(Hisisf ^0ok ^o. 30 9Z LIBRARY RULES. This book may ke kept A/V*i.O. . . weeks. A fine of two cents will be charged for each day books or magazines are kept overtime. Two books may be borrowed from the Library at one time. Any book injured or lost shall be paid for by the person to whom it is charged. No member shall transfer his right to use the Libra] to any other person. ^, UMI^-^^ I 4 ■ - / ^ '#-^ longmang' (^MJitih Claggjcg HUXLEY'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS EDITED WITH NOTES AND INTRODUCTION BY E. H. KEMPER McCOMB, A.M. lEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH IN THE MANUAL TRAINING HIGH SCHOOL, INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA NEW YORK LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. LONDON BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 1910 ■•J -J rs0 Hs I I Copyright, 1910, BY LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. THE SCIENTIFIC PRESS ROBERT DRUMMOND AND COMPANY NEW YORK NGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS EDITED BY ASHLEY H. THORNDIKE, Ph.D., L.H.D. PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS ^CONTENTS (jj PAGE IXTRODUCTION vii I — Huxley's Life vii IJ II — Huxley's Personality. . . '. xvi III — Huxley's Work xx Bibliography xxiii Chronological Table xxiv Autobiography 3 On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowl- Y' edge [1866] 17 A Liberal Education; and Where to Find It [1868] 36 On a Piece of Chalk [1868] 62 (A Lecture delivered to workingmen of Norwich during the meeting of the British Association.) On the Physical Basis of Life [1868] 90 Scientific Education: Notes of an After-dinner Speech : [1869] 115 (Liverpool Philomathic Society.) ^Address on University Education [1876] 132 (Delivered at the opening of the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.) On Science and Art in Rel.a.tion to Education [1882] 153 (An address to the members of the Liverpool Institute.) Notes 1 75 > V ^ 3092. INTRODUCTION I In his Autobiography, the opening selection in this volume, Huxley gives what he considers an a,dequate account of his life. His article, however, while setting forth the main influences in his life and what he considers his chief achievements, is so modestly written that it does not give present-day readers an intimate enough view of this really great man and his valuable scientific work. To fill in the details necessary to present such a picture will be the aim of this sketch. Of his childhood and early education Huxley says very little in the Autobiography; indeed, of the latter there was little to say, so scanty had been the amount of his instruction. As a boy, however, he was an omnivorous reader and showed an inquiring turn of mind. At twelve years of age he awoke early to read in bed Hutton's Geology. A few years later he read Hamilton's Logic to such good effect that he acquired at this early age the beginning of what was to be a lasting interest in metaphysics. Such facts show the unusual mental keenness of young Huxley, but there are no records to prove him precocious. When fifteen he began to keep a fragmentary journal which now furnishes an interesting glimpse into his life. Here one reads of his teaching himself German, of his vii viii INTRODUCTION reading Carlyle, and of his pondering over a classifica- tion of knowledge. In this journal, his biographer says: "The boy displays three habits afterwards characteristic of the man: the habit of noting down any striking thought or saying he came across in the course of his reading; of speculating on the causes of things and discussing the right and wrong of existing institutions; and of making scientific experiments, using them to correct his theories." At sixteen he began both to study medicine with one of his brothers-in-law, a doctor, and to prepare for the entrance examinations to the University of London. In 1842 he and his brother obtained free scholarships in the Charing Cross Hospital and Medical College. Of his work here he tells in the Autobiography, mentioning his first scientific paper. This little paper was the account of his discovery of a new membrane at the base of the hair, since known as Huxley's layer. For a young medical student even this small discovery was a notable achievement. When he had finished his medical course, Huxley secured an appointment as Assistant Surgeon in the British Navy. After a few months' service in a naval hospital he was assigned to the ship Rattlesnake, in commission for survey work in Australian waters. On this cruise, in addition to his regular duties, Huxley was expected to assist the naturalist of the expedition. The ship sailed in 1846 and was away four years. But these were years of importance for the young scientist, the value of which Professor Virchow has summed up as follows: ''When Huxley himself left Charing Cross Hospital in 1846, he had enjoyed a rich measure of instruction in anatomy and physiology. Thus trained, he took the post of naval surgeon, and by the time he returned four years later, he had become a perfect zoologist and a keen-sighted INTRODUCTION ix ethnologist. How this was possible any one will readily understand who knows from his own experience how great the value of personal observation is for the development of independent and unprejudiced thought." Without adequate equipment for research, with very few books of reference, with his microscope lashed to the mast on the hot deck of a ship in tropical waters, Huxley during these years of unremitting work made observations and generalizations, the firm foundation upon which later workers have built. That this work was done before he was twenty-six shows what manner of man Huxley really was. Upon his return from his voyage there followed a four years' struggle to obtain a foothold in science. For some reason the government, while giving him leave of absence to complete the preparation of the papers embodying the results of his observations, refused to allow the promised ."^"'^liL to publish them. IN or, as a matter of principle, would the learned societies undertake the work. Hux- ley s Ousiinacy came to his assistance, for he worked away, striving by all honorable means for the recognition that was his just due. Out of this struggle grew the clear consciousness that the proper sphere of activity for him lay not in the Navy, but in science. How to secure a post that would enable him to devote himself to this work and at the same time to live, was the real proljlem. He wrote to his sister, " Science in England does everything — but pay. You may earn praise but not pudding." In truth he was earning praise. In 1851 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society and in the next year he was granted the Royal Medal — both highly coveted honors, bestowed only for original research and sought by all leaders in science; but this time awarded to a young man X INTRODUCTION of twenty-six solely for the m^rit of his work. His head was not turned, however, for he kept steadily at work, completing the investigations begun on the Rattlesnake. .•\I1 of this labor took much time and brought him little direct profit. But he was meeting many men prominent in many lines of scientific work and was filled with hope. He wrote to his sister: ' ' So fair a prospect opens out before me if I can only wait. I am beginning to know what work means, and see how much more may be done by steady, unceasing, and well-directed efforts. I thrive upon it too." In spite of his brave spirit, this was a desperate time of waiting, but in 1854 the uncomfortable period came to an end. In this year, having resolved to earn a living by writing and lecturing on science, Huxley resigned from the Navy. This step taken, Fortune seemed to smile upon him, for the Royal Society allowed him a temporary grant to publish his long-deferred papers. In a few muni^h^ when his friend Edward Forbes accepted a position in the University of Edinburgh, Huxley was appointed to succeed him in a post with the Geological Survey and as lecturer on Natural History at the Royal School of Mines. These appointments gave Huxley an income and the permanency in London he had so long desired. In 1855 he married Miss Heathorn, whom he had met in Sydney in 1847 ^^^ whom he had not seen since his ship had sailed from Aus- tralian waters in 1850. During the next few years Huxley was incessantly busy writing and lecturing. He established courses of lectures to workingmen w^hich proved very valuable and exceed- ingly popular. No small element, no doubt, in the pop- ularity of these lectures lay in their careful preparation. For Huxley's ideal was high,* and he thoroughly fortified INTRODUCTION xi his knowledge, not only by wide reading, but by constant original investigation. To support this exact knowledge, Huxley employed his great power of lucid and accurate, though popular, oral expression. The result is seen in readable scientific essays like that On a Piece of Chalk, found in this volume. Unfortunately about this time Huxley began to suffer from poor health, dating back, perhaps, to the attack of poisoning he mentions in the Autobiography. For these attacks walking-tours proved" the best medicine, and they took him a-field in England and Switzerland. His com- panion often was his friend Tyndall, the noted physicist. In 1859 ^^'^s published that epoch-making book by one of Huxley's friends, Charles Darwin, entitled The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. The publica- tion of this volume became for Huxley a momentous event. For it soon developed that he was to be the great champion of 'what came to be called "Darwinism." The scientific views his friend had expressed were so novel and antago- nistic to what people had long believed that they were attacked vigorously by many scientists and clergymen. Huxley, animated by an abiding and fearless love of truth, came to the defence of his friend. Using his great powers of thought and expression, Huxley explained and championed Darwin's views before various kinds of audiences. He wrote essays to promulgate this new doctrine. He debated the question with Bishop Wilberforce. He lectured upon it before the Royal Institution, at the University of Edin- burgh, and to workingmen. Of one of these lectures a competent critic said: " I never remember an address listened to with such applause." So clear and forceful was his popular presentation of Darwinism in the lectures to workingmen that the thin little volumes in which the xii INTRODUCTION lectures were published had wide vogue. Darwin him- self declared them " simply perfect," and added, in his letter to Huxley, ' ' but it is very good of me to say so, for I threw down No. IV with this reflection, 'What is the good of my writing a thundering big book, when everything is in this green little book, so despicable for its size ? ' " During the years Huxley was actively championing the cause of Darwinism, he had not lessened any of his scientific work. In fact, he had made the two lines of work go hand in hand. In 1862 he had been elected Pro- fessor of Comparative Anatomy at the College of Surgeons. The next year he published his first book, Man^s Place in Nature. Later he served on Royal Commissions on Sea Fisheries and on Science Education for Ireland. Elec- tion to scientific societies, not only in Great Britain, but also in other countries, honors, and degrees were conferred upon him. He wrote and published scores of scientific memoirs. The investigations upon w^hich most of these were based had led him into new fields in physiology, paleontology, the anatomy of both vertebrate and inverte- brate animals, osteology, ethnology, and other allied branches of science. So successfully indeed, was all this work done that by 1870 Huxley was probably the most prominent man in biological science in England. In the next ten years of Huxley's life the character of his work changed. Official and administrative duties increased, leaving him less time for research. His gov- ernment demanded his services on new commissions on science and education. He became secretary of the famous Royal Society, the founding of which he tells of in this volume in the essay On Improving Natural Knowl- edge. By example and precept he had previously aided in the efforts for reform in elementary education. So INTRODUCTION xili important did he consider this matter that he sought suc- cessfully for election to the first London School Board in 1870. He filled this important place with distinction, but only for a short time, being forced to retire by the breaking of his health. Notwithstanding his short term of service, his influence upon English education was enormous and lasting, for to-day many of the best features of the English educational system are those advocated by Huxley. His work for education included the training of teachers and pupils in science by actual work in a laboratory, then a new departure, but now considered the only possible method. Under the strain of this enormous amount of work, Huxley's health broke again. A complete rest being necessary, he visited Egypt and stopped in Italy on his way home. The money for this trip was presented to him by a few of his friends. Upon his return with health restored, he at once plunged into his usual round of in- cessant activity. Further recognition came to him too. He was made Lord Rector of Aberdeen University, and honorary degrees were bestowed upon him by the Uni- versities of Dublin and Edinburgh. In 1876 Huxley paid a visit to the United States to de- liver an address at the opening of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. He also delivered a few other addresses in other cities. He was much interested in Professor Marsh's collection of fossils at Yale College, by means of v/hich Marsh had established the American origin of the horse. The truths here presented to Huxley for the first time were so convincing that he rewrote at once a lecture he was to deliver in New York on the geological history of the horse. His reception everywhere was enthusiastic, due to the widespread acquaintance of the American people XIV INTRODUCTION with his works. His son says: "His visit was so far like a royal progress, that unless he entered a city disguised under the name of Jones or Smith, he was liable not merely to be interviewed, but to be called upon to 'address a few words to the citizens.' . . . His reception in America may be said to emphasize his definita establishment in the first rank of English thinkers. It was a signal testimony to the wide extent of his influence, hardly suspected, in- deed, by himself; an influence due above all to the fact that he did not allow his studies to stand apart from the moving problems of existence, but brought new and re- generating ideas into contact with life at every point, and that his championship of the new doctrines had at the same time been a championship of freedom and sincerity in thought and word against shams and self-deceptions of every kind. It was not so much the preacher of new doc- trines who was welcomed, as the apostle of veracity — not so much the teacher of science as the teacher of men." Upon his return from America Huxley took up again various phases of his educational work. In addition he undertook a study of the philosophy of Hume and wrote a biography of that great thinker that will long be a master- piece. Though his contributions to science based upon his own research were now not so voluminous as in the preceding period, his literary output increased greatly, and new scholastic honors were heaped upon him. For a few years longer Huxley continued his manifold activities. He was now at the very height of his power and fame. Keenly interested in all affairs of his time, he was constantly writing and speaking on scientific, medical, and technical education. He was elected President of the Royal Society in 1883, and in the same year was called on to deliver the Rede Lecture at the University INTRODUCTION XT of Cambridge, which had honored him four years earlier with the degree LL.D. Oxford University wanted to make him the head of one of its great colleges. These are signally noteworthy honors and clearly show the rank the man had achieved, for Huxley himself was not a Uni- versity man. Heavy personal losses came to Huxley in these years in the death of Spottiswoode, Francis Maitland Balfour, and Darwin. His own health was breaking again, for his life-long foe, dyspepsia, would not yield to the usual treatment. A visit to Italy gave only partial relief, so on the advice of his physician, he resigned on his sixtieth birthday, in 1885, all his positions demanding active work. Retiring in feeble health upon a government pension by no means meant a life of inactivity for Huxley. He still had important committee work to do. He was en- gaged in a controversy with Gladstone over the evolution of religion, an intellectual contest which he enjoyed rarely. Other similar discussions occupied part of his time. His health did not improve, but with his removal from London to Eastbourne in 1889, he gained more freedom from illness. Here he lived quietly, occasionally publishing a volume of essays or delivering a lecture. In 1893-94 he revised and reissued in nine volumes, under the title Collected Essays, his previously published articles and essays. More honors came to him, for in 1892 he was made a privy councillor, and the Copley and Darwin medals of the Royal Society were awarded him. In the quietness of Eastbourne with better health, sur- rounded by all the accompaniments of well-spent years, ''honor, love, obedience, troops of friends," Huxley hoped to pass the Indian Summer of his life. His happiness, however, was sadly m.arred hy the death of friends like xvi INTRODUCTION Jowett, the great scholar, and Tyndall, the scientist, who had been to Huxley more like a brother than a friend. But he was not to mourn them long, for in less than two years, after a short illness, Huxley died peacefully on June 29, 1895, at Eastbourne. n After reading the preceding sketch, one is apt to ask what sort of man Huxley was. Since he performed so much work and expended so much energy, was he merely a stupendous, dry-as-dust, cold logic-engine? Was he really a man as other men are? To the first question, the answer is an emphatic no; to the second an equally emphatic yes. At the same time, however, Huxley was a perfect illustration of his own saying, ' ' Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not." He was, it is true, so filled with abundant enero-y that no one can wonder at his saying, when he saw the tugs moving the larger boats in New York Harbor, doing the work of the day that had to be done, "If I were not a man, I think J should like to be a tug." But even a hasty reading of Leonard Huxley's admirable Life of his father makes it clear that Thomas Huxley was an all-round man, "a noble, warm-hearted human being." He was a man absolutely simple and natural, witli a "veritable passion for truth." In a time of deepest per- sonal sorrow, when writing to a friend, he said, "If wife and child, and name and fame were all to be lost to me, one after the other, still I will not lie." His interc^onrse with men, his letters to his friends and to his family disclose INTRODUCTION xvii him always single-minded in purpose, beautiful and spotless in intogrity, whole-souled and hearty, full of energy and enthusiasm, unselfish to a fault, and unfailingly sympathetic. It was this last characteristic that affected John Fiske, the historian, who declared Huxley " a powerful individ- uality, a poetic soul one could not help loving." Rounding out and illuminating these splendid qualities was a sense of humor, keen and irrepressible. It flashed out in his lectures, in his conversation, and in his letters. Of course, any man with such a charming personality would attract many friends, and Huxley was no exception. Darwin, Tyndall, Herbert Spencer, Sir John Lubbock Hooker — all great men in science; Jowett, the scholar; Matthew Arnold and Tennyson, the poets; Lecky, John Fiske, and J. R. Green, the historians; Alma Tadema, the artist; Leslie Stephen, Mark Pattison, Frederic Harrison, the writers, were among the intimates who used to gather informally on Sunday evenings in the Huxley home in London. Here old and young, for the friends of the Huxley children came too, indulged in most delightful talk. There was no limit to the range of subjects discussed, though if the talk turned upon science, the modest host, always the very center and life of the company, was not the man to bring it in. Politics, religion, art, literature, music, poetry, all furnished themes for the rare talk heard in the little library. Ever ready for his share in the conversa- tion, be it serious or light, Huxley ahvays left John Fiske, a man of great intelligence and wide knowledge, wondering at the ''fullness and accuracy of his information and the keenness of his judgments." This seems an extraordinary statement, but it must be remembered that Huxley was not a mere scientist, but a scholar. He was self-taught. As a boy, he learned xviii INTRODUCTION German and Latin, and later he mastered French and Italian, not for the sake of the languages, but to be able to know at first hand the scientific works contained therein. In middle life he mastered Greek to read Aristotle, and then read Homer. History, philosophy, and literature he made his own with great ease, for he had that rare power of intense concentration which enabled him to read a book " through at a gallop." The words he did not retain, but the substance of all that interested him was fixed in memory. He read everything, his son relates, '' from fairy tales to the last volume on metaphysics." Music and art appealed to him, and he had cultivated a natural talent for drawing. But reading was his chief recreation, a change of mental occupation affording him sufficient rest. To appreciate fully the qualities of Huxley as man, friend, scientist, and scholar, one needs to read his de- lightful letters. They are indeed excellent; they are bright, pithy, and always happily worded. How they turn out to be so uniformly excellent is the wonder, for they were dashed off in spare moments between important duties. So fascinating are these letters that the tempta- tion to quote is almost irresistible. But should one start, and one might begin on any page, the question where to end would become a serious difficulty, since something characteristic and attractive might be taken from every letter. This pleasure of selection must be put aside here, but the reader is urged to enjoy for himself the letters in Leonard Huxley's biography of his father. In personal appearance Huxley was distinguished. Slender but not tall, he had a commanding air. He wore his abundant hair rather long and brushed straight back. His face was alive and his dark eyes flashing; his mouth, large and firm in repose, was capable of breaking into a INTRODUCTION xix lovable smile. Here is an admirable picture of him as he appeared in his prime before the Royal Institution to lecture. *'The square forehead, the square jaw, the tense lines of the mouth, the deep flashing dark eyes, the impression of something more than strength he gave you, an impres- sion of sincerity, of solid force, of immovability, yet with the gentleness arising from the serene consciousness of his strength — all this belonged to Huxley and to him alone. The eyes were those of one accustomed to command, of one having authority, and not fearing on occasion to use it. The hair swept carelessly away from the broad fore- head and grew rather long behind, yet the length did not suggest, as it often does, effeminacy. He was masculine in everything — look, gesture, speech." As he grew older and his hair turned gray, his features took on an air of benignity. Time softened some of the lines and tenseness of the face, but he lost none of his grace and distinction. Such was the personality and appearance of the man who, at the opening of the year 1857, when thirty-one years of age, wrote in his private journal: "To smite all humbugs, however big; to give a nobler tone to science; to set an example of abstinence from petty personal con- troversies, and of toleration for everything but lying; to be indifferent as to whether the work is recognized as mine or not, so long as it is done — are these m.y aims? i860 will show." i860 did show, and in 1895 at his de^th this epitaph that he had \mtten for a fellow scientist, "He had intellect to comprehend his highest duty distinctly, and force of character to do it; which of us dare ask for a higher summary of his life than that?" expressed the common opinion of all who knew Huxley. XX INTRODUCTION III The work that Huxley did for the cause of science was very great and very important. Beginning with an exceed- ingly wide first-hand study of the anatomy of invertebrates, he passed on to the study of that of vertebrates. '' It was he who, properly speaking, founded modern embryology," but the value of his work in this field can be fully appre- ciated only by experts. He made important contributions to ethnology, biology, botany, animal physiology, phys- iography, and zoology, both vertebrate and invertebrate; contributions in nearly every one of these fields important enough to have given him a reputation as a scientist of the first rank. Of his scientific research, "a great deal was not only valuable, but epoch-making. He left his mark on almost every important group of the animal kingdom, and specialist workers with the most diverse interests have built and will continue to build on the foundation he laid." Indeed, so many have already done so that his original work has been almost buried under that of those who have followed him. But how broad that foundation was and what an immense amount of original work Huxley actually did, anyone can see who will take the trouble to glance over the list of his scientific memoirs in his biography, a list of titles which covers ten pages. And here it seems well to quote from Sir Michael Poster: "Whatever bit of life he [Huxley] touched in his search, protozoan, polyp, mollusc, crustacean, fish, reptile,, beast, and man — and there are few living things that he did not touch — he shed light on it, and left his mark. There is not one, or hardly one, of the many things he has written which may not be read again to-day with pleasure and with profit, and not once or twice only in such a reading, it will be felt that the INTRODUCTION xxi progress of science has given to words written long ago a strength and meaning even greater than that which they seemed to have w^hen first they were read." In addition to his work in research, Huxley did much to advance the cause of evolution, that epoch-making doctrine which has exerted widespread influence on all phases of activity since 1859. Having accepted the theory of his friend Darwin, Huxley became its expositor. He preached it, expounded it, made it the basis of lectures to workingmen and of discourses in America, until his name has become linked almost as inseparably as Darwin's to the term evolution. Believing, as he said, that " science is nothing but trained and organized common-sense," Huxley spared no pains to promulgate this doctrine. He delivered many courses of popular lectures, clothing his ideas in language all might understand. His articles in the magazines and reviews likewise aided in the dissemination of the new and stirring ideas of science. By such means as these Huxley did a great service in bringing the English people of his day to realize the vital importance of science in their every-day life. The desire to reach a larger audience with his message led him to publish, in 1870, a number of his articles and addresses under the title Lay Sermons. From this book the selections included in this volume were chosen. They well illustrate the qualities that made Huxley such an admirable writer and speaker. Having interesting and important subject matter, he took pains to give it expression at once worthy, adequate, and powerful. So well has he succeeded that his own writing furnishes sufficient proof for his aphorism, " Science and literature are not two things, but two sides of one thing." Most frequently the pages easiest to read cost the most xxii INTRODUCTION pains In preparation. Such was the case with Huxley, who once wrote: ''I have a great love and respect for my native tongue, and take great pains to use it properly. Sometimes I write essays half a dozen times before I can get them into proper shape." His only rule of style was to have clear conceptions and then to express them. Clear- ness, simplicity, dignity, conciseness are not gifts of the gods, but only result from much careful practice. By no other method did Huxley acquire these powers, for after one of his early lectures a note was sent to the authorities asking ''not to have that young man again." But he accepted criticism from, any source, and persevered until he became one of the masters of English prose. Three of the addresses in this volume, those On a Piece of Chalk, A Liberal Education, and The Physical Basis of Life, his son considers to represent best Huxley's mature style, for in them he was able to say ''exactly what he meant, neither too much nor too little, without confusion and without obscurity. This was the secret of his lucidity." x\ll of these addresses were, no doubt, delivered with the ease, fluency and effectiveness for which Huxley was noted. What his manner was has been accurately described by Professor Mivart, who says: "He was my very ideal of a lecturer: Distinct in utterance, with an agreeable voice, lucid as it w^as possible to be in exposition, with admirably chosen language, sufficiently rapid, yet never hurried, often impressive in manner, yet never otherwise than com- pletely natural, and sometimes allowing his audience a glimpse of that rich fund of humor ever ready to well forth when occasion pjermitted, sometimes accompanied with an extra gleam in his bright dark eyes, sometimes expressed with a dryness and gravity of look which gave it a double zest." BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE The brief list of books that follows is complete enough to furnish accurate and full information on Huxley and his work. Life and Letters of Thomas H. Huxley, by Leonard Huxley. Two volumes. D. Appleton & Company, Thomas Henry Huxley, by Edward Clodd. Dodd, Mead & Company. Thomas H. Huxley, by J. R. Ainsworth Davis. English Men of Science. E. P.' Dutton & Company. Thomas Henry Huxley; a Sketch of his Life and Work, by P. Chalmers Mitchell. G. P. Putnam's Sons. In addition to these books, there may be found in any good library, through Poole's Index, a great number of reminiscences and other articles. xxiii < a o a, M Z O o -^ o O -7- !A U < c t/3 O t3 ^% c S-o ^ CD c c W 0) < fi^ O c-5 .2 rt c o ni 13 O CO 73 c H &<; t^l Tt* >. 00 Ui 00 to O "o .0 . ~ lO iJ CO '^. ^J C/D ^1 o ^ ^ •-J cj^ ii a ■:o :2 ■^ r>i ^ fc "4 cc 00 X Gs C^s «5 iQ «.« M C w c« C O m ffi XXIV CHROXOLOGICAL TABLE XXV 2 [A 1-1 (U a o z -!-> < > > O X >. < o, ^^ Pi u i: o ^ rt ^ C C E2 ^ - c o -5 2 era o y f^ '^ . nj V, o ^ CO (U 3 ^ O ■* D. t/3 X 0) ^ c ^ kJ ^i^'-l li, f-, X ^ OS •^ I s !0 0, to to .r- tH ^ ^ 8 S S ..-I . m 8 s ^ ^ 'J a « Ttl -I^ "-Q "to •.a,^ _>> S > "-J ,^ 'M 'T ^ X I- u C o m ^ - > fe nj o o o > rt o P^ c ^ ^ •V t! 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'^rt CO Ph ^-n •Ji C .s £ 2 Is 72 '3; u _ ''' 3 rt o o >. ° [a M rt O O w< ^ ^ §^ O 'A • u •# O ■" O -M O 00 o o c s; < (.; m i) § 'II 1 <5 LO GO 5£ fe <^ C O j^ yi g3 1^1 O O E d s< .S ?3 'o >■ W > c O D oS So nJ O a a, 5 x > a o X, 0) ^ . Pi-= 5 10 03 'ifi CJ ^ GO 5 % X 2^ " 2 oi rt C s a ..a C s- o '-' o > c c 53 ;^ so o u u fin r-H t> X ^- 00 >,-Q ^ ■^ kera ettys ation c '5? rt -^ *j y i« ^ ^ g < x6 00 OO 2; .. Q 5 C >. 03 «o O CD >i; 00 00 C!h c rt - S o y^ 2 "=^ to;-" ^ 1- ':^ ■ 0) ^ X 2^> 0) Q c/: O .^^ a • (to (M re > CD CD "-1 a 3 '-2 t3 ^ >> .. 2 S c c o c - - C rt c 2 >-<' g ^ .. -Si CD << CD r^ to OO OO -^ § s-^ a| to -»» u •S a .m Si O • ^' « to o ^ <^ "^.^i : Ring Cultur orna D Poem ng Cam cent mar ise. t^ to >^ W) M .. •j' C 13 0) J.J O ■^^ s l-o fe ^^ ■^ i e g 6 '6^ ^ ^ J ■.o CO to X to 0 ?^ o 1^ C5 '•/', O X Pi 3 c "^ 0 ^_^ 13 . (U M ^-> o XI .S I- 3 ci CI. < [i( . cS c^ r*> O CD CD C/} X X ^ -4 -J 4-> 4) u C (U o 42 13 :^' - ? i hJ cs a >. °2 CD ft eq y-> t^ tq X X X CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE XXIX < Victoria ric light- ladstone d time), ar Alexander ent Garlield ^and Act. ^3 n died. gypt. p^; > o q;0 > 1-" < x> ■ o 0 12 O c C -^ M p< -t-> . a TJ 4) O o J3 •■SO c -^ 1- c c m ,1^ '^^ '35 &13 -n as > I-. M g fi^^PQ S O Q ^■tim p- C to < 1 :5 1^ s lO '■o O ^ t ^ ■^ Cj o ^ • ? 5 '2 "S to s < .2 ..-2 ! .si ■■o CqQ o o C « c g . '^ o r. tL C > Is J O ffi ^ Oi.^o UO X C/2 M i-~< Z CO di^ CO X X X 2C X ~ X X X X ; ^H 1— t '^ ^^ 1 c o >. •r. 15 >, o 0< '/;' v-; Co 05 O > o -t-J c ■^ J ^! — r^ o o "^ "o Q "^ Q Z .s s 'o -6% CI ito X u c (LI b a •n s 2 M 'Tn ^ '^ ^ c w y rt ^ --3 a; > J- M 'S o c r< o -e •- ^ ^ o o . ^ r- di Oi P^ M lO > . . . .:h K-; CO r^ CO 05 tH CC O X P5 a t^ X W CO X 00 X X X X I— 1 ,-< rt '-' '-' i-H XXX CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 7i ^ C o ^^ ^ U w. > c u -a > 0) T3 -S- C c« K O (U 3 i) rt t/; S -+ ? c Pi ISO oi CO > o; P^ Ci Oi G5 « Cfc 00 GC AUTOBIOGRAPHY SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY AUTOBIOGRAPHY And when I consider, in one view, the many things .... which I have upon my hands, I feel the burlesque of being employed in this manner at my time of life. But, in another view, and taking in all circumstances, these things, as trifling as they may appear, no less than things of greater importance, seem to be put upon me to do. . . . — Bishop Butler to the Duchess of Somerset. The "many things" to which the Duchess's corre- spondent here refers are the repairs and improvements of the episcopal seat at Auckland. I doubt if the great apolo- gist, greater in nothing than in the simple dignity of his character, would have considered the writing an account of himself as a thing which could be put upon him to do what- ever circumstances might be taken in. But the good bishop lived in an age when a man might write books and yet be permitted to keep his private existence to himself; in the pre- Boswellian epoch, when the germ of the photographer lay in the womb of the distant future, and the interviewer who pervades our age was an unforeseen, indeed, unimaginable, birth of time. At present, the most convinced believer in the aphorism " Bene qui latuit, bene vixit," is not always able to act up to it. An importunate person informs him that his portrait is about to be published and will be accompanied by a biog- raphy which the importunate person proposes to write. The sufferer knows what that means; either he undertakes to revise the "biography" or he does not. In the former case. 4 • AUTOBIOGRAPHY he makes himself responsible; in the latter, he allows the pub- lication of a mass of more or less fulsome inaccuracies for which he will be held responsible by those who are familiar with the prevalent art of self-advertisement. On the whole, it may be better to get over the " burlesque of being employed in this manner" and do the thing himself. It was by reflections of this kind that, some years ago, I was led to \vrite and permit the publication of the subjoined sketch. I was born about eight o'clock in the morning on the 4th of May, 1825, at Eahng, which was, at that time, as quiet a little country village as could be found within half-a-dozen miles of Hyde Park Corner. Now it is a suburb of London with, I believe, 30,000 inhabitants. My father was one of the masters in a large semi-public school which at one time had a high reputation. I am not aware that any portents preceded my arrival in this world, but, in my childhood, I remember hearing a traditional account of the manner in which I lost the chance of an endowment of great practical value. The windows of my mother's room were open, in consequence of the unusual warmth of the weather. For the same reason, probably, a neighbouring beehive had swarmed, and the new colony, pitching on the window-sill, was making its way into the room when the horrified nurse shut down the sash. If that well-meaning woman had only abstained from her ill-timed interference, the swarm might have settled on my lips, and I should have been endowed with that mellif- luous eloquence which, in this country, leads far more surely than worth, capacity, or honest work, to the highest places in Clmrch and State. But the opportunity was lost, and I have been obliged to content myself through life with saying what I mean in the plainest of plain language, than which, AUTOBIOGRAPHY 5 r I suppose, there is no habit more ruinous to a man's pros- pects of advancement. Why I was christened Thomas Henry I do not know; but it is a curious chance that my parents should have fixed for my usual denomination upon the name of that particular Apostle with whom I have always felt most sympathy. Physically and mentally I am the son of my mother so completely — even down to peculiar movements of the hands, which made their appearance in me as I reached the age she had when I noticed them — that I can hardly find any trace of my father in myself, except an inborn faculty for drawing, which unfortunately, in my case, has never been cultivated, a hot temper, and that amount of tenacity of purpose which unfriendly observers sometimes call obstinacy. My mother was a slender brunette, of an emotional and energetic temperament, and possessed of the most piercing black eyes I ever saw in a woman's head. With no more education than other women of the middle classes in her day, she had an excellent mental capacity. Her most dis- tinguishing characteristic, however, was rapidity of thought. If one ventured to suggest she had not taken much time to arrive at any conclusion, she would say, "I cannot help it, things flash across me." That peculiarity has been passed on to me in full strength; it has often stood me in good stead; it has sometimes played me sad tricks, and it has always been a danger. But, after all, if my time were to come over again, there is nothing I would less willingly part with than my inheritance of mother wit. I have next to nothing to say about my childhood. In later years my mother, looking at me almost reproachfully, would sometimes say, ''Ah! you were such a pretty boy! " whence I had no difl&culty in concluding that I had not fulfilled my 6 AUTOBIOGRAPHY early promise in the matter of looks. In fact, I have a dis- tinct recollection of certain curls of which I was vain, and of a conviction that I closely resembled that handsome, courtly gentleman. Sir Herbert Oakley, who was vicar of our parish, and who was as a god to us country folk, because he was occasionally visited by the then Prince George of Cambridge. I remember turning my pinafore \\Tong side forwards in order to represent a surplice, and preaching to my mother's maids in the kitchen as nearly as possible in Sir Herbert's manner one Sunday morning when the rest of the family were at church. That is the earliest indication I can call to mind of the strong clerical afl&nities which my friend Mr. Herbert Spencer has always ascribed to me, though I fancy they have for the most part remained in a latent state. My regular school training was of the briefest, perhaps fortunately, for though my way of life has made me ac- quainted with all sorts and conditions of men, from the highest to the lowest, I deliberately affirm that the society I fell into at school was the worst I have ever known. We boys were average lads, with much the same inherent capacity for good and evil as any others; but the people who were set over us cared about as much for our intellectual and moral welfare as if they were baby-farmers. We were left to the operation of the struggle for existence among ourselves, and bullying was the least of the ill practices current among us. Almost the only cheerful reminiscence in connection with the place which arises in my mind is that of a battle I had with one of my classmates, who had bullied me until I could stand it no longer. I was a very slight lad, but there was a wild- cat element in me which, when roused, made up for lack of weight, and I licked my adversary effectually. However, one of my first experiences of the extremely rough-and-ready nature of justice, as exhibited by the course of things in AUTOBIOGRAPHY 7 general, arose out of the fact that I — the victor — had a black eye, while he — the vanquished — had none, so that I got into disgrace and he did not. We made it up, and thereafter I was unmolested. One of the greatest shocks I ever received in my life was to be told a dozen years afterwards by the groom who brought me my horse in a stable-yard in Sydney that he was my quondam antagonist. He had a long story of fam- ily misfortune to account for his position, but at that time it was necessary to deal very cautiously with mysterious strangers in New South Wales, and on inquiry I found that the unfortunate young man had not only been "sent out," but had undergone more than one colonial conviction. As I grew older, my great desire was to be a mechanical engineer, but the fates were against this and, w^hile very young, I comr^enced the study of medicine under a medical brother-in-law. But, though the Institute of Mechanical Engineers would certainly not own me, I am not sure that I have not all along been a sort of mechanical engineer in par- tibus infidelium. I am now occasionally horrified to think how very little I ever knew or cared about medicine as the art of healing. The only part of my professional course which really and deeply interested me was physiology, w^hich is the mechanical engineering of living machines; and, not- withstanding that