction. The following table gives in standard can-
dles the performance of the respective machines: *

Name of Machine
Holmes
Alliance

Gramme (No. 1) ,
Gramme (No. 2)
Siemens (Large)
Siemens (Small, No. 1)
Siemens (Small, No. 2)
Two Holmes's coupled
Two Gramme's (Nos. 1 and 2)
Two Siemens' (Nos. 1 and 2)

Maximum

Minimum

1,523

1,523

1,953

1,953

6,663

4,016

6,663

4,016

14,818

8,932

5,539

3,339

6,864

4,138

2,811

2,811

11,396

6,869

14,134

8.520

» Observations from the sea on the night of November 21, 1876, made the
Granmie and small Siemens practically equal to the Alliance. But the photo-
metric observations, in which the external resistance was abolished, and previous
to which the light-keepers had become more skilled in the management of the
direct current, showed the differences recorded in the table. A close inspection
of these powerful lights at the South Foreland caused my face to peel, as if it
had been irritate i by an Alpine sun.

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT 457

These determinations were made with extreme care and
accuracy by Mr. Douglass, the engineer- in- chief, and Mr.
Ayres, the assistant engineer of the Trinity House. It is
practically impossible to compare photometrically and di-
rectly the flame of the candle with these sun-like lights.
A light of intermediate intensity — that of the six-wick
Trinity oil lamp — was therefore in the first instance com-
pared with the electric light. The candle power of the oil
lamp being afterward determined, the intensity of the elec-
tric light became known. The numbers given in the table
prove the superiority of the Alliance machine over that
of Holmes. They prove the great superiority both of the
Gramme machine and of the small Siemens machine over
the Alliance. The large Siemens machine is shown to
yield a light far exceeding all the others, while the coup-
ling of two Grammes, or of two Siemens together, here
effected for the first time, was followed by a very great
augmentation of the light, rising in the one case from
6,663 candles to 11,896, and in the other case from Q^^Q^
candles to 14,134. "Where the arc is single and the ex-
ternal resistance small, great advantages attach to the
Siemens light

After this contest, which was conducted throughout in
the most amicable manner, Siemens machines of type No.
2 were chosen for the Lizard. *

"We have machines capable of sustaining a single light,
and also machines capable of sustaining several lights.
The Gramme machine, for example, which ignites the

* As the result of a recent trial by Mr. Schwendler, they have been, also
chosen for India.

SCIENCE^VI— 20

458 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

Jablochkoff candles on the Thames Embankment and at
the Holborn Yiaduct, delivers four currents, each passing
through its own circuit. In each circuit are five lamps
through which the current belonging to the circuit passes
in succession. The lights correspond to so many resist-
ing spaces, over which, as already explained, the current
has to leap; the force which accomplishes the leap being
that which produces the light. Whether the current is to
be competent to pass through five lamps in succession, or
to sustain only a single lamp, depends entirely upon the
will and skill of the maker of the machine. He has, to
guide him, definite laws laid down by Ohm half a century
ago, by which he must abide.

Ohm has taught us how to arrange the elements of a
Voltaic battery so as to augment indefinitely its electro-
motive force — that force, namely, which urges the current
forward and enables it to surmount external obstacles.
We have only to link the cells together so that the cur-
rent generated by each cell shall pass through all the
others, and add its electro-motive force to that of all
the others. We increase, it is true, at the same time the
resistance of the battery, diminishing thereby the quanti-
ty of the current from each cell, but we augment the power
of the integrated current to overcome external hinderances.
The resistance of the battery itself may, indeed, be ren-
dered so great that the external resistance shall vanish in
comparison.

