^^$mf^

THE UNITY SERIES. VI

SCIENCE

AND

CIVILIZATION

ESSAYS ARRANGED AND EDITED

BY

F. S. MARVIN

AUTHOR OF 'THE LIVING PAST*, 'THE CENTURY OF HOPE', ETC.

' Savoir afin de prdvoir.'— AUGUSTE Comte

HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW COPENHAGEN
NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE CAPE TOWN
BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS SHANGHAI

1923

Q

n\

M51

PRINTED IN ENGLAND

AT THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

BY FREDERICK HALL

PREFACE

This volume is based on lectures given at the
Sixth Unity History School held at Woodbrooke
near Birmingham in August 1922.

Preceding volumes having treated of problems
connected with the Unity of Mankind rather from
the synthetic and general point of view, it was
thought well in this course to attempt a more
analytical line of approach and to consider in some
detail one of the leading threads which have
tended progressively to bind humanity together
in historic times. Science was obviously the first
to select. This volume will, it is hoped, be followed
by another dealing with Art from the same point
of view. The lectures for it are to be given in
Vienna in the coming August.

The editor and readers of this book are under
a debt to Dr. Charles Singer which can hardly be
overstated. Those who attended the course will
remember the vigour and the learning which added
so greatly to its success. In seeing the book
through the press his generous help and good
judgement have been of equal service.

F. S. M.

Berkhamsted,

Apyil 1923.

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE . . 7

By J. L. Myres.

II. ANCIENT MEDICINE .... 43

By Charles Singer.

III. ASPECTS OF BIOLOGICAL AND GEO-
LOGICAL KNOWLEDGE IN ANTIQUITY 73
By Arthur Platt.

IV. GREEK MATHEMATICS AND ASTRO-
NOMY 87

By J, L. E. Dreyer.

V. THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN . 112
By Charles Singer.

VI. THE FIRST PHYSICAL SYNTHESIS . 161

By A. N. Whitehead.

VII. SCIENCE IN THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLU-
TION 179

By Cecil H. Desch.

VIII. THE INFLUENCE OF DARWINISM ON

THOUGHT AND LIFE .... 203
By J. Arthur Thomson.

6 CONTENTS

PAGE

IX. SCIENCE AND EDUCATION . . .221

By A. E. Heath.

X. SCIENCE AND HEALTH .... 247
By F. G. Crookshank.

XT. SCIENCE AND RELIGION . : . 279

By Julian S. Huxley.

XII. SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS . . 330
By F. S. Marvin.

I

THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE
J. L. Myres

In further instancing the case of the King of Benin, the Consul
General stated that the King, when coming down from the City
during the rains, said the white man did not know how to stop
the rain, but that, if he (the King) wanted to stop it, he would
send down to the river, bring a man from there, and hang him up
on the crucifixion trees. The Consul explained to the Chiefs how
wrong and silly such a notion was, and said it would never be
allowed by the British. — [Report of a Palaver at Brass, W. Africa :
Standard, 8 November 1897.]

It is an observation as old as Thucydides, that we
may learn something about early stages of an advanced
culture from the present-day practices of savagery. It
is less commonly realized how much the practices of
primitive savagery have to tell us about the less advanced
elements in a present-day society which is for the most
part civilized. We speak of primitive 'cultures'; and,
therein, of arts or crafts, and other expressions of primi-
tive personality, amazingly advanced in technique and
aesthetic value; yet alongside of these modes of self-
expression, so rationally responsive to daily needs of
humanity, such 'cultures' exhibit instances of an almost
incredible stupidity — as it seems to us — and of intolerable,
almost inhuman self-repression, all the more surprising
from their association with such intimate interplay of
hand and tongue with brain, such orderly, intelligible —
in a word, reasonable — accommodation of effort to need.
I dealt briefly with this paradox in a contribution to the
first of these conferences,^ and need only repeat the
^ The Unity of Western Civilization, 1915, pp. 41-5.

8 THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE

conclusion, which then seemed to me probable, that
the most charitable, most just, and most illuminating
assumption is that here and there man has just 'lost his
way' intellectually; has in fact 'stopped thinking';
and that the reasons for such temporary inhibition of his
reasoning faculties are in the main these two, Fear and
Pride — defect, namely, and excess of self-reliance — with
the result that, as Heraclitus expressed it long ago,
'though reason is common to all, most men live as if they
had a way of thinking of their own'. For men in such
predicament — whatever be the cause of it — popular
language has the neatest of phrases; for we say — do we
not ? — that they have ' lost their heads ' ; and when a man
'loses his head' there is no limit to the folly and misery
that may follow.

I have ventured to suggest that the reasons for such
inhibition of man's reasoning are mainly two, Fear and
Pride; and this would seem to be the place to elaborate
each of these suggestions, before going farther.

§ I. Fear ; the Savage and the Law of the Jungle ;
' Panic ' in Simple Societies

Few of those unforeseen contributions to knowledge
which have resulted from the European War have been
more illuminating to the anthropologist than the revela-
tion on a vast scale of how men behave under the mastery
of overwhelming fear. I do not mean the moral fear of
the coward, or the intellectual fear of the man who, like
Kipling's elephant, 'thinks too much', until the worser
part appears the better, and he anticipates the historian's
task of demonstrating how (as he argues) we are losing
the war, and why (as he assures us) we must lose it.
I mean rather that physical fear which may beset the
stoutest heart and the clearest head when something

THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE 9

which is neither heart nor head encounters a 'force, not
ourselves', intolerably great, incessantly prolonged, un-
foreseeable, irremediable. For such physical, over-
mastering, irrational fear of what is limitless, incom-
mensurable with us, unsusceptible of alteration by any
act of ours, the Greeks had a name, and, after their
manner, a hypothesis, a myth, if not a reasoned explana-
tion. If an army fled when no man pursued; if sheep
and shepherd alike were scattered, as I am told that sheep
used to be stampeded here during the war; or if merely
the mountain goats scampered and vanished, in a great
stillness, as I have seen them do on Cretan hills — they
called it iraviKos ^o/3o?; and 'panic fear' has passed from
their language into ours. Their explanation, if we may
call it so, is in the best vein of their mythology; for
panic fear was the act of the great god Pan; and Pan is
the anthropomorph of Wild Nature, of all that manless
and reasonless world which is Not-Us; the aircipov, the
' limitless ', indeterminate congeries of things, which baffled
the Greek philosopher; the chaos 'without form and
void' of the Hebrew thinker, on which it is the task and
glory of God and man alike to impose definition, analysis,
explanation, until in the latter end man, like Jehovah,
rests from his labours, for he sees that it is 'very good'.
Of this Pan, as Herodotus says, 'they have no word to
say, what became of him, as soon as he was born'; for
he is the son of Hermes, the god at whose bidding all
chance things come to pass; a very Lord of Misrule.
It is his reeds by the river that make pan-pipe music on
a still day ; he and his nymphs make a ' going in the tops
of the mulberry trees' when nothing else could have
stayed the marauding Philistine; his goat-hoof started
the plunging boulder where no goat trod ; his leery goat-
eye and a wisp of a beard we seemed to see where
neither man nor goat was when we looked again; his

10 THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE

devilish chuckle out of the wayside cave; his loving care
of the lost lambs that we found unharmed after so long,
in such a thorn-brake, on such a rat's-foot-hold in the
cliff. Such was that Pan whom Pheidippides met face
to face on the waste places of Arcadia; and vowed him,
conscience-stricken, the sanctuary so long over due ;
and it was panic fear that achieved the Marathon victory,
the Persians 'losing their heads' in amazement at the
Athenians' attack.

From what Pan became, in the gracious atmosphere of
adolescent Greece, we may form some conception, I think,
in the light of our own experience of immeasurable,
irresistible devastation in the physical and chemical
jungles of modern war, of what mere Nature may have
meant for unsophisticated, ingenuous man. Perhaps our
own infant bogies — a dark room, the mere density of
a window-curtain, the wan smell of a top-lighted attic,
the bit of path beyond the yew tree, the first conscious
fall on the gravel, when the pebbles all rushed at your
face — may serve to complete the picture. And infant
man had no strong-handed, even-tempered, knowledgeable
nurse ; at best an equally panic-haunted mother, and the
heavy fist of the ' old man ' to knock sense into him.

I have called this the 'Law of the Jungle', because it
is in the dense forest regime of the tropical rain-belt that
we can best observe what happens when Nature, at her
strongest and most aggressive, is confronted with man
at his weakest, technologically, socially, individually.
Here agriculture and domestication of animals are alike
impracticable: man's hand is against everything, no less
than everything around is against him. Plants he may
rob of their fruit, animals of their young; but only to
kill and eat. Debris of dead or killed plants, or of the
game he has eaten, are his sole raw-materials ; for the
wholesome basement of rockery lies deep in festering

THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE ii

humus. It is only in his wholly human ingenuity to find
secondary uses for such cast-off remnants of Earth's
vesture that he differs from the bandar-log and the forest
carnivora. Concerted action, even in hunting, is a draw-
back, if not a danger; it scares the creatures he would
kill and eat, and attracts those which would kill and
eat him. Beyond an early point, experience is not trans-
missible; youth has no more to learn from age, and in
jungle, age cannot keep up with youth; so society breaks
up just when it should most cohere. Even family life
hardly outlasts the period of infancy. As the Amazon
Indian said to M. Crevaux, 'I had a wife, but I don't
know where she is now: the children went off and I lost
her; she is hunting somewhere, like me.' Consequently
there is no 'collective memory', nor tradition of experi-
ence; no premium on foresight or ambition, for a great
hoard is a great evil and a great waste of good stuff,
since in the jungle all stores rot. 'An Indian who has
a knife will not give anything for a second'; and if he
has no knife, he has probably nothing that he could give
far one, unless perchance he has found rubber, and not
dropped it yet. For the same reason there is little leisure.
To quote Crevaux again, 'Our voyage is a continual
struggle for existence. All the time we can spare from
mapping and observation is devoted to fishing and
hunting ' ; and the last statement might well have been
inverted. ' The one thing needful is the one thing uncer-
tain.' In England, when people meet, they talk about
the weather: in Greece, they talk about wealth; in the
Amazon forest, exclusively about food. Rigid selection,
on these lines, of the best individualists to survive, has
resulted in unusual suppression of the social instincts,
even the instinct of kind, which very few animals lose.
The huge mortality is accentuated by frequent cannibal-
ism; for man is good eating; he is the best of sport.

12 THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE

because he is as clever as you are; and besides, if you
bag him, there is one hunter less. The greatest happiness,
indeed, is that of the smallest number.

The only inalienable property is individual effort. If
two individuals can succeed, in the prime of life, in
exerting effort-for-three, they may rear a child; if not,
they fail, and it is the child who starves first. There is,
however, record that an orphan child has been allowed
to haunt a camp, and scramble for offal with the dogs.^

Yet there is much testimony that within the group 'the
voice with the smile wins'. When it is so easy for an
ill-used person to quit, honesty and courtesy are the best
policy as long as it is to the common interest (as in
matrimony) that the group should hold together. There
is testimony also to the contentment of such people:
we may conjecture that grousers either go away or pine
away. There is extreme contempt for other modes
of life, utter inability to adopt other ways. Even the
simplest barter hardly rouses interest; not so much
because they have nothing to offer, as because there is
almost nothing that they need. Like the Fenni of
Tacitus, 'they have achieved the hardest thing in the
world, to have no use for prayer.'

This, however, is not due to stupidity. Of things
which concern them — such as animals, plants, country,
and weather — such people are very acute observers, and
show great practical ingenuity. The failure, with occa-
sional scandal, of attempts to ' make them work ' even at

^ For the social life of jungle-folk in general, consult the
chapter in E. Demolins, Comment la Route cree le Type social,
Paris, 1905, and A. de Preville, Societes Africaines (ch. v), Paris,
1894. No assumption is intended here that jungle life is the real
Garden of Eden, man's primitive estate : only that in jungle,
as travellers know it now, man is at his most defenceless against
his surroundings, and presumably thinks and acts according to
his powerlessness to alter them.

THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE 13

such a simple business as picking raw rubber off the trees
and bringing it in, seems due mainly to their inability
to realize that what is asked of them, or offered to them,
is of any conceivable use : undebauched by intruders, they
do not seem even to get drunk, for like Ingoldsby cherubs
' they haven't de quoi'. That the needs of any one else
in any way concern them appears as utter folly as that
any one else should be concerned with needs of theirs.
Their apparent laziness, or enjoyment of leisure, which
has deceived some observers, would seem to result partly
from real need of physical rest between spasms of
activity, like the holiday loafing of a schoolboy ; partly
from habitual economy of effort ; partly from indulgence
in' reflection, for where such effort is required to under-
stand what is going on — at all events to the point of right
response to it — hard thinking and much 'brown study'
are as essential and natural as they seem to have been,
on occasion, to men like King Alfred and James Watt.
Let that philosopher cast the first stone who has never
appeared at breakfast without a tie.

Now, what do such people think about ? Here we are
rather in the dark, since we have only their acts to guide
us; just as we are about men's mode of life when we
have only their implements to go by. ' Evolution ', it has
been said, ' means, sooner or later, a complete transcend-
ence of one group of interests over another ', and we have
to unthink a good deal of what chiefly interests ourselves
if we are to recover the mental standpoint of simple
societies and the substance of their thought. Civilized
people's 'thinking', as distinct from mere use of their
brains in the daily round of their lives, is concerned
mainly with high matters which they do not quite under-
stand yet, but their ignorance of which is beginning to
be felt practically as an obstacle to desirable activity.
Thinkers among ourselves think, for example, about the

T4 THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE

constitution of matter; the nature of force and life;
high problems of conduct, of politics, of mental and
metaphysical philosophy. But the thinking of the savage,
too, is concerned with high matters, too high as yet for
him, but of no less practical bearing ; with hanger, sickness,
rain ; with the baffling ways of game, and the behaviour of
dogs and womankind ; with his own feelings and imagina-
tions; and among them, above all, with his dreams.
All these puzzle him and prevent him from living as well
as he has it in him to live under his actual conditions.
He needs, that is, and apparently strives to achieve, in his
thinking, two things mainly; an explanation, intelligible
to himself, of what it is that is going on; and direction,
how to behave, in presence of this which is going on in
Nature and in his own experience as a whole. The
explanation is to be a response to impulses of curiosity —
that is, to his need to know- — as vital to his well-being as
those of any young animal, or of a modern baby, or
researcher; curiosity, most active in modern man during
infancy and adolescence, and customarily repressed in
most of us; but lifelong whenever it has not been so
repressed, and irrepressible, as we know, in idiots, gossips,
and men of science. From the need of explanation,
that is, comes all pure science, n6 less than all true
poetry. From the need of direction, on the other hand,
all applied sciences: for the need of direction stands in
similar relation to man's need-to-do, his instinct to push,
to hustle, to disarrange and rearrange things about him
till he has got them arranged as he likes, from which all
material arts and technical skill proceed, for the conquest
and domestication of intractable Nature; and, no less,
all social arts and political skill, for the conquest and
domestication — let us say at once the 'civilization' — of
no less intractable man. Such thought with a view to
action involves foresight, and leads to invention ; as

THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE 15

thought with a view to knowledge presumes imagination,
and achieves discovery.

In such thought with a view to knowledge, there are
two distinct phases: in the first, the mere facts are
established by observation, and up to the point where
their own natural needs are concerned, quite primitive
men are good observers, as we have seen, and may also
be good recorders of what they observe. The Bushman
drawings and the wonderful naturalism of the old French
and Spanish cave-dwellers are ample evidence for this.
But mere facts have never taken thinking men very far
on the road to knowledge ; and the second phase of
thought begins when the meaning of the facts is expressed
by what the Greeks knew as hypothesis, by supposiiion,
that is, or in plain English underpinning; filling in,
beneath and behind the facts, whatever is conceived in
imagination as really going on, and presenting these
appearances to the observer. Primitive ingenuous man,
like the greatest philosophers, is but trying to get beneath
the surface, behind the veil of appearance, and to reach
reality.

Theories of causation, indeed, are by no means the
monopoly of European philosophy; nor is the search
after causes confined to what we are pleased to idolize
as modern and rational civilization. Great as is the
advance in applying our more extensive experience of the
order of nature, and vast as is the accumulation of data
on which that experience itself rests, it is not clear that
recent presentations of the problem of causation show
by any means corresponding advance upon the earliest
speculations — we can hardly call them conclusions —
which have been handed down to us. For an adequate
theory of the relation of cause and effect, essential as it
is to any considerable advance towards mastery of human
circumstances, is no less essential from the first step of

i6 THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE

progress onwards; and we shall find reason for the view
that, whether explicitly or not — and of course more
frequently the latter — uncivilized man does practically
employ the same methods of inquiry in his researches
into the connexions among phenomena as the trained
student of modern philosophy or modern science; and
that, in spite of obstructions, drawbacks, and defects of
system, which appear to the modern inconceivably great,
he has sometimes reached results surprisingly like those
of his more favoured successors.

The inquiry is of some importance to us here from
more than one point of view. In tracing the emergence
of successive, more or less independent centres of specu-
lation in the Greek world, it is obviously of considerable
value to be able to outline the traditional beliefs among
which the first philosophers grew up, more particularly
as for a while it was the sensible course of Nature which
absorbed their attention : and this outline, in the extreme
dearth of direct statements on the subject, can only be
made even tolerably complete by comparing such details
as we have with the fuller record of undeveloped states
of practical belief elsewhere in which the same features
recur. The cosmological myth of Kronos, for example,
thie significance and world-wide distribution of which has
been studied in detail by Andrew Lang in his Custom and
Myth, is a typical aspect of the view of the world in
general which was current in the Aegean in the generation
of Thales ; diagrammatically and figuratively expressed,
indeed, in such parables as this, but none the less approved
by general consent as a working hypothesis, and found
tolerably consistent in practice ; exceptions 'proving the
rule', in the strictest sense, when examined secundum
artem.

It would be easy to multiply examples of the way in
which this unpromising substratum of popular, pre-

THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE 17

scientific conceptions coloured, distorted, and in some
cases even directly originated the conceptions of Greek
rationalistic philosophy. Greek hylozoism in the sixth
century is immediately descended, and but a step re-
moved, from the undisguised animism of the eighth ;
the doctrine of Metempsychosis is hardly explicable at all,
except as an inference from totemistic beliefs, which need
no more than mention; and the side of Pythagorean
doctrine which is least obscurely presented, looks like
nothing so much as a belated and archaistic revival of
obsolescent tabu — practices which, however, are found in
full ritual observation, if with dimmed appreciation of
their meaning, at a very much later date, and are even
yet not wholly extinct. Pythagoras himself, like Epi-
menides in the preceding century, and Empedocles in
the next, and countless ephemeral dyvproi besides, appears
to have found no difficulty in combining the profession
of philosophy with the practjce of common magic.

From this point of view, indeed, the ethnography of
logical and metaphysical theory may come to occupy no
mean place among the Human Sciences; certainly it
already offers material for obstructing more than one
blind alley of anthropological and even of philosophical
research. And when it is remembered that the reasoning
apparatus of the individual of to-day passes in its develop-
ment, like so much else of his more physical equipment,
very closely along the lines of growth of the rational
faculty of the species; that the chances are that every
philosopher or experimenter among us has passed—
unless he was a very abnormal infant — through a recog-
nizable stage of almost unqualified animism, usually with
concomitant manifestations of magical and fetishistic
practice; and that with many people such beliefs and
practices persist uneradicated into maturity; it will,
I think, be clear that the examination of certain principles

B

i8 THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE

of primitive thinl^ing may be not entirely without value
in regions nearer at hand. Let me illustrate such primitive
thinking by a diagram; not an actual instance, but a
narrative summary of the gist of many such.

A savage, resting in his cave on a windy night, hears
howling outside. Nothing is to be seen to account for the
noise, but it — whatever it is — howls like a wolf : or rather
(he thinks) it is not an ordinary wolf; but if a wolf were
big and fierce enough, it would howl like that. So far we
have a hypothesis, just as rational and adequate in itself
as when a physicist like Lord Kelvin thought that certain
electrical and optical phenomena reminded him of the
behaviour of the smoke-rings people make when they sit
and smoke : not of course ordinary smoke-rings, though
they have little enough in them ; but if a ' vortex-ring '
were small enough, and rapid enough, which implies
movement in so rare and elastic a medium that there is
nothing there at all, it would roll and travel like that.
So far, between myth and scientific h^^pothesis there
is no difference at all, except that Lord Kelvin's myth
of a vortical universe is wilder far than the savage's
hypothesis of a wind wolf.

Now the savage did not know what really made the
howling, any more than Loid Kelvin knew what light or
electricity really is; but he knew what a wolf was, as
Lord Kelvin's pupils knew about smoke-rings; and with
that to go by, wrong as it was, the savage felt rather less
'in the dark' about the noise, for he had brought it into
relation with the rest of his own experience. In the same
way, I imagine, a student of elementary chemistry feels
rather less in the dark about oxygen and sulphur (of
which we really know very little as yet) if instead of
' oxygen ' and ' sulphur ' he writes down the numerals
i6 and 32. The wind-wolf in fact is the savage's notation
for the cause of that noise, as I might write 'violet' as

THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE 19

a notation for the rays at one end of the spectrum,
without any pretence that the violet in the Hght was the
same as the violet in the shade. Language is full of such
myths, the detritus of a mountain of hypotheses : sun-
rise, full moon, influenza, good humour are such outworn
'parables of Nature'; just as when a Nile-side Egyptian
depicted the 'Boat of the Sun', or a 'horse-taming'
Greek spoke of his 'chariot', or a Jewish philosopher,
with one eye on his athletic neighbours the 'lords of the
Philistines', described him 'coming out of his chamber,
and rejoicing as a giant to run his course' ; or as a San
Francisco cartoonist, after a spell of rain in 1914, drew
a jovial personage traversing the sky on an aeroplane.

It is in a third and quite subsequent stage that the
comparison between myth and scientific hypothesis ceases
to hold good. Not that the savage does not apply his
discovery, such as it is, to elucidate other noises ; but
that he does not, before doing so, make adequately sure
of its implications ; in other words, he omits to verify
his hypothesis. This may be a sin of omission, when
panic sets the pace and he thinks he knows enough about
it to save his skin ; but it may also be a sin of commission,
in so far as he thinks he knows all about it, when he does
not; and that is the sin not of Fear, but of Pride.

Thus the reasons for the failure to push beyond hypo-
thesis to explanation — or as a Greek would say, to pass
from iJLvdos^ to Ao'yos — are in the main the same two causes
of intellectual paralysis, of 'losing one's head', with
which we began, namely Fear and Pride. Our savage
knows quite enough about wolves to avoid going out
at night while howling goes on. With such a howling,
common prudence argues irresistibly against experimental
verification : and it is at this point, of omission to test
and (in the older sense) 'prove' the hypothesis, that
mythology has its frontier with science: a myth being

B 2

20 THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE

unverified hypothesis of what is really happening, as well
as symbolic notation for what appears to happen, such as
poets and men of science alike employ. And the paralysis,
wrought in this instance by fear, may be wrought no less
by pride, in the not unlikely event of the wind-wolf
notion working in the mind of its originator, in mere
consolation of his fear, or in emotional enhancement of
his apprehension of the noise as wolf-noise, so that
conviction seizes him, or perhaps seizes first his fellows
in the cave, and the mere achievement of such a guess,
like any other creative activity, satisfies his sense of need,
as food, or song, or graceful movement expel desire and
establish a sense of well-being from which modern
speculators are, I believe, not wholly exempt. It was
a sound psychologist who portrayed the Creator looking
upon the work that he had made, 'and behold it was
very good '.

The Law of the Jungle then is Panic, and the Avoidance
of it. Provision for to-day — not to speak of the morrow-
is effected just so far as the savage equivalent of what we
call 'shell-shock' permits, man differing above all from
other animals in this, that he alone is consciously at war
with Nature; winning occasional victories and surviving
to enjoy such truce as they bring; occupying now and
then some patch of lotus-land, till, honeysweet as the
first, the last fruit falls from the tree and dearth begins
again; but conscious of defeat, no less than of achieve-
ment; conscious most of all that, whatever may happen
to himself, Nature never tires, and has ever new reserves
of unconceived surprise. Only because, while Nature
does not tire, Man will not, does the divergence between
man and animal grow, and not vanish again; at all
events for those stocks, few at best, and perhaps one only,
which in fact remained human, and became us.

In all this welter of occurrences, only two maxims (if

THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE 21

we may call them so) proved their validity in practice.
Out of all the proverb-lore of early Greece — where I think
we find most coherently the conclusion of the whole
matter as less clear-thinking folk experienced it, while
they failed to formulate — these two only were inscribed
in the Delphic Temple: — yvQOi (reavror and /utjSo- aym-:
know thyself: thus far and no farther.

The first, as we shall see, works positively and pro-
foundly throughout this elementary stage. Among all
changes and chances in the world of his experience, it is
only in respect to one class of changes that a man can
pass behind the veil of appearances; namely in respect
to what, as he says, he does himself. Not unnaturally,
he interprets other changes that go on around him, other
relations of cause and effect, in the light of this unique
class of experiences. On this analogy between act as he
knows it, and fact as he perceives it, rests all animistic
explanation, from the wakonda of Omaha philosophy,
and the afjyai (which we feebly translate as 'causes') of
pre-Socratic Greece, up to modem vitalism and Christian
theology. This analogy he applies least unsuccessfully,
where modern psychologists feel it to hold most truly,
to explain the facts of society as acts of persons like
himself. Conscious of that in himself which makes fori
action, he imputes to his fellows, in greater or less degree,
what we might crudely describe as me-ness, the Polynesian
mana, the Omaha wazhin. The nearest Greek and
Roman equivalents for it, in its moral and personal
aspect, are respectively virtus and ap^Ti] ; on the social
and political side imperium and apxt], the last-named
being (as will be seen) identical with the term applied to
impersonal ' initiatives ' in the world of non-human
fact.

Yet another aspect of this analogy is the Greek use
of atrtos- to denote the person responsible for a moral or

22 THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE

social act, and of atrta for the necessary antecedent of
any occurrence, the 'cause' of any 'effect'. Just so m
Latin the corresponding word causa itself comes into
metaphysic from the law courts,^ so that the Latin legal
term for human responsibility, which Cicero thus defines -
ea est quae id efficit cuius est causa, ut vulnus mortis,
becomes a medical term for any disease, i.e. anything
responsible for deficiency of me-ness in me : ^ so that the
modern French chose, and the Italian cosa, is the colloquial
word for any mere thing or external object; and even
among ourselves a charvvoman, I hope, retains her proper
meaning, as a person who gets things done.

Now 'me-ness' of this kind, the driving personality of
the agent, exists, as the more social animals already show,
in very different degrees in different individuals. It also
exists in the same individual in varying degrees on
different occasions. Most of us probably have been
occasionally in the predicament that 'virtue is gone
out of us. It may be diminished by want, or exposure,
or fatigue ; still more perceptibly and rapidly by blood-
letting, shock, or poison; more obscurely too, by disease
and less-obvious ' causes ' ; by hate, love, despair, or the
weather. It may on the other hand be enhanced, by
drugs, emotions, or ideas, that make us, as Americans
say, 'feel good'.

To judge from recorded practices, in almost all simple
types of human communities our natural expectation is
more than realized, that personality, so conceived, has
been the subject of peculiarly intense thinking and
elaborate precaution. The interpretation and enhance-
ment of the personality of the Performer; the removal

^ Causam dicere {agere) = to find out who is responsible for
what has happened.
^ Cic. de Fato, 15. 34.
^ Causam metuere. Celsus, 3. 3; cf. causaria wissio = sick leave.

THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE 23

of obstructions of every kind to achievement; in parti-
cular the concentration of faciUties at the disposal of
individuals of outstanding personality ; and the enhance-
ment of personality in those at whose disposal such
facilities are, are obvious motives for a very large part
of the mental efforts of man in simple societies, and for
many of his performances outside the mere round of
daily needs. ^

The other maxim of Delphi is not quite so easy to
illustrate as a principle of primitive thought. In popular
Greek morality, it expressed in practical advice the belief
in a world-order within which man moves and acts.
This idea of a world-order hardly reaches the degree of
humanized personification which we look for in Greek
religious myth, and we have seen that its opposite, too,
the freakish misrule of chance and surprise, was only
partially humanized in the goat-footed, goat-minded Pan;
but there is fortunately preserved in a provincial sanc-
tuary at Rhamnus in Attica, a presentation of Nemesis
as a goddess of wild things and wild places, with wild
apples in her hand, and little stags leaping wildly among
her hair. It is she who, representing what we call the
'order of nature' or more precisely, the idea of order in
nature, presides over the wild places and their denizens,
' giving them their meat in due season ' like the Providence
delineated in the Hundred-and-fourth Psalm. Like that
Providence too, this physical Nemesis is the physical
counterpart of that social Nemesis which has become
traditional in Greek and subsequent speech. Nemesis

^ I need only refer in illustration to Mr. E. S. Hartland's
address to the anthropological section of the British Association
at York [Proc. Brit. Ass. Adv. Sci., York, 1906), to Miss Alice C.
Fletcher's monographs on The Omaha Tribe (Mem. Bur. Am.
Ethnology, 191 1) and The Hako, a Pawnee Ceremony (ibid. 1905);
and to Dr. B. Malinowski's Argonauts of the Western Pacific,
London, 1922.

24 THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE

indeed, as Miss Harrison and Mr. Cornford ^ have shown,
is little more, nor less, than the world-order, within
which man moves and struggles at his peril. And his
dilemma is this: if his 'me-ness', his personal aperi], the
' drive ' or ' virtue ' which keeps him going, be not adequate
to his needs, there is no evil chance to which he may not
fall a prey. Yet if his achievement pass beyond a certain
margin of adjustment, between himself and the wild
which is about him, no less than between himself and his
human neighbours (who are not wholly of himself, any
more than they are wholly alien and part of the wild),
there is risk of mishap from non -human forces, just as
there is risk from offended or injured neighbours. It is
essentially a risk unknown and beyond his present power
to estimate: an essential quality of the wild, which is
for him at least 'without form and void': aireipor, limit-
less. And the sole remedy and precaution available to
man is once again not merely to know what he can do,
but to know what he is doing. To know 7£'hat he is doing,
mdeed, is a first step to an estimate, first, of what is yet
undone ; and then, of his power either to do the rest, or
not. Side by side with Pan and the a-neipov stand ■nipa's and
Nemesis ; side by side with mana, with wazhin, with
at^Tv, with apxv, stand tahu, avoidance, ixhpov and WAo?.

It would be instructive, and easy (did space permit),
to illustrate, side by side with the salutary working of
such 'self-restraint', the disastrous consequences when
Pride, in the person of the seer who believes that he
knows, in virtue of his double portion of discernment,
reinforces prestige by unholy alliance with panic Fear;
tabu sustaining mana and perverting aristocracy, which
is the rule of the seer, into oligarchy, the despotism
of an 'inner ring', with its watchwords 'hush-hush'

^ Miss Jane E. Harrison, Themis, Cambridge, 1910; F. M.
Cornford, From Religion to Philosophy, Cambridge, 1910.

THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE 25

and 'verhoten'. Nobody likes amateur intervention in
matters of which he at least knows the perilous delicacy ;
and it is only too easy for the niceties of magical mani-
pulation— so liable in any case to miscarriage, seeing how
unproven hypothesis is sport for Pan and tragedy for
Nemesis — to be restricted to the gifted or cunning few.
Not that specialism is not liable to occur in far later
stages of rational scientific research, with the same
ominous consequence of the formation of an 'inner ring'.
For the seer, ancient or modern, remains human, after all ;
and the key of knowledge has been used at times to
double-lock the door: 'this people that knoweth not the
law are cursed '.

To illustrate the baneful effects of Fear, I have dealt
separately and in the first place with what I have described
as the 'panic' aspect of man's attempts to deal with
external nature. It predominates wherever the balance
of forces sets so heavily in favour of nature, and against
man, that man's strategy in the conflict is defensive
mainly; and in life, as in warfare, 'a purely defensive
strategy means ruin '. Terrible as is inhuman nature,
in this kind of struggle, a person armed with however
little of nature's weapons, as the witch doctor claims,
and may well believe that he is, is more disastrous still.
Panic fear is bad enough, for it makes men 'lose their
heads'; when a human personality rides the storm and
directs the thunderbolt, a man may 'lose heart' as well.
Within the mere slums of the rain-forest, there are
criminal quarters, here and there, and cruel habitations.

Yet it is in some such surroundings as these and in
monsters like the king of Benin, with whom we began,
and other panic-mongering potentates throughout West
Africa, that we trace some of the first extensive, if momen-
tary, successes of the 'drastic man', armed with his own
knowledge of himself, and intelligent enough to make the

26 THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE

relative helplessness of the others the pretext and justifica-
tion for helping them, provided he may do it on his own
terms.

§ 2. Pride : Priest-kings and the Laws of the Gods :
' Magic ' in the Ancient East

We have taken as extreme instances of the Jungle Law
of Panic those regions of the earth where nature most
completely overwhelms human initiative and defaces the
rational aspect of human endeavour.

In contrast, we may look to those rare regions where
the balance sets so far in favour of Man as to allow not
merely those adaptations of animals and plants to his
uses which are common to tribally organized societies
throughout the north temperate zone and far into the
less amenable districts on either margin of it, but even
what we may describe as the first great domestication
of inanimate nature, the redistribution of water over
the land surface in accordance with man's will, to make
plants grow and animals breed in a land which is his
by right of creation. Such domestication of water is
the fundamental achievement on which are based the
great river-valley cultures and the vast aggregations of
humanity which these quite artificial conditions rendered
possible. And here again we are confronted with the
same paradox as in our first phase. On the one hand,
there is here amazing industry, wonderful craftsmanship,
acute observation applied to the enhancement of life in
many ways; a high degree of organized co-operation on
an unprecedented scale; and, perhaps most remarkable
of all, a stability if not of the political superstructure,
at all events of the social framework, which was only
upset in Babylonia by an external shock — the Mongol
invasion — so violent as to disrupt, not so much the

THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE 27

economic organism, as the geographical redistribution
which permitted it at all. ' As it was in the days of Noe ',
so it was in those of the last Caliph of Bagdad ; ' they ate,
they drank, they married and were given in marriage,
until the flood came ', and Mesopotamian irrigation almost
ceased to be.'

Yet, great as were the achievements of each of the
great river-cultures, one limitation is common to them
all. Once the full measure of regional adaptation was
reached — and this seems to have happened rather
rapidly — the main structure of society and the main
fashions in all activities of life appear almost as quickly,
grow soon to essential maturity, and then nothing more
but such superficial ups and downs as are attributable to
political conquest and temporary decline or renascence of
an economic oligarchy.

There is certainly a reason for this, and in Egypt and
Babylonia at all events, the facts are sufficiently well known
to justify conjecture. In both regions, initial advance-
ment follows the intrusion, among an old-established and
comparatively sparse population, of a fresh element alien
in culture and antecedents, but not so alien as to discard
entirely either their own organization or their more
fundamental ideas. It is to these exploiters, or
rather to their great chieftains, that the large-scale
reclamation of the region was due. Local experience and
effort were organized and directed by brains sufficiently
clear and competent to grasp so vast a problem and
enforce a solution. The risks, as far as we can estimate
them, were enormous; the returns commensurate, in the
event of success; and the maintenance of an artificial

^ Yet ' the bow shall be in the cloud . . . that I may remember
the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature ' :
and our 'victory ribbon' reminds us that the decision is ours,
to accept or to reject its omen.

28 THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE

state, society, and economic regime depended, like the
initiation of them, on perennial co-operation within rigidly
determined lines.

Once again, side by side with economic and social
arrangements so definite and peculiar; with the adminis-
trative genius of the men in authority, the horse-sense
of their officials, and the technical skill and application of
the mass of the population, applied from day to day to
practical secular problems, in mere self-expression, or
under the taskmaster's whip, we can recover outlines,
at least, of a system of ideas which stand to the secular
culture of these regions in much the same relation as the
hypotheses of the Panic stage to the life of the jungle-folk.

In the first place, so elaborate and extensive an
organization as a riparian state required and achieved
accurate means to communicate instructions and register
events: it is the same need to do and need to know as we
have seen already giving rise on a lower social plane to
myth and magic. Longer foresight demands accurate
measurement of time and a calendar-scheme for record
and for programme. Wider conceptions of area and
cubic content, whether for earthen-dams, or water-flow,
or estimation of produce and tribute, lead to s^^stems of
measurement, and eventually even of weight and value.
To this extent the mere needs of administration enforced
and stimulated new notions of quantitative accuracy, of
permanent and world-wide significance. ^ No less impor-
tant is the reaction of the political and economic regime
on the cosmolog}^ and the connexions between 'physics
and politics ' deserve closer examination.

^ For these primary inventions of oriental science, see F. S.
Marvin, The Living Past, ch. ii, London, 1913; and for details
A. Erman, Life of Ancient Egypt (E. T. 1895), A. Wiedemann,
Das alte Aegypten, p. 400 ff., Heidelberg, 1920, and B. Meissner,
Babylonien und Assyrien, p. 355 ff., Heidelberg, 1920.

THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE 29

The peculiarities of the Egyptian interpretation of
nature may be illustrated by analysis of some of its
leading ideas. In the Nile valley, man's struggle against
the wild succeeds on two conditions, of industry and
observation. Physical contrasts of seasonal and regional
fertility are abrupt ; solar heat contends with Nile water,
sea breeze with scorching 'hamseen', Man must discern
which of the Powers are his friends, and serve them;
and in such a world-war, even the Greater Powers recog-
nize service rendered. First of all Powers, as already
hinted, are Sun and River; then the Bull, Cow, and Ram
which his leaders brought with them, or reclaimed from
the wild. These are beneficent, but require observation
and maintenance, so near the margin of pasturage.
Others are maleficent, and need observation too; the
crocodile, scorpion, uraeus-snake. Others challenge won-
der, by incessant or periodic or exceptional activity;
the hawk flying in the eye of the sun, the dung beetle
rolling his pellet — whither? and why? — the jackal,
guarding (or is he molesting?) the dead; the ibis, ubi-
quitous and all-seeing; the cat, 'for all places are alike
to him ' ; lion, hippopotamus, and many m.ore ; all
elements of a ramshackle universe, precariously held
together, like the baronies of Delta and Valley by the
wearer "of the double crown, who is 'child of the Sun',
and co-regent over men with him, as his own son is his
co-regent.

Large matters are 'explained' by the simplest of
diagrams; creation, in a w^orld of Nile-mud, is potter's
business at bottom ; the sun's daily course is a boat-
journey through sky, blue as the river's reflection of it.
Complex activities are surely the work of composite
deities. If the same functions are performed in Croco-
dilopolis by King Crocodile and in Bubastis by Our
Lady Puss, reason points to that which in cat and-

30 THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE

crocodile is one, as the generic cause. And all these
powers, working as reasonably as they do, are in some
sense human; it is not mere ibis or lion, but an intelligent
and intelligible energy like man's; and the animal head
surmounts a body of which the working mechanism is
human. Above all, and gradually subsuming and har-
monizing this polytheism, two master-conceptions domin-
ate and at times compete : a naturalist hypothesis,
attributing all ultimately to solar-energy ; and a humanist
hypothesis, that all growth and maintenance is ultimately
congruous with the birth and life and death of man, the
only sequence in all nature, as we have seen in the most
primitive phase, of which man directly knows the inward-
ness. And so Egyptian knowledge culminates in the facts
of motherhood and childhood — Isis and Osiris— ever
bearing, ever-born, and ever born again, as day succeeds
night, and awakening sleep, and life death, when that
which is not-us wins periodic victory over laborious
beneficent manhood. With this Osiris-mystery, as with
Egyptian civilization itself, we pass beyond indigenous
Nile-dom, for Osiris is shepherd-king; in another of his
aspects he is lord of some un-Egyptian tree, which is his
written symbol; in another, his energy is vegetative
rather than animal, and in an essentially agricultural
regime analogies between the fate of seed-corn and that
of man himself, desiccated and buried away 'till Osiris
shall come', acquired profound significance, and suggested
infinite precaution to conserve that unpromising remnant
of my career, in mvmimy-shroud and sarcophagus,
pyramid-tomb and chantry priest, against that far
renaissance.

Thus Egyptian attempts to rationalize the Nile-world
led first to ill-harmonized analyses of nature-forces ; then
to loose synthesis round twin hypotheses of solar and
vital energy — Ra and Osiris — nowhere carried really

THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE 31

farther than political theory was carried by the ramshackle
Egyptian administration and social structure; and then
the lurking remnant of primaeval fear — fear of my own
dissolution in spite of all — imposed the dead hand of vast
insurance-societies, the great priestly guilds, on further
progress in administration, in society, in economics and
industry. For with a cosmology so complicated and so
incomplete, only an expert could understand the symbol-
ism, much less perform the ritual. As elsewhere, too,
repeated failures of the experts themselves led to the
conviction that human insufficiency through latent defect
in the client — not of course in the procedure or its theory !
— must be almost irremediable: so that both ingenuity
and wealth were diverted from more accurate interroga-
tion of nature into refinements of current ceremonies.
Thus the 'wisdom of the Egyptians' forwent enhance-
ment of this life, and spent itself to ensure a sequel.
It is perhaps not without significance that those later
systems of knowledge which have been imbued most
deeply with that wisdom have been most liable to the
grip of the same ' dead hand '. Lucretius feared this when
Isis had but newly come to Rome: Piers Plowman
heralds more effective 'protest' against it.

In its outlook on nature the other great river-culture of
the Ancient East presents curious similarities with that
of Egypt, and also instructive contrasts. In an artificial
country like Babylonia, terrestrial nature is poor : ' in the
beginning no reed was ; no tree ; no dry land for cities ' :
only mudflats like those which infest the Euphrates delta
to-day. Only the sky-phenomena are copious in quantity
(the sky being usually clear), though simple in kind, being
essentially movements of points. Once correlated em-
pirically (which was fairly easy) with the cycle, less
accurately graded, of water-flow and weather and especially
of the seasonal winds, the movements of the stars were

32 THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE

seen to be primary, and all else coherent with them.
The ' great powers ', Sun, Moon, Planets, and Stars, have
however a less and less orderly escort (like the courtiers and
camp-followers of a king) of Winds and Storms ' fulfilling
Ijis word', Waters and Sandbanks, the latter rebellious,
incalculable, 'disastrous' in the literal sense that there
was no star that really looked after * them. Then there
are domestic animals, with biddable natures like those of
men, and plants whose innate observance of the kindly
seasons brought them under the sweet influence of the
Pleiades or whatever constellation brought up 'herb for
the use of men' upon the earth; and there were wild
unbiddable blights and vermin, serpents, scorpions, and
poison-spiders most pernicious of all. These too, like the
hangers-on of temporal majesty, were to be observed,
selfishly, with precaution; and bound over to keep the
peace, by a ' word of might ' from one of the greater gods.
Now a 'great god', like a great priest-king in a temple-
city, was a public benefactor, an earthly providence.
At his will he could interrupt the order of your days,
cut off your water, commandeer your seed-corn; or turn
again and bless you with freehold land, and a place at
his table. But if he was an earthly providence, he was
before all things a capitalist: the earth was his, for he
made it,^ out of mud and primaeval slime; the water was
his, to irrigate the just and the unjust; wealth was his to
give or to withhold. But all things had their price in
Babylonia; the talent, lent out of the temple treasury,
to be returned at the day of reckoning with interest as
per agreement, was counterpart and symbol of other
'talents' of character and skill, to be employed as under

^ This aspect of oriental theology has gained a new vogue in
our own capitalist society, as Dean Inge has noted in a scrmcMi
at Hull, lo September 1922, during the meeting of the British
Association for the Advancement of Science.

THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE 33

the master's eye. It was a common proverb in Babylonia,
' five years of harvest, and yet the craftsman has bread ' ;
all skilled workmen being attached as a matter of course
to some temple corporation, and drawing on its reserves
during bad times. And the god could borrow as well as
lend; like a Stuart monarch, he levied 'benevolences',
'free-will offerings' of his dependants; but the share-
holder in a good temple, like an investor in government
securities, was at all events sure of his income : and if all
went well, the bonus would be ample.

Whatever, Lord, we lend to thee
Repaid a thousand-fold \vill be;
Then gladly will we give to thee
Who givest all.

The great nature-powers in Babylonia are, moreover, very
curiously doubled with national or tribal or civic deities ;
and provided with consorts like a human monarch.
More notable, especially in view of the light thrown upon
it by what we have already seen at an earlier stage, is the
worship of human beings : of the deceased king ; of the
living king, as chief local repository of mere power ;
of other important personages; and lastly and more
oddly, of oneself, far in excess of any scheme of votive
substitution. All these are special cases of that enhance-
ment of a valued personality which we have already
noticed, and which comes out again so oddly, farther
west, in the story of Kylon the Athenian, who 'grew his
hair long for a tyranny ', and perished accordingly.

On the other hand, with characteristic attention to
business in hand, Babylonian imagination stopped short
at the grave: in striking contrast with the copious and
varied speculation about the soul's after-life in Egypt.
'The tree' (in the Book of Job, one of our fullest reper-
tories of Babylonian world-knowledge, however resolutely
its author is striving to transcend it) 'hath hope; if it be

c

34 THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE

cut down it will sprout again; but man lieth down and
risetli not; till the heavens be no more, they shall not
awake, nor be raised out of their sleep.' Somewhere under
the earth is the land without return, to which the dead
pass when they ' go hence and be no more seen '. Traces
of an earlier theory survive here, as in other departments
of Babylonian culture, in the belief that if you could get
at the spirits of the dead, they could tell you something.
The ' land without return ' was also the ' place of inquiry ' ;
by the rather crude method of hammering offerings into
the ground, you might ' get through ' to the departed, and
learn of them. But this needed a priest, and the fees
were heavy; so heavy that in the common interest the
priest-king had to intervene from time to time with
a tariff of charges, as a modern township fixes cab-fares.
For what the god-king did in his temple, and the priest-
king in his court, the general practitioner of the same
' applied science ' did among his private clients ; a capitalist
economy carried all things human and divine to a profit-
and-loss account. ' Justice is mine, I will repay ' was the
common law of physics, politics, and theology.

Thus in Babylonia, and rather less clearly and crudely
in Egypt, much that at an earlier phase was paraphrased
by myth is now found amenable to explanation, capable
of being verified by recurring experience; and this is
mainly due to the circumstance that in organized society,
with adequate means of record, observers multiply in each
generation, and observations can accumulate in time.
Natural history at all events is found to repeat itself;
a general order, intelligible to man, is made out, and
attributed to the foresight and administration of the
Great Powers. Thence emerges a hypothesis of Provi-
dence, and a formulation of the Will of the Gods, which
for man are laws, like the laws of Hammurabi : we have
echoes of such an astronomical Digest in the Hundred-and-

THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE 35

fourth Psalm, 'He hath appointed the moon for certain
seasons, and the sun knoweth his going down'; more
distant echo still in the fragment of Heraclitus, ' the sun
will not overstep his landmarks; if he do so, avenging
spirits, minions of the law shall find him out'. But
the 'Code' is not absolute, nor complete; the gods of
a Theocracy do not yet find all their work ' very good ' ;
any more than Khammurabi or Ur-kagina may rest from
their labours. The * great dragon underground ', or rather
in the lower fens, is not yet dead: his head is bruised
but not broken by the 'seed of the woman'. Only by
divine foresight — let us call it by its Roman name of
'Providence' while noting that it is neither all-seeing,
nor all-powerful yet — can man preserve from bruises his
own Achilles' heel. Providence, that is, is reinforced with
Miracle ; for as long as miracle is possible. Equity supple-
ments the Code; Justice is tempered with Mercy. And
as long as Mercy, Equity, Miracle, remain. Magic remains
too ; the possibility, namely, of somehow getting the
judge on to the right side, or yourself on to the blind side
of him. Thus with an organized leligion, we find magic
organized too, and the name mage and magic, like the
Roman equivalent Chaldaean and our own Gipsy (that
is, Egyptian), mark the modes in which this organized
Magic penetrated into the West.

§ 3. Honesty : the Citizen and the Law of Nature :
'Physic' in Mediterranean Lands

It is a relief to turn to that other region whose early
effort and thought are so large a part of our own. Greek
Science, in its eventual maturity, falls to others to
illustrate. But here too there has been a long pre-history ;
for the Hellenic civilization of the last six hundred years
before our own era has been shown within the last

c 2

36 THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE

generation to be the sequel, and in some degree the heir,
of a prior culture, in the 'Minoan' Bronze Age of Crete
and the Aegean archipelago; and though the higher
aspects of the pre-Hellenic culture remain unrevealed,
so long as its script is undeciphered and its language
unidentified, the mode of life which this region imposes
on its inhabitants in all ages is sufficiently recoverable
for an attempt to be made to sketch at all events that
background of popular beliefs among which the first
Greek thinkers were brought up, and the beliefs about
' that which surrounds us ' with which their interpretation
of nature started.

First, Herodotus's brief eulogy of the climate and
circumstances of Ionia reveals an 'eaithly paradise'
which nearly three thousand years of human depredation
have not wholly disfigured. 'These lonians happen to
have founded their communities in the fairest climate
and seasons, of all people within our ken. Neither the
landward regions to the east nor the seaward to the west
render aught like unto Ionia; oppressed her« by cold
and wet, there by heat and drought.' Under that clear
sky and limpid atmosphere, seldom too hot for man's
rational effort or too cold for a genial response from
nature ; among those rigid landf orms, whose every profile
confesses the ceaseless sculpture of sheer rock by mere
weather, no less than the perennial increment of
fertile silt therefrom, to the service of man; with inter-
mittent heavings and lapses of island and continent, to
demonstrate how sea and land have come to be so subtly
interpenetrated; and with an annual cycle of plant-life
illustrating, more eloquently than any other, how life and
death, and again new life and death, stand related to
a cosmic order of larger scope and infinite but not unknow-
able interaction between its component 'elements' —
earth, water, air, and that ethereal 'fire' which we call

THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE 37

solar energy — what wonder if in seasonal and diurnal
intervals of enforced leisure from the task of exploitation,
Ionian Greeks looked about them with clearer vision,
wholesome release from the shell-shock of catastrophic
environment, ampler anticipation of a commensurate
issue from honest observation and fearless experiment
with ' the way things grow ' ? ^ In that Aegean ' paradise ',
the tree of knowledge grew in every man's garden, and
the fruit of it was his, in its season; for his fathers had
planted it there, and he himself had dug about it and
enriched the roots of it.

We have also to take account of two facts on the
human side of the reckoning. First, neither the more
pushful components of the Greek people themselves,
nor those Olympian occupants of the high thrones,
exuberant as their votaries, were indigenous to the
Mediterranean coastlands. Zeus did not make that world,
nor Poseidon the land or the sea. They had found them
and occupied them; by superior humanity — clear brain
directing deft hand under imperious will — they had
repelled the last rebels of an 'earthborn' regime, and
penned them down and under. They could make ' tenants'
improvements', like the gorge of Tempe, and thwart
the plans of man, their own bailiff, for a Corinthian canal
or the insulation of Cnidus from Asia Minor.

'Zeus would have made it island, had he willed.' But,
as Aeschylus at all events knew, Zeus had no freehold

^ We have to remember here that the disastrous mistranslation
of (f>v(Tis, 'the way things grow', by the Latin naiiira, 'the way
things come into being ', had not yet perverted men's thoughts
from observation of processes and detection of uniformities of
' behaviour ' in the present, to speculations as to the origin of it
all, and inferences as to the probable character of One who could
' make all things out of nothing ' by the ' word of his power ', not
to mention making wine out of water, or victualling a brigade
with 'a few small fishes'.

38 THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE

in Olympus. Only by a fresh bargain with the champion
of man's right to the full means of life — to celestial fire
as well as to earth, water, and air — could he insure even
an extension of his lease. ' While the strong man armed
keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace'; but Titans
or the Son of lo might threaten Olympus again, as the
Persians broke ultimately into Ionia. In a physical
world, only one thing is stronger than its forces, and that
is humanity, rightly used.

Secondly, in this royal sport of finding out ' how things
grow ' and making them grow to man's convenience, only
one peculiarity in the constitution of 'that which is
around us ', which might have been so deadly an opponent,
gave the final victory to man: and that was the rule of
law in ' that which surrounds us ' no less than among the
sons of men. ' The sun will not overstep his landmarks ;
if he do so, avenging spirits, minions of the law shall find
him out.' This belief of Heraclitus that 'the very devil
of a police' controls the traffic of the cosmos, with
penalties 'to fit the crime', was an almost inevitable
metaphor from the only illustration of 'law and order'
which he and his contemporaries were competent to
study 'from inside'. For not only had the Olympian
gods, and those human votaries who introduced them, no
birthright in Aegean lands; the subsequent crisis which
broke down the Minoan civilization, and flung fragments
of its peoples on to the lee-shore of an Asia hitherto
impervious to it, appears to have shattered existing
society so completely almost everywhere, and most of
all among these farthest refugees, that they had literally,
as in the social philosophy of Aristotle, to ' get to know '
one another ; for ' he who first introduced them to each
other was author of the greatest blessings '. Out of these
emergency camps of social, unrelated Crusoe-men,
' formed ', as folk-memory taught the later thinkers, ' to

THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE 39

maintain life' but with conscious ulterior aim 'to live
weir, as men had lived in the Golden Age before the
cataclysm, arose the ' city states ' of historic Greece ;
almost the only type of human society of which it is
possible really to know the origin. In these strenuous
circumstances, human behaviour was just as urgent
a subject for observation and experiment as the climate
and soil and food-plants of the new home. The gods,
it was true, had allowed a few men to survive, out of a
world that, as the legend put it, was 'too full of people';
but they had not done much more; and the pathetic
indulgence of the Greek towards his Olympian friends —
for they were friends and associates rather than his lords
or masters — when again and again they fail him in his
time of need, is a notable sequel to the catastrophe with
which Greek culture begins. The Greek never ceased to
like his gods ; there they were, old friends of the family ;
so he made the best of them, and treated them courteously,
and as generously as he could afford. But he neither
feared them nor trusted them very greatly; least of all
in a pestilence or a world war, unless perchance they
'did their bit' like Apollo at Phigaleia.

Physics and politics therefore, in early Greece, were
collateral branches of research; and the terminology of
'physics', when we first catch a glimpse of it, is indebted
to the sister science for its more important terms, no less
than for its earliest exponents.^ 'The Seven Sages ', says

^ This is perhaps the point at which to explain why no account
is taken, in this survey, of the other great interpretation of
nature which we owe to Indo-European folk. On the political
side Zoroastrian thought went farther, in its earliest phase, than
any Greek speculation before the fourth century. But it remained
anthropocentric, unaccompanied by any such interpretation of
the physical environment as occurred in early Greece and never
wholly lapsed ; and it may be asked, whether the renunciation
of physical studies by such men as Archelaus and his younger

40 THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE

Dicaearclius, ' were originally neither learned nor students,
but men of common sense with a taste for legislation';
and of Thales we hear that 'it was after his political
career that he devoted himself to speculation as to how
things grow '. Similarly Anaximander, who came like
Thales 'from politics to physics', is described as using
'somewhat poetical terminology' to describe physical
phenomena; 'to do sentence and reparation for their
wrong-doing, in the order of time' or to describe how
'into those elements, from which they have their birth,
things that exist have their dissolution, according to their
obligation', is certainly an odd way of describing bio-
logical cause and effect. But it is the same immemorial
inference, that we have encountered already, from
processes of which we feel we know the cause within
ourselves, to the unknown causes of processes observed
in that which is 'not us'. So Heraclitus, dark though
his teaching is, in the fragmentary utterances which have
been handed down, conceived 'that which suiTounds us'
as 'reasonable and intelligent'; he held 'wisdom to be
this alone, to know the judgement which steers all things
through all'; dividing his great treatise into three
accounts, ' that of the whole ' or ' things in general ', the
' civil ', and the ' theological ' ; and describing this threefold
exposition of gods, men, and nature as an 'accurate
chart for estimating human life', or more briefly and
comprehensively as a 'judgement of behaviours'. His
method he described concisely as 'distinguishing things
according to their way of growing, and demonstrating in
what state they are'.

Thus, in Greek ' city states ', and between Greek sky
and Greek soil, came substantial release from fear of vast

fellow student Socrates was not in part due to a century of
converse between the learned of Ionia and sincere Zoroastrians
among the Persian ofificials.

THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE 41

inhuman forces, once the stresses of the migration period
relaxed ; and release, no less wholesome, from whatever of
theocratic lule had tightened the discipline of the Minoia
regjia, with its palace-dungeons, its bull-worship, its
gladiatorial orgies, as we trace them on Cretan sites or
in Greek folk-memory; or had gripped the survivors of
that regime under the shortlived conquest -rule of Homer's
'divine-born kings'. Already in Homeric narrative the
twin conceptions of aidos and nemesis {my feeling that
this or that is out of bounds, for me or ioihim, respectively;
and that it is for him and me to seek out and put straight
what goes amiss) were leading to a moral honesty which
considered the observer's neighboiu- as he considered
himself. And the counterpart of this moral honesty was
a mental honesty, as we have seen, which, ' considering '
the observer's self, ' considered ' also ' the lilies of the
field, how they grow', and under the twin conceptions of
physis and nomos, 'growing' and 'mode of behaviour',
embraced and interpreted the whole complex of 'that
which surrounds us' as something 'rational and
intelligent '.

Not all the lore which early Greece collected about
'the way things grow' or the 'modes of behaviour' of
'that which surround us' would have stood the stricter
test of a maturer logic, any more than the conduct of
Greek citizens or Greek states conformed to the Delphic
maxims of self-knowledge and self-control. But between
the magic 'and ritual of those earlier theocracies which
preceded the reasonable freedom of the Hellenic outlook,
and the relapse into pride and fear which came when the
half-Hellenized East joined hands with a half-Hellenized
West across the Macedonian and Roman conquest-
empires, the physical and the political philosophy of the
Greeks stands out distinct, coherent, and humane ; as the
Baconian rationalism stands, in 'physics' and in 'politics'

42 THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE

alike, when after long theocratic eclipse it re-translated
natura into physis, and lex into the nomos of Hellenic
science.

Books for Reference

Demolin, E. Comment la Route cree le Type Social. Paris, 1905.

Especially the chapter on Tropical Forest,
de Pre villa, A. Societes Africaines. Paris, 1894.
Erman, A. Life in Ancient Egypt (E.T.). London, 1895.
Fletcher, Miss A. C. The Hako, a Pawnee Ceremony (1905), and

The Omaha Tribe (191 1). (Mem. Amer. Bureau of Ethnology,

Washington.)
Goldenweiser, A. A. Early Civilization. London, 1922.
Hartland, E. S. Anthropological Address in Proc. Brit. Assoc, for

Advancement of Science (York Meeting), 1906, for the

Polynesian mana and analogous conceptions.
Lang, A. Magic and Religion. London, 1901.
Malinowski, B. Argonauts of the Pacific. London, 1922. For

magic in Melanesian commerce.
Marett, R. R. The Threshold of Religion. London, 1909.
Marvin, F. S. The Living Past. London, 1913.
Meissner, B. Bahylonien und Assyrien. Heidelberg, 1920.
Murray, G. G. A. The Rise of the Greek Epic. Oxford, 191 1^.

For the conceptions of aidos and nemesis. Four Stages of

Greek Religion. Oxford, 1912. For primitive bewilderment

and the loss of mental grip after the ' great age ' of Greek

thought and action.
Myres, J. L. ' The Background of Greek Science ', in University

of California Chronicle, xvi. 4 (191 4).
Tylor, Sir E. B. Primitive Culture. London, 1903*.
Wiedemann, A. Das alte Mgypten. Heidelberg, 1920.
Wundt, W. M. Volkerpsychologie Leipzig, 1900-6.

II

ANCIENT MEDICINE

Charles Singer
§ I. Early Greek Rationalism and its relation to Medicine

Those who have to deal with the ignorant and back-
ward— a class by no means confined to the lowest social
stratum and to the least accessible countries — frequently
find themselves in contact with customs and practices that
are described as 'magical'. During the last generation
anthropologists have given a great amount of attention
to these customs, and it has become evident that they
represent a sur\dval of an earlier and pre-scientific
attitude to Nature. The general character of the beliefs —
if beliefs they can be called — underlying these practices
and this attitude can now be reconstructed. The recon-
struction is aided by the fact that the attitude which we
may call ' magical ' is not pecuhar to one race or people,
but is the common heritage of mankind. The survival of
such beliefs in certain classes among highly civilized
peoples is a most important and interesting psychological
phenomenon, and one well worthy of more attention than
it has yet received.

It has become more and more evident, as a result of
recent investigation, that man is even less a creature of
reason than had been thought. In many or most matters
our opinions are formed first, and the logical justification
of them is the result of a later mental process. This fits
in well with the general conclusions of anthropology that,
in an earlier stage of man's development, feelings and
impressions may give rise to actions which appear quite
contradictory to the rationalizing mind. Such actions

44 ANCIENT MEDICINE

we can now see are inconsistent because they are not
linked together by any clear body of belief.

When such contradictory or inconsistent actions are
considered to be of a 'religious' character they have
frequently been gravely misunderstood by investigators.
These have often the models of the higher religions before
their eyes, and have regarded ritual as something based
on a definite faith. It is, however, only in a later stage
of his development that the vague and inconsistent
attitude toward the world around him becomes elevated
by man into anything that can be called a consistent
religion or body of belief. That stage was reached in
ancient Egypt.

A yet further stage shows man giving reasons for the
faith that is in him. It is evident that this stage had been
nearly reached in Mesopotamia, but was more clearly
attained in ancient Judaea. Religions on this higher stage
seek to justify themselves and to explain their origin and
nature. They develop ritual into a legal system and a fixed
sacred tradition. It is a stage that clearly corresponds
to the present needs of the vast majority of mankind.
The great religions are largely in this stage, and all have
sought to provide their followers with an explanation
of the world in which they live. These cosmologies
were once the very bases of the appeal that the religions
made to the rationalizing mind. It is evident that on
another mental level cosmologies form an obstacle where
they were once an aid.

Following on what we may perhaps call the 'cosmo-
logical phase' of religion comes a further stage in the
mental development of man. He finds that his world is
not only subject to laws, but that those laws are further
and further discoverable. By accumulating experience
and by investigating these natural laws as betrayed by
phenomena, he finds at last that even his own opinions

ANCIENT MEDICINE 45

and thoughts are the subject of laws, and he seeks to
know something of them too. Without this knowledge
he cannot understand himself, for to do that he must
first seek to learn how he came to be what he is. This
last stage, which we may call the scientific stage, has
proceeded but a very little way. It cannot as yet be
traced back with any clearness beyond the Ionian Greeks
of the sixth century b. c. It is with them that the scientific
idea begins.

In order to avoid misunderstanding it is necessary to
enlarge a little on this statement that the scientific idea
begins with the Ionian Greeks of the sixth century b. c.
It is not suggested that the careful and accurate observa-
tion of nature began with them — in such observation
every hunter must be an expert, and we have evidence
of its existence far back in palaeolithic times. Nor is it
even suggested that the Ionian Greeks were the first to
formulate general laws concerning natural phenomena.
The Ahmes papyrus of about 1700 B.C., believed to be
founded on much older work, shows that the Egyptians
were in possession of certain mathematical laws even at
that date. The Ionian Thales of Miletus {c. 640-c. 546 b. c),
the founder of Greek geometry, astronomy, and philosophy,
predicted the eclipse that took place on 28th of May 585,
but he did this from data derived from Mesopotamian
sources. Astronomical observatories were, as we know,
to be found in the great cities of the Euphrates valley
at least as far back as the eighth century B.C., when
professional astronomers were taking regular observations
of the heavens. Similarly rational Greek medicine can
be shown to have been preceded, in some of its findings,
by the Ebers papyrus of about 1500 B.C. and by the
Babylonian records.

It was thus not the practice of science which the Greeks
invented but the scientific idea, the conception that the

46 ANCIENT MEDICINE

world was knowable, inasmuch and in so far as it could
be investigated. In ancient times this idea led to a special
point of view and to some amelioration of man's lot.
In modern times it has led to a complete transformation
of our mode of life, to a profound modification of the
inter-relations of peoples and to an alteration in our
attitude to each other and to the world around us. It
would be idle to pretend that these changes have been
entirely to the good. We believe, however, that an
impartial survey of the general effects of the scientific
idea upon men's minds and hearts throughout the ages,
such as this book is intended to provide, will result in an
overwhelming verdict in favour of science as a very
beneficent and humanizing instrument. In helping man
to gain a clear idea of the knowable world, science has
also helped him to understand his fellow-man.

To give any adequate account of the ancient conception
of the knowable world would demand a description of the
whole course of Greek philosophy. Works containing
such an account are readily available. Here we are
only concerned with the special application of rational
ideas to the known physical universe. This is the
department which we nowadays call science, a depart-
ment which was in antiquity by no means always clearly
separated from philosophy. The first writer to make clear
in practice this separation between science and philosophy
is said by tradition to have been the Coan physician,
Hippocrates the Great. The earliest scientific works
that have come down to us are medical in character
and bear his name.

If then Greek philosophy sought to give a rational basis
to our knowledge of the world, it was Greek medicine that
first put that rational basis to the test. It is in Greek
medical writings too that we meet some of the noblest
and most effective expositions of that rational spirit which

ANCIENT MEDICINE 47

separated the Greeks from all the other peoples of
antiquity. There is one great monument of the rational
spirit in medicine to which we must especially refer.
It is the work known as the Sacred Disease, the condition
that we nowadays call epilepsy. This wonderful book
may fairly be called the 'Charter of Science'. It was
prepared a little before 400 B.C., perhaps by a writer
who dwelt on the Greek mainland.

' The Sacred Disease bears now the name of Hippocrates,
but it is very unhkely that it is in fact by him. In
attempting to give some idea of the nature of early Greek
rationalism, we cannot do better than make an abbre-
viated and paraphrased version of this magnificent work.
In the original much space is given to a description of the
physical conditions which were believed to underlie the
phenomena of the disease. The explanation thus provided
is quite rational and satisfactory according to the know-
ledge of its day. It is, however, not in accord with
modern physiological teaching, and, being without value
for our immediate purpose, is here omitted. It is the
existence of the attempt to rationalize phenomena rather
than the exact nature of that attempt that we would
here stress.

' As regards the disease called Sacred, to me it appears
to be no more divine than other diseases, but to have
a natural cause from which it originates even as do other
diseases. Men regard its nature as divine from ignorance
and wonder, since it is a peculiar condition and not
readily understood. Yet if it be reckoned divine merely
because it is wonderful, then instead of one there would
be many sacred diseases.

To me, then, it appears that they who refer such
conditions to the gods are but as the charlatans, conjurors,
and mountebanks who claim to be excessively religious
and to know what is hidden from others. These men do
but use divinity for a cloak to their own ignorance.
They give out that the disease is sacred and adopt a mode

48 ANCIENT MEDICINE

of treatment that shall be safe for themselves whatever
happen. They apply purifications and incantations and
all manner of charlatanry, but mark! they also enforce
abstinence from unwholesome food. All these things
they enjoin, they say, with reference to the divinity of the
disease. If the patient recover, theirs is the honour; if
he do not it is the god, not they, that is to blame, seeing
they have administered nothing unwholesome.

But consider! Surely if these foods aggravate the
disease and it be cured by abstaining from them, then the
god is not the cause of the disease at all, and they who
seek thus to cure it are by their very act showing that
it is neither sacred nor divine. Nay, more, in the very
assertion of its sacredness and divinity their discourse
savours of impiety, as though there were no gods.