natural science has been my proper busi- ness, I am afraid there is very little of the genuine naturalist in me. I never collected anything, and species work was always a burden to me; what I cared for was the architec- tural and engineering part of the business, the working out the wonderful unity of plan in the thousands and thousands of diverse living constructions, and the modifications of simi- lar apparatuses to serve diverse ends. The extraordinary attraction I felt towards the study of the intricacies of living structure nearly proved fatal to me at the outset. I was a 8 AUTOBIOGRAPHY mere boy — I think between thirteen and fourteen years of age — when I was taken by some older student friends of mine to the first post-mortem examination I ever attended. All my life I have been most unfortunately sensitive to the disagreeables which attend anatomical pursuits, but on this occasion my curiosity overpowered all other feelings, and I spent two or three hours in gratifying it. I did not cut my- self, and none of the ordinary symptoms of dissection-poison supervened, but poisoned I was somehow, and I remember sinking into a strange state of apathy. By way of a last chance, I was sent to the care of some good, kind people, friends of my father's, who lived in a farmhouse in the heart of Warwickshire. I remember staggering from my bed to the window on the bright spring morning after my arrival, and throwing open the casement. Life seemed to come back on the wings of the breeze, and to this day the faint odour of wood-smoke, like that which floated across the farm-yard in the early morning, is as good to me as the "sweet south upon a bed of violets." I soon recovered, but for years I suffered from occasional par- oxysms of internal pain, and from that time my constant friend, hypochondriacal dyspepsia, commenced his half century of co-tenancy of my fleshly tabernacle. Looking back on my "Lehrjahre," I am sorry to say that I do not think that any account of my doings as a student would tend to edification. In fact, I should dis- tinctly warn ingenuous youth to avoid imitating my example. I worked extremely hard when it pleased me, and when it did not — which was a very frequent case — I was extremely idle (unless making caricatures of one's pastors and masters is to be called a branch of industry), or else wasted my energies in wTong directions. I read everything I could lay hands upon, including novels, and took up all sorts of AUTOBIOGRAPHY 9 pursuits to drop them again quite as speedily. No doubt it was very largely my own fault, but the only instruction from which I ever obtained the proper effect of education was that which I received from Mr. Wharton Jones, who was the lecturer on physiology at the Charing Cross School of Medicine. The extent and precision of his knowledge impressed me greatly, and the severe exactness of his method of lecturing was quite to my taste. I do not know that I have ever felt so much respect for anybody as a teacher before or since. I worked hard to obtain his appro- bation, and he was extremely kind and helpful to the young- ster who, I am afraid, took up more of his time than he had any right to do. It was he who suggested the publication of my first scientific paper — a very little one — in the Medical Gazette of 1845, and most kindly corrected the literary faults which abounded in it, short as it was; for at that time, and for many years afterwards, I detested the trouble of writing, and would take no pains over it. It was in the early spring of 1846, that, having finished my obligatory medical studies and passed the first M.B. examination at the London University — though I was still too young to qualify at the College of Surgeons — I was talking to a fellow-student (the present eminent physician. Sir Joseph Fayrer), and wondering what I should do to meet the imperative necessity for earning my own bread, when my friend suggested that I should write to Sir William Burnett, at that time Director-General for the Medical Service of the Navy, for an appointment. I thought this rather a strong thing to do, as Sir William was personally unknown to me, but my cheery friend would not listen to my scruples, so I went to my lodgings and wrote the best letter I could devise. A few days afterwards I received the usual official circular of acknowledgment, but at the 10 AUTOBIOGRAPHY bottom there was written an instruction to call at Somerset House on such a day. I thought that looked like business, so at the appointed time I called and sent in my card, while I waited in Sir William's ante-room. He was a tall, shrewd- looking old gentleman, with a broad Scotch accent — and I think I see him now as he entered with my card in his hand. The first thing he did was to return it, with the frugal reminder that I should probably find it useful on some other occasion. The second was to ask whether I was an Irishman. I suppose the air of modesty about my appeal must have struck him. I satisfied the Director- General that I was English to the backbone, and he made some inquiries as to my student career, finally desiring me to hold myself ready for examination. Having passed this, I was in Her Majesty's Service, and entered on the books of Nelson's old ship, the Victory, for duty at Haslar Hospital, about a couple of months after I made my application. My official chief at Haslar was a very remarkable person, the late Sir John Richardson, an excellent naturalist, and far-famed as an indomitable Arctic traveller. He was a silent, reserved man, outside the circle of his family and intimates; and, having a full share of youthful vanity, I was extremely disgusted to find that "Old John," as we irreverent youngsters called him, took not the slightest notice of my worshipful self either the first time I attended him, as it was my duty to do, or for some weeks afterwards. I am afraid to think of the lengths to which my tongue may have run on the subject of the churlishness of the chief, who was, in truth, one of the kindest-hearted and most considerate of men. But one day, as I was crossing the hospital square. Sir' John stopped me, and heaped coals of fire on my head by telling me that he had tried to get me one of the resident appointments, much coveted by the assistant- AUTOBIOGRAPHY 11 surgeons, but that the Admiralty had put in another man. "However," said he, "I mean to keep you here till I can get you something you will like," and^ turned upon his heel without waiting for the thanks I stammered out. That explained how it was I had not been packed off to the West Coast of Africa like some of my juniors, and why, eventually, I remained altogether seven months at Haslar, After a long interval, during which "Old John" ignored my existence almost as completely as before, he stopped me again as we met in a casual way, and describing the service on which the Rattlesnake was likely to be employed, said that Captain Owen Stanley, who was to command the ship, had asked him to recommend an assistant surgeon who knew something of science; would I like that? Of course I jumped at the offer. "Very well, I give you leave; go to London at once and see Captain Stanley." I wxnt, saw my future commander, who was very civil to me, and promised to ask that I should be appointed to his ship, as in due time I was. It is a singular thing that, during the few months of my stay at Haslar, I had among my messmates two future Directors-General of the Medical Service of the Navy (Sir Alexander Armstrong and Sir John Watt- Reid), with the present President of the College of Physi- cians and my kindest of doctors. Sir Andrew Clark. Life on board Her Majesty's ships in those days was a very different affair from what it is now, and ours was exceptionally rough, as we were often many months with- out receiving letters or seeing any civilised people but ourselves. In exchange, we had the interest of being about the last voyagers, I suppose, to whom it could be possible to meet with people who knew nothing of fire-arms — as we did on the south Coast of New Guinea — and of making acquaintance with a variety of interesting savage and semi- 12 AUTOBIOGRAPHY civilised people. But, apart from experience of this kind and the opportunities offered for scientific work, to me, personally, the cruise was extremely valuable. It was good for me to live under sharp discipline; to be down on the realities of existence by living on bare necessaries; to find out how extremely well worth living life seemed to be when one woke up from a night's rest on a soft plank, with the sky for canopy and cocoa and weevilly biscuit the sole prospect for breakfast; and, more especially, to learn to work for the sake of what I got for myself out of it, even if it all went to the bottom and I along with it. My brother officers were as good fellows as sailors ought to be and generally are, but, naturally, they neither knew nor cared anything about my pursuits, nor understood why I should be so zealous in pursuit of the objects w^hich my friends, the middies, christened "Buffons," after the title conspicuous on a volume of the "Suites a Buffon," which stood on my shelf in the chart room. •During the four years of our absence, I sent home com- munication after communication to the "Linnean Society," with the same result as that obtained by Noah when he sent the raven out of his ark. Tired at last of hearing nothing about them, I determined to do or die, and in 1849 I drew up a more elaborate paper and forwarded it to the Royal Society. This was my dove, if I had only known it. But owing to the movements of the ship, I heard nothing of that either until my return to England in the latter end of the year 1850, when I found that it was printed and published, and that a huge packet of separate copies awaited me. When I hear some of my young friends complain of want of sympathy and encouragement, I am inclined to think that my naval life was not the least valuable part of my education. A UTOBIOGRA PHY 13 Three years after my return were occupied by a battle between my scientific friends on the one hand and the Admirahy on the other, as to whether the latter ought, or ought not, to act up to the spirit of a pledge they had given to encourage officers who had done scientific work by con- tributing to the expense of publishing mine. At last the Admiralty, getting tired, I suppose, cut short the discussion by ordering me to join a ship, which thing I declined to do, and as Rastignac, in the Pere Goriot, says to Paris, I said to London "a notis deux.'' I desired to obtain a Professor- ship of either Physiology or Comparative Anatom.y, and as vacancies occurred I applied, but in vain. My friend. Professor Tyndall, and I were candidates at the same time, he for the Chair of Physics and I for that of Natural History in the University of Toronto, which, fortunately, as it turned out, would not look at either of us. I say fortunately, not from any lack of respect for Toronto, but because I soon made up my mind that London was the place for me, and hence I have steadily declined the inducements to leave it, which have at various times been offered. At last, in 1854, on the translation of my warm friend Edward Forbes, to Edinburgh, Sir Henry De la Beche, the Director-General of the Geological Survey, offered me the post Forbes vacated of Paleontologist and Lecturer on Natural History. I re- fused the former point blank, and accepted the latter only provisionally, telling Sir Henry that I did not care for fossils, and that I should give up Natural History as soon as I could get a physiological post. But I held the office for thirty- one years, and a large part of my work has been paleonto- logical. At that time I disliked public speaking, and had a firm conviction that I should break down every time I opened my mouth. I believe I had every fault a speaker could 14 AUTOBIOGRAPHY have (except talking at random or indulging in rhetoric), when I spoke to the first important audience I ever addressed, on a Friday evening at the Royal Institution in 1852. Yet, I must confess to having been guilty, nialgre moi, of as much public speaking as most of my contemporaries, and for the last ten years it ceased to be so much of a bugbear to me. I used to pity myself for having to go through this training, but I am now more disposed to compassionate the un- fortunate audiences, especially my ever-friendly hearers at the Royal Institution, who were the subjects of my orator- ical experiments. The last thing that it would be proper for me to do would be to speak of the work of my life, or to say at the end of the day whether I think I have earned my wages or not. Men are said to be partial judges of themselves. Young men may be, I doubt if old men are. Life seems terribly foreshortened as they look back, and the mountain they set themselves to climb in youth turns out to be a mere spur of immeasurably higher ranges when, with failing breath, they reach the top. But if I may speak of the objects I have had more or less definitely in view since I began the ascent of my hillock, they are briefly these: To promote the increase of natural knowledge and to forward the application of scientific methods of investigation to all the problems of life to the best of my ability, in the conviction which has grown with my growth and strengthened with my strength, that there is no alleviation for the sufferings of mankind except veracity of thought and of action, and the resolute facing of the world as it is when the garment of make-believe by which pious hands have hidden its uglier features is stripped off. It is with this intent that I have subordinated any reason- able, or unreasonable, ambition for scientific fame which AUTOBIOGRAPHY 15 I may have permitted myself to entertain to other ends; to the popularisation of science; to the development and organisation of scientific education; to the endless series of battles and skirmishes over evolution; and to untiring op- position to that ecclesiastical spirit, that clericalism, which in England, as everywhere else, and to whatever denomi- nation it may belong, is the deadly enemy of science. In striving for the attainment of these objects, I have been but one among many, and I shall be well content to be remembered, or even not remembered, as such. Circum- stances, among which I am proud to reckon the devoted kindness of many friends, have led to my occupation of various prominent positions, among which the Presidency of the Royal Society is the highest. It would be mock mod- esty on my part, with these and other scientific honours which have been bestowed upon me, to pretend that I have not succeeded in the career which I have followed, rather because I was driven into it than of my own free will; but I am afraid I should not count even these things as marks of success if I could not hope that I had somewhat helped that movement of opinion which has been called the New Reformation. SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS ON THE ADVISABLENESS OF IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE [1866] This time two hundred years ago — in the beginning of January, 1666 — those of our forefathers who inhabited this great and ancient city, took breath between the shocks of two fearful calamities: one not quite past, although its fury had abated; the other to come. Within a few yards of the very spot on which we are assembled, so the tradition runs, that painful and deadly malady, the plague, appeared in the latter months of 1664; and, though no new visitor, smote the people of England, and especially of her capital, with a violence unknown before, in the course of the following year. The hand of a master has pictured what happened in those dismal months; and in that truest of fictions, The History of the Plague Year, Defoe shows death, with every accompaniment of pain and terror, stalking through the narrow streets of old London, and changing their busy hum into a silence broken only by the wailing of the mourners of fifty thousand dead; by the woful denunciations and mad prayers of fanatics; and by the madder yells of despairing profligates. But, about this time in 1666, the death-rate had sunk to nearly its ordinary amount; a case of plague occurred only 18 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS here and there, and the richer citizens who had flown from the pest had returned to their dwelhngs. The remnant of the people began to toil at the accustomed round of duty, or of pleasure; and the stream of city life bid fair to flow back along its old bed, with renewed and uninterrupted vigour. The newly-kindled hope was deceitful. The great plague, indeed, returned no more; but what it had done for the Londoners, the great fire, which broke out in the aututnn of 1666, did for London; and, in September of that year, a heap of ashes and the indestructible energy of the people were all that remained of the glory of five-sixths of the city within the walls. Our forefathers had their own ways of accounting for each of these calamities. They submitted to the plague in humility and in penitence, for they believed it to be the judgment of God. But, towards the fire they were furiously indignant, interpreting it as the effect of the malice of man, — as the work of the Republicans, or of the Papists, accord- ing as their prepossessions ran in favour of loyalty or of Puritanism. It would, I fancy, have fared but ill with one who, stand- ing where I now stand, in what was then a thickly-peopled and fashionable part of London, should have broached to our ancestors the doctrine which I now propound to you — that all their hypotheses were alike wrong; that the plague was no more, in their sense. Divine judgment, than the fire was the work of any political, or of any religious, sect; but that they were themselves the authors of both plague and fire, and that they must look to themselves to prevent the recur- rence of calamities, to all appearance so peculiarly beyond the reach of human control — so evidently the result of the wrath of God, or of the craft and subtlety of an enemy. ON IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 19 And one may picture to one's self how harmoniously the holy cursing of the Puritan of that day would have chimed in with the unholy cursing and the crackling wit of the Rochesters and Sedleys, and with the revilings of the politi- cal fanatics, if my imaginary plain dealer had gone on to say that, if the return of such misfortunes were ever rendered impossible, it would not be in virtue of the victory of the faith of Laud, or of that of Milton; and, as little, by the triumph of republicanism, as by that of monarchy. But that the one thing needful for compassing this end was, that the people of England should second the efforts of an insignificant corporation, the establishment of which, a few years before the epoch of the great plague and the great fire, had been as little noticed, as they were conspicuous. Some twenty years before the outbreak of the plague a few calm and thoughtful students banded themselves to- gether for the purpose, as they phrased it, of "improving natural knowledge." The ends they proposed to attain cannot be stated more clearly than in the words of one of the founders of the organisation: — " Our business was (precluding matters of theology and state affairs) to discourse and consider of philosophical enquirers, and such as related thereunto: — as Physick, Anat- omy, Geometry, Astronomy, Navigation, Statieks, Magnet- icks, Chymicks, Mechanicks,and Natural Experiments; with the state of these studies and their cultivation at home and abroad. We then discoursed of the circulation of the blood, the valves in the veins, the vena^ lacteas, the lymphatic vessels, the Copernican hypothesis, the nature of comets and new stars, the satellites of Jupiter, the oval shape (as it then appeared) of Saturn, the spots on the sun and its turning on its own axis, the inequalities and selenography 20 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS of the moon, the several phases of Venus and Mercury, the improvement of telescopes and grinding of glasses for that purpose, the weight of air, the possibility or impossibility of vacuities and nature's abhorrence thereof, the Torri- cellian experiment in quicksilver, the descent of hea\y bodies and the degree of acceleration therein, with divers other things of like nature, some of which were then but new discoveries, and others not so generally known and embraced as now they are; with other things appertaining to what hath been called the New Philosophy, which from the times of Galileo at Florence, and Sir Francis Bacon (Lord Verulam) in England, hath been much cultivated in Ital}^, France, Germany, and other parts abroad, as well as with us in England." The learned Dr. Wallis, writing in 1696, narrates in these w^ords, what happened half a century before, or about 1645. The associates met at Oxford, in the rooms of Dr. Wilkins, who was destined to become a bishop; and subsequently coming together in London, they attracted the notice of the king. And it is a strange evidence of the taste for knowledge which the most obviously worthless of the Stuarts shared with his father and grandfather, that Charles the Second was not content with saying witty things about his philosophers, but did wise things with regard to them. For he not only bestowed upon them such attention as he could spare from his poodles and his mistresses, but, being in his usual state of impecuniosity, begged for them of the Duke of Ormond; and, that step being without effect, gave them Chelsea College, a charter, and a mace: crowning his fa- vours in the best way they could be crowned, by burdening them no further with royal patronage or state interference. Thus it was that the half-dozen young men, studious of the ''New Philosophy," who met in one another's lodg- ON IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 21 ings in Oxford or in London, in the middle of the seven- teenth century, grew in numerical and in real strength, until, in its latter part, the " Royal Society for the Improve- ment of Natural Knowledge" had already become famous, and had acquired a claim upon the veneration of English- men, which it has ever since retained, as the principal focus of scientific activity in our islands, and the chief champion of the cause it was formed to support. It was by the aid of the Royal Society that Newton published his Principia. If all the books in the world, except the Philosophical Transactions, were destroyed, it is safe to say that the foundations of physical science would remain unshaken, and that the vast intellectual progress of the last two centuries would be largely, though incom- pletely, recorded. Nor have any signs of halting or of decrepitude manifested themselves in our own times. A& in Dr. Wallis's days, so in these, "our business is, pre- cluding theology and state affairs, to discourse and consider of philosophical enquiries." But our "Mathematick" is one which Newton would have to go to school to learn; our *'Staticks, Mechanicks, Magneticks, Chymicks, and Natu- ral Experiments" constitute a mass of physical and chemi- cal knowledge, a glimpse at which would compensate Galileo for the doings of a score of inquisitorial cardinals; our ''Physick" and "Anatomy" have embraced such infinite varieties of being, have laid open such new worlds in time and space, have grappled, not unsuccessfully, with such complex problems, that the eyes of Vesalius and of Harvey might be dazzled by the sight of the tree that has grown out of their grain of mustard seed. The fact is perhaps rather too much, than too little, forced upon one's notice, nowadays, that all this marvellous intellectual growth has a no less wonderful expression in 22 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS practical life; and that, in this respect, if in no other, the movement symbolised by the progress of the Royal Society stands without a parallel in the history of mankind. A series of volumes as bulky as the Transactions oj the Royal Society might possibly be filled with the subtle spec- ulations of the Schoolmen; not improbably, the obtaining a mastery over the products of mediaeval thought might necessitate an even greater expenditure of time and of energy than the acquirement of the *'New Philosophy"; but though such work engrossed the best intellects of Europe for a longer time than has elapsed since the great fire, its effects were "writ in water," so far as our social state iz concerned. On the other hand, if the noble first President of the Royal Society could revisit the upper air and once more gladden his eyes with a sight of the familiar mace, he would find himself in the midst of a material civilisation more different from that of his day, than that of the seventeenth was from that of the first century. And if Lord Brouncker's native sagacity had not deserted his ghost, he would need no long reflection to discover that all these great ships, these railways, these telegraphs, these factories, these printing- presses, without which the whole fabric of modern English society would collapse into a mass of stagnant and starving pauperism, — that all these pillars of our State are but the ripples and the bubbles upon the surface of that great spiritual stream, the springs of which only, he and his fel- lows were privileged to see; and seeing, to recognise as that which it behoved them above all things to keep pure and undefiled. It may not be too great a flight of imagination to conceive our noble revenant not forgetful of the great troubles of his own day, and anxious to know how often London had been ON- IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 23 burned down since his time, and how often the plague had carried off its thousands. He would have to learn that, although London contains tenfold the inflammable matter that it did in 1666; though, not content with filling our rooms with woodwork and light draperies, we must needs lead inflammable and explosive gases into every corner of our streets and houses, we never allow even a street to burn down. And if he asked how this had come about, we should have to explain that the improvement of natural knowledge has furnished us with dozens of machines for throwing w^ater upon fires, any one of which would have furnished the ingenious Mr, Hooke, the first "curator and experi- menter" of the Royal Society, with ample materials for discourse before half a dozen meetings of that body; and that, to say truth, except for the progress of natural knowl- edge, we should not have been able to make even the tools by which these machines are constructed. And, further, it would be necessary to add, that although severe fires sometimes occur and inflict great damage, the loss is very generally compensated by societies, the operations of which have been rendered possible only by the progress of natural knowledge in the direction of mathematics, and the accu- mulation of wealth in virtue of other natural knowledge. But the plague? My Lord Brouncker's observation would not, I fear, lead him to think that Englishmen of the nineteenth century are purer in life, or more fervent in religious faith, than the generation which could produce a Boyle, an Evelyn, and a Milton. He might find the mud of society at the bottom, instead of at the top, but I fear that the sum total would be as deserving of swift judgment as at the time of the Restoration. And it would be our duty to explain once more, and this time not without shame, that we have no reason to believe that it is the improvement 24 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS of our faith, nor that of our morals, which keeps the plague from our city; but, again, that it is the improvement of our natural knowledge. We have learned that pestilences will only take up their abode among those who have prepared unswept and ungar- nished residences for them. Their cities must have narrow, un watered streets, foul with accumulated garbage. Their houses must be ill-drained, ill-lighted, ill-ventilated. Their subjects must be ill-washed, ill-fed, ill-clothed. The Lon- don of 1665 was such a city. The cities of the East, where plague has an enduring dwelling, are such cities. We, in later times, have learned somewhat of Nature, and partly obey her. Because of this partial improvement of our natu- ral knowledge and of that fractional obedience, we have no plague; because that knowledge is still very imperfect and that obedience yet incomplete, typhoid is our companion and cholera our visitor. But it is not presumptuous to express the belief that, when our knowledge is more com- plete and our obedience the expression of our knowledge, London will count her centuries of freedom from typhoid and cholera, as she now gratefully reckons her two hundred years of ignorance of that plague which swooped upon her thrice in the first half of the seventeenth century. Surely, there is nothing in these explanations which is not fully borne out by the facts? Surely, the principles involved in them are now admitted among the fixed beliefs of all thinking men ? Surely, it is true that our countrymen are less subject to fire, famine, pestilence, and all the evils which result from a want of command over and due antici- pation of the course of Nature, than were the countrymen of Milton; and health, wealth, and well-being are more abundant with us than with them? But no less certainly is the difference due to the improvement of our knowledge ON IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 25 of Nature, and the extent to which that improved knowl- edge has been incorporated with the household words of men, and has supplied the springs of their daily actions. Granting for a moment, then, the truth of that which the depredators of natural knowledge are so fond of urging, that its improvement can only add to the resources of our material civilisation; admitting it to be possible that the founders of the Royal Society themselves looked for no other reward than this, I cannot confess that I was guilty of exaggeration when I hinted, that to him who had the gift of distinguishing between prominent events and impor- tant events, the origin of a combined effort on the part of mankind to improve natural knowledge might have loomed larger than the Plague and have outshone the glare of the Fire; as a something fraught with a wealth of beneficence to mankind, in comparison with which the damage done by those ghastly evils would shrink into insignificance. It is very certain that for every victim slain by the plague, hundreds of mankind exist and find a fair share of happi- ness in the world by the aid of the spinning jenny. And the great fire, at its worst, could not have burned the supply of coal, the daily working of which, in the bowels of the earth, made possible by the steam pump, gives rise to an amount of wealth to which the millions lost in old London are but as an old song. But spinning jenny and steam pump are, after all, but toys, possessing an accidental value; and natural knowledge creates multitudes of more subtle contrivances, the praises of which do not happen to be sung because they are not directly convertible into instruments for creating wealth. When I contemplate natural knowledge squandering such gifts among men, the only appropriate comparison I can -^ 26 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS find for her is, to liken her to such a peasant woman as one sees in the Alps, striding ever upward, heavily burdened, and with mind bent only on her home; but yet without effort and without thought, knitting for her children. Now stockings are good and comfortable things, and the children will undoubtedly be much the better for them; but surely it would be short-sighted, to say the least of it, to depreciate this toiling mother as a mere stocking-machine — a mere provider of physical comforts? However, there are blind leaders of the blind, and not a few of them, who take this view of natural knowledge, and can see nothing in the bountiful mother of humanity but a sort of comfort-grinding machine. According to them, the improvement of natural knowledge always has been, and always must be, synonymous with no more than the improve- ment of the material resources and the increase of the grati- fications of men. Natural knowledge is, in their eyes, no real mother of mankind, bringing them up with kindness, and, if need be, with sternness, in the way they should go, and instructing them in all things needful for their welfare; but a sort of fairy godmother, ready to furnish her pets with shoes of swiftness, swords of sharpness, and omnipotent Aladdin's lamps, so that they may have telegraphs to Saturn, and see the other side of the moon, and thank God they are better than their benighted ancestors. If this talk were true, I, for one, should not greatly care to toil in the service of natural knowledge. I think I would just as soon be quietly chipping my own flint axe, after the manner of my forefathers a few thousand years back, as be troubled with the endless malady of thought which now infests us all, for such reward. But I venture to say that such views are contrary alike to reason and to fact. Those ON IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 27 who discourse in such fashion seem to me to be so intent upon trying to see what is above Nature, or what is behind her, that they are blind to what stares them in the face in her. I should not venture to speak thus strongly if my justifi- cation were not to be found in the simplest and most obvious facts, — if it needed more than an appeal to the most notori- ous truths to justify my assertion, that the improvement of natural knowledge, whatever direction it has taken, and however low the aims of those who may have commenced it — has not only conferred practical benefits on men, but, in so doing, has effected a revolution in their conceptions of the universe and of themselves, and has profoundly altered their modes of thinking and their views of right and wrong. I say that natural knowledge, seeking to satisfy natural wants, has found the ideas which can alone still spiritual cravings. I say that natural knowledge, in desiring to ascer- tain the laws of comfort, has been driven to discover those of conduct, and to lay the foundations of a new morality. Let us take these points separately; and first, what great ideas has natural knowledge introduced into men's minds? I cannot but think that the foundations of all natural knowledge were laid when the reason of man first came face to face with the facts of Nature; when the savage first learned that the fingers of one hand are fewer than those of both; that it is shorter to cross a stream than to head it; that a stone stops where it is unless it be moved, and that it drops from the hand which lets it go; that light and heat come and go with the sun; that sticks burn away in a fire; that plants and animals grow and die; that if he struck his fellow savage a blow he would make him angry, and per- haps get a blow in return, while if he offered him a fruit he would please him, and perhaps receive a fish in exchange. 28 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS When men had acquired this much knowledge, the outlines, rude though they were, of mathematics, of physics, of chemistry, of biology, of moral, economical, and political science, were sketched. Nor did the germ of religion fail when science began to bud. Listen to words which, though new, are yet three thousand years old : — ". . . . When in heaven the stars about the moon Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid, And every height comes out, and jutting peak And valley, and the immeasurable heavens Break open to their highest, and all the stars Shine, and the shepherd gladdens in his heart." i • If the half savage Greek could share our feelings thus far, it is irrational to doubt that he went further, to find as we do, that upon that brief gladness there follows a certain sor- row,— the little light of awakened human intelligence shines so mere a spark amidst the abyss of the unknown and unknowable; seems so insufficient to do more than illumi- nate the imperfections that cannot be remedied, the aspira- tions that cannot be realised, of man's own nature. But in this sadness, this consciousness of the limitation of man, this sense of an open secret which he cannot penetrate, lies the essence of all religion; and the attempt to embody it in the forms furnished by the intellect is the origin of the higher theologies. Thus it seems impossible to imagine but that the founda- tions of all knowledge — secular or sacred — were laid when intelligence dawned, though the superstructure remained for long ages so slight and feeble as to be compatible with the existence of almost any general view respecting the mode of governance of the universe. No doubt, from the first, 1 Need it be said that this is Tennyson's English for Homer's Greek ? ON IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 29 there were certain phenomena which, to the rudest mind, presented a constancy of occurrence, and suggested that a fixed order ruled, at any rate, among them. I doubt if the grossest of Fetish worshippers ever imagined that a stone must have a god within it to make it fall, or that a fruit had a god within it to make it taste sweet. With regard to such matters as these, it is hardly questionable that mankind from the first took strictly positive and scientific views. But, with respect to all the less familiar occurrences which present themselves, uncultured man, no doubt, has always taken himself as the standard of comparison, as the centre and measure of the world; nor could he well avoid doing so. And finding that his apparently uncaused will has a powerful effect in giving rise to many occurrences, he naturally enough ascribed other and greater events to other and greater volitions, and came to look upon the world and all that therein is, as the product of the volitions of persons like himself, but stronger, and capable of being appeased or angered, as he himself might be soothed or irritated. Through such conceptions of the plan and work- ing of the universe all mankind have passed, or are passing. And we may now consider what has been the effect of the improvement of natural knowledge on the views of men who have reached this stage, and who have begun to culti- vate natural knowledge with no desire but that of "increas- ing God's honour and bettering man's estate." For example, what could seem wiser, from a mere ma- terial point of view, more innocent, from a theological one, to an ancient people, than that they should learn the exact succession of the seasons, as warnings for their husband- men; or the position of the stars, as guides to their rude navigators? But what has grown out of this search for natural knowledge of so merely useful a character? You 30 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS all know the reply. Astronomy, — which of all sciences has filled men's minds with general ideas of a character most foreign to their daily experience, and has, more than any other, rendered it impossible for them to accept the beliefs of their fathers. Astronomy, — which tells them that this so vast and seemingly solid earth is but an atom among atoms, whirling, no man knows whither, through illimit- able space; which demonstrates that what we call the peace- ful heaven above us, is but that space, filled by an infinitely subtle matter whose particles are seething and surging, like the waves of an angry sea; which opens up to us infi- nite regions w^here nothing is known, or ever seems to have been known, but matter and force, operating according to rigid rules; which leads us to contemplate phenomena the very nature of which demonstrates that they must have had a beginning, and that they must have an end, but the very nature of which also proves that the beginning was, to our conceptions of time, infinitely remote, and that the end is as immeasurably distant. But it is not alone those who pursue astronomy who ask for bread and receive ideas. What more harmless than the attempt to lift and distribute water by pumping it; what more absolutely and grossly utilitarian ? Yet out of pumps grew the discussions about Nature's abhorrence of a vac- uum; and then it was discovered that Nature does not abhor a vacuum, but that air has weight; and that notion paved the way for the doctrine that all matter has w^eight, and that the force which produces weight is co-extensive with the universe, — in short, to the theory of universal gravitation and endless force. While learning how to handle gases led to the discovery of oxygen, and to modern chemistry, and to the notion of the indestructibility of matter. Again, what simpler, or more absolutely practical, than ON IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 31 the attempt to keep the axle of a wheel from heating when the wheel turns around very fast? How useful for carters and gig drivers to know something about this; and how good were it, if any ingenious person would find out the cause of such phenomena, and thence educe a general remedy for them. Such an ingenious person was Count Rumford; and he and his successors have landed us in the theory of the persistence, or indestructibility, of force. And in the infinitely minute, as in the infinitely great, the seekers after natural knowledge of the kinds called physical and chemical, have everywhere found a definite order and suc- cession of events which seem never to be infringed. And how has it fared with "Physick" and Anatomy? Have the anatomist, the physiologist, or the physician, whose business it has been to devote themselves assiduously to that eminently practical and direct end, the alleviation of the sufferings of mankind, — have they been able to con- fine their vision more absolutely to the strictly useful? I fear they are