What is here said regarding the voltaic battery is
equally true of magneto -electric machines. If we wish
our current to leap over five intervals, and produce
five lights in succession, we must invoke a sufficient
electro -motive force. This is done through multiplying,

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT 459

by the use of thin wires, the convolutions of the rotating
armature as, a moment ago, we augmented the cells of our
voltaic battery. Each additional convolution, like each
additional cell, adds its electro-motive force to that of all
the others; and though it also adds its resistance, thereby
diminishing the quantity of current contributed by each
convolution, the integrated current becomes endowed with
the power of leaping across the successive spaces neces-
sary for the production of a series of lights in its course.
The current is, as it were, rendered at once thinner and
more piercing by the simultaneous addition of internal re-
sistance and electro- motive power. The machines, on the
other hand, which produce only a single light have a
small internal resistance associated with a small electro-
motive force. In such machines the wire of the rotating
armature is comparatively short and thick, copper ribbon
instead of wire being commonly employed. Such ma-
chines deliver a large quantity of electricity of low ten-
sion— in other words, of low leaping power. Hence,
though competent, when their power is converged upon
a single interval, to produce one splendid light, their cur-
rents are unable to force a passage when the number of
intervals is increased. Thus, by augmenting the convo-
lutions of our machines we sacrifice quantity and gain
electro-motive force; while, by lessening the number of
the convolutions, we sacrifice electro- motive force and
gain quantity.

Whether we ought to choose the one form of ma-
chine or the other depends entirely upon the exter-
nal work the machine has to perform. If the object
be to obtain a single light of great splendor, machines of
low resistance and large quantity must be employed. If

460 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

we want to obtain in the same circuit several lights of
moderate intensity, machines of high internal resistance
and of correspondingly high electro-motive power must
be invoked.

When a coil of covered wire surrounds a bar of iron,
the two ends of the coil being connected together, every
alteration of the magnetism of the bar is accompanied by
the development of an induced current in the coil. The
current is only excited during the period of magnetic
change. No matter how strong or how weak the magnet-
ism of the bar may be, as long as its condition remains
permanent no current is developed. Conceive, then, the
pole of a magnet placed near one end of the bar to be
moved along it toward the other end. During the time
of the pole's motion there will be an incessant change in
the magnetism of the bar, and accompanying this change
we shall have an induced current in the surrounding coil.
If, instead of moving the magnet, we move the bar and
its surrounding coil past the magnetic pole, a similar al-
teration of the magnetism of the bar will occur, and a
similar current will be induced in the coil. You have
here the fundamental conception which led M. Gramme
to the construction of his beautiful machine.' He aimed
at giving continuous motion to such a bar as we have
here described; and for this purpose he bent it into a
continuous ring, which, by a suitable mechanism, he
caused to rotate rapidly close to the poles of a horse-
shoe magnet. The direction of the current varied with
the motion and with the character of the influencing pole.
The result was that the currents in the two semicircles of

» "Comptes Rendus," 1871, p. 176. See also Gaugain on the Gramme
macMne, "Ann. de Chem. et de Phys.," vol xxviii. p. 324.

THE ELECTBIC LIGHT 461

the coil surrounding the ring flowed in opposite directions.
But it was easy, by the mechanical arrangement called a
commutator, to gather up the currents and cause them to
flow in the same direction. The first machines of Gramme,
therefore, furnished direct currents, similar to those yielded
by the voltaic pile. M. Gramme subsequently so modified
his machine as to produce alternating currents. Such al-
ternating machines are employed to produce the lights
now exhibited on the Holborn Viaduct and the Thames
Embankment.

Another machine of great alleged merit is that of M.
Lontin. It resembles in shape a toothed iron wheel, the
teeth being used as cores, round which are wound coils of
copper wire. The wheel is caused to rotate between the
opposite poles of powerful electro-magnets. On passing
each pole the core or tooth is strongly magnetized, and
instantly evokes in its surrounding coil an induced cur-
rent of corresponding strength. The currents excited in
approaching to and retreating from a pole, and in passing
different poles, move in opposite directions, but by means
of a commutator these conflicting electric streams are gath-
ered up and caused to flow in a common bed. The bob-
bins, in which the currents are induced, can be so in-
creased in number as to augment indefinitely the power of
the machine. To excite his electro-magnets, M. Lontin
applies the principle of Mr. "Wilde. A small machine
furnishes a direct current, which is carried round the
electro-magnets of a second and larger machine. Wilde's
principle, it may be added, is also applied on the Thames
Embankment and the Holborn Viaduct; a small Gramme
machine being used in each case to excite the electro-
magnets of the large one.

