The Catholic Church and science

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THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
AND SCIENCE

LONDON

CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY

69 SOUTHWARK BRIDGE ROAD, S E.
1908

CONTENTS

Agnosticism.

By the Rev. John Gerard, S.J.

Modern Science and Ancient P".\ith
By the same.

Science and its Counterfeit.
By the same.

Some Scientifical Inexactitudes.
By the same.

Pantheism.

By William Matthews.

Reason and Instinct.

By the Rev. P. M. Northcote.

The Powers and Origin of the Sour.
By the same.

The Use ok Reason.
By the same.

Scientific Facts and Scientific Hypotheses.
By B. C. A. Windle, M.D., F.R.S.

Some Debts which Science owes to Catholics.
By the same.

The Decline of Darwinism.
By Walter Sweetman.

PRICE HALF-A-CROWN.
By the Rev. John Gerard, S.J.

Essays in Un-Natural History.

, This volume is made up of the three following, which may be obtained
separately, price One Shilling each. The pamphlets composing them may
also be obtained in numbers, price One Penny each.

SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS.

1. Mr.Grant Allen's Botanical Fables. 1 4. " Behold the Birds ofNthe Air."

2. Who painted the Flowers ? 5. How Theories are Manufactured.

3. Some Wayside Problems. | 6. Instinct and its Lessons.

SCIENCE OR ROMANCE?

1. A Tangled Tale. 4. The Empire of Man.

2. Missing Links. | 5. The New Genesis.

3. The Game of Speculation. 1 6. The Voices of Babel.

EVOLUTIONARY PHILOSOPHY AND
COMMON SENSE.

1. "The Comfortable Word 'Evolu- I 4. Evolution and Thought.

tio"-' " 5. Agnosticism.

2. Foundations of Evolution 6. Evolution and Design.

3. Mechanics of Evolution. | 7. Un-Natural History.

AGNOSTICISM

Bv THE REV. JOHN {;1:RARI), S.J.

We are all familiar with the term "Agnosticism," and
recognize the attitude of mind which it denotes as the
most formidable antagonist of Christianity at the present
day. It must therefore seriously claim the attention of all
who would not only preserve the treasure of their own
souls unimpaired, but likewise render assistance to the
multitude of their fellows, within and without the Church,
who, as one of these latter not long ago expressed it to me,
are suffering from the sickness of bewildered faith.

But, frequently as the term is employed, it is very doubt
ful whether the great majority of those who use it to
describe even their own position, attiibute to it its proper
and legitimate sense, and accorJingly in order to discuss
the question, it behoves us tirst to make sure what it is
that we are talking about.

There can, 1 think, be little doubt that very many of
those who style themselves " Agnostics " signify that they
are atheists, that they deny the existence of God, believing
it to have been disproved by the discoveries of modern
science, which, in the words of M. Caro, conducts God
with honour to its frontiers, thanking Him for His pro-
visional services, which it finds no longer required. This
creed is often called " Agnosticism," but it is not that to
which the title should be applied.

The genuine agnostic, as his creed is described by such
authorities as Professor Huxley, who gave it its name, and
Sir Leslie Stephen, indulges in no dogmatic denials, wliich

' A Paper read at the Catholic Conference, Brighton, Sept. 25, 1906,

2 Agnosticism

he holds to be as irrational as dogmatic assertions. He
will not say that there is no God, that man has not an
immortal soul, that there is no eternal future in store for
him of weal or woe, according to the manner of his life.
What our agnostic does maintain is that in regard of all
such matters we can knoiv nothing, and that it is therefore
mere idle waste of time and trouble to concern ourselves
about them. His principle is that we can obtain true
knowledge only by means of sensible experience, that is
to say, only by means of such observations and experi-
ments as fall within the province of science ; and since
such a mode of research can obviously teach us nothing
about the beliefs and hopes of religion, he concludes that
we know nothing, nor ever can know, or even con.ceive the
possibility of knowing, anything concerning these.' Ac-
cordingly, Professor Huxley lays it down that to occupy
ourselves with such matters is as futile a proceeding as to
inquire what are the politics of the inhabitants of the
moon.^

It is thus clear that very different meanings are attached
to the term " Agnosticism," while it is no less obvious that
they are equally destructive of Christianity, and even of
religion in any intelligible sense of the word. If we can
knosv nothing of the existence of God and our relations
towards Him, He is non-existent, so far as we are con-
cerned, as is a rainbow for the blind ; and as reasonable
men we shall be forced to adopt Professor Huxley's advice,
and dismiss entirely from our mind all such inquiries, by
means of which we can no more accomplish anything than
a squirrel can travel back to his native wood by revolving
in his cage.

It is to the consideration of agnosticism in its proper or
genuine sense that I shall confine my observations; not
only because this appears to be the only legitimate mode
of treating the subject, but, even more, because in this
guise it is undoubtedly most dangerous. That science has
discovered anything which disproves the fundamental ideas
of religion, is an assertion that cannot seriously be made,

' Professor Ray Lankester, in the Times, May 19, 1903.
' Lay Sermons (" The Physical Basis of Life ").

Agnosticism 3

and in consc4uence, as Sir Leslie Stephen allows,' Dog-
matic Atheism is, to say the least, a rare phase of opinion,
— rare we should add amongst real students, though sadly
too common amongst the less educated masses, who pin
their faith to the confident but unscientific teaching of such
writers as Professor Haeckel.

Genuine agnosticism, on the other hand, bases itself
upon a principle which undoubtedly contains truth, — and
as we all know, a half-truth is the most dangerous of errors.
The human intellect, it rightly declares, is limited. There
are boundaries which it is wholly unable to overstep, and
it is our duty as honest men frankly to recognize our
limitations, and not to dream dreams as to what there is
beyond the frontier at which we are forced to stop, and
then to persuade ourselves and others that these dreams
are realities.

So far, it is evident, the agnostic is right. No doubt our
intellect is limited, — very limited. No doubt also it is
our duty to confess as much, and not to pretend to know-
ledge which we do not, and cannot, possess. We part
company with him when he goes on to make the assump-
tion, already noticed, that in one way only can we arrive
at a knowledge of truth, namely by the empirical method
of observation and experiment. Whatever transcends the
narrow limits of experience, and is thus "metempirical,"
says Sir Leslie Stephen, is forbidden ground for the
intellect, which is there deprived of the very breath of its
life, and becomes as impotent as our lungs, or the wings
of a bird, would be beyond the confines of the atmosphere.
But, necessarily, theology, in any sense, professes to exist
in this impossible sphere, and therefore, in his view, it is
plainly an imposture. Not only, he continues, are we
incapable of knowing all about God, or of fully com-
prehending His nature and attributes, but we cannot know
anything about Him, not even that He exists, for His
existence cannot be demonstrated by observation and
experiment.

Such is the position which the agnostic represents as
being the only reasonable one, and we reply that not only
' An Agnostic'' s Apdoi:}'.

4 Ag7iosticism

is it altogether unreasonable, but that if we adopt it we
must renounce all knowledge, not only concerning God
and the truths of religion, but of much else of which
no man doubts, and even concerning the truths of science
herself.

For it is a patent fact that in no single branch of inquiry
can the mind stop where observation and experiment cease
to be available ; and, were it to stop there, it would in-
evitably deprive what observation and experiment have
taught it of all possible significance. . Take, for example,
the province of Physics. This deals with two factors,
Matter and Force. What do we know, scientifically, about
them ? Of Matter, which we can observe, and on which
we can experiment, we know a little, a very little, and
every fresh discovery does but make it more obvious how
little this is. But Force ! As to what it is, science knows
just nothing at all. We see its results, or at least pheno-
mena which we are forced to ascribe to its action, on the
principle that every effect must have a cause. But the
nature of that cause is absolutely dark, for we cannot get
at it to observe or try our experiments. We know, for
instance, that stones dropped from the hand fall to earth,
and we say that this is due to the attraction of gravitation.
In reality we knoiv no more, from mere observation, apart
from inference, than that these stones behave as if there
were such an attraction ; and when we try to pass further,
and imagine what this attraction may be, we speedily
discover so many perplexities that Sir John Herschel called
it the " mystery of mysteries." As a well-known man of
science has lately put the matter ' : —

" Physics knows nothing of Force as an eflficient cause of
the accelerations with which it deals. The planets are in
motion round the sun ; the molecules of crystals move in
an orderly fashion. What makes either planet or molecule
move we simply do not know, as men of science Under
assignable conditions, they do move, and there's an end on't
— for science."

But because she is thus utterly ignorant of the nature of
Force, which lies beyond the limits of observation and

' Principal Lloyd Morgan in the Tributu, February lo, 1906.

Agnosticism 5

experiment, does science declare her inability to be certain
even of its existence? To do so would be to stultify her-
self and reduce all her domain to hopeless chaos-. She
could not predict, as do our almanack-makers, the course of
the earth and the other planets during the coming year, did
she not unhesitatingly assume that gravitation, however in-
comprehensible to her, will continue to act and to hold these
bodies in their several paths round the sun ; for were this
to cease, they would fly off into space. Similarly, multiform
as are the uses to which we have learnt to put electricity,
no man has the faintest idea what electricity is ; and, in
the words of the writer I have just quoted, " Biology
knows nothing of vital force as an efficient cause of the
phenomenon with which it deals."

There' are other instances in which science is powerless,
not only to pass beyond phenomena to that, which though
itself imperceptible, is implied by them, but even, by any
method of her own, to verify the phenomena th./mselves.
Such is the case when they are phenomena, not of matter,
but of mind. This is manifest in regard of jesthetic. \\'hat
test can science apply to distinguish between the poetic
excellence of the "Iliad" or "Hamlet," and that of the
rhymesters who supply our music-halls; or between a
picture by Turner and the sign of a public-house? Yet
have we any doubt whatever that there is all the difference
in the world ? We are more certain of this than that the
earth goes round the sun.

Still more imperiously does this truth force itself upon us
in regard of the moral law. Whatever may be their systems
and professions all men are forced practically to agree that
some things are good and others bad ; some lines of
conduct right and others wrong; and that no power on
earth can change their character, so as to make benevolence,
generosity, and truthfulness evil, and exalt cruelty, selfish-
ness, and fraud in their place. As Mr. Balfour says ' :—

" The two subjects on which professors of every creed.

theological and anti-theological, seem least anxious to differ,

are the general substance of the Moral I^w, and the

character of the sentiments with which it should be regarded.

■ Foundatiotts of Belief \^\^^\^ Edition), p. 13.

As'nosticism

ii

That it is worthy of all reverence ; that it demands our
ungrudging submission ; and that we owe it not merely
obedience, but love — these are commonplaces which the
preachers of all schools vie with each other in proclaiming."

Here, then, is something in regard of which by the
common consent of mankind, we have arrived at certitude,
towards which science can by no possibility contribute any-
thing. She can no more di-;criminate between good and
evil than between beauty and ugliness, nor can she offer
any explanation as to why it should be man's duty to reverse
the conduct of what many, professing to speak in her name,
represent to us as our evolutionary ancestors. It is not
science but conscience that witnesses to the law, and
(Conscience is nowise "scientific," for it refuses to argue, and
appeals only to its own evidence in issuing its ptfremptory
prohibitions or commands. Nevertheless, the most typical
agnostics have no hesitation in accepting with fullest assent
what comes to them in this non-scientific or " metam-
pirical " manner. Professor Hu.Kley, for example, tells
us that ' —

" We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance,
and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try and make
the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable
and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered
it." But how is any such duty made "plain " to us ? Most
assuredly, not by any method of scientific observation and
experiment. Agnostic science tells us that man has been
evolved through the survival of the fittest, in the struggle
for existence, and that the quality which enabled his
progenitors to survive, was their utter disregard for others,
whom they ruthlessly stamped out whenever they stood in
their own way. Whence came the total change of principle
when man appeared upon the scene? — for how great is the
change some of the ultra-partizans of the new school
demonstrate by rushing into extravagance in the opposite
direction, and declaring that our duty is to forget ourselves
altogether, and think only of the good of others. Nay, it
has even been maintained, not only that the claims of
patriotism must vanish, as tinged with selfishness, giving

' Hume, English Men of Letters, p. 58.

Agnosticism 7

place to world-citizenship, but that should we in the future-
establish relations with the in'uibitatits of other planets,
"Our altruism must widen its embrace beyond the limits of
the human family."' It is quite evident that, however
constantly they may have the name of science on their lips,
it is not through her that men arrive at such conclusions.

We may obviously go further, and ask how the funda-
mental principle of agnosticism itself can be warranted by
science That principle, as we have already heard it, is
that omy by means of observation and experiment can any
real 'knowledge be acquired.

But how can observation and experiment establish such
a principle? How can positive means of acquiring know-
ledge establish the negative conclusion that no other means
of acquiring knowledge are possible ? To say this would
be like saying that the sense of touch can avail, not only
to demonstrate the reality of objects within its reach, but
moreover to prove the non-reality of those which we cannot
feel but only see. How can observation and experiment
demonstrate anything either for or against the pretensions
of other means for obtaining knowledge, which they are,
confessedly, as powerless to examine as are our most
sensitive nerves to verify the existence of the luminiferous
ether ?

Thus, in laying down his first principle of argumentation,
the agnostic contradicts it, by accepting it as true, in the
very same breath in which he declares that he can have no
sufficient warrant of its truth.

Here in fact we encounter another example of the fatal
defect which attaches to any purely negative system. As
every tyro in logic has learnt, the man who declares that
we can be sure of nothing, refutes his own assertion by
being sure that we cannot be sure ; he who asserts that no
man can ever tell the truth, necessarily would have it
understood that he himself is telling the truth in making
such a statement. In like manner, our agnostics declare
their fundamental principle to be certain, although— on
their own showing — we can have no grounds whatever for
accepting it. They desire to exclude sources of knowledge,

'- Saleeby, The Cycle of Life accoiditig to Modem Scieme, p. 3.

8 Agnosticism

the elimination of which would at once introduce intel-
lectual vacuum, and make it impossible for us to know
more of the universe or of ourselves than do the beasts
of the field, which have senses as good as ours, or better,
but have not mind And so impossible is the position
thus created that the agnostic never thinks of applying his
own principles save in the one instance of religion, and it
is, indeed, abundantly evident that they were never seriously
meant to be applied to anything else.

Can it be said, therefore, that as concerns religion the
agnostic principle assumes a different character, and can
claim a validity which it obviously lacks in other fields of
knowledge ? This is, no doubt, the assumption at the back
of the agnostic mind, an assumption which in effect pre-
judges the whole question. But how can it be said that
the processes of reasoning upon which believers rely are
alien in their nature from those which are recognized as
sound and legitimate in other branches of inquiry ? As we
have seen, in physics we accept the existence and efficiency
of forces altogether inscrutable to us, because of phenomena
which we cannot attempt to explain without assuming their
existence. In aesthetics and ethics w^e ground all our
philosophy upon phenomena which are utterly beyond the
reach of observation and experiment, but to which we
nevertheless assent with absolute certitude.

In exactly the same manner does the Natural Theologian
argue from Nature to Nature's God. As it has been
excellently expressed by a recent writer ' : —

" Taking the three factors o'. the universe — matter, force,
and mind — we find this state of things. The ' philo-
sophers ' see as much as they want to see, and no more.
These three mysterious entities lie equally behind the veil,
are equally ' metaphysical conceptions.' Natural pheno-
mena bear witness to the existence of all three in exactly
the same way, viz., by special characteristics from which we
necessarily infer the existence of each. From the reality
of these phenomena, we infer a real basis, matte?- ; from
their actual occurrence, we infer an agent or power at work,
/bfce ; from their orderly character we infer a controlling
' Gaynor, T/te New Materialism, p. 14.

Agnosticism 9

and guiding influence, mmd. Why are two of these in-
ercnces valid, although they point to things ' behind the
veil,' and the third is to be regarded as invalid hecause it
too points to something behind the veil ? If we are able
to read the existence of two of these things in their effects,
why not of the third as well ? The evidence is as plain in
one case as another."

It is not easy to understand how such a line of argument
can be condemned as iinscientilic and illegitimate, unless
we are prepared similarly to treat those which science
herself constantly employs. Nor does the fact of har-
monious order, so strikingly evident in nature, stand alone
as furnishing the basis of inference. To many minds the
phenomena of the moral law will appeal even more forcibly.
As we have seen, there is undeniably a practically universal
consensus amongst mankind that what we style virtues are
good, and what we style vices are evil : that it is our duty
to practise the one and eschew the other ; that it is no
human enactment that has invested them with their
respective characters, or imposed obligaiions in respect
of them, and that no human power, no decree of kings or
parliaments, could alter that character, or dispense from
that obligation. Here is a phenomenon whicli like other
phenomena postulates a cause, and despite the mists of
words with which some philosophies would endeavour to
bridge the gulf, but one intelligible explanation has ever
been discovered, namely, that of theism. According to
this, it is the Eternal, Self-existent, First Cause— God, —
who, making man to His own image and likeness, implanted
in his soul that conscience which is, as has been said, the
monitor from whose judgement there is no ap[)eal, and
whose office it is to convey to us the will of our Creator.

Such are in brief some of the lines of argument by which
we are led to the conclusions to which, as the agnostic
declares, no process of reasoning can possibly lead us.
I do not cite them for the purpose of directly discussing
the great question with which they deal, but only as enabling
to judge of their character, and that of the agnostic assump-
tion which seeks to put them out of court, and to deny the
possibiUty of arriving at the knowledge of truth by iheii

lO Agnosticism

means. And I would ask all sensible men whether in thus
reasoning we do not follow the very method according to
which science herself teaches us to argue.

One more observation before I conclude what I have to
say regarding this aspect of my subject. The question we
have in hand is one that requires to be treated by logic,
not by quoting the authority of names, however great ; but
of authority something requires to be said, for nothing
probably does so much to make agnosticism popular, as
the idea, sedulously fostered by many of its exponents, that
all scientific men are necessarily its votaries. But this
is a most monstrous and groundless assumption, as a very
slight examination is sufficient to show. Whereas agnos-
ticism, as Sir Leslie Stephen tells us, declares any knowledge
regarding God to be absolutely impossible for us, such
eminent men of science as Professors Stewart and Tait tell
us,' on the contrary, that the existence of a Deity who
is the Creator and upholder of all things is for them
" absolutely self-evident." Lord Kelvin not long ago ^
declared that " science positively affirms creative and
directive power, which she compels us to accei)t as an
article of belief." In the same manner thirty-two years
earlier, he had told the British Association in his presiden-
tial address,3 that "overpowering proofs of intelligence and
benevolent design lie around us ; showing to us through
nature the influence of a free will, and teaching us that all
living beings depend upon one ever-acting Creator and
Ruler." So, another president, Sir William Siemens, told
the same body* that "all knowledge must lead up to one
great result, that of an intelligent recognition of the Creator
through His works." It would be easy to multiply similar
testimonies, but I will content myself with naming some
of those who might furnish them — Sir John Herschel,
Faraday, Clerk Maxwell, Sir Gabriel Stokes, Pasteur. And
the greatest of them all. Sir Isaac Newton, undoubtedly
recognized the limitations of our intelligence. He likened
his own unparalleled discoveries, to the shells picked up by
a child on the sea beach, while the ocean rolled before him

• The Unseen Universe, p. 47. - See the Times, May 2, 1903.

3 Edinburgh, 1871. •* 1S84.

Agnosticism 1 1

unexplored. But this recognition did not hinder him from
holding that to treat of God is a necessary part of Natural
Philosophy.'

There are, therefore, those who, while well acquainted
with science and scientific method, know nothing of the
agnosticism which is claimed as the result of such
acquaintance.

Thus far, we have met the agnostic system on its own
ground, and examined its root-principle in the light of pure
reason. But, necessary though it be for us to be ready thus
to deal with the attacks of our adversaries, and reply to
their arguments, it is not by such means that a practical
antidote to the malady of doubt and disbelief is to Ije
obtained. The man who enjoys security against them is
one who relies upon something far more efficacious than
logic and argument to sustain his faith, namely, on the
knowledge of God. which comes of his own personal
experience in the practice of religion. The Catholic who
says his prayers, who frequents the sacrarnents, who strives
to live in communion with God, has means of knowledge
concerning Him, of which the unbelieving philosopher can
have not the faintest conception.

Natural theology, the knowledge of God which we can
acquire philosophically by the light of Nature alone, is no
doubt indispensable, as laying the foundations for some-
thing more, but it is not this which has in fact been
appointed as the means whereby we are to arrive at the
possession of truth ; nor are its teachings adequate for the
recjuirements of our souls as they actually are. Obviously,
it can teach us nothing about Christianity, of which mere
reason can know nothing. What it can tell regarding God
of necessity falls far short of what He wishes us to know.
Of necessity, the elementary notions which human reason
naturally attaches to the idea of a Supreme Being, are the
simplest of the Divine attributes — power, wisdom, and
goodness, which it therefore sets forth as if they wore all,
and amongst them, as Cardinal Newman says,' it has most

' Principia, Schol. Gen.

^ Christianity and Physical Science (Lectures on University
Subjects).

1 2 Agnosticism

to say concerning power, and least coicerning goodness.
Even conscience, "our great internal teacher ot religion,
which, more than any other natural source of knowledge,
teaches us not only that God is, but what He is, providing
for the mind a real image of Him, as a medium of
worship,"' represents Him primarily, and before all else,
as our Judge, and the attribute on which its witness is so
clear as even to blind us to all others, is His retributive
justice. But this is not the aspect under which He desires
His people to regard Him ; and, as we know from our own
experience and that of others, it is not in this character
that He most powerfully appeals to the hearts of men, and
secures their allegiance and service. It is not His will to
leave us to the light of our unaided reason. From the first
beginnings of our race He has ever superadded revelation,
which He has placed within the reach of all, not of the
learned and wise alone, but of the humblest and rudest,
provided they were men of good will. And this is a point
of prime importance : for if there be a God to know whom
is the supreme necessity for men, and if He desires to be
known by them — in other words, if there be true religion
at all — then the obtaining of such knowledge cannot
possibly be d(j{)endent upon the possession of faculties and
powers of intellect which not one man in ten thousand
possesses.

This being so, it is evidently a fatal mistake so to occupy
ourselves with the arguments furnished by reason solely, as
to make it seem, and perhaps ourselves to fancy, that in
them alone is the justification of our faith to be found,
losing sight, or allowing others to lose sight, of what is the
real strength of our position. It is not by arguments, how-
ever cogent, that men are converted or that their hearts
are touched, and we shall never arrive at anything satisfac-
tory regarding religion if we discuss it like a poinc of law or
a maxim of political economy.

" I do not want " (says Newman), "to be converted by a
smart syllogism ; if I am asked to convert others by it, I
say plainly I do not care to overcome their reason without

' Graiiunar of Assent, p. 385.

Agnosticisnt 1 3

touching their hearts ; I wish to deal, not with contro-
versiaUsts, but with inquirers." '

And inquirers are just what our agnostic friends are not.
They will not even consider the pos.sibility of Christianity
being anything but fable and delusion, and so long as they
remain in this state of mind we can have no hope of doing
anything, but answering their arguments, as I have en-
deavoured to do, and demonstrating that we are not afraid
to meet them on their own terms and look them squarely
in the face.

Nor does it by any means follow, as will of course be
objected, that because we will not restrict ourselves to the
teachings of pure reason, we therefore disparage it and
prove ourselves irrational and unscientific. Far from it.
It is our reason, and especially, as has been said, the argu-
ments it draws from the facts of conscience, that lead us to
the recognition of God, and convince us that being, as He
must be, supremely good. He lias undoubtedly provided
some means whereby we may obtain that knowledge con-
cerning Him, an ineradicable craving for which He has
implanted in our souls, — some way to Him accessible to all
— " so plain that the wayfarers, though fools, shall not err
therein." We look round the wor. .1, and we find that the
Catholic Church, and she alone, claims and ever has
claimed to furnish these means, and that in her teaching
millions of men in every age have found peace of soul,
feeling that they had obtained what they wanted. By such
marks our reason recognizes her as a creation which no
mere human power can explain. As Newman writes^ :^

" The great Note of an ever-enduring avtus fidelinm, with
a fi.xed organization, a unity of jurisdiction, a poHtical
greatness, a continuity of existence in all places and times,
a suitableness to all classes, ranks, and callings, an ever-
energizing life, an untiring, ever-evolving history, is her
evidence that she is the creation of God, and the repre-
sentative and home of Christianity."

Thus being convinced that here we have found the
divinely-appointed teacher, our common sense bids us

' Grammar 0/ Assent, p. 419.

■ Essays Critical and Hisiorica/, note on Essay IX.

1 4 Agnosticism

submit ourselves to the Church, as otherwise she would
have no reason for -existing.

When we do so, and know her from within, we at once
become cognizant of much which to those outside her is as
imperceptible as the forms and hues of a painted window
are to those without the building in which it is placed.
Just as a child brought up on the system of Plato's
Republic in a State institution, knowing nothing of father,
mother, brother, or sister, could have no notion of the
charms of home, or family ties, so those who have not been
privileged to enter the household of Faith, can have no
conception of the overpowering sense of security and peace
which her faithful children enjoy, and in which they find
the most convincing assurance that God is there, while the
unerring instinct with which she divines and provides for
all the wants and needs of humanity, " is in itself a proof
that [she] is really the supply of them." '

Here, as I have said, is the real strength of our position,
the true foundation of our Faith, if we build aright. No
man will ever believe that he can know nothing of God,
who has felt Him working within his soul, and has learnt
to recognize His voice whispering comfort, encouragement,
or reproof.

In arguing upon such grounds, we of course expose our-
selves to the obvious objection that the evidence to which
we appeal is notoriously subject, more than any other, to
hallucination and delusion, for does not every fanatic and
visionary rely confidently upon the testimony of his own
inner consciousness ?

This is undoubtedly true ; but it proves no more than
that here as elsewhere some men may fall into error — it
certainly does not prove that none can find the truth
any more than the undoubted fact that many have false
taste in art proves that there is none which is true.
Certainly, from the undeniable fact of the frequency of
such errors, we cannot in reason draw the conclusion that
such direct action of the Creator on the soul of His creature
is impossible, or impossible to recognize with certainty, and

' Gramma)- of Assent^ p. 481.

Agnosticism 1 5

unless we can do this we must a[i[)ly in each instance the
tests which common sense suggests.

And here, as is evident, the sceptic or agnostic can con-
tribute nothing towards a solution, for avowedly he has no
experience of what can be judged by experience alone.
The behever is in a totally different position. The uni-
versal craving of mankind to know something of their
Maker and their destiny — ^or, in other words, their yearning
for religion — -is a fact which, as even agnostic philosophers
admit, cannot be without significance. As the migratory
instinct of salmon or swallow is inexplicable unless we
understand its goal, the ocean, or the sunny south, so this
restless longing of the human soul to obtain enlightenment
concerning the deep problems of the universe, points to
some means by which such longings can be satisfied. And
when we find a religion by which as a matter of fact they
can be satisfied, and satisfied in such a manner as to accord
with the teachings of reason, however far they transcend
these teachings, and exactly to harmonize with the voice
of conscience, we have what we may even style a scientific
argument in favour of that religion.

And here we discover the special and exclusive strength
of the position of the Catholic. He does not stand alone,
or rely merely upon his own private and personal discern-
ment. He has with him the Communion of the Saints,
the millions who for two thousand years, in every region of
the earth, in every race and every class of society, have
found peace for their souls where he finds it, and recognized
the workings of the sam.e spirit which he recognizes. It is
this which alone has made the history of the Church possible,
which has made her what even tho.se who are not her
children acknowledge her to be, the most marvellous Empire
the world has ever seen, and it makes a strong denidnd
upon our credulity to ask us to believe that mere illusion
and self-deception have been able to accomplish results
which neither philosophy nor science herself can ever hoi)e
to emulate.

Over and above all this, there is the supernatural virtue
of Faith, which, as every Catholic child learns from hi-^
Catechism, enables us to believe without doubting wh;ii.\. .

1 6 Agnosticism

God has revealed, and which invests the knowledge thus
imparted with a character of absolute certainty, marking it
off as something quite different from any other. Like other
virtues, this may be forfeited by neglect and disobedience,
as it can be fomented and cherished by fidelity and sub-
mission. As I have already said, he is truly secured against
the perils we have been considering who can rely for his
defence, not only, or even so much, on the weapons of his
intellect, as on those aids which are gi\-en to those wliose
hearts are open to God's visitations, which they strive to
merit by humble and faithful service. For such as these
there is no danger lest, intoxicated with the pride of human
knowledge, they should forget that there is knowledge
still higher, and immeasurably more needful for man,
towards which they will find that every kind of knowledge
rightly understood does but point the way. As the
illustrious Pasteur said, with -whose words we may fitly
conclude : —

" The result of all my studies has been to bring me to
have the faith of the Breton peasant. Had I pushed them
further I should probably have even the faith of the Breton
peasant's wife." '

' F. Bournand, Pasteur, sa Vie et ses CEuvres, p. 262

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY
THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, LONDON.

/;

MODERN SCIENCE AND
ANCIENT FAITH.'

BY THE REV. JOHN GERARD, S.J.

THERE can be no doubt that many minds
are sorely distressed by what is termed
the conflict between Science and Faith.
Beyond all else, this is pre-eminently the age
of scientific discovery : of this characteristic we
are proud, and most justly proud. Never before
have men pried so far into the secrets of nature ;
never has the human mind exhibited itself so
triumphantly as the most marvellous of all the
forces within the range of our experience, by
forcing all others to yield up tiieir secrets and
reveal their operations, or even to perform those
operations at man's bidding and for the fulfilment
of his purposes. And when with each advance
of knowledge it is strenuously proclaimed by a

' A paper read at the Catholic Conference at Hanley,
September 30, 1896.

li

2 MODERN SCIENCE AND ANCIENT FAITH.

host of writers, that one more death-blow has
been dealt not only to Christianity but to all
belief in the supernatural, and that unless we
choose to shut our eyes against the light now
streaming in upon us, we must be content to
recognize ourselves but as creatures of a day,
called into being by blind natural forces and
inevitably destined to sink again into the abyss
whence we have come, " melting like streaks of
morning mist into the infinite azure of the past"
— that there is no such thing as a fatherly
Providence watching over us, and no hereafter
in which we may hope to reap a harvest that
shall not decay — when, I say, we hear this new
gospel of misery put forth in the name of
Science, as it is every day, there can be no
doubt as to the gravity of the question which
is raised, nor can we wonder at the disquiet
and anxiety which is so widely engendered. If
it be true that increase of human knowledge
contradicts the beliefs we have been accustomed
to cherish, if the discoveries we are able to make
by means of our natural faculties, are in reality
incompatible with the foundations of our faith,
then undoubtedly the most formidable obstacle
the world has ever seen is set up to hinder
men from believing.

But is all this true ? That is the question we

/f

Modern science and AncIent faith.

have now to discuss, and as a contribution to
such discussion I can attempt no more, within
the Hmits to which I must confine myself, than
briefly to recapitulate a few of the chief reasons
which show that the assumptions with which we
are confronted, are not only untrue, but the
reverse of the truth ; that the case of oui
opponents rests upon arguments not only in-
valid but preposterous.

And here I would remark that, as it seems
to me, the champions of our own party are
often to blame for the line they adopt. While
the apostles of unbelief are loud-mouthed and
confident, laying down with assurance what they
declare to be the law, the defenders of orthodo.xy
are too often either timid and apologetical, or
strenuous in the wrong way — exhibiting their
want of acquaintance with the true nature of
the teachings they undertake to refute. In either
case much harm is done. The impression is
produced that we can meet our antagonists only
by misrepresenting them, and that if we venture
to look them fairly in the face we are inevitably
forced to make a pitiable display of our im-
potence, and have to content ourselves with a
feeble attempt to show that after all the case
against us is not absolutely proved, but that
some loophole of escape may yet be found.

10

4 MODERN SCIENCE AND ANCIENT FAITH.

This is not the temper which is Hkely to
vindicate the ways of God to man. The in-
visible, as He Himself tells us, is made known
to us by the visible, and the more we under
stand of the world whereof our senses can take
cognizance, the more should we learn of Him
who made it what it is, the more should we
be drawn to mount from nature up to nature's
God. And such, without question, is the fact.

Coming now to the matter itself, it is in the
first place to be observed, that although, as I
have said, the number of those is legion who
undertake to speak in the name of Science, and
interpret her lessons in a sense contrary to Faith,
they are not as a rule entitled to the character
they assume. It is the popular "scientist," to
borrow the hideous title he has invented, un-
encumbered with sound knowledge, who finds
all plain and easy where men far greater than he
find mystery, who scatters abroad his crude and
random infidelity with the reckless assurance
which ignorance begets. When we turn to
those who have the best right to speak, we
find, in general, a ver}' different tone. I need
not dwell on the opinion of the greatest of
scientific discoverers. Sir Isaac Newton, who
declared that natural philosophy without God
was an impossibility ; for he lived two centuries

^/

MODERN SCIENCE AND ANCIENT FAITH. 5

ago, and our self-sufficient generation might
therefore decline to accept him as a witness.
But Lord Kelvin is still with us, and has not
he declared that " overpowering proofs of in-
telligence and benevolent design lie around us,
showing us through nature the influence of a
free will, and teaching us that all living beings
depend upon one ever-acting Creator and Ruler " ?
Another of its Presidents, Sir William Siemens,
likewise told the British Association that "all
knowledge must lead up to one great result, an
intelligent recognition of the Creator through His
works." " We assume as absolutely self-evident,"
wTote Professors Stewart and Tait, " the existence
of a Deity, who is the Creator and Ruler of all
things." In a like sense speak Faraday, Clerk-
Maxwell, Sir John Herschel, Sir Gabriel Stokes,
Sir Joseph Dawson, to name but a few of those
who — none will be bold enough to deny — stand
in the very front rank of modern science.

