Chapters on the art of thinking. And other essays

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W.PARRUTHERS ^ILSON

Eastbournk

CHAPTERS ON
THE ART OF THINKING.

AND OTHER ESSAYS.

LIFE AND LETTERS OF JAMES HINTON.

Edited by Ellice Hopkins. With an Introduction by Sir
W. W. Gull, and a Portrait engraved by Jeens. Crown 8vo.
Cloth, price 8^. 6d.

BY THE LATE JAMES HINTON.

The Place of the Physician. To which is added,
Essays on the Law of Human Life, and on the Rela-
tion BETWEEN Organic and Inorganic Worlds. Second
Edition. Crown Svo. Cloth, price 35. 6d.

An Atlas of Diseases of the Membrane Tympani.

With Descriptive Text. Post Svo. Price £6, 6s.

The Questions of Aural Surgery. With Illustra-
tions. Two vols, post Svo. Cloth, price izy. 6d.

Physiology for Practical Use. By various Writers.
Edited by James Hinton. With 50 Illustrations. Two Vols.
Second Edition. Crown Svo. Cloth, price i2.r. 6d.

Man and His Dwelling Place. Third Edition.

Crown Svo. 6s.

Life in Nature. Second Edition. Crown Svo. 6^.
Thoughts on Health and Some of its Conditions.
Post 8vo. Cloth, 65.

BY ELLICE HOPKINS,

Editor of the "Life and Letters of James Hinton."

Rose Turquand: A Novel. Second and Cheaper
Edition. Crown Svo. Cloth, 6s.
" If ' Rose Turquand ' is a maiden novel, as we may suppose, it
does its author very great credit. It shows real power, and no
little originality. . . . Rose is certainly brought out as a noble
character ; none the less so that there can be no mistaking that she
is made of flesh and blood like ourselves." — Times.

Work in Brighton ; or, Woman's Mission to Women.
Ninth Thousand. i6mo. Sewed, 6d.
" From my own experience in long past years, I am quite sure
that the way indicated in ' Work in Brighton ' is the only true way ;
and I would entrfeat the women of England to read the little book,
and then judge, each for herself, in what way she can help a cause
which, for the shke of home and family, has a claim on every
woman. I bid the work ' God speed ' with all my heart, and soul,
and strength. " — Florence Nightingale.

CHAPTERS ON
THE ART OF THINEIia

AND OTHER ESSAYS.

BY THE LATE

JAMES HINTON.

• »

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SHAD WORTH HODGSON.
EDITED BY C. H. HINTON.

LONDON:

C. Kegan Paul & Co., i PaternostePw Square.

1879.

All rights of translation and 6f reproduction are reserved.

PREFACE.

The present volume is composed partly of papers which
were found amongst the manuscripts left by my father in
a form ready for publication, partly of essays which have
appeared on various occasions in literary or scientific
periodicals.

No use has been made of the greater mass of the manu-
scripts which exist, as they were intended to be entirely
rewritten and rearranged before publication.

Nor have any extracts been given from a series of
volumes which contain his work from 1859 to 1863 and
again from 1869 to 1870. These volumes would form
the most available source to whoever wished to make a
study of the course and bearings of my father's inquiries,
but are hardly adapted for general perusal, as they are
more a record of his thoughts in the process and order of
development than an exposition of the results at which he
arrived.

In order to make their contents accessible, it is neces-
sary to bring together into one parts which are often

601605

vi Preface.

separated by many pages, and to collate them with later
and unprinted manuscripts. A book thus formed will, I
hope, some time be produced.

Of the essays in this volume the two, " On the Bases
of Morals" and "Professor Tyndall and the Eeligious
Emotions," which appeared in the " Contemporary
Keview," taken together with the short paper entitled
" Others' Needs," seem to me to give the best represen-
tation there is of the ethical portion of my father's
writings.

Between pages lOO and 212 will be found a series of
articles which are for the most part reprinted from the
" Christian Spectator." Some of them were in the form
of letters to the Editor, and when this was the case I
have simply removed unnecessary paragraphs. Amongst
them, on page 2 1 3, is an explanation of " The Mystery of
Pain," contributed at the Editor's request shortly after
the appearance of that book.

It is included here, as it places the scope and object of
that work in a very clear light, and is the only available
reference to a class of subjects which occupy great pro-
minence in the manuscripts.

Although many of the essays from the " Christian
Spectator" were written so long ago as i860, it will be
found, I believe, that they place in a very clear light a
great many elements which were essential in the develop-
ment of my father's later thoughts.

Preface, vli

At tlie end of the volume will be found those amongst
my father's scientific papers which seem to have a general
interest, and at the same time not to be altogether dis-
connected with his philosophical views. Of the greater
part of his writings on science I am not in a position to
give a summary, nor would it be of general interest if I
were, as they consist of papers on particular questions in
medical science, for the most part on subjects connected
with aural surgery.

To the introduction contributed by my father's friend,
Mr. Shadworth Hodgson, I do not feel that I can add any-
thing, nor do I feel that this is the place for any personal
reminiscences of my own.

I cannot help remembering, however, one occasion on
which the conversation turned on music. The idea was
suggested that owing to the limited number of notes, and
the unlimited number of compositions that were produced,
a time would at last come when all the possible combina-
tions would have been made, and all future attempts to
compose would be simply repetitions of harmonies already
exhausted. His remark was, that the man would some
time come, breathed on by a new spirit, whose feeling
would be much more nearly represented by saying, instead
of " All music has been written," " No music has been
written."

And so, on looking back, I cannot help recalling these
words, for as I turn over the pages of this book what I

I

viii Preface

find there hardly seems to me the same as what I once
heard.

Yet, if the whole purpose of the thoughts in this book
may not be manifest, and although the spirit which
animated them, and made them seem a different thing
when they were spoken, has to be reconstructed, still I
am sure that the reader will be able to gather from these
pages a great portion of my father's life-work.

In order to show the impression which different minds
received, I have appended, under the title of " Eecollec-
tions," a few papers which are in each case the report
either of single or of several conversations.

To the writers of these, and to Mr. Shad worth Hodgson,
I must express my sincere thanks.

C. H. H.

Cheltenham, October 1878.

CONTENTS.

INTBODUCTION BY SHADWORTH HODGSON . , ,

I. CHAFTEBS FROM THE ART OP THINKING —

I. CORRECTION OP THE PREMISS . . .

II. OPPROOP ......

IIL ON THE ANALOGY BETWEEN THE ORGANIC AND THE MENTAL
WPB ......

IV. ON SEEING THE UNSEEN ....

V. THOUGHT AND ART ....

IL ON THE BASES OF MORALS ....

in. others' NEEDS . . . . .

IV. PROFESSOR TYNDALL AND THE RELIGIOUS EMOTIONS
V. ON FREEWILL ......

VI. THE RELATION BETWEEN THE ORGANIC AND INORGANIC WORLDS

VII. SIR w. Hamilton's philosophy ....

VIII. THE IDEA OP CREATION .

IX. ON THE RELATION OP SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY

X. ON THE RELATION OP SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY . ,

XI. THE TWO WORLDS .....

XII. THE TWO SIDES OP A THING ....

XIII. THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY : MR. HERBERT SPENCER

XIV. ON TWO PENHOLDERS . . . • •
XV. ON MIRACLE ..••••

PAGE

I

15
28

34

40

43
47
63
74
84
91

lOI

109
119
131
145

157
163
187
195

Contents,

XVI. SHORT NOTES ON LONG QUESTIONS —

I, A HINT FROM LORD BACON .
II. A FRAGMENT ON FRAGMENTS
III. OF NATURE

XVII. THE MYSTERY OF PAIN .
XVIII. GENIUS

200
204
207
213
225

RECOLLECTIONS.

XIX. AN ANALOGY OF THE MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL LIFE OF MAN . 245

XX. THE MORAL LAW ...... 261

XXL VeHAT WE CAN KNOW ...... 267

XXIL ART . ....... 274

SCIENTIFIC PAPERS

XXIIL ON THE PROXIMATE CAUSE OF FUNCTIONAL ACTION . . 293

XXIV. ON PHYSICAL MORPHOLOGY, OR THE LAW OF ORGANIC FOUM . 319

XXV. MR. HERBERT SPENCEu's PUINCIPLES OF BIOLOGY . . 343
XXVL ON THE RELATIONS BETWEEN CHEMICAL DECOMPOSITION AND

NUTRITION ...... 387

IIS^TRODUCTIOS".

I HAVE been asked to contribute some words by way of
introduction to the present volume, which consists of
papers, partly manuscript, partly republished, by one
from whose hand, but a few short months ago,^ we were
hoping to welcome some fresh philosophical achievement,
the planting of some new beacon far advanced into the
surrounding gloom ; but must now content ourselves
with gathering together, soberly and sorrowfully, the
fallen but still burning torches which strew the stages
of a traversed road, that their radiance may not be
wholly lost to us.

The task is one which I think I cannot better perform
than by attempting to indicate the general direction of
thought taken by their lamented author — the nature of
the general problem which he set himself to solve — the
place which speculations of this kind hold in the economy
of human effort. It would be beyond the province of an
introduction, as well as beyond my own powers, were I
to attempt to estimate what success has been actually
achieved within that direction and in that part of the
general economy — what position and rank among philo-
sophical and scientific authors will finally be assigned to
James Hinton. That rank, I venture to anticipate, will
be no mean one. The very direction of thought into
which he struck, the mere method which he adopted,

1 Written April 1876.

2 Introduction,

would suffice to secure him an honourable place. In
magnis voluisse sat est ; it is so, namely, in cases where
the choice itself is one which can only have been made
by a mind at once acute, energetic, and comprehensive.

A comprehensive mind is one that not only pursues
various lines of thought, but pursues them in combina-
tion with each other, continually weighing the bearings
of one upon another and of the whole upon each. And
the present selection of papers brings out this character
of comprehensiveness in a very marked way. They show
us their author's mind at work simultaneously in three
different directions; and have been accordingly classed,
and their dates given wherever possible, under the three
heads of general philosophy, physiology, and ethic. The
union of the order according to time with the order
according to subject serves to make manifest the unity
of thought and method which underlies them all, the
co-ordination which they have all received from the
dominant desire of finding a supreme law of practice
which should bring harmony out of discord in the various
aims and actions of men.

But this dominant desire which rules throughout these
papers is precisely the desire which most strongly and
universally prevails in the world at large, which is pre-
eminently the characteristic of the present age. In this
point Hinton and the world are absolutely at one ; he has
but given expression to the wants now felt as the most
urgent by the heart of universal humanity.

How long are mankind to contiuue in a condition of
anarchy and discord, authority against experience and
experience against authority, faith against reason and
reason against faith, law against liberty and liberty
against law ? Nay, it is not a question of the continuance
merely, but of the increase of anarchy ; for the discord.

Introduction, x

which was at first confined to the few, is now reachinfr
the masses. JSTot that we are without a common widely-
accepted morality to steady us. This we have, and we
cleave to it the more energetically because, like men in
despair, we have as yet nothing else to cleave to. We
have the moral habits and practices which custom and
inheritance have bequeathed to us, and which an ancient
creed has sanctioned — two guarantees for their continu-
ance, one of fact, the other of theory. But of these, the
theoretical and theological one is fast losing, even for the
masses, what long has seemed to them its foundation in
reason — is fast becoming universally a belief at variance
with truth. This is the position of things ; one of the
two sources of common morality is decaying or decayed —
decayed for advanced minds, decaying for all. We can-
not trust to the other source alone. We must replace the
theoretical one. We want an authoritative and a reason-
able basis for the common morality.

Society has, in our days, again arrived at a crisis where
it is called upon to undertake the tasks of adult age before
that age has been fully reached. It is called upon to
guide itself by reason before its reason is fully matured.
For what is the age of mature reason in a society ? The
answer must surely be, that it is one at which the reason
of the few most intelligent of its members can without
hindrance govern the action of the whole society, just as,
in an individual, reason is mature when the actions of the
individual can be governed by it, his passions restrained,
his purposes guided. It is one at which, if the individual
goes wrong, he does so in spite of his better reason, not
from the absence or the interception of its guidance.

But is a state analogous to this reached by any of the
greater societies, that is, by any nation, at the present day ?
Assuredly not. It is a state, indeed, which they are all,

4 Introduction,

with more or less success, striving to attain, but which
not one has reached. The obstacles are two. First,
there is imperfect communication between the intelli-
gent few and the masses ; secondly, the intelligent few
are at variance with each other on points of fundamental
importance. There is neither an authoritative doctrine
nor adequate means of diffusing any doctrine at all.
And this is but another way of saying that the Churches
have lost their authority. For these two functions, of
announcing an authoritative doctrine and of diffusing it,
are precisely those which the Churches once performed,
and now increase the anarchy by insisting that they can
perform still.

Of the two desiderata, the re-establishment of theo-
retical concord is incomparably the most urgent. Unless
a theoretical concord is established, no provision for the
diffusion of knowledge can do anything but increase the
confusion. But this by no means implies that provision
for diffusion should not be made without waiting for the
complete advent of a doctrine. For, on the one hand, the
diffusion itself may be itself a means of leading, through
discussion, to concord ; and, on the other hand, there are
certain points in which, for some societies, concord may
be held to be already attained, notwithstanding that these
points are not yet combined into a system of truth.

It is at the re-establishment of theoretical concord that
philosophy necessarily aims at the present day ; it is in
this direction that Hinton's writings have their chief
value ; and it is as contributions to this end that they
must be judged. What, then, is the feature in his
writings which makes them tend in this direction; what
is the point which he is most concerned to establish as
the pivot on which the whole of philosophy must turn
if theoretical concord is to be established ? It is this, —

Introduction, 5

the emotional nature of man must bear an equal part with
his intellectual nature in determining his philosophical
creed.

The importance of the emotions in philosophy may be
thus stated. As the senses furnish us with the facts of
the external world in which we live, which directly acts
upon us, and to which we have to conform, so the emo-
tions, which are the facts of our inner world, determine
our reaction upon the external world of sense, are the
ends which we employ the external world to realise for
us, the guide of our efforts to mould it to our will. The
moral world begins with the emotions, which may be
described as those kinds of feeling which accompany
thoughts, just as sensations are the kinds of feeling which
accompany perceptions of sense. Pleasure and pain of
sense are good and evil simply ; but moral good and evil
are respectively pleasure and pain of emotion — are a
pleasure and pain judged by reference to an inner
standard. And the perceptions we have of both kinds
may be healthy or morbid, true or perverted, may lead
us right or may lead us astray.

There are, in short, two great domains of feeling — sense
and emotion, and both belong to the great kingdom of
nature. We did not make our senses, neither did we
make our emotions; but we can within certain limits
modify both, and both by the same two methods, — one
by modifying the external world, the other by modifying,
which in this case is called educating, the faculties them-
selves. The world, so far as it is an object of thought, is
also an object of emotion ; and we can no more get rid of
its having a character in this respect than we can get
rid of its having qualities which sense perceives in it.
It is a common error to imagine that when we are said to
do anything, the thing done is wholly arbitrary, wholly

6 Introdjiction,

within our power to do or leave alone, wholly the result of
choice. We are a part of nature, and our power is limited
to certain comparatively small and slowly operating mo-
difications of nature's course. The moral character of the
world as an object of thought belongs wholly to nature
and only partially to us, inasmuch as we ourselves are a
part of nature. Ours is " an art which nature makes."

Until, then, the emotions, those inner* sensations which
are the key to the character of nature as a whole, are
given their due weight and place in philosophy, philo-
sophy cannot be at unity with itself. The mind of man
will resist the imposition of a doctrine, however appa-
rently scientific, which professes to be the whole truth
without taking into account the moral or emotional side
of human nature. Those are the truly comprehensive minds,
those are the best philosophers, who insist on having not
only the truth, but (as our witnesses' oath says), the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth. Nor are they the worse
for that, even in their character of men of science.

The decisive entrance of this principle, as an informing
principle, into English philosophy, is due to one whose
name will one day be recognised as the greatest which
that philosophy can boast — Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Coleridge did not, indeed, express or announce the prin-
ciple, but he acted on it ; and he was the first to act on
it here or elsewhere. The, German writers of the same
school show little or no trace of that emotional motive
which led the intensely sensitive and imaginative Cole-
ridge to adopt the philosophical doctrines common to
them all. Eeason, Intellectual Intuition, and the Ideas
belonging to them, have with these writers an intellec-
tual content as well as an intellectual framework ; they
treat man as having high moral and religious duties, pre-
scribed by these ideas, in all relations of life ; but they

Introduction, *i

do not regard him as a being in direct emotional relation
with the Unseen. With Coleridge, on the contrary, this
direct emotional relation is all in all. His poet nature
made him introduce the emotional element into the very
constitution of that nominally intellectual faculty which
was with him, as it was with Kant, with Schelling, and
with Hegel, the highest power of mind, the faculty of
Eeason. The reason was with him an emotional at least
as much as it was an intellectual faculty. Whereas
Kant had left it purely intellectual — its Ideas having in
speculation only a regulative use, and in practical matters
only a formal content, the " categorical imperative " —
Coleridge ascribed to it a vision of concrete truths, the
substance or matter of which received for him its whole
value, not as it did for Schelling, from its enlightening the
intellect, so much as from its power of touching the heart.
Coleridge took up from Kant and Schelling the dis-
tinction between the two intellectual faculties. Under-
standing and Eeason, and made this the basis of his
whole philosophy. But if we look at the comparison
which he institutes between them in the " Aids to Eeflec-
tion," ^ we shall see that the difference in hind which he
discovers comes from nothing but this, that he combines
with his faculty of Eeason the objects upon which it
works, namely, the emotions, while he does not combine
the corresponding objects, namely, sensations, with his
faculty of Understanding. He contrasts them thus : —

" Understanding.

" I. Understanding is discursive.
" 2. The Understanding in all its judgments refers to
some other faculty as its ultimate authority.
" 3. Understanding is the faculty of reflection.

1 Vol. i. p. 175, ed. 1848.

Introdiictio7i,

" I. Eeason is fixed.

" 2. The Eeason in all its decisions appeals to itself as
the ground and substance of their truth.

" 3. Keason [is the faculty] of contemplation. Reason,
indeed, is much nearer to Sense than to Understanding :
for Eeason (says our great Hooker) is a direct aspect of
truth, an inward beholding, having a similar relation to
the intelligible or spiritual as Sense has to the material
or phenomenal."

The Eeason, then, is with Coleridge thought informed
with emotion. Of the two domains described above as
dividing between them the kingdom of nature, Sense and
Emotion, Coleridge takes Sense as separate from Under-
standing, while he does not see that Emotion might equally
well be taken separately from Eeason, nay, that it must
be so if Eeason and Understanding are to be fairly com-
pared together. Understanding minus its objects, Eeason
plus its objects, are not fairly to be contrasted. Either
both with their objects, and then the difference would
seem to be due to the objects; or both without them,
and then the difference in kind would vanish altogether.
Then it would be discovered that there was no essential
difference between Eeason and Understanding, taken
^like as purely intellectual processes. But the emotions
had not in Coleridge's time been distinguished as a sepa-
rate domain from the senses ; indeed, it was mainly to
Coleridge's own insistance on the attributes of Eeason
that they assumed that position in philosophy.

It would demand a long work of literary criticism to
prove in detail the claim I have now advanced for Cole-
ridge, still more to prove it in contrast with the great
German writers of the same school ; but in confirmation

Introduction, g

of it take a single passage from the priceless " Biographia
Literaria," where Coleridge is speaking of his early Quan-
tock days, when he first set himself to philosophise in
earnest, and " devoted his thoughts and studies to the
foundations of religion and morals." " For a very long
time, indeed, I could not reconcile personality with infi-
nity ; and my head was with Spinoza, though my whole
heart remained with Paul and John." ^ There is the key
to Coleridge — the head with Spinoza, the heart with Paul
and John. Yes, and there, too, is the key to all philo-
sophy in this country since his time, and what is more,
to all philosophy everywhere in the future. The need of
finding a system of thought which shall reconcile the
phenomena and combine the claims of the head and of
the heart — this is what philosophy aims at, and cannot
rest till it be accomplished.

Here it is that we see Hinton's true place and func-
tion in philosophy. He is occupied in working out that
problem which Coleridge proposed for solution. He is a
hander-on of Coleridge's torch. Let us not be deceived
by appearances. Whatever Coleridge may have said or
thought of himself, however much of a theologian he
was, the essentials of his doctrine are in no antagonism
to the essentials of the English Lockian school. The
addition of the domain of Emotion to the domain of Sense
is not destruction but addition — the addition of a new
domain of facts. The quodi non prius in sensu receives
the addition aut in affectu. The interpretation of the
new facts belonging to affectus is another matter. Here
Coleridge becomes a theologian ; and his interpretation of
the facts is, as we have seen, wrong from the first. And
the traditional or Church theology, which that mistaken
interpretation served for the moment to revivify, has

1 Vol. i. p. 196, ed. 18 17.

lo Introduction,

been ever since more and more parting company with
any form of living and consistent philosophy. But pre-
cisely here it is that the Coleridgian philosophy requires
correction by his successors ; precisely here that the
value of fresh interpreters is felt.

Principal Shairp, who has written of Coleridge with
truer appreciation and profounder insight than any other
known to me, says, after remarking on the absence at
the present day of any acknowledged authority speaking
from the spiritual side of philosophy : " Whenever such
a thinker shall arise, he will have to take up the work
which Coleridge left incomplete, and by more patent
analysis, and more systematic exposition of the spiritual *
element which enters into all thought and all objects of
thought, to make good as reasoned truth the ground
which Coleridge reached only by far-reaching but frag-
mentary intuition." ^ These words, I think, may be fairly
claimed as applicable to James Hinton, although he may
not have been himself aware of his intellectual relation-
ship to the elder philosopher, still less have worked in
conscious continuation of him. At least, judging from
myself, Hinton's work gave me a new, and, I venture to
think, a deeper insight into Coleridge's.

Coleridge and Hinton were both of them Christian
philosophers ; but a change has been wrought in the in-
terval in their common Christian philosophy — a change
which consists in this, that the theological vesture which
was its predominant feature in Coleridge has in Hinton
given place to the emotional body by which it was created,
worn, and finally outgrown. What was implicit in
Coleridge became explicit in Hinton ; there was a " more
systematic exposition of the spiritual element;" and

^ studies in Poetry and Philosophy, p. 236, 2d ed., Samuel Taylor
Coleridge.

Introduction. i j

much of what was explicit in Coleridge fell away in con-
sequence. Eriipitur 'persona, manet res. The emotional
nature of man is that by which he is a religious beincr,
that by which, therefore, he is a Christian. Let us hear
Mr. Matthew Arnold on this point, who is himself a
fellow-labourer in the same direction, and who, if he had
not so much of the philosophe malgre lui about him, would
stand at the head of philosophy in this country. " The
power of Christianity has been in the immense emotion
which it has excited, in its engaging, for the government
of man's conduct, the mighty forces of love, reverence,
gratitude, hope, pity, and awe — all that host of allies
which Wordsworth includes under the one name of
imagination, when he says that in the uprooting of old
thoughts and old rules we must still always ask —

* Survives imagination, to the change
Superior] Help to virtue does she give?
If not, 0 mortals, better cease to live.'"