462 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

The Farmer- Wallace macMne is also an apparatus of
great power. It consists of a combination of bobbins for
induced currents, and of inducing electro-magnets, the
latter being excited by tbe metliod discovered by Siemens
and Wbeatstone. In tbe machines intended for the pro-
duction of the electric light, the electro-motive force is so
great as to permit of the introduction of several lights in
the same circuit. A peculiarly novel feature of the Farmer-
Wallace system is the shape of the carbons. Instead of
rods, two large plates of carbons with bevelled edges are
employed, one above the other. The electric discharge
passes from edge to edge, and shifts its position according
as the carbon is dissipated. The duration of the light in
this case far exceeds that obtainable with rods. I have
myself seen four of these lights in the same circuit in
Mr. Ladd's workshop in the City, and they are now, I
believe, employed at the Liverpool Street Station of
the Metropolitan Eailway. The Farmer- Wallace *' quan-
tity machine" pours forth a flood of electricity of low
tension. It is unable to cross the interval necessary
for the production of the electric light, but it can fuse
thick copper wires. When sent through a short bar
of iridium, this refractory metal emits a light of extraor-
dinary splendor.'

The machine of M. de Meritens, which he has gener-
ously brought over from Paris for our instruction, is the
newest of all. In its construction he falls back upon the
principle of the magneto-electric machine, employing per-
manent magnets as the exciters of the induced currents.

* The iridium light was shown by Mr. Ladd It brilliantly illununated the
theatre of the Royal Institution.

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT 463

Using tlie magnets of the Alliance Company, by a skilful
disposition of his bobbias, M. de Meritens produces with
eight magnets a light equal to that produced by forty
magnets in the Alliance machines. While the space
occupied is only one- fifth, the cost is little more than
one-fourth of the latter. In the De Meritens machine
the commutator is abolished. The internal heat is hardly
sensible, and the absorption of power, in relation to the
effects produced, is small. With his larger machines M.
de Meritens maintains a considerable number of lights
in the same circuit.*

In relation to this subject, inventors fall into two

classes, the contrivers of regulators and the constructors
of machines. M. Eapieff has hitherto belonged to inven-
tors of the first class, but I have reason to know that he
is engaged on a machine which, when complete, will place
him in the other class also. Instead of two single carbon
rods, M. Eapieff employs two pairs of rods, each pair
forming a V. The light is produced at the common junc-
tion of the four carbons. The device for regulating the
light is of the simplest character. At the bottom of the
stand which supjDorts the carbons are two small electro-
magnets. One of them, when the current passes, draws
the carbons together, and in so doing throws itself out of
circuit, leaving the control of the light to the other. The
carbons are caused to approach each other by a descend-
ing weight, which acts in conjunction with the electro-
magnet.

' The small machine transforms one and a quarter horse-power into heat and
light, yielding about 1,900 candles; the large machine transforms five horse-
power, yielding about 9,000 candles.

464 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

Through the liberality of the proprietors of the
"Times," every facility has been given to M. Eapieff to
develop and simplify his invention at Printing House
Square. The illumination of the press-room, which I
had the pleasure of witnessing, under the guidance of
M. E-apieflt' himself, is extremely effectual and agreeable
to the eye. There are, I believe, five lamps in the
same circuit, and the regulators are so devised that
the extinction of any lamp does not compromise the
action of the others. M. Kapieff has lately improved his
regulator.