So much for authority. When we turn to
scrutinize the subject itself, this must strike us
in the first place. The main point upon which
the so-called rationalistic argument is based, is
that experimental science is not able, by the
methods in which it deals, to discover what
must be, if it exists at all, altogether beyond
its scope, and would be absolutely discredited

^>

6 MODERN SCIENCE AND ANCIENT FAITH.

if it could be so discovered. Science deals with
the forces and properties of matter ; what is not
material it cannot touch. But no one ever
imagined that God or the soul of man are
anything material. On the contrary, if we could
see them or touch them, if we could weigh
them in a balance, or detect them in a test-
tube, or affect them with a battery, they would
be thereby shown not to be what we believe
them. Accordingly, to say that because Science
— meaning by that term experimental science —
has nothing to report concerning them, therefore
they do not exist, is like saying that there is no
beauty in the poems of Shakespeare because
chemistry fails to discover it, or in Westminster
Abbey because though we examine its stones
and timbers with the most powerful of micro-
scopes we shall see nothing of it.

This leads naturally to another reflection.
Science, as I have said, is justly proud of the
advances she has made in recent years, and it
is in the name of these her triumphs that the
claim is advanced on her behalf to be the
supreme instructress of man as to all which it
is possible to know. But although, without
doubt, the field of our knowledge appears very
wide when we compare it with that of former
ages, it is altogether paltry and insignificant in

MODERN SCIENCE AND ANCIENT FAITH. 7

comparison with our ignorance. To hear some
men talk we might imagine that we liave now
sounded the depths of the universe, traced all
effects to their causes, and torn aside every
veil which shrouded the operations of Nature,
forcing her to disclose to us the secrets she
most jealously guarded. As a matter of fact
we are still, to use Sir Isaac Newton's well-
known simile, like little children picking up shells
on the shore of the ocean. It may have receded
a little more for us than for our ancestors, and
enabled us to find some brilliant objects which
they could not ; but for us as for them its
impenetrable depths defy all scrutiny. Nor only
this. It may be said with absolute truth that
what discoveries we have been enabled to make
do but intensify the mystery which lies beyond,
and each scrap of knowledge we are able to
glean brings with it fresh and perplexing
problems which we are utterly unable to solve.
To say that modern research has eliminated
mystery from nature, is like saying that the
telescope has done away with the wonders of
the heavens. As an example, we may consider
the ultimate elements of which the material
universe is composed. In old days it was
supposed that there were but four elements —
earth, air, fire, and water. Now we have dis-

V1

8 MODERN SCIENCE AND ANCIENT FAITH.

covered that, in round numbers, there are about
eighty. Have we therefore removed all mystery ?
It would be more true to say that we have
multiplied it twenty-fold. We know something
of the behaviour in certain circumstances of the
atoms into which these various elements are
ultimately resolvable, but beyond this we know
nothing. As Lord Salisbury put it in his pre-
sidential address to the British Association two
years ago : " What the atom of each element
is ; whether it is a movement, or a thing, or a
vortex, or a point having inertia ; whether there
is any limit to its divisibility, and, if so, how
that limit is imposed ; whether the long list of
elements is final, or whether any of them have
any common origin — all these questions remain
surrounded by a darkness as profound as ever."

As to the causes of things, Science has never
discovered one. She has doubtless followed
up the chain of inter-dependent phenomena,
of which we frequently speak as causes and
effects, to a point higher than has ever been
done before ; but at whatever point she is forced
to relinquish her scrutiny, the problem of the
true cause remains inscrutable as ever. Of what
discovery are we so proud as of Newton's great
law of gravitation ? Old philosophers knew as
well as we that a stone will fall if it be dropped,

7>

MODERN SCIENCE AND ANCIENT FAITH. 9

and they explained the phenomenon by declaring
that every body naturally tends to the centre of
its own sphere. We know better, and call such
an explanation no explanation at all. It is the
attraction of the earth, we say, which explains it
all, for according to the formula which we learn
at school, every material substance attracts every
other with a force proportional directly to its
mass, and inversely to the square of the distance.
No doubt this is a great advance on the old
philosophy ; but are we, after all, very much
nearer to the root of the matter ? Why do
bodies so attract one another ? And how ?
By what means is the attraction conveyed ?
What is it ? How is it that the pull of the
earth beneath my feet, upon the roof above my
head, passes through my body, and yet I am not
conscious of it ? The pull of the earth upon
myself I feel — it is what I call my weight — but
not that exerted upon other substances. So
manifold are the difficulties with which this
subject is surrounded, that Sir John Hcrschel
termed that force of gravitation, of which we
speak so familiarly, the "mystery of mysteries,"
and Faraday thought the great law a paradox.
Yet even were our ideas concerning its operation
far in advance of what they are, it would still
remain true that we have not arrived at the

%>>

lO MODERN SCIENCE AND ANCIENT FAITH.

ultimate cause which can account for so familiar
a phenomenon as the falling of a stone or of an
apple, till we have discovered what or who it is
that made that which makes it fall.

In connection with this topic it is well to
remember that what Science can do is to discover
"laws," and this is only another name for facts.
Recently, for instance, we have been astounded
to learn that there are rays of some kind, called
X rays because we know nothing of their nature
except that they are neither light-rays nor heat-
rays, which can penetrate our flesh and reveal our
skeletons. That is to say, we have just found
out something in nature which has always been
there without our knowing it. But too often it
seems to be assumed that our achievements are
far more important. Of a recent eminent man
of science it was said, that having detected a
certain substance and called it " protoplasm," he
seemed to fancy, because he had invented the
name, he had therefore created the thing. Science
can but record what she finds in operation. She
admires, and bids us admire, the laws she is able
to trace. But these are not of her making, and
though she may unquestionably claim high honour
for the skill with which they have been investi-
gated, we must endorse the sentiment expressed
by Diderot — Is the formation of the universe

^7

MODERN SCIENCE AND ANCIENT FAITH. I I

a less proof of intelligence than its explana-
tion ?

These are a few of the considerations which
present themselves on the very threshold of our
inquiry. Bearing them in mind, we may proceed
to another point which will conveniently serve
to illustrate our subject in the compendious
manner which such an occasion as this requires.

It has been said that the first three words of
the Bible convey three fundamental ideas, which
we shall seek in vain in the writings of philo-
sophers however profound, whose natural powers
were not illumined by revelation. " In the
beginning, God created." The idea of a be-
ginning, before which the things we know by

our senses did not exist ; of g? Supreme Being,

111 1 • • '•»^'(. vviv :. />«/<^ <^.J^Ii :

who had no begum uig, who was, when the

heavens and the earth were not i and of the act

of creation, the calhng or the universe out oi

nothing, at the will and by the power of Him

who alone had His being of Himself. Here

is the foundation-stone of all supernatural belief

— not of Christianity alone, but of Theism itself.

What, let us ask, is the witness of Science upon

each of these all-important points ?

And first as to the beginning. If there is

anything which is proved by modern philosophy

beyond all (question, it is that such a beginning

i

12 MODERN SCIENCE AND ANCIENT FAITH.

there must have been. On such a point no
exception can be taken to the evidence of the
late Professor Huxley, and he emphatically de-
clares that the phenomena with which astronomy
deals, demonstrate by their very nature that they
cannot have existed for ever. More than this.
The law of the conservation and dissipation of
energy, one of the greatest discoveries of our
times, clearly proves that in its beginning the
universe was in a condition to which its own
forces could never have brought it, one from
which, on the contrary, they can only more and
more remove it. It was, in brief, like a clock
wound up ; the weights when left to themselves
run down, and in doing so set the various parts
of the mechanism in motion. But the more
work they do the less power of doing work
remains ; and once they reach their lowest point
all work is over, unless a power altogether
different from theirs should intervene to replace
them in their first position. Even so with the
forces of the universe : they are ever spending
their power of work, never adding to it — motion,
heat, electricity, all the forms of energy with
which nature is endowed, are constantly ap-
proaching their inevitable term. As Mr. Balfour
has expressed it, " We sound the future, and
learn that after a period, long compared with

■I I

MODERN SCIENCE AND ANCIENT FAITH. 1 3

the individual life, but short indeed compared
with the divisions of time open to our investiga-
tion, the energies of our system will decay, the
glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the
earth, tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate
the race which has for a moment disturbed its
solitude." This, then, is the verdict of Science :
that there was a beginning, and that for it no
force whereof she takes cognizance can account.

But if so, she necessarily leads us on to the
consideration of a Being beyond her ken, who
alone could make that beginning possible ; who
could construct the clock and wind it, and deter-
mine the order of its going ; who is not subject
to the laws inexorably governing material things,
but, existing for ever, does not grow old, nor
part with any fragment of His power, and from
whose plenitude alone can Nature have received
these forces which make her what she is. The
conception of such a Being, as Sir Isaac Newton
has told us, is a necessary part of natural philo-
sophy, and so far from this necessity being dis-
proved by recent research, it may be said, with
the late Bishop of Carlisle, that by the establish-
ment of the laws of energy Atheism has been
rendered " unscientific."

As to " creation," the question appears to
be already answered. The calling into being

V

14 MODERN SCIENCE AND ANCIENT FAITH.

of a universe which was not, and could not
otherwise have been, is Creation. It need only
be observed that here is the point at which
infidel science always breaks down, and in-
evitably must do so. It will not, because it dare
not, face the starting-point. It treats nature
as a "going concern." From the course of
events observed in the past, it argues to what
may be anticipated in the future ; and this it
styles " philosophy," altogether ignoring the
obvious consideration that the past, no less
than the future, requires to be accounted for.
As a conspicuous illustration of this method of
dealing with the question, we may cite that
doctrine of evolution of which we hear so
much. Of that doctrine this is not the place to
speak in detail. We cannot stay to inquire
whether, as a matter of fact, the history of
organic life, as we know it, is in accordance with
evolutionary hypotheses — which such a geologist
as Sir Joseph Dawson, and such a botanist as Mr.
Carruthers, absolutely deny— nor can we spare
time to examine the ambiguity of evolutionist ter-
minology, and the consequent difliculty of deter-
mining what exactly is maintained. Let all be
as its champions say it is. Let it be granted that
one species of plants and animals has been evolved
from another species, according to some law. Is

7/

MODERN SCIENCE AND ANCIENT FAITH. 15

it not obvious that we must start with something
which is to evolve, and that it must be capable of
evolving ? Whence came the thing, and whence
the capability ? The language of many so-called
scientific writers might lead us to believe that the
law of evolution, as Science has been able to
ascertain it, is capable of explaining, the origin of
life as w'ell as its developments. Nothing could
be more erroneous. As to development. Science
can offer a few conjectures, more or less plausible,
but as to the origin of life she has to confess that
she knows absolutely nothing. As Professor Tait
writes : " To say that even the very lowest form of
life can be fully explained on physical principles
alone, is simply unscientific. There is absolutely
nothing known in physical science which can
lend the slightest support to such an idea." In
fact, just as Science bears witness that the Uni-
verse must have had a beginning, so with equal
emphasis she declares that, within the sphere of
her observation, life can be derived only from a
living parent. How far does this take us towards
a solution of the great problem of its origin ?
Hens doubtless come from eggs, and likewise
eggs from hens. But what of the beginning ?
Did the first hen come out of an egg that never
was laid ? Or was the first egg laid by a hen
that never was hatched ? One or the otlier we

^^

l6 MODERN SCIENCE AND ANCIENT FAITH.

must say ; and not till we have adequately ac-
counted for the existence of the primordial germ,
endowed with the mysterious potencies of life,
have we done anything to elucidate the great
problem of the origin of all things.

Here is the mystery which true Science must
discern beneath the surface of every object which
meets her view. As Tennyson has sung : —

" Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies ;
Hold you root and all in my hand ;
Little flower, but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is."

^:>

SCIENCE AND ITS COUNTERFEIT ^

By thk Rev. JOHN (iERARD, S.J.

That the age in which we Hve is nothing if not
scientific, we are in no danger of forgetting, for there
is none of its attributes of which we are more con-
stantly reminded, or in which we take more pride.
Nor can it be pretended that such pride is unreason-
able, for wliile it is evident that in these latter days
the domain of scientilic discovery has been enlarged
as it never was before, no one will deny that the
advance of science, that is to say, of sound and solid
knowledge, is a most legitimate motive for satisfaction
and gratification.

But, at tlie same time, I will venture to inquire
whether our self-satisfaction on this head be not in
danger of being very seriously overdone — whether, in
the case at least of the general public, there be not a
grave risk lest the science of which we so loudly boast
may become but a specious cloak for ignorance, and
ignorance of the most pernicious kind, that which
plumes itself on being wisdom.

Two branches of science may be distinguished — the
pure, or theoretical, and the practical or applied — that

' A paper read at the Catholic Conference, Preston. September

1 I, lljOT-

n.

Science and its Counterfeit

by which we subject the forces of nature to our own
pur})oses and make them do our bidding. Of the
latter, whereof we have so many instances continually
around us, I have little now to say, and will only
observe that in this regard we appear to be somewhat
apt to take to ourselves credit which we have no right to
claim, and to imagine that discoveries and inventions
which are not of our making, elevate us above the
men of previous generations who knew them not, and
upon whom we therefore assume a right to look down
as mere ignarant simpletons. We can, for example,
travel sixty miles in as short a period as was required
a few centuries ago to travel six ; we can send a message
to New York in shorter time than it took our grand-
fathers to send one from London to Windsor ; a work-
man in one of pur factories can do more work, and
better, than a dozen used to be able to accomplish.
But it is evident that it was not we who discovered the
steam-engine, the electric telegraph, or the spinning-
jenny ; the powers of which we lind ourselves possessed
are an inheritance from others, and a monument, not
of our intelligence, but of theirs. It may very well be
that our ancestors, who had none of these means at
their disposal, were abler and better workers in their
several fields than we are, as contributing more of their
own, and having consequently a better title to honour.
The spirit of self-laudation and assumption of superiority
over other generations, upon grounds which furnish no
real justification for it, is doubtless very common
amongst us, and is sedulously fostered by many writers
and speakers who have the public ear ; but it is hard
to name any which is more unreasonable and which so
unfits us for true progress in science.

If

Science and its Cottnterfeit 3

When we turn to pure science, to that which regards
the inteUectual side alone, apart from utihtarian appH-
cations, we iind the same consideration holding good,
and with even greater force. It is plain and manifest
that we know vastly more concerning nature that did
our forefathers, but does this necessarily mean that
intellectually we are their superiors ? Schoolboys, at
the present day, learn many truths of science of which
Sir Isaac Newton knew nothing, but no one, I suppose,
would therefore rank them above him. It is, once
again, not the mere possession of knowledge which
constitutes eminence, but the share which the possessor
has in its acquisition ; and it may easily be, not only that
he who has less should deserve greater credit than
another who has more, but that a man not merely
ignorant of what another knows, but actually maintain-
ing an erroneous scientific doctrine against the truth,
should exhibit more of the scientific spirit than his
opponent. To take an extreme instance. Upon whom
are we taught, to look down with more unmeasured
contempt that mfcT)pponcnts of Copernicus and Galileo,
the men who strove to discredit the new astronomy and
persisted in maintaining that the sun moved and the
earth stood still ? But one of the most obstinate
amongst them was Lord Bacon, who is recognized and
honoured as the great leader to whom is chiefly due
the introduction of that experimental system of natural
philosophy, to which the marvellous advances of science
are directly due. We shall hardly be inclined to assign
less credit to him than to the multitude of those who
delight in the hideous title of " scientists," and obtain
all the knowledge of which they are so proud from
text-bt)oks or popular lectures.

4 Science and its Counterfeit

And this brings us to the main point. While the
mere possession of knowledge, which we have such
facile means of acquiring without any merit of our own,
is apt to give us an inordinate conceit of ourselves, for
which there is no real warrant, there is danger likewise
lest our study of science itself should become thoroughly
unscientific. It is the first principle of science that
nothing should be taken on faith, that we should prove
all things, and take no step forward till we have made
quite sure of our ground. As we have been warned
by Dr.Windle,' we must clearly understand how much of
what we learn is fact and how much is hypothesis, and
what support any hypothesis presented to us receives
from the facts which alone can give it any solid value.

But under present conditions how few are able to
observe such a standard ! It is plainly impossible for
the great majority of men to pursue scientific research
for themselves, or even to sit at the feet of eminent
instructors who have trodden the i-)ath of original
investigation and so learnt how serious is the responsi-
bility which attaches to those who act as the inter-
pVeters of science for the benefit of others less
advantageously circumstanced. And as, at the same
time, every self-respecting person is required to be
up to date in this regard, and to hold views which
he takes to be in accord with the latest scientific results,
it inevitably follows that a vast multitude must have re-
course to those who will supply them with a mental
outfit ready-made, and nurture their minds on what —
to use the inelegant term of patent-food purveyors —
has been " predigested " for them.

Most unfortunately, too, many who undertake to
' See Scientific Facts and Scientific Hypotheses (C.T.S., id.).

^/

Science and its Cotcnterfeit 5

supply the demand tor popular scientitic instiuction,
whose wares are most assiduously pressed upon public
attention, and who are very commonly regarded as
authorities from whom there is no appeal, have no
claim to the character they assume. '' Scientists," as
they style themselves, they may be, for this is an elastic
term and may be applied to any one who makes science
the topic of which he treats — just as whosoever reports
for a newspaper may call himself a journalist. But
they certainly are not men of science. It would even
appear that often they have no great interest in science,
itself, of which they profess to make so much, its real
attraction for them being that in it they think to tind a
purely mechanical explanation of the universe, which
shall banish from the minds of men all idea of the
supernatural — of God, of religion, of a life after death,
and of the obligations by which our temporal existence
must be regulated in prospect of eternity. The
constant and dominant note of their teaching is that
all such notions are exploded absurdities, which
science, having sounded all the depths of knowledge,
has shown to be but the baseless visions of men's
disordered dreams ; while so loud and so positive are
these assurances, that thousands and hundreds of
thousands at the present day are doubtless persuaded
that such a belief is the only one tit for a reasonable
being to entertain.

At the same time, not only, as has been said, have
these self-constituted instructors no such authority as
they claim (and commonly have their claim allowed),
but moreover in their practice they actually contradict
those principles upon which real men of science insist
as being necessary for the attainment of true know-

^

Science and its Counterfeit

ledge, and thus they accustom those whom they
influence to commit in the name of science the very
faults which science most abhors.

In the first place, the authors of whom we are
speaking know nothing of scientific caution — nothing
of what Professor Huxley styles the art of arts, that of
saying, " I do not know." For them there are no
dark places in nature, they are ready at any moment
to turn their searchlight upon its every nook and
cranny. " I wish," said Lord Melbourne, when Prime
Minister, " I wish I was as sure of anything as Tom
Macaulay is of everything^" and in like manner our
acknowledged leaders in science — our Kelvins, our
Thomsons, our Crookes, Gills, Wilsons, Lodges, and
■^s Pasteurs, even our Huxleys and Darwins — might well
\^' envy the sublime assurance of those who contributa

^i'^' scientific" articles to popular magazines, or load ouij

' bookstalls with sixpenny treatises which are to impartl
to the million the best results of modern research.

It must suffice at present summarily to indicate and
illustrate some of the principal charges to which such
performances lay themselves open.

To begin with — as for their purpose they must —
such writers vastly exaggerate the achievements of

j science, and give it to be' understood that she has taken
entire possession of territories on which, as she herself
declares, she has • not even set her foot. Take, for
example, the origin of life. It is constantly assumed
that, however inscrutable this was in former days, it is
now fully explained, on purely naturalistic principles,

\^ by the famous theory of Mr. Darwin.' But — even if

' See, foi" example, Haeckel's Riddle of the Universe, p. 92.
Professor Haeckle is of course within his own department a

%

r/

Science and its Counterjeit 7

we set aside the fact, that, as we kiK^w, the Darwinian
theory does not now hold the anthoritative position
it once did — it is obvious to any one who understands
what this theory is, that it has no bearing whatever,
nor pretends to have any, upon the point in question ;
and to this effect there is no more emphatic witness
than Darwin himself. He on various occasions declared
that he knew nothing, and nevei^ioped'^ to know any-
thing, as to how life originated ; that in his opinion no
evidence, worth anything, has yet been brought for its
mechanical production ; and that, for the present at
least, the question seemed to him beyond the pale of
science.

No less mysterious, for the man of science, .than the
origin of life, is its nature. In the organic structures
with which life, as we know it, is invariably associated,
there is not to be found any chemical element which is.,
not also to be found in inorganic matter. Yet between! I
the organic and inorganic is hxed a great gulf whicl)'
science cannot attempt to bridge. As Professor Huxley
tells us, our present state of knowledge furnishes no
link between the living and the not living. So tin-
evolutionist professor ; but not so Mr. Edward Clodd,
one of the most active amongst our j:>opular scientists.
" The origin of life," he assures us,' " is not a more
stupendous problem than the origin of water, it hides
no profounder mystery than the lifeless : it is only a
local and temporary arrest of the universal movement /,'

scientific auttiority of the first class. 4^ut it is not fioin anything
he has learnt in scientific investigation that he bases the doctrines
which he proclaims in his Riddle of tlie Universe, and similar
works, which are nut taken seriously by any who can be styled
scientific men.

' Story uj Ciriilioii, p. 150.

8 Science and its Counterfeit

towards equilibrium," — which of course makes things
clear to the meanest capacity.

Thus, again, with the complex processes and
apparatus which organic life involves ; nothing can be
simpler, according to our " scientists," than to account
for them all. We have only to imagine what would
have occurred if we had the direction — and there we
are. Here are a few samples furnished by another
author, extremely popular in his day, the late Mr. Grant
Allen. A long-tailed reptile was to be developed into
a short-tailed bird — " Accordingly the bones soon grew
fewer in number and shorter in length, while feathers
simultaneously arranged themselves side by side on the
terminal hump." What could be easier? In like
manner, a water-snail, paliidina, w\'is with equal facility
transformed into a land-snail, cydostonia. It took to
living on dry land, " and so acquired the habit of pro-
ducing lungs"— which, we are assured, could easily be
acquired by any soft-bodied animal like a snail. In the
same fashion, but in the opposite direction, a land-
buttercup took " to hving pretty permanently in water,"
and so became the water-crowfoot, the modifications
of stem and leaves necessary to tit the plant for its
altered circumstances being of course forthcoming
without further explanation.

And all this is science ! Rather, we should say, that
no man having any knowledge of the matters whereof
he discoursed so ghbly, could possibly have uttered
such absurdities.

Another point to be noticed is the fondness of such
writers and speakers for masking ignorance behind a
shroud of mere words which convey no meaning to the
reader or hearer. They do, in fact, the very thing for

Science and its Counterfeit g

which wc rii^htlv coiKk-inii our pre-scicutilic ancestors.
These were accustomed to explain the phenomena they
witnessed by mere phrases which signified nothing.
If stones fell to earth, or flames flickered towards the
sky, it was, said they, because " every element tends
to its own sphere." While if water rose in a pump, it
was because " nature abhors a vacuum."

We have doubtless long ago got beyond explanations
so manifestly futile, but does it not come- to very much
the same thing if we merely give a name to something
which we do not understand, and then use the name as
an explanation ? When, for example, it is asked why
a hen's egg produces a chicken and a duck's egg a
duckling, or an acorn an -oak, our paper scientists reply
that such products are due to " heredity," and are pro-
duced by forces " inherent " in the germ from which
they spring, which is supposed to solve the whole
mystery. Unfortunately, however, the facts shrouded
under such terms constitute the very mystery to be
solved, and as Professor Huxley acknowledges, the
genesis of every chick that we see hatched is as far
beyond our comprehensioii as that of the universe.
*' Heredity " is only a term conveniently expressing the
truth set forth in the first chapter of Genesis, that like
begets like, that creatures produce offspring each after
its own kind. As George Canning sang in the Aiili-
Jacobin :

Wc see, in plants, potatoes 'tatoes breed,
Uncostly cabbage springs from cabbage seed,
Lettuce to lettuce, leeks to leeks succeed :
Nor e'er did cooling cucumbers presume
To flower like myrtle, or like violets bloom.

V

lo Science and ?fs Counterfeit

We do not need science to tell us that. But why or
how it is brought about we know no more than in the
days of Adam.

As to "inherent" forces or potencies, it will be
sufficient to quote an observation of the late Lord
Grimthorpe :

" The w'ord ' inherent ' passes with some people for
an explanation, but unfortunately it is the very thing
that wants explaining. * Inherent' only means 'stick-
ing in,' and nobody will doubt that if such a power
once got into an atom of matter it would be likely to
stay there. It is amazing that people in this boasting
age of science should promulgate and accept' such
empty phrases for a solution of the problem of the
origin of the laws of nature."

For a final example I will turn to the province of
astronomy, in which again our friends are quite at
home, while the immensity of the subject frequently
inspires a magnificence of language which, even if
not very intelligible, can hardly fail to be impressive.
This, for instance, is how Mr. Clodd sets forth, as a
scientifically verified truth, that the universe is an
automatic self-sufficing piece of mechanism, which
having started of itself, will continue going ever-
lastingly, without any need of a Creator :

" The ultimate transference of all energy to the
ethereal medium, involves the end of the existing state
of things. But the ceaseless redistribution of matter,
force-clasped and energy-riven, involves the beginning
of another state of things. So the changes are rung on
evolution and dissolution, on the birth and death of
stellar systems — gas to solid, solid to gas, yet never
quite the same — mighty rhythmic beats, of which the

7^

Science and its Counterfeit 1 1

earth's cycles and the cradles and i^raves of her children
are minor rhythms."

Another member of the school — one who is at present
constantly in evidence — tells us with equal assurance
that, astronomy having brought the evolution of the
original cosmic nebula to a certain pcint, '' Other
branches of science take up the tale and declare that the
continued action of these same forces, and of others
like them, has resulted in . . . that ' vital putrefaction
of the dust' which we call living matter, and whiclil
has now continued the evolutionary advance so far aa
to result in the existence of man. Hence we believ^
that Newton, Shakespeare, and Beethoven wereji
potential in that nebula, as were Kant and Laplace, J
whose destiny it was to advance and establish the/
nebular theory of their own and our origin." '

With the confident utterances of these gentlemen it
is instructive to compare the words of Sir David Gill,
the distinguished astronomer at the Cape of Good
Hope, in his presidential address to the British
Association the other day (July 31st) at Leicester. He
too spoke of the stars, and the evidence furnished by
spectrum analysis of cosmic processes in the realms of
space. But the conclusion he draws is by no means
that which we have just heard. "The stars," he says,
"are the crucibles of the Creator." We have, he
continues, arrived at the grand discovery that a great
part of space, so far as we have visible knowledge of
it, is occupied by two majestic streams of stars,
travelling in opposite directions, and in the cryptograms
of their spectra has been deciphered the amazing truth
that the stars of both streams are alike in design, alike
' Dr. C. \V. Sakeby, Evolution the Mastcr-Kcy, p. 72.

I 2 Science and its Connterfeit

in chemical constitution, and alike in process of
development.

And what then ? Whence have they all come ?
Are the hundreds of millions of stars we are able to
observe the sole occupants of space ? Or are they but
one small item in a vaster universe of which we have no
knowledge ? His answer is clear and unhesitating —
"We do not know."

And he goes on to indicate where alone the know-
ledge which transcends our own can be found.

" Canst thou," he asks, " by searching find out
God ? Canst thou hnd out the Almighty unto
perfection ? "

Here we may stop. There are those, we know, who
do not hesitate to rush in where angels fear to tread ;
but enough has perhaps been said to show that it
is not those whose knowledge is greatest who take
credit for knowing everything, nor is it they who are
most ready to say in their heart, or upon our book-
stalls, that there is no God.

NOTE.

Since the foregoing paper was read at the Preston
Conference, Mr. Edward Clodd has loudly complained
through the public press that it grossly misrepresents
him. It is disingenuous, he protests, to quote him as
saying that " the origin of life is not a more stupendous
problem than the origin of water, and hides no pro-
founder mystery than the lifeless," unless it be added
that he likewise says " the ultimate cause which bring-
ing lifeless bodies together gives living matter as the
result is a profound mystery."

He is thus represented, he complains, as a materialist,

//

Science and its Co2intci'feit i 3

whereas in the very work quoted he tlius explains
himseh" : " Deahng with proeesses, and not with the
nature of things in themselves, evolution is silent
concerning any theories that may be formulated to
justify man's insatiate curiosity about the whence and
the whither."

With every desire to do Mr. Clodd the fullest justice,
it is not very easy to discover the point of the grievance
of which he makes so much. There can be no doubt,
on his own admission, that he declares the origin of
life to be no more mysterious than the origin of water,
and it is equally clear that in making such an assertion,
whatever he may have said elsewiiere, he contradicts
such men as Darwin and Huxley, according to whom
the origin of life adds a fresh mystery to those pre-
sented by the inorganic world. And this, as will
be seen, was the whole purport of the quotation
from his book.

As to the charge of materialism, which term was not
actually used of his doctrines, it appears incredible that
he should repudiate it, for the whole scope and purport
of his teaching is undoubtedly materialistic in the only
intelligible sense of the word. He complains that he is
represented as " attempting to find a purely mechanical
explanation of the universe," and there can be no
question that this is exactly what he does. It is true
that every now and then he acknowledges the limited
extent of our knowledge, speaks of the im}-)cnetrable
mysteries which surround us, and declares that beyond
the bounds of the phenomenal we can neither aflirm
nor deny, but only confess ignorance. But, despite
such avowals, ignorance is just what he never confesses.
He speaks througlunil as if he knew all that had hap-

14 Science and its Counterfeit

pened in the genesis of the universe, even far beyond
the Hmits of the phenomenal, and he confidently
presents his readers with an explanation of the produc-
tion of everything, not excepting the soul of man,
which is purely mechanical.

Thus, he tells us that the universe — (or " that which
is ") — is made up of matter and motion, and that, given
these as its raw materials, the interaction of motion
upon matter is sufficient to account for the totality of
things — living and non-living alike :

That, the nebulous stuff of which the universe is the
product held latent within its diffused vapours, not only
the elements of which land and sea are built, but man
and all his works :

That, all which is, from fire-fused rock to the genius
of man, was wrapped up in primordial matter, with its
forces and energies :

That, thought and emotion have their antecedents in
molecular changes in the matter of the brain, and are as
completely within the range of causation and as capable
of mechanical explanation as material phenomena : *

Finally, that, " The Story of Creation is shown
to be the unbroken record of the evolution of gas
into genius."

If this is not materialism, what is it ? And how can
a writer seek to shelter himself behind protestations of
ignorance who claims to possess such knowledge as can
justify all these dogmatic statements^.?

Mr. Clodd, moreover, declares that the charges made
against his teachings are equally applicable to the
master minds at whose feet he has sat. It is, however,
the precise point of the charge that such is not the
case, that the men who have a right to speak in the

Science and its Counterfeit 15

name of science make no pretence to such omniscience,
and retrain from the confident assertions concerning
matters about which nobody knows anything, of which
those cited above are specimens. Sometimes they have
gone further, and actually denounced the doctrines
thus put forwai'd as scientific truths. A notable
example is afforded by the theory of Force and Energy
excogitated some years ago by Mr. Clodd in conjunc-
tion with his friend Grant Allen, in which he appears to
take no little pride, for he still puts it prominently
forward in his account of the genesis of the material
universe, and makes his whole system of cosmic evolu-
tion depend upon it. The object of Messrs. Allen and
Clodd was to reconstruct the fundamental science of
dynamics, which as bequeathed to us by Galileo and
Newton, appeared to them unsatisfactory ; but any one
who has any knowledge of the subject, however
elementarv, must at once perceive that they have not
comprehended its first principles. Of the theory which
they elaborated. Sir Oliver Lodge, whose authority as a
physicist is unimpeachable, pronounced ■ that it is
"simply an emanation of mental fog," that ''blunders
and mis-statements abound on nearly every page," and
that there evidently are persons to whom ignorance of
a subject offers no sufficient obstacle to the composition
of a treatise upon it.

Yet this precious theory Mr. Clodd. witli even more
than his wonted assurance, presents as an undoubted
scientific truth !

' .V(?//(;r, January 24, 18S9.

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BV THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIKTY. LO.NDON.

f/

/-^

SOME SCIENTIFICAL INEXACTITUDES

By thk Key. JOHN GERARD, S.J.

We all know that in current politics "Terminological
Inexactitudes " have won for themselves no inconspicuous
position. Much also might be said in support of the view
that in our present omniscient age the art of accurate
quotation is like to become extinct, so frequently do we
hear familiar citations, which are invariably given wrong.
A conspicuous instance is the famous Credo quia impos-
sibile est, constantly attributed to TertuUian, which,
however, he never wrote. In history, again, Cromwell's
well-known "Take away that bauble," when he had the
Mace removed from the House of Commons, was in
reality something far more characteristically significant
— "Take away "C^dX fooPs bauble,'' as will be seen on
reference to so easily accessible an authority as Murray's
A'ew Oxford Dictionary.

In regard of literary citations, such irregularities are
even more general, not to say universal. It is not many
years ago that the Times itself, having occasion to nien-

■ Reprinted from The Moiilli, May, iyo8.