If these fellows professed to bring down the moon, to
darken the sun, or to induce storms or fine weather, should
we not accuse them of impiety, whether they claimed this
power as derived from the sacred mysteries or from any
other knowledge ? And even if they could do these things,
I, for my part, should still not believe there was anything
divine therein, since the divine would have been over-
powered by human knowledge and have become subject
thereto.

As for this disease which they call divine, surely then
it too has its nature and causes whence it originates, just
like other diseases, and is curable by means comparable
to their cure. It arises — ^just like other diseases — from
things which enter and quit the body, such as cold, the
sun, and the winds, things which are ever changing and
are never at rest. Such things are divine or not — as you
will, for the distinction matters not — and there is no
need to make this division anywhere in nature, for all are
alike divine or all are alike human. All have their ante-
cedent causes which can be found by those who seek them.'

That it has set forth such doctrine as this constitutes
alone an overwhelming claim of Greek medicine on the
gratitude of subsequent civilization.

But Greek medicine has yet other claims on our con-
sideration. Among departments of the scientific know-

ANCIENT MEDICINE 49

ledge of the ancients, medicine takes a quite peculiar place
in that it begins very early as an independent study,
while its history, perhaps more than that of any other
science, can be traced as a continuous whole. Moreover,
alone among the sciences, medicine had its humane aspect
and deeply influenced the lives of men. This was realized
even in antiquity, and is voiced by the author of the
* Hippocratic ' book of Precepts when he wrote — 'Where
the love of man is, there also is love of the Art.' In the
Greek medical writings Medicine is always thus referred
to as the Art without further qualification. And note, too,
that it is a rex^^'/j an Art, a piece of applied knowledge,
not an iirtaTijixri, a Science, a thing cultivated in and for
itself. There never developed in Antiquity any separate
disciplines of the ancillary sciences, Anatomy, Physiology,
Pathology, and the rest. All were still part of the great
subject of medicine and were studied only as equipment
for the practice of the Art.

Scientific medicine thus began in Greece. The Greeks
not only gave us the first start in rational medicine, but
have also provided almost all our medical nomenclature
and very substantial basic elements of our anatomy,
physiology, pathology, and therapeutics. When to this
we add that our clinical tradition is inherited through
a direct and continuous chain from the Greek practitioners,
and that they have set the ethical standard to which our
physicians still swear fealty, it becomes evident that the
debt that medicine owes to this marvellous people is great
indeed.

§ 2. The Sources of Greek Medicine

Now this debt has become associated with a few great
figures such as Hippocrates and Galen, but it is not always
recognized of what a widely extended and long lasting
system these men were the representatives. Greek

D

50 ANCIENT MEDICINE

medical science was by no means the product of a few
great intellects, but was, like our own, the result of
centuries of carefully recorded, collated, and progressive
experience. Greek medicine first took on a rational
aspect with the Ionian and Italo-Greek philosophers at
the very beginning of the sixth century B.C., and continued
to make important advances until the death of Galen at
the beginning of the third century of the Christian era.
It thus lasted eight hundred years. With the most
tolerant use of the words ' scientific ' and ' progressive ',
can we place the beginnings of scientific and progressive
medicine in modern Europe at a date earlier than the
later part of the fifteenth century ? Our own system has
thus only been developing its characteristic features for
some four and a half centuries, or but little more than
half of the time that Greek rational medicine endured.

It is evident, therefore, that we may still have a great
deal to learn from the Greeks, not indeed in matters of
actual fact and observation — for all or nearly all that is
directly useful in their works has been long ago absorbed
into our medical literature — but in spirit and method.
Above all, from a study of the character and course of
Greek medical science we can gain a hint of the dangers
and difficulties that may await the development of
scientific thought in our own times, and the snares and
pitfalls and catastrophes which may lie in the path of
scientific progress.

It has been said that 'save the blind forces of Nature,
nothing lives or moves to-day which is not Greek in
origin '. That phrase of a great jurist needs modification ;
for even apart from our inheritance from other ancient
civilizations, there is one thing which still lives and moves
that is not Greek in origin, a blind force which is not a
blind force of nature — it is the force of superstition. The
Greeks were not free from it any more than we are in these
days. But the greatest of them, firm in their faith in

ANCIENT MEDICINE 51

a rational world, were utterly above such folly. We can
watch the Greek mind gradually lifting itself from that
primaeval mental attitude which is older than any known
culture, older than any existing species of man, the
attitude of magical belief, of nature-worship, of animism.
To gain an understanding of how the ' sweet reasonable-
ness ' of the Greek mind gradually dissipated these age-old
clouds that darkened human vision, a little must be
learned about the history of the Greeks. Without that
amount of history it would seem even more of a miracle
than it is that man ever became rational at all.

The medicine we call Greek might really be described
as the system which prevailed in ancient times in that
half of the Mediterranean area which lies east of the
Italian Peninsula. Up to about 1000 B.C. this area was
inhabited, so far at all events as the coast lands were
concerned, by that most remarkable people the Minoans.
These have left some extraordinary remains, the full
significance of which is not yet revealed to us, but the
general development of their civilization has been laid bare
by the labours of Sir Arthur Evans. The exploration of
the last twenty or thirty years has resulted in an entirely
new interpretation of the story which Homer tells in the
'Iliad'. The siege of Troy represents an attack by the
invading Greeks on these Minoans in their last stronghold,
t^ About 1000 B. c. the whole of the eastern Mediterranean
basin was overrun by the people who became known as
Greeks or Hellenes coming in from the North. Even at
that date the Greeks were no longer a pure race, but
a mixed group of tribes who came along at least four
main lines of advance. As always happens in such
invasions, the conquered were not exterminated, but
mingled with the invaders, who, moving mainly south-
ward and eastward, absorbed, no doubt, much of the
culture and intellectual possessions of the civilization
they submerged. Temporarily the submergence was

D 2

52 ANCIENT MEDICINE

complete, and Minoan Art dramatically disappears. But
gradually the influence of the native blood and the native
point of view must have asserted itself, as it did in our
own country after its invasion by the Baltic tribes whom
we call the Anglo-Saxons. Many of the cults of the
Greeks were surely of Minoan origin.

So far as the history of medicine goes, we are concerned
chiefly with two main invading streams of Greeks: that
of the Dorians who passed towards Crete and towards
the Island of Cos and the opposite peninsula of Cnidus;
and that of the lonians, who colonized most of the
remaining part of Western Asia Minor. These two peoples
divided between them the intellectual output of the
Greeks of these early days. The medical system they
initiated first took shape in Western Asia Minor and
thence diffused itself over the whole of the Greek world.

The Greek system of medicine which thus arose in
Asia Minor had various roots, as indeed the medicine of
a mixed people, living under very complex social con-
ditions, was bound to have. Firstly, there was the culture
of the conquered and submerged Minoan folk. The cult-
of the serpent, which is so constantly associated with the
worship of Asclepios and at last became his universal
attribute, was probably of Minoan origin, for the serpent
was a very constant symbol of the Minoan religion.
It is likely too that some of the hygienic ideas of the
Greeks were derived from the same source, for the Minoans
had certainly a good system of drainage. We can, how-
ever, say very little on this head because the key to the
interpretation of the Minoan script is still hidden from us.

The western shores of Asia Minor lie on the outskirts of
the great civilizations which had grown up in the valleys
of the Tigris and the Euphrates. From that source the
Greeks certainly drew much of their more superstitious
beliefs, as well as much of their scientific method. Thus
the demoniac theories that bulk so largely in later Greek

ANCIENT MEDICINE 53

medicine doubtless came from Assyria and Babylonia.
The medicine of the New Testament, with its casting out
of devils and evil spirits, is of Mesopotamian origin. The
very name of that most magical of plants, the mandragora
or mandrake, is thought to have had a Mesopotamian
source. But another and very important aspect of Greek
medicine came also from Assyria and Babylonia. The
Mesopotamian peoples had for long ages laid up a great
treasury of observation, notably of astronomical data, but
extending also into other departments. On the basis of
these extensive records the Greeks were able to erect
a scientific method, which appears as a prominent feature
in their intellectual life in the centuries which were
to follow. The Greek scientific mood has an evident
relationship to Babylonian sources.

More difficult to estimate is the extent of the direct
debt of Greek medicine to the Egyptian civilization.
A large part of the materia medica of the Greeks was
undoubtedly derived from Egypt, and so also, as some
think, was the basis of Greek medical ethics. Many of the
practical devices of Greek medicine, too, such as the forms
of their surgical instruments, were of Egyptian origin.
Nor can we afford to neglect the statement, made by the
Greeks themselves, that their knowledge of mathematics,
the simplest, most fundamental, and most generally
useful of all scientific work, was first derived from Egypt.
Considering the amount of literary material that the
Valley of the Nile has yielded, the record of Egyptian
medicine is remarkably deficient. The recent investiga-
tion of the Edwin Smith papyrus, of about 1700 b. c,
suggests, however, that Hippocratic medicine had very
definite roots in Egypt.

The advancing Greek peoples on the western shores
of Asia Minor, thus deriving material from many sources,
began to develop, towards the end of the seventh century
B.C., a philosophical system, out of which the whole of

54 ANCIENT MEDTCTNE

their science was historically a natural growth. Important
factors in this development were the medical school of
Cos, where Hippocrates was born, and that of the opposite
peninsula Cnidus. These schools were in active operation
by the sixth century B.C., and by the middle and end of
the fifth they were influential factors in the growing
complexity of Greek life. They soon began to react on
Ionian philosophy. The actual 'Hippocratic Collection'
which has survived contains some of this early material.
In something like its present form it must have been first
put together towards the end of the fourth century b. c,
but our present recension was made in Alexandria a little
after 300 B.C. It was in Alexandria that the greatest
Greek medical school developed, and most Greek medical
writers, after the break-up of the Empire of Alexander
in 323 B.C., were trained there. It is a noteworthy fact
in the history of medicine that Athens, the main centre
of Greek life and thought, and the seat of the great
philosophical schools of Plato and Aristotle, plays a quite
minor part in the history of medicine.

Curiously enough, although we inherit the finest
scientific spirit from the Greeks, and although they set
us an example of the purest and most disinterested type
of medical practice, they are also, in part at least, respon-
sible for some of the basest and most superstitious forms
of medical jugglery that have afflicted and still afflict
mankind. The medicine of the physicians was only one
of the medical systems in vogue among them. Another
system of medical practice was practised by the priests,
and the temple jugglery of Greece is the ancestor, both by
imitation and by direct tradition, of much of the miracle-
mongering of mediaeval and modern medicine. Further-
more, in ancient as in modern times, all medical men
were not equally pure and scientific in their methods,
and there was certainly a relation between the practice
of some of the physicians and that of some of the priests.

ANCIENT MEDICINE 55

The practice, too, of some of the priests had scientific
elements in it. The relationship between these two
systems is still a subject of dispute among scholars, and
one which we shall not attempt to decide upon here. For
our purposes it is enough to say that in their most typical
development the two systems were distinct, and in what
follows we shall treat them as such, asking our readers
to bear in mind that we assume this complete separation
for simplicity and brevity.

Medicine, like all other knowledge, was, as we have
seen, cultivated first of all for its practical application.
Alone among the sciences, medicine in antiquity never
succeeded in ridding itself of the evidence of its immediate
practical application. Whether or no the insistence on
the purpose of knowledge makes for the value or even
the effectiveness of the knowledge, we need not, for the
moment, discuss. Certain it is that the art of medicine
makes its first appearance on a cultural plane in which
knowledge for its own sake is unthinkable.

Following the usual law of dissolution, that the first
gained is the last lost, we shall find that the last stage to
which a degraded civilization will reduce knowledge is
again its practical application. There is no cultural state
in which man has not a pressing need for the aid of the
medicine-man. There can be found no savage race,
however backward, no deteriorated civilization, however
degraded, that has no medical tradition. Such tradition,
however, is a very different thing from the scientific
attitude which we nowadays associate with the word
'medicine'. The scientific attitude first appears among
the Greeks, though that people exhibited, it must be
admitted, in all stages of its history, no lack of the
lower element out of which the higher had developed,
and into which much of it was destined to pass again.
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust is as much the law of
cultures as of the beings that create them.

56 ANCIENT MEDICINE

§ 3. The Practice of Greek Medicine

The temple system of Greek medicine was associated
from an early date with a number of deities of whom one,
Asclepios, stands out before all others. There is good
evidence that Asclepios was an actual medicine-man who
lived in Thessaly about iioo B.C. and was subsequently
deified. Numerous representations of this divine Asclepios
have come down to us, and we see him gradually moulded
to a particular type, one of the best representations of
which is the fine head in the British Museum. He is
usually represented as an aged man of very noble and
somewhat dreamy aspect, holding in his hand a staff
around which a serpent is twining. The cult of Asclepios
was carried on at a large number of centres distributed over
a wide area of the Eastern Mediterranean; of these the
best known, both from literature and excavation, is that
at Epidaurus. Other important Asclepian temples were
at Tricca, Cos, Athens, and Rome.

Epidaurus is in the Argolic peninsula and about thirty
miles south-west of Athens. It lies in a valley between
two considerable ranges of hills, and the country bears still,
in its customs and place-names, some remnants of the
ancient cult. There are various traditions of Asclepios,
or, to give him the more usual Latin form of his name,
Aesculapius. One tradition that connects Aesculapius
with Epidaurus is derived from Pausanias, an old gossip
of the second century of the Christian era, who wrote
a guide-book to Greece. Pausanias tells that a certain
maiden, Koronis, became with child by Apollo, and
brought forth on the mountain Titthion. The event is
still recorded in the name Koroni, a village in the valley
hard by. She fled to conceal her shame, leaving the
child on the mountain, where it was tended by a goat,
and watched over by a dog which was looking after the
flock. Goat and dog being missed by the shepherd, he

ANCIENT MEDICINE 57

set out to seek them, and found them with the child.
He endeavoured to attract the animals from the infant,
and the child thereupon sent forth flames from his mouth
and eyes, and very soon, Pausanias says, this child,
Aesculapius, was performing many other miracles all over
the valley. In commemoration of these events, we read,
the temple at Epidaurus was built.

The story is further elaborated by Pausanias in another
passage of very great interest. He relates that there was
still in his day at Epidaurus ' an old slab which tells that
Hippolytus dedicated twenty horses to the god. The men
of Aricia in Italy tell a tale that agrees with this. They
say that Hippolytus, having been killed by the curses of his
father Theseus, was raised by Aesculapius from the dead,
.On coming to life again, Hippolytus refused to forgive his
father and went to Aricia. There he became a king and
devoted a precinct to Artemis, where, down to my time,
the prize for the victor in single combat was the priest-
hood of the goddess. The contest was not open to freemen,
but only to runaway slaves.'

The runaway slave seeking sanctuary with Artemis
in her grove, allowed his liberty and raised to the priest-
hood, but retaining that office only so long as he can
guard it in mortal combat with the next runaway slave —
this succession of priestly murders is a picture that has
touched the imagination of artists and poets. The sacred
grove of Artemis stood by the side of the lake Nemi :

The still glassy lake that sleeps

Beneath Aricia's trees —
Those trees in whose dim shadow

The ghastly priest doth reign,
The priest who slew the slayer

And shall himself be slain.

It is a picture utterly out of accord with the main trend
of classical mythology. Many years ago it drew the
attention of Sir James Frazer. He perceived in it the

58 ANCIENT MEDICINE

remains of a submerged faith, the ancient nature-worship
which survived among the Greeks and survives still with
us. With this incident as his text he wrote his immortal
Golden Bough. By this story and by all that it implies,
by all that learning has drawn out of it and read into
it, by all the haunting beauty and mystery with which
it is linked, the history of medicine comes into con-
tact with the study of the lower culture. But that is
a realm that we must not enter farther. It was a more
developed and elaborated worship that Pausanias had
before him. In his time a great temple to a great deity
had arisen at Epidaurus. The site has been excavated in
our own days.

Epidaurus was but one of a whole series of temples to
Aesculapius that arose in different parts of the ancient
world. We know a great deal of that worship and of its
associations. The treatment accorded to the sufferers
who presented themselves in these temples was based on
the suggestions yielded by dreams. The central element
in the ritual was the ' temple sleep ', the eyKotjuT/o-t?
or incubatio. Everything was done to suggest to the
patient that the god would come to him and succour him
during his night spent in the temple precinct. These
ideas gave colour to his dreams and often determined the
character of the treatment imposed upon him.

Dreams ! The word expresses something deeper than
a mere ritual incident. The dream system of the dream-
god Aesculapius stands over against another system,
rational medicine, the ideas of which are associated with
the great name of Hippocrates. That system is based on
the collection and collation of experience. It is a steep
and narrow way that has thus to be traversed, but one
that the advancing ages have more and more fully
justified. The other path has been trodden by countless
millions throughout all human time. There has never

ANCIENT MEDICINE 59

been an age when the practice of theurgy has not been
widespread, and the overwhelming majority of mankind
employs it to this day. It is the way of dreams ! ' The
gods sell us all good things at a price ', said one of the
wisest of the ancients. Science, the rational spirit, per-
ceives that the price must be paid, and she pays it. She
dwells now secure in her own house. Theurgy would get
something for nothing. She is content with dreams;
progress is unknown to her, and the path she has chosen
leads back to the spot where her journey began. Her
practices at this day differ not at all from those of ten
thousand years ago. She still takes such refuge as she
may find from the elements in the wretched hut which
man first built for himself or for her — and in her dreams !

We gladly turn from the world of dreams to the
actuality of the early development of scientific medicine.
The calm and stately beauty of the best Greek medical
writings stands out sharp and clear against the back-
ground of sombre folk-behef and priestly charlatanry. The
noblest expression of early Greek science is undoubtedly
to be found in the so-called Hippocratic Collection.

It will naturally be asked, ' Which of the works of this
great collection is by Hippocrates himself ? ' and to that
question, it must be feared, only a very disappointing
answer can be given. There is not a single work extant
which we can regard with certainty as by the father of
medicine. Modern critical examination of the Hippo-
cratic Collection has shown that the books of which it is
composed are the work of a number of authors, belonging
to different schools, holding various and often contra-
dictory views, living in various parts of the Greek world
and at dates widely separated from each other. We have
no standard of genuineness whatever, and all that we
can claim for some of the finest books of this collection,
e.g. the Aphorisms, the work On Wounds of the Head, the

6o ANCIENT MEDICINE

Epidemics or the Prognostics, is that they contain nothing
inconsistent with a Hippocratic origin, that their ethical
standpoint is in accord with the Hippocratic ideal, and
that they are the work of a physician of great experience
and intellectual power.

If we ask what is known about Hippocrates himself,
the answer must be almost as meagre. We can be sure
that he was a real person and not merely a mythical
figure, for he is mentioned with high respect by his
younger contemporary Plato. He was born at Cos about
460 B. c, the son of the physician Herakleides and his wife
Phainarete. His most important works would thus begin
to appear about 420 B.C. His death is placed between
377 and 359 — the latter would make him loi, a very
appropriate age for a great physician. He led a wandering
life, and is heard of at Cos, Thasos, Athens, in Thrace
and elsewhere, and lastly in Thessaly, where he died and
where his grave is said to have long been shown on the
road between Larissa and Gyrton. He had many pupils,
among whom were his two sons Thessalos and Drakon
and his son-in-law Polybos. Of the works of the latter we
have fragments the genuineness of which is guaranteed
for us by Aristotle himself.

That is all that is known with certainty about the
father of medicine. We have not even his portrait.
Yet we have something which for historical purposes is
far better: we have an idealized representation of what
the Greek would wish his physician to be. It is a noble
bust to which the name of Hippocrates was early attached.
Many copies of it exist, and to the calm, righteous, and
dignified presence which it portrays, medical men will
continue to pay homage.

But if critical examination has thus dealt with the
Hippocratic writings and with Hippocrates himself, it
may be asked what has been left which we may surely

ANCIENT MEDICINE 6i

derive from the Greek medical system ? Tlie answer is :
two great things, the picture of a man and the picture of
a method.

The man is Hippocrates himself. His figure, perhaps
gaining in dignity what it loses in clearness, stands for
all time as that of the ideal physician, for the ideal is
there and is clearly set forth in these great writings,
whether we discern the details of his features or no.
Calm and effective, humane and observant, prompt and
cautious, at once learned and willing to learn, eager
alike to get and to give knowledge, but with a most pro-
found reverence for the claims of his patient, zealous that
his knowledge may benefit others — both the sick and
their servants, the physicians — incorruptible and pure
in mind and body, the figure of the greatest of physicians
has gained, not lost, by time. In all ages the reverence
of medical men for the greatest of their number has been
comparable only to that which their followers have felt
towards the founders of the great religions. The figure
of Hippocrates has thus been of incalculable ethical and
spiritual value in the twenty-three centuries that have
passed since his death.

The method of Hippocratic medicine is that known
to-day as the 'experimental' or better 'experiential'.
It was followed among the Greeks for centuries after the
death of Hippocrates. Then came a time when a great
political, social, and philosophical upheaval prevented
its further prosecution. For a thousand years after the
break-up of the Roman Empire, the medical practice of
Europe was at best a corrupted imitation and misunder-
standing of the teaching of Hippocrates ; at worst it
descended to a low level of animism and magic. Then
there was a rally, and slowly — very slowly and stumblingly
at first — the foundations of modern science were labori-
ously laid. Among the first elements in this scientific

62 ANCIENT MEDICINE

renaissance was the recovery of Hippocratic works, or of
imitations of them. For some centuries more, his very
words were taught in the medical schools in a spirit that
was far from that of the master.

Gradually, however, a better understanding crept into
men's minds. It was the spirit of those writings and their
methods and observations that were now rightly empha-
sized rather than the works themselves. The works
themselves began to drop out of the medical curriculum,
and a first-hand knowledge of them is not now demanded
in any medical school. But if we turn again to contem-
plate the Hippocratic treatises, we may still see at work
the modern process of careful record of data and cautious
inference from them, that progressive collation of experi-
ence with which we are now so familiar. We may see the
actual process of case-taking, bedside-instruction, and
clinical-lecture in full force, practised much in the manner
which we know to-day, and described for us with a con-
ciseness and beauty of language and a loftiness of ethical
tone which have never been surpassed. Some of the
Hippocratic works feel the most modern of all ancient
writings. To such a collection medical men must always
return. With a few extracts from three of these writings
we may therefore most appropriately close our brief sketch
of Greek medicine.

The Hippocratic Oath is a magnificent passage which,
though usually included in the Hippocratic Collection, is
certainly, in its present form, of much later date. Yet
parts of it may be even earlier than Hippocrates, and
some suggestion of it has been seen in the Ebers papyrus
of about 1500 B. c. The first author who mentions the
oath is, however, of the first century A. d. It need perhaps
hardly be said that its late date by no means lessens the
interest of this grand ethical monument. No passage
better reflects the spirit of the Hippocratic physicians.

ANCIENT MEDICINE 63

' I swear by Apollo the physician and Aesculapius and
Hygieia and Panacea, invoking all the gods and goddesses
to be my witnesses, that I will fulfil this Oath and this
written covenant to the best of my power and of my
judgement.

I will look upon him who shall have taught me this art
even as on mine own parents; I will share with him my
substance, and supply his necessities if he be in need;
I will regard his offspring even as my own brethren, and
will teach them this art, if they desire to learn it, without
fee or covenant, and will impart it by precept, by lecture
and by all other manner of teaching, not only to my
own sons but also to the sons of him who taught me, and
to disciples bound by covenant and oath according to the
law of the physicians, but to none other.

The regimen I adopt shall be for the benefit of the
patients to the best of my power and judgement, not for
their injury or for any wrongful purpose. I will not give
a deadly drug to any one, though it be asked of me, nor
will I lead the way in such counsel; and likewise I will
not give a woman a pessary to procure abortion. But
I will keep my life and my art in purity and holiness.
Whatsoever house I enter, I will enter for the benefit of
the sick, refraining from all voluntary wrongdoing and
corruption, especially seduction of male or female, bond
or free. Whatsoever things I see or hear concerning the
life of men, in my attendance on the sick or apart from
my attendance, which ought not to be blabbed abroad,
I will keep silence on them, counting such things to be as
religious secrets.

If I fulfil this oath and confound it not, be it mine to
enjoy life and art ahke, with good repute among all men
for all time to come; but may the contrary befall me if
I transgress and violate my oath.' ^

The Aphorisms is the most famous book with which the
name of Hippocrates is associated. It is probably the
greatest medical work ever written, and many think that of
all the collection it is the one most hkely to be really the

1 This translation of the Oath has been prepared by Professor
Arthur Piatt.

64 ANCIENT MEDICINE

work of Hippocrates himself. It consists of a series of
very succinct generalizations. Many of these have been
amply confirmed by the clinical experience of later ages,
some have passed into medical commonplaces, yet others
have become popular proverbs. The whole appearance
of the work suggests an aged physician reflecting on the
experience of a lifetime. Among modern medical writings
its closest analogy is perhaps the Commentary of William
Heberden the elder (1710-1801), one of the very greatest
of British physicians. This remarkable work was com-
menced by Heberden after the age of seventy, occupied
the last twenty years of his life, contained a summary of
the whole of his vast experience, and was published by
his son after his death. If the Aphorisms is similarly
a work of the old age of Hippocrates, it may be dated
about 380 B. c. The book is fortunately of such a character
that a few extracts give a fair idea of its nature. We
have here adopted a rough classification of some of the
best known and truest of the Aphorisms.

General.

'Life is short and the Art [i.e. of Medicine] is long;
the crisis is fleeting, experiment risky, decision difficult.
Not only must the physician be ready to do his duty,
but the patient, the attendants, and external circum-
stances must aid in the cure.

If in any illness sleep does harm, it is a mortal symptom.

Spontaneous weariness indicates disease.

The dry seasons of the year are more healthy than the
rainy and attended by less mortality.

In cases of jaundice, induration of the liver is a bad
sign.'

Age and Sex in relation to disease.

' Old people have for the most part fewer illnesses than
the young, but if any illness becomes chronic with them
they generally carry it with them to the grave.

Old persons bear fasting most easily, next adults, and

ANCIENT MEDICINE 65

young people least ; least of all children, and least of these,
again, any who may be particularly full of energy.

Phthisis comes on mostly from eighteen to thirty-five
years of age.

Apoplexy is commonest between the ages of forty and
sixty.

It is fatal for a woman in pregnancy to be attacked by
one of the acute diseases.'

Nutrition in disease.

' If you give the same nutriment to a patient in a fever
and to a person in health, the patient's disease is aggra-
vated by what adds strength to the healthy man.

Any food or drink slightly inferior in itself, but more
pleasant, should be preferred to those which are better
in themselves, but less pleasant.

To eat heartily after a long illness without putting on
flesh is a grave sign.'

Signs connected with fevers and convulsions.

' Convulsions supervening on a wound are deadly.

Those attacked by tetanus either die within four days,
or, if they get through these, they recover.

Cold sweats in conjunction with an acute fever indicate
death, but with a milder fever only prolonged sickness.

Fever following a convulsion is better than a convulsion
following a fever.'

Certain fatal signs.

' We should observe the appearance of the eyes in sleep;
if any of the white show through the eyelids when closing,
this is a bad sign and very dangerous, unless it be due to
diarrhoea or taking a purgative.

Those who have severe fainting fits die suddenly
without apparent cause.

Those who are naturally very fat are more liable to
sudden death than the thin.'

The Prognostics. Immense, and, as some may think,
overwhelming, importance is attached in the Hippocratic
writings to the art of prognosis or foretelling the course

E

66 ANCIENT MEDICINE

and duration of a disease. The work to which the title
Prognostics is attached represents a very lofty standard
of practice, but we have only space to quote a single
typical and famous passage. It is a description of the
signs of death to which the name of Hippocratic fades
has become attached. It is imitated by Shakespeare in
his description of the death of Falstaff in Henry V.

' You should observe thus in acute diseases : first the
countenance of the patient, if it be like those of persons
in health, and especially, if it be like itself, for this is
best of all. But the opposite are the worst, such as
these: a sharp nose, hollow eyes, collapsed temples;
the ears cold, contracted, and their lobes turned out;
the skin about the forehead rough, stretched, and parched;
the colour of the face greenish, dusky, livid, or leaden.

If the countenance be such at the beginning of the
disease, and if this cannot be accounted for by the
symptoms, inquiry must be made whether the patient
has been sleepless, whether his bowels have been very
loose, and whether he has wanted food, and if any of
these be confessed the danger is to be reckoned so far
the less, and it will become obvious in a day and night
whether or no the appearance come of these. But if none
such cause exist and if the symptoms do not subside in
this time, be it known for certain that death is nigh.'

§ 4. Medicine and the Empire

Scientific medicine in Antiquity was, as we have seen,
essentially a product of the Greek genius. It was closely
related to and in its turn reacted upon the philosophy
of the age. Later, in the Hellenistic period, scientific
medicine was more and more developed as a special
department which demanded early and prolonged appren-
ticeship. The subject of study of the Hippocratic
physicians thus became in Alexandrian times crystallized
into a definite discipline. In the hands of Herophilus,
Erasistratus, and their followers, the foundations of

ANCIENT MEDICINE 67

anatomy and physiology were laid in the third century
B.C. Encouraged by the Ptolemaic dynasty, medical
knowledge continued to advance along academic lines,
and Alexandria remained the chief centre of medical
study for long after 30 b. c. when Egypt became a Roman
province.

The inclusion of Egypt within the Roman Empire,
however, was to have a very far-reaching effect on
medicine. The Roman people never developed scientific
tastes. Even a real comprehension of the scientific
standpoint was excessively rare among them, and no man
of Roman blood ever wrote an important medical work.
The Romans, nevertheless, were by no means slow to
appreciate the advantages to be derived from medical
science and to utilize Greek medical talent. Indeed, with
the exception of the Hippocratic Collection practically all
the works of ancient medicine that have come down to us
were produced by Greek physicians within the Empire.
Among the most eminent of these were Soranus of
Ephesus, who lived in the second century A. D. and wrote
scientific treatises on anatomy, midwifery, and medicine,
and Dioscorides of Anazarba in Cilicia, who lived in
the first century A. d., was a military surgeon under
Nero, and wrote the most influential botanical treatise
ever penned. Dioscorides has deeply influenced modern
botanical nomenclature, and many of our popular plant
names are to be found in his work. A word must also be
said concerning the medical work to which the name of
Celsus is attached. It is thoroughly scientific and is the
only important ancient medical treatise in Latin. A large
part of the work is surgical, and it is our best representa-
tive of the surgery of the Alexandrian School. There can
be no doubt, however, that it is an adaptation from the
Greek, and not an original composition. It was the first
ancient medical treatise to be printed (Florence 1478).

E 2

68 ANCIENT MEDICINE

C'lowering above all the other physicians who practised
in the Empire stands the mighty figure of Galen (130-201).
He was physician to Marcus Aurelius, and left behind him
a truly portentous mass of literary material. Galen was
a highly cultivated man, an experimenter, a most expert
anatomist and physiologist as well as a capable and
shrewd physician, and a teacher of no mean order, but
as a writer garrulous and diffuse to the last degree. His
anatomical and physiological views, in more or less
corrupted form, held the field in the mediaeval world —
both Oriental and Occidental — until the coming of
Vesalius and Harvey.

The genius of Rome lay in organization rather than
knowledge, in discipline rather than science. Many
centres of medical teaching sprang up in the Empire at
Pergamum, Rome, Beneventum, Marseilles, and elsewhere,
but the contributions of these schools to scientific medicine
were very small. Though Galen himself was born in
Pergamum he studied in Alexandria, and that city
retained the lead to the end. There were two depart-
ments of medicine, however, in which the peculiar Roman
capacity found fuller scope. These were preventive
medicine and the organized treatment of disease. Sanita-
tion is largely and the hospital almost entirely of Roman
invention.

The sanitation of Rome was a natural outcome of the
sense of public duty so carefully instilled into its citizens.
The cloaca maxima, the main drainage conduit of the
city, dates right back to the Tarquins (c. 590 B.C.). The
idea was almost certainly derived from the Etruscans.
Sewers, as we have seen, are also encountered on Minoan
sites long anterior to Roman times, and there are very
evident sanitary enactments in the Bible. But the
general and organized public care for sanitation, com-
bined with the formation of structural sanitar}^ devices on

ANCIENT MEDICINE 69

a large scale, is peculiarly Roman and is a product of the
characteristic Roman attitude to life.

Here too something must be said of the wonderful
arrangements for water supply that were made through-
out the Empire, but most characteristically in Rome
itself. The great aqueducts of Rome are said to have
brought to the city about 300,000,000 gallons of water
a day. Modern sanitarians regard 30 gallons per head
per day as a reasonable supply. Thus the Roman aque-
ducts would have been adequate for about 10,000,000
souls on modern computation. The population of the
great city can never have approached this number.
The very full supply can be doubtless explained by the
Roman love for the bath.

Perhaps an even more characteristic product of the
Roman genius was the hospital system. State physicians
are early mentioned as paid out of public funds. Before
the days of the Empire, the Greek physicians had possessed
private surgeries or even something approaching to
nursing homes. With the expansion of Rome, however,
with the wars on her frontiers, with the massing of sick
and wounded troops, new needs arose. The Romans
early instituted valetudinaria or hospitals for soldiers at
their great military depots. The sites of several of these
mihtary base-hospitals, dating from the first century of
the Christian era, have been excavated.

From the military valetudinaria it was no great step to
the construction of similar institutions for the numerous
imperial officials and their families in the provincial
towns. Motives of benevolence, too, seem to have
gradually come in, and finally public hospitals were
founded in many localities. The idea naturally passed
on to Christian times, and the pious foundation of
hospitals for the sick and outcast in the Middle Ages
is to be traced back to these Roman valetudinaria.

70 ANCIENT MEDICINE

The first of these Christian institutions concerning
whicli we have clear information was estabhshed at
Rome in the fourth century by a lady named Fabiola.
Our knowledge concerning it comes to us from St.
Jerome. The actual plan of a hospital projected at St. Gall
in the early years of the ninth century has survived. It
reminds us in many respects of the plan of the early
Roman military hospitals. These mediaeval hospitals
for the sick must naturally be distinguished from the even
more numerous mediaeval 'hospitals' or 'hospices' for
travellers and pilgrims, the idea of which may also be
traced back to the rest-houses along the strategic roads
of the Empire.

But if, with the passing of antiquity and the advance
of Christian sentiment, the sick became more widely
cared for, it is certain that the care was ever less and less
efficient. From the later days of the Empire a number
of medical writings have come down to us. They give
a reflex of those exclusively practical interests which mark
the new limitation of the human intellect.

With the spread of Christianity, interest in phenomena
had dwindled. The light of science had become dim,
then flickered, and finally went out. Medicine alone
survived — but how changed ! In the absence of any
theoretical interests, medical loiowledge had progres-
sively deteriorated. The anatomical, physiological, and
pathological bases of medical knowledge were more
and more disregarded. The later Latin medical works
were thus reduced to mere lists of remedies, and entirely
ignore theory. All such arbitrary treatments of mental
needs bring their own nemesis. Such works from
being practical become empirical, from empirical they
pass to being merely rule-of-thumb, then corrupt, and
finally basely superstitious. Before the process was
ended, learned and Christian physicians had attached

ANCIENT MEDICINE 71

their names to material as mean and debased as any
which the field-anthropologist has elicited from the lore
of the lowest savages. From Hippocrates the Great of
Cos to Marcellus Empiricus of Bordeaux is eight hundred
years. The difference in outlook between the two is as
the difference between the practice of Lister and the
lowest type of magic. The discussion of the long weary
process of elevation from that miserable slough must be
reserved for another chapter.

Books for Reference

Withington, E. T. Medical History from the Earliest Times.

London (The Scientific Press), 1894.
AUbutt, Sir T. C. Greek Medicine in Rome. London (Macmillan),

1921.
Singer, Charles. Greek Biology and Greek Medicine. Oxford

(Clarendon Press), 1922.
Frazer, Sir J. G. The Golden Bough, a Study in Magic and

Religion. Abridged Edition. London (Macmillan), 1923.

Ill

ASPECTS OF BIOLOGICAL AND
GEOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE IN ANTIQUITY

Arthur Platt

It is a curious thing in this age, when science is supposed
to have become a popular subject, that so few classical
scholars take any interest in it. Perhaps it may be said
that there is a natural division, a great gulf, between the
arts and sciences, and that for one to try and communicate
with the other is as unsatisfactory an enterprise as that
of Pyramus and Thisbe whispering to one another through
a chink in the wall between their respective parents'
estates. But if there is one thing more clear than another
it is that there is really rather a connexion than a wall
between them. Look at Goethe, Redi, Tennyson, and
many others — and were not Gesner and Spallanzani
professors of Greek ?

Besides, many of us are brought up to study the early
developments of Greek science. We are laboriously
dragged through the conjectures of Anaximander and
Democritus, and very interesting and prophetic those
conjectures are. But when science gets out of the first
stage of conjecture and becomes really science worthy
of the name, there we stop all of a sudden. It is surely
rather absurd to be interested first in the guesswork of
the pre-Socratics and then to avert one's eyes from the
really important scientific work done by Hippocrates and
Aristotle. Even such a simple matter as the explanation
of references to ordinary observation of plants and
animals by the great writers is sadly neglected. It is
really comical to see how a classical editor will turn tail
and bolt for his life at the mention of a beast or bird.

BIOLOGICAL AND CxEOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE 73

while he will gallantly face a problem of Athenian law or
of the details of a Roman army. And yet sometimes this
results in melancholy misunderstanding of important
passages. For instance, there is a passage in Aeschylus
about two eagles, one black, the other white-tailed. The
multitudinous commentators have never asked what these
were ; if they had they would have found that Aeschylus
was thinking of a mature golden eagle (called black eagle
in Scotland to this day) teaching its young one (which has
a white tail) to prey, and this clears up the meaning of the
whole passage.

But it is time to come to business. Natural science
really began by careful observation of two things, the
stars of the heaven and the bodies of men. Of astronomy
I do not purpose to say anything ; Sir Thomas Heath has
written an admirable history of it among the ancients in
his introduction to Aristarchus of Samos. Nor is there
time, nor have I the power, to go through the history of
medicine ; but I will just take two or three points of
interest.

We all say that we think with our brains, and it has
become so natural to us to believe this that we can hardly
conceive that anybody ever thought anything else. Yet
that is not the natural idea of the natural man — very
far from it. The savage feels his heart beating and he
inevitably assumes that the seat of life and all vital
powers, including the intellect, is in the heart. The Bible
assumes that all through, and so does early Greek litera-
ture, and so we still talk of the heart as the seat of the
affections, though we ma3r not call it the seat of the
intellect. Another theory was that the kidneys were the
brain, so to say; that also appears in the Bible. ^

If you come to think of it, the greatest discovery ever

^ Psalms 16. 7.

I will bless the Lord, who hath given me counsel ;
Yea, my reins instruct me in the night seasons.

74 ASPECTS OF BIOLOGICAL AND

made in physiology was this, that the brain is the organ
of sensation and thought. We should be ashamed not
to be able to say who discovered the circulation of the
blood; how many of us can say who discovered the use
of the brain ? Well, it was Alcmaeon of Crotona, who,
I think, must have been a very great man. Alcmaeon,
it seems, observed that the sense-organs were all somehow
connected with the brain, and made the great advance of
saying that the brain was that by which we feel. Whether
he went on to say also that we think with it, is not quite
clear ; but it seems from a passage in the Phaedo of Plato
that he did, and it is indeed hard to see how he could
help going on to that.

Once this was established, it remained a fixed doctrine
in the great medical school. Hippocrates assumes it as
a matter of course. It had become the popular view at
Athens before the end of the fifth century, as we see
from Aristophanes, when Strepsiades says sarcastically of
a man at the end of the Clouds : ' he seems to me to have
got concussion of the brain ', and Hegesippus (in the
speech on Halonnesus attributed wrongly to Demos-
thenes) says 'if you carry your brains in your skulls and
not trampled down in your heels ', Plato also assumes it
in Timaeus, but you must not give him any particular
credit for it; remember always that Plato took all his
physiology straight from Hippocrates.
\__But what is astonishing is the view, of Aristotle. He
was the son of a physician and brought up in contact
with physicians. They all said, and everybody knew,
even the man in the street, that we think and feel with
our brains. How amazed we are then to learn that
Aristotle defied the medical school and went back to the
old old notion that sensation and thought are located
about the heart. It is the most wonderful retrogression
perhaps in the whole history of science. If the Astro-

GEOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE IN ANTIQUITY 75

nomer Royal were suddenly to tell us that after all the
sun does go round the earth, we should begin to think of
calling in a mad-doctor to see whether he ought not to be
shut up in a lunatic asylum. Aristotle's case is like that ;
he was incomparably the greatest biologist of his time,
perhaps the greatest of all time, and he seriously said that
the heart was the seat of sensation and of thought. How,
you ask, did he come to entertain so ludicrous a view,
to dig up again the dead and rotting theory of the primi-
tive savage and present it for the acceptance of civilized
and cultivated men ?

The answer may sound as astonishing as the puzzle
itself. Aristotle did this just because he was a great
master of science and because he had made a very great
discovery. He practised vivisection, and he had found
out that if you cut or burn the brain it does not feel.
What was he to say to this ? On the face of it, it was
a knock-down blow to the medical theory. If the brain
cannot feel, why say that it is the seat of sensation ?
And if not of sensation, then not of thought either, for
all thought comes from sensation. I think it probable
also, though this is only a guess, that he had discovered
that the brain of an animal can be removed without
destroying life, whereas to injure the heart causes death
at once, and so he surely could not help placing life,
sensation, thought, all together in the heart. And he
had seen the heart appearing as a punctum saliens in the
chick before there was any sign of a brain.

But Aristotle was never content without a theory about
everything; it is a weak point in him, as in everybody,
until they have been much chastened by the experience
of generations ; lucky if then ! So he invented a theory,
a very bad one. He assumed the brain to be cold and
watery, and decided that it existed as a regulator to cool
the heat of the heart, which otherwise would kill us right

76 ASPECTS OF BIOLOGICAL AND

away. Man as the most perfect of animals is also the
hottest (which is not true, but Aristotle had no clinical
thermometer) : therefore he requires the largest brain to
counteract the heat. And so through the whole scale of
animal life, the higher the animal the bigger refrigerator
is required. That Nature should first make such a furnace
in us and then squash it again by such a sponge of cold
water (as Galen ironically calls it) rather suggests the
old man who had a plan to dye his whiskers green and
always used so large a fan that they could not be seen.
But it seems that we need a most dangerous fire in us to
enable us to think and carry out the higher vital functions,
and so Nature could not help herself.

The medicals appear to have remained obstinate ; they
did not like Aristotle, I fancy, regarding him as a meddling
amateur. And they presently proved their case against
him. The greatest name in physiology between Aristotle
and Galen is that of Erasistratus of Alexandria. He is
principall}/ known, perhaps, because of his theory that
the arteries contain only air, not blood. You will find
it frequently stated in modern books that this was the
general opinion among the ancients: do not believe it.
Nobody ever said so before Erasistratus, neither Praxa-
goras nor Diodes nor the Ebers papyrus ; at least I cannot
see that there is any evidence for attributing it to them.
The papyrus says that the arteries contain milk and half
a dozen other things: this is not to say that they contain
nothing but air. It seems an astonishing theory to put
forward, but Huxley declares that it was an exceedingly
reasonable view in the then state of knowledge, and that
Erasistratus was naturally driven to it. It held its own
till towards A. D. 200, when Galen decisively disproved it
by experiment on living animals. But the really great
work of Erasistratus, which he shared with his contem-
porary Herophilus, was that on the nervous system.

GEOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE IN ANTIQUITY ^^

It is thought that Aristotle discovered the optic nerves,
but he ahiiost certainly knew no others, nor did he
appreciate the use of even the optic nerve, which he
called simply a passage between eye and brain. The
medical men, once the nerves began to be explored, soon
found that they conveyed sensation to the brain, and so
Aristotle's views on the brain fell into a peaceful
oblivion.

The last of this succession of neurologists is Galen, and
his researches on the nervous system are reported to be
his great glory. ' I am fond of referring to Galen ', said
Sir Victor Horsley, 'because it is perfectly astonishing
what an amount of accurate neurological knowledge Galen
acquired b}; his experiments on the lower animals and
demonstrated to his pupils in Rome.'

I must content myself here with repeating that Galen's
knowledge of the nerves marks the high-water point of
ancient science in that direction. About 200 he died,
and then set the sun of science till its glorious resur-
rection in the year 1543. For thirteen centuries and
a half hardly a step forward was taken in anatomy of
any sort or kind, nor in any other science except a few
observations in chemistry and astronomy.

It is interesting to contemplate the dates and the
discoveries in this history.

c. 500 B. c. Alcmaeon discovers that the brain feels and

thinks.
c. 350 B. c. Aristotle points out that the brain cannot

feel anything directly,
c. 300 B. c. Herophilus and Erasistratus discover the

nervous system.
c. A. D. 180. Galen.

So in 700 years there are only five names of any great
consequence, and after that a blank silence. Yet what

78 ASPECTS OF BIOLOGICAL AND

a prodigious advance had been made by just those very
few investigators.

Two questions naturally arise. Why were there so
few ? and why this sudden stop ? There was no lack of
brains during these 800 years, and if advance depended
on isolated geniuses it is clear that the reason why the
advance goes in great jerks at such long intervals is
probably due to the want of method and of training.
Of the importance of that the ancients had no idea
whatever. If we depended now on single geniuses
cropping up without anything to direct them we should
not get on much quicker than did the ancients. And if
you want to know why science came to an end altogether
about A. D. 200, read first the correspondence of Cicero and
then that of Fronto. In the former you are in an atmo-
sphere of intellectual power, activity, insight; not only
Cicero himself, but all his multitudinous correspondents,
strike one in that way. In Fronto's correspondence you
find the first literary man of his time and the people at
the head of politics talking like a lot of idle old women,
and the atmosphere that of a ladies' tea party.

But let us take another curious question of physiology.
You doubtless remember a fragment of Alcaeus which
begins : ' Bedew your lungs with wine, for the Dog-star
rises again.' One reads it languidly supposing lungs to be
poetic licence. No such thing. In a work in the Hippo-
cratic collection you will find the same thing seriously
stated as a fact, that the solid food indeed goes into the
stomach, but liquid into the lungs. Plato of course
repeats the lesson in Timaeus. But Aristotle proves quite
clearly that the liquid as well as the solid goes to the
stomach, and he is very angry with those who deny this —
'but perhaps it is silly to argue against such silliness',
says he. It is a wonderful thing that it should have been
left to Aristotle to make this advance, and it shows again

GEOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE IN ANTIQUITY 79

how deficient the ancients were in encouraging any
general spirit of investigation, and how dependent their
science was upon an isolated genius arising here and there.
But it is more wonderful still to find Galen 500 years
later still seriously discussing the question; he knows
that Aristotle is right, but cannot find it in his heart
to throw Hippocrates and Plato over altogether, and he
actually ends by saying that after all perhaps some of the
liquid goes into the lungs. Respect for authority was
nearly as ruinous then as it was among the conservative
idiots at the revival of science who preferred Aristotle to
demonstrated facts.

Here again we find Aristotle in the van of progress
And wherever you look in biology, he is first and midst
and without end. So far as we can tell there was no
biology before him worth looking at. Just as he created
logic as a full-blown science springing in full armour
out of his head, so he created embryology and compara-
tive anatomy; he had no forerunners and no successors
in these subjects worth looking at so far as we know.
'Never', it has been said, 'did any science leave its
creator's hands so fully equipped as that of comparative
anatomy.' The germ from which it sprang was to be
seen in the famous sentence of Anaxagoras: 'Mind
ordered Chaos for a good end.' Plato, not Socrates, says
in Phaedo that he tried to apply this principle to Nature
but failed to do so; later on in Timaeus he does apply it
in a way to human physiology. Aristotle in De Partihus
Animalium first applies it to the whole world of animal
life, comparing the use of a bird's wing, for instance,
and that of a reptile's fore leg, pointing out how the
structures vary in accord with the uses required of them,
and thereby created the science which has now been
developed to such vast proportions. In so doing he lays
down one great law after another ; here is a list of some

So ASPECTS OF BIOLOGICAL AND

of them as given by Dr. Ogle in his most interesting
introduction to his translation of the treatise.

1. The law of organic equivalents — that Nature must
save in one part if she spends in another.

2. The advantage of physiological division of labour.

3. Complexity of life varies with complexity of organ-
ization.

4. No animal has more than one adequate means of
defence.

5. Inverse relation between development of horns and
teeth.

6. No dipterous insect has a sting.

7. Inverse relation between growth and generation.

8. Development of embryo from homogeneous to
heterogeneous.

g. Development is progress from general to special
form.

Of course there are innumerable mistakes in the book,
but it would be pitiful to lay stress upon them ; there were
great mistakes in The Origin of Species. But listen to what
Darwin himself said when he first saw Aristotle's work:
'Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my great gods, but
they are mere schoolboys to old Aristotle.'

Great as the De Partibus is, it is cast into the shade by
its sister work, that on the Generation and Development
of Animals. George Henry Lewes, known now I suppose
principally in connexion with George Eliot, wrote a book
called Aristotle, which really means Aristotle's Science:
it is a most malignant work, directed all through at
running Aristotle down. I owe a great deal to it myself,
because it was getting hold of it by chance when I was
an undergraduate, and ought to have been reading other
things, that first interested me in the whole business, not
only in animals, but also modern science. And Lewes
had great provocation because of the absurd way in
which certain uncritical men of science had told falsehoods

GEOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE IN ANTIOUITY 8i

about Aristotle, enormously exaggerating his merits.
For all that it is not a good book, and its animus against
the mighty master is deplorable. Well, when Lewes
comes to the De Generatione he cannot hold out any
longer; he is as hyperbolical in praise of it as Cuvier
himself. He declares that in philosophical grasp Aristotle
greatly surpasses even the immortal Harvey. For Harvey
is the second great name in embryology; we have to jump
over very nearly 2,000 years before Aristotle fouhd
a successor in this. And it is a fact that Aristotle was in
certain points ahead of not only Harvey, but all modern
science till about the year 1900. Few questions have
been more often discussed than the question why some
children are male and some female. Reckless guesses
were put out as facts by Empedocles, Parmeneides, and
other people in the days of Greek philosophy ; one theory
after another goes on being made now. One favourite
view was that it was connected with nutrition; feed the
mother up before the birth and you will get a girl, starve
her and you will get a boy. It never seems to have struck
these amiable speculators that if that were so more boys
ought to be born among the poorest classes and more
girls among the richest. But what I call your attention
to is this : speculations of this kind assume that the sex
of a child can be determined at quite a late period of
embryonic development. Now Aristotle asserts, and he
not only asserts but proves as plainly as a proposition in
Euclid, that sex is determined in the embryo of the chick
as early as the third day after the e^g begins to develop.
Yet in spite of this proof, people went on talking about
the importance of nutrition in this business right up to
about 1900. I dare say some do so still, though Mendelism
has finally knocked the notion on the head.

It is in such passages as these that we see Aristotle at
his very best. Where pure intellectual power, grasp,

F

82 ASPECTS OF BIOLOGICAL AND

insight are required, no modern can surpass him. And
he is great as an observer too, and well aware that specu-
lation must be tested by observation. There is a some-
what famous paragraph on this head in the De Genera-
Hone. After discussing at great length the question of
bees, and hitting, by the way, upon the truth that bees
may produce drones parthenogenetically, he concludes
thus:

' Such appears to be the truth about the generation of
bees, judging from theory and from what are believed to
be the facts about them ; the facts, however, have not yet
been sufficiently grasped; if ever they are, then credit
must be given rather to observation than to theories, and
to theories only if what they affirm agrees with the
observed facts.'

The quantity of things Aristotle had spied into is
truly extraordinary : he knew that certain sharks have
a kind of placenta, a thing found elsewhere only among
the higher mammalia, and this was not re-discovered by
the moderns until Johannes Miiller reaffirmed it in 1840 ;
he knew that the yolk of the egg liquefies during incuba-
tion, a thing of which I found the modern zoologists to
be completely ignorant. He knew which way up a hen
lays her egg — do you ? And the way in which Aristotle
argues upon general questions of embryology is quite
astounding, though he was too hasty in generalizing,
and he did not understand the importance of experiment.
He could observe with the naked eye as well as anybody,
but it had not then dawned upon people that mere
observation by itself is of comparatively little use. And
the naked eye is a sadly deficient instrument. The grand
reasons why modern science has advanced so much
farther than ancient appear to me to be these : recognition
of the importance of experiment, the habit of testing
hypotheses (which Aristotle might have learned from

GEOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE IN ANTIOUITY 83

Socrates), the invention of the microscope and the tele-
scope and other instruments of all kinds, and the training
of a multitude of men in scientific methods. None of
these things were to be found among the ancients; they
trusted at best to observation and arguments upon their
observation. In this they went as far as it was possible
for man to go.

A good instance of this may be seen in the scattered
speculations upon geology. It is delightful to see how
free and unfettered in their mental outlook the ancients
were as compared with many modern writers, who not
so very long ago did not dare to go beyond a paltry
6,000 years for the history of the earth. Herodotus sees
plainly that Egypt is the gift of the Nile, and guesses
that if the Nile were to be diverted and flow into the
Red Sea, it would fill it up in 10,000 years. Plato looks
back into vistas of time which go far beyond this. He
thinks that many past civilizations have been wiped out
by great geological catastrophes. The inhabitants of the
earth were consumed by deluges or earthquakes; only
a few escaped, and had to begin again laboriously building
up a new civilization. And the more we get to know
about prehistoric archaeology, the truer this turns out to
be. At least we see dimly one civilization under another,
only we no longer believe that they were destroyed by
earthquakes and volcanoes and inundations, but by the
still more ruinous and detestable agency of war. But
the great triumph of Plato in this connexion is his specu-
lation on the past state of Greece and the Aegean. The
rocky hills of Greece and the islands, he says, are like the
bones of a body wasted with disease. But in the past
they were clothed with a rich mantle of earth and covered
with vegetation and forests. Very likely it is largely
a lucky guess, but modern geology confirms it. In the
Miocene period Attica and the islands of the Aegean

F 2

84 ASPECTS OF BIOLOGICAL AND

really were a rich country, abounding in mammalian life;
all over the Aegean spread a land of rolling grass plains
and woods supporting antelopes, a sort of giraffe, apes
and all sorts of animals ; it has now largely sunk below
the sea-level, and its relics have been reduced by the
action of sub-aerial denudation to the state in which we
now see them, the skeleton of a body wasted by disease,
as Plato puts it. . .

The first book of the Metamorphoses of Ovid also shows
an astonishing insight into geology, not of course on the
part of the poet himself. No Roman ever had any
insight into scientific questions; like Lucretius and like
the elder Pliny, Ovid merely repeats what he had got
from the Greeks. The discourse upon geology which
occupies a large part of the 15th book of the Meta-
morphoses is put into the mouth of Pythagoras, and
apparently represents the teaching of a Pythagorean
school.

Vidi ego quod fuerat quondam solidissima tellus
Esse fretum; vidi factas ex aequore terras
Et procul a pelago conchae iacuere marinae.

This presence of shells in deposits raised high above sea-
level has always been one of the phenomena most calcu-
lated to make people think. When the Italians again
took up the torch of learning, it was just this phenomenon
about which they began to argue, and it is a matter of
particular interest to observe that the two greatest men
who insisted on the correct interpretation of it were no
others than Leonardo da Vinci and Fracastoro, the
celebrated doctor and writer of Latin verse. But besides
the marine shells Ovid mentions a great number of other
pieces of evidence that the surface of the earth is con-
tinually changing.

Strabo discusses the question of the shells with wonder-

GEOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE IN ANTIQUITY 85

ful insight. He lays down the principle that we ought to
explain such obscure questions by appealing to things
that are obvious and in some measure of daily occurrence,
and this is exactly the principle which was worked out so
triumphantly by Sir Charles Lyell. And so he explains
the presence of the shells by saying 'the same land is
sometimes raised up and sometimes depressed, and the
sea in like manner is sometimes raised and sometimes
depressed, so that it either overflows or returns to its
own place '. Much more remarkable, I think, is his
observation that ' volcanos are safety-valves, and that the
subterranean convulsions are probably most violent where
first the volcanic energy shifts itself to a new quarter '
(Lyell).

But in general we see here the same phenomenon : the
ancients observe acutely, but it is by fits and starts;
they reason acutely upon their observations, but they
do not advance. There is no organized body of investi-
gators taking up and working at innumerable small
points, as there is now, and there is no attempt at making
any kind of experiment, such as those of Hutton at the
end of the eighteenth century. And it is a very curious
thing that they paid no attention whatever to the fossil
remains of animals. Yet such remains were of course
known to them. Suetonius in his Life of Augustus 72
tells us of bones of monstrous beasts found in the island
of Capreae and elsewhere, which were called 'bones of
giants' and 'arms of the Heroes'. Such bones were
pointed out in the island of Elba, and were there called
the 'arms of the Argonauts', as we learn from Apollonius
Rhodius. You would have thought that these remains
should have aroused more interest, but it seems that the
untrained and unscientific mind altogether fails to be
impressed by them. In the Middle Ages a thigh bone
of an elephant was carried in procession through the

86 BIOLOGICAL AND GEOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE

streets of Rome, and worshipped as a relic of St. Peter,
if I recollect aright. The bones which Herodotus tells us
were conveyed from Arcadia to Sparta as the bones of
Orestes were probably something of the same kind.
The word giant is said to mean 'earth-born'; were not
the stories about the giants who fought the gods, and were
overwhelmed and buried beneath the earth, due to the
discovery of great bones of animals? But it is strange
that nobody ever seriously asked what these bones had
belonged to, or made any spetulations about them.
Comparative osteology is a very recent science; even
Aristotle, profoundly interested in comparative physiology
and anatomy as he was, never did anything worth speak-
ing of in osteology, and in quite modern times a gigantic
extinct salamander was described by its discoverer as
'homo diluvii testis'.

If these disconnected remarks lead any of you to
follow up these questions, he will find himself amply
rewarded.

Books for Reference

The Oxford Aristotle :

De Generatione Animalinm. Translated by Arthur Piatt.
(Clarendon Press) 1910.

De Partibits AmmaUum. Translated by W. Ogle. (Claren-
don Press) 191 1.

Historia Animalium. Translated by D'Arcy W. Thompson.
(Clarendon Press) igio.

IV
GREEK MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY

J. L. E. Dreyer

Long before mathematics began to be studied among
the Greeks, geometry had been cultivated in Egypt.
In that country, where the annual rise of the Nile obHter-
ated all landmarks, it was an absolute necessity to have
the means of recovering these by measurement and
calculation. The word 'geometry' or earth-measurement
plainly points to the practical application of the new
science. How great was the value of the rules of land-
surveying found by the Egyptians is shown by the fact
that long after the Greeks had developed geometry into
an important science, it was still mostly the Egyptian
rules which were used by the Roman agrimensores, who
no doubt knew little or nothing of the proofs of the rules
found by the Greeks. The determination of areas was
also an important problem in Egypt; but approximate
solutions were generally considered good enough. The
construction of the pyramids shows, however, that the
Egyptians were capable of doing work which involved
both careful measurement, as these monumental buildings
were accurately oriented, and also some knowledge of
similarity of figures, which is implied by the use of the
ratio of half the side of the base to the height. In an
Egyptian tomb of which the decoration is unfinished,
a wall, on which a certain picture was to be copied on
a different scale, has been divided into squares by two
systems of parallel lines, which also implies the idea of
similarity.

88 GREEK MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY

Apart from these and other practical rules, such as the
construction of a right angle by making a triangle with
sides equal to 3, 4, 5, the Greeks learned nothing in the
way of mathematics from the Egyptians. Neither did
they owe anything worth speaking of to the Babylonians.
Although the latter people during the last few centuries
before our Era (if not somewhat earlier) had attained
a considerable amount of knowledge of the periods of
revolution of the sun, moon, and planets, they reached
this solely by the use of empirical formulae and never
employed geometrical constructions. Mathematics is
therefore in its origin a Greek and not an Oriental science.

Thales, the earliest philosopher of Greece (flourished
about 600 B.C.), was a native of Miletus, one of the
Greek colonies on the coast of Asia Minor. It is a remark-
able fact, that all the early philosophers came from the
outlying colonies and not from Hellas or Peloponnesus;
as if the scanty Greek populations living next door to
hostile nations had had their wits sharpened by this
contact, as well as by having access to the knowledge
gathered by them. Thales is also supposed to have
travelled in Egypt, and may thereby have been stimulated
to pay attention to geometry. Various theorems of the
first book of Euclid are attributed to Thales: that the
angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal (I. 5) ;
that if two straight lines cut each other, they make the
opposite angles equal to each other (I. 15); that if two
triangles have two angles and one side respectively
equal, the triangles are equal in every respect (I. 26).
He is also said to have been the first to find that the
angle in a semicircle is a right angle (Eucl. IH. 31).

This was the small beginning of Greek mathematics,
strict logical proofs taking the place of the Egyptian
empiric rules and unproved (though sometimes correct)
assertions. The next steps were taken by Pj^thagoras

GREEK MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY 89

(about 530 B.C.), but it is often difficult to say whether the
credit of a discovery should be given to him or to some
member of the philosophical school founded by him.
The famous theorem Eucl. I. 47 is, however, generally
credited to Pythagoras himself. His school discovered
that the side and the diagonal of a square are incom-
mensurable, a most important discovery. More generally
known is the great discovery of Pythagoras, that the
harmony of musical sounds depends on regular intervals
corresponding to certain arithmetical ratios between
lengths of string, the octave corresponding to the ratio
2: I, the fifth to 3: 2, &c.

We must pass over 150 years before we come to another
great mathematician, Eudoxus of Knidus in Asia Minor
(about 380 B.C.). To him is due the theory of proportion,
applicable both to commensurable and incommensurable
quantities, set forth in the fifth book of Euclid. Also the
so-called method of exhaustion, by means of which many
problems of mensuration could be solved without the aid
of infinitesimals. Eudoxus made use of this method to
show that the volume of a pyramid (or a cone) is | of
that of a prism (or cylinder) on the same base and of
equal height.

We have now reached the time when regular text-
books began to appear. Autolycus of Pitane wrote ' on
the moving sphere' and 'on risings and settings', dealing
with various problems of spherical geometry suggested b}^
the apparent phenomena of the starry heavens. Euclid,
about whose life next to nothing is known, flourished
about 300 B.C. He is of course best known to fame as
the author of an immortal text-book; but he was also
an original investigator to whom we owe the current
arrangement of mathematical material, and who published
other writings of value. Before Euclid died, Archimedes,
the greatest of all the Greek mathematicians, was born

90 GREEK MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY

at Syracuse in 287 b.c. He was killed in his native
city in 212 B.C., when it was captured and sacked by the
Romans. He wrote a number of essays on almost every
branch of mathematics, and his treatment was always
original and threw new light on the subjects investigated.
As regards geometry he showed that the ratio of the
circumference of a circle to the diameter (now known
as 77) is less than 3^ and greater than 3fJ. He also
developed Eudoxus' method of exhaustion and appHed
it to the determination of areas of a parabohc segment
and a spiral. His method is really nothing but the
modern integral calculus. He wrote a work on statics,
particularly on the principle of the lever and on finding
the centres of gravity of plane laminas. But better
known than any of his other works is that on floating
bodies, which is the first attempt (and a very successful
one) to apply mathematical methods to problems of
hydrostatics. Eighteen hundred years were to elapse
before any advance was made on Archimedes' theories
of the lever and of hydrostatics.

The last great mathematician we shall mention in this
rapid review is Apollonius of Perga who lived about
230 B.C. and was therefore a contemporary of Archimedes).
He spent most of his life at Alexandria, first as a student
and in later years probably as a teacher in the Museum.
Of his great work on Conic Sections in eight books the
last is lost, and Books V, VI, VII are only extant in an
Arabic translation. The work contains a very thorough
and very complete investigation of the properties of these
curves; so complete indeed, that it has been suggested
that Apollonius must have found some of these pro-
perties by the use of coordinate geometry, and afterwards
translated the proofs into a geometrical form. In any
case the work stands in the foremost rank of mathe-
matical pubhcations of all ages.

GREEK MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY 91

We shall not follow the development of Greek
Mathematics farther. We have shown how far it had
advanced by the beginning of the second century B.C.,
and the means which thus had been placed at the
disposal of astronomers were indeed amply sufficient to
enable them to solve such problems as might arise in
interpreting the observations made with their crude
instruments.

Almost all the pre-Socratic philosophers speculated
freely about the construction of the world, but, with the
exception of Pythagoras and his school, they were not
equipped with a sufficient amount of knowledge of
observed facts to do so successfully. Pythagoras was the
first to realize that the earth is a sphere, and he is credited
with the discovery that the morning and evening stars
are one and the same body. Either he or his younger
contemporary Alcmaeon first taught that the sun, moon,
and planets move in separate orbits from west to east.
But all the celestial bodies were seen to partake of a
common motion in the opposite direction; from east
to west, as if the whole celestial sphere rotated in twenty-
four hours from east to west. It was probably a feeling
that all celestial motions ought to take place in the same
direction which made Philolaus, a Pythagorean philo-
sopher of the fifth century B.C., propose a very peculiar
system of the world. According to this, the earth travelled
in twenty-four hours from west to east in an orbit round
a body called the central fire. Nobody had ever seen
that body, but that was easily explained by assuming
that the known parts of the earth, Greece and the sur-
rounding countries, are situated on the side of the earth
which is always turned away from the centre of the
orbit. During the daily revolution a point on the earth's
equator would in succession face every point on the
celestial equator, thus producing the same effect as if

92 GREEK MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY

the earth merely rotated on its own axis. Moon, sun,
and five planets all moved round the central fire in the
same direction but in different periods, the moon in
29I days, the sun in a year. Day and night were easily
accounted for; when the inhabited part of the earth
swings round in sight of the sun we have day, and when
it is carried round to the other side of the central fire,
away from the sun, we have night. Similarly the system
readily explains the revolutions of the moon and planets
and the annual motion of the sun in the zodiac, as well as
the changes of the seasons caused by the inclination of the
sun's orbit to the equator, in the plane of which the earth
moved. The visible celestial bodies were nine in number,
the earth, the moon, the sun, the five planets and the
sphere of the fixed stars. To complete the 'perfect
number' of the Pythagoreans, Philolaus postulated a
tenth body, the antichthon or counter-earth, which moves
inside the earth's orbit and in the same period, so that
it is always between the earth and the central fire and
therefore invisible to us.

This system of the world does not appear to have won
any adherents outside the philosophical school in which
it originated, as it required a very strong faith to accept
the doctrine of an unseen central body, of the existence
of which there was no evidence anywhere, except per-
haps the feeble light over the whole surface of the moon
when only a couple of days old, which we now know is
sunlight reflected from the earth. But the system paved
the way for the simpler and more natural conception
of the earth's rotation on its own axis. This step was
taken by two Pythagoreans, Hiketas and Ekphantus,
both of Syracuse, and the doctrine of Philolaus was
also modified by substituting for the central fire the
fire in the interior of the earth. We shall see presently
that the doctrine of the earth's rotation was later on

GREEK MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY 93

revived by some powerful minds outside the Pythagorean
school.

It was natural that the motions of the sun and the
moon should have attracted attention earlier than those
of the five planets known in antiquity, and that they
should have been employed for measuring time. For
a very long time the two great luminaries were sup-
posed to move with uniform velocity. But the civic
life of the Greek city-states made it important to
regulate the calendar as accurately as possible, and
this brought about a closer scrutiny of the motion of
the sun. That this motion throughout the year is not
uniform was first pointed out by Meton and Euktemon,
about the year 433 B.C., when they discovered that the
four seasons, that is the four intervals between the
solstices and the equinoxes, were not quite of equal
length. The corresponding discovery of the inequality
of the moon's motion was not made till the middle of the
fourth century B.C., as it was chiefly the exact moment
of the appearance of the New Moon which was of interest
for chronological purposes.