Many other inventors might here be named, and fresh
ones are daily crowding in. Mr. Werdermann has been
long known in connection with this subject. Employing
as negative carbon a disk, and as positive carbon a rod,
he has, I am assured, obtained very satisfactory results.
The small resistances brought into play by his minute arcs
enable Mr. Werdermann to introduce a number of lamps
into a circuit traversed by a current of only moderate
electro-motive power. M. Eeynier is also the inventor of
a very beautiful little lamp, in which the point of a thin
carbon rod, properly adjusted, is caused to touch the cir-
cumference of a carbon wheel which rotates underneath
the point. The light is developed at the place of contact
of rod and wheel. One of the last steps, though I am in-
formed not quite the last, in the improvement of regula-
tors is this: The positive carbon wastes more profusely
than the negative, and this is alleged to be due to the
greater heat of the former. It occurred to Mr. William
Siemens to chill the negative artificially, with the view
of diminishing or wholly preventing its waste. This he
accomplishes by making the negative pole a hollow cone

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT 465

of copper, and by ingeniously discharging a small jet of
cold water against the interior of the cone. His negative
copper is thus caused to remain fixed in space, for it is
not dissipated, the positive carbon only needing control.
I have seen this lamp in action, and can bear witness to
its success.

I might go on to other inventions, achieved or pro-
jected. Indeed, there is something bewildering in the
recent rush of constructive talent into this domain of ap-
plied electricity. The question and its prospects are mod-
ified from day to day, a steady advance being made
toward the improvement both of machines and regulators.
With regard to our public lighting, I strongly lean to the
opinion that the electric light will at no distant day tri-
umph over gas. I am not so sure that it will do so in
our private houses. As, however, I am anxious to avoid
dropping a word here that could influence the share
market in the slightest degree, I limit myseK to this
general statement of opinion.

To one inventor in particular belongs the honor of the
idea, and the realization of the idea, of causing the car-
bon rods to burn away like a candle. It is needless to
say that I here refer to the young Eussian officer, M.
Jablochkofi. He sets two carbon rods upright at a small
distance apart, and fills the space between them with an
insulating substance like plaster of Paris. The carbon rods
are fixed in metallic holders. A momentary contact is es-
tablished between the two carbons by a little cross-piece of
the same substance placed horizontally from top to top.
This cross-piece is immediately dissipated or removed by
the current, the passage of which once established is after-
ward maintained. The carbons gradually waste, while the

466 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

substance between them melts like the wax of a candle.
The comparison, however, only holds good for the act of
melting; for, as regards the current, the insulating plaster
is practically inert. Indeed, as proved by M. Rapieff and
Mr. Wilde, the plaster may be dispensed with altogether,
the current passing from point to point between the naked
carbons.

M. de M^ritens has recently brought out a new can-
dle, in which the plaster is abandoned, while between
the two principal carbons is placed a third insulated rod
of the same material. With the small De Meritens ma-
chine two of these candles can be lighted before you;
they produce a very brilliant light.* In the Jablochkoff
candle it is necessary that the carbons should be consumed
at the same rate. Hence the necessity for alternating cur-
rents by which this equal consumption is secured. It will
be seen that M. Jablochkoff has abolished regulators alto-
gether, introducing the candle principle in their stead. In
my judgment, the performance of the Jablochkoff candle
on the Thames Embankment and the Holborn Viaduct is
highly creditable, notwithstanding a considerable waste of
light toward the sky. The Jablochkoff lamps, it may
be added, would be more effective in a street, where
their light would be scattered abroad by the adjacent
houses, than in the positions which they now occupy in
London.

It was my custom some years ago, whenever I needed
a new and complicated instrument, to sit down beside its

^ The machine of M. de Meritens and the Farmer-Wallace machine were
•worked by an excellent gas-engine, lent for the occasion by the Messrs. Crossley
of Manchester. The Siemens machine was worked by steam.