the worst offenders of all. For if the astrono- mer has set before us the infinite magnitude of space, and the practical eternity of the duration of the universe; if the physical and chemical philosophers have demonstrated the infinite minuteness of its constituent parts, and the practical eternity of matter and of force; and if both have alike proclaimed the universality of a definite and predicable order and succession of events, the workers in biology have not only accepted all these, but have added more startling theses of their own. For, as the astronomers discover in the earth no centre of the universe, but an eccentric speck, so the naturalists find man to be no centre of the living world, but one amidst endless modifications of life; and as the astronomer observes the mark of practically endless time set upon the arrangements of the solar system so the student 32 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS of life finds the records of ancient forms of existence peo- pling the world for ages, which, in relation to human expe- rience, are infinite. Furthermore, the physiologist finds life to be as dependent for its manifestation on particular molecular arrangements as any physical or chemical phenomenon; and wherever he extends his researches, fixed order and unchanging causation reveal themselves, as plainly as in the rest of Nature. Nor can I find that any other fate has awaited the germ of Religion. Arising, like all other kinds of knowledge, out of the action and interaction of man's mind, with that which is not man's mind, it has taken the intellectual cover- ings of Fetishism or Polytheism; of Theism or Atheism; of Superstition or Rationalism. With these, and their relative merits and demerits, I have nothing to do; but this it is needful for my purpose to say, that if the religion of the present differs from that of the past, it is because the theology of the present has become more scientific than that of the past; because it has not only renounced idols of wood and idols of stone, but begins to see the necessity of breaking in pieces the idols built up of books and traditions and finespun ecclesiastical cobwebs: and of cherishing the noblest and most human of man's emotions, by worship "for the most part of the silent sort" at the altar of the Unknown. Such are a few of the new conceptions implanted in our minds by the improvement of natural knowledge. Men have acquired the ideas of the practically infinite extent of the universe and of its practical eternity; they are familiar with the conception that our earth is but an infinitesimal fragment of that part of the universe which can be seen; and that, nevertheless, its durati«:;va is, as compared with ON IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 33 our standards of time, infinite. They have further acquired the idea that man is but one of innumerable forms of life now existing on the globe, and that the present existences are but the last of an immeasurable series of predecessors. Moreover, every step they have made in natural knowledge has tended to extend and rivet in their minds the conception of a definite order of the universe — which is embodied in what are called, by an unhappy metaphor, the laws of Nature — and to narrow the range and loosen the force of men's belief in spontaneity, or in changes other than such as arise out of that definite order itself. Whether these ideas are well or ill founded is not the question. No one can deny that they exist, and have been the inevitable outgrowth of the improvement of natural knowledge. And if so, it cannot be doubted that they are changing the form of men's most cherished and most impor- tant convictions. And as regards the second point — the extent to which the improvement of natural knowledge has remodelled and altered what may be termed the intellectual ethics of men, — what are among the moral convictions most fondly held by barbarous and semi-barbarous people. They are the convictions that authority is the soundest basis of belief; that merit attaches to a readiness to believe; that the doubting disposition is a bad one, and scepticism a sin; that when good authority has pronounced what is to be believed, and faith has accepted it, reason has no further duty. There are many excellent persons who yet hold by these principles, and it is not my present business, or inten- tion, to discuss their views. All I wish to bring clearly before your minds is the unquestionable fact, that the im- provement of natural knowledge is effected by methods 34 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS which directly give the lie to all these convictions, and assume the exact reverse of each to be true. The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin. And If cannot be otherwise, for every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority, the cherishing of the keenest scepticism, the annihilation of the spirit of blind faith; and the most ardent votary of science holds his firmest convictions, not because the men he most venerates hold them; not because their verity is testified by portents and wonders; but because his experience teaches him that whenever he chooses to bring these convictions into contact with their primary source, Nature — whenever he thinks fit to test them by appealing to experiment and to observation — Nature will confirm them. The man of science has learned to believe in justi- fication, not by faith, but by verification. Thus, without for a moment pretending to despise the practical results of the improvement of natural knowledge, and its beneficial influence on material civilisation, it must, I think, be admitted that the great ideas, some of which I have indicated, and the ethical spirit which I have endeav- oured to sketch, in the few moments which remained at my disposal, constitute the real and permanent significance of natural knowledge. If these ideas be destined, as I believe they are, to be more and more firmly established as the world grows older; if that spirit be fated, as I believe it is, to extend itself into all departments of human thought, and to become co-extensive with the range of knowledge; if, as our race approaches its maturity, it discovers, as I believe it will, that there is but one kind of knowledge and but one method of acquiring ON IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 35 it; then we, who are still children, may justly feel it our highest duty to recognise the advisableness of improving natural knowledge, and so to aid ourselves and our suc- cessors in our course towards the noble goal which lies before mankind. A LIBERAL EDUCATION; AND WHERE TO FIND IT [1868] The business which the South London Working Men's College has undertaken is a great work; indeed, I might say, that Education, with which that college proposes to grapple, is the greatest work of all those which lie ready to a man's hand just at present. And, at length, this fact is becoming generally recognised. You cannot go anywhere without hearing a buzz of more or less confused and contradictory talk on this subject — nor can you fail to notice that, in one point at any rate, there is a very decided advance upon like discussions in former days. Nobody outside the agricultural interest now dares to say that education is a bad thing. If any representative of the once large and powerful party, which, in former days, proclaimed this opinion, still exists in the semi-fossil state, he keeps his thoughts to himself. In fact, there is a chorus of voices, almost distressing in their har- mony, raised in favour of the doctrine that education is the great panacea for human troubles, and that, if the country is not shortly to go to the dogs, everybody must be educated. The politicians tell us, " You must educate the masses be- cause they are going to be masters." The clergy join in the cry for education, for they afhrm that the people are drift- ing away from church and chapel into the broadest infidelity. The manufacturers and the capitalists swell the chorus lustily. They declare that ignorance makes bad workmen; that England will soon be unable to turn out cotton goods. A LIBERAL EDUCATION 37 or steam engines, cheaper than other people; and then, Ichabod! Ichabod! the glory will be departed from us. And a few voices are lifted up in favour of the doctrine that the masses should be educated because they are men and women with unlimited capacities of being, doing, and** suffering, and that it is as true now, as it ever was, that the people perish for lack of knowledge. These members of the minority, with whom I confess I have a good deal of sympathy, are doubtful whether any of the other reasons urged in favour of the education of the people are of much value — whether, indeed, some of them are based upon either wise or noble grounds of action. They question if it be wise to tell people that you will do for them, out of fear of their power, what you have left undone, so long as your only motive was compassion for their weakness and their sorrows. And, if ignorance of everything which it is needful a ruler should know is likely to do so much harm in the governing classes of the future, why is it, they ask reasonably enough, that such ignorance in the governing classes of the past has not been viewed with equal horror ? Compare the average artisan and the average country squire, and it may be doubted if you will find a pin to choose between the two in point of ignorance, class feeling, or prej- udice. It is true that the ignorance is of a different sort — that the class feeling is in favour of a different class — and that the prejudice has a distinct savour of wrong-headedness in each case — but it is questionable if the one is either a bit better, or a bit worse, than the other. The old protec- tionist theory is the doctrine of trades unions as applied by the squires, and the modern trades unionism is the doctrine of the squires apphed by the artisans. Why should we be worse off under one regime than under the other? 38 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS Again, this sceptical minority asks the clergy to think whether it is really want of education which keeps the masses away from their ministrations — whether the most com- pletely educated men are not as open to reproach on this score as the workmen; and whether, perchance, this may not indicate that it is not education which lies at the bottom of the matter? Once more, these people, whom there is no pleasing, venture to doubt whether the glory which rests upon being able to undersell all the rest of the world, is a very safe kind of glory — whether we may not purchase it too dear; especially if we allow education, which ought to be directed to the making of men, to be diverted into a process of manu- facturing human tools, wonderfully adroit in the exercise of some technical industry, but good for nothing else. And, finally, these people inquire whether it is the masses alone who need a reformed and improved education. They ask whether the richest of our public schools might not well be made to supply knowledge, as well as gentlemanly habits, a strong class feeling, and eminent proficiency in cricket. They seem to think that the noble foundations of our old universities are hardly fulfilling their functions in their present posture of half-clerical seminaries, half race- courses, where men are trained to win a senior wranglership, or a double-first, as horses are trained to win a cup, with as little reference to the needs of after-life in the case of a man as in that of the racer. And, while as zealous for education as the rest, they affirm that, if the education of the richer classes were such as to fit them to be the leaders and the governors of the poorer; and, if the education of the poorer classes were such as to enable them to appreciate really wise guidance and good governance, the politicians need not fear mob-law, nor the clergy lament their want of flocks, A LIBERAL EDUCATION 39 nor the capitalists prognosticate the annihilation of the prosperity of the country. Such is the diversity of opinion upon the why and the wherefore of education. And my hearers will be prepared to expect that the practical recommendations which are put forward are not less discordant. There is a loud cr\- for compulsory education. We English, in spite of con- stant experience to the contrary, preserve a touching faith in the efficacy of acts of Parliament; and I believe we should have compulsory education in the course of next session, if there were the least probability that half a dozen leading statesmen of different parties would agree what that educa- tion should be. Some hold that education without theology is worse than none. Others maintain, quite as strongly, that education with theology is in the same predicament. But this is certain, that those who hold the first opinion can by no means agree what theology should be taught; and that those who maintain the second are in a small minority. At any rate "make people learn to read, write, and cipher," say a great many; and the advice is undoubtedly- sensible as far as it goes. But, as has happened to me in former days, those who, in despair of getting any thin i^^ better, advocate this measure, are met with the objection that it is very like making a child practise the use of a knife, fork, and spoon, without giving it a particle of meat. I really don't know what reply is to be made to such an objec- tion. But it would be unprofitable to spend more time in disen- tangling, or rather in showing up the knots in, the ravelled skeins of our neighbors. Much more to the purpose is it to ask if we possess any clue of our own which may guide us among these entanglements. And by way of a begin- 9 40 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS ning, let us ask ourselves — What is education? Above all things, what is our ideal of a thoroughly liberal education ? — of that education which, if we could begin life again, we would give ourselves — of that education which, if we could mould the fates to our own will, we would give our children ? Well, I know not what may be your conceptions upon this matter, but I will tell you mine, and I hope I shall find that our views are not very discrepant. Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and for- tune of every one of us would, one day or other, depend upon his winning or losing a game of chess. Don't you think that we should all consider it to be a primary duty to learn at least the names and the moves of the pieces; to have a notion of a gambit, and a keen eye for all the means of giving and getting out of check? Do you not think that we should look with a disapprobation amounting to scorn, upon the father who allowed his son, or the state which allowed its members, to grow up without knowing a pawn frorh a knight ? Yet it is a very plain and elementary truth, that the life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game infi- nitely more difficult and complicated than chess. It is a game which has been played for untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the small- A LIBERAL EDUCATION 41 est allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well, the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of overflowing generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated — without haste, but without remorse. My metaphor will remind some of you of the famous picture in which Retzsch has depicted Satan playing at chess with man for his soul. Substitute for the mocking fiend in that picture a calm, strong angel who is playing for love, as we say, and would rather lose than win — and I should accept it as an image of human life. Well, what I mean by Education is learning the rules of this mighty game. In other words, education is the instruc- tion of the intellect in the laws of Nature, under which name I include not merely things and their forces, but man and their ways; and the fashioning of the affections and of the will into an earnest and loving desire to move in har- mony with those laws. For me, education means neither more nor less than this. Anything which professes to call itself education must be tried by this standard, and if it fails to stand the test, I will not call it education, whatever may be the force of authority, or of numbers, upon the other side. It is important to remember that, in strictness, there is no such thing as an uneducated man. Take an extreme case. Suppose that an adult man, in the full vigour of his faculties, could be suddenly placed in the world, as Adam is said to have been, and then left to do as he best..might. How long would he be left uneducated ? Not five minutes. Nature would begin to teach him, through the eye, the ear, the touch, the properties of objects. Pain and pleasure would be at his elbow telling him to do this and avoid that; and by slow degrees the man would receive an education 42 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS which, if narrow, would be thorough, real, and adequate to his circumstances, though there would be no extras and very few accomplishments. And if to this solitary man entered a second Adam, or, better still, an Eve, a new and greater world, that of social and moral phenomena, would be revealed. Joys and woes, compared with which all others might seem but faint shadows, would spring from the new relations. Happiness and sorrow would take the place of the coarser monitors, pleasure and pain; but conduct- would still be shaped by the observation of the natural consequences of actions; or, in other words, by the laws of the nature of man. To every one of us the world was once as fresh and new as to Adam. And then, long before we were susceptible of any other modes of instruction. Nature took us in hand, and every minute of waking life brought its educational influence, shaping our actions into rough accordance with Nature's laws, so that we might not be ended untimely by too gross disobedience. Nor should I speak of this process of education as past for any one, be he as old as he may. For every man the world is as fresh as it was at the first day, and as full of untold novelties for him who has the eyes to see them. And Nature is still continuing her patient education of us in that great university, the universe, of which we are all members — Nature having no Test-Acts. Those who take honours in Nature's university, who learn the laws which govern men and things and obey them, are the really great and successful men in this world. The great mass of mankind are the "Poll," who pick up just enough to get through without much discredit. Those who won't learn at all are plucked; and then you can't come up again. Nature's pluck means extermination. Thus the question of compulsory education is settled so A LIBERAL EDUCATION' 43 far as Nature is concerned. Her bill on that q xstion was framed and passed long ago.^ But, like all compulsory legislation, that of Nature is harsh and wasteful in its opera- tion. Ignorance is visited as sharply as wilful disobedience — incapacity meets with the same punishment as crime. Nature's discipline is not even a word and a blow, and the blow first; but the blow without the word. It is left to you to find out why your ears are boxed. The object of what we commonly call education — that education in which man intervenes and which I shall dis- tinguish as artificial education — is to make good these defects in Nature's methods; to prepare the child to receive Nature's education, neither incapably nor ignorantly, nor with wilful disobedience; and to understand the prelimi- nary symptoms of her pleasure, without waiting for the box on the ear. In short, all artificial education ought to be an anticipation of natural education. And a liberal education is an artificial education which has not only prepared a man to escape the great evils of disobedience to natural laws, but has trained him to appreciate and to seize upon the rewards, which Nature scatters with as free a hand as her penalties. That man, I think, has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions 44 SEL'^.CTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of Nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself. Such an one and no other, I conceive, has had a liberal- education; for he is, as completely as a man can be, in har- mony with Nature. He will make the best of her, and she of him. They will get on together rarely; she as his ever beneficent mother; he as her mouthpiece, her conscious self, her minister and interpreter. Where is such an education as this to be had? Where is there any approximation to it? Has any one tried to found such an education? Looking over the length and breadth of these islands, I am afraid that all these questions must receive a negative answer. Consider our primary schools and what is taught in them. A child learns — 1. To read, write, and cipher, more or less well; but in a very large proportion of cases not so well as to take pleasure in readino;, or to be able to write the commonest letter properly. 2. A quantity of dogmatic theology, of which the child, nine times out of ten, understands next to nothing. 3. Mixed up with this, so as to seem to stand or fall with it, a few of the broadest and simplest principles of morality. This, to my mind, is much as if a man of science should make the story of the fall of the apple in Newton's garden an integral part of the doctrine of gravi- tation, and teach it as of equal authority with the law of the inverse squares. 4. A good deal of Jewish history and Syrian geography, and perhaps a little something about English history and the geography of the child's own country. But I doubt if A LIBERAL EDUCATION 45 there is a primary school in England in which hangs a map of the hundred in which the village lies, so that the children may be practically taught by it what a map means. 5. A certain amount of regularity, attentive obedience, respect for others: obtained by fear, if the master be incom- petent or foolish; by love and reverence, if he be wise. So far as this school course embraces a training in the theory and practice of obedience to the moral laws of Nature, I gladly admit, not only that it contains a valuable educa- tional element, but that, so far, it deals with the most valu- able and important part of all education. Yet, contrast what is done in this direction with what might be done; with the time given to matters of comparatively no impor- tance; with the absence of any attention to things of the highest moment; and one is tempted to think of Falstaff's bill and "the halfpenny worth of bread to all that quantity of sack." Let us consider what a child thus "educated" knows, and what it does not know. Begin with the most important topic of all — morality, as the guide of conduct. The child knows well enough that some acts meet with approbation and some with disapprobation. But it has never heard that there lies in the nature of things a reason for every moral law, as cogent and as well defined as that which underlies every physical law; that stealing and lying are just as cer- tain to be followed by evil consequences, as putting your hand in the fire, or jumping out of a garret window. Again, though the scholar may have been made acquainted, in dogmatic fashion, with the broad laws of morality, he has had no training in the application of those laws to the difficult problems which result from the complex condi- tions of modern civilisation. Would it not be very hard to expect any one to solve a problem in conic sections who 46 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS had merely been taught the axioms and definitions of math- ematical science? A workman has to bear hard labour, and perhaps priva- tion, while he sees others rolling in wealth, and feeding their dogs with what would keep his children from starva- tion. Would it not be well to have helped that man to calm the natural promptings of discontent by showing him, in his youth, the necessary connection of the moral law which prohibits stealing with the stability of society — by proving to him, once for all, that it is better for his own people, better for himself, better for future generations, that he should starve than steal? If you have no founda- tion of knowledge, or habit of thought, to work upon, what chance have you of persuading a hungry man that a capi- talist is not a thief ''with a circumbendibus"? And if he honestly believes that, of what avail is it to quote the com- mandment against stealing, when he proposes to make the capitalist disgorge? Again, the child learns absolutely nothing of the history or the political organisation of his own country. His general impression is, that everything of much importance happened a very long while ago; and that the Queen and the gentle- folks govern the country much after the fashion of King David and the elders and nobles of Israel — his sole models. Will you give a man with this much information a vote? In easy times he sells it for a pot of beer. Why should he not? It is of about as much use to him as a chignon, and he knows as much what to do with it, for any other purpose. In bad times, on the contrary, he applies his simple theory of government, and believes that his rulers are the cause of his sufferings — a belief which sometimes bears remarkable practical fruits. Least of all, does the child gather from this primary A LIBERAL EDUCATION 47 "education" of ours a conception of the laws of the physical world, or of the relations of cause and effect therein. And this is the more to be lamented, as the poor are especially exposed to physical evils, and are more interested in remov- ing them than any other class of the community. If any one is concerned in knowing the ordinary laws of mechanics one would think it is the hand-labourer, whose daily toil lies among levers and pulleys; or among the other imple- ments of artisan work. And if any one is interested in the laws of health, it is the poor workman, whose strength is wasted by ill-prepared food, whose health is sapped by bad ventilation and bad drainage, and half whose children are massacred by disorders which might be prevented. Not only does our present primary education carefully abstain from hinting to the workman that some of his greatest evils are traceable to mere physical agencies, which could be removed by energy, patience, and frugality; but it does worse — it renders him, so far as it can, deaf to those who could help him, and tries to substitute an Oriental submis- sion to what is falsely declared to be the will of God, for his natural tendency to strive after a better condition. What wonder, then, if very recently an appeal has been made to statistics for the profoundly foolish purpose of showing that education is of no good — that it diminishes neither misery nor crime among the masses of mankind? I reply, why should the thing which has been called educa- tion do either the one or the other? If I am a knave or a fool, teaching me to read and write won't make me less of either one or the other — unless somebody shows me how to put my reading and writing to wise and good purposes. Suppose any one were to argue that medicine is of no use, because it could be proved statistically, that the per- centage of deaths was just the same among people who had 48 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS been taught how to open a medicine chest, and among those who did not so much as know the key by sight. The argu- ment is absurd; but it is not more preposterous than that against which I am contending. The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all the other woes of mankind, is wisdom. Teach a man to read and write, and you have put into his hands the great keys of the wisdom box. But it is quite another matter whether he ever opens the box or not. And he is as likely to poison as to cure himself, if, with- out guidance, he swallows the first drug that comes to hand. In these times a man may as well be purblind, as unable to read — lame, as unable to write. But I protest that, if I thought the alternative were a necessary one, I would rather that the children of the poor should grow up ignorant of both these mighty arts, than that they should remain igno- rant of that knowledge to which these arts are means. It may be said that all these animadversions may apply to primary schools, but that the higher schools, at any rate, must be allowed to give a liberal education. In fact they professedly sacrifice everything else to this object. Let us inquire into this matter. What do the higher schools, those to which the great middle class of the coun- try sends its children, teach, over and above the instruction given in the primary schools? There is a little more read- ing and writing of English. But, for all that, every one knows that it is a rare thing to find a boy of the middle or upper classes who can read aloud decently, or who can put his thoughts on paper in clear and grammatical (to say nothing of good or elegant) language. The "ciphering" of the lower schools expands into elementary mathematics in the higher; into arithmetic, with a little algebra, a little Euclid. But I doubt if one boy in five hundred has ever A LIBERAL EDUCATION 49 heard the explanation of a rule of arithmetic, or knows his Euclid otherwise than by rote. Of theology, the middle class schoolboy gets rather less than poorer children, less absolutely and less relatively, because there are so many other claims upon his attention. 1 venture to say that, in the great majority of cases, his ideas on this subject when he leaves school are of the most shad- owy and vague description, and associated with painful impressions of the weary hours spent in learning collects and catechism by heart. Modern geography, modern history, modern literature; the English language as a language; the whole circle of the sciences, physical, moral and social, are even more com- pletely ignored in the higher than in the lower schools. Up till within a few years back, a boy might have passed through any one of the great public schools with the greatest dis- tinction and credit, and might never so much as have heard of one of the subjects I have just mentioned. He might never have heard that the earth goes round the sun; that England underwent a great revolution in 1688, and France another in 1789; that there once lived certain notable men called Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Voltaire, Goethe, Schiller. The first might be a German and the last an Englishman for anything he could tell you^to the contrary. And as for Science, the only idea the word would suggest to his mind would be dexterity in boxing. I have said that this was the state of things a few years back, for the sake of the few righteous who are to be found among the educational cities of the plain. But I would not have you too sanguine about the result, if you sound the minds of the existing generation of public schoolboys, on such topics as those I have mentioned. Now let us pause to consider this wonderful state of 50 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS affairs; for the time will come when Englishmen will quote it as the stock example of the stolid stupidity of their ancestors in the nineteenth century. The most thoroughly commercial people, the greatest voluntary wanderers and colonists the world has ever seen, are precisely the middle class of this country. If there be a people which has been busy making history on the great scale for the last three hundred years — and the most profoundly interesting history — history which, if it happened to be that of Greece cr Rome, we should study with avidity — it is the English. If there be a people which, during the same period, has devel- oped a remarkable literature, it is our own. If there be a nation whose prosperity depends absolutely and wholly upon their mastery over the forces of Nature, upon their intelligent apprehension of, and obedience to the laws of the creation and distribution of wealth, and of the stable equilibrium of the forces of society, it is precisely this nation. And yet this is what these wonderful people tell their sons: — "At the cost of from one to two thousand pounds of our hard- earned money, we devote twelve of the most precious years of your lives to school. There you shall toil, or be supposed to toil; but there you shall not learn one single thing of all those you will most want to know directly you leave school and enter upon the practical business of life. You will in all probability go into business, but you shall not know where, or how, any article of commerce is produced, or the difference between an export or an import, or the meaning of the word 'capital.' You will very likely settle in a colony, but you shall not know whether Tasmania is part of New South Wales, or vice versa. "Very probably you may become a manufacturer, but you shall not be provided with the means of understanding the working of one of your own steam-engines, or the nature A LIBERAL EDUCATION 51 of the raw products you employ; and, when you are asked to buy a patent, you shall not have the slightest means qf judging whether the inventor is an impostor who is contra- vening the elementary principles of science, or a man who will make you as rich as Croesus. "You will very likely get into the House of Commons. You will have to take your share in making laws which may prove a blessing or a curse to millions of men. But you shall not hear one word respecting the political organisation of your country; the meaning of the controversy between free- traders and protectionists shall never have been mentioned to you; you shall not so much as know that there are such things as economical laws. "The mental power which will be of most importance in your daily life will be the power of seeing things as they are without regard to authority; and of drawing accurate general conclusions from particular facts. But at school and at college you shall know of no source of truth but authority; nor exercise your reasoning faculty upon any- thing but deduction from that which is laid down by authority. "You will have to weary your soul with work, and many a time eat your bread in sorrow and in bitterness, and you shall not have learned to take refuge in the great source of pleasure without alloy, the serene resting-place for worn human nature, — the world of art." Said I not rightly that we are a wonderful people ? I am quite prepared to allow, that education entirely devoted to these omitted subjects might not be a completely liberal education. But is an education which ignores them all a liberal education? Nay, is it too much to say that the education which should embrace these subjects and no others would be a real education, though an incomplete 52 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS one; while an education which omits them is really not an education at all, but a more or less useful course of intellectual gymnastics ? For what does the middle-class school put in the place of all these things which are left out? It substitutes what is usually comprised under the compendious title of the "classics" — that is to say, the languages, the literature, and the history of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and the geography of so much of the world as was known to these two great nations of antiquity. Now, do not expect me to depreciate the earnest and enlightened pursuit of classical learning. I have not the least desire to speak ill of such oc- cupations, nor any sympathy with them who run them down. On the contrary, if my opportunities had lain in that direction, there is no investigation into which I could have thrown myself with greater delight than that of antiquity. What science can present greater attractions than phil- ology ? How can a lover of literary excellence fail to rejoice in the ancient masterpieces? And with what consistency could I, whose business lies so much in the attempt to de- cipher the past, and to build up intelligible forms out of the scattered fragments of long-extinct beings, fail to take a sympathetic, though an unlearned, interest in the labours of a Niebuhr, a Gibbon, or a Grote? Classical history is a great section of the paleontology of man; and I have the same double respect for it as for other kinds of paleontology — that it to say, a respect for the facts which it establishes as for all facts, and a still greater respect for it as a prepa- ration for the discovery of a law of progress. But if the classics were taught as they might be taught — if boys and girls were instructed in Greek and Latin, not merely as languages, but as illustrations of philological science; if a vivid picture of life on the shores of the Med- A LIBERAL EDUCATION 53 iterranean two thousand years ago were imprinted on the minds of scholars; if ancient history were taught, not as a weary series of feuds and fights, but traced to its causes in such men placed under such conditions; if, lastly, the study of the classical books were followed in such a manner as to impress boys with their beauties, and with the grand simplic- ity of their statement of the everlasting problems of human life, instead of with their verbal and grammatical peculiar- ities; I still think it as little proper that they should form the basis of a liberal education for our contemporaries, as I should think it fitting to make that sort of paleontology with which I am familiar the back-bone of modern education. It is wonderful how close a parallel to classical training could be made out of that paleontology to which I refer. In the first place I could get up an osteological primer so arid, so pedantic in its terminology, so altogether distasteful to the youthful mind, as to beat the recent famous production of the head-masters out of the field in all these excellencies. Next, I could exercise my boys upon easy fossils, and bring out all their powers of memory and all their ingenuity in the application of my osteo-grammatical rules to the inter- pretation, or construing, of those fragments. To those who had reached the higher classes, I might supply odd bones to be built up into animals, giving great honour and reward to him who succeeded in fabricating monsters most entirely in accordance with the rules. That would answer to verse- making and essay-writing in the dead languages. To be sure, if a great comparative anatomist were to look at these fabrications he might shake his head, or laugh. But what then? Would such a catastrophe destroy the parallel? What, think you, would Cicero, or Horace, say to the production of the best sixth form going? And. would not Terence stop his ears and run out if he could be present 54 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS at an English performance of his own plays? Would Hamlet, in the mouths of a set of French actors, who should insist on pronouncing English after the fashion of their own tongue, be more hideously ridiculous ? But it will be said that I am forgetting the beauty, and the human interest, which appertain to classical studies. To this I reply that it is only a very strong man who can appreciate the charms of a landscape as he is toiling up a steep hill, along a bad road. What with short-windedness, stones, ruts, and a pervading sense of the wisdom of rest and be thankful, most of us have little enough sense of the beautiful under these circumstances. The ordinary school- boy is precisely in this case. He finds Parnassus uncom- monly steep, and there is no chance of his having much time or inclination to look about him till he gets to the top. And nine times out of ten he does not get to the top. But if this be a fair picture of the results of classical teach- ing at its best — and I gather from those who have authority to speak on such matters that it is so — what is to be said of classical teaching at its worst, or in other words,, of the clas- sics of our ordinary middle-class schools? ^ I will tell you. It means getting up endless forms and rules by heart. It means turning Latin and Greek into English, for the mere sake of being able to do it, and without the smallest regard to the w^orth, or worthlessness, of the author read. It means the learning of innumerable, not always decent, fables in such a shape that the meaning they once had is dried up into utter trash; and the only impression left upon a boy's mind is, that the people who believed such things must have been the greatest idiots the world ever saw. And it means, finally, that after a dozen years spent at this kind of work, 1 For a justification of what is here said about these schools, see that valuable book, Essays on a Liberal Education, passim. A LIBERAL EDUCATION 55 the sufferer shall be incompetent to interpret a passage in an author he has not already got up; that he shall loathe the sight of a Greek or Latin book; and that he shall never open, or think of, a classical writer again, until, wonderful to relate, he insists upon submitting his sons to the same process. These be your gods, O Israel! For the sake of this net result (and respectability) the British father denies his chil- dren all the knowledge they might turn to account in life, not merely for the achievement of vulgar success, but for guid- ance in the great crises of human existence. This is the stone he offers to those whom he is bound by the strongest and tender e'st ties to feed with bread. If primary and secondary education are in this unsatis- factory state, what is to be said to the universities ? This is an awful subject, and one I almost fear to touch with my unhallowed hands; but I can tell you what those say who have authority to speak. The Rector of Lincoln College, in his lately published valuable Suggestions for Academical Organisation with especial reference to Oxford tells us (p. 127); — • "The colleges were, in their origin, endowments, not for the elements of a general liberal education, but for the pro- longed study of special and professional faculties by men of riper age. The universities embraced both these objects. The colleges, while they incidentally aided in elementary ed- ucation, were specially devoted to the highest learning. . . . " This was the theory of the middle-age university and the design of collegiate foundations in their origin. Time and circumstances have brought about a total change. The colleges no longer promote the researches of science, or direct professional study. Here and there college walls may shelter an occasional student, but not in larger proportions than niay 56 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS be found in private life. Elementary teaching of youths under twenty is now the only function performed by the university, and almost the only object of college endowments. Colleges were homes for the life-study of the highest and most abstruse parts of knowledge. The}' have become boarding schools in which the elements of the learned lan- guages are taught to youths." If Mr. Pattison's high position, and his obvious love and respect for his university, be insufficient to convince the out- side world that language so severe is yet no more than just, the authority of the Commissioners who reported on the University of Oxford in 1850 is open to no challenge. Yet they WTite: — "It is generally acknowledged that both Oxford and the country at large suffer greatly from the absence of a body of learned men devoting their lives to the cultivation of science, and to the direction of academical education. " The fact that so few books of profound research emanate from the University of Oxford, materially impairs its char- acter as a seat of learning, and consequently its hold on the respect of the nation." Cambridge can claim no exemption from the reproaches addressed to Oxford. And thus there seems no escape from the admission that what we fondly call our great seats of learning are simply "boarding schools" for bigger boys; that learrned men are not more numerous in them than out of them; that the advancement of knowledge is not the object of fellows of colleges; that, in the philosopliic calm and meditative stilln,ess of their greenswarded courts, philosophy does not thrive, and meditation bears few fruits. It is my great good fortune to reckon amongst my friends resident members of both universities, who are men of learn- irtg and research, zealous cultivators of science, keeping A LIBERAL EDUCATION 57 before their minds a noble ideal of a university, and doing their best to make that ideal a reality; and, to me, they would necessarily typify the universities, did not the authoritative statements I have quoted compel me to believe that they are exceptional, and not representative men. Indeed, upon calm consideration, several circumstances lead me to think that the Rector of Lincoln College and the Commissioners cannot be far wrong. I believe there can be no doubt that the foreigner who should wish to become acquainted with the scientific, or the literary, activity of modern England, would simply lose his time and his pains if he visited our universities with that object. And, as for works of profound research on any subject, and, above all, in that classical lore for which the univer- sities profess to sacrifice almost everything else, why, a third-rate, poverty-stricken German university turns out more produce of that kind in one year, than our vast and wealthy foundations elaborate in ten. Ask the man who is investigating any question, profoundly and thoroughly — be it historical, philosophical, philological, physical, literary, or theological; who is trying to make him- self master of any abstract subject (except, perhaps, polit- ical economy and geology, both of which are intensely An- glican sciences), whether he is not compelled to read half a dozen times as many German as English books ?