Even though the planets were probably not followed
as carefully as the sun and the moon, it must have been
noticed long before the age of Plato that the motions
of the planets are subject to very conspicuous irregu-
larities. The planet Mars, for instance, after having been
invisible in the neighbourhood of the sun for some time,
appears in the east before sun-rise. It is next seen to
move through the constellations, increasing its distance
from the sun, until it is exactly opposite the sun and
passes the meridian at midnight. But before this happens,
the planet gradually moves more slowly, becomes station-
ary, moves towards the west for a while (during which
time it passes the point opposite the sun), stops again,
and then resumes its ordinary movement towards the

94 GREEK MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY

east. How could this irregularity (which we now know
to be caused by the earth's motion) be explained with-
out giving up what seemed to be an indispensable
assumption, that the planets could only move in circular
orbits ?

The first attempt to form a mathematical theory of
planetary motions was made by Eudoxus, to whose
distinguished mathematical work we have already alluded.
To the assumption of circular motion he added another,
that every planet was connected with a number of
spheres, and that all these spheres were situated one
inside the other and all concentric to the earth. Every
planet (including the sun and moon) was supposed to be
situated on the equator of a sphere, which revolves with
uniform velocity round its two poles. In order to explain
the stations and arcs of retrogression of the planets, as
well as their motion in latitude, Eudoxus assumed that
the poles of a planetary sphere are not immovable, but
are carried by a larger sphere, concentric with the first
one, which rotates with a different speed round two poles
different from those of the first one. As this was not
sufficient to represent the phenomena, Eudoxus placed
the poles of the second sphere on a third, concentric to
and larger than the two first ones, and rotating round
separate poles with a speed peculiar to itself. For the
sun and moon these three spheres were sufficient, but each
of the five planets required a fourth sphere.

While all other ancient cosmical systems (apart from
those which accept the rotation of the earth) account for
the diurnal apparent motion of sun, moon, and planets
across the sky by assuming that the sphere of the fixed
stars during its daily revolution drags all the other
spheres along with it, the system of Eudoxus provides
a separate machinery for each planet for this purpose.
Thus the motion of the moon was produced by three

GREEK MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY 95

spheres; the first and outermost of these rotated from
east to west in twenty-four hours hke the fixed stars;
the second sphere turned slowly in the same direction
as the first one, round the axis of the zodiac. This
sphere accounts for the retrograde motion (east to west)
of the nodes of the lunar orbit (the points of intersec-
tion of the solar and lunar orbits) in i8| years. The
third or innermost sphere turned from west to east round
an axis inclined to the axis of the zodiac at an angle
equal to the highest latitude reached by the moon (5°),
producing the monthly motion of the moon round the
heavens, as the moon was attached to a point in what
we may call the equator of the third sphere.^ That the
motion of the lunar nodes was known at the time of
Eudoxus is thus proved, while he apparently was not
aware of the fact that the moon's motion in longitude is
not uniform.

Similarly, in the case of the sun, there were three
spheres, of which the outermost had the same daily
motion as the sphere of the fixed stars. The second
sphere has a very slow motion along the zodiac from
west to east, while the third sphere turns in a year in
the same direction round an axis inclined at a very small
angle to that of the zodiac. The sun is here supposed to
describe in a year, not the zodiacal circle (the ecliptic)
itself, but a circle inclined at a very small angle to it,
the nodes of which are supposed to have a very slow
direct motion (W. to E.) instead of the retrograde motion
of the lunar nodes. This is an altogether imaginary
phenomenon, which was refuted by Hipparchus but was

1 Simplicius, who has handed down to us an account of the
system of Eudoxus (the latter's writings being lost), has by a shp
interchanged the motions of the second and third lunar and solar
spheres. This slip (first pointed out by Ideler) has been corrected
above.

96 GREEK Mx\THEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY

all the same accepted by Pliny and other much later
compilers. It would have been better if Eudoxus had
ignored it and had accounted for the variable orbital
velocity of the sun, which, as we have seen, had been
discovered 60 or 70 years earlier.

But the task which Eudoxus had set himself became
vastly more difficult when he took up the theories of the
five planets. Of the four spheres given to each of them
the first and outermost produced the daily rotation of the
planet round the earth in twenty-four hours; the second

produced the motion along the zodiac in a period. which
for the three outer planets was respectively equal to their
sidereal periods of revolution, while it for Mercury and
Venus was equal to a year. To represent the motion in
latitude (in reahty caused by the orbits of the planets
being inclined to that of the earth), and also the irregular
motion depending on the elongation from the sun,
a third and fourth sphere were introduced for each
planet. The third sphere had its poles situated at two
opposite points of the zodiac (on the second sphere) and
rotated round them in a period equal to the synodic
period of the planet, that is the interval between two
successive oppositions or conjunctions with the sun.
These poles were different for the different planets, but

GREEK MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY 97

Mercury and Venus had the same poles. In the figure
A and B are the poles of the third sphere, while P is one
of the poles of the fourth. During the rotation of the
third sphere P describes the circle QPR, while the fourth
sphere in the same period, but in the opposite direction,
completes a rotation round P and its other pole (not
shown in the figure) . The planet is at M in the equator
of the fourth sphere, so that PM ^go°. If we leave the
motion of the first or daily sphere altogether out of
consideration and for the present also neglect that of the
second sphere, the path described by M, projected on
the plane of the circle AQBR, is found to be a curve

4 8

called by Eudoxus a hippopede, nowadays known as
a lemniscate or figure of eight. The longitudinal axis
of the curve lies along the zodiac, and its length is equal
to the diameter of the circle described by P, the pole of
the sphere which carries the planet. The double point
is 90° from the two poles of rotation of the third sphere,
A and B, and the planet passes over the arcs 1-2, 2-3,
3-4, 4-5, &c., in equal times. But the axis AB revolves
round the zodiac in the sidereal period of the planet,
carrying with it the lemniscate with uniform velocity.
The combination of this motion with that of the planet
on the lemniscate produces the apparent motion of the
planet through the constellations. The period of the
motion on the lemniscate is that of the synodical revolu-
tion, and during one half of this period the motion
of the planet along the ecliptic becomes accelerated, and
during the other half it becomes retarded, when the two

G

98 GREEK MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY

motions are in opposite directions. When on an arc
of the lemniscate the backward oscillation is quicker
than the simultaneous forward motion of the lemniscate
itself, then the planet will for a time have a retrograde
motion, before and after which it is stationary for a short
time, when the two motions just balance each other.
The greatest acceleration and the greatest retardation
occur when the planet passes through the double point
of the lemniscate. The motions must therefore be so
combined that the planet passes through this point with
a forward motion at the time of superior conjunction
with the sun (when it is behind the sun as seen from the
earth), where the apparent velocity of the planet is
greatest. But the planet must pass through the double
point in the retrograde direction at the time of opposition
or inferior conjunction, when the planet appears to have
the most rapid retrograde motion. This combination
of motions will, of course, also produce a certain amount
of motion in latitude depending on the breadth of the
lemniscate.

The question how far this theory could be made to
agree with the actually observed motions of the planets
has been thoroughly examined by Schiaparelli in a memoir
published in 1875, To be able to test the theory we
require to know the values adopted by Eudoxus of the
sidereal and synodic periods, and the distance between
the poles of the third and fourth spheres, by Schiaparelli
called the inclination. The value of the latter is not given
anywhere, but the periods are given by Simplicius in
round numbers, fairly correct with the exception of the
synodic period of Mars, which he gives as 260 days,
whereas it really is 780 days. The problem is now, with
these values, to find a value of the inclination of each
planet which will produce an arc of retrograde motion
equal to the actually observed one, without making half

GREEK MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY 99

the breadth of the lemniscate, that is the greatest latitude
of the planet, too unreasonably great, Schiaparelli found
that this was possible in the cases of Saturn, Jupiter, and
Mercury, so that the theory agreed sufficiently well with
observation. But the theory was unsatisfactory as
regards Venus, and it broke down completely when
dealing with the motion of Mars, whether we put the
synodic period equal to 260 days or to 780 days. It is
however probable that Eudoxus had not at his command
a sufficient series of observations, and only knew the main
facts about the stationary points and retrogressions of
the outer planets; and that these might be represented
by some combination of concentric spheres had been
proved by Eudoxus.

Some of the pupils of Eudoxus must have compared
the movements resulting from the theory with those
actually taking place in the heavens, since we find
Kalippus of Kyzikus engaged in improving the system
some thirty years after its first publication. He left the
theories of Saturn and Jupiter untouched, but added
a fifth sphere to each of the theories of Mars, Venus, and
Mercury. Schiaparelli has shown that it was possible
in this way to produce retrograde motion of sufficiently
correct extent without making the breadth of the lemnis-
cate and thereby the maximum latitude too excessive.^
In the solar theory Kalippus introduced two new spheres
to account for the unequal motion of the sun which had
been discovered by Meton and Euktemon about a hundred
years earlier. A lemniscate 4° in length and 2' in breadth
gives in fact the necessary maximum inequality of 2°.
Similarly the number of lunar spheres was increased by
two, which can only have been done in order to account
for the inequality caused by the moon's motion in an

1 For particulars see the writer's History of the Planetary
Systems, Cambridge, 1906, pp. 104-7.

G 2

100 GREEK MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY

eccentric orbit ; and Schiaparelli has shown that a hippo-
pede 12° in length (the mean inequaUty is 6°) would only
be twice 9' in breadth, so that the improved theory of
the moon was quite as good as any of the other planetary
theories, as long as the evection or second lunar inequality
had not been discovered.

While the system of concentric spheres was thus made
more perfect by Kalippus, so that it could better 'save
the phenomena' (i.e. account for the observed facts),
it was fully accepted by his great contemporary, Aristotle
(384-322). According to him, the universe is spherical,
because the sphere is the most perfect body, and as the
quickest motion is the most perfect, the outermost sphere
(that of the fixed stars) is the most perfect sphere of all
and is the seat of unchangeable order. It is under the
immediate influence of the primary divine cause of motion,
which from the circumference extends its power to the
centre. In his work on Metaphysics Aristotle gives
a short account of the system of Eudoxus and Kalippus.
To him the spheres are not merely representatives of
mathematical formulae, but physically existing parts of
a vast machinery by which the celestial bodies are kept
in motion. He is therefore obliged to introduce a number
of extra spheres to prevent the motion of the outer
spheres from being transmitted to the inner ones. Not-
withstanding the great authority of Aristotle, the modified
system of concentric spheres could, however, not hold its
own among people who had a more detailed knowledge
of the motions of the planets. But his ideas about the
immutability of all bodies in the 'aethereal region' and
his theory that comets originated in the upper parts of the
atmosphere continued to prevail for nearly two thousand
years.

The great difficulty in accepting the system of concen-
tric spheres was that according to it every planet must

GREEK MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY loi

always be at the same distance from the earth. But
how could that possibly be the case, when every planet
was seen to vary very considerably in brightness ? Mars,
Jupiter, and Saturn were always brightest when opposite
the sun; did that not indicate that they were at that
time much nearer to us than when they were nearer the
sun and much fainter? Similarly Venus and Mercury
attained their greatest brightness at a certain angular
distance from the sun. How could they be attached
to a sphere, in the centre of which the earth was
situated ?

It is therefore not to be wondered at that other ways
were sought of 'saving the phenomena', and this was
already done by a contemporary of Aristotle, Herakleides
of Pontus. His mind must have been singularly free from
preconceived notions, since he accepted the doctrine held
by some of the later Pythagoreans, that the earth turns
on its axis once in twenty-four hours from west to east,
thereby producing the apparent rotation of the heavens
in the opposite direction. And Herakleides went even
farther. There had been considerable difference of
opinion among philosophers as to whether Mercury and
Venus were nearer to us than the sun or farther off. It
almost looked, judging by their changes of brightness,
as if these two planets were sometimes on the near side
of the sun and sometimes beyond the sun. This, in
connexion with the fact that they are never seen at any
great distance from the sun, made Herakleides reahze
that Mercury and Venus move round the sun and not
round the earth. Unfortunately all his writings are lost,
so that all we know of his doctrines is derived from the
allusions of much later writers. We have therefore no
evidence as to whether Herakleides took another step
forward and suggested that the other three planets also
travelled round the sun. A certain passage in a lost

102 GREEK MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY

book by Geminus (about 80 B.C.) quoted by the com-
mentator Simplicius (about a.d. 500) has been inter-
preted by Schiaparelli as hinting that Herakleides even
let the earth go round the sun. But not only is the
passage in question strongly suspected of being corrupt,
it is also contradicted by positive statements that Hera-
kleides placed the earth in the middle and let it move
'not progressively but in a turning manner'.

But about fifty years later the hypothesis of the earth's
motion round the sun was indubitably advanced by
Aristarchus of Samos, who flourished about 280 B.C.
In his case we are not dependent on the testimony of
uncritical compilers; our authorities are Archimedes and
Plutarch. The former tells us that Aristarchus ' published
the hypothesis' that the earth is carried round the sun
in a circle, and that the sphere of the fixed stars is of
such a size that this motion does not produce apparent
displacements among the stars in the course of a year.
Plutarch, in his little book ' On the face in the disc of the
moon ', says that Aristarchus ' in order to save the pheno-
mena supposed that the heavens stand still and the earth
moves in an oblique circle at the same time v as it turns
round its axis '. In another of his writings Plutarch
mentions that Aristarchus and Seleukus (a Babylonian
geographer of the second century B.C.) held that the
earth rotates, the former supposing it only, but the latter
affirming it as true.

But what can have made Aristarchus think that the
earth travels round the sun, and why did nobody else
take up this fine idea, which had to lie dormant for
eighteen hundred years?

Simplicius, after alluding to the great brightness of
Mars when in opposition to the sun and to the changes
of the apparent diameter of the moon, which made the
system of concentric spheres untenable, says that as-

GREEK MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY 103

tronomers therefore introduced the hypothesis of eccen-
tric circles and epicycles, if indeed the hypothesis of
eccentrics was not already invented by the Pythagoreans,
as stated by Nikomachus. This late writer's testimony
is not worth much as regards the origin of the system of
movable eccentrics ; but that the latter was invented
before the epicyclic theory is very probable indeed, and
it is easy to see how the statement of Simplicius indicates
the manner in which the way was prepared for the
hypothesis of Aristarchus. To the Greek mind a heavenly
body could not possibly move in any other curve than
a circle. And as Mars was evidently nearest to us when
in opposition, it followed that Mars must move on
a circle which was eccentric to the earth, and furthermore
that the centre of this circle lay somewhere on the straight
line through the earth and the sun. Obviously this was
not a fixed line, but one which turned round one of its
extremities; consequently the centre of the orbit of
Mars described a circle round the earth in a year, and
everything would be explained by assuming that Mars
moved round the eccentric circle from east to west in
a period equal to its synodic revolution, that is, the
interval between two successive oppositions (two years
and fifty days). Jupiter and Saturn moved similarly on
movable eccentrics. We cannot doubt that this system
was known to Aristarchus. He must also have been
acquainted with the hypothesis of Herakleides, that the
centres of the orbits of Mercury and Venus lay in the sun.
What then could be simpler than to assume that the
centres of the orbits of the three outer planets not only
lay somewhere on a line passing through the sun, but
coincided with the sun ? And having got so far, Aris-
tarchus must have been struck by the fact that the
phenomena would be precisely the same if he took
one step farther, and instead of letting the sun, centre

104 TiREEK MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY

of all the planetary orbits, go round the earth, let
the earth go round the sun, leaving everything else
unaltered.

This must have been the way in which Aristarchus
was led to his brilliant hypothesis. But why did nobody
accept it ? The few and scanty references to it by classical
authors prove that it can never have been favourably
received. We learn from Plutarch that Kleanthes the
Stoic ' held that Aristarchus of Samos ought to be accused
of impiety for moving the hearth of the world'; but
prejudice of that kind can hardly have prevented the new
hypothesis from being a success. But the Greece of the
third century B.C. was very different from the aggregate
of small city-states to which the poets and philosophers
had addressed their works during the preceding two
hundred and fifty years. Philosophical speculation had
flourished there, and had been thought sufficient to solve
the problems of the universe. But now the conquests of
Alexander the Great had resulted in the foundation of
large states, imbued with Hellenic culture and yet not
severed from their own ancient civilization. A wider
outlook ensued, and it was realized that oply if based
on accurately observed facts could scientific theory have
a chance of succeeding. At the newly founded Museum
of Alexandria observations began to be made, and it
cannot long have escaped attention that just as the sun's
apparent motion was not uniform (a fact perhaps neglected
by Aristarchus), so also were the motions of the planets
subject to inequalities. These were less conspicuous than
those depending on the planet's distance from the sun,
which the hypothesis of Aristarchus accounted for so well,
but they could not be explained merely by assuming that
the earth went round the sun. Thus the beautifully
simple idea of Aristarchus fell to the ground.

The aim of mathematicians by degrees became to find

GREEK MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY 105

combinations of circular motion which would represent
more or less closely the observed place of a planet at any
time and give the means of finding this place by com-
putation beforehand, without insisting on the actual
physical truth of the system. In the course of nearly
four hundred years the theory of planetary motions,
which eventually became known as the Ptolemaic
system, was developed, so far as we know, solely by
Apollonius (230 B.C.), Hipparchus (130 B.C.) and Ptolemy
(a.d. 140). Apollonius does not seem to have left any

writings on astronomy; most of the writings of Hip-
parchus are lost, and Ptolemy in his great work on
astronomy gives very little historical information about
his predecessors. We therefore know very little about the
gradual development of the Ptolemaic System. Ptolemy
however describes at some length the two ways in which
the motions of the three outer planets could be repre-
sented. We have already given a short account of the
earlier of the two systems, that of movable eccentrics. In
the first figure the larger circle is the orbit of a planet P,
which travels round it in the synodic period from east
to west, while the centre C in a year describes the smaller
circle round T, the earth, from west to east. But this

io6 GREEK MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY

system was not applicable to Mercury and Venus, and it
did not illustrate the stationary points and retrograde
motions as clearly as the system of epicycles did. The
latter therefore soon drove it from the field altogether.
In the second figure T is the earth, round which the point
C performs a revolution in the period in which the planet
travels round the heavens, for Saturn 29I years, for
Jupiter nearly 12 years, for Mars 687 days. For Venus
and Mercury the period is a sidereal year (the line TC
always pointing to the sun), and this is also the period
in which one of the three outer planets moves round
the epicycle (the smaller circle) in the same direction
from west to east. For the two inner planets the revolu-
tion on the epicycle takes place in the synodic period.
The apparent motion of the planet as seen from T is
therefore the resultant of two motions. When the planet
reaches the point a, determined by \ay being to Ta in the
ratio of the two linear velocities, the two angular velocities
seen from T will for a short time be equal and opposite,
so that the planet is stationary. After that the motion
becomes retrograde as seen from T. This lasts until
the planet reaches /3, after which the planet again becomes
stationary for a little while and then resumes its ordinary
direct motion. It is evidently possible to fix the ratio
of the radii of the two circles so that the observed length
of the retrograde arc corresponds exactly to that given
by the theory. The line TC always points towards the
sun, and the planet is in opposition to the sun when
it is at p^ or nearest to the earth, and in conjunction with
the sun when at ^. It is also possible by means of an
epicycle to represent the motion of a body which like
the sun and moon moves with a somewhat variable
velocity without ever becoming stationary or retrograde.
In this case the motion on the epicycle has to be in the
opposite direction to that of the motion on the larger

GREEK MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY 107

circle, or deferent as it was later on called, but in the
same period.

That the result is the same whether we employ the
movable eccentric or the concentric deferent with an
epicycle to account for the motion of one of the outer
planets is shown in the figure. The dotted circles repre-
sent the former theory, the others the deferent and
epicycle, and it is necessary to make the radii cP and
TC equal and also Tc = CP. But as already stated, the
movable eccentric theory soon disappeared.

.. Z-

What we have here described in outline had most
probably been reached before the time of Hipparchus.
He was a native of Nicaea, but spent most of his time
at Rhodes. He was able to make use of observations
made at Alexandria in the previous 150 years, and by
means of them he made his great discovery of the Pre-
cession of the Equinoxes, whereby the longitudes of
all stars increase at the rate of 50" per annum. He
was also himself an indefatigable observer, and prepared
a catalogue of the positions of about 850 stars, which
unfortunately has been lost. But he had also at his dis-
posal observations of eclipses made in Babylonia centuries
before the foundation of the Museum of Alexandria, and
this enabled him to determine the orbits of sun and moon

io8 GREEK MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY

more accurately. In the case of the sun it was easy
enough, since the unequal length of the four seasons was
the only inequality to be accounted for; and this could
be done either by a simple eccentric circle or by an
epicycle. The same was the case with the moon, but
matters were here somewhat more complicated, as the
nodes (or points of intersection of the moon's orbit and
the apparent orbit of the sun) travel from east to west
right round the heavens in about i8| years, a fact which,
as we have seen, had already been taken into account by
Eudoxus. In addition to this the line of apsides (points
of greatest and least distance of the moon) move round
the heavens from west to east in nearly nine years, which
was accounted for by making the motion on the deferent
about 3° per revolution in excess of the motion on the
epicycle. As his predecessors had only furnished him
with observations of eclipses, Hipparchus could only
produce a theory of the moon's motion which represented
that motion at new and full moon sufhciently well. He
noticed that observations of the moon about the time of
first or last quarter sometimes did not agree with his
theory, but he had to leave the investigation of this to
his successors. Similarly in the case of the five planets, want
of observations prevented him from making any advance.
The epicyclic system received its last development
in the second century from Claudius Ptolemy, who
embodied his predecessors' and his own work in a great
book called the Mathematical Syntaxis. In addition to
a catalogue of 1,025 stars, it discusses the motions of the
sun, moon, and planets. In the theory of the moon he
made very substantial improvements by discovering the
second inequality, now known as the evection (dimly
suspected by Hipparchus), and fixing its amount at
1° 19I', very near its true value. To allow for this the
centre of the moon's epicycle had not only to move on
an eccentric circle, but further complications had to be

GREEK MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY 109

introduced in the theory, which must be passed over here.
Ptolemy had also to add a somewhat similar complication
to the planetary theory of ApoUonius to account for the
apparent irregularity which we now know to be caused
by a planet moving in an elliptic orbit with variable
velocity. He introduced a ' punctum aequans ', so situated
on the line of apsides that the earth was midways
between it and the centre of the deferent. The line from
the equant to the centre of the epicycle moved so that
it described equal angles in equal times. Even this was
not enough for the planet Mercury, the theory of whose
motion was still more complicated.

As a ready means of computing the movements of sun,
moon, and planets, the Ptolemaic system is deserving of
the highest praise. By its authors it was certainly not
intended to represent the actually existing state of the
heavenly bodies. For it could not possibly have escaped
Hipparchus and Ptolemy that their theory of the moon
involved excessive variations of the moon's distance, and
thereby of its apparent diameter, which never happened
in reality. Owing to the state of algebra at that time,
geometry had to be pressed into the service of astronomy,
just as Euclid had to adopt a geometrical representation
when dealing with irrational quantities or the theory of
proportion.

But the truth, that is the Copernican system, lay
hidden all the time among the deferents and epicycles of
the Greek mathematicians. We can reproduce Ptolemy's
values of the ratio of the radii of epicycle and deferent
from the semi-axis major of each planet expressed in
units of that of the earth as shown in the following table :

Semi-axis

1

Ptolemy's

••>'

major (a)

a

ratio.

Mercury

0-387

0-371

Venus

0723

0-719

Mars .

1-524

o'656

0-658

Jupiter

5-203

0'192

0-192

Saturn

9-539

0-105

o-io8

no GREEK MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY

But for more than fourteen hundred years the idea of
Aristarchus remained dormant and unrecognized, and the
Ptolemaic system was almost universally accepted. All
the same, the system was totally at variance with Aris-
totelean Physics, the adherents of which objected strongly
to the movements around points outside the centre of
the world. Attempts had therefore been made even
before the time of Ptolemy to reconcile the two systems.
As long as the deferent was assumed to be concentric
with the earth, the epicycle might be supposed to be the
equator of a solid sphere, rolling between two solid
concentric spheres. This idea, which is described by
Theon of Smyrna (soon after a.d. ioo), became insufficient
as soon as the deferents became eccentric circles. In the
Syntaxis Ptolemy ignores it, but in a later work, the
Hypotheses of the Planets, or rather in the second book
of it, he sets forth a development of the system described
by Theon. The epicycle sphere now fits between two
eccentric spherical surfaces (an inner and an outer one),
near the common centre of which the earth is situated.
This theory of the world, which its author made as
elaborate in its way as the epicyclic system, was not
a success. The Greek original is lost, but an Arabic
translation of the second book of Hypotheses has been
preserved and has some years ago become more accessible
through a German translation. This and other systems
of spheres seem to have appealed strongly to Eastern
minds, and throughout the Middle Ages various com-
binations of spheres were proposed by some Mohammedan
philosophers, who could not feel satisfied with the
Ptolemaic system of circles. This was particularly the
case in Spain, and was connected with the rise of Aristo-
telean philosophy in that country. Frorh Spain the
fight between the circles and the spheres spread to
Paris and to Oxford, and it was not until about the

GREEK MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY iii

year 1300 that the system of epicycles was finally
victorious.

Thus the Syntaxis of Ptolemy remains the acme of
Greek astronomy. Whatever may be said against the
Ptolemaic system of the world as being apparently
complicated and difficult to believe in, it must be con-
ceded that from a mathematical point of view it was
perfect. It gave the means of computing tables of the
movements of the planets, which supplied positions not
differing too much from those observed with the imperfect
instruments then available, except after long periods of
time. It might even have been further developed, when
observations had shown the necessity for doing so, as the
system is quite analogous to a development in a series
of sines or cosines of multiples of certain angles. It was
worthy of the great minds by whom it was started, in
the days when Greek social development and intellectual
life were at their best; and of those who completed it,
when Greece and the Hellenized countries had become
parts of an Empire embracing most of the known world
and giving its citizens opportunities for extended activi-
ties far beyond what the small Greek city-states had
been able to ofter.

Books for Reference

Dreyer, J. L. E. History of the Planetary Systems from Thales

to Kepler. Cambridge, igo6.
Heath, T. L. Aristarchus of Samos, the ancient Copernicus.

Oxford, 1913.

History of Greek Mathematics. 2 vols. Oxford, 1922.

Short and simple accounts are found in
Heiberg, J. L. Mathematics and Science in Antiquity. Oxford,

1923;
and an article by T. L. Heath in
Livingstone, R. W. The Legacy of Greece. Oxford, 1922.

V
THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN

Charles Singer

§ I. The Limits of the Middle Ages of Science

The task that falls to the writer on the Middle Ages
in such a volume as this might be deemed far from
attractive. The epoch, by general admission, presents us
with a set-back in the development of scientific ideas.
During the period between the fall of the Empire and the
revolution in physics carried through by Galileo in the
seventeenth century, the conceptions as to the nature
of the world in which they lived that prevailed among
educated men was not conducive to the first-hand study
of nature. It is because these views were finally shattered
by Galileo and his successors that many of the authors
whose works we shall have to discuss may seem insigni-
ficant. Yet some of these men, who are now well-nigh
forgotten, have had their share in determining the current
of human thought and with it the course of human destiny.
The test of importance that we must apply is not our
assent to their opinions but the influence their work has
had on the period we are considering. We shall remember
too that the period has the intense interest of presenting
us with the beginning of something, the birth — or rebirth
— of the scientific idea.

We cannot, then, pass over in silence the millennium
that intervenes between antiquity and modernity. There
is a continuity in the history of the human intellect,
for civilization is a unique phenomenon and there is
no real evidence that it has occurred more than once

THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN 113

in the world's history. To understand our own version
of civiHzation we must trace it back to its origin, and
this we can do only through the Middle Ages. It is beside
the point to urge that the Middle Ages contributed
little to the actual sum of knowledge of the external
world. What we want to know is why they contributed
so little, and how, contributing so little, they yet succeeded
in passing on to our time the basic ideas from which
science has grown.

These Middle Ages, after all, were not a thousand years
of cataclysm. They represent doubtless a deterioration
of the human mind, but the nature and causes of that
deterioration are themselves the subject of intense
scientific interest. The Middle Ages can no more be
disregarded in considering the general course of science
than can a degenerate or parasitic series of plants or
animals be passed over when considering the larger group
to which they belong and from which they have sprung.
The very degeneracy of such a series has an interest of
its own, and often, by helping us to exclude accidental
elements, enables us to detect essential traits of the group
which we might otherwise overlook.

We may begin our task with some attempt to delimit
the period with which we are concerned. Without
attempting to define science, we may describe it as the
process of making knowledge. Being a process it must also
involve the idea of progress or at least of movement.
The world of science is a dynamic world with its own
stores of ever-acting energy. The world of the mediaeval
thinker was a static one, a world in which such forces
as were acting were impressed from without. When and
how was this static element introduced ?

We may first consider the terminus a quo of the mediaeval
attitude toward the external world. The Middle Ages
begin for science at that period when the ancients ceased

H

114 THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN

to make knowledge. Now, ancient science can be clearly
traced as an active process up to the end of the second
century of the Christian era. Galen, one of the very
greatest and most creative biologists of all time, died
A. D. 201. Ptolemy, one of the greatest of the cosmo-
graphers, was his older contemporary. After Galen and
Ptolemy, Greek science flags and scientific inspiration
dwindles.

Mathematics holds out the longest, but with the
mathematician Theon of Alexandria, who died about
400, we part altogether with the impulse of the science
of antiquity. Stoicism and Neoplatonism too, the chief
systems of thought of the late Empire, are dying and are
giving place to that great philosophical and religious
movement, the repercussion of which is felt right through
the Middle Ages and down to our own time. The stand-
point of its great protagonists, Tertullian (155-222),
Lactantius (260-340), and, above all, St. Jerome (340-
420) and St. Augustine (354-430), is outside the depart-
ment with which we have here to deal, but it was assuredly
not conducive to the exact study and record of phenomena.
We may fix the end of Antiquity and the beginning of
the Middle Ages for science at the end of the fourth or the
beginning of the fifth century.

The terminus ad qiiem of mediaeval science is, perhaps,
less easy to determine. Mediaevalization, in our view,
was a slow process under the action of which the human
mind, failing to increase the stock of phenomenal know-
ledge, sank slowly into an increasing ineptitude. At
a certain point the nadir of mental deterioration was
reached and intellectual competence tended again up-
ward. The time of lowest degradation of the human
intellect varied according to the state of civilization
in different parts of Europe. It was probably most
general about the tenth century. After this may be

THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN 115

discerned a slow ascent. Later, in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, we encounter considerable extension
of natural knowledge. There is still, however, no wide-
spread acceptance of the anciejit^iew that_^ad been
voiced by the philosopher Seneca {x~B.^Q.=A^Ji. 65) that
knowledge may be indefinitely extended. That view
appears^ to be an essejnitial element in any effective
doctrine of progress^__In the scholastic period, however,
there do at last appear a very few forward-looking minds
such as that of Roger Bacon (1214-1294), but they are
as yet very rare and exceptional. When we reach the
fifteenth century and the full influence of humanism we
encounter a larger number of forward-looking thinkers,
but they are stilj isolated. Not until the sixteenth
century is there any effort, at once organized and con-
scious, to translate into action this new-born hope in the
future. It is only in the early years of the seventeenth
century that the hope obtains formal philosophical
expression once more with Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
and Rene Descartes (1596-1650). By that time, however,
not" only are the Middle Ages past but they are so much
forgotten that the reading public needs skilled inter-
preters to explain the mediaeval point of view.

If we have to name a year for the end-point of mediaeval
science we would select 1543. In that year appeared two
fundamental modern works based on the experimental
method, the De fahrica corporis humani of the Belgian
Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) and the De revolutionibus
orhium caelestium of the Pole Nicholas Copernicus (1473-
-1543)- It is true that for generations before 1543 there
was a dawning consciousness of the inadequacy of the
mediaeval cosmic system. That discontent, however,
was vague and ill-expressed, and of the nature rather
of mental discomfort than of intellectual revolt. It is
also true that for some generations after the time of

H 2

ii6 THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN

Vesalius and Copernicus the characteristic doctrines of
the science of the Middle Ages were almost universally
taught in the schools. Such doctrines, too, were still
diffused by literature, and are, for instance, displayed
in the writings of Shakespeare. But the ideas on which
the works of Vesalius and Copernicus had been based
gain, from this time onward, an ever wider hearing.
The year 1543 saw for the first time two published
authoritative works that formally rejected the old
views. These works, though produced by men who
had steeped themselves in the old system, yet provided
a new standpoint. For science, then, 1543 is the natural
terminus ad quern of the Middle Ages.

Now, since the human mind turned on its upward
course after the tenth century, and since the process was
accelerated during the great scholastic period of the
thirteenth century and again at the Revival of Learning
of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, it may be asked,
why should we not choose one or other of these dates
as the end-point of the scientific Middle Ages ? The
thirteenth century, the epoch of consolidation of Catholic
philosophy, has been selected as one of exceptional
enlightenment, and has been specially exalted by those
who lay great emphasis on the continuing role of the
Church in the development of the intellectual system of
our modern world. There are, therefore, some who would
place the division in the thirteenth rather than in the
sixteenth century. There are yet others, biassed perhaps
by the literary training of the classics, who would place
the cleavage about the year 1400. They would make the
Revival of Learning, and especially of Greek letters, the
basis of the differentiation between mediaeval and modern.
Yet to make the great division at any such date as 1000,
1200, or 1400 would be an error, because, with very few
exceptions, the point of view of the eleventh-century

THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN 117

encyclopaedist, of the thirteenth-century scholastic, and
of the fifteenth-century scholar was formally and essen-
tially an effort to return to the past. It was the literature
and language of antiquity, the antiquity of the fathers,
of the philosophers, or of the poets, that these men sought
more or less vainly to revive.

In an encyclopaedia of the eleventh century nothing
can be found that is not derived from patristic sources.

The great Catholic scholastics of the thirteenth century
believed that they were reconstructing the philosophy
of Aristotle. Few first-hand students of that great man
of science will now be found to agree with the inter-
pretation supplied by them. It is true that, despite the
errors of philosophical interpretation, scientific elements
are not wholly wanting in scholastic writings. Yet in
that age the infinity of the knowable universe was
passionately denied, originality of view was furtively
hidden under the cloak of authority, and knowledge —
so the knowers. claimed — was always based on the wisdom
of antiquity. Imitation rather than origination was the
characteristic mental attitude also of the most enthusi-
astic scholars of the fifteenth century.

The Revival of Learning also, even the process by which
the ancient texts were recovered, though it may rightly
be regarded as containing scientific elements, had for its
motive the imitation of the past by the present, rather
than the modern archaeological aim of the mental recon-
struction of the past with the object of understanding the
present. The ablest writers of the time sought to become
the ' apes of Cicero '. What is true of the hterary studies
of the Renaissance is just as true of the scientific studies
of the period. The rescue of the Greek texts, though it
enlarged the mental horizon, chained men's minds more
closely than ever to the past. Even the revolt against
the ' Arabists ', led with such enthusiasm by the

ii8 THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN

classical scholars, had for its object a yet closer return
to antiquity.

There is a point, however, at which those interested in
phenomena — the physicists, and especially the physicians
— show a general willingness to turn their gaze from the
past and toward the future. We may at least say of the
two great works that appeared in 1543 that they present
a new thing in that their authors are looking to the
future for the development and vindication of their
views.

The work of the aged Copernicus, though not published
till 1543, had been prepared many years before. It is
therefore much the more conservative of the two, and
still bears marks of the Middle Ages on every page.
Vesalius, on the other hand, when he published his mag-
nificently printed and illustrated Fabrica was a vigorous
young man of but twenty-eight. Only four years earlier
he had produced a treatise which, while rejecting the
anatomical views of the Arabists, had expressed full faith
in the complete reliability of Galen. I^is conversion had
been rapid, and now he parts definitely with the Middle
Ages. As an anatomical observer he has become inde-
pendent. His physiological theory, however, is still based
on Galen just as surely as the circular orbits ascribed by
Copernicus to the planets are derived from Aristotle,

With Copernicus and Vesalius, however, organized and
systematic observation had found her place. Fabricius ab
Aquapendente (1537-1619) in Anatomy and Tycho Brahe
(1546-1601) in Astronomy did but practise a method
which their two great predecessors had formally initiated.
But for the process of free generalization on such observa-
tion and for the effective wielding of the new weapon of
experiment the world had still to wait for the generation
of Gahleo (1564-1642), Kepler (1571-1630), and Harvey
(1576-1657).

THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN 119

§ 2. The Dark Age

Thus for effective purposes we may place the Umits of
the mediaeval attitude towards nature between the years
400 and 1543, with a debatable period of another half
century up to 1600. This vast stretch of time is divided
by an event of the highest importance for the history of
the human intellect. Between the beginning of the tenth
and the end of the twelfth century there was a remarkable
outburst of intellectual activity in Western Islam. This
movement reacted with great effect on Latin Europe,
and especially on its views of nature, by means of works
which gradually reached Christendom in translations
from the Arabic. In the light of this great intellectual
event we may divide our vast mediaeval period into three
parts, an earlier Dark Age, an intermediate Age of Arabian
Influence, and a later Scholastic Age. The Age of Arabian
Influence may itself be conveniently sub-divided into an
earlier period of Arabian Infiltration and a later one of
Arabian Translation. During all these periods the general
beliefs as to the nature of the external world hardly
change, but the difference in presentment of the material
is such that the mediaevalist need seldom be in doubt
into which category to place any document from these
centuries treating of a scientific topic.

The task of the first mediaeval period was the convey-
ance of the remains of the ancient wisdom to later ages.
During the closing centuries of the classical decline, the
literature that was to be conveyed had been delimited and
translated into Latin, the only language common to the
learned West. We may briefly discuss this classical
heritage.

The work of Plato that is least attractive and most
obscure to the modern mind fitted in well with the pre-
valent views of the Neoplatonists. The commentary on

120 THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN

the Timaeus, prepared by Chalcidiiis in the third century
from a translation by Apiileius in the second, presents
the basis of views held throughout the entire Middle Ages
on the nature of the universe and of man. Thus the
Timaeus became one of the most influential of all the
works of antiquity, and especially it carried the central
dogma of mediaeval science, the doctrine of the macrocosm
and microcosm.

Of Aristotle there survived only the Categories and the
De inter pretatione, translated in the sixth century by
Boethius (480-524). A Greek introduction to the Cate-
gories had been prepared by Porphyry in the second
century, and this also was rendered into Latin by
Boethius. Thus the only Aristotelian writings known
to the Dark Age of science were the logical works, and
these determined the main extra-theological interest for
many centuries. It is a world-misfortune that Boethius
did not see his way to prepare versions of those works
of the Peripatetic school that display powers of observa-
tion. Had a translation of Aristotle's Historia animalium
or De generatione animalium survived, or had a Latin
version of the works of Theophrastus on plants reached
the earlier Middle Ages, the whole mental history of the
race might have been different. Boethius repaired the
omission, to some small extent, by handing on certain
mathematical treatises of his own compilation, the
De i^istitutione arithmetica, the De institutione musica,
and the (doubtful) Geometrica. These works preserved
throughout the darkest centuries some fragment of
mathematical knowledge. Thanks to them we can at
least say that during the long degradation of the human
intellect, mathematics, the science last to sink with the
fall of the Greek intellect, was not dragged down quite
so low as the other departments of knowledge. The main
gift of Boethius to the world, his De consolatione philo-

THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN 121

sophiae, which preserved some classical taste and feeling,
lies outside our field.

A somewhat similar service to that of Boethius was
rendered by Macrobius (395-423) and by Martianus
Capella (c. 500). The latter, especially in his Satyricon,
provided the Dark Age with a complete encyclopaedia.
The work is divided into nine books. The first two contain
an allegory, in heavy and clumsy style, of the marriage
of the god Mercury to the nymph Philology. Of the last
seven books of the work, each contains an account of
one of the 'Liberal Arts', grammar, dialectic, rhetoric,
geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music, a classi-
fication of studies that dates back to Varro (116-27 B.C.)
and was retained throughout the Middle Ages. The
section on Astronomy has a passage containing a helio-
centric view of the universe, a view that had been familiar
to certain earlier Greek astronomers. The cosmology of
Capella, like that of Chalcidius, is Neoplatonic, as is also
the work of Macrobius, whose commentary on the
Somnium Scipionis of Cicero gave rise to some of the
most prevalent cosmological conceptions of the first
mediaeval period.

In addition to the little cosmography, mathematics, and
astronomy that could be gleaned from such writings as
these, the Dark Age inherited a group of scientific and
medical works from the period of classical decline. By
far the most important was the NaUiral History of Pliny
the elder (a. d. 23-79), which deeply influenced the early
encyclopaedists. Somewhat akin to it are the Quaestiones
naturales of the moralist Seneca (3 b. c.-A. d. 65), whose
ethical attitude toward phenomena delighted many
mediaeval writers by whom he was taken for a Christian.

Very curious and characteristic is a group of later
pseudepigrapha bearing the names of Dioscorides, Hippo-
crates, and Apuleius. These works were probably all

122 THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN

prepared or at least translated between the fourth and
sixth centuries. They provided much of the medical
equipment of the Dark Age.

Such material, then, was the basis of the mediaeval
scientific heritage. Traces of it are encountered in
De Institutionibus divinarum et humananim literanmi of
Cassiodorus (490-585), perhaps the earliest general writer
whose works bear the authentic mediaeval stamp. The
scientific heritage is, however, much more fully displayed
in the Origines of Isidore of Seville, a late sixth-century
work which formed a cyclopaedia of all the sciences in
the form of an explanation of the terms proper to each.
For many centuries Isidore was very widely read, and
the series Isidore (560-636), Bede (673-735), Alcuin (735-
804), Rabanus Maurus (776-856), who borrow from one
another successively and all from Pliny, may be said to
contain the natural knowledge of the Dark Age. These
writers are summarized by the early eleventh-century
English writer Byrhtferth (died c. 1020), whose copious
commentary on Bede may be regarded as the final pro-
duct of the nature-knowledge of the Dark Age. With
this somewhat belated author we part company with the
Dark Age and enter upon a new period, with new forces
and new movements at work.

§ 3. The Age of Arabian Infiltration

The tenth century and those that follow bring us into
relation with the wisdom of the East. In these centuries
the relation of East and West with which we are nowadays
familiar is reversed. In our time most Oriental peoples
recognize the value of Western culture, cind give it the
sincerest form of flattery. The Oriental recognizes that
with the Occident are science and learning, power and
organization and public spirit. But the admitted

THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN 123

superiority of the West does not extend to the sphere of
rehgion. The Oriental who nowadays gladly accepts the
Occidental as his judge, his physician, or his teacher,
wholly repudiates, and perhaps despises, his religion.
In the Europe of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth cen-
turies it was far otherwise. The Westerner knew full well
that Islam held the learning and science of antiquity. His
proficiency in arms and administration had been more
than sufficiently proved — the Occidental belief in them is
enshrined in our Semitic words 'arsenal' and 'admiral'.
There was a longing, too, for the intellectual treasures of
the East, but the same fear and repugnance to its religion
that the East now feels for Western religion. And the
Western experienced obstacles in obtaining the desired
Oriental learning analogous to those now encountered
by the Eastern in the Occident.

The earliest definitely Oriental influence that we can
discern as affecting ideas about nature is of the character
of infiltration rather than direct translation. The literary
first agents of this process appear to have been mainly
Jews who had been under Saracen rule. Such influence
can be traced in two works in the Hebrew language by
Sabbatai ben Abraham ben Joel (913-982), better known
as Donnolo, a Jew of Otranto who practised medicine at
Rossano in Southern Italy. Donnolo learnt Arabic while
a prisoner in Saracen hands ; he was taught the language
by a native of Bagdad, and, like Constantine the African
in the next- century, claimed to have studied 'the sciences
of the Greeks, Arabs, Babylonians, and Indians '. He
travelled in the Italian peninsula in search of learning,
and must thus have spread some of his Arabic science.
His most important work, known as the Book of Creation,
is dated to the year 946. It is a mystical treatise of great
historical and philological interest and involves a know-
ledge of astrology. It unquestionably draws on Arabic

124 THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN

sources, and sets forth fully the ancient doctrine encoun-
tered in the Timaeus of the macrocosm and microcosm
or parallelism between the external world of nature and
the internal world of man's body. This idea was very
popular among the Arabian writers.

The earliest Latin document exhibiting Oriental in-
fluence is a treatise on astrology to which the name
'Alchandrus' (Alexander?) is attached. This work has
come down to us in a manuscript written about 950 or
a little later, probably in Southern France. The repeated
use of Hebrew and Arabic equivalents for the names
of constellations and planets, and the occasional use of
Hebrew script, leave no doubt that it also is of Jewish
origin.

The existence of these works enables us to understand
the Oriental influence in the mathematical writings of the
learned Pope Silvester II (Gerbert, d. 1003), who spent
some years in Northern Spain, where Jews are known to
have acted as intermediaries between Moslems and
Christians. Gerbert was, perhaps, among the earliest to
introduce the Arabic system of numbering, which slowly
replaced the much clumsier Roman system, with its
tiresome use of the abacus for simple mathematical
processes. He is also believed to have instigated a trans-
lation from the Arabic of a work on the Astrolabe.

Hermann the Cripple (1013-1054) spent his life at the
Benedictine abbey of Reichenau in Switzerland. He
wrote certain mathematical and astrological works which
were extensively used in the following century. Hermann
was unable to read Arabic, and could not travel by reason
of his infirmity. Yet his writings display much Oriental
influence, which was almost certainly conveyed to him
by wandering scholars of the type of Donnolo and
'Alchandrus'. Similar though somewhat belated evidence
of the influence of what we have called the process of

THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN 125

Arabic infiltration is exhibited in the lapidary of Marbod
of Anjou, Bishop of Rennes (1035-1123), and in the
extremely widely read work on the medicinal use of herbs,
probably composed by Odo of Meune, Abbot of Beauprai
(Macer Floridus, d. 1161).

The Arabic learning thus beginning to triclde through
to the West in a much corrupted form was, however,
by no means an entirely native Saracen product; it was
derived ultimately from Greek work. There was, indeed,
yet one channel by which the original Greek wisdom
might still reach Europe. Communication between the
West and the Byzantine East was very little in evidence
in the centuries with which we are now concerned, but
a Greek tradition still lingered in certain Southern
Italian centres, and especially in Sicily. South Italy
and Sicily remained for centuries under the 'nominal
suzerainty of Byzantium, and the dialects of the island
bear traces to this very day of the Greek spoken there
and in Calabria and Apulia until late mediaeval times.
But the Saracens had begun their attacks on Sicily as
early as the eighth century, and their rule did not cease
until the Norman conquest of the eleventh century. The
Semitic language of the Saracens left the same impress
on the island as did their art and architecture, so that
between the tenth and twelfth centuries Sicily is a source
of both Greek and Arabic learning for Western Europe.

One seat of learning in the Southern Italian area felt
especially early the influence of the Graeco-Arabic culture.
Salerno, on the Gulf of Naples, had been a medical centre
as far back as the ninth century. It is clear from surviving
manuscripts that, even apart from the Greek language,
some traces of ancient Greek medicine lingered in Latin
translation widely diffused in Magna Graecia during the
centuries that succeeded the downfall of the Western
Empire. Such learning as remained was galvanized into

126 THE DARK ACxES AND THE DAWN

life by Saracenic energy and, witli what we know of the
carrying agents of Arabic culture, it is easy to understand
the tradition that attributes the founding of the great
medical school of Salerno to the co-operation of a Greek,
an Arab, a Latin, and a Jew. From the latter part of the
eleventh century Salernitan material is full of Semitic
words, a few of which, such as the anatomical term
'nucha' and the names of some drugs, linger in medical
nomenclature to this day.

§ 4. Translation from the Arabic

A very important agent of the Arabic revival was
Constantine the African (d. 1087), a native of Carthage,
who came to Italy about the middle of the eleventh
century. He became a monk at Montecassino, and spent
the rest of his life turning current Arabic medical and
scientific works into Latin. His sources are mainly
Jewish writers of North African origin. In his desire for
self-exaltation Constantine often conceals the names of
the authors from whom he borrows, or he gives them
inaccurately. His knowledge of both the languages
which he was treating was far from thorough, and his
translations are wretched. But these versions were very
influential, and they remained current in the West long
after they had been replaced by the better workmanship
of Toledo students of the type of Gerard of Cremona
(1114-1187). It is interesting to note that one of Con-
stantine's works is dedicated to Alphanus, Archbishop of
Salerno (d. 1085), who was perhaps the first medical
translator direct from the Greek.

The earliest Oriental influences that reached the West
had thus been brought by foreign agents or carriers, but
the desire for knowledge could not be satisfied thus.
The movement that was soon to give rise to the univer-

THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN 127

sities was shaping itself, and the Western student was
beginning to become more curious and more desirous of
going to the well-springs of Eastern wisdom.

His main difficulty was one of language. Arabic was
the language of Eastern science and letters, and its
idiom was utterly different from the speech of the peoples
of Europe. Moreover, its grammar had not yet been
reduced to rule in any Latin work, nor could teachers be
easily procured. Even in the thirteenth century we find
that Roger Bacon, though he clearly perceived the
importance of linguistic study and eagerly sought to
unlock the literature of foreign tongues, had still not
found the key. He had only time to commence labori-
ously the grammatical apparatus of the Greek and
Hebrew languages. The only way to learn Arabic was
to go to an Arabic-speaking country. Yet this was
a dangerous and difficult adventure, involving hardship,
secrecy, and perhaps abjuration of faith. Moreover, to
learn the language at all adequately for rendering scientific
treatises into Latin meant a stay of years, while the work
of translation demanded also some understanding of the
subject-matter to be translated. There is good evidence
that an effective knowledge of this kind was very rarely
attained by Westerns, and probably never until the later
twelfth century.

At the period during which Western science began to
draw from Moslem sources there were only two areas of
contact of the two cultures : these were respectively Spain
and ' the Sicilies '. The conditions in the two were some-
what similar. In the tenth century the Iberian peninsula
was Moslem save for the small kingdoms of the French
march, Leon, Navarre, and Aragon. Here the grip of Islam
had soon relaxed, and this territory remained historically,
religiousl}/, racially, and linguistically a part of the Latin
West. The Moslem South was ruled from Cordova, which

128 THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN

became increasingly Mohammedanized, but at the more
northern Toledo the subject population, though speaking
an Arabic patois, remained in the main Christian, though
with a very large Jewish element. In 1085 Alphonso VI
of Leon (Alphonso I of Castille), aided by the Cid, con-
quered Toledo, and there most of the work of transmission
took place.

The schools of Southern Italy and Sicily were on the
whole less influential, though their work of translation
continued to a somewhat later date. They are, however,
important in another respect, for from them went forth
the first renderings of scientific works made direct from
the Greek. These translations of scientific works direct
from the Greek began to appear as early as the eleventh
century, when Alphanus Archbishop of Salerno (d. 1085)
produced a Latin version of a work by Nemesius (fourth
century). Such translations increased in number and
importance gradually and very slowly. A most interesting
worker in Sicily was Burgundio of Pisa (d. 1194), who
made translations both from the Arabic and the Greek,

It is evident that the process of translation from Arabic,
especially in Spain, was frequently carried on by the inter-
vention of Jewish students, and many of the translated
works were themselves by Jews, The tenth, eleventh, and
twelfth centuries, a time of low degradation of the Latin
intellect, was the best period of Jewish learning in Spain.
Arabic was the natural linguistic medium of these learned
Jews. Among them were the Egyptian physician Isaac
Israeli ben Solomon (d. c. 1000) called in the West Isaac
Judaeus, Solomon ibn Gabirol (1021-1058 ?) of Saragossa
who was disguised in scholastic writings as Avicebron,
and Moses ben Maimon (i 135-1204) of Cordova, more
familiarly known as Maimonides. These three authors
were among the more important and influential that were
rendered into Latin from Arabic during the Middle Ages,

THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN 129

and their works form part of the Eastern heritage won
by the translators during these centuries. All three deeply
influenced Western scholasticism.

In the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries,
when the tide had turned and Islam was in retreat, it was
occasionally possible for a scholar with a gift for languages,
such as Gerard of Cremona (1114-1187), to find a skilled
native Christian teacher. But in the tenth or eleventh
century Christian learning and Christian society in Spain
were subject and depressed. Like many modern peoples
similarly placed, these native Christians were attached
with the more fanaticism to the religion w^hich held
them together and to the language of their Church. The
student of an earlier time could find no effective Christian
teacher of literary Arabic, while the very sciences which
he sought to acquire were suspect as the mark of the
infidel and the oppressor.

It thus comes about that there is some obscurity —
much of it doubtless intentional — as to the circumstances
under which the best translations from the Arabic were
made. It is apparent, however, that these earlier versions
were sometimes prepared by a group of three or more
who would interpret one to the other. One would turn
the Arabic text, sentence by sentence, into the vernacular
or into Hebrew, another would then render it into Latin
and perhaps a third would turn it into literary form.
Naturally, in this process many words would be encoun-
tered that could not be rendered either into the vernacular
or into the barbarous Latin of the time. Especial difficulty
would be encountered with technical terms. The meaning
of some of these might well be imperfectly known to
the translators themselves. Such words were therefore
often simply carried over, transliterated, in their Arabic
or Hebrew form, and the early versions are full of
Semitic expressions. The Latin mediaeval astronomical

I

130 THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN

and mathematical vocabularies especially abound in these
Semitic words, many of which, such as 'azure', 'zero',
'zenith', 'cipher', 'azimuth', 'algebra', 'nadir', and
names of stars, as 'Aldebaran' and 'Altair', are still in
use. Most of the Latin medical literature of the Middle
Ages, too, was of Arabian origin and contained a whole
host of Semitic words which, however, were almost all
displaced by equivalents of Greek origin during the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries.

The sort of translation which emerged from the process
that we have described may well be imagined. When
it is also remembered that to reach the Arabic from the
original Greek the text had already passed through similar
stages, usually with Syriac as an intermediary, it will be
understood that the first scientific books that reached the
West were often but travesties of the Greek originals from
which they were ultimately derived.

Men who may be supposed to have worked in such
a way as we have pictured are Adelard of Bath (c. iioo),
who journeyed both to Spain and to"" Sicily, and published
a compendium of Arabic science, and the wizard Michael
Scot (1175 P-I234?), who visited the court of Frederick II
at Naples and produced versions or abridgements of the
biological works of Aristotle. Such men, like Gerbert
before them and Peter of Abano after them, were fre-
quently accused of magical practices. More scientific in
their methods and probably better equipped linguistically
were Robert of Chester (c. 11 44), who rendered the Koran
into Latin and translated the valuable algebra of Al
Khowarizmi (fl. 830) as well as works on alchemy and
astronomy, and Alfred the Englishman {c. T180), who
translated from Arabic the corrupted peripatetic work
On Plants, and thus preserved for us a fragment of
a work of the Aristotelian school that would otherwise
be lost. Robert and Alfred worked in Spain.

THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN 131

But the greatest and most typical of all the translators
from the Arabic was Gerard of Cremona (1114-1187),
who spent many years at Toledo and obtained a thorough
knowledge of Arabic from a native Christian teacher. He
is credited with having translated into Latin no less than
ninety-two complete Arabic works. Many of them are
of very great length, among them being the Almagest of
Ptolemy on which Regiomontanus began his work in the
fifteenth century, and the enormous Canon of Avicenna
(980-1037), perhaps the most widely read medical treatise
ever penned, editions of which continued to be issued right
down to the middle of the seventeenth century. The
Canon of Avicenna is still in current use in the East.

Contemporary with Gerard of Cremona, and perhaps
stimulated by him, were certain native translators. One
of these was Domenico Gonzalez (Gundissalinus, fl. 1140),
a Christian who rendered into Latin the Physica and the
De caelo et mundo of Aristotle. Another Spaniard,' Johannes
Hispalensis or Ibn Daud, known to the Latins as Avendeath
(fl. 1130-1155), was a converted Jew. Avendeath trans-
lated, among many other works, the pseudo-Aristotelian
treatise Secretum secretorum philosophorum which greatly
influenced Roger Bacon, as well as the astronomical
works of the Egyptian Jewish writer Messahalah (Ma
scha'a Allah = 'What God will', 770-820). This Latin
translation of Messahalah long formed the staple popular
account of the system of the world under the name of the
EngUshman John Holy wood (' Sacrobosco ', d. 1256).
Gonzalez and Avendeath, like Gerard, worked at Toledo.

The Sicilian group was less active. The Optics of
Ptolemy was translated about 1150 by the Sicihan
admiral Eugenius of Palermo. He rendered it from the
Arabic though he had an effective knowledge of Greek.
The great astronomical and mathematical system of
Ptolemy known to the Middle Ages as the Almagest was

I 2

132 THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN

also first translated into Latin from the Arabic in Sicily
in 1 163 (some twelve years before it was rendered by
Gerard at Toledo), and Arabian versions only of the
work were available until the fifteenth century. The last
translator of Sicilian origin, the Jew Farragut (Farradj
ben'Sehm, Moses Farachi, d. 1285), was a student
at Salerno, and his works were among the latest of any
influence that issued from that ancient seat of learning.
Such later translators w^re, however, usually less influ-
ential, and at the end of the thirteenth century, we may
say that the period of important translations was rapidly
closing.

§ 5. Content of Mediaeval Science. The Astrological Clue

We have now to turn to the actual material thus
conveyed to Latin Christendom. It differed rather in
degree than in kind from that of the earlier Dark Age
and from that of the age of Arabian infiltration. The
systems differed in the extent to which certain logical
conclusions from the premises provided were pushed, and
in the amount to which each was influenced by certain
theological conceptions.

In the late classical age there had developed the Stoic
system of thought, which divided with Neoplatonism
and Epicureanism all the more philosophical minds of the
ancient world. This Stoic philosophy assumed that man's
fate was determined by an interplay of forces, the nature
and character of which were, in theory at least, completely
knowable. The microcosm, man, reflected the macrocosm,
the great world that lay around him. But how and to
what extent did the one reflect the other ? In seeking to
determine these points Stoicism, like Neoplatonism and
the other philosophical systems of the classical twilight,
gleaned from many sources material which it passed on

THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN 133

in a corrupted state to the Latin West. In a somewhat
less imperfect form such material lingered for centuries
in the Byzantine East until, with the great outburst of
Islam, it was caught up and elaborated by the Arabic
culture. Thus elaborated, it was sent forth a second
time to Latin Europe by the process of infiltration and
translation.

The astrological conceptions of the Stoics and of the
later Christian ages drew both on Plato and on Aristotle.
The hylozoism of the Timaeus, the doctrine that the
universe itself and the matter of which it is composed is
living, gave a suggestive outline to the hypothesis of the
parallelism of the outer and inner universe. But the
main details, on which the hypothesis was based, were
drawn from Aristotle, whose views or supposed views as
to the structure of the universe formed the framework on
which the whole of mediaeval science from the thirteenth
century onward was built. Especially Aristotle's con-
ception of the stars as living things, of a nature higher and
nobler than that of any substance or being in the spheres
below, was a point of departure from which the influence
of the heavenly bodies over human destinies might be
developed. Changes undergone by bodies on the earth
below — all phenomena in fact — were held to be controlled
by parallel movements in the heavens above.

The theory carried the matter farther. Taking its
clue from the Aristotelian conception of the ' perfection '
of the circle among geometrical figures, it distinguished
the perfect, regular, circular motion of the fixed stars
from the imperfect, irregular, linear motion of the
planets. The fixed stars, moving regularly in a circle,
controlled the ordered course of nature, the events that
proceeded in recurring, manifest, and unalterable rounds,
such as winter and summer, night and day, growth and
decay. The planets, on the other hand, erratic or at

134 THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN

least errant in their movements, governed the more
variable and less easily ascertainable events in the world
around and within us, the happenings that make life the
uncertain, hopeful, dangerous, happy thing it is. It was
to the ascertainment of the factors governing this kaleido-
scope of life that astrology set itself. The general outline
was fixed, death in the end was sure, and, to the believing
Christian, life after it. But there was a great uncertain
zone between the sure and the unsure that might be pre-
dicted and perhaps avoided, or, if not avoided, its worst
consequences abated. It was to this process of insurance
that the astrologer set himself, and his task remained the
same throughout the Middle Ages. In this hope, savoir
afin de prevoir, the mediaeval astrologer was at one with
the modern scientist.

In the earlier Middle Ages, however, as in the earliest
Christian centuries, the world was but God's footstool,
and all its phenomena were far less worthy of study than
were the things of religion. In the view of many patristic
writers the study of the stars was likely to lead to indiffer-
ence to Him that sitteth above the heavens. This is the
general attitude of the fourth and fifth centuries, set
forth for instance by Augustine, who speaks of 'those
impostors the mathematicians [i.e. astrologers] . . . who
use no sacrifice, nor pray to any spirit for their divinations,
which arts Christian and true piety consistently rejects
and condemns '.

By the sixth and seventh centuries, however, the
Church had come to terms with astrology, and Isidore
regards it as, in part at least, a legitimate science. He
distinguishes, however, between natural and superstitious
astrology. The latter is ' the science practised by the
mathematici who read prophecies in the heavens, and
place the twelve constellations [of the Zodiac] as rulers
over the members of man's body and soul, and predict

THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN 135

the nativities and dispositions of men by the courses of
the stars '. Nevertheless Isidore accepts many of the
conclusions of astrology. He advises physicians to study
it, and he ascribes to the moon an influence over plant
and animal life and control over the humours of man,
while he accepts without question the influence of the
dog-star and of comets. He is followed by the other
Dark Age writers on natural knowledge, who accept
successively more and more astrological doctrine.

With the advent of the Arabian learning the matter
was carried farther, and astrology became the central
interest. It retained this position until the triumph of
the experimental method in the seventeenth century.
We cannot here follow the details of the developed
astrological scheme. It is enough for our purpose to have
observed that the general material law which it implies
had become widely accepted in the Middle Ages, and to
have traced its passage from antiquity and from the
Orient into the thought of the West and of the period of
which we are treating.

Especial attention was always paid to the zodiacal signs
and to the planets. Each zodiacal sign was held to
govern or to have special influence on some region of the
body, and each of the planets was held to influence
a special organ. The supposed relations of zodiacal signs,
planets, and bodily parts and organs, together with their
power to produce disease, had been set forth in such late
Latin writers as Firmicus Maternus (c. 330) and Avienus
(c. 380) and in innumerable Greek texts. This belief,
conveyed to the Dark Age, but much corrupted and
attenuated during its course, was brought back again to
the West, reinforced and developed, in translations from
the Arabic during the scholastic period which followed.

136 THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN

§ 6. Scholasticism and Science

Doctrine of this type received into Europe was stamped
with the special form of Western thought. Now, it was
characteristic of the mediaeval Western thinker that he
sought always a complete scheme of things. He was not
content to separate, as we do, one department of know-
ledge or one class of phenomena, and consider it in and
by itself. Still less would he have held it a virtue to
become a specialist, to limit his outlook to one department
with the object of increasing the sum of knowledge in it.

His universe, it must be remembered, so far as it was
material, was limited. The outer limit was the primum
mobile, the outermost of the concentric spheres of which
the Aristotelian world was composed. Of the structure
and nature of all within the sphere of the primum mobile
he had been provided with a definite scheme. The self-
appointed task of mediaeval science was to elaborate that
scheme in connexion with the moral world. This was
first especially undertaken by mystical writers working
under the stimulus of the new Arabian influence. Such
authors as Hugh of St. Victor (1095-1141), who drew on the
earlier and more vague Arabian rumours, Bernard Sylves-
tris (c. 1150), who relied on Hermann the Cripple (1013-
1054), and Hildegard (1098-1180), who was influenced by
Bernard Sylvestris and by other Arabicized writings, all
produced most elaborate mystical schemes based on the
doctrine of the macrocosm and microcosm. These
schemes took into account the form of the world and of
man as derived from Arabian sources, and read into
each relationship a spiritual meaning. For such an
attitude of mind there could be no ultimate distinction
between physical events, moral truths, and spiritual
experiences. In their fusion of the internal and external
universe these my.stics have much in common with the

THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN 137

mystics of all ages. The culmination of the process, so
far as our period is concerned, is reached with Dante
(1265-1321).

But with the thirteenth century new currents of
thought set in. Arabian science had at last been won,
the scientific works of Aristotle were becoming accessible
and gradually entering the curriculum, the universities
were firmly established, and there were the beginnings of
a knowledge of Greek. A contemporary religious move-
ment of vast importance was the foundation of the
mendicant religious orders the acti\dties of which largely
replaced those of the monastic Benedictines. Among
these new orders were two that specially influenced the
Universities, the Dominicans or Black Friars founded at
Toulouse in 1215 by the austere and orthodox Doininic
(1170-1221) and the Franciscans or Grey Friars founded
in 1209 by the gentle and loving Francis of Assisi. The
contributions of the Carmelites or White Friars and the
Hermits or Austin (Augustinian) Friars were less weighty.
The name of .Dominic is associated with the terrible
extermination of the Albigenses, and the Dominicans
(the Domini canes, hounds of the Lord) set themselves
to the strengthening of the doctrine of the Church and to
the extirpation of error. The work of the Franciscans
led up more clearly to the scientific revival. During the
thirteenth century these two orders provided most of
the great university teachers, who occupied themselves
in marshalling the new knowledge and making it more
accessible. Alexander of Hales (d. 1245) and Robert
Grosseteste (d. 1253) were Franciscans, Albertus Magnus
(1206-1280) and St. Thomas Aquinas (1227-1274) were
Dominicans.

A foremost influence in the revival was the recovery
of the writings of Aristotle. If was the interpretation
of these works by a few great thinkers that gave to

138 THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN

Scholasticism its essential character. Thus it is that the
history of the recovery of the Aristotelian corpus has been
a main theme of writers on mediaeval thought for over
a century. The first scholastic to be acquainted with
the whole works of Aristotle was Alexander of Hales.
Albert was the first who reduced the whole philosophy of
Aristotle to systematic order with constant reference to
the Arabian commentators, while Aquinas remodelled the
Aristotelian philosophy in accordance with the require-
ments of ecclesiastical doctrine. As time went on, the
works of Aristotle, at first represented in translations
from Arabic, gradually became accessible in renderings
direct from the Greek. A very important agent in this
process was the Dominican William of Moerbeke (d. 1286).
It is remarkable that this process of codifying the new
knowledge, involving as it did a rapid development in
the whole mental life, did not early develop a more
passionate and more conscious faith in the reality and
value of progress in knowledge. The test of such faith,
so far as nature is concerned, must be the direct appeal to
nature. Yet there is very little evidence of direct observa-
tion of nature in the great physical encyclopaedias of the
thirteenth century, such as those of the Augustinian
Alexander of Neckam (1157-1217), the Dominican Vincent
de Beauvais (1190-1264), or the Franciscan Bartholomew
of England [c. 1260). The fact is that the "mediaeval mind
was obsessed with the idea of the world as mortal,
destructible, finite, and therefore completely knowable
both in space and in time. Thus the motive for detailed
research, in our modern sense of the word, was hardly
present. One great Islamic philosopher there was,
Averroes (Ibn Roschd, d. 1198), who took an opposite
view. His works were, available in Latin, but the great
ecclesiastics set their face against him, and his theories
were adopted by few but Jews.

THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN 139

The mediaeval world thus knew nothing of that infinite
sea of experience on which the man of science nowadays
launches his bark in adventurous exploration. The task
of the writers of these encyclopaedias was rather to give
a general outline of knowledge, to set forth such a survey
of the universe as would be in accord with spiritual truth.
The framework on which this encyclopaedic scheme was
built was Aristotle, largely as conveyed by his Arabic
commentator Averroes, the philosopher whom the heads
of the Church had condemned. Yet it is an amusing
reflection on the incompleteness of all philosophical
systems that Albert (1206-1280), who perhaps more than
any man was responsible for the scholastic world-system,
was among the very few mediaeval writers who were real
observers of nature. It is, after all, in the very essence
of the human animal to love the world around it and to
watch its creatures. Naturam expellas furca tamen usque
recurret. Albert, scholastic of the scholastics, drowned in
erudition and the most learned man of his time, has left
us evidence in his great works on natural history that the
scientific spirit was beginning to awake. As an inde-
pendent observer he is not altogether contemptible, and
this element in him marks the new dawn which we trace
more clearly in his successors.

§ 7. The Daisjn of Modern Science. Roger Bacon

Thus the best of the systematizers among the schoolmen
were leading on to the direct observation of nature.
Contemporary with Albert (1206-1280) and Aquinas
(1227-1274) were several remarkable scholastic writers
who form the earliest group with whom the conscious
advancement of knowledge was a permanent interest.
These men were the first consciously forward-looking
scientific thinkers since the fourth century. Perhaps the
most arresting of them was Robert Grosseteste (c. 1175-

140 THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN

1253), Bishop of Lincoln. Grosseteste determined the
main direction of physical investigation in the thirteenth
century by his work on Optics. He knows something of
the action of mirrors and of the nature of lenses. It would
appear that he had actually experimented with lenses, and
many of the optical ideas of Roger Bacon were taken
straight from his master. The main Arabian source of
Grosseteste was a Latin translation of the mathematical
work of Alhazen of Bazra (965-1038). Another important
optical writer whom Alhazen deeply influenced was the
Pole Witelo (fl. 1270), an acute mathematical investigator
who worked in northern Italy. Roger Bacon was largely
dependent on Witelo.

The opposition between the followers of Dominic and of
Francis was paralleled by certain very remarkable develop-
ments among the Franciscans themselves. There is no
stranger and more impressive chapter in the whole history .
of thought than that of the early history of the Francis-
cans. Within the memory of men who had known the
saintly founder of the order (1181-1226), the 'penitents of
Assisi', the 'friars minor', sworn as 'jongleurs of God' to
bring Christ cheerfully to the humblest and the meanest,
sworn to possess nothing, to earn their bread from day to
day by the work of their own hands, or at need by begging,
forbidden to lay by store or to accumulate capital, this
order of humble servants of Christ had produced a series
of monumental and scholarly intellects. These men not
only initiated what bid fair to be a renaissance of science
and letters, but also aided in the formation of the bulwark
which long resisted the very movement that thus ema-
nated from the order itself. To both parties the English
Franciscan houses contributed an overwhelming share.
To the former, or scientific party, as we may call it,
belonged Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln (c. 1175-
1253), John Pecham, Archbishop of Canterbury (d. 1292),

THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN 141

the elusive Adam Marsh (d. 1257), and above all Roger
Bacon (1214-1294). To the latter or theological party
are attached the names of Alexander of Hales (d. 1245),
Duns Scotus (1265 ?-i3o8 ?), and William of Ockham

(d. 1349)-
The primar}' inspirer of the scientific movement was

the great Bishop of Lincoln himself, as we learn from his
pupil Roger. ' Nobody ', says Bacon, ' can attain to
proficiency in the science of mathematics by the method
hitherto known unless he devotes to its study thirty or
forty years, . . . and that is the reason why so few study
that science. . . . Yet there were found some famous men,
as Robert [Grosseteste] Bishop of Lincoln, and Adam
Marsh, and some others, who knew how by the power of
mathematics to unfold the causes of all things and to give
a sufficient explanation of human and divine phenomena.
The assurance of this fact is to be found in the ^^Titings
of those great men, as, for instance, in their works on the
impression [of the elements], on the rainbow and the
comets, on the sphere, and on other questions apper-
taining both to theolog}' and to natural philosophy.'
The work of this remarkable group of Franciscans at
Oxford extended beyond the sciences to language and
literature. There was thus the beginning of a real renais-
sance of Greek letters which died an early death. After
Roger Bacon's death the scientific re\ival also languished
imtil recalled to life by a second re\ival of a later century.

It may be convenient to give a summary of the scientific
achievements of Roger Bacon, the greatest of the Francis-
can group and the first man of science in the modem sense.

I. He attempted to set forth a system of natural
knowledge. This system was far in advance of his time,
and its basis was observation and experiment. He was
clearly the first man in modem Europe of whom this can
be said.

142 THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN

2. He was the first to see the need for the accurate
study of foreign and ancient languages. He attempted
grammars of Greek and Hebrew along definite scientific
lines. He also projected a grammar of Arabic. Moreover,
he laid down those lines of textual criticism which have
only been developed within the last century.

3. He not only discussed the nature of the experimental
method, but was himself an experimenter. His writings
are important for the development of the following
sciences :

{a) Optics. His work on this subject was a text-book
for the next two centuries. He saw the importance of
lenses and concave mirrors, and showed a grasp of the
mathematical principles of optics. He described a system
equivalent to a two-lens apparatus, and there is trust-
worthy evidence that he actually used a compound
system of lenses equivalent to a telescope.

(b) Astronomy was Bacon's perpetual interest. He
spent the best part of twenty years in the construction
of astronomical tables. His letter to the Pope in favour of
the correction of the calendar, though unsuccessful in his
own day, was borrowed and reborrowed, and finally, at
third-hand, produced the Gregorian correction.

(c) Geography. He was the first systematic geographer
of the Middle Ages. He gave a systematic description of
Europe, Asia, and part of Africa. He collected first-hand
evidence from travellers in all these continents. His
arguments as to the size and sphericity of the earth were
among those that influenced Columbus.

(d) Mechanical Science. Suggestions by him include
the automatic propulsion of vehicles and vessels. He
records a plan for a flying machine.

{e) Chemistry. The chemical knowledge of his time
was systematized in his tracts. His description of the
composition and manufacture of gunpowder is the earliest

THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN 143

that has reached us. It is clear that he had worked out
for himself some of the chemistry of the subject.

(/) Mathematics. His insistence on the supreme value
of mathematics as a foundation for education recalls the
attitude of Plato. It was an insistence that the method
of thought was at least as important as its content.

Summed up, his legacy to thought may be regarded as
accuracy of method, criticism of authority, and reliance
on experiment — the pillars of modern science.^

Bacon was not an isolated phenomenon, but an impor-
tant link in the chain of scientific development. But
during the century after Bacon, though his mathematical
and philosophical works were still studied in the schools,
the greatest advances were to be found among the physi-
cians. Of medical men the last half of the thirteenth and
the first half of the fourteenth century exhibit an especially
brilliant group. Bologna had possessed a medical school
since the twelfth century, and had inherited the learning
of Salerno. At Bologna had worked Hugh of Lucca
(d. 1252?) and his son or pupil Theodoric (1206-1298).
Here surgery may be said to have been born again with
the practice of Roland of Parma (c. 1250), the successor
and faithful follower of Roger of Salerno (c. 1220). At
Bologna, above all, William of Saliceto (1201-1280) estab-
lished a practical method of anatomization which was
inherited by Mondino da Luzzi (1276-1328), whose work
based on translations from the Arabic text of Avicenna
became the general anatomical text-book of the later
Middle Ages. By the fourteenth century the practice of
dissection of the human body had become well recognized.

1 It is not inappropriate to point out here that this country
has not yet been able to raise funds for a national edition
of the writings of its first man of science. Many of the works of
Roger still remain unpublished. The writer of this article will be
glad to receive contributions for this object.

144 THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN

At the end of the thirteenth century the ancient
foundation of the medical school of Montpellier was
coming to the fore. The Catalan Arnald of Villanova
(1235-1311), one of the most remarkable personalities of
mediaeval medicine, taught there. Arnald was not only
one of the earliest exponents of the Hippocratic method
of observing and carefully recording symptoms of actual
cases of disease, but he also deeply influenced alchemy.
That study was effectively of Arabian origin so far as the
modern world is concerned. It begins in 1144 with the
translation into Latin from Arabic by Robert of Chester
of the Dc compositionc alchcmiac which Morienus Romanus,
a contemporary hermit of Jerusalem, had ' edited for
Calid, king of the Egyptians '. Alchemy had taken its
rise with a real effort to understand the properties of
metals, prompted by the hope of transmuting the baser
into the more precious. Like other mediaeval studies,
it became linked with astrology, and the ' seven metals '
were each of them controlled or influenced by the ' seven
planets ' much in the same way as were the organs of
the human body. Of such ideas Arnald was a prolific
exponent. He had a knowledge of both Arabic and
Hebrew. A student at Naples and Salerno, a traveller
in Italy, Sicily, France, and Spain, he served as medical
adviser to the Papal Curia both at Rome and Avignon,
and was employed as ambassador on more than one
special mission. Arnald influenced politics no less than
learning, and ended his adventurous life at sea. A char-
acter somewhat similar to Arnald was the Majorcan
Raymond Lull (1235-13 13), who was learned in oriental
languages and deeply influenced Alchemy.

THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN 145

§ 8. Humanism

In outlook no less remarkable than Arnald was the
heretical Peter of Abano (1250-c. 13 18). He earned
a reputation as a magician, and his natural death
saved him from the hands of the Inquisition. His
body is said to have been exhumed and burned.
Peter — who was a most voluminous writer — had a know-
ledge of Greek, acquired at Constantinople, and he
translated works from that language. He was a professor
at the University of Paris and later at Padua in the
generation which followed that in which the newly won
Aristotehan works on physics had entered the curriculum.
His greatest and best-known work, the Conciliator,
expresses his mediation between the now commencing
humanistic Greek school and the Arabists. From that
work we learn that he had come into contact with the
great traveller Marco Polo {c. 1254-1324). Among the
views of Peter of Abano that are most worth record may
be mentioned his statements that the air has weight, that
the brain is the source of the nerves and the heart of the
vessels — all ideas that were novel in his time. He made
a remarkably accurate measure of the length of the year
as 365 days, 6 hours, 4 minutes.

The second half of the fourteenth century, perhaps
owing to social disturbance and notably to the effects of
the Black Death (1347-1349), shows a distinct falling off
in the intellectual advance. In medicine the most note-
worthy name is that of Guy de Chauliac of Montpellier
(1300-1370), the most influential of all the mediaeval
surgeons. Outside the ranks of the physicians the
most striking figure in fourteenth-century science is
probably the French Jewish philosopher Levi ben Gerson
(1288-1344). His work on astronomy was important as
illustrating the consciousness of a growing discontent with
the Ptolemaic system of the universe.

K

146 THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN

With the fourteenth century appeared too a great move-
ment, the hand of which is still heavy on our own day.
Humanism was born. Historians have perhaps linked the
humanistic movement too intimately with a knowledge of
the Greek language. Instances of knowledge of that
language in the West can, however, be adduced far back
into the Dark Ages (e. g. John Scot Erigena, c. 850), while
many of the greatest of the humanists, including Petrarch
himself (1304-1374), were without such knowledge. It is
worth noting too, as linking humanism with the Middle
Ages, that Petrarch's epistolary style was still moulded on
St. Augustine rather than on Cicero.

The backward-looking habit, strong in man from his
nature and strengthened by the teaching of the Christian
religion, was yet further enforced by the humanists.
From Petrarch onward they were ever brooding on the
past that had been Greece and Rome. Yet even from
the first, the humanists had the sensation too of being
builders, so that their glance was at times turned away
from the past and towards what was to come, nay, what
was in the act of becoming. Roger Bacon and a few
isolated souls had had this double vision, but for a whole
school to possess it was something new. In his Book of
memorable things Petrarch says outright, 'Here stand
I as though on a frontier that divides two peoples,
looking both to the past and to the future '. While
studying the classics some of these very men were indeed
visibly forging new intellectual weapons, those national
vernaculars that have made modern literature and
thought possible. It is no mere coincidence that Boccaccio
(1313-1375), friend and contemporary of Petrarch, should
have been at once the first modern literary man to
study Greek and the first great master of Italian prose.

We must note, however, that save for reverence for the
one supreme poet in their own tongue, Dante (1265-1321),

THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN 147

the backward gaze of the ItaHan humanist is always
fixed on the more distant classical past, not on the
nearer period that came to be regarded as a yawning
chasm, an abyss across which he sought to reach back
to the thought of antiquity. To him the Middle Ages
seemed real enough and dark enough. It stood for the
period during which the sweet Greek literature had been
ignored. Even in this new age it could be understood
by few except in Latin dress, and the work of translation
remained somewhat of a specialist's occupation. To the
end of the fifteenth century an effective knowledge of
Greek continued to be a rarity even among scholars, and
we may point to some of the most important teachers of
the sixteenth century who were still without it.

The great influence of the masterpieces of Greece,
therefore, was then as now something indirect, often
conveyed through translators and special interpreters,
a subtle thing that influenced men's way of think-
ing rather than the actual content of their minds.
The mere capacity for translation from the Greek goes
back, as we have seen, to the eleventh century, the
ninth century, or even beyond. It can therefore hardly
have been simply the discovery of the actual Greek
language which brought about the revival of letters.
But if the knowledge of Greek goes back so far, can
we speak of a real Renaissance at all ? How can we
account for the change of heart that came over the world
when humanism was born ? Or is that change of heart
but an illusion, a difference of degree rather than of kind
in a world where everything is in a state of becoming ?

Some answer to this absorbing question we may glean
by comparing the earlier Greek works which came to the
West to those of later advent. The general character of
the earlier translations was determined by the outlook
of a world becoming ever more deeply Arabicized. Islam,

K 2

148 THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN

the inheritor of antiquity, entered into the enjoyment
of its legacy with great spirit, but with a taste aheady
fixed. The Hterary and artistic works were debarred by
a, definite theological standpoint. Homer and Hesiod,
Sophocles and Euripides, Greek Art and Greek Archi-
tecture were chapters as closed and forbidden to Islam
as to early Christian Europe. It was the philosophical,
the scientific, the mathematical, the medical works that
made an appeal. These gave an illusory impression of
completeness to life with which Islam long rested content.
It was these very works that were the first to be rendered
into Latin from the Arabic, and the Latin taste being thus
determined it was similar works that were the first to be
turned into Latin direct from the Greek.

Such material — and it is bulky and intricate enough —
represents the Western access to Greek wisdom before the
fourteenth century. It does not lack variety, but it lacks
life. They err who think the discovery of the humanists
was the Greek language — here the humanists were but
followers where others had been pioneers. It is something
much deeper and more fundamental which they have
handed on to us, something the nature of which they
hardly knew and the meaning of which they missed in
their enthusiasm. The humanists discovered the literary
works of antiquity. In them they became absorbed to the
exclusion of all else. The humanist eagerness passed into
a literary vogue, and long cast the blight of a purely literary
education on the modern world. The barren striving after
form as distinct from substance, the miserable and slavish
imitativeness that is no flattery but an insult to its model,
these features, exhibited typically in the literature of the
late Empire, were repeated by the humanists as they have
been often repeated in modern times.

The humanist then did not give us the knowledge of
a language nor did he even give an insight into the life

THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN 149

of antiquity. What the humanist really gave was
a something which, added to the heritage already there,
made possible a completer reconstruction of the Greek
spirit. That reconstruction, indeed, he was never able to
make ; it was the succeeding generations that made it
for themselves. With that reconstruction Greece lived
again, the modern world was ushered in, and modern
science, art, literature, and philosophy were born. It is
an illuminating reflection and one not without bearing
on our present state that both the mediaeval heritage of
Greek science and the Renaissance heritage of Greek
literature proved barren by themselves. It was not until
the one fertilized the other that there was real and vital
growth. Modern thought, modern science, modern art,
and modern letters are the offspring of that union.

§ 9. The Science of the Renaissance

The humanists as a class did not exhibit great sympathy
with the scientific outlook. Their interests were literary
and their peculiar aversion was the Arabist tendency
of the Middle Ages that they were leaving behind. That
Arabist tendency was very largely expressed in the ancient
scientific and philosophical themes, some of which we
have discussed in outline. In the movement initiated by
Roger Bacon in the thirteenth century a new element
had been introduced. That movement had fallen into the
background after Roger's death. It had not entirely died,
but it had become 'quietist' — if the expression may be
used in this connexion — a part of the seldom-expressed
faith of a small band of philosophically-minded recluses.
Faith in the appeal to nature was at last to find more open
expression. With the fifteenth century, discontent with
the entire mediaeval scientific scheme becomes more
generally obvious, and we perceive a first hint of the idea

150 THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN

that it may be possible to adjust theory by means of
experiment.

The earhest suggestion is made by a man of high
genius and scholarship, the Rhinelander Nicholas of Cues
(1401-1464), who became a cardinal and made a fruitless
attempt to reform the calendar. The philosophical basis
of the experimental suggestion of Nicholas of Cues is set
forth in his book De docta ignorantia, which has nothing
to do with the absurdity of erudition, as its name might
be thought to imply, but concerns itself with acknow-
ledged ignorance, i. e. with the inability of the human
mind to conceive the infinite. His theoretical views led
him to a belief that the earth is moving, though he
attained to no genuine heliocentric theory. He records
a careful experiment on a growing plant — afterward
pirated by the seventeenth-century writer van Helmont
(1577-1644) — proving that it absorbs something of weight
from the air. This is the first biological experiment
of modern times, and incideAtally the first formal
proof that the air has weight. In another work, De
staticis experimentis, Nicholas shows that he knew how to
apply the experimental method in detail, and he suggests
in outline many investigations which were not taken in
hand until the time of Galileo 150 years later.

The tradition of the combination of scholarship and
observation that Nicholas had started was carried on by
several astronomers in the second half of the fifteenth
century. For part of this work we are indebted to the
far-sightedness of another Cardinal, Johannes Bessarion
(1389-1472), a Greek by birth, who was equally anxious
to aid the progress of astronomical knowledge and to
diffuse Greek literature in the West. Bessarion's friend-
ship, extended to the two German astronomers Purbach
and Regiomontanus, made possible their work which
formed the foundation of that of Copernicus.

THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN 151

George Purbach (1423-1461) followed with great avidity
the study of Ptolemy. He died prematurely and had only
translations from the Arabic on which to base his work.
He improved on his original, however, by calculating
a table for every 10 minutes, using sines instead of chords.

Johannes Miiller (1436-1476) of Konigsberg {= King's
mountain), usually known from his birthplace as Regio-
montanus, though his life was hardly longer than that of
Purbach, had the good fortune to work on Greek originals.
He produced the first systematic treatise on trigonometry
and a table of sines for every minute and of tangents for
every degree. He edited too the Epitome of Ptolemy
which Purbach had left behind him in an imperfect state.
He died at Rome, whither he had been summoned by
the Pope to aid in the long-contemplated reform of the
Calendar. The important works of Regiomontanus were
only published after his death. His name has become
associated with an ill-founded legend that he taught the
heliocentric view of the solar system before Copernicus.
The statement has been made of several other contem-
poraries, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) among them.
It has been verified, however, for only one of them
(Celio Calcagnini, 1479-1541), who perhaps borrowed the
idea from Copernicus.

The most remarkable philosophical teacher of the
Renaissance was perhaps Pietro Pomponazzi (1462-1525),
a writer who, in many respects, foreshadows the new
period and the work of its great philosopher Francis
Bacon. Pomponazzi was a physician who became a pro-
fessor of philosophy and devoted himself to the exposition
of what he believed to be the teaching of Aristotle.
Though incapable of interpreting Aristotle to his hearers
from the original Greek, Pomponazzi was yet a very
spirited and original teacher, of great independence of
thought. He was wholly divorced from the religion of his

152 THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN

day, and he died repudiating the hope of Christianity.
But Pomponazzi represents a movement of far more
importance than any mere school of Aristotehan inter-
pretation. He stands for Naturalism, for the attempt to
explain the World and all that it contains on the basis
of known or discoverable laws. That many of the laws
considered by him as demonstrated now seem absurdities,
that on insufficient evidence he regarded certain earthly
events as related to the movements of the heavenly
bodies with the same assurance that we now ascribe
them to climate or meteorological conditions, these are
errors in the application of his method that need not
affect our judgement of the importance of his philosophical
position.

The Renaissance of Letters was contemporary with the
Renaissance of Art, and the artists had also their reaction
upon scientific thought. The great painters had begun
to study nature more closely. Antonio Pollaiuolo (1429-
1498) and Andrea del Verrocchio^ (1435-1488), among
others, had made careful investigations of surface anatomy,
while the exquisite figures of plants in the pictures of
Sandro Botticelli (1444-1510) mark him out as a very
accurate observer. There was, however, one artist of the
time who takes a quite peculiar place among students
of nature. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) stands for
many as the turning-point of the Renaissance into modern
times.

It would be impossible to give in a paragraph the
titles to fame of one of the very greatest geniuses that
the human race has produced. The marvellous rapidity
of his insight, the sureness of his intuitions, and his
extreme versatility made earlier students place Leonardo
in an isolated and almost non-human position. His very
limitations, moreover, while they have increased the
apparent gulf which separates him from other men, have

1

THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN 153

hampered the comprehension of his mind. Isolated he
remains by the loftiness of his genius, but more prolonged
, study has revealed many of the sources of his knowledge
and some of his methods of work.

To understand anything of Leonardo's scientific work
and of its fate we must however recognize his defects.
Leonardo's great limitation was on the literary and
linguistic side. He had no gift for language and did not
acquire even an elementary knowledge of Latin till well
on in life. He had no power of literary expression. The
language that he employs is that of a Florentine shop-
keeper of the lower class. He created no great phrase or
saying. In his note-books his sentences are usually
ungrammatical and often unfinished. Even allowing for
the purely private nature of these memoranda, it is yet
fairly evident that in a literary sense he was incoherent.
The very rush of his ideas seems to have obstructed the
natural channels of their expression. Of him his biographer
Vasari quotes with admirable point the lines of Petrarch :

E r amor di saper che m' ha si acceso
Che r opera e retardato dal desio.

My love of knowledge so inflamed me

That my work was retarded by my very desire.

With what we now know of Leonardo the question may
reasonably be raised whether his art did, in fact, consume
the major part of his energy and his thoughts. Among
the great artists he was notorious for the smallness of his
output and for the extreme slowness with which he
worked. On the other hand, he left behind him a vast
mass of papers, about 5,000 leaves of which have survived.
These contain evidence not only of a unique scientific
insight but of a tireless industry which is almost incredible.
He covers the whole field of science from mathematics to
physiology, and there is nothing that he touches which

154 THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN

he does not illuminate. To give but a few scattered
instances : he presents us not only with a model of
a flying machine but with an invention of a helicopter,
and he analyses the nature of flight of birds in a way
that has only been surpassed during the last few years;
he has a design for a parabolic compass on a principle that
was not adopted till late in the seventeenth century; he
hints at a heliocentric view of the world ; he has admirable
drawings of quick-firing and breech-loading guns ; he has
mastered the theoretical principles of perspective; he
sets forth the homologies of the vertebrate skeleton ; he
has passages which suggest the laws of motion; and
his anatomical and embryological standpoint was not
passed in certain respects for hundreds of years.

Leonardo may be linked with his time by tracing some
of his scientific ideas back to his predecessors. The break
in continuity is much more marked if we seek to trace
them forwards. He had indeed very little influence on
the science of the age which immediately followed him.
Save in certain ideas and drawings of a few sixteenth-
century anatomists leading on to Vesahus, the scientific
work of Leonardo was without effect until modern times.
If Leonardo be regarded as the topmost peak of the
Renaissance, that peak, continuous with a long range of
mighty mountains on one side, terminates in an almost
sheer precipice on the other.

Before we quite part with the Renaissance we must
consider another remarkable character whose life-course
was almost as isolated and aberrant as that of Leonardo.
The Swiss writer Aurelius Philippus Theophrastus Bom-
bastus von Hohenheim, commonly known as Paracelsus
(1493-1541), was a person of violent, dramatic and
repellent temper, a born rebel whose iconoclasm doubtless
did something to deter men from the worship of the old
idols. His symbolic act of burning the works both of the

THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN 155

Greek Galen and of the Arab Avicenna, as an introduction
to his lecture course at Basel, typified the position of the
independent investigators of the generation that imme-
diately followed him. A writer of excessive obscurity, an
obscurity of language, of form, and of thought, very few
have claimed the privilege of penetrating to his full mean-
ing, and those few have nearly all been infeeted with some
of the defect of expression from which the master suffered.
There is, however, a general agreement among the learned
and nebulous band of Paracelsists that their hero did
indeed foreshadow the ' new instauration '. His aim was
to see the world in the 'Light of Nature'. That hght of
his is dimmed for us because of his extreme gullibility in
some matters, his violence and self-contradiction in others,
and the involved and mystical presentment in all.
'Nature' contained for him the influence of the stars
upon the lives of men and many other mysterious pheno-
mena then generally credited. He believed still in a
relation of microcosm and macrocosm — as in a residual
sense we all do — but his free modification of that theory
paved the way for its rejection in the generation which
followed.

§ 10. The Great Instauration

Francis Bacon (i 561-1620), coming at the very end of
our period, grasped the nature of the truth that had been
struggling to birth since the days of his great namesake.
He called it the Instauratio Magna, the great restoration.
Of him a modern enthusiast for research (Mark Pattison)
has written, 'the great instaurator of all knowledge, in
preaching the necessity of altering the whole method of
knowing included the method of " teaching to know " '.
Of the reformers of the method of teaching to know,
two stand at the very threshold of the new era, Nicholas
Copernicus and Andreas Vesalius.

156 THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN

The Pole Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543), despite the
vast change that was introduced in his name into men's
ideas, was himself more in the line of such comparatively
conservative scholars as Nicholas of Cues and Regio-
montanus than the more revolutionary Leonardo or
Paracelsus. No man was ever more 'academic', and he
continued to «attend university courses until over thirty
years of age. He studied at several Italian universities,
giving attention to classics, mathematics, astronomy,
medicine, law, and theology. His skill in painting sug-
gests that he had that type of visualizing imagination
frequently associated with scientific power.

Copernicus was not, however, a first-hand observer on
any large scale. He had, it is true, taken a number of
observations of eclipses and oppositions of planets, but for
the most part his results were obtained in the study. He
tells us that he was induced to seek a new theory of the
heavenly bodies by finding that m^athematicians differed
among themselves on this subject. He had counted up
the various motions of the heavenly bodies involved in the
old system and concluded that some essential factor had
been missed. He therefore turned to antiquity and learned
from Cicero — who quotes Hiketas — and Plutarch that some
among the ancients were of the same opinion.

* Occasioned by this,' he says, ' I decided to try whether,
on the assumption of some motion of the earth, better
explanations of the revolutions of the heavenly spheres
might not be found. Thus assuming the motions which
I attribute to the earth ... I have found that when
the motions of the other planets are referred to the
circulation of the earth and are computed for the revolu-
tion of each star, not only do the phenomena necessarily
follow therefrom, but the order and magnitude of the
stars and of all their orbs and the heaven itself are so
connected that in no part can anything be transposed
without confusion to the rest and to the whole universe.'

THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN 157

In this new scheme the ancient theory of the uniform
circular motion of the heavenly bodies was still retained.
Since it involved the retention of the theory of epicycles
as well as the displacement of the sun from the true
centre of the planetary orbs, the simplicity of the scheme
was only apparent and comparative.

Vesalius (1514-1564) was in almost every respect a con-
trast to Copernicus. Young, ardent and combative, his
life's work was wellnigh complete at twenty-eight, and its
effective and creative part was crowded into the four years
that preceded the publication of the Fahrica in 1543. The
contents of that great work were delivered in the form of
lecture-demonstrations to crowded audiences. It contains
an enormous number of first-hand observations which
must have been accumulated while working under the
most extreme pressure. Vigorous and fearless in the
demonstration of observed fact, Vesalius becomes more
timid and less effective in the discussion of theory, and
he leaves the Galenic physiology practically intact. He
was a man of the laboratory and lecture-room rather than
of the study, and reflection was not the source of his
power. Yet even his observations are by no means
completely free from traditional bias. Thus some of the
poses of the figures and the treatment of the skeletons
in his book have been shown to be derived from scholastic
sources, and there are anatomical structures figured by
him which are to be found in the mediaeval tradition,
but not in the human body. There are important points
which he may have derived by tradition from Leonardo
and the artist-anatomists of the previous generation.
Taken as a whole, his work is, however, one of the most
marvellous efforts of scientific observation that has ever
been launched upon the world.

A word must be said as to the point of view of Vesalius.
Nowadays the student's dissection-manual figures for

158 THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN

him the anatomy of the dead. Vesahus working in Italy
in the sixteenth century was in the midst of a country of
artists. He thinks always of the living body and seeks
to restore the anatomy of the part into its form when
living. The dramatic poses of his corpses and the land-
scape with which each is provided is no piece of idle
artistry. It is a part of his scheme. Nor does he think
so much of the actual body he is dissecting as of the idea
towards which God is tending in us all. Each body is,
as it were, one of that supreme artist's 'studies' for an
ideal and final work of art. It is the anatomist's duty to
attain as near as he can to that ideal.

The work of Vesalius was carried farther by a number
of investigators in the latter part of the sixteenth century,
but by none with greater skill and intensity than Hierony-
mus Fabricius ab Aquapendente (1537-1619), a successor
of Vesalius in the chair at Padua, where he taught for
over sixty years and where WilHam Harvey (1578-1657)
was his pupil. Fabricius was one of the most successful
and stimulating of medical teachers and he added an
enormous number of facts to the sum of anatomical and
physiological knowledge. As an investigator, however,
he lacked, like all his contemporaries, complete specula-
tive freedom. For that the time was still hardly ripe, and
his physiology was still largely Galenic. While he provided
many of the observations on which the view of the circu-
lation of the blood was built, his vision remained obscured
by the traditional outlook. It was left to his great English
pupil to enunciate the basic doctrine of modern physiology
in the next century. The grasp of Galen was weakening,
but it had not yet wholly relaxed.

The mentality of Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), the greatest
astronomer of the second half of the sixteenth century,
was not dissimilar to that of Fabricius, its greatest anato-
mist. Tycho, like Fabricius, was a first -class observer, but.

THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN 159

like him, weak and timid in drawing conclusions. By
means of newly designed but simple apparatus employed
with exquisite skill, Tycho attained an unprecedented
degree of accuracy in astronomical observation. His
records were employed later by his colleague Johann
Kepler (1571-1630). These observations aided Kepler to
purge the Copernican hypothesis of the traditional notions
concerning the movements of the heavenly bodies in
circles. The circles were replaced by ellipses and modern
astronomy was born.

The year 1600 is associated with two important events
in the histor}/ of science, which mark it out as the final
parting of the ways. In that year Giordano Bruno (1548-
1600), a profound student of the works of Nicholas of
Cues and an ardent follower of Copernicus, suffered
martyrdom at the stake. In that year William Gilbert
(1540-1603) produced his work On the magnet, on magnetic
bodies and on the earth as a great magnet, a new physiography ^
demonstrated by many arguments and experiments. The
work is the first great scientific treatise published in
England, but it is much more. It is a landmark in the
history of science as a whole. Gilbert accepts fully the
Copernican view of a heliocentric world and he speculates
fearlessly on observed conclusions. Above all, as the
title of the work tells, his views are demonstrated by
arguments and experiments. It is a distinction of which
he never loses sight, and he is careful to record exactly
and by a special device his own personal experiences.
These are clearly separated from his arguments and from
the experiences of others. The book has the form and
spirit of a modern scientific treatise.

We have now left utterly behind the Middle Ages and
all their works and ways. The old hypothesis of the

^ The word he uses is physiologia, which is best translated by
our word physiography.

i6o THE DARK AGES AND THE DAWN

macrocosm and microcosm was no longer possible to those
who had studied and understood the works of Copernicus
and Vesalius. Men no longer studied macrocosm and micro-
cosm as such, but they became physicists or physiologists,
taking each of them a separated portion of the universe for
special study. This disposition to base opinion on observa-
tion, involving separation of nature into departments,
characterizes the modern method and distinguishes it from
the mediaeval. The dawn was past and it was the risen
sun that Harvey and Galileo saluted, and in the light of
which Francis Bacon and Descartes prophesied.

Books for Reference

R. R. Steele. Mediaeval Lore, an Epitome of Science, Geography ,
&-C. London (Stock), 1893.

E. Nolan and S. A. Hirsch. The Greek Grammar of Roger Bacon
and a Fragment of his Hebrew Grammar. Cambridge (Univer-
sity Press), 1902. ^

M. Foster. Lectures on the History of Physiology during the
Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries. Cambridge
(University Press), 1901.

T. C. Allbutt. The Historical Relations of Medicine and Surgery to
the End of the Sixteenth Century. London (Macmillan), 1905.

J. L. E. Dreyer. Planetary Systems. Cambridge (University
Press), 1906.

W. P. Ker. The Dark Ages. London (Blackwood), 1911.

H. O. Taylor. The Mediaeval Mind. 2 vols. Lonodon (Mac-
millan), 191 1.

A. G. Little. Roger Bacon ; Essays contributed by Various
Writers. Oxford (Clarendon Press), igij[.

Studies in English Franciscan History. Manchester (Univer-
sity Press), 1917.

C. Singer. Studies in the History and Method of Science. Oxford
(Clarendon Press), 1921.

L. O. Wedel. Mediaeval Attitude toward Astrology. London
(Milford), 1920.

L. Thorndike. History of Magic and Experimental Science during
the First Thirteen Centuries of our Era. 2 vols. New York
(Macmillan), 1923.

The Works of Dante with translation and notes in the Temple
Classics (Dent).

VI
THE FIRST PHYSICAL SYNTHESIS

A. N. Whitehead

There are in the history of civihzation certain dates
which stand out as marking either the boundaries or the
culminations of critical epochs. It is true that no epoch
either commences, ends, or sums itself up in one definite
moment. It is brought upon the stage of reality in the
arms of its predecessor, and only yields to its successor
by reason of a slow process of transformation. Its
terminals are conventional. Wherever you choose to fix
them, you can be confronted with good reasons for an
extension or contraction of your period. But the meridian
culmination is sometimes unmistakable, and it is often
marked by some striking events which lend an almost
mystic symbolism to their exact date. Such a date is the
year 1642 of our epoch, the year in which occurred the
death of Galileo and the birth of Newton. This date
marks the centre of that period of about 100 years,
during which the scientific intellect of Europe was
framing that First Physical Synthesis which has remained
down to our own times as the basis of science. The
development of modern Europe from the world of the
Renaissance and the Reformation is unintelligible in its
unique importance without an understanding of the
achievements of these two men. The great civilizations
of Asia and of the classical times in the Mediterranean
had their epochs of artistic and literary triumph, of
religious reformation, and of active scientific speculation.
But it was the fortune of modern Europe that during the

L

i62 THE FIRST PHYSICAL SYNTHESIS

seventeenth century, amid a ferment of scientific specu-
lation, two men, one after the other, appeared, each with
a supreme gift of physical intuition, with magnificent
powers of abstract generalization, and each with sub-
sidiary endowments exactly suited to the immediate
circumstances of the scientific problem, this one a supreme
experimentalist and enough of a mathematician, and
that one a supreme mathematician and enough of an
experimentalist. Archimedes left no successor. But our
modern civilization is due to the fact that in the year
when Galileo died, Newton was born. Think for a moment
of the possible course of history supposing that the life's
work of these two men were absent. At the commence-
ment of the eighteenth century many curious and baffling
facts of physical science would have been observed,
vaguely connected by detached and obscure hypotheses.
But in the absence of a clear physical synthesis, with its
overwhelming success in the solution of problems which
from the most remote antiquity had excited attention,
the motive for the next advance would have been absent.
All epochs pass, and the scientific ferment of the seven-
teenth century would have died down. Locke's philo-
sophy would never have been written ; and Voltaire when
he visited England would have carried back to France
merely a story of expanding commerce and of the political
rivalries between aristocratic factions. Europe might
then have lacked the French intellectual movement.
But the Fates do not always offer the same gifts twice,
and it is possible that the eighteenth century might then
have prepared for the western races an intellectual sleep
of a thousand years, prosperous with the quiet slow
exploitation of the American continent, as manual labour
slowly subdued its rivers, its forests, and its prairies.
I am not concerned to deny that the result might have
been happier, for the chariot of Phoebus is a dangerous

THE FIRST PHYSICAL SYNTHESIS 163

vehicle. My only immediate thesis is that it would have
been very different.

The forms of the great works by which the minds of
Galileo and Newton are best known to us bear plain
evidence of the contrast between their situations. In
his book entitled, The Two Systems of the World in
Four Dialogues, and published in 1632, Galileo is arguing
with the past ; whilst in his Mathematical Principles of
Natural Philosophy, published in 1687, Nev/ton ignores
old adversaries and discussions, and, looking wholly to
the future, calmly enunciates definitions, principles, and
proofs which have ever since formed the basis of phvsical
science. Galileo represents the assault and Newton the
victory. There can be no doubt but that Galileo is the
better reading. It is a real flesh and blood document of
human nature which has wedged itself between the two
austere epochs of Aristotelian Logic and Applied Mathe-
matics. It was paid for also in the heart's blood of the
author.

The catastrophe happened in this way: most unfor-
tunately His Holiness, the reigning pope, in an entirely
friendly interview after the Inquisition had forbidden the
expression of Copernican opinions, made use of the
irrefutable argument that, God being omnipotent, it was
as easy for him to send the sun and the planets round the
earth as to send the earth and the planets round the sun.
How unfortunate it is that even an infallible pontiff and
the greatest of men of science, with the most earnest
desire to understand each other, cannot rid themselves
of their presuppositions. The pope was trembling on
the verge of the enunciation of the relativity of motion
and of space, and in his Dialogues there are passages in
which Galileo plainly expresses that same doctrine.
But neither of them was sufficiently aware of the full
emphasis to be laid upon that truth. Accordingly the

L 2

i64 THE FIRST PHYSICAL SYNTHESIS

next precious ten minutes of the conversation in which
Gahleo might have cleared away the httle misunder-
standing were wasted, and as a result there ensued for the
world's edification the persecution of Galileo and a clear
illustration of the limits of infallibility. The true moral
of the incident is the importance of great men keeping
their tempers. Galileo was annoyed — and very naturally
so, for it was an irritating sort of argument with which
to counter a great and saving formulation of scientific
ideas. Unfortunately he went away and put the pope's
argument into the mouth of Simplicius, the man in the
Dialogues who always advances the foolish objections.
It is welcomed in the following speech by the leading
interlocutor, Salviatus — I give it in the seventeenth-
century translation of Thomas Salusbury : ' This of yours
is admirable, and truly angelical doctrine, to which very
exactly that other accords in like manner divine, which
whilst it giveth us leave to dispute, touching the con-
stitution of the world, addeth withall (perhaps to the end
that the exercise of the minds of men might neither be
discouraged nor made bold) that we cannot find out the
works made by his hands. Let therefore the Disquisition
permitted and ordained us by God, assist us in the
knowing, and so much more admiring his greatness, by
how much less we find ourselves too dull to penetrate
the profound abysses of his infinite wisdom.'

At this point the Dialogues end. Galileo always
protested that he had meant no discourtesy. But the
pope, even if his infallibility tottered, was here assisted
by the gift of prophecy and smelt Voltaire. Anyhow in
his turn he lost his temper and afterwards remained the
bitter enemy of Galileo.

Galileo's supreme experimental genius is shown by the
way in which every hint which reached him is turned
to account and immediately made to be of importance.

THE FIRST PHYSICAL SYNTHESIS 165

He hears of the telescope as a curiosity discovered by
a Dutch optician. It might have remained a toy, but in
his hands it created a revolution. He at once thought
out the principles on which it was based, improved upon
its design so as to obviate the inversion of objects, and
immediately applied it to a systematic survey of the
heavens. The results were startling. It was not a few
details that were altered, but an almost sacred sentiment
which fell before it. I have often thought that the calm-
ness with which the Church accepted Copernicus and its
savage hostility to Galileo can only be accounted for by
measuring the ravages made by the telescope on the
sacred doctrine of the heavens. It was then seen too
late that the Copernican doctrine was the key to the
position. But Galileo's Dialogues plainly show that it
was not the movement of the earth but the glory of the
heavens which was the point at issue. It must be remem-
bered that the heaven, which Christ had taught is within
us, was by the popular sentiment of mediaeval times
placed above us. Accordingly when the telescope
revealed the moon and other planets reduced to the
measure of the earth, and the sun with evanescent spots,
the shock to sentiment was profound. It is the character-
istic of shocked sentiment in the case of men whose
learning surpasses their genius that they begin to quote
Aristotle. Accordingly Aristotle was hurled at Galileo.

The Dialogues are the record of the contemporary
dispute between Galileo and the current Aristotelian
tradition, and the end of the discussion was the creation
of the modern scientific outlook of which Galileo was the
first perfect representative^ — somewhat choleric but en-
tirely whole-hearted.

So far we have been endeavouring to appreciate the
climate of opinions amid which Galileo's life was passed —
and you will remember that no climate is composed of

i66 THE FIRST PHYSICAL SYNTHESIS

a succession of uniform days, especially in its spring-time.
A judicious selection could affix almost any label to the
thought of the seventeenth century. What we have to
keep in our minds is that at its beginning, so far as
science was concerned, men knew hardly more than
Aristotle and less than Archimedes, while at its end the
main positions of modern science were firmly established.
I will now endeavour to explain the main revolutionary
ideas which Galileo impressed upon his contemporaries.
The first one was the doctrine of the uniformity of the
material universe. This doctrine is now so obvious to us
that we can only think of it in the attenuated form of
discussions on miracles or on the relations of mind and
matter. But in Galileo's time the denial of uniformity
went much deeper than that. The different regions of
Nature were supposed to function in entirely different
ways. This presupposition led to a style of argument
which is foretgn to our ears. For example, here is a short
speech of Simplicius, the upholder of the old Aristotelian
tradition in Galileo's Dialogues, chosen almost at random :

Aristotle, though of a very perspicacious wit, would
not strain it further than needed: holding in all his
argumentations, that sensible experiments were to be
preferred before any reasons founded upon strength of
wit, and said those which should deny the testimony ot
sense deserved to be punished with the loss of that sense;
now who is so blind, that sees not the parts of the Earth
and Water to move, as being grave, naturally downwards,
namely, towards the centre of the Universe, assigned by
nature herself for the end and term of right motion
deorsum; and doth not likewise see the Fire and Air to
move right upwards towards the Concave of the Lunar
Orb, as to the natural end of motion sursum ? And this
being so manifestly seen, and we being certain, that
eadem est ratio totius et partium, why may we not assert
it for a true and manifest proposition, that the natinal
motion of the Earth is the right motion ad medium, and
that of the Fire, the right a medio ?

THE FIRST PHYSICAL SYNTHESIS 167

In this passage we note that different functions are
assigned to the Centre of the Universe to which the
Earth or any part of it naturally moves in a straight line,
and to the Concave of the Lunar Orb (to which Fire
naturally moves in a straight line). The idea of the
neutrality of situation and the universality of physical
laws, regulating casual occurrences and holding indiffer-
ently in every part, is entirely absent. On the contrary,
each local part of nature has its one peculiar function
in the scheme of things. It is a fine conception : the only
objection to it is that it does not seem to be true. I am
not sure, however, that the Einstein conception of the
physical forces as being due to the contortions of space-
time is not in some respects a return to it.

But let us see how Galileo in the person of the inter-
locutor, Salviatus, answers this speech of Simplicius.
His answer is somewhat long, and I only give the relevant
part :

. . . Now, like as from the consentaneous conspiration
of all the parts of the Earth to form its whole, doth
follow, that they with equal inchnation concur thither
from all parts; and to unite themselves as much as is
possible together, they there physically adapt them-
selves; why may we not believe that the Sun, Moon,
and other mundane Bodies, be also of a round figure,
not by other than a concordant instinct, and natural
concourse of all the parts composing them? Of which,
if any, at any time, by any violence were separated from
the whole, is it not reasonable to think, that they would
spontaneously and by natural instinct return ? and in
this manner to infer, that the right motion agreeth with
all mundane bodies alike.

Note that in this answer Galileo, in the person of
Salviatus, entirely ignores any peculiar function or
property to be assigned to a Centre of the Universe or to
a Concave of the Lunar Orb. He has in his mind the
conceptions of modern science, in that the Earth, the

i68 THE FIRST PHYSICAL SYNTHESIS

Moon, the Sun, and the other planets are all bodies moving
in an indifferent neutral space, and each attracting its
own parts to form its whole — or, as Salviatus puts it,
'the consentaneous conspiration of all the parts of the
Earth to form its whole '.

Evidently Galileo is very near to the Newtonian

doctrine of Universal Gravitation. But he is not quite

there. Newton enunciates the doctrine that every

particle of matter attracts every other particle of matter

in a certain definite way. Galileo — as children say in the

game of Hide-and-Seek — is very hot in respect to this

doctrine. But he does not seem, at least in this passage,

to have made the final generalization. He is thinking

particularly of the Earth, the Sun, the Moon, and other

planets — and his guardiap angel does not appear to have

whispered to him the generalization ' any material body *.

Newton probably knew Galileo's Dialogues nearly by

heart. They were standard works in his time. Cannot

we imagine him sitting in his rooms between the gateway

and the chapel of Trinity College, or in the orchard

watching the apple fall, and with this passage of Galileo's

Dialogue running in his mind, perhaps the very words

of Salusbury's translation which I have quoted, 'the

consentaneous conspiration of all the parts of the Earth

to form its whole '. Suddenly the idea flashes on him —

' What are the Earth and the Sun and the Moon ? Why,

they are any bodies! We should say therefore that any

bodies attract. But if this be the case, the Earth and

the Sun and the Moon attract each other, and we have

the cause maintaining the planets in their orbits.' In

this course of thought Newton would have been assisted

by his third law of motion. For by it if the Earth attracts

the apple, then the apple attracts the Earth.

By this conjectural reconstruction of Newton's state
of mind we see that, given a genius with adequate

THE FIRST PHYSICAL SYNTHESIS 169

mathematical faculties, Newton's Principia is the next
step in science after Galileo's Dialogues. Probably
Galileo himself would have gone farther in this direction
if his imagination had not been hampered by the necessity
of arguing with the Conservative Party. It is in general
a mistake to waste time in discussions with people who
have the wrong ideas in their heads. But in Galileo's
time and country the Conservative Party had thumb-
screws at its service and could thereby enforce a certain
amount of attention to its ideas.

Undoubtedly the whole implication of the answer of
Salviatus is that the Earth, Sun, &c., are mere bits of
matter. It is difficult for us to estimate how great an
advance Galileo made in adumbrating this position.
Consider for example this statement by Simplicius, made
in another connexion, enforcing a doctrine which he
upholds throughout the whole of the Dialogues :

See here for a beginning, two most convincing argu-
ments to demonstrate the Earth to be most different
from the Ccelestial bodies. First, the bodies that are
generable, corruptible, alterable, &c., are quite different
from those that are ingenerable, incorruptible, unalter-
able, &c. But the Earth is generable, corruptible,
alterable, &c., and the Ccelestial bodies ingenerable,
incorruptible, unalterable, &c. Therefore the Earth is
quite different from the Ccelestial bodies.

That is the sort of thing that Galileo was up against, not
as a mere casual idea occurring to a subtle reasoner, but
as the very texture of current notions. The primary
achievement of the first physical synthesis was to clear
all this away. Galileo with his telescope, his trenchant,
bold intellect, and his magnificent physical intuition was
the man who did it.

But we have not nearly exhausted Galileo's contri-
butions to the general ideas of science. We owe to
Galileo the First Law of Motion. Probably most of us

170 THE FIRST PHYSICAL SYNTHESIS

have in our minds Newton's enunciation of this law,
'Every body continues in its state of rest or of uniform
motion in a straight line except so far as it is compelled
by impressed force to change that state.' This is the
first article of the creed of science ; and like the Church's
creeds it is more than a mere statement of belief: it is
a paean of triumph over defeated heretics. It should be
set to music and chanted in the halls of Universities.
The defeated adversaries are the Aristotelians who for
two thousand years imposed on Dynamics the search for
a physical cause of motion, whereas the true doctrine
conceives uniform motion in a straight line as a state in
which every body will naturally continue except so far
as it is compelled by irnpressed force to change that state.
Accordingly in Dynamics we search for a cause of the
change of motion, namely either a change in respect to
speed or a change in respect to direction of motion.
For example, an Aristotelian investigating the motion of
the planets in their orbits would seek for tangential forces
to keep the planets moving; but a follower of Galileo
seeks for normal forces to deflect the direction of motion
along the curved orbit. This is why Newton, at the
moment which we pictured him as he sat in his rooms
in Trinity College thinking about gravitation, at once
saw that the attraction of the Sun was the required force.
It was nearly normal to the orbits of the planets. Here
again we see how immediately Newton's physical ideas
follow from those of Galileo. One genius completes the
work of the other.

It has been stated by Whewell that in his Dialogues
on the Two Principal Systems of the World Galileo does
not enunciate the first law of motion, and that it only
appears in his subsequent Dialogues on Mechanics. This
may be formally true so far as a neat decisive statement
is concerned. But in essence the first law of motion is

THE FIRST PHYSICAL SYNTHESIS 171

presupposed in the argumentation of the earlier dialogues.
The whole explanation why loose things are not left
behind as the Earth moves depends upon it.

Galileo also prepared the way for Newton's final
enunciation of the Laws of Motion by his masterly
investigation of the uniform acceleration of falling bodies
on the Earth's surface and his demonstration that this
acceleration is independent of the relative weights of the
bodies, except so far as extraneous retarding forces are
concerned. He swept away the old classification of
natural and violent motions as founded on trivial un-
essential differences, and left the way entirely open for
Newton's final generalizations. Newton conceived ex-
plicitly the idea of a neutral absolute space within which
all motion is to be construed, and of mass as a permanent
intrinsic physical quantity associated with matter,
unalterable except by the destruction of matter. He
phrased this concept in the definition, mass is quantity
of matter. He then conceived the true measure of force
as being the product of the mass of the body into its
rate of change of velocity. The importance of this
conception lies in the fact that force as thus conceived
is found to depend on simple physical conditions, such
as mass, electric and magnetic charges, electric currents,
and distances. We owe to Newton the final formulation
of the basic physical ideas which have served science so
well during these last two centuries. They comprise the
foundations of the science of Dynamics, and Law of
Gravitation. We also owe to Galileo's experimental
genius the telescope and its first systematic use in science,
the pendulum clock (subsequently perfected by Huyghens)
and the experimental demonstration of the laws of
falling bodies. To Newton's mathematical genius we
owe the deduction of the properties of the planetary
orbits from dynamical principles. To Galileo and Newton

172 THE FIRST PHYSICAL SYNTHESIS

we must add the name of Kepler so far as astronomy is
concerned, and of Stevinus of Bruges so far as mechanics
is concerned. He discovered the famous triangle of
forces. But in one lecture lasting one hour you will not
expect me to give a detailed account of the science of the
seventeenth century.

In like manner we must add the name of Huyghens in
mentioning the services of Galileo and Newton to the
science of Optics. Huyghens first suggested the undula-
tory theory of light, to be revived at the beginning of
the nineteenth century by Thomas Young and Fresnel.
But the immediately fruitful work was due to Galileo
with his studies on the theory of the telescope, and to
Newton with his studies on the theory of colour. Both
Dynamics and Optics reached Galileo as a series of
detached truths (or falsehoods) loosely connected. After
the work of Galileo and Newton they emerged as well-
knit sciences on firm foundations.

Galileo's preoccupation with Optics doubtless helped
him to another great idea which has coloured all modern
thought. Light is transmitted through space from its
origin by paths which may be devious and broken.
What you see depends on the light as it enters your eye.
You may see a green leaf behind the looking-glass; but
the leaf is really behind your head and you are really
looking at its image in the mirror. Thus the green which
you see is not the property of the leaf, but it is the result
of the stimulation of the nerves of the retina by the
light which enters the eye. These considerations led
Descartes and Locke to elaborate the idea of external
nature consisting of matter moving in space and with
merely primary qualities. These primary qualities are
its shape, its degree of hardness and cohesiveness, its
massiveness, and its attractive effects and its resilience.
Our perceptions of nature such as colour, sound, taste and

THE FIRST PHYSICAL SYNTHESIS 173

smell, and sensations of heat and cold form the secondary-
qualities. These secondary qualities are merely mental
projections which are the result of the stimulation of the
brain by the appropriate nerves. Such in outline is the
famous theory of primary and secondary qualities in the
form in which it has held the field during the modern
period of science. It has been of essential service in
directing scientific investigation into fruitful fields both
of physics and physiology. Now the credit for its first
sketch is due to Galileo. Here is an extract from Galileo's
work, II Saggiatore, published in 1624. I take it from
the English life of Galileo by J. J. Fahie^ : 'I have now
only to fulfil my promise of declaring my opinions on the
proposition that motion is the cause of heat, and to
explain in what manner it appears to me that it may
be true. But I must first make some remarks on that
which we call heat, since I strongly suspect that a notion
of it prevails which is very remote from the truth ; for it
is believed that there is a true accident, affection, or
quality, really inherent in the substance by which we
feel ourselves heated. This much I have to say, that as
soon as I form a conception of a material or corporeal
substance, I simultaneously feel the necessity of con-
ceiving that it has boundaries, and is of some shape or
other; that relatively to others it is great or small;
that it is in this or that place, in this or that time ; that
it is in motion or at rest; that it touches, or does not
touch another body ; that it is unique, rare, or common ;
nor can I, by any act of imagination, disjoin it from
these qualities; but I do not find myself absolutely
compelled to apprehend it as necessarily accompanied by
such conditions as that it must be white or red, bitter or
sweet, sonorous or silent, smelling sweetly or disagreeably;
and if the senses had not pointed out these qualities,

^ Published by Murray, London, 1903.

174 THE FIRST PHYSICAL SYNTHESIS

it is probable that language and imagination alone could
never have arrived at them. Therefore I am inclined to
think that these tastes, smells, colours, &c., with regard
to the object in which they appear to reside, are nothing
more than mere names, and exist only in the sensitive
body; insomuch that when the living creature is re-
moved, all these qualities are carried off and annihilated ;
although we have imposed particular names upon them
(different from those other and real accidents), and would
fain persuade ourselves that they truly and in fact exist.
But I do not believe that there exists anything in external
bodies for exciting tastes, smells and sounds, but size,
shape, quantity, and motion, swift or slow; and if ears,
tongues, and noses were removed, I am of opinion that
shape, quantity, and motion would remain, but there
would be an end of smells, tastes, and sounds, which,
abstractedly from the living creature, I take to be mere
words.'

If we knew nothing else about Galileo except that in
the October of the year 1623 he published this extract,
we should know for certain that a man of the highest
philosophic genius then existed. On the subject of this
extract, he leaves nothing for Descartes and Locke to do,
except to repeat his statement in their own language,
and to emphasize its philosophic importance. Indeed in
many ways this original statement by Galileo is, as
I believe, more accurately and carefully drawn than the
usual formulations of modern times which I followed in
my introductory remark.

I will now quit the special consideration of Galileo and
Newton. I hope that I have with sufficient clearness
given my reasons for holding that they are to be con-
sidered as the parents of modern science and as the joint
authors of the first physical synthesis. You cannot
disentangle their work. There would have been no
Newton without Galileo; and it is hardly a paradox to

THE FIRST PHYSICAL SYNTHESIS 175

say, that there would have been no Gahleo without
Newton. Galileo was the Julius Caesar and Newton the
Augustus Caesar of the empire of science.

But these men did not work in a vacuum. It was an
age of ferment, and they had as contemporaries men
with genius all but equal to theirs. Francis Bacon was
a contemporary of Galileo, somewhat older (1561-1626).
I need not remind you that Bacon was the apostle of the
experimental method. He especially emphasized the
importance of keeping our minds open throughout
a careful and prolonged examination of the facts. Like
all apostles he somewhat exaggerated his message, and
perhaps undervalued the importance of provisional
theories. But the main point is perfectly correct and
particularly important in view of the tradition of the
preceding 1500 years, during which experiment had
languished. Aristotle had discovered the importance of
classification, and neither he nor his followers had realized
the danger of classification proceeding on slight and
trivial grounds. The greatest curse to the progress of
science is a hasty classification based on trivialities.
An example of what I mean is Aristotle's classification of
motions into violent and natural. Bacon's writings were
a continual protest against this pitfall. Again the active
life of Descartes lies between those of Galileo and Newton.
He published his Principia Philosophiae in 1644, j^st
two years after the date which I have assigned as the
symbolic centre of the epoch. The general concepts of
space and matter, body and spirit, as they have per-
meated the scientific world, are largely in accordance
with the way in which he fashioned them. He viewed
space as a property of matter and therefore rejected the
idea of purely empty space. This conception of space as
an essential plenum led him to speculate on the other
physical characteristics of the stuff whose extension
is space. He thus hit on the idea of the vortices which

176 THE FIRST PHYSICAL SYNTHESIS

carry along the heavenly bodies. These vortices are
a failure. For one thing, they show that Descartes had
not really assimilated the full import of Galileo's work
in his discovery of the first law of motion. The planets
do not want anything to carry them along, and that is
just what Descartes provides. But for all that I hold
that Descartes with his plenum was groping towards
a very important truth which I will endeavour to explain
before I finish this lecture. Newton's formulation of
gravitation led Newton's followers to insist on the
possibility of a vacuum, but the nineteenth century
again filled space with, an ether. Finally Einstein has
recurred to the inversion of Descartes' doctrine and has
made matter a property of space. The Newtonian
vacuum and the Cartesian plenum have fought a very
equal duel during the last few centuries. Leibniz, Newton's
contemporary, emphasized the relativity of space.

This mention of relativity leads me to my last topic,
which is to ask, how to-day we would criticize this First
Physical Synthesis which we owe to the seventeenth
century.

In the first place, if we are wise, before criticizing it
we will stop to admire it, and to note its essential services
to science, and (in its main outlines) its continuing value
to-day. We must do honour to the century of genius
to which we owe it — a century which will compare with
the greatest that Greece can show.

By a criticism of the great physical synthesis which is
the legacy of this century to science I do not mean a mere
enumeration of the additions since made, for example,
the rise of the concept of energy, of the atomic theory,
or of the theory of various chemical elements. Such
homogeneous additions leave the concept undisturbed.
In this way, Kelvin made it the mainspring of all his
scientific speculations. But for the last thirty years or

THE FIRST PHYSICAL SYNTHESIS 177

so, the great ideas of the seventeenth century have, so to
speak, been losing their dominating grip on physical science.

Clerk-Maxwell probably thought that he had finally
established its ascendancy. In truth, he had set going
trains of thought which in the hands of his followers
have caused it to totter. Galileo and his followers
thought in terms of time, space, and matter. They were
in fact more Aristotelian than they knew — though they
wore their Aristotle with a difference. Clerk-Maxwell
emphasized the importance of the electromagnetic field
as an interplay of relations between various electro-
magnetic quantities. Maxwell himself looked on this
field as merely expressing strains, stresses, and motions
of the ether, a point of view quite in the Galilean tradition.
But recently the field itself has come to be conceived as
the ultimate fact, and properties of matter have been
explained in terms of it. Thus energy, mass, matter,
chemical elements are now expressed as electromagnetic
phenomena. The ether is still there for those who like it,
but it merely serves to allay the tortures of a meta-
physical craving.

But Einstein and Minkowski have gone farther.
Hitherto time and space have been treated as separate
and independent factors in the scheme of things. They
have combined them. This is a complete refashioning
of older ideas and is in many ways much more consonant
with the Cartesian point of view.

The world as we observe it involves process and exten-
sion. Hitherto process has been identified with serial
time, and extension with space. But this neglects the fact
that there is an extension of time. Conceive any ultimate
concrete fact as an extended process. If you have lost
process or lost extension, you know that you are dealing
with abstraction. What is going on here in this room is
extended process. Extension and process are each

M

178 THE FIRST PHYSICAL SYNTHESIS

abstractions. But these abstractions can be made in
different ways. The space which we apprehend as
extension without process and the time which we appre-
hend as serial process without spatial extension are not
each unique. In different circumstances we affix different
meanings to the notion of space, and different meanings
to the correlative notion of time. In respect to space
there is no paradox in this assertion. For us the space
of this room is a definite volume; for a man in the sun
the room is sweeping through space. But it is paradoxical
to hold that the serial process which we apprehend as
time is different from the serial process which the man
in the sun apprehends as time. Yet if you do that, you
can introduce mathematical formulae expressing spatio-
temporal measurements which at one sweep explain
a whole multitude of perplexing scientific observation.
In fact the formulae practically have to be admitted,
and the theory is the simplest explanation of them.
Also philosophically the closer association of time and
space is a great advantage.

We now come back to Descartes. He conceived exten-
sion as essentially a quality of matter. Generalize his
idea: the ultimate fact is not static matter but the flux
of physical existence : call any part of this flux, with all
its fullness of content and happening, an event: exten-
sion is essentially a quality of events and so is process.
But the becomingness of nature is not to be constricted
within one serial linear procession of time. It requires
an indefinite number of such processions to express the
complete vision.

If this line of thought, which is that underlying the
modern relativity, be admitted, the whole synthesis of
the seventeenth century has to be recast. Its Time, its
Space, and its Matter are in the melting-pot — and there
we must leave them.

VII

SCIENCE IN THE INDUSTRIAL
REVOLUTION

Cecil H. Desch

To study the share of science in bringing about the
great social change towards the end of the eighteenth
century that we know as the Industrial Revolution is to
turn from a time when science was the concern of a few
intellectual leaders, and occasionally the amusement of
a group of amateurs, to one when it came to affect the
life of every member, even the least instructed, of the
Western communities. It is to turn from isolated experi-
ments in the harnessing of the forces of Nature to man's
needs to a deliberate conquest and exploitation of those
• forces in the service of industry. We may observe the
distinction that has been drawn between the industrial
^ and the mechanical revolution, closely connected in
history though they are. There is much evidence to show
that the transition from domestic workshops to factories,
and from small-scale handicrafts to capitalist production,
was in course of taking place independently of machines,
but the whole movement was hastened and intensified
to a most remarkable extent by the new mastery of
nature that came with the introduction of coal as a
metallurgical fuel and with the invention of the steam
engine. These two great inventions led to a complete
transformation of industry. Not only was its character
radically changed, but the distribution of population was
altered by the establishment of the growing industries
on the coal fields, ignoring previous historical conditions,

M2

i8o SCIENCE IN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

so that new centres of dense population grew up, hastily
and without forethought, presenting those undesirable
features that we commonly associate with the idea of the
industrial revolution. For the moment we have only to
deal with the main outlines of that transformation,
attempting to relate it to the progress of science.

We should be wrong to suppose that organized industry
on a large scale was a new thing in the history of the
world. The canal system of Babylonia, the pyramids of
Egypt, the great aqueducts of Roman cities, were achieve-
ments in construction comparable with any but the
greatest works of 'modern times, demanding not only
a vast supply of human labour, which the institution of
slavery made possible, but a high degree of engineering
knowledge and skill. It is difficult to picture the task
of the ancient engineer, with primitive surveying instru-
ments, cumbrous methods of calculation, and only the
rudest of mechanical appliances for handling large masses
of material. Nevertheless, the results achieved were
marvellous, and modern engineers are beginning to study,
with renewed interest, the methods adopted by their
predecessors of Egypt and Rome. Neither was their
work purely empirical. The ancient studies of geometry
and physics were originally directed to practical ends,
and some of the most important ancient discoveries in
abstract science arose from attempts to solve the urgent
practical problems of the land surveyor and the engineer.
Simple mechanical devices which form the basis of
elaborate mechanisms, such as the wheel and the lever,
were known and commonly applied, whilst the labours
of Archimedes and others had established the quantitative
laws of some of them, notably of the lever. At a later date,
the sea defences of Venice and Holland, which made it
possible for those states to rise to power and commercial
importance in spite of geographically unfavourable con-

SCIENCE IN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION i8i

ditions, may be named along with the great engineering
works of Rome. We may place the Pyramids, as royal
tombs, in a class apart, but all the other structures
named had the character of public works, carried out
under the authority of states or cities for the benefit of
the general body of citizens. The mediaeval cathedrals
are a most wonderful example of such co-operative work
on a large scale, combining majesty of conception, skill
in constructional design, and resourcefulness in over-
coming technical difficulties. [It was not new for large
numbers of men to work togefher on a single task, or to
employ mechanical appliances for the purpose, but it
was new for goods for the market to be produced in this
way. Capitalism was not new; contractors were often
responsible for the undertaking of those great works of
ancient times, and certain industries, such as iron smelt-
ing, were capitalistic in their organization from early
times, but the production of ordinary goods in quantity
for private profit was, with some exceptions, unknown
before the eighteenth century. At that time, the textile
industries and a few others started their new career, to be
hastened almost inconceivably in their transformation
before the century was out by the application of improved
machines and more efticient mechanical power.

The spirit of invention, again, which seems to us so
typical of the industrial revolution, was no new thing in
human history. Among the Greeks, such legends as that
of Daedalus commemorate the inventors of new crafts,
of casting and hammering metals, of erecting buildings,
and of constructing military engines. '< Hero of Alexandria,
with his primitive steam engine and other scientific toys,
as well as his serious military devices, is a witness to the
existence of the capacity for designing elaborate mechan-
isms in the first century A. d., and Vitruvius, in the same
century, in his descriptions of cranes and machines, now

i82 SCIENCE IN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

and then seems oddly to anticipate modern inventions,
as when he describes a taxicab, the distance travelled
by a chariot being measured by the number of balls
dropped into a bowl, each ball being released after
a certain number of revolutions of the wheels. To come
to later times, Leonardo da Vinci, one of the~lTiost mar-
vellous men of genius in history, was a most fertile
inventor, and his note-books, most of which have only
become known recently, contain sketches an^ designs of
machines for the most varied purposes. I need only
mention a machine for cutting the teeth of files, an
operation even now largely performed by hand, i Many
inventors, from Hero to Vaucanson, busied themselves
with the construction of ingenious automata, imitating
the action of men or animals, some of them exhibiting
a high degree of manual skill and fertility of invention.

None of these inventions had any appreciable influence
on industry. In looking for an explanation of this, we
may note that, with the exception of Leonardo da Vinci,
who was far in advance of his time, so that his projects
could not be carried out until industry had made much
further progress, inventors had confined themselves to
two main classes of objects. Either their machines were
built up of timbers, with at most small connecting parts
of metal, like the military engines, storming towers and
catapults of the ancients, or the water wheels of mediaeval
industry, or they were delicate mechanisms, like the
automata of Vaucanson, calling for ingenuity and dex-
terity, but making no severe demands on the strength
or quahty of the materials used in them. Machines of the
modern kind only become possible when the art of
working large masses of metal has reached a high state of
development. Broadly speaking, this was not the_case
before the latter part of the eighteenth century. (There
have been exceptions : the ancient Indian iron forgmgs.

SCIENCE IN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 183

although they were limited to pillars and simple beams,
still excite our admiration, and the art of casting bronze
for statuary arrived at extraordinary perfection even in
early Greek times, and was preserved and perfected by
the great German and Italian masters of the Renaissance,
as Peter Vischer of Nuremberg and Benvenuto Cellini.
The casting of iron was limited to comparatively small
masses, cannon being the largest, and forging to stiU
smaller masses, such as could be dealt with by a tilt
hammer worked by water power. ,1 The metallurgical
revolution had to precede the mechanical, and it was
not until iron could be handled in quantity with ease
and certainty that a machine, however ingenious, had
a chance of becoming a practical success.