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT 467

proposed constructor, and to talk the matter over with.
him. The study of the inventor's mind which this habit
opened out was always of the highest interest to me. I
particularly well remember the impression made upon me
on such occasions by the late Mr. Darker, a philosophical
instrument maker in Lambeth. This man's life was a
struggle, and the reason of it was not far to seek. No
matter how commercially lucrative the work upon which
he was engaged might be, he would instantly turn aside
from it to seize and realize the ideas of a scientific man.
He had an inventor's power, and an inventor's delight in
its exercise. The late Mr. Becker possessed the same
power in a very considerable degree. On the Continent,
Froment, Breguet, Sauerwald, and others might be men-
tioned as eminent instances of ability of this kind. Such
minds resemble a liquid on the point of crystallization.
Stirred by a hint, crystals of constructive thought imme-
diately shoot through them. That Mr. Edison possesses
this intuitive power in no common measure is proved by
what he has already accomplished. He has the penetra-
tion to seize the relationship of facts and principles, and
the art to reduce them to novel and concrete combina-
tions. Hence, though he has thus far accomplished noth-
ing that we can recognize as new in relation to the elec-
tric light, an adverse opinion as to his ability to solve the
complicated problem on which he is engaged would be
unwarranted.

I will endeavor to illustrate in a simple manner Mr.
Edison's alleged mode of electric illumination, taking ad-
vantage of what Ohm has taught us regarding the laws of
the current, and what Joule has taught us regarding the
relation of resistance to the development of light and

468 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

Keat. From one end of a voltaic battery runs a wire,
dividing at a certain point into two branches, which re-
unite in a single wire connected with the other end of the
battery. From the positive end of the battery the current
passes first through the single wire to the point of junc-
tion, where it divides itself between the branches accord-
ing to a well-known law. If the branches be equally re-
sistant, the current divides itself equally between them.
If one branch be less resistant than the other, more than
half the current will choose the freer path. The strict
law is that the quantity of current is inversely proportional
to the resistance. A clear image of the process is derived
from the deportment of water. When a river meets an
island it divides, passing right and left of the obstacle,
and afterward reuniting. If the two branch beds be equal
in depth, width, and inclination, the water will divide it-
self equally between them. If they be unequal, the larger
quantity of water will flow through the more open course.
And, as in the case of the water, we may have an in-
definite number of islands, producing an indefinite sub-
division of the trunk stream, so in the case of electric-
ity we may have, instead of two branches, any number
of branches, the current dividing itself among them, in
accordance with the law which fixes the relation of flow
to resistance.

Let us apply this knowledge. Suppose an insulated
copper rod, which we may call an "electric main," to be
laid down along one of our streets, say along the Strand.
Let this rod be connected with one end of a powerful vol-
taic battery, a good metallic connection being established
between the other end of the battery and the water-pipes
under the street. As long as the electric main continues

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT 469

unconnected with the water-pipes, the circuit is incom-
plete and no current will flow; but if any part of the
main, however distant from the battery, be connected with
the adjacent water-pipes, the circuit will be completed and
the current will flow. Supposing our battery to be at
Charing Cross, and our rod of copper to be tapped oppo-
site Somerset House, a wire can be carried from the rod
into the building, and the current passing through the
wire may be subdivided into any number of subordinate
branches, which reunite afterward and return through the
water-pipes to the battery. The branch currents may be
employed to raise to vivid incandescence a refractory
metal like iridium or one of its alloys. Instead of being
tapped at one point, our main may be tapped at one hun-
dred points. The current will divide in strict accordance
with law, its power to produce light being solely limited
by its strength. The process of division closely resembles
the circulation of the blood; the electric main carrying
the outgoing current representing a great artery, the water-
pipes carrying the return current representing a great vein,
while the intermediate branches represent the various ves-
sels by which the blood is distributed through the system.
This, if I understand aright, is Mr. Edison's proposed
mode of illumination. The electric force is at hand.
Metals sufficiently refractory to bear being raised to vivid
incandescence are also at hand. The principles whi<}h reg-
ulate the division of the current and the development of
its light and heat are perfectly well known. There is no
room for a "discovery," in the scientific sense of the term,
but there is ample room for the exercise of that mechan-
ical ingenuity which has given us the sewing machine and
so many other useful inventions. Knowing something of