^ And whether, of these English books, more than one in ten is the work of a fellow of a college, or a professor of an English university ? Is this from any lack of power in the English as compared with the German mind? The countrymen of Grote and of Mill, of Faraday, of Robert Brown, of Lyell, and of Darwin, to go no farther back than the contemporaries of men of 58 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS middle age, can afford to smile at such a suggestion. Eng- land can show now, as she has been able to show in every generation since civilisation spread over the West, individual men who hold their own against the world, and keep alive the old tradition of her intellectual eminence. But, in the majority of cases, these men are what they are in virtue of their native intellectual force, and of a strength of character which will not recognise impediments. They are not trained in the courts of the Temple of Science, but storm the walls of that edifice in all sorts of irregular ways, and with much loss of time and power, in order to obtain their legitimate positions. Our universities not only do not encourage such men; do not offer them positions, in which it should be their highest duty to do, thoroughly, that which they are most capable of doing; but, as far as possible, university training shuts out of the minds of those among them, who are subjected to it, the prospect that there is anything in the world for which they are specially fitted. Imagine the success of the attempt to still the intellectual hunger of any of the men I have men- tioned, by putting before him, as the object of existence, the successful mimicry of the measure of a Greek song, or the roll of Ciceronian prose! Imagine how much success would be likely to attend the attempt to persuade such men that the education which leads to perfection in such elegances is alone to be called culture; while the facts of history, the process of thought, the conditions of moral and social exist- ence, and the laws of physical nature are left to be dealt with as they may by outside barbarians! It is not thus that the German universities, from being beneath notice a century ago, have become what they are now — the most intensely cultivated and the most productive intellectual corporations the world has ever seen. A LIBERAL EDUCATION 59 The student who repairs to them sees in the list of classes and of professors a fair picture of the world of knowledge. Whatever he needs to know there is some one ready to teach him, some one competent to discipline him in the way of learning; whatever his special bent, let him but be able and dilisent, and in due time he shall find distinction and a career. Among his professors, he sees men whose names are known and revered throughout the civilised world; and their living example infects him with a noble ambition, and a love for the spirit of work. The Germans dominate the intellectual world by virtue of the same simple secret as that which made Napoleon the master of old Europe. They have declared la carriere oiiverte aiix talents, and every Bursch marches with a pro- fessor's gov/n in his knapsack. Let him become a great scholar, or man of science, and ministers wall compete for his services. In Germany, they do not leave the chance of his holding the office he would render illustrious to the tender mercies of a hot canvass, and the final wisdom of a mob of country parsons. In short, in Germany, the universities are exactly what the Rector of Lincoln and the Commissioners tell us the English universities are not; that is to say, corporations "of learned men devoting their lives to the cultivation of science, and the direction of academical education." They are not "boarding schools for youths," nor clerical semi- naries; but institutions for the higher culture of men, in which the theological faculty is of no more importance or prominence, than the rest; and which are truly "univer- sities," since they strive to represent and embody the totality of human knowledge, and to find room for all forms of in- tellectual activity. May zealous and clear-headed reformers like Mr. Pattison 60 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS succeed in their noble endeavours to shape our universities towards some such ideal as this, without losing what is valu- able and distinctive in their social tone ! But until they have succeeded, a liberal education will be no more obtainable in our Oxford and Cambridge Universities than in our public schools. If I am justified in my conception of the ideal of a liberal education; and if what I have said about the existing educa- tional institutions of the country is also true, it is clear that the two have no sort of relation to one another; that the best of our schools and the most complete of our university trainings give but a narrow, one-sided, and essentially illib- eral education — while the worst give what is really next to no education at all. The South London Working- Men's College could not copy any of these institutions if it would; I am bold enough to express the conviction that it ought not if it could. For what is wanted is the reality and not the mere name of a liberal education; and this College must steadily set before itself the ambition to be able to give that education sooner or later. At present we are but beginning, sharpen- ing our educational tools, as it were, and, except a modicum of physical science, wt are not able to offer much more than is to be found in an ordinary school. Moral and social science — one of the greatest and most fruitful of our future classes, I hope — at present lacks only one thing in our programme, and that is a teacher. A con- siderable want, no doubt; but it must be recollected that it is much better to want a teacher than to want the desire to learn. Further, we need what, for want of a better name, I must call Physical Geography. What I mean is that which the Germans call ^' Erdkunde.^' It is a description of the earth, A LIBERAL EDUCATION 61 of its place and relation to other bodies; of its general structure, and of its great features — winds, tides, mountains, plains; of the chief forms of the vegetable and animal worlds, of the varieties of man. It is the peg upon w^hich the greatest quantity of useful and entertaining scientific information can be suspended. Literature is not upon the College programme; but I hope some day to see it there. For literature is the greatest of all sources of refined pleasure, and one of the great uses of a liberal education is to enable us to enjoy that pleasure. There is scope enough for the purposes of liberal education in the study of the rich treasures of our owm language alone. All that is needed is direction, and the cultivation of a re- fined taste by attention to sound criticism. But there is no reason why French and German should not be mastered suf- ficiently to read what is worth reading in those languages with pleasure and with profit. And finally, by and by, we must have History; treated not as a succession of battles and dynasties; not as a series of biographies; not as evidence that Providence has always been on the side of either Whigs or Tories; but as the devel- opment of man in times past, and in other conditions than our own. But, as it is one of the principles of our College to be self- supporting, the public must lead, and we must follow, in these matters. If my hearers take to heart what I have said about liberal education, they will desire these things, and I doubt not we shall be able to supply them. But we must wait till the demand is made. ON A PIECE OF CHALK [1868] If a well were sunk at our feet in the midst of the city of Norwich, the diggers would very soon find themselves at work in that white substance almost too soft to be called rock, with which we are all familiar as "chalk." Not only here, but over the whole country of Norfolk, the well-sinker might carry his shaft down many hundred feet without coming to the end of the chalk; and, on the sea-coast, where the waves have pared away the face of the land which breasts them, the scarped faces of the high cliffs are often wholly formed of the same material. Northward, the chalk mav be followed as far as Yorkshire; on the south coast it appears abruptly in the picturesque west- ern bays of Dorset, and breaks into the Needles of the Isle of Wight; while on the shores of Kent it supplies that long line of white cliffs to which England owes her name of Albion. Were the thin soil which covers it all washed away, a curved band of white chalk, here broader, and there nar- rower, might be followed diagonally across England from Lulworth in Dorset, to Flamborough Head in Yorkshire — a distance of over 280 miles as the crow flies. From this band to the North Sea, on the east, and the Channel, on the south, the chalk is largely hidden by other deposits; but, except in the Weald of Kent and Sussex, it enters into the very foundation of all the south-eastern counties. Attaining, as it does in some places, a thickness of more than a thousand feet, the English chalk must be admitted ON A PIECE OF CHALK 63 to be a mass of considerable magnitude. Nevertheless, it covers but an insignificant portion of the whole area occu- pied by the chalk formation of the globe, much of which has the same general characters as ours, and is found in detached patches, some less, and others more extensive, than the English. Chalk occurs in north-west Ireland; it stretches over a large part of France, — the chalk which underlies Paris being, in fact, a continuation of that of the London basin; it runs through Denmark and Central Europe, and extends southward to North Africa; while eastward, it appears in the Crimea and in Syria, and may be traced as far as the shores of the Sea of Aral, in Central Asia. If all the points at which true chalk occurs were circumscribed, they would lie within an irregular oval about 3,000 miles in long diameter — the area of which would be as great as that of Europe, and would many times exceed that of the largest existing inland sea — the Medi- terranean. Thus the chalk is no unimportant element in the masonry of the earth's crust, and it impresses a peculiar stamp, varying with the conditions to which it is exposed, on the scenery of the districts in which it occurs. The undulating downs and rounded coombs, covered with sweet-grassed turf, of our inland chalk country, have a peacefully domes- tic and mutton-suggesting prettiness, but can hardly be called either grand or beautiful. But on our southern coasts, the wall-sided cliffs, many hundred feet high, with vast needles and pinnacles standing out in the sea, sharp and solitary enough to serve as perches for the wary cormorant, confer a wonderful beauty and grandeur upon the chalk headlands. And, in the East, chalk has its share in the formation of some of the most venerable of mountain ranges, such as the Lebanon. 64 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS What is this wide-spread component of the surface of the earth ? and whence did it come ? You may think this no very hopeful inquiry. You may not unnaturally suppose that the attempt to solve such problems as these can lead to no result, save that of entan- gling the inquirer in vague speculations, incapable of refu- tation and of verification. If such were really the case, I should have selected some other subject than a "piece of chalk" for my discourse. But, in truth, after much delibera- tion, I have been unable to think of any topic which would so well enable me to lead you to see how solid is the founda- tion upon which some of the most startling conclusions of physical science rest, ' A great chapter of the history of the world is written in the chalk. Few passages in the history of man can be supported by such an overwhelming mass of direct and indirect evidence as that which testifies to the truth of the fragment of the history of the globe, which I hope to enable you to read, with your own eyes, to-night. Let me add, that few chapters of human history have a more profound significance for ourselves. I weigh my words well when I assert, that the man who should know the true history of the bit of chalk which every carpenter carries about in his breeches-pocket, though ignorant of all other history, is likely, if he will think his knowledge out to its ultimate results, to have a truer, and therefore a better, conception of this wonderful universe, and of man's relation to it, than the most learned student who is deep-read in the records of humanity and ignorant of those of Nature. The language of the chalk is not hard to learn, not nearly so hard as Latin, if you only want to get at the broad fea- tures of the story it has to tell; and I propose that we now set to work to spell that story out together. ON A PIECE OF CHALK 65 We all know that if we "burn" chalk the result is quick- lime. Chalk, in fact, is a compound of carbonic acid gas, and lime, and when you make it very hot the carbonic acid flies away and the lime is left. By this method of procedure we see the lime, but we do not see the carbonic acid. If, on the other hand, you were to powder a little chalk and drop it into a good deal of strong vinegar, there would be a great bubbling and fizzing, and, finally, a clear liquid, in which no sign of chalk would appear. Here you see the carbonic acid in the bubbles; the lime, dissolved in the vinegar, van- ishes from sight. There are a great many other ways of showing that chalk is essentially nothing but carbonic acid and quick-lime. Chemists enunciate the result of all the experiments which prove this, by stating that chalk is al- most wholly composed of "carbonate of lime." It is desirable for us to start from the knowledge of this fact, though it may not seem to help us very far towards what we seek. For carbonate of lime is a widely-spread substance, and is met with under very various conditions. All sorts of limestones are composed of more or less pure carbonate of lime. The crust which is often deposited by waters which have drained through limestone rocks, in the form of what are called stalagmites and stalactites, is car- bonate of lime. Or, to take a more familiar example, the fur on the inside of a tea-kettle is carbonate of lime; and, for anything chemistry tells us to the contrary, the chalk might be a kind of gigantic fur upon the bottom of the earth-kettle, which is kept pretty hot below. Let us try another method of making the chalk tell us its own history. To the unassisted eye chalk looks simply like a very loose and open kind of stone. But it is possible to i^rind a slice of chalk down so thin that you can see through it — until it is thin enough, in fact, to be examined 66 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS with any magnifying power that may be thought desirable. A thin slice of the fur of a kettle might be made in the same way. If it were examined microscopically, it would show itself to be a more or less distinctly laminated mineral sub- stance, and nothing more. But the slice of chalk presents a totally different appear- ance when placed under the microscope. The general mass of it is made up of very minute granules; but, imbedded in this matrix, are innumerable bodies, some smaller and some larger, but, on a rough average, not more than a hun- dredth of an inch in diameter, having a well-defined shape and structure. A cubic inch of some specimens of chalk may contain hundreds of thousands of these bodies, com- pacted together with incalculable millions of the granules. The examination of a transparent slice gives a good notion of the manner in which the components of the chalk are arranged, and of their relative proportions. But, by rubbing up some chalk with a brush in water and then pouring off the milky fluid, so as to obtain sediments of different degrees of fineness, the granules and the minute rounded bodies may be pretty well separated from one another, and submitted to microscopic examination, either as opaque or as trans- parent objects. By combining the views obtained in these various methods, each of the rounded bodies may be proved to be a beautifully-constructed calcareous fabric, made up of a number of chambers, communicating freely with one another. The chambered bodies are of various forms. One of the commonest is something like a badly-grown raspberry, being formed of a number of nearly globular chambers of different sizes congregated together. It is called Globigerina, and some specimens of chalk consist of little else than GlobigerincB and granules. Let us fix our at- tention upon the Globigerina. It is the spoor of the game ON A PIECE OF CHALK 67 we are tracking. If we can learn what it is and what are the conditions of its existence, we shall see our way to the origin and past history of the chalk. A suggestion which may naturally enough present itself is, that these curious bodies are the result of some process of aggregation which has taken place in the carbonate of lime; that, just as in winter, the rime on our windows sim- ulates the most delicate and elegantly arborescent foliage — proving that the mere mineral water may, under certain conditions, assume the outward form of organic bodies — so this mineral substance, carbonate of lime, hidden away in the bowels of the ea^rth, has taken the shape of these chambered bodies. I am not raising a merely fanciful and unreal objection. Very learned men, in former days, have even entertained the notion that all the formed things found in rocks are of this nature; and if no such conception is at present held to be admissible, it is because long and varied experience has now shown that mineral matter never does assume the form and structure we find in fossils. If any one were to try to persuade you that an oyster-shell (which is also chiefly composed of carbonate of lime) had crystallized out of sea,- water, I suppose you would laugh at the absurdity. Your laughter would be justified by the fact that all expe- rience tends to show^ that oyster-shells are formed by the agency of oysters, and in no other way. And if there were no better reasons, we should be justified, on like grounds, in believing that Glohigerina is not the product of anything but vital activity. Happily, however^ better evidence in proof of the organic nature of the Globigerime than that of analogy is forthcoming. It so happens that calcareous skeletons, exactly similar to the GlohigerifUB of the chalk, are being formed, at the pres- ent moment, by minute living creatures, which flourish in 68 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS multitudes, literally more numerous than the sands of the sea-shore, over a large extejit of that part of the earth's surface which is covered by the ocean. The history of the discovery of these living GlobigerincB , and of the part which they play in rock building, is singular enough. It is a discovery w^hich, like others of no less scien- tific importance, has arisen, incidentally, out of work devoted to very different and exceedingly practical interests. When men first took to the sea, they speedily learned to look out for shoals and rocks; and the more the burthen of their ships increased, the more imperatively necessary it became for sailors to ascertain with precision .the depth of the waters they traversed. Out of this necessity grew the use of the lead and sounding line; and, ultimately, marine-surveying, which is the recording of the form of coasts and of the depth of the sea, as ascertained by the sounding lead, upon charts. At the same time, it became desirable to ascertain and to indicate the nature of the sea-bottom, since this circumstance greatly affects its goodness as holding ground for anchors. Some ingenious tar, whose name deserves a better fate than the oblivion into which it has fallen, attained this object by "arming" the bottom of the lead with a lump of grease, to which more or less of the sand or mud, or broken shells, as the case might be, adhered, and was brought to the surface. But, however well adapted such an apparatus might be for rough nautical purposes, scientific accuracy could not be expected from the armed lead, and to remedy its defects (especially when applied to sounding in great depths) Lieut. Brooke, of the American Navy, some years ago invented a most ingenious machine, by which a considerable portion of the superficial layer of the sea-bottom can be scooped out and brought up from any depth to which the lead descends. In 1853, Lieut. Brooke obtained mud from the bottom of ON A PIECE OF CHALK 69 the North- Atlantic, between Newfoundland and the Azores, at a depth of more than 10,000 feet, or two miles, by the help of this sounding apparatus. The specimens were sent for examination to Ehrenberg of Berlin, and to Bailey of West Point, and those able microscopists found that this deep-sea mud was almost entirely composed of the skeletons of living organisms — the greater proportion of these being just like the GlobigerincE already known to occur in the chalk. Thus far, the "Vork had been carried on simply in the interests of science, but Lieut. Brooke's method of sounding acquired a high commercial value, when the enterprise of laying down the telegraph-cable between this country and the United States was undertaken. For it became a matter of immense importance to know, not only the depth of the sea over the whole line along which the cable was to be laid, but the exact nature of the bottom, so as to guard against chances of cutting or fraying the strands of that costly rope. The Admiralty consequently ordered Captain Dayman, an old friend and shipmate of mine, to ascertain the depth over the whole line of the cable, and to bring back specimens of the bottom. In former days, such a command as this might have sounded very much like one of the impossible things which the young Prince in the Fairy Tales is ordered to do before he can obtain the hand of the Princess. However, in the months of June and July, 1857, my friend performed the task assigned to him with great expedition and precision, without, so far as I know, having met with any reward of that kind. The specimens of Atlantic mud which he pro- cured were sent to me to be examined and reported upon.^ 1 See Appendix to Captain Dayman's Deep-sea Soundings in the North Atlantic Ocean between Ireland and Newfoundland, made in H.M.S. "Cyclops." Published by order of the Lords Commissioners 70 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS The result of all these operations is, that we know the contours and the nature of the surface-soil covered by the North Atlantic for a distance of 1,700 miles from east to west, as well as we know that of any part of the dry land. It is a prodigious plain — one of the widest and most even plains in the world. If the sea were drained off, you might drive a waggon all the way from Valentia, on the west coast of Ireland, to Trinity Bay, in Newfoundland. And, except upon one sharp incline about 200 miles from Valentia, I am not quite sure that it would even be necessary to put the skid on, so gentle are the ascents and descents upon that long route. From Valentia the road would lie down-hill for about 200 miles to the point at which the bottom is now covered by 1,700 fathoms of sea- water. Then would come the central plain, more than a thousand miles wide, the in- equalities of the surface of which would be hardly percep- tible, though the depth of water upon it now varies from 10,000 to 15,000 feet; and there are places in which Mont Blanc might be sunk without showing its peak above water. Beyond this, the ascent on the American side commences, and gradually leads, for about 300 miles, to the Newfound- land shore. Almost the whole of the bottom of this central plain (which extends for many hundred miles in a north and south di- rection) is covered by a fine mud, which, when brought to the surface, dries into a greyish white friable substance. You can write with this on a blackboard, if you are so inclined; and, to the eye, it is quite like very soft, greyish chalk. Examined chemically, it proves to be composed almost wholly of carbonate of lime; and if you make a section of it, of the Admiralty, 1858. They have since formed the subject of an elaborate Memoir by Messrs. Parker and Jones, published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1865. ON A PIECE OF CHALK 71 in the same way as that of the piece of chalk was made, and view it with the microscope, it presents innumerable GlobigerincB imbedded in a granular matrix. Thus this deep-sea mud is substantially chalk. I say substantially, because there are a good many minor differences; but as these have no bearing on the question immediately before us, — which is the nature of the Globigerince of the chalk, — it is unnecessary to speak of them. GlobigerincB of every size, from the smallest to the largest, are associated together in the Atlantic mud, and the cham- bers of many are filled by a soft animal matter. This soft substance is, in fact, the remains of the creature to which the Globigerina shell, or rather skeleton, owes its existence — and which is an animal of the simplest imaginable descrip- tion. It is, in fact, a mere particle of living jelly, without defined parts of any kind — without a mouth, nerves, muscles, or distinct organs, and only manifesting its vitality to ordi- nary observation by thrusting out and retracting from all parts of its surface, long filamentous processes, which serve for arms and legs. Yet this amorphous particle, devoid of everything which, in the higher animals, we call organs, is capable of feeding, growing, and multiplying; of separating from the ocean the small proportion of carbonate of lime which is dissolved in sea-water; and of building up that sub- stance into a skeleton for itself, according to a pattern which can be imitated by no other known agency. The notion that animals can live and flourish in the sea, at the vast depths from which apparently living GlobigerincB have been brought up, does not agree very well with our usual conceptions respecting the conditions of animal life; and it is not so absolutely impossible as it might at first sight appear to be, that the GlobigerincB of the Atlantic sea- bottom do not live and die where they are found. 72 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS As I have mentioned, the soundings from the great Atlan- tic plain are almost entirely made up of GlohigerincB, with the granules which have been mentioned, and some few other calcareous shells; but a small percentage of the chalky mud — perhaps at most some five per cent, of it — is of a different nature, and consists of shells and skeletons composed of silex, or pure flint. These silicious bodies belong partly to the lowly vegetable organisms which are called Diatomacece , and partly to the minute, and extremely simple, animals, termed Radiolaria. It is quite certain that these creatures do not live at the bottom of the ocean, but at its surface — where they may be obtained in prodigious numbers by the use of a properly constructed net. Hence it follows that these silicious organisms, though they are not heavier than the lightest dust, must have fallen, in some cases, through fifteen thousand feet of water, before they reached their final resting-place on the ocean floor. And considering how large a surface these bodies expose in proportion to their weight, it is probable that they occupy a great length of time in making their burial journey from the surface of the Atlantic to the bottom. But if the Radiolaria and Diatoms are thus rained upon the bottom of the sea, from the superficial layer of its waters in which they pass their lives, it is obviously possible that the Globigerincc may be similarly derived; and if they were so, it would be much more easy to understand how they obtain their supply of food than it is at present. Neverthe- less, the positive and negative evidence all points the other way. The skeletons of the full-grown, deep-sea Globigerince are so remarkably solid and heavy in proportion to their surface as to seem little fitted for floating; and, as a matter of fact, they are not to be found along with the Diatoms and Radiolaria in the uppermost stratum of the open ocean. ON A PIECE OF CHALK 73 It has been observed, again, that the abundance of Glo- bigerincB, in proportion to other organisms, of like kind, in- creases with the depth of the sea; and that deep-water GlohigerincB are larger than those which live in shallower parts of the sea; and such facts negative the supposition that these organisms have been swept by currents from the shallows into the deeps of the Atlantic. It therefore seems to be hardly doubtful that these wonderful creatures live and die at the depths in which they are found. ^ However, the important points for us are, that the living GlobigerincB are exclusively marine animals, the skeletons of which abound at the bottom of deep seas; and that there is not a shadow of reason for believing that the habits of the Globigerince of the chalk differed from those of the existing species. But if this be true, there is no escaping the conclu- sion that the chalk itself is the dried mud of an ancient deep sea. In working over the soundings collected by Captain Dayman, I was surprised to find that many of what I have called the "granules" of that mud were not, as one might have been tempted to think at first, the mere powder and waste of Globigerince, but that they had a definite form and size. I termed these bodies ^' coccoliths,^^ and doubted 1 During the cruise of H.M.S. Bulldog, commanded by Sir Leopold M'Clintock, in i860, living star-fish were brought up, clinging to the lowest part of the sounding-line, from a depth of 1,260 fathoms, mid- way between Cape Farewell, in Greenland, and the Rockall banks. Dr. Wallich ascertained that the sea-bottom at this point consisted of the ordinary Glohigerina ooze, and that the stomachs of the star-fishes were full of GlobigerincB. This discovery removes all objections to the existence of living Globigerince at great depths, which are based upon the supposed difficulty of maintaining animal life under such con- ditions; and it throws the burden of proof upon those who object to the supposition that the Globigerince live and die where they are found. 74 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS their organic nature. Dr. Wallich verified my observation, and added the interesting discovery that, not unfrequently, bodies similar to these '^coccoliths" were aggregated to- gether into spheroids, which he termed ^' coccospheres.''^ So far as we knew, these bodies, the nature of which is extremely puzzling and problematical, were peculiar to the Atlantic soundings. But, a few years ago, Mr. Sorby, in making a careful examination of the chalk by means of thin sections and otherwise, observed, as Ehrenberg had done before him, that much of its granular basis possesses a definite form. Comparing these formed particles with those in the Atlantic soundings, he found the two to be identical; and thus proved that the chalk, like the sur- roundings, contains these mysterious coccoliths and cocco- spheres. Here was a further and most interesting confir- mation, from internal evidence, of the essential identity of the chalk with modern deep-sea mud. GlobigerincB, cocco- liths, and coccospheres are found as the chief constituents of both, and testify to the general similarity of the condi- tions under which both have been formed.^ The evidence furnished by the hewing, facing, and superposition of the stones of the Pyramids, that these structures were built by men, has no greater weight than the evidence that the chalk was built by Globigerince and the belief that those ancient pyramid-builders were terres- trial and air-breathing creatures like ourselves, is not better based than the conviction that the chalk-makers lived in the sea. But as our belief in the building of the 1 1 have recently traced out the development of the "coccoliths" from a diameter of y^Vo^^ °^ ^^ ^^^^ ^P ^° their largest size (which is about jg'oo'-^)' ^^^ "^ longer doubt that they are produced by inde- pendent organisms, which, like the Globigerince, live and die at the bottom of the sea. ON A PIECE OF CHALK 75 Pyramids by men is not only grounded on the internal evidence afforded by these structures, but gathers strength from multitudinous collateral proofs, and is clinched by the total absence of any reason for a contrary belief; so the evidence drawn from the Globigerince that the chalk is an ancient sea-bottom; is fortified by innumerable independent lines of evidence; and our belief in the truth of the conclu- sion to which all positive testimony tends, receives the like negative justification from the fact that no other hypothesis has a shadow of foundation. It may be worth while briefly to consider a few of these collateral proofs that the chalk was deposited at the bottom of the sea. The great mass of the chalk is composed, as we have seen, of the skeletons of GlobigerincB, and other simple organisms, imbedded in granular matter. Here and there, however, this hardened mud of the ancient sea reveals the remains of higher animals which have lived and died, and left their hard parts in the mud, just as the oysters die and leave their shells behind them, in the mud of the present seas. There are, at the present day, certain groups of animals which are never found in fresh waters, being unable to live anywhere but in the sea. Such are the corals; those corallines which are called Polyzoa; those creatures which fabricate the lamp-shells, and are called Brachiopoda; the pearly Nautilus, and all animals allied to it; and all the forms of sea-urchins and star-fishes. Not only are all these creatures confined to salt water at the present day; but, so far as our records of the past go, the conditions of their existence have been the same: hence, their occurrence in any deposit is as strong evidence as can be obtained, that that deposit was formed in the sea. Now the remains of animals of all kinds which have been enumerated, occur in the chalk, in greater or less abundance; while not one oi 76 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS those forms of shell-fish which are characteristic of fresh water has yet been observed in it. When we consider that the remains of more -than three thousand distinct species of aquatic animals have been discovered among the fossils of the chalk, that the great majority of them are of such forms as are now met with only in the sea, and that there is no reason to believe that any one of them inhabited fresh water — the collateral evidence that the chalk represents an ancient sea-bottom acquires as great force as the proof derived from the nature of the chalk itself. I think you will now allow that I did not overstate my case when I asserted that we have as strong grounds for believing that all the vast area of dry land, at present occupied by the chalk, was once at the bottom of the sea, as we have for any matter of history whatever; while there is no justification for any other belief. No less certain it is that the time during which the coun- tries we now call south-east England, France, Germany, Poland, Russia, Egypt, Arabia, Syria, were more or less completely covered by a deep sea, was of considerable duration. We have already seen that the chalk is, in places, more than a thousand feet thick. I think you will agree with me, that it must have taken some time for the skele- tons of animalcules of a hundredth of an inch in diameter to heap up such a mass as that. I have said that through- out the thickness of the chalk the remains of other animals are scattered. These remains are often in the most ex- quisite state of preservation. The valves of the shell-fishes are commonly adherent; the long spines of some of the sea-urchins, which w^ould be detached by the smallest jar, often remain in their places. In a word, it is certain that these animals have lived and died when the place which they now occupy was the surface of as much of the chalk as had ON A PIECE OF CHALK 77 then been deposited; and that each has been covered up by the layer of Globigerina mud, upon which the creatures imbedded a little higher up have, in like manner, lived and died. But some of these remains prove the existence of reptiles of vast size in the chalk sea. These lived their time, and had thdir ancestors and descendants, which assuredly implies time, reptiles being of slow growth. There is more curious evidence, again, that the process of covering up, or, in other words, the deposit of Globigerina skeletons, did not go on very fast. It is demonstrable that an animal of the cretaceous sea might die, that its skeleton might lie uncovered upon the sea-bottom long enough to lose all its outward coverings and appendages by putre- faction; and that, after this had happened, another animal might attach itself to the dead and naked skeleton, might grow to maturity, and might itself die before the calcareous mud had buried the whole. Cases of this kind are admirably described by Sir Charles Lyell. He speaks of the frequency with which geologists find in the chalk a fossilized sea-urchin, to which is attached the lower valve of a Crania. This is a kind of shell-fish, with a shell composed of two pieces, of which, as in the oyster, one is fixed and the other free. "The upper valve is almost invariably wanting, though occasionally found in a perfect state of preservation in the white chalk at some distance. In this case, we see clearly that the sea-urchin first lived from youth to age, then died and lost its spines, w^hich were carried away. Then the young Crania adhered to the bared shell, grew and perished in its turn; after which, the upper valve was separated from the lower, before the Echinus became enveloped in chalky mud." ^ 1 Elements of Geology, by Sir Charles Lyell, Bart., F.R.S., p. 23. 