The smelting of iron had been performed from pre-
historic times in a simple manner, by heating the ore with
charcoal in a primitive furnace, urged to a sufficiently
high temperature by a blast, the bellows being driven by
hand or later by water power. With only slight modifica-
tions, this process persisted for many centuries. It was
only suitable for pure ores and for small quantities, and
the special skill required for the operation combined with
certain elements in social tradition to place the smith in
a place apart, (as is shown by legends and folk-tales in
many countriesT" From the time of the Romans onwards,
the process was improved by almost imperceptible steps,
due to inventors of whom we know next to nothing.
The most that we can do is to trace, partly in documents
'V but chiefly in such material remains as the destructive
action of time has left to us, the passage of a new metal-
lurgical process across Europe. Some of the most impor-
tant improvements in the smeTting of iron probably came
to us from the Walloon country in the east of Belgium.
A few men of real scientific ability devoted themselves
to the study of metals, chief amongst them being Georg

y

184 SCIENCE IN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Bauer or Agricola, to whom we owe a magnificent treatise,
published in 1556, in which we have clearly set forth the
processes of mining and smelting then in use, with such
scientific explanations as were then possible. \ Agricola
is wonderfully modern in his outlook, and his rejection
of alchemy and of all far-fetched theories of the origin
of minerals in itself entitles him to an honourable place
in the history of science.' For a complete understanding
of metallurgical processes a knowledge of chemistry is
necessary, so that a truly scientific control of the industry
was not possible until much later.

To fix our ideas, we may consider the state of the
English iron industry in the latter part of the sixteenth
century. The principal region was the Weald, most of
the works lying in Sussex, with extensions into Surrey
and Kent. Here blast furnaces, worked by means of
charcoal, made the cast iron, and when malleable material
was wanted, the same fuel was used for the conversion.
Water power was necessary to blow the furnaces and to
y/'K drive the forging hammers.' The consumption of wood
for charcoal was large, so that even in 1558 a statute was
passed to prevent the destruction of forests for this
purpose. \At first Sussex was exempted, but later the
prohibition ' was extended, and the movement of the
industry to the Forest of Dean, another old smelting
centre, took place. There was a constant strife between
the claims of the State, which required timber especially
for shipbuilding purposes, and the needs of the growing
iron industry. By the beginning of the eighteenth century
the scarcity of wood in England was so serious that the
ironmasters of the Furness district of Cumberland were
erecting works in the Scottish Highlands, where timber
was still to be found and the restrictions did not apply.

In the face of these difficulties, it is not surprising that
attempts were made to replace charcoal by coal, already

SCIENCE IN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 185

long a familiar domestic fuel. Dud Dudley, in the middle
of the seventeenth century, was the mxOst successful of
these experimenters, but the jealousy of his rivals put
an end to his work, and it was not until 1757 that coal,
previously converted into coke, was successfully used in
blast furnaces at Coalbrookedale in Shropshire, where
also the first cast-iron bridge and the first iron rails for
mine trams, in place of wood, were used. This change
marks a turning-point in industrial history. The greater
cheapness and facility of coal made the manufacture of
iron (steel was still only made on a very small scale)
possible, and thus began the migration of industry to
the coal-fields, which has led to the present distribution
of the population, so different from that of the era pre-
ceding coal. The time was now ripe for the mechanical
revolution.

Mechanical power, for driving corn-mills and forge
hammers, for blowing furnaces, and for grinding cutlery,
had been hitherto derived from the wind or from the fall
of water to a lower level. The wind is too variable to be
applied widely, and windmills are only possible in flat
countries ; but water power has wide applications. We
can imagine how a great industrial civilization might
have grown up, organized for production on a large scale,
and based on water power. The use of the water-wheel
was common throughout Europe, (and the extension
would have been a natural one^^ The Hamming of streams
to form 'hammicr ponds', each supplying a wheel, was
characteristic of iron-working districts, and the corn-mill
has been a feature of agricultural life for centuries. But
practical difficulties stood in the way of any such develop-
ment. The very power of great waterfalls, such as the
Falls of the Rhine at Schaffhausen, made it impossible
to utilize them. The simple water-wheel, built up of
timbers, however skilfully constructed, would have been

\^

i86 SCIENCE IN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

crushed by the mass of falHng water, and all that man

could do with such a source of power was to lead off

some minute fraction through a channel to supply a single

wheel. Only a modern turbine, scientifically designed

to take the full force of the water, and constructed of

materials of exceptional strength, can serve in such a case,

and for that neither the knowledge nor the means existed.

/Had the invention of the water turbine preceded that of

Hhe steam engine, the geographical distribution of industry

would have been far other than it is. The other great

/' natural sources oi power — the tides and the direct heat

of the sun — have so far baffled even the engineers of our

own day.

Thus, of the natural sources of power now known to us,
there only remained the combustion of fuel. To convert
the chemical energy of wood or coal into mechanical
energy is not directly practicable, and the suggestion
would never have occurred to an early inventor, since
the very conception of energy, and of the mutual equival-
ence of different kinds of energy, did not arise until after
the date of the industrial revolution. We may consider
ie~scientific knowledge that was available in the period
/^' immediately before the invention of the steam engine.
The laws of statics, the simplest of which had been
established by Archimedes both for solids and for liquids,
were extended by Stevin of Bruges and later by Galileo,
who is also the true founder of dynamics. The great
work of Newton had brought mechanics to such a state
of perfection that the most difficult problems in con-
nexion with bodies at rest or in motion could be solved,
with the aid of the new mathematical methods due to
Napier, Descartes, Newton, and Leibniz. The study of
gases was of more recent origin. Ctesibius of Alexandria,
the teacher of Hero, is credited with the first scientific
studies of air and steam, and the expansive force of gases

V

SCIENCE IN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 187

was known to him, but it is with the work of Torricelli
and Boyle that a firm foundation for a knowledge of the
properties of gases, including steam, is first apparent.
Boyle, one of the most brilliant of that group of men
who established the Royal Society, and so gave practical
form to the new creed of experiment as the true means
of investigating Nature that was making its way in
England, added more than any other man to our know-
ledge in this field. By discovering the relation between
the volume of a gas and the pressure to which it was
subjected, he made it possible to define quantitatively the
behaviour of an enclosed volume of gas under different
conditions^

The scientific knowledge required for the construction
of a simple steam engine was in existence by the middle
of the seventeenth century, but it was long before it was
practically applied. Among the devices of Hero of
Alexandria had been a machine, capable of performing
simple motions, which depended on the expansion of air
in a partly closed vessel, forcing water into another
vessel, and it was this contrivance that formed the model
for the earlier inventors. Delia Porta in 1601 replaced
air by steam, and suggested that the condensation of the
steam might be utilized in drawing up water from below.
De Caus and the Marquis of Worcester suggested similar
machines, pumps rather than engines, intended for the
lifting of water, but none of these ever assumed practical
shape. It was not until 1698 that Thomas Savery made
a working steam engine on this principle, involving
several ingenious details, and finding direct application
in the pumping of water from mines, a question then
beginning to assume importance. As the metallurgical
demand for coal increased, shallow workings became
insufficient, and miners were prevented from working
at greater depths by the accumulation of water in the

i88 SCIENCE IN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

mines. Savery's engine worked with pressures sometimes
as high as 8 or lo atmospheres, and naturally gave much
trouble from leakage. In principle it was not unlike the
modern pulsometer pump.

Denis Papin in 1690 adopted an entirely different
principle. The use of a piston moving in a cylinder was
already familiar in the common suction pump, and Papin,
by condensing steam in the lower part of the cylinder,
caused the piston to descend by atmospheric pressure.
Huygens had shortly before proposed an explosion engine
with piston, a crude forerunner of the modern internal
combustion engine. Neither had any practical con-
sequences. Newcomen, in 1705, constructed a steam
pumping engine which held the field for the greater part
of the century. He used a piston, but made the boiler
for generating steam a separate vessel from the cylinder,
and brought about the condensation of the steam by
admitting a jet of water. The piston rod moved one end
of a beam, to the other end of which was attached the
pump rod, and in this form, the movement of the necessary
valves soon being made automatic by connecting them
with the beam, the machine was long employed for
raising water from mines, \^One is even now in use in
the Sheffield district. Many of these engines were built
at Coalbrookdale. Great strength was not required, as
\^, the pressure never differed greatly from that of the
atmosphere.

So far the engines had all been examples of mechanical
ingenuity, involving no new principles, and based only
on the simplest mechanics. The next great step was not
taken at random, but was the result of the application
of new principles. James Watt was much more than
a merely ingenious mechanic. Skilled workman as he
was, he was the close friend of two active investigators in
physics, Black and Robison, and with them and others

,w

SCIENCE IN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 189

of like intellectual standing he discussed his inventions.
Struck by the inefficiency and wastefulness of the New-
comen engine, he rightly saw that this came from the
alternate heating and cooling of the cylinder. Black's
discovery of latent heat had shown how large a quantity
of heat is released when steam is condensed to water,
and Watt, applying this knowledge, took the decisive
step of separating the cylinder from the condensing
vessel. "This is not a memoir on the steam engine, and
it is impossible to enter into the wonderful record of Watt
as an inventor, adding detail after detail until the crude
steam pump had been converted into an efficient engine,
the reciprocating action of the piston being converted
into rotary motion by means of the crank, so making it
possible to employ the steam engine to drive machinery
in a factory or, as was done later, to fix it into a boat for
steam navigation, or on wheels as a locomotive. Subse-
quent developments, remarkable as they have been, are
essentially matters of detail. '^

Before leaving this subject, a suggestion of Giovanni
Branca in 1629 may be mentioned. This was to direct
a jet of steam against the vanes of a wheel, and so produce
rotation. This suggestion bore no fruit, but it is inter-
esting in the light of recent mechanical history. Many
inventors from time to time reverted to the idea of
a steam turbine, but the plan proved to be unreaUzable,
The high speed of such an engine was a practical difficulty,
whilst the principles were yet unknown. The theory of
the heat engine, according to which the maximum
efficiency of the most perfect engine is limited by the
temperatures between which it works, was only estab-
lished in 1824, by Sadi Carnot. Carnot showed that heat
does work when it falls from a higher level (of tempera-
ture) to a lower, but that an equivalent quantity of heat
disappears in the process was not realized until the

igo SCIENCE IN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

establishment of the doctrine of the conservation of
energy in 1843 and succeeding years, by the labours of
Joule, Mayer, and Helmholtz. It is this doctrine that
controls the efforts of modern inventors, and makes
immediately evident the absurdity of proposals to
increase the amount of energy in a system without
taking it from somewhere else. A lack of comprehension
^ of this principle is responsible for many fallacious sugges-
tions. The steam turbine is a quite modern invention,
scarcely forty years old, and is based on a most thorough
study of the properties of steam, as well as of those of
metals used in its construction. It could never have been
arrived at by a process of happy guessing, or of trial and
error.

Watt's engine could not have been constructed at an
earlier period. It was not a pump, but an engine in the
modern sense, and required not only relatively large
masses of metal, but accurate casting and boring, things
that could not yet be obtained. ' On reading the life of
Watt, one is struck by the great practical obstacles that
confronted him at every stage. Although his early
engines were atmospheric, depending on the vacuum
produced by condensing the steam for their action, so
that high pressures were unnecessary, his cylinders had
to be large to give sufficient power, and even when the
casting difficulties had been overcome there was the
difficulty of boring the cylinder so that the piston would
make a reasonably tight fit.] Gradually, Watt and his
associates triumphed over their difficultiesr and after
many years of effort and discouragement the steam engine
became the agent of the mechanical revolution. The
same metallurgical advances that had created the demand
for engines for pumping, on account of their large con-
sumption of coal, made it possible for the engines to be
constructed. The Carron works in Scotland, with which

T

SCIENCE IN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 191

Watt was associated through Roebuck, assisted him in
,^the manufacture of them as well as by making use of
them when made. 3

In the meantime a revolution in the manufacture of
textile materials had been going on in this country.
Hargreaves, Arkwright, and Crompton had invented
machines, depending on no new principle, but ingeniously
combining simple mechanical movements, which could
replace hand labour and allow of the production of
textile fabrics on an enormously increased scale. Whilst
the machines were at first driven by water power, and
the mills were therefore placed near to streams having
a sufficient fall, the usefulness of steam power for the
purpose was soon obvious, and in 1785 the first steam
cotton mill was set to work in Nottingham.

Factory production on a large scale was first adopted
in the metal industry. The iron and steel works of
Abraham Crowley at Newcastle employed several hundred
men in 1682. There had been textile capitalists employing
as many persons much earlier, but their workers were
scattered through small domestic workshops, and not
collected into a single factory. With the invention of
power machinery for spinning and weaving textiles came
the organization of that industry also on a factory plan,
and the engineering industry followed as a consequence.
The change having once set in proceeded with ever-
increasing velocity, until the present conditions of
industry were reached. In the great majority of manu-
factures, machine production has superseded hand work,
whilst the immense developments of mechanical trans-
port have transformed the conditions of industrial life
throughout.

Not all industries were affected to an equal extent.
As we have seen, the invention and construction of the
steam engine and of the machinery for textiles demanded

192 SCIENCE IN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

knowledge which was supplied by the sciences of mechanics
and physics, already sufficiently advanced by the middle
of the eighteenth century. Scientific chemistry is only
considered to date from the time of Lavoisier, so that
the transformation of the chemical industries, formerly
exceedingly primitive, came much later, and in fact is
only now in progress. Agriculture was improved, but for
any radical transformation a scientific knowledge of
biology was needed, and that is of quite modern growth.
We are still only perceiving the firstfruits of the system-
atic apphcation of biological science to agriculture,
a reformation which may well transform rural life, and
to some extent counteract the evil influences of the
industrial revolution.

Those evils were immense. The introduction of steam
power almost immediately opened the way to the rapid
and cheap production of many classes of goods. It was
found that large profits could be made by employing
labour in great factories. Competition became intense,
and to secure a remunerative share of any manufacture
the costs of production had to be kept as low as possible,
hence the misery and cruelty of the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries. Unfortunately, the growth
of facilities for manufacture was far too rapid for the
essential social readjustments to keep pace with it, and
evils accumulated fast. Moreover, the new discoveries
came at a time when the moral sense, in this country at
least, was of a low standard. Even admirers of the
eighteenth century must admit that a selfish complacency
was characteristic of much of its life, and that the influence
of religion on morality was then at its lowest ebb. It
may seem a paradox that the Methodist movement and
the Evangelical revival did practically nothing to counter-
act the selfishness of the new industrial era. It is remark-
able that even Hannah More, in her accounts of her

SCIENCE IN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 193

endeavours to promote a knowledge of the Bible among
the poor, scarcely betrays a suspicion that the condition
of the industry of her time, with its appalling misery
for a large proportion of the workers, was anything but
a natural and inevitable state of affairs, and her com-
placent reflections on the good fortune of the rich are
to a modern reader strangely heartless. The fact is that
the new religious fervour was so directly and intensely
concerned with a future life that its influence in improving
the conditions of this world was almost insignificant.
A curious narrowness is perceptible in the attitude of
some even of the most earnest of religious philanthropists
at a somewhat later date. The leaders of the movement
for the abolition of the slave trade, with a few honourable
exceptions, took little notice of the virtual slavery and
misery of the industrial population of our own country.
The influence of the churches and the sects was small,
and when the means of acquiring wealth rapidly pre-
sented themselves, there was no restraining force of
adequate strength to oppose the greed of the new indus-
trial chiefs. Dickens's Mr. Gradgrind, although later in
date, is a typical figure of the age. Suitably controlled,
we can picture a mechanical revolution which would have
rendered life infinitely happier, by improving comfort
and lessening toil, without imposing a practical slavery
on large masses of workers, or converting great tracts of
beautiful country into hideous wildernesses, as has been
the case in the north. Mr. Austin Freeman has made
a good point in remarking that the introduction of
machinery, whilst it has destroyed many handicrafts
and turned many classes of skilled craftsmen into soulless
machines, has done but little to remove the drudgery of
everyday life, so that men are still employed in the
roughest of mechanical tasks that might well be per-
formed by machines, and the housewife has derived little

N

194 SCIENCE IN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

benefit in her daily toil from all the inventions of the
mechanical age. This is true, and whilst it emphasizes
some of the lessons preached so eloquently and so fruit-
./ lessly by Ruskin, it points a way to possible reforms in
the future.
_, One of the worst features of the industrial revolution
is the wasteful treatment of natural resources. In the
first enthusiasm of the discovery of steam power, it
seemed that Nature had placed in the hands of Man an
inexhaustible s source of wealth. Coal was abundant in
England, and the idea of its possible exhaustion did not
present itself to the minds of those who used it. Whole
counties were laid waste in order that goods might be
produced cheaply, whilst smoke and slag heaps were
allowed to disfigure the country. Professor Geddes has
rightly said that the industrial age must be divided into
two, a Palaeotechnic and a Neotechnic Age, in the first of
which natural resources were squandered and social good
subordinated to private gain, whilst in the second those
conditions are reversed. We are only now seeing the
beginnings of the Neotechnic Age.

It would be wrong to blame science for the evils of
industrialism. It was scientific discovery, misapphed in
practice, that made those evils possible, but the spirit
of industrial greed was not that of science. In another
aspect, also, it was the imperfection of science that led
to its misapplication. The waste of natural resources
could hardly have been so great had the idea of the
conservation of energy been present to men's minds.
It was of later growth, and was not in time to prevent
the evils. Even now it is so little comprehended by the
ordinary man of business that his actions are hardly
affected by it. Further, the scientific study of human
physiology came too late to warn men of the consequences
of the unhealthy conditions of industrial hfe, whilst the

-~N

SCIENCE IN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 195

fact that social science had not yet come into existence
was the most potent of all in permitting such outrages
on social good as characterized the system. Science,
that is, the mechanics and physics of the time of Watt,
might have been used to increase the sum of human
happiness, and it is not the fault of science that it was
not so used. Science is not responsible for its misuse by
selfish men. ^ In the last few years the cry has again
been raised mat materialistic science is responsible for
the horrors of war, because chemistry and physics have
been applied to the production of more destructive and
crueller means of warfare. The danger of such mis-
application still exists, and has to be reckoned with.
One of the great aims of physical science of the present
day is to discover a means of tapping the vast store of
energy contained within the atom, and revealed to us
by the phenomena of radioactivity. As Professor Soddy,
one of the leading workers in that field, has remarked,
the first application of that discovery, should it be made,
would undoubtedly be the invention of a bomb, incom-
parably more destructive than any hitherto known.
This is a real danger, but it cannot be allowed to hinder
scientific investigation. The same discovery might be
used to alleviate the hardships of life and to bring about
a happier social state, and we must look to the control
and not to the suppression of invention for a remedy for
the evils of misapplied science. J

At the same time as the discoveries in mechanics and
in the properties of gases, a new force was being studied,
the knowledge of which was not to bear fruit until much
later. It was in the year 1600 that William Gilbert,
a court physician to Queen Elizabeth, published his
treatise on the Magnet, in which for the first time experi-
ments on electricity and magnetism were carefully
described. This great work laid the foundation of a new

N 2

196 SCIENCE IN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

science, but for more than two centuries that science
grew slowly, and even the brilliant discoveries of Franklin,
Cavendish, and Volta had no immediate practical con-
sequences for industry. The discoveries of Oersted and
Ampere led to the invention of the electric telegraph ;
but it was not until Faraday, one of the greatest
experimenters in the whole history of science, established
the principal laws of electromagnetism, that industrial
applications of electricity became possible. ('The d3mamo
and the electric motor, with their more recent com-
panion, the electric furnace, are the instruments of a new
mechanical revolution taking place before our eyes, but
of which only our descendants will see the full results.
Electrical power will be the chief practical means of
bringing about the change from the palaeotechnic to the
neotechnic age. One feature of its influence is to be
remarked in the geographical redistribution of industries,
especially in the transference of some of them from the
coal-fields to the mountainous regions where water power
is abundant, with the attendant possibility of making
a fresh start, untrammelled by the surroundings of
a palaeotechnic industrial region.

We may note in passing, although it belongs to a later
period than that of the introduction of the steam engine,
that electrical invention has pursued a rather different
course from mechanical inventiouj Whilst the design of
Vnew mechanical devices has often been instinctive or
based merely on a process of trial and error, the under-
lying scientific principles being established later — the
steam engine was a practical success before the theory
of heat engines was worked out by Carnot — the practical
applications of electricity have followed on the theory .
; Wireless telegraphy was not the result of a happy guess
f or of a process of trial and error, but was a direct applica-
V tion of a theoretical prediction of Clerk-Maxwell, tested

x>

SCIENCE IN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 197

experimentally by Hertz. The thermionic valve, which
has made wireless telephony possible, is a consequence
of purely scientific investigations on the emission of
electrons from heated bodies — investigations apparently
remote from any practical applications. Electrical
inventions are historically more recent than mechanical,
and it is probable that the course of their history will
be the normal one in the future, invention following on
theory instead of preceding it. The time has passed when
a happy guess may result in an epoch-making discovery.
The growth of mechanical industry became more and
more rapid as the years of the nineteenth century passed.
Two factors in that growth may be selected ior brief
mention, the development of the manufacture of steel
and the rise of the chemical industries. Whilst, in the
/- period that has been considered, iron was made on a large

scale in the blast furnace by the use of coke, such steel
as was required was manufactured on a relatively small
scale. Huntsman's crucible process of 1740 being used
for the greater part of the production until the middle
of the nineteenth century. Then two great inventions,
that of Bessemer and that of Siemens and Martin, revolu-
tionized the industry. The two were almost simultaneous,
but the former sooner became a practical success. By
blowing air through pig iron in a suitable vessel, a quantity
of iron weighing several tons could be converted into
steel in twenty minutes, and the scale of production
increased almost immediately. From this point onwards
the curve which shows the annual production of steel
rises with increasing steepness «until 1913. .^The Siemens-
Martin, or open-hearth process, was slower in making its
way, but is now in this country by far the more important,
and is everywhere gaining ground on its rival. The
world's production of steel, which was about 100,000
tons in 1848, was about 76,000,000 tons in 1913. These

198 SCIENCE IN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

vast quantities of cheap material have transformed the
construction of buildings, bridges, and ships, and we now
live in a veritable Steel Age. Metallurgical chemistry
has added a wide range of alloy steels, containing nickel,
chromium, tungsten, and other metals, to the materials
available to the engineer, surpassing the older steel andiron
in strength and elastic qualities, and so making possible
the construction of the motor-car and the aeroplane.

The chemical industries are essentially of modern
growth. The great alkali industry, the foundation of all
the others, began with the invention of the Leblanc soda
process in 1791, and soon found a home in England, where
it flourished. Popular attention, however, has been more
constantly directed towards that part of the chemical
industry which deals with artificial dyes and drugs, the
industry of coal-tar products. Scientific chemists having
shown the presence of definite chemical compounds in the
tar obtained in the distillation of coal, the first coloured
compound, mauve, was prepared from it by Perkin in
1856, since when the industry has reached an extra-
ordinary development, many thousands of compounds
having been prepared, including a wide range of synthetic
colouring matters and therapeutic agents, and of such
minor but yet important substances as photographic
developers. The virtual capture of the industry by
Germany, owing to the employment of an army of
chemical investigators by the manufacturers, has caused
a widespread interest in its fortunes, its social and political
importance being quite disproportionate to its magnitude,
which is far below that of other branches of industry.
The coal-tar products have formed the text of many
a homily on the importance of scientific education, but
it must not be forgotten that its lessons are equally
applicable to many other industries, which can only
flourish and grow when scientifically controlled.

Unfortunately, the manufacture of synthetic chemicals

SCIENCE IN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 199

involves more than the production of dyes and drugs.
Modern high explosives belong to the same class and are
derived from the same source, and whilst these, by their
use in mining, have increased efficiency and diminished
danger, they have made warfare more deadly and have
enormously increased its scale. So, too, the knowledge
of many compounds prepared in the laboratory and
remarked for their noxious qualities led to the intro-
duction in the great war of ' poison gases ', the last
refinement of horror in fighting. These are among the
misuses to which all scientific discoveries are liable to be
put, as long as the general conscience is insufficiently
powerful to control them.

Closely allied to explosives, however, are the artificial
fertilisers by means of which the yield of cereals and
other crops can be so largely increased. By combining
the experience of the chemist with that of the electrician,
means have been found of converting the nitrogen of the
air into compounds which serve in time of peace to
increase the fertility of the land, and in time of war to
form the foundation of high explosives. Hence the
importance of the synthetic nitrogen industry, which
requires cheap electric power, derived from water, for its
existence, and therefore tends to establish itself in new
districts, on the coast of Norway, among the mountains
of Central Europe, or on the shores of the Pacific. It is
being followed by a number of other electrochemical
industries, which associate themselves with it, and are
assisting in that transfer of industry from the coalfields
of which mention has already been made.
O ^ The early scenes of the industrial revolution were set
in England, where both invention and application
advanced more rapidly than elsewhere. For many years
other nations were content to follow at an interval the
path traced out by British industry. It was only later
that they became serious rivals, and the struggle for

200 SCIENCE IN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

industrial supremacy belongs to a later period than that
considered in this essay, i There 'were several reasons for
/ this industrial leadership of England. Her supremacy
' in shipping and in foreign trade had given the people
an active interest in industrial production, and stable
political conditions had favoured the growth of a large
industrial population, including many skilled craftsmen.
When the change in the manufacture of iron took place,
coal, ironstone, and fireclay were found together in
abundance in the north, giving this country a great
natural advantage at the start. It is remarkable how,
as each successive development arose, suitable raw
materials were found conveniently placed — clay for steel
crucibles, ganister for the Bessemer process, and so on.

-But-these material factors are not sufficient in them-
selves to account for the English leadership in the indus-
trial revolution. There was a practical bias of the
English intellect that also played its part. The experi-
mental method of investigation, although splendidly
represented in Italy by Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo,
is most characteristic of Enghsh science, from Roger
Bacon onwards. It is commonly associated with his later
namesake, but the name of Francis Bacon was rather
a rallying cry for the school than anything more. The
strict Baconian method, as expounded in detail by its
author, was barren of results, although the general
principle was an inspiration, and the real founders of the
experimental school were Boyle and the men who estab-
lished the Royal Society. They fought under the banner
of Bacon, but their methods were their own, and it was
their work, interpreted by Voltaire and d'Alembert, that
influenced Continental science. The philosophy of Locke
had a practical tendency, and whilst French speculative
thought in the eighteenth century took mainly a political
direction, that of England was essentially practical.
^ That the advocates of experimental investigation looked

\^

SCIENCE IN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 201

deliberately to industrial applications of their discoveries
may be made clear by quoting a passage from Bishop
Thomas Sprat's History of the Royal Society, published
in 1667. Sprat was one of the founders of the Society, j
and his essay is a powerful defence of the experimental |
method against criticisms from the philosophical and ''
religious points of view. After showing how inventions
have mostly arisen from one of three causes — chance, the
desire of pleasure or luxury, and necessity — he goes on
to show that the study of experimental philosophy, as he
calls it, provides a more excellent way:

It is impossible for us to administer this power [of
dominion over nature] aright, unless we prefer the light
of men of Knowledge, to be a constant overseer, and
director, of the industry, and Works of those that labor.
The Benefits are vast, that will appear upon this con-
junction. By this means the Inventions of chance will
be spread into all their various uses, and multiply'd into
many new advantages : By this the Productions of
necessity, will be amplify'd, and compleated : By this
those of Luxury, and Wantoness may be reduc'd to some
solid ends : By this may be rays'd almost as certain
a Method to invent new Mechanics, as now any particular
Mechanics can practise, to produce their own Operations.
. . . By this that will be amended, which has bin hitherto
the misfortune of such Inventions, that they have com-
monly fallen into mens hands, who understood not their
Natures, uses, or improvements : By this the conceptions
of men of Knowledge, which are wont to soar too high,
will be made to descend into the material World : And
the flegmatick imaginations of men of Trade, which use
to grovell too much on the ground, will be exalted.

We have seen that the industrial revolution was the
consequence of the new movements in science and philo-
sophy. Without the discoveries in mechanics and physics
of the seventeenth century, the methods of industry
could not have been transformed in the eighteenth.
That the social consequences of the change were in

202 SCIENCE IN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

large measure disastrous, and that a period of callous
cruelty almost unexampled in history followed on an
invention that might have brought material comfort
to all, is to be attributed to the low standard of morality
then prevailing, to a temporary retrograde movement in
religion, and to the fact that the practical development
of the phj^sical sciences had outstripped the growth of
abstract science. ^, Biology was scarcely born, sociology
had hardly been dreamed of as a science. In the great
transition that is before us, from the selfish, wasteful,
and ugly Palaeotechnic age to the peaceful organization
of Neotechnic industry, all the sciences will have to take
their part. Some of the most ardent advocates of the
claims of science to be the guide of national and social
life are apt to restrict the scope of science too narrowly,
including in it only the physical aspects of the universe,
perhaps adding the study of the animal and vegetable
world. / Viewed so narrowly, science is dangerously open
to misapplication in the cause of commercial interests or
of military ambitions, and it is only when its scope is so
extended as to include the life of man in society that the
reproach can be avoided. The conception of science as ^
a whole, ranging from mathematics to sociology and
ethics, is the true safeguard against its misuse in anti-
social ways.

Books for Reference

R. L. Galloway, The Steam Engine and its Inventors. Macmillan.

\V. Cunningham, The Growth of English Industry and Commerce in
Modern Times. The relevant chapters have been reprinted
by the Cambridge University Press under the title The
Industrial Revolution.

S. Smiles, Lives of the Engineers. Industrial Biograph3^ Murray.

J. Percy, Metallurgy ; Iron and Steel. Murray.

R. Austin Freeman, Social Decay and Regeneration. Constable.

VIII

THE INFLUENCE OF DARWINISM ON
THOUGHT AND LIFE

J. Arthur Thomson

§ I. Meaning of Darwinism

It is useful to take 'Darwinism' in a large sense, as
including six great ideas. First, there is the web of life,
the inter-relations binding organisms together, the link-
ages which form an increasingly intricate system. Cats
are connected with the clover crop and with the incidence
of the plague in India; water wagtails have to do with
the success of sheep-farming, and little fishes with malaria.
No creature lives or dies to itself. There is correlation
of organs in the body; there is correlation of organisms
in Nature. Second, there is the struggle for existence,
all the answers-back that living creatures make to
environing difficulties and limitations, partly in com-
petition with fellows of the same kith and kin, partly in
parrying the attacks of foes belonging to other races,
and partly in reaction against the callous fates of the
physical world. The struggle may mean girding the loins
or tightening the belt, trimming the lamps of the senses
or quickening the pace, putting on a garment of invisi-
bihty or 'attending the mind thereunto', to use Sir Isaac
Newton's phrase. Third, there is the idea of variabihty,
the mysterious fountain of change which wells up from
the germinal depths, sometimes resulting in a little more'
of this quahty and a httle less of that, sometimes leading
to a remarkable shuffling of the hereditary cards so that
the outcome is a distinct novelty.

204 THE INFLUENCE OF

Fourth, there is the idea of sifting or winnowing, the
selection that the struggle for existence involves, a very
varied and often subtle process, as Darwin always
insisted. Fifth, there is included in Darwinism a vindica-
tion of the general idea of evolution, that the present is
the child of the past and the parent of the future. This
was indeed an old idea, but Darwin made it current
intellectual coin. He showed that it was a formula that
fitted — a modal, rather than a causal description of what
had occurred. But Darwin proceeded to change it into
a causal theory by showing how the consistent Natural
Selection of variations might work out new adaptations.
Sixth, we must include in Darwinism the thesis that Man
is solidary with the rest of creation and the outcome of
a process of natural evolution. Such then are the six
great ideas included in Darwinism,

§ 2. Changes in Darwinism

The next question is more difficult : How has Darwin-
ism changed since it was first promulgated ? For of course
it has made progress, and it is with the Darwinian body
of doctrine that we have to deal, not with Darwin's
ipsissima verba. It would indeed be a bad sign of an
evolution theory if it did not itself evolve !

First of all, it may be said that the fact of evolution
stands more firmly than ever; the uncertainties concern
the factors. Perhaps it is clearer than it used to be that
it does not explain anything to say that it evolved, for
that is merely stating the manner of its becoming.
Perhaps it is clearer than it used to be that there is no
way of proving the evolution theory as one might prove
the law of gravitation ; all that can be shown is that it is
a descriptive formula that fits, and that there is nothing
to contradict it.

Apart from a few heretics who profess to believe — in

DARWINISM ON THOUGHT AND LIFE 205

defiance of the rock-record — that the lower forms of life
are derived by simplification from the higher, there is
unanimity as to the derivation of our present-day fauna
and flora from an antecedent fauna and flora on the
whole simpler, and so on back and back. And apart
from Professor Bateson's inquiry 'whether the course
of Evolution can at all reasonably be represented as an
unpacking of an original complex, which contained within
itself the whole range of diversity which living things
present', there is general belief in an age-long progression
from the simple to the complex, a general increase in
differentiation and integration, and a frequent emergence
of what must be called new.

For a time naturalists spoke as if they knew everything
about evolution; now it is rather the fashion to speak
as if we knew nothing about it. The fact is that while our
ignorance remains immense, as Darwin said, we have
come to know a good deal. The general idea of organic
evolution commends itself to all naturalists, and it is
justified of its children. But it is not so easy as it looks.
This is plain whenever we pass from the fact to the
factors. If the inquiry were not very young there would
be reason for being disappointed over the uncertainties
that surround the problems of variation, heredity, and
selection ; and over our ignorance of the precise pedigree
and mode of origin of the great types, such as Backboned
Animals or Birds. We have not even attained to clearness
in regard to the origin of a species — i.e. a discontinuous
group of similar individuals, breeding true (in the main)
inter se, but not readily fertile with other species.

§ 3. Changes in regard to Variation

For the raw materials of evolution, Darwin relied
chiefly on minute fluctuations, the origin of which he
confessed he did not know. He was intrigued by brusque

2o6 THE INFLUENCE OF

or saltatory variations, but he thought that they would
be swamped by intercrossing. He inclined to a belief
in some transmission of the direct organismal results of
changes in environment, nutrition, use and disuse. In
speaking of fortuitous variations he meant little more
than that the particular combinations of causes that give
rise to a new departure remain unknown. He had the
idea that two or more different variations may be linked
together or correlated, one involving the other.

We know now that variations are even more abundant
than Darwin supposed. The fountain of change is often
overflowing. We know what Darwin did not realize,
that most of the variations — some would say all — are
due to germinal permutations and combinations. We are
very dubious in regard to the transmissibility of somatic
modifications ('acquired characters') as such or in any
representative degree; though it is premature to shut
the Lamarckian door. We know that discontinuous
variations or brusque mutations are common, and that
they have great staying power in inheritance. In some
cases it is certain that the germinal ' factors ' corresponding
to these mutations and to all or many of the discrete
non-blending 'unit characters' of the organism lie in
longitudinal order in the chromosomes of the nucleus of
the germ-cell. In a few cases something is known of
their topography. In the fruit-fly Drosophila there are
known to be about 7,500 of these 'factors' or genes —
hereditary cards which can be shuffled. One hereditary
'factor' or 'determiner' may affect several adult char-
acters (corroborating Darwin's idea of the correlation of
variations), and one adult character may be the outcome
of several 'factors'.

There is strong palaeontological and some experimental
evidence that variations are sometimes definite or ortho-
genetic, i.e. occurring consistently in a particular direction.

DARWINISM ON THOUGHT AND LIFE 207

In other words, a variation may be congruent with what
has already been enregistered in the organization of the
creature. Just as an architect cannot add a random new
feature to a building, but only what is consistent with the
given style, so it is unlikely that ' anyhow ' variations are
common. The organism is a unity, even when it is an
implicit organism, the germ-cell.

As to the origin of the new, we know much in regard
to the opportunities afforded for shuffling the hereditary
cards during the life-history of the germ-cells, especially
during maturation and fertilization. There are some facts
which show that deeply saturating environmental, nutri-
tional, and functional peculiarities may pull the trigger
of germinal changefulness. And just as there is a periodic
scrapping and reorganization (endomixis) in the nuclear
constitution of a slipper animalcule, artificially kept in
a pure-line culture in which conjugation does not occur, so
there may be spontaneous rearrangements and reorganiza-
tions in the complex nucleus of a germ-cell. What is
particularly baffling is not the occurrence of a little more
of this or a little more of that, but the emergence of
something distinctively new. It looks as if the germ-
cells made experiments in self-expression.

* § 4. Chmiges in regard to Heredity

Darwin was one of the first to show that heredity is
amenable to scientific treatment. He had a particular
theory of his own — an ingenious hypothesis of the centri-
petal passage of gemmules from changed parts of the
body to the reproductive organs. In this way the changes
hammered on to the individual body might conceivably
affect the next generation. But Darwin had no clear
idea of the continuity of the germ-plasm, and therefore
did not understand the radical reason why hke tends to
beget like. That was made plain by his cousin Francis

2o8 THE INFLUENCE OF

Gallon and by Weismann. Most unluckily Darwin did
not come to know the work of Mendel, which would have
delighted him. Thus he was unaware of the precise
vehicles of the factors for hereditary characters (which
are carried by the chromosomes of the nucleus of the
germ-cells) ; and he did not know how those from the
two sides of the house are sorted out among the offspring
in intdligible proportions. What we do not know is how
these 'factors' come to be, how they express themselves
in development, and how changes may arise within them
as well as in their assortment or distribution.

Since Darwin's day, the list of demonstrably heritable
characters has been greatly increased, but many if not
most naturalists would agree in excluding somatic modi-
fications or 'acquired characters'. The modes of inherit-
ance tend to be reduced to Mendelian formulae, though
many still believe that some pairs of characters, differing
in the father and the mother organism, may blend in the
offspring.

Perhaps there has been since Darwin's day an increased
clearness as to what heredity is. It is no principle, fate,
or force, but a relation of genetic continuity between
successive generations, admitting of variations as well as
ensuring the general persistence of specific organization.
It includes the study of the measurable differences as well
as of resemblances between successive generations. The
distinction between re-impression of peculiarities and
their transmission or hereditar}^ continuance has become
clear, as also the difference between the inheritance of
a disease and the inheritance of a predisposition towards
it. Of considerable practical importance also is the
distinction between ante-natal infection and the here-
ditary continuance of a disease. There is value in the
recognition of the fact that the expression of a character
in the course of the development is always the resultant

DARWINISM ON THOUGHT AND LIFE 209

of two components — the hereditary 'nature' and the
environmental, nutritional, and functional 'nurture'.
For this takes the fatahstic edge off heredity. Finally
there is clearness in distinguishing between the natural
inheritance (to use Sir Francis Galton's phrase) enregis-
tered in the germ-plasm, and the extra-organismal
heritage embodied in traditions and permanent products,
forming, indeed, part of the environment in the wide
sense.

§ 5. Changes in regard to Sifting

The essence of the Darwinian contribution to aetiology
is the theory of Natural Selection — the sifting of tenta-
tives, the winnowing of experiments. Darwin had a very
broad and subtle view of the manifold processes of
selection, broader and subtler than many since. Those
naturalists are in line with Darwinian tradition who
distinguish various modes of selection, e.g. lethal and
reproductive, sexual and germinal. In a few cases, like
Weldon's crabs, the actual working of Natural Selection
has been demonstrated. Similarly, to take a diagram-
matic case, Cesnola tethered brown Mantises on withered
herbage, and they escaped their enemies; and green
Mantises on green plants, with the same result; whereas
brown insects on a green background, or green insects
on brown, were soon picked off.

It is clearer than it once was among the non-expert
that selection need not mean immediate elimination of
the relatively less fit, for the same final result may be
reached by handicapping, e.g. if the relatively less fit
organisms have a shorter and harder life and a smaller,
less successful family. The common misunderstanding
is dying, that the survival of the fittest need mean more
than the survival of the relatively fittest to a given
environment. The tapeworm survives as well as the

o

2IO THE INFLUENCE OF

Golden Eagle. At the same time, when we take a long
view, there has been a general increase of differentiation
and integration in the course of organic evolution.

Of great importance is the fact that Natural Selection
operates in relation to a system of inter-relations — the
web of life — already established, for this explains why
Shibboleths may have survival value. A nuance in the
inter-relations between flower and bee may be decisive,
and it is so all round. Moreover, the establishment of
inter-relations gives some external security for progress.
There has been an evolution of sieves as well as of the
material to be sifted.

Another step is the recognition of the importance of
Isolation in its varied forms — geographical, habitudinal,
temporal, and temperamental — for isolation tends to
inbreeding or endogamy, which stabilizes a stock or
species, whereas outbreeding or exogamy promotes
variability, sometimes almost like an epidemic. Alterna-
tions of inbreeding and outbreeding have almost certainly
meant much in evolution.

It seems fair to say that, since Darwin's time, the
range of the fortuitous and mechanical in evolution has
shrunk. Darwin once spoke of the beautiful hinge of
some bivalve shells, from which men used to argue to
the skill of the ' Divine Artificer ', to use the rather terrible
phrase of those days. But Darwin said that what had
come about in the shell was more like the formation of
the beautiful snow-wreaths which we see when there is
a snowstorm in windy weather. But perhaps the com-
parison did not show Darwin's usual shrewdness. For
we can give, in proportion to our knowledge of the facts,
a satisfactory mechanical description of what happens
in the making of a snow-wreath, whereas we cannot give
any mechanical re-description of the origin of really new
mutations, nor of the way in which the chick is minted

DARWINISM ON THOUGHT AND LIFE 211

and coined out of the egg, nor of the ingenuity with which
animals play the hand of cards with which they have been
endowed. It is true that the environment often selects
organisms, but it is also true that organisms often select
their environment, and in the use of their hereditary
talents do commerce with circumstance. In short, living
creatures are not passive pawns ; they play their own
game. Organisms take a share in their own evolution.

Purpose is a scientific concept when we are dealing
with some known agent; we may legitimately speak of
the intelligent purpose of the dog and the instinctive
purpose of the bee. But to speak of purpose in Nature
or in Evolution is to go beyond §cience in the strict
sense ; we are passing to philosophical interpretation.
Yet we cannot refrain from trying to see things 'whole'.
The old lady marvelled at the providential way in which
big rivers ran past big towns ; are we repeating this
naive mistake when we call attention to the abundant
availability of C, H, O, N on or near the surface of the
cooling planet, to the almost unique property of water
which keeps pools from freezing solid and thus allows
of freshwater faunas in North Temperate countries, to the
broad foundations of small fry that make higher animals
possible, to the conservatism in evolution that holds fast
that which is good, such as amoeboid movement ? It often
seons as if a multitude of factors conspired towards
a progressive result. We often seem to hear the order
and purposiveness of an onward advancing melody.
The institution of the order of Nature must have been
well thought out.

§ 6. Manifold Influence of Darwinism

The influence of Darwinism on modern thought and
life is too big for more than illustration in an hour's
lecture. We should have liked to show how Darwinism

o 2

212 THE INFLUENCE OF

was the leaven that made Psychology a new science —
comparative, genetic, and concrete; but that in itself is
a long story. We should like to have asked how far
philosophy has been influenced by the demonstration of
continuity in Nature and Man; or how Pragmatism is
in some measure a recognition of the -struggle for existence
in the world of ideas. But we must restrict ourselves to
three illustrations — the influence of Darwinism on Socio-
logy, on Religion, and on everyday human life with its
hopes and ideals.

§ 7. Influence on Sociology

How has Sociology been influenced ? The foundations
of sociology doubtless began to be laid whenever human
societies began, but as a definite science sociology is young,
and all but its earliest development has been under the
influence of evolutionism. It has been genetic from the
start, and has not undergone a metamorphosis like
biology and psychology. From the moment of its modern
formulation, by Comte and Spencer, it has been influenced
by the demonstration of man's solidarity with the rest
of creation, and by the idea of evolution going on here
and now.

But just because sociology has grown in Darwinian soil
it has run certain risks, from which it has suftered.
Ideas which had been suggested hy human affairs to
biology, returned to sociology with a biological imprim-
atur, and sometimes with a false simphcity. We mean
such ideas as Division of Labour and the Struggle for
Existence. For a time it was almost like a game to press
analogies between the individual organism and the
so-called 'social organism', between the Realm of Organ-
isms and the Kingdom of Man. More serious was the
utilization of biological generalizations to justify human
practices. War was justified as the logical outcome of the

DARWINISM ON THOUGHT AND LIFE 213

struggle for existence, and laissez-faire slackness was
justified as congruent with the regime of Natural Selection,
' Leave things alone ; the survival of the fittest will
follow': the silly cackle continued. Because there have
been 'Lost Races' among animals, extinctions without
any residue of descendants, it was argued that every
human race or nationality must reach its limit and then
decline. Next day the talk would be about the inevit-
ableness of progress, the previous day's convictions in
regard to degeneration and lost races being forgotten.

It is not reactionary to indicate the grave danger of
'biologisms'. Just as a materialism is the simplicist
fallacy of forcing vital facts into mechanical frames,
constructed for a different order of facts, so a biologism
is the simplicist fallacy of trying to make sociolog}^ a
department of the study of mammals. Up to a certain
point there is a legitimate biology of mankind, and one
wishes one knew more about it. An albino child is
a human mutation; tanning under a tropical sun is a
human modification; hereditary characters have for^their
vehicles twenty-four or so chromosomes in t-h^ human
germ-cell; the differential death-rate in mankind some-
times illustrates Natural Selection. All that is clear.
Man is a mammalian organism, and illustrates biological
formulae. But he is also a rational and a social organism,
a 'political being', a member of a society in which the
whole is more than the sum of the parts.

What are the big differences which change the venue?
The sociological unit is a societary form; variations are
no longer confined to the germ-plasm; great men, big
ideas, and social organizations count supremely; there
is a social heritage — or, under another aspect, we may
call it the social environment, which is as supreme as
the Natural Inheritance is fundamental. Moreover, the
selective processes are now in great part rational, or, if

214 THE INFLUENCE OF

not rational, more or less consciously realized. It is
only necessary to state these differences to see how
unscientific it is to try to force social affairs into biological
frames. Every suggestion from biology must be verified
in the higher field. This has obvious practical corollaries,
for a proposal which is justifiable biologically — the
euthanasia of incurables, for instance — may be quite
invalid sociologically. Here also, we have to face the
dilemma of civilization that the growth of social senti-
ment tends to favour the continuance and even the multi-
plication of undesirables, who would not be tolerated
under Nature's regime, where there is no place for the
unlit lamp and the ungirt loin — unless indeed in parasit-
ism. Man's kindness in the present is apt to mean
cruelty in the future.

§ 8. Influence on Religion

It appears that Man has usually become religious at
limits of his practical, emotional, and intellectual tethers.
Now Darwinism with its corollary the Control of Life
means more power, and therefore, in proportion, less
need for, let us say, offering gifts to propitiate the gods.
On the other hand, it is only to the shallow-witted that
the world has become through Darwinism less wonderful,
less beautiful, less fundamentally mysterious. The
emotional path to religion remains as open as before —
perhaps more clearly open. When the half-gods go, the
God arrives. The Darwinian world is grander than
Paley's. And as to the limit of the intellectual tether, we
get there soon enough even with all the light of Darwinism
to illumine our thinking. For biology tells us little of
more than chronological beginnings, e.g. that birds
emerged from a reptilian stock in the Jurassic age; it
tells us nothing of essences and very little of more than
the modes of becoming. What science is always saying

DARWINISM ON THOUGHT AND LIFE 215

is : 'If this, then that ' ; or this occurrence is a particular
case of laws VII and IX. But the concepts of these laws
or descriptive formulae are big with mystery — organism,
protoplasm, development, and the like. We venture to
say that Darwinism leaves plenty of room for religion
from the intellectual side. Of course we must not be
taken as suggesting that religion is a sort of crutch for
our weakness or a pillow for our weariness — something
to be apologized for. It is rather of the nature of an
enrichment, like music, if we are strong enough and
open-souled enough to use it.

This change, however, has come about — a change in
our understanding of the aim of science. Its aim is to
describe and formulate, whereas the task of religion is to
interpret transcendentally. Science is ever reducing the
fractions of reality that we know to their lowest common
denominator; religion seeks for the greatest common
measure — the Will of the Absolute. In general, no
conflict should be possible between religion and science,
unless we try to speak two languages at once. This is no
return to idea-tight compartments, science in one and
religion in another; it is simply a recognition of the fact
that scientific (empirically descriptive) concepts and
religious (transcendentally interpretative) concepts are
incommensurable. The title of a book, God or Natural
Selection, is a diagram of the pernicious fallacy we are
condemning.

Science must never dance to the piping of religion or
theology, but it is open to the religious thinker to say to
the biologist : ' Are you sure that your Darwinian concept
of the struggle for existence is accurate and adequate?'
And there are many similar questions possible. In the
uplands of mysticism, science has no right of way. The
only conflict between science and religion is when parti-
cular forms of religious ideas are in detail at variance

2i6 THE INFLUENCE OF

with scientific descriptions. Thus a Hteral, one may say
wooden, acceptance of the Genesis poem regarding Man's
origin contradicts scientific description, but that is not
to say that there is no contribution to Truth in the
rehgious poetical interpretation. Similarly, as exoterically
expounded, the theological doctrine of the Fall is unac-
ceptable scientifically, for it is an ascent, not a descent,
that we have behind us.

It is not very difficult to see that a Doctrine of Creation
may be rehabilitated as a religious interpretation of the
Institution of the Order of Nature ; and when Dame
Nature in Charles Kingsley's Water Babies said to the
child who expected to find her very busy, 'You see,
I make things make themselves ', the idea suggested is
a teleology deeper than the old doctrine of design and
not inconsistent with Darwinism. On the other hand,
the doctrine of the resurrection of the body in its usual
literal form seems an insult to the scientific intelligence.
If it be said that religious feeling and interpretation are
generically independent of particular forms, then the
remarks we have made will refer to the influence of
Darwinism on theology rather than on religion.

We have spoken, on the other side, of the right that
the religious thinker has to inquire into the adequacy of
a scientific statement when that passes beyond the field
of exact knowledge. That inquiry may be made, for
instance, in regard to the biological account of Man's
place in Nature. The demonstration of Man's affiliation
to the highest order of mammals was certainly a great
gain. It gave a new unity and continuity to the whole
world-process ; it gave a new significance to the long
groaning and travaihng of creation. But there is often
a tax to pay on a big intellectual gain, and in this case the
tax has been an occasional unworthiness in our thoughts
of Man as one 'whose grandfather was a monkey'.

DARWINISM ON THOUGHT AND LIFE 217

No doubt there is an all-pervading similitude of
structure between man and the highest apes, bone for
bone, muscle for muscle, convolution for convolution;
man is a walking museum of relics, some of which go
back to a remote aquatic ancestry; in his individual
development he climbs up his own genealogical tree;
irl his relapses he betrays his ancestry. Now it is no
doubt profitable at times to look on the rock whence we
were hewn and the pit whence we were digged, but there
are other profitable directions in which we may look.
' What a piece of work is a man ! how noble in reason !
how infinite in faculty ! in form and moving how express
and admirable ! in action how like an angel ! in appre-
hension how like a god ! ' Part of the truth lies here.

The apartness of Man remains, whatever be his pedigree.
Shakespeare is not less great because once a silly child;
Man is not less great because a scion of a stock common
to him and the Gorilla. His apartness is in his big brain,
his language, his conceptual reason, his morality, his
ability to envisage and control his own evolution.

Think for a moment of what the objective facts suggest.
There is a solemnity in the patience of the age-long
man-ward adventure which has crowned the evolutionary
process upon the earth. Two or three millions of years
ago the Primate stem sent out its first tentative branches,
and the result was a tangle of monkeys. First the New
World monkeys diverged, and then those of the Old
World; the main stem grew on. It gave off the lower
Anthropoid Apes, and then the higher, but the main
stem, vaguely known, probed on. Without haste, without
rest, and sometimes leading to nothing, more branches
were given off — tentative men, eventually: Pithecan-
thropus the erect, the slouching Neanderthalers, the man
of Heidelberg and of the Sussex Weald. In none of these,
they say, was the ancestor of the modern man type.

2i8 THE INFLUENCE OF

The Neanderthalers had their day and ceased to be — the
main stem spUt into African, Austrahan, Mongohan,
Indo-Aryan and European races. The story is so remark-
able that we feel the vulgarity of saying that Man sprang
from a monkey. We question rather whether there is
not a purpose at the core of the world-process.

,This, at least, we would plead for — trying to see the
process as a whole. When we are dealing with the
significance of any process, we may get glimpses when
we consider a particular transition. From reptiles sprang
birds — there is significance in that. It meant a movement
to greater integration, more emancipation of mind, more
freedom of body, a richer life, and more satisfaction in
life. But think of the entire evolution in the light of its
outcome — which includes Man. And there is no reason
to believe that achievements are all in the past !

§ 9. Influence on Life

Our last question concerns the influence of Darwinism
on ordinary human life, and here we must confine our-
selves to a couple of illustrations. The first concerns the
'Control of Life', which is to Darwinism as works to
faith. When it became clear that out of the crab-tree
by the wayside, more promising in its flowers than in its
fruit, man had evolved all the aristocrats of the orchard,
the question was bound to arise whether man might not
evolve some of the crabbedness out of himself. When it
became clear that out of a wolf man had evolved the
domestic dog, the trusty guardian of his herds, the
question was bound to arise whether man might not
evolve some of the wolfish out of himself.

Pasteur might perhaps be taken as the figurehead of
the modern idea of the scientific control of life, though
Francis Bacon was quite clear that the aim of science was
not only 'the glory of the Creator' but 'the relief of

DARWINISM ON THOUGHT AND LIFE 219

Man's estate'. When one thinks of the triumphs of
modern medicine and sanitation, when one gathers
together the practicable suggestions of Eugenics, Eutech-
nics, and Eutopias — the amehoration of Folk, Work, and
Place, one sees no limit to what Man may do in taking
fuller possession of his kingdom. It is certain that a
closer linkage of science and goodwill may remove
shackles and handicaps that hinder Man gratuitously, and
may thus leave him more free for higher adventures.

The second illustration is more subtle, yet surely not
far-fetched. Every one remembers Huxley's picture of
Animate Nature as a vast gladiatorial show, a dismal
cockpit, a Hobbesian warfare — each for himself, and
extinction take the hindmost. Man, Huxley argued,
must, in his ethical endeavours, turn his face in the
opposite direction — solus contra mundiim. But while
Huxley painted one aspect of Nature in his lurid picture,
there is another which is at least equally true. There are
modes of the Struggle for Existence in which the solution
is found in an increase of parental care, in experiments
in mutual aid and sociality. Goethe wisely said that
Nature was always taking advantage of her children's
capacity for self-forgetfulness.

But may we not go farther? Progress is a human
concept, implying a judgement of values. It means the
fuller embodiment of the True, the Beautiful, and the
Good in lives which are increasingly a satisfaction in
themselves; and the pre-conditions of this progress are
Health and Wealth, meaning by Health not merely the
absence of disease, but positive vigour, and meaning by
Wealth a happy mastery of the requisite energies.

Now the main movement of evolution has been integra-
tive and progressive. It has meant the emergence of
nobler, liner, more moralized types. It actually dis-
closes movements which are the counterparts of man's

220 THE INFLUENCE OF DARWINISM

endeavours after the True, the Beautiful, and the Good.
Nature is all for health and all for beauty. She rewards
the creatures that face the facts, which is the beginning
of the search for truth. She gives the premier place to
those that have learned the lesson of self-subordination.
The momentum of evolution is behind us when we are
at our best.

Books for Reference

Baldwin, J. Mark. Darivin and the Humanities. Baltimore, 1909.

Geddes, P., and Thomson, J. Arthur. Evolution. Home Univer-
sity Library, 191 1. Williams & Norgate.

Kellogg, Vernon L. Darwinism To-day. New York, 1907.
Holt & Co.

Lankester, Sir E. Ray. The Kingdom of Man. 1907.

Seward, A. C. (Editor). Darwin and Modern Science. Cambridge
University Press, 1909. A valuable series of twenty-nine
essays by various authorities.

Thomson, J. Arthur. The System of Animate Nature. 2 vols.
1920. Williams & Norgate.

Darwinism and Human Life. Fifth Edition, 1919. Melrose.

IX

SCIENCE AND EDUCATION
A. E. Heath

Our common task, in this course, is to discuss the
relation between science and social progress. Such a line
of work falls naturally into place as part of a wider
movement towards a fuller appreciation of the basis of
science upon which modern social structures are built.
This movement has two main streams.

On the one hand a growing band of scientific workers
have turned their attention to the building up of a real
history of science, and of a first-hand account of scientific
procedure. What is aimed at is not a history of trivial
biographical detail, but a real treatment of the evolution
of scientific ideas; not a philosophy of science which
consists in the spinning of a fine web of a priori con-
structions out of the philosopher's superior wisdom, but
a critical attempt to obtain a general synthetic view of
scientific concepts, methods, and principles from a careful
survey of their actual use in the hands of scientific
workers themselves. These studies must inevitably have
important bearings upon any serious attempt to estimate
the influence of science on the thought and on the
material organization of the world we live in. In parti-
cular they will enable us to avoid a too narrow interpreta-
tion of science as a body of fact, and will turn our attention
to science as what Professor Nunn has called a 'grand
expression of the human spirit'.

On the other hand we have a closely associated move-

222 SCIENCE AND EDUCATION

ment among those modern historians who are dissatisfied
with the older over-stressing of the pohtical aspects of
history. Once we accept the view that history is the
account in full of man's achievement, of his increase in
knowledge as well as in the power which comes from
^knowledge, then the character, growth, and influence of
science form an important part of that study.

In broad outline we may anticipate our conclusions and
say that the two parts of this movement exhibit science
as an age-long process which has enabled man to trace
ever more complete uniformities and correlations in his
world, and has given him in consequence new powers of
control. From the first of these comes a deepening sense
of social unity; from the second, an intensification of
social responsibility. It is a fatal mistake to exaggerate
the degree of rational unity reached by man: neverthe-
less he does seem to be groping towards ever more con-
sciously directed control over the social institutions
(including education) whose growth has been, however
dimly and inadequately, an expression of his social unity.

Now it is clear that if, with these considerations in
mind, we ask what has been the influence of science on
that part of social organization we call education we are
entering upon a vast field whose full treatment may well
employ generations of workers. We can only, in our
brief survey, choose a single aspect of this subject; and
even within the limits set, only attempt a preliminary
and tentative treatment. If we confine ourselves to
English education, it still leaves our subject too wide:
English education is a growth whose continuity is being
more and more emphasized in recent work. Nevertheless
we can justify the further limiting of our subject to the
modern period. For, as Professor Archer has well said,
'Institutions are not like plants which grow from a seed
into a predetermined shape; they are transformed into

SCIENCE AND EDUCATION 223

something radically different by a creative period, and
such a creative period was the nineteenth century.' ^
Again, in treating our narrower subject we must guard
against any implication that the creative force with which
we are here concerned — the intellectual movement
centred in the sciences — was the only moulding force
acting in this period. The ferment in the public schools
during the middle of the nineteenth century and the
enlargement of classical studies called 'classical human-
ism ' are examples of other important forces whose effects
are clearly discernible in the educational theory and
practice of our own time. We must however recognize
that any adequate treatment of the influence of science
on modern education must embody the important fact
that it has been more than the impact of an intellectual
movement. In addition to its primary influence on
education, science has itself affected social organization
in general and produced secondary influences arising out
of the changes so induced. In revolutionizing the methods
of production in modern times it has, for instance,
affected the functions of the State, precipitated social
movements, and raised new and urgent problems — all of
which, in turn, react on educational theory and practice.
We may express this by saying that our age is one
[a) whose material characteristics are closely connected
with scientific progress and {b) whose thought is saturated
with scientific ideas. In view of this double character it
will be convenient to make a twofold division in our
treatment of the influence of science upon modern
education, and to distinguish between (i) the influence of
scientific results, and (2) the influence of the method and
outlook of science.

^ R. L. Archer, Secondary Education in the Nineteenth Century,
p. I.

224 SCIENCE AND EDUCATION

II

The most important general influence of scientific
' results has been referred to above, namely the revolution
brought about in the methods of industry. Modern
' students of the industrial revolution draw a distinction
between the earlier change from individual to organized
production and the later changes resulting from the
application of the results of the physical sciences to
industrial processes. This distinction is important because
it emphasizes the continuity of the movement. The
change in the last decade of the eighteenth and early
decades of the nineteenth centuries was only an accelera-
tion of what had been taking place before. The social
consequences are not, that is to say, to be sought
. entirely in science ; and the more evil of these conse-
quences seem to come, not from improved powers of
production alone (it seems incredible that they should,
though many people write as if they believed it) but
from the rapidity of the changes in view of the special
character of the time. This point we must stress because
it has an important bearing not only upon our view of
the direct influence of this social upheaval upon education,
but also, as we shall see later, upon our view of the
influence on education of the method and outlook of
science. Professor G. W. Daniels has stated the case
with great clarity in his Early English Cotton Industry}
The idea that a movement characterized by a greater
power of production and by an expanding economic
unity could, of itself, be a cause of widespread distress
and of social retrogression is, he says, a hard one to
accept. He points out that in consequence of the Napo-
leonic war the economic changes were probably con-
centrated within this country to an extent they would

1 Ch. V, pp. 145-8.

SCIENCE AND EDUCATION 225

not have been in time of peace; and he shows that
contemporary movements which were making for social
development were checked by war-time class-legislation.
The Napoleonic war, he concludes, thus becomes the
dominant factor in the social and economic history of
this period. Owing to its occurrence the whole movement
was distorted, the increasing power of production was
diverted from improving the material welfare of the com-
munity, and problems of industrial relationships which
might have been faced at once were left as a heritage
to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the light
of these conclusions we can see that the influences on
education of the apphcations of science to material
production are twofold.

{a) In the first place the increased control of man's
material environment, whether misused or not, carried
with it important consequences. A complex industrial
machine cannot be reared on a foundation of unskilled
work. ' The need for elementary and technical education,
which became urgent at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, led to the reconstruction of the whole system
of national education upon a new basis.' ^ Moreover, the
intrusion of organized scientific results into everyday
life compelled the admission of scientific subjects into
every grade of school and into university studies.
An elaborate account of the fight of science for a place
in the curriculum would tell us less than the bare fact
that 'artisans studied science before Cambridge under-
graduates knew of it '. '^ To these consequences we may
add the slow secularization of educational control.

(6) In the second place, the evil consequences of the

'^ Sir Michael Sadler, Lecture Courses in the Department of
Education, University of Manchester, ' History of Education in
England i8oo-igio,' xvi.

- R. L. Archer, loc, cit., p. vii.

P

226 SCIENCE AND EDUCATION

industrial revolution precipitated social movements which
in turn affected education. We need only recall the
influence, both direct and indirect, on educational thought
of Ruskin, Maurice, and Kingsley. It is precisely here,
however, that a just estimate of the place of science in
the chain of causes becomes important. We have seen
that the evil consequences of industrialism had other
origins than mere increase in productiveness. Unfor-
tunately this was not always recognized; movements
against preventable evils were occasionally directed also
against the whole idea of scientific production and
even against science itself. Our own age is not entirely
proof against this confusion of causes : and from it, I feel
convinced, comes a great part of the current belief that
science is a piece of soulless intellectual machinery tending
to the standardization of men and things, and to the
ultimate destruction of finer shades and values.

It is true that increased productiveness has left man
with the immense and as yet unsolved problem of its
effective control; but the gospel of despair preached by
those critics who observe only the lack of such control,
and lay them at the door of science, brings to the ordinary
man neither conviction nor encouragement. The view
here taken is that it is only by the application of the
method of science to the problems of control in turn that
any hope for the future of mankind lies. In education,
too, it is true that — for a variety of reasons — the first
developments of national primary education were stiff,
standardized, and in a literal sense lacking in values.
But here again it must be observed that scientific results
have greatly helped, as the century advanced, in the
growth of a more rational and humane outlook; whilst
the mode of co-operative investigation in the sciences
probably influenced the official labours on the adminis-
trative defects of the earlier systems. The extension of

SCIENCE AND EDUCATION 227

scientific method to the field of biolog}', which is the out-
standing characteristic of the later nineteenth century,
emphasized the organic unity of the life of the com-
munity, and so gave a new significance to the responsi-
bility of providing for all the conditions necessary to
healthy mental and physical growth. But it did more
than merely help the drift towards a national system of
education: it provided solid ground for a reasoned first-
hand study of the sensitive growing creatures who were
to be subject to that system. The biological outlook,
with its concept of development, does not leave men
content with the formal and one-sided education which
was considered good enough for the mass of children in
the middle of the nineteenth century. The extension of
scientific method to the domain of mind has in turn
added its important part to the tale of the influence of
scientific results on educational theory and practice.
But as we approach the twentieth century it becomes
less and less possible to differentiate between influences
of results and influences of method, because man's whole
attitude has been so profoundly modified by the latter.

Before attempting, however, to deal with the influences
of method, it is necessary to state as plainly as possible
that the method and outlook of science have meant
different things at different times and to different people.
Moreover, as has been hinted above, what men have
taken them to mean, as well as what they really were,
affected thought and practice. Hence some inquiry,
however inadequate, into the meaning of science regarded
as an age-long growth is a necessary preliminary to
a treatment of the influence of ' scientific method ' on .
education. All that can be attempted here is a mere
sketch of the lines along which such an inquiry might
be pursued, in the hope that the digression may justify
itself by the light it throws on our main theme.

P 2

228 SCIENCE AND EDUCATION

III

The first question which arises is whether any intel-
Hgible meaning at all can be assigned to ' scientific method '
in view of the fact that there are so many different
sciences. If 'method' be conceived as the result of
abstracting many 'methods', and comprising a kind of
generahzed research tool whose use can be learnt before
it is applied to any field, then the answer is emphatically
No. But 'scientific method' may be regarded as some-
thing rather different from this: as a characteristic mode
of approach to the study of any field of human experience.
In each actual field, on this view, workers will employ
' methods ' common to other fields, but to which its users
will give slight shades of emphasis or meaning that
impart to them a form typical of that special field.
Moreover the balance of 'methods' used will vary from
field to field. Thus, what pieces of logical apparatus are
used, and their relative importance in the whole, will
depend entirely on the domain chosen. In the domain of
light, for instance, deduction plays a much greater part
than in anatomy : yet I beheve that a very real meaning
attaches to saying that both physicist and anatomist
employ a common mode of approach to their respective
domains. This was what Huxley meant by claiming that
different habits of mind and various special tendencies
of two sciences do not imply a difference in method.
'The mountaineer and the man of the plains have very
different habits of progression, and each would be at
a loss in the other's place; but the method of progression,
by putting one leg before the other, is the same in each
case.' ^ There is a curious relevance in this metaphor to
the view which will here be expressed as to what this

1 Science and Education, 'On the Educational Value of the
Natural History Sciences ', p. 57.

SCIENCE AND EDUCATION 229

common mode of approach to different subjects is: for
I take it to consist essentially of two processes whose
alternations are comparable to the placing of first one
and then the other foot forward in walking. These
processes are (i) the observing and testing of a body of
facts, and (2) the 'ordering' or systematizing of those
facts, by the discovery or creation of appropriate con-
ceptions and hypotheses, into general and easily grasped
truths.^ Knowledge of a chaotic body of facts does not
constitute a science. To step (i) has to be added step (2)
That is to say, the body of fact has to be, in Professor
Nunn's phrase, 'rendered intelligible'.- Moreover this
double process is never finished, for the ordering of any
field always directs attention back to a closer examination
of the body of fact. Theories constructed to co-ordinate
facts lead to the discovery of additional groups of fact;
these, in turn, are susceptible of further ordering, and so
on in an endless series.'"^ It should be carefully noted that
both steps are essential. In certain periods the need
for constant critical and first-hand observation was
overlooked, and science degenerated into system-building ;
in other ages there have not been wanting those who
regarded empirical and experimental processes as the
sole requirement in scientific work, a denial of man's most
valuable possession — the power of imaginative reason.