This, then, is the light by which the papers comprised
in the present volume should be read, if we would judge
fairly either of their significance or of the results which
they achieve. The unity of nature is the thought
which underlies them as a whole. The operations which
have mind and those which have matter for their field
are parts of one system of operations ; and just because
they are parts of a single whole do they recall and seem to
repeat each other when each kind is separately examined.
" The Analogy between Organic and Mental Life," at
page 91, is an instance of what I mean. Why should
" Mind " and " Matter " have been set up as antagonistic
powers, and made the watchwords of hostile schools ?
Surely such antagonism is a relic of the infancy of the
race, and destined to pass away under a larger grasp and

1 2 Introduction,

co-ordination of facts. For why do we discover analogies
in material processes to the workings of thought ? Is it
not because our minds are themselves dependent upon
material processes in the organism, continuous with the
material processes in external things ? Is it not also and
at the same time because external things consist of sense
qualities and emotion qualities, that is, consist of the
very things which our minds consist of?

Thus the unity in our philosophical conceptions requirep
unity in the object of those conceptions, requires a single
nature, or universe of things, as the objective counter-
part of a single self-consistent philosophy. And this is
the key to, or logical transition between, those two
doctrines of Hinton's, which at first sight seem, if not
repugnant, yet at best only superficially resemblant — the
doctrine that the material world is not a world of dead
or inert matter, but animated, and the doctrine that the
moral and emotional nature of man gives us an insight
into the real nature and character of the world at large.

That inanimate matter is inanimate in appearance
only ; that animate matter is a large category, including
under it as a case that which we know as living
organisms, and as a still more special case that which
we know as inanimate matter or inorganic substances ; —
this seems to be a doctrine belonging in any case, whether
it be true or untrue, to the domain of physic and physio-
logy. On the other hand, the doctrine that the emotional
nature of man gives us an insight into the nature of
the world at large, seems to be one that belongs to ethic,
religion, or general philosophy, and to have no bearing on
the physical world which the special scieucfes investigate.

But when we reflect that the unity of philosophical
conceptions requires unity in their objective counterpart,
the universe of nature, then it becomes evident that if

Introduction,

13

we start with the latter of the two doctrines, then some
such complement as that supplied by the former of them
is inevitably required. The dependence of the highest
mental perceptions upon physical changes in the nervous
organism unifies the two domains of physiology and ethic.
The moral world and the physiological are of a piece.
But the physiological and the physical, the organic and
the inorganic, are of a piece also. The only question is, in
what way to interpret this latter unity. For the belong-
ing of them both to a single great whole requires us to
find some sense in which the more complex force, the
physiological, is a condition upon which the less complex
force, the physical, depends, as well as vice versa, whether
it be as an efficient or as a final condition, as a condition
precedent or a condition subsequent, in order of actual
development in time. It requires us to conceive, as
possible at least, the converse of that process of evolution
with which Mr. Spencer and others have familiarised us ;
it requires us to conceive life as being, possibly at least,
the condition existendi of the merely physical modes of
motion, and as itself dependent in turn upon some still
more complex forces, the special nature of which we have
not faculties to apprehend.

But whether this converse process of evolution is also
to be conceived as actual, whether the physical and
inorganic forces are a part of an actually existing whole
of physiological and organic forces, instead of being the
condition upon which and out of which they are subse-
quently developed, — this I apprehend was to Hinton a
matter of small importance comparatively to the philo-
sophical doc une of the unity of nature resulting from a
due regard to the emotional nature of mau. With him
this view carried with it a reversal of the current notion
that man was morally greater than nature, the top of

14 Introduction,

creation, the " roof and crown of things." It meant no
less than this : What a small and puny creature is man,
who, instead of being, as he supposed, the one moral
thing in nature, is now becoming aware that nature, not
he, is the moral being ; having before attributed to him-
self, to the entity his soul, those moral perceptions which
were his by nature's gift, which he held only in right of his
being a part of nature, and which were really eyes by
which he might see what nature was, means of discovery
of nature's majesty, not the foam and froth of sportive fancy.
Like all true philosophers, Hinton restores the con-
ception of the whole to its just rights over against the
conception of the parts. The two conceptions are cor-
relative, and can never be rightfully dissevered. And the
expression. Whole and Parts, is but another way of saying,
Final and Efficient Cause. The whole of anything is its
final cause, the parts are the chain of conditions which
build it up. And the whole or final cause of anything
is that which alone enables us to judge of the character
of its parts, which alone gives a character to the parts
composing it. Some would banish final causes from
science, some even from philosophy; but as from the
latter at least they can be banished only by mistake of
what they really are and mean, so their return is inevit-
able the moment any man begins to philosophise with
genuine insight. And Hinton is marked as a born philo-
sopher by nothing more decisively than by the constant
and almost involuntary use which he makes of this con-
ception as a principle of thought — by the way in which
it is, if I may say so, ingrained in the texture of his
speculations. Shadworth H. Hodgson.

COLLECTED PAPERS OF THE LATE
JAMES HINTON.

I.

CHAPTERS FROM THE ART OF THINKING
(1872. Unpublished),

CHAPTER I.

CORRECTION OF THE PREMISS.

One of the best known modes of progress in knowledge
is that which has received the name of the reductio ad
ahsurduniy or correction of the premiss : that is, the funda-
mental thought which is taken as the starting-point, in
any given case, being imperfect, false conclusions are
rendered necessary; and by the casting aside of these
conclusions a truer fundamental thought is brought in.
In the following remarks I shall endeavour to show that
the correction of the premiss is the mode in which both
the intellectual and the moral life of the human race
advance.

I. In respect to the intellectual life, man's advance is
from ignorance ; and from ignorance to knowledge (apart
from direct instruction from without) there is no other

1 6 Chapters from the Art of Thinking,

path than through, the correction of the premiss. This is
•tjUe'necessar-y'^fetixt af the attainment of knowledge."^

' If the * reader will repall any ordinary mental process,
h^ will*;perc€iYe. jtliat '"Wrhen, in any case, he is ignorant of
lECny essential circumstance, the conclusions he draws will
not be true. The omission of truth, if any process of
reasoning takes place, necessarily involves us in error.
A person, for example, not knowing the existence of steam,
would necessarily suppose false powers in the things
moved by it. A man not knowing the weight of the at-
mosphere, by which lighter bodies are raised, must attri-
bute to a balloon a power of ' rising ' that it does not
possess. Savages, not knowing eclipses, have inferred
devouring monsters. It is impossible that reasoning in
ignorance should have any other effect than that of lead-
ing us to erroneous conclusions. Nor is the case different
if, instead of reasoning, or together with it, observation be
employed. Observation, based upon assumptions that
include too Little, leads also necessarily to error. So
chemists, formerly, observing with all exactness the effect
of hicrning, but without knowing that oxygen unites with
the burning body, and that part of it is carried off in
invisible gas, thought that something which they called
phlogiston was given off by bodies in burning. The
things we can directly observe are, at the utmost, but
parts ; and we cannot put them truthfully together wlule
the parts which we cannot directly observe are wanting.

^ One or two qualifications, not at all affecting the proposition, need
perhaps to be made : thus (i) When the premiss has been corrected in any-
particular case, there lies open a course, more or less fruitful, of observation
and reasoning upon the new premiss thus acquired, before there arises the
need for a repetition of the process. (2) A certain knowledge we may be
said to possess without any process of acquiring it at all ; namely, the know-
ledge that we have certain sensations. (3) It may be held by some that there
is also a certain further amount of ' instinctive ' knowledge possessed by man
which is exempt from this law, not having to be acquired.

Correction of the Premiss, 1 7

Now, in ordinary affairs, no one either doubts or com-
plains of the law that if he does not know the facts he
falls into erroneous conclusions. Eeason would not exist
if it were otherwise. And if we turn to wider spheres, it
is evidently as little desirable, and as little possible, that
ignorance should not lead to error. It is by means of the
error that the ignorance is banished ; by means of the
false conclusions the premiss is rendered more complete,
for by them men are driven to seek a truer thought. On
how grand a scale this method of learning has been
carried out, it needs but slight acquaintance with science
to perceive. All the ancient astronomy, before the dis-
covery of the earth's motion, was one magnificent demon-
stration in this form ; ignorance of that one fact compelled
it to be so.

But it is needless to multiply instances. Absence of
knowledge has for its inevitable fruit this result: that
the right exercise of our faculties leads, at first, not to
true but to false conclusions. The only means whereby \
our progress to knowledge can be made harmonious is in
frankly recognising and accepting this law of our life.
For, be it ever so well understood, if it be not consciously
accepted in its application to every problem which nature
presents to us, we turn against ourselves the very powers
by which we might advance.

Conceive a master carrying a class, in good faith and
with a view to their own real discovery of the truth,
through a reductio ad ahsurdum : we perceive all the
pupils starting from a common false conviction (for igno-
rance always feels itself to be knowledge) ; then, as the
master's good logic or good observation carried them to
the false conclusion, inevitably the class would divide
itself into two portions : one affirming the false conclu-
sion because supported by sound reasoning or clear evi-

1 8 Chapters from the Art of Thinking.

dence; the other feeling the conclusion to be false, and
insisting therefore on finding some flaw in the demon-
stration. Strife and opposition would come, and an
endeavour to wrest from one another that which each
maintained ; a strife which must continue until the mean-
ing of the process was perceived, and the premiss cor-
rected. The pupils would divide themselves into two
sides, according as they felt most the validity of the 'pro-
cess by which the false result was proved, or the unreason
of the result itself. In any ordinary case, this condition
of strife, of course, would last but a short time ; but if
the problem were really one of great complexity, capable
of being solved only by long-continued effort, and espe-
cially if demanding the joint effort of many minds, it is
evident that (the nature of the process not being con-
sciously recognised — the master giving no hint) this
condition of strife and opposition might go on very long.
Now mankind are situated thus as a class before nature ;
she is our schoolmistress, we are her pupils ; she carries
us through one reductio ad dbsurdum after another, and
she gives us no hint.

So, if we overlook tliis law, we turn our efforts into
a false direction. The true use of the results that are
gained by our very best efforts, on a starting-point that
is incomplete, consists not in their being held, but in
their being given up in the right way. To discover that
right way of giving up even the very best results we
could attain is man's true task — the task that perpetually
comes to him, and must come to him again and again, so
long as his knowledge remains incomplete, and his
powers of perceiving limited. Our true end is to banish
the ignorance within, and attain a true starting-point;
and if we do not thoroughly accept it, we divide into
hostile camps the powers which nature gave us for

Correction of the Premiss, 19

mutual aid, and waste in fruitless fighting energies
which, if we perceived our task aright, would be found
to be each other's complements.

This is perfectly simple. There is certainly nothing
in what has been said that is not entirely well known ;
but is it fairly applied in any relation of human thought ?
Simple as it is, its consequences are very great. One of
these is, that in every case we are bound to ask not only
whether the forces which move us are those of truth, but
whether the basis on which they operate is also true.
Nature calls us, in order to attain true knowledge, to
regard two things ; not only whether our conclusions are
truly drawn, but whether the premisses from which we
draw them are also true : but we tend to content our-
selves with regarding one of these alone. When we
perceive that a power of ti-uth is leading us — clear
reason or obvious fact — it seems to us that we fulfil all
our duty if we follow it; a duty, indeed, we do thus
fulfil, but it is only half. Truth on a basis of ignorance
means not truth, but error. We must be prepared for this.

Another result of this nature of learning is, that the
true right always comes to us in the form of giving up
right. For the conclusions imposed on us by sound
reason or true observation, while there is ignorance in
the basis, though they are false, come to us in the form
of truth. Ignorance within imposes on man a false law
— the law of thinking according to the appearances : a
law he cannot disobey, yet in the obeying of which no
true duty is done ; in yielding to truth he enacts false-
hood ; his right is a wrong right, his truth a false truth.
In respect to knowledge, absence within means false
rights without.

Now to this cause is due the chief part of the
difficulty that is found in the advance of truth. It

20 Chapters from the Art of Thinking,

arises from the demand, that is inevitable in neiu know-
ledge, for a letting go of that which has been enforced
upon the mind by proofs to which the mind was bound
to submit. Evidently this is a much harder task than
merely yielding to proof, and consenting to accept
evidence, and give up prepossessions. Difficult as this
demand may be to minds constituted as ours are, it is a
difficulty vastly inferior to that of abandoning opinions
to which not prejudice or indolence has inclined us, but
which our best zeal, our most rigid accuracy, even in
spite of our own inclinations, it may be, have compelled
us. Truth identifies itself in the soul of man, and
rightly, with the highest moral obligation: to give up
what truth has evidently and consciously compelled
upon us — and the more if it be a thing distasteful to us,
and calling on us for restraint of feelings we tend to
indulge — affects the soul as a crime. This it is that
has made the advance of knowledge so slow in times
past ; has embittered it with anger, stained it with blood.
This : that ignorance imposes a false right. Not for
follies, prejudices, indolence, indifference, have men striven
against their brothers ; but for the voice of God within
their souls ; for that which was most precious ; for which,
if they had not striven to the utmost, they had lost more
than all knowledge could repay.

But also this fact, that the difficulty in the advance of
knowledge lies in the demand it makes for the giving up
of that which the pursuit of truth has imposed, and
relaxing the grasp on that which has inevitably identified
itself with right; this fact gives absolute assurance of
the prevalence of truth. If that which opposed it were
prejudice, or indolence, or any form of desire for ill, then
it might wage a doubtful strife. Perchance man's evil
(though far be it from us to believe it possible) might

Correction of the Pj^emiss, 2 1

have been too strong. But since what most opposes
truth is a false thought of truth itself, truth cannot fail
to triumph. The powers that oppose it are its own;
casting it down, they bear it up ; its seeming enemies
yield up their own life to make it live. For this
submission of man's soul to truth, which in ignorance
gives the false truth its power, is that which ensures
the yielding of the ignorance when the choice is fairly
brought before man's mind. The false truths gain their
power only by the ignorance which perverts truth to
falsity ; and when habit ceases to invest them with this
usurped dominion, there is no more a contest to be waged.

Thus, in so far as our advance consists in the gaining
of a completer starting-point, this consequence is involved :
the true attainment of knowledge means that that which
was a duty becomes no more a duty. Our learning must
have this character whenever it fulfils our chief require-
ment, and penetrates deeper into regions of ignorance
unassaUed before. It is essentially a deliverance, a set-
ting free. Because the character, above all, of ignorance is
that it is a binder of bonds, an imposer of falsity with
the outside characters of truth ; falsity against which tVe
struggle in vain, while the ignorance is still within us,
because ignorance perverts the very power of truth to
enchain us, and yet against which man struggles with
absolute success, because through his very obedience his
deliverance is wrought.

This becomes more evident when the various forces
which are engaged in a correction of the premiss are
considered. In its most usual form it has been a strife
between sense and reason as to which shall rule, based
upon the fact that our sense-perception is always a per-
ception of appearances. Now, it is not the nature of
appearances to be in accordance with the demands of the

2 2 Chapters from the Art of Thmking.

reason ; on various grounds it is impossible that they
should be. Among the chief of these is, that our perception
by sense is extremely partial. Hence comes, as before
remarked, the appearance of numerous isolated forces in
nature, instead of one force in changing form. And
since, if the whole be rational, that is itself a reason
against isolated fragments, put together as we may
happen to perceive them, being rational, it is evident
that any arrangement of the appearances alone will be
opposed to the reason. However much of reason may be
employed in the arrangement, it will still be so. The
absence of reason involved in their partialness cannot be
eliminated, but only for a time concealed. A thought
that is conformed to the appearances (or sense-perceptions),
therefore, inevitably lays bonds on man ; it lays bonds
upon his reason. And the solving of the reductio ad absur-
dum thus instituted consists in the rightful assertion of
the claims of reason over those of sense ; not crushing
them, nor putting them aside, but fulfilling them, by the
recognition of the unperceived elements, of which sense
had given no account. So far the correction of the pre-
miss is the introduction into our thought of some element
unperceived by sense.

Thus it follows also that the history of human advance
is by no means one of simple continuous progress, but
presents a series of revolutions. Again and again it pre-
sents to us a process more or less long, apparently tending
to one end, but resulting in another, and in one also
altogether unexpected ; necessarily unexpected, and even
striven against, while the universal operation of this law
is overlooked. That which experience teaches when we
read it truly, is not that the thoughts which man has
had will continue to be his, but that in everything in
which a great and fundamental revolution has not already

Correction of the Premiss, 23

occurred, such a revolution will certainly occur in the
future. In respect to thought, nothing is stable that has
not undergone this radical change — of receiving a new
starting-point. The true lesson of experience teaches us
to expect it, even as reason shows us its necessity.

And reason and experience also alike exhibit to us
the characters which mark the stages of the process. A
correction of the premiss involves that good reasoning
and sound evidence — a 'process altogether valid — lead to
results that cannot be accepted. The process good, the
results untrue. It is the embodiment, in fact, of the
words : " Either make the tree good and his fruit good,
or else the tree evil and his fruit evil." It is nature's
law that each tree — all acted upon alike by her good
forces — brings forth fruits after his kind. The approach-
ing completion of a correction of the premiss is marked
especially by this — that good processes, actions dictated
and guided perfectly by right, inferences sound in logic,
observations of perfect honesty and skill, lead to conclu-
sions that are intolerable to the reason ; so that strife
and doubt arise, and, above all, a suspicion that true
knowledge is impossible. It has all the appearance of a
failure and limitation of our faculties ; for they are ob-
viously set against themselves. Before the crisis comes a
lull ; before the revelation of the new knowledge, despon-
(Tency. What experience truly teaches us to expect is
great and sudden changes ; the attainment of new percep-
tions of facts unperceived before, which shall give new
bases to all our thoughts ; and these fundamental changes
preceded by special strife and mistrust of our powers.

II. And in the moral life, is it not to the full as visible
that the law of man's advance is the correction of his
starting-point ? For what is more evident than that he

24 Chapters from the Art of Thinking.

begins with absence of the true emotions — with moral
\ ignorance ? and what more visible in the whole course of
his history than that his very efforts after good have led
him into evil ? For this is the sadness and " mystery " of
human life, the thing that most tends to sink us in de-
spair : not that evil is so strong, but that such a blight
seems to attend also the very seeking after good. The
very powers on which we must rely seem to play us
false ; not only evil has brought evil, but effort for right
itself has ended in calamity, even in corruption. But this
is the very process whereby a correction of the premiss is
wrought out. It comes by man being compelled to open
his eyes afresh, and regard more things; compelled to
say, " It is true that right, to me, as I have been feeling
and acting, has meant these things; but I must have a
different thought, a different feeling, that right may no
more mean these things to me." This is the problem of
the correction of the premiss : to fulfil the condition of
right no more meaning to ns that which it has meant ;
of beginning so that duties which we could not have put
aside before become no more our duties. " Our fathers
said that on this mountain was the place where we should
worship God ; you say it is Jerusalem. Where must we
worship ? How far must we travel ? what trouble under-
go ? " There is no luhe^^e ; let but the soul worship, and
there lies no toil upon the body. •

But thus we see that, no less than in the intellectual
life, the moral and religious life must also have been a
strife, a battle : not of evil and good alone, but one in
which good must have seemed divided against itself — a
truer right calling for the giving up of that which right
itself had brought. For in respect to right also there lies
on us a twofold demand, and we are prone to recognise
but one and to ignore the other. Two demands lie on us

Correction of the Premiss, 25

— not only to see that we follow that which right enforces,
but to see also that our right also operates on a true
basis. This latter obligation man leaves unfulfilled long
after he has learnt to accept, and earnestly try to fulfil,
the former. For very, very long he is content to say,
" Eight means this to me, and I will do it," before he will
ask himself, " Is my soul truly right within, and if it were
so, would right to me mean this ? " And many and most
disastrous evils he endures, never suspecting that his
right can be in fault, before he is driven to ask, " Ought
not right to me to be a different thing ? " But God has
so ordained his life that he cannot put the question away
for ever, not even in the things he feels most sure of
and counts most sacred.

For, indeed, the more intense his feeling of right in
the things that right on an imperfect basis brings, the
more holy, necessary, and utterly beyond profanation he
feels them, so much the more potent on his soul is the
demand God makes for him to let them go : the greater
and deeper the change that must accompany the loosing
of his grasp upon them.

And what the power is by which this change is to be
wrought we need not ask, for it is shown us. How
sacred must the Jews have thought resting on the Sabbath
day, when they would let men suffer, die perchance,
rather than it be broken ? But there was one thing
more sacred. The power that God sends against the rights
that a false condition of the soul imposes is the needs of
our fellow-men. By these He teaches us what the service
is that He demands ; how deep it goes into the desires ;
exacting from the soul nothing less than such a turning
of its thought to others that its service has no need of
rigid forms in which to clothe itself, but is free to follow
wheresoever, by human want. His will is revealed. For,

26 Chapters from the Art of Thinking.

in the moral life, tlie falsity in the starting-point is that
others are not present from the first in our regard, so that
our very goodness, our very worship, centre about our-
selves. This makes our righteousness self-righteousness,
our virtue a self- virtue ; binds us to deeds for goodness'
sake that are not one with service to our fellows.

It were an infinite joy if this law were true of our
life. For there are two characters that belong of necessity
to a correction of the starting-point. One is, that as soon
as it is understood, the task is already done. The diffi-
culty lies not in making the correction, but in the discovery
that it is needed ; the task and labour are in working out
the false rights ; the substitution for them of the more
right beginning is, not labour, but deliverance. By its
very nature, the truer right, the corrected premiss, is
always the easier thing ; it is at once more and easier, a
better achievement and less toil. It is an entering into
rest, the want that imposed the toil having been supplied.
Other men labour, and those to whose eyes it is given to
see that what they need is a truer beginning, reap the fruits.

And there is an infinite joy again in this, that though
the working out of the correction of a premiss is a process
of darkness, a very mystery of evil, compelling strife, and
making peace impossible in spite of all desire ; yet when
once its meaning is understood all is changed : a new
light breaks over the past, a new spirit descends into the
present. The strife ceases ; a meaning and end become
visible in every part ; an assured victory is made manifest
in each defeat.

[N'OTE. — I have said that, in the intellectual life of
man, the correction of the premiss is the introduction
into our thought of some element unperceived by sense.