1^

2 Some Scientifical Inexactitudes

tion Hamelin, the town of the Pied Piper, must needs
go on to place it on the Elbe, whereas, as everybody
should know,

" The river Weser deep and wide
Washes the town on the southern side."

To give but a couple of samples which serve to exhibit
the staying-power of a misquotation. Pope wrote, in his
Imitations of Horace,^

" Unhappy Drydcn I In all Charles's days
Roscommon only boasts unspotted bays,"

but as the lines are usually given, except by an editor
such as Mr. Elwin, we have " lays " substituted for
"bays," manifestly a change much for the worse. What
is still more regrettable, Dr. Johnson himself, in his
Lives of the Poets, lent his authority to the mistake, if
indeed he did not originate it.

A still more unpardonable blunder has been intro-
duced, and has taken root, in Sheridan's comedy, T/ie
Rivals,'^ where Mrs. Malaprop is made to speak of "the
Derbyshire petrifactions." Now it should be self-evident
that, being Mrs. Malaprop, she could by no possibility
have managed so formidable a word correctly, and that
Sheridan must have introduced it for the sake of a
malapropism which at once suggests itself. Neverthe-
less, in all modern editions, from that of 182 1, edited
by Tom Moore, onwards to the present day, "petri-
factions " retains its place apparently unchallenged.
' Book ii. I. ^ Act v. sc. I.

-V

Some Scieiitifical Inexactitudes 3

Not till we go back to those which were published in
Sheridan's own lifetime do we find the obviously
correct reading, " The Derbyshire putrefactionsP

But of such exhibitions, common as they may be in
other departments, there is one in which we might expect
to find no trace, namely, that of science ; for is it not
her peculiar and characteristic merit that she trains the
minds of her votaries to the most scrupulous accuracy,
in every minutest particular, and teaches them to accept
nothing which they have not fully verified ? And yet it
is actually here that we find the worst instances of inex-
actitudes, on a larger scale and of a graver character than
any we have considered.

To l)egin with a notable instance, which concerns the
great man whom we usually hear styled the " Founder
of Inductive Philosophy." As Lord Macaulay wrote in
his well-known essay :

"The vulgar notion about Bacon we take to be this,
that he invented a new method of arriving at truth, which
method is called Induction, and that he detected some
fallacy in the syllogistic reasoning which had been in
vogue before his time. This notion is about as well
founded as that of the people who, in the Middle Ages,
imagined that Virgil was a great conjurer. Many who
are far too well informed to talk such extravagant non-
sense entertain what we think incorrect notions as to
what Bacon really effected in this matter."

Still more apposite is the account given by Professor
Hi^xley. Discoursing on the phenomena of organic
nature, after warning his auditors not to suppose that

4 So?ne Scientifical Inexactitudes

scientific investigation is "some kind of modern black
art," he thus continued : '

" I say that you might easily gather this impression
from the manner in which many persons speak of
scientific inquiry, or talk about inductive and deduc-
tive philosophy, or the principles of the ' Baconian
philosophy.' I do protest that, of the vast number of
cants in this world, there are none, to my mind, so con-
temptible as the pseudo-scientific cant which is talked
about the ' Baconian philosophy.' To hear people talk
about the great Chancellor — and a v^ery great man he
certainly was — you would think that it was he who had
invented science, and that there w'as no such thing as
sound reasoning before the time of Queen Elizabeth.

'•There are many men who, though knowing abso-
lutely nothing of the subject with which they may be
dealing, wish nevertheless to damage the author of
some view with which they think fit to disagree. What
they do is not to go and learn something about the
subject ; . . . but they abuse the originator of the view"
they question, in a general manner, and wind up by
saying that, ' After all, you know, the principles and
method of this author are totally opposed to the canons
of the Baconian philosophy.' Then everybody applauds,
as a matter of course, and agrees that it must be so."

How utterly and obviously wrong is such an idea,
both these writers proceed to show. As Macaulay says :

" The inductive method has been practised ever since
the beginning of the world by every human being. It is
' Collected Eisays, ii. p. 361.

r>

Sonie Sc it'll/ i/ica/ lucxactiliidcs

constantly practised by the most ignorant clown, by the
most thoughtless schoolboy, by the very child at the
breast. That method leads the clown to the conclusion
that if he sows barley he shall not reap wheat. By that
method the schoolboy learns that a cloudy day is the
best for catching trout. The very inftmt, we imagine,
is led by induction to expect milk from his mother or
nurse, and none from his father. Not only is it not
true that Bacon invented the inductive method ; but it
is not true that he was the first person who correctly
analyzed that method and explained its uses. Aristotle
had long before pointed out the absurdity of supposing
that syllogistic reasoning could ever conduct men to the
discovery of any new principle, had shown that such
discoveries must be made by induction, and by induc-
tion alone, and had given the history of the inductive
process, concisely indeed, but with great perspicuity and
precision."

And as, in like manner, Huxley points out: "The
method of scientific investigation is nothing but the
expression of the necessary mode of working of the
human mind. It is sim[)ly the mode by which all
phenomena are reasoned about — rendered precise and
exact " ; just, he adds, as a butcher or baker weighing out
our provisions employs scales identical in principle with
those of a physicist or chemist in his laboratory, tliough
far less delicate and accurate. In fact, says tlie Pro-
fessor, as M. Jourdain talked prose all his life without
knowing it, so do men in general employ induction.

The real merit which, with Macaulay, he attributes to

-rr

Some Scientijical Inexactitudes

Bacon, is that of having directed attention to the study
of matters for which the inductive method is necessary,
as it was always known to be. Macaulay writes •.

"If others had aimed at the same object with Bacon,
we hold it to be certain that they would have employed
the same method. It would have been hard to con-
vince Seneca that the inventing of a safety-lamp was an
employment worthy of a philosopher. It would have
been hard to persuade Thomas Aquinas to descend
from the making of syllogisms to the making of gun-
powder. But Seneca would never have doubted for a
moment that it was only by a series of experiments that
a safety-lamp could be invented. Thomas Atjuinas
would never have thought that his barbara and hara-
lipton would enable him to ascertain the proportion
which charcoal ought to bear to saltpetre in a pound of
gunpowder. Neither common sense nor Aristotle would
have suffered him to fall into such an absurdity."

Another example of inexactitude, still more remark-
able, is furnished by Professor Huxley himself, to whose
trenchant criticism we have been listening.

In his famous Lay Sermon on "The Physical Basis
of Life,"' he set himself strenuously to combat the notion
that there is in living creatures any such thing as a vital
principle, over and above the physical forces which
operate in lifeless matter also : ^ in support of which
view he argued thus :

' Lay Sermons, No. VII.

' The opposite view is maintained in Professor Windle's
recent book, IVIiat is Life'

r>

Some Scientijical Inexactitudes

" The existence of the matter of hfe depends on the
pre-existence of certain compounds ; namely, carbonic
acid, water, and ammonia. Withdraw any of these
three from the world, and all vital phenomena come to
an end. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen are
all lifeless bodies. Of these, carbon and oxygen unite,
in certain proportions and under certain conditions,
to give rise to carbonic acid ; hydrogen and oxygen
produce water; nitrogen and hydrogen give rise to
ammonia. These new compounds, like the elementary
bodies of which they are composed, are lifeless. But
when they are brought together, under certain con-
ditions they give rise to the still more complex body,
protoplasm, and this protoplasm exhibits the phenomena
of life. I see no break in this series of steps in mole-
cular complication, and I am unable to understand why
the language which is applicable to any one term of tiie
series may not be used of any of the others. We think
fit to call different kinds of matter carbon, oxygen,
hydrogen, and nitrogen, and to speak of the various
powers and activities of these substances as the proper-
ties of the matter of which they are composed. When
hydrogen and oxygen are mixed in a certain proportion,
and an electric spark is passed through them, they
disappear, and a quantity of water, ecjual in weight to
the sums of their weights^ appears in their place. There
is not the slightest parity between the passive and active
powers of the water and those of the oxygen and
hydrogen which have given place to it. . . . We call
many strange phenomena the properties of the water.

1: V

8 So)?ie Scicntijjcal Inexactitudes

and we do not hesitate to believe that, in some way or
another, they result from the properties of the com-
ponent elements of the water. We do not assume that
a something called 'aquosity' entered into and took
possession of the oxide of hydrogen as soon as it was
formed, and then guided the particles to their place in
the facets of the [ice] crystal, or amongst the leaflets of
the hoar-frost. On the contrary, we live in the hope
and in the faith that, by the advance of molecular
physics, we shall by and by be able to see our way
as clearly from the constituents of water to the proper-
ties of water, as we are now able to deduce th&
operations of a watch from the form of its parts and
the manner in which they are put together. Is the
case in any way changed when carbonic acid, water,
and ammonia disappear, and in their place, under the
infiiie nee of pre-existing living protoplasm,^ an equivalent
weight of the matter of life makes its appearance? . . .
What justification is there, then, for the assumption of
the existence in living matter of a something which has
no representative, or correlative, in the not-living matter
which gave rise to it ? What better philosophical status
has ' vitality ' than ' aquosity ' " ?

Before we proceed to consider the particular example
of misquotation which this exposition introduces, it
must be noticed that here we have already exhibited an
inexactitude of most serious character, though of a class
somewhat different from that with which we are now
concerned. No serious philosopher, certainly none of
' Italics mine.

Sonic Scicutifica/ fucxactifudcs g

the despised Scholastics, ever for a moment supposed
that a mere abstraction, like "aquosity" or "vitality"
could intervene to play any practical part and change
the nature of things. Nobody ever imagined that
when we light a candle we introduce a new element
"luminosity," in virtue of which it becomes luminous.
This would indeed be to emi)loy a term to which no
meaning could possibly attach. What really happens
is that in the lighted candle chemical energy is set up,
introducing an objective force, not operating previously,
which causes those undulations of ether to which is
due the phenomenon we call light. This production of
light we style "luminosity," but it is a result of force,
not the force to which that result is attributable.

Exactly similar is the case of "vitality." Those
whom IVofessor Huxley speaks of as believing in it,
hold it to be the result of a force producing objective
phenomena no less manifest than light, phenomena
which no force discoverable by our senses can
originate, but which obviously retjuire a cause capable
of producing them, and so indicate the presence
of something no less real than gravitation, electricity,
or chemical affinity — though not subject, as are these,
to physical observation and experiment. There is a
wide difference between the types set up to com[)ose
the passage just quoted from Professor Huxley and
the same in a "printer's pie," but would any one
say that the difference is caused by an element of
"mentality" present in the one case, absent in the
other, and not bv the human intellect to which the

lo Some Scientifical Inc.xactititdcs

manifestation of mind bears witness? Or would any
one attempt to explain the depth of Burke's political
views as being due to their profundity?

But, as has already been intimated, all this is sub-
sidiary to an illustration most germane to our present
topic. In support of the argument to which we have
listened. Professor Huxley then proceeds :

" Why should ' vitality ' hope for a better fate than the
other 'itys' whiclj have disappeared since Martinus
Scriblerus accounted for the operation of the meat-jack
by its inherent 'meat-roasting quality,' and scorned the
' materialism ' of those who explained the turning of
the spit by a certain mechanism worked by the draught
of the chimney?"

Here we have an example of inexactitude which
would be hard, to beat. There is, to begin with, a
very serious misquotation, for it is not Martinus to whom
Pope attributes this philosophy of the smoke-jack, but
"the Society of Freethinkers," who endeavoured, seem-
ingly without success, to convert him to their view.
Moreover, which is still more important, the illustration,
such as it is, tells just the opposite way to that here
intended, and the system of the Freethinkers corre-
sponds, not to that of the Vitalists, but to Professor
Huxley's own. It is thus that they state it : '

" In every jack there is a meat-roasting quality, which

neither resides in the fly, nor in the weight, ' nor in

any particular wheel of the jack, hut is the result of

the whole composition : So in an animal, the self-

' Mcirtiiiiis'Scn'blcnis, c. xii.

J ^

Some Scicnfipcal Inexactitudes \ i

consciousness is not a real quality inherent in one
being (any more than meat-roasting in a jack) but the
result of several modes or qualities in the same subject.
As the fly, the wheels, the chain, the weight, the
cords, (,\:c., make one jack, so the several parts of the
body make one animal. As perception or consciousness
is said to be inherent in the animal, so is meat-roasting
said to be inherent in the jack. As sensation, reasoning,
volition, memory, &c., are the several modes of thinking ;
so roasting of beef, roasting of mutton, roasting of
pullets, geese, turkeys, &c., are the several modes of
meat-roasting. . . ."

In this exposition of the Freethinkers' sysicm ihcrc is
no mention, be it observed, of the draught in the
chimney, which, as Professor Huxley rightly implies, is
the true cause that the jack roasts meat. And if this
essential element be introduced, the comparison must lie
not with the Professor's theory of life, as we have heard
him set it forth, but with that of the Vitalists whom he
wishes to confute ; — for the said draught will stand for
the animating principle which it is the whole object of
his argument to prove superfluous.

On the other hand, his own system is clearly on all
fours with that at which he laughs, as may be seen from
a concrete ajjplicatiun thereof.

There is another kind of jack sometimes found in
chimneys, known as a jackdaw, and as the smoke-jack is
composed of fly, weights, wheels, and chains, so the jack-
daw is made up of water, ammonia, and carbonic acid.
The smoke-jack has a meat-roasting quality, which

c>

I 2 Soiric Sciciitifical Inexactitjides

makes its presence desirable in a kitchen ; the jackdaw
has an egg-stealing quality rendering its presence very
undesirable in a game-covert. The meat-roasting quality
of the smoke-jack resides neither in fly, weight, wheel,
nor chain, but is the result of the whole composition.
In like rhanner, neither oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, nor
carbon has any disposition to steal eggs, but when these
elements are combined in proper proportions, and
(trifling circumstance) under the influence of " pre-
existing living protoplasm " — this, moreover, being con-
tributed by a jackdaw — the resulting compound is found
to be endowed with a thievish propensity, leading it to
steal, amongst other things, eggs, cherries, and sixpences.
The comparison between the two jacks appears to be
as close in all respects as it is the nature of compari-
sons to be.

Another instance of inexactitude is even more remark-
able, on account of the solemnity of the occasion on
which it was produced. In his presidential address to
the British Association at York, August i, 1906, Sir
Edwin Ray Lankester, reviewing the recent progress of
Science in her various branches, spoke thus in regard of
Astronomy :

" As recently as last April, at the Royal Astronomical
Society, two important papers were read — one by Mr.
Cowell and the other by Mr. Stratton — which had their
roots in Sir (}eorge Darwin's work. The former was led
to suggest that the day is lengthening ten times as
rapidly as had been supposed, and the latter showed that
in all probability the planets had all turned upside down

So7ne Scientifical Inexactitiuies i 3

since their birth. And yet M. Brunetiere and his friends
wish lis to believe that science is bankrupt and has no tiew
thini^s in store for humanity."

The reference in the passage here itaHcized is of
course to the late AT. Brunetiere's audacity in speaking of
the bankruptcy or insolvency {faillite) of science, a
heterodox sentiment which in certain quarters raised no
less indignation than of old would have been excited by
disrespect shown towards Diana of the Ephesians. The
only meaning that can possibly be attached to the words
we have heard, is that M. Brunetiere denied the capability
of science to make in such a field as astronomy discoveries
like those which were (quoted as having actually, or at
least conjecturally, been made.

But on a previous occasion, when a charge of similar
character was brought against him, M. Brunetiere had
explained, in language which might seem to admit of no
mistake, that he meant nothing of the sort. In his own
words :

" Non seulement je n'ai pas nie les progres de la
science — le telephone, ou le vaccine du croup — ce (}ui
serait aussi ridicule que de nier en plein midi la clartedu
soleil — mais je I'ai dit textuellement. ' Ou sont celles de
leurs promesses que la physique, par exemple, et la
chimie, n'aient pas tenues, et au dela ? "' '

No one but a fool, and it will not be said that M.

Brunetiere was that, could attempt to maintain that

science is incapable of doing what we see her do every

day, and it might have seemed worth while to make sure

■ La Science et la Relii^ioti, p. 19 note.

14 Some Scicntifical Inexactitudes

what so eminent a man really meant, before saddling him
with so grotesque an absurdity. Had this obvious pre-
caution been taken, it would have been at once found
that what M. Brunetiere disallowed were the extravagant
pretensions which some people have advanced on behalf
of science, to overstep her own boundaries, and teach
man a better religion than was ever known before. Not
only, however, has such an idea never been counte-
nanced by those best authorized to speak in her name, but
by no one has it been more vigorously repudiated than
Sir Edwin Ray Lankester himself, who his told us that
no one who understands what "science is can even con-
ceive the possibility of arriving by means of her at that
very knowledge which M. Brunetiere declares to be
beyond her reach, namely, " those beliefs and hopes
which we call ' religion.' " " These things," he added,
" are not ' explained ' by science, and never can be." '

It would thus appear that when he spoke as he did,
the President of the British Association had not thought
it necessary to ascertain what M. Brunetiere really said,
but was content to base his disparaging remark upon a
phrase which it is customary to represent as derogatory
to the sacred name of Science.

Not to multiply instances of inexactitude, which might
be continued indefinitely, we may conclude with one
which figures no less constantly than the Credo quia
impossibile of Tertullian, and, like it, is favoured by
writers who love to quote great names without the irk-
some labour of consulting original sources. It is thus
' Letter in the Times, May 19, 1903.

^•7

Some Scientifical Inexactitudes i 5

given by Professor Haeckel, in his notorious Riddle of
the Universe : '

"When the famous French astronomer, Laplace, was
asked by Napoleon where God, the Creator and Sus-.
tainer of all things, came in, in his system, he clearly and
honestly replied : ' Sire, I have managed without that
hypothesis.' That indicated the atheistic character
which this mechanical cosmogony shares with all the
other inorganic sciences."

But if any one will take the trouble, which Professor
Haeckel has evidently considered unnecessary, of con-
sulting the works of Laplace himself, or those who could
speak of him with authority, he will find that such an
account is a gross travesty. In none of Laplace's
writings is there anything to justify the charge of
atheism, and in one of them,' having cited the remark
attributed to Alphonsus X of Ostile, that if God had
consulted Aim he could have suggested a much better
system of the world, Laplace adds : " By these words,
which have been branded as impious, the king signified
that they were still a long way from understanding the
mechanism of the universe " ; an observation which
obviously does not accord with the view taken by
Haeckel.

Moreover, according to M. Faye,^ the purport of his
reply to Napoleon was quite different from what we have
heard. The point of the Emperor's question regarded,

' Popular edition, p. 92.

- E.xJ^ositioii du Systciuc dn Monde, book v. c. 4.

3 SiirrOrigiiic du Monde, p. iro.

1 6 ^07ne Scientifical Inexactitudes

not the origin of the world, but its actual constitution.
Owing to the imperfection of the observations of his time,
Newton had discovered in the mechanism of the solar
system an element of instability, which seemed to
require the occasional intervention of direct creative
power to keep it going. With better observations
Laplace was able to show that such interferences were
needless, and it was to this that his reply referred. As
M. Faye writes : " It was not God whom he treated as
an hypothesis, but His intervention at a particular
juncture." Moreover, on the authority of M. Arago,
cited by Faye, Laplace having learnt before his death
that the story repeated by Haeckel was to be related in
a biographical notice, begged his friend to procure its
suppression.

Nevertheless it will doubtless proceed merrily on its
course, and enjoy the same perennial vogue as Mrs.
Malaprop's " petrifactions."

Manifestly, the wide diffusion of scientific teaching,
and still wider of scientific talk, has not rendered
obsolete the precept bequeathed as a legacy to his
younger friends by the aged President of Magdalen —
" Always verify your references." To do so, is not only
essential for those who write, but will furnish those who
read with a means of obtaining much unexpected en-
lightenment, and, moreover, a form of sport yielding not
merely profit, but diversion.

MINTED A\D PUBLISHED BY THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, LONDON.

/ \

PANTHEISM

By WILLIAM MATTHEWS

I. Prefatoky.

A FEW words of explanation are required to render the
following argument in the form of queries, or, as I have
termed it, a " Catechism," intelligible to the reader.

A friend, whom I will name Mr. Montague, like many
other young men at the present day, is anxiously
brooding over the mysteries of the Universe, and
desires to frame for himself a solution which will
dissipate at once and for ever all perplexities.

It will hardly be thought surprising that Haeckel's
book, The Riddle of the Universe, with a title so pro-
mising, should seem to afford the very solution re-
quired of the great problem. Often have Montague
and I held friendly converse in the true Johnsonian
sense ; for the great Samuel considered there can be
no real conversation unless something is discussed.
My friend is inclined to accept the Pantheistic concep-
tion of God and the Universe as a summary settlement
of all difficulties. In truth, if the word " God " is but
a label appended to all that is, to earth, sea, stars, man,
and to what we call "good " and '' evil," what riddle is
there for us to unriddle ? There can be no contrariety,
no collision among impersonal, unconscious forces,
simulating intelligence and goodness, and phenomena
inconsistent with them ; for if Nature is exhaustive of
all that is, nothing is left but to be content with till that
is, as it is, and bceausc it is.

2 Pantheism

In terms like these I have gently bantered ^lontague,
reminding him that his deep pondering over the
mystery of life must, on his own showing, be " super-
fluous vapouring." I own the phrase is a little strong,
and I am not surprised he should retort : —

" You provoking old fellow ! Why will you persist
in misrepresenting me ? I don't deny God ; I believe
in God as truly as you do."

" Ah ! " said I, " that is well. But haven't I heard
you declaim, with a metaphysic shudder, against
attributing personality to God ? What, then, is your
Almighty One? Is He, or /'/, only an abstraction —
nothing but a quality?"

'' Oh ! " rejoins Montague, " you must make a
distinction. It is not personality that I deny to Deity ;
that is, not the essence of personality, but only its
accidents."

I reply, " Right ; now I begin to see daylight. I
propose this : that you favour me by taking pen, ink,
and paper, and giving in black and white the meaning
of your term ' God,' and what these ' essentials ' of His
Divine Personality are, as distinguished from its
' accidents. ' "

And so it happened that Montague fell in with my
proposal, and gave me his definitions ; and these I have
quoted in his exact words in the questions and replies
now appended.

We must be careful, if we wish to show any one that
he has involved himself in a series of fallacies, not to
assume an attitude too controversial or too combative.
What will be the result of showing tight too fiercely
but to put him on his mettle, to excite his pugnacity in
return, and to hinder rather than to encourage him to
reconsider his mental position. I have accordingly in
the after-part of these pages imagined myself to be
replying in the form of questions, which suggest

iJ

Pauthcisni

instead of directly denionstratinij; the fallacy of the
views I would refute.

I have little doubt that a mode of argument which at
hrst sight looks somewhat indirect will, for the reason
assigned, be more effective to a mind in the inquiring
stage than conclusions reasoned out with formal pre-
cision and expressed with some amount of positive
assertion.

II. A Catechism.

1. What do you mean by the term '' God " ?

I mean '' the whole universe, including every-
thing, and man."

2. May I ask how much, beside iiuiii^ you deiinitely

include under this universal term "everything" ?
I include " all activities, forces, energies."

3. As you refer to " God" by the phrase " Him," and

" His," and as "acting," I infer that you believe in
the existence of :i Being of some kind so designated.
Has this Being any characteristics capable of being
discerned and stated ?

Assuredly. The Deity has all the essentials of
personalitv.

4. Will you specify what you consider " the essentials

of personality " to be ?

With i^leasure. " All the qualities, peculiarities,
powers," possessed by " the human unit " ; that is,
" intelligence," also " will," though not " absolutely
free," and " power of choice."

5. Then you mean, I suppose, that our notion of the

personality and its essentials of "the human miit"
assists us to form a notion of the "essentials" of
the personality of God ?

Well, not exactly. " The form of human per-
sonality, as we know it, does not pertain to God."

Pantheism

'thanks for your definition of terms concerning God
— so far as your oscillation of ideas between an
abstraction and a real Being renders any definition
intelligible. But now, I should like to know what
you understand by Evolution ?

I understand that process continued through
" countless leons of the past, of which the present
stage of the universe is the result."
What was that process ? Among various theories of
Evolution, which do you approve ?

All that exists, including man's entire personality
with all its attributes, was contained potentially
" in seeds of the original Kosmos." Thus, Newton's
genius, and such intellectual productions as Mac-
beth and Fausl were parts of the original Kosmos.
Pray tell me is that something which you call " God "
Ihe cause of these astounding potentialities, and of
their far-reaching effects?

We may speak of God as cause only as being a
force inherent in Nature itself, but not as a Power
external to it.
Yoii express yourself most clearly. But now, con-
sidering that, as you would say, God is not only in
Nature but that Nature is God^ and since man is a
part of Nature, can there be such a thing as human
agency ? Is our will a distinct and originating
cause of our actions ?

As regards human action, " God is the true and
the efficient, man only the secondary and instru-
mental, cause of whatever he accomplishes." Does
a man think that he discovered chloroform ? No
such thing. He is merely an instrument " used by
God," who is the true Maker of the product. Like
this it is with all good. " Law, State, Church, are
but tools of God, means by which He works His
inscrutable ends."

of

Pantheism

TO. I begin to feel that your last replies make me
dizzv. I hardly know whither you are leading me ;
whether from Nature to the supernatural, or, by
declaring everything to be " natural," to the in-
ference that nothing can be supernatural. These
are indeed tilings which have been kept secret
from the fathers since the foundation of the world.
I long to know one thing more, if you can tell me.
Is Evil an actuality under God's rule — if, indeed,
Nature can properly be said to rule ? What is
God's relation to it ?

" Vice is necessary as a contrast or a play-off to
Virtue, to give it a meaning which by itself as sole
possessor of the field it would not have." The
general tendency of the Universe shows virtue to
be the ultimate victor over vice. "The stream of
tendency fiows in the direction of Right."

III. A Pause before Pkoceedixg.

So far, I hope that in the form of question and rejcMuder
I have made clear the meaning of certain terms in
familiar use by some who adopt Theistic words only
with all their Theism w^ashed out. It is possible that
others beside our friend Montague may get definiteness
of idea from this exposition. It is not only desir-
able but it is imperative that before dealing with any
set of propositions there should be no mistake about the
precise import of their leading phrases. Especially
does this hold true when the name of the Ever Blessed
God is concerned, and when by juggling with words
His Being is nominally acknowledged but virtually
denied. The way is now prepared to add some further
questions on the truth or the fallacy of positions main-
tained in the interest of anti-theistic philosophy. Fairly
met, these questions. I submit, can have but one reply,

yO

6 Pantheism

though that must be left for the reader's candid con-
sideration. It will be easy to evade, to raise false
issues, to split imaginary hairs, to blow bubbles in-
definitely. But it will be for a reasonable man to
reflect calmly whether the implied answers to the
questions proposed do not outweigh the objections that
might be arranged in opposition.

IV. Further Questions for the Reader to
Answer for Himself.

If the term " God " means everything that exists, must
it not include things that are not conscious of
existing ?

If these things, being unconscious, are in no conscious
union with this existence that you name "God,"
how can they be parts of His undivided personality ?

Is it not competent for a mind to distinguish between
its own identity and something else not included
in that conscious identity ?

If a mind can make this distinction, is there not a real
difference in kind between this perceiving mind
^ and objects external to its perception ? But if
there is no real difference between the things per-
ceived and the mind which is cognizant of them,
how can we speak of mind as possessing distinctive
" characteristics," or as being a true existence in
itself ?

If by the phrase " God " you mean only a collective
epithet for the totality of phenomena, conscious
and unconscious, inteUigent and unintelligent — that
is, Nature — is it not a mockery to call this con-
glomerate God, as if it were the Omnipotent Deity
and the Supreme Causal Will ?

If v.-e give the name " God " to all that is, is not every-
iliiug the sanie^ because it is God ? And is not God

-7/

Pantheism 7

the same, b^- being everything ? Now, as all sorts
of things arc not the same — for instance, good and
evil, living and lifeless, intelligence and unintelli-
gence — how can God be the same, one term being
common to them all ? Do many incoherencies
make up one coherent ?

If ''God" and the "universe" are merely different
expressions for one and the same identity, and if
there is no God irrespective of Nature, why say " I
believe in God " ? Why not, rather, '' I believe in
nothing, except in things in general " ?

Is it not perplexing to ascribe to God, first, " intelligence,"
" choice," '' will," all qualities of the *' human unit,"
and secondly, to assert that human personality as
we know it does not pertain to God ? From
whence, then, are we to derive a notion of the
" essential " of personality if not from our own ?
Why play fast and loose with your own terms,
talking one minute like a Pantheist, then like a
Theist, then very like an Agnostic ?

Since Theism and Atheism have each explicit arguments
of affirmation and of denial, each, therefore, has a
basis of proof and of disproof of their respective
doctrines. But what direct argument in its favour
as a middle term, and what definite proposition and
direct proof, can Pantheism afford ? How does it
account for the orderly, combined with the
apparently disorderly, phenomena of Nature ? Or
how does it account for Nature at all, in any more
satisfying way than sheer blank Atheism ?

What " demonstrations " of Evolution are forthcoming
that prove it has advanced from the region of
hypothesis to that of fact ? To constitute scientific
proof, must not such proof be founded on experi-
ment and verification ?

As experiment and verification in regard to " Kosmic

8 Pantheism

seeds," or to " Kosmic vapour" (such is Mr.
Huxley's phrase), is impossible, how is it proposed
to verify Evolution ? Is it by attributing Nature's
method //oec to Nature's method in the past f

Suppose it so. What, then, do we know of Nature in
the remotest past f Is it not certain that life at one
time did not exist in the material universe ? Was
not the nebula, or " Kosmic vapour," a vast fire-
mist, rendering life impossible ? Next, what do
we know of Nature now f Is it proved that
organic life is derived from inorganic matter ?
Does not life appear only from antecedent life ?
If the latter proposition holds good, and not the
former, how is Evolution "demonstrated"? Is
not Evolution at present undergoing collapse ?

What is implied on Pantheistic principles by " Virtue,"
"Vice," "Good," "Evil"? If nothing is intrin-
sically right or wrong, good or evil, but is only
apparently or relatively so according to men's
partial apprehension, what can you mean beyond
mere sounds in calling anything by those names ?
If " God " is but another phrase for " Nature,"
where is tlic seat in the universe of any moral
responsibility for good or for evil ? In fact, can
there be such a thing as moral rectitude, or
" morals " whatever ? What problem is there to
solve, when wrong and oppression in some fierce
carnival make humanity their sport ? Might you
not as well praise or blame the regularity or the
catastrophes of an engine-room, as feel one single
generous glow of rapture or throe of indignation at
the vicissitudes of victorious virtue or of audacious
wickedness in your Godless Universe ?

And permit me to inquire further whether it does
not follow that some astounding conclusions must
result from your (pardon the expression) eccentric

7'}

Pantheism

observations on chloroform ? If no one. Pantheis-
tically speaking, "invents anything"; if "God,"
that is, "Nature," is the only true inventor ; further,
if Law, State, and Church are but " tools of God" ;
if Newton's genius, and Macbeth and Faust, are
but the residual deposit of " Kosmic seed" — is
not man a mechanism only, a viviiied automaton,
and not a person f If thought is a property of
matter, why not propose to abolish the study of
Mental Philosophy ? Why not dub Psychology,
" Physiology in a mist "?

Another step. Human personality having been evapo-
rated, how can you attribute personality, in any
intelligible sense, to God ? If " Nature " and
"God" are equivalent terms, and if there is no
God apart from Nature, and as Nature as one
whole is impersonal, are you not pitchforked upon
a " no man's land " ? In other words, must you
not accept this ridiculous conclusion : that there
is neither a truly Divine, nor a truly human, per-
sonality ? — in short, that there is no such entity as
a person in the universe ?

What, and where, are we now ? Does it not look like
this : that we are inappreciable atoms, whirled
by an unknown, an unknowable, a mindless,
impersonal, mechanic force to nowhere ? The
thing we name " man," on this showing, what is
he, or it, but a bubble, a desolation ?

Why not revert to the theory of the eternity of the
universe, a.nd make something of that? Would it
not save no slight botheration ? What need to
theorize about the origin of things if they never
had an origin, but were what they are from
eternity ? Why speculate on the creation of the
world, or on " how the world was created," if its
eternal existence precludes the necessity of a

lo Pantheism

Creation and of a Creator ? If all things existed
from eternity, which has to be accounted for ?
If the universe is eternal, what is that but to say
that it did not require a cause, since it did not
need initiation ? Why rack the brain for a
Pantheistic Cosmogony ? Is it not superfluous
to essay the composition of a new Book of
Genesis ?

V. Confirmatory.

It is not improbable that some one upon reflecting on
the ideas I have shaped in the form of question and
reply, may suspect me of attributing conceptions to
my friend too unreasonable to have been entertained
either by him or, indeed, by any one else, and so
of getting cheap credit for triumphant retort by the
device of cross-examining posers. Yet the truth is
that I have attributed no sentiment, however peculiar,
which has not been expounded with due acumen and
philosophic sedateness by " potent, grave, and reverend
signiors " of that particular school of thought. It will,
therefore, I think, be iitting that I should close with
some observations from authors well qualified to
delineate the nature and tendency of Pantheistic specu-
lations. It is always desirable to go back, if we can,
to the originating mind of an error, the man who first
gave it coherence, shape, and symmetry. It is a fact
that this masquerading with the name of " God," as a
cover to the practical denial of His existence, finds its
most celebrated exponent in Spinoza, the real founder
of Pantheism ; understanding by Pantheism, not its
actual theoretic origination, but rather the condensation
of the idea by Spinoza from a fluctuating, cloudy,
indeterminate phase, an " airy nothing," to " a local
habitation and a name." The idea of God, according

7)-

Pantheism 1 1

to Spinoza, is entirely a product of Geometry and
IMetaphysics.