^ This view is developed iii more detail in a paper on 'The
Scope of the Scientific Method', Proc. Aristotelian Soc, IQ18-19,
pp. 179-207.

- T. P. Nunn, The Aim and Achievements of Scientific Method,
ch. 2, pp. 46-62.

3 It is this which renders sterile a certain type of criticism of
science according to which its hypothetical, 'ordering' construc-
tions lead one away from direct experience into systems of
' knowledge about ' experience. For an able statement of this
Bergsonian view see Mrs. Karin Stephen, Proc. Aristotelian Soc,
1917-18, pp. 69, 71.

230 SCIENCE AND EDUCATION

For healthy scientific development a proper balance
between the two factors must be maintained.

It is important that we should recognize that scientific
method, viewed in this way as a mode of approach to the
study of any subject, has, through many vicissitudes,
been first attained in its complete form by man in the
domains of mathematics and of external nature. It is
this which has led to the everyday use of 'scientific
method' to designate that mode of treatment of a field
which is seen in its most unquestionable form in the
domain of the natural sciences. In common speech
something quite definite is meant by saying that a man
is tackling a subject in a scientific manner; and what is
referred to is not the methods used so much as the manner
of wielding those methods. This is the justification for
our usage; though it must be admitted that the word
'method' is in some ways an unfortunate one in this
connexion, because it tends to confusion with 'methods'.

The utility of this usage for our present purpose is that
it enables us to envisage science throughout the ages as
a single development. Thus in broad outline we may say
that in Greek science at its best this balance was won.
Its first victory was in the domain of spatial experience;
and the importance for thought, in all fields, of the step
from the empirical results of Egyptian mathematicians
to the general theorems of Greek geometers cannot be
over-estimated. Greek geometry, the first fruits of the
method, not only developed the logical machinery neces-
sary for the scientific mode of approach to the world of
external nature, but also fostered the objectivity of outlook
essential to that approach. Especially in those domains
of nature where deductive processes play the most
important part, the emergence of a balanced 'scientific'
treatment became possible'. This balance was lost again
in succeeding ages, in which — for complex reasons —

SCIENCE AND EDUCATION 231

there is a failure to value step (i) . Thus much mediaeval
scientific work may' be regarded as coming under this
description. It should be noticed, however, that such
work often serves a real function in co-ordinating known
facts and views. Thus Dr. Singer, in his account of ' The
Scientific \Tews and Visions of Saint Hildegard (1098-
1180) ', speaks of the use of the supposed relations between
the macrocosm and the microcosm as a co-ordinating
conception in which her theological and physiological
knowledge, together with her notions of the working of
the human mind and of the structure of the universe,
are all synthesized. 'In studying it', he writes, 'the
modern reader is necessarily hampered by the bizarre
and visionary form into which the whole subject is cast.
Nevertheless the scheme, though complex and difticult,
is neither incoherent nor insane . . . this theory of the
essential similarity of the macrocosm and microcosm held
in the Middle Ages, during the Renaissance, and even
into quite modern times, a position comparable to that
of the theory of evolution in our own age. If at times
it passed into folly and fantasy, it should be remembered
that it also fulfilled a high purpose. It gave a meaning
to the facts of nature.' ^ Nevertheless the lack of stress
in mediaeval science on the first factor carried with it
loss in objectivity. It therefore represents a falling away
from 'the direct, detached, objective temper' which has
been spoken of as the generative principle of the whole
Greek achievement for civilization.- In short, it was
a regression to a more primitive form of treatment, and
only a little way separates it from an earlier form still —
animistic magic. Magic, like mediaeval science, is too
personal; men read themselves, their feelings, and their
desires into their explanations of the world. Animistic

^ Studies in the History and Method of Science, vol. i, p. 32.
■^ R, W. Livingstone, The Legacy of Greece, p. 274.

232 SCIENCE AND EDUCATION

interpretations, however, like anthropomorphic ones,
still perform a true co-ordinating function,^ But there is
this important further character of magic : it is developed
in a much less conscious and less deliberate way. The
origin of sympathetic magic, for instance, does not
appear to be intellectual illusion. The first element seems
to be the immediate discharge of longing in action. If the
savage wants rain he 'acts' rain by croaking as he has
heard frogs croak when it rains. These acts stiffen into
ritual, on this view ; and beliefs in the efficacy of similari-
ties follow later. Magical beliefs and practices are not
mere unorganized collections of baseless superstitions,
then, any more than mediaeval science is altogether
incoherent and insane. Both are primitive forms of
approach to the study of the world of nature.

We can now return to our claim that this view of
scientific method enables us more clearly to envisage the
sciences as age-long growths. So long as they were the
product of unreflective acts they could only take the
stiff and self-centred form of magical beliefs, corre-
sponding to the social organization which Bagehot called
the 'cake of custom' of primitive societies. In some
marvellous way we find, in ancient Greece, that the
complete break-up of the cake of custom has been sud-
denly effected. Not only is man's outlook on the world
now fully deliberate and conscious, but also it has become
objective. The loss of objectivity in later times was not,
however, a complete regression to magic: for though
mediaeval astrology was primarily concerned with human
hopes and fears, and only secondarily with the stars, yet
its vision did reach to the stars. Nevertheless lack of
appreciation of step (i) made even the newly gained
knowledge of Greek scientific results sterile for centuries.
The rediscovery of what Roger Bacon called scieniia
^ T. P. Nunn, loc. cit., p. ^6.

SCIENCE AND EDUCATION 233

experimentalis was needed to revive the objective temper
essential to real scientific method. The growth of this
can be traced through transitional figures like Kepler to
its full fruition in Galileo. The seventeenth century saw
the double process of direct observation and ordering into
systematic wholes applied to the complete field concerned
with the study of the rest and motion of material bodies:
it was the age of mechanics. Succeeding centuries saw
the extension of this double process into ever wider fields
of human endeavour : to various physical forces in nature,
and to the field of chemical fact, in the eighteenth century ;
to the domain of biology in the nineteenth; and in our
own time, to the realms of mind and the products of mind,
including social institutions.

It must not be supposed, however, that this extension
of scientific method to different fields means that scientific
development has been a steady, uniform process in the
last three centuries. Actually each age seems to have
its own peculiar scientific 'flavour'.^ Thus there is
a certain disconnectedness in the science of the sixteenth
century: it was more like the spasmodic inventiveness
which still connotes 'science' in many minds. Whereas
the seventeenth century saw the beginnings of an inter-
connected character; results in one field were used in
another — as when Galileo, hearing of the invention of
the telescope, constructed one, but turned it at once to
astronomical use. Co-operation between workers in
different fields became common; and most of the great
European scientific academies were founded in this
century. This characteristic was an essential element in
future progress, for without it the ground could not have

^ This is strikingly shown in chronological charts of scientific
history. I have found it useful to make such charts with a
'background' of events of importance in the history of social
movements and of the various arts : the close connexion between
different human activities are thus thrown into relief.

234 SCIENCE AND EDUCATION

been cleared of the age-long accumulation of systems
which cumbered it. Individual men working in isolation
could not cope with the enormous labour of testing such
systems by patient reference back to the field of fact
upon which they claimed to be reared. This probably
had some part in the failure of the first attempt in Eng-
land, in the middle of the seventeenth century, to intro-
duce science into the school curriculum. The balance had
already been re-won: the mode of approach to these
studies had regained its objective character. But if
educational reformers like Comenius, claiming to be
followers of Francis Bacon, had succeeded, the teaching
of science would almost certainly have degenerated under
the stifling influence of the accumulated systems to whose
sifting the co-operative labours of scientific workers in
this and succeeding ages had to be devoted. Moreover
the Baconian account of method was little more than an
early attempt at that abstraction of 'methods' into
a generalized research tool whose possibility we have been
forced to deprecate.

IV

It has been previously suggested that the treatment of
the second main division of our subject — the influence
upon education of the method and outlook of science —
ought to include some reference to the effects of what
men have mistakenl}/ supposed that method and outlook
to be. Two of these errors have enough historical impor-
tance for special mention.

The first consists in the belief that the criterion of
a scientific treatment is its quantitative character. If
this be so, then most 'biological science' is not science
at all : and the greater part of all existing attempts at
scientific treatment of the field of experience concerned
with 'human' facts, whether mental or physical, is

SCIENCE AND EDUCATION 235

worthless. It will be recognized, I think, that assump-
tions of this kind, often not explicitly formulated, underlie
a certain type of educational theory. If our previous
discussion of what is actually involved in the scientific
treatment of a field is correct, then this view is false.
Quantitative treatment is, of course, important in all
sciences; but it is not essential. There can be quite
systematic sciences which are almost entirely qualitative ;
there are, indeed, qualitative sciences which are not only
systematic but also formally deductive — as for instance
non-metrical geometry. The historical origin of this
error lies probably in the fact that the scientific method
of approach was first achieved, as we have seen, in
mathematics.

The second is the commonly accepted view that the
scientific treatment of a field implies that the facts of
that field are ultimately reducible to mechanics ; and that,
in consequence, the outlook of science tends in a last
analysis to materialism. The mistake here comes from
non-recognition of the self-determining character of the
separate sciences. It is true that there are complex
inter-relationships between all studies, and that cross-
fertihzation is often effected by applying the concepts of
one field to another. Further, it is a natural consequence
of the fact that the physical sciences already possess
mature and generalized descriptive schemes that biologists
should seek aid from them in developing their own. And
this makes it clear why they will continue to find reference
to the physical sciences a fruitful methodological prin-
ciple, however solemnly philosophers wag their heads
at it. Yet it is a far cry from this to assert the reduci-
bility of all the categories of one domain to those of
another. Each science is, in fact, an autonomous study;
and only he who is actually at work in a particular field
can determine the effective form of the concepts he

236 SCIENCE AND EDUCATION

requires for the ordering of that iield. Just as the biologist
must repel any attempt to force upon his study categories
foreign to it, such as those of mechanics, so also — in
another field altogether — the historian can legitimately
set his face against partial interpretations of his domain
in terms of other studies like economics or ethnology,
and is not (in so doing) rendering his study less ' scientific '
in our meaning of that adjective. From all cognate
studies the worker in any particular field takes onh^ what
serves his own proper and unique purpose.

These two mistaken views blend together to create the
notion that a science is essentially something antithetical
to humane studies; and both views gain support from
the vague feehng that the less desirable results of the
industrial revolution can be referred to the physical
sciences. The result has been to delay appreciation of
the real character of the intellectual movement centred
in the natural sciences. The development of such under-
standing is well exemplified in the varying reasons
assigned for their inclusion in the curriculum during the
latter half of the nineteenth century. Thus in Spencer's
utilitarian and individualistic arguments stress was laid
on the importance of the content of a subject. Later the
stress is shifted, as shown in Huxley and still more in
Ruskin, from the content of a study to the outlook it
induces if fully appreciated and properly taught. Finally,
in Karl Pearson, the weight of the argument is for
science as a method of ordering any field of human
experience.

A real difficulty arises here, however: for on the view
developed above no general defence of the natural
sciences can be based on their training in scientific
method, since on that view any study may be ' scientific '.
This does not mean that a useful distinction may not be
made by the teacher between content and methods of

SCIENCE AND EDUCATION 237

study.^ But it does mean that he must recognize that
such methods always show characteristics due to the
content in which they arise. Hence if the pupil acquires
the power of wielding the methods used in one field it
does not follow that this power will be transferable to
another. It will be observed that we deliberately speak
of 'methods' as something clearly to be distinguished
from 'method' in our sense of a mode of approach to
a study. Yet though no general defence of the natural
sciences can be based on their training in 'scientific
method ', we must now add that a special defence is not
only possible but also rendered more powerful by this
delimitation of the scope of the argument. This defence
rests on the claim that the particular mode of approach
which we call 'scientific' (defined as in the preceding
section) is exhibited in its fullest and least equivocal
manner in the natural sciences. That this is so may be
due to the fact that this mode of approach was, for quite
definite reasons, first attained by man in his study of
the world of mathematics and of external nature: and
hence such studies form the natural introduction to the
scientific method or manner of approach to all other
fields. This will perhaps become clearer as we proceed
with our general task of dealing with the influences in
education of the appearance of this 'mode of approach'
upon the stage of human thought. We have already

1 Its use is apparent if we remember that in general the
teacher of any subject has two correlative aims: (i) to give his
pupils as wide a knowledge as possible of the completed edifice
which workers in that subject have reared in the course of its
history; and (2) to induce in his pupils some 'sense' of the
methods of work of those who have built up that edifice. Syn-
thetic teaching, capable of giving sweeping views of the field of
study, is essential to the first ; analytical and detailed work over
a selected portion of the field is essential to the second. In the
one the emphasis is on content; in the other, on methods.

2i8 SCIENCE AND EDUCATION

traced through the centuries its slow emergence in a
complete balanced form, and its extension to ever wider
domains of experience. The effects on education in our
own age may now be exhibited as arising out of the
general character of that method.

(i) The insistence upon close and critical examination
of the field of fact studied and the constant reference
back to it as the ordering of the field is proceeded with
give to the method its character of objectivity. Now
it is notoriously difficult to attain the impersonality of
outlook necessary for this in those fields which more
closely touch human interests. The late appearance of
the 'human' studies in their scientific form is therefore
only what we should expect. M. Bergson has, in one of
his books, tried to imagine what might have happened
if the science of psychology had appeared before the
physical sciences: but the thing is inconceivable, since
an objectivity of outlook is needed in the study of mind
far beyond what is necessary in mechanics. This could
only arise when men had developed and consolidated
their gains on more neutral ground : when they had won
the power of facing facts which ran counter not only
to their hopes and fears but also to their preconceived
theories, many of which — as we have seen — arose as
secondary products of unreflective action. This char-
acter of objectivity, carrying with it what Professor
Whitehead has happily called the ' first-handedness ' of
science, has spread to human studies in our day. It has
, helped educationists to recognize the value of educational
experiment: it has slowly forced them to acknowledge
that the touchstone of educational theories and adminis-
trative systems is only to be found in the educational
laboratory — that is, in direct and first-hand experience
of the effects of those theories and systems upon the
living body-minds of pupils in the schools. Closely con-

SCIENCE AND EDUCATION 239

nected \Aith this objective and first-handed character of
scientific method is the attitude it encourages of welcome
to the unexpected. Discovery fosters susceptibility to
new experiences. This attitude has especial value in
education, where both in theory and practice it is, in
a peculiarly complete sense, easier to deal with the
normal and expected. If a clever boy who is expected to
be good at mathematics shows incapacity in that study,
it is easier to blame and pass on than to inquire in what
that incapacity lies; yet such inquiries when pursued
often lay bare failures in co-ordination, or in early
training, of the highest interest and importance. Here,
as in other fields, the unexpected forms the rough edge
to the building — often showing where the next con-
struction is to be. So, slowly, a franker and more un-
biassed re-examination of the facts of child life is born
of the modern openness of mind which no longer views
the abnormal with either indifference or contemptuous
pity but with attempts at understanding.

(ii) Each process involved in the second of the steps
which comprise the scientific mode of treatment of
a field had to be painfully won in the 'human' domains.
These processes may be described as {a) the ordering of
the facts of a field by {b) the deliberate creation and
use of appropriate conceptual constructions with a view
to {c) the attainment of general truths or principles.
{a) The idea of order has only slowly developed, and
with it the sense of control which that order confers.
The wind bloweth where it listeth ; yet discernible traces
of order made possible sailing-ships and windmills.
Malaria was regarded as an 'act of God' beyond man's-
control; but biological ordering has led to control of
that element in the biological environment. Man's
emotional instability and group character place him at
the mercy of mob-passion; doubtless orderings in the

240 SCIENCE AND EDUCATION

psychological field will forge defensive controls here too.
These orderings in turn lay the basis for similar orderings
in fields like education. For they exhibit man as being,
of all creatures, bom the least capable of coping with his
environment; and yet, by that fact of a long plastic
youth, of all creatures the best able to pass on his social
heritage — the capitalized experience of the human race,
in Huxley's famous phrase — to the next generation.
(6) The use of conceptual constructions is as old as
language; their deliberate and critical use is a different
matter. Words, as Hobbes said, are wise men's counters,
bat they are the money of fools. The terrifying power of
words and phrases over men's minds is sufficient to warn
us that the distinction is a real one. Their explicit and
critical employment in human studies like education
would act like an electric discharge on a fog: it would
clear the air. (c) The final aim of these processes, the
attaining of general truths by the co-ordinating power of
deliberately used concepts, even if beyond immediate
reach in a complex human study like education, is
a powerful defence against partial views. Its presence
as an ideal helps the habit of wider vision and cultivates
the power of looking for, and seizing upon, intercon-
nexions between separate regions. The greatest of all
evils in education has been a kind of casual discon-
nectedness. The teaching of snippets inside any subject,
and of subjects divided off from each other in water-tight
compartments, is only symptomatic of wider failure to
envisage educational problems as wholes. The system-
atization of the concrete field of educational practice,
which we here speak of as an ideal, should proceed side
by side with the empirical garnering of experience. This
helps practice not by presenting it with a set of a priori
principles or rules from outside, but by turning the
attention of the practitioner to the rational orderly study

SCIENCE AND EDUCATION 241

of successful methods in actual use, and of the underlying
reasons for their success. In Professor Laurie's pointed
phrase, sound theory is only sound practice 'conscious
of itself. But it performs a wider co-ordinating function
than this. Its far-reaching consequences in helping to
foster a more synthetic view of education in the twentieth
century would form an interesting chapter of educational
history. We must be content with the bare statement that
its influence can be traced in state control and investiga-
tion of education, in the unifying of educational outlook
as well as of its machinery, and in the sharpened sense of
social control and responsibility which is reflected in such
movements as that towards effective adult education.

These influences may be summed up by saying that the
field of education is proving more and more susceptible
of scientific treatment. We may profitably view this
statement, however, from another angle, especially as
this new mode of looking at the whole question will enable
us to deal more easily with certain further aspects of the
influence of scientific method on education,

V

A science, on our view, is the product of a particular
mode of treatment of some field of experience: but men
are 'experiencing' in such fields long before this stage
is reached. The mode of approach to the field has to
become both reflective and impersonal before it is ' scien-
tific'. Moreover, man is primarily, as we have noticed,
a doer. In other words, sciences have their origin in
crafts. They are the craftsman's experience rationalized.
'Science is born anew in that wonderful world within
each man, when with deliberate will he succeeds in
thinking about the principles of his work in the great
world without in a clear, logical, and systematic way, and

Q

242 SCIENCE AND EDUCATION

courageously puts his conclusions to the test of experi-
ment.' ^ Mr. Branford's stimulating conception of levels
of skill enables us to clarify still further our ideas of this
relation between a science and the portion of the world's
work in which it has its origin. At the lowest level we
have routine skill, an unconscious product of mere
practice. Scientific skill is more than this: there is the
addition of rational thought about practice, and the con-
sequent understanding brings added power. Directed by
consciously acquired principles skill becomes deliberate
and communicable by language. A science is born.
But there is a still higher level in this hierarchy: that
of aesthetic skill. The word is used, of course, in a very
wide sense ; it is as applicable to the work of a physicist
or mathematician as to that of an artist. It consists
in the possession of what Professor Whitehead has called
that most austere of all qualities — a sense of style. It is
the elusive rightness which distinguishes the work of the
artist from that of the technician, and is incommunicable
because it reflects the individual and unique quahty of its
possessor. This highest form of skill is built up on, and
may be helped by, scientific skill ; but it does not neces-
sarily crown it.

Education, on this view, is more than a science: it
is a craft. The science of education will be to the practical
educationist a servant whose usefulness grows with his
own growth in experience and skill ; and it will appear as
the product of a particular mode of utihzing his experience
to extend the scope and level of his activities. From the
action of thought on work emerges a synthetic novelty,
scientific skill; but work is the basis. 'Don't learn to
do,' said Sam Butler, 'but learn in doing.' Our schools,
however, still suffer from the divorce between work and
thought which is, in part, a heritage of the past : a rehc
^ Beiichara Branford, Janus and Vesta, p. 185.

SCIENCE AND EDUCATION 243

of the time when man's social heritage had to be so
largely re-won from books. This disjunction has not
gone without protest, and in our own time attempts are
being made to remedy it. It is part of the great work of
Sanderson of Oundle, for example, that he asserts, in all
subjects, that real work amongst concrete problems is the
ground out of which flowers any systematic thought
about these problems which is worthy of the name.
If once men reaHzed this, if they knew that problems in
any field of human study cannot be solved by fair words
and polished phrases, but only by hard work, then your
man of affairs might be persuaded that learning could
be good fun and a worthy occupation for grown men.
Sanderson did not stop, however, at asserting that the
divorce between thought and work, pure and applied
science, was wrong; he pointed to its evil effects. It
encourages, for instance, the tendency of teachers to use
the logical order of treatment, in which one passes from
the logically simple to the complex. But this often
means a premature appeal to the system-making motive.
The motive of wonder or romance, the unsophisticated
delight in natural phenomena: or that of utility, the
' how does it work ? ' motive — either of these may be
appealed to in such early stages. But the craving for
theoretical completeness and unity, for the trim tidiness
of deductive systems, comes — if at all — later. Sanderson's
sympathy with the average boy's appreciation of the
concrete thing, and especially of new scientific creations,
led him to inquire whether a teaching order which was
the exact reverse of the traditional one might not be more
effective. Instead of beginning the study of mechanics
with the abstract and formal definitions of the older text-
books, the boy was to be set to work in an engineering
laboratory in which he would pick up 'by contact'
rough but concrete notions of such things as force and

Q2

244 SCIENCE AND EDUCATION

momentum for himself. These he could use as tools for
further advance, leaving their exact definition to a later
stage. It should be observed that such courses are of
a preliminary character. Systematic treatment is not
discarded, but only deferred.

Sanderson's work goes further than this: his social
message is a natural outcome of his main view. When he
says that he wants scientific men to claim a larger share
in the work of the world, and not to confine themselves
to what is commonly called science, he is insisting on the
extension of the scientific spirit into every field of human
thought and endeavour, just as he sought to extend it
into every side of school life and work. He regarded his
school as a scientific laboratory, and his work as an
experiment in that laboratory. By the duty and service
of science Sanderson meant, therefore, that scientific
men should bring their ideal of life, their vision, and their
methods to the problems raised by the social structure
which science has itself brought into being. 'Our indus-
trial life', he said, 'is imperfectly organized; all our
troubles are due to the fact that we have a process
created by science, but organized in the old way by men
of a different outlook.' He saw that modern industrial
processes had only been made possible by the bringing
into being of alert and intelligent workers, with the
consequence that the control of the whole industrial
machine lags behind its power and complexity. The main
lines along which a hopeful solution may be sought
seemed to him perfectly clear. In his school he had tried
to replace explicit teaching by 'finding out'; to replace
the class-room by the laboratory, into which you went
not to learn but ' to find out the things required for to-day '.
Such an appeal to the constructive impulse rather than
to acquisitiveness carried with it important social con-
sequences : for though boys may be willing to ' learn '

SCIENCE AND EDUCATION 245

out of sheer possessiveness, they don't want to make or
discover things merely for themselves. 'I have tested
that ', he wrote, ' in the workshops. They don't want to
make things for themselves; they soon cease to have
any longing desire to make anything even for their
mothers. What they love to do is to take part in some
great work that must be done for the community; some
work that goes beyond them, some great spacious work,'
Sanderson therefore felt that he could point out the way
to hopeful advance when he said that the great thing
was to enlist boys and girls in the service of man to-day
and man to-morrow. And since, to him, the ideal school
was a model of the world to be, he believed that this
same way is the path of advance for the world outside
school.

We have spent some time over this social aspect of
Sanderson's educational work ^ because it illustrates so
admirably the main conclusions to which we are being
led concerning the influence of scientific method on
education. The objectivity of outlook and the deliberate
and self-conscious character of scientific treatment is
urgently needed in the field of social studies. Dispassion-
ate survey of the actual character of institutions is a rare
thing because the 'ought' is so often confused with the
'is'. Studies like human biology and psychology have
had to struggle through to their present ' ethical neutral-
ity'. This does not mean that the 'ought' has no place;
but it does mean that its force is very seriously impaired
unless it is built upon a sound knowledge of the 'is'.
Social institutions are too seldom regarded as the dis-
organized products of largely unreflective activity which
they really are : their functions are rationalized to fit the

^ For a fuller account see the article on ' Sanderson of Oundle
and the Ideal of Science as Service', Friends' Quarterly Examiner,
October 1922,

246 SCIENCE AND EDUCATION

prejudices of the time. Systematic knowledge of what
social institutions are (and of the limits of their powers —
a thing often forgotten in education) is an essential
preliminary to their control. Moreover, if we reflect on
the suggestive conception of a 'hierarchy of skills'
described above, a possibility of the emergence of values
opens out which has the very highest importance in this
connexion. This possibility is that values both moral
and aesthetic may be a synthetic novelt}^ proceeding out
of the earlier scientific treatment of a field, just as scientific
treatment itself was a synthetic novelty arising out of
earlier and less reflective modes of treatment. This
would, if it could be substantiated, throw a happy light
on the high social and aesthetic level of Greek civiliza-
tion ; ^ and it might perhaps enable us to look forward
to less groping and incomplete solutions of our own social
disharmonies in the future. If social sciences should
arise which are unashamedly part and parcel of the
world's work and the world's concrete problem.s we might
perhaps expect that they would precipitate new values
based on the creative aspects of scientific discovery: and
only such values can free the scientist from his earher
bondage to mere blind productiveness, and preserve him
from acquiescence in the prostitution of the power he
wields to unworthy ends.

^ It might have some bearing on Dr. Singer's interesting
suggestion that the re-winning of Greek science in the Middle
Ages was sterile until the ' literary renaissance ' had added Greek
art.

X

SCIENCE AND HEALTH

F. G. Crookshank

§ I. Introditctio7t

'The office of Medicine is but to tune this curious harp of
man's body, and to reduce it to harmony.' — Bacon, Advancement
of Learning, Bk. II.

Life has been defined as the continuous adjustment of
inner to outer relations. We may consider health as the
functional unity of the organism that continues when,
following repeated response to stimulus, there is successful
adaptation, or adjustment to environment. Again,
disease is no objective entity but a dissociation of func-
tional unity, or, mal-adjustment due to failure or incom-
pleteness of adaptive response. Now, in thus speaking of
health and disease, we must learn to think, not merely in
terms of ourselves and of our component organs and cells,
but in terms of the higher complexes with temporal as
well as spatial extension — the race and the community —
of which we are components. We must realize that, for
these higher complexes as well as for ourselves, with new
conditions new reactions or responses occur which ai-e
at first disharmonic ; but that with personal, communal
and racial effort, adjustment becomes effected and
harmony is again reached. Positive and final victory
over disease implies an absolute stabilization of internal
and external conditions, and is not compatible with
progress, far less with change.

The 'special diseases' of which we speak exist as
concepts of the various types of inharmonious reactions

248 SCIENCE AND HEALTH

and responses that we observe, and have in no sense
'real' or even constant — far less material — values.
Indeed, the very 'diseases' against which we declare
that Science is waging implacable war often represent
reactions created by the social progress that we vaunt;
sometimes the direct consequence of the application, to
practical affairs, of that kind of accurate knowledge which
is supposed to constitute Science, We must not believe,
moreover, that because the application to the case of
a particular individual of some item of scientific know-
ledge often results in benefit to the health of that indi-
vidual, therefore like application to the cases of many
individuals will proportionately benefit the health of the
community or of the race. Both the benefit to the
individual and the manner of bringing it about may be
prejudicial to the interests of the race and of the com-
munity. Yet the contrary assumption is too often the
foundation not only of the gratulations of health lecturers
but of the projects of health reformers.

The fact is that, at the present time, social change —
industrial, economic, and the like — is everywhere modif}^-
ing the conditions of life more rapidly than we care to
admit; — far too rapidly for the exercise of the natural
powers of adaptation of the human race, and so Science
is called in to adjust the balance. Sometimes by the
logical demonstration of truths intuitively appreciated
by every savage — as in the case of the so-called discovery
of vitamines — Science expensively redresses the disturb-
ance brought about by her own interference with habits
dictated by racial memories. Sometimes, as by her
interference with warfare, she increases quantitatively
and for the community what she set out to diminish for
the individual.

Thus the relations between Science and Health may be,
and often are, regarded on the one hand as from a very

SCIENCE AND HEALTH 249

static platform and, on the other, as by one who is more
concerned to note the succession in outlook obtained
during a long and progressive ascent. Both modes of
view have always obtained, perhaps they always will,
and our purpose may be best fulfilled if we attempt to
compare them, saying something first, in historical
retrospect; next, concerning the present scientific posi-
tion; and, finally, considering the matter from the
human standpoint.

§ 2. Historical Retrospect

' Medicine is a Science which hath been . . . more professed than
laboured, and yet more laboured than advanced; the labour
having been, in my judgment, rather in circle than in progression.'
— Bacon, loc. cit.

All are acquainted with the biological law that states
how the individual, in his development, recapitulates the
history of his race. Does not each scientific investigator,
in each piece of work he undertakes, recapitulate the
process by which human thought has progressed, from
its first glimmerings until now; the process by which
each Science, and Science herself, has developed? First
comes the crude or simple experience, followed by
intuitive generalization: then the amphfication of this
experience by purposive observation — the stage of
empirical generalization; and, later, the conscious build-
ing up of scientific generalization by logical process.
The logical generaHzation becomes further tested, perhaps
by deliberate experiment under the stimulus of secondary
hypotheses, and, finally, a still greater induction is
achieved which brings the results already obtained into
harmonious relation with yet other facts and generaliza-
tions, and always with a progressive tendency towards
further synthesis.

Now, it is necessary that we realize how, in that making

250 SCIENCE AND HEALTH

of knowledge which (in distinction from the knowledge
made) is really Science, there are two elements to be
distinguished. First, the orderly accumulation of experi-
ences, and, secondly, the coherent symbolic expression
of these experiences. The enormous widening of our
perceptual field, the enormous increase in our actual and
possible experiences, brought about by mechanical means
of observation, have led many to speak and to write,
perhaps to think, as if Science consisted in the mere
accumulation of data, of experiences, of 'facts', and to
restrict the application of the phrase 'scientific know-
ledge' to recorded and assembled experiences. At any
rate this is so in Medicine, where there has been a tendency
to forget that, without logical inquiry, thought, and
generalization, what is gained by experience in the
field of disease cannot in itself contribute towards the
progress of our Science, however useful may be its applica-
tion in the practice of our Art.

It is, perhaps, for this reason that, even to-day, there
is some truth (more perhaps than we care to acknow-
ledge), in the words of Bacon that I have just recited.
Nothing, I think, in the whole history of Medicine is more
striking than the manner in which, duriTig the ages, the
same practical results have been repeatedly achieved as
a result of the accumulation of similar experiences
differently resumed, or, if you will, explained.

Let me give an illustration. We are accustomed, and
rightly, to honour the names of Semmelweiss and Lister.
Semmelweiss showed us how, under certain circumstances,
puerperal fever could be prevented; Lister showed us
how, under certain circumstances, operations could be
performed with impunity. The results achieved empiri-
cally by Semmelweiss are explained for us by reference
to the great generalizations of Pasteur, and the practical
results achieved by Lister were a consequence of applica-

SCIENCE AND HEALTH 251

tion of Pasteur's principles. Countless lives have been
saved in the last fifty years as a result of the work of
these three great men. But we should be wrong were
we to suppose that before the era of Semmelweiss the
mortahty from puerperal fever was everywhere that
which obtained in the hospital at Vienna where Semmel-
weiss worked. We should be equally wrong were we to
suppose that, before the time of Lister, surgical operations
were always attended by the terrible consequences that
Lister found to exist at the Royal Infirmary at Glasgow.
The mortality of puerperal women at Vienna was due to
the fact that men of science and of intelligence had
discarded what had been known intuitively and empiri-
cally long before their day, and that the progress of
scientific enthusiasm had driven students to pass from
the dissecting-room to the lying-in wards with unwashen
hands. Equally, too, surgeons at Glasgow, and elsewhere,
fifty or sixty years ago, had forgotten those simple
teachings of experience in favour of cleanliness still
embodied in the ritual observances of unscientific or
uncivilized peoples. It was not until the accumulation,
in industrial areas, of unhealthy, of uncleanly and of
badly nourished persons had led to the appalling con-
sequences in hospitals with which we are familiar, that
forgotten empirical teaching in favour of cleanliness was
raised to the higher plane of Science, and the doctrine
of asepsis became established. Let us remember that
Hippocratic physicians, in the purer air of the isles of
Greece, operated under conditions of asepsis which we
seek to emulate in London to-day. The surgeons of
Pompeii employed knives which would have seemed
inelegant to Sir Astley Cooper, but which are now imitated,
under the spell of bacteriological commandments, by
modern instrument-makers.

Nevertheless, if we seem to return again and again to

252 SCIENCE AND HEALTH

the same lapparent outlook, it is always from a higher
level and each time with a wider sweep of horizon.

• ••••••••

In earliest ages man, when sick, sought to refer the
cause of his distress to external agency. He had already
learnt to connote cuts, bruises, and broken bones with the
activities of hostile men and beasts and with the physical
properties of material objects. So, pains and aches must
often have seemed to him the consequences of something
eaten or drunk, or given him to eat or drink. Later,
things found by experience to be noxious, or to which
he was obnoxious, were credited with malignity, and he
found it easy to ascribe suffering to the malevolent action
of some unknown person or, when conscience first pricked
him, to the revenge of some one killed — and so to
spirits. Places connected with haunting memories, with
ambushes, snares, or fatality, were to be avoided as the
resort of evil and hostile beings. Thus arose a conception
of disease which is expressed to-day when we speak of
So-and-So being 'attacked' by influenza, and is implied
when medical men announce their intention of 'heading
a crusade ' to stop the ravages of heart disease or lunacy.
Survivals of such ideas are obvious enough when the
lunatic explains his illness as due to something that
some one has done to him, or to something that some one
has put in his food. Such ideas are encouraged — on the
level in which they arose — when, to soothe little Tommy
who has fallen. Nurse smacks the naughty chair for having
hurt poor baby. There was a striking example of
a collective delusion of this same nature when four
years ago a form of disease known during the centuries
reappeared in its due cycle. The elaborate machinery
of a Government Department was brought into play to
track down the microbes which, it was believed, were
being disseminated by enemy action.

SCIENCE AND HEALTH 253

However, even in early days, though it was not
denied that some places were insalubrious, some foods
nocive, and some habits detrimental to well-being, the
factor of human 'choice' was admitted and a sense of
personal responsibility for personal ill-health and of
communal responsibility for communal ill-health rose
into consciousness. It became a duty to self and to
neighbours to conform to a code or ritual in which was
embodied the memories of racial experiences. Such
codes first arose at a very early stage of human develop-
ment. So soon as it became regarded as ethically
'wrong' to infringe the tribal code, and so soon as it
was observed that its abrogation was often followed
by unpleasant consequences, the idea arose that illness
and death were the consequences of moral wrong-
doing in nonconformity to the code. The code, becoming
divorced from obvious hygienic intention, ultimately
ceased to be obviously other than arbitrary or conven-
tional. The wholesome belief, however, that the health
of individuals could be preserved by ' right ' living (in the
tribal sense) must have been from time to time shaken,
and its force weakened, by the irruption of those secular
pestilences we still experience; and so, to meet the case,
it was suggested that such pestilences were a mani-
festation of Divine wrath at the iniquity of mankind in
general or of particular communities.

We must admit that the theory of the Divine, or at
least 'celestial', causation of epidemics implies recognition
of three very important facts: (i) that the observance
of the rules of health by individuals does not necessarily
secure those individuals from pestilence; (2) that epi-
demics and pestilences are disorders of communal health
rather than disorders of the health of individuals, however
numerous ; and (3) that the ultimate causes of all great
pestilences must be sought for amongst the primary

254 SCIENCE AND HEALTH

factors controlling ^and affecting all life, however sym-
bolized, and whatever the conjunct conditions modifying
the reactions of mankind to these primary factors or
agents.

Thus Hippocrates, the first and greatest of physicians,
not only recognized the duty of each one of us in respect
of healthy living, but, as epidemiologist, inferred the
incursion into human affairs, however wisely ordered, of
the cosmic, celestial, or Divine factor. Our repertoire
of facts and experiences is infinitely greater than that of
Hippocrates; but, the more carefully we generalize from
each addition to our knowledge gained by observation
in the hospital, in the laboratory, and in the field, the
more acutely are we impelled to adopt his standpoint.
Those who to-day are of his School observe what happens
and think in terms of experience : they describe what is
seen in persons and in communities : they consider the
relation of the happenings both to personal activities and
to extra-corporeal agencies ; they advise not only how
to live, but to what end. As metaphysicians they are
conceptualists rather than realists, as physicians they
are vitalist rather than materialist, and as philosophers
they would pursue the chain of causation to its origin in
the infinitely unknown.

But there was, in the time of Hippocrates, another
School, that of Cnidus, which was later represented in
essential respects by that of Galen. Galen himself
based his philosophy upon a form of Platonic realism
that later drifted into the realism of the mediaeval
scholastics. Galenists of to-day still deal with diseases
as scholastic, if not material realities, and take, as their
fixed point of departure for reasoning, not their clinical
experiences, but their universals, or formal concepts.
They seek to demonstrate 'diseases' in the laboratory
and in the post-mortem room, ignoring the primary

SCIENCE AND HEALTH 255

disturbance of function in patients, and insisting rather
on tlie consequent organic changes. To an Hippocratic
physician diagnosis has always meant the recognition
(i) of the whole disorder of function present to the indi-
vidual, (ii) of the whole complex of its causation, and
(iii) of the whole series of its consequences. To the
Galenists of the past and of to-day diagnosis means the
reference of the patient's illness to some formally recog-
nized concept which is regarded as a philosophic reality.
Thus do they place themselves in line of descent — though,
of course, of long descent — from the primitive peoples
who personify forms of disease by particular demons.

In the sixteenth century, after the downfall in theology
of that scholastic realism which earlier went hand-in-hand
with a certain kind of superstition, with the neglect of
hygiene, and with the invocation of the protection of
saints, there was a -great revival of Hippocratic medicine
by sundry physicians, to whom justice has hardly yet
been done. Later still, Sydenham, following Guillaume
de Baillou, popularized the Hippocratic notion of epi-
demics as the expression of the reaction of peoples to
certain forces or conditions of life, of telluric or cosmic
origin. But otherwise he reverted to scholastic realism,
teaching that diseases are to be classified, as are the
plants and flowers of the field. Thus Sydenham set the
fashion for the many vain attempts made, by botanical
physicians such as Linnaeus and Cullen during the
eighteenth century, to deal with diseases as if existing
apart from the persons affected, and dowered with a
substance real in the Platonic sense, if not material
in ours.

Now, great as have been the formal advantages of
analysis, of attempts at classification, and so forth, the
great drawbacks of adherence to what I will here call
'scholasticism' in medicine have been the limitations

256 SCIENCE AND HEALTH

imposed upon our recognition of the complexity of
causation of disease : the disregard imphed for personal
responsibility ; and the tendency to pursue specific
remedies for particular diseases, rather than the study
of the personal condition of each sick person. Over and
above all this, it has encouraged deduction from con-
cepts rather than induction from experience, the investi-
gation of hypostatized 'diseases' rather than of what
happens. Lastly, the modern scholastics insist on re-
garding State medicine as concerned with mere aggrega-
tions of cases of disease rather than with disorders of the
health of communities as such. To adopt words which
Bacon used in another connotation. State medicine
should 'deal with 'man congregate or in society '. It may
be said of the modern scholastic physician that he
'considereth man segregate or distributively '. He there-
fore proceeds to 'stamp out' the epidemic by isolating
or inoculating individual persons, and there is a tendency
to neglect the study of the conditions under which
epidemics occur, and the order of their happenings.

During the early part of the last century an extremely
materialistic school of thought obscured, for the moment,
the great conclusions of the Science of Medicine, while
the patient observations of its adherents greatly advanced
our wealth in facts. I refer to the great morbid anato-
mists, and particularly those of France. They had found
the classifications (based upon symptomatology) of the
botanical physicians of the eighteenth century incon-
sistent with observations made on changes found in the
post-mortem room. The notion then arose that in these
changes we had at last met with the true 'substantia'
of disease — with that which, in Galen's sense, follows
the symptoms as does the substance follow the shadow.
Thus arose the doctrine of the specificity of disease, so
tenaciously adhered to to-day — the doctrine that each

SCIENCE AND HEALTH 257

disease is specific, and is manifested by specific structural
changes.

The fallacy that the substance of disease is to be found
in organic changes still persists, and is attended by certain
consequences worth considering. It leads to the con-
sideration of sick persons as suffering from organic
changes in this, that, or the other organ, rather than
from dissociation of the functional unity of the whole
body, and thus induces a deplorable extension of special-
ism and an often unjustifiable optimism in respect of
certain surgical procedures. Moreover, it involves a
slighting depreciation of those disorders of function now
recognized as the ' beginnings of disease'. It minimizes
at all times the importance of forms of ill-health not
demonstrably accompanied in the upshot by evidence
of organic change. There is a story of a fair American
who consulted an eminent physician. After a careful
examination the sage thus delivered himself : ' Madam,
I am happy to assure you that you have no disease.
Your trouble is purely functional.' And she replied,
with some spirit, 'You don't say. Doc ! Then I guess
I function pretty badly.' To-day, however, largely
owing to the influence of Sir James Mackenzie and others,
a reaction is setting in against such tendencies ; a reaction
which, in its turn, has its dangers and may be pursued
too far.

Some seventy or eighty years ago, however, while
physicians were still mostly occupied with the study of
the organic changes of disease as seen in individuals,
a great School of Sanitarians arose (headed by Chadwick,
himself not a doctor) that found, in the vigour of men's
lives, their best defence against disease. That school
initiated vast schemes for the improvement of the con-
ditions which had arisen as a consequence of our industrial
expansion.

R

258 SCIENCE AND HEALTH

Of the practical value of the work of these men it is
impossible to speak too highly; nevertheless, under their
influence, the Hippocratic epidemiology fell completely
into oblivion. Later, when it was found that not even
drains, a main water-supply, and pure food and drink
always prevent epidemic disease, the rise of bacteriology
gave encouragement to others, who spoke contemptu-
ously of Chadwick and his followers as inculcating hygiene
by whitewash. The bacteriologists soon caused it to be
accepted that the morphological and cultural characters
of microbes are invariable and specific, and that their
onslaughts necessarily evoke specific symptoms and the
appearance of specific morbid changes. So a new and
healthy world was to be brought about by antiseptics
and universal protective inoculation. Indeed, the classi-
fication of disease by specific morbid changes having been
found in the long run as little satisfactory as the earlier
classifications made by the botanical physicians, diseases
were to be finally classified by the specific microbes
associated Avith them.

Now we must not for one moment under-value the
enormous number of facts given to us by the bacterio-
logists, and the incalculable help that applied bacteriology
has brought to the art of medicine. Yet it is odd that,
at the very moment when biologists, under the influence
of the theory of evolution, were everywhere approaching
the facts of life in a new spirit, the bacteriologists should
have set up the most rigid of barriers between the species
into which they divided the objects of their investiga-
tions. Moreover, if the great Sanitarians had stressed
unduly the importance of the 'soil', the bacteriologists
forgot all but the 'seed'. Neither party cared to remem-
ber the third or Hippocratic factor ! Yet, whether we
think of 'man distributively ' or 'man congregate', no
conjunction of 'seed' and 'soil' appears effective to

SCIENCE AND HEALTH 259

produce pestilence except on due season or occasion,
hard though it be for us to express more definitely all
that our experiences lead us to suggest by this phrase.

The world-wide pestilence of 19 18, which we call
influenza, has, however, confounded the rigid bacterio-
logists as completely as did the influenza of 1889 confound
the advocates of drainage and whitewash. We are again
forced to consider the importance of the observations
which in times past led men to the expression of belief
in the cosmic origin of pandemics.

Such is, perhaps, the present and interesting position
that we have reached. It seems as if we are about to
recognize the purely relative importance of the 'single
cause' in respect of the evocation of disease. We are
beginning to see that the type of reaction in each indivi-
dual or in each community varies not only with the state
of the subject and with the environmental conditions,
but with the incursion of factors which do not as yet
come within our perceptual field, though it must of
course be admitted that for different types of disorder
and pestilence, different etiological values must be
allotted to each of these elements in the production of
disease.

Again — and here Medicine, after centuries, is groping
her way towards reunion with Science and Philosophy
in general — we are beginning to recognize that when
we discuss Science and Health we must have in mind,
not merely individuals, but higher units — communities,
nations, and leagues of nations— not mere masses of
individuals, but collectivities, with collective function
and subject to collective disorder. Finally, we are
recognizing that the sterile accumulation of mere facts
is not greatly helping us; that our task is to bring these
facts together, to find some general synthetic expression
for theni, agreeing even so that our generalizations are

R 2

26o SCIENCE AND HEALTH

only of symbolic value, and are liable to readjustment, as
knowledge accrues. The moment we attach positive
value to our generalizations we relapse into formal and
academic System : deduction and analysis alone then
remain to us as intellectual tools.

Once more (and this time in the words of Oliver Wendell
Holmes) let us admit that ' disease is a function and not
an entity'. Using the word in the mathematical rather
than the physiological sense, it is a function of the hving
organism, given certain conditions.

§ 3. The Scientific Problem

' It is no other method than that which brute beasts are capable
of, and do put in use; which is a perpetual understanding or
practising some one thing, urged and imposed by an absolute
necessity of conservation of being.'- — Bacon, loc. cit.

The change of outlook in Medicine that we have
indicated is consequent, though not too closely, upon
a change that has, during the last thirty or forty years,
taken place in biology. That change has had more than
one root. Thus, following the work of Roux, who though
nominally mechanistic has yet given an enormous impulse
to vitalism, there has been a revival of the old synthetic
and functional thought of Aristotle, Bichat, and Cuvier.
On the other there has been a drifting away from pure
Darwinism and a reversion to Lamarck, of which the
early prophet was Samuel Butler.

Roux held that living things persist, in spite of their
metabolism, in spite, also, of concurrent changes of
environment, by reason of their power of self-regulation.
Now a neo-Vitalist will proceed a httle farther, and will
think of living things primarily as units of functional
organization. He will then find special kinds of functional
activity, and special modes of response to stimulus, to be

SCIENCE AND HEALTH 261

proper to special kinds of organization units. But
biologists of all Schools, whatever their philosophical
peculiarities, agree in distinguishing two kinds of function
as common to and exercised by all living units. Of these
one, which we may call the animal or outer function,
regulates and secures the adjustment of the unit to its
environment. The other, more primitive, and therefore
more stable, which we may call vegetative or inner, is
concerned with the regulation of the internal life of the
organism or unit; with its nutrition, and with its repro-
duction. The visible structure of a cell, or of an organ,
or of an organ-complex, depends therefore upon, and is
primarily an expression of, the manner in which the
inner functions of the cell, organ, or complex are carried
out or co-ordinated. The organic changes that some call
disease are the consequences of the dissociation of inner or
vegetable functions entailed, perhaps, by failure of due
adjustment of external relations. They do not represent
something superimposed from outside and, so to speak,
invading the organization unit. If we apply this biological
conception to, let us say, cancer, we realize that 'the
disease' is not the mass removed, or removable, by the
surgeon's knife, but a disorder or degradation of certain
functional activities that permits irregular, aberrant, and
reversionary forms of reproduction on the part of certain
elements in the body complex, which thus uncontrolled —
and to use a common simile ' rebellious ' — disorganize the
whole 'system'.

In different cases this degradation or reversion is, in
different proportions, an expression (i) of weakened
co-ordination of the elements making up the whole body,
and (2) of local failure under stress of local irritation or
injury. The political analogy is perfectly just. Responsi-
bility for rebellion is distributed between imperfect or
faulty central control and peculiar or exasperating local

262 SCIENCE AND HEALTH

conditions. And in disease, as in politics, the stronger
the central control and the more purely local the irritating
cause, the greater the chances of restoration. But, when
feebleness of the central government leads to disinte-
gration at the periphery, force, or the knife, is no remedy ;
and the inevitable process of dissolution proceeds. Even
when disease is definitely associated with the presence
of micro-organisms or the grosser parasites, the elements
of central vigour and control cannot be neglected. The
invader finds no foothold when the defences are well
organized: he flourishes when these are constitutionally
weak or temporarily inadequate.

Whilst, however, such is the general rule, we must not
forget that the human body is from time to time subjected
to the influence of certain changes in environment which
occur too rarely in a generation for the perpetuation of
efficient organization against them. Just so, however
stable, however well-conducted, the government of a
political unit may seem, yet the intervention of famine or
of physical disaster may provoke revolution and disin-
tegration of central and local control.

Now the natural method of securing a healthy race is,
as Bacon saw, the slow process of adjustment by response
to stimulus continued throughout the ages. But we,
men and women, have the power, which we believe
denied to the brutes, of conscious response or of choice
in response. Nature's response, therefore, can be acceler-
ated or retarded by the intervention of human activity,
of human volition. And let it be remembered that
human volition can not merely decide, within certain
limits, the response to external conditions, but can in
many instances directly modify these conditions them-
selves, and so obviate the need for individual or racial
adaptation to them. Hence the enormous complexity of
this problem of Science and Health, and the danger lest,

SCIENCE AND HEALTH 263

in acting as we think kindly from the point of view of
this or that individual, we may be acting unwisely in the
interests of the greater complexes.

Superficially, of course, it would seem that, just as it
has been a biological convention to consider the cell as
the simplest unit of function, so is it proper to consider
the human body (itself composed of associated and co-
ordinated organs and tissues; themselves complexes of
lesser cell systems) as the highest and most differ-
entiated unit in a biological sense. But we must by no
means be content thus to restrict our range of biological
conception. On the one hand, though it is true that our
positive knowledge as yet hardly extends below the grade
of such simple organisms as bacteria, yet we have some
form of acquaintance with what are called ' filter-passers ' ;
with some viruses that are less than cells, if indeed they
are particulate. Dixon has suggested that viruses of
this nature may be ferment-units which are parasitic,
so to speak, to bacteria themselves ; that may be carried
by bacteria, as we carry grosser parasites; thus justifying
old Samuel Butler's doggerel.

While we are thus compelled to extend the scale of life
in the direction of the infinitely httle, no mere human
pride should lead us to forget that you and I are com-
ponents of biological units far more complex than our-
selves, to which we stand, perhaps, in the same relation
as do our separate blood corpuscles to what we call
ourselves. Individual persons do not, biologically,
represent the most complex of organization units. The
pregnant woman, the mother and suckling, the family,
the tribe, the race, the nation, the League of Nations,
and humanity itself : each is a complex organization unit
in the biological sense, whereof each component has
personal functions, as well as relations to and dependence
on those with which it is associated. Each individual who

264 SCIENCE AND HEALTH

walks the earth is biologically a part of the one great
existing human unit, but is also a part of, is physically
linked with, and represents in himself, those individuals
who have gone before and those who will follow. How
infinitely small, therefore, are the responsibilities of each
of us in respect of what we deem ourselves, when com-
pared with the responsibilities we owe to those with
whom we are associated ! And these responsibilities are
not less than is the debt we owe to those by virtue of
whose efforts we are endowed with the powers that we
do possess.

The individual components of such a high function
complex as a community may not seem to us so closely
associated in a material sense as are the organs or cells
of the body of each one of us, or as are even the mother
and her unborn, or newly-born, child. Nevertheless, the
association of interdependent functional activity exists.
The real thing in organization is not form but activity.
It is association in the exercise of function rather than
mere physical continuity that we must consider. And
so, just as Medicine, in being concerned with the disorders
of health in persons, has to take note of maladjustments
between the functions of the component organs and
tissues of the human body, so in the art of government
has note to be taken of disorders and maladjustments
between the component individuals of communities, and
State Medicine is not so much concerned with the
disorders of health of persons in a community con-
sidered separately as with the disorder of health of the
community itself.

Here the word 'health' is used primarily with the
physical connotation, but we are well persuaded that
disorders of the mental health of a community cannot
be easily excluded from the purview of the epidemiologist.
Certainly the so-called epidemic manias and psychoses

SCIENCE AND HEALTH 265

of the Middle Ages were, like many of the mental phases
manifested during the late War, closely associated,
temporally and geographically, with widespread disorders
of physical health.

We may turn now to a brief consideration of the
influence, in respect of Science and Health, of some of
the factors that have been particularly dealt with by
Samuel Butler and those who to-day are referred to as
neo-Lamarckians. If the appropriate adaptive response
to external stimulus is, for an individual or for a race,
only organized as a result of experience, then the pre-
sentation of new stimuli will always, at first, be provoca-
tive of disorder that can onl}^ be overcome by practice
in responsive effort. We may, by human intervention,
be able sometimes to prevent the recurrence of the same
change in environment, but not always ; and we shall
never be able to prevent the occurrence of new kinds of
changes unless — which is unthinkable — we can stabilize
the universe. We must remember, too, that unless pro-
vocative stimulus recurs, individuals and races alike lose
their power of adaptation to, or their protection against,
that kind of stimulus. So that, in general terms, our hope
is for the acquisition by the race of powers of adaptation
to all likely forms of stimulation, and for the retention
of all powers of adaptive response acquired to all forms
of stimulus within human experience. It therefore
becomes of the very greatest importance to those who
take a wide view of our responsibihties in respect of the
pubhc health, to appreciate all that is involved, or
implied, by the word heredity.

We demand therefore: How may powers of response
acquired by the individual be preserved for the race ; how
may the race be prevented from losing what has been
acquired, or is acquired, by individuals ?

In the past, physicians, Hke biologists in general, have

266 SCIENCE AND HEALTH

thought of heredity simply in terms of the transmission
of form. Now, while it would be wrong to consider the
question merely in terms of function, or functional
aptitudes, there is nevertheless an intricate relationship
between the exercise of function and the appearance of
form, and between the degradation of functional aptitudes
and degeneration in form, not only for individuals but
for races. Jeremiah expresses more perfectly than do the
neo-Lamarckians, the position in respect of these prob-
lems : ' The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the
children's teeth are set on edge.'

Let us consider the matter a little more closely. Modern
biology considers that not form but functional activity is
the really important thing in organization, just as Goethe
saw that 'fixed form' is only a momentary phase of
'form change', and 'form change' itself chiefly of interest
as the manifestation of functional activity. The physician,
however, largely concerned with development of indivi-
duals, has to recognize that, in certain cases, what we
call congenital disease is an expression of defect in form
and in organization of function which do not permit of
the normal response to normal stimuli. As a matter
of fact, for each individual there are two stages of develop-
ment. During the later stage (according to Roux and
those who follow him) , development of form .follows the
exercise of functional activity ; that is to say, it is a result
of personal effort. But in the earlier period, form is
elaborated in anticipation of the functional activity that
may one day be associated with it. If we translate these
biological generalizations into popular terms, do we not
at once realize their validit}'? Do we not see personal
advantages due to parental effort tending to confer an
advantageous start in life upon offspring, a start which
becomes increasingly valuable for one or two genera-
tions, but of which the benefit is lost if there be not the

I

SCIENCE x\ND HEALTH 267

continued exercise of voluntary effort to make use of
opportunities on tlie part of those on whom advantage
is conferred?

Functional activity, we may therefore say, determines
form ; not only for the individual but increasingly for the
race. If, however, parental responsibihty is thus em-
phasized, it is no less the fact that the responsibihty is
stressed of each one of us for the use of the aptitudes
in form and in organization handed down to us by our
predecessors.

There may well be failure by any particular individual
or community, but ultimate adjustment will be effected
by the continuing efforts of the successors of that indi-
vidual or community, all the more successfully by reason
of those originally made. This is why, in the interests
of the race, it is better that we insist on the need for
personal effort than on that for passive protection.

§ 4. The Human Standpoint

' To speak, therefore, of Medicine, and to resume that we have
said, ascending a Uttle higher.' — Bacon, loc. cit.

So far we have discussed firstly the origin and develop-
ment of our notions concerning disease, and, secondly,
some of those teachings of modern biology that seem
destined to exercise influence upon our plans for the
prevention of disease. What now is the outlook from the
completely human standpoint ?

Unless there be full appreciation of the fundamental
principles involved, many superficially attractive schemes
for the prevention of disease are bound to entail disap-'
pointment and may, indeed, prove wasteful, if not
ultimately mischievous. But it is idle to deny that the
promulgation of such schemes is more popular than the
examination of the principles on which action should be

268 SCIENCE AND HEALTH

founded. The note of criticism, or at least of restraint
from uncritical enthusiasm, will always expose to the
charge of pessimism or of laisser-faire. Public memory is
very short; but it may be recalled that during the last
twenty-five years we have seen the inception of cam-
paigns against many diseases, all directed by the noblest
aims, but rarely by sound principles. Cancer, tuber-
culosis, syphilis, infantile mortality, and lunacy have in
turn been the object, as it is said, of systematic attack.
Yet the mortality from cancer is increasing, and the cure
of cancer is as far away as ever : the incidence of tuber-
culosis is again rising; venereal disease is more widely
diffused than ever. The diminution in infantile mor-
tality is more than balanced by the fall of the birth-
rate, and if to-day the lunatic asylums are less full than
formerly, it is, in part, because during the war the death-
rate in asylums soared to an unappreciated height. The
last pandemic of influenza levied a toll of which the
gravity is not yet appreciated by a nation whose sensi-
tiveness has become blunted, and in the wake of this
pandemic has followed a trail of old foes with new faces,
or with new names, which we are sometimes told are new
diseases. Surely it is high time that we seriously con-
sidered practical proposals in the light of first principles.
In the first place, let us frankly admit that, unless
existing conditions be standardized and progress sus-
pended, disease in general can never be reduced to
vanishing-point, since every change in environmental
conditions must involve the need for fresh adjustments
v\'hich to many will be difficult and for some impossible.
As well might we expect the rising tide not to break
into surf at its advancing edge, as that disease should
disappear from a community that is undergoing progres-
sive organization! Moreover, even if we were able to
remove all rocks from the shores against which the waves

SCIENCE AND HEALTH 269

of progress break, we could not expect to establish
immunity from those recurrent disturbances, dependent
on factors beyond man's control, which, from time to
time, throw our social system into disorder; even as
tidal waves agitate sometimes the smoothest of oceans.

Still, this is not to say that we may not, in some
measure, mitigate the rigours of the rocky coast ; put up
breakwaters here and there, and construct harbours of
refuge where the tides may rise peacefully during even
the severest storms. But we must consider our plans
at least as carefully as does the civil engineer in his own
sphere of action ; above all, we must not be led away by
mere sentiment. Certainly we should attempt to dis-
tinguish critically between action in respect of individuals
and of communities. Communities are social complexes
that are not yet fully organized: the component indivi-
duals and groups of individuals are not yet so conscious
of their interdependence as they may one day be: as
they must be if organization of function is to be perfected.
But it is idle to maintain that by improving the health
or alleviating the sickness of particular individuals we
necessarily benefit the community as a whole. This is
a hard saying, but no paradox. The health of the whole
collectivity 'may require, and often does require, the
subordination of the interests of individual parts. Just
so, the health of the body-personal may require the
sacrifice rather than the preservation of an organ or
a limb

As a matter of fact there is an extent to which the
methods and appHcation of Medicine, although of imme-
diate benefit to many individuals who are actually
suffering, must and do tend to lower the average level
of health and the adaptability of the race, ultimately
increasing the (number of persons who are sickly and
feeble. For no gain is transmitted that is not acquired

270 SCIENCE AND HEALTH

by the effort of the organism ; and no gain that is passively
accepted is preserved by the race ; whilst the propagation
of a weaker stock is favoured in proportion to the number
of weaklings saved by art. The expensive care of the
insane, the tuberculous, the deformed, and the indigent,
tends, moreover, to impose a restrictive disabihty upon
those who, if not fettered by taxation, would be capable
of effort advantageous to themselves, to their families,
and to the State.

I do not suggest that we should hang petty criminals
by batches, allow the insane to perish miserably, and
make no effort to prolong the lives of the tuberculous.
I no more suggest that, than do I propose that the Red
Cross be abolished in order that the next war be brief.
The fulfilment of the moral duty that we instinctively
feel incumbent on us is in itself not the least important
of the necessary stages in the toilsome path of human
ascent. But, beyond our present dut}^ to the individual
straggler from the ranks, there is the still higher aim of
so organizing communal, national, and international life
that the stragglers are few and that their needs may be
satisfied without hampering the advance of the whole
army. At present there is real danger lest uncritical
sympathy for, and injudicious aid to, the individual should
entail harm to the community and the race. Nature —
the ' cosmic process ' — settles many problems far better
than we do. If the epileptic and imbecile, or weak-
minded, are left to themselves, they marry amongst their
kind, and the consequent and inexorable exaggeration of
hereditary defect then puts an end to the stock. Yet we
continually speak as if such inter-marriage would produce
a race of epileptics or imbeciles. The very contrary is the
fact ; and human interference seems often doomed to
perpetuate the very evils that it is designed to prevent.

Again, it is pretty certain that the personal profit to

SCIENCE AND HEALTH 271

the individual from the responsive effort of the body to
carry out a defensive reaction against microbic infection
is transmitted to offspring on favourable terms. Racial
immunity to tuberculosis will probably be finall}' achieved,
if at all, by the transmission to offspring of properties
acquired by victorious reactions in early life. But passive
protection not only from certain forms of bacillary inva-
sion, but from personal discomfort or difftculty, is some-
thing which must be paid for by increased susceptibihty
to functional disorder under what should be useful
stimulus. I am not sure, indeed, that as a nation we
have not recently paid, and are not still paying, for the
sheltered life led by so many during the last thirty years.
Life had become for many too easy. And the true secret
seems to lie in the conscious adoption by individuals and
by communities of the great lesson to be learnt from
Nature and Science ahke. It is as true in matters of
health as otherwise, that God helps those who help
themselves; and the message of Longfellow's Psalm of
Life is as practical as it is unfashionable.

It has been my experience, during the last twenty-five
years, to have treated many thousands of patients at
many of our great hospitals, and it is my conviction that
there are few cases of disease to be seen at these places
which would have occurred had there not been, on the
part of the patient or his immediate progenitors, some
lack of patient persistence in right and ordered habits of
physical, mental, and moral life. Sir George Newman, in
a recent Memorandum, lays greater stress, I think, than
any one hitherto on the ultimate importance, in the
production of grave disorders of the stomach and bowels,'
of lack of attention to such habits of cleanliness, or care
in eating, of regularity and so forth, as can only be
acquired in childhood by upbringing and effort.

Yet nothing is more deplorable than the resort to our

272 SCIENCE AND HEALTH

hospitals of young men and women, painfully eager for
a diagnosis and a remedy, who, by "spending less than
they do on an evening's amusement at the 'Pictures',
could acquire a tooth-brush, a sufficiency of Epsom Salts,
and perfect health. All sense of personal responsibility is
lacking to these people ; there are diseases, they think ;
there are doctors and drugs to be had for nothing; why,
then, fag? If they achieve parenthood, their children,
lacking impetus, grow up even less sufficiently organized
than the parents in respect of aptitude for the performance
of natural functions, and are ready subjects for the
remedial knife of the surgeon, since the parental failure
in function has entailed structural under-development on
the part of the children. Herein is some explanation of
the increasing frequency with which we meet certain
minor defects which are the background of graver dis-
orders.

Again : circumstances have made it easy and convenient
for mothers during the last thirty years to exempt them-
selves from the duty of suckling their own babies. The
biological consequences are already obvious. Amongst
young mothers of to-day there is diminished capacity;
the breast is becoming a functionless structure. At the
same time, the necessity thus imposed for the artificial
rearing of infants is, in its turn, entailing as its penalty
an increasing feebleness in infantile powers of resistance,
an increasing poverty of structure, and an increasing need
for protection. The habit of artificial restriction of the
birth-rate is already entailing for the newer generation
a definitely impaired capacity for parenthood, and an
extraordinary sign of the times is the supply of little
books, written by enthusiastic authoresses, giving in-
struction in the performance of what should be for
a healthy couple a perfectly natural and spontaneous
function. The fact is that, as Butler might have put it,

SCIENCE AND HEALTH 273

racial memories are becoming lost or confused by reason
of the avoidance of recapitulative or repetitive personal
effort, and racial adaptations of form and function are
in real danger of being lost to the race.

From another point of view, it is of no advantage that
we 'suppress' certain special diseases by methods of
artificial protection, if there be, at the same time, a general
reduction in, not merely the physical but the mental
and moral vigour of men's lives. It will prove equally
futile to suppress alcoholism by preventing the consump-
tion of alcohol, so long as the invertebrate flabbiness of the
potential drunkard is tacitly encouraged, is freely repro-
duced, and is allowed to form the foundation of other
physical vices.

But how many of those who clamour for battle to be
waged against this, that, or the other enemy of the human
race would care to support a measure imposing, for the
neglect of personal health, even such a moderate penalty
as " five shilHngs or a week " ? Yet it is no exaggeration
to say that half the money expended by our voluntary
and rate-supported hospitals, and half the time given,
without recompense, by doctors, would be immediately
saved were it not for the neglect of soap-and-water, the
tooth-brush, and those racial promptings that are faith-
fully obeyed by the domestic cat and dog. In fact, our
resources, which were never in greater need of conserva-
tion, are frittered away as a result of false conceptions of
disease held by sentimentalists, who hesitate to inculcate
personal responsibility for the right training of self and of
offspring and for the preservation of personal health.

But to recognize this is not enough. The idea is still
prevalent, even amongst those who, in this country,
profess communism, that in this matter of public health
the reciprocity should be, as the Irishman said, 'all on
one side,' and that side that of the other party to the

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274 SCIENCE AND HEALTH

bargain. The idea that the responsibiUty for the health
of a borough should rest upon the local Medical Officer of
Health, and for that of the Nation upon the shoulders of
demigods at Whitehall, is as dangerous as the idea that
doctors should be paid to keep individuals well. The
Ministry of Health, the local Medical Officer, and the
plain doctor may each and all direct measures for the
restoration of health to the organized units with which
they are immediately concerned, and may give useful
counsel with a view to the avoidance of disease. But the
responsibility and the real work must be shared.

We saw and learnt during the crises of the war what
could be accomplished by concerted effort and restraint,
when all helped and tried to help in their measure and
under moderately intelligent direction. As much could
be done to mitigate the consequences of pestilence during
times of pestilence as was done for war during war; and
as much could be done in normal times to fortify against
pestilence as can be done during peace to lessen the
possibility of war, or to restrict its conflagrations when its
prevention is found impossible. The only practical way of
mitigating plagues lies in applying the lessons of biology,
in utilizing the memories of racial experience, and in
developing the sense of need for common action for the
preservation of the common health.

The farther we proceed then, the clearer does it become
that health is not a matter for speciahsts and cannot be
divorced from sociology and from pohtics. War, famine,
and pestilence ever march side by side. We all consider
wars to be productive of pestilence ; and it is true that
just as some harmful parasites are killed by the poisons
they produce, so wars, the begetters of pestilence, are
ended by their own products, if Science does not inter-
vene. It is certain that the influenza of 1918 modified,
in no small degree, the resistance, the moral, and the

SCIENCE AND HEALTH 275

energies of civil and military populations. As much may-
be said of the dearth which, though largely artificial and
epiphenomenal, was not, I think, altogether unconnected
with the general conditions that even in peace time
sometimes affect the earth's productiveness. Indeed
some would regard war, dearth, and pestilence as each and
all dependent on the remoter influences affecting all forms
of life, the 'divine something', if you will, of Hippocrates.
Speaking purely from the standpoint of experience, I am
not sure that they are wrong.