We may give perhaps to this fact another form of

Correctmi of the Premiss. 27

expression. It has now become customary to say that
our perception is modified by " subjective " elements :
that is, that something within us affects our perceiving,
and causes that of which we are conscious to be different
from that which truly exists. In so far as sense is
concerned, we see that this "subjective element" — or
that which is from ourselves — is, that there are things
which we do not perceive; or that there is more in that
which exists than our perception includes. That is, the
" subjective element " is a non-perception ; or, to speak
more generally, the subjective element, so far as we
have knowledge of its nature, is a negative. The advance
from falsity to truth is by a casting out of a negation or
of a non-perception : that is, by our coming to perceive
more fully. Now there is at least strong probability
that, in this instance, of the senses as compared with
the reason, there is shown to us the nature of the
difference of our perception from the truth in every
case: namely, that it differs by a negative — by that
which answers to a non-perception. The correction of
the premiss, then, we may define as the casting out of
a non-perception : and it is effected either by the reason
casting off bonds laid on it by the senses, through in-
complete perception on their part, or by some process
parallel to this.*

* I do not take into account the assumed introduction of light by the eye,
or of sound by the ear, &c. ; because these are by no means established to
be subjective. The resolution of colour and sound, and other sensations of
our own, into motion, is simply putting the impressions of one sense for
those of another ; and is done only because the latter furnishes convenient
formulae for universal application. Expressing all the phenomena of nature
in terms of motion is like reducing incommensurable fractions to a common
term ; but it neither is, nor now professes to be, a truer apprehension.
Whether our perceptions by ear, eye, taste, smell, &c., or those by touch,
be the truer, remains an open question; and it is evident that those of
touch, as involving exertion, whereby alone there comes to us the sensation
oi force, are presumably those which are most modified.

( 28 )
CHAPTEE 11.

OF PROOF.

Other results follow from the law that the advance of
knowledge is by a correcting of the starting-point, but
before considering them, it may be better to inquire
what we mean when we say of any assertion that it is
proved.

When we wish to bring another person to any opinion
we adduce " arguments." These arguments are of two
kinds — either direct evidence of the thing affirmed, or
thoughts which make it difficult for any other opinion to
be held. Now, direct evidence alone cannot amount to
proof unless it be also shown that no other explanation
of the appearances is possible. Until tested in this way,
any opinion is plausible or probable only, never proved.
To hold it proved would be to place ourselves at the mercy
■of our own impressions, and debar ourselves from supply-
ing what might be wanting in them. Proof depends
upon the testing of our thought in every direction, and
finding that, of all ways possible to be supposed, the one
affirmed alone is possible to be held. When, then, in
argument we seek to make another's opinion agree with
our own, what do we do ? We bring to his mind thoughts,
ideas, facts, which oppose his former thought : we do the
very same thing that we do when we seek to direct the
motion of a moving body ; we apply resistances to its
motion in all directions but that which we desire. So
we apply " resistances " to thought ; that is, we adduce
opposing thoughts. We cannot think against another
thought without having to overcome the resistance of

Of Proof, 29

that thought; and amid conflicting thoughts, that one
prevails to which there is least thought opposed. The
reason we cannot think that two and two are five is, that
we have a thought which opposes it — that two and two
are four. The thought recoils from "two and two are
five," as a ball recoils from a wall ; there is an absolute
resistance to it. In whatsoever direction thought is least
resisted, in that direction it goes. It is no question of
will or choice. We think that the whole is greater than
the part ; therefore we cannot think the part equal to the
whole. Take the former thought away, and we no more
are unable to think the part equal to the whole. Why
should we not ? So we are compelled to the conclusion
of a syllogism, simply because the established general
proposition resists a particular opposed to it. Thinking all
men are mortal, I cannot think one man is not. That
thought is resisted : the opposite one has nothing to resist
it ; and my thought takes the direction, of course, in which
it is not resisted.

This, then, is what we mean by proof : the term simply
expresses the fact that thought takes the direction of least
opposing thought ; that is, of least resistance. Thought
takes the direction of least resistance ; and to our conscious-
ness of this fact in particular instances we gave the name
of proof. The word expresses our feeling that our
thought does go, will go, without possibility of forbidding
on our part, in one direction, and not in any other ; that
is, in any other it is more resisted (by other thoughts).
When a man is conscious of this fact, he says, if he be
hasty in judging, "This is proved;" if he be more
considerate, he says, " So far as I can see, this is
proved."

For it is clear that this perception of ours, that our
thought is more resisted in every other direction than in

30 Chapters from the Art of Thinking,

one, establishes nothing as to truth. Whether the direc-
tion in which our thought, being least resisted, is com-
pelled to move be the true direction or not, depends
obviously on the question whether all the elements which
should direct our thought are present to our minds. Our
consciousness of the necessity of our thought — that is,
our feeling of proof — is the same whether this be so or
not. Non-recognition of this fact, and taking the feeling
of assurance for evidence, is the great and chief charac-
teristic of ignorance ; the escape from it is the first sign
of approaching knowledge : the sensation of assurance
means just as much as the sensation of being at rest
means, and no more. It is equally compatible with the
truth and untruth to the fact. But this does not mean,
of course, that there is no test of truth. Our thought is
true when all the elements which concern it are present
to the mind, and do their part in directing its operation.
This is the case with mathematical truth, for instance.
That two straight lines cannot enclose a space is " proved "
simply because we, having a certain thought of straight
lines, cannot against that think a contrary one ; but it is
true because it is certain that there are no other elements
which belong to the case, and which are not present to
our thought. And this is certain because we ourselves
are the makers, or at least the definers, of the ideas with
which we are dealing. All that concerns the thought of
straight lines is certainly present to our minds, because
our own minds determine the idea of the straight line ;
we know there is nothing left out because we deal only
with what we put in. So with all other ideas which we
ourselves strictly define, and by defining, limit ; we make
a completeness in thought of which we reap the fruits in
an assurance of truth. But it is clear that if, besides
what we know of straight lines, they might also have other

Of Proof . 3T

properties affecting their power to enclose space, which we do
not know, we could not say that the impossibility of their
enclosing space was true. Unknown facts might show it
not to be true. But we know there are no other facts
which do affect this question, because we look back to
the whole origin of the idea, and perceive that it is one
of our own construction, and that, therefore, there is in it
nothing bearing on that point which we do not know.
By a similar process of defining we can give ourselves
the same assurance of truth in respect to anything. De-
fine motion as that which is produced or stopped by force,
and it is true that wheresoever motion arises force is
expended, and as it ceases force is again ready for ope-
rating. The definition ensures the completeness (for their
purpose) of the elements present to our thought. The
mode in which these propositions come to be true, not
only as mere matters of definition and verbal inference,
but in respect to nature, is that, by a more or less long pro-
cess of observation and reasoning, men have adapted their
definitions to that which experience has demanded of
them. The truths of geometry are true of the physical
world because men have constructed their definitions
according to the demands of that world. And what the
geometrician now affirms is, not that there is space, or
anything in space ; but that certain things are true in
respect to space — he having defined it to himself — and
that in so far as things external are in space, so far the
truths of geometry are true of them.

But it is worth while to note, in passing, that geometry
bears upon its face marks of having undergone a great
revolution. Is it not certain that, however men began the
measuring of the earth, they did not begin by defining
points and lines as things that have no substance or no
breadth ? that they began, in fact, by using measures of

32 Chapters from the Art of Thinking, -

tangible dimensions, and by a reductio ad absurdum
were compelled to abolish them, and take measures which
the intellect alone, and not the senses, could recognise.
The process is visible in the result ; the breadth of their
measures falsified their results, and the definitions of the
point and line are the fruits of their failure.

Let it be granted me for the present to term that kind
of proof which means also truth, all the elements belong-
ing to the case being present to the mind, " demonstra-
tion : " I shall then used the word proved to mean that
a conclusion is the result of sound argument so far as we
can see ; and demonstrated when we have reason also to
know that nothing pertaining to the case is left out, and
that the conclusion is therefore a true one. Demonstra-
tion, as we have seen, may be secured by limiting the
possible elements of any case by a definition ; but it is
not meant to be afiirmed that it is not also attained in
other ways. Whensoever there are consciously present
to us all the elements which affect the case, be they
gained how they may, proof is demonstration. And it
is evident that however far this condition (and it is surely
inexorable) may seem to throw back the possibility of
certitude, it leaves the question of the truth or falsity of
opposing opinions not in the least obscured, but rather
gives decisive aid in the settlement of every controversy.
Of two opinions which may be held respecting anything,
that is the one binding upon the intellect which includes
more elements than its opponent; that is, which takes
into account facts which the other overlooks : in a word,
that is the binding one which casts out a non-perception
from the premiss. In one aspect, this distinction between
proof and demonstration is but a mode in which the demand
for the correcting of the premiss appeals to us. Till this
is done, whatsoever evidence may come before us, howso-

Of Proof. 33

ever inevitable a certain conclusion may be in presence
of it, the proof means not truth, but simply the direction
of least resistance to an imperfect thought.

But the relative truth given by the introduction into
our starting-point of an element that had not been per-
ceived is a result in no degree unsatisfactory. In rela-
tion to the question that had been before us, it is final,
however much beyond it may leave unsettled. Thus, to
take the question of one or many forces ; the unity of force
as against its multiplicity is demonstrated : what is not
proved is that there is force at all ; that is, that our con-
ception of force is truly applicable to the external world.
This awaits further study. But if we postulate the idea
of force, and ask respecting it, " Is it one or manifold ? "
the answer is complete enough: it is so far absolute.
Our idea of many forces rests solely on our non-percep-
tion of the constancy of force : it is one. Eelatively
to that question the elements present to our thoughts
are complete.

The expression that thought takes the direction of
least resistance — that is, of least opposing thought — may
be subject to various remarks ; as, for example, that
thought exists where there is no resistance, has impulses
of its own, has power to overcome resistance, and doubt-
less various others. But I do not dwell upon them, for
this reason : that the parallel law in mechanics affords the
answers. What is meant by the assertion of it in respect
to thought is, that it has the same application in the
mental world as the physical. It covers a certain ground
in the latter, and has to be used with certain limitations :
no other use is claimed for it in the world of mind.

( 34 )

CHAPTEE III.

ON THE ANALOGY BETWEEN THE ORGANIC AND THE
MENTAL LIFE.

In the working out of a reductio ad absurdum, the idea
of a strain or tension, ending in a resolution, is plainly
embodied. We have a false notion, with which, therefore,
the facts cannot agree ; but we with more or less labour
reconcile them, supposing all the things necessary to
make the false idea fit, until we find the result grows too
absurd : the strain becomes too great. Suppose a thief
in a house where aU are believed honest and suspicion
most unwelcome ; every missing article sets on foot some
hypothesis to account for its disappearance, until the mere
multiplicity of these hypothesis makes them incredible ;
a weight of supposition is imposed on the mind which at
last it cannot accept ; the suppositions fall by their own
weight, and the conviction, " There is a thief here," how-
ever unwelcome, is forced to take their place.

The tension and straui imposed upon the reason, which
demands simplicity and rational connection in its beliefs,
is the force by which the new conviction is brought ; and
the feeling, " I have been starting with a false assump-
tion," is compelled. The process is strictly parallel to
the putting more and more strain upon a barrier until
at last it yields ; or, as Shelley beautifully likens it — in re-
spect to great new thoughts — to the accumulation of snow
upon a mountain side until it falls in an avalanche.

Kow, it is not only to processes accounted mechanical
that this mental process is like. The relations of force
in the living body obey the same law. The more or less

Organic and Mental Life, 35

protracted "nutrition" and the sudden "function" are
the most familiar of our experiences. We take force into
our bodies in our food ; we assimilate it in the processes
included in digestion ; it forms a tension on our muscles,
and indeed on every organ ; and on a ceasing of that
tension every function is performed. Nature accumulates
force for us which we employ ; but we can avail ourselves
of it only by thus incorporating into our own frames the
tension ; our muscles and nerves are as a drawn bow with
the arrow ready at every moment to take flight. The liv-
ing tissue contains force — force restrained; a weight,
as it were, piled up and ready to fall, a pressure against
a barrier, ready to produce its equivalent effect as soon
as the barrier is removed. The organic and the mental
process claim the very same terms for their expression.
The process of making the false suppositions in the
redudio ad ahsurdum is the nutrition ; the correction of
the premiss is the function. The force by which the
conviction of the earth's motion is maintained in our
minds is the force which was " stored up " in the old
hypothesis of which it has taken the place. The false
conclusion to which we are led by arguing or observ-
ing on a false premiss contains force ; it answers to the
living body full of power for action : the process whereby
it comes is the mental " nutrition ; " the ceasing of those
false conclusions, on the perfecting of the premiss, is the
mental function. In tracing this action of the human
mind, we are tracing a process in the strictest sense vital
or organic; it is a true physiology or process of life
that is exhibited before us.

Further, since this process is carried out through many
minds, and extends in its sweep through many genera-
tions, it presents visibly before us a life strictly par-
allel to the organic life, in which the individuals are as

36 Chapters from the A7't of Thinking,

atoms. We see in it the living process magnified;
projected, as it were, before us on a gigantic scale. Here
is a " nutrition " in which not particles of oxygen, car-
bon, hydrogen, with forces such as those of light and
heat, are the factors, summing up their tiny activities
within the scope of a few hours or months, or at most
a short flow of years ; but long generations of men, with
all the potencies of human thought and will and inflowing
agencies of nature through every sense. Here we see Life
" written large " that we may read it ; the long toil of
thousands of men through thousands of years adding
hour by hour new items of laborious search, or careful
scrutiny, or scrupulous deduction, aU collected into one
great organisation, replete and pulsating with living force
— with living force of error, be it noted — until the weighty
fabric is complete, and falls — falls by its own weight ;
and through some lips, of no more potency than any
others, and passive instruments of the force that carries
him first, only because it is to carry all men on its torrent,
a magic word is spoken, and knowledge arises new-created
from the chaos. That is Life ; the reductio ad absurdum
is a nutrition ending in a function.

There must, in the mental life, be these two opposite
processes ; ignorance is banished only by their union,
never by a single one. A deeper reason for this will
perhaps appear hereafter ; but in truth that it is a law
common to the mental and bodily life is sufficiently signi-
ficant. Nor is it much less so that our language appears
already, although without full consciousness, to have
recognised the fact. I have used the terms " nutrition "
and " fimction " for the mental processes, adopting them
from the bodily ones ; but it is not necessary to have
recourse to these ; for there exists already a pair of terms
exactly suited to denote these related processes in respect

Organic and Mental Life. 37

to thought, although not yet distinctively applied to them :
I mean the terms Theory and Interpretation.

It would be impossible to say that the ancients inter-
preted the heavens, and Copernicus made a theory of
them : the words fix themselves in the opposite use ; the
ancients made (and, beyond all admiration, well) a theory
of the heavens ; Copernicus interpreted it. Now this cleav-
ing of the words to one idea, and refusal to be applied
to another, proves in them (however little it may be in
our intention) a certain distinctness and definiteness of
meaning. Nor is their relation in the least degree ob-
scure. They fit themselves precisely each to one of the
two processes of which a correction of the premiss con-
sists. The word " theory " — it is its own choice, its own
affinity, no arbitrary dictation of ours — fixes itself to the
tracing out of results on the imperfect premiss ; the word
"interpretation," by an equal natural adhesion, lays hold
of the turning these falsely true results ^ to their true
use, in bringing to our knowledge the omitted fact or
facts.

That is the exact description of every rightness that
is based upon a wrongness ; and there is no part of
human life that has not been, or is not still, full of it.
The word " theory " is very exactly adapted to this mean-
ing ; it is from the Greek dewpico to see ; it means that
which is the result of mere observing without the dis-
covery of our own non-perception at the root ; it may be
called the " observation-true," such as the idea of many
forces in Nature; which is true to mere observation.
Thus we not only find ourselves already provided with

1 No words could more exactly describe the characters of a "Theory " as
thus defined than Tennyson's of Lancelot —

" His honour rooted in dishonour stood,
And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true."

38 Chapters from the Art of Thinking.

terms answering to tlie twofold process in which the
attainment of knowledge consists, but we perceive also
indications of a power guiding man's words which is
beyond his individual thoughts. These terms have
meanings, real significations involved in them, which
have never been intended ; we perceive that they possess
them, for they will not bend to an indiscriminate use,
even though no man ever designed to separate them.
For, as thus applied, it is evident that in the use of the
word theory, there is conveyed the affirmation of a falsity ;
that is, of an incompleteness in the starting-point giving
false results ; but it is implied also that these results are
not merely false, but definitely and adaptedly so ; false
in the right way, the way in which by being false they
shall reveal the truth. Now in the word Theory as used
in Science, there has been no intended meaning of falsity
at all ; the aim is constantly to acquire tlie true theory of
any series of events. Yet, on the other hand, a meaning
of untruth clings about the word and will not let itself
be banished ; to say of anything that it is " theoretical "
is ever to count it of small value. May it not be that
these characteristics of the word are really due to its
fittest application being to that form of thought which is
at once true and false ; which presents a falsity that is
the destined road to truth, being the fruit of the union
of truth and error.

But it is not only in having thus contained within it,
in the sequence of theory and interpretation, a parallel
to the sequence of nutrition and function in the living
body, that the mental life answers to the body. In the
fact that thought takes the direction of least resistance
(least opposing thought), it presents to us another parallel
to the bodily life, not less close. It is inevitable indeed
that it should do so ; for this law of least resistance is

Organic and Mental Life, 39

one which prevails, and must prevail wherever force is
present.-^

The structure of the body, its " organisation " as it is
termed, exhibits motion determined by least resistance ;
each form and organ, and the harmony of all, are involved
in this simple necessity ; the form and resistance of the
existing parts at every stage determining, according to
that law (with the limitations always involved in it),
the form and relations of all that succeed. In the bodily
life, the law of least resistance beneath the influence
of Nature's force issues in an " organisation," determining
that the tension within it shall result in a function —
suited to and serving the body from which it emanates.
Even so in the mental life the law of least resistance,
carried out amid the elements of perception and of thought
that Nature furnishes, results not in a mere mass of know-
ledge, nor even in an array of it ordered according to
some external order, marshalled as it were into crystalline
forms however beautiful and shapely ; it results in a liv-
ing order, a structure, though it be built up of thoughts
alone, an organisation though it be but of impressions of
the sense and reactions of the reason in them, which
determines that the tension within it shall result in
functions, in actions suited to and serving the mental life
from which they flow.

1 It is indeed but one form of the axiom that the whole is greater than
the part ; being simply that a greater force operates more strongly than a
less one. For the evidence of this law in the organic body, as well as of the
relation of nutrition and function, see " Life in Nature," Chaps. I. and V.

( 40 )

CHAPTER lY.

ON SEEING THE UNSEEN.

Returning to the thought, that on an imperfect premiss
a mere process of inference, or' of observation, or even of
both combined, conducts us not to knowledge, but to
results which still embody ignorance, a practical question
arises : By what process is the completion of the premiss
effected ? How may we know that the ignorance which
vitiated the process at the first is no longer present ? The
answer is not at once obvious. For the problem to be
solved arises not merely from the ignorance in which we
start, but from the limitation also of our perception.
Our course would be simple, if all we had to do were
to use our observing faculties, and formulate according to
our best reason the data presented to them ; but it is not
this. No formulating with whatever strictness or subtlety
of reason of things perceived, or by any means whatever
capable of being brought within perception will suffice ;
because the problem is how to fill up the gap in our per-
ception, and supply aright elements which not only are
unperceived at first, but to the last continue unperceiv-
able. The gravity of the heavenly bodies is an instance.
The gravitating motion, or tendency, not only is not
presented to our first or casual observation, it remains
equally hidden from the last and most refined ; indeed,
it is certain that so long as the stellar order remains
undisturbed it never can be presented in relation to the
bodies to which it is applied. Gravity, as a falling
motion, or tendency to fall, cannot be " observed " in the
regular movements either of star, planet, or satellite j the

On Seeing the Unseen, 41

bodies approach one another indeed, but they recede to
an equal extent ; falling is no more visible than recession;
attraction no more obvious to the senses than repulsion.
No amount of observation, nor of reasoning, upon things
observed in their motions would have had any tendency
to result in the present interpretation of them : in truth,
both observation and reasoning had been tried, and well
tried; had done probably all that was possible for them to do.
The natural result of such exercise of man's faculties was
that which they produced — suppositions of powers in the
sun to produce rotatory motions around it ; or similar
hypotheses answering to that which observation presented
to man's belief. JSTow, the nature of the error in all such
suppositions is manifest; namely, that they were sup-
positions correspondent to the impressions that observation
gave ; and so embodying its imperfection. The explana-
tion of the motions by gravity is an explanation by means
of something that was seen not in them, but in something
else ; namely, in the fall of bodies to the earth. It intro-
duces into our thoughts of those motions an element
which, in them, is unperceivable. We may express this
fact by saying, that the true explanation of the planetary
motions was given by recognising in another thing
something visible in them ; the demand was for seeing an
invisible, and this was the mode in which it was fulfilled.
Now, in this instance, there is presented to us an
unusual law, rendered necessary by the fact of this
limitation of our perceiving powers. Granted, the fact of
this limitation, this law obviously follows ; and we see in
it the basis of a fact now recognised in Science, that a
true scientific " induction " is by no means a mere infer-
ence from collected observations, but " a guess verified."
That it must be so is evident ; for only by this means
can a complete basis of reality be given to our con-

42 Chapters from the Art of Thinking,

elusions ; the gaps in our perception being supplied not
by our own suppositions but by realities presented by
Nature. For in this way Nature herself gives the key to
her own hidden things. And thus it is not difficult to
understand the assurance of truth which is given by this
kind of evidence. It is Nature furnishing us the key to
her own proceedings. The thing which we suppose is no
invention of our own, but is a reality, and one which we
are bound to believe existing everywhere, unless it be
proved absent. So in respect to Gravity — Newton's own
claim for it was that in suggesting it he did not " invent
hypotheses" but adduced a "true cause "^ — a cause
known to exist, visibly existing, in Nature. If we con-
sider the evidence on which the explanation of the
heavenly motions of gravity rests, we find that it has no
other ground whatever than that all the appearances
observed, agree with it, and that the cause assigned is one
that is also seen on something else ; that is presented to
us also under a different form. And if the reader will test
his convictions farther, he wiU find also (I believe) that
he is unable even to imagine any other or farther proof as
possible to be given of any account of natural phenomena,
beyond this, that the cause assigned absolutely agrees
with the phenomena, and that it is a thing which can be
seen elsewhere in Nature.

1 Hypotheses non jingo.

( 43 )

CHAPTEE y.

THOUGHT AND ART.

How strange it is that logic has been set up as a
complete rule or mode by which thinking is performed.
For logic is the expression of that which all do after a
certain fashion, which every one can do perfectly who
has been trained in the use of logical forms. It is related
to thought, as architectural drawing which every one can
do who has learned to use a ruler and compasses is to
paintings. This ruler-and- compass- work, observe, is not
exactly unrelated to true painting ; it is in every true
picture (or in all true thinking) at once present and not
present. It is there, but with so much more that it is
only discoverable by taking away.

Thinking, indeed, is no mere mechanical process ; it is
a great Art, the chief of all the Arts ; nay, it is both an
Art and a work ; it has the attractions of an Art and the
positive results of a Science. Those only can be called
thinkers who have a native gift, a special endowment for
the work, and have been trained, besides, by assiduous
culture. When others attempt to think it should be
understood that the results of such attempts have the
same kind of value that belongs to amature paintings.
In the one case as in the other, what most cultivated
men should seek and expect is the capacity — not to do
the work — but to enjoy and appropriate the work of
others. And indeed though we continually assume that
every one is capable of thinking, do we not all feel that
there is somehow a fallacy in this assumption. Do we
not feel that what people set up as their "reasons" for

44 Chapters from the Art of Thinking,

disbelieving or believing a particular doctrine are often
nothing of the sort, but merely statements which would
be at once discarded were it not for the opinions held.