But let others speak. It will be obvious that the
writers to be quoted agree in understanding the
Pantheism of Spinoza to teach : (i) that Nature alone
exhausts the whole of existence, and that there is
nothing beyond or prior to it ; (2) that " God " is but
another name for an impersonal, necessary automatism ;
(3) that there is no distinction between good and evil,
right and wrong, and that there is no such thing as
sinning against God ; (4) that the human mind has no
rational, personal, self-conscious existence after death ;
(5) such being the principles developed out of the
Pantheism of Spinoza, it involves no injustice to his
memory to class him with Atheists.

Epitome of Spinoza's system by the Rev. Michael
Maher, S.J., Psychology, Empirical ami Ralioiial, 4th
edition :—

" His system is elaborated in his chief work, The
Ethica, in geometric fashion from a few definitions
and axioms. Substance is ' that which exists in itself,
i.e., the conception of which can be formed without
the aid of the conception of anything else.' . . .
Every particular existence is only a modification, an
individualization, of the universal substance. Neither
human souls, nor material objects, are self-subsistent ;
they are merely transitory modes, or as recent
writers say, ' aspects ' of the one infinite being.
This one eternal, absolute substance is God. This
God is the immanent, indwelling, self-evolving cause
of the totality of things. It is neither intelligent nor
free. God and the universe differ merely as natiira
naliirans and naliira naturala. The Divine sub-
stance evolves itself according to the inner necessity
of its being, and this is the only 'freedom' which
it possesses. The laws of Nature are absolutely

7^

1 2 Pantheisjn

immutable. They proceed from the essence of God
with the same necessity as its geometrical properties
flow from the essence of the circle or triangle.
Divine action is not in view of ends ; there are no
final causes" (p. 260, «&;c.).

"The supposed freedom of the human will is an
illusion. ' Men,' says Spinoza, ' deceive themselves
in thinking that they are free. The idea which men
form of their liberty arises from this, that they do
not know the causes of their actions.' The soul is
the ' idea ' — the subjective aspect — of the body.
Both are merely modes or phases of the Divine
substance. . . . Good is that which is useful to
human well-being ; evil is the reverse. Since the
soul is merely an aspect of the body, immortality
in the form of continuity of personal life, after the
dissolution of the body, is of course impossible. The
individual will be reabsorbed in the omnivorous
infinite substance. We are only ' tiny wavelets on
the great ocean of substance ; we roll our httle
course, and sink to rise no more ' " (p. 261).

" Spinoza's theory is entirely built up out of his
definitions and axioms, and these have been shown
to be inaccurate and untenable by many w'riters. . . .
The identification of God with blind, necessarily
all-evolving, all-devouring substance is little, if at all
preferable to bald, naked atheism. The fatalism
involved in the system is subversive of the notions
of responsibility, merit, duty, and sin, good and
evil, together with all moral ideas. Finally, the
belief of mankind in a future life is an idle dream "
(p. 261).

Essay on the Latest Form of Infidelity, in Tracts on
Christianity, by Andrews Norton, formerly Professor of
Sacred History, Harvard University : —

77

Pantheisiu 1 3

" It is asserted, apparently on good authority, that
Spinoza composed the work in which his opinions
are most fully unfolded in the Dutch language, and
committed it to his friend the physician Meyer to
translate into Latin ; that where ' the name God
now appears Spinoza had written Katurc\ but that
Meyer induced him to substitute the former word for
the latter in order partially to screen himself from
the odium to which he might be exposed (Le Clerc's
BibJiotliequc Ancicnnc et Modcnie^ tom. xv., p. 433,
torn, xxii., p. 135). This account, which Le Clerc
says was given him in writing by a man worthy
of credit, is confirmed, not merely by the whole
tenor of Spinoza's system, but by his use of the
words ' God ' and ' Xature ' as interchangeable.
Thus, he says in his preface to the fourth part of
his Ethics, ' we have shown in the appendix to the
first part that Nature does not act for any end. For
that eternal Being which we call God, or Xature,
acts by the same necessity by which it exists. The
reason, therefore, or cause, why God, or Nature, acts,
and why it exists, is one and the same. As it exists
for no end, so it acts for no end ' " (p. 239, &c.).
A Study of Spinoza, by Dr. Garnett : —

''The identification of Nature, Substance, and God
settled at a very early date the fundamental doctrine
that nothing was possible except the actual. The
general belief that the contents of the Universe might
have been other than tliey are assumes that they
came from a Source of wider range than themselves
— the finite from the Infinite. If, however. Nature
is intinite and complete, no scope is left for other
than it ; and if God is simply the common ground of
all things. Reality and He are one, and leave no
margin over to either. As all that is in Nature has
its ground in God, so must all of which God is the

1 h

1 4 Pantkeisju

ground be found in Nature. . . . This co-extension
of God and the world leaves nothing which transcends
the actual, and turns all the actual into the necessary.
. . . All that is, must be ; and nothing can be, but
what is " (p. 172).

" The moment Spinoza had, to his own satisfac-
tion, identified Nature, God, and Substance, he
would have done well to select the term which
he preferred, to the exclusion of others. If a
modern man of science believed himself to have
alighted on the ultimate principle of phenomena —
be it protoplasm or some proto-dynamic polarity —
he would mark it by an invariable name. Should it
have been previously known in some of its disguises,
and called now this, now that, without suspicion of
its universal function, he might perhaps choose one
of its existing designations ; but having chosen it,
would certainly not keep wandering about among
them all. But Spinoza, maintaining in use several
terms for the same subject, virtually neutralizes the
equivalence which he has established among them,
and reopens questions which his philosophy com-
pletely shuts up" (p. 173).

'' Spinoza makes it a merit of his philosophy that
it treats the human mind as ' a kind of spiritual
automaton.' Not only does the remark apply to
the total Thinking attribute of the Universe, but his
whole theory of God exactly presents, in its principle
of parallelism, the modern doctrine of automatism "

(P- 342)-

"He is conscious of the resistance which he must
expect from the prevalent belief in Creative and Provi-
dential design, and makes efforts more strenuous than
patient to break it down. . . . Nature acts because
it exists, and as it exists, and can no more do anything
different than he anything different. It has no alterna-

7/

Pantheism \ 5

tives ; it knows no degrees of comparison, of better
or worse ; no antithesis, of true and false, of right
and wrong; but subsists exclusively in the positive
and determinate. . . . The estimates of good and
evil, of beauty and deformity, of order and con-
fusion, are wholly relative to our finite constitution,
and have no meaning for the world as a whole "

(P- 343)-

'' It is a human inaccuracy, Spinoza says, to speak
of ' sins against God ' ; they are against nothing, if by
that is meant any positive antithesis to other positive
being ; but are only cases of imperfect conformity
with an arbitrary expectation of ours that every
individual, in the shape and with the delinition of
man, will be and do what we deem suitable to that
type. Drop the preconception of the type, and the
very same things that offend us in men please and
amuse us — as the lighting of bees, and the jealousy
of doves" (p. 263).

" This surrender of all things to unlimited Nature-
powers, unguided by Ideas, is at once a reproduction
of Lucretius and an anticipation of Haeckel, and
identities Spinoza's relation to Theism with theirs
(p. 344). . . . 'The conception of Go^/,' says Kant,
' is generally understood to involve, not merely a
blindly operating Nature as the eternal root of
things, but a Supreme Being that shall be the
Author of all things by free and understanding
action ; and it is this conception which alone has
any interest for us.' And he who has it (Kant adds),
is properly called a ' Theist ' in virtue of his belief in
a ' Living God ' " (p. 332).

'' If we adhere to Kant's interpretation of the word
' God,' it is impossible to claim Spinoza as a Theist,
or even as a Pantheist; for neither as 'Immanent,'
nor as ' Transitive ' and Creative, did he acknowledge

1 6 Pantheism

' a Supreme Being the Author of all things by free
and understanding action.' By this criterion jacobi
was certainly justihed in classing him with Atheists.
... As there are and always have been people who
believe, so there are and always have been people
who disbelieve the governance of the world by a
' Living God ' ; and we cannot dispense with a name
for each. The duty of applying to no one a term
which he disowns is conditioned on his not altering
its meaning in order to disown it ; the obligation is
reciprocal, resting on a common understanding, and
violated by tricks of perversion on either side. . . .-
It is no valid disclaimer to say, ' I am not an Atheist,
for I believe in a First Cause,' if that first cause
should happen to be hydrogen, or other blind
element of things. It cannot be desirable that the
vs^ord ' God ' should be thrown into the crucible of
metaphysics, and reserved for any cnpiil mortniim
that may be left, when the essential constituents
of its meaning have been dissipated " (p. 347).

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY
THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, LOiVDON.

3-/

REASON AND INSTINCT

By the Rev. P. M. NORTHCOTE

I HAVE not infrequently been confronted with the
opinion that the animal creation, inferior to man, is
endowed, like him, with the power of reason, similar in
kind although in a less developed state. In many
instances to the persons who put forward this opinion
I might justly have applied the dictum of the philoso-
pher, " qui ad pauca respiciitnt dc facili proiiiiiiliaiit "
(those who know but little pronounce readily) ; in the
cases of others, however, their conclusion was evidently
the result of attentive observation and more careful
thought.

I must prelude my disquisition on the subject by
saying that with this opinion I am wholly at variance,
nor have I ever seen, heard, or read of any instance of
animal sagacity which could persuade me to alter my
conviction.

Any example which may be brought forward in
support of a theory of this kind must, of course, be
rigorously well-attested and absolutely veracious ; more-
over, to be of value it must be drawn from tht
actions of animals in a state of nature, or if domesti-
cated at least not acting under the influence of the
trainer. In the case of performing animals, there is a

2 Reason and Instinct

strong presumption that their feats are the result of a
certain subtle mesmeric power, which I have known
some men to possess in an extraordinary degree over
the inferior creatures. At any rate a new element
enters in which would invalidate any examples taken
from this source ; although, even if admitted, I doubt if
anything could be adduced which would unquestionably
show that such action was the outcome of reason. If
so, it would yet have to be demonstrated that the
animal was acting on its own initiative, and not merely
recording the impress of its trainer's will. So we must
exclude this class of example from our inquiry.

One of the chief elements of any argument is the
definition of your subject. And I think that the cause
of so much confusion and error in this as in many
another question, is because persons have not formu-
lated to themselves an exact conception of the meaning
of the terms they use ; we must therefore first of all
clearly define what we understand by '' reason " and
what by " instinct."

Another point that we must be careful to bear in mind
is that not all our actions are the outcome of reason,
but very often we act on the impulse of the moment
without any deUberation whatsoever ; in such cases we
are obeying an instinct and not acting upon reason.
When we instinctively start aside to avoid afaUing piece
of timber, we do not stop to reason upon our action,
but we obey promptly and unhesitatingly the instinct of
self-preservation. We have, therefore, certain instincts
I in common with the lower animals, but we have some-
thing else besides, namely, the power of reason. We
must clearly bear in mind that we too have animal

y-^

Reason and Instinct 3

instincts, for this will greatly help us in our inquiry
" Have the lower animals also got reasoning powers ? "
First of all let us ask ourselves the question, What is
reason ? We may give the answer which all logicians
have given, at least in substance if not in so many
words, that it is " the discourse of the human mind,
proceeding from universal principles." Two points
must especially be noticed in this definition, namely,
that it is a discursive faculty, and not intuitive ; and
secondly, that its exercise is always based on universal
principles, which either we know intuitively, or else
have established beyond question by reasoning down-
wards from superior principles, or by the induction of
them from particular facts which have fallen under our
observation. But even in this case the induction of a
universal principle from the observati(Mi of particular
facts had its basis in a principle more universal still,
which was self-evident to our understanding. These
few universals which, being self-evident, are incapable
of proof we call the first principles of reason, and upon
them all subsequent reasoning is based. Let me
illustrate this : a chemist analyses a pint of water,
finding as a result that it resolves into two volumes of
hydrogen and one volume of oxygen ; again, he takes a
quart of the same liquid, submits it to a similar process,
with the result as before, that he finds the quart, equally
with the pint, to be composed of hydrogen and oxygen
in the proportion of two to one. He may repeat the
process with any quantity of water, small or great, and
he will invariably arrive at the same result. Now,
mark the action of his reason : the pint, the quart, the
gallon of water were all particular things perceptible to

4 Reason and Instinct

his senses, but from the examination of them he has
arrived at a universal conclusion which his senses could
never have attained to ; he has discovered the nature of
water, and now he is able to say that all water is com-
posed of hydrogen and oxygen in the proportion of two
to one. We see, then, that the chemist has a faculty
which is superior to the senses, an immaterial faculty ;
for his senses, whether exterior, as the sight, touch, and
so forth, or interior, as the imagination, the sensitive
memory, &c., being material are only capable of re-
cording particular objects, of perceiving particular
sensations, but he has arrived at a universal principle,
"the nature of water." In the possession of the
reasonable mind this principle is not barren, but it
forms a solid groundwork from which new deductions
may be made. And so we go on always conquering
fresh fields of knowledge. What, however, was that
great underlying first principle rooted in the chemist's
mind, which prompted him to embark on his experi-
ments ? It was a principle known to him by intuition,
a principle which he could not prove, but which his
jntelhgent nature received immediately as self-evident,
namely, that " nothing exists without a sufficient reason
for its existence," or, to put it otherwise, when we
speak of things created, that " there is no effect with-
out a cause." The causes of a thing are fourfold : the
efficient cause, the material cause, the formal cause,
and the final cause. When we thoroughly understand
all these causes of anything that exists, then we have
arrived at as perfect a knowledge of that thing as it is
possible for us to obtain. So the chemist knows about
water that the matter of which it is composed are the

Reason and Instinct 5

gases hydrogen and oxygen in certain deiinite propor-
tions, the efficient cause required to effect their com-
bination is a spark, and now the matter which before
existed under the forms of hydrogen and oxygen, exists
under the form of water.'

No discoverer would ever have taken in hand investi-
gations into the secrets of nature had not his mind
been furnished originally with this great lirst principle
that " nothing exists without a sufficient reason for its
existence," or otherwise, " no effect without a cause.''
Friar Bacon watched the lid of his kettle bobbing up
and down : would it ever have occurred to him to ask
himself why was this, had it not been that this great
first principle, the basis of every discovery, was ineradi-
cably planted in his mind ? Was it not the same prin-
ciple which caused Newton to draw such momentous
conclusions from the falling of an apple ?

Or again, a more universal principle still is this, that
" a thing cannot at the same time be and not be." It is
obvious that we should never trouble ourselves about
the relations between cause and effect, nor indeed make
any mental act whatsoever, were we not intuitively
cognizant of this principle.

Let us take another example of a beautiful exercise
of reason, namely, the dilemma : Whensoever we reduce
our opponent to silence by an irresistible dilemma, it is
because firmly fixed in the minds of us both is the prin-
ciple that " the two sides of a contradiction cannot at

' The old peripatetic doctrine is that all material thinj^s have one
common basis, which they call " materia prima," and which is
potentially receptive of all the different forms of material existence,
organic or inorganic. But into the subleties of this doctrine we do
not now propose to enter.

6 Treason and Instinct

the same time be verified." For example, to one who
professes belief in the Christian revelation, yet picks
and chooses from it just so much as suits his fancy, I
would propose this dilemma : " If the gospel of Jesus
Christ is a revelation from God, why do you not accept
it in its entirety ? If it is not a revelation from God,
what grounds have you for faith in any part of it ? "
Here we see the two sides of a contradiction : the
gospel is either a revelation from God, or it is not ; one
or other side of the contradiction must of necessity be
true. If it is a genuine revelation we must accept it ,
wholly, but if not we can have no failh in any part.
Thus I force my opponent to be a genuine Christian, or
openly to acknowledge himself an unbeliever. Could
this argument have any weight were it not for the first
principle rooted in every human intelligence, that the
opposite sides of a contradiction cannot simultaneously
be verified ?

You might take any instance of the exercise of our
reasoning powers, and you will find that immediately
or remotely it is based on a universal principle in-
tuitively apprehended by the mind.

It is precisely in the power to grasp and make an
intelligent use of universals that we perceive the
spiritual and consequently immortal nature- of the
human soul. Whatsoever the senses perceive is
always something single and particular. Mine eye
beholds a red rose : that particular flower is pre-
sented to my sense of sight, but the eye will never
of itself have a universal conception of the nature
of roses irrespective of colour and shape. Mine ear
is delighted with an exquisite piece of music : it alone

^/

Reason and Instinct 7

will tell me nothing abont the laws of harmony, nor
is it able to grasp the universal conception of the
nature of sound. My imagination will conjure up the
figure of a man, hear his words, portray his actions,
but it will not answer for me the question, What is
human nature in the universal ? The imagination is
the noblest of the sensitive faculties, yet it is obvious
that it will only represent one set of images at a time ;
if we would conjure up another set of images we must
exclude the former, simply because the imagination
is exercised through a material organ of the brain,
and consequently can only represent concrete, singu-
lar, and material objects ; it can never represent what
is immaterial and universal. Just as the senses
cannot obtain a grasp of any universal conception,
so obviously they can never deduce an intelligent
conclusion from universale ; we must first have an
intelligent grasp of the law of optics before we are
able to make a telescope or a microscope. We con-
clude, therefore, that man has within him something
higher than mere sensitive nature, a spiritual intelli-
gence capable of apprehending and making use of
universals ; being spiritual it is liable to no destruc-
tion short of sheer annihilation, and is therefore an
immortal unit. Matter is never annihilated, it decom-
poses, passing from change to change ; but the spiritual
is incapable of decomposition, being a simple nature
not composed of jarring and contrary elements, it
cannot therefore cease to be except by annihilation ;
that is to say, by the Creator snbtracting from it the
existence He once has given. Natural philosophy teaches
us that this is done in no instance comins:! under our

8 Reason and Instinct

knowledge, we therefore rationally conclude that He
will never withdraw the " esse " of existence once
imparted to the spiritual nature that has once
come forth from the inexhaustible reservoir of the
Divine Ideas.

We must now speak about animal instinct. So
unerring is this instinct, so marvellous the sagacity
founded thereon, that it is small wonder that even
thoughtful persons have been found to attribute to
the inferior creatures a certain measure of rudimentary
reasoning powers.

We may define instinct as being " the principle of
brute action founded on the sensitive perceptions."
Without doubt both the brutes and ourselves possess
this faculty of instinct, for my dog and myself will
equally shrink from contact with a hot iron the moment
we perceive that it burns us, without either of us
stopping to reflect why we do so. The only question
at issue is whether the brute creation has also, in an
elementary way, that higher faculty, which I have
demonstrated to be resident in man, namely, action
resulting from the intelligent grasp of universal prin-
ciples. We cannot solve this question except by a
close observation of the manner of life amongst the
birds and beasts ; there is no other way of arriving at
a conclusion. If it can be demonstrated in this way,
by observing their mode of action, that the brute
animals proceed to what they do from an intelligent
grasp of universal principles, then indeed it is made
clear that they possess the reasoning faculty in common
with ourselves. They would be upon the same plane
with us : to take their Ufe would be almost equiva-

Reason and Instinct 9

lent to murder, and to feed upon them little short
of cannibalism.

All action tends towards some end, and since nature
is the intrinsic principle of action, it follows that as
there are different natures each adapted to some
special end, so the actions which creatures in the
different orders of nature elicit will be of a kind
proportioned to bring them to their destined end.
An intelligent nature proposes its end to itself and
selects the means which appear to it to be best
fitted for the attainment of that end. An unintelh-
gent nature being incapable of proposing to itself
an end, must have its proper end constituted for it
by the Author of nature, Who will also furnish it
with all the powers necessary for the attainment of
that end.

As far as natural philosophy goes — since we do not
intend for our argument to take into consideration
what faith teaches us concerning the resurrection of
the body — all material sensation ceases with physical
death. Sensation is recorded through material organs,
when death deprives these of their power of per-
ceiving external objects then sensation ceases. We
need no proof of this, for experience teaches us that
a corpse is absolutely devoid of sense — it neither sees,
nor hears, nor feels ; wherefore we conclude that the
operations of sense have an end which terminates
with the period of mortal life.

Four things are necessary to a being endowed
with sensitive, mortal existence ; they are : —

I. Its conservation during the term of its natural
existence in time.

lo Reason and Instinct

2. A measure of enjoyment proportioned to its
power of receiving delight.

3. The propagation of its species : for the unit
passes away but the species abides.

4. A certain sensitive attachment to persons and
things in some way beneticially connected with itself,
and an aversion from those that are harmful.

In the performance of these four things it achieves
its last end, which is to give glory by actions suited
to its nature to the Infinite Author of its existence.

Instinct, therefore, which is founded upon the per-
ceptions of sense, will go as far as this and no further.

Let us take a glance at these points. First, then,
there is the unit's own conservation in life. In order
to this it must have a natural propensity to seek those
kinds of nourishment which are conducive to health
and to avoid those that are noxious ; to select en-
vironments adapted to its structure and constitution :
to avoid or repel its natural enemies ; in general, to
seek what is conducive to, and to eschew what is
adverse to, the prolongation of its natural term of
existence. In these matters we perceive that instinct
provides sensitive nature with the finest perceptions.
Take a town-bred man, in whom the natural instincts
have become blunted by desuetude, or rather have
been turned into another channel, place him in the
centre of a great primeval forest to subsist for a
week on such roots and berries as he can procure :
will he distinguish between the wholesome and the
poisonous with the same unerring instinct which
guides the monkey? Will he select healthy locali-
ties, distinguishing them from the unhealthy, as surely

Reason and Instinct 1 1

as the goat will seek the mountain-side and the bulYalo
find out the low-lying marshes ? Will he discern
between dangerous and harmless animals as readily
as the sheep will flee from the wolf and herd with
the deer ?

We notice the same with regard to animals reared
in captivity : they have acquired, it is true, many amiable
characteristics foreign to them in their wild state, but,
as is the inevitable result of slavery, they have in
a great measure lost their self-dependence ; having
always been provided for and protected, their natur:>l
powers of resource have deteriorated, and if let loose
they will in all probability either die of starvation or
fall an easy prey to the first natural enemy which
comes along. The perceptions of sense have been
diverted from a natural into an artificial channel, with
the consequence that Nature revenges herself by
depriving them to some extent of their former
endowments. They have ceased to depend on them-
selves, and have learned to lean upon others for all
their bodily requirements ; but for all that we do
not perceive that they have come one step nearer
to the apprehension of universal principles whereon
reason is based, which would have taught them some
means of supplying the wants of those instincts, once
so acute but now deadened by long disuse.

Sometimes it happens that two different instincts
will come in conflict one with another ; then we see
in the animal a hesitation very similar in outward
appearance to the indecision of a reasoner hovering
between two opinions, both of which have in them
an element of probability.

12 Reason and Instinct

For example, a dog will conceive a strong sensitive
affection for his master and will follow him every-
where ; if, however, the same dog has a rooted aversion
to cold water, should the master cross a stream you
will see the dog whine and hesitate on the bank until
the pressure on one side of instinct predominates over
the other, and it plunges in to follow him : we trace the
hesitation on either side to a sensitive instinct, the one
impelhng the other repelUng. How different is the
hesitancy of the reasoner, who is sure enough of
the universal principle on which he works, but cannot
see its application in some remote conclusion. The
first principle of the man of commerce is " to buy in
a cheap market and sell in a dear one " — that is clear
enough, and on it every commercial enterprise is based ;
yet when it comes to a particular application, you may
see the merchant in great perplexity as to whether he
had better make a venture in coal or in cotton, he must
calculate profit and loss, weigh the probable chances of
fluctuation in the market, ere he can lay out his capital
to the best advantage.

It sometimes happens that this conflict of instincts
is an occasion of loss to the individual but of gain to
the species ; the males of many kinds of animals will
fight to the death at breeding time — the weaker loses
his life,. but the species is thereby the gainer, inasmuch
as propagation proceeds from the strongest. Here we
perceive that the amative propensities have prevailed
over the instinct of self-preservation. In either case,
however, the principle of action is sensitive and par-
ticular. The two stags which fought for the lordship
of the herd did not do so because they apprehended

p

Reason and Instinct 1 3

intellectually the universal principle that it is good for
a species that its propagation should proceed from the
strongest, it was simply that the sensual inclinations
aroused their combative qualities, which got the better
of the creature's natural instinct to preserve its own
life ; and thus they performed by nature what the stock-
breeder achieves by art, who emasculates the less
perfect males, leaving the more perfect to carry on the
breed.

In some respects instinct has the advantage over
reason, for it is prompt and unerring ; the senses
immediately record the impression of their proper
object, and if the organism is healthy and the object
properly presented to them, they record it with un-
erring sureness. Reason, on the other hand, works
slowly from its principles, proceeding step by step as
one truth after another is apprehended, while the more
remote our conclusion is from the principle on which
it is based, the less certain do we feel that we have
worked out our problem correctly. Could we see all
that is included in the human knowable, in the same
manner that the senses apprehend their object or the
intellect perceives its first principles, then our know-
ledge would be intuitive altogether, our understanding
would be on a par with what theology teaches us about
the pure intelligence of the angelic spirits. Still,
between intellect and sense, reason and instinct, this
difference is always discernible, that the one has a ■
grasp of universals while the perceptions of the other \
deal with single objects.

You may train instinct just as you may train reason,
and in their own decree there is as much difference

14 Reason and Instinct

between the natural sagacity of the wild animal and the
trained sagacity of the shepherd's dog, as there is
between the inteUigence of the rustic and the intelli-
gence of the man of science ; yet the essential differ-
ence always abides — the one is cultivated, sensitive
perception, the other is reason cultivated so that it can
draw accurate conclusions from those universal concep-
tions to the apprehension of which the senses can
never attain.

The more thoroughly we institute a comparison
between man and the inferior animals, the more surely
are we obliged to recognise that he has within him a
faculty which they have not ; he has senses and the
instincts inherent to sense the same as they have, but in
him they perform a function unknown to the lower
creation ; they supply matter to that faculty of his
nature which is capable of abstracting from the objects
perceived by sense, eternal, universal, and immutable
truth — a sure indication that this faculty is spiritual
and immaterial, because it is capable of what sense is
wholly incapable. The human soul, therefore, in which
this sublime faculty is radicated must itself be spiritual,
immaterial, immortal ; for if it is certain that the effect
cannot exceed the power of the cause which produces
it, so it is certain that immaterial operations cannot
proceed from any but an immaterial substance.

Now compare, for instance, the maternal instinct of
the brutes with the rational love of a human mother.
The affection of the female bird or beast for its young
is indeed beautiful beyond words, yet it only lasts for
as long as the little creatures are unable to fend for
themselves ; when they are grown up the maternal

9)

Reason and Instinct 15

affection for them ceases, and the mother will drive
them roughly from her as though she had no further
interest in them. The maternal instinct had a particular
mission to fulfil, when that was over there was no
further use far it, and Nature withdrew her inspiration.
Not so the mother-love of the woman : it extends
through the whole of life, it will bridge over the gulf
of death, and stretches out with undiminished love and
longing into the ocean of eternity, simply because it is
the love of a spiritual soul which is not bound down to
the limits of time and space, but w'hich tends towards
the universal, the infinite, the eternal.

Or again, the dog will conceive the strongest and
most constant devotion to its master. Yet the principle
on which it rests is purely sensitive : no dog ever yet
recognized any man for its lawful master with whom it
has not come into sensible contact ; if he leaves others
to feed it, takes no notice of and neglects it, he may be
its master by every title, but he will never attach it to
him. There is only one way of winning its affections,
and that is through its senses, just as you can only
master it and make it obey you by making it feel
through its sensitive perceptions that you have the
upper hand.

Once, however, this mastery has been asserted, then
indeed nothing will detach the dog from its subjection
to its master, not blows, nor harshness, nor ill-treat-
ment. And in truth marvellous are the instances of
canine devotion even to a cruel master. Yet through it
all you can detect nothing that may not be reduced to
the perceptions of sense, the sound of w^ords, the tone
of the voice, the glance of the eye, all of whicli are

1

L

1 6 Reason and Instinct

indelibly impressed on the animal's imagination and
recorded in its sensitive memory.

Compare this with the unswerving fidelity of a
staunch royalist to an ungrateful king. Justinian treated
Belisarius with constant ingratitude, neglect, and mis-
trust, yet the great soldier, who might have played the
part of a king-maker if he would, remained faithful
to the fortunes of Justinian with an unshaken and
unshakable constancy. His unfaltering loyalty with-
stood every test because it was founded on an immov-
able basis, the political axiom " a Deo rex, a rege lex,"
the first principle of all monarchical institutions, which
was to him a universal axiom of government immutably
true, and consequently no amount of ill-treatment or
neglect could destroy his loyalty to the Emperor his
master. Why ! a staunch royalist will die for the royal
master whom he has never seen. Would a dog do
this?

If, furthermore, we regard the devices which man
constructs, comparing them with the works of the
brute creation, we see operative the same two distinct
principles of action, the instincts of sense tied down to
what is particular and definite ; on the other hand reason,
which, basing its conclusions on universal conceptions,
is consequently capable of constant variety and con-
tinual improvement. In its own particular domain
instinct will turn out better work than reason ; no
artificer could construct a honeycomb, or make a
bottle-tit's nest, or weave a web, so perfectly beautiful
as can the bee, the tit, or the spider. Man can and
does imitate by art these works of Nature, if he can
obtain the necessary material, but his most skilful

^/

Reason and Instinct

imitation is far inferior in symmetry and iinish to the
exquisite beauty of Nature's handiwork. Nevertheless,
man, as he unfolds the secrets of Nature, and steadily
advances from one truth apprehended to another
before unknown, is able to compare and, improve, and
to induce in the execution of his designs a perpetual
variety. Whereas what the bird or beast does to-day is
essentially similar to what the same species performed
a thousand years ago : the swallows have built their
nests for centuries upon the Arch of Constantine, they
are precisely of the same design as they were when
first it was erected, but mankind has conceived many
and various forms of arch since then. They worked
according to the particular instinct which God im-
planted in them from the beginning, but man has
drawn continually new devices from the universal
principles of reason.

As I have said, there is no possible way of dis-
covering the source of a creature's actions except by
observing how it acts ; for our understanding is not
of the intuitive kind which sees directly into the
essence of a thing, but we observe and draw conclu-
sions, making use of those universals with which the
mind is furnished as a basis for the discourse of reason.
There are certain actions of animal nature which at
tirst sight might lead us to think that the brutes
possess a rudimentary grasp of universals. A cat gets
to know by experience that fire imparts a pleasurable
sense of warmth, but should a burning brand happen
to fall upon it, ever afterwards it will start away
the moment there is a stir in the grate. Has it not,
therefore, apprehended certain universal principles,

^fs Reo.so7i and Instinct

namely, "all fire warms," "all fire burns" ? A short
consideration shows us that it is sense, not reason,
which is responsible for its behaviour The sense of
touch has shown it that a fire will warm, and also burn
if incautiously approached ; the sensitive memory
retains the impression. When, therefore, the eye
beholds a fire, the particular pleasure or pain it has
once experienced is brought back to it, and it will
act accordingly. I suppose there is no beast more
sagacious than a monkey ; he too will warm himself at
the fire, or flee from it if he fears being burned. But
it is evident that he has no intellectual grasp, however
elementary, of the nature of the fire, for he will not do
what the most savage tribe of men will do, namely, put
it to intelligent uses, such as the cooking of his food or
working havoc upon his enemies. He will not main-
tain a fire once lit by supplying it with fuel, because
he has no conception of " inflammable substance " any
more than he has of the nature of fire itself ; both are
universal ideas, and therefore hopelessly beyond the
reach of his sensitive perceptions. He will play with
a lighted brand upon a thatched roof, utterly uncon-
scious of the danger to himself and the inmates of
the hut ; should a spark burn him he will instantly
drop the fire-brand upon the straw, and perhaps pay
for his diversion with his life.

Animal sagacity founded upon instinct is, indeed,
oftentimes so marvellous, that it is small wonder that
even intelligent persons are sometimes deceived into
the idea that it is an exhibition of rudimentary reason-
ing powers. But they must bear in mind that solitary
and exceptional examples are insufficient proof, for

Reason and Instinct ^9

such may be the result of some coincidence, or some
higher law which baffles all calculation ma}' have
temporarily crossed the normal law of nature and
produced the unwonted phenomena. We cannot con-
clude that the ass is a reasonable animal because
Balaam's ass spoke. An animal trait must be shown
to be racial, not individual alone, before it can be put
forward as a proof. I do not argue that men arc
rational because one man is able to construct an
equilateral triangle, but because all men whatsoever
are able to do so once they have apprehended these
twouniversals : the definition of a circle, and the axiom
that things that are equal to the same thing are equal
to one another.

When some trait of the brute creation has been
shown to be racial and not individual, it remains
further to be demonstrated that it is an action which
could only proceed from the intelligent grasp of a
universal principle, otherwise the theory of reason
existing in the brute creation has not been advanced
one jot. Without such an example the case for the
animals remains at best non-proven ; it is baseless con-
jecture, nothing more. If there be any such example,
we can only say that we have never seen it recorded.