78 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS A specimen in the Museum of Practical Geology, in London, still further prolongs the period which must have elapsed between the death of the sea-urchin, and its burial by the GlobigerincB. For the outward face of the valve of a Crania, which is attached to a sea-urchin (Micraster), is itself overrun by an incrusting coralline, which spreads thence over more or less of the surface of the sea-urchin. It follows that, after the upper valve of the Crania fell off, the surface of the attached valve must have remained exposed long enough to allow of the growth- of the whole coralline, since corallines do not live imbedded in mud. ^ The progress of knowledge may, one day, enable us to deduce from such facts as these the maximum rate at which the chalk can have accumulated, and thus to arrive at the minimum duration of the chalk period. Suppose that the valve of the Crania upon which a coralline has fixed itself in the way just described, is so attached to the sea-urchin that no part of it is more than an inch above the face upon which the sea-urchin rests. Then, as the coralline could not have fixed itself, if the Crania had been covered up with chalk mud, and could- not have lived had itself been so covered, it follows, that an inch of chalk mud could not have accumulated within the time between the death and decay of the soft parts of the sea-urchin and the growth of the coralline to the full size which it has attained. If the decay of the soft parts of the sea-urchin; the attachment, growth to maturity, and decay of the Crania; and the subsequent attachment and growth of the coralline, took a year (which is a low estimate enough), the accumulation of the inch of chalk must have taken more than a year: and the deposit of a thousand feet of chalk must, consequently, have taken more than twelve thousand years. 1 Elements of Geology, by Sir Charles Lyell, Bart., F.R.S., p. 23. ON A PIECE OF CHALK 79 The foundation of all this calculation is, of course, a knowledge of the length of time the Crania and the coralline needed to attain their full size; and, on this head, precise knowledge is at present wanting. But there are circum- stances which tend to show, that nothing like an inch of chalk has accumulated during the life of a Crania; and, on any probable estimate of the length of that life, the chalk period must have had a much longer duration than that thus roughly assigned to it. Thus, not only is it certain that the chalk is the mud of an ancient sea-bottom; but it is no less certain, that the chalk sea existed during an extremely long period, though we may not be prepared to give a precise estimate of the length of that period in years. The relative duration is clear, though the absolute duration may not be definable. The attempt to affix any precise date to the period at which the chalk sea began, or ended, its existence, is baffled by difficulties of the same kind. But the relative age of the cretaceous epoch may be determined with as great ease and certainty as the long duration of that epoch. You will have heard of the interesting discoveries recently made, in various parts of Western Europe, of flint imple- ments, obviously worked into shape by human hands, under circumstances which show conclusively that man is a very ancient denizen of these regions. It has been proved that the whole populations of Europe, whose existence has been revealed to us in this way, consisted of savages, such as the Esquimaux are now; that, in the country which is now France, they hunted the reindeer, and were familiar with the ways of the mammoth and the bison. The physi- cal geography of France was in those days different from what it is now — the river Somme, for instance, having cut its bed a hundred feet deeper between that time and this; 80 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS and, it is probable, that the climate was more like that of Canada or Siberia, than that of Western Europe. The existence of these people is forgotten even in the traditions of the oldest historical nations. The name and fame of them had utterly vanished until a few years back; and the amount of physical change which has been effected since their day renders it more than probable that, venerable as are some of the historical nations, the workers of the chipped flints of Hoxne or of Amiens are to them, as they are to us, in point of antiquity. But, if we assign to these hoar relics of long-vanished generations of men the greatest age that can possibly be claimed for them, they are not older than the drift, or boulder clay, which, in comparison with the chalk, is but a very juvenile deposit. You need go no further than your own sea-board for evidence of this fact. At one of the most charming spots on the coast of Norfolk, Cromer, you wdll see the boulder clay forming a vast mass, which lies upon the chalk, and must conse- quently have come into existence after it. Huge boulders of chalk are, in fact included in the clay, and have evidently been brought to the position they now occupy by the same agency as that w^hich has planted blocks of syenite from Norway side by side with them. The chalk, then, is certainly older than the boulder clay. If you ask how much, I will again take you no further than the same spot upon your own coasts for evidence. I have spoken of the boulder clay and drift as resting upon the chalk. That is not strictly true. Interposed between the chalk and the drift is a comparatively insignificant layer, containing vegetable matter. But that layer tells a wonder- ful history. It is full of stumps of trees standing as they grew. Fir-trees are there with their cones, and hazel-bushes with their nuts; there stand the stools of oak and yew trees, ON A PIECE OF CHALK ' 81 beeches and alders. Hence this stratum is appropriately called the ''forest- bed." It is obvious that the chalk must have been upheaved and converted into dry land, before the timber trees could grow upon it. As the bolls of some of these trees are from two to three feet in diameter, it is no less clear that the dry land thus formed remained in the same condition for long ages. And not only do the remains of stately oaks and well-grown firs testify to the duration of this condition of things, but additional evidence to the same effect is afforded by the abundant remains of elephants, rhinoceroses, hippo- potamuses, and other great wild beasts, which it has yielded to the zealous search of such men as the Rev. Mr. Gunn. When you look at such a collection as he has formed, and bethink you that these elephantine bones did veritably carry their owners about, and these great grinders crunch, in the dark woods of w^hich the forest-bed is now the only trace, it is impossible not to feel that they are as good evi- dence of the lapse of time as the annual rings of the tree stumps. Thus there is a writing upon the wall of cliffs at Cromer, and whoso runs may read it. It tells us, with an authority which cannot be impeached, that the ancient sea-bed of the chalk sea was raised up, and remained dry land, until it was covered with forest, stocked with the great game the spoils of which have rejoiced your geologists. How long it remained in that condition cannot be said; but, "the whirl- igig of time brought its revenges" in those days as in these. That dry land, with the bones and teeth of generations of long-lived elephants, hidden away among the gnarled roots and dry leaves of its ancient trees, sank gradually to the bottom of the icy sea, which covered it with huge masses of drift and boulder clay. Sea-beasts, such as the walrus 82 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS now restricted to the extreme north, paddled about where birds had twittered among the topmost twigs of the fir- trees. How long this state of things endured we know not, but at length it came to an end. The upheaved glacial mud hardened into the soil of modern Norfolk. Forests grew once more, the wolf and the beaver replaced the rein- deer and the elephant; and at length what we call the his- tory of England dawned. Thus you have, within the limits of your own county, proof that the chalk can justly claim a very much greater antiquity than even the oldest physical traces of mankind. But we may go further and demonstrate, by evidence of the same authority as that which testifies to the existence of the father of men, that the chalk is vastlv older than Adam himself. The Book of Genesis informs us that Adam, immediately upon his creation, and before the appearance of Eve, was placed in the Gard'en of Eden. The problem of the geographical position of Eden has greatly vexed the spirits of the learned in such matters, but there is one point respecting which, so far as I know, no commentator has ever raised a doubt. This is, that of the four rivers which are said to run out of it, Euphrates and Hiddekel are identical with the rivers now known by the names of Euphrates and Tigris. But the whole country in which these mighty rivers take their origin, and through which they run, is composed of rocks which are either of the same age as the chalk, or of later date. So that the chalk must not only have been formed, but, after its formation, the time required for the deposit of these later rocks, and for their upheaval into dry land, must have elapsed, before the smallest brook which feeds the swift stream of "the great river, the river of Babylon," began to flow. ON A PIECE OF CHALK 83 Thus, evidence which cannot be rebutted, and which need not be strengthened, though if time permitted I might indefinitely increase its quantity, compels you to believe that the earth, from the time of the chalk to the present day, has been the theatre of a series of changes as vast in their amount, as they were slow in their progress. The area on which we stand has been first sea and then land, for at least four alternations; and has remained in each of these condi- tions for a period of great length. Nor have these wonderful metamorphoses of sea into land, and of land into sea, been confined to one corner of England. During the chalk period, or "cretaceous epoch," not one of the present great physical features of the globe was in existence. Our great mountain ranges, Pyrenees, Alps, Himalayas, Andes, have all been upheaved since the chalk was deposited, and the cretaceous sea flowed over the sites of Sinai and Ararat. All this is certain, because rocks of cretaceous, or still later, date have shared in the elevatory movements which gave rise to these mountain chains; and may be found perched up, in some cases, many thousand feet high upon their flanks. And evidence of equal cogency demonstrates that, though, in Norfolk, the forest-bed rests directly upon the chalk, yet it does so, not because the period at which the forest grew immediately followed that at which the chalk was formed, but because an immense lapse of time, represented elsewhere by thousands of feet of rock, is not indicated at Cromer. I must ask you to believe that there is no less con- clusive proof that a still more prolonged succession of similar changes occurred, before the chalk was depos- ited. Nor have we any reason to think that the first term in the series of these changes is known. The oldest sea-beds preserved to us are sands, and mud, and pebbles, 84 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS the wear and tear of rocks which were formed in still older oceans. But, great as is the magnitude of these physical changes of the world, they have been accompanied by a no less striking series of modifications in its living inhabitants. All the great classes of animals, beasts of the field, fowls of the air, creeping things, and things which dwell in the waters, flourished upon the globe long ages before the chalk was deposited. Very few, however, if any, of these ancient forms of animal life were identical with those which now live. Certainly not one of the higher animals was of the same species as any of those now in existence. The beasts of the field, in the days before the chalk, were not our beasts of the field, nor the fowls of the air such as those which the eye of men has seen flying, unless his antiquity dates infinitely further back than we at present surmise. If we could be carried back into those times, w^e should be as one suddenly set down in Australia before it was col- onized. We should see mammals, birds, reptiles, fishes, insects, snails, and the like, clearly recognizable as such, and yet not one of them would be just the same as those with which we are familiar, and many would be extremely different. From that time to the present, the population of the world has undergone slow and gradual, but incessant, changes. There has been no grand catastrophe— no de- stroyer has swept away the forms of life of one period, and replaced them by a totally new creation: but one species has vanished and another has taken its place; creatures of one type of structure have diminished, those of another have increased, as time has passed on. And thus, while the differences between the living creatures of the time before the chalk and those of the present day appear startling, if ON A PIECE OF CHALK 85 placed side by side, we are led from one to the other by the most gradual progress, if we follow the course of Nature through the whole series of those relics of her operations which she has left behind. It is by the population of the chalk sea that the ancient and the modern inhabitants of the world are most completely connected. The groups which are dying out flourish, side by side, with the groups which are now the dominant forms of life. Thus the chalk contains remains of those strange flying and swimming reptiles, the pterodactyl, the ichthyosaurus, and the plesio- saurus, which are found in no later deposits, but abounded in preceding ages. The chambered shells called ammonites and belemnites, which are so characteristic of the period preceding the cretaceous, in like manner die with it. But, amongst these fading remainders of a previous state of things, are some very modern forms of life, looking like Yankee pedlars among a tribe of Red Indians. Crocodiles of modern type appear; bony fishes, many of them very similar to existing species, almost supplant the forms of fish which predominate in more ancient seas; and many kinds of b'ving shell-fish first become known to us in the chalk. The vegetation acquires a modern aspect. A few living animals are not even distinguishable as species, from those which existed at that remote epoch. The Globigerina of the present day, for example, is not different specifically from that of the chalk; and the same may be said of many other Foraminijera. I think it probable that critical and unprejudiced examination will show that more than one species of much higher animals have had a similar longevity; but the only example which I can at present give confidently is the snake 's-head lamp-shell (Terebratulina caput serpen- tis), which lives in our English seas and abounded (as Terebratulina striata of authors) in the chalk. 86 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS The longest line of human ancestry must hide its dimin- ished head before the pedigree of this insignificant shell- fish. We Englishmen are proud to have an ancestor who was present at the Battle of Hastings. The ancestors of Terebratiilina caput serpentis may have been present at a battle of I chthyosauria in that part of the sea which, when the chalk was forming, flowed over the site of Hastings. When all around has changed, this Terebratulina has peace- fully propagated its species from generation to generation, and stands to this day, as a living testimony to the con- tinuity of the present with the past history of the globe. Up to this moment I have stated, so far as I know, noth- ing but well-authenticated facts, and the immediate con- clusions which they force upon the mind. But the mind is so constituted that it does not willingly rest in facts and immediate causes, but seeks always after a knowledge of the remoter links in the chain of causation. Taking the many changes of any given spot of the earth's surface, from sea to land and from land to sea, as an estab- lished fact, we cannot refrain from asking ourselves how these changes have occurred. And when we have explained them — as they must be explained — by the alternate slow movements of elevation and depression which have affected the crust of the earth, we go still further back, and ask, Why these movements? I am not certain that any one can give you a satisfactory answer to that question. Assuredly I cannot. All that can be said, for certain, is, that such movements are part of the ordinary course of nature, inasmuch as they are going on at the present time. Direct proof may be given, that some parts of the land of the northern hemisphere are at this mo- ment insensibly rising and others insensibly sinking; and , ' ON A PIECE OF CHALK 87 there is indirect, but perfectly satisfactory, proof, that an enormous area now covered by the Pacific has been deep- ened thousands of feet, since the present inhabitants of that sea came into existence. Thus there is not a shadow of a reason for believing that the physical changes of the globe, in past times, have been affected by other than natural causes. Is there any more reason for believing that the concomitant modifications in the forms of the living inhabitants of the globe have been brought about in other ways ? Before attempting to answer this question, let us try to form a distinct mental picture of what has happened in some special case. The crocodiles are animals which, as a group, have a very vast antiquity. They abounded ages before the chalk was deposited; they throng the rivers in warm cli- mates, at the present day. There is a difference in the form of the joints of the back-bone, and in some minor partic- ulars, between the crocodiles of the present epoch and those^ which lived before the chalk; but, in the cretaceous epoch, as I have already mentioned, the crocodiles had assumed the modern type of structure. Notwithstanding this, the croco- diles of the chalk are not identically the same as. those which lived in the times called ''older tertiary," which succeeded the cretaceous epoch; and the crocodiles of the older tertia- ries are not identical with those of the newer tertiaries, nor are these identical with existing forms. I leave open the question whether particular species may have lived on from epoch to epoch. But each epoch has had its peculiar croc- odiles; though all, since the chalk, have belonged to the modern type, and differ simply in their proportions, and in such structural particulars as are discernible only to trained eyes. How is the existence of this long succession of different 88 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS species of crocodiles to be accounted for? Only two sup- positions seem to be open to us — Either each species of croc- odile has been specially created, or it has arisen out of some pre-existing form by the operation of natural causes. Choose your hypothesis; I have chosen mine. I can find no war- ranty for believing in the distinct creation of a score of suc- cessive species of crocodiles in the course of countless ages of time. Science gives no countenance to such a wild fancy; nor can even the perverse ingenuity of a commentator pre- tend to discover this sense, in the simple words in which the writer of Genesis records the proceedings of the fifth and sixth days of the Creation. On the other hand, I see no good reason for doubting the necessary alternative, that all these varied species have been evolved from pre-existing crocodilian forms, by the oper- ation of causes as completely a part of the common order of nature as those which have effected the changes of the inorganic world. Few will venture to affirm that the reason- ing which applies to crocodiles loses its force among other animals, or among plants. If one series of species has come into existence by the operation of natural causes, it seems folly to deny that all may have arisen in the same way. A small beginning has led us to a great ending. If I were to put the bit of chalk with which we started into the hot but obscure flame of burning hydrogen, it would presently shine like the sun. It seems to me that this physical met- amorphosis is no false image of what has been the result of our subjecting it to a jet of fervent, though nowise brilliant, thought to-night. It has become luminous, and its clear rays, penetrating the abyss of the remote past, have brought within our ken some stages of the evolution of the earth. ON A PIECE OF CHALK 89 And in the shifting "without haste, but without rest" of the land and sea, as in the endless variation of the forms assumed by living beings, we have observed nothing but the natural product of the forces originally possessed by the substance of the universe. ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE ^ [1868] In order to make the title of this discourse generally intel- ligible, I have translated the term "Protoplasm," which is the scientific name of the substance of which I am about to speak, by the words "the physical basis of life." I suppose that, to many, the idea that there is such a thing as a physical basis, or matter, of life may be novel — so widely spread is the conception of life as a something which works through matter, but is independent of it; and even those who are aware that matter and life are inseparably connected, may not be prepared for the conclusion plainly suggested by the phrase, ^^the physical basis or matter of life," that there is some one kind of matter which is common to all living beings, and that their endless diversities are bound together by a physical, as well as an ideal, unity. In fact, when first apprehended, such a doctrine as this appears almost shock- ing to common sense. 1 The substance of this paper was contained in a discourse which was delivered in Edinburgh on the evening of Sunday, the 8th of No- vember, 1868 — being the first of a series of Sunday evening addresses upon non- theological topics, instituted by the Rev. J. Cranbrook. Some phrases, which could possess only a transitory and local interest, have been omilted; instead of the newspaper report of the Archbishop of York's address, his Grace's subsequently published pamphlet On the Limits of Philosophical Inquiry is quoted; and I have, here and there, endeavoured to express my meaning more fully and clearly than I seem to have done in speaking — if I may judge by sundry criticisms upon what I am supposed to have said, which have appeared. But in substance, and, so far as my recollection serves, in form, what is here written corresponds with what was there said. ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE 91 What, truly, can seem to be more obviously different from one another, in faculty, in form, and in substance, than the various kinds of living beings ? What community of faculty can there be between the brightly-coloured lichen, which so nearly resembles a mere mineral incrustation of the bare rock on which it grows, and the painter, to whom it is instinct with beauty, or the botanist, whom it feeds with knowledge ? Again, think of the microscopic fungus — a mere infinitesi- mal ovoid particle, which finds space and duration enough to multiply into countless millions in the body of a living fly; and then of the wealth of foliage, the luxuriance of flower and fruit, which lies between this bald sketch of a plant and the giant pine of California, towering to the dimensions of a cathedral spire, or the Indian fig, which covers acres with its profound shadow, and endures while nations and empires come and go around its vast circumfer- ence. Or, turning to the other half of the world of life, picture to yourselves the great Finner whale, hugest of beasts that live, or have lived, disporting his eighty or ninety feet of bone, muscle, and blubber, with easy roll, among waves in which the stoutest ship that ever left dockyard would flounder hopelessly; and contrast him with the invis- ible animalcules — mere gelatinous specks, multitudes of which could, in fact, dance upon the point of a needle with the same ease as the angels of the Schoolmen could, in imagination. With these images before your minds, you may well ask, what community of form, or structure, is there between the animalcule and the whale; or between the fungus and the fig-tree? And, d fortiori, between all four? Finally, if we regard substance, or material composition, what hidden bond can connect the flower which a girl wears in her hair and the blood which courses through her youthful veins; or, what is there in common between the dense and 92 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS resisting mass of the oak, or the strong fabric of the tortoise, and those broad disks of glassy jelly which may be seen pulsating through the waters of a calm sea, but which drain away to mere films in the hand which raises them out of their element? Such objections as these must, I think, arise in the mind of every one who ponders, for the first time, upon the con- ception of a single physical basis of life underlying all the diversities of vital existence; but I propose to demonstrate to you that, notwithstanding these apparent difficulties, a threefold unity — namely, a unity of power or faculty, a unity of form, and a unity of substantial composition — does pervade the whole living world. No very abstruse argumentation is needed, in the first place to prove that the powers, or faculties, of all kinds of living matter, diverse as they may be in degree, are substan- tially similar in kind. Goethe has condensed a survey of all powers of mankind into the well-known epigram: — "Warum treibt sich das Volk so und schreit? Es will sich ernahren Kinder zeugen, und die nahren so gut es'vermag. * * * * Weiter bringt es kein Mensch, stelT er sich wie er auch will." 'In physiological language this means, that all the multi- farious and complicated activities of man 'are comprehen- sible under three categories. Either they are immediately directed towards the maintenance and development of the body, or they effect transitory changes in the relative posi- tions of parts of the body, or they tend towards the contin- uance of the species. Even those manifestations of intellect, of feeling, and of will, which we rightly name the higher ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE 93 faculties, are not excluded from this classification, inas- much as to every one but the subject of them, they are known only as transitory changes in the relative positions of parts of the body. Speech, gesture, and every other form of human action are, in the long run, resolvable into muscular contraction, and muscular contraction is but a transitory change in the relative positions of the parts of a muscle. But the scheme which is large enough to embrace the activi- ties of the highest form of life, covers all those of the lower creatures. The lowest plant, or animalcule, feeds, grows, and reproduces its kind. In addition, all animals manifest those transitory changes of form which we class under irri- tability and contractility; and, it is more than probable, that w^hen the vegetable world is thoroughly explored, we shall find all plants in possession of the same powers, at one time or other of their existence. I am not now alluding to such phenomena, at once rare and conspicuous, as those exhibited by the leaflets of the sensitive plants, or the stamens of the barberry, but to much more widely spread, and at the same time, more subtle and hidden, manifestations of vegetable contractility. You are doubtless aware that the common nettle owes its stinging property to the innumerable stiff and needle-like, though exquisitely delicate, hairs which cover its surface. Each stinging-needle tapers from a broad base to a slender sum- mit, which, though rounded at the end, is of such micro- scopic fineness that it readily penetrates, and breaks off in, the skin. The whole hair consists of a very delicate outer case of wood, closely applied to the inner surface of which is a layer of semi-fluid matter, full of innumerable granules of extreme minuteness. This semi-fluid lining is protoplasm, which thus constitutes a kind of bag, full of a limpid liquid, and roughly corresponding in form with the interior of the D4 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS hair which it fills. When viewed with a sufl&ciently high magnifying power, the protoplasmic layer of the nettle hair is seen to be in a condition of unceasing activity. Local contractions of the whole thickness of its substance pass slowly and gradually from point to point, and give rise to the appearance of progressive waves, just as the bending of successive stalks of corn by a breeze produces the apparent billows of a corn-field. But, in addition to these movements, and independently of them, the granules are driven, in relatively rapid streams, through channels in the protoplasm which seem to have a considerable amount of persistence. Most commonly, the currents in adjacent parts of the protoplasm take similar directions; and, thus, there is a general stream up one side of the hair and down the other. But this does not prevent the existence of partial currents which take different routes; and sometimes trains of granules may be seen coursing swiftly in opposite directions within a twenty-thousandth of an inch of one another; while, occasionally, opposite streams come into direct collision, and, after a longer or shorter struggle, one predominates. The cause of these currents seems to lie in contractions of the protoplasm w^hich bounds the channels in which they flow, but which are so minute that the best microscopes show only their effects, and not themselves. The spectacle afforded by the wonderful energies prisoned within the compass of the microscopic hair of a plant, which we commonly regard as a merely passive organism, is not easily forgotten by one who has watched its display, con- tinued hour after hour, without pause or sign of weakening. The possible complexity of many other organic forms, seem- ingly as simple as the protoplasm of the nettle, dawns upon one; and the comparison of such a protoplasm to a body with ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE 95 an internal circulation, which has been put forward by an eminent physiologist, loses much of its startling character. Currents similar to those of the hairs of the nettle have been observed in a great multitude of very different plants, and weighty authorities have suggested that they probably occur, in more or less perfection, in all young vegetable cells. If such be the case, the wonderful noonday silence of a tropi- cal forest is, after all, due only to the dulness of our hearing; and could our ears catch the murmur of these tiny Mael- stroms, as they whirl in the innumerable myriads of living cells which constitute each tree, we should be stunned, as with the roar of a great city. Among the lower plants, it is the rule rather than the ex- ception, that contractility should be still more openly man- ifested at some periods of their existence. The protoplasm of Alg(E and Fungi becomes, under many circumstances, partially, or completely, freed from its woody case, and ex- hibits movements of its whole mass, or is propelled by the contractility of one, or more, hair-like prolongations of its body, which are called vibratile cilia. And, so far as the conditions of the manifestation of the phenomena of contrac- tility have yet been studied, they are the same for the plant as for the animal. Heat and electric shocks influence both, and in the same way, though it may be in different degrees. It is by no means my intention to suggest that there is no difference in faculty between the lowest plant and the highest, • or between plants and animals. But the difference between the powers of the lowest plant, or animal, and those of the highest, is one of degree, not of kind, and depends, as Milne- Edwards long ago so well pointed out, upon the extent to w^hich the principle of the division of labour is carried out in the living economy. In the lowest organism all parts are competent to perform all functions, and one and the same 96 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS portion of protoplasm may successfully take on the function of feeding, moving, or reproducing apparatus. In the high- est, on the contrary, a great number of parts combine to perform each function, each part doing its allotted share of the work with great accuracy and efficiency, but being use- less for any other purpose. On the other hand, notwithstanding all the fundamental resemblances which exist between the powers of the proto- plasm in plants and in animals, they present a striking difference (to which I shall advert more at length presently), in the fact that plants can manufacture fresh protoplasm out of mineral compounds, whereas animals are obliged to procure it ready made, and hence, in the long run, depend upon plants. Upon what condition this difference in the powers of the two great divisions of the world of life depends, nothing is at present known. With such qualifications as arises out of the last-mentioned fact, it may be truly said that the acts of all living things are fundamentally one. Is any such unity predicable of their forms? Let us seek in easily verified facts for a reply to this question. If a drop of blood be drawn by pricking one's finger, and viewed with proper precautions, and under a sufficiently high microscopic power, there will be seen, among the innumerable multitude of little, circular, dis- coidal bodies, or corpuscles, which float in it and give it its colour, a comparatively small number of colourless corpus- cles, of somewhat larger size and very irregular shape. If the drop of blood be kept at the temperature of the body, these colourless corpuscles wdll be seen to exhibit a marvel- lous activity, changing their forms with great rapidity, draw- ing in and thrusting out prolongations of their substance, and creeping about as if they were independent organisms. The substance which is thus active is a mass of proto- ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE 97 plasm, and its activity differs in detail, rather than in prin- ciple, from that of the protoplasm of the nettle. Under sundry circumstances the corpuscle dies and becomes dis- tended into a round mass, in the midst of which is seen a smaller spherical body, which existed, but was more or less hidden, in the living corpuscle, and is called its nucleus. Corpuscles of essentially similar structure are to he found in the skin, in the lining of the mouth, and scattered through the whole framework of the body. Nay, more; in the earliest condition of the human organism, in that state in which it has but just become distinguishable from the egg in which it arises, it is nothing but an aggregation of such corpuscles, and every organ of the body was, once, no more than such an ao-o-regation. Thus a nucleated mass of protoplasm turns out to be what mav be termed the structural unit of the human bodv. As a matter of fact, the body, in its earliest state, is a mere multiple of such units; and in its perfect condition, it is a multiple of such units, variously modified. But does the formula which expresses the essential struc- tural character of the highest animal cover all the rest, as the statement of its powers and faculties covered that of all others? Very nearly. Beast and fowl, reptile and fish, mollusk, worm, and polype, are all composed of struc- tural units of the same character, namely, masses of proto- plasm with a nucleus. There are sundry very low ani- mals, each of which, structurally, is a mere colourless blood- corpuscle, leading an independent life. But, at the very bottom of the animal scale, even this simplicity becomes simplified, and all the phenomena of life are manifested by a particle of protoplasm without a nucleus. Nor are such organisms insignificant by reason of their want of complexity. It is a fair question whether the protoplasm 98 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LAY SERMONS of those simplest forms of life, which people an immense extent of the bottom of the sea, would not outweigh that of all the higher living beings which inhabit the land put together. And in ancient times, no less than at the present day, such living beings as these have been the greatest of rock builders. What has been said of the animal world is no less true of plants. Imbedded in the protoplasm at the broad, or attached, end of the nettle hair, there lies a spheroidal nucleus. Careful examination further proves -that the whole substance of the nettle is made up of a repetition of such masses of nucleated protoplasm, each contained in a wooden case, which is modified in form, sometimes into a woody fibre, sometimes into a duct or spiral vessel, some- times into a pollen grain, or an o\nile. Traced back to its earliest state, the nettle arises as the man does, in a particle of nucleated protoplasm. And in the lowest plants, as in the lowest animals, a single mass of such protoplasm may constitute the whole plant, or the protoplasm may exist without a nucleus. Under these circumstances it may well be asked, how is one mass of non-nucleated protoplasm to be distin- guished from another? why call one " plant " and the other "animal"? The only reply is that, so far as form is concerned, plants and animals are not separable, and that, in many cases, it is a mere matter of convention whether we call a given organism an animal or a plant. There is a living body called jEthalium septicum, which appears upon decaying vege- table substances, and, in one of its forms, is common upon the surfaces of tan-pits. In this condition it is, to all intents and purposes, a fungus, and formerly was always regarded as such; but the remarkable investigations of De Bary have ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE 99 shown that, in another condition, the jEthalium is an ac- tively locomotive creature, and takes in solid matters, upon which, apparently, it feeds, thus exhibiting the most char- acteristic feature of animality. Is this a plant; or is it an animal ? Is it both; or is it neither? Some decide in favour of the last supposition, and establish an intermediate king- dom, a sort of biological No Man's Land for all these questionable forms. But, as it is admittedly impossible to draw any distinct boundary line between this no man's land and" the vegetable world on the one hand, or the ani- mal, on the other, it appears to me that this proceeding merely doubles the difficulty which, before, was single. Protoplasm, simple or nucleated, is the formal basis of all life. It is the clay of the potter: which, bake it and paint it as he will, remains clay, separated by artifice, and not by nature, from the commonest brick or sun-dried clod. Thus it becomes clear that all living powers are cognate, and that all living forms are fundamentally of one charac- ter. The researches of the chemist have revealed a no less striking uniformity of material composition in living matter. In perfect strictness, it is true that chemical investiga- tion can tell us little or nothing, directly, of the composi- tion of living matter, inasmuch as such matter must needs die in the act of analysis, — and upon this very obvious ground, objections, which I confess seem to me to be some- what frivolous, have been raised to the drawing of any conclusions whatever respecting the composition of actu- ally living matter, from that of the dead matter of life, which alone is accessible to us. But objectors of this class do not seem to reflect that it is also, in strictness, true that we know nothing about the composition of any body what- ever, as it is. The statement that a crystal of calc-spar consists of carbonate of lime, is quite true, if we only mean 100 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS that, by appropriate processes, it may be resolved into bonic acid and quicklime. If you pass the same carb acid over the very quicklime thus obtained, you will ot carbonate of lime again; but it will not be calc-spar, anything like it. Can it, therefore, be said that chen ^ analysis teaches nothing about the chemical composi of calc-spar? Such a statement would be absurd; but hardly more so than the talk one occasionally hears al the uselessness of applying the results of chemical ana to the living bodies which have yielded them. One fact, at any rate, is out of reach of such refineme and this is, that all the forms of protoplasm which 1 yet been examined contain the four elements, carl hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, in very complex un and that they behave similarly towards several reage , To this complex combination, the nature of which . never been determined with exactness, the name of I tein has been applied. And if we use this term with s . caution as may properly arise out of our comparative ig ranee of the things for which it stands, it may be truly si that all protoplasm is proteinaceous, or, as the white, albumen, of an egg is one of the commonest examples c nearly pure proteine matter, we may say that all liv matter is more or less albuminoid. Perhaps it would not yet be safe to say that all form^ protoplasm are affected by the direct action of elec shocks; and yet the number of cases in which the contr tion of protoplasm is shown to be affected by this agei increases every day. Nor can it be affirmed with perfect confidence, that • forms of protoplasm are liable to undergo that pecub coagulation at a temperature of 40^-50° centigrade, whi has been called "heat-stiffening," though Kiihne's beam ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE 101 ful researches have proved this occurrence to take place in so many and such diverse living beings, that it is hardly rash to expect that the law holds good for all. Enough has, perhaps, been said to prove the existence of a general uniformity in the character of the protoplasm, or physical basis, of life, in whatever group of living beings it may be studied. But it will be understood that this general uniformity by no means excludes any amount of special modifications of the fundamental substance. The mineral, carbonate of lime, assumes an immense diversity o^ charac- ters, though no one doubts that, under all these Protean changes, it is one and the same thing. And now, what is the ultimate fate, and what the origin, of the matter of life? Is it, as some of the older naturalists supposed, diffused throughout the universe in molecules, which are inde- structible and unchangeable in themselves; but, in endless transmigration unite in innumerable permutations, into the diversified forms of life we know ? Or, is the matter of life composed of ordinary matter, differing from it only in the manner in which its atoms are aggregated? Is it built up of ordinary matter, and again resolved into ordinary matter when its work is done ? Modern science does not hesitate a moment between these alternatives. Physiology writes over the portals of life— "Debemur morti nos nostraque," vvith a profounder meaning than the Roman poet attached to that melancholy line. Under whatever disguise it takes refuge, whether fungus or oak, worm or man, the living protoplasm not only ultimately dies and is resolved into its mineral and lifeless constituents, but is always dying. 