These " reasons " are often to be found accompanying
widely-spread beliefs ; but although the arguments may
be dismissed, it would be very foolish to suppose that it
is of no importance what innumerable people have
thouglit. The tilings that made them think as they did
must have their full weight. In fact the more monstrous
and repugnant in any way an opinion is, the more power-
ful must have been the forces which compelled men to
adopt it. In the true opinion, then, forces must be
present, but balanced.

If thinking be one of the Fine Arts, wiU not a compari-
son of its history with that of the so-called Arts throw
light on both ? May we not find a correspondence even in
the details of their course ? May we not even get guid-
ance for the future — guidance in thinking, the hardest of
the Arts from the study of the easier and therefore the
earlier developed ones. Nay, the object of Art, we know,
is to " interpret Nature." May not the Arts render this
service best by actiug as guides and servitors to the great
interpreter of Nature, Thought ? Bacon supposed, and
our modern philosophy supposes also, that the only
materials which can legitimately be made use of by
thought are those supplied to it by the senses under the
form of observation and experiment. The consequence
has been a disunion and even strife between Thought and
the Art feeling which should have been its servant. For
all Art and all observation , are members 6f one body
bunt up into one head — which is Thought.

Our present Art and what we now call " Thought "
{i.e., Science and Metaphysics) are two halves. Each is
imperfect alone. Art is so merely fanciful, and Thought

Thoicght and Art, 45

so dry, because of the negative in each, which, in our
condition of ignorance, must needs be. The true Thought
— non-existent yet — is to exclude the negative of each
and make them one.^

The Art-faculty, the artist's own peculiar gift, is
Imagination. Imagination is properly the power of
seeing the unseen; the power also of putting ourselves
out of the centre, of reducing ourselves therefore to our
true proportions, of taking a view including ourselves, i.e.,
of truly using our own impressions. And is not this, in
reality, the chief element in .the work of the thinker ?
Logic, apart from the exercise of the Imagination is, in
fact, not Thought; it is, as it were, the skeleton of
thought, the condition or mode under which the
Imagination works in thinking, as, in other Arts it works
under other conditions. Now, if this be so, how has it
come to pass that logic is commonly considered to be the
Thought-faculty.

Different forms of Eeligion have been, in their progress,
opposed to all those emotions : that joy, that free sponta-
neous activity, in which perfected religion consists. And
in the same way Thinking in the course of its progress,
has assumed the form of a mere logic opposed to Imagina-
tion if only for this reason that the true Thought is
Imagination perfected.

Art, including of course poetry, and Science (including
logic) are to each other as the life of free emotion is to
that of rigid restraint. They are to each other as the
Gentile and Jewish lives, which are united in Christianity.
The beauty in Art and the logic in Thought are the
" Liberty " and " Law " respectively. Thinkers, as such,

1 Art is one of two lines. Science with Metaphysics being the other. But
Science and Metaphysics are themselves opposites within one line; are
Painting (&c.,) and Music in the same way opposites also?

46 Chapters from the Ai^t of Thiyiking,

have for the most part suppressed their Art-instinct, their
imagination. But all our instincts must have their
foundation in truth. The perfect art of thinking must
embody and express them all, and be true to the whole
of man's nature with all its faculties.

The very law of progress is that no tendency is
suppressed except for the sake of being perfected ; ever
the suppressed returns to be united with its suppressor.
In what we call " Thought " the imagination has been
suppressed for the sake of logic ; in Art the truth has
been suppressed for the sake of beauty ; true thought
will turn the negation out of each, and " break down the
middle wall of partition " " making both one." Is not
such union the very essence of Eevelation.

Christianity appeared at first among the Jews,
appeared as, and was called, a form of Judaism (though
in truth Judaism had been but one negative presenta-
tion, one phenomenon of it, the Gentile life being
another). It came from the Jews ; but it had to turn
to the Gentiles for its reception. When the true thought
arises, will it not, though appearing as a form of Science,
be received first by the aesthetic portion of mankind.

Poetry is seeing one thing in another, Nature in man
and man in Nature, but how often is the vision confined
to mere external things and accidents. Science assists in
tracing force-relations and following processes. Each is
opposed to the other only through the lack of its own
perfectness. Each is in its own nature what the other
only is supposed to be. Poetry an instrument of re-
search, and Science a teacher of the soul by beauty, and
interpreter of aU things into spiritual meaning. Science
is poetry; if it would use altruistic seeing: Poetry is
Science, if it would use a true vision of the dynamic
relations. Only by each laying aside what is its own
does it oppose the other.

f 47 )

II.

ON THE BASES OF MORALS.

{April 1876.)

The very interesting discussion in a recent number of
this "Eeview"^ on the "Scientific Bases of Morals"
must have suggested many thoughts to every reader. To
me it has recalled a view which may not be out of
accord with some of the lines of argument there advanced.
Perhaps for brevity and distinctness' sake a certain
dogmatism of form may be excused.

Let me begin by recalling a few facts connected with
the intellectual part of our nature. Man, being endowed
with what I may term an intellectual consciousness, and
existing in a world in which there are facts that have a
natural relation to that consciousness, is, by that nature
and that position, under a lavj ; the law, namely, that his
intellectual consciousness should correspond truly to
those facts. These, merely, by their existing, have a
claim upon the response of his consciousness, to them.
If there be not that response there is non-accord of the
external and internal ; his consciousness is false, he
is ignorant, and the consequence of the falsity — or non-
response of the intellect to facts — is disaster, in so far as
there arise any practical relations.

1 Seo ** Contemporary Review," September 1875.

48 On the Bases of Morals.

By the mere existence of an intellectual Being among
facts adapted to an intellectual response, there arises this
claim, of which Science, in its largest sense, is the recog-
nition and the progressive fulfilment. It is also to be
observed that this claim for a true response to facts is the
primary claim under which man, in respect to his intel-
lectual consciousness, lies ; all others are either directly
fulfilled in this, or they are involved in it as means, or
imply it as foundation. And this law of a true response
is one that cannot be imagined absent, or, except by a
perpetual and hurtful miracle, unavenged if broken.

But in fulfilling this law mankind have encountered
two difficulties : one affecting the individual directly, the
other affecting rather the race, and the individual chiefly
through the race. For, in the first place, every man starts
without this response of his intellectual consciousness to
facts, and has to acquire it by slow degrees and more or
less laborious processes. And secondly, men did not
know that this was the law under which, as intellectual
beings, they exist. Accordingly we find that, so far from
having endeavoured to fulfil it, they set before themselves
various other aims, or ideals of intellectual right, neglect-
ing or even deliberately ignoring the claims of fact. Now
of these two hindrances to a true response of the intellec-
tual consciousness the second has been immensely the
greater. The mere ignorance of the child is easily turned
into an attitude of genuine inquiry, and when the mind
is once open and alert, quick to perceive and patient to
weigh, its true relation to the world is established. But
the false aims at intellectual Tightness kept back the
world from knowledge for centuries, and have rendered
even the recognition of the true demand an achievement
but of later times.

Yet the fulfilment of it was an issue assured from the

On the Bases of Morals. 49

first ; the success of the process was guaranteed by the
very nature of man's life. Disaster and failure have
taught, or at least are teaching, him to know and to obey
the law.

Let us pass now to the moral life. Besides an in-
tellectual, mankind possess an emotional consciousness ; ^
and they exist in a world where facts are present that
have a natural relation to this consciousness ; a claim
upon it answering to that which facts have upon the
intellect. Thus, that a man in my presence possesses
teeth constitutes a claim upon my intellectual conscious-
ness, to which if it does not respond I am ignorant. If
he have a pain in one of these teeth, that is a fact which
has a claim upon my emotional consciousness, to which
if it does not respond I am emotionally ignorant. In
each case alike I am untrue to nature ; there is a discord
between my consciousness and fact : in tlie one case an
intellectual, in the other an emotional, non-regard. Now
the claim upon the emotional consciousness for a true
response to the facts which are related to it — all facts of
good and evil whatsoever that come within its range — is
as absolute, indeed is in all visible respects the same, as
the corresponding claim upon the intellect. There is one
" law " on both : the law of a true regard. And here
also this law comes first ; all other claims are either
directly fulfilled in this, or are included in it as means, or
imply it as foundation.

But to the fulfilment of this law also there have been
two obstacles : one individual, one pertaining to the race.
There is the non-regard to the claims on the emotions in
which every child is born ; and there has been, besides,

^ These are not separable, of conrse, by any distinct line ; nor could
emotion be conceived as existing without intellectual apprehension ; but it
appears to me that they are at once distinct and blended just as sense and

intellect are.

D

50 Oil the Bases of Morals,

the ignorance of mankind tliat tliis true response, or con-
formity between the emotional consciousness and facts, is
its law. As in the intellectual sphere, so here also, other
thoughts of right have been erected and maintained ;
thoughts of right, or ideals, which have involved the
ignoring or putting aside of the claims of facts.

Now in respect to the intellectual life this error has
been corrected. However imperfectly fulfilled, the duty
of a true response to facts as the first operation of thought
and the only possible basis for its further activity, is
affirmed by all ; and almost every one admits that any
intellectual processes, however logical, ingenious, or splen-
did, wliich are not erected on this foundation, are, so far
as truth is concerned, wasted labour ; useful, if useful at
all, only as a discipline whereby a truer method may be
gained. There is no "right" for the intellect, save on
the basis of a true response to facts.

After much mistaken effort, and by aid of achieve-
ments of a bright but illusive splendour, cloud-buildings
erected but to vanish, the intellect has recognised the
conditions of its success. But the case is not the same
with the emotions. In respect to them man tarries still
at an earlier stage of the process. He is still trying to
find a " right " for his feelings and his actions without
having laid the basis of a true response to facts.

This radical error is visible in the thought that the
character of right or wrong pertains, or can pertain, to
" things " or external deeds. Mr. Sidgwick "^ says : " That
there is, in any given circumstances, some one thing that
ought to be done, and that this can be known, is a funda-
mental assumption." Yet reflection shows us not only
that right and wrong are qualities incapable of pertaining
to things, inasmuch as the same external deed will be, by

^ " Methods of Ethics," p. 6.

On the Bases of Morals, 5 1

universal consent, right or wrong, not only under different
circumstances, but according to the feelings prompting it.
Thus a father rightly chastises a son for a fault for the
son's good ; but the same blow given in selfish anger
would be a crime. Indeed it is easy to imagine circum-
stances in which there would be no right deed whatever
possible. A man is called out to resist an invading army ;
it is his duty to kill (or wound) as many of the enemy as
possible. But suppose that in the hostile ranks he sees
a person who is also his private foe, and the feeling arises
in his mind that he is glad to kill him for his own revenge
or gain, his act is not one wliit less murder. To that
man, so feeling, there is no right deed. If he kill he is
a murderer, if he do not he is a traitor. The state of his
feeling has banished all possibility of right — in things.
Only one act for him is or can be right ; so to turn his
soul to his country's good and his duty thereto, that the
private hate shall vanish, and killing again be holy. It
is to the pure that " things " are pure.

Plainly, in such a case as this, the stress of right lies
upon the emotions, and not upon the deeds. The fault
was absence of the true regard ; non-response of the
feelings to the facts ; unmoderated anger ; lacking
patriotism. But it is not only in exceptional cases that
this relation holds. The very same perversion of right
occurs wherever a similar falsity of the emotions is pre-
sent. For where their perfect response to facts is absent,
there the regard is to self ; the deed, whatsoever it be, is
done for self ; and that only is " right " which can be
rightly done for self Now the things that, can be
rightly done for self are not the same that may rightly
be done if the regard is on others. From the least things
to the greatest this is visible, from taking life to absolv-
ing one's self from the commonest civilities. That which

52 On the Bases of Moi'ais.

is wrong if done for one's self may become right when
the claims of " good " demand it. And the reason of the
paramount importance of this response or non-response of
the emotions to facts is obvious ; it is a question of truth
or falsity, of accord or discord between our consciousness
and the world. It is impossible that such accord should
really be dispensed with, impossible that any substitute
should be found for it, or that any mode of action, in its
absence, should yield satisfactory results. There is no
substitute for truth — in absence of it no success.^

Now, the effect of the absence of the true regard is
visible in history in more than one form. And here I
cannot but think that Professor Clifford's profound and
ingenious representation is at least inadequate. If the
becoming of man's moral nature and practice had been as
simple as is represented by him, how should it have pre-
sented some of the phenomena which appear always to
have characterised it ; those, namely, of a special sancti-
fication as right of practices most mischievous to the
tribe ? Take human sacrifice ; how can a regard to a
" tribal self " have developed it in the forms in which it
exists, undermining as it sometimes does the whole power

^ The terms used to express the correspondence of the emotions with
facts have, perhaps, an effect of hiding from us its real significance. The
names benevolence, goodwill, compassion, indignation, love — fitting as they
are — yet may turn away the thought from the fact that they mean, one and
all, simply truth, and that the absence of them is falsity. Hence they may,
perhaps, tend to mislead us into the idea that if these feelings are lacking,
some substitute may be made to do instead— their absence in some way com-
pensated for — which is impossible. In like manner the term " selfishness "
is apt to mislead, as having a positive form, while it indicates a negative
thing. Selfishness is absence or inadequacy of the response of the emotions
to the facts which have claims upon them, and is that alone. A synonym
for it, and one that it might have many advantages to use, is non-regard.
Not only thought, but moral action also, is often perverted by the idea of
selfishness as anything else than this, or as susceptible of any cure but by
the cultivation of a true regard, a turning of the thought, to others from the
first.

On the Bases of Morals. 53

of the tribe ? The same may surely be said of the
system of tabu, and of many other practices of less
cultured nations, or how should it have developed asceti-
cism in its most marked and frequent forms — in the
extremes in which it is palpable waste of the general
resources ?

There have evidently been perverting forces, of which
a superstitious regard to supposed supernatural Beings
has been one. The lines of savage right seem often to
be drawn more around fetish worship than round tribal
good ; and no fact in moral history seems more marked
than this — that the enthronement of the good of men, as
the law of right, has come so often in antagonism to
existing rights, as reform or even as revolution. Has
this fact been sufficiently accounted for? Why has
right in man's thought so constantly tended to become a
thini? hurtful to, or at least not identical with, his
fellows* wellbeing ? Does not the fact that there is
primarily in men an absence of a true emotional regard
to facts, afford at least a partial explanation ? For then,
if there comes a desire of right or " being good," it neces-
sarily expresses itself in restraints, in abstinences, or self-
inflicted torments ; in the sacrifice, above all, of the things
or persons that are the means of pleasure. So we have
given to us a key to the sacrifice of children — " the fruit
of my body for the sin of my soul." The value of the
child as an instrum.ent of advantage to the parent lay at
the root of its destruction. Naturally the most precious
thinjr would be selected when the man asked, " How shall
/ be good ? "

So that, instead of the moral sense showing signs of
having been simply developed from an increasing regard
to the social whole, there are signs that the order has
been, in part at least, the opposite ; that the feeling of

54 Oil the Bases of Al orals.

right or duty has preceded the larger care ; has expressed
itself accordingly in mere personal restraints and sacrifices,
which have necessarily tended to be injurious rather than
beneficial to the whole ; have projected, as it were, as
reasons, fictitious Beings whom the restraints or pains
were supposed to please ; and that the good of others or of
the whole has taken the place of these arbitrary restraints
in every case by means of a moral revolution, determined
by the very fact of their mischievousness. In this order
a certain dynamic relation is visible, a kind of life or
organic process, not without likeness to that pre-
sented by the living body. For as, in this, force is first
stored iip in the various organs, and then nsed in their
functions, or, as we see, the decay of one portion becomes
the means of a higher development of the whole, so in
the moral organism we see force stored np in the mere
restraints which the desire of right brings in the absence
of a true regard, and in the putting aside of these the
truer feeling comes. Emphatically we see this process
in the moral revolution initiated by Christ ; but its
outlines are plainly to be discerned in other great moral
revolutions of the world. The true regard, or desire
fixed on good, comes as the issue of a process in which
the " moral sense " appears not as a resultant only but
as a factor.

If we inquire, then, into the origin of the moral sense
itself, more than one answer may be given. Professor
Clifford's suggestion, that it arises from the gradual
development of the feeling of a tribal self, might be
accepted compatibly with what has gone before ; but
perverting forces must then be recognised as having
played an immense part in its practical direction. Or
it may be that as yet no account can be given of its
origin, but that a desire for the feeling of being " good "

On the Bases of Morals. 55

is parallel to the desire for any other pleasure ; in the
same sense a primary feeling, developing at a certain
epoch, as is the desire for music or for art. Some of the
facts of abnormal development seem to me to favour this
hypothesis, there being apparently individuals in whom
the moral sense is simply wanting, as in others the
musical ear is wanting, or the eye for colour, or the sense
of smell. There is, however, another suggestion for the
possible origin of the moral sense to which I shall refer
in the sequel.

Now, the view I have tried to suggest is, that the
moral history of man presents to us a process ; and that
this process may be considered as the cure of non-regard,
or the bringing of the emotional consciousness into a true
response to facts ; even as the intellectual history of man
may be also described as the bringing of his intellectual
consciousness to such a true response. When this point
is attained, this demand recognised and kept steadily in
view, then, in each case alike, a true foundation is laid ;
upon that basis any other aims may be erected or efforts
carried out, but not without it. The attempt to found a
moral life without a true response of the emotions is like
an attempt to establish an intellectual system in ignorance
of phenomena. The process suffers an inevitable per-
version; the intellect is given over to chimseras, and
wastes its strength in efforts to rise above sense ; the
moral nature follows in like manner false ideals, and
w^astes its strength in efforts to put away or limit
pleasure; in a goodness about ourselves. Professor
Clifford says, " There are no self-regarding virtues." But
I venture to suggest that there must be self-regarding
virtues if there is self-regard. Given that non-response
to facts which constitutes self-regard, and " virtue " will
engraft itself upon that fatal root. It has done so in the

56 On the Bases of Morals.

past, in gigantic forms, and does so still in forms perhaps
less gigantic, but also less in splendour. The only way
to avoid " non-regard virtues " is to be free from non-
regard. A true foundation must be laid. Could idle
speculation be laid at rest but by the advent of Science,
or would it have been desirable that it should ?

Thus there comes into man's thought the idea of a
connection of goodness, or right, with absence or limita-
tion of pleasure, which in principle is false, and, in so far
as it is true in detail, is so only by accident, and there-
fore inevitably in an inefficient way. Eight consists not
in putting away pleasure, which is but one form of having
our regard not on facts, but on putting away the question
of pleasure or paiu ; having our thought on other things.

And thus also the order of man's advance in moral life
is visible. It consists first in the coming of restrictions ;
the desire of goodness operating with the thought on self ;
then when these have been* carried to the needed point a
twofold process ensues ; one of ceasing, one of arising ; a
change of mode, or transference, of force ; a ceasing of
the restrictions, as restrictions, and the arising of a truer
regard ; a ceasing of details and the arising of a general
feeliug ; the things that are made evil only by being done
for self cease to be put away, and the activity of the
man becomes one not for himself A change occurs like
that referred to in the case of the soldier who finds his
duty plain by ceasing to make it evil. Then the detailed
restrictions reveal their nature ; they are the means by
which power is brought into the soul; the power by
which the absence of a true response to facts is cured.
The change is one from deeds of the hands to the action
of the soul.

For the detailed restrictions not only imply that the
regard is to self, and tend to keep it there ; but by being

Ofi the Bases of Morals. 57

rigid and inflexible they necessarily come into conflict
with the practical good of men; necessarily sacrifice
practical hnman welfare to a rule. And in this lies the
power of their ceasing; they cease at the bidding of
human good ; that is, they cease not to be general rules
and guides, but to be rigid and inflexible restrictions.
They are permeated by a living spirit, and show its fruits
by exhibiting the characters of Life. For non-regard
makes right rigid, as we have seen, by excluding from it
everything that cannot be done for self.

Thus we may see, possibly, a glimpse of an answer to
P. C. W.'s question respecting asylums for incurables.
The question is not fully asked ; nothing is said of the
foundation. It is true, human life requires "mercy,
tenderness, compassion, self-sacrifice ; " these are the de-
mands. The right is that which most expresses these.
But why should that be always the same " thing " ?
Nay, how should it? How, in such varying circum-
stances, should these emotions always exhibit themselves
in exactly the same form ? The necessity is that they
should be there.

But in our moral systems is not the necessity of these
— which are but other names for a true response of facts
— ignored ? We admit their value ; their pre-eminence ;
but we have not recognised their necessity. We try to
build without them, and trust to supply their place ; to en-
graft them afterwards. It is a hopeless task. Science is but
its abandonment in another portion of our life. And how
hopeless it is here, these last utterances of our best
wisdom in their total discord may assure us ; confirmed
as their lesson is by the abandonment of the problem of
right as hopeless on its own ground in Mr. Sidgwick's
book : " Without a hypothesis unverifiable by experience
and reconciling? the individual and the universal reason.

58 Oil the Bases of Morals,

the prolonged effort of the human intellect to frame a
perfect ideal of rational conduct is seen to have been
foredoomed to inevitable failure."

We consent to put " doing as if we loved " for loving.
But it is not the same thing ; and it will not answer the
same purpose. It will not do to build man's life upon ; it
will not even answer as a basis for so light a super-
structure as a theory of morals, which refuses to be con-
structed so. For it compels right to be sought in things
in which it is not : the only right that can be in a " thing,"
is its expressing a true feeling.

But it will be felt that it is necessary to have the
things that are right to do under every condition formu-
lated as a guide to practical action, which else becomes
a chaos of individual fancies. Let this be supposed for
the present ; it still does not affect what has been said.
However necessary such formulating may be, it remains
but a question of social discipline, and does not touch
right and wrong ; and if any clear insight is to be gained
into these, must be kept wholly distinct from them. To
let this ordering of things take the place of right in our
thoughts is to turn them away from the true question of
morals ; and fatally reinforce, in the name of virtue, the
already too strong tendency of man to disregard the
question of his desires.

But whether it is so necessary that right should con-
tinue to be formulated as it has been, in definite things,
may be open to question. Men have many times waked
up to see that objects which they considered of the
utmost necessity were needless ; and that they had been
held in bondage by mere panic-terrors, which seemed to
them to have the most demonstrable basis in facts. The
question depends upon how far an attempt to instil into
every mind the law of a true regard, as the one and

On the Bases of Morals. 59

absolute duty, would be attended with success. And
what reason is there to suppose that if it were attempted
it would not be fairly achieved ? We see, in other times
and other lands, what monstrous, distorted, painful rules,
crushing all nature and doing the utmost violence to
inclination, are taught, and successfully taught, in the
name of right, and are carried into practice. Why then
should it, in absence of experiment, be thought certain
that a right so simple, natural, self-evident, so far from
meaning violence to Nature or habitual pain, as the law
of an absolutely true regard, should be impossible to teach
and to gain such fulfilment of, from all, as should be on a
par with the fulfilment now gained for the other laws whicli
are taught instead ? The absolute duty of a true regard
is not taught ; but instead are put the things which are
right for the not-regardful to do.