The fact that man sometimes degrades himself below
the level of the brutes is only another proof of his
essential superiority. Instinct keeps the brute on a
well-defined level ; it has a certain latitude of its own,
but outside that, as the brute does not rise above it, so
he does not fall below it ; but reason, acting under the
Hght of universals, is free to choose the highest or the
lowest. That the great mystery of sin is not to be

/

&D Reason and Instinct

found in the lower creation shows us clearly that their
non-intelligent nature cannot be raised to supernatural
heights or sink to supernatural depths.

It is hard to distinguish exactly the border-line which
separates vegetable from animal life, but the difference
between even the low^est race of men and the highest
species of animal is clearly marked, for we see in man-
kind the power to grasp and make intelligent use of
universal ideas ; no such power can be shown to exist
in the brutes ; the consequence is that the comparatively
feeble and defenceless biped is able by his ingenuity to
cope with, overcome, and reduce to subjection the
strongest and most crafty animals of the brute creation.

There are races of men which appear to be quite, or
almost, stationary as regards intellectual development
when left to themselves ; they seem to be somehow
wanting in that power of initiative which is the note
of a progressive race. Nevertheless, those very peoples
who have remained at a standstill for centuries, are
shown to be capable of imbibing new ideas when under
the instruction of a superior stock. Witness thenative
races of South Africa : not long since they showed only
the rudimentary intelligence of a savage people, a
"people who used their intelligence merely for the
purposes of obtaining and preparing food, waging war-
fare, and all the other things constituting the elementary
manner of life which denotes the sheer barbarian.
Now they are developing into craftsmen, agriculturists,
political agitators, and even students of the more liberal
arts. Could any race of beasts be raised so high in so
short a time ? Never ! for the soul of the beast has in
it no faculty for apprehending universal ideas. If they

Reason and Instinct / ^i

have, in what do they reveal it ? The most highly-
developed animal sagacity affords no real proof of
what is transparently evident in the actions of the
least cultivated races of men, namely, an intelligent
grasp of universal ideas. The vast majority of the
greatest thinkers of every age concur, therefore, in
placing man in a scale of existence essentially higher
than any other terrestrial being.

Two corollaries follow upon the conclusions we have
here deduced. The hrst is that w^e cannot have friend-
ship, properly speaking, with the lower creation, for
the very idea of friendship implies some sort of
equality, the interchange of kindly offices between
beings of the same order. We may be fond of the
birds and beasts, they may entertain our leisure
moments, they afford copious matter for reflection on
the glories of the great Creator ; any wanton cruelty
towards them is the sign of a character low, cowardly,
and pitiless. Still, friendship with them, in the strict
sense of the word, we cannot have, because they can
never render an adequate return for the rational love
which it is in man's power to bestow. Much less are
we bound to them by the supernatural friendship of
charity. We may have this divine friendship wath the
angels because, although lower by nature than they, we
are yet exalted by grace to be sharers in the same
beatitude. Nay, we may become friends of God, for
He, by assuming our nature, has made Himself like unto
ourselves, that He might raise us up to become partici-
pators in His own Divine Nature. But between
rational and irrational beings true friendship can never
subsist.

> $2 Reason and Instinct

The second corollary we have already noticed in the
course of our inquiry, namely, that whereas the soul of
man is immortal, the soul of the brute perishes with
the material body, through the organs of which its
every operation is elicited ; we detect in it no power
which tends towards the universal, the limitless, the
eternal. There are some who think that the spark of
life, once enkindled, can never be extinguished, whatso-
ever the grade of life may be. The fancy is a pleasing
one, and I must confess to certain visionary specula-
tions of my own on the subject, but it would be mere
idle talking to put them forward, since we can find
no solid basis of reason in support of such theories ;
while, although we have no emphatic revelation on
this matter, the tendency of our Christian revelation
seems to teach that there is only one thing upon
earth endowed with immortal existence, and that is
the human soul.

It is useless to argue that the justice of God re-
quires that there should be a hereafter for the beasts
in compensation for the sufferings they may have
endured in this life. All such arguments based on
liihal God ought to do are at best the flimsiest argu-
ments of convenience, an attempt to tie down infinite
Intelligence to the limitations of finite intelligence.
Arguments of this kind can only be of weight when
drawn from the actions of Jesus Christ, the Word
Incarnate, Who, by having assumed human nature,
submits Himself to a standard which it is not beyond
the compass of human reason to measure. But the
law of compensations as known to God, has in it
depths quite beyond our ken. And indeed, to look

Reason and Instinct /^3

at it from a practical point of view, I should think
it would be very difficult to find a brute in whose
life the sum of sensitive pleasure was not in excess
of the sum of sensitive pain.

To recapitulate what I have said : there is a
difference between reason and instinct as wide as the
poles, because reason consists in the apprehension of
universal ideas, their application to the discovery of
less universal or altogether particular conclusions, and
from this the intelligent use we are able to make of
the forces in nature, the limitless variety of and con-
tinual ' improvement in those works which are the
outcome of reasoned conclusions ; while instinct,
being founded on the perception of particular sensa-
tions, is confined within the straitened limits of a
certain definite sphere. We further saw that whereas
man has, in common with the brutes, the power of
sensitive perception, whereby he experiences sensations
agreeable or disagreeable from the particular objects
which come within the range of his faculties of sense,
yet he has in addition another and higher power by
which he can abstract from particular things universal
conceptions, so that he is able to dominate and control
whatsoever is merely material. We saw, moreover,
that it cannot be shown that the inferior animals give
indication by their actions of possessing any such power.
By consequence we can iind no solid argument on
which to rest for them a claim to immortality ; on the
contrary, reason indicates that the soul whose powers
are wholly dependent on organs of sense must perish
with that body, thx-ough which alone it can put forth
its opei'ations. Whereas the soul which, though it has

ie\

Reason and Instinct

the same power of perceiving, through the organs of
sense, particular objects, concrete and individuaUzed
in matter, yet is able from them to abstract notions of
universal nature, shows that it is not hopelessly bound
down to the material, but has in it an element of the
limitless, the indestructible and eternal.'

Wherefore we conclude that there is a measureless
distance between mere brute nature and that human
nature which was assumed by Him who was Incarnate
by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made
Man.

' According to peripatetic philosophy the vital principle in all
living things is the " anima," or soul, but only in the case of man
is it an immaterial substance, which, though it is dependent on the
material body in the first place for its individualization, and though
it acts during mortal life through material organs, yet because it is
immaterial, as it is shown to be by its power to abstract universal
conceptions from material concrete things, it is therefore not
dependent on the body which it animates for the continuance of
its existence after physical death, as is the soul which is wholly
immersed in matter and possesses no immaterial operation.

PRINTED AXD PUBLISHED BY THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, LONDO.V.

/^";

THE
POWERS AND ORIGIN OF THE SOUL

By the Rev. P. M. NORTHCOTE

In a former essay on Reason and Instinct ' I sought to
demonstrate that the human soul possesses a natural
power which places man immeasurably above every other
terrestrial being in the scale of existence, namely, the
power of reason. The train of thought thus awakened
appeared to me so interesting that it would not be amiss
to develop yet more this subject in one or two further
short disquisitions.

I use the term "soul" to express the vital principle in
all living organic bodies. This is merely a question of
names : words are arbitrary symbols used to express
ideas, wherefore if any one would prefer to appropriate
the term "soul" to the immortal life-principle which
animates the human body, using some other word to
express the intrinsic cause of life in the inferior
organisms, there is no reason why he should not
do so.

Life is the power of self-movement from an active
intrinsic principle. All material things are capable of

' C.T.S., \)v\cc id.

/

2 The Powers and Origin of the Soul

motion : the air will move, cooler air rushing in to
supply the place of air which has been rarefied by heat,
and so a wind is formed : a stone will move when
impelled by the hand, or drawn by the attraction of a
larger body : but, as will be seen, the principle of their
motion is extrinsic not intrinsic, or at least in so far as it
is intrinsic at all it is passive, not active^, the power to be
moved not the power to move itself. Some inanimate
things might at first sight be said to have the power of
self-movement, as, for example, the steam-engine, but the
principle of its motion is not really intrinsic or innate,
it comes from the expansive force of steam. It is not
necessary to our conception of a steam-engine that it
should be able to move ; indeed we know perfectly well
that it would rust in the shed unless its motive power
were supplied from without. But it is absolutely
necessary to our conception of any living thing that it
has an innate power of self-movement, even if that self-
movement be only the lowest kind, which is the motion
of increase or growth from the seedling to the perfect
plant. All things that have life have in some way or
other an innate power of self-movement.

We divide the life of material things under three
headings — vegetable, animal or sensitive, and rational ;
under the two former innumerable species exist, the last
named forms a species by itself, iacludmg men of j^lli
j;a£es. As there are three grades of life so there are
three kinds of soul or life-principle, the vegetable, the
animal, and the rational. We shall see in the course of
our inquiry that the animal soul includes the perfections
of the mere vegetable soul and possesses other perfections
over and above, while the rational soul endows the body
it animates with all the perfections of both the inferior

/ <^
The Powers and Origin of the Soul 3

forms^ adding besides the superlative excellence of
reason. All creatures possessing material life, from the
highest to the lowest, have in some way the power to
transmit the vital energy and so maintain the propagation
of their species: we shall enlarge upon this when we
come to say a few words anent the production of the
human soul.

That all animals have the vegetable faculties of
absorbing nourishment^ growing, and propagating their
species requires no proof. But they have in addition
the powers of sense. It is difficult, perhaps, to say
where exactly amongst living things sensation begins.
Speaking, however, of animals, which are undoubtedly
gifted with sensation, we perceive that they possess
senses both exterior and interior : the exterior senses
apprehend external objects of plurality ; the interior
senses retain impressions gathered from without, and
can distinguish and associate these in the absence of
the objects which first induced the impressions upon
the exterior senses.

By common consent these senses are admitted to be
five in number : sight, which has power to perceive
colour, and through colour to become cognizant of shape ;
hearing, which perceives sound ; smell, which perceives
different odours ; taste, which perceives flavour ; and
touch, which perceives what is hard or soft, rough or
smooth, hot or cold.' The noblest of these exterior
senses is the wonderful power of sight, but the most
fundamental, in which all the other senses are based, is
the sense of touch. These senses are all perceptive
faculties, but following on from them are the different

■ I speak here according to popular eslimalion, for we must leave
scienlilic experts to decide what colour, cVc, actually is.

/

^ I

4 The Powers and Origin of the Soiil

emotions which impel to action, but with these we shall
not deal, for it is by the perceptive faculties that the
nature of the soul is discerned. If the perceptive
powers are material, the motive powers which flow from
them will be material also.

It is only in the case of man that we can discern an
immaterial perceptive power, the motive power pro-
ceeding from which, as its faculty of execution, must be
immaterial also, namely, freewill : for this is the
necessary concomitant of an intelligence able to discern
under which of two universal contraries the object of
election may be contained. This is particularly notice-
able in the choice between good and evil : these are two
universal contraries, under the heading of that which is
good there are particular actions potentially infinite in
number and variety ; in the same way under the heading
of that which is evil there are likewise an infinitude of
possible acts ; consequently only the mind which is able
to apprehend these two universal contraries, good and
evil as such, is capable of making a free choice and there-
fore of meriting eternal reward by the one or of incurring
eternal loss by the other. The soul which cannot discern
between good and evil as contrary universals cannot
formally sin. We recognize this even in the case of
children who have not yet come to a sufficient use of
their inborn powers of reason to be able intelligently
to discern between what is good and what is bad.

I must not precipitate my inquiry, but must proceed
to the consideration of those interior faculties of the
soul, which though purely material and exercised
through a material organ of the brain, are none the less
so wonderful as to give at times to mere animal action
the semblance of reason.

/-/

The Poivers and Origin of the Soul 5

We enumerate four interior senses, namely :

1. The common sense ;

2. The power to apprize things as either beneficial or
harmful ;

3. The memory ;

4. The imagination.

The common sense is that faculty in which all the
other senses are radicated, and its ofifice is to distinguish
between the various sensations ; it is necessary to place
some such distinguishing power in the animal soul,
otherwise sound, colour, savour, &:c., impressions con-
veyed to the brain by the organs of hearing, sight,
and taste, would be indistinguishable one from another.
I am inclined to think that it is not necessary to
consider this faculty as a distinct sense by itself, but
rather as a quality of the fundamental sense of touch.
The discoveries of modern science in its various
branches would, I believe, bear out this view. That
man, and with him all the other perfect animals, possess
this faculty is beyond all question.

As instance of the power to discern between what
is good and what is harmful to the animal itself or
to the persons and things it loves : we see that cattle
will not browse upon poisonous herbage, and that a
female cat will fly at the terrier which approaches her
litter. Darwin holds that the operations of this dis-
cerning power are largely the result of experience, and
adduces examples in proof: we may readily admit this,
but at the same time the faculty itself must be innate
for experience to work upon ; you cannot build without
any foundation at all. Moreover, this faculty, like any
other faculty, may be trained ; thus you can teach a dog
to defend not only itself and its own belongings, but also

6 The Powers and Origin of the Soul

its master and his property : indeed, herein training is
scarcely necessary, for as soon as the creature attaches
itself to anything, it looks upon that thing as in some
sort its own, and that it should care for and defend
it is merely the transference of the natural instinct to
a new object.

Perhaps a better instance of the training of this power
of discernment is the way you can teach even the
fiercest kinds of animal not to harm other animals
which in their wild state "they would esteem their
natural prey. For these extreme cases it is usually
necessary to associate them together from infancy, if
you are to overcome the natural ferocity of the car-
nivora; I have seen a lamb being brought up together
with a leopard cub. But as I watched the gambols of
the baby leopard, it occurred to me that the process,
though entertaining enough for the leopard, must have
been particularly disconcerting to the lamb, and that
a trivial accident would cause the frolics to end in a
tragedy.

The memory is the power to retain the images im-
pressed upon the brain through the medium of the
exterior senses.' This faculty is instanced by the
manner in which migratory birds will return year after
year to the same nesting place, or by the way in which
animals will recognize persons with whom they have not
been in contact for a long period of time, and will
manifest signs of affection or aversion according as

i ' The human memory is far nobler than this, for besides re-
taining the images of things received through the outer senses,
it also retains universal notions, processes of reasoning, sciences
once learnt, &c., which higher memory is due to the pos-

, session of an immaterial intellect.

The Powers and Origin of the Sonl 7

their power of discernment apprehends them as friends
or foes.

Underlying the other interior senses is the imagina-
tion, This sense is the power of preserving and repro-
ducing images, and it is obvious that the imagination
must first produce images before the creature can discern
them as beneficial or harmful, or apprehend them as
things the impressions of which have been before con-
veyed through the outward senses. But the imagination
can do more than this ; it is able to group together the
images contained in its storehouse into all sorts of
fantastic conceptions : as, for example, the Mahomedan
conceives in his paradise a river of milk and a river
of honey, such things never had actual existence, it is
merely an instance of the association of different images
for the formation of a fantastic conception.

Theie can be no doubt that the brutes possess
imagination, for this is absolutely necessary as a foun-
dation for the memory and the power of discernment,
but how far their imagination is able to group diverse
images together is, of course, unknown to us, though
I think we can perceive traces of it in some of their
actions.

Darwin speaks of the animals inferior to man having
the power to associate ideas. This language, though it may
serve well enough in common parlance, is highly un-
philosophical. For an " idea " and an " image " are widely
different things ; an image is something concrete recorded
on the organs of sense, while an idea is a purely intel-
lectual concept, which, being a sheer universal, can only
be apprehended by an immaterial faculty which is not
determined and tied down to any material conditions.

For example, I associate two ideas for the generation

8 The Powers and Oi^igin of the Soul

of a third when I put together the two ideas that the
interior angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles,
and that when one straight line falls upon another
straight Hne the adjacent angles are likewise equal to
two right angles : from the association of these two
ideas a third is generated, namely, that the exterior
angle of any triangle is equal to the two interior and
opposite angles. Here it will be seen that we are deal-
ing with universals pure and simple, for whatever the
dhnensions of the triangle may be, or whatever its kind,
right-angled, obtuse-angled, or acute-angled, whether
equilateral, isosceles, or scalene, it is always true that
its interior angles are equal to two right angles and the
exterior angle is equal to the two interior and opposite
angles. This is a purely intellectual idea, nor do I have
to conjure up in my fancy the image of any particular
triangle whatsoever for the apprehension of this uni-
versal and immutable truth, but when any triangle is put
before me I am able to make use of my knowledge in
the execution of practical designs ; I apply the universal
to the particular.' It will be seen that this association
of ideas is a very different thing from the association
of images which enables me to conjure up the picture
of a river of milk.

It is precisely in this confusion between the " idea "
and the " image " that we may detect the Darwinian error
as regards the origin of the human soul. It is the com-
monest of all logical fallacies ; he asserts what he has

' We cannot exercise thought without making use of some sort of
phantasm, because it is the nature of the human intellect to abstract
'•ideas" from "images." On this subject of the relation of the
"idea" to the "common phantasm," let the reader consult Fr.
Clarke s Logic, w here the question is admirably treated.

The Poivers and Origin of the Soul 9

to prove, and then drags his assertion from his premises
into his conclusion. This may very well bewilder the
vulgar, hut the trained reason of the logician is not so
readily deceived. However, we must not blame others
if they do what we are so prone to ourselves, for who
that has followed up a pet theory does not know how
tempting it is to bridge over a difficulty by a gratuitous
assumption ? Nevertheless, such a method is not cool,
clear reasoning.

If, as I am inclined to think they have, from examples
which I shall presently adduce, the brute animals possess
this power of grouping together images naturally dis-
cordant, they only exhibit it in regard to their immediate
wants : wants, that is to say, which are determined by the
material conditions of " here and now," a " here and
now," however, which is fortified by images recorded
in the memory. With man, however, it is far different,
for in him imagination ministers to the intelligence,
which abstracts from the images of fancy universal
notions. Let us take an example or two. That man
is a "rational animal" is a universal notion, yet this
universal will be limited by the individual's experience
of human nature. A pigmy of the great forest of
Central Africa will conceive of man that he is a
" rational animal," though he will not know how to
put his conception into philosophical language. Still,
his idea of human nature will be bounded by the pig-
mies of his own race of whom he has experience, and
unless he Has seen or heard of other men, he will not
be able to conceive of human nature outside that limited
sphere. None the less that same universal is responsible
for the dramas of Shakspere. Yet what a marvellous
grouping together of images do we not see in the works

lo The Poivers and Origin of the Soul

of our great dramatist, all acting their proper parts in
the hght of that great universal, the " rational- animal "
which constitutes human nature. Hamlet, Lear, Fal-
staff, Henry Y, lago, are all rational beings giving forth
the most brilliant flashes of wit and wisdom, but they
are also animal, endowed with the different animal
passions, which combine so marvellously to exhibit them
to our gaze as good or bad men. With what an as-
tounding penetration must not that mighty intellect have
grouped all the potentialities which are contained under
that one simple universal idea of a "rational animal."

Euclid is the clearest example of an intellect which
grasped mathematical universals, but just think of the
power of the imagination which could produce mathe-
matical figures requisite for the proof of his universal
problems.

Napoleon could weigh more accurately, perhaps, than
any other military genius the effect of opposing forces.
Try to conceive the vividness of an imagination which
could hold in its grasp whole continents, with their
mountains, their roads and their rivers, in order that he
might know where to strike with a sure promise of
victory.

Of course, these are the highest examples of what
imagination is capable, but they serve to show to what
heights imagination can go in so perfect an organism as
the human brain. We must not expect amongst the
brutes anything approaching to this power of associating
images, for indeed it is only in the first specimens of
human genius that such powers are to be found. Still, it
shows us of what wonders mere matter is capable.

For us, who possess imagination under the control of
the dominant reason, it is very difficult to conceive of

I',

The Powers and Origin of the Soul 1 1

what that extraordinary power is capable by itself alone.
Let us now, however, review some amongst the examples
put forward by Darwin in support of his theory that the
brute animals are possessed of rudimentary reasoning
powers, for the examples adduced by so acute and accu-
rate an observer may certainly be considered as classical.
That animals inferior to man are affected in the same
way as he is affected by certain drugs, that they will, like
him, acquire a taste for tobacco and alcoholic drinks, is
not in the least wonderful, for their nervous system is
very much the same as his, and they are endowed with
all the bodily senses, exterior and interior, which he
possesses. The bodies of both the one and the other
have the same material' office to perform, and, therefore,
it is only to be expected that they will in the main be
similarly constructed. If, however, it could be shown
that the apes, for example, were known to brew beer, to
distil spirits, and to prepare tobacco for their own use,
then it would be abundantly evident that they had an
intelligent grasp of the nature and properties of these
things in the universal, they would show that they had
apprehended the universal laws of cause and effect ; in
fine, we could no longer deny to them the faculty of
reason. Darwin admits that the difference in mental
power between the highest brutes and the lowest men is
simply immense, but he contends that it is a difference
of degree and not of kind. In order to prove this he
would have to show that the brutes are capable of work-
ing out intelligent conclusions from universal principles.
As far as I can see he has not shown that they are
capable of anything higher than the association of
images, which does not outpass the capacity of the
material faculty of imagination.

1 2 T/ie Powers and Origin of the Soul

Here are three very good examples adduced by Darwin
{Descent of Man, cap. iii.) : he speaks of having seen
elephants bring a biscuit within their reach by blowing
upon the ground beyond it so that the current of air
drove is;'towards- them ; again of a bear drawing towards
him a piece of floating bread by creating an artificial
current in the water with his paw; and, more remarkable
still, of a baboon which revenged itself upon an officer
by mixing dust and water to form mud and then
surreptitiously throwing it over the officer's uniform.
Unquestionably these creatures applied a proportionate
cause to produce a given effect; so does a wasp when he
drives his sting into your hand ; but we must ask ourselves
had they an inteHigent notion of cause and effect? or
was their behaviour merely the result of the association
of images called into action by a present need under the
material conditions of " here and now " ? I do not
think there is anything in all this which would warrant
us in conceding to them anything higher. Dormant in
the imaginations of these animals there must have been
stored up plenty of images which, called into association
by the occasion of the moment, would have been quite
adequate to produce the actions recorded of them. In
the case of the baboon, which is his weightiest example,
the creature's action would amply be accounted for by
the image of children playing with mud. We do not
know, of course, that this particular image had ever been
impressed on the baboon's brain, although such a thing
would be most probable as regards a pet animal. But
at least we are not justified in ascribing to a superior
' cause, the existence of which is merely hypothetical, an
action which can perfectly well be accounted for by an
inferior cause which we know of a certainty to exist.

The Poivers and Origin of the Soul i 3

namely, the brute's power of imagination.' To make
comparative inferences of this kind is quite within the
reach of the imaginative faculty by the association of
one image with another. Of course, the operation looks
uncommonly like an act of reason : we can only distin-
guish the one from the other by paying careful attention
to the principle of action. If that principle is undoubtedly
a universal idea, then the source of action is intelligence
which abstracts immaterial conceptions from material
concrete things ; if, on the other hand, the principle of
action cannot be shown to be anything more than an
image impressed on the fancy, we are not justified in
ascribing to reason what is well within the scope of ima-
gination. Darwin's examples {Descent of Afan, cap. iii.)
in support of his contention that the brute animals are
able to form " general concepts," by which expression
he no doubt means "universal ideas," are feeble in the
extreme : they prove nothing more that what we have
already laid down as evident, that a brute's fancy is
stored with a multiplicity of images, that it retains the
memory of persons, things, and former events, and that
it has the faculty of discerning between the beneficial
and the harmful, friend and foe. Darwin was a wonder-j
ful observer, but a deplorable reasoner.

Far different from this is the action of the Bushman,
who shapes, barbs, and feathers his little arrow, tainting
the point with a subtle and deadly poison. There is no
doubt that here are indications of deliberate design. He
is not impelled by a present need, for the expedition of

' How readily evolutionists would make use ot the axiom that
" we are not justified in ascribing to a higher cause an eflect which
might be produced by a lower cause," if it were a question of
discussing the merits of a supposed miracle.

14 The Powers and Origin of the Soul

war or hunting has not yet been planned, he is simply
preparing for future indeterminate emergencies. He has
a given effect to produce, namely, the death of his
enemy, and he skilfully prepares his arrow as an instru-
mental cause adequate to the obtaining of the desired
effect: he has watched the flight of the bird, and he
feathers his arrow that it may fly too : he has learned
that he must give his arrow-head a fine point in order
that it may penetrate : he demonstrates that he has
obtained a knowledge of the nature of poisons, and is
able to put his knowledge to an intelligent use.

Moreover there is a great difference discernible on
the part of the end in view : the actions of the brutes,
however ingenious, had for their end something that was
present, concrete and particular ; the action of the Bush-
man, on the other hand, was not determined to any
particular and present end, he was simply preparing for
the exigencies of hunting and warfare in the universal,
he had not in the least predetermined at what object he
was going to shoot his arrow. It is the action of reason
all over, a universal conception under which an indeter-
minate number of particular objects may be found.

Here we have compared some of the most sagacious
brutes with one of the lowest savages, and we perceive
a fundamental difference in their principle of action : the
savage indicates most clearly that he is able to grasp
universals and work out from them practical conclusions;
whereas it cannot h^ proved that the brutes did more
than associate images together, and we have no right to
assert without full and suflficient proof.

Some of the images stored up in the brain of a brute
animal are the result of his experiences ; he has collected
them in his way through life : a new object will puzzle

The Poivers and Origin of the S021I 1 5

him until familiarity with it has taught his discerning
faculty to decide whether it is useful or harmful, friend
or foe. So that we may concede to the brutes a certain
amount of mental development : thus, it is much easier
to trap a young rat than it is to beguile into the snare an
old stager well versed in the ways of life. There are,
however, other images which are impressed on their
imagination by nature ; for example, the young bird on
the first attempt builds its nest on exactly the same
pattern that its parents did before it ; we conclude,
therefore, that itmust have worked upon an image z«;^a/(?/i'
impressed. I suppose it is the same with regard to the
power of discernment, for all creatures will instinctively
shun snakes and carnivora which are their natural
enemies, without being taught by previous experience.
It seems to me that it is quite gratuitous to assume that
these innate instincts have become implanted as habits
through heredity and that they are the result of the
experiences of former generations, there is nothing to
prove all this. Even if it were so it would not affect
our contention in the least, for they are experiences
which deal entirely with images and not with ideas.

Very different is the mental development of a child.
Nature has not furnished him with predetermined images ;
he has reason and must learn to use it; he will bungle
with his first efforts at any art, but as his fancy absorbs
more and more images for his reason to work upon, he
will see the causes of his mistakes and go on improving
until he attains to perfection.

We say that a child reaches the age of reason at about
seven or eight. Of course this is merely an arbitrary line of
demarcation drawn by theologians to designate the time
when a child may be supposed to be able intelligently to

I \ 0

1 6 The Poivers and Orzo^in of the Soul

distinguish between right and wrong, and to be capable
of appreciating the use of the sacraments. As a matter
of fact a child's intellect begins to work simultaneously
with the senses, first abstracting, from the images pre-
sented through the exterior senses to the imagination, the
most universal of all conceptions, namely, sheer existence.
Gradually, as the images impressed upon the fancy
multiply, this bare notion will be resolved into its parts,
until the imagination is sufificiently well stored with
images for the reason, to which imagination supplies
matter for abstraction, to exercise. its office of judging
and drawing conclusions. Those whose imagination is
torpid will learn with difficulty, those whose imagination
is vivid will learn quickly, for the intellect requires that
the matter for its consideration be properly presented to
it by the fancy. Not but what a vivid imagination is not
always concomitant with a strong reason, so that, as we
often see, one whose mind works more slowly than
another, yet grasps his principles ever so much more
firmly and clearly, and draws from them much surer
conclusions than his more versatile and volatile neigh-
bour. It is the combination of an extraordinarily vivid
imagination with an extraordinarily powerful intellect
which produces your Newtons, your Platos, and your
Napoleons. In the same way the variety of talents
amongst men is to be sought on the side of imagination
rather than of reason, for the intellect which grasps
universals is wholly indetermined as to the kind of these
universals ; it is an immaterial faculty liberated from all
material trammels. Thus if, through some circumstance
of heredity or otherwise, the material organ of the imagi-
nation is rendered apt to store up with avidity and
produce readily numbers and geometrical figures, you

The Poivers and Origin of the Soul 1 7

will get a mathematician ; if the imagination is more
disposed to receive incidents of human life, scenery, and
language, you get a romance writer or dramatist ; and so
on you might enumerate the different phases of mental
activity in the affairs of men, you would see that though
the intellect guides and controls the fancy, still it is the
fancy which determines the quality of the intellect,
which considered in itself is by its very nature indeter-
minate with regard to whatsoever is intrinsically depen-
dent on matter.

The intellectual development of races of men is very
similar to the intellectual development of individuals :
they attain to their zenith, produce a golden age, and
then decline. It is true that the succeeding generation
profits by the research and discoveries of the preceding
generation, but this is because man is rational, and con-
sequently can use previous conclusions as premises for
further conquests in the domain of truth. We discern,
however, no progress in the native powers of the human
intelligence itself; history records intellects just as great
in ancient times as in modern ; their advance in science
was less simply because they had not got the discoveries
that our generation has to- work upon as a base ; we profit
by their labours, but we are not superior to them in
natural powers of reason. Darwin himself, despite his
theory of evolution, seems to admit in his Dcscenf of Man
that "the old Cireeks stood some grades higher in in-
tellect than any race that has ever existed." What a
proof this is of the essential superiority of man over all
the lower animals. There is no solid reason whatsoever
to show that our domestic cats and other brutes have
advanced in experience one whit more than those of the
ancient Egyptains, while we ourselves are in possession

/

a

/V

1 8 The Powers and Origin of the Soul

of innumerable discoveries unknown to them, ti^ough we
have lost some which they had, nor are we a bit superior
to them in the native powers of intellect. How can one
weigh all this without claiming for man that his position

Zin the economy of terrestrial beings is absolutely
unique ?
The nature of the soul gives us the clue to the manner
of its origin : whatsoever is purely material, though it
reach the apex of what matter is capable, is yet not beyond
the power of material forces to produce.

Whether these material forces were implanted germin-
ally in matter, and developed by the slow process of
evolution,' as indeed some of our greatest theologians
say that material life was implanted in matter " in the
germ," and that living things were developed from these
germs in their proper order under the influence of the
First Cause ; or whether material life started into being
more or less as we see it now by the operation of the
same Omnipotent Creative Cause, matters very little as
regards our present inquiry; whatsoever powers were
given to matter, matter is capable of producing corre-
sponding effects. No one doubts that the reproduction
of an image by a mirror, or that the recently discovered
invention of transmitting photographs from a distance, is
the result of material forces, what powers then may not
be contained in that most perfect of organisms, the

n

By the term " evolution " used here I do not mean the genetic
evohition of Darwin, for Father Gerard, in his book The Old
Riddle mid the Newest Answer, a book which deserves not only to
be read, but to be learned by heart, shows with convincing reason
that genetic evolution is merely an hypothesis, and a lame one at
that. But I speak of evolution in its correct sense, namely, the
appearance of life upon the globe in a gradually ascending scale of
excellence, from the lowest forms to the highest, which is Man.

The Poivers mid Origin of the Soul 19

brain ; yet the brain is a material thing, and can produce
nothing outside the domain of matter and its inherent
forces. The s,£luJ) then, which exhibits no immaterial
operation, is_the product of material energies implanted
\n matter by the Creator. We do not, therefore, need to
seek "any further caus^ for the production of merely
animal souls than the generative force of the parent
animals. It is simply the transmission of the vital
energy from the parent to the offspring through those
marvellous vitalizing properties of the male seed acting
upon the female ovum. Through these properties, once
that material life of a certain degree has been called into
existence by the Omnipotent Creator, it is capable of
propagating itself and producing from generation to
generation creatures of the same order : the vital powers
of a dog can produce another dog : the vital powers of a ,
horse can produce another horse ; for in such cases the |
cause is not found inferior to the effect, it is a mere j
question of the conservation of energy, the highest form
of energy certainly, because it is vital energy, but it does
not imply more than the transmission of this energy from
parent to offspring, for since it is within the material
order of things, like all other material energies, it is
conserved in the kind or species, not in the unit
or individual, as I have indicated in my former
pamphlet is necessarily the case with the immaterial
human soul. Immortality consists in nothing else but
this, that the vital energy is conserved not only in
the species but also in the individual, because it is an
immaterial essence, which, being indivisible, gives forth
energy without loss to itself. Once, therefore, that
into matter has been infused by the Creator material
life, of whatsoever grade it may be, the active force

20 TAe Powers and Origin of the Soul

therein is able to go on propagating that phase of Hfe

• as long as the world lasts. Species die out, it is true,

but as far as we can discern it is not from failure of the

vital energy, but from some combination of adverse

, circumstances which renders their subsistence no longer

I possible. Granted favourable conditions, there is no

5 reason why a stock should not propagate itself per-

'petually. But here the struggle for life and survival

/ of the fittest comes in, which, to some extent true,

j has given rise to the exaggerated theory of the evolu-

\ tionist with regard to the origin of the species.