It is, however, clear, that no efforts directed against
the spread of the generalized disorders of health we call
pestilence and plague go near the root of the matter, so
long as the production of the earth's fruits and their
adequate distribution to the world's populations are
allowed, by the intervention of war, to fall below the
optimum. Nor is the influence of war on the grand scale
— if grand be the adjective — confined, in respect of health,
to the propagation of pestilence. The effects of stress,
of under-feeding, and of anxiety, fall upon the children
unto the third and fourth generation of even those who
walk in the way of physiological righteousness. The loss
by death of the finest prospective fathers, the infection
by disease of too many who escape death or mutilation,
the arrest of the orderly development of the immature,
all these are consequences more important to the race
than are the mutilations and amputations sustained by
those who deservedly obtain our commiseration. And
can we forget the deprivation of legitimate opportunity
for motherhood, and the psychical and social consequences '
of this deprivation ?

Perhaps I am now about to exceed my province, but
I confess that it was with feelings which I find some
difficulty in describing that I recently read the able,
eloquent, and comprehensive Memorandum on National

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276 SCIENCE AND HEALTH

Health, written by the Chief Medical Officer of the
Ministry of Health, and found therein not one direct
allusion to the most potently injurious set of conditions
affecting the national health: I mean, international
warfare. I fully recognize the limitations imposed upon
a Government official; but does not the very existence
of these Hmitations reduce our talk about national con-
cern for health to a rather sorry farce ? If we cover our
country, from John o' Groats' to Land's End, with the
most perfect web of sanitary organization and mechanism ;
if we notify every conceivable disease and segregate every
possible carrier of microbes ; if we set half the population
to lecture and inspect the other half, and continue our
efforts for a generation; even then we shall not achieve
anything that will not be destroyed by six months of
war involving the organization of a nation in arms. And
yet how much could be done in six months were each
one of us to do his best, with conscious effort, to improve
his own functional organization and physical condition
by prosecuting the endeavours and obeying the rules
that the experience of mankind has tested throughout
the ages !

And something more. If every one were to recognize
his own share of responsibility for the health of the com-
munity to which he belongs, and every community to
recognize its own share of responsibility for the general
well-being, then the world would have advanced im-
measurably towards successful adaptation to, and the
control, if not the subjection, of many of the forces we
represent as playing on it. Progressive functional organi-
zation links the amoeba serially with man. Progressive
functional organization has brought each of us from the
form of a tiny unicellular organism to what we are.
Progressive functional organization will secure us, so far
as is possible, against war, against famine, and against

SCIENCE AND HEALTH 277

disease; if, that is, the necessary effort in progressive
organization is consciously pursued and maintained.

But is there any definite end to this process of pro-
gressive effort? Shall we ever attain the summit which
seems to elude us, as one mountain peak rises behind
another? I do not say that mankind will ever attain
perfect adjustment in progress, but that I think is not
the point. It is our duty to continue: and I would rather
be the efficient donkey trotting behind the elusive carrot
dangled by his driver, than would I be his stall-fed
brother living in petty idleness. At any rate, although
a measure of choice is held out to us, we are not free
from responsibilit}^ Telemachus may fulfil his duty in
the ordered quiet of his little island where —

. . . 'centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail'

he may succeed in keeping out disease for a time. But
even in the best ordered of little islands comfort will
beget sloth, and catastrophe, when it comes, will find
a people weak and ill-prepared. If, on the other hand,
like Ulysses, we are resolved to

' Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows '

our spirits

'yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star.
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought '

equally may we meet with hazard, with accident, or with
catastrophe. But we shall be fulfilhng the duty which
we know is imposed upon us —

' To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.'

In so doing we shall tread the pathway of Science to
moral, mental, and physical Health.

278 SCIENCE AND HEALTH

Books for Reference

"E. Boinet, Les Doctrines Medicales. (Flammarion.) 191 1.

S. Butler, Life and Habit. (Fifield.) 1916.

F. G. Crookshank, Influenza. (Heinemann.) 1922.

A. E. Gurney-Dixon, The Transmutation of Bacteria. 1919.

Sir M, Morris, The Story of British Public Health. 1919.

Sir B. W. Richardson, The Health of Nations. 18S7.

H. Roger, La Medecine. (Masson.) 1920.

E. S. Russell, Form and Function. (Murray.) 1916,

E. T. Withington, Medical History. (Scientific Press.) 1894.

XI
SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Julian S. Huxley

'The next great task of Science is to create a religion
for humanity.' So says Lord Morley in one of his essays.
It is a striking saying, coming as it does from one in whom
thought and action have been so intertwined, one to
whom reason, not dogma, is the basis of moraUty, achieve-
ment, not emotion, its justification.

Let those words be my encouragement ; for they
challenge at the outset, and to my mind rightly, two of the
most persistent difficulties that confront one who tries
to write of the relations between Science and Religion.
The man of science too often asks what science can have
to do with what he brands as utterly and wholly unscien-
tific; the religiously-minded man demands what gain can
follow from contact with the cold and inhuman attitude
of pure reason. To those questions I hope that this
lecture will provide a partial answer. Meanwhile I shall
begin with a perhaps less ultimate but more pressing
question. That question is asked by many men and
women to-day, who on the one hand feel as it were
instinctively that religion of some sort is necessary for
life, yet on the other are unable to do violence to their
intellectual selves by denying the facts that reason and
scientific inquiry reveal, or by closing their eyes to '
them.

The question, in briefest form, is this: 'What room
does science leave for God ? '

To the savage, all is spirit. The meanest objects are

28o SCIENCE AND RELIGION

charged Avith influence, the commonest actions fraught
with spiritual possibihties, the operations of nature one
and all are brought about by spiritual powers. But with
ordered civilization and dispassionate observation, a net-
work of material cause and effect invades this spiritual
domain. The mysterious influences, for example, be-
lieved to be inherent in springs and running rivers became
personified, and, anthropomorphized as nymphs or gods,
were removed into a seclusion more remote from practical
and everyday life than their unpersonified predecessors.
Later, they retreated still farther from actuality into
a half-believed mythology, and then passed away into
the powerlessness of avowed fairy-story or literary
symbolism, while the rivers, perceived as the resultant of
natural forces, were more and more harnessed to man's
use. So with the wind and the rain, the growth of crops,
the storms of the sea. So, in due time, with the thunder
and the lightning, with earthquakes, eruptions, comets,
eclipses, pestilences.

This process of liberating matter from arbitrary and
mysterious power, of perceiving it as orderly and endowed
with regularity of natural law, of bringing it more and
more beneath human control, was, on the other hand,
accompanied by what may be called a combined con-
densation and sublimation of the spiritual forces accepted
by human faith, from spirit to spirits, spirits to gods,
gods to God. But now it seems as if this condensation
had reached its limit, and the sublimation could only go
farther by resolving the one God into an empty name or
the vaguest unreality.

No one who has read Flaubert's Tentatmn de St.
Antoine can forget the procession of gods, hundreds upon
hundreds, in every diversity of form, all the divinities of
early man, defiling past the visionary saint to tumble
into the abyss and be for ever destroyed. Is it to be so

SCIENCE AND RELIGION 281

with every God ? Is God only a personified symbol of
our residuum of ignorance ? Is to hold the idea of God
in any form to be, as Salomon Reinach believes, in an
infantile stage of human development, and must we with
him define religion as ' a sum of beliefs impeding the free
use of human faculty ' ?

I think not ; and I shall endeavour to justify my
belief to you to-day, and to show that, albeit much
alteration and a thorough revision of ideas is needed, the
term God has an important scientific connotation, and
further that the present stagnation of religion can be
remedied, if, as has happened again and again in biological
evolution, the old forms become extinct or subordinate,
and a new dominant type is developed along quite fresh
lines.

In any case the man of science must obviously, if he
face the problem at all, take up a scientific attitude of
mind towards it. He cannot say that there is no such
thing as religion ; or try to whittle it away by explaining
that it is something else — a complicated fear, or a sub-
limated sex-instinct, or a combination of credulity and
duplicity. A thing, if it is a thing at all, is never merely
something else. Nor can he submit to the pretensions of
those who assert that it is too sacred to be touched, or
that its certainties are greater than those of science.
No — he must treat it for what it is — a fact, and a very
important fact at that, in human history : and he must
see whether the application of scientific method to its
study — in other words, its illumination by the faculty
of pure intellect — will help not only our comprehension of
religion in the past, but its actual development in the
future.

He can study it in various ways. He can use the
method of observation and comparison, collecting and
collating facts until he is able to give a connected account

282 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

of the manifestations of religion and of their past history;
he can study it physiologically, so to speak, to see what
part it plays in the bod}' politic, and how that part may
alter with circumstances ; or he may seek to investigate
its essence, to discover not only how it appears and what
it does, but what it is.

Further, he must have some general principles to lean
on in his search, principles both positive and negative.
He must be content to leave certain possibihties out of
account because as yet he cannot see how they can be
connected with his organized scheme of things ; in other
words, he has to be content to build slowly and imper-
fectly in order that he may be sure of building soundly.
This is the principle which we may call positive agnos-
ticism.

This very fact has been in the past one of the great
obstacles in the way of successful treatment of religion
by science. One of the attributes of man is his desire
for a complete explanation, or at least a complete view,
of his universe, and this has been at the bottom of much
doctrine and many creeds. But before Kepler and
Newton, no sort of scientific account could be given of
celestial phenomena; before Darwin, none of Natural
History ; before the recent revival in psychology, none of
the mind and its workings. In the second half of the
nineteenth century, for instance, science could give an
adequate account of most inorganic phenomena, and, in
broad outline, of evolutionary geology and biology; but
mind was still refractory. Accordingly, the philosophy
of science was mainly materialist. But the common man
felt that mind was not the empty epiphenomenon that
orthodox science would have it ; and he desired a scheme
of things in which mind should be more adequately
explained than it could be by science at its then stage of
development. Hinc illae lacrimae.

SCIENCE AND RELIGION 283

To-day, it is at least possible to link up, not only
physics and chemistry and geology and evolutionary bio-
logy, but also anthropology and psychology, into a whole
which, though far from complete, is at least organized
and coherent with itself. If the seventeenth century
cleared the ground for that dwelling-place of human
mind which we call the scientific view of things, if the
eighteenth century laid the foundations and the nine-
teenth built the walls, the twentieth is already fitting up
some of the rooms for actual habitation.

There are certain other domains of reality which have
not yet been properly investigated by science. Telepathy,
for instance, and the whole mass of phenomenon included
broadly under the term spiritualism, are in about the
same position with regard to organized scientific thought
to-day as was astronomy before astrology's collapse, as
was the study of electricity in the eighteenth century,
or that of hypnotism in the middle of the nineteenth.
What is more, the average man demands that phenomena
of this order shall be included in his scheme of things.
Science cannot yet do this for him ; and accordingly the
dwelling-place that we are building must still be incom-
plete ; it is for those who come after to build the upper
stories.

This cannot be helped. What we build, we must build
firmly ; on what is yet to be built, science cannot pro-
nounce, except to say that she knows that it will be
congruous with what has gone before.

What general principles, then, do we assume? We
assume that the universe is composed throughout of
the same matter, whose essential unity, in spite of the
diversity of its so-called elements, the recent researches
of physicists are revealing to us ; we assume that matter
behaves in the same way wherever it is found, showing
the same mode of sequence of change, of cause and

284 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

effect. We assume that there has been an evolution of
the forms assumed by matter ; that, in this solar system
of ours, for instance, matter was once all in electronic
form, that it attained later to the atomic and the mole-
cular ; that later, colloidal organic matter of a special
type made its appearance, and later still, living matter
arose. That the forms of life, simple at first, attained
progressively to greater complexity ; that mind, negligible
in the lower forms, became of greater and greater impor-
tance, until it reached its present level in man.

Unity, uniformity, and development are the three great
principles that emerge. We know of no instance where
the properties of matter change, though many where
a new state of matter develops. The full properties of
a molecular compound such as water, for instance, cannot
be deduced at present from what we know about the
properties of its constituent atoms of hydrogen and oxygen.
The properties of the human mind cannot be deduced
from our present knowledge of the minds of animals.
New combinations and properties thus arise in time.
Bergson miscalls such evolution 'creative'. We had
better, with Lloyd Morgan, call it 'emergent'.

With mind, we find a gradual evolution from a state
in which it is impossible to distinguish mental response
from physiological reaction, up to the intensity and
complexity of our own emotions and intellect. Since
all material developments in evolution can be traced
back step by step and shown to be specializations of one
or more of the primitive properties of living matter, it is
not only an economy of hypothesis, but also, in the
absence of any evidence to the contrary, the proper
conclusion, that mental properties also are to be traced
back to the simplest and most original forms of life.
What exact significance is to be attached to the term
'mental properties' in such organisms, it is hard to say,

SCIENCE AND RELIGION 285

we mean, however, that something of the same general
nature as mind in ourselves is inherent in all life, some-
thing standing in the same relation to living matter in
general as do our minds to the particular living matter
of our brains.

But there can be no reasonable doubt that living
matter, in due process of time, originated from non-
living; and if that be so, we must push our conclusion
farther, and beheve that not only living matter, but all
matter, is associated with something of the same general
description as mind in higher animals. We come, that is,
to a monistic conclusion, in that we believe that there is
only one fundamental substance, and that this possesses
not only material properties, but also properties for
which the word mental is the nearest approach. We
want a new word to denote this X, this world-stuff;
matter will not do, for that is a word which the physicists
and chemists have moulded to suit themselves, and since
they have not yet learned to detect or measure mental
phenomena, they restrict the word 'material' to mean
'non-mental', and 'matter' to mean that which has
material properties.

You will remember Wilham of Occam's razor : ' Entia
non multiplicanda praeter necessitatem ; ' when we are
monists in the sense I have just outlined, we are using
that weapon to shave away a very unrestrained growth
of hair which has long obscured the features of reality.

Holding to these principles, we must, until evidence
to the contrary is produced, reject any explanation which
proceeds by cataclysms, or by miracles ; a miracle becomes
(when not an illusion) simply an event which is on the
one hand uncommon, and for which, on the other, there
has been found no explanation. Revelation too goes by
the board — save a revelation which is simply a name for
the progressive increase of knowledge and insight.

286 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Last, but not least, we do not pretend to know the
Absolute. We know phenomena, and our systems, in so
far as scientific, are interpretations of phenomena.

Religion has been defined in a hundred different ways.
It has been defined intellectually— as a creed ; as myth ;
as a view of the universe. It has been defined emotionally
— as consisting in awe ; in fear ; in love ; in mystical
exaltation or communion. It has been defined from the
standpoint of action — as worship ; as ritual ; as sacrifice ;
as morality. Matthew Arnold called it 'morality tinged
with emotion'; Salomon Reinach 'a sum of scruples
impeding the free use of human faculties', Jevons makes
the experiencing of God the central feature; and so on
and so forth. Is it possible to find any common measure
for all these statements ? Would it not be better to
unite with those who cut the Gordian knot by writing
down all religion simply as illusion ? No. For their
point of view is meaningless. Even illusions are, in
themselves, facts to be investigated; and even illusions
have a basis.

But it is not necessary to believe that it is an illusion;
the knot may be untied. Ritual, Creed, Morality, Mystical
Experience — all these are manifestations of religion, but
not religion itself. Religion itself is the reaction between
man as a personality on the one side, and on the other,
all of the universe with which he comes in contact.
It is not only ritual, for you may have obviously non-
religious ritual, as in a court ceremonial, or a legal
function : it is not merely morality, for men may practise
morality, the most austere or the most terre a terre,
uninspired by anything that could remotely be called
religious: it is not belief, for we may have beliefs of all
kinds, even to the most complex scientific beliefs con-
cerning the universe, which have yet no connexion with

SCIENCE AND RELIGION 287

religion: it is neither communion in itself, nor ecstasy in
itself, as many lovers and poets could tell you.

But because it is a reaction of the whole personality,
it must involve intellectual and practical and emotional
processes : and because man has the powers of abstraction
and association, or rather because his mind in most cases
cannot help making associations and abstractions, it
follows that it will inevitably concern itself, consciously
or sub-consciously, with all the phenomena that it
encounters, will try to bring them all into its scheme,
and will try to unify them and frame concepts to deal
with them as a whole.

Some men will be more concerned on the emotional,
others on the intellectual, others again on the moral side :
but it is impossible to separate any one of the three
aspects entirely from the others.

We will begin with and treat mainly of the intellectual
aspect of the problem, the credal side. For one thing,
science has more direct concern with it than with the
others ; for another, more continuous and startling
alterations have had to be made in it; and finally, the
actual problem is there felt most acutely at the present
moment.

What, then, is the problem? In the terms of our
definition of religion, it is in its most general terms as
follows: Man has to live his life in a world in which he
is confronted with forces and powers other than his own.
He is a mere animalcule in comparison with the totality
of these forces, his life a second in comparison with their
centuries. By his mental constitution, he of necessity
attempts to formulate some intelligible account of the
constitution of the world and its relation to himself —
or should we rather say in so far as it is in relation to
himself ? — and so we have a myth, a doctrine, or a creed.

At the present moment, as we have already seen, there

288 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

appears to be an irreconcilable conflict between orthodox
Christianity and orthodox Natural Science. The one
asserts the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient,
personal God — creator, ruler, and refuge. The other, by
reducing ever more and more of natural phenomena to
what we please to call natural laws — in other words, to
orderly processes proceeding inevitably from the known
constitution and properties of matter — has robbed such
a God of ever more and more of his realm and possible
power; until finally, with the rise of evolutionary biology
and psychology, there seems to be no place any more for
a God in the universe.

Stated thus, the opposition is complete. But let us
return on our footsteps, and trace for one thing some of
the history of religious beliefs, for another reinvestigate,
from a slightly unusual standpoint, the actual knowledge
of the Universe which science has given us.

Man has developed: in early stages, his physical and
mental capacities developed ; in later stages development
has been mainly restricted to his traditions, ideas, and
achievements. As part of his development, his religious
ideas have altered too.

At the beginning, he appears to have no ideas of a God
of Gods at all^ — merely of influences and powers, obviously
(he would say) inherent in the forces of Nature, magically
inherent in certain objects and actions — fetishes and
incantations. He seems scarcely to have been conscious
of himself as an individual, or of the full distinction
between self and the external world.

Later, perhaps as the idea of his own personality grew,
he began to ascribe a more personal existence to the
forces with which he came into contact, and so to turn
them more and more into beings that can properly be
called Gods : polydaemonism arose and in its turn gave
place to polytheism.

SCIENCE AND RELIGION 289

But while rigid custom was at first the only morality,
and each external power and each human activity was
regarded separately, later the rise of civilization led to
a modification of custom, to a reference of action and
belief to the standards of pure reason, and to an attempt
at unification. Once this occurred, and equally so
whether the attempt at unification had an intellectual
or a moral basis, polytheism was doomed. Its downfall
has been often described; the reasons for it are sugges-
tively put by Jevons in his little book. The Idea of God,
It passes through a stage where one among the gods is
pre-eminent: but finally even that does not suffice, and
in its place arises a monotheistic creed.

Monotheism may start as a purely local or tribal affair —
my one God against yours. But this idea, too, is self-
contradictory, and merges into that of one God for all
men. The primitive anthropomorphism which had
invested the first vague and mysterious spirits with
human parts and passions, human speech and thought,
also fell into gradual desuetude. It was kept up as
a symbol, or because of the difficulty of describing a God
except in terms of human individuality, but its literal truth
was deliberately denied. God became different from and
more than man — omnipotent, omniscient, with no parts,
with no limitations: but he retained personality — in
other words, a mental or spiritual organization of the
same general kind as man's, however superior in degree.
With time, the divine personality became compounded
more and more of man's ideals instead of his everyday
thoughts and attributes. And thus and that God remains.
He has created everything ; he is in some sense immanent
in the world, in some sense apart from it as its ruler — you
take your choice according to your philosophic preferences.
Beyond that, organized religious thought has not gone;
and now it finds itself fronting science in an impasse.

T

290 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

That, very briefly and roughly, is how man's idea of
God has developed. But how have man's knowledge and
ideas of the natural universe developed? What has
Science to say to the impasse?

Man has to deal with three great categories of pheno-
mena— the inorganic, the organic, and the psychic. In the
inorganic, chemistry first and then ph3^sics have given us
a picture whose broad outlines are now familiar. There
is but one type and store of energy in Nature, whether
it drives a train, animates a man, radiates in heat or
light, inheres in a falling stone. There is but one sub-
stance. All bodies of trees, of men, of rivers and rocks,
the clouds in the air and the air itself, precious stones and
common clay — all can be resolved into a limited number
of elements. And these elements in their turn can be
resolved into combinations, differing, it appears, only
quantitatively from each other, of electrical charges;
so that at the last all matter is one, and becomes perhaps
indistinguishable, or at least inseparable, from energy.
There is no personal operator for particular happenings ; the
lightning and the volcano are the inevitable outcome of the
material constitution of things, equally with the form and
colour of a pebble and with the fact that it will drop to the
ground if it is let fall. All is impersonal order and unity.

There is, however, one other great fact about the
system of inorganic matter. The energy contained in it
tends to be degraded, as the physicists say — in other
words to become less readily available. There is available
energy in moving matter. There is potential energy in
all matter, dependent upon whether it can be set in
motion. But if the sea were to cover the whole surface
of the globe, it would be impossible to extract energy
from running water as we do now, because no water
would be running. So too heat is energy; but it is only
available when it can flow, when there are hotter and

SCIENCE AND RELIGION 291

colder bodies. The law under which transformations of
energy operate has now been investigated, and it has
been established that in every energy-transaction a certain
modicum goes to waste as unavailable heat, so that,
unless some at present unforeseen change occurs, the last
state of the universe, considered as a purely physico-
chemical mechanism, will be one of death, of inactivity,
with all matter at a uniform low temperature and the
whole stock of energy locked up and unavailable in this
sea of tranquillity. True for one thing that an almost
inconceivable number of millions of years must elapse
before this ' death of matter ' is realized ; and for another
that we are unable to understand how such a progressive
degradation could have been in operation from all
eternity. We must not expect complete knowledge
within a few years or a few centuries; but even if the
beginning is veiled — for there is no more evidence for
a 'creation' than for (say) a rhythmic reversal of the
direction of energy-availability — and if it is always
possible that some unforeseen change in the process
should occur before the whole runs down, yet it is a fact
(and we are resolved to be agnostic save about facts)
that, here and now, a direction is to be observed in the
evolution of inorganic matter, by which natural opera-
tions are tending to become less active, and the amount
of available energy is diminishing. If it continues
indefinitely, first life, and later on all activity and change
whatsoever will cease. There is a tendency towards
death and towards unchanging inactivity.

The next great category is that of the organic, of
living matter. We have to consider its origin and later
history. So far as constitution goes, living matter is
merely a special and highly complicated form of ordinary
matter; and there can be no reasonable doubt that it
has originated naturally from non-living matter.

T 2

292 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

While the main direction of the inorganic has been
towards degradation of energy, it has shown another
subsidiary direction towards the production of more and
more complex forms of matter. If our general ideas are
correct, there must have been a time when matter in our
ordinary sense of the word did not exist — there can have
been no atoms, only free electrons. From this state,
there evolved one in which the various electron-systems
that we call atoms first appeared ; later still, atoms could
join with atoms to produce molecules. Leaping over vast
periods, we would come to the time when radiation had
brought the temperature of the earth surface below
100° C. ; water then could form from steam and solution
occur. Through solution, all soluble elements, which
would otherwise remain locked in the inactivity of the
solid state, are enabled to enter upon a new phase of
mobility, of chemical life, as we may say. Only in water
could colloid carbon compounds first be built up, and only
from such substances could life originate.

Living substance, or at least much of it, must be
formed of molecules containing thousands of atoms, each
atom in its turn a system of circling electrons. Here
already is a vast increase of complexity : it remains to be
seen whether the same tendency is perpetuated later.

The evolutionary concept is to biology what the
doctrine of the conservation of energy has been in the
physico-chemical sciences — an indispensable preliminary
to proper methods of attack. But while great stress has
been laid on the various methods by which evolution may
be supposed to have taken place — Natural selection,
Lamarckism, orthogenesis and the rest — biology has
concerned herself comparatively little with the form of
the process in itself. But it is here that evolution becomes
of value to us in our present search; for once more we
become aware of a direction. Partly from the direct

SCIENCE AND RELIGION 293

evidence of palaeontology, partly from indirect evidence,
but along many converging lines, we can. form an idea of
this direction which in broad outlines is unassailable.

During life's existence on earth — a period to be reckoned
in hundreds and probably in thousands of millions of
years — there has been an increase in various of its
attributes. But just as in the inorganic world electrons
and atoms still exist as such side by side with molecules,
so also the earlier types of living matter continue to exist
side by side with the later. The increase is not therefore
seen uniformly in all forms at once, but is most easily
observed by studying the maximum level attained. Size,
for instance, is one of these attributes; and whereas
to-day all variations are to be found between ultra-
microscopic disease germs and vast organisms like whales
and elephants, there has been a gradual steady increase
(tending to a limit) in the size of the largest organisms
existing at any one period.

If we confine ourselves for the moment to the material
side, we find that the directional change in organic evolu-
tion can be reduced to this — to an increase of the control
exercised by living matter over the environment, and
of its independence of the environment — two reciprocal
aspects of a single process. When we look more closely
into the means by which this has been achieved, we
shall see an increase of the maximiim not only in size,
but in complexity, in length of life, in efficiency of par-
ticular organs, in co-ordination of parts and general
harmony, in improvement of sense-organs, and, con-
tinuing even after other tendencies have reached their
limits, in brain-size and consequently in complexity of
mode of reaction and behaviour.

If we turn to the psychological side, we find that there
has been an increase in the intensity of mental process.
This is apparent in all aspects of mind, on that of emotion

294 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

equally with that of knowledge, of volition equally with
that of emotion. To be an amoeba or a worm is to live
a hfe almost without windows. Perfection of sense-
organs makes it possible for life to be aware of the different
types of outer events, whilst memory and, later, associa-
tive memory give the possibility of understanding their
history. In higher forms volition can be maintained for
longer and longer intervals, can attain greater intensity,
and can fix itself upon ever more and more distant
objects. With depth of feeling comes also differentiation,
so that finally we find in ourselves the possibility of
organizing various blends of the simple emotions into
the compound emotional forms such as reverence and
admiration, called sentiments by McDougall.

Biologically speaking, therefore, the direction observable
in mental evolution is again towards increased control and
increased independence ; by mental and cerebral improve-
ment there is introduced a greater accuracy and a greater
range of control, as well as better adjustment between
organisms and environment, than would be otherwise
possible to the same bodily organs.

The direction of life may therefore be roughly summed
up in the two words 'more life' — more both in quantity
(have not both land and air been colonized during
evolution?) and also in quality. More matter has been
stolen from the hfeless and embodied in the living; and
the living begins to be less helpless in face of the lifeless.

The direction of living matter is thus in many ways
opposed to the direction to be seen in inorganic matter;
yet not only has the organic arisen from the inorganic,
but its direction continues one direction already traceable
before the appearance of life.

Finally, we come to the psychological aspect of the
universe. We have already touched on it in connexion
with biology, and found that in many ways at least the

SCIENCE AND RELIGION 295

development of mind follows the same lines as that of
living matter, and helps forward the general trend of life.

But finally a kink occurs, a critical point, similar to
that seen at the origin of living from non-living matter.
There the attributes of living matter which m.ark it off
from inorganic matter become dominant — its capacity
for self-reproduction, its tendency to organization. The
colloid carbon compound had been the highest known
independent unit; from now on, this place was taken by
the organism.

In exactly the same way, in the final stages of evolution
(as witnessed abundantly by fossil mammals) complexity
of purely bodily organization had reached a limit, and
survival, as is evidenced by increasing size of brain, came
to be determined more and more by mental qualities.
Finally the curve of mental development caught up with
that of body, and intersected it : mind became the
dominant factor in the new type of organism, and in the
subsequent history of the evolutionary process. The
organism ceased to be the highest unit, and gave place to the
person, or self-conscious individual with organized mind.

This new critical point was reached when man arose;
many authors recognize it for what it is, the beginning
of a new era, by christening the subsequent geological
period the Psychozoic. That period, geologically speaking,
has yet run but a tiny span ; and we are no more entitled
to think that we have reached or even imagined the
possibilities of its future evolution than we should have
been entitled to regard the possibilities of purely bio-
logical evolution as having been exhausted after the far
longer period needed to give rise to a coral polyp or
jelly-fish as highest existing types of organism. Even
man as a biological species is in his infancy, not to speak
of other psychozoic types that may be waiting in the
womb of time.

296 SCIENCE AND RELICxION

But what are the characteristics of this new phase?
In the first place, mind has become self-conscious ; thus
the evolutionary methods of psychozoic organisms may
become conscious, and they come to direct their own
evolution instead of having their destinies shaped by the
blind forces of natural selection.

In most respects the same direction as before is pursued,
but new methods are introduced. The rate of change,
of movement in that direction, is accelerated ; and the
possibility is given of eliminating a vast deal of waste.
A watchmaker sends out very few defective watches :
why? because he makes his watches on a preconceived
plan. Even when an improvement in watch construction
is introduced, he can draw up his plan beforehand, and
at the worst, waste only time and paper, instead of metal
and far more time. Ideas do not need to be embodied
before selection can act upon them ; thus an increasing
amount of evolutionary change will take place through
the natural selection of ideas than through the older and
far more wasteful process, natural selection of individuals
and species.

Finally, values appear upon the scene. If we could ask
a wild animal such as a fox what gave value to its life,
and it could answer us, it would doubtless say food,
sleep, comfort, hunting, sexual pleasure, and family
companionship. But it cannot answer; nor can it know
the value of what it pursues, but only appreciate the
result. Strictly speaking, values do not exist for it.
However, even if we allow ourselves to speak of values
in the life of pre-human organisms, we see immediately
that wholly new values are introduced after the critical
point.

Putting it summarily, we can say that, with the rise of
mind to dominance, various activities of mind come to
be pursued for their own sake, to have value in them-

SCIENCE AND RELIGION 297

selves. Our life is worth living not only for the sake of
eating and drinking, sleeping, athletics, and sexual pleasure.
There is a value attached to knowledge for its own sake,
apart from the possible access of control that it may bring.
But this is new, a property of man alone , not even
Athena's owl will exert itself through laborious years to
understand celestial mechanics or physiology. The highest
anthropoids do not attempt to create works of art, which
for man come to have value in themselves. Natural beauty
comes to have its value too ; a cow (so far as known !) does
not interrupt the business of its life to admire the sunset,
whereas men may and do. Behaviour also is implicated:
with the entry upon the scene of that practically
unlimited number of possible reactions which give us
what we call free will and choice, there comes a conviction
that some modes of action are higher than others ; and
so a scale of moral values comes into being.

Nor is it merely that values, in the strict sense, are
created ; nor that new values come into being. But with
the enlargement of mind and its more perfect organiza-
tion, there arises a new method of appraising values,
and so a new type of value altogether. I mean, of
course, the so-called absolute values. Absolute values
are never absolute in the sense of absolute completeness;
they are relative to two things — to external reality and
to our mental powers and organization.^ They are
abstractions; we generalize the value in our minds, and
at the same time raise it to the highest pitch of intensity

^ A confvision of thought easily arises here. It may be abso-
lutely true that 2 and 2 make 4 ; we may be absolutely right in
certain cases to tell a lie ; or may find an expression of absolute
beauty in some one lovely thing. But we may grow to find that
same thing aesthetically unsatisfying ; we can imagine a state of
society in which it would never be right to lie ; while our correct
knowledge of elementary arithmetic is something very partial
and incomplete.

298 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

we can. An interesting point arises from this way of
thinking. Apart from the guarantee of our own con-
victions, the observable direction of living nature is our
guarantee of right : or one had better say that it is at
once the guarantee and the touchstone of our convictions.
But two things may be moving in the same direction, and,
if one be moving much slower than the other, the slower
may impede the faster ; a pedestrian procession making
eastward along Fleet Street will hold up the life of the
City for a time, and cows walking along railways are
treated as obstacles by trains proceeding in the same
direction. So it comes about that much that was once
progressive in organic evolution has become an obstacle
or a drag to psychozoic evolution ; it is relatively retro-
gressive, and, from our present standpoint, bad. To take
the simplest and most fundamental example : evolution
by blind natural selection was the method of progress for
organisms below man. Unceasing struggle and courage
was the chief factor in producing the grandeur and
strength of the lion, the swiftness and grace of deer, the
brilliance and lightness of the birds. But if the same end
can be obtained both more quickly and more bloodlessly
by new methods, then the old stands condemned. Here
lies the key to the problem propounded by Huxley in his
Romanes Lecture— the problem of man's relation to the
rest of the cosmic process, at once sprung from it by
gradual generation and separated from it by an absolute
and unbridgeable chasm, at once one with it and in
deadly combat with it and all its ways.

Our mode of envisaging the problem illuminates it,
and shows it as inevitable and intelhgible instead of
insoluble and tormenting ; and illuminates, too, many
other minor problems of good and evil. But all this is
a side-issue : revenons a nos moiUons.

Unknown, or neutral, or hostile power : a movement

SCIENCE AND RELIGION 299

similar in direction to the direction in which history on
the whole shows we are moving, and to that which we
desire with our highest aspirations, but operating blindly ;
an acceleration of that movement by the coming of mind
to biological predominance, with certain consequent
minor changes in direction but major changes in speed
and in methods. Three tendencies, but all founded in
one unity, and each arising out of the other — that is the
picture drawn for us by the present state of science.
In this sense, and in this only, can it be said that 'all
things work together for righteousness'.

One word on an important side-issue — the problem of
evil in man, of stagnancy and degeneration in organic
evolution. Degeneration often does occur — a reversal,
in other words, of the main tendency. But the positive
fact remains that the maximum level is progressively
raised, and that we find that stagnation of development
or even sometimes degeneration have been factors in-
directly helping on the main direction.

We must accept the positive main direction for what
it is — an external sanction for faith; confess that we do
not understand the detailed working of the whole, but
see in the change of methods brought about by the rise
of mind a hope that we shall gradually learn at least to
dispense with much waste and evil and degeneration in
the further course of evolution.

This main direction gives us cause for optimism. The
exceptions to it temper that optimism. But the direction
is there.

As we shall see later, we may either call the sum of the
forces acting in the cosmos the manifestations of God,
who in this case must be the Absolute God, and unknow-
able except through these manifestations. Or we may
confine the term God to its anthropological usage, as
denoting the objects of human religion, in which case

300 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

we must admit that the term God as understood by man
is constituted by man's idea of the forces acting in the
cosmos, so that not only are these forces involved, not
only a possible Absolute God behind them, but also the
organizing power of human mind.

I wish you here to agree to my adopting the second
alternative and giving the name of God to the sum of the
forces acting in the cosmos as perceived and grasped by
human mind. We can therefore now say that God is one,
but that though one, has several aspects. There is one
aspect of God which is neutral to us, in a way hostile,
mere Power operating in the vastness of the stellar
universes, apprehended only as orderly, tending in
a direction which appears to be in the long run inimical.
It is to this aspect of God that Mr. Wells has given the
name of the Veiled Being — a somewhat primitive term
for a true idea. There is another aspect, which is the
one seen operating in that sphere which comprises the
whole of life upon this earth — a sphere infinitesimal in
relation to the whole, yet still vast in relation to ourselves.
This aspect of God is our refuge and guarantee, for here we
find our assurance that our human life is a part of a whole
that is not antagonistic, but moves in the same general
direction as do our history and our aims. There does
exist, in Matthew Arnold's words, ' a power, not ourselves,
that makes for righteousness'. And this second aspect
is not wholly separate from the first, in spite of its differ-
ence of direction; for the first is its parent, physically
and temporally, and the' direction of biological progress
is the continuation of a line of development marked out,
within the opposed inorganic direction, even from the
first.

Next, there is a more immediate and more often-
demanded assurance that we, as individuals or as single
communities in space or time, are at one with humanity

SCIENCE AND RELIGION 301

as a whole. Here it is that we look to the third aspect
of God, which enshrines the directive forces operating
in man. These directive forces are our instincts, ^ our
needs, our values, our ideals. When those are har-
monized with each other and with the outer world by
reason and experience, they form a power which we can
see has been directive, normative in the past, and will
continue to be so in the future. It alters with man's
development ; but after a first rudimentary phase, its
main outlines, its type of organization remain the same,
fot man's instincts and ideals do not greatly change, and
their harmonization with each other and with experience
will generally proceed in the same broad way. Although
in a sense this aspect is the smallest, as comprising the
smallest physical field, yet in another it is the largest,
since man's ideals are in themselves unlimited, non-finite;
and the values involved, to our present type of mind,
appear ultimate. This third aspect of God is again
historically the offspring of the second, and through the
second of the first.

Matter, life, mind — this is the simplest classification
of phenomena. By means of processes analogous to
obtaining a resultant by the parallelogram of forces, we
can obtain a resultant of material operations in general,
vital operations in general, and mental operations in
general, numerous and varied in direction though they be.
Life is the link between the other two. Living matter is
so definitively one with non-living matter, not at all
obviously one with mind; yet the direction of living
matter is obviously similar to that^ of the direction of ■
mind, not at aU obviously one with that of non-living
matter.

It is a simple fact that the conception which man
has of the universe and its relation to himself exercises

302 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

important effects upon his life. A name therefore is
needed for this anthropological phenomenon. God is the
usual name applied, and we shall retain it in default of
another, premissing that the word, like many similar
general terms — 'love', or 'life', or 'beauty', say — can be
defined and applied in many ways, and that we apply
it here in a particular and perhaps somewhat novel
sense.

God in this sense is the universe, not as such, but so
far as grasped as a whole by a mind, embodied in an
idea, and in consequence capable of influencing that
mind, and through it the whole course of events. It is
not grasped as a mere sum of details, but, however vaguely
and imperfectly, as a single idea, unitary in spite of its
complexity. Nor is it the universe in itself, but only so
far as it has been thus grasped by mind. There exists
no other meaning of the term which, on analysis, is found
to convey anything, or at least anything scientific or
comprehensible to us. We may reason that there is an
Absolute God behind the universe and our idea of it.
But we have no proof of this statement, and such an
absolute God is, as Spencer pointed out, an Unknowable,
and accordingly no concern of ours. That part and these
aspects of the universe which have been grasped by us
may prove to contain the key to many of our difficulties;
meanwhile we can only be humble and admit that our
idea of God, even in this restricted sense, is still ex-
tremely incomplete: and in this sense there is a God
far greater than our present idea and knowledge of God,
only waiting to be discovered.

That which it is essential to establish is our way of
looking at the problem. The universe does come into
relation with our minds, and there, owing to the way it
and our minds are organized, generates an idea which
exerts an influence upon us.

SCIENCE AND RELIGION 303

The external basis of the idea of God is thus con-
stituted by the forces operating in the universe. The
universe is a unitar}^ whole, greater and more powerful
than ourselves, and its operations have resultants in
certain main directions — these are phenomena which
we constatate like any other phenomena. They, and
that other phenomenon of our contact with the Universe
and our exposure to the play of its forces, give us
our objective knowledge of God. The rest of our idea
of God, the inner component, depends upon the mode of
action of our minds.

So far then, we have shown that recent advance in
science, particularly in our understanding of evolution,
has enabled us to give a more objective account than
ever before of what is involved in the concept God, and
so to pave the way for a consensus of thought on the
question.

It will be observed that there is no idea of personality
implicit in this conception of God — God may or may not
possess personality. It will be for us later to investigate
that particular aspect of the problem.

It now remains to deal with the inner reality. Man has
a wholly new type of mind. He is social and capable of
speech. He generahzes, and he has a very highly deve-
loped power of association. This combination gives him
a great many possibihties hitherto denied to hfe. In the
first place, he is able to order his experiences in a totally
new way, differing from the old very much as a classified
card-index differs from a rough diary-record of events.
The organization of his mind is elastic, capable of inde- '
finite expansion and of speciahzation in any direction.

That being so, there will be always parts of his mind
wholly or at least partially undeveloped; and in any
case the capacities which he must employ in his everyday
life, the region of his mind illuminated by the attention

304 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

needed in the struggle for existence, constitute but
a fraction of his mental self and its potentialities.

This brings us on to one of the most important achieve-
ments of modern psychology — the discovery and anatysis
of the subconscious. Impossible here to go into detail;
we must content ourselves with a few broad statements.
When we speak of the subconscious mind, we mean that
in man there exist psychoneural processes (to use the most
non-committal term), which appear for many reasons to
be of the same nature as those of the normal mind (in
that they are associated with the same parts of the
nervous system, fulfil the same general biological functions
and probably operate through similar mechanisms), with
the single exception that we are not conscious of them
as such.

The conscious mind, that which we think of as the
basis of our mental individuality, as our personal being,
is the result of a long process of organization. We come
into the world with a set of instinctive and emotional
reactions only waiting their proper stimuli to be fired off,
with a capacity for learning, for amassing experience,
and a capacity for modifying our instincts and our
behaviour according to our experience. We incorporate
experience in ourselves, and in so doing, we alter the
original basis of our reactions; a strongly emotional
experience colours all that is closely associated with it;
and so after birth we are continually making our mental
microcosm not only larger but qualitatively more complex,
in exactly the same way as before birth our body grew
not only in size, but also in complexity of organization.

Parts of experience or of inherited tendencies may fail
to become organically connected with the main parts of
our minds, simply because attention has never been
focussed on them, or has not attempted to bring them
into relation with the rest. They are, shall we say, like

SCIENCE AND RELIGION 305

bricks which might have been used in a building, but have
been left lying on the ground by the workmen.

Still more remarkable are the methods by which
harmony is achieved in the personal mind. It is obvious
that a conflict of any sort between parts of the mind will
waste energy, will prevent a clear-cut reaction being
given in either direction, and so constitute a grave
biological disadvantage by making us fall between two
stools. If a child gets a serious fright in the dark, dark-
ness will tend to arouse fear. But darkness also comes
with evening and with the time for sleep. Two modes of
reaction to darkness are therefore given, and they are
self-contradictory. One part of the mind comes down
its pathway towards action, and finds itself met by
another which is coming along the same path in the
opposite direction. If neither moves, there is a conflict;
in our hypothetical case sleep is delayed ; and if it comes,
is disturbed by nightmares — the echoes of the fright —
and the childish organism suffers.

Exactly similar conflicts in which fear plays a part may
occur in adult life, e.g. in so-called 'shell-shock' ; or the
sex-instinct may come into conflict with other parts of the
personality.

These conflicts are resolved through one tendency or
part of experience being passed into the sub-conscious,
where it no longer can meet its opponent on the path to
action. And this passage into the subconscious can be
apparently automatic, unwitting, when it is called
suppression, or performed only by voluntary effort,
when it is caWed repression. In the former case, it would
appear that the conflict may wholly or almost wholly
cease ; whereas in the second, the repressed portion of
mind is perpetually searching to come to the surface
again, and must thus perpetually be held down by force.

If we hold by our metaphor of the building, then in

u

3o6 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

suppression, bricks which would not go well with the
rest are stacked quietly in the cellars ; while in repression,
part of the workmen want to build a different sort of
building, and have to be forcibly held down by some
of the rest to prevent their doing so.

But in whatever way the subconscious may be orga-
nized, it is always with us, and there will always be a
remainder of our soul, or of its possibilities, which is not
incorporated in our personal life at all, as well as much
which is not closely organized with the main everyday
personality, but is connected with it only by vague and
loose bonds, approachable only by narrow pathways
instead of by broad roads.

There is another process at work in the human mind
which is of the utmost importance for our problem.
I mean the process of sublimation. If it is not easy to
give a short and clear definition of sublimation, at least
the process is familiar to all. The commonest example
is 'falling in love', where the simple sex-instinct becomes
intertwined with other instincts and with past emotional
experience, and projects itself in wholly new guise upon
its object. We may perhaps best say that a sublimated
instinct has more and higher values attached to its
satisfaction than one unsublimated. The mere satis-
faction of the sexual impulse need be little more than
a physiological desirability; but the satisfaction of
passionate love involves every fibre of the mental organ-
ism, hopes and ideals converging with memories and
instincts on to the highest pitch of being.

In such a case sublimation occurs with the normal
object of the instinct. But the elasticity of man's mind
permits of further complication: the instinct may be
not only sublimated but attached to new objects. Through
the cogs and spirals of the mind, the sexual instinct may
find an outlet at higher levels, and contribute to the

SCIENCE AND RELIGION 307

driving force of adventurous living, of art, or as we may
see in many mystics — St. Teresa for example — of religious
ecstasy.

It is as if a swift stream were falling into underground
channels below the mill of our being, where it could
churn and roar away to waste. But some of it is led off
at a higher level, and we can learn to lead off still more;
and we can make an installation of pipes whereby it can
be taken up to the original level, and made to fall through
new machines and do any work we may ask of it.

The mechanism of sublimation, however, deserves a few
more words. Recent work in biology has shown that in
low forms of animals and in early stages of high forms,
the head-region is in a certain sense dominant to the rest,
in that it forms first and independently; but that, once
present, it exerts a formative influence upon the rest of
the body, keeping the various organs in some way under
control, making them different from what they would
otherwise have been, and so moulding them to the part
of a single and higher whole.

An extremely similar process is at work in sublim_ation.
Ideas and ideals can be naturally dominant over others,
or they can become dominant through becoming asso-
ciated with primarily dominant ideas, or by receiving
a larger share of attention. Attention, concentration,
what you will, is one of the most remarkable mental
functions. Not only can the metaphor of intense illumina-
tion of a particular field be justly used of it, but we may
say that it seems to accelerate the flow of mental process
through a particular channel, and so to draw into that
channel the contents of other channels in connexion with
it, just as a rapid flow of water through a pipe sucks in
water from connected pipes.

As a result of this, sublimation involves not the
suppression or repression of instincts and emotional

u 2

3o8 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

experiences, nor merely the summation of them with
another instinct, but their utihzation as parts of a new
whole, of which the dominant instinct is like the
controlling head.

When the sex-instinct is repressed, the emotional and
religious life is meagre, though often violent. When the
sex-instinct and the religious feeling exist side by side,
without conflict but without union, you have ' the natural
man' of St. Paul; but when the religious ideals are
dominant, and can catch up the sex-instinct into them-
selves, and in so doing give it a new form and a new
direction, then you get one of the highest types of emo-
tional lives. Or fear may be sublimated to reverence;
or sex again to art or to philanthropy.

In every case, a new and more complicated mental
activity or organ is arrived at; and the same process
that we saw at work in biological evolution — the creation
of ever more complex units — is thereby continued.

Then we come to the fact that man displays dishar-
monies of mental construction, together with an innate
hankering, after harmony. His most obvious disharmony
is that between the instincts that are self-regarding and
those that are other-regarding — between man's egotistic
and his social tendencies.

It appears that man became gregarious quite late in
evolutionary history. Through natural selection, suffi-
cient 'herd-instinct' was developed to insure that men
would on the whole stand by the tribe in danger, that the
tribe should become a real biological unit. But it was
impossible wholly to harmonize these new social instincts
even in the simplest societies, with the old, deeper-
rooted, individualist tendencies; and as life became more
complex and choice wider, conflict grew more and more
frequent.

Another obvious disharmony in modern civilized com-

SCIENCE AND RELIGION 309

munities is the fact that sexual maturity occurs long
before marriage is possible or desirable.

In all this, there is inevitably a field for all the various
combinations of suppression, or repression, or sublimation.

Man's gregariousness, together with his power of
speech, learning, and generalization, have led to the
development of a new thing in the w^orld — persistent and
cumulative tradition. I use tradition in the broadest
sense, as denoting all that owes its being to the mind of
man, and is handed down, by speech or imitation or in
some permanent record, from generation to generation.
Language, general ideas of right and wrong, convention,
invention, national feeling — all this and much more,
constituting the more important part of the human
individual's environment — is part of tradition; and
tradition is pre-eminently and inevitably social. However
individualistic we may wish to be we cannot escape
modelling by this social environment.

The general effect of man's gregarious instinct is that
he desires to find himself in harmony with some traditions,
with the ideas that modern jargon likes to call the herd
to which he belongs. The herd ideas, the traditions, may
be those of a nation or of a stratum within the nation;
of a whole class or of a clique; of science or of art; of
a retired monasticism, or of an all-embracing world-
civilization. But they are always herd ideas, and through
them man is always member of some com.munity, even
though that community be tiny, or consist mainly of
writers dead and gone ; and he always strives to put himself
in harmony with the traditions of that community.

A long-winded introduction enough; now for the
bearing of it. One of the essentials of every religion is its
treatment of the subconscious, is its view and its practice
as regards the relation between the personally-organized

310 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

part of the mind to the remaining non-personal reservoirs.
At first the non-personal part is regarded as being wholly
outside the organism, and its occasional flooding up into
the narrower ego is regarded as an operation of an external
personality, a spirit, a God Comparatively late, it is
recognized as part of the organism, but the process by
which connexion is made is still regarded as divine, and
called inspiration. Such ideas belong to the adolescence
of the race, in precisely the same way as the discovery
and acquisition of great tracts of this subconscious
territory will always necessarily constitute part of the
adolescence of the individual. But any developed religion
must always in some way help to make these great re-
serves of power accessible, always teach the enlargements
of the personal ego which their conquest brings about.
This is one of the ways in which, to use current religious
phraseology, self may be lost, and found again on a
different plane.

Religion must further always provide some internal
harmony, in counterpart to the harmony demanded in
the unitary comprehension of external reality. The various
activities and experiences of life, as they are originally
given by heredity to the child, are either independent,
or else antagonistic and disharmonious. There must be
some means provided for bringing all of them into a true
organization — in other words into a whole which, though
yet single, is composed of co-operating parts. Here
again the actual responses of actual religions have been
many and various ; but they all operate by suppression,
repression, and sublimation, or by a combination of
these.

It can at once be said that sublimation is the right and
highest way, and that two of the criteria of religious
progress are to be found in the stress laid upon sublima-
tion, and in the enlargement and the elevation of the

SCIENCE AND RELIGION 311

dominant ideas at work in the sublimating process. It
is the right and highest way because through it no spiritual
energy is wasted, and the age-long path of progress
towards ever higher levels of complexity in organization
is still continued. Among religious teachers, both Jesus
and Paul laid great stress on this — on the freedom, the
emancipation from the shackles of an external law made
possible by the apprehension of some highest harmonizing
principle and the subordination of all other ideas and
desires to it. Once one can see and learn to follow such
a principle, whatever one does is in a sense right, because
one's desires are all subordinate to a desire for right, and
to something which is right. Perhaps it would be better
to say that they appear right to oneself, that the haunting,
terrible sense of sin is laid to rest, and one's life liberated
into free activity, one's energy made all available for
achievement.

The sense of sin, if not universal at one or other period
of life, is almost so, and comes from an apprehension of
inner disharmony. As one would expect, selfishness and
sex are its most common roots; and whenever it exists,
then the necessary preliminary to any further progress of
one's being is that it should be made to disappear. It
can disappear, as in St. Paul's natural man, by a suppres-
sion of part of the mind or of the connexion between
parts, or b}^ a failure to make certain connexions, or it
can be eradicated by a growth of callousness ; or — and
I take it that this is the proper religious solution — by
discovering a clue which will harmonize the two apparently
opposed sections of experience, the two antagonistic
tendencies, and so resolve the problem with no loss of
energy or of vital possibilities.

Finally, there remains to be considered the mode in
which the mind may best organize the ideas of external

312 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

reality given to it by its pure cognitive and intellectual
faculties.

Even from the purely scientific point of view, generali-
zation is obviously of value. When we have found unity
in the outer world's apparent diversity, direction in its
apparent disorderliness, we have obviously achieved
a great gain. But religion appears to demand something
more. If for a moment we look at the matter pragmati-
cally, we shall find that a number of the great mystics
(and a large majority of those of our own occidental type
and tradition) speak of their experiences of ' divine
communion ' as being communion with a person.

What does this mean? We have seen that a purely
intellectual analysis gives us no handle for finding person-
ality in God. Can we suppose that this direct intuition
gives us that handle ? To say so, to my mind, would be
simple obscurantism. Intuition, if it shows us reality,
can only show a reality capable in the long run of intel-
lectual analysis; to deny this is to deny all our premisses.
No : their intuition shows us that something akin to
personality is perceived, but permits no pronouncement
as to whether its resemblance to personality is given in
its real nature, or introduced into it by their thought.

If we look into the history of religion, we find over and
over again that man has taken something from his own
mind and projected it into the external world. The magic
power of fetishes, the tabus incurred by contact with
certain objects, the endowment of the idea of external
powers, of God, with human form, the ascription of
miraculous influence to places or things — in ever}^ case
there has been this projection. And there is no reason to
doubt that here again there has been a similar occurrence;
that man has organized his idea of external power after the
pattern of a personality, and has then ascribed this type
of organization to the external power itself.

SCIENCE AND RELIGION

The rival schools of psychology may disagree : but all
are agreed that some modes of thinking are more primitive
than others, and even in the most educated amongst us
tend to persist, often in the subconscious, side by side
with more developed methods that have arisen later.

The use of concrete symbols or images is the most
widespread of these primitive modes of thought. It is
natural and inevitable that the more complex should at
the first be described in terms of the less complex, that
those experiences for which no proper terminology has
been hammered out should be given names out of man's
existing vocabulary. That is inevitable: but there is an
even more fundamental process at work. It seems as if
the human mind works, on its most primitive levels, by
means of image-formation, and that emotions and
concepts for which no simple image exist may call up
symbolic images by association and indeed often dress
themselves in these new clothes before they present
themselves to consciousness. Some such process appears
to take place in dreams (including day-dreams!) and
possibly in the ordinary thought-processes of savages.
More advanced modes of thought substitute the currency
of an arbitrary token such as a word or a formula for the
barter of images and concrete symbols ; the freshness and
vividness of the image is lost, but more efficient and
speedier working is attained. However, in most of us the
concrete image-using mode of thought is a relief from the
apparently less natural and more artificial (though more
efficient) operations of reason, and we relapse into it,
wholly or partially, more often than we realize.

This unconscious irrational tendency to symbolism,
together with the other tendency to project ideas properly
attaching to the subjective world into external objects
and processes — these between them account for much of
the modes of expression so far found for religious belief;

314 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

and, since the majority of human beings have a profound
distaste for sustained or difficult thought, it is hkely that
they will continue to account for much in the future.

These are facts of extreme importance. The profes-
sional sceptic is at once tempted to exclaim that every
such projection and illogical symbolism is illusion through
and through, and must be wholly swept aside. He would
be wrong. We each of us must know from our own
experience the 'influence' (to use a- general term) which
may inhere in certain things and places. True that the
influence is of our own mind's making ; but it is none
the less real, not only as a momentary existence, but, as
the term implies, as exerting a definite and often a great
effect upon our lives. The lover who cherishes a ring or
a lock of hair; the man who is drawn back to the haunts
of his childhood or his youth ; the mind refreshing itself
with some loved poem or picture ; — what do we have in
these and innumerable other instances but a peculiarity
of mind whereby it may take external objects into itself
and invest them with its own emotions and ideas, in such
a way that those same objects may later reflect their
stored-up emotion back again into the mind ? It operates
by a form of association; but the actual working re-
sembles the charging of a battery, which may subse-
quently discharge back. We have in it, in fact, a special
faculty which, if rightly used, is of the greatest practical
value. Further, the symbol, if rightly used and rightly
limited, is of service to most minds in giving a more or less
concrete cage for the winged, elusive, and hardly retained
creatures of abstract thought.

So too, the organization of the idea of God into a form
resembling a personality appears definitely to have, at
least with the majority of people belonging to what we
call 'Western civilization', a real value.

Biologically, the essence of real personality is first that

SCIENCE AND RELIGION 315

it is organized, and secondly that on each of its many
faces it can, if I may put it metaphorically, enter into
action at a single point, but with its whole content of
energy available behind the point. In other words, man
as a personality can concentrate his mind on one par-
ticular problem of one special aspect of reality; but he is
able, if need be, to summon up ever fresh reinforcements
if he cannot carry the position^ — more facts, other ways
of thinking and feeling, memories, reserves of will. In
a properly organized personality, it is possible to bring
the whole to bear upon any single object.

Now when the idea which man makes for himself of
outer reality is organized after the same general pattern
as a personality, it too will be able to act in this same sort
of way.

When man in perplexity interrogates the idea he has of
external realit}^ he is anxious to put his little individual
self in harmonious relation with the whole of reality that
he knows. Therefore he should organize that reality as
a whole, and in such a way that it can all be brought to
bear through any single point. The relation between the
self and the idea of outer reality is, for any one problem,
that of two pyramids touching by their points only ; but
the points of contact can shift as by miracle over their
surfaces as the problem is changed.

But another power of personalities is their power of
interpenetration. The pureh' material cannot do this.
One portion of matter cannot occupy the same space as
a second portion. It is another of the great differences
between the psychozoic and all previous stages of evolu-
tion, between man and all else that we know in the
universe, that the discrete units reached at this level of
organization, the individual human beings, can achieve
interpenetration by means of their minds. When you
expound a new idea to me, and I grasp it, our minds have

3i6 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

obviously interpenetrated. This is a simple case; but
there may be an intimate union of mind with mind which
is the basis of the highest spiritual achievement and the
greatest happiness. If mind and matter are two properties
of the same world-substance, then the rise of mind to
dominance has enabled this basic substance to escape
from some of the imprisoning hmitations which confined
it at lower levels of its development : do we not all know
that despair at being boxed up, that craving for com-
munion? Using our previous line of argument, we see
that the interpenetration of personalities is right, implies
a further step in progress, must be part of the basis on
which future advance in evolution is to build.

But to apply this to our present point. By organizing
our knowledge of outer reality after the pattern of a per-
sonahty, we make it possible for it to interpenetrate our
private personality. If, therefore, we have, in any true
sense of the word, 'found religion', it means that we shall
so have organized our minds that, for flashes at least,
we attain to a sense of interpenetration with the reahty
around us — that reality which includes not only the
celestial bodies, or the rocks and waters, not only evolving
life, but also other human beings, also ideas, also ideals.

This, to my mind, is what actually happens when men
speak of communion with God. It is a setting, an organiz-
ing of our experiences of the universe in relation with the
driving forces of our soul or mental being, so that the two
are united and harmonized. There is a resolution of
conflicts, an attainment of a profound serenity, a con-
viction that the experience is of the utmost value and
importance.

Up till now, we have been defining and analysing:
here we see religion in operation. It is a relation of the
personaUty as a unit to external reality as a unit — and
a relation of harmony. First, the inner structure of the

SCIENCE AND RELIGION 317

mind must be organized into a harmonious unit, then our
knowledge of outer reaUty organized similarly, and finally,
in religious experience, the two must be harmonized in
interpenetrating union.

Once this harmony has been achieved, it is for one
thing so precious in itself that it will be sought for again ;
the knowledge that we have once reached the stage at
which difficulties and doubts are resolved in what the
philosophers would perhaps call a higher unity, but which
I should prefer to call an organic harmon}^, is always
there to fall back upon in times of discouragement ; and
finally the harmony is actually woven into the tissue of
our mind, just as the amazing physical harmony revealed
by physiology has, in the course of evolution, been woven
into the structure and working of living bodies; and it
can remain there as the dominant idea to which the rest
of our ideas, and consequently our actions, are brought
into subordinate relation. In other words, it becomes the
dominant sublimating principle. Once more, however, the
subordination is not forced, but free — we find that what
we once thought obstacles are aids, what once seemed sin
is now the willing and efficient handmaid of good. That
is the fundamental fact in all genuine and valuable
rehgious experience as such — the resolution of conffict and
the losing, or enlarging as you will, of the private person-
ality, the mere 'self. You will find this set out more
fully, though in different terminology, in Miss Under-
hill's books on Mysticism, or in William James's Varieties
of Religious Experience, or in Thouless's Psychology of
Religion.

One side-issue. Such experience, if not absolute in the
philosophical sense, is absolute for us. If I may be Irish,
its absoluteness is relative to our organization and to
reality as we perceive it. We cannot perceive anything
fuller, more absolute — until perhaps one day, with the

3i8 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

growth of our minds, we come to have some still richer
and more complete experience.

What is more, owing to our power of framing general
concepts and ideals, and of accumulating past and future
in our present, we can focus a vast deal to one point. In
such experiences, whether they come through religion, or
love, or art, we may say that although we are but a system
of relations, we touch the Absolute — although we are
mortal, we mount to the Eternal for a moment. Only,
to guard against error, we must remember that it is
obviously not in reality the Absolute or the Eternal that
we attain to, but only the nearest approximation to them
of which we are capable.

We can therefore sum up this second part of our
investigation by saying that religion, to be more than
mere ritual, must involve the possibility of harmonizing
the parts of the soul, of wiping out the sense of sin, of
sublimating instinct, of rendering the subconscious
reservoirs of energy and being available for the personal
self, and of organizing the ideas of external reality into
a single organized mental whole — the idea of God —
capable of reacting with the personal self by inter-
penetration.

I may perhaps be rebuked for trying to analyse
the unanalysable, for neglecting the supreme and
sufficing fact of experience of God in favour of the un-
profitable and impossible task of catching the infinite in
an intellectual net. There are two answers to this. One
is that unanalysed experience is selfish because less
communicable: with that we deal later. The other is
even more important : it is this. Humanity at large is not
content with emotional experience alone, however com-
plete and apparent^ satisfying: it has always demanded
an intellectual formulation of the reality with which
it is in contact, as well as emotional experience of it,

SCIENCE AND RELIGION 319

and so far as we can judge it will always continue to
do so.

But it is further found, as matter again of general expe-
rience, that such formulations do not remain innocuous in
the vacuum of pure intellect, but reverberate upon action
and influence conduct. When men believe that they are
surrounded with magical powers, they spend half their
lives in ritual designed to affect the operations of these
(wholly hypothetical) influences. When they worship
a God whom they rationalize as man-like, they sacrifice
a large proportion of their produce on his altars, and may
even kill their fellow-creatures to placate his (again
imaginary) passions. When they believe in a Divine
Revelation, they think that they possess complete
enlightenment on the great problems of life and death;
and they will then cheerfully burn those who differ from
them, or embark upon the bloodiest wars in defence of this
imaginary certainty. When they worship God as absolute
and as a person, they cannot help making deductions that
lead them into absurdities of thought and of conduct:
they deny or oppose ideas derived from a study of nature,
the only actual source of knowledge, because they conflict
with what they believe to be immutable truths, but are
in reality conclusions drawn from false premisses; they
tend to an acquiescent and obscurantist spirit in the
belief that such moral and intellectual laziness is 'doing
God's will', when that will is in reality their own personifi-
cation of cosmic direction.

Sooner or later, false thinking brings wrong conduct.
Man can perhaps get along with empirical methods and
ideas which turn out on analysis to be only symbols, pro-
vided that he does not attempt difficult construction. He
can have some sort of a religion, which will be some sort of
a help to him, even when its so-called certitudes are only
a collection of mixed metaphors, in the same way as he can

320 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

practise agriculture on a basis of mingled empiricism and
superstition. But just as he is finding that he is only able
to raise agricultural efficiency to its highest pitch by
relying on the result of scientific method, as when he uses
synthetic nitrates instead of ploughing in a leguminous
crop, or just as a power-station would be very difficult to
run if the staff had only symbolic ideas on the nature of
electricity no closer to the real than is the symbolism of
most religions, so if he does not bring scientific analysis
into the intellectual side of his religion, he cannot reahze
religious possibilities. True that in a sense all knowledge
and intellectual presentation is symbolic : but there is the
world of difference between the merely analogical symbol-
ism which takes one idea or thing as symbolic of another
because there is some degree of similarity between the two
and the first is more familiar, and the scientific symbolism
which strives to find a scientific counter, so to speak, which
shall represent particular phenomena as closely as possible,
and them alone.

In religion, the danger has always been that analogy and
symbolism be taken for more than they are — for scientific
knowledge or even for an absolute certainty of some still
higher order — and conclusions then drawn from it. The
conclusions follow with full s3dlogistic majesty: but their
feet are of clay — their premisses are false.

If we find that this is the case now, we not only may
but we must endeavour to make our formulation corre-
spond more closely with reality, must not be content to
take one thing in place of another, the familiar for
the unfamiliar, must set about destroying the old false
formulation for fear of the further harm that it will do
by its hold upon man's incurable habit of drawing con-
clusions.

Nor does this in any way interfere with or detract from
the private and unique experiences that in the long run

SCIENCE AND RELIGION 321

are religion. They remain; but they are thus hindered
from becoming draped with delusion, from leading their
possessor into false courses.

We may put it in another way. Too often in the
past, religious experience has been one-sided^ — one-or-
other-sided instead of two-sided. The intellectually-
inclined, the theologians, frame more or less adequate
ideas of external reality, but fail in the majority of
cases to set their own house in order, to organize the
inner reality to react with the outer; they have theory
without practice, are Dry-as-dusts. On the other hand,
the emotionally-minded who are gifted besides with
organizing and intuitive power, the mystics — they build
up their own souls into a desired and lovely edifice, in
which too they have constructed a spiritual machinery
capable of viewing external realities on a new plane, under
a more highly synthesized aspect; but they neglect the
precise analysis of that outer reality, and so can only
speak in the barest symbols and metaphors, and cannot
put their hard-won knowledge into a form available for
others. They have that non-communicable skill which
is that of the craftsman alone as opposed to the craftsman
who is also in some degree a scientist. We know good
mysticism from bad, as we know good art from bad — as
definitely, and as personally. And we are sure that good
mysticism, like good art, is somehow of supreme, trans-
cendent importance; but almost always it has remained
like a purely symbolic art, not having for others the value
which it should have or did have for the mystic himself,
because not properly enchained, as the French say, with
stern and immutable fact. And of the theologian we feel
that he gives us the grammar, not the spirit, that he does
not help us toward the supremely important act of
experiencing, but only to understanding experience if we
chance to have had it.

X

322 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

One word on the problem of transcendence. The
mystics will tell us that transcendence is a hall-mark of
religion at its highest. His mode of experience transcends
normal experience ; things of everyday life become
surcharged with new, transcendent values; he has trans-
cended from a plane of disharmony to one of harmony.
But the mystic is not alone in this. Familiar examples are
best examples : and the transcendence of the lover's
experience is so familiar that all mankind is divided into
those who have it, those who long for it, and those who
laugh at it. But the great philosopher too must mediate
between the transcendent and mankind, and the true
artist also, and the moralist worthy of the name.

What goes under this technical name of transcendence,
therefore, is the product of some special psychological
mechanism which may be at work in the most diverse
spheres. If we wish to substitute one technical phrase for
another, we can say that it consists in the successful
attachment of what we have called absolute value to some
human activity, so as to make it, for the time at least,
unitary, dominant, and all-embracing. But psycho-
logically speaking the genesis of ' absolute values ' depends
upon the generalizing of particular values; the raising of
them to the highest possible pitch; and the putting of
them and the rest of the mental organization into a relation
in which they are permanently or temporarily the domi-
nating head and front, and are connected with and gain
strength and support from all the rest of the mind.

The problem of transcendence, in other words, is not
one of divine inspiration, of wholly mysterious experience,
but one special case of the problem of sublimation ; and as
such it is to be investigated by psychological science, to be
understood, to be democratized, to be made more available
to all who wish for it.

The most ardent enemies of traditional religion have

SCIENCE AND RELIGION 323

often professed the most transcendental type of morality.
Some men are pragmatic and utilitarian in regard to
Truth; by others she is worshipped as fanatically as any
goddess. So some men deliberately make manages de con-
venance ; to others, the transcendence of their love is such
that they precipitate themselves into what can only be
described as manages d'inconvenance.