But there are no such things. The most abhorrent
doctrine of the deadest orthodoxy, truly seen, is the
statement of a simple fact : " Whatsoever is not of faith
is sin." With emotions not true to facts there is no right.

And having thus before us the clear thought of an
object to be attained in human progress on the moral
side, namely, the bringing of this true regard into the
souls of all men ; the structure of our complex nature is
clothed with a visible meaning. The spiritual and the
sensuous part are not engaged merely in a strife; the
best issue of which is the mere victory of the higher over
the lower. They are joint factors in a common work ; to
which each contributes an essential element. For the
absence of a true regard makes the sensuous evil, when
with the desire truly fixed on good it is not evil. And
thus the wrong state of the soul expresses itself inevit-
ably in a strife to put away the sensuous ; and the very
failure of this effort constitutes the means by which, in

6o On the Bases of Mo7'als,

the larger life of the race, the false deskes are made true.
It is even as the false attitude of the intellect of old ex-
pressed itself in our effort to put away the sensible ; and
Science is fulfilling the conditions of perfectly admitting
it. Without the sensuous, refusing to be put away, the
thought of men might have rested, perchance for ever, on
themselves, and nothing have made them conscious that a
thought so resting was untruth.

The question has been raised — "Who is the most de-
veloped man ? " It becomes important, when develop-
ment is taken as the guide, to have a test for that which
is the true development. I venture to suggest that the
most developed man is he who has the least reason for
not simply obeying his impulses, or, that perfect impulses
mark the perfect man. For obeying impulses demands
conditions. He may be the child of the wind who has
been bom of water. The simple function of eating seems
to exhibit a complete moral process which has already
so far reached its achievement that it may be taken as a
type. With his thought fixed upon his pleasure a man
strives in vain for a law on eating ; there is no " right
thing " for him to do. If he indulges his appetite he runs
into excess ; if he restrains himseK by rules, and eats by
weight and measure, he sets at naught Nature's subtle
promptings, and still breaks the laws of health. There
is no right for a glutton, nor has Nature any law for him,
but one — to cease to be a glutton. And when this law
is fulfilled, and the man's thought is no more upon his
pleasure, but the taking of food has become to him a
means and not an end, there is stiU no other law; no
right things ; his right is obedience to his impulses, for
which he has fulfilled the conditions. Now in this is
not the image of all life presented to us ? Human good
is too wide and unlinown a thing by far for any wisdom

Oil the Bases of Moi^als. 6 1

of onrs to predict its means, or rules of ours to insure.
But if the thought of men were taken off their pleasure,
and the response of their emotions made true to facts,
would not this mean that their impulses would become
tnie guides to action ?

And from this point of view another suggestion may
be made as to the source, or meaning, of the moral sense.
For let it be supposed that the perfect condition of any
Being involved that his impulses were perfect guides to
his action, then we can trace how an imperfection in him
might express itself in a" " moral sense," or intuitions of
right or duty. For an impulse is an " intuition of desire ; "
and a desire perfectly following good would mean that
every perception of good constituted in itself an impulse,
the good being desired. But if the desire for good were
absent, this same relation which constituted the impulse
or intuition of desire, would remain as an " intuition " still
but without the desire. That which would, in the perfect
state, or with true desires, be an impulse by absence of
true desires would sink down into an intuition of ouglit,
that is, of duty, or of right. So the moral sense, with its
intuitions of things that "ought to be," seems possibly
explicable as an imperfect form of impulse ; as derived
from it by absence of desire of good ; a negative condition ;
looking towards one more complete; vouching for the
latency, as it were, of impulses ready, when the condition
is fulfilled, to spread over, and rule, and guide with Nature's
own truthfulness, the whole compass of man's life. The
doctrine of intuitions of right and wrong would thus
appear as an unconscious affirmation that man's perfect
nature is to be guided completely by true impulses.
Of these intuitions of "ought" are the germs; their
empty forms, unfilled by desire, and frozen therefore into
rules, and rules that have not, and till they be filled and

62 On the Bases of Alorals,

made fluent with passion cannot have, a true controlling
power.

To have the thought off pleasure and on good is to
liave impulse free ; and happy therefore is it for human
life that, on every hand, at every hour, in every deed,
questions of good and evil are at stake, and challenge our
re^Tard, so that our thought need never centre on the
question of our pleasure.

The true basis of morals then is to be sought by shift-
ing the thought of right away from things to the attitude
or feeling of the soul. It consists in the absolute demand
embodied in man's structure and relations for a true re-
sponse of the emotions to facts. On this foundation any
superstructure must be built ; any that is built without
it must be perverted and destined to fall. There is no
right on a basis of non-regard.

Two corollaries follow from this position ; first, that
the basis of morals is not itself a question of morals, but
of truth ; and secondly, that it has no necessary relation
to " others," ^ but comes to be thus related in our case
through the particular conditions of our life, whereby the
good and evil of others constitute the facts amid which
we, as emotional beings, live.

1 Any more than "knowledge" has any necessary relation to "matter and
force."

11 / ^ f

le.f W 71

r?

{ 63 )

III.

OTHERS' NEEDS,
{Unpublished, 1874.)

Among the passions, or desires, of men there exist, more
or less widely, a desire for pleasure and a desire for
goodness; that is, men have a desire to enjoy, and a
desire to do what they feel it right to do. These two
desires vary both in their forms and in their strength :
the desire for pleasure may be more widely spread and
constant : but the desire for doing right has proved itself
certainly not less powerful in very many of those in
whom it has existed.

Now it is a fact that these two passions have been,
at certain times, in intense opposition. The desire for
right, or for goodness, as it was understood, led men (as
it leads some still) to oppose to the utmost degree their
desire for pleasure. We call those times the Ascetic
ages. Among us, this tendency has, for the most part,
passed away, and the desire for goodness, however strong,
seeks for itself other satisfactions than that of a mere
putting aside of pleasure. Yet there still is a feeling
among us that goodness, or doing right, has some oppo-
sition to pleasure. Our recognised thought of goodness
is, more or less, that of foregoing our own direct enjoy-
ment ; and that (in this world), however much of greater

64 Others' Needs.

joy may come with it, it must have the character of
being a giving up of pleasure. '

But if we consider, it will be evident that whether
goodness has any connection with foregoing pleasure or
not depends on the state of feeling of the person. Sup-
pose a person wholly regarding some other's good, and
having no desire except to serve him ; then it can make
no difference to his goodness whether the action, on his
part, which that other's good calls for, is pleasurable or
not. Such a person's " goodness " consists in his desire
to serve the other, in the absolute preference of that
other's advantage to his own ; and this cannot be in any
way affected by the kind of action for which that other's
good may call. That would make moral quality depend
on merely external circumstances. Take the case of an
architect who, gratuitously and for the children's sake,
draws a plan for a school ; let it be supposed that it is
an artistic pleasure to him to draw the design, and a
tedious task to calculate the materials required. Suppose
a morning spent by him in the calculations and the
afternoon in drawing the design. It were absurd to
suggest that he was more " good " in the tedious than in
the pleasant task : both are done for the children, both
equally done for them ; both absolutely alike in good-
ness.^

When the regard is to others, a man's goodness has no
relation to any abstaining from pleasure. In truth, so
far fromx this, a goodness which consists in a wish to
serve others must prompt a desire, rather, that the actions

1 It might perhaps be more strengthening to the character to do a toilsome
task, but that is a different thing. And it is also true that tlie nature of
the motive may be more exhibited, and visibly shown to be free from regard
to self in the action that involves pain. And this may be of great advantage
also for many reasons, but it is a different thing from more goodness being
present.

0

Others Needs, 65

by wliicli that service can be rendered should be pleasur-
able ones. For the desire will be for the most efficient
service, that is, for the most perfect performance of the
serviceable deed. And deeds are most perfectly per-
formed when they are pleasurable ; for not only does the
same amount of effort produce more result in actions
that are pleasurable than in those that are toilsome
or painful ; but in the very best work pleasure is an
essential constituent : without joy in the doing no work
can have the most perfect excellence. A perfect desire,
therefore, to serve another, with no thought of oneself,
would lead to the desire that the act of service should be
a pleasurable one, in order that it might be of the very
best kind and performed in the most effective way.
Undoubtedly, a perfect desire to serve implies a perfect
willingness for painful service if it be required : if there
be not that willingness the desire to serve is not perfect :
but it cannot induce the least preference for absence of
pleasure, but rather the contrary; for the presence of
pleasure in it gives most power to the service.

Whence then can come the feeling that goodness has
a connection — however vague or slight — with abstinence
from pleasure ? The source of this feeling is plain. For
if our thought in any case be of ourselves, or in so far as
it is of ourselves, a desire for goodness can express itself
only in a willingness for, or acceptance of, diminished
pleasure. This follows from the very fact of the regard
being to ourselves, for though it may be by no means
wrong to do a pleasant thing for our own pleasure's sake,
it cannot have any character of positive goodness ; and
nothing is left for a desire for goodness to express itself
in, except self-restraint and the putting away of pleasure.
All other methods are cut off.

Thus by regard to ourselves these two desires within

66 Others Needs,

us — for pleasure and for goodness — are put into opposi-
tion. We may, in a sense, gratify either, but both
together we cannot. Eegard to ourselves, however in-
nocent, or legitimate, however free from excess, or care-
fully guarded against injury to others, carries with it tliis
effect inseparably: it makes our passions fight. If we
will enjoy pleasure we forego goodness ; if we will seek
goodness we forego pleasure. A natural, harmonious
expression of goodness is cut off, and the desire for it is
forced into an antagonism to pleasure not in the least
degree belonging to it.

Is regarding ourselves, then — even in any way, how-
ever moderate, refined, subdued or delicate— ?ia^2^?'aZ .?
How can it be natural if it has this unnatural effect on
goodness ?

But is it not necessary ? Clearly not. Suppose a man
acting wholly with regard to others, what would he do ?
First, everything that it would benefit others for him to
do, or injure others for him to leave undone. Secondly,
whenever it occurred that his action could benefit or
injure no one, then — since his strength is used for others
— ^he would do that which tended most to maintain and
increase it : and that would be to enjoy all pleasures that
did not injure him; weaken his body or enervate his
will: that is, he would enjoy all pleasure that is not
excess ; and excess means less pleasure in the end. A
person acting wholly for others would do all things there
was any use in doing ; and when no use was immediately
concerned would do all that most increased his power.
There is no reason, therefore, for any one to act for him-
self: there is this reason against it, that in so far as he
does so, goodness to him is perverted, and made to mean
a thing it does not mean; nay, more, a thing it cannot
safely mean.

Others' Needs, 67

But in so far as we do pleasant things, do we not
necessarily act for ourselves ? Also, clearly not. This
is a palpable confusion of things that have no necessary
connection. A father said to his son a short time ago :
" You see you must take care of yourself and eat your
dmner, or what trouble you would give to us." That is, it
is not necessary, in the least, to eat our food for our own
sake ; we can do it for our friends'. *' Taking care of our-
selves " is not a thing that need be done for ourselves.
A general in command of an army sees combats going
on all around him w^hich he must wish to share more
closely ; but he takes care of himself, avoiding risks of
wounds or death, for his army's sake.

Again, suppose a person goes to see a sick friend,
along a pleasant road on a fine day, and the walk sends
pleasure through every vein ; he goes for the sake of his
sick friend as absolutely as if his path lay through
morass and storm. If it had lain so, he would have
gone just the same. The pleasure is an incident, not
a motive. Whatever pleasant thing we do, however
pleasant, however keenly enjoyed, if we would equally
have done it for another's sake though it had been
unpleasant, we do for that other's sake, not for our own.
There is no more unreasonable confusion than that which
confounds doing things which are useful to others, if they
are pleasant, with acting for ourselves.

Yet this confusion has evidently misled men into
terrible errors. It is visibly at the root of the cruelties
of the ascetic life. That life was an attempt to put
away acting for self ; and in this it must be held to have
had a true and noble aim. But with a confusion in
men's minds between doing pleasant things (though use-
ful to others) and acting for self, it is evident that the
attempt to put away acting for self must have meant, to

68 Olhers Needs,

them, putting away all pleasant things : while in truth it
means not this at all, but doing all things, pleasant or
painful alike, that others' needs require.

Another error, not less fruitful of evil and especially
affecting us, visibly has had its source in the same con-
fusion. This error is the opinion that men must act
mainly for themselves ; that that is their nature and the
construction of the world, and the spring by which its
progress must be carried on. We have seen that this
opinion has no basis, and that no single action of all
man's life need be done for himself; but with a con-
fusion existing in his thoughts between doing pleasant
things and acting for self, it is evident that that opinion
must have been forced upon him, as soon as the ascetic
attempt to put pleasure away for the sake of goodness
had to be given up, on account of the evils which it
caused. If doing pleasant things (though useful to
others) be confused with acting for self, then to find that
pleasant things cannot be put away, must involve the
conviction that acting for self is necessary.

This, therefore, is the relation of our life to that of the
ascetics : to a great extent the same confusion exists now
as then, between doing pleasant things and acting for
self ; but the difference is this : that while the ascetics,
thinking thus, sought to put away all pleasure, we,
having to consent to pleasure, have consented to acting
for self. But the effects of acting for self are not
changed by this : the war it introduces between the
desire for pleasure and the desire for goodness remains
unhealed. It is still as true as it was of old, that acting
for self makes goodness to consist in putting pleasant
things away, and leaves it no other meaning. The strife
has changed its issue in our hands, but it has not ceased.
Our fathers, making goodness and pleasure fight, sought

Others Needs, 69

to give the victory to goodness, and pleasure lay crushed
before it: — before a false name of goodness; we, still
making goodness and pleasure fight, even as they, con-
sent to let pleasure conquer ; and goodness lies crushed
before it : — before a false name of pleasure. For that
pleasure to which good is sacrificed is but a false pleasure.

Of old, a false name of goodness; goodness outside,
but lacking its soul : now, a false name of pleasure ;
pleasure outside, but lacking its soul. For the conditions
of goodness and of pleasure are the same : the strife be-
tween them must be reconciled. In their \'ery nature
they are one ; and neither truly possesses its own Life
till they are made one. They are one when the regard
is to others ; opposed when the regard is to self. What
then are others' needs to us ? They are the appointed
reconcilers of goodness and pleasure.

Beginning with regard to himself first, man makes his
goodness mean refusing to enjoy; and three courses are
open to him : to refuse goodness and indulge his passion
for enjoying to the utmost, crucifying one unsatisfied
l^assion in his breast ; or to refuse pleasure, and indulge
his passion for goodness to the utmost, crucifying another
unsatisfied passion in his breast; or lastly, to try and
make a balance between them, indulging neither fully,
but half-heartedly, crucifying within his breast both
passions; tantalised, but no more satisfied than before.
Keeping regard to himself, either of these courses he can
pursue ; each of them he has pursued, as history bears
visible testimony : the last is ours. No other course is
open. Eegard to self means war between pleasure and
goodness : strife between man's passions. They are seed
and harvest ; sowing self-regard means reaping war.

Then, had there been no wants of others to appeal to
them, men must have remained thus for ever : torn by

JO Others Needs,

opposing desires, beaten about between alternate ice and
fire ; between self-pleasure and self-torture, flying to each
but to think the other better; and with no deliverance.
Pleasure for himself and no goodness; or goodness for
himself and no pleasure ; every part of life in which the
one was, made barren of the other : how should he
rest ? How does he ? When we feel our lives un-
satisfying, our hearts ill at ease, need we look farther
for the cause ? With whatever limitations, with what-
ever superadded charities, if our own wants are put
first, disharmony has entered into our souls ; there is
strife within and no outside resource can ease it. Tlie
needs of others bear the remedy ; for by them the strife
is healed. Others' needs put first, made the motive of
life, determining its rule, bring back the banished goodness
over the whole domain of pleasure. For this is what
the needs of others do. Quite falsely we look on them
as demands, as interfering with our enjoyments. They
never have been so, nor are so. The enemy of pleasure is
the demand for goodness arising in man's heart while his
regard is still on himself. While his own pleasure or
his own virtue stands first in his thought, he makes his
desire for goodness the banisher of pleasure, and leaves it
no other choice ; turns against all joy a power against
which nothing can permanently stand ; which has proved
itself stronger than fire or sword, mightier to endure than
all tortures are to tame. The powder by which joy is
banished is that which makes man's own passion for
goodness banish it, which forbids him to let pleasure be
because it will mean pleasing himself. The reconciler
of goodness w^ith enjoyment is — the needs of others.

In two ways the needs of others make goodness and
pleasure one. First, by removing the contradiction be-
tween them which acting for itself introduces. They

Others Needs. 71

make free all pleasure ; for every pleasure that is service
to another, taken for that other's sake, has in it all the
goodness there would be if it were pain. And when a
service to another is in itself a painful thing, and the
fulfilling of other's needs means the foregoing of our own
delight, even then those needs do not change their char-
acter, they are still the bringers of joy. For it is not
they that impose the pain ; man's own need for good-
ness would have imposed that upon him. What the
needs of others do is to bring into this pain, or sacrifice,
— hard task and burden as it is when for our own good-
ness' sake we take it, — a leaven of delight ; they make it
KO longer virtue for our own sake, but service for another's :
itself a joy ; the joy.

With false eyes we have looked on others' needs;
man's nature was at strife within itself, and they have
come with soft hands and supplicating voices, and offered
to it peace. They offer it to us. Only by ignoring and
disregarding them has the strife been made. For what
would regarding others' needs, and being wholly led by
them, imply ? Absence of enjoying ? Starvation, sack-
cloth, foul air, indolence, banished beauty, neglected art,
forgotten literature, impeded thought ? Of all these things
the utmost contrary. What most serves .? All pleasant
things; among them, yet only one among them, that
most essential element of joy, energetic and industrious
work. V/hatever injures any one detracts from service.

The thought of goodness in diminished pleasure betrays
its origin : it arose from putting self first ; which perverts
the thought of goodness into that of self-restraint : — into
goodness about self and for its sake. Yet there has been
a value even in that error. It was well that man should
have thought that goodness must be in suffering, should
have consented to accept it so : should have sought sorrow.

72 Others Needs.

and said to pain : " You are my friend, my chosen por-
tion." Not until he had done so could liis eyes have
been truly opened, his heart made free for pleasure that
is not for self. And therefore, perhaps, it is that God
has used men's own ignorance and folly to give them a
reason for the thought that service also had in its nature
some connection with pain. It is plain, if we look at
life, that it is not so ; that men's most continual services
to each other are in things that are pleasure ; and that
if service were alone sought by all, life would be full of
pleasure beyond all thought of ours. If it were not for
the disorder man's self-regard introduces, in disease almost
alone would service not be pleasure. Yet it is true that
the greatest ser\aces have been rendered in pain : the
services of the martyrs, of the refused teachers of the
race. But this has been so, not by any connection in
their own nature between such services and sorrow. On
the contrary, by their own natural tendency they were
joined with the utmost delight : with the joy of true
vision, of clearer knowledge, of discovery of truth un-
known before; a joy than which a keener is scarcely
known to man. Only by man's folly have these services
been joined with sorrow : because ignorance feared light,
and thought it did God service in killing those to whose
eyes it was first given. God has used man's folly and
liis sin to join together service and sorrow ; so that men
have said : " It is pain to serve, but let that pain be our
delight."

But not in itself does service mean sorrow: not in
themselves are others' needs the ministers of self-restraint.
They forbid goodness to banish pleasant things : they put
away self-restraint, by putting aside the self that needs
it. Over the whole domain of pleasant things, on which
self-regard broods with a sullen blight — making it bare

O theirs Needs. 73

of goodness if pleasure come, or bare of pleasure if good-
ness put her foot — over the whole domain of pleasant
things the needs of others sweep like a breath of spring ;
and the barren pleasure, all for self, the barren goodness,
all for self, alike break forth and blossom into a pleasure
that is good.

Everything in man's life — every pleasure, every duty
— that has not had regard for others' needs put first in
it, will betray that falsity within by this mark ; that it
will show a false restraint — a false virtue — a thought of
goodness that is good not because it serves, but because
it is less pleasure. By that sign it may be known that
others' needs have been not regarded there : self has been
put first, and brought forth its fruit : a goodness that
means less pleasure.

And thus also we may see a power that God has kept
in His hands, to put away from the heart of man that
regard first to self that clings so close to him. For
whenever the regard to self has made men — for their
goodness' sake — refuse pleasures, then, by bringing needs
of others which demand for their fulfilment that those
pleasures be not refused, God makes a call upon man's
soul, a new and deeper call. In those needs He says to
men : " Be different in your hearts ; cast out from them that
which puts pleasure at strife with goodness ; make the
thought of others first."

( 74 )

IV.

PROFESSOR TYNDALL ON THE RELIGIOUS
EMOTIONS. •

{December 1874.)

" To find a legitimate satisfaction for the religious Emo-
tions is the problem of problems of our day." These are
the words of a man who stands as one of the best expo-
nents of scientific knowledge, and as a fair representative
of the feelings of scientific men. They are distinctly free
from any trace of antagonism to Theology, considered in
itself; and in so far as they express dissent from any
existing theological views, imply it in the most modest
form ; simply affirming that the solutions reached hither-
to, upon a line of inquiry that has his intensest sympathy,
seem to him not to satisfy all the conditions of the pro-
blem.'

By a " legitimate " satisfaction it is evident is meant a
satisfaction that, while contenting the religious aspira-
tions, does not come into conflict with the operations of
the intellect as expressed in the results of Science; a
claim which no one now would wish to controvert. The

^ It might be remarked here that, inasmuch as some of those conditions —
our knowledge of physical phenomena, namely— were not present when these
solutions were formulated, it is not surprising that the forms given to them
failed adequately to recognise these conditions ; from which, however, it by
no means follows that the solutions themselves are not fundamentally
correct.

Professor Tyndall on Religiojis Emotions, 75

feeling expressed, then, being so absolutely innocent and
so worthy of a man, it is perhaps worth while to cease
for a moment from controversial assaults upon the speaker
(even though they might be in other respects deserved),
and to see whether or not anything may be accomplished
in the direction in which his face is turned, and on a
method which would command his sympathy.

. It is possible that at least one step may be taken. Let
us look at the task that is suggested for us. We are
bidden to seek some thought respecting the Universe and
our rehation to it that shall do two things : in the first
place, shall satisfy the religious Emotions, and, in the
second, shall not contradict the results of the exploration
of the Universe by our senses and our intellect.