102 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS and, strange as the paradox may sound, could not live unless it died. In the wonderful story of the Peaii de Chagrifi, the hero becomes possessed of a magical wild ass' skin, which yields him the means of gratifying all his wishes. But its surface represents the duration of the proprietor's life; and for every satisfied desire the skin shrinks in proportion to the intensity of fruition, until at length life and the last handbreath of the peaii de chagrin, disappear with the gratification of a last wish. Balzac's studies had led him over a wide ransje of thought and speculation, and his shadowing forth of physiological truth in this strange story may have been intentional. At any rate, the matter of life is a veritable peau de chagrin, and for every vital act it is somewhat the smaller. All work implies waste, and the work of life results, directly or indirectly, in the waste of protoplasm. Every word uttered by a speaker costs him some physi- cal loss; and, in the strictest sense, he burns that others may have light — so much eloquence, so much of his body resolved into carbonic acid, water, and urea. It is clear that this process of expenditure cannot go on forever. But, happily, the protoplasmic peau de chagrin differs from Balzac's in its capacity of being repaired, and brought back to its full size, after every exertion. For example, this present lecture, whatever its intellec- tual worth to you, has a certain physical value to me, which is, conceivably, expressible by the number of grains of protoplasm and other bodily substance wasted in main- taining my vital processes during its deliver}^ My pean de chagrin will be distinctly smaller at the end of the discourse than it was at the beginning. By and by, I shall probably have recourse to the substance commonlv called mutton, ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE 103 for the purpose of stretching it back to its original size. Now this mutton was once the living protoplasm^ more or less modified, of another animal — a sheep. As I shall eat it, it is the same matter altered, not only by death, but by exposure to sundry artificial operations in the process of cooking. But these changes, whatever be their extent, have not rendered it incompetent to resume its old functions as mat- ter of life. A singular inward laboratory, which I possess, will dissolve a certain portion of the modified protoplasm; the solution so formed will pass into my veins; and the subtle influences to which it will then be subjected will con- vert the dead protoplasm into living protoplasm, and tran- substantiate sheep into man. Nor is this all. If digestion were a thing to be trifled with, I might sup upon lobster, and the matter of life of the crustacean would undergo the same w^onderful meta- morphosis into humanity. And were I to return to my own place by sea, and undergo shipwreck, the crustacean might, and probably would, return the compliment, and demon- strate our common nature by turning my protoplasm into living lobster. Or, if nothing better were to be had, I might supply my wants, with mere bread, and I should find the protoplasm of the wheat-plant to be convertible into man with no more trouble than that of the sheep, and with far less, I fancy, than that of the lobster. Hence it appears to be a matter of no great moment what animal, or what plant, I lay under contribution for protoplasm, and the fact speaks volumes for the general identity of that substance in all living beings. I share this catholicity of assimilation with other animals, all of which, so far as we know, could thrive equally well on the proto- plasm of any of their fellows, or of any plant; but here the 104 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS assimilative powers of the animal world cease. A solution of smelling-salts in water, with an infinitesimal propor- tion of some other saline matters, contains all the elemen- tary bodies which enter into the composition of protoplasm; but, as I need hardly say, a hogshead of that fluid would not keep a hungry -man from starving, nor would it save any animal whatever from a like fate. An animal cannot make protoplasm, but must take it ready-made from some other animal, or some plant — the animal's highest feat of constructive chemistry being to convert dead protoplasm into that living matter of life which is appropriate to itself. Therefore, in seeking for the origin of protoplasm, we must eventually turn to the vegetable world. A fluid con- taining carbonic acid, water, and nitrogenous salts, which offers such a Barmecide feast to the animal, is a table richly spread to multitudes of plants; and, wdth a due supply of only such materials, many a plant will not only maintain itself in vigour, but grow and multiply until it has increased a million-fold, or a million million-fold, the quantity of protoplasm which it originally possessed; in this way build- ing up the matter of life, to an indefinite extent, from the common matter of the universe. Thus, the animal can only raise the corr^plex substance of dead protoplasm to the higher power, as one may say, of living protoplasm; w^hile the plant can raise the less complex substances — carbonic acid, water, and nitrogenous salts — to the same stage of living protoplasm, if not to the same level. But the plant also has its limitations. Some of the fungi, for example, appear to need higher compounds to start with; and no known plant can live upon the uncom- pounded elements of protoplasm. A plant supplied with pure carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur, and the like, would as infallibly die as the animal ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE 105 in his bath of smelling-salts, though it would be surrounded by all the constituents of protoplasm. Nor, indeed, need the process of simplification of vegetable food be carried so far as this, in order to arrive at the limit of the plant's thaumaturgy. Let water, carbonic acid, and all the other needful constituents be supplied except nitrogenous salts, and an ordinary plant will still be unable to manufacture protoplasm. Thus the matter of life, so far as we know it (and we have no right to speculate on any other), breaks up, in conse- quence of that continual death which is the condition of its manifesting vitality, into carbonic acid, water, and nitrog- enous compounds, which certainly possess no properties but those of ordinary matter. And out of these same forms of ordinary matter, and from none which are simpler, the vegetable world builds up all the protoplasm which keeps the animal world a-going. Plants are the accumulators of the power which animals distribute and disperse. But it will be observed, that the existence of the matter of life depends on the pre-existence of certain compounds; namely, carbonic acid, water, and certain nitrogenous bodies. Withdraw any one of these three from the world, and all vital phenomena come to an end. They are as necessary to the protoplasm of the plant, as the proto- plasm of the plant is to that of the animal. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen are all lifeless bodies. Of these, carbon and oxygen unite in certain proportions and under certain conditions, to give rise to carbonic acid; hydrogen and oxygen produce water; nitrogen and other elements give rise to nitrogenous salts. These new com- pounds, like the elementary bodies of which they are com- posed, are lifeless. But when they are brought together, under certain conditions, they give rise to the still more 106 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS complex body, protoplasm, and this protoplasm exhibits the phenomena of life. I see no break in this series of steps in molecular compli- cation, and I am miable to understand why the language which is applicable to any one term of the series may not be used to any of the others. We think fit to call different kinds of matter carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, and to speak of the various powers and activities of these sub- stances as the properties of the matter of which they are composed. When hydrogen and oxygen are mixed in a certain pro- portion, and an electric spark is passed through them, they disappear, and a quantity of water, equal in weight to the sum of their weights, appears in their place. There is not the slightest parity between the passive and active powers of the water and those of the oxygen and hydrogen which have given rise to it. At 32° Fahrenheit, and far below that temperature, oxygen and hydrogen are elastic gaseous bodies, whose particles tend to rush away from one another with great force. Water, at the same temperature, is a strong though brittle solid, whose particles tend to cohere into definite geometrical shapes, and sometimes build up frosty imitations of the most complex forms of vegetable foliage. Nevertheless wt call these, and many other strange phe- nomena, the properties of the water, and we do not hesitate to believe that, in some way or another, they result from the properties of the component elements of the water. We do not assume that a something called "aquosity" entered into and took possession of the oxidated hydrogen as soon as it was formed, and then guided the aqueous particles to their places in the facets of the crystal, or amongst the leaflets of the hoar-frost. On the contrary, we live in the hope and in OiY THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE 107 the faith that, by the advance of molecular physics, we shall by and by be able to see our way as clearly from the constitu- ents of water to the properties of water, as we are now able to deduce the operations of a watch from the form of its parts and the manner in which they are put together. Is the case in any way changed when carbonic acid, water, and nitrogenous salts disappear, and in their place, under the influence of pre-existing living protoplasm, an equivalent weight of the matter of life makes its appearance ? It is true that there is no sort of parity between the prop- erties of the components and the properties of the resultant, but neither was there in the case of the water. It is also true that what I have spoken of as the influence of pre-existing living matter is something quite unintelligible; but does anybody quite comprehend the modus operandi of an electric spark, which traverses a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen ? What justification is there, then, for the assumption of the existence in the living matter of a something which has no representative, or correlative, in the not living matter which gave rise to it? What better philosophical status has ''vi- tality" than "aquosity"? And why should "vitality" hope for a better fate than the other "itys" which have disap- peared since Martinus Scriblerus accounted for the operation of the meat-jack by its inherent "meat-roasting quality," and scorned the "materialism" of those who explained the turning of the spit by a certain mechanism worked by the draught of the chimney. If scientific language is to possess a definite and constant signification whenever it is employed, it seems to me that we are logically bound to apply to the protoplasm, or physi- cal basis of life, the same conceptions as those which are held to be legitimate elsewhere. If the phenomena exhib- 108 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS ited by water are its properties, so are those presented by protoplasm, living or dead, its properties. If the properties of water may be properly said to result from the nature and disposition of its component molecules, I can find no intelligible ground for refusing to say that the properties of protoplasm result from the nature and dis- position of its molecules. But I bid you beware that, in accepting these conclusions, you are placing your feet on the first rung of a ladder which, in most people's estimation, is the reverse of Jacob's, and leads to the antipodes of heaven. It may seem a small thing to admit that the dull vital actions of a fungus, or a foraminifer, are the properties of their protoplasm, and are the direct results of the nature of the matter of which they are composed. But if, as I have endeavoured to prove to you, their protoplasm is essentially identical with, and most readily converted into, that of any animal, I can discover no logical halting-place between the admission that such is the case, and the further concession that all vital action may, with equal propriety, be said to be the result of the molec- ular forces of the protoplasm which displays it. And if so, it must be true, in the same sense and to the same extent, that the thoughts to which I am now giving utterance, and your thoughts regarding them, are the expression of molec- ular changes in that matter of life which is the source of our other vital phenomena. Past experience leads me to be tolerably certain that, when the propositions I have just placed before you are accessible to public comment and criticism, they will be condemned by many zealous persons, and perhaps by some few of the wise and thoughtful. I should not wonder if "gross and brutal materialism" were the mildest phrase applied to them in certain quarters. And, most undoubtedly, the terms of the ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE 109 propositions are distinctly materialistic. Nevertheless two things are certain; the one, that I hold the statements to be substantially true; the other, that I, individually, am no materialist, but, on the contrary, believe materialism to involve grave philosophical error. This union of materialistic terminology with the repu- diation of materialistic philosophy I share with some of the most thoughtful men with whom I am acquainted. And, when I first undertook to deliver the present discourse, it appeared to me to be a fitting opportunity to explain how such a union is not only consistent with, but necessitated by, sound logic. I purposed to lead you through the terri- tory of vital phenomena to the materialistic slough in which you find yourselves now plunged, and then to point out to you the sole path by which, in my judgment, extrication is possible. Let us suppose that knowledge is absolute, and not rel- ative, and therefore, that our conception of matter represents that which it really is. Let us suppose, further, that we do know more of cause and eft'ect than a certain definite order of succession among facts, and that we have a knowledge of the necessity of that succession — and hence, of necessary laws — ^and I, for my part, do not see what escape there is from utter materialism and necessarianism. For it is obvious that our knowledge of what we call the material world is, to begin with, at least as certain and definite as that of the spiritual world, and that our acquaintance with law is of as old a date as our knowledge of spontaneity. Further, I take it to be demonstrable that it is utterly impossible to prove that anything whatever may not be the effect of a material and necessary cause, and that human logic is equally incompe- tent to prove that any act is really spontaneous. A really spontaneous act is one which, by the assumption, has no no SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS cause; and the attempt to prove such a negative as this is, on the face of the matter, absurd. And while it is thus a philosophical impossibility to demonstrate that any given phenomenon is not the effect of a material cause, any one who is acquainted with the history of science will admit, that its progress has, in all ages, meant, and now, more than ever, means, the extension of the province of what we call matter and causation, and the concomitant gradual banish- ment from all regions of human thought of what w^e call spirit and spontaneity. I have endeavoured, in the first part of this discourse, to give you a conception of the direction towards which modern physiology is tending; and I ask you, what is the difference between the conception of life as the product of a certain disposition of material molecules, and the old notion of an Arch^us governing and directing blind matter within each living body, except this — that here, as elsewhere, matter and law have devoured spirit and spontaneity? And as surely as every future grows out of past and present, so will the physiology of the future gradually extend the realm of matter and law until it is co-extensive with knowledge, with feeling, and with action. The consciousness of this great truth weighs like a night- mare, I believe, upon many of the best minds of these days. They watch what they conceive to be the progress of mate- rialism, in such fear and powerless anger as a savage feels, when, during an eclipse, the great shadow creeps over the face of the sun. The advancing tide of matter threatens to drown their souls; the tightening grasp of law impedes their freedom; they are alarmed lest man's moral nature be de- based by the increase of his wisdom. If the "New Philosophy" be worthy of the reprobation with which it is visited, I confess their fears seem to me to ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE 111 be well founded. While, on the contrary, could David Hume be consulted, I think he would smile at their perplex- ities, and chide them for doing even as the heathen, and falling down in terror before the hideous idols their own hands have raised. For, after all, what do we know of this terrible "matter," except as a name for the unknown and hypothetical cause of states of our own consciousness ? And what do we know of that "spirit" over whose threatened extinction by matter a great lamentation is arising, like that which was heard at the death of Pan, except that it is also a name for an unknown and hypothetical cause, or condition, of states of conscious- ness ? In other words, matter and spirit are but names for the imaginary substrata of groups of natural phenomena. And what is the dire necessity and "iron" law under which men groan? Truly, most gratuitously invented bugbears. I suppose if there be an "iron" law, it is that of gravitation; and if there be a physical necessity, it is that a stone, unsupported, must fall to the ground. But what is all we really know, and can know, about the latter phe- nomena ? Simply, that, in all human experience, stones have fallen to the ground under these conditions; that we have not the smallest reason for believing that any stone so cir- cumstanced will not fall to the ground; and that we have, on the contrary, every reason to believe that it will so fall. It is very convenient to indicate that all the conditions of belief have been fulfilled in this case, by calling the statement that unsupported stones will fall to the ground, "a law of Nature." But when, as commonly happens, we change will into must, we introduce an idea of necessity which most assuredly does not lie in the observed facts, and has no warranty that I can discover elsewhere. For my part, I utterly repudiate and anathematise the intruder. Fact I know; and Law I know; 112 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS but what is this Necessity, save an empty shadow of my own mind's throwing? But, if it is certain that we can have no knowledge of the nature of either matter or spirit, and that the notion of necessity is something illegitimately thrust into the per- fectly legitimate conception of law, the materialistic position that there is nothing in the world but matter, force, and necessity, is as utterly devoid of justification as the most baseless of theological dogmas. The fundamental doctrines of materialism, like those of spiritualism, and most other *'isms," lie outside "the limits of philosophical inquiry," and David Hume's great service to humanity is his irrefrag- able demonstration of what these limits are. Hume called himself a sceptic, and therefore others cannot be blamed if they apply the same title to him; but that does not alter the fact that the name, with its existing implications, does him gross injustice. If a man asks me what the politics of the inhabitants of the moon are, and I reply that I do not know; that neither I, nor any one else, has any means of knowing; and that, under these circumstances, I decline to trouble myself about the subject at all, I do not think he has any right to call me a sceptic. On the contrary, in replying thus, I conceive that 1 am simply honest and truthful, and show a proper regard for the economy of time. So Hume's strong and subtle intellect takes up a great many problems about which we are naturally curious, and shows us that they are essen- tially questions of lunar politics, in their essence incapable of being answered, and therefore not worth the attention of men who have work to do in the world. And he thus ends one of his essays : — " If we take in hand any volume of Divinity, or school metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concern- ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE 113 ing quantity or mimher? No. Does it contain any experimental reason- ing concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames; for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." i Permit me to enforce this most wise advice. Why trouble ourselves about matters of which, however important they __may be, we do know nothing, and can know nothing? We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and some- what less ignorant than it was before he entered it. To do this effectually it is necessary to be fully possessed of only •^wo beliefs: the first, that the order of Nature is ascertain able by our faculties to an extent which is practically unlim- ited; the second, that our volition ^ counts for something as a condition of the course of events. Each of these beliefs can be verified experirnentally, as often as we like to try. Each, therefore, stands upon the strongest foundation upon which any belief can rest, and forms one of our highest truths. If we find that the ascertain- ment of the order of nature is facilitated by using one ter- minology, or one set of symbols, rather than another, it is our clear duty to use the former; and no harm can accrue, so long as we bear in mind, that we are dealing merely with terms and symbols. In itself it is of little moment whether we express the phenomena of matter in terms of spirit; or the phenomena of' spirit in terms of matter: matter may be regarded as a form of thought, thought may be regarded as a property of 1 Hume's Essay "Of the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy," in the Inquiry concerning the Human Understanding. — [Many critics of this passage seem to forget that the subject-matter of Ethics and ^Esthetics consists of matters of fact and existence. — 1892]. 2 Or, to speak more accurately, the physical state of which volition is the expression. — [1892]. 114 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS matter — each statement has a certain relative truth. But with a view to the progress of science, the materialistic ter- minology is in every way to be preferred. For it connects thought with the other phenomena of the universe, and suggests inquiry into the nature of those physical conditions, or concomitants of thought, which are more or less accessible to us, and a knowledge of which may, in future, help us to exercise the same kind of control over the world of thought, as we already possess in respect of the material world; whereas, the alternative, or spiritualistic, terminology is utterly barren, and leads to nothing but obscurity and confusion of ideas^ Thus there can be little doubt, that the further science advances, the more extensively and consistently will all the phenomena of Nature be represented by materialistic for- mulae and symbols. But the man of science, who, forgetting the limits of philo- sophical inquiry, slides from these formulae and symbols into what is commonly understood by materialism, seems to me to place himself on a level with the mathematician, who should mistake the a;'s and ;y's with which he works his problems, for real entities — and with this further disadvan- tage, as compared with the mathematician, that the blunders of the latter are of no practical consequence, while the errors of systematic materialism may paralyse the energies and destroy the beauty of a life. SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION: NOTES OF AN AFTER- DINNER SPEECH [1869] [Mr. Thackeray, talking of after-dinner speeches, has lamented that "one never can recollect the fine things one thought of in the cab," in going to the place of entertainment. I am not aware that there are any "fine things" in the following pages, but such as there are stand to a speech which really did get itself spoken, at the hospitable table of the Liverpool Philomathic Society, more or less in the position of what "one thought of in the cab."] The introduction of scientific training into the general education of the country is a topic upon which I could not have spoken, without some more or less apologetic intro- duction, a few years ago. But upon this, as upon other matters, public opinion has of late undergone a rapid modification. Committees of both Houses of the Legisla- ture have agreed that something must be done in this direc- tion, and have even thrown out timid and faltering sugges- tions as to what should be done; while at the opposite pole of society, committees of working men have expressed their conviction that scientific training is the one thing needful for their advancement, whether as men, or as workmen. Only the other day, it was my duty to take part in the reception of a deputation of London workingmen, who desired to learn from Sir Roderick Murcliison, the Director of the Royal School of Mines, whether the organisation of the institution in Jermyn Street could be made available for the supply of that scientific instruction the need of which could not have been apprehended, or stated, more clearly than it was by them. 116 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS The heads of colleges in our great universities (who have not the reputation of being the most mobile of persons) have, in several cases, thought it well that, out of the great number of honours and rewards at their disposal, a few should hereafter be given to the cultivators of the physical sciences. Nay, I hear that some colleges have even gone so far as to appoint one, or, maybe, two special tutors for the purpose of putting the facts and principles of physical science before the undergraduate mind. And I say it with gratitude and great respect for those eminent persons, that the head masters of our public schools, Eton, Harrow, Winchester, have addressed themselves to the problem of introducing instruction in physical science among the studies of those great educational bodies, with much honesty of purpose and enlightenment of understanding; and I live in hope that, before long, important changes in this direction will be carried into effect in those strongholds of ancient prescription. In fact, such changes have already been made, and physical science, even now, constitutes a recognised element of the school curriculum in Harrow and Rugby, whilst I understand that ample preparations for such studies are being made at Eton and elsewhere. Looking at these facts, I might perhaps spare myself the trouble of giving, any reasons for the introduction of physi- cal science into elementary education; yet I cannot but think that it may be well if I place before you some con- siderations which, perhaps, have hardly received full atten- tion. At other times, and in other places, I have endeavoured to state the higher and more abstract arguments, by which the study of physical science may be shown to be indispen- sable to the complete training of the human mind; but I do not wish it to be supposed that, because I happen to be NOTES OF AN AFTER-DINNER SPEECH 117 devoted to more or less abstract and *' unpractical" pur- suits, I am insensible to the weight which ought to be attached to that which has been said to be the English con- ception of Paradise — namely, "getting on." I look upon it, that "getting on" is a very important matter indeed. I do not mean merely for the sake of the coarse and tangible results of success, but because humanity is so constituted that a vast number of us would never be impelled to those stretches of exertion which make us wiser and more capable men, if it were not for the absolute necessity of putting on our faculties all the strain they will bear, for the purpose of "getting on" in the most practical sense. Now the value of a knowledge of physical science as a means of getting on is indubitable. There are hardly any of our trades, except the merely huckstering ones, in which some knowledge of science may not be directly profitable to the pursuer of that occupation. As industry attains higher stages of its development, as its processes become more complicated and refined, and competition more keen, the sciences are dragged in, one by one, to take their share in the fray; and he who can best avail himself of their help is the man who will come out uppermost in that struggle for existence, which goes on as fiercely beneath the smooth surface of modern society, as among the wild inhabitants of the woods. But in addition to the bearing of science on ordinary practical life, let me direct your attention to its immense influence on several of the professions. I ask any one who has adopted the calling of an engineer, how much time he lost when he left school, because he had to devote himself to pursuits which were absolutely novel and strange, and of which he had not obtained the remotest conception from his instructors? He had to familiarise himself with ideas 118 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS of the course and powers of Nature, to which his attention had never been directed during his school-Hfe, and to learn, for the first time, what a world of facts lies outside and be- yond the world of words. I appeal to those who know what engineering is, to say how far I am right in respect to that profession; but with regard to another, of no less importance, I shall venture to speak of my own knowledge. There is no one of us who may not at any moment be thrown, bound hand and foot by physical incapacity, into the hands of a medical practitioner. The chances of life and death for all and each of us may, at any moment, depend on the skill with which that practitioner is able to make out what is wrong in our bodily frames, and on his ability to apply the proper remedy to the defect. The necessities of modern life are such, and the class from which the medical profession is chiefly recruited is so situ- ated, that few medical men can hope to spend more than three or four, or it may be five, years in the pursuit of those studies which are immediately germane to physic. How is that all too brief period spent at present ? I speak as an old examiner, having served some eleven or twelve years in that capacity in the University of London, and therefore having a practical acquaintance with the subject; but I might fortify myself by the authority of the President of the College of Surgeons, Mr. Quain, whom I heard the other day in an admirable address (the Hunterian Oration) deal fully and wisely with this very topic. ^ 1 Mr. Quain's words {Medical Times and Gazette, February 20) are: — "A few words as to our special Medical course of instruction and the influence upon it of such changes in the elementary schools as I have mentioned. The student now enters at once upon several sciences — physics, chemistry, anatomy, physiology, botany, pharmacy, therapeutics — all these, the facts and the language and the laws of each, to be mastered in eighteen months. Up to the beginning of the NOTES OF AN AFTER-DINNER SPEECH 119 A young man commencing the study of medicine is at once required to endeavour to make an acquaintance with a number of sciences, such as Physics, as Chemistry, as Botany, as Physiology, which are absolutely and entirely strange to him, however excellent his so-called education at school may have been. Not only is he devoid of all appre- hension of scientific conceptions, not only does he fail to at- tach any meaning to the words "matter," "force," or "law" in their scientific sense, but, worse still, he has no notion of what it is to come into contact with Nature, or to lay his mind alongside of a physical fact, and try to conquer it, in the way our great naval hero told his captains to master their enemies. His whole mind has been given to books, and I am hardly exaggerating if I say that they are more real to him than Nature. He imagines that all knowledge can be got out of books, and rests upon the authority of some master or other; nor does he entertain any misgiving that the method of learning which led to proficiency in the rules of grammar will suffice to lead him to a mastery of the laws of Nature. The youngster, thus unprepared for serious Medical course many have learned little. We cannot claim anything better than the Examiner of the University of London and the Cam- bridge Lecturer have reported for their Universities. Supposing that at school young people had acquired some exact elementary knowl- edge in physics, chemistry, and a branch of natural history — say botany — with the physiology connected with it, they would then have gained necessary knowledge, with some practice in inductive reason- ing. The whole studies are processes of observation and induction — the best discipline of the mind for the purposes of life — for our pur- poses not less than any. 'By such study (says Dr. Whewell) of one or more departments of inductive science the mind may escape from the thraldom of mere words.' By that plan the burden of the early Medi- cal course would be much lightened, and more time devoted to prac- tical studies, including Sir Thomas Watson's 'final and supreme stage' of the knowledge of Medicine." 120 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS study, is turned loose among his medical studies, with the result, in nine cases out of ten, that the first year of his cur- riculum is spent in learning how to learn. Indeed, he is lucky if, at the end of the first year, by the exertions of his teachers and his own industry, he has acquired even that art of arts. After which there remain not more than three, or perhaps four, years for the profitable study of such vast sciences as Anatomy, Physiology, Therapeutics, Medicine, Surgery, Obstetrics, and the like, upon his knowledge or ig- norance of which it depends whether the practitioner shall diminish, or increase, the bills of mortality. Now what is it but the preposterous condition of ordinary school education which prevents a young man of seventeen, destined for the practice of medicine, from being fully prepared for the study of Nature; and from coming to the medical school, equipped with that preliminary knowledge of the principles of Physics, of Chemistry and of Biology, upon which he has now to waste one of the precious years, every moment of which ought to be given to those studies which bear directly upon the knowledge of his profession? There is another profession, to the members of which, I think, a certain preliminary knowledge of physical science might be quite as valuable as to the medical man. The practitioner of medicine sets before himself the noble object of taking care of man's bodily welfare; but the members of this other profession undertake to "minister to minds dis- eased," and, so far as may be, -to diminish sin and soften sorrow. Like the medical profession, the clerical, of which I now speak, rests its power to heal upon its knowledge of the order of the universe — upon certain theories of man's relation to that which lies outside him. It is not my busi- ness to express any opinion about these theories. I merely wish to point out that, like all other theories, they are pro- NOTES OF AN AFTER-DINNER SPEECH 121 fessedly based upon matters of fact. Thus the clerical profession has to deal with the facts of Nature from a certain point of view; and hence it comes into contact with that of the man of science, who has to treat the same facts from another point of view. You know how often that contact is to be described as collision, or violent friction; and how great the heat, how little the light, which commonly results from it. In the interests of fair play, to say nothing of those of mankind, I ask, Why do not the clergy as a body acquire, as a part of their preliminary education, some such tincture of physical science as will put them in a position to under- stand the difficulties in the way of accepting their theories, which are forced upon the mind of every thoughtful and intelligent man, who has taken the trouble to instruct him- self in the elements of natural knowledge ? Some time ago I attended a large meeting of the clergy, for the purpose of delivering an address which I had been invited to give. I spoke of some of the most elementary facts in physical science, and of the manner in which they directly contradict certain of the ordinary teachings of the clergy. The result was, that, after I had finished, one section of the assembled ecclesiastics attacked me with all the intemperance of pious zeal, for stating facts and con- clusions which no competent judge doubts; while, after the first speakers had subsided, amidst the cheers of the great majority of their colleagues, the more rational minority rose to tell me that I had taken wholly superfluous pains, that they already knew all about what I had told them, and perfectly agreed with me. A hard-headed friend of mine, who was present, put the not unnatural question, "Then why don't you say so in your pulpits?" to which inquiry I heard no reply. 