We now ask ourselves the question. Can the vital
energy of the human seed be the efficient cause, even
instrumentally, of the soul which animates the body of
man, in the same way that the brute in the generation of
another is accidentally the efficient cause of the animal
soul ? I say accidentally, because the term of the
generative act is not merely to produce the soul but to
produce the entire composite consisting of soul and
body. The answer must be in the negative, because
the human soul being an immaterial substance, a unit
self-subsisting, it cannot possibly be evolved out of
matter ; there is no proportion between such a cause and
so high an effect. The immaterial is not even poten-
tially resident in the material, and no conceivable
activity can engender from it what is in no wise resident
in it. Material activities can produce material effects
even when we cofhe to such lofty powers as the
imagination, but further than this they cannot go.
Since, then, there is no latent germ in matter from which
the spiritual soul can be evolved, it follows that it must
come from without, drawn from the abyss of nothingness
by an act of creation. This is only the work of God,

L

The Powers and Origin of the Soul 2 1

not even can it be said that the immaterial soul of the
parent, using the vital forces of the human seed, is
instrumental in the production of the offspring's soul.
For the very idea of an instrument denotes that there is
something pre-existent which the instrument can touch
and work upon, conveying to it the action of the
principal agent. In the evoking of existence out of
sheer nonentity no part can be found for the instrument!
to play. We conclude, therefore, that each individual/
human soul is the outcome of a distinct creative act on
the part of God alone.

As to when the soul came into being, the opinion of
Plato, Origen, Leibnitz, and others, that all souls were
created simultaneously in the beginning of created
things, and that they were infused into the bodies pre-
pared for them according to the order and disposition of
God's providence, though very fascinating and produc-
tive of all sorts of beautiful speculations, we must
nevertheless, I fear, relegate to the domain of imagination ;
for there is not the faintest proof that our soul existed
before its entrance upon this world's stage, while all
metaphysical reasoning which is within our reach would
persuade the contrary. We must, therefore, conclude
that the soul was not created prior to the body which it
animates. No one, however, knows the precise moment
when the soul is infused into the body ; it may be in the
moment of conception, so that all the developments of
the fcetus take place under the unconscious influence of
the soul adapting a body to its own requirements, and
overcoming, partially or wholly, the accidental difficulties
found in the matter to which it has been imparted
as the life-giving principle. Much might be said in
favour of this view, and personally I rather incline

1

2 2 The Powers and Origin of the Soul

towards it, This, however, is not the teaching of
Aristotle, for he argues that the soul, being the form of
an organic body, will not be infused into that body until
the organization of the body is sufficiently advanced
to admit of its becoming the instrument for so noble a
thing as the immaterial soul. He holds, therefore, that
the female ovum, under the vital energy of the male seed,
gradually develops, passing through every phase of life,
from the lowest to the highest, until a body is prepared
fit for the reception of a true human soul, at that precise
moment the soul is created by God and infused into the
body which it assumes and animates, expelling the
succeeding form of an animal soul to which it had
reached in the process of generation. It is very curious
how thoroughly evolutionistic is the embryology of old
Aristotle ; we must certainly admit that he was an
observer inferior to none that have come after him.

But Aristotle's evolutionism is of a much saner type than
the kind that we know. Huxley, quoted and approved
by Darwin, tells us that Von Bauer proved "that no
developmental stage of a higher animal is precisely
similar to the adult condition of any lower animal."
Anything more subversive of Darwinism than this
candid admission it would be hard to imagine. We are
expected to assume that these different steps in the
evolution of man as we know him did once actually
exist, yet there is now no trace of them even in fossil
remains. However, the obedient disciple of Darwin
must throughout be omnivorous in the matter of
swallowing arbitrary assumptions, so no doubt this will
not give him very much trouble amongst the rest. A
man who is capable of acquiescing in the notion that
" the sense of hunger and the pleasure of eating were,

The Powers and Origin of the Soul 23 )^ \

no doubt, first acquired in order to induce animals to \)i^ J
eat," is capable of assenting to almost any proposition /X)"
that might be put forward. It seems to me that genetic \\
evolution demands some colossal acts of faith founded /
on nothing better than mere human guess-work. ""

If we adopt Aristotle's opinion as the most probable,
we ask ourselves at what time may the human fatus be
considered sufficiently developed to admit of receiving a
form which requires so highly organized a body as does
the human soul.

In answer to this it is extremely interesting to cite the
observations of Bischoff, quoted by Darwin in his
Descent of Man. Bischoff says that "the convolutions
of the brain in a human foetus at the end of the seventh
month reach about the same stage of development as in
a baboon when adult." The most highly endowed of
the apes touch high-water mark in the matter of animal
sagacity, one would therefore conclude that about the
end of the seventh month of development the human
fcetus approximates to that state of perfection when it
would be sufficiently prepared for the infusion of \X
spiritual soul. Somewhere near this time, then, we may
suppose that the soul is created and simultaneously
infused, and the term of human generation is reached/
namely, the formation of a man. ^Vhat it is whict
decides the sex no one has been able to discover; all
theories which have been advanced, when examined,
prove inadecjuate.

One last word as to the conclusion to be drawn con-
cerning the soul from the manner of its production. By
what means a thing comes into being, by the same
means, in an opposite direction, it ceases to be. The
soul of the brute is indeed a simple thing, having in

24 T/ze Powers and Origin of the Soul

itself no elements of corruption. We perceive this
from the fact that, though the powers of the animal
soul operate through bodily organs, they yet survive even
when the organ is rendered impotent as a channel for
vital operations. For example, if the eyes become
diseased blindness is the consequence, yet the visual
power still remains in the soul, for if the eyes can be
restored to a healthy condition the brute will see once
more. Nevertheless, though the mere animal soul is
simple it is not self-subsisting, that is to say, it has no
subsistence independent of the body which it animates
and through the organs of which all its vital operations
are conducted, for it affords no evidence of any imma-
terial operation as does the human soul, which would
show that its essence, although informing and animating
matter, is yet radically independent of matter. Where-
fore we conclude that, as it accidentally came into
e.xistence with the generation of the composite com-
pounded of soul and body, so it will accidentally cease
to exist with the corruption of the composite.

It is otherwise with the human soul, its immaterial
operation of intelligence, the power to abstract from
matter universal conceptions and turn them to an
intelligent use, shows that its essence is immaterial, that
it could come into existence only through an act of
creation by God. A thing can cease to be only by that
motion which is directly contrary to the motion which
gave it being. The contrary to creation is annihilation,
from sheer nothingness to sheer nothingness, just as the
contrary to generation is corruption ; unless, therefore,
which is impossible, it can be proved that God annihilates,
we must conclude that the human soul of all earthly
forms is alone immortal.

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, LONDON.

/-r/

THE USE OF REASON

By the Rev. P. M. NORTHCOTE

Having spoken in my two former essays ' about the
difference between reason and instinct, I must now say a
few words about reason itself.

The office of mind is, in the first place, to know truth,
and secondarily, under the light of truth, to be the guide
of action. Nothing, therefore, is more important to the
intelligent nature of a being endowed with understanding
than that it should know aright. I am in possession of
truth when my mind conceives a thing to be as it is in
reality.

If the conception of my mind is not in agreement
with the reality of that which I consider, then there is
an error in my understanding ; if I use this as a principle
of action, my actions will be beside the mark, because
founded on a false basis. For example, no one has as
yet constructed a really workable flying machine, simply
because no one has yet adequately grasped the laws
which govern aerial flight ; yet such laws do actually
exist, and nature is able to turn out flying machines of
the most varied type by myriads upon myriads.

' Reason and Instinct and 'ri:c Poiccrs and Orii>in of the Son!.

/-)

2 The Use of Reason

Just as there are three conceivable orders of in-
telligence, so there are three conceivable ways of .
knowing: that is, by comprehension, by intuition, and by
discourse.

Comprehension is the knowledge of the Supreme
Intelligence, who, comprehending Himself the First
Cause of all things, from whose Existence all other
entities have participated existence, by whose influence
all inferior causes are moved to action, who consequently
possesses a comprehensive knowledge, not only of every-
thing that exists outside Himself, but also of all
possibilities whatsoever, though perhaps these are never
to issue from the state of possibility to that of actual
fact. How far the beatified intelligence of the saints
shares in this knowledge of comprehension we leave to
theology to determine as best it can.

Intuitive knowledge is that which, in perceiving any-
thing, percefves'aTso at a glance all the consequences
that flow from it. As, for example, an intuitive mind,
once it perceived what a triangle is, would instantly
grasp all those conclusions resulting from the triangle
which Euclid works out with so much labour. Such,
according to theology, is the knowledge of the angels,
which, being pure spirits, do not abstract their notions
from sensible phantasms, but know the nature of things
by a ray imparted from the Divine ideas of the Supreme
Intelligence. As we reflect upon this, we must concede
to the human understanding a certain at least rudimen-
tary power of intuition. There are some judgements
which we form about the simplest and most universal
conceptions, which follow immediately and without efi"ort
upon these conceptions. The most simple and universal
of all conceptions is that of sheer existence: immediately

/^

The Use of Reason

that I conceive the idea of existence I know that a thing
cannot at the same time exist and not exist : I do not
have to thrash this out, I know it intuitively. In the
same way when I conceive the idea of. cause and effect,
I have no need that any one should prove to me that
where there is an effect there must also be some assign-
able cause ; I know it in the very idea of cause and effect.
Such judgements as these we call first principles ; they
are themselves unprovable, being immediately evident,
and every subsequent proof supposes them. There is
no doubt that our knowledge of these principles is
intuitive as soon as we have abstracted from material
phantasms the simple and altogether univeral ideas of
existence and causality.

There is a certain (juasi-intuitive power in the mind of
man which goes a good deal farther than this. Any one
who is a man of thought is aware that he has been
sometimes quite sure of a conclusion long before he has
been able to find the reasons by which to establish it.
This is particularly evident in the discoveries of physical
science ; the life-history of many of our great discoverers
in this field of knowledge goes to show that they had
often arrived at a conclusion of which they themselves
felt certain, though it took them sometimes many years
before they could evolve the proofs necessary to convince
other minds besides their own. If this is not intuition
it is something very nearly akin to it. Nevertheless, all
such intuitions are valueless for any except the individual
himself, unless they are made evident by proofs of reason.
This leads us to the consideration of that manner of
understanding which is peculiar to the human intelligence
as apart from other intelligences, namely, the " discourse
of reason."

-^

1.

4 The Use of Reason

There are three steps in the discourse of reason. The
first is the simple apprehension of a bare idea : for
example "gold." This is quite a universal idea; I do not
refer to the particular gold out of which my watch is
made, but to the nature of gold in the universal.

The second step is a judgement passed upon this
simple idea, as it were dividing it up into all the different
parts which are included in my conception of the
substance " gold." For example, " Gold is a rare metal."
" Gold is a simple element." "Gold has such and such
a specific gravity." " Gold is of a yellow colour," &c.

The third step is an inference drawn from the colloca-
tion of two judgements in which there is one common
term. For example : —

Rare metals are precious.
Gold is a rare metal,
Therefore gold is precious.

Here is an inference drawn from the commonly
accepted proposition that what makes a metal precious
is its rarity ; under the heading of rare metals I collocate
gold, and so I conclude that gold is precious.

Or again : —

All animals are sensitive.
Man is an animal,
Therefore man is sensitive.

Here the idea of " animal " is that which enables me
to link together the two ideas of "man " and "sensitive."

There are two methods of reasoning, each of which
has its proper province, namely : deduction, or reasoning
downwards from the universal to the singular; and
induction, or reasoning upwards from the singular to the
universal.

The above are examples of deductive reasoning —

The Use of Reason 5

reasoning, that is to say, which proceeds downwards from
a more general proposition to a conclusion less general
or altogether singular. Tn the foregoing instance I
descend from the more general proposition that ^^ All
animals are sensitive," to a less general proposition,
namely, that '■'■Man is sensitive." I can carry this
further down still until my reasoning reaches the case of
a particular individual ; thus I take up the conclusion of
the foregoing inference, and use it as a premise for
a further conclusion. Ex. gr. : —
Man is sensitive.
John is a man,
Therefore John is sensitive.

So reasons the schoolmaster when he wants to cure
John of idleness by the infliction of corporal punish-
ment. Thus reason, which began with universal
principles, at last finds vent in vigorous action ; it is a
conclusion reduced to practice.

There is, however, as I have indicated, another
method of reasoning besides the deductive, or method of
reasoning downwards, and that is the inductive, or
method of reasoning upwards, from the observation of
single facts to the establishment of a universal principle.
Deduction is in itself far more noble than induction,
and, if we could always be certain of our principles, far
more sure. However, except in the case of principles
immediately known, the most obvious of which are those
universal first principles which deal with transcendental
notions — notions, that is to say, such as " existence,"
which embraces all things that are— our reasoning is
based upon principles not immediately perceived, but
which must be established by a process of induction.
Therefore it is that inductive reasoning is of the highest

6 The Use of Reason

importance, and in the main appeals to us more strongly
than deductive reasoning.

For example in the syllogism given above : —

All rare metals are precious.

Gold is a rare metal,

Therefore gold is precious.
Nobody is likely to call in question the major proposi-
tion that " all rare metals are precious," since there is no
assignable reason for a material substance being costly,
except the fact that it is scarce and difficult to obtain.
The minor proposition, however, that " Gold is a rare
metal," requires proof, and this can only be done
by induction, giving statistics of the output of the mines,
showing the state of the mints, and, in fine, making
it abundantly clear that the amount of gold in the world
is less than the amount of silver, lead, tin, iron,
copper, &c.

In all our reasonings deduction and induction are so
closely interwoven, that it is rare to find a bit of reason-
ing of any length in which both methods do not
have some part.

Very often we can prove a proposition either by
deduction or by induction. For example, if I were
asked my political creed I should formulate it in this
proposition : —

" Monarchy is the best system of government."
If questioned as to the grounds for my opinion, I should,
with the illustrious author of De Regimine Principum,
first prove it deductively thus : —

National success depends on united action,

But unity of action is best secured by a single
central authority.

Therefore the Government which has one central

/^

The Use of Reason 7

authority is the best calculated to secure national
success.
Against this conclusion of mine one having republi-
can tendencies would argue from facts {i.e., inductively).
He would say, "Your opinion is all very well in theory,
but the facts are against you," and he would proceed to
enumerate examples of successful republics and monar-
chical failures. Here I should have to take up facts
also; I should set forth examples of nations that achieved
prosperity under a king, and of others which came to
grief as republics. I should further show that the
successful republics were successful through the instru-
mentality of a succession of strong men who, though
nominally representatives of the people, were virtually
kings ; I should point out that in times of calamity
the only hope for a republic is in the nomination of a
dictator. And so on I should labour to prove my
thesis by induction. Very likely I should not succeed in
convincing my opponent, because an induction is very
often not of sufficient weight to convince, while it seems
that not everybody is capable of appreciating the force
of a deduction. At the same time he would be a very
strong reasoner indeed if he succeeded in convincing me
that the people ever have or ever will really govern them-
selves. "The sceptre to the strong" is my maxim, and
it is verified wheresoever the people have tried to take
government into their own hands. If you could prove
by the facts of history that republics are more successful
than monarchies, the reasoning of De Rc^imitie
Principum would fall to the ground, for established
facts can overthrow any reasons a priori : something
must be wrong with our principles, and if we perceive
that the conclusions legitimately deduced from them are

)-^i-

The Use of Reason

at variance with fact, we must set to work to readjust our
principles. The great intellectual danger of theorists
is that they are apt to overlook facts until they have
pressed their reasons so far as to land themselves in an
absurdity. It is the office of sound induction to obviate
this danger.

Here I must pause to point out that reasoning a
priori and a posteriori is not identical with deduction
and induction respectively — a mistake which is some-
times made and which leads to much confusion of
terms. A priori reasoning is that which proceeds from
cause to effect : as, for example, taking for my principle
that "Union is strength," I should argue "Japan is
united, therefore Japan is strong." A posteriori reason-
ing proceeds from effect to cause : thus from Japan's
exhibition of her strength, I should argue that the
Japanese are a united people. If the cause of anything
is unknown to me I cannot reason from it a priori, as is
obvious ; I can only reason about it a posteriori from
its effects. Thus it is impossible to prove the existence
of the Deity a priori, because He has no cause, and
even if for "cause" we substitute "reason of existence,"
still from this I can prove nothing a priori about God,
simply because the unbeatified human intelligence does
not see God in Himself, and consequently cannot
see immediately that His own Nature is the necessary
reason of His Existence, because His Nature and His
Existence are one and the same thing. We can, how-
ever, prove the existence of God by demonstration a
posteriori. Thus, for example : —

Evidences of design imply the existence of a
designer.

The visible universe exhibits evidences of design.

The Use of Reason g

Therefore the visible universe proves the existence
of a Designer thereof.
This is reasoning aposteriori. I proceed from the visible
things of the universe, which are effects, to prove that
there must exist an invisible First Cause of all these
things. Nevertheless it is clearly deduction, not in-
duction, for I make ^use of a universal principle which
embraces all designers, in order to demonstrate a
particular conclusion, namely, the existence of one
Designer. This universal principle, which I take as my
major proposition in the above syllogism, requires no
induction to establish it, because the very idea of
"design" includes a "designer"; design without a
designer is simply inconceivable — it implies a contradic-
tion in terms. But I may, nevertheless, illustrate the
meaning of the proposition by pointing to works of
design — a chair, a watch, a building, (S:c. — and showing that
in every case they owe their structure to the designing
intelligence of a carpenter, a watchmaker, or an architect,
as the case may be. All a posteriori propositions are those
which we establish by induction, while a priori proposi-
tions are immediately perceived as flowing from the simple
idea we have apprehended. We must be very cautious
not to raise an a posteriori proposition to the dignity of
one known a priori^ or we may find the foundations
of our reasoning cut away from under us. At the same
time to endeavour to apply induction everywhere would
be simply fatal to all reasoning whatsoever. In the
above syllogism the major is an a prion proposition,
while the minor is an a posteriori proposition ; it retjuires
establishing by a very easy and evident induction.

Men have reasoned from the beginning of the world,
because it is natural to them to do so ; but to the

]n

8

lo The Use of Reason

ancient Greeks is due the honour of having reduced the
workings of the human mind to a science. Aristotle laid
down the laws of deductive reasoning so fully and
perfectly that it would be very difficult to add anything
of importance to his teachings on this head. While
if we come to look for examples of deductive reasoning
we shall find none more beautiful than Euclid's
geometry. He starts with thirty-five definitions, twelve
axioms, and three postulates; these constitute his
principles. He requires no instruments but the pencil,
the compass, and the rule ; with these to hand he works
out problems of amazing intricacy. The demonstrated
conclusions of foregoing problems are used as premises
in the problems that are to follow after in so orderly
a sequence that his litde book has come down to
us through the ages a monument of what the human
intellect is able to achieve by deductive reasoning.

Euclid's geometry is an example of purely deductive
reasoning from beginning to end.

Neither was induction by any means unknown to the
Greeks ; a brief summary of it is given in Aristotle's
loc'ic, and he uses it admirably well in his other works
where occasion requires. Nevertheless, it was left to
our own Francis Bacon and his able interpreter, John
Stuart Mill, to elaborate the inductive method.

As Bacon most justly remarks in the first part of his
Novum Organutn: "The syllogism is composed of
propositions, the propositions of words ; and words are
but the signs and symbols of ideas ; if, therefore, our
ideas are rashly and imperfectly abstracted from the
things around us, all our subsequent reasoning upon
them falls to the ground." ' For example: "Copper" is

' " Syllogismus ex propositionibus constat, propositiones ex
verbis, verba autem notionum tesserae et signa sunt. Itaque si

/5

C/

The Use of Reason \ i

a word which by common usage signifies a certain
metal; if I conceive of copper that it is a simple element,
my conception of what copper is goes wide of the truth.
If I formulate this erroneous conception into a proposi-
tion, saying, " Copper is a simple element," my proposi-
tion is false ; if I draw a conclusion from this proposition,
my conclusion will be wrong. Thus : —

A simple element cannot be further resolved.

Copper is a simple element,

Therefore copper cannot be further resolved.
Here my syllogism is perfect in form, but because it
contains a mistaken idea of the nature of copper, it
generates a false conclusion.

Bacon is the victim of much misapprehension and
some vituperation from the enthusiastic disciples of
Aristotle. Indeed, he must be blamed for his somewhat
contemptuous manner of treating the deductive method.
He was sickened by dialectic verbiage founded on
erroneous conceptions, and he thought he must destroy
before he could rebuild. Nevertheless, we must perforce
confess that his inductive method applied for that pur-
pose for which he mainly intended it— namely, for
unfolding the secrets of nature — is not merely the best,
but it is the only way by which we can achieve satis-
factory results. We may reason deductively from
universal principles, but except in the case of pro-
positions immediately known where the connection
between the subject and the predicate is perceived at a

notiones ipsae mentis (quae verborum quasi anima sunt, et tolius
hujusmodi structurae ac fabricae basi.s) male ac teniere a rebus
abslractae, et vagae, nee satis definitae et circumscriplae, fieni(]ue
multis modis vitiosae fuerint, omnia xxxwrX^— Novum Orgauuiii
{pars prima).

n

1 2 The Use of Reason

glance, we must establish our principles by accurate in-
duction. It is quite impossible to learn the secrets of the
universe in which we dwell without making careful use
of experimental induction. We owe Bacon a very great
debt: our progress in physical discoveries, our commercial
pre-eminence, the march of all that material civilization
in which for many generations the Anglo-Saxon intellect
has led the van, is due to the impulse which he gave to
inductive reasoning. It has not been an unmixed
blessing ; as he foresaw with a wonderful prescience,
inductive reasoning has proved the most powerful of all
weapons in the hands of those who, regarding religion
as an impediment to progress, have sought its overthrow.
But we must not blame Bacon and his method for this :
the fault lies partly with some over-zealous supporters of
the old school, who held on to certain principles as
though they were revealed articles of faith, whereas they
were nothing of the kind ; but much more to be blamed
are the so-called men of science who set up a theory of
their own, and then endeavour to establish it by faulty
induction sufficiently plausible to deceive the ignorant
many, but hopelessly wanting in the elements of a sound
induction. The history of the physical sciences shows
a long succession of the rise and fall of such theories.
It is perfectly legitimate, even useful, to propound a
theory, but the author of it must be content that it
should rank only as a theory until he has established its
truth by a properly constructed induction ; if he is
unable to do this he must be prepared to set it aside
as unproven, or at most to claim for it nothing more
than that it is a working hypothesis.

Induction has two constituent parts— observation and
rational inference ; we observe facts, and from them we

^

The Use of Reason 13

infer the existence of some universal law, or of the cause
of the phenomenon we observe. For example, if we
subject any metal to the action of heat, we observe a
sensible increase in size ; from these observations we
infer the general law that "heat expands metal.'" This
principle we can apply for the attainment of all sorts of
practical results. Observation without inference is not
the action of reason at all ; many birds and beasts have
extremely acute powers of observation, and some men
are excellent observers but poor reasoners. The diag-
nosis of a malady which a doctor makes can scarcely be
called an act of reason except inasmuch as he makes
it under the light of a well-established universal principle.
For example, the following proposition is a well-
established principle of medical science : " Sore throat,
sudden rise in temperature, swollen glands of the neck,
rash, nausea, and strawberry tongue denote scarlet
fever." When a doctor diagnoses a case of scarlet fever
he makes the following conjectural syllogism :—

Such and such symptoms denote scarlet fever.

John Smith exhibits such and such symptoms.

Therefore John Smith has scarlet fever.
The major proposition is a sure principle established by
the inductions of former physicians, and so firmly
grounded that it is now a fixed principle of medical
science ; but the minor proposition merely requires
observation, and could scarcely be considered an act of
reason at all unless it were made under the light of a
universal as a means of arriving at a particular con-
clusion.

Nevertheless, it must be borne in mind that a singular
proposition which has received its full and complete
individualization either by the use of a proper name for

^

14 The Use of Reason

the subject, or when the subject has been determined
by the afifix of a definite pronoun, that proposition now
becomes equivalent to a universal, and may be reasoned
upon or reasoned up to as such. For example, the pro-
position "Milton was the author of Paradise Lost'' is
a fully individualized proposition, and I can construct a
syllogism upon it as though it were a universal.
Thus : —

Milton was the author of Paradise Lost.

The author of Paradise Lost had a great genius,

Therefore Milton had a great genius.
In this way we may consider that the sifting and
eliminating process by which the doctor comes to the
conclusion that John Smith has contracted scarlet fever
is a true induction, though the term of it is not a
universal law, but a singular fact. He finds the universal
cause of those symptoms we have enumerated, namely,
the disease called scarlet fever, individualized in the
particular case of John Smith. Merely to record facts
is the office of the external senses, the imagination and
memory. Induction, therefore, is only an act of reason,
because this gathering together of facts is serying an
intellect which bases its research on a universal
principle that "there is no effect without a cause";
secondly, that it sustains its research with another
universal — for example, that " Nature is uniform in her
operations," otherwise I could not be sure that heat
which expands one bar of iron might not contract the
next ; and lastly, that the term of the research is a third
universal or its singular equivalent, as in the instance I
have given, the law that " heat expands metal.'' To
make a good induction is most difficult ; in our research
after what we think we have hit upon as a law of nature.

//5

The Use of Reason 15

we shall probably find instanced examples for, examples
against, and irrelevant examples. ^Ve must eliminate
those facts which are irrelevant to the issue we have in
hand ; we must find reason sufficient to account for the
facts which appear to go against us ; and finally, we
must show that the facts in support of our contention
are conclusive. The five methods which are employed
by induction for the sifting of facts have been expounded
with admirable clearness by John Stuart Mill. They
are equally available either for the establishing of a
universal law, or for the diagnosing of an individual
case.

A few years ago I journeyed to Cape Town in
company with Professor Hutchinson, the celebrated
specialist in skin diseases. The object of his journey
was to ascertain whether or not the Zulus eat fish, for
he was endeavouring to construct an induction which
would establish this proposition : —

Leprosy is caused by eating stale fish.

He had heard that the Zulus had leprosy amongst
them, yet eat no fish. Wherefore his induction would be
valueless unless he could prove that the disease amongst
the Zulus was not true leprosy, or else that the Zulus eat
fish or its equivalent. The action of the learned pro-
fessor shows us what care must be used in constructing
a sound induction.

An instance of imperfect induction is the book 1 have
several times referred to in these essays, Darwin's
Descent of Man. In that book he has proposed to
himself to establish the following thesis : —

" Human life has been evolved from lower forms of
hfe."
Perhaps the strongest argument for his contention is

i6 The Use of Reason

to be found in the chapter which deals with reversion to
former types through arrested development, and the
existence of rudimentary and apparently useless organs.
No one can deny that the examples he instances are- very
forcible in support of his theory ; at the same time, as
regards reversion, he merely instances, without explain-
ing one single example, which militates against him ;
whereas it would not be difificult to cite hundreds of
such freaks of nature which cannot possibly be attri-
buted to reversion to a former type. In this his
strongest argument the induction is most imperfect.

When we come to the argument from the records
of geology, we find one solitary, by no means well-
defined, example in favour of his theory, and and all
the rest up to date against him. What an induction !

In fairness to Darwin we must here say that in his
concluding chapter he states t^hat much that he has
said will no doubt be considered " highly speculative."
In this we entirely agree with him.

Facts must be tested by rigorous experiment if they
are to be of any value in establishing a sure principle. It
is because many so-called scientists do not know how
to make a proper induction that we have now such
a quantity of arrant nonsense floating about in the name
of science. The old school of thought which Bacoq
opposed may have been obstinately tenacious of un-
sound principles rendered venerable by antiquity, but
I think that were Bacon alive now he would be the
first to lift up his voice against the tribe of little
scientific pedlars who flaunt before the eyes of the
vulgar a mass of flimsy intellectual rubbish, mere fictions
of the brain supported by some loose and puerile induc-
tion. Of course the physical sciences are not the sole

n,

The Use of Reason i /

province of inductive reasoning, though it is here that
this method finds its widest scope. Indeed, induction
enters more or less into almost every sphere of mental
activity. Fey example, th^ canons of criticism which
guide the historian and the antiquary in their researches
are not immediately known ; they are principles arrived
at by induction. Here again we see how all important it
is that these inductions should be properly worked out,
otherwise goodbye to truth and historical accuracy.
We must, moreover, bear in mind that even a thoroughly
well-established canon of criticism is not infallibly
applicable in every case, because it deals with con-
tingencies and moral issues, not with the iron
mechanical laws of nature.

So much for the universal principles either im-
mediately known or arrived at by induction, which are
attainable by the natural light of the human intelli-
gence, and form the basis for the discourse of reason.
But we may well ask ourselves the question. May it noTj
be that the understanding can be furnished with I
principles other than those attainable by the light q^
nature alone ? For it is obvious that, if there are such,
he is not a perfect reasoner who has not made these
principles his own.

We Catholics claim that there do exist such super-
natural principles — i.e., the dogmas of revelation imparted
to the mind of man by the light of faith, if only he
is willing to admit that light. '^

When we are once assured that God has spoken by
revelation, then surely there is no one who will deny
that the dogmas contained in this revelation are
principles as firm as the first principle of reason. Both
the one and the other have the same First Cause, namely

1 8 The Use of Reason

God, either illuminating the human intelligence by the
natural light He gave it in its creation, or else by that
added supernatural light which enables the mind
to apprehend revealed tru*lh.' Indeed, we may say
that the truths of faith are in a certain sense firmer than
the very first principles of reason, because the light
of faith strikes more directly from above upon the
created intelligence ; there is less of the intermediary
between the Illuminator and the illumined. It would be
as absurd for one who beheved in revelation to call
its truths in question, as it would be for him to doubt
the first principles of reason.

The only point which admits of argument is the fact
of revelation. This must be established by an accumula-
tion of arguments mainly composed of inductive reason-
ing. You take the prophecies of the Old Testament
about the Messias one by one, and you find them each
and all fulfilled in the Person of Christ. You turn
to the record of His life and miracles attested by eye-
witnesses. You mark the continuous fulfilment of His
own predictions, the spread of the Gospel, the stability
of the see of St. Peter, the constant hostility of the
worldly-minded, and so forth. In fine, you review all
that we call the evidences of Christianity. These are
facts : each several prophecy is a fact, each miracle is an
attested fact, the fulfilment of His words are so many
patent facts. These and similar arguments are the
different lines of a many-rooted induction which culmi-
nates in proclaiming to us the great truth contained
in this proposition : —

" Jesus Christ is the Divinely-appointed Teacher
of mankind."

There is no a priori proposition from which we can at

'■y?

The Use of Reason 19

once deduce the fact of revelation, for it does not depend
upon any law of necessity, like the ebb and flow of the
tides; it depends upon the free pleasure of God. It is,
therefore, perfectly useless to look for an argument which
will conclude with the conciseness of a " Syllogism in
Darii." ' If this could be done there would be no scope
left for the exercise of faith whatsoever. Nevertheless
God has given us materials for constructing an accumu-
lative argument of overwhelming force, whereby the
human intelligence may find reasonable grounds for its
acceptance of revealed truth. It is hard to see how any
one can fail to perceive the force of this accumulation of
well-reasoned proofs. As a matter of fact every one who
thinks at all does perceive it, but those who do not wish
to admit the light of faith very naturally make it their
business to use all possible ingenuity in order to weaken
the different members of this argument, or more com-
monly to divert their own and others' attention to some
little side issue, passing by without notice, in fact afraid
to look at, the crushing evidence which remains against
them. The very hostility which the fact ©f revelation
excites is in itself a proof of the conclusiveness of the
arguments to be brought in its favour. I say conclusive-
ness, for an induction does really conclude, although in a
different manner to a deduction. The criterion of truth
is evidence, and whatsoever form of argument you use, so
lo)ig as it begets evidence, that argument is conclusive.

' A Syllogism in Darii is a syllogism in which the major pro-
posili(jn is a universal affirnintive, the minor and conclusion singular
affirmatives. There is no universal aftirmative from which we can
necessarily conclude the fact of revelation, in the same way that I
can necessarily conclude that Peter is a reasonable being from the
universal affirmative that "all men are reasonable beings."

20 The Use of Reason

Some may, perhaps, object to Newman's dictum that the
accumulation of probabilities will produce a certainty,
on the ground that a cause must be proportioned to its
effect. They will say that the heaping up of probabili-
ties can do no more than heighten probability indefinitely.
An imperfect induction, it is true, only begets a proba-
bility of greater or less strength according as the induc-
tion approaches more or less towards perfection ; but a
perfect induction begets more than probability, its begets
certainty : because between the facts adduced and the
law of which they are the expression the connection is
necessary and certain, only the facts must be piled up
and the difficulties removed before that connection is
made evident. Once it is made evident then the conclu-
sion is cectain ! If the matter of our induction be
physical facts pointing to a physical law, we shall attain
a physical certainty ; if the matter be human testimony,
circumstantial evidence, &c., we shall attain a moral
certainty. Still it is a certainty, not a probability. For
example, I believe it is now proved to a certainty that
the sleeping-sickness is caused by inoculation from the
blood of. the crocodile through the bite of the tzetze fly.
This now amounts to a physical certainty. That cer-
tainty always existed, but it took our bacteriologists years
of patient labour before, by the piling up of evidence, by
the process of elimination, and so forth, they were able
to construct an induction strong enough to make that
certainty evident. In the same way the rotation of the
earth is a physical certainty, and there always existed ,
a necessary connection between this and the succession
of day and night, the course of the ocean currents, &c.,
yet many days and nights had succeeded each other, the
Gulf Stream, the Antarctic Drift, the North and

'rr

The Use of Reason 2 1

South Equatorial Currents, &c., had been in motion for
many ages before men perceived the necessary con-
nection between these things and the rotation of the
earth. When they did perceive that connection, they saw
therein conclusive evidence that the earth revolves upon
its axis. In the same way sufficient moral evidence pro-
duces moral certainty. If a criminal is to be convicted
of murder, the counsel for the prosecution must put
forward an accumulation of evidence which will induce
a moral certainty of the accused's guilt. You cannot hang
a man upon a probability of guilt, however strong that
probability may be ; you must have clear evidence of guilt,
that is to say proofs strong enough to induce a moral
certainty. Perhaps, therefore, it is using rather inaccurate
language to say that the accumulation of probabilities
begets a certainty, probable arguments will only generate
a probable conclusion, but the instances of a sound
induction are so many separate proofs each severally
inducing a certain conclusion, only they have to be piled
up and sifted before we are enabled to ierccive that the
conclusion is indeed certain.