Let us put these two conditions into definite terms ;
and take the second first : our thought must not con-
tradict Science. Now of all the results of Science none
is more universal or emphatic than this : that there is no
arbitrariness in the series of events which constitute our
experience ; but that a perfect order prevails through
them all, an order which our intellect can apprehend
under the form of cause and effect, or, better, of constant
persistency of amount both of matter and of force; or,
perhaps better still, under the form of a perfect " connec-
tion in reason " between all events. Against this result of
Science our solution must not offend : it must not ascribe
arbitrariness to that which it may recognise as the agent,
or existence, or power, operative in the Universe. And
on the other hand, the solution must, in like manner, not
offend against the demands of the Emotions (which evi-
dently have demands as clear and as incapable of being
merely set aside as those of the Intellect itself). Now
one demand of the Emotions, absolute and most emphatic,
is that this agent, or existence, or power, is not to be

76 Professor Tyndall on Rcligiotis Emotions.

regarded as meclianical. If it be so regarded — as a mere
ineclianical necessity — then the intensest and deepest
interests of our life are subject to mere blind forces ; the
very Life of moral Beings, their moral life as well as
physical, liable to be marred or ruined by that which is
nothing more than the mere impulse of a falling stone.
This does not satisfy the Emotions, but stifles them.

We have thus, at once, apart from theory, two charac-
ters that must (on Professor Tyndall's principles) be
embodied in our thought of the Universe : one that the
power or existence exhibited in it is not arbitrary ; the
other that it is not mechanical. There is a boundary on
either hand, one erected by the Intellect, and one by the
Emotions, marking out the path that we must walk in.

Is there any difficulty in fulfilling these two condi-
tions ? What is that which is at once not arbitrary and
not mechanical ? What at once free and necessary ; un-
bound and yet perfect in order ?

The real simplicity of the problem becomes more evi-
dent as we advance. There has been a tendency to
regard the demands of the Intellect and of the Emotions
as opposed or mutually limiting each other ; but in reality
they are mutually confirmatory ; and only seem opposed
so long as each is but partially apprehended. The emo-
tions as much demand the exclusion of arbitrariness as
Science does : disorder and unreason — absence of neces-
sity— are, truly, at least as repugnant to them as to the
intellect : the moral aspirations as utterly refuse arbitrari-
ness as does the severest Science. And on the other hand,
Science to the full as absolutely refuses mechanicalness in
Nature as do the religious aspirations.

For it is long now since Science discarded the idea
that it could include within its formulas the true power
by which the order of natural events is determined.

Professor Tyndall on Religiotis Emotions. 77

While retaining tlie names of matter and force, it is
express in affirming that these names are not used as the
names of absolute existences, or as denoting the presence
of special qualities in that which is the true subject of
our research ; but that they are simply used as terms for
something the true properties of which are unknown, but
which (as it is presented to us) is best investigated by
aid of the ideas which these terms convey. This view
has even frequently led to the expression that matter and
force are merely used as x and y are used by the mathe-
matician ; as symbols for the study of things in them-
selves unknown. Matter and force so far answer to our
sensations and our conceptions that our thoughts can best
trace the relations of things by laying hold of them under
these terms ; but they do not represent to us the things
themselves.

But if this be so, then Science does not affirm, but
expressly repudiates, mechanicalness in Nature. For to
affirm that, would be to affirm that the ideas of matter
and force do truly represent existence. To Science the
world is no more mechanical than it is coloured or warm ;
as colour is an idea derived from a mode of our Sensa-
tion, so also, fully as much, is force, or mechanical neces-
sity. The one is derived from the passive sense of sight ;
the other from the active sense of touch : but, for reasons
easy to see, the latter sense [of touch] presents characters
better adapted for the general expression of the pheno-
mena than any other.

In this respect, then, there is no antagonism between
the demands of Emotion and of Intellect: alike each
repudiates mechanicalness, repudiates arbitrariness : affirm-
ing, therefore, both unitedly, a necessity not mechanical.

But further, that a contradiction should exist between
the religious Emotions and Science in its present attitude

yS Pt'ofcssor Tyndall on Religions Emotions,

is impossible. For the conceptions fmnislied by Science
are universally agreed to be but phenomenal; that is,
Science presents to us but an appearance. Now, to esti-
mate aright our real position here, we may turn to the
appearances presented by the sense of sight in relation to
their objects as known by touch. It is evident that the
appearance to the eye of an object, under circumstances
of light, distance, position, &c., may differ in an extreme
degree from that object. Our experience, indeed, would
lead us to believe that there may exist scarcely any trace-
able resemblance between them. In tracing the relation
of an appearance to tlie reality, therefore, there is no
reason, in experience, for our expecting to find likeness
between tlie tv\^o : the only result that we can expect to
gain is, that we should be able to trace a reasonable con-
nection between them ; that is, that we should discover
how the object should, in accordance with reason, present
such an appearance to us.

Granted, therefore, that the " phenomenon " or appear-
ance of the Universe, as presented to us, is best appre-
hended as matter and force, and its characters best
expressed in material terms, there is no presumption that
the fact resembles this phenomenon. There is one result,
however, which experience justifies us in hoping to gain :
namely, to become able to trace, rationally, how the truly
existing Universe should present to us the appearance
that it does. That is, to learn why an existence that is
not a material world should impress us as if it were one.

Even now does this task appear impossible ? Surely
not absolutely so. For even in Professor Tyndall's own
words, a parallel is suggested to us which may furnish
guidance to our thoughts.

We can interpret mere appearances to the eyes into
solid things because we can bring into use the sense of

Professor Tyndall on Religions Emotions. 79

touch ; ^ and, on a larger scale, when we have most com-
pletely gathered together all the perceptions we can gain
by sense, we can interpret the appearance that is so pre-
sented to us, by bringing into use the intellect.^ Thus
we rise from appearances to the truer facts by bringing
in the aid of other powers : we add touch to sight, we
add to the aggregate of the senses intellect. Now there
is (as Professor Tyndall points out) yet another element
of our being besides reason ; namely, the Emotions. So,
to interpret into a truer fact the appearances presented to
intellect — that is, the " phenomenon " which Science
attains — what should we do but bring in the aid of the
Emotions ? The very same process which enables us to
pass beyond appearances is, open to us again. We have
not availed ourselves yet of all our means ; we are mid-
way in a course which calls us to continuance, and in
which the experience of the past gives us assurance of
success. The " problem of problems of our day," then, is
this : ^0 to use the Senses, the Intellect, and the Emo-
tions together, as to learn from the appearance which is
presented to us in Science,^ some truer fact, in respect to
which we shall be able to understand why it should pre-
sent to us this appearance.

Now the turning-point of the question, and that also
which makes it difficult, is this introduction of the Emo-
tions as part of the means whereby we are to gain a
knowledge of Nature. But preparation has been made
lor it in the steps we have already taken. When we
exclude from the fact which gives us our experience —
that is, when we exclude from that which we call Nature

1 So we find that there is no merely superficial thing, although we can
never see more than surface.

=* Thus, the multitude of apparent "forces" which the senses present to us,
are interpreted, by aid of the intellect, into one unceasing "force."

^ This is sometimes termed " the phenomenal."

8o Professor Tyndall on Religiotts Emotions,

— on the one hand arbitrariness, and on the other hand
mechanicalness, and so recognise in it at once necessity
and freedom, we perceive that we have pLaced before our-
selves a problem which we need the aid of our Emotional
powers to solve. The terms are without meaning to the
intellect, but they are not so to the moral feelings. To
them nothing is more familiar than an action at once free
and necessary. It is as solidity, inapprehensible in the
strict sense to the eye, is familiar to the touch. In
either case we transfer, as it were, a problem from one of
our powers to another, to receive its answer. Here the
moral Emotions give plain reply : an action at once free
and necessary is an act that we know as one of love, or
rightness. The Existence, therefore, that presents to us
the phenomena of Nature is one in which such powers
inhere as enable necessity to be present, and yet not mean
passiveness : such powers as can let action in its fullest
sense exist, and yet not put aside necessity. They are
the powers, therefore, which we apprehend by our moral
Emotions ; which, in an imperfect way, express them-
selves in these.

Let this then be, for the argument's sake, supposed.
Now can we or can we not rationally discover how an
existence with characters thus of a moral or spiritual
order, should present to us the appearance of an Universe
of matter and force ? The mere unlikeness need present
no difficulty ; but many questions arise which cannot be
included here. Yet one suggestion may be made. One
characteristic of the " material " may be questioned as it
were, in this light, respecting its real significance. " Cause
and effect " is an universal condition of the phenomenal.
Now cause and effect is a name we give to the ceasing of
one thing coincidently with the occurrence of another;
it has been described sometimes, even in the language of

Professor Tyndall on Religious Emotions, 8 1

scientific men, as " one thing merging itself in another ; "
as if it were — even when looked at from without and in
mere appearance — the visible image of the giving up of
one life for another's being. Now if the order of Nature
truly were mechanical this would of course be a merely
inaccurate expression, as implying spontaneous action
where there can be none. But if material Nature be but
the appearance of an existence not mechanical, but acting
in ways to be truly grasped only with the aid of the Emo-
tions, then the expression is more than justified. So far,
at least, the appearance may be rationally referred to the
fact ; for what appearance could more truly represent an
act of everlasting " merging self into another," than this
perpetual flux of cause and effect which Science presents
to us?

Thus one character of the material world gives us aid
in recognising the material as the appearance of a spiritual
existence. Through being bound in a seeming chain of
cause and effect, Nature challenges us (as soon as we
recognise that her processes are not truly mechanical) to
acknowledge in her a life that appeals to the heart.
Mere passiveness being put aside, a different energy,
which we best know as a passion of the soul, takes its
place : for Science forbids us to suppose caprice or acci-
dent. This constant order — when a passive or mechanical
necessity is refused as its explanation — comes to us with
a new significance. Leave out the action from self-
sacrifice, and does not " cause and effect " remain ?

And it is to be observed that this character of the
phenomenal (or material) world which is thus foimd to
be spiritual in its meaning, is the one which most of all
has seemed the contrary. So long as men took their own
sensuous impressions to guide them, and assumed that all
they had to do was to carry their own sensation of force

S2 Pi'ofessor Tyjidall on Religious Emotions,

everywhere, as if it contained the key to all things, then
this unvarying cause and effect was the fact which above
all banished spirituality from Nature ; but when we have
risen above this bondage, and gained liberty for our other
faculties also to take their part in determining our thought,
then this absolute rule of reason amid all change, this
constant giving up of being to find it in new forms, this
meeting of every fresh demand with ready sacrifice, have
a voice not heard before. That which seemed darkness
has become light.

And if this fact that most seemed hostile to the Emo-
tions thus becomes their guide, it is reasonable to expect
that other characters of the phenomenal world also would
be found to have a similar significance. When the idea
of a dead mechanicalness is fairly banished from our
study of Nature, and the thought is kept fairly before the
mind that the material Universe is but the appearance to
us of some existence not yet recognised, a freer pathway
is opened for thought. There is a road yet to be trodden
with a guidance no less sure than that on which Science
has hitherto relied.

But into further illustrations we cannot enter now ; in
the meantime, it would appear that the claim put forth in
the name of Science for a satisfaction to the religious Emo-
tions which shall not conflict with its teacliing, gives to
those Emotions not a limitation, but an enlargement of
their field. It aflftrms for them a right to share in the
interpretation of Nature itself; and puts aside the very
possibility of conflict by uniting them with Science in a
common work.

And the mode in which this result is effected is full
of interest. For in truth the efforts made to maintain the
claims of the Emotions have been the very causes of their
loss, and the seeming defeat of their cause is its real

Professor Tyndall on Religious Emotions. Z-iy

victory. For it is through the recognition of the law of
cause and effect as universal that it is made to be recos-
nised as the appearance of a spiritual act. If it were not
universal, then it might have been left still mechanical
in our thoughts, and the religious Emotions might have
been cheated indefinitely with a partial and precarious
satisfaction, such as they still endeavour to find in claim-
ing a sphere of exceptions to the law, or a Will leyond it.
But through at once insisting on the universality of the
law of cause and effect, and at the same time on a satis-
faction (not conflicting with this) for the religious Emo-
tions, they are given this better and fuller satisfaction
still: that the law itself becomes the domain of these
Emotions, and is to be interpreted by them.

They chiefly therefore owe thanks to Science, who thus
through it receive the fulfilment of their own desires,
made better than they desired.

Perhaps it may be found that, in lines somewhat such
as these, a positive investigation, not fated to barrenness,
may be carried on. The points I have tried to suggest
are chiefly two. One, that this problem is rationally
presented to us by the present state of Science ; namely,
to try if we can learn how a world not having the pro-
perties we call material should present the appearance of
a material world to us. And the other, that in this in-
quiry the emotional part of our nature has a legitimate
place.

( 84 )

V.

ON FREE WILL

{October i, 1875,)

The present condition of tlie controversy on Freewill
appears to be one of peculiar interest, inasmuch as it
seems to have issued in a distinct recognition of failure,
at least on the part of several of the more impartial and
reflective minds. It is enough to refer to the expressions
of the late Professor Cairnes in reviewing H. Spencer's
" Sociology," and to the similar position taken by Professor
Sidgwick in his "Methods of Ethics." Both of these weighty
authors, summing up the arguments for and against Free-
will, find them on each hand too strong to be set aside,
and a conclusion, therefore, impossible to be drawn. And
it is interesting also to note that different grounds are
assigned by the two writers for withholding their
decision. Professor Cairnes is deterred from yielding to
the evidence of a mere necessary sequence in human
volitions by its hostile bearing upon moral effort ; Pro-
fessor Sidgwick by its opposition to the direct evidence
of consciousness. That is, the study of the phenomena
seems to lead to one conclusion ; our own nature seems
to claim a contrary one : or, may we not say, the objective
and subjective aspects of the question are at variance.
Now, if we look away from the particular problem at

Oil Freewill. 85

issue, and turn our attention to this condition, regarded
abstractly, of antagonism between objective evidence and
subjective demands, it hardly seems difficult to under-
stand its meaning. It may seem strange that it should
exist in respect to such a problem, but the position itself
is a simple one. Such an antagonism arises, necessarily,
whenever a premiss needs correcting. Given a false or
partial starting-point, and let true mental processes be
carried out upon it, and there comes inevitably this exact
result — the subjective opposed to the objective : the
evidence of the phenomena conflicting with the claims
of the consciousness. Draw any two unequal lines and
assume that they are equal : consciousness or reason will
claim one result ; the phenomena will persist in giving a
different one. Or, ignore the persistency of force and
take note only of its visible manifestations; the phenomena
give us a multiplicity of isolated entities, the mind
demands simplicity and unity. A falsity of the funda-
mental thought — a lack, that is, in the premiss — issues,
of course, in this result. If we consider the matter in
this wider aspect, there ceases, perhaps, to be much that
is surprising, certainly anything that should be disappoint-
ing, in the fact that the demands of our consciousness and
the evidence of observation should be at strife in respect
to Freewill. On a question that penetrates so deeply is
it really any wonder that our fundamental assumptions
should need enlarging ? Or can it disappoint us that the
issue even of so long a study should be the clear
demonstration of this fact? Assuredly it cannot be
called a failure. The discovery of a flaw in our premiss,
wherever we attain it, is success.

Have we not succeeded, then, in respect to the problem
of our freedom, in gaining conclusive evidence of need for
a truer premiss? If we have, we have gained strong

86 On Freewill,

presumption that the problem is soluble. For it is ever
by a more adequate grasping of premisses that the
domain of real knowledge is extended.

In all recent discussions of the question that I
remember to have read, Freewill has been treated as the
possession of a power; as a positive element, or true
ability. Has it been discussed, in modem thought, as
the question of a negation or absence of power ? Yet it
would appear that this view is a possible one : in our
experience absences are sometimes felt as positive things ;
negations are found even practically operative. I pro-
pose to try this thought as a " premiss " in considering
the question of Freewill.

It is not wholly an inappropriate one ; certain of our
established thoughts suggest it. For in Freewill is
included the idea of an arbitrariness, of at least the
possibility of unreason, of non-necessity. But the human
race have formulated for themselves another idea of
action than this : a mode they have counted more per-
fect. Allow that the idea may be inaccurate or unreal,
still mankind have had it before their minds : an action,
namely, that is necessary ; which excludes arbitrariness,
and to which choice were an indignity. It is the Action
they have ascribed to God ; that necessary truth to which
it is impossible to lie. Here is a freedom on which
mankind have fixed their thoughts, which is perfect not
by absence but by presence of necessity. And from this,
by a lack, would come that kind of action to which
necessity is wanting.

There are one or two illustrations which may serve to
make the idea clear. Lord Bacon, in his Essay on Truth,
says : — " There be that delight in giddinesse, and count
it a bondage to fix a beleefe ; affecting freewill in think-
ing as well as in acting." JSTow, it is possible to imagine

On Freewill, Sy

beings not only affecting, but really possessed of, a " free-
will in thinking." It is only necessary to suppose them
wanting in the faculty of logical apprehension, unper-
ceptive of that necessity of reason wherein the true free-
dom of thought consists. Such a " power " would be the
expression of an absence.

Yet it might conceivably be " possessed." It is doubt-
ful, indeed, whether it has not been the real condition of
men in certain states. But if we imagine such " freewill
in thinking " to be the characteristic of a whole race of
beings, so that, while themselves possessing only this
marred faculty, they should have present to them no
other beings more truly endowed, with whom they might
compare themselves, but only things wholly insentient,
we perceive that to them the very idea of thinking would
be that of Freewill in Thinking. This wanting faculty
would necessarily stand to them as the faculty itself; its
very defect would rise up into their feeling as a power ;
the arbitrariness would tend to become a glory ; the lack
of necessity a boast.

And with this justification, or at least excuse, that to
their experience arbitrariness and thought would have
ever been associated, and necessity have been found only
where thought was not. Yet it would scarcely be un-
natural that beings so endowed and yet so wanting,
possessing that which by its very nature claimed comple-
tion, should have imagined, as a greater and more perfect
power than their own, a thought to which necessity was
not wanting: thinking which was free because not
arbitrary. Would they, indeed, have erred in so
conceiving ?

A power of Freewill in Thinking — idiotcy to the logical
relations ; non-response to reason — what would it bring ?
Disaster, failure, evil. And to those who had it, experi-

S^ Oil FreezvilL

ence would teacli one lesson : that, though the " power "
of thinking as they choose might be possessed, yet that
the only wisdom was to act as though it were not.

In what respect do the two " Freewills " differ, but that
we, smiling at the one, are afflicted with the other?
That order which we cannot choose but follow, that gives
true freedom to our thought, is it not wanting to our
action ?

There is another illustration also which carries the
same suggestion under another point of view. The
difficulty of the question is this, that when we study
Freewill, and try to prove or test its existence, it
disappears ; we not only cannot grasp it, we can bring
evidence, apparently clear proof indeed, that it is not;
and yet, on the other hand, our consciousness will persist
in affirming that it is : we can prove it is not anything,
and yet we cannot but perceive it. Nay, the more we
from it is not, through our attention being directed more
closely to it, the more we 'perceive it is.^

But the contradiction has a familiar parallel. Suppose
a person, not- knowing that a shadow was an absence of
light, set to work to study it. He would prove there
was nothing, would demonstrate it did not exist — nay,
could not ; but he would perceive it all the same. The
more he proved it was not, the more unequivocal his per-
ception of it would become.

Always this must be the result of studying an absence
under the idea that it is a presence. We prove it is
not, but our perception of it remains. And conversely,
when there is and persists a perception of a thing, and
it is proved by examination that it is not, is not de-
monstration given that it is an absence ? IMight not
this contradiction in respect to Freewill, if we had better

1 See Trofessor Sidgwick very emphatically on this point.

On Freewill. 89

observed and been more ready to apply our known
experience, have suggested to us, long ago, that it was an
absence we were studying ?

Let us suppose that this at once unbanishable and
untenable phenomenon of Freewill is an absence : an
absence in our experience of that necessity which is the
true character of Action (as it also is of Thought) : what
is the position which we thus affirm ? Not that there
is or can be arbitrary action — that order can be absent —
but that our experience is phenomenal ; that we have a
feeling of that as being which cannot truly be ; of doing
that which is not truly done. It is simply proof from
another side that that which answers to our consciousness
is not the same as that which truly causes it. The
absence in us of that which would express itself in
necessity of action is but another side, or aspect, of the
shortcoming of our consciousness, on which the meta-
physicians and even men of science now delight to dwell.
This fact, which speculation so enforces, presents to us
also a moral side in the phenomena of volition ; and
thus at once a greater force of meaning is given to the
speculative proposition, and a harmony is introduced
between the various aspects of our nature. As our phe-
nomenal knowledge does not fill the idea of knowledge,
so our phenomenal action does not fill the idea of
action.^

Thus a clearer conception of the nature of our life
seems to grow upon us. For we seem, even involun-
tarily, always to draw a distinction between Man and

1 So far from the " phenomenist " seeking to repudiate Freewill, thus
apprehended, it should be a natural part of his logical position ; it brings up,
so to speak, his whole line to one front. And at the same time it puts aside
an antagonism. What could be more likely, indeed, than that we all are
antagonistic to our fellows partly, at least, through being inconsistent with
ourselves ?

90 On Freewill,

JSTature : even when any such distinction is denied in
theory, the words betray that it is felt. But from the
point of view here taken the meaning of this distinction
may be considered afresh. For if the absence of neces-
sity from Man's action is a lack, then the presence of
necessity in Nature assumes a new aspect. It may
truly be, there, that which a true necessity in Man would
be : the necessity of a perfect will. Nor does it affect
the question that it is felt by us as a mere expression of
force : the force is but a mode of apprehension of our
own. ]\ian may differ from Nature, not by possessing
that which Nature has not, but by lacking that which
Nature has.

My limits will not permit me to do more than make
these mere suggestions, of which I will add but one
more : namely, that this mode of regarding the question
of Freewill is one that is much more widely applicable.
It consists simply in not assuming any phenomenon
presented to us as necessarily either existent or non-
existent ; but in seeking to ascertain whether some fact
that includes more elements may not be recognised as
presenting to our apprehension a phenomenon that is
less. In other words, whether that which is present to
our consciousness may not be derived ly a minus (as e.g.,
colour is from white light) from some larger fact to
which our thoughts must turn, if our experience is to be
rightly interpreted, or even harmony introduced into
human thought.

( 91 )

VI.

THE RELATION BETWEEN THE ORGANIC
AND INORGANIC WORLDS,

(1872.)

In the chapter on the correction of the premiss it has been
rather assumed than argued that the marked differences
we perceive between the organic and inorganic worlds
arise not from unlikeness in the things themselves, but
from the different mode in which they are presented to
us. It was with this view that the history of man's
thought in respect to motion was adduced.

Motion is one thing in nature ; but when the Greek
thought of it, he divided it into two kinds, and contrasted
them sharply; when we think of it, we think of it as
one, though to us, as much as to him, there are only un-
ending motions in the heavens, only ending motions on
the earth. Now the interest of this change of thought
lies in this : that we see in it, first, the tacit, unsuspecting
assumption of an absolute difference between two parts
of nature, as if it were obvious beyond question; and
secondly, the awakening of the mind to perceive that the
difference was but apparent, and arose from a difference
in the mode in which these parts of nature are presented
to the sense. We see man's dawning consciousness of
the necessity under which he lies, in order rightly to

92 The Organic and I7i07^ga7iic Worlds.

understand the world, to be aware of the shortcomings
of his perception, and to include within his thought that
which seems at first to contradict his sense.