470 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

the intricacy of the practical problem, I should certainly
prefer seeing it in Mr. Edison's hands to having it in

It is sometimes stated as a recommendation to the elec-
tric light that it is light without heat; but to disprove
this it is only necessary to point to the experiments of
Davy, which show that the heat of the voltaic arc tran-
scends that of any other terrestrial source. The emission
from the carbon points is capable of accurate analysis.
To simplify the subject, we will take the case of a plati-
num wire at first slightly warmed by the current, and then
gradually raised to a white heat. When first warmed, the
wire sends forth rays which have no power on the optic
nerve. They are what we call invisible rays ; and not un-
til the temperature of the wire has reached nearly 1,000°
Fahr. does it begin to glow with a faint, red light. The
rays which it emits prior to redness are all invisible rays,
which can warm the hand but cannot excite vision. When
the temperature of the wire is raised to whiteness, these
dark rays not only persist, but they are enormously aug-
mented in intensity. They constitute about 95 per cent of
the total radiation from the white-hot platinum wire. They
make up nearly 90 per cent of the emission from a brilliant
electric light. You can by no means have the light of the
carbons without this invisible emission as an accompani-
ment. The visible radiation is, as it were, built upon the
invisible as its necessary foundation.

It is easy to illustrate the growth in intensity of these
invisible rays as the visible ones enter the radiation and

^ More than thirty years ago the radiation from incandescent platinum was
admirably investigated by Dr. Draper of New York.

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT 471

augment in power. The transparency of the elementary
gases and metalloids — of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen,
chlorine, iodine, bromine, sulphur, phosphorus, and even
of carbon, for the invisible heat rays is extraordinary.
Dissolved in a proper vehicle, iodine cuts the visible ra-
diation sharply off, but allows the invisible free transmis-
sion. By dissolving iodine in sulphur. Professor Dewar
has recently added to the number of our effectual ray-
filters. The mixture may be made as black as pitch for
the visible, while remaining transparent for the invisible
rays. By such filters it is possible to detach the invisible
rays from the total radiation, and to watch their augmen-
tation as the light increases. Expressing the radiation
from a platinum wire when it first feels warm to the
touch — when, therefore, all its rays are invisible — by the
number 1, the invisible radiation from the same wire
raised to a white heat may be 600 or more.' It is not,
then, by the diminution or transformation of the non-
luminous emission that we obtain the luminous; the heat
rays maintain their ground as the necessary antecedents
and companions of the light rays. When detached and
concentrated, these powerful heat rays can produce all the
effects ascribed to the mirrors of Archimedes at the siege
of Syracuse. While incompetent to produce the faintest
glimmer of light, or to affect the most delicate air-ther-
mometer, they will inflame paper, burn up wood, and
even ignite combustible metals. When they impinge upon
a metal refractory enough to bear their shock without fu-
sion, they can raise it to a heat so white and luminous as
to yield, when analyzed, all the colors of the spectrum.

* See article "Radiation," vol. i.

472 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

In this way the dark rays emitted by the incandescent
carbons are converted into light rays of all colors. Still,
so powerless are these invisible rays to excite vision that
the eye has been placed at a focus competent to raise
platinum foil to bright redness, without experiencing any
visual impression. Light for light, no doubt, the amount
of heat imparted by the incandescent carbons to the air is
far less than that imparted by gas flames. It is less, be-
cause of the smaller size of the carbons, and of the com-
parative smallness of the quantity of fuel consumed in a
given time. It is also less because the air cannot pene-
trate the carbons as it penetrates a flame. The tempera-
ture of the flame is lowered by the admixture of a gas
which constitutes four-fifths of our atmosphere, and which,
while it appropriates and diffuses the heat, does not aid
in the combustion; and this lowering of the temperature by
the inert atmospheric nitrogen renders necessary the com-
bustion of a greater amount of gas to produce the neces-
sary light. In fact, though the statement may appear
paradoxical, it is entirely because of its enormous actual
temperature that the electric light seems so cool. It is
this temperature that renders the proportion of luminous
to non-luminous heat greater in the electric light than in
our brightest flames. The electric light, moreover, re-
quires no air to sustain it. It glows in the most perfect
air vacuum. Its light and heat are therefore not pur-
chased at the expense of the vitalizing constituent of the
atmosphere.