I have dilated upon this at some length, because those
whom we may call the religious writers on religion so
often lay such stress on this question of transcendence
and its special value and importance. But you do not —
in the long run at least — make a thing more important
by giving it an imposing title; you only give it a false
exclusiveness.

Transcendence is the experiential side of what we
have been describing all along: it is the finding of unity
in diversity, the synthesis of discord in harmony, and in
especial the finding of something of supreme value (and
therefore dominant) which can be linked up with the
whole extent of our mental being. Transcendence in
religion differs from transcendence in art or love only in
its objects. In love the discrepancy between the object
and the ideal values hung round it is often so glaring as
to provoke laughter from cynics, compassion from the
rest. In art, the operations by which an artist turns
a collection of mean and commonplace objects into
a beautiful and single whole, a poet invests failure and
death with authentic tragedy, or drags every day to
a seat in eternity, are just as transcendent as that by
which the mystic converts the relation between the
warring passions of his soul and the infinite catalogue of
differences which he finds around him into what he can
only speak of as a divine communion, all-satisfying in
itself, all-important for the conduct of his life. Science
can here help religion by analysing and interpreting

X 2

324 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

phenomena such as transcendence, paring the false from
the true, cutting down false claims, substituting the hope-
fulness of natural causation for the illogical vagaries of
supernaturalism and incommunicabihty.

I may perhaps be allowed to close with a few more
practical aspects of the problem.

Many religious ideas and practices, as man's thought
clarified itself, have proved to be unserviceable, and have
been thrown on the lumber-heap, or left only with the
losers in the race. It is impossible for any educated man
nowadays to oelieve in the efficacy of magic, or of animal
sacrifice ; to accept the first chapter of Genesis as Hterally
true ; or to believe that God has human parts and passions.
But there was a time when all these could be, and were,
believed.

The time is obviously coming when a great many other
ideas must be cast aside in favour of new ones. If you
have followed me, you will agree that it is impossible for
me and those that think like me to believe in God as
a person, a ruler, to continue to speak of God as a spiritual
Being in the ordinary way. Consequently, although the
value of prayer persists in so far as it is meditative and
a self-purification of the mind, yet its commonly accepted
petitive value must fall to the ground; so must all idea
of miracle and of direct inspiration; so must all that is
involved in the ordinary materialist ideas of ritual, self-
denial and worship as merely propitiation or 'acceptable
incense'; so must all the externally-projected parts of the
ideas concerning the ordaining of special priests; so must
all notion of our having a complete, peculiar, or absolute
knowledge of God, or of there being a divinely-appointed
rule of conduct or a divinely-revealed belief.

On such matters, most advanced thinkers have been
long in general agreement. But there is one very

SCIENCE AND RELIGION 325

important point, which, so far as I know, has been very
little touched upon — chiefly, I think, because such radical
thinkers have been for the most part destructive, and
so have not envisaged this particular side of the
question.

I hope I have been able to convince you that the
scientific manner of thinking can lay the foundation for
something constructive in religion: this great problem,
however, remains : what sort of form or organization
shall any such new-moulded religion take on itself ?

We have just decided that fixed and rigid dogma is
impossible, and that completeness is out of the question.
Yet humanity craves for certainty and is not content to
leave any factor out of the scheme of things.

To this we answer that it is here that real faith enters.
We cannot know the absolute, nor have we discovered
a goal for our efforts. But we have discovered a unity
embracing all that we know, and a direction starting at
the first moment to which our reconstructive thought can
penetrate, continuing till to-day, and showing an accelera-
tion of speed on which we may raise our hopes for the
future.

We do not know all. For instance, I have studiously
avoided ever mentioning the word immortality, since
I believe that Science cannot yet profitably discuss that
question. But the discovery of unity in all that has so
far been studied gives us reasonable faith that its wings
will reach out to cover all that we shall still be enabled
to learn, while the unbroken continuity of evolutionary
direction gives us the same sort of right to believe that
it will continue to-morrow and on into time as we have
to believe that apples will continue to fall to the earth.

The study of evolution may give us a further help.
We have seen how the final steps of the highest forms
of animals have been in the direction of plasticity of

326 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

organization : we see it in the rise of man from mammals,
in higher as against more primitive levels of human culture,
in great men as against ordinary men. There can be no
doubt that its acquisition constitutes a step in evolu-
tionary progress. Plasticity is needed in any new religion.
And plasticity means tolerance, means the reduction of
fixity of ritual, of convention, of dogma, of clericalism.

It is clear that, as complexity increases, need will be
felt for a finer adjustment of satisfaction to mood, a more
delicate adaptation of religion to the individual. A few
types of ceremony satisfied primitive races : an elaborate
system, fixed in essence, fluctuating in detail, has grown
up in modern Christianity. But the more complex the
mind, the less does it like to have to ' wait till Sunday ' —
the less is it satisfied with the solely biblical point of view,
or the literary and musical level of Hymns A. and M.

The less also is it satisfied with the mediation of a
priest. Priest (or Priest- King) is sole mediator in most
savage tribes: his mediation is enormously important in
the Roman Catholic Church: less so in Protestant
Churches: until with the progressive raising of the
spiritual and cultural level, it is perhaps possible that
he may become an obstacle instead of a help. Mediators
there must always be. They are the great ones — prophets
and poets, heroes, philosophers, musicians, artists, and
all who discover or interpret or display what for the
ordinary man is hidden or difficult or rare. They mediate
between the utmost attainable by man and man in the
lump. As Hegel says of one group of these mediators, the
artists, it is the function of their art to deliver to the
domain of feeling and delight of vision all that the mind
may possess of essential and transcendent Being.^ But,
with the spread of invention and the change of civilization,
their mediations are becoming more and more readily
^ Quoted from Underhill, Essentials of Mysticism, p. 65.

SCIENCE AND RELIGION 327

accessible to all. I can get, on the whole, more satis-
factory mediation from three or four feet of properly
filled bookshelf than from a dozen priests. Milton will
give me doctrine if I want it, but stupendously: Words-
worth will reveal nature : Shakespeare the hearts of men :
Blake can put me into a mystical, Shelley into an intel-
lectual ecstasy, while Keats and a dozen others can open
universal doors of beauty. What is more, if I have had
the mediation of wise parents and good teachers, or to
be so fortunate as to be enthusiastic, I find that in many
things 1 can be my own mediator, in the same way as
the Protestant found that he could read his Bible and
eat the holy bread and wine for himself as well or better
than the priest could do it for him.

Whatever we may say or like, it is an obvious fact that
much of what is essential in religious experience, which
in a simpler society was only attainable in prayer and
sacrifice, communal ceremony or ritual worship, is now
attainable to an increasing degree through literature,
music, drama, art, and is, again, as a matter of fact, so
attained by an increasing number of people who do not
profess a creed or belong to a church. So that, as regards
the personal, individual side of religion, many of the func-
tions of Churches will inevitably be better performed
through direct contact between the individual and the
mediator — philosopher, poet, artist, or whatever he be —
who provides the experience.

There remains public worship and community-religion.
It is clear that whereas the Church in the Middle Ages
was not only Church but also Museum of curiosities, Art-
gallery and Theatre, and in large measure also took the
place of our press and public libraries, now it is none of
these things. There is now less reason for public worship,
fewer functions for it to perform. On the other hand
a religion is essentially in one aspect social, and not only

328 SCIENCE AND RELIGION

does the unity of nature demand a unity of religion, but
such unity of rehgion would be of the highest importance
as a bond of civilization and a guarantee of the federalist
as against the solely nationalist ideal. Moreover, to
many types of mind, and to almost all men in certain
circumstances, the partaking in a public religious cere-
mony in common with others is of real importance.
It is safe to say, therefore, that these ceremonies will
continue, however much modified, and that for them
a mediator or priest, even if but temporarily acting as
such, will be needed. The problem is largety that of
combining in public worship the religious effectiveness of
the simple, the hallowed, and the universally familiar —
such as inheres in many of the prayers, psalms, and hymns
of the Church to-day — with the spontaneity and immediacy
which, for instance, are to be found at a devotional
meeting of the Society of Friends.

In any case, the new intellectual premisses once
granted, the limitations imposed on human mind once
understood, the important thing is to give a greater
vigour and reality to religious experience itself, whether
personal and private or social and public. It is just here
that Science may help, where knowledge may be power.
Atonement, conversion, sense of grace, ecstasy, prayer,
sacrifice — the meaning and value of these and of other
religious acts and experiences can be put on a proper
psychological basis, they can be shorn of excrescences,
and their practice take its place in normal spiritual
development. That is of the essence of any religion
rooted in scientific ideas — that comprehension should
make practice easier and better worth while.

I am only too painfully aware of the omissions which
such a cursory treatment of the subject inevitably
involve. I have given you, I know, little but dry
bones; but bones are the frame-work necessary before
impatient life can animate a new form. If Science

SCIENCE AND RELIGION 329

can construct that form, the emotions and hopes and
energies of humanity will vivify and clothe it. It is
with the aid of such intellectual scaffolding that the
common mind of humanity in the future, inevitably
rooted in scientific conceptions as it will be, must try
to raise that much-desired building, a religion common
to all.

In any case, I shall be more than content if I have been
able to persuade you first that the term God, just as
much as the terms Energy, say, or Justice, has a real
meaning and scientifically-based sense. Second, that the
idea of God has and will continue to have an important
biological function in man as denoting an idea, organized
in a particular way, of the whole of the external reality
with which he is surrounded. Thirdly, that the physical
and biological sciences, in discovering the unity of
matter and energy, and the direction operating in cosmic
evolution, have provided a real basis for what up till now
have been only theological speculations. Fourthly, that
psychological science, in revealing some of the mechanism
of mind, is helping us to appreciate the value of so-called
mystical experience, is laying a foundation for the proper
spiritual training and development of human mind, and
shows us how the idea of God may be efficacious as a
dominant idea in the all-important process of sublimation.
And finally that, since the scientific mode of thought is of
general and not merely local or temporary validity, to
build a religion on its basis is to make it possible for
that religion to acquire a stability, a universality, and
a practical value hitherto unattained.

We are yet at the very beginning of that task, but
I cannot close better than by reminding you of another
biological fact of importance, that from all analogy the
human species is yet near the beginning of its evolutionary
career, and that man has before him vast tracts of time
to set against the vastness of his tasks.

XII
SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS

F. S. Marvin

We have been tracing so far the spread of the scientific
spirit in man's outlook on the world. We saw it emerging
among the Greeks, and taking the place of the earlier
view, which found no order in external events, or attri-
buted them to wilful agencies like ourselves, acting
sometimes with benevolence, oftener with blind indiffer-
ence or active hostihty to human interests. We saw the
Greek spirit humanize the world, seeking for explanations
of what it saw, satisfactory to the reason of the inquiring
mind; and, after an interval of a thousand years, we saw
the spirit and the power of science appear again in
greater vigour, till in our own day it is the dominating
factor in industry, in health, in education, and even in
religion.

It is clear from our survey that science, or the
spirit of seeking order in events, invading human life
from many angles, has already profoundly altered both
the general mind and the institutions of civihzed men.
It has made an industrial revolution ; and, looking
forward, we can see that further changes in industry are
inevitable from the same cause. In this sphere and in
others we can predict their tendency and trace something
of their coming form. In industry, however, i.e. in the
appHcation of science to the material world, the sequence
has been most obvious and irresistible, and consequently
our power of prediction is most complete. We may be
sure, for instance, that the factory system, or mass-
production, will be extended in some form to other

SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS 331

countries, especially in the East. We know too that
means of transport and communication due to science —
the giant steamship, the aeroplane and wireless — will be
further extended throughout the world, and will carry
further the material unification of mankind. In less
developed, but yet quite clear outlines, the same process
may be followed in other forms of human life. Our
advance in the knowledge of physiology and of the laws
of health gives us confidence that other diseases besides
those already suppressed will in due course disappear. In
this case as compared with industry, the factors being
more complex and less subject to human will, our range
of vision carries us less far, and in still higher spheres, such
as government or religion, the certainty and the direction
are even less assured. But over all science sheds a growing
light ; ' savoir afin de prevoir ' is its key note.

But a great and fundamental difficulty faces us. Just
as science has in recent times gained more and more
influence in our lives, so men have come to believe more
in, and attach a higher value to, the freedom of the spirit.
In this M. Bergson is the most representative voice.
Like all the philosophic thinkers of the day, he does not
escape the environment of science ; like Aristotle, his
science is mainly biology, which looks always at the
aim of living ; and to him the supreme end of life is
self-realization in perfect freedom. Here then we have
a contradiction : science is based on discovered and
ordered uniformities in nature, and leads to prediction:
philosophy, at least the dominant philosophy of the day,
tells us that then only have we attained our end, when
we are completely free, when in the moment of action we
create some new thing in the world.

The opposition seems insuperable ; but for that very
reason we know that we are face to face with an ulti-
mate problem, and that both sides, opposing though they

332 SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS

seem, are true. On the one hand, man will undoubtedly
go farther in tracing an ordered sequence of events,
both in his own history and in the world; on the other
hand, he is increasingly free as he becomes more civihzed,
that is, as mind predominates over matter. The savage
is at the mercy of external forces to a degree immensely
greater than is the civilized man, who can foresee their
incidence, calculate their power, protect himself against
them, and use them in increasing measure for his own
ends. He harnesses their forces and rides the storm,
though being all the time a part of the great whole of
which his spirit becomes ever more clearly the driving
point.

It must be sufficient here to state the paradox of which
both sides command the assent of thinking and impartial
men. We are concerned rather with summing up the
conclusions to which it leads us, and with pointing out
the right road of effort and hope in the future. Man's
freedom runs no risk of injury by enlightenment as to
the laws of his being and the order of his past. True
progress demands their conscious realization. Even
M. Bergson will grant us that.

But in the last century a mass of new sciences have
arisen, dealing with the facts and the laws supposed,
rightly or otherwise, to govern human life and history.
They are grouped under the name of 'sociology', a term
coined by Auguste Comte loo years ago, and denoting
by its mixed origin the elements of both Greek and
Roman thought which have entered into its composi-
tion. We might have included in this volume a special
essay on the history of sociology. But it seemed better
to deal with the questions involved in a simpler and
less technical manner. Moreover 'sociology', important
and stimulating as its work has been, has not yet been
fully naturalized among our family of sciences. It is

SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS 333

so great that we are rather afraid of it, so general that
we are indined to pick holes in all its conclusions. In
America, where sociology has been most warmly welcomed,
it has led to little fresh enlightenment, and a recent
critic of the voluminous literature there produced has
declared that a page of Plato or Aristotle contains more
vital truth. The region to be covered is so vast and the
guides speak with so many voices that the fresh inquirer
may be forgiven if he thinks the course of safety points
rather to tilling one small corner than attempting to
survey and cultivate the whole. Of all the schools of
sociology that have arisen since its foundation, the
soundest and most fruitful is that which has followed
Comte's lead in the land of its origin, the school of M.
Durkheim in France. But we shall not speak of this work
in any detail, and only consider the sort of scientific
knowledge which is possible with regard to human
affairs, the defects of some of the current reasoning which
is offered to us as scientific, and the urgent need of
applying our minds more closely to the subject.

Of what nature then is the science or ordered knowledge
which we may expect to acquire with regard to human
affairs and which may serve as a guide to our action ?
Here a distinction, first made by Comte, is useful and
even necessary. He distinguished between the static and
dynamic aspects of the problem : the question, on the
one hand, of the conditions under which any human
society can hold together and persist, and on the other,
the laws of its change and, above all, of its progress or
advance to a higher state. In the case of mankind, as
Comite pointed out and we shall see later on, the dynamic
aspect prevails increasingly over the static. It is the
special quality of man, as distinguished from other
animals, to strive to realize an ideal of betterment which
he gains by tradition and by intercourse with his fellows.

334 SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS

and which becomes more and more conscious as history
proceeds. On the static side man is obviously subject
to the general conditions on which all life depends. The
laws of physics and chemistry govern his body like all
other organic and inorganic things, and, in addition to
these, there are in human societies other higher rules to
which all must submit if they are to live. There must
for instance be some recognized authority enforcing order
and checking internecine violence and spoliation; other-
wise no society could live, still less enlarge itself as most
societies have aimed at doing. All such conditions,
whether of physical or social health, may be grouped
together under the static aspect of sociology, and
there is now a multitude of special sciences dealing with
them. But above all this, man is a moving, evolving,
progressive being, and his supreme interest is to know
whence he has come, whither he is going, the past stages
of his march, and how to quicken them in the future.
This is the dynamic aspect of sociology, and it must
prevail over the static in the sense that every higher law
or state of being subsumes the lower. If we can be sure
that man has a higher end, and is advancing towards it,
then the fundamental statical laws, e.g. of health and
order, are seen as means and not as ends in themselves.
It is enough for an animal species to persist and thrive;
for man it is the starting-point.

We approach then the laws, real or supposed, of
progress, actual or imagined. That this is the side of
sociology which, if not the most important, excites
the most public interest is obvious from almost every
number of a review or copy of a newspaper. We read
'The Dilemma of Civilization', 'The Decadence of the
West', 'The Revolt of the Sub-man', or learn that the
' superstition of progress is the surest mark of a stationary
age '. The reality of social progress is rightly judged to be

SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS 335

a supreme question, but the belief in it and the general
agreement as to its nature have been rudely shaken by
recent events.

About the middle of the last century several great
thinkers had combined their voices in proclaiming the
historical authenticity and future certainty of progress.
Darwin followed shortly after and seemed to give a
biological guarantee. The sixty years that have followed
have by no means disposed either of Darwin or of a doc-
trine of general progress, but they have induced a more
critical frame of mind. We ask now, 'In what does
progress consist, and what grounds are there to beheve
that it will continue? ' just as in the case of Darwin the x
biologists have inquired 'What is a variation, and how
can we imagine certain variations to occur which seem
so miraculously favourable to the needs of the creature ? '
Such questionings as these have during^ the last few
decades covered all the ground of the great synthetic
thinkers of the early nineteenth century. Then came
the War. It seemed to extinguish the hopes of assured
progress and speedy peace and happiness for all mankind
which first shone out at the end of the eighteenth century
and irradiated the century which followed.

Both the accession of criticism and the wave of
pessimism were natural, but not final. It was healthy
to subject the wide and glowing generaUzations of
Condorcet or of Comte to close examination, but it would
be absurd to dismiss a widely grounded conclusion as to
the growth of human society because some of its dis-
coverers and exponents have expressed it in too unquali-
fied a way. The growth of human society being the ,
most extensive and complex example of evolution, the
widest and longest views are needed to compass it to
any purpose.

The so-called laws of social progress which have been

336 SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS

enunciated during the last hundred years are all of this
large and stimulating order: they rest rather on broad
views of human nature and history than on minute
inquiry into the facts of particular societies. They are
not to be dismissed on that account, or treated as un-
scientific, any more than we dismiss Copernicus because
Tycho Brahe was the better observer and Kepler gave
the proofs. There is room for both types of thinkers,
and in human affairs, dependent on long-continued series
of consecutive changes, the broad view leads the way.
Comte's Law of the Three Stages, Spencer's Law of
Increasing Heterogeneity or specialization, St. Simon's
industrial in place of military organization, all contain
valuable aspects of the truth; each successive thinker
will criticize them afresh and bring them closer to the
fuller knowledge of his own time, but that they were not
conceived wildly or in vain will be apparent to any one
attempting a similar survey.

Let us put beside these 'laws', or general conclusions,
of the earlier thinkers, a summary statement of what
appear the main lines of human advance from primitive
to contemporary days, and confine ourselves to the most
certain as well as the most general facts. The longer the
stretch of our review, the stronger our conclusion. On
one side, in remotest past, we see a savage half-human
being, ignorant of the simplest general laws of nature,
unaided in his struggle against external forces and
hostile beasts except by his own right arm and his
mother-wit, isolated in his cave or forest from other
tribes of future men, ignorant of everything not met
with in the daily hunt or the nightly lair. At the other
end comes the modern man, with his animal senses less
acute, his muscular force inferior to his savage ancestors,
yet intellectually, socially, collectively so developed that
the gap between him and the Urmensch seems even

SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS 337

greater than that between the Urmensch and the next of
the Primates. And this development of the modern from
the primitive man can be quite surely analysed, at least
in its leading features. The modern compared with the
primitive is immeasurably more powerful, more knowing
both of himself and all other things, more united as
a world-being and conscious of this being and of the
universe in which it moves. That man has started from
the one state and come to the other is certainly a historical
fact : whether we call it a ' law ' of progress or not depends
upon the meaning we attach to that ambiguous term.

We will leave aside then the question of any ' law of pro-
gress ' and only consider a few of the implications of this
summary statement of the most salient and certain
results of man's evolution. We leave aside the question
— though we are prepared to answer it in the affirmative —
whether the average of individual men has risen in
knowledge, power, and goodness. We leave aside the
question whether our eminent persons are as great as
those of the past, and what is the prospect of any future
crop of greatness. We will even leave aside for the
moment the whole question of values, whether the ascer-
tainable advance is to be considered a good thing, either
for the species as a whole or for the individual. We will
confine ourselves strictly to a consideration of what is
implied in the social growth which we have stated, and
which cannot be questioned by the most sceptical or
pessimistic critic. In the course of unnumbered ages
a social being has arisen, distinguished by a rapidly
increasing accumulation of collective knowledge, power,
and self-consciousness. It is the part of history to trace
the stages and various strains in this growth. One point
that must strike very sharply the attention of any student
is the great acceleration of this process in recent years,
i.e. since the rise of modern science in the seventeenth

Y

338 SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS

century. The greatest steps, indeed, in this expansion
of humanity have occurred in those recent decades since
the middle of the eighteenth century which contained the
synthetic thinkers some of whom we named above. The
development impressed itself upon their minds because
it was both new and great. It is now somewhat stale to
us, and we are beginning to be conscious of other sides to
the picture. But the great facts remain and have grown
still greater since the early nineteenth century when they
were first studied. Thus the scientific, or positive, spirit
which inspired Comte's law is farther spread since his
time, and in spite even of the Great War the world is
further industrialized than when St. Simon foresaw the
regime of industrial chiefs. Spencer's law, too, of in-
creasing specialization is seen to be an incident in the
organization of masses of men on a scientific basis for
industrial and practical ends. These and other laws,
therefore — generalizations which have been criticized as
too sweeping and uncritical — are best understood, when
duly corrected, as partial aspects of the larger truth, viz.
the actual growth of humanity as a world-force through
the medium of applied collective knowledge.

This view of progress, as the growth of an active
common soul, or will, in mankind has been attacked, and
is open to attack, on various grounds. It is said that it
overlooks the supreme importance of the individual, that
it elevates unduly the material results and instruments
of the scientific and practical mind; above all, that it is
not true — that there has been no real general growth of
human feeling or common action in the world as a whole.
It is beyond our scope in this short chapter to follow
up such arguments, a few among the many which crowd
the mind when we begin to think of science, or ordered
sequence, in human affairs. But it may be possible to
remove one or two more obvious misconceptions.

SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS 339

In the first place it must be remembered that, in tracing
any law of social progress, we are, at that time and for
that purpose, overlooking the individual and deliberately
basing our argument on the qualities and behaviour of
the greater being of which he is a member. This is no
disparagement of the individual soul ; but is the neces-
sary consequence of any scientific thinking about society
as a v/hole, into which the individuals only enter as
parts. If you deny that there is any such real collective
being, and that therefore we cannot reason scientifically
about it, cadit quaestio : we must then all be treated as
self-contained units, caring for and preserving our own
souls alone; which is impossible. The bearing of any
law of social' progress, which we may be able to trace,
on the character of individuals is a separate inquiry.
We believe that the individual personality grows and
does not wither as the society becomes larger and fuller:
but we cannot pursue that topic here.

Another very common complaint against a doctrine
of progress through science is based on a false evaluation
of the products of scientific as compared with literary,
artistic, or any other sort of thinking. There is a curious
notion that it is a finer and more spiritual thing to put
together a sonnet than to construct an engine, and that
the latter is a base and rather degrading operation which
we have to tolerate for the necessities of our lower nature,
but cannot possibly conceive of as bringing us any
nearer to the kingdom of heaven. The Greeks have some-
thing to answer for in this ridiculous superstition, and it
was perpetuated by the literary tradition of the Renas-
cence. All well-directed actions of the human mind
belong equally to the realm of spirit, and from the point
of view of social progress that should be valued most
highly which is best adapted to carry out its true end,
the attainment of some human good.

Y 2

340 SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS

The last objection, that there has been no general
growth of human feeling or common action, would, of
course, be fatal, if true ; but it is obviously not true.
The most salient feature of general history is the gradual
coming together of the world of mankind as one. The
process has its less attractive side. It has meant the
smoothing out of many interesting diversities, the spread
of many vulgarizing uniformities. It has been accom.-
panied by fierce conflicts of the stronger powers to sweep
fresh tracts of the earth's surface into their net. But it
has resulted in our own day in the formation of a world-
organization, the League of Nations, still incomplete
and expectant, but expressing for the first time in history
the social will of the great majority of nations to act
together and to do things making for peace and the
common weal.

The League of Nations comes aptly enough into the
argument, but rather as a symbol. It is the natural
outcome of the unifying process which has gone on more
and more rapidly in the last hundred years. ^ There are
two other considerations of a philosophic kind which will
fortify us in our suggested doctrine of progress, though
we may base it safely in the first instance on historical
grounds. Looked at philosophically, this first broad
notion of progress is seen to be simply the development
in time of man's special nature, as Aristotle and all other
thinkers have perceived it from the Greeks onwards.
Knowledge, activity with a purpose, life developed in
society, these are the specially human characteristics ;
and social progress, as we can trace it in history, is the
expansion of these quahties. And the evolution is then
most clearly towards a better state, when the three factors
draw together, as knowledge inspires the purposeful

^ See Delisle Burns, The Morality of Nations, The Evolution of
World Peace (Unity Series IV)

SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS 341

activity, and as the purposeful activity arises from the
whole society and is aimed at the development of the
life of all.

The other philosophical consideration, which gives
corroboration, is that the science of psychology, if
not new-born, has at least been most developed,
and taken on its distinctive social colour, during the
nineteenth century, the period when the new social will
of all mankind has been most clearly shown. 'Social
Psychology', the 'Psychology of Peoples', 'The Crowd',
the 'Herd Mind', and similar titles of books and
reviews in recent years, indicate the new direction in
psychological thought since the early nineteenth century,
when psychology, in its infancy, was still relying mainly
on the introspection of the individual mind. The limited
value of this is now generally admitted, and psychology,
in its adolescence, takes its place among the social
sciences and employs a comparative and historical
method. Even the psycho-analyst, with his grave
vagaries, is in touch with one vital truth, that our psychic
states come to us from the past and depend on other
beings than ourselves.

An age of psychology therefore comes to crown an age
of biology; and the psychology is social, based on the
manifestations of the collective mind, in the first instance
of groups, and later of the whole of mankind.

The view of progress which we have suggested is
a psychological one, putting the determining, character-
istic factor in the mental and not the material sphere.
It traces the evolution of man in his gradual ascent
above his material environment and above his individual
isolation, and it proclaims a real common movement
towards a higher state for the race, rising above the
special civilizations which have flourished and dechned
at various places during historic time. Science, or

342 SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS

collective, orderly thinking, and sympathy, or common
feeling, rising at last into a conscious social will, are
the leading traits in the evolution looked at from this
point of view. The union of these two, broadly
speaking the positive and the Christian elements, which
has been coming about in recent times, is the crucial
point in the human story, as it has been unrolled before
us up to the present.

It is a broad and simple outline, but it has the treble
advantage of being true to the dominant features in
man's nature, of giving a rational account of the main
currents in history and an ideal of hopeful action in
the future. It would only be harmful if we used it to
slur over the innumerable diversities in the concrete
process or to relieve us from the task of minute and
faithful inquiry into the particular facts.

A simple illustration may perhaps make clearer the
nature and mutual relations of the two methods of
approaching the scientific study of human affairs. We
might think of the course of history, i.e. the dynamic
aspect of sociology, as a long journey, of which we know
in a general way the conditions and the goal. We might
imagine it as a journey round the world, or, better still,
up a high and distant mountain. We know from other
sources the distance, the direction, the possibilities of
approach. If the route were round the world, we have
absolute assurance that it can be ultimately completed,
for the world is round; if up a mountain, we can locate
the summit by trigonometrical survey, and we know,
also from a prion reasoning, that the powers of the
travellers, if wisely used, are sufficient for the task.
But this general knowledge and assurance do not exempt
us from the duty of the most careful examination of the
intermediate steps. If this is not done, the journey,
though perfectly feasible and certain in the end to be

SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS 343

accomplished, may be repeatedly delayed, and will in
any case be attended by losses and difficulties which
preliminary study and foresight would have avoided.
A sound, general scheme, fortified by accuracy and
patience in detail — these are the conditions of success.

The need of sound reasoning on social problems, never
so great as now, suggests examining a few of the current
arguments which have been used to aggravate the
unrest of the day and induce a pessimistic spirit contrary,
as we believe, to ascertainable facts. Many of those who
use them begin with a sincere appeal to scientific truth
against the ' professors of a facile optimism ', and then
proceed themselves to draw all sorts of illicit conclusions
from faulty premisses. The much-quoted IJntergang des
Ahendlands by Spengler shall be our first example. In
this the whole thesis rests upon a foundation of sand.
Western Civilization, which is supposed to be in decay,
is, in its scientific and international form, a new thing in
the world, and no argument as to its future can be drawn
from the decline of previous civilizations which were
far less extensive and without the world-wide organiza-
tion of the present day to hold them together. A glance
at the state of the world since the War is enough to estab-
lish this. In spite of the most destructive social cata-
clysm in history, international activities are flourishing
again, in some respects more vigorously than before, and
the great areas which are most broken up — Russia and
China — are precisely those parts of the world where
modern scientific organization was least developed. It
will be said that the downfall and sufferings of Germany-
and Austria are sufficient proof that science is no real
defence. Exactly the opposite conclusion should be
drawn. Germany held out so long and with such mar-
vellous success owing to her scientific training and
organization. She is now, in defeat and depression,

344 SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS

carrying on her accustomed activities in education,
science, medical care, trade, &c., through the same
cause, and her financial collapse, being realized as an
international danger, is being dealt with internationally.
The loser in the greatest of wars pursues the tenor of her
/ course, changed in spirit no doubt, but without internal
y or social collapse, owing to the strength of modern
organization based on science.

Spengler's main argument, like many of his subsidiary
ones, is drawn from a faulty historical parallel. It is the
besetting sin of a vivacious stylist writing as a historian.
He sees in the second Punic War the ancient analogy
between the conflict of England and Germany in our
own times, forgetting that in the Great War England
entered as one of a League of Nations upholding the
sanctity of international law. He sees in the present state
of the West signs of decadence which suggest another
Decline and Fall, forgetting that the West is now only
an historical term for a world-wide civilization which
sprang from Mediterranean lands, but has its pillars
on both sides of the Pacific and no real parallel with any
of the empires or cultures of the past.

Among ourselves there is abundant pseudo-scientific
writing on social themes. A recent book called the
Revolt of Civilization is typical. Its author laments the
supposed decay of vigorous manhood, and again harks
back to the analogy of ancient Rome. A new race of
barbarians is waiting at the gate. Who these may be is
left in some doubt, as we are not breeding them ourselves.^
But the Bolsheviks are always at hand to fill a gap in the
argument.

Another favourite line of pseudo-scientific argument

^ 'We are breeding not vigorous barbarians but a new type
of sub-men, abhorred by nature and ugly as no natural product
is ugly!'- — Dean Inge, Edinburgh Review, July 1922.

SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS 345

is to contend that just as the Roman Empire was over-
whelmed by inroads of barbarians from without, so our
civihzation is threatened by the uprising of a flood of
'sub-men' from below. The better-to-do classes, with
a tradition of culture, have fewer children; therefore
the classes below, of a supposed inferior civilization and
education, will come up and take their places. But what
are the known facts on this matter? It is a fact that
families generally are becoming much smaller than they
used to be. This tendency spreads gradually over the
whole of society and over all civilized countries. At the
one end of the social scale this leads to a diminution of
the 'gentle' class who a hundred years ago were the
undisputed leaders of society. But, on the other hand,
the children of the lower middle or upper working class
are being constantly improved and taking more important
positions. Is there any sound reason to assume that
these people are incapable in due time of acquiring the
good qualities — in manners, &c. — which we associate with
the old upper class ? It is in any case pure ignorance and
prejudice, without any foundation in fact, to sweep them
all together into a class of imaginary 'sub-men'. At the
other extreme of the social class we now learn (see Dr.
Crookshank's chapter on 'Science and Health') that the
defectives tend to extinction by inter-marriage.

Questions of heredity, the size of families, &c., are all
so extremely complicated and doubtful that the mark
of the scientific spirit will be to abstain from such con-
clusions of panic as we have quoted, and meanwhile
to observe and inquire with care, patience, and an open
mind. The general statistics of health, length of life, and
mental capacity are all directly contrary to any theory of
decadence. The conclusion to which they seem to point
is that we are steadily rising to a higher level of average
capacity, both physical and intellectual, from which we

■X

346 SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS

may anticipate fresh eminences to appear, different no
doubt from those of the past, but more suited to the
demands of a democratic age.

It would be easy to multiply examples of such pseudo-
scientific reasoning about human affairs as we have just
given. They abound in the reviews and in popular social
essays. Unfortunately, the more fallacious a thesis is,
the more it is likely to gain popular credence for a while.
If, like Mr. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, a writer
discovers a popular historical analogy and announces it
in glowing terms and with striking illustration, he is
bound to find a large and credulous public. He may,
like Mr. Chamberlain, announce that all the moving
genius of the world belongs to one race, e.g. the Teutonic.
He selects a number of cases which seem to prove his
point. He suggests that in others, about which we have
no sufficient knowledge, there is good reason for thinking
that if we did know, they too would corroborate the
conclusion. He brings out in the end a portentous
doctrine which, like that of Teutonic superiority, may
work immeasurable harm and embroil nations in an
undying feud. The process is possible through the com-
plexity of the facts and the impossibility of knowing
everything about them. The gaps are filled up by
surmises based on prejudice, or on one or another of the
sociological biases which Herbert Spencer analysed for us
fifty years ago.

The weakness is the obvious one of not taking pains to
master all the facts and be sure of their causal relation.

It may be retorted that such a requirement precludes
the drawing of the most general conclusion of all with
which we began. If you have first to know all the facts,
how can you be sure that there is such a thing as general
progress as we defined it above ? The answer is that
we may, in sociology, often have better grounds for

SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS 347

a more general than for a more particular conclusion,
as, in our suggested world- journey, we may be perfectly
certain that if we start from London in a due easterly
direction and keep travelhng on in a straight Une we
shall ultimately come back to London again from the
west. This does not exclude the necessity of studying
with the utmost care all the intervening country and
making many detours in order to arrive in the end at the
object which in the general plan is sure and simple.
So in the realm of public health. We know perfectly
well the general conditions for the avoidance of disease,
but it may be the most difficult problem to discover in
a particular village the cause of an outbreak of small-pox
and to take the necessary steps to exclude it.

Hence we arrive at the supreme necessity, in the
application of science to human affairs, of a twofold path.
We need the high or general hue, based on the facts of
man's nature to the broad outhnes of history, and we
need the careful plodding work of the investigator,
estabUshing the facts and tracing their connexion.
Neither can do without the other, neither can afford to
disparage the other. No time in history has shown more
clearly than the present the necessity of both, for we are
overwhelmed in the practical world by a complex pro-
blem which has come upon us from want of sufficient
knowledge and foresight, and the social atmosphere is
infected by a want of the cheerfulness and confidence
which spring from a sound general philosophy.

The complex practical problem is, of course, the
reparation of the losses due to the War and the restoration
of normal trade and finance. In this matter it would
seem that the facts surpassed the competence of the best
brains which tried to cope with them in 1918 and 1919.
No one at that time foresaw the financial collapse, the
colossal difficulty of carrying out in any degree what was

348 SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS

calmly set down as an agreed obligation in the Treaty of
Versailles.

This growing complexity of human problems, without
a corresponding growth of the human brain to deal with
them, is perhaps the most serious obstacle which faces
the onward march of mankind. It is exemplified equally
on the theoretical and the practical field. The realm of
science is now so vast that a small subdivision of one of
its branches is enough to occupy the lifelong energies
of a devoted student who, even a hundred years ago,
might have hoped to acquire a competent acquaintance
with the whole. And in the practical sphere the affairs
of one region, which to the ancients seemed to embrace
the world, are now in one department of the British
Foreign Office, itself one member of the League of Nations.-^
We need not despair of the human intellect : its material
organ, the brain, has demonstrably developed since
prehistoric times. But the spiritual organ which must
grapple with the problems of the future will not be
located in any one cranium: it will be the co-operative
working of many minds. Such co-operation has been
shown publicly in an Age of Conference; it has been
crowned recently in the newly formed committee of the
League of Nations for Intellectual Work. But it exists
everywhere where sound thinking on human affairs
is in process, and any action such as the exclusion
of German or Austrian professors from international
societies is a grave mutilation of general efficiency,
almost as harmful to those who inflict as to those
who suffer the exclusion. To render such co-operation
as effective as possible, to make the collective mind
function with something of the quickness and the

^ See Isaiah, chap, xix, where the communication of Assyria
and Egypt through Palestine is treated as the consummation of
World Peace.

SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS 349

decision of a good individual, is the highest problem of
organization.

Such is the necessary method both for social studies
and for social action in the modern world, but a general
theory and spirit are also needed to give a moving force
to the machine. Mount Everest could not be cHmbed
without a conviction of its possibility and a hopeful
determination to do it. This is given in the social sphere
by the general theory of progress, based on the nature
of man and the known broad facts of history. He has
advanced from a lower to a higher state of existence,
for we cannot believe that his recently acquired conscious-
ness and study of this advance will operate as a brake to
its further continuance. Man had been gaining science
for uncounted ages before he became a conscious philo-
sopher. Since he began to work at science consciously, the
growth has been immeasurably greater. We may expect
the same result to follow man's awakening to progress.
The progress was a fact long ages before it was detected
and its outlines described in a ' law '. The theorizing
will not destroy the movement but accelerate its rate.
The sadness of to-day and yesterday is but a trough
between the great advancing waves, the reaction against
a doctrine announced perhaps too loudly and with too
little qualification by the earlier prophets. The later
generation of writers, with Anatole France at their head,
appreciate the greatness, are kindly to the weakness, and
hopeful but less confident of the future of mankind.

In such an atmosphere a general law of progress, if it
can be well founded on the facts, has a double part to
play. It is the greatest generahzation about man's
history into which the studies of particular movements
have to be fitted. If the general law is true we shall
judge the smaller movements according to the degree in
which they have contributed to the whole. But the law,

350 SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS

if we may call it a law, is also an ideal. It describes
something which we have derived from a considera-
tion of man's nature before we turned to history for
its confirmation in social facts. In its ideal aspect socio-
logy inevitably touches ethics ; it becomes allied to, if
not an actual branch of, a science of values. But
it is its aspect as pure science which has concerned us
in this volume and especially in this essay. We start
from the principle that man being the social animal
pay excellence, his progress consists in the development
of this quality: he becomes more social both by the
extension of his solidarity with other men now living
and also by the deeper sense of filiation with past genera-
tions which he gains from history. Our law is therefore
primarily a law of growing sociability. But man is also
the maker of organized knowledge, and the growth of
science therefore becomes a leading thread in any law of
progress and is connected with his increased sociability.
Co-operation, enlightened by knowledge, itself a social
product, produces great works of practical skill, the fruit
of past effort, the foundation of a more stable society
in future. Greater unity, greater knowledge, and greater
power, gained by the application of knowledge, — these
leading aspects of man's social evolution may be gathered
in one expression as the growth of the human spirit.

We have been following in this book the function of
science in determining this evolution, and we conclude
that, through science and the organization which it has
occasioned, our modern civilization has reached a state of
extension and stability which is a new and supremely
important factor for the future. We have to see to it
that this more closely-knit and richer social spirit is
adequately reflected in fuller and nobler personalities.
This is the task of education, and herein our law of pro-
gress points an ideal for the future as well as summing
up the achievements of the past.

THE 'UNITY HISTORY SCHOOLS'
AND THE 'UNITY SERIES'

THE idea of these schools, which have now been held annually
for six years, was first mooted at a gathering of the London
Adult School Union at Jordans on the ist of August, 1914,
the day on which war was declared between Germany and Russia.
The world was about to be torn in sunder by a cataclysm deplored
by all and expected by very few ; then was the time to turn one's
thoughts to those still greater and more permanent forces which
have built up the world-community of the present, imperfect as it is,
but growing, as we hope, stronger in unity, and capable, as the event
has proved, of surmounting even the most terrible shock which
could at that time have been imagined. Mr. F. S. Marvin undertook
to consider a plan for historical studies on such lines, and the first
'Unity History School' was held in August 191 5 at Woodbrooke,
the social and educational settlement of the Society of Friends, some
four miles out of Birmingham.

The subject was 'The Unity of Western Civilization ', and gave
the name and general colour to all which have succeeded it. The
common foundations and the essentially identical spirit of the Western
civilization which sprang from Greece and Rome were clearly exhibited
in their various aspects : it was not yet seen how far the same ideas
would carry us in a systematic study of what may be called 'synthetic *
history. But the audience of the first year were eager to continue,
and one of them suggested that as we had begun by considering
'Unity' — the statical aspect of the Western woild, the next step
would be to turn to the conception of ' Progress ' — its dynamical
condition, and ask wherein it consisted, and how far it was realized
in the different departments of Western activity which had been

seen in the first course to possess a certain, though an imperfect,
approximation to unity of spirit.

This second course was held at the same place in the following
year, August 1916. It was in many ways an advance on its pre-
decessor. The volume following this second course, 'Progress .aid
History ', soon reached five impressions, and is used for study in
several Indian universities.

An interval followed, due to the difficulties of travel and of
provisioning so large a company as had assembled at Woodbrooke.
But in August of 191 9 the third school assembled to consider
' Recent Developments in European Thought '. This was an
attempt to bring the more general treatment of the earlier
volumes into closer touch with recent conditions. The period
studied was limited, broadly speaking, to the last fifty years. The
Great War was now over, and it seemed to form a ust^ful terminus
ad quern to a period which, from many points of view, starts with
the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. How far, it was asked, does this
limited period bear out the conclusions of the two earlier courses?
The volume following this course has now reached three
impressions.

Before the fourth school met, the League of Nations had been
formally adopted by the victorious Powers at Versailles and the
Covenant of the League had been signed by between forty and fifty
nations. The course of 192,0 was therefore held in conjunction with
the League of Nations Union, and the volume published in the spring
of 1911 under the title of 'The Evolution of World-Peace '.

The fifth course (1921) arose again by a natural suggestion
from that of 1920. The Covenant of the League of Nations con-
tains, as one of its most important sections, the clauses instituting
the ' mandatory ' system under which the stronger Powers in the
world assume formally the responsibility of trustees towards certain
of the weaker peoples. This suggested the general problem of the
relations of the West towards other races and nations in various
degrees of progress. This school assembled in August 1921, and
the subsequent volume was published in July 1921 as 'Western
Races and the World '.

In 1922 the course was given on 'Science and Civilization',
published herewith. A sketch in broad outline is given of the
history of science, especially in its relation to the contemporary
social evolution. First the historical retrospect^ then the living problem^
and the whole looked at from the completely human, not merely nationalist
standpoint. Such is the general plan of study which has been
gradually evolved in this series. It is proposed to continue it at
Vienna this summer with a course on 'Art and Civilization'.

THE UNITY SERIES

Essays arranged and edited by F. S. Marvin

I. THE UNITY OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION.

Second Edition, 1921. Crown 8vo, pp. 318. 6s. net.

Grounds of Unity, F. S. Marvin. Unity in Prehistoric Times, ]. L. Myres.

Contribution of Greece and Rome, ). A. Smith. Unity in the Middle Ages,

E. Barker. Unity in Law, W. M. Geldart. European Literature and Art,
A. j. Carlvle. Unity in Science and Philosophy, L.T. Hobhouse. Education,
y. W. Headlam. Commerce and Finance, Hartley Withers. Industrial
Legislation, C. Smith. Social Reform, C. Delisle Burns. A World State, J. A.
HoBSON. Religion, H. G. Wood. The Growth of Humanity, F. S. MARvm.

II. PROGRESS AND HISTORY. Fifth Impression, i^ii.

Clown 8vo, pp. 514. 6s. net.

The Idea of Progress, F. S. Marvin. Progress in Prehistoric Times, R. R.
Marett. Progress and Hellenism, F. Melian Stawell. Progress in the
Middle Ages, A. J. Carlyle. Progress in Religion, Baron von Huegei..
Moral Progress, L. P. Jacks. Government ; Industry, A. E. Zimmern. Art,
A. Clutton-Brock. Science, F. S. Marvin. Philosophy ; Progress as an Ideal
of Action, [. A. Smith.

III. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN EUROPEAN

THOUGHT. Third Impression, 1921. Crown 8vo, pp. 306. 6s. net.
General Survey, F. S. Marvin. Philosophy, A. E. Taylor. Religion, F. B. Jevons.
Poetry, C. H. Herford. History, G. P. Gooch. Political Theory, A. D. Lindsay.
Economic Development, C. R. Fay. Atomic Theories, W. H. Bragg. Biology
since Darwin, Leonard Doncaster. Art, A. Clutton-Brock. A Generation of
Music, Ernest Walker. The Modern Renascence, F. Melian Stawell.

IV. THE EVOLUTION OF WORLD-PEACE. 19x1.

8vo, pp. 192.. ^s. 6d. net.

The Appeal to History, F. S. Marvin. Alexander and Hellenism, Arnold
Toynbee and F. S. Marvin. The Work of Rome, Sir P. Vinogradoff.
Innocent III and the Mediaeval Church, H. W. C. Davis. Grotius and Inter-
national Law, G. N. Clark. The French Revolution as a World Force, G. P.
GoocH. The Congress of Vienna, C. R. Beazley. The Nineteenth Century,

F. S. Marvin. The League of Nations in Being, F. Whelen. A World Utopia,
H. G. Wells. The Teaching of History and World Peace, Eileen Power.

V. WESTERN RACES AND THE WORLD, i^zz.

8vo, pp. 264. i2S. 6d. net.

An Educational Problem, F. S. Marvin. Language, J. A. Smith. Greeks and
Barbarians, Edwyn Bevan. The Roman Empire, H. Stuart Jones. The
Influence of Christianity, A. y. Carlyle. The Humanitarianism of the Eighteenth
Century, S. H. Swinny. Europe and Islam, Sir T. W. Arnold. The Indian
Problem, Charles Roberts. Western Races and the Far East, W. E. Soothill.
The Economic Exploitation of the Tropics, J. H. Harris. Master and Man in
the TrOjMcs, and Mandates under the League of Nations, Sir Sydney Olivier.

VI. SCIENCE AND CIVILIZATION. 19x3. 8vo,

pp. 352. I2S. 6d. net.

The Beginnings of Science, J. L. Myres. Ancient Medicine, Charles Singer.
Aspects of Biological and Geological Knowledge in Antiquity, Arthur Platt.
Greek Mathematics and Astronomy, J. L. E. Dreyer. The Dark Ages and the
Dawn, Charles Singer. The First Physical Synthesis, A. N. Whitehead.
Science in the Industrial Revolution, Cecil H. Desch. The Influence of
Darwinism on Tlought and Life, J. Arthur Thomson. Science and Education,
A. E. Heath. Science and Health, F. G. Crookshank. Science and Religion,
Julian S. Huxley. Science and Human AfiFairs, F. S. Marvin.

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS 337

greater, than that between the Urmensch and the next of
the Primates. And this development of the modern from
the primitive man can be quite surely analysed, at least
in its leading features. The modern compared with the
primitive is immeasurably more powerful, more knowing
both of himself and all other things, more united as
a world-being and conscious of this being and of the
universe in which it moves. That man has started from
the one state and come to the other is certainly a historical
fact : whether we call it a ' law ' of progress or not depends
upon the meaning we attach to that ambiguous term.

We will leave aside then the question of any ' law of pro-
gress ' and only consider a few of the implications of this
summary statement of the most salient and certain
results of man's evolution. We leave aside the question
— though we are prepared to answer it in the affirmative —
whether the average of individual men has risen in
knowledge, power, and goodness. We leave aside the
question whether our eminent persons are as great as
those of the past, and what is the prospect of any future
crop of greatness. We will even leave aside for the
moment the whole question of values, whether the ascer-
tainable advance is to be considered a good thing, either
for the species as a whole or for the individual. We will
confine ourselves strictly to a consideration of what is
implied in the social growth which we have stated, and
which cannot be questioned by the most sceptical or
pessimistic critic. In the course of unnumbered ages
a social being has arisen, distinguished by a rapidly
increasing accamulation of collective knowledge, power,
and self-consciousness. It is the part of history to trace
the stages and various strains in this growth. One point
that must strike very sharply the attention of any student
is the great acceleration of this process in recent years,
i.e. since the rise of modern science in the seventeenth

Y

338 SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS

century. The greatest steps, indeed, in this expansion
of humanity have occurred in those recent decades since
the middle of the eighteenth century which contained the
synthetic thinkers some of whom we named above. The
development impressed itself upon their minds because
it was both new and great. It is now somewhat stale to
us, and we are beginning to be conscious of other sides to
the picture. But the great facts remain and have grown
still greater since the early nineteenth century when they
were first studied. Thus the scientific, or positive, spirit
which inspired Comte's law is farther spread since his
time, and in spite even of the Great War the world is
further industrialized than when St. Simon foresaw the
regime of industrial chiefs. Spencer's law, too, of in-
creasing specialization is seen to be an incident in the
organization of masses of men on a scientific basis for
industrial and practical ends. These and other laws,
therefore — generalizations which have been criticized as
too sweeping and uncritical^are best understood, when
duly corrected, as partial aspects of the larger truth, viz.
the actual growth of humanity as a world-force through
the medium of applied collective knowledge.

This view of progress, as the growth of an active
common soul, or will, in mankind has been attacked, and
is open to attack, on various grounds. It is said that it
overlooks the supreme importance of the individual, that
it elevates unduly the material results and instruments
of the scientific and practical mind; above all, that it is
not true — that there has been no real general growth of
human feeling or common action in the world as a whole.
It is beyond our scope in this short chapter to follow
up such arguments, a few among the many which crowd
the mind when we begin to think of science, or ordered
sequence, in human affairs. But it may be possible to
remove one or two more obvious misconceptions.

SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS 339

In the first place it must be remembered that, in tracing
any law of social progress, we are, at that time and for
that purpose, overlooking the individual and deliberately
basing our argument on the qualities and behaviour of
the greater being of which he is a member. This is no
disparagement of the individual soul ; but is the neces-
sary consequence of any scientific thinking about society
as a whole, into which the individuals only enter as
parts. If you deny that there is any such real collective
being, and that therefore we cannot reason scientifically
about it, cadit quaestio : we must then all be treated as
self-contained units, caring for and preserving our own
souls alone; which is impossible. The bearing of any
law of social progress, which we may be able to trace,
on the character of individuals is a separate inquiry.
We believe that the individual personality grows and
does not wither as the society becomes larger and fuller :
but we cannot pursue that topic here.

Another very common complaint against a doctrine
of progress through science is based on a false evaluation
of the products of scientific as compared with literary,
artistic, or any other sort of thinking. There is a curious
notion that it is a finer and more spiritual thing to put
together a sonnet than to construct an engine, and that
the latter is a base and rather degrading operation which
we have to tolerate for the necessities of our lower nature,
but cannot possibly conceive of as bringing us any
nearer to the kingdom of heaven. The Greeks have some-
thing to answer for in this ridiculous superstition, and it
was perpetuated by the literary tradition of the Renas-
cence. All well-directed actions of the human mind
belong equally to the realm of spirit, and from the point
of view of social progress that should be valued most
highly which is best adapted to carry out its true end,
the attainment of some human good.

Y 2

340 SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS

The last objection, that there has been no general
growth of human feeling or common action, would, of
course, be fatal, if true ; but it is obviously not true.
The most salient feature of general history is the gradual
coming together of the world of mankind as one. The
process has its less attractive side. It has meant the
smoothing out of many interesting diversities, the spread
of mam^ vulgarizing uniformities. It has been accom.-
panied by fierce conflicts of the stronger powers to sweep
fresh tracts of the earth's surface into their net. But it
has resulted in our own day in the formation of a world-
organization, the League of Nations, still incomplete
and expectant, but expressing for the first time in history
the social will of the great majority of nations to act
together and to do things making for peace and the
common weal.

The League of Nations comes aptly enough into the
argument, but rather as a symbol. It is the natural
outcome of the unifying process which has gone on more
and more rapidly in the last hundred years. ^ There are
two other considerations of a philosophic kind which will
fortify us in our suggested doctrine of progress, though
we may base it safely in the first instance on historical
grounds. Looked at philosophically, this first broad
notion of progress is seen to be simply the development
in time of man's special nature, as Aristotle and all other
thinkers have perceived it from the Greeks onwards.
Knowledge, activity with a purpose, life developed in
society, these are the specially human characteristics ;
and social progress, as we can trace it in history, is the
expansion of these qualities. And the evolution is then
most clearly towards a better state, when the three factors
draw together, as knowledge inspires the purposeful

* See Delisle Burns, The Morality of Nations, The Evolution of
World Peace (Unity Series IV)

SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS 341

activity, and as the purposeful activity arises from the
whole society and is aimed at the development of the
life of all.

The other philosophical consideration, which gives
corroboration, is that the science of psychology, if
not new-born, has at least been most developed,
and taken on its distinctive social colour, during the
nineteenth century, the period when the new social will
of all mankind has been most clearly shown. 'Social
Psychology', the 'Psychology of Peoples', 'The Crowd',
the 'Herd Mind', and similar titles of books and
reviews in recent years, indicate the new direction in
psychological thought since the early nineteenth century,
when psychology, in its infancy, was still relying mainly
on the introspection of the individual mind. The limited
value of this is now generally admitted, and psychology,
in its adolescence, takes its place among the social
sciences and employs a comparative and historical
method. Even the psycho-analyst, with his grave
vagaries, is in touch with one vital truth, that our psychic
states come to us from the past and depend on other
beings than ourselves.

An age of psychology therefore comes to crown an age
of biology; and the psychology is social, based on the
manifestations of the collective mind, in the first instance
of groups, and later of the whole of mankind.

The view of progress which we have suggested is
a psychological one, putting the detennining, character-
istic factor in the mental and not the material sphere.
It traces the evolution of man in his gradual ascent
above his material environment and above his individual
isolation, and it proclaims a real common movement
towards a higher state for the race, rising above the
special civilizations which have flourished and declined
at various places during historic time. Science, or

342 SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS

collective, orderly thinking, and sympathy, or common
feeling, rising at last into a conscious social will, are
the leading traits in the evolution looked at from this
point of view. The union of these two, broadly
speaking the positive and the Christian elements, which
has been coming about in recent times, is the crucial
point in the human story, as it has been unrolled before
us up to the present.

It is a broad and simple outline, but it has the treble
advantage of being true to the dominant features in
man's nature, of giving a rational account of the main
currents in history and an ideal of hopeful action in
the future. It would only be harmful if we used it to
slur over the innumerable diversities in the concrete
process or to relieve us from the task of minute and
faithful inquiry into the particular facts.

A simple illustration may perhaps make clearer the
nature and mutual relations of the two methods of
approaching the scientific study of human affairs. We
might think of the course of history, i.e. the dynamic
aspect of sociology, as a long journey, of which we know
in a general way the conditions and the goal. We might
imagine it as a journey round the world, or, better still,
up a high and distant mountain. We know from other
sources the distance, the direction, the possibilities of
approach. If the route were round the world, we have
absolute assurance that it can be ultimately completed,
for the world is round; if up a mountain, we can locate
the summit by trigonometrical survey, and we know,
also from a priori reasoning, that the powers of the
travellers, if wisely used, are sufficient for the task.
But this general knowledge and assurance do not exempt
us from the duty of the most careful examination of the
intermediate steps. If this is not done, the journey,
though perfectly feasible and certain in the end to be

SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS 343

accomplished, may be repeatedly delayed, and will in
any case be attended by losses and difficulties which
preliminary study and foresight would have avoided.
A sound, general scheme, fortified by accuracy and
patience in detail — these are the conditions of success.

The need of sound reasoning on social problems, never
so great as now, suggests examining a few of the current
arguments which have been used to aggravate the
unrest of the day and induce a pessimistic spirit contrary,
as we believe, to ascertainable facts. Many of those who
use them begin with a sincere appeal to scientific truth
against the 'professors of a facile optimism', and then
proceed themselves to draw all sorts of illicit conclusions
from faulty premisses. The much-quoted Untergang des
Ahendlands by Spengler shall be our first example. In
this the whole thesis rests upon a foundation of sand.
Western Civihzation, which is supposed to be in decay,
is, in its scientific and international form, a new thing in
the world, and no argument as to its future can be drawn
from the dechne of previous civilizations which were
far less extensive and without the world-wide organiza-
tion of the present day to hold them together. A glance
at the state of the world since the War is enough to estab-
lish this. In spite of the most destructive social cata-
clysm in history, international activities are flourishing
again, in some respects more vigorously than before, and
the great areas which are most broken up — Russia and
China — are precisely those parts of the world where
modern scientific organization was least developed. It
will be said that the downfall and sufferings of Germany
and Austria are sufficient proof that science is no real
defence. Exactly the opposite conclusion should be
drawn. Germany held out so long and with such mar-
vellous success owing to her scientific training and
organization. She is now, in defeat and depression.

344 SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS

carrying on her accustomed activities in education,
science, medical care, trade, &c., through the same
cause, and her financial collapse, being realized as an
international danger, is being dealt with internationally.
The loser in the greatest of wars pursues the tenor of her
coujse, changed in spirit no doubt, but without internal
or social collapse, owing to the strength of modern
organization based on science.

Spengler's main argument, like many of his subsidiary
ones, is drawn from a faulty historical parallel. It is the
besetting sin of a vivacious stylist writing as a historian.
He sees in the second Punic War the ancient analogy
between the conflict of England and Germany in our
own times, forgetting that in the Great War England
entered as one of a League of Nations upholding the
sanctity of international law. He sees in the present state
of the West signs of decadence which suggest another
Decline and Fall, forgetting that the West is now only
an historical term for a world-wide civilization which
sprang from Mediterranean lands, but has its pillars
on both sides of the Pacific and no real parallel with any
of the empires or cultures of the past.

Among ourselves there is abundant pseudo-scientific
writing on social themes. A recent book called the
Revolt of Civilization is typical. Its author laments the
supposed decay of vigorous manhood, and again harks
back to the analogy of ancient Rome. A new race of
barbarians is waiting at the gate. Who these may be is
left in some doubt, as we are not breeding them ourselves.-^
But the Bolsheviks are always at hand to fill a gap in the
argument.

Another favourite line of pseudo-scientific argument

* ' We are breeding not vigorous barbarians but a new type
of sub-men, abhorred by nature and ugly as no natural product
is ugly!' — Dean Inge, Edinburgh Review, July 1922.

SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS 345

is to contend that just as the Roman Empire was over-
whelmed by inroads of barbarians from without, so our
civihzation is threatened by the uprising of a flood of
'sub-men' from below. The better-to-do classes, with
a tradition of culture, have fewer children; therefore
the classes below, of a supposed inferior civilization and
education, will come up and take their places. But what
are the known facts on this matter? It is a fact that
families generally are becoming much smaller than they
used to be. This tendenc}/ spreads gradually over the
whole of society and over all civilized countries. At the
one end of the social scale this leads to a diminution of
the 'gentle' class who a hundred years ago were the
undisputed leaders of society. But, on the other hand,
the children of the lower middle or upper working class
are being constantly improved and taking more important
positions. Is there an}^ sound reason to assume that
these people are incapable in due time of acquiring the
good qualities — in manners, &c. — which we associate with
the old upper class ? It is in any case pure ignorance and
prejudice, without any foundation in fact, to sweep them
all together into a class of imaginary 'sub-men'. At the
other extreme of the social class we now learn (see Dr.
Crookshank's chapter on 'Science and Health') that the
defectives tend to extinction by inter-marriage.

Questions of heredity, the size of families, &c., are all
so extremely complicated and doubtful that the mark
of the scientific spirit will be to abstain from such con-
clusions of panic as we have quoted, and meanwhile
to observe and inquire with care, patience, and an open
mind. The general statistics of health, length of life, and
mental capacity are all directly contrary to any theory of
decadence. The conclusion to which they seem to point
is that we are steadily rising to a higher level of average
capacity, both physical and intellectual, from which we

346 SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS

may anticipate fresh eminences to appear, different no
doubt from those of the past, but more suited to the
demands of a democratic age.

It would be easy to multiply examples of such pseudo-
scientific reasoning about human affairs as we have just
given. They abound in the reviews and in popular social
essays. Unfortunately, the more fallacious a thesis is,
the more it is likely to gain popular credence for a while.
If, like Mr, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, a writer
discovers a popular historical analogy and announces it
in glowing terms and with striking illustration, he is
bound to find a large and credulous public. He may,
like Mr. Chamberlain, announce that all the moving
genius of the world belongs to one race, e. g. the Teutonic.
He selects a number of cases which seem to prove his
point. He suggests that in others, about which we have
no sufficient knowledge, there is good reason for thinking
that if we did know, they too would corroborate the
conclusion. He brings out in the end a portentous
doctrine which, like that of Teutonic superiority, may
work immeasurable harm and embroil nations in an
undying feud. The process is possible through the com-
plexity of the facts and the impossibility of knowing
everything about them. The gaps are filled up by
surmises based on prejudice, or on one or another of the
sociological biases which Herbert Spencer analysed for us
fifty years ago.

The weakness is the obvious one of not taking pains to
master all the facts and be sure of their causal relation.

It may be retorted that such a requirement precludes
the drawing of the most general conclusion of all with
which we began. If you have first to know all the facts,
how can you be sure that there is such a thing as general
progress as we defined it above ? The answer is that
we may, in sociology, often have better grounds for

SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS 347

a more general than for a more particular conclusion,
as, in our suggested world- journey, we may be perfectly
certain that if we start from London in a due easterly
direction and keep travelling on in a straight line we
shall ultimately come back to London again from the
west. This does not exclude the necessity of studying
with the utmost care all the intervening country and
making many detours in order to arrive in the end at the
object which in the general plan is sure and simple.
So in the realm of public health. We know perfectly
well the general conditions for the avoidance of disease,
but it may be the most difficult problem to discover in
a particular village the cause of an outbreak of small-pox
and to take the necessary steps to exclude it.

Hence we arrive at the supreme necessity, in the
application of science to human affairs, of a twofold path.
We need the high or general line, based on the facts of
man's nature to the broad outlines of history, and we
need the careful plodding work of the investigator,
establishing the facts and tracing their connexion.
Neither can do without the other, neither can afford to
disparage the other. No time in history has shown more
clearly than the present the necessity of both, for we are
overwhelmed in the practical world by a complex pro-
blem which has come upon us from want of sufficient
knowledge and foresight, and the social atmosphere is
infected by a want of the cheerfulness and confidence
which spring from a sound general philosophy.

The complex practical problem is, of course, the
reparation of the losses due to the War and the restoration
of normal trade and finance. In this matter it would
seem that the facts surpassed the competence of the best
brains which tried to cope with them in 1918 and 1919.
No one at that time foresaw the financial coUapse, the
colossal difficulty of carrying out in any degree what was

348 SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS

calmly set down as an agreed obligation in the Treaty of
Versailles.

This growing complexity of human problems, without
a corresponding growth of the human brain to deal with
them, is perhaps the most serious obstacle which faces
the onward march of mankind. It is exemplified equally
on the theoretical and the practical field. The realm of
science is now so vast that a small subdivision of one of
its branches is enough to occupy the lifelong energies
of a devoted student who, even a hundred years ago,
might have hoped to acquire a competent acquaintance
with the whole. And in the practical sphere the affairs
of one region, which to the ancients seemed to embrace
the world, are now in one department of the British
Foreign Office, itself one member of the League of Nations.^
We need not despair of the human intellect : its material
organ, the brain, has demonstrably developed since
prehistoric times. But the spiritual organ which must
grapple with the problems of the future will not be
located in any one cranium: it will be the co-operative
working of many minds. Such co-operation has been
shown publicly in an Age of Conference; it has been
crowned recently in the newly formed committee of the
League of Nations for Intellectual Work. But it exists
everywhere where sound thinking on human affairs
is in process, and any action such as the exclusion
of German or Austrian professors from international
societies is a grave mutilation of general efficiency,
almost as harmful to those who inflict as to those
who suffer the exclusion. To render such co-operation
as effective as possible, to make the collective mind
function with something of the quickness and the

^ See Isaiah, chap, xix, where the communication of Assyria
and Egypt through Palestine is treated as the consummation of
World Peace.

SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS 349

decision of a good individual, is the highest problem of
organization.

Such is the necessary method both for social studies
and for social action in the modern world, but a general
theory and spirit are also needed to give a moving force
to the machine. Mount Everest could not be climbed
without a conviction of its possibihty and a hopeful
determination to do it. This is given in the social sphere
by the general theory of progress, based on the nature
of man and the known broad facts of history. He has
advanced from a lower to a higher state of existence,
for we cannot beheve that his recently acquired conscious-
ness and study of this advance will operate as a brake to
its further continuance. Man had been gaining science
for uncounted ages before he became a conscious philo-
sopher. Since he began to work at science consciously, the
growth has been immeasurably greater. We may expect
the same result to follow man's awakening to progress.
The progress was a fact long ages before it was detected
and its outlines described in a ' law '. The theorizing
will not destroy the movement but accelerate its rate.
The sadness of to-day and yesterday is but a trough
between the great advancing waves, the reaction against
a doctrine announced perhaps too loudly and with too
httle qualification by the earlier prophets. The later
generation of writers, with Anatole France at their head,
appreciate the greatness, are kindly to the weakness, and
hopeful but less confident of the future of mankind.

In such an atmosphere a general law of progress, if it
can be well founded on the facts, has a double part to
play. It is the greatest generahzation about man's
history into which the studies of particular movements
have to be fitted. If the general law is true we shall
judge the smaller movements according to the degree in
which they have contributed to the whole. But the law,

350 SCIENCE AND HUMAN AFFAIRS

if we may call it a law, is also an ideal. It describes
something which we have derived from a considera-
tion of man's natm'e before we turned to history for
its confirmation in social facts. In its ideal aspect socio-
logy inevitably touches ethics ; it becomes allied to, if
not an actual branch of, a science of values. But
it is its aspect as pure science which has concerned us
in this volume and especially in this essay. We start
from the principle that man being the social animal
par excellence, his progress consists in the development
of this quality: he becomes more social both by the
extension of his solidarity with other men now living
and also by the deeper sense of filiation with past genera-
tions which he gains from history. Our law is therefore
primarily a law of growing sociability. But man is also
the maker of organized knowledge, and the growth of
science therefore becomes a leading thread in any law of
progress and is connected with his increased sociability.
Co-operation, enlightened by knowledge, itself a social
product, produces great works of practical skill, the fruit
of past effort, the foundation of a more stable society
in future. Greater unity, greater knowledge, and greater
power, gained by the application of knowledge, — these
leading aspects of man's social evolution may be gathered
in one expression as the growth of the human spirit.

We have been following in this book the function of
science in determining this evolution, and we conclude
that, through science and the organization which it has
occasioned, our modern civilization has reached a state of
extension and stability which is a new and supremely
important factor for the future. We have to see to it
that this more closely-knit and richer social spirit is
adequately reflected in fuller and nobler personalities.
This is the task of education, and herein our law of pro-
gress points an ideal for the future as well as summing
up the achievements of the past.

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Marvin, Francis Sydney

Science and civilization

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