The proposition that Life is not a distinction of the
organic world, but is a common property of the whole of
nature, and only made visible to us in the organic,
implies, of course, that relations are really existent in the
inorganic that do not directly affect our senses ; so that
we receive at first a deceptive impression. It gives us
the same challenge which the affirmation that motion
never ceases gives ; the challenge, in a word, which is
the very touchstone of science — to feel in one way and
think in another.

But the history of man's thought respecting motion —
first assuming it as two, and then learning that it is one
— has further suggestions for us. It is true that in learn-
ing that motion does not cease, even on this earth, where
practically every motion so surely ends, the supposed dis-
tinct and inferior earthly motions are seen to differ only
in mode from the heavenly motions, that had been exalted
above them. But this is not the whole : we have learnt
something also respecting the heavenly motions which
mere observation of them never could have taught us :
for motion is not presented to us as we most truly think
of it, in the heavens any more than on the earth. Below,
we see it under conditions which make it seem not to
continue ; above, we see it under conditions which make
it seem not to continue in the same straight line. We
hold two properties true of motion: that it continues,
and that it proceeds always in the same line. Now we
nowhere see motion presenting to us hotli these characters.
Every straight motion ceases ; every continuous motion
is a curve. We always perceive it under conditions
which hide from us one or other of these two characters.

The Organic and Inorganic Worlds. 93

which yet we unhesitatingly affirm always to belong to
it. We always see it either under resistance which
makes it practically cease, or under gravity which makes
it practically curved. What man has done is to unite in
his thought of motion at once the not-ending which he
perceives in the heavens, and the not-bending which he
discovers upon earth; from the two presentations of
motion to him (which once he took for granted meant
two kinds of motion), he has raised up Motion — the one
everlasting, rectilinear motion that he knows, and which
nature everywhere acknowledges for her own.

I would suggest that the very same lesson is put before
us again by the diverse-seeming organic and inorganic
world. There is some unity, some truth of nature —
when we know it we shall be sure to call it Life — which
is presented to us under these two forms ; neither truly
the one Life as it is, but both together giving us the key
to it. In the inorganic we miss some characters that it
possesses ; in the organic we fail of others. But also
each possesses some that the other lacks. The subject
cannot be treated yet ; it floats before us but as the misty
outline of a distant shore. Yet even now we may see so
much as this : that in the inorganic we seem to discover
uniformity, unchangeableness, necessity; in the organic
we seem to perceive spontaneity, action, power. Yet in
each, as it so appears, something is wanting; the un-
changeable necessity seems to reveal no action; the
spontaneous action seems as if changelessness and neces-
sity were absent from it. Each presents to us that which
we already begin to know cannot be the truth. Nay,
already we have begun, even if unconsciously, to interpret
each by the other, especially to discover that in organic
things there is no lack of necessity or want of perfect
order of causation. So that already there glimmers before

94 ^>^^ Organic and Inorganic Worlds,

our eyes a vision [is it not the vision of the Life that
truly is ?] — of an action in which also is necessity ; of a
necessity that does not banish action. It is true we
directly perceive it nowhere. Neither do we, nor can we,
anywhere perceive that to which alone we truly give the
name of motion ; but nowhere also do we perceive any-
thing that does not demonstrate and reveal its presence.

But to come to matters of demonstration: if it is
proved that the force in organic things, and through the
presence of which we call them living, is a force coming
from the inorganic world, and returniug into it, is there
any longer any meaning in affirming that 'Life' is
confined to the organic ? If it be meant that this force
exists in a peculiar mode in the organic, different from
any other mode, of course, it is true ; but it is as true of
electricity in a wire, or magnetism in an iron bar. The
organic force appears to have some special relation to the
properties we term chemical, and may — in some respects
truly, though doubtless very inadequately — be imagined
as being a resistance to certain chemical tendencies,
which establishes a state of proneness to chemical
change. This is like, not unlike, the inorganic. Or if
it be said that the distinction of the organic is not in its
force but in its forms, in the complexity and adaptations
of its structures, so manifold in use; then two thiugs
must be remembered : ( i ) that the name of Life is not
limited to such adaptations and formations of special
structures, but is given quite apart from them — the
white of Qgg is living; and (2) the source of these
adaptations of structure that strike us so in the organic
world, is exactly the question. Why is not the natural
inference true that they spring from, and express, an
equal or superior adaptation, and beauty of structure and
order, in the whole universe around, but which we, by

The Organic a7td Ino7'ganic Worlds. 95

tlie narrow range of our perception, cannot see until it is
made visible to us in these smaller wholes ? Does our
not perceiving a thing prove that it is not present ? If
our puny lives and capacities did constitute elements in
a great living whole, should we be at once perceptive of
it? It must be remembered that the burden of the
proof lies not on him who says the organic and inorganic
worlds are one though differently related to us, but on
him who says that they are different.

But it is not necessary to urge reasoning. The
evidence that the structure, and adaptations of the
organic world are determined by demonstrable conditions
around them, and so express relations that have their
source in the larger nature, is daily growing more com-
plete. That the forms, with all their delicacy, are
imparted from without, is as evident as that the force
that works within them is imparted from without.^ If,
then, both the force and the forms are given by the
world around, what remains to justify the denial of the
unity ? It is the same fact we see in each.

That there is a natural revulsion from this view I
admit. Who among us has not felt it ? We hate to
reduce all the beauty of life to fortuitous concurrences,
and even more, probably, to a mechanical Fate. Nay, I
own, the thought is to me ridiculous. I do not under-
stand how one who is assured that no " matter " and no
" force " ever come to be except through just so much
matter and force having been before, can imagine that
order and adaptation can come to be save by order and
adaptation having been before. If not-order can make
order, why not not-force make force ? Is order but an idea ?

1 I abstain from details on this point, having discussed it before. See
*• Life in Nature : On Living Forms." But reference may be made to Mr.
Herbert Spencer's writings on Biology.

96 The Organic and Inorganic Worlds.

matter and force are the same ; alike, both are names for
our sensations. Is order a mere conditit)n or mode ?
force also is but a name for condition. Why is the
primary law of the mind, that will not let anything be
supposed to begin absolutely de novo and of itself here
to be set aside ? In no thought can those instincts of
our nature which demand some adequate cause for tlie
beauty and wonderfulness of organic life be so fully
satisfied as in the thought that accounts it a resultant of
the force around ; for this means that all of wonder and
of beauty that we can discover in the less is proved also
of the greater ; only more still is proved ; such beauty
and such adaptation as should make this little world we
call organic — this tiny offshoot — the natural and inevit-
able expression of its glory.

We let ourselves be befooled by size. Takmg any
view of the organic life, we must conceive the body as
made up of molecules ; small particles of carbon and
oxygen, &c. Now, I think, no one supposes these
minutest molecules themselves to be more living in the
organic body than elsewhere. The "life" — it is the
material or physical life we are speaking of — lies in the
relation between them. Now, would a creature endowed
with reason, and yet small enough to live on one of these
molecules and find them of an enormous size, perceive
that they were parts of a living whole ? They would be
to it mere dead masses ; how would it know that the
forces that moved them were the forces of a great Life ?
But why should not the molecules of a living body be as
large as suns and planets seem to us ? and why should
not the dwellers on them have called one of the powers
of the Life that rules them — gravity ?

But it may be asked, what reason is there for insisting
on the identity of the organic and inorganic > or what

The Organic and Inorganic Worlds, 97

use in wresting the term Life thus to a new meaning ?
There are differences, practically of the greatest amount,
between the two : why should not Life still denote to us
those differences ? The reasons to my mind are both
obvious and important. Pirst, there is the question of
truth. To think of the one world as living and the
other as not living — twist or obscure the idea of Life as
we may — is to think falsely of them ; whatever differ-
ence it is meant to imply, it is one that has no right to
he affirmed, and that therefore distorts our thoughts of
each. And secondly, it hinders our knowledge ; for two
different presentations of one object give us more than
doubled powers for rightly understanding it. If the
organic and inorganic worlds be truly one, we can by
the one interpret the other; m. the very fact of their
apparent difference they throw on each other a mutual
light, each making visible to us characters which in the
other are hidden. This advantage is plain in the two
apparently contrasted forms of motion; but in the
intricate problems alike of physics and of physiology of
how much greater service to us were such help ! And
perhaps it would be a help to us chiefly in the direction
in which we are prone least to feel our need of it;
namely, in the interpretation of the inorganic world.
For it is at least possible that our feeling here is inverse
to the truth, and that, instead of understandiQg best (as
we seem to ourselves to do) the inorganic, we understand
it least, and therefore feel it to be so much more simple.
It is possible that the assurance we feel of knowledge
here is the assurance that is the very mark of ignorance ;
and that nothing so much could prove that we know
most — little as that most may be — respecting the organic
world, as that we have at least discovered that it is a
" mysterious " thing. Suppose we came to feel that the

98 Ihe Organic and Inorganic Worlds,

mechanical explanations which had seemed to answer so
well for all that was not " living," were really no more
than the mechanical explanations of organic processes by-
aid of which our predecessors contrived to make them-
selves content with a false feeling of knowledge ? For
what have we done, in these explanations of the inorganic,
but take one feeling of our own — the feeling of exertion
and resistance — and apply it to all outside things as
if it contained the sum and substance of their secret ?
Formulating the facts around us in terms of one of our
own sensations — is that real knowledge of them / Indeed
it is no longer called so.

But all the while there stands beside us the organic
world, pregnant with a fresh significance, introducing new
meanings, suggesting quite other reasons, revealing a
whole series of relations and of ends, of which we had
no glimpse before. Yet when we turn to study it, it
refuses to be found different. On one pedestal after
another of special divineness or nobleness we seek to
exalt it ; but it descends from every one in turn, and
claims kindred with its lowlier brethren. What does it
mean ? Is it not simply this : that the organic world is
but the part of nature that we best and most truly know
— the part nearest • to us, most within our ken ? The
inorganic is afar off from us ; we can perceive it but
through senses which leave upon it each its own impress ;
but this throbbing body of our own — we feel it, our very
actions are its actions ; we know that it is living. If
we find, by every test we can apply, that it is one with
the other larger w^orld, it teaches us that that larger
world is living too. It is not that in the seeming more
there is something added, but in the seeming less there
is something unperceived.

So, as we have sought, and with so much success, to

The Organic and Inorganic Worlds, 99

explore the living body by the aid of the inorganic pro-
cesses, there awaits us a yet richer study ; the converse :
by aid of the organic processes and results to explore the
inorganic world. How many hidden, utterly unlikely,
things we have discovered by this method in organic
life ! Why should not hidden and utterly unlikely things
reveal themselves, by use of the same method, in the
opposite direction ? And what could be of more certain
use than if we should prove that mtal relations — pro-
cesses, and ends akin to those of our own lives — rule all
around us ? It were unworthy here to give the reins to
fancy ; but there is one simple point on which already
it is right to dwell. In organic life the processes are
cyclical ; we never see one action without its complement,
its opposite. In this respect we see nature there most
truly ; and in so far as this character seems absent from
the inorganic, there our perception is in fault. The
thought of any process as unconformed to this law, and
as complete without that completeness — of showing us a
cycle — is one which demands to be banished from our
minds. In this, all processes are as the vital processes,
and by the aid of these we may better learn to see them.
But the chief good to us of learning that the organic
and inorganic worlds are one would be that it would
deliver us from the conception of ourselves as exalted
above the rest of the universe, endowed with higher
prerogatives, and bound therefore by special and higher
laws. "We wrong morselves when we deem that the laws
nature obeys are mere mechanical necessities, and there-
fore unsuitable for us ; they claim from us a study more
reverent, more open-eyed. Who took as the type of the
true man the wind ? — the wind that blows where it
likes ; and of which no man need ask whence or whither ;
he may be sure that it is going where it is needed to

lOO The Organic and Inorganic Worlds,

keep nature's balance true. Were not the wind's law,
law enough for us ?

Our thought of nature influences all other thoughts ;
nor can we, while that continues false, read aright our
own destiny, or even our own duty.

{ loi )

VII.

SIR W, HAMILTON'S PHILOSOPHY.

{October 1859.)

It is a pleasant thing to feel that a task is done, especially
if it be one of difficulty and embarrassment. To have
achieved a final result, and have earned a title to repose, are
among our dearest pleasures. Exertion, with a constantly
receding prospect of success, is of all things one of the
most irksome. Naturally, therefore, we trace the effects
of this disposition in the history of philosophy ; for it is
here that men's energies have been exerted with least
visible result, and their patience most cruelly taxed. If,
therefore, we are sometimes disposed to blame with
harshness the fantastic theories which have been set up
as solutions of the problem of existence, pity for human
weakness may claim a mitigation of the censure. Surely
it is too hard a self-denial to demand even of a philoso-
pher, that he should admit the labours of his life to have
been fruitless, and allow that no positive result has re-
warded exertions which have consumed all his energy.

This feeling has doubtless been at the root of the
satisfaction with which hypotheses, that the first touch
of common sense dissolved, have been put forward as the
end of all controversy, and the final reconcilement of
reason and religion. We should reverence these proofs

I02 Sir TV. Harnillons Philosophy,

'.thkt men, •wli'^se lives have been passed among abstrac-
tions till they might seem to have outgrown the common
aifsetions of •their race, have after all been like ourselves.
Let us welcome, not with rebukes, but with joy, this touch
of nature which makes the man of soaring intellect kin
to the weakest of his fellows. Here are the proofs of
affections, not dormant, though concealed; of passions
ruling still, though seeming to be subdued. This is the
love of iron souls, the water springing from the rock.
It is the mother's feeling wliich blinds the philosopher
to that which all else can see. His theory is the nurs-
ling of his heart ; he has nourished it with his blood,
and pressed it to his bosom. No treason to the soul, no
falseness to the reason, can convince him that it will not
be a faithful subject, and do good service to the state.
No stern and loyal father is he to plead for justice on
his son — " If thou hadst groaned for him as I have done "
is the secret answer of his heart to all accusers, which
distils itself through his brain in paradoxes and dilemmas,
syllogisms and definitions, divisions of the indivisible
and confusions of that which ought never to be confounded,
till we could hardly suspect what it is that comes to us
in such a questionable shape.

But it is not only in the positive theories which have
been put forth in such variety, as the end of all inquiry,
that this feeling is to be traced. It has another and
more subtle form by which its influence is extended over
a different class of minds. If a positive final result can-
not be attained, cannot we attain a negative one ? So
the native desire for finality is equally gratified ; and if
something has to be given up, compensations may be
found ; if we abandon one pursuit we have more leisure
for others ; if some hoped-for results are forbidden, others
may be more successfully attained. Granted that philo-

Sir W. Hamilto7is Philosophy. 103

sopliical certainty is beyond our reach, yet science opens
inexhaustible avenues to our research, and presents at
once demonstrable certainties and tangible fruits. Thus,
in a new and insidious form, the tendency to affirm a
final result of our labours asserts itself. It has two poles,
la positive and a negative. The one is, " I have found
out the ultimate secret; there is nothing further to be
done." The other, " I have found out the limit of our
powers; no one can go further." the natural desire to
have earned repose is in each case fulfilled. The former
was the temptation of men in bygone times ; the latter
may be ours.

Would it be too bold a question if one were to ask,
whether the limit of our powers might not be a very
difficult thing to discover ; hardly less difficult, perhaps,
than the essence of things ? Does it not imply, indeed,
that we have discovered at least one, essence, namely, our
own ? Could we otherwise know the limits of our powers ?
And if, then, we have discovered one essence, might we
not hope to discover more ? Our own nature has some-
times been represented as one of the most difficult sub-
jects of research ; is this a mistake, or can we know the
limits of the powers of a thing, while we know very little
else about it ? Thoughts of this kind will intrude mto
the mind. And with them will come others : is it really
humility that attempts to fix these limits, or is it not
presumption rather ? Is it distrust of self or self-con-
fidence ? May we not be going as much beyond our
legitimate sphere when we undertake this task, as when
we undertake to give a solution of the origin of evil, or
the nature of being, or any other problem which we are
forbidden to attempt ?

And besides aU this, we cannot help reflecting that the
limits of the human powers would have been differently

104 ^^^ ^^' Hamilton s Philosophy,

fixed in each different age ; nay, that of old the pro-
foundest intellects did make this very attempt and failed
utterly ; pronouncing it beyond man's power to penetrate
the laws of the material world. How then can we know
that this is the age in which those limits can be fixed
aright ?

And finally, why will it not suffice to say that our
power of answering questions has at present a certain
limit, without speaking for the future ? Once, men could
not discover the relations of natural phenomena; they
felt them beyond the limits of their powers. But when
they changed their method they found their powers larger
than they thought. Might not a change of method,
possibly, by extending our powers, teach us that we had
fixed their limits prematurely ?

In attempting now to answer certain questions, we are
brought to contradictions. True. Therefore we shall
never answer those questions ? Is not the conclusion
too large for the premises ? Were it not better said —
We shall never answer them unless we can alter our way
of trying ? Cannot that way be altered ? Let us see.
Thus speaks Sir W. Hamilton on " consciousness : " —

" We proceed to consider the authority, the certainty
of this instrument. Now it is at once evident that philo-
sophy, as it affirms its own possibility, must affirm the
veracity of consciousness ; for as philosophy is only a
scientific development of the facts which consciousness
reveals, it foUows that philosophy, in denying or doubt-
ing the testimony of consciousness, would deny or doubt
its own existence. ... If philosophy is possible, the
evidence of consciousness is authentic." (Lectures on
Metaphysics, vol. i. p. 265).

That is, in brief, there must truly he a table, because I
feel it as I do. The authority of the sensational conscious-

Sir IV. Hamiltoiis Philosophy, 105

ness is the postulate and starting-point of this philo-
sophy. It reposes upon the faith, that our consciousness
of the existence of physical things does not deceive us.
Else were " the root of our being a lie."

In this starting-point it does not pretend to be demon-
strative ; but it gives a reason why we should forego demon-
stration. And this reason is, that otherwise we cannot
have a philosophy. But, not to refer to the fact that
some men prefer to be without a philosophy to accepting
it on these terms, let us consider whether the dilemma
itself be a fact. Is it true there can be no philosophy
unless the deliverances of the sensational consciousness
be true, or be held as true ? Is there not a perfect basis
for philosophy if these deliverances be false, jprovided it
he known in what respects they are false ? Might we not
have philosophical certainty if we had to correct our
consciousness ? Falsity or error in our consciousness
interposes no obstacle whatever to philosophy, if such
error have its laws so that it can be allowed for. It is
clear that a philosophy, founded on the basis of a definite
and known falsity of consciousness, would stand on a
foundation at least as broad and firm as on that of its
authority and truth.

It would have a foundation, indeed, broader and firmer.
It would make less demand on faith ; it would be more
consistent with itself; it would be safer against objections.
Nay, it might even be such as to compel assent from aU
men. If the error in our consciousness could be demon-
strated as necessary ; if the correction of it reconciled
contradictions, and proved itself conformable to facts ; if
the theory stood the test of experiment ; must it not com-
mand the assent of all ? For what is science, in which
aU agree, but a great scheme for the correction of con-
sciousness ? The assertion of the authority of conscious-

io6 Sir W. Hamilton s Philosophy.

ness leads to contradictions when we think, necessitates
our fixing a limit to the capacity of man in all future
time, makes philosophy contemptible in many eyes. Are
not these sufficient reasons for calling it in question ?

If consciousness, then, should be corrected, by what
means is this to be done ? Sir W. Hamilton has himself
furnished the answer to this question by pointing out
that all the mental operations are forms of consciousness.
One form of consciousness is to be corrected by another.
The sensational consciousness is to be corrected by the
rational. Sense is to be subordinated to reason. The
sensational consciousness authoritatively testifies to what
we feel ; the rational consciousness should authoritatively
determine what we think. Suppose I fed a table to
exist, and think it does not exist, is there any harm done,
any violence to reason, any shock to faith ? Do I not
feel things to exist in dreams ; and when I wake do I
not think that they did not exist ? Do I not use the
rational consciousness to correct the sensational ? Is not
this the rule on which I always act in every affair of
life ? And when I find that the sensational conscious-
ness has deceived me, do I sit down and complain of
illusion, or give up hope of knowing ? So far from it,
I find nothing more natural. Only by such correction
can there be harmony between sense and reason. It is
the nature of the sensational consciousness to deceive
and to demand correction. For if the sensational con-
scioiisness have not authority, stiU it has some cause ;
and this cause it is the part of the rational consciousness
to discover. The problem of philosophy is but this : by
the exercise of the rational consciousness to discover the
cause of the sensational consciousness ; and its means is,
not to assume an authority anywhere, but to investi-
gate. To my thought^ there must be something which

Sir W. Hamilto7is Philosophy, 107

causes my consciousness : how ought I to think of it, and
how can its operation to produce my consciousness be
traced and understood ? If, in this investigation, we may
at last come to a limit of our powers, may we not feel
well assured we have not reached it yet ? . What a scope
expands around us ; what a vista opens before us ! How
should we know beforehand by what means God has
thought fit to cause our consciousness ? How should we
learn, except by diligent thought and examination directed
to this special question? Have we not a well-nigh
boundless field to explore before we can say we have
earned a right to answer it ? Tor this we must examine
well ourselves that we may learn how our own conditions
affect our feelings ; we must diligently examine the whole
phenomena, leaving no part of them unexplored; we
must exert our reasoning faculties to the utmost, that we
may not suffer contradictions or inconsistencies to pass ;
we must control our natural impatience, and suspend our
judgment resolutely to the last, that we may not assert
the dictates of our own ignorance, and dignify with the
name of faith what is rather a faithless shrinking from
the duty of doubt.

For is it not a marvel that a philosophical theology
which seeks to establish as its grand result that man
must not suppose he can know what God is, or judge
what He may do, has for its foundation this principle :—
That God must not suffer our consciousness to be erro-
neous ; that He cannot have done so ! Is it possible such
a superstructure can have been raised on such a basis ?

Gratifying as the occupation is, we must forego for the
present the satisfaction of assigning limits to the powers
of man. This lofty function is not yet ours ; it must be
the reward of longer labour, of more rational and per-
severing toil. Our part is humbler. Our work is, not

io8 Sir W. Hamilto7is Philosophy,

to crown the edifice, but to toil in hope and patience at
the foundation. Nor need we be discontented with our
lot. That longing for a finished work, a result that shall
prove to be an end, is an illusion of the mind. Nature
knows no such ends : all her ends are means. Let us
be content that ours should be so too. That is the truly-
permanent and complete which is subservient to a larger
scheme, and dies into a higher life. The victory which
philosophers may win is not that of rounding human
thought into a perfect and increscent whole ; the crown
which they may wear is not a garland for their individual
brow. Their task is nobler, their reward more blest.
To them it is given to be nothing in themselves ; to
struggle amid darkness and error towards a light, firmly
believed in, though but dimly seen; to gather up the
growing elements of thought at each epoch of man's life,
and mould them into forms which shall enable their
successors to be wiser than themselves. This is their
labour, their reward. Toil unrequited is their glory ;
failure their success.

( ^09 )

YIII.

THE IDEA OF CREA TION,

{May i860.)