122 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS In fact the clergy are at present divisible into three sec- tions: an immense body who are ignorant and speak out; a small proportion who know and are silent; and a minute minority who know and speak according to their knowl- edge. I hope you will consider that the arguments I have now stated, even if there were no better ones, constitute a suffi- cient apology for urging the introduction of science into schools. The next question to which I have to address my- self is. What sciences ought to be thus taught ? And this is one of the most important of questions, because my side (I am afraid I am a terribly candid friend) sometimes spoils its cause by going in for too much. There are other forms of culture beside physical science; and I should be pro- foundly sorry to see the fact forgotten, or even to observe a tendency to starve, or cripple, literary, or aesthetic, culture for the sake of science. Such a narrow view of the nature of education has nothing to do with my firm conviction that a complete and thorough scientific culture ought to be intro- duced into all schools. By this, however, I do not mean that every schoolboy should be taught everything in science. That would be a very absurd thing to conceive, and a very mischievous thing to attempt. What I mean is, that no boy nor girl should leave school without possessing a grasp of the general character of science, and without having been disciplined, more or less, in the methods of all sciences; so that, when turned into the world to make their own way, they shall be prepared to face scientific problems, not by knowing at once the conditions of every problem, or by being able at once to solve it; but by being familiar with the general current of scientific thought, and by being able to apply the methods of science in the proper way, when NOTES OF AN AFTER-DINNER SPEECH 123 they have acquainted themselves with the conditions of the special problem. That is what I understand by scientific education. To furnish a boy with such an education, it is by no means necessary that he should devote his whole school existence to physical science: in fact, no one would lament so one-sided a proceeding more than I. Nay more, it is not necessary for him to give up more than a moderate share of his time to such studies, if they be properly selected and arranged, and if he be trained in them in a fitting manner. I conceive the proper course to be somewhat as follows. To begin with, let every child be instructed in those general views of the phenomena of Nature for which we have no exact English na^e. The nearest approximation to a name for what I mean, which we possess, is "physical geography." The Germans have a better, ''Erdkunde" ("earth knowl- edge" or " geology " in its etymological sense), that is to say, a general knowledge of the earth, and what is on it, in it, and about it. If any one who has had experience of the ways of young children will call to mind their questions, he will find that so far as they can be put into any scientific cate- gory, they come under this head of "Erdkunde." The child asks, "What is the moon, and why does it shine?" " What is this water, and where does it run ? " " What is the wind?" "What makes this wave in the sea?" "Where does this animal live, and what is the use of that plant?" And if not snubbed and stunted by being told not to ask foolish questions, there is no limit to the intellectual craving of a young child; nor any bounds to the slow, but solid, accretion of knowledge and development of the thinking faculty in this way. To all such questions, answers which are necessarily incomplete, though true as far as they go, may be given by any teacher whose ideas represent real knowledge 124 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS and not mere book learning; and a panoramic view of Na- ture, accompanied by a strong infusion of the scientific habit of mind, may thus be placed within the reach of every child of nine or ten. After this preliminary opening of the eyes to the great spectacle of the daily progress of Nature, as the reasoning faculties of the child grow, and he becomes familiar with the use of the tools of knowledge — reading, writing, and elementary mathematics — he should pass on to what is, in the more strict sense, physical science. Now there are two kinds of physical science : the one regards form and the relation of forms to one another; the other deals with causes and effects. In many of what we term sciences, these two kinds are mixed up together; but systematic botany is a pure example of the former kind, and physics of the latter kind, of science. Every educational advantage which train- ing in physical science can give is obtainable from the proper study of these two; and I should be contented, for the pres- ent, if they, added to our "Erdkunde," furnished the whole of the scientific curriculum of school. Indeed, I conceive it would be one of the greatest boons which could be con- ferred upon England, if henceforward every child in the country were instructed in the general knowledge of the things about it, in the elements of physics, and of botany. But I should be still better pleased if there could be added somewhat of chemistry, and an elementary acquaintance with human physiology. So far as school education is concerned, I want to go no further just now; and I believe that such instruction would make an excellent introduction to that preparatory scientific training which, as I have indicated, is so essential for the suc- cessful pursuit of our most important professions. But this modicum of instruction must be so given as to ensure real NOTES OF AN AFTER-DINNER SPEECH 125 knowledge and practical discipline. If scientific education is to be dealt with as mere bookwork, it will be better not to attempt it, but to stick to the Latin Grammar which makes no pretence to be anything but bookwork. If the great benefits of scientific training are sought, it is essential that such training should be real: that is to say, that the mind of the scholar should be brought into direct relation with fact, that he should not merely be told a thing, but made to see by the use of his own intellect and ability that the thing is so and not otherwise. The great peculiarity of scientific training, that in virtue of which it cannot be replaced by any other discipline whatsoever, is this bringing of the mind directly into contact with fact, and practising the intellect in the completest form of induction; that is to say, in drawing conclusions from particular facts made known by immediate observation of Nature. The other studies which enter into ordinary education do not discipline the mind in this way. Mathematical training is almost purely deductive. The mathematician starts with a few simple propositions, the proof of which is so obvious that they are called self-evident, and the rest of his work consists of subtle deductions from them. The teaching of languages, at any rate as ordinarily practised, is of the same general nature, — authority and tradition furnish the data, and the mental operations of the scholar are deductive. Again: if history be the subject of study, the facts are still taken upon the evidence of tradition and authority. You cannot make a boy see the b'attle of Thermopylae for him- self, or know, of his own knowledge, that Cromwell bnce ruled England. There is no getting into direct contact with natural fact by this road; there is no dispensing with author- ity, but rather a resting upon it. 126 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS In all these respects, science differs from other educa- tional discipline, and prepares the scholar for common life. What have we to do in every-day life? Most of the busi- ness which demands our attention is matter of fact, which needs, in the first place, to be accurately observed or appre- hended; in the second, to be interpreted by inductive and deductive reasonings, which are altogether similar in their nature to those employed in science. In the one case, as in the other, whatever is taken for granted is so taken at one's own peril; fact and reason are the ultimate arbiters, and pa- tience and honesty are the great helpers out of difficulty. But if scientific training is to yield its most emxinent results, it must, I repeat, be made practical. That is to say, in explaining to a child the general phenomena of Nature you must, as far as possible, give reality to your teaching by object-lessons; in teaching him botany, he must handle the plants and dissect the flowers for himself; in teaching him physics and chemistry, you must not be solicitous to fill him with information, but you must be careful that what he learns he knows of his own knowledge. Don't be satis- fied with telling him that a magnet attracts iron. Let him see that it does; let him feel the pull of the one upon the other for himself. And, especially, tell him that it is his duty to doubt until he is compelled, by the absolute author- ity of Nature, to believe that which is written in books. Pursue this discipline carefully and conscientiously, and you may make sure that, however scanty may be the measure of information which you have poured into the boy's mind, you have created an intellectual habit of priceless value in practical life. One is constantly asked, When should this scientific edu- cation be commenced ? I should say with the dawn of intel- ligence. As I have already said, a child seeks for informa- NOTES OF AN AFTER-DINNER SPEECH 127 tion about matters of physical science as soon as it begins to talk. The first teaching it wants is an object-lesson of one sort or another; and as soon as it is fit for systematic in- struction of any kind, it is fit for a modicum of science. People talk of the difficulty of teaching young children such matters, and in the same breath insist upon their learn- ing their Catechism, which contains propositions far harder to comprehend than anything in the educational course I have proposed. Again: I am incessantly told that we, who advocate the introduction of science in schools, make no allowance for the stupidity of the average boy or girl; but, in my belief, that stupidity, in nine cases out of ten, ^^fit, non nascilur,'^ and is developed by a long process of paren- tal and pedagogic repression of the natural intellectual appetites, accompanied by a persistent attempt to create artificial ones for food which is not only tasteless, but essen- tially indigestible. Those who urge the difficulty of instructing young people in science are apt to forget another very important condi- tion of success — important in all kinds of teachiiig, but most essential, I am disposed to think, when the scholars are very young. This condition is, that the teacher should himself really and practically know his subject. If he does, he will be able to speak of it in the easy language, and with the completeness of conviction, with which he talks of any ordinary every-day matter. If he does not, he will be afraid to wander beyond the limits of the technical phraseology which he has got up; and a dead dogmatism, which op- presses, or raises opposition, will take the place of the lively confidence, born of personal conviction, which cheers and encourages the eminently sympathetic mind of childhood. I have already hinted that such scientific training as we seek for may be ^iven without making any extravagant 128 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS claim upon the time now devoted to education. We ask only for "a most favoured nation" clause in our treaty with the schoolmaster; we demand no more than that science shall have as much time given to it as any other single subject — say four hours a week in each class of an ordinary school. For the present, I think men of science would be well content with such an arrangement as this; but speaking for myself, I do not pretend to believe that such an arrangement can be, or will be, permanent. In these times the educa- tional tree seems to me to have its roots in the air, its leaves and flowers in the ground; and, I confess, I should very much like to turn it upside down, so that its roots might be solidly imbedded among the facts of Nature, and draw thence a sound nutriment for the foliage and fruit of litera- ture and of art. No educational system can have a claim to permanence, unless it recognises the truth that educa- tion has two great ends to which everything else must be subordinated. The one of these is to increase knowledge; the other is to develop the love of right and the hatred of wrong. With wisdom and uprightness a nation can make its way worthily, and beauty vdll follow in the footsteps of the two, even if she be not especially invited; while there is perhaps no sight in the whole world more saddening and revolting than is offered by men sunk in ignorance of everything but what other men have written; seemingly devoid of moral belief or guidance; but with the sense of beauty so keen, and the power of expression so cultivated, that their sensual caterwauling may be almost mistaken for the music of the spheres. At present, education is almost entirely devoted to the cultivation of the power of expression, and of the sense of NOTES OF AN AFTER-DINNER SPEECH 129 literary beauty. The matter of having anything to say, beyond a hash of other people's opinions, or of possessing any criterion of beauty, so that we may distinguish between the Godlike and the devilish, is left aside as of no moment. I think I do not err in saying that if science were made a foundation of education, instead of being, at most, stuck on as cornice to the edifice, this state of things could not exist. In advocating the introduction of physical science as a leading element in education, I by no means refer only to the higher schools. On the contrary, I believe that such a change is even more imperatively called for in those primary schools, in which the children of the poor are expected to turn to the best account the little time they can devote to the acquisition of knowledge. A great step in this direction has already been made by the establishment of science- classes under the Department of Science and Art, — a meas- ure which came into existence unnoticed, but which will, I believe, turn out to be of more importance to the welfare of the people than many political changes over which the noise of battle has rent the air. Under the regulations to which I refer, a schoolmaster can set up a class in one or more branches of science; his pupils will be examined, and the State will pay him, at a certain rate, for all who succeed in passing. I have acted as an examiner under this system from the beginning of its establishment, and this year I expect to have not fewer than a couple of thousand sets of answers to questions in Physi- olog}', mainly from young people of the artisan class, who have been taught in the schools which are now scattered all over Great Britain and Ireland. Some of my colleagues, who have to deal with subjects such as Geometry, for which the present teaching power is better organised, I under- 130 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS stand are likely to have three or four times as many papers. So far as my own subjects are concerned, I can undertake to say that a great deal of the teaching, the results of which are before me in these examinations, is very sound and good; and I think it is in the power of the examiners, not only to keep up the present standard, but to cause an almost unlimited improvement. Now what does this mean? It means that by holding out a very moderate inducement, the masters of primary schools in many parts of the coun- try have been led to convert them into little foci of scientific instruction; and that they and their pupils have contrived to find, or to make, time enough to carry out this object with a very considerable degree of efficiency. That ef- ficiency will, I doubt not, be very much increased as the system becomes known and perfected, even with the very limited leisure left to masters and teachers on week-days. And this leads me to ask, Why should scientific teaching be limited to week-days? Ecclesiastically-minded persons are in the habit of call- ing things they do not like by very hard names, and I should not wonder if they brand the proposition I am about to make as blasphemous, and worse. But, not minding this, I venture to ask. Would there really be anything wrong in using part of Sunday for the purpose of instructing those who have no other leisure, in a knowledge of the phenomena of Nature, and of man's relation to Nature? I should like to see a scientific Sunday-school in every parish, not for the purpose of superseding any existing means of teaching the people the things that are for their good, but side by side with them. I cannot but think that there is room for all of us to work in helping to bridge over the great abyss of ignorance which lies at our feet. And if any of the ecclesiastical persons to whom I have NOTES OF AN AFTER-DINNER SPEECH 131 referred object that they find it derogatory to the honour of the God whom they worship, to awaken the minds of the young to the infinite wonder and majesty of the works which they proclaim His, and to teach them those laws which must needs be His laws, and therefore of all things needful for man to know — I can only recommend them to be let blood and put on low diet. There must be something very wrong going on in the instrument of logic if it turns out such conclusions from such premises. ADDRESS ON UNIVERSITY EDUCATION ' [1876] The actual work of the University founded in this cit}- by the well-considered munificence of Johns Hopkins commences to-morrow, and among the many marks of confidence and good-will which have been bestowed upon me in the United States, there is none which I value more highly than that conferred by the authorities of the Univer- sity when they invited me to deliver an address on such an occasion. For the event which has brought us together is, in many respects, unique. A vast property is handed over to an administrative body, hampered by no conditions save these: — That the principal shall not be employed in building: that the funds shall be appropriated, in equal proportions, to the promotion of natural knowledge and to the allevia- tion of the bodily sufferings of mankind; and, finally, that neither political nor ecclesiastical sectarianism shall be permitted to disturb the impartial distribution of the tes- tator's benefactions. In my experience of life a truth which sounds very much like a paradox has often asserted itself: namely, that a man's worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes. So long as a man is struggling with obstacles he has an 1 Delivered at the formal opening of the Johns Hopkins University at Baltimore, U. S., September 12. The total amount bequeathed by- Johns Hopkins is more than 7,000,000 dollars. The sum of $3,500,000 is appropriated to a university, a like sum to a hospital, and the rest to local institutions of education and charitv. ADDRESS ON UNIVERSITY EDUCATION 133 excuse for failure or shortcoming; but when fortune removes them all and gives him the power of doing as he thinks best, then comes the time of trial. There is but one* right, and the possibilities of wrong are infinite. I doubt not that the trustees of the Johns Hopkins University felt the full force of this truth when they entered on the administration of their trust a year and a half ago; and I can but admire the activity and resolution which have enabled them, aided by the able president whom they have selected, to lay down the great outlines of their plan, and carry it thus far into execution. It is impossible to study that plan without per- ceiving that great care, forethought, and sagacity, have been bestowed upon it, and that it demands the most respectful consideration. I have been endeavouring to ascertain how far the principles which underlie it are in accordance with those which have been established in my own mind by much and long-continued thought upon educational ques- tions. Permit me to place before you the result of my reflections. Under one aspect a university is a particular kind of educational institution, and the views which we may take of the proper nature of a university are corollaries from those which we hold respecting education in general. I think it must be admitted that the school should prepare for the university, and that the university should crown the edifice, the foundations of which are laid in the school. University education should not be something distinct from elementary education, but should be the n^itural out- growth and development of the latter. Now I have a very clear conviction as to what elementary education ought to be; what it really may be, when properly organised; and what I think it will be, before many years have passed over our heads, in England and in America. Such education 134 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS should enable an average boy of fifteen or sixteen to read and write his own language with ease and accuracy, and with a sense of literary excellence derived from the study of our classic writers: to have a general acquaintance with the history of his own country and with the great laws of social existence; to have acquired the rudiments of the physical and psychological sciences, and a fair knowledge of elementary arithmetic and geometry. He should have obtained an acquaintance with logic rather by example than by precept; while the acquirement of the elements of music and drawing should have been pleasure rather than work. It may sound strange to many ears if I venture to main- tain that proposition that a young person, educated thus far, has had a liberal, though perhaps not a full, education. But it seems to me that such training as that to which I have referred may be termed liberal, in both the senses in which that word is employed, with perfect accuracy. In the first place, it is liberal in breadth. It extends over the whole ground of things to be known and of faculties to be trained, and it gives equal importance to the two great sides of human activity — art and science. In the second place, it is liberal in the sense of being an education fitted for free men; for men to whom every career is open, and from whom their country may demand that they should be fitted to perform the duties of any career. I cannot too strongly impress upon you the fact that, with such a primary edu- cation as this, and with no more than is to be obtained by building strictly upon its lines, a man of ability may become a great writer or speaker, a statesman, a lawyer, a man of science, painter, sculptor, architect, or musician. That even development of all a man's faculties, which is what properly constitutes culture, may be effected by such an ADDRESS ON UNIVERSITY EDUCATION 135 education, while it opens the way for the indefinite strength- ening of any special capabilities with which he may be gifted. In a country like this, where most men have to carve out their own fortunes and devote themselves early t6 the prac- tical affairs of life, comparatively few can hope to pursue their studies up to, still less beyond, the age of manhood. But it is of vital importance to the welfare of the community that those who are relieved from the need of making a liveli- hood, and still more, those who are stirred by the divine impulses of intellectual thirst or artistic genius, should be enabled to devote themselves to the higher service of their kind, as centres of intelligence, interpreters of Nature, or creators of new forms of beauty. And it is the function of a university to furnish such men with the means of becom- ing that which it is their privilege and duty to be. To this end the university need cover no ground foreign to that occupied by the elementary school. Indeed it cannot; for the elementary instruction which I have referred to embraces all the kinds of real knowledge and mental activity possible to man. The university can add no new departments of knowledge, can offer no new fields of mental activity; but what it can do is to intensify and specialise the instruction in each department. Thus literature and philology, repre- sented in the elementary school by English alone, in the uni- versity will extend over the ancient and modern languages. History, which, like charity, best begins at home, but, like charity, should not end there, will ramify into anthropology, archaeology, political history, and geography, with the history of the growth of the human mind and of its products in the shape of philosophy, science, and art. And the university will present to the student libraries, museums of antiquities, collections of coins, and the like, which will efficiently sub- serve these studies. Instruction in the elements of social 136 SELECTED ESSA YS FROM LA Y SERMONS economy, a most essential, but hitherto sadly-neglected part of elementary education, will develop in the university into political economy, sociology, and law. Physical science will have its great divisions of physical geography, with -geology and astronomy; physics; chemistry and biology; represented not merely by professors and their lectures, but by laboratories, in which the students, under guidance of demonstrators, will work out facts for themselves and come into that direct contact with reality which constitutes the fun- damental distinction of scientific education. Mathematics will soar into its highest regions; while the high peaks of philosophy may be scaled by those whose aptitude for abstract thought has been awakened by elementary logic. Finally, schools of pictorial and plastic art, of architecture, and of music, will offer a thorough discipline in the principles and practice of art to those in whom lies nascent the rare faculty of aesthetic representation, or the still rarer powers of creative genius. The primary school and the university are the alpha and omega of education. Whether institutions intermediate between these (so-called secondary schools) should exist, appears to me to be a question of practical convenience. If such schools are established, the important thing is that they should be true intermediaries between the primary school and the university, keeping on the wide track of gen- eral culture, and not sacrificing one branch of knowledge for another. Such appear to me to be the broad outlines of the rela- tions which the university, regarded as a place of education, ought to bear to the school, but a number of points of detail require some consideration, however briefly and imperfectly I can deal with them. In the first place, there is the impor- tant question of the limitations which should be fixed to ADDRESS ON UNIVERSITY EDUCATION 137 the entrance into the university; or, what qualifications should be required of those who propose to take advantage of the higher training offered by the university. On the one hand, it is obviously desirable that the time and opportu- nities of the university should not be wasted in conferring such elementary instruction as can be obtained elsewhere; while, on the other hand, it is no less desirable that the higher instruction of the university should be made accessible to every one who can take advantage of it, although he may not have been able to go through any very extended course of education. My own feeling is distinctly against any abso- lute and defined preliminary examination, the passing of which shall be an essential condition of admission to the university. I should admit to the university any one who could be reasonably expected to profit by the instruction offered to him; and I should be inclined, on the whole, to test the fitness of the student, not by examination before he enters the university, but at the end of his first term of study. If, on examination in the branches of knowledge to which he has devoted himself, he show himself deficient in industry or in capacity, it will be best for the university and best for himself, to prevent him from pursuing a vocation for which he is obviously unfit. And I hardly know of any other method than this by which his fitness or unfitness can be safely ascertained, though no doubt a good deal may be done, not by formal cut and dried examination, but by ju- dicious questioning, at the outset of his career. Another very important and difficult practical question is, whether a definite course of study shall be laid down for those who enter the university; whether a curriculum shall be prescribed; or whether the student shall be allowed to range at will among the subjects which are open to him. And this question is inseparably connected with another, namely, the 138 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS conferring of degrees. It is obviously impossible that any student should pass through the whole of the series of courses of instruction offered by a university. If a degree is to be conferred as a mark of proficiency in knowledge, it must be given on the ground that the candidate is proficient in a certain fraction of those studies; and then will arise the necessity of insuring an equivalency of degrees, so that the course by which a degree is obtained shall mark approxi- mately an equal amount of labour and of acquirements, in all cases. But this equivalency can hardly be secured in any other way than by prescribing a series of definite lines of study. This is a matter which will require grave consider- ation. The important points to bear in mind, I think, are that there should not be too many subjects in the curric- ulum, and that the aim should be the attainment of thor- ough and sound knowledge of each. One half of the Johns Hopkins bequest is devoted to the establishment of a hospital, and it was the desire of the testator that the university and the hospital should co- operate in the promotion of medical education. The trus- tees will unquestionably take the best advice that is to be had as to the construction and administration of the hospital. In respect to the former point, they will doubtless remember that a hospital may be so arranged as to kill more than it cures; and, in regard to the latter, that a hospital may spread the spirit of pauperism among the well-to-do, as well as relieve the sufferings of the destitute. It is not for me to speak on these topics — rather let me confine myself to the one matter on which my experience as a student of medicine, and an examiner of long standing, who has taken a great interest in the subject of medical education, may entitle me to a hearing. I mean the nature of medical education itself, and the co-operation of the university in its promotion. ADDRESS ON UNIVERSITY EDUCATION 139 What is the object of medical education ? It is to enable the practitioner, on the one hand, to prevent disease by his knowledge of hygiene; on the other hand, to divine its nature, and to alleviate or cure it, by his knowledge of pathology, therapeutics, and practical medicine. That is his business in life, and if he has not a thorough and practical knowledge of the conditions of health, of the causes which tend to the establishment of disease, of the meaning of symptoms, and of the uses of medicines and operative ap- pliances, he is incompetent, even if he were the best anato- mist, or physiologist, or chemist, that ever took a gold medal or won a prize certificate. This is one great truth respecting medical education. Another is, that all practice in medi- cine is based upon theory of some sort or other; and there- fore, that it is desirable to have such theory in the closest possible accordance with fact. The veriest empiric who gives a drug in one case because he has seen it do good in another of apparently the same sort, acts upon the theory that similarity of superficial symptoms means similarity of lesions; which, by the way, is perhaps as wild an hypothesis as could be invented. To understand the nature of disease we must understand health, and the understanding of the healthy body means the having a knowledge of its structure and of the way in which its manifold actions are performed, which is what is technically termed human anatomy and human physiology. The physiologist again must needs possess an acquaintance with physics and chemistry, inas- much as physiology is, to a great extent, applied physics and chemistry. For ordinary purposes a limited amount of such knowledge is all that is needful; but for the pursuit of the higher branches of physiology no knowledge of these branches of science can be too extensive, or too profound. Again, what we call therapeutics, which has to do with 140 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS the action of drugs and medicines on the living organism^ is, strictly speaking, a branch of experimental physiology, and is daily receiving a greater and greater experimental development. The third great fact which is to be taken into consider- ation in dealing with medical education, is that the practical necessities of life do not, as a rule, allow aspirants to medical practice to give more than three, or it may be four years to their studies. Let us put it at four years, and then reflect that, in the course of this time, a young man fresh from school has to acquaint himself with medicine, surgery, obstetrics, therapeutics, pathology, hygiene, as well as with the anatomy and the physiology of the human body; and that his knowledge should be of such a character that it can be relied upon in any emergency, and always ready for practical application. Consider, in addition, that the med- ical practitioner may be called upon, at any moment, to give evidence in a court of justice in a criminal case; and that it is therefore well that he should know something of the laws of evidence, and of w^hat we call medical jurisprudence. On a medical certificate, a man may be taken from his home and from his business and confined in a lunatic asylum; surely, therefore, it is desirable that the medical practitioner should have some rational and clear concep- tions as to the nature and symptoms of mental disease. Bearing in mind all these requirements of medical education, you will admit that the burden on the young aspirant for the medical profession is somewhat of the heaviest, and that it needs some care to prevent his intellectual back from being broken. Those who are acquainted with the existing systems of medical education will observe that, long as is the catalogue of studies which I have enumerated, I have omitted to men- ADDRESS ON- UNIVERSITY EDUCATION 141 tion several that enter into the usual medical curriculum of the present day. I have said not a word about zoology, comparative anatomy, botany, or materia medica. Assur- edly this is from no light estimate of the value or importance of such studies in themselves. It may be taken for granted that I should be the last person in the world to object to the teaching of zoology, or comparative anatomy, in them- selves; but I have the strongest feeling that, considering the number and the gravity of those studies through which a medical man must pass, if he is to be competent to dis- charge the serious duties which devolve upon him, subjects which lie so remote as these do from his practical pursuits should be rigorously excluded. The young man, who has enough to do in order to acquire such familiarity with the structure of the human body as will enable him to perform the operations of surgery, ought not, in my judgment, to be occupied w4th investigations into the anatomy of crabs and starfishes. Undoubtedly the doctor should know the com- mon poisonous plants of his own country when he sees them; but that knowledge may be obtained by a few hours devoted to the examination of specimens of such plants, and the desirableness of such knowledge is no justification, to my mind, for spending three months over the study of system- atic botany. Again, materia rdedica, so far as it is a knowl- edge of drugs, is the business of the druggist. In all other callings the necessity of the division of labour is fully recog- nised, and it is absurd to require of the medical man that he should not avail himself of the special knowledge of those whose business it is to deal in the drugs which he uses. It is all very well that the physician should know that castor oil comes from a plant, and castoreum from an animal, and how they are to be prepared; but for all the practical purposes of his profession that knowledge is not of one whit more 142 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS value, has no more relevancy, than the knowledge of how the steel of his scalpel is made. All knowledge is good. It is impossible to say that any fragment of knowledge, however insignificant or remote from one's ordinary pursuits, may not some day be turned to account. But in medical education, above all things, it is to be recollected that, in order to know a little well, one must be content to be ignorant of a great deal. Let it not be supposed that I am proposing to narrow medical education, or, as the cry is, to lower the standard of the profession. Depend upon it there is only one way of really ennobling any calling, and that is to make those who pursue it real masters of their craft, men who can truly do that which they profess to be able to do, and which they are credited with being able to do by the public. And there is no position so ignoble as that of the so-called "liberally- educated practitioner," who may be able to read Galen in the original; who knows all the plants, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop upon the wall; but who finds himself, with the issues of life and death in his hands, ignorant, blundering, and bewildered, because of his ignorance of the essential and fundamental truths upon which practice must be based. Moreover, I venture to say, that any man who has seriously studied all the essential branches of medical knowledge; who has the needful acquaintance with the elements of physical science; who has been brought by medical jurisprudence into contact with law; whose study of insanity has taken him into the fields of psychology; has ipso facto received a liberal education. Having lightened the medical curriculum by culling out of it everything which is unessential, we may next con- sider whether something may not be done to aid the medical student toward the acquirement of real knowledge by ADDRESS ON UNIVERSITY EDUCATION 143 modifying the system of examination. In England, within my recollection, it was the practise to require of the medical student attendance on lectures upon the most diverse topics during three years; so that it often happened that he would have to listen, in the course of a day, to four or five lectures upon totally different subjects, in addition to the hours given to dissection and to hospital practice: and he was required to keep all the knowledge he could pick up, in this distracting fashion, at examination point, until, at the end of three years, he was set down to a table and questioned pell-mell upon all the different matters with which he had been striving to make acquaintance. A worse system and one more calculated to obstruct the acquisition of sound knowledge and to give full play to the "crammer" and the "grinder" could hardly have been devised by human ingenuity. Of late years great reforms have taken place. Examinations have been divided so as to diminish the num- ber of subjects among which the attention has to be dis- tributed. Practical examination has been largely intro- duced; but there still remains, even under the present system, too much of the old evil inseparable from the con- temporaneous pursuit of a multiplicity of diverse studies. Proposals have recently been made to get rid of general examinations altogether, to permit the student to be exam- ined in each subject at the end of his attendance on the class; and then, in case of the result being satisfactory, to allow him to liave done with it; and I may say that this method has been pursued for many years in the Royal School of Mines in London, and has been found to work very well. It allows the student to concentrate his mind upon what he is about for the time being, and then to dis- miss it. Those who are occupied in intellectual work, will, I think, agree with me that it is important, not so much to 144 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERAIONS know a thing, as to have known it, and known it thoroughly. If you have once known a thing in this way it is easy to re- new your knowledge when you have forgotten it; and when you begin to take the subject up again, it slides back upon ^the familiar grooves with great facility. Lastly comes the question as to how the university may co-operate in advancing medical education. A medical school is strictly a technical school — a school in which a practical profession is taught — while a university ought to be a place in which knowledge is obtained without direct reference to professional purposes. It is clear, therefore, that a university and its antecedent, the school, may best co-operate with the medical school by making due provi- sion for the study of those branches of knowledge which lie at the foundation of medicine. At present, young men come to the medical schools with- out a conception of even the elements of physical science; they learn, for the first time, that there are such sciences as physics, chemistry, and physiology, and are introduced to anatomy as a new thing. It may be safely said that, with a large population of medical students, much of the first session is wasted in learning how to learn — in familiarising themselves with utterly strange conceptions, and in awaken- ing their dormant and wholly untrained powers of observa- tion and of manipulation. It is difficult to over-estimate the magnitude of the obstacles which are thrown in the way of scientific training by the existing system of school educa- tion. Not only are men trained in mere book-work, ignor- ant of what observation means, but the habit of learning from books alone begets a disgust of observation. The book-learned student will rather trust to what he sees in a book than to the witness of his own eyes. There is not the least reason why this should be so, and. ADDRESS ON UNIVERSITY EDUCATION 145 in fact, when elementary education becomes that which I have assumed it ought to be, this state of things will no longer exist. There is not the slightest difficulty in giving sound elementary instruction in physics, in chemistry, and in the elements of human physiology, in ordinary schools. In other words, there is no reason why the student should not come to the medical school, provided with as much knowledge of these several sciences as he ordinarily picks up in the course of his first year of attendance at the medi- cal school. I am not saying this without full practical justification for the statement. For the last eighteen years we have had in England a system of elementary science teaching carried out under the auspices of the Science and Art Department, by which elementary scientific instruction is made readily accessible to the scholars of all the elementary schools in the country. Commencing with small beginnings, carefully developed and improved, that system now brings up for examination as many as seven thousand scholars in the subject of human physiology alone. I can say that, out of that number, a large proportion have acquired a fair amount of substantial knowledge; and that no inconsiderable per- centage show as good an acquaintance with human physi- ology as used to be exhibited by the average candidates for medical degrees in the University of London, when I was first an examiner there twenty years ago; and quite as much knowledge as is possessed by the ordinary student of medicine at the present day. I am justified, therefore, in looking forward to the time when the student who pro- poses to devote himself to medicine will come, not abso- lutely raw and inexperienced as he is at present, but in a certain state of preparation for further study; and I look to the university to help iiim still further forward in that stage 14G SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS of preparation, through the organisation of its biological department. Here the student will find means of acquaint- ing himself with the phenomena of life in their broadest acceptation. He wull study not botany and zoology, which, as I have said, would take him too far away from his