Now as regards the proposition we are considering,
namely, "Jesus Christ is the Divinely-appointed Teacher
of Mankind." As we have seen, this conclusion cannot
be proved by a deduction from an a priori proposition ;
neither is it provable by a physical induction, as in the
case of sleeping-sickness or the rotation of the earth,
simply because it is not in the sphere of physical facts
and physical laws ; but it is made evident by a moral
induction resting upon moral data. The evidences of
Christianity afford matter for an accumulated argument
so overpoweringly strong, that if similar evidences were
produced in any court of law as forming a title to an

2 2 The Use of Reason

estate, they would be considered sweepingly conclusive.
Nevertheless all this weight of argument is insufficient to
generate faith, because faith is a supernatural light above
the natural powers of reason. ' The consequence is that
you not infrequently find men who profess themselves
intellectually convinced; they yield to the force of
evidence, and yet do not believe.

Once, however, that the conclusions of reason, fortified
by the higher light of faith, have made us quite sure of
this principle, " Jesus Christ is the Divinely-appointed
Teacher of Mankind," it follows as a consequence that
the dogmas included in His revelation are as firm as the
very first principles themselves. The science of theology
is that which accepts these propositions as immovably
fixed and certain, and then proceeds to reason from them
deductively. If the conclusions deduced from these
principles are evident, then such conclusions though not
themselves of faith unless they have been pronounced so
by the Authority of the Church, nevertheless are proxi-
mate to faith, and to call them in question would be rash
and presumptuous. Here, however, much caution must
be used, for in making theological deductions our
syllogism is often composed of principles of faith and
principles of reason combined. The principles of faith
are sure, but the principles of reason may be unsound,
abstracted by a faulty induction ; consequently the
theological conclusion deduced therefrom may be
incorrect. Much harm has been done by over-
enthusiastic theologians trying to make out that con-
clusions of this kind are proximate to truths of faith.
We Catholics of the present day should not have such a
heavy burden of defence laid upon us, had foregoing
generations of theologians been more cautious in their

/ >

The Use of Reason 23

conclusions, and not sought lo push doubtful points too /
far. ^-^

But here let me stop. Reason is truly a magnificent
heritage, and we are all reasoners by nature ; yet reason,
like everything else, has it laws, which laws have been
deciphered for us by the great masters of the science of
logic.

Cardinal Manning, in his beautiful book The Eternal
Priesthood, expresses his opinion that every child ought
to be taught logic as soon as it has mastered grammar.
Would that it were so ! We should not then so often
witness the sad spectacle of men endowed with high
intelligence falling into the most egregious and often
puerile blunders, simply because their reason has never
been trained by scientific methods.

He will be the perfect reasoner who, being completely
master of the deductive and inductive methods, has,
moreover, his natural intelligence fortified by the super-
natural light of faith, which gives him new principles to
reason from wholly unattainable by the light of nature.
There is still left an empty niche for the world's greatest
thinker to fill when he arrives in our midst. But, per-
haps, there was only One who ever could have achieved
that lofty position, and He instead preferred to speak
with Authority and to seal His testimony with His
Precious Blood.

PKLMED A.ND fUBUSHKD BY THE CATHOLIC IKl.lll bOClbll, I.UNUUN

/ )' ^

n^^

SCIENTIFIC FACTS
AND SCIENTIFIC HYPOTHESES '

By BERTRAM C. A. WIXDLE, M.D., F.R.S.,

President of Queen's College, Cork.

Many persons proclaim and still more believe, being
for the most part wholly ignorant of one or other or
both subjects, that between religion and science there is
an absolute incompatibility, nay, more, a conflict to the
death.

" Of all antagonism of belief," wrote Herbert Spencer,
" the oldest, the widest, the most profound, and the
most important is that between religion and science."
Those who still believe in this writer will not be sur-
prised that his ipse dixit carries great weight with the
uninformed multitudes who are incapable of studying
the subject for themselves, and who, therefore, conclude
that Spencer is right, and that those who believe in
religion must necessarily be enemies of science. One
object of this paper is to show that this is the most
arrant nonsense tliat was ever penned by rational man,\
and that \'Getween science^ properly so-caileci, and
religion, properly understood, there can be no kind of
dispute or dissension.

' A paper read at the Catholic Conference, Preston, September
II, 1907.

2 Scientific Facts

Science, to those who know what that much-abused
word means, is the study of ascertained or ascertain-
able facts, and with such facts, when once estabhshed
beyond yea or nay, rehgion has nothing and can have
nothing to do. But science, beside deaHng with facts,
her own especial province, is also, and, as will be
shown, inevitably, given to philosophising or indulging
in hypotheses framed for the purpose of explaining the
facts which are her peculiar province.

Now it is with regard to these two different kinds
of occupations of science that this paper is chiefly
concerned, and in attempting to indicate what the
reasonable attitude of the religious man is, or ought to
be to science, it is of the hrst importance for us to
distinguish between scientilic facts and scientific hypo-
theses. Most readers of popular works, having never
Tearnt the alphabet of science, in which they resemble
more than one of the writers of the same works, wholly
confuse the essential difference between facts and
hypotheses, and hence fall into utter confusion as- to
the whole of the controversy which rages, or has raged,
around certain biological ideas and theories.

At the outset, therefore, one must distinguish care-
fully between scientific facts and scientific hypotheses.
The former are matters of observation, the latter of
deduction. The former scarcely admit of doubt, if
they admit of it at all ; the latter may appear to be
incontrovertible or may not rise to as high a level even
as a pious opinion. For example, it is an unquestioned
fact that some living creatures have backbones and
some have not ; that certain animals live in one part of
the world and in that part alone ; that certain acids
combine with certain bases to form certain combinations
or salts.

and Scientific Hypotheses 3

There is no gainsaying facts such as these, nor has
the Church anything to say to them save in so far as
she chooses to use them in building up her system of
philosophy.

An hypothesis endeavours toex^hiin facts, to bind
them together, to co-relate them. As an example we
might take the much-debated theory which asserts that
all living animals have been derived from simpler, forms
— the doctrine of transformation.

Before discussing our attitude to such hypotheses
there are three points which it will be well to keep in
mind :

(i) That what has long been thought to be a scientific
fact may turn out to have been all along only an hypo-
thesis, and perhaps an inaccurate hypothesis too. I
shall deal more fully with this point when I come to
touch upon the question of the so-called chemical
elements.

(2) That scientilic facts without hypotheses to bind
them together are interesting but disjoined. They
may, like the sheep's head, afford " fine confused
feeding," but the effect upon the student will be like
that produced upon the man who attempted to satisfy
his literary cravings by reading Johnson's Dictionary.

They are like the bricks and mortar out of which the
genius of the architect can construct a. Westminster
Cathedral, but which otherwise remain a confused and
meaningless mass.

(3) That these hypotheses are liable, at any moment,
to be upset by facts newly come to light. But even if
overthrown and cast on the scrap-heap, they may still
have served a useful puipose as stepping-stones on the
way to truth.

Hence the construction of hypotheses is not onlv a

h'V

4 Scientific Facts

legitimate exercise of scientific imagination, it is also an
absolutely necessary one if science is to progress and
knowledge to increase.

But what is too often forgotten is that many — it
would not be too much to say most — of these theories
never attain to a greater dignity than of a working hypo-
thesis, and many of them perish before they have
arrived even at this pitch of acceptance.

In the biological sciences at least it may safely be
said that there is hardly a single theory which can be
regarded as being, even in its measure, as iirmly
established as a mathematical proposition.

Take the theory of evolution which, as the little
scientific manuals are never tired of assuring us, unless
a scientific man believe, he is undoubtedly lost. What
is the real value of this hypothesis ? It may fairly be
said that it is accepted by most, though perhaps not by
all men of science, though the same men of science
differ as widely as can be as to how evolution has come
about. Few, however, if any, would be so temerarious
as to say that this hypothesis rests on as secure a
foundation, as, say, a proposition of Euclid, or as one of
the positive facts of science like those alluded to pre-
viously. But if this be the case, and it can hardly be
denied, then this theory, like others, remains only a
theory and cannot be accepted as being more than a
working hypothesis, though admittedly the most fruit-
ful of results of all the hypotheses which have been put
forward by scholars belonging to the biological wing of
the scientific army,
r As I have already said, this is not the view which is
^ taken of this subject by the compilers of the little
manuals which flutter in such swarms from the popular
i press, but it is of great importance to take these manuals

and Scientific Hypotheses 5

at their real value and not at that which is set upon
them by their writers. A recent writer has very
pertinently observed :

" Laymen in science who wish to follow tiie trend of
modern discovery are limited for the most part to one
of two things : Either they must read the pseudo-
science of the magazines, which is arranged chiefly for
dramatic effect rather than for accurate exposition, or
they must turn to specialized and technical works
written by the discoverers themselves for their fellow-
workers — books in which technical training is taken for
granted, and the lay-reader, however cultured and
thoughtful he may be, becomes utterly and hopelessly
lost. The world is, then, divided between men who
know and cannot tell, and men who tell and cannot
know."

For the sake of those but little conversant with the
literature of science it may be well to give one example
of the kind of thing which is here alluded to. Readers
of evolutionary books will not require to be told that the
stock example of a chain of anim.ils in direct descent
is that of the horse and its predecessors, an example
which is so much quoted in such books as to lead many
to suspect that it is the only quotable instance.

In any case, as ordinarily given, it certainly is a very
striking instance, and one which might well be con-
sidered to go a long way in the direction of proving the
theory of transformation, at any rate so far as this
particular species is concerned. And so we hnd, in
one of the most recent and dithyrambic of the little
books on evolution, that "this great service, the afford-
ing of unquestionable proof of this momentous theory "
[of organic evolution], " mankind owes to its trusty
ser\ant the horse."

6 Scientific Facts

So impressed with this point is the writer that he
proceeds : '' The horse always stands to me for three
things : First, its obsolescent use as a beast of burden ;
second, its proof of the truth of organic evolution ;
third, its priceless services — irreplaceable by any
machine — in giving its blood to save our children's
lives when they are in the clutches of diphtheria."
The order of the services or aspects of interest of the
horse is rather odd, but at least it is clear that the
writer in question attached extraordinary importance
to the piece of evidence which it is supposed to afford.
Indeed, he does not hesitate to describe it as "A Con-
clusive Instance" in the heading of the chapter which
deals with the subject. So much for the man who tells.
Let us now turn to the man who knows. For every
thousand persons who glance through the pages of the
booklet from which I have been quoting, it may be
taken that perhaps not more than one will consult
the learned Text-book of Zoology, published in 1905 by
the present occupant of the chair of that subject in the
University ol Cambridge. Hence but few in com-
parison will learn what the position of science is on
that subject to-day. After describing the points alluded
to above, with regard to the so-called ancestry of the
horse, the learned writer proceeds : " So far as the
characters mentioned are concerned, we have here a
very remarkable series of forms which at iirst sight
appear to constitute a linear series with no cross-con-
nections. Wliether, however, they really do this is a
dilTicult point to decide. There are flaws in the chain of
evidence, which require careful and detailed considera-
tion. For instance, the genus Eqiius appears in the
Upper .Siwalik beds, which have been ascribed to the
Aliocene age. It has, however, been maintained that

and Scientific Hypotheses J y^ /

these beds are really Lower Pliocene or even Ujiper
Pliocene. It is clear that the decision of this question
is of the utmost importance. If Eqiiiis really existed in
the Upper Miocene, it was antecedent to some of its
supposed ancestors. Again, in the series of equine
forms, Mcsohippus^ Miohippus, Dcsinatliippiis, Prolo/iippus,
which are generally considered as coming into the
direct line of equine descent, Scott points out that each
genus is in some respect or other less modernized than
its predecessor. In other words, it would appear that
in this succession of North American forms the earlier
forms show, in some points, closer resemblances to the
modern Eqiiits than to their immediate successors. It
is possible that these difticulties and others of the same
kind will be overcome with the growth of knowledge,
but it is necessary to take notice of them, for in the
search after truth nothing is gained by ignoring such
apparent discrepancies between theory and fact."

With which last statement every rational person must
fully agree, and must conclude that in this case at least
the man who told of the " Conclusive Instance " was
not aware of what the men who know had been think-
ing about the point which he endeavours to present as
incontrovertible evidence. It is true that he quotes
Huxley in support of his contention. But then that
distinguished man has been dead for some time.
Scientiiic work did not come to a close with his death,
and, as will be shown, the tendency of scientitic work
is quite as often to upset as to establish earlier theories.

We conclude, then, that the formation of scientilic
hypotheses is legitimate and useful ; that each has to be
carefully weighed and no hasty judgement formed upon
it, and that its real value is to be estimated from the
opinion, the carefully matured opinion, of genuine

lus

Scientific Facts

workers, and not from the dicta of magazine articles or
of popular manuals of science.

In this connection it seems well to make two remarks :
(i) It is clearly foolish' at its first enunciation to announce
any theory as certainly true and to denounce those who
hesitate to accept it, and it is equally foolish to boast
that this theory, which may or may not be true, com-
pletely upsets all the teachings of /^igion or even some
of them. A single glance at tl|^' scrap-heap, where
rusting wrecks ofbygone theories h^rf^ hi^^n casL.should

prevent any man of science from taking u^ any such
rash and hasty an attitude. \

(2) It is equally unwise, if I may venturq to offer this
criticism, ftti' theologians who may perhaps be but little
versed in'^^cieiice and its methods, hastily to assume
that the adherents of some hypothesis are right in their
conclusion as to its opposition to religious teaching,
and to condemn it, as has been done in the past, with-
out first carefully considering what the real bearing of the
theory upon religion may happen to be. Before taking
up any such attitude it would be better to leave the
theory for a time to the ciliJi^'"'''" ^f srientific men, and
how corrosive that criticism may be I must now make
some attempt to show.

In doing this I shall take an example from each
of the two great branches of science, physical and
biological.

Everybody, one may presume, will have heard of
the alchemists and of their search for the philosopher's
stone which was supposed to possess the power of
transmuting one substance into another ; of making,
for example, gold out of lead.

This search was based upon the underlying theorj-
that there was a materia prima of which all substances

mid Scientific Hypotheses 9

were different manifestations, and the search itself was
vakiable in that it led to the emergence of the great
science of chemistry.

Robert Boyle — ''the Father of Chemistry, and the
Brother of the Earl of Cork," as his tombstone describes
him — a very distinguished exponent of his science,
wrote, in 168 1, a work called The Skyptical Chemist,
which was the commencement of the movement which
displaced the view of the alchemists that there was a
"simple, perfect essence," and replaced it by the theory
that there existed some seventy or eighty elements
which were unchangeable and undecomposable. It is
fair to say that the view that these elements were
unchangeable was always guarded by careful men of
science with the proviso that they were unchangeable
so far as could be seen. Thus Davy stated in 181 1
that " to inquire whether the metals be capable of
being decomposed and composed is a grand object of
true philosophy," and Faraday, in 1815, that "to de-
compose the metals, to reform them, and to realize the
once absurd notion of transiftutation, are the problems
now given to chemists for solution." But in spite of
assertions such as this, it is fair to say that all chemical
work for more than two hundred years proceeded upon
the assumption that the simplicity of the elements was
a scientiiic fact. And yet recent discoveries seem to
show that the fact was in reality only a theory, and that
theory not an accurate one ; nay, more, that the
alchemists in their underlying assumption were nearer
to the truth than the many generations of chemists which
succeeded them. To justify this statement it must
be explained in the first place that some twenty-live
years ago Sir Norman Lockyer showed, by spectroscopic
methods, that a certain element, which he called helium,

1 o / " Scientific Facts

at that time not known to exist upon the earth, was to
be found in abundance in the atmosphere of the sun.
Now recent research seems to show that this hehum is
a disintegration product of radium, and if that is the
case, then one form of matter has been caught in the
act of transmuting itseh" into another. Moreover, there
is some evidence that radium itself is a disintegration
product from some other substance, perhaps the hitherto
called element uranium, or, as others hold, of some
unknown substance which accompanies uranium.
Finally, the element thorium appears to be constantly
engaged in generating from itself another solid element
which again decays, its end-product being so far un-
known. These facts, if they be facts, are the result of
but a few years' investigations ; for it is but yesterday
that M. and Mme. Curie announced their discovery of
radium. Yet they have rendered insecure the whole
basis upon which chemists have been working for more
than two hundred years, and strikingly illustrate the
truth of the statement that great hesitation should be
exhibited before scientific facts are regarded as being
surely and irrefragably established.

But far beyond the points above dealt with is
the view which is now being put forward that all
matter is one in its last analysis. That the molecules
of which any substance is made up are composed of
certain factors called atoms has long been a dictum of
science, and the atomic theory, so wonderful and so
fruitful, is built upon it. But it is now urged that these
atoms consist of corpuscles or electrons, and that each of
these is made up of a moving unit of negative electricity
together with the ether which is bound up with it. A
collection of such corpuscles, surrounded and balanced
by a sphere of positive electricity, is an atom. Hence

and Scientific Hypotheses 1 1

in essence there is no diiteience between the corpuscles
of any substances. It is their arrangement in the atom,
their positions with regard to one another, perhaps the
kinks or vortices whicli they produce in the ether
surrounding them, or which exist in that ether, which
produce the differences in the atoms and hence pro-
duce the differences in the substances of which they
are the constituent parts. If all this be true then it is
not too much to expect that some means may yet be
found by which the arrangement of the corpuscles in
the atom may be artihcally altered, and one substance
actually transmuted into another. Incidentally I may
remark that besides rehabilitating the alchemists, this
view, so far as I understand such matters, comes un-
commonly close to the scholastic theory of matter and
form. What I have said shows, I think I may claim,
that even a theory of such respectable antiquity and
such apparently unimpeachable validity as that of the
chemical elements may turn out to have been inaccurate,
and that, if such be the case, it is a strong proof of the
wisdom which bids one hesitate before rashly forming
a judgement as to any hypothesis or its bearing upon
any other order of thought.

Turning to the other side of scicntilic investigation, I
must dwell for a few moments on the so-called Dar-
winian theory, and in doing so, it may be well first to
clear up the misapprehension under which so many
persons labour, that Darwin was the originator of the
doctrine of transformation, of the view, that is, that
certain living things were derived from other living
things, the theory of what we should call Derivative
Creation. Darwin, of course, did nothing of the kind,
for such a solution of the condition of affairs in the
world of living things was proposed centuries before

'7^^

v>.

^

i^^( l^ A Scientific Facts

arwin was born. To take only our own theologians,
such a view was in essence put forward by St. Augustine,
by St. Thomas Aquinas, by Cornelius a Lapide, and by

« Suarez, as has been shown by Mivart in a now almost
forgotten book, The Genesis of Species, and by Father
Wasmann in his splendid treatise. Die Modcnie Biologic
und die Entivickliitigstheone, so that, whether true or not,
the doctrine in one shape or another has a v^ery respect-
ahlgantiquity. What Darwin did was to" suggest a
meansB}' wliirh the transformation might have taken
place, and his great factor was Natural Selection. The
title of his most celebrated work — a title unknown to
many who talk and write about the subject, at least so
it would appear — is The Origin of Species by means of
Natural Selection, or the Prcscn<aiion of Favoured Races
in the Struggle for Life, and this makes it clear that it
was the method, not the fact, of transformation which
he desired primarily to expound. Now many hold that
Natural Selection does not exist, and Professor T. H.
Morgan, a most distinguished American authority on
biological matters, says that the discoveries of the
Augustinian Abbot Mendel have given that theory its

' coup de grace. But if Natural Selection exists it is
nothing, and can be nothing, but a sieve by which
certain changes, which have in some way or another
arisen, are tried and retained or lost. It postulates an
internal force of variation following some law, and that
again demands the existence of a law and of a law-
giver. But let that pass. Darwin called these varia-
tions spontaneous, and he insisted particularly that they
were individually slight, minute, and insensible. On
such an hypothesis most biologists, and at lirst all, have
pursued their

But of yecent years lanother school has arisen which

and Scientific Hypotheses 1 3

declares that these sHi^ht, ahiiost unnoticeable changes
on which Darwin rehecl, are utterly powerless to bring
about any transformation, and that it is only by the
occurrence — the sudden occurrence — ^f^large and cou-
sidegable-ebaageg or ^mutations" that a new species

is produced. De Vries, the distinguisHecP Dutch

botanist, claims that he has been able to observe the
birth of.-ft€J5/^ species in the vegetable kingdom, and he
an^JBatesorv'and others proclaim that Variation is dis-
continuous and not continuous ; in other words, that the
accumulation of small variations which Darwin counted
on, and the efficacy of which Mivart doubted, have
nothing to do with the process. It is true that others
have cast doubt on the reality of these species, so that

the matter rx}nc.{ c\\\\ hf; rnnc^iVlprprl Kiih jii'[irr.^ but in

any case, if these " mutations " really occur, we are
brought back to the imperative necessity for some
internal cause which produces these large spontaneous
departures from the normal condition, and to the equally
imperative necessity for a law to regulate them and for
a law-giver who has established them and set them in
motion.

I take this instance because the hypotheses of Natural
Selection and of the efficacy of small variations in the
production of species really lie at the bottom of the
whole of the Darwinian edifice. These theories were
supported with all the marvellous skill and with all the
industry and research which were the attributes of that
truly great man, yet wp nnw-frn4 thpm rnntJUVj^tfd, and
learn that it is possible that they too may have to find
their way to the scrap-heap of which I have spoken, a
scrap-heap on which will be found also Darwin's
beloved " pangenesis " theory, and perhaps some other
of his hypotheses.

14 Scientific Facts

Thqj; these theories should have found their way there
in no way detracts from the greatness of the man or
the remarkable power which his work has had in
stimulating scientific research. It merely proves that
fresh facts, of which he was not cognizant, have come
to light, facts which upset or seem to upset his theories.
But it affords another proof of the extraordinary caution
which we should adopt in dealing with scientilic hypo-
theses, the scepticism with which they should be
received, and the importance of constantly keeping
before one's mind the fact that the hypothesis, however
alluring, is only a working hypothesis, and that it must
not be estimated at a higher value than that which it
really possesses.

On the whole, then, I hope I have been able to show
by the examples which I have chosen, and I might have
added many others to them, that a scientilic hypothesis
is by no means necessarily a scientific truth. I also
wish to emphasize the point that this is a matter which
is perfectly well understood by men of science, and
that the xeasQO-why tliere^is any doubt at a41 about it in
the minds of the public, is-lhat the public relies for its
information upon unreliable manuals and articles which,
for effect, pick up a theory and Hai,mt^it..iiL the face of
that pubirc"^i"if it were a fact as undeniable as sunrise
and sunset, and moreover often draw from it deductions
which are frequently unwarrantable and almost always
absent from the minds, or at least the books, of the real
originators of the main hypothesis.

And so, to any one worried by the bearing or supposed
bearing of any scientific hypothesis upon matters close
to his heart I would say, " Do not be worried ; theories
come and go, but God remains for ever, and there can
be no possible ultimate contradiction or difference

and Scientific Hypotheses i 5

between the tenets oi His Ciiurch and the laws of His
creation."

There is just one other point which I should wish to
dwell upon for a moment. The extraordinary results
of science during the past fifty years, the remarkable
fecundity of observation in all branches, the almost
incredible progress which has been made, all tend to
show the wonderful complexity of the problems with
which we have to do and the truly amazing extent of
our ignorance. If there is a science in which it might
be supposed that really definite knowledge had been
arrived at it is that of physics, yet it is not, perhaps, too
much to say that physicists are beginning to come to
the conclusion that they know nothing of the undex"-
lying physical facts of which ordinary things and
phenomena are the symbol and the manifestation. The
same is true on the biological side. The greater the
improvements in the microscope, the more subtle the
methods of microscopic preparation, the more delicate
and searching the experiments undertaken, the greater
are the mysteries which are found to surround us.

There is nothing on which greater pains and study
have been expended than on tlie structure and physi-
ology of the cell, and, to us as Catholics, I may add
that it is matter of congratulation that some of the
most important and fruitful of this work has been done
in the University of Louvain.

It is a small thing — the cell. It might have been
supposed by the casual observer that no very great
amount of labour would be necessary to clear up all
that could possibly be known of such a very limited
field of investigation. Yet after so many years of work,
after the unceasing toil of hundreds of observers in all
parts of the world, the leading authority on the subject

l''^

1 6 Scientific Facts

finds himself compelled to write, " The recent advance
of discovery has not tended to simplify our conceptions
of cell-life, but has rather led to an emphasized sense of
the diversity and complexity of its problems."

The sea by the side of which Sir Isaac Newton picked
up his pebbles is a much greater one than even he
imagined, and the pebbles which remain to be picked
up are a million for every one on which a discoverer
has as yet laid his hand. How can we then, in the
presence of such a confession of ignorance, feel any
great confidence in the foundation or longevity of a
scientific theory when we know not the day in which
some new pebble may not be picked up which will
shatter that theory into fragments, as that fine pebble,
radium, has shattered so many pre-existing views.

Pulchra quae videntur, piilchriora quae exisiimantur,
longe puJchernma quae ignorantur. We have not come to
the confines of knowledge as yet nor anywhere near them.

We cannot understand the flower from the crannied
wall, nor even grasp the secrets of one of the many
million cells of which it is built up, and it is improbable
that future generations will succeed in clearing up all
the mysteries which elude our grasp.

But till all these have been cleared up it is hard
to say that any scientific hypothesis is irrefutably
established.

Facts let us have in as great a measure as possible
and theories too, let us have, in any reasonable number :
but let us be quite clear as to what are facts and what
are theories, and quite definite in our ideas as to the
relative value of the two categories.

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BV THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, LONDON.

SOME DEBTS WHICH SCIENCE OWES
TO CATHOLICS^

Bv bp:rtram c. a. wixdle, M.n., f.k.s.,

Pi csidciil of Queen's Collci^c, Cork.

That there have been great discoverers in the realm of
science who have professed no religious faith, v. '.'
on the contrary, been inimical to all forms oi
belief, is a fact that can hardly have failed to con- ....^_.
the notice of any person who reads the magazines or even
the daily papers. That there have also been great lumi-
naries of science like the late Sir George Stokes or like
that most distinguished man whose body was laid to rest
in Westminster Abbey but a short time ago who, though
not members of the Catholic (Church, were yet professed
believers in Christianity, is also a matter of common
knowledge.

That at least as great a number as both of these classes
put together have been or are faithful adherents of the
great Mother Church, it is the object of this paper to
show. It ought not to be necessary to have to show
anything of the kind, nor would it be if the reading world
was better educated and at least reasonably informed. But
this is the day of the imperfectly educated, and the half-
informed writers are never tired of telling their quarter-
informed readers that between the Catholic Church and

' A lecture delivered to the Catholic Young Men's Society, Cork.

2 ' Some Debts which

science there exists such a deadly enmity that the latter
cannot flourish where the former exercises her baneful
influence. This is a terrible accusation if it were true,
for science being simply the examination and discovery
of the facts of nature, the accusation really means that
Catholicism is such a thing of shreds and patches that
it cannot stand the light of truth, and must therefore seek
to extinguish or occlude that light lest it prove its destruc-
tion. Well, this is a matter, fortunately, which does not
rest upon the word of any man ; it is an actual question of
fact, and can be determined by a little historical inquiry,
an inquiry so simple and so easy that one might have sup-
posed it to be within the capacity even of those half-informed
writers of whom mention has just been made.

When 1 begin the task which now lies before me,
the difficulty which I first encounter is not one of dis-
covery but of selection, for there are so many distinguished
Catholic names amongst the Fathers of Science that it
would be possible to exhaust the limits of this paper by
merely giving a catalogue of them. That would be a very
uninteresting thing to most people, and I must, therefore,
make a choice and select those lines of study with which
I am myself most familiar.

Hence I must pass over the Mathematicians, and I must
not linger over the Astronomers, though I might have given
some account of the Canon of the Cathedral of PVauen-
burg, who is better known as Copernicus, whose wish it
was that there should be inscribed upon his tomb the words,
" I ask not the grace accorded to Paul, not that given to
Peter : give me only the favour Thou didst show the thief
on the cross." Or I might have given you the true history
of the Galileo episode, and might have asked you to con-
sider how it is that if the Church is really so much opposed
to science, this is the one case that is constantly being
brought up, and why it is that this one case has always

Science owes to Catholics 3

to be garbled to make it bear the interpretation which it
is desired to place upon it. Or I might have asked you to
consider the lives and work of those two distinguished
Jesuits, Fathers Secchi and Perry, whose names are held
in honour wherever astronomers meet together.

So also must I pass over the Chemists, and even the
Ethnologists, though there is no body of men to whom
Ethnology owes so great a debt as it does to the early
Catholic missionaries, indeed, to the Catholic missionaries
of all ages, and particularly to those who belonged to the
Society of Jesus. I cannot do more than briefly allude
also to the many names of Catholics, and especially of
Catholic ecclesiastics which are to be found amongst the
list of those who have helped to clear up the secrets of the
earlier races which inhabited this globe, and particularly
Europe, during the prehistoric period. Why, even Kent's
Cavern, the investigation of which has taught us so much,
was rediscovered, after having been lost for years, by
Father M'Enery, a Catholic priest !

I intend to devote most of my space to the consideration
of some few of those who have been eminent in Biology or
in Medicine, for of those two lines of scientific investiga-
tion I have some claim to speak, but before passing to
them I must pause for a few moments and bring under
your notice some remarkable facts connected with Physics,
or as it used to be called. Natural Philosophy.

I do this for a twofold reason. Firstly, because the
uses of electricity are so numerous, and its applications
daily growing so familiar that everybody talks about it,
and many people think that they know all about it. But
secondly, I bring it under your notice because it is a subject
which is peculiarly connected with the question we are now
concerned with, and, as we shall see, the names of great
Catholic observers are actually embalmed in tlie nomen-
clature of the science, though probably not one in a

4 Some Debts which

thousand of those who use the terms have the slightest
knowledge of that fact.

Why, for example, do we speak of galvanism, of a gal-
vanic battery, of galvanized iron ? We do so because
Galvani, an Italian, was one of the earliest and the
greatest discoverers in this line of research. Galvani was
born in Bologna in 1737; he Was educated there, he
became — I am proud to think of the subject which he
taught — Professor of Anatomy there, and he died there
in 1798. He was evidently a man of more than merely
nominal Catholic beliefs, since it is recorded in his Life
that he made a novena to our Lady in order to be guided
aright in his choice of a wife, an act which proclaims his
prudence as well as his faith.

IJut Galvani is not the only Catholic name which is
associated with this science. Since it became a com-
mercial matter, electricity has taught us a number of
terms employed, as inches are in linear measurement, and
as pounds are in weight, the units of various kinds used in
the measurement of the mysterious entity which we call the
electric current. There are five of these units, the \'olt,
the Ampere, the Coulomb, the Ohm, and the Farad. How
are these strange terms derived, and what do they signify ?
Well, in the first place, each of them is the whole or the
part of a man's name, and I suppose it need hardly be
said that those men would not have had their names thus
honoured if they had not fully earned the distinction which
has been given to them.

The fact is that their names are attached to these units
because they were the first or the greatest discoverers, and
in some cases both, of the secrets connected with the par-
ticular measurement with which their names have become
associated. We may dispose at once of the Ohm, which is
the unit of resistance, and the Farad, which is that of capa-
city, since neither Ohm nor that great man. Sir Michael

Science oives to Catholics 5

Faraday, were Catholics. But all the other three belong to
us. Volts and voltage are on everybody's tongue who has
to do wdth electricity, however slightly, and the volt is the
unit of electromotive force. It owes its name to Volta,
a great physicist, who, amongst other things, discovered
the electrical decomposition of water. He was a Catholic,
was born in Como in 1745, and was Professor of Natural
Philosophy in Pavia. Scarcely less frequently do we hear
of the ampere, which is the unit of current, and Ampere, to
whom it owes its name, was a Catholic and a Frenchman,
born in Lyons in 1775. Afterwards a Professor in the
College de P>ance, he died in 1836. Finally, there is the
unit of quantity, the coulomb, and that owes its name to
another French Catholic who was born in Angouleme
in 1730, and died in 1806. Four, therefore, out of the
six names associated most prominently with this subject,
embedded in its very nomenclature, are those of Catholics.
Of course, it may be argued that they were Catholics because
of their time and place of origin. Well, taking into con-
sideration the dates at which some uf them lived, I think
that might be an arguable proposition, but after all it is not
to the point. The allegation we are answering is that it is
not possible for Catholicism and Science to flourish side
by side, and here we bring you four Catholics, who were
such masters in their own particular line that men of
science of all religious beliefs and of no religious belief
have united to honour them in the most distinguished
manner in their power, namely, by giving their names for
ever to. the nomenclature of their subject. But I can still
further add to my argument by giving one more name of a
man happily still living. Everybody has heard of the
Rontgen rays, and most people have either seen them
or at least the radiographs which they produce, but
probably few know that the discoverer of these rays is
a faithful son of the Church.