It is time that we should see what God reveals to us in
Science, and that is the law to which He submits Him-
self. Apart from Science, indeed, Nature reveals God.
The heavens declare His glory. That which may be
known of Him is clearly seen by the things which are
made. Under both dispensations, inspiration has invoked
Nature's testimony to her Maker. The simple shepherd
on the hills of Palestine, and the cultivated Greek, re-
sponded to the appeal. Since then, in every age, the
same argument has been repeated, and has elicited the
same response. AVe cannot stand awe-stricken in
presence of Nature's majesty, we cannot melt before her
beauty, and bar our thought, or restrain our homage from
the Deity she speaks. He who would say " No God,"
first turns away from hill and vale, verdant with waving
woods or bright with yellow corn ; shuts out the sun, the
moon, the stars, from converse with his soul; buries
himself in closets, where the wooing face of Nature is
unseen, her beating heart unheard. There he weaves his
chain of argument, constructs his family without a
father, his universe that no purpose animates, no will
controls ; traces laws that reveal no holiness, and bends

no The Idea of Creation,

to a necessity that owns no love. Atheism is a disease
of towns. Air and sunshine, the sight of the living
tribes whom, the hand supplies, the music of the winds
and waves, one burst of sympathy with the mirth,
the melody, the awe that are around us; these are
its cure. In Nature God is felt. The consciousness
of a present person awoke the reverence of the earliest
times, and is stamped upon the superstitions of every
race.

But this first and universal form of Nature's evidence
for God, in which it exists rather as a feeling than as
a thought, and is less an argument than an instinct,
necessarily becomes modified as the reflective powers of
men are developed. It loses something ; something also
it gains. The ideas gain in distinctness and in logical
coherence, but the feeling weakens. The existence of a
God becomes an irrefragable inference, but God Himself
tends, in the process, to become to us rather an inference
than an existence. He is distinguished from Nature, and
therein more justly regarded, but He grows more distant.
Conviction waxes, but faith wanes. Even a new order
of phenomena makes its appearance. While, on the one
hand, the proofs that there must be a God are elaborated
with ever greater amplitude and skill; on the other,
many persons of devout habits and firm belief manifest
an alienation from the entire process, and the singular
spectacle is seen of men contending, on behalf of reli-
gion, that Nature does not give evidence of her author.
And can we hide from ourselves that the "argument
from design " grows daily more difficult, more precarious,
more chilling ? Wlien we turn from the glowing earth
and sky to the " Treatises," do we not experience a feel-
ing akin to disappointment ? The magnificent impres-
sion is analysed into elements from which we can in no

The Idea of Creation, in

way reconstitute the whole. Wb turn from a bosom
warm with life to anatomise a corpse.

Perhaps the reason of this feeling is that we have
read the lesson of Nature too partially : have fixed our
gaze upon her thousand forms, but missed the unchang-
ing soul. Adaptation and design are there in infinite
profusion, but there is also more. There is necessity.
Science consists in tracing this ; it is her very life
and being. The design which Nature reveals does not
stand alone. It is conjoined with another element, of
loftier and profounder aspect ; a wedded pair of attributes.
Beautiful, attractive, winning, is that fair final cause,
which smiles as with mother-love upon aU the creatures
which the Divine wisdom formed, and the Divine bounty
feeds ; reverend and awful that stern law, which no
passion sways, no calamity appals : upholding, as by a
strong right arm, the order of God's house.

Before we attempt to reason on this fact, shall we
endeavour to feel it ? Shall the heart, for once, have
precedence of the intellect ? Has not the necessity in
Nature a voice which speaks to the soul, and says : " Put
off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou
standest is holy ground"? Is it not God's character
that stamps itself in these unfailing and unflinching laws
on aU things ? — the rightness of His ways ? In His
creation we see His love. His wisdom. His power. His
providence ; — is His holiness absent ? Why, of all His
attributes, should that one, which sanctifies and ennobles
all the rest, be wanting ? Can the necessity be Law in
very deed ?

There is abundant evidence that this thought is true.
It not only commends itself to the feelings, it is imperative
upon the intellect. The fact which is presented to us
in Nature is not that of a necessity, determining certain

1 1 2 The Idea of Creation,

results and design visible in other things. The two
elements coexist in the same instances, and the problem
we have to solve is : — What that can be which presents
to us at once the twofold aspect of designed and benefi-
cent result, and of necessary law. A true solution must
be one which includes both. A theistic solution, which
takes into account the adaptation merely (however much
it may be preferable on moral grounds), is as far from
fulfilling the logical conditions of the case, as a mate-
rialistic solution which takes into account only the
necessity.

For example, how often it has been referred to, and
most justly, as an instance of beneficent arrangement,
that ice is lighter than water ; so that it floats on the
surface of the seas and rivers, instead of sinking to the
bottom, where it would be so much less accessible to the
influence of the returning heat. It has sometimes been
represented that water is exceptional in this respect, and
this has been dwelt upon as evidence of a " special con-
trivance for useful ends." But, in fact, it is a law that
the solid formed by the freezing of a liquid is lighter
than that liquid ; and it is, so far as we can judge, a
necessary law. The expansion of a liquid as it approaches
the freezing point, is consequent upon its assuming a
certain structure, as proved by the effect produced upon
a ray of light transmitted through it. So this useful and
beneficent arrangement, the floating of ice, is seen to be a
necessary law. Or, if we consider the beneficent adapta-
tions of living structures, while the fact of the marvellous
contrivance remains unshaken, it is receiving continually
a new aspect, by the discovery of second causes (mechani-
cal necessities as they appear to us), by which they are
produced. The spheres of necessity and of design in
Nature cannot be held separate. They tend to, and

The Idea of Creation, 113

probably will ultimately receive even from human Science,
a complete identification.

But further ; in Nature law is the ruler. The design
is often sacrificed to the necessity, the necessity is never
sacrificed to the design. Witness all defects, deformities,
and monstrosities in the organic world ; all disadvantage,
loss, and injury arising from its relation to the inorganic.
A great evil has arisen from the exclusive attention paid,
by those who have devoted themselves to " natural theo-
logy," to the evidences of design, or special use : the facts,
being looked at with a particular end, have not been
fairly seen. The failures in Nature (regarded from the
design point of view) are innumerable ; quite innumerable,
also, are the results (apparently designed) which are pain-
ful, and, to our view, evil. Law rules : beneficent design
is subordinate. No gap is filled which the law does not
fill ; no end secured which the law does not secure ; no
pain remitted which the law inflicts ; no failure averted
which the law demands. Must not this law have a value
in and for itself ? a higher value, even, than the benefi-
cent design ? Must it not be that the law is the more
sacred in God's sight, as the right is higher than the
expedient ?

Asain, — if we consider our own relations to the laws
of Nature, not only as sensitive but as moral creatures, we
must allow that they represent something deeper than
the mere chain of causes and effects which they appear
to be. These laws stand as the agents in the darkest
tragedies : by them not only are bodily tortures of unsur-
passal)le severity inflicted, but hearts are crushed and
wrung with fiercer agonies, and spirits capable of the
highest good are sent in dark ruin to the grave. It can-
not be a mechanical necessity, mere passive laws, which
might be other than they are, that do these things. Not

1 14 The Idea of Creation,

if there be a God in heaven : an ear that is open to the
cry of human anguish, a heart that throbs with sympathy
for human joy or woe. It cannot be, but that a necessity
is laid on God's own heart : a law which binds the Infinite
Himself speaks in these laws. They are not the product
of an arbitrary wiU any more than of blind chance.
Should souls be lost, and tender affections lacerated by
Him whose name is love, to preserve the law of gravity
unbroken, or that chemical operations might be uniform ?

Manifestly we have been thinking wrongly here. There
is more in physical necessity than we have seen. Our
senses, which feel the laws that surround us as if they
were so much mechanical force alone, have misled us.
God has hidden Himself, and we, not seeing Him, have
thought and reasoned as if He were not present. The
laws of Nature are His deeds, and all His deeds are right.

The express words of Scripture assert this view. " 0
Lord our God, how excellent are Thy works ; in wisdom
hast Thou made them all." " Wisdom " is not used in
Scripture to indicate mere skill, or power of attaining
ends apart from a moral reference. Wisdom, in Bible
language, is holiness. So I would read that passage : —
" How excellent are Thy works, in holiness hast Thou
made them aU."

A moral necessity demanded that the worlds should
be made as they were made, should be sustained as they
are now sustained. The argument is of the same kind as
that by which the existence of a personal God is inferred
from the works of Nature. If the evidences of adapta-
tion imply a conscious design in the Creator, the evidences
of necessity, discovered by Science, imply a conscious
rectitude in the Creator. The inference is based in each
case on our own consciousness, and is certainly of not
less validity in the latter case than in the former. In

The Idea of Creation. 115

respect to its form tlie argument may be variously-
presented. We may say: the necessity discerned in
Nature indicates a necessity in God's own being. It has
its basis there, and is the outcome and representative in
the world of phenomena of a Divine necessity. But this
necessity in the Divine being cannot be merely physical :
it is not passive mechanism, but has a spiritual nature, as
God is a Spirit. But a spiritual necessity is moral ; a
necessity of character. It is holiness. The necessity in
Nature, therefore, is the expression of the holiness of God ;
tilings that are necessary are right. They are necessary,
because right.

Or, we may ask (considering together the two elements
of necessity and adaptation, which the investigation of
Nature presents to us together), What necessity can that
be from which such results arise as these which we see ?
AYhat necessity can that be which has for its fruit the
innumerable tribes of animals and plants, so wondrously
constructed, so perfect in mutual subordination, so adapted
to the conditions under which they exist, so bountifully
supplied with all they need ? What necessity can it be
that bears such fruit? Evidently not the mechanical
necessity, the mere chain of forces, which our feeling of
it leads us to suppose. There is more in the necessity of
Nature than we feel. The necessity which we have sup-
posed excludes design : the true necessity includes it ;
and bears as its blossom the rejoicing world of life.

Nor is this truly difficult to understand. A necessity
which bears fruits of happiness, design, and adaptation, is
not unknown even to us. The necessity which is in
Nature exists also in man's experience. When we are
compelled (by the Spirit of God within us, who alone is
the author of aU good) to do the right, then we are par-
takers of it. Then we know how the worlds were framed

1 1 6 The Idea of Creation,

and what law guided the Creator's hand. And the fruits
of right doing, too, we know, are those of perfect adapta-
tion and success. When we do riglit, then are united in
our action (as in God's) necessity and design. Then are
found in its result (as in God's) unwavering law, crowned
with rich harvests of beauty and of joy.

We naturally conceive of God as acting arbitrarily, and
from mere choice, in His creative act : that He made the
world as a man might make a steam-engine or a watch,
with no moral element concerned. But this is an imper-
fect and untrue conception; and instead of honouring
God (which is doubtless the intention) it deprives Him
of His highest honour. It makes His action parallel to
the lowest, and not to the highest of our own. For never
does human action reach its true dignity until it is sancti-
fied by moral law, and is made necessary by holy love.
Ought we not to take this as the type of the Divine
action, and not the mere exercise of skill ?

And, in truth, it is wholly a false thought of creation
which represents it as an exercise of skill. It is unworthy
of God, unworthy of us. The analogues on which it is
unconsciously based are inappropriate and false. Our
exercises of skill and constructive energy, upon the
materials around us, are not legitimate elements for
illustrating a deed so different as the Divine prerogative
of imparting existence. We rise there into a higher
region, and should be careful to remember that we do so.
We rise into a region where arbitrary choice and con-
trivance have no place, but eternal holiness reigns
supreme.

This false and partial idea of creation, derived from a
superficial and inadequate knowledge of the facts of
Nature, has been the reason of the apparent opposition
between Science and natural theology. Ever as the dis-

The Idea of Creation, 117

covery of natural law, or necessary connection, was
extended, it has seemed as if the Divine action was
excluded. But this is an impression due entirely to our
misapprehension. It is not God who is excluded, but
arbitrariness. To recognise necessity is to demonstrate
Divinity. It is to give evidence of moral law, and
satisfy at once the intellect and the heart.

Welcome to us, therefore, should be all that Science
can do to trace law in Nature, and bind aU physical
events in the chain of causation. This is a process we
need never fear. It does not separate any event from
God, but demonstrates His action therein, proving His
presence by proof of that true necessity of which physical
causation is the sign. The argument from design grows
larger, and embraces that which has been most opposed to
it, never more to fear a foe.

And here, also, may be found one source of the weak-
ness of what is called natural religion. Besides, the
absence from it of those elements which only revelation
can supply, it is not even true to itself. It does not
read its own oracle aright ; it misinterprets the voice of
Nature. What does it teU us of that absolute and
unflinching law, revealed in Nature, to which all happi-
ness is relentlessly sacrificed ? of that deep necessity of
things on which all the beauty, harmony, and happiness
of creation are based, and out of which they spring ? In
ignoring the unbending holiness of God, Deism is as false
to its own origin as it is to the conscience of mankind.

But if the recognition of rightness in the necessity of
Nature gives us aid towards a better understanding of
the world, much more should it give us help to live in it.
For what is it makes life hard, and trials bitter, but the
apparent absence of God from it and them, the seeming
triviality and unmeaningness of the things which affect us

1 1 8 The Idea of Creation,

so deeply. Our life seems squandered in the dust, our
afflictions seem to spring up from the ground, and when,
by great effort, faith has said, " It is the Lord," still we
doubt and fear; the dark shadow of the second cause
comes in between us and our Father, and we long for a
clearer vision — a more demonstrable proof that there is no
accident, and no forgetting. If we could see that the
shadow itself is evidence of the light, that the inexorable
forces which crush us, the imperturbable laws which rend
us and wiU not hear, are the very instruments of God's
righteousness, the golden wheels of His chariot, were not
that enough for us ? Could not our faith, instructed by
a better understanding of His works, hold with a firmer
grasp and more implicit trust the consolations of His
Word ? And rising from the patriarch's confidence, which
Mature has in these last days confirmed to us, " shall not
the Judge of all the earth do right ? " might we not see,
with opened eye, the world, made by the Son of God,
witnessing in every fact and law of Him ? And — our
experience ennobled and made sacred so — might we not
emulate an apostle's faith, and say, " I glory in tribulation
also"?

( 119 )

IX.

ON THE RELATION OF SCIENCE AND
THEOLOGY.

{To the Editor of the Christian Spectator, Dec, i860.)

SiE, — Will you allow me a few words on this old subject
in the columns of your magazine ? It has been again
brought before my thoughts by various remarks which
have reached me respecting the physiological views I
have had the pleasure of laying before the public in the
" Cornhill Magazine." ^

I make this reference, not for the sake of bringing
those views into further notoriety, but because it seems
to me the best way of causing the exact question at issue
to be thoroughly apprehended. I have argued, in that
periodical, that the forms of plants and animals may be
traced, by observation, to arise from the operation of
physical conditions, and that they are largely dependent
upon the resistance of the enclosures or limitations within
which such plants or animals are developed. For the
sake of illustration I may add another instance or two to
those which are there adduced. I do not, however, pretend
to bring them as proofs. The stamens of a flower, as is well
known, are modified leaves, and the modification appears
traceable to the resistance which the external portions of

* Physiological Riddles. No. 3, On Living Forms.

T20 071 the Relation of Science and Theology.

the flower present to their unfolding. The stamen grows
to a small extent by the expansion of its lateral portions,
in the same way as many young leaves, but it is then
arrested; its fm'ther increase is mechanically stopped.
Again, the fibres of the most highly developed form of
muscle consist of long hollow tubes, which are subdivided
transversely at minute intervals, on which account they
are called " striated." Their appearance may be likened
to that of a ladder. The transverse divisions form by
gradually increasing projections from each side of the
fibre, which finally unite in the centre. It is evident
that this result might ensue mechanically, from the
increase of tlie inner of the two membranes of which the
fibre consists, supposing the outer one not to increase to an
equal extent. And there is reason to believe that this is
the mode in which the striation is effected.

It seems to me that by such views as these a new source
of wonder and delight in creative wisdom is opened to the
devout mind. Tor let the position be granted, as proved,
or made probable, and what follows ? Surely, for one
thing, an entirely new evidence of design in the structure
of the organic world. Innumerable parts, and arrange-
ments of parts, which before might have seemed barren of
meaning or of use, are raised into the rank of essential
elements in a perfect and well-ordered scheme. Of what
visible use, for example, is the calyx of a flower, if it be
not the means (by its restraint on the expansion of the
internal parts) of determining their forms ? Would the
plant be a more perfect exhibition of skill if the calyx
had no office, and if the flower would have been as com-
pletely developed without it ? For it is to be observed
that in the majority of flowers, the function of the calyx,
whatever it may be, ceases with the full expansion of the
bud. It is true this is a very simple case ; but it is on

On the Relation of Science and Theology. 121

perfectly simple cases that the proof of such a position
as this must depend. And if the function of the calyx
in shaping the flower be recognised, the entire principle is
granted. For then, must it not he allowed to be a yet
more perfect exhibition of creative skill that there should
be something w^iich had for its office, or part of its
office, to shaye the calyx ?

Again ; is it not adduced as an eminent argument in
natural theology, that the heart and veins are provided
with valves which determine the course of the blood in
one direction only ? These valves, together with the
mechanical force of the heart, make the circulation a
matter of physical necessity. And this, as I understand
it, is the proof adduced of the Divine wisdom. The cir-
culation being an essential condition for the higher forms
of animal life, the Creator has provided that it shall be
rendered physically necessary. He has used means which
on mechanical principles insure that end. The result
does not come by chance, because the provision for it can
be traced and demonstrated. Is not this the argument ?

It is at least an argument that carries with it my full
conviction. But, then, if the making the circulation
mechanically necessary by heart and valves is a proof of
Divinity, must it not be a still higher proof of the same
if the heart and valves themselves can also be shown to
be made mechanically necessary ? What is this but a
further extension of the same line of argument ? Why
should we stop, or desire to stop, at this particular point ?
Above all, why should the very same argument seem to
us, in two cases so immediately connected, to be of op-
posite tendency ? I affirm that it can be shown that the
heart does not come by chance ; its spiral form, its " septa "
(or the partitions which divide it into distinct cavities),
and other points in its formation may be demonstrably

122 On the Relatiori of Science and Theology.

shown to be planned, and to be brought about by means
of physical conditions in the structure and circumstances
of the embryo, as is the circulation by means of the
structure of the veins. Surely this is a truly religious
thought. It gives, as I have said, meaning and use, and
stamps with the mark of forethought facts in the history
of organic life which have hitherto had no message to us
from their Creator.

Nor must we imagine that any line can be drawn in
this course of investigation; that we may say, certain
organs, or forms, in living things may be shown to be
determined by physical causes, but certain others cannot.
The whole force of the proof in any one case bears uni-
versally. The use of mechanical means for the produc-
tion of organic forms, if it be a fact at all, is a law and
not an exception. It is the very essence of the embryo-
nic or developing state, through which every living crea-
ture passes ; each individual of the animal and vegetable
tribes goes through this period of immaturity, because the
physical causes to which the imparting of its form is as-
signed require time to operate. If it were not thus, why
should not its perfect structure exist from the first ?
To what end are the multiform changes which every
embryo undergoes, unless it be that its development is
achieved by means which operate only under certain con-
ditions ; and of which those various changes exhibit the
undeviating influence ? Why should it be an ordinance
of the Creator, that the animal or vegetable structure
should be attained only through a certain series of
changes, not all of them by any means beautiful to our
eye — nay, that if this series be interfered with, or broken,
the designed structure, however beautiful or useful, shall
not be attained at all — unless it exhibits the working of
appointed means, which He will not forego, and expresses

On the Relation of Science and Theology, 123

His adherence to His law. The same law, surely, which
He has not only engraved on every particle of inorganic
matter, but has written in lines of unwavering severity
in our own experience, that before any result however
longed for, however good, shall be, it shall be first made
necessary.

" Do you desire any end ? Then take the pains to
make it necessary according to the powers and properties
of things." This is God's plain message and decree to
us. His creatures, whom He desires, as His highest gift,
to make like Himself. Is it not, then, a worthy, nay, a
tender and delightful thought, vouching for chords of
sympathy and bonds of union between us and our Father,
yet unfelt in their true depth and sweetness, that this is
the very law which He adopts in His own working ?
Not acting in one way Himself, and bidding us act in
another ; but sternly, unrelentingly for cries or tears, or
the outpouring of our heart's blood, or blackness of our
despair, compelling us to learn His lesson, and to fulfil
law like Him. Sternly and unrelentingly ? Let me
rather say with throbbing heart of deepest pity, but with
a love, stronger than pity, that craves, and will not be
denied, the oneness of our souls with Him, and eyes that
see that future time as now, when He shall wipe away
all tears from ours ; rejoicing more than we, for in heaven
never are the words of the Lord Jesus forgotten, which
He said, " It is more blessed to give than to receive."

But I am anticipating my thoughts. The link which
connects the revelation of God's work in Nature with the
revelation of Himself in Christ, is to my feelings so close
and so fuU of meaning, that my ideas pass involuntarily
from the one to the other. I cannot contemplate Nature
as it is made known by Science, without an awe and
delight which are not to be divorced from that vision of

124 071 the Relation of Science and Theology.

the Divine with which God has joined all that is highest
and most blissful. But the argument I have been urging
requires to be prosecuted somewhat further. It gives us,
doubtless, a glorious conception of God as the Creator, to
recognise in all the processes of organic life, down to the
very least and apparently most insignificant, an arrange-
ment of adapted and mutually necessary elements, and to
trace its exquisitely beautiful and multitudinous results
to means of which the simplicity almost renders us
ashamed of our highest feelings of amazement and adora-
tion. This is something ; but it is not all. It is indeed
the least part of the overwhelming revelation. For while
an entirely new apprehension of life is given us, in the
perception that every organ and structure is caused to be
by determinate conditions present in the organic world,
and thus exhibits law in its existence as well as in its use,
a new light is cast also on the world that is termed in-
organic. For the dependence of the structure of living
things on causes which we term mechanical, cannot be
limited to the bounds within which we have been accus-
tomed to confine our idea of life. As scientific explora-
tion shows that the vital force is derived from the
inorganic world, and is but a special form of common
forces, such as those which flow to us from the sun (lieat,
light, and the chemical force called actinism) ; so in re-
cognising the part played by mechanical conditions in
determining vital forms. Science also breaks through this
line. The conditions which physically determine form
in the organic world, have been themselves physically
determined, and point to an origin in inorganic forces.
The forms of life are involved as a consequence in the
structure and composition of the globe.

I think that on the clear showing of Science we cannot
stop short of this position ; and I am quite sure that on

On the Relation of Scie7ice and Theology. 125

grounds of religion we ought to rejoice to take it. For
what is its legitimate effect ? — to make life less to us ? —
to rob its unutterable beauties of their charm, its unparal-
leled adaptations of their lesson ? It seems to me that
nothing but a real though latent unbelief could fancy so.
Are or are not the evidences of design in the organic frame
positive and unquestionable proofs of a Creator, certainly
not lower in the ranks of intelligence than ourselves ?
If they are, then how can they