ulti- mate goal; but, by duly arranged instruction, combined with work in the laboratory upon the leading types of ani- mal and vegetable life, he will lay a broad, and at the same time solid, foundation of biological knowledge; he will come to his medical studies with a comprehension of the great truths of morphology and of physiology, with his hands trained to dissect and his eyes taught to see. I have no hesitation in saying that such preparation is worth a full year added on to the medical curriculum. In other words, it will set free that much time for attention to those studies which bear directly upon the student's most grave and serious duties as a medical practitioner. Up to this point I have considered only the teaching aspect of your great foundation, that function of the uni- versity in virtue of which it plays the part of a reservoir of ascertained truth, so far as our symbols can ever interpret nature. All can learn; all can drink of this lake. It is given to few to add to the store of knowledge, to strike new springs of thought, or to shape new forms of beauty. But so sure as it is that men live not by bread, but by ideas, so sure is it that the future of the world lies in the hands of those who are able to carry the interpretation of nature a step further than their predecessors; so certain is it that the highest function of a university is to seek out those men, cherish them, and give their ability to serve their kind full play. I rejoice to observe that the encouragement of research occupies so prominent a place in your official documents, and in the wise and liberal inaugural address of your presi- ADDRESS ON UNIVERSITY EDUCATION 147 dent. This subject of the encouragement, or, as it is some- times called, the endowment of research, has of late years greatly exercised the minds of men in England. It was one of the main topics of discussion by the members of the Royal Commission of whom I was one, and who not long since issued their report, after five years' labour. Many seem to think that this question is mainly one of money; that you can go into the market and buy research, and that supply will follow demand, as in the ordinary course of commerce. This view does not commend itself to my mind. I know of no more difficult practical problem than the dis- covery of a method of encouraging and supporting the original investigator without opening the door to nepotism and jobbery. My own conviction is admirably summed up in the passage of your president's address, "that the best investigators are usually those who have also the responsibilities of instruction, gaining thus the incitement of colleagues, the encouragement of pupils, and the obser- vation of the public." At the commencement of this address I ventured to assume that I might, if I thought fit, criticise the arrange- ments which have been made by the board of trustees, but I confess that I have little to do but to applaud them. Most wise and sagacious seems to me the determination not to build for the present. It has been my fate to see great educational funds fossilise into mere bricks and mortar, in the petrifying springs of architecture, with nothing left to work the institution they were intended to support. A great warrior is said to have made a desert and called it peace. Administrators of educational funds have sometimes made a palace and called it a university. If I may venture to give advice in a matter which lies out of my proper com- petency, I would say that whenever you do build, get an 148 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS honest bricklayer, and make him build you just such rooms as you really want, leaving ample space for expansion. And a century hence, when the Baltimore and Ohio shares are at one thousand premium, and you have endowed all the professors you need and built all the laboratories that are wanted, and have the best museum and the finest library that can be imagined; then, if you have a few hundred thousand dollars you don't know what to do with, send for an architect and tell him to put up a fagade. If American is similar to English experience, any other course will probably lead you into having some stately structure, good for your architect's fame, but not in the least what you want. It appears to me that what I have ventured to lay down as the principles which should govern the relations of a university to education in general, are entirely in accord- ance with the measures you have adopted. You have set no restrictions upon access to the instruction you propose to give; you have provided that such instruction, either as given by the university or by associated institutions, should cover the field of human intellectual activity. You have recognised the importance of encouraging research. You propose to provide means by which young men, who may be full of zeal for a literary or for a scientific career, but who also may have mistaken aspiration for inspiration, may bring their capacities to a test, and give their powers a fair trial. If such a one fail, his endowment terminates, and there is no harm done. If he succeed, you may give power of flight to the genius of a Davy or a Faraday, a Carlyle or a Locke, whose influence on the future of his fellow-men shall be absolutely incalculable. You have enunciated the principle that "the glory of the university should rest upon the character of the teachers ADDRESS ON UNIVERSITY EDUCATION 149 and scholars, and not upon their numbers of buildings constructed for their use." And I look upon it as an essen- tial and most important feature of your plan that the income of the professors and teachers shall be independent of the number of students whom they can attract. In this way you provide against the danger, patent elsewhere, of find- ing attempts at improvement obstructed by vested inter- ests; and, in the department of medical education espe- cially, you are free of the temptation to set loose upon the world men utterly incompetent to perform the serious and responsible duties of their profession. It is a delicate matter for a stranger to the practical working of your "institutions, like myself, to pretend to give an opinion as to the organisation of your governing power. I can conceive nothing better than that it should remain as it is, if you can secure a succession of wise, liberal, honest, and conscientious men to fill the vacancies that occur among you. I do not greatly believe in the efficacy of any kind of machinery for securing such a result; but I would venture to suggest that the exclusive adoption of the method of co-optation for filling the vacancies which must occur in your body, appears to me to be somewhat like a tempting of Providence. Doubtless there are grave practical objec- tions to the appointment of persons outside of your body and not directly interested in the welfare of the university; but might it not be well if there were an understanding that "your academic staff should be officially represented on the board, perhaps even the heads of one or two independent learned bodies, so that academic opinion and the views of the outside world might have a certain influence in that most important matter, the appointment of your professors ? I throw out these suggestions, as I have said, in ignorance of the practical difficulties that may lie in the way of carry- 150 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS ing them into effect, on the general ground that personal and local influences are very subtle, and often unconscious, while the future greatness and efficiency of the noble in- stitution which now commences its work must largely de- pend upon its freedom from them. I constantly hear Americans speak of the charm which our old mother country has for them, of the delight with which they wander through the streets of ancient towns, or climb the battlements of mediaeval strongholds, the names of which are indissolubly associated with the great epochs of that noble literature which is our common inheritance; or with the blood-stained steps of that secular progress, by which the descendants of the savage Britons and of the wild pirates of the North Sea have become converted into w^ar- riors of order and champions of peaceful freedom, exhaust- ing what still remains of the old Berserk spirit in subduing nature, and turning the wilderness into a garden. But anticipation has no less charm than retrospect, and to an Englishman landing upon your shores for the first time, travelling for hundreds of miles through strings of great and well-ordered cities, seeing your enormous actual, and almost infinite potential, wealth in all commodities, and in the energy and ability which turn wealth to account, there is something sublime in the vista of the future. Do not suppose that I am pandering to what is commonly under- stood by national pride. I cannot say that I am in the slightest degree impressed by your bigness, or your material resources, as such. Size is not grandeur, and territory does not make a nation. The great issue, about which hangs a true sublimity, and the terror of overhanging fate, is what are you going to do with all these things? What is to be the end to which these are to be the means ? You are making ADDRESS ON UNIVERSITY EDUCATION 151 a novel experiment in politics on the greatest scale which the world has yet seen. Forty millions at your first centenary, it is reasonably to be expected that, at the second, these states will be occupied by two hundred millions of English- speaking people, spread over an area as large as that of Europe, and with climates and interests as diverse as those of Spain and Scandinavia, England and Russia. You and your descendants have to ascertain whether this great mass will hold together under the forms of a republic, and the despotic reality of universal suffrage; whether state rights will hold out against centralisation, without separation; whether centralisation will get the better, without actual or disguised monarchy; whether shifting corruption is better than a permanent bureaucracy; and as population thickens in your great cities, and the pressure of want is felt, the gaunt spectre of pauperism will stalk among you, and communism and socialism will claim to be heard. Trulv America has a great future before her; great in toil, in care, and in responsibility; great in true glory if she be guided in wisdom and righteousness; great in shame if she fail. I cannot understand why other nations should envy you, or be blind to the fact that it is for the highest interest of man- kind that you should succeed; but the one condition of success, your sole safeguard, is the moral worth and intel- lectual clearness of the individual citizen. Education cannot give these, but it may cherish them and bring them to the front in whatever station of society they are to be found; and the universities ought to be, and may be, the fortresses of the higher life of the nation. May the university which commences its practical activity to-morrow abundantly fulfil its high purpose; may its renown as a seat of true learning, a centre of free inquiry, a focus of intellectual light, increase year by year, until men wander 152 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS hither from all parts of the earth, as of old they sought Bologna, or Paris, or Oxford. And it is pleasant to me to fancy that, among the English students who are drawn to you at that time, there may linger a dim tradition that a countryman of theirs was permitted to address you as he has done to-day, and to feel as if your hopes were his hopes and your success his joy. ON SCIENCE AND ART IN RELATION TO EDUCATION [1882] When a man is honoured by such a request as that which reached me from the authorities of your institution some time ago, I think the first thing that occurs to him is that which occurred to those who were bidden to the feast in the Gospel — to begin to make an excuse; and probably all the excuses suggested on that famous occasion crop up in his mind one after the other, including his "having married a wife," as reasons for not doing what he is asked to do. But, in my own case, and on this particular occasion, there were other difficulties of a sort peculiar to the time, and more or less personal to myself; because I felt that, if I cam^e amongst you, I should be expected, and, indeed, morally compelled, to speak upon the subject of Scientific Education. And then there arose in my mind the recollection of a fact, which probably no one here but myself remembers; namely, that some fourteen years ago I was the guest of a citizen of yours, who bears the honoured name of Rathbone, at a very charming and pleasant dinner given by the Philomathic Society; and I there and then, and in this very city, made a speech upon the topic of Scientific Education. Under these circumstances, you see, one runs two dangers — the first, of repeating one's self, although I may fairly hope that every- body has forgotten the fact I have just now mentioned, except myself; and the second, and even greater difficulty, is the danger of saying something different from what one said before, because then, however forgotten your previous 154 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS speech may be, somebody finds out its existence, and there goes on that process so hateful to members of Parliament, which may be denoted by the term "Hansardisation." Under these circumstances, I came to the conclusion that the best thing I could do was to take the bull by the horns, and to "Hansardise" myself, — to put before you, in the briefest possible way, the three or four propositions which I endeavoured to support on the occasion of the speech to which I have referred; and then to ask myself, supposing you were asking me, whether I had anything to retract, or to modify, in them, in virtue of the increased experience, and, let us charitably hope, the increased wisdom of an added fourteen years. Now, the points to which I directed particular attention on that occasion were these: in the first place, that instruction in physical science supplies information of a character of especial value, both in a practical and a speculative point of view — information which cannot be obtained otherwise; and, in the second place, that, as educational discipline, it supplies, in a better form than any other study can supply, exercise in a special form of logic, and a peculiar method of testing the validity of our processes of inquiry. I said further, that, even at that time, a great and increasing atten- tion was being paid to physical science in our schools and colleges, and that, most assuredly, such attention must go on growing and increasing, until education in these matters occupied a very much larger share of the time which is given to teaching and training, than had been the case heretofore. And I threw all the strength of argumentation of which I was possessed into the support of these propositions. But I venture to remind you, also, of some other words I used at that time, and which I ask permission to read to you. They were these : " There are other forms of culture besides physi- SCIENCE AND ART AND EDUCATION 155 cal science, and I should be profoundly sorry to see the fact forgotten, or even to observe a tendency to starve or cripple literary or aesthetic culture for the sake of science. Such a narrow view of the nature of education has nothing to do with my firm conclusion that a complete and thorough scientific culture ought to be introduced into all schools." I say I desire, in commenting upon these various points, and judging them as fairly as I can by the light of increased experience, to particularly emphasise this last, because I am told, although I assuredly do not know it of my own knowledge — though I think if the fact were so I ought to know it, being tolerably well acquainted with that which goes on in the scientific world, and which has gone on there for the last thirty years — that there is a kind of sect, or horde, of scientific Goths and Vandals, who think it would be proper and desirable to sweep away all other forms of culture and instruction, except those in physical science, and to make them the universal and exclusive, or at any rate, the dominant training of the human mind of the future generation. This is not my view — I do not believe that it is anybody's view, — but it is attributed to those who, like myself, advocate scientific education. I therefore dwell strongly upon the point, and I beg you to believe that the words I have just now read were by no means intended by me as a sop to the Cerberus of culture. I have not been in the habit of offering sops to any kind of Cerberus; but it was an expression of profound conviction on my own part — a conviction forced upon me not only by my mental constitution, but by the lessons of what is now becoming a somewhat long experience of varied con- ditions of life. I am not about to trouble you with my autobiography; the omens are hardly favorable, at present, for work of 156 SELECTED ESSA YS FROM LA Y SERMONS that kind. But I should like if I may do so without appear- ing, what I earnestly desire not to be, egotistical, — I should like to make it clear to you, that such notions as these, which are sometimes attributed to me, are, as I have said, inconsistent with my mental constitution, and still more inconsistent with the upshot of the teaching of my experi- ence. P^or I can certainly claim for myself that sort of mental temperament which can say that nothing human comes amiss to it. I have never yet met with any branch of human knowledge which I have found unattractive — which it would not have been pleasant to me to follow, so far as I could go; and I have yet to meet with any form of art in which it has not been possible for me to take as acute a pleasure as, I believe, it is possible for men to take. And with respect to the circumstances of life, it so hap- pens that it has been my fate to know many lands and many climates, and to be familiar, by personal experience, with almost every form of society, from the uncivilised savage of Papua and Australia and the civilised savages of the slums and dens of the poverty-stricken parts of great cities, to those who perhaps, are occasionally the somewhat over- civilised members of our upper ten thousand. And I have never found, in any of these conditions of life, a deficiency of something which was attractive. Savagery has its pleas- ures, I assure you, as well as civilisation, and I may even venture to confess — if you will not let a whisper of the matter get back to London, where I am known — I am even fain to confess, that sometimes in the din and throng of what is called "a brilliant reception" the vision crosses my mind of waking up from the soft plank which had afforded me satisfactory sleep during the hours of the night, in the bright dawn of a tropical morning, when my comrades were yet asleep, when every sound was hushed. SCIENCE AND ART AND EDUCATION 157 except the little lap-lap of the ripples against the sides of the boat, and the distant twitter of the sea-bird on the reef. . And when that vision crosses mv mind, I am free to confess I desire to be back in the boat again. So that, if I share with those strange persons to whose asserted, but still hypothetical existence I have referred, the want of appre- ciation of forms of culture other than the pursuit of physi- cal science, all I can say is, that it is, in spite of my constitu- tion, and in spite of my experience, that such should be my fate. But now let me turn to another point, or rather to two other points, with which I propose to occupy myself. How far does the experience of the last fourteen years justify the estimate which I ventured to put forward of the value of scientific culture, and of the share — the increasing share — which it must take in ordinary education? Happily, in respect to that matter, you need not rely upon my testimony. In the last half-dozen numbers of the Journal of Educa- tion, you will find a series of very interesting and remark- able papers, by gentlemen who are practically engaged in the business of education in our great public and other schools, telling us what is doing in these schools, and what is their experience of the results of scientific education there, so far as it has gone. I am not going to trouble you with an abstract of those papers which are well worth your study in their fulness and completeness, but I have copied out one remarkable passage, because it seems to me so entirely to bear out what I have formerly ventured to say about the value of science, both as to its subject-matter and as to the discipline which the learning of science in- volves. It is from a paper by Mr. Worthington — one of the masters at Clifton, the reputation of wliich school you know well, and at the head of which is an old friend of mine, 158 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS the Rev. Mr. Wilson — to whom much credit is due for being one of the first, as I can say from my own knowledge, to take up this question and work it into practical shape. What Mr. Worthington says is this: — "It is not easy to exaggerate the importance of the information im- parted by certain branches of science; it modifies the whole criticism of life made in maturer years. The study has often, on a mass of boys, a certain influence which, I think, was hardly anticipated, and to which a good deal of value must be attached — an influence as much moral as intellectual, which is shown in the increased and increasing respect for precision of statement, and for that form of veracity which consists in the acknowledgment of difficulties. It produces a real effect to find that Nature cannot be imposed upon, and the attention given to experimental lectures, at first superficial and curious only, soon becomes minute, serious, and practical." Ladies and gentlemen, I could not have chosen better words to express — in fact, I have, in other words, expressed the same conviction in former days — what the influence of scientific teaching, if properly carried out, must be. But now comes the question of properly carrying it out, because, when I hear the value of school teaching in physi- cal science disputed, my first impulse is to ask the disputer, "What have you known about it?" and he generally tells me some lamentable case of failure. Then I ask, "What are the circumstances of the case, and how was the teach- ing carried out?" I remember, some few years ago, hear- ing of the head-master of a large school, who had expressed great dissatisfaction with the adoption of the teaching of physical science — and that after experiment. But the ex- periment consisted in this — in asking one of the junior masters in the school to get up science, in order to teach it; and the young gentleman went away for a year and got up science and taught it. Well, I have no doubt that the result was as disappointing as the head-master said it was, SCIENCE AND ART AND EDUCATION 159 and I have no doubt that it ought to have been as disappoint- ing, and far more disappointing too; for, if this kind of instruction is to be of any good at all, if it is not to be less than no good, if it is to take the place of that which is already of some good, then there are several points which must be attended to. And the first of these is the proper selection of topics, the second is practical teaching, the third is practical teachers, and the fourth is sufficiency of time. If these four points are not carefully attended to by anybody who undertakes the teaching of physical science in schools, my advice to him is, to let it alone. I will not dwell at any length upon the first point, because there is a general consensus of opinion as to the nature of the topics which should be chosen. The second point — practical teaching — is one of great importance, because it requires more capital to set it agoing, demands more time, and, last, but by no means least, it requires much more personal exertion and trouble on the part of those professing to teach, than is the case with other kinds of instruction. When I accepted the invitation to be here this evening, your secretary was good enough to send me the addresses which have been given by distinguished persons who have previously occupied this chair. I don't know whether he had a malicious desire to alarm me; but, however that may be, I read the addresses, and derived the greatest pleasure and profit from lomeof them, and from none more than from the one given by the great historian, Mr. Freeman, which delighted me most of all; and, if I had not been ashamed of plagiarising, and if I had not been sure of being found out, I should have been glad to have copied very much of what Mr. Freeman said, simply putting in the word science for history. There was one notable passage, — "The difference 160 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS between good and bad teaching mainly consists in this, whether the words used are really clothed with a meaning or not." And Mr. Freeman gives a remarkable example of this. He says, when a little girl was asked where Turkey was, she answered that it was in the yard with the other fowls, and that showed she had a definite idea connected with the word Turkey, and was, so far, worthy of praise. I quite agree with that commendation; but what a curious thing it is that one should now find it necessary to urge that this is the be-all and end-all of scientific instruction — • the sine qua non, the absolutely necessary condition, — and yet that it was insisted upon more than two hundred years ago by one of the greatest men science ever possessed in this country, William Harvey. Harvey wrote, or at least published, only two small books, one of which is the well- known treatise on the circulation of the blood. The other the Exercita Hones de Generatione, is less known, but not less remarkable. And not the least valuable part of it is the preface, in which there occurs this passage: "Those who, reading the words of authors, do not form sensible images of the things referred to, obtain no true ideas, but conceive false imaginations and inane phantasms." You see, William Harvey's words are just the same in subst'aTiC'c. as those of Mr. Freeman, only they happen to be rather more than two centuries older. So that what I am now saying has its application elsewhere than in science; but assuredly in science the condition of knowing, of your own knowledge, things which you talk about, is absolutely imperative. I remember, in my youth, there we^^e detestable boojvs which ought to have been burned by the hands of the com- mon hangman, for they contained questic is and answere to be learned by heart, of this sort, ''What is a hor. ? The SCIENCE AND ART AND EDUCATION 161 horse is termed Equiis caballus; belongs to the class Mam- malia; order, Pachydermata; family, Solidungula." Was any human being wiser for learning that magic formula? Was he not more foolish, inasmuch as he was deluded into taking words for knowledge? It is that kind of teaching that one wants to get rid of, and banished out of science. Make it as little as you like, but, unless that which is taught is based on actual observation and familiarity with facts, it is better left alone. There are a great many people who imagine that elemen- tary teaching might be properly carried out by teachers provided with only elementary knowledge. Let me assure you that that is the profoundest mistake in the world. There is nothing so difficult to do as to write a good elementary book, and there is nobody so hard to teach properly and well as people who know nothing about a subject, and I will tell you why. If I address an audience of persons who are occupied in the same line of work as myself, I can assume that they know a vast deal, and that they can find out the blunders I make. If they don't it is their fault and not mine; but when I appear before a body of people who know nothing about the matter, who take for gospel what- ever I say, surely it becomes needful that I consider what I say, make sure that it will bear examination, and that I do not impose upon the credulity of those who have faith in me. In the second place, it involves that difficult process of knowing what you know so well that you can talk about it as you can talk about your ordinary business. A man can always talk abijut his own business. He can always make it plain; but, if his knowledge is hearsay, he is afraid to go beyond what he has recollected, and put it before those thu.t are ignorant in such a shape that they shall compre- hend it , That is why, to be a good elementary teacher, to 162 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS teach the elements of any subject, requires most careful consideration, if you are a master of the subject; and, if you are not a master of it, it is needful you should familiar- ise yourself with so much as you are called .upon to teach — soali yourself in it, so to speak — until you know it as part of your daily life and daily knowledge, and then you will be able to teach anybody. That is w^hat I mean by practi- cal teachers, and, although the deficiency of such teachers is being remedied to a large extent, I think it is one which has long existed, and which has existed from no fault of those who undertook to teach, but because, until the last score of years, it absolutely was not possible for any one in a great many branches of science, whatever his desire might be, to get instruction which would enable him to be a good teacher of elementary things. All that is being rapidly al- tered, and I hope it will soon become a thing of the past. The last point I have referred to is the question of the sufficiency of time. And here comes the rub. The teach- ing of science needs time, as any other subject; but it needs more time proportionally than other subjects, for the amount of work obviously done, if the teaching is to be, as I have said, practical. Work done in a laboratory involves a good deal of expenditure of time without always an obvi- ous result, because we do not see anything of that quiet ■'process of soaking the facts into the mind, which takes place through the organs of the senses. On this ground there must be ample time given to science teaching. What that amount of time should be is a point which I need not dis- cuss now; in fact, it is a point which cannot be settled until one has made up one's mind about various other questions. All, then, that I have to ask for, on behalf of the scientific people, if I may venture to speak for more than myself, is that you should put scientific teaching into what statesmen SCIENCE AND ART AND EDUCATION 163 call the condition of "the most favoured nation"; that is to say, that it shall have as large a share of the time given to education as any other principal subject. You may say that that is a very vague statement, because the value of the allotment of time, under those circumstances, depends upon the number of principal subjects. It is x the time, and an unknown quantity of principal -subjects dividing that, and science taking shares with the rest. That shows that we cannot deal with this question fully until we have made up our minds as to what the principal subjects of education ought to be. I know quite well that launching myself into this dis- cussion is a very dangerous operation; that it is a very large subject, and one which is difficult to deal with, however much I may trespass upon your patience in the time allotted to me. But the discussion is so fundamental, it is so com- pletely impossible to make up one's mind on these matters until one has settled the question, that I will even venture to make the experiment. A great lawyer-statesman and philosopher of a former age — I mean Francis Bacon — said that truth came out of error much more rapidly than it came out of confusion. There is a wonderful truth in that saying. Next to being right in this world, the best of all things is to be clearly and definitely wrong, because you will come out somewhere. If you go buzzing about between . right and wrong, vibrating and fluctuating, you come out nowhere; but if you are absolutely and thoroughly and persistently wrong, you must, some of these days, have the extreme good fortune of knocking your head against a fact, and that sets you all straight again. So I will not trouble myself as to whether I may be right or wrong in what I am about to say, but at any rate I hope to be clear and definite; and then you will be able to judge for your- 164 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS selves whether, in following out the train of thought I have to introduce, you knock your heads against facts or not. I take it that the w^hole object of education is, in the first place, to train the faculties of the young in such a manner as to give their possessors the best chance of being happy and useful in their generation; and, in the second place, to furnish them with the most important portions of that immense capitalised experience of the human race which we call knowledge of various kinds. I am using the term knowledge in its widest possible sense; and the ques- tion is, what subjects to select by training and discipline, in which the object I have just defined may be best attained. I must call your attention further to this fact, that all the subjects of our thoughts — all feelings and propositions (leaving aside our sensations as the mere materials and occasions of thinking and feeling), all our mental furniture — may be classified under one of two heads — as either within the province of the intellect, something that can be put into propositions and affirmed or denied; or as within the province of feeling, or that which, before the name was defiled, was called the aesthetic side of oup nature, and which can neither be proved nor disproved, but only felt and known. According to the classification which I have put before you, then, the subjects of all knowledge are divisible into the two groups, matters of science and matters of art; for all things with which the reasoning faculty alone is occupied, come under the province of science; and in the broadest sense, and not in the narrow and technical sense in which we are now accustomed to use the word art, all things feelable, all things which stir our emotions, come under the term of art, in the sense of the subject-matter of the aesthetic faculty. So that we are shut up to this — that the SCIENCE AND ART AND EDUCATION 165 • business of education is, in the first place, to provide the young with the means and the habit of observation; and, secondly, to supply the subject-matter of knowledge either in the shape of science or of art, or of both combined. Now, it is a very remarkable fact — but it is true of most things in this world — that there is hardly anything one- sided, or of one nature; and it is not immediately obvious what of the things that interest us may be regarded as pure science, and what may be regarded as pure art. It may be that there are some peculiarly constituted persons, who, before they have advanced far into the depths of geometry, find artistic beauty about it; but, taking the generality of mankind, I think it may be said that, when they begin to learn mathematics, their whole souls are absorbed in trac- ing the connection between the premises and the conclu- sion, and that to them geometry is pure science. So I think it may be said that mechanics and osteology are pure science. On the other hand, melody in music is pure art. You can- not reason about it; there is no proposition involved in it. So, again, in the pictorial art, an arabesque, or a " harmony in grey," touches none but the aesthetic faculty. But a great mathematician, and even many persons who are not great mathematicians, will tell you that they derive immense pleasure from geometrical reasonings. Everybody knows mathematicians speak of solutions and problems as "ele- gant," and they tell you that a certain mass of mystic sym- bols is "beautiful, quite lovely." Well, you do not see it. They do see it, because the intellectual process, the process of comprehending the reasons symbolised by these figures and these signs, confers upon them a sort of pleasure, such as an arti?* has in visual symmetry. Take a science of which I may speak with more confidence, and which is the most attractive of those I am concerned with. It is 166 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS what we call morphology, which consists in tracing out the unity in variety of the infinitely diversified structures of animals and plants. I cannot give you any example of a thorough aesthetic pleasure more intensely real than a pleasure of this kind — the pleasure which arises in one's mind when a whole mass of different structures run into one harmony as the expression of a central law. That is where the province of art overlays and embraces the prov- ince of intellect. And, if I may venture to express an opin- ion on such a subject, the great majority of forms of art are not in the sense what I just now defined them to be — pure art; but they derive muclj of their quality from simultaneous and even unconscious excitement of the intellect. When I was a boy, I was very fond of music, and I am so now; and it so happened that I had the opportunity of hearing much good music. Among other things, I had abundant opportunities of hearing that great old master, Sebastian Bach. I remember perfectly well — though I knew nothing about music then, and, I may add, know nothing whatever about it now — the intense satisfaction and delight which I had in listening, by the hour together, to Bach's fugues. It is a pleasure which remains with me, I am glad to think; but, of late years, I have tried to find out the why and wherefore, and it has often occurred to me that the pleasure derived from musical compositions of this kind is essentially of the same nature as that which is derived from pursuits which are commonly regarded as purely intellectual. I mean, that the source of pleasure is exactly the same as in most of my problems in morphology — that you have the theme in one of the old master's works fol- lowed out in all its endless variations, always appearing and always reminding you of unity in variety. So in paint- ing; what is called "truth to nature" is the intellectual SCIENCE AND ART AND EDUCATION 167 element coming in, and truth to nature depends entirely upon the intellectual culture of the person to whom art is addressed. If you are in Australia, you may get credit for being a good artist — I mean among the natives — if you can draw a kangaroo after a fashion. But, among men of higher civilisation, the intellectual knowledge we possess brings its criticism into our appreciation of works of art, and we are obliged to satisfy it, as well as the mere sense of beauty in colour and in outline. And so, the higher the culture and information of those whom art addresses, the more exact and precise must be what we call its "truth to nature." If we turn to literature, the same thing is true, and you find works of literature which may be said to be pure art. A little song of Shakespeare or of Goethe is pure art; it is exquisitely beautiful, although its intellectual content may be nothing. A series of pictures is made to pass before your mind by the meaning of words, and the effect is a melody of ideas. Nevertheless, the great mass of the literature we esteem is valued, not merely because of having artistic form, but because of its intellectual content; and the value is the higher the more precise, distinct, and true is that intellectual content. And, if you will let me for a moment speak of the very highest forms of literature, do we not regard them as highest simply because the more we know the truer they seem, and the more competent we are to appreciate beauty the more beautiful they are? No man ever understands Shakespeare unt!l he is old, though the youngest may ad- mire him, the reason being that he satisfies the artistic in- stinct of the youngest and harmonises with the ripest and richest experience of the oldest. I have said this much to draw your attention to what, in my mind, lies at the root of all this matter, and at the 168 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS understanding of one another by the men of science on the one hand, and the men of literature, and history, and art, on the other. It is not a question whether one order of study or another should predominate. It is a question of what topics of education you shall select which will com- bine all the needful elements in such due proportion as to give the greatest amount of food, support, and encourage- ment to those faculties which enable us to appreciate truth, and to profit by those sources of innocent happiness which are open to us, and, at the same time, to avoid that which is bad, and coarse, and ugly, and keep clear of the multi- tude of pitfalls and dangers which beset those who break through the natural or moral law^s. I address myself, in this spirit, to the consideration of the question of the value of purely literary education. Is it good and sufi&cient, or is it insufficient and bad? Well, here I venture to say that there are literary educations and literary educations. If I am to understand by that term the education that was current in the great majority of middle-class schools, and upper schools too, in this coun- try when I "was a boy, and which consisted absolutely and almost entirely in keeping boys for eight or ten years at learning the rules of Latin and Greek grammar, constru- ing certain Latin and Greek authors, and possibly making verses which, " had they been English verses, would have been condemned as abominable doggerel, — if that is w^hat you mean- by liberal education, then I say it is scandalously insufficient and almost worthless. My reason for saying so is not from the point of view of science at all, but from the point of view