Two orders of minds have been implicated in the de-
velopment of this subject: first, the investigator and dis-
coverer, whose object is purely scientific, and who cares
little for practical ends; secondly, the practical mechani-

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT 473

cian, whose object is mainly industrial. It would be easy,
and probably in many cases true, to say that the one
wants to gain knowledge, while the other wishes to make
money; but I am persuaded that the mechanician not in-
frequently merges the hope of profit in the love of his
work. Members of each of these classes are sometimes
scornful toward those of the other. There is, for exam-
ple, something superb in the disdain with which Cuvier
hands over the discoveries of pure science to those who
apply them: "Your grand practical achievements are only
the easy application of truths not sought with a practical
intent — truths which their discoverers pursued for their
own sake, impelled solely by an ardor for knowledge.
Those who turned them into practice could not have dis-
covered them, while those who discovered them had
neither the time nor the inclination to pursue them to
a practical result. Your rising workshops, your peopled
colonies, your vessels which furrow the seas; this abun-
dance, this luxury, this tumult" — "this commotion," he
would have added, were he now alive, "regarding the
electric light" — "all come from discoverers in Science,
though all remain strange to them. The day that a dis-
covery enters the market they abandon it; it concerns
them no more."

In writing thus, Cuvier probably did not sufficiently
take into account the reaction of the applications of science
upon science itself. The improvement of an old instru-
ment or the invention of a new one is often tantamount to
an enlargement and refinement of the senses of the scien-
tific investigator. Beyond this, the amelioration of the
community is also an object worthy of the best efforts of
the human brain. Still, assuredly it is well and wise for

474 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE

a nation to bear in mind that those practical applications
which strike the public eye, and excite public admiration,
are the outgrowth of long antecedent labors begun, con-
tinued, and ended, under the operation of a purely intel-
lectual stimulus. ''Few," says Pasteur, "seem to compre-
hend the real origin of the marvels of industry and the
wealth of nations. I need no other proof of this than the
frequent employment in lectures, speeches and official lan-
guage of the erroneous expression, 'applied science.' A
statesman of the greatest talent stated some time ago that
in our day the reign of theoretic science had rightly yielded
place to that of applied science. Nothing, I venture to
say, could be more dangerous, even to practical life, than
the consequences which might flow from these words.
They show the imperious necessity of a reform in our
higher education. There exists no category of sciences to
which the name of 'applied science' could be given. We
have science and the applications of science which are
united as tree and fruit."

A final reflection is here suggested. We have among
us a small cohort of social regenerators — men of high
thoughts and aspirations — who would place the operations
of the scientific mind under the control of a hierarchy
which should dictate to the man of science the course
that he ought to pursue. How this hierarchy is to get
its wisdom they do not explain. They decry and de-
nounce scientific theories; they scorn all reference to
ether, and atoms, and molecules, as subjects lying far
apart from the world's needs; and yet such ultra-sensi-
ble conceptions are often the spur to the greatest discov-
eries. The source, in fact, from which the true natural
philosopher derives inspiration and unifying power is es-

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT 476

sentially ideal. Faraday lived in this ideal world. Nearly
half a century ago, when he first obtained a spark from
the magnet, an Oxford don expressed regret that such a
discovery should have been made, as it placed a new and
facile implement in the hands of the incendiary. To re-
gret, a Comtist hierarchy would have probably added
repression, sending Faraday back to his bookbinder's
bench as a more dignified and practical sphere of action
than peddling with a magnet. And yet it is Faraday's
spark which now shines upon our coasts, and promises to
illuminate our streets, halls, quays, squares, warehouses,
and, perhaps at no distant day, our homes.

END OF VOL. n. OF " FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE"

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