6 Some Debts zukich

Now I must turn from these fields and ask you to consider
with me a few only of the distinguished Catholic names
which are associated with biological science, a science any
dealings with which is, according to some persons, the
certain road to loss of faith.

I will begin with the great controversy which raged for so
long around the question of the origin of life — biogenesis or
abiogenesis.

From the time of Aristotle and for centuries after him
down to the days of William Harvey, the discoverer of the
circulation of the blood and the tutor of the sons of
Charles I of England, for all this long period of time
people thought that living things could be originated by
non-living materials. Thus they thought that maggots were
actually engendered by decomposing flesh ; that insects and
reptiles arose from the slime of rivers ; that eels were formed
in vinegar • and the like. It was in no way wonderful that,
in days when the microscope was unknown, such ideas
should prevail ; they were held by all the Fathers of the
Church who troubled themselves about such matters, and
even St. Thomas Aquinas, that well of learning, when com-
bating the ideas of Avicenna, a controversy which has often
and grossly been misrepresented, did not deny — it would
have been absurd for him to have done soothe possibility
' ' ' ' - -nesis. Where St. Thomas differed from Avicenna
that the latter maintained that life was spon-
l generated from non-living matter by the inherent

powers of that matter alone, whereas St. Thomas contended
that, if life did come from non-living matter it was
because the Creator had imparted to non-living matter the
power of producing life, which would be the sufficient
explanation of the question to-day, if — which seems very
unlikely — it were actually discovered that, under certain
circumstances, life did arise from non-living matter.

Now, the first investigator to disprove some of the stand-

Science owes to Catholics 7

ing proofs — as they were then taken to be — in favour of
spontaneous generation was Redi, an ItaHan, born in 1698,
and doubtless a Catholic, though I have no definite infor-
mation on this point. Redi conceived the idea of protect-
ing pieces of meat immediately after the animal from which
they had been taken had been killed, with gauze covers, the
precursors of the meat-safes in our larders of to-day. He
found that if he did this, his pieces of meat produced no
maggots, and he was able to prove by this very simple
experiment, of which no one had thought before, that it
was the eggs of the- flies which produced the maggots, and
that if the flies were kept off there were no such things to
be seen.

However, this only settled the one point in question, and
did not close the controversy, which continued in the
i8th century, when, oddly enough, the leading antago-
nists on the two sides were both of them Catholics, and
not only that but Catholic ecclesiastics. These two were
Needham (1713-1781), who believed in spontaneous
generation, and Spallanzani (1729-1799), who denied
its existence. It cannot be denied that whichever side
was right or wrong, the Church was impartial in this case.
Still later, the publications of Pouchct, a l""rcnchman, led
to a further outburst of investigation, and, in the end, to
the epoch-making experiments of Pasteur. I have no
space to deal with these, but can only say that they all
reduce themselves to the original experiment of Redi, that
of keeping living things away from the dead matter, which
then never produces life. For that is what Pasteur proved,
and not that dead matter never produces living. That
negative has never been proved, and is probably unprov-
able. At any rate, no sane person doubts the great
scientific interest and the enormous practical importance
of Pasteur's work. Nor does any person, who knows any-
thing about him, doubt the sincerity of his atrarhmcnt to

8 Some Debts which

the Catholic Faith. It was Pasteur who said that the more
he knew, the more his faith assimilated itself to that of a
Breton peasant, and that he was quite sure that if he knew
as much as he wanted to know, his faith would be as great
as that of the Breton peasant's wife. And in the centre
of the great edifice of science which has arisen as his
memorial in Paris, there is a chapel, where all that is
mortal of Pasteur rests, and where Mass is said on each
anniversary of his death for the repose of his soul — one
wonders how long the pious practice will continue under
the present circumstances of France.

So much for this great controversy, in which, as I have
tried to show. Catholic names have been prominent from
the earliest to the latest times, for Mr. Burke, the author of
the latest unsuccessful attempt to prove abiogenesis, is also
a member of our Faith.

I turn now from what has been one of the greatest, and
perhaps one of the most important of all scientific battle-
fields," to another subject of great importance and entran-
cing interest, that of regeneration. I suppose most people
know that if one cuts a worm in two pieces, each of them
will develop into a new complete worm ; also that if one
cuts off the leg or the tail of a newt, the injured creature
will re-grow the member of which it has been deprived, and
will go on re-growing it as often as it is taken off. Such a
process in a major or minor form takes place in all living
things. We even see examples — very slight examples — of
it in ourselves or our neighbours when we watch the
healing of wounds. I have no space to devote to giving
examples of this curious process, nor of dwelling upon the
philosophical importance which it possesses. What I am
concerned with is the connection with it of Catholic names,
and of these that of Spallanzani was one of the greatest, the
very Spallanzani of whom I wrote a few lines above. For
it was Spallanzani who found out about the division of the

Science oives to Catholics 9

worm, and it was Spallanzani who made the discoveries as
to the power which the salamander or newt had of re-
growing its hmbs, so that all the work which has since been
done has been really nothing more than an amplification of
the discoveries of this Catholic ecclesiastic. But Spallan-
zani was not the original discoverer of regeneration in
animals. That honour belongs to another Catholic ecclesi-
astic, the Abbe Trembley, who carried out his classical
experiments in 1740 on a small water creature called hydra,
and showed that if the hydra was divided into two or more
pieces, each of these pieces was capable of developing into
a new individual. Trembley knew that plants behaved in
this way : everybody knows and knew this, but he had
never before, nor had any other person, come in contact
with such an occurrence in an animal. Now the hydra is
green in colour, and Trembley was at first disposed to think
that its nature had been mistaken, and that it was really a
vegetable, but ^vith a beautiful modesty — which would
become any man of science — he wrote : " I felt strongly
that nature is too vast, and too little known, for us to
decide without temerity that this or that pro[)erty is not
found in one or another class of organized bodies."

Since the days of Trembley and Spallanzani many papers
and books have been written on this subject, but none of
them have controverted the work of these two Catholic
ecclesiastics, on whom, indeed, the whole edifice of this
part of biology may be said to have been erected.

From these two lines of research let us turn to another,
that of inheritance, one of the most important and the
most mysterious of all the problems presented to us by
living things. The greatest miracle — in the classical sense
of mh-actihim — if we were not blinded by our familiarity
with it, is that of inheritance. Why should the egg bring
forth a chick more or less resembling the fowls which
originated it? ^Vhy should the child be like the p.irent.

lo Some Debts ivhich

Why is it that a rabbit never produces a hare, or a rat a
mouse ? These and other questions go right down to the
roots of all biological investigations, and they have as yet
received no kind of adequate answer of a physical character.
Probably there never will be any such answer, and it is
likely that the best that we can hope for is that we may be
able some day to know the laws under which inheritance
works. Some persons, and they are of great distinction in
the realms of science, think that we do know some of these
laws and that the Mendelian experiments have really set at
rest certain questions which have agitated the scientific
world for many a day. Whether this is true or not it is
still too early to say. Many firmly believe in Mendel's laws
and think that they are the key to all kinds of scientific
and practical dififiiculties, and one writer at least, a distin-
guished American biologist, goes so far as to say that they
have given the coup de grdce to Darwin's theory of Natural
Selection. Others as vehemently deny the general applica-
bility of these laws, and so the controversy, at times of a
very envenomed character, goes on. But who, after all,
is this Mendel of whom there is so much talk, around
whose discoveries or theories all this scientific controversy
rages? W^ell, Mendel was a monk, and ended his days as
Abbot of the Augustinian Abbey of Briinn, and it was in
the gardens of this abbey that his classical experiments
were carried out.

Moreover, his scientific knowledge was due to his studies
of a post-graduate nature in Vienna, and he was sent there
by his abbey on account of the scientific bent which his
Superiors observed that their young brother possessed.
Mendel died in 1884, so that he is a man of our own time
and one of the most recent, with Father Wasmann, S.J.—
fortunately still with us — of the band of Catholic eccle-
siastics who have shed lustre "upon themselves by their
brilliant and enduring work in connection with biology.

Science owes to Catholics i i

Before I come to my last instance I must not omit to
mention the names of Schwann, who was the discoverer of
the cell-theory on which the whole science of histology,
normal and pathological, is built ; of Johannes Miiller,
after whom the Miillerian Ducts are named, one of the
greatest of biologists of the last century ; and of Claude
Bernard, a physiologist of the very first rank. All of these
were Catholics, and, what is particularly interesting, the
last named abandoned his religion, became a professed
materialist, and yet returned to the Faith before his death
and died in full communion with the Church.

Of these and many others I cannot now find space to
write, for I must conclude this part of my subject by some
account of the life of a man in whom I have always felt
the deepest interest, and for whom, if I may legitimately
say so, I entertain a great and a deep devotion.

This man is Nicolaus Stensen, after whom is named
Stensen's Duct, a structure familiar to every medical
student. Now Stensen was, amongst other things, an
anatomist, and that has been the line in life which I have
followed for a good many years. He also was a convert to
the Church, and there again I can match him. But there
the resemblance between us ceases, for no duct has ever
been named after me or probably ever will be, and I see
no immediate likelihood that I shall terminate my career
as a bishop as Stensen did. His life is so interesting and
so instructive that I may give the main outlines of it.

Stensen was born, of Lutheran parents, in Copenhagen
in the year 1638. He became a student in the university
in that city, and was taught anatomy by Bartholin, whose
name is also familiar to all medical students, as connected
with another salivary duct. After some years of study he
went to Florence and became Physician to the Hospital of
Santa Maria Nuova in that city. Let me here call atten-
tion to the remarkable fact that in intolerant Cathol

1 2 Some Debts which

Italy, as some people would call it, at a time when religious
controversy ran very high, a Lutheran could attain to such
an important position. I note this and pass on. Stensen
owed his conversion to his connection with this hospital,
for in the apothecary's department, acting as dispenser, was
an old nun, who never left off arguing with Stensen and
praying for him until she had brought him into the Church.
After his conversion he was made Professor of Anatomy in
Copenhagen, and that is a gratifying piece of toleration on
the other side. But he found that his position was impos-
sible on account of the feeling which his change of religion
had aroused in the minds of many of his fellow-townsmen.
Consequently he returned to Italy, and, refusing various
important positions which were offered to him, he settled
down to theological studies and was ordained a priest.
Eventually he was consecrated — though most unwilling to
accept the position — Bishop of Hamburg, and his first
episcopal act was to send his blessing to the old nun to
whom he owed his conversion. That there may be no
doubt of the reality of Stensen's conversion I quote a Tew
lines from a letter which he wrote to a friend on the
eighteenth anniversary of his reception into the Church :
"To-morrow [he saysj I shall finish, God willing, the
eighteenth year of my happy life as a member of the
Church. I wish to acknowledge once more my thankful-
ness for the part which you took under God in my conver-
sion. As I hope to have the grace to be grateful to Him
for ever, so I sigh for the opportunity to express my thank-
fulness to you and your family. I can feel that my own
ingratitude towards God, my slowness in His service, make
me unworthy of His graces ; but I hope that you, who
have helped me to enter His service, will not cease to pray,
so that I may obtain pardon for the past, and grace for the
future, in order in some measure to repay all the favours
that have been conferred on me."

Science owes to Catholics 1 3

Stensen was not only a great anatomist, but he was also
a great geologist, the father of all modern geology, for on
his theories and deductions stands the whole imposing
fabric of that science to-day. In fact Leibnitz said that it
took more than a century for geological science to reach
the point at which it had been left by Stensen's work, and
which he had reached at a single bound. When the Inter-
national Congress of Geologists met in Bologna in 1881
they erected to his memory a tablet, on which there is an
inscription commemorating him as a man inter geologos
et anafomicos pnrstantissimus.

Stensen, at least, is an example of the truth that true
scientific instinct and the Catholic Faith are not incom-
patible, for in the zenith of his fame, and in the fulness of
his intellect, he forsook the religion in which he had been
brought up, for the ancient Faith, and that his conversion
was no mere incident of his Italian residence he proved by
his abandonment of all that the world had to give of scien-
tific honours for the lowly estate of a priest, and by the
humility and poverty of his episcopal life.

Stensen was not only an anatomist and a geologist, but
he was also, as we have seen, a physician, and this fact
leads me to say a few words in conclusion as to the debt
which the science of Medicine owes to Catholic members
of that profession.

I may commence with the name of Morgagni, who is
godfather to a number of structures, which will at once
occur to all familiar with the anatomy of the human body.
But beyond this, Morgagni was the father of modern
pathology, for his great work, De Se dibits et Can sis Mor-
horuin, was what the Germans would call a hahnbrechenden
werk in this direction. His devotion to the Church was
no less than his devotion to science. He was the intimate
friend of four Popes ; he had a standing invitation to stay
at the \'atican whenevt?!- he visited Rome, and as eight of

14 Some Debts lijhich

his daughters became nuns, and one of his sons a Jesuit,
there can be little doubt as to what the home influence was
like.

Passing from the scientific foundation of medicine, we
may turn to its practical applications, and here again we
find ourselves confronted by Catholic pioneers.

If one goes to a doctor to be examined, or if a doctor
comes to see us, there is every probability that he will put
the fingers of his left hand on different parts of our chest
and rap on them with the fingers of his right, listening to
the various sounds which he evokes.

And if he does this, he will quite certainly also listen
over various parts of the same region with an instrument
called a stethoscoi)e. These processes are called respec-
tively percussion and auscultation, and both of them were
discovered by, it would appear, Catholic physicians.

Auenbrugger, who was born in Styria in 1722, first gave
the theory of percussion to the medical world, dnd Laennec,
who was borli at Quimper, in Brittany, in 1781, discovered
the stethoscope, and may well be called the Father of
Physical Diagnosis. Of the life of the former but little is
known, though one may assume from his dale and birth-
place that he was a Catholic, but of the latter it may be
said that all through his career he was devoted to his
religion. It is narrated of him that when travelling with
his wife it was their custom to say their Rosary together as
they journeyed, and after his death his biographer, Bayle,
a life-long friend, said of hirA :

" His death was that of a true Christian, supported by
the hope of a better life, prepared by the constant practice
of virtue ; he saw his end approach with composure and
resignation.

" His religious principles, imbibed with his earliest
knowledge, were strengthened by the conviction of his
maturer reason. He took no pains to conceal his religious

Science oives to Catholics i 5

sentiments, when they were disadvantageous to his worldly
interests, and he made no display of them when their
avowal might have contributed to favour and advance-
ment."

I should not like to conclude this list of Catholic men
of science without adding to it the name of at least one of
our fellow-countrymen, and fortunately one there is which
at once rises to the mind. I allude to the late Sir Dominic
Corrigan, a man whom I can myself recollect, and whose
form must still be remembered by many inhabitants of
Dublin. With the name of Corrigan must always be asso-
ciated the elucidation of what is known as aortic regurgita-
tion, so much so that Trousseau, one of the greatest of
French clinicians, said that this ailment ought to be called
("orrigan's disease. As to his attachment to his religion,
it is not necessary for me to speak, for it is known to many
still living.

Here I must leave my roll of Catholic men of science,
not because my possibilities are exhausted, far from it, but
because everything temporal has its limits, and mine are
reached.

I think I have at least been able to show that there are
a number of names honoured for their work for science
which were also, and not less honourable, for their devotion
to their religion, and, if I have been able to do this, I have
then proved that there is nothing incompatible between
the profession of Catholicity and still more the exhibition
of its highest developments and the pursuit of science.
There is an old proverb which declares, Uln trcs medici,
ibi duo athei. It was composed at a time when most scien-
tific men followed the pursuit of medicine, that being the
only scientific walk in life then known.

It may have had some truth in it, but at least this may
be said, that the paths of science are not untreadable by
the religious man, and that, as he walks in them, he will

1 6 Debts zvhich Science owes to Catholics

find in front of him the footprints of many who upheld the
banner of religion as they did that of science, and who
have gone before to that reward which we may surely hope
their adherence to their Faith and their honesty of purpose
has gained for them elsewhere.

NOTE.

For some of the instances narrated I am indebted to my friend
Fatiier Cortie, .S.J., and for other facts to the erudite works of Pro-
fessor James J . Walsh, of P'ordham University, New York. Since this
address was written I learn that there is some consideralile doubt as to
Trembley having been an ecclesiastic. He is, however, described as
"Abbe" in I'rof. Morgan's great work on Rei;t:neration, on which I
relied, f^n the other hand. I am informed that in all probability Ohm
was a Catholic ; at any rate he taught for ten years in the Jesuit
Gymnasium in Cologne, was called thence te .Munich, and is buried in
the old cemetery in that city. It is by no means always easy to deter-
mine the religious views of people who lived many years ago.

The " Galileo episode '" referred to on p. 2 has been admirably
treated by Father Gerard in a penny C.T.S. pamphlet.

PRIMKll A\l) PIHLISHKH BV THK catholic rKITll SOCII-.rV. LONDON

n<

THE DECLINE OF DARWINISM

]^>Y WALTER SWEETMAN

The following very remarkable extract is taken
from an article by Mr. J. B. Crozier, which
appeared in Tlic FoitiiigJifly Rc7'iciv of January,
1904^ :—

"The same thing happened in a greater or less
degree to the specialists themselves. Huxley, the
farther he went, the farther he departed from his
early belief in Natural Selection as the prime
factor in the evolution of species, and the more he
became inclined to relegate it to a secondary
place ; although with his usual honesty and ster-
hng intellectual integrity, not knowing what the
really efficient cause of the varieties was, he wiselv
gave no opinion. Romanes, and other observers,
on the other hand, the more they came to grapple
at close quarters with the facts in their special
lines of work, the more they became dissatisfied
with the doctrine, until at last they fell away
' p. no.

1^1^

2 The Decline of Danvinism

altogether, attributing the facts of variation mainly
to 'prepotency' and other inicrnal physiological
factors, as the agencies which kept the great
organic lines of species true to their type by
snufttng out through ultimate sterility and de-
cadence all variations that fell outside the limits
of permissible oscillation. But beyond marking
out some of the characteristics of these hidden
internal causes, they could give no further explana-
tion of them than Dial so it stood in the icill of Pro-
vidence or Fate. And now with the gaps in the
geologic record on which Darwin himself relied
for the full demonstration of his theory, largely
filled in, the most eminent paheontologisls and
geologists, working on the best accumulation of
new facts that have come to light since his time,
and tired of the ineffective effort to plaster a single
formula on the infinite variety of Nature and Life,

^ have degraded the theory of Natural Selection to
a secondary and subordinate position, retaining it
rather as a cause of the elimination of the old and
unfit, than as a creative cause of the new. Fully

•• developed insects have been found as far back
almost as the existence of dry land itself, scorpions
of as high a type as those of to-day, and all
the present divisions of fishes, as far back as
the Upper Silurian ; gasteropods in strata where

1(1'

The Decline of Darivinisiii ' 3

inolluscan life was only just beginning ; whales in
the Miocene, and so on ; and, in fact, all attempts
to explain the origin of iish, amphibians, reptiles,
birds, marsupials, and the higher mammalia by
the theory of Natural Selection alone, and without
the co-operation of some unseen initiative 'uiicnial
agency, are now generally admitted to have been
failures."

The italics are the present writer's, but as it ]
stands this extract probably gives us what is now 1
the general opinion of the best informed and
most unprejudiced thinkers of the position in
the world of thought of extreme or materialistic
Darwinism. But unfortunately such reasonable
and liberal views have by no means reached the
man in the street ; and that generally rather /
hurried personage is quite convinced that Mr.
Darwin owes the dignified resting-place of his
remains not merely to having given the world)
a plausible hypothesis and supported it by a
vast arrav of interesting facts most amiably
presented, but to having absolutely proved the
truth of that hypothesis up to the hilt, and thus
left the old argument from Design as dead as
the old astronomy that made Joshua stop the
sun. This is the belief that we meet in the
whole mass of modern popular literature, and

,/

The Decline of Darwinism

sometimes it seems to be even acquiesced in
by apparently Christian story-tellers. But the
writer of these pages has the very strongest
conviction that such materialism is absolutely
destructive of all sound Theism,^ and that it is
indeed the intellectual Antichrist of our times
which, in spite of all attempts to destroy it by
making us ignore it, really lurks in almost every
human soul ready to help every strong tempta-
tion. When men are making up their minds
to take a course of which their conscience strongly
disapproves, it is very pleasant to believe that all
really learned people have come to the conclusion
that there is no eternity and no Supreme Judge.

In a short pamphlet printed some years ago,
and more recently in the New York Catholic
IVorhl of December, 1901, the writer of this
paper tried to draw attention to five arguments
against the very foundations of the materialistic
theory for the formation of the body of man,
which seem to him to appeal to everybody's

' In his opinion, the great argument for Natural Religion
is that the same Creator who made the eye of man so well
to see, and his hand to grasp, could not have made his
conscience badly. Yet conscience often hands a man over
to misery in this world. Therefore there must be another
to make amends.

in.

The Decline of Darivinism 5

common sense and to be perfectly unanswerable.
As a matter of fact, he has never seen them
answered, and therefore he will venture to repeat
them here.

" First and foremost," as we Paddies say, no-
body can suppose that a new limb or a new joint,
unguided by a Designing Power, began to be
exhibited (even with the Ascidians) all completed,
or in working order, at once ; yet the beginning
of every such limb or joint (and probablv of many
parts of many organs) arising from relative chance,
could have been but a deformity, and, therefore, a
disadvantage in the struggle for life. How, then,
were they — from the knee to a lens in the eye —
ever to have been completed 'i It would seem to
be only by persistently refusing to let imagination
play upon this, the most important part of the
building up of tlie whole system of materialist
Darwinism, tiiat this argument has not been met,
but ignored.

Then, again, there is the plain fact that for one
useful change introduced by relative chance alone,
there should have been, in/^oikimon fairness,
thousands tlKil^^'-''- '^'^^ iisefiuT'and where are the
traces in the strata of this quasi-iniinite crooked-
ness ? It must have been (according to the old
Darwinian ideas) diu-ing their formation — the

6'

D

The Decline of Darivinisiii

formation of the strata — that a mammal was
built up from a cell ; for organic life could
scarcely have been flung dowji from the fixed
stars. Now, perhaps, even without looking into
embryos, nobody can glance at the stuffed
animals in the British Museum without being
inclined to fancy that they are all, as it were,
shaded into each cither. The question Js;^whether
this shadings js the work of chance, or of a
Sovereign Artist ; and surely the fact that there
are no fair amount of the failures necessary to
relative chance to be found in the crust of the
earth should have much to do with settling it.
The struggle must have been over every limb and
every joint, and between the different arrange-
ments of the limbs and the joints, and where are
the traces of all the crooked things that could not
have been sufficiently deforming to have destroyed
life at once ? If we had very many of these
crooked things now, men might say that they
were a proof that no design guided formation.
But it may seem to some of us that we have one ;
and should it not be a fair sum in proportion that
would state that as the ugly and — as far as the
present writer knows — useless callosities on the
legs of the horse and ass are to the mean
between the ages since the separation of the

/V

The Decline of Darivinistn

horse-tribes and the removal by natural and
sexual selections of the smallest similar blemish,
so should the quasi-infinite crookedness and
ugliness necessary to build up a vertebrate animal
by chance from a cell, be to — the answer.

Thirdly comes the great argument from the
^ b^jiity oQlie organic world. No attempt would
seem to have been made by evolutionists to
account for the beauty, as distinguished from the
mere conspicuousness, of shells and fruits, and
the thrush's egg. A graver difficulty is how the
apes and the lower savages could have invented
our noble human frame. Gravest of all is the
impossibility of our conceiving how the genius of
insects, with the mechanical means at their com-
mand, could make at once the never-varying
beauty of the wings of the ornate butterfly, and
the as invariably changeful gracefulness of many
of our common leaves. The laurestine-leaf, for
instance, is always built up in conspicuously
different compartments on either side, yet always
keeps more or less to its own graceful shape.
How could the insects or the plants have
managed it ?

Then, fourthly, we have the mule argument ;
but its force is admitted by evolutionists them-
selves, and need not, therefore, be dwelt on here.

8 The Decline of Darzvinisni

; Accompanied as it is by the fact that there is no
abiogenesis, it certainly seems to afford strong
proof that the Creator wished to keep species

j separate, so that rational man might have no

I excuse for thinking that he was descended from

1 beasts who have no consciences.^

And the fifth — that to be drawn from a fair
observ^ation of the workings of instinct in animals
— is perhaps the strongest argument of all. These
phenomena — I mean the apparent operations of
instinct in animals — must, under materialistic
hypotheses, be put down to "heredity" — for, un-
helped by any designing power, they are plainly
not taught their arts as our human children are ;
and, therefore, all the wisdom (and all the voli-
tions necessary to meet ever-varying circum-
stances) necessary to enable a working-bee to
avail itself of the chemical forces of the simples
which it blends into a jelly in order to turn an
ordinary egg into a queen — when, through some
iiiiiisiial accident, such an abnormal event be-
comes necessary — must be contained in the
arrangements of the atoms of every egg in every
hive. That seems wonderful enough, but what is

' There is also a very strong argument to be drawn from
the wonderfully complicated preparations made for future
events by some insects who could not have been taught.

m

The Decline £>f Da7'winism

even more wonderful is liow the wisdom got
there.

It is no sufficient answer to these difficulties
to point to the fact that, if we grant that here-
ditary instincts influence human motives, it is as
wonderful as if they created human volitions ;
for it is manifest that, being hereditary, they must
depend entirely upon forces contained in or
transmitted by the reproductive cells. So again
with the recuperative powers of tissues, and, indeed,
with the extraordinary developments of organic
life from seeds generally. Christian philosophy
must maintain that the natural dispositions are
but the stamp of individuality given to each
human soul. It would be but a poor artist that
w^uld-letJais-stat4;es_-leave--hi^-Iiands having all
pj-prkpb^the s;iTnp formation ; and we are forced
to conceive that the operations jqUqw regular
rules of which we can learn the nature only from
their results. At all events, the fact of many
things being wonderful is no adequate explana-
tion of another thing being more wonderful still ;
though such an attempted explanation must be
familiar to readers of Mr. Darwin. Besides, it is
plainly one thing to say that such arrangements
were made by a Designing Power, and another to
say that they were made by what may be called

K^i

lo T/ie Decline of Darivinisni

relative chance. Almost equally astonishing to
think of are the combinations of mechanical wis-
dom that must be in the egg of the spider,' and
even if we could fancy an elderly working-bee
lecturing on chemistry, the wisdom of the moth
in choosing the best possible spot for her eggs is
almost as wonderful, and she is only in the first
hours of her existence as a moth, and has clearly
heard no lecturer whatever.

It is plain, too, that as a means of meeting the

' In the Contemporary Revicu.' of September, 1895, Dr.
Wcismann writes : " In the first place, some animals —
numerous insects, for instance— possess instincts which
are used only once in a lifetime. As examples, there are
the many kinds of web-making, such as that seen in the
Bombacydne, which is executed in so wonderfully adaptive
and complicated a manner, and w^hich each individual has
always, as at the present day, carried out but once in a
lifetime. These instances prove that instincts of the finest
and most complicated kind may arise simply by the process
of natural selection." But it is manifest that the Professor
requires quasi-infinite time for his hypothesis, and this
Science and Lord Kelvin will not give him. And indeed it
would seem to be plain that his perfectly honest hypothesis
(as far as the writer can understand it) can scarcely meet
/ the fact of the bee's jelly. In The Last Link, page 76,
■ j Haeckel says of it that he is of opinion that " it would be
better to accept a mysterious creation of all the species as
1 V described in the Mosaic account."

The Dec Hue of J^arwinisui \ \

facts of these phenomena, tlie simpler form of
Natural Selection is quite as strong as the more
plausible teachings of Mr. Spencer, since it is
evident that there can be no gain here from the
transmission of acquired peculiarities, for the bee
which missed the flower containing the proper
chemical elements, and sucked the one next it
could do its hive no good whatever. But here I
will let the two very able disputants speak, more
or less, for themselves, upon their whole system.
In the Contemporary Review of March, 1893,
/^Q^Jr. Spenc^ has shown with admirable clearness
that "co-operative parts" do not necessarily vary
together, and that, to adapt a prairie-dog to the
leaping suited to a mountain country, both fore-
limbs and hind-limbs must be "co-adapted"
together ; and that, since the prob.ibilities are
" millions to one " against the first alone being
produced by what he seems very properly to call
"fortuitous concourse of atoms," there must be
"billions to one" against both being simul-
taneously achieved by the same cause alone,
and that the " old hypothesis of special creations
is more consistent and comprehensible."

At page 446, indeed, he distinctly lays it down
that either there has been inheritance of acquired
peculiarities, or there has been no evolntion.

1 2 The Decline j)f Daf'winism

On the other hand, Professor Weismann shows
that wonderful as the changes must have been
that went to produce the Irish elk or the assumed
prairie-dog, the changes are just as wonderful in
the soldier-ants of certain species, which being
sterile and producing no offspring cannot hand
on their structural peculiarities, and which spring
from queens destitute of the peculiarities they
transmit. Accordingly, he on his part lays down
that his principle — which Mr. Spencer calls
"the fortuitous concourse of atoms" — can alone
explain the adaptation of organisms withont
assiuning the help of a principle of design.

Mr. Spencer replies by asserting that the ances-
tors, for instance, of the Amazon ants had the
big heads now possessed by the sterile soldier-
workers but not by the fertile queens. This,
however, would be hard to prove. Indeed, it is
not easy to say which is most difficult to imagine,
that queens so shaped should grow soldiers, or
that soldiers so shaped should grow queens. It
must be remembered, also, that the same queens
produce other workers besides soldiers and of
totally different construction. Mr. Spencer elo-
quently describes all the processes that must have
occurred in order to enable the Irish elk to carry
its enormous head of horns. Preciselv similiar

The Decline of Darivinism 13

processes must have been repeated or reversed in
the body of the parent ant in order to turn the
ordinary worker into a soldier, or a soldier into
an ordinary worker, while she hkewise continued
to perpetuate other normal forms essential to the
community — remaining herself all the time quite
different from them all. When this is remem-
bered it may well seem that "fortuitous concourse
of atoms" is just as likely to have brought these
things about as any other force we can conceive
— except design.

On the whole, the controversy between these,,
two very able men must be satisfactory to all who
desire to show that, of the forces laioicii to us, the ,
design of an artist and of an artist of quasi-infinita,'!
power, can alone explain to human reason the
phenomena of its environment.

So far, then, as the necessary effects of time and
the real nature of animals are concerned, it seems
to the writer that we should be all, not only
Christian Rationalists, i but Christian Agnostics.
The polype upsets all our notions of personal
consciousness by being bisected and thriving as
two polypes. As we have seen, there clearly can

■ " Etsi fides sit supni ralionein, nulla tanicii unquain
inter fidem ct rationcin vera disscnsio esse potest " (Co/cu/V
of the Vatican).

14 The Declme of Darwinism

be nothing like our human intellect behind the
most brilliant phenomena of animal intellect.
How, then, can we be sure that there is any-
thing like human pain behind their phenomena
of pain?

But here it is necessary for the sake of fairness
to give some attention to the latest issues of the
atheist press (Haeckel's The Riddle of the
Universe and M'Cabe's Haeckel's Critics An-
swered), which seem to make the absolute
denial of the possibility of mysteries their funda-
mental principle, and to maintain that creations
or, in other words, evolutions and devolutions
have been going on for ever, and which seem, at
least to the present writer, to throw back their
Darwinism into the dim distances of eternity,
and to suggest that our organic forms owe their
existence to the unconscious memories of other
existences retained by atoms. But this, while
plainly admitting the weakness of Darwinism as
it was originally put forward, would seem to be
itself quite as weak.

Strengthened by a little honest reading of J. S.
Mill, upon the probable natural foundations of
our human sense of external certainty, it may
seem to us that even reasonable infidels should
vastly prefer believing in mysteries to believing

The Decline of Darwinism 15

in Professor Haeckel's views of the minds of
fnolecules. Why, the noblest liuman brain that
was ever formed has never devised and carried
out anything half as wonderful as its own mar-
vellous adaptations, which Professor Haeckel
would put down to the admittedly elementary
and unconscious memories (and indeed intelli-
gences) of atoms !

The points upon which I desire to insist may
thus be summarized.

(i) In a recent work ^ Father Gerard writes with
admirable clearness : —

" On Darwinian principles each step in any
development can be made, not because it leads
to an advantageous result in the future, but only
because it is itself advantageous. At each stage
favoured individuals survive others because they
are favoured here and now, not because when the
development they promote shall be completed,
their remote descendants will be favoured."

Applying, then, this principle in llic lirst place
to the joints and eyes of the human body, it
must seem to many of us as plain as any truth
can be (after the impossibility of the truth of
direct contradictories), that the principles of
Darwinism as put forward by Professor Haeckel
' The Old Riddle and the Ntncest Aiisxcer, p. 170.

1 6 The Decline of Darwmism

and Mr. Spencer do not make even a plausible
attempt to account for the creation of. our human
frames.

(2) As to the perfectly honest hypothesis of Pro-
fessor Weismann, it is hard to see how it would
try to meet the facts of the bees' queen-making
jelly ; and probably most of our readers will
for once agree with Professor Haeckel when he
writes of it : —

" If one denies with Weismann the heredity of
acquired characters, then it becomes necessary to
have recourse to the purely mystical qualities of
germ-plasm. I am of the opinion of Spencer
that in that case it would be better to accept a
mysterious creation of all the species as described
in the Mosaic account."

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY
THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, LONDON

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Catholic Truth Society

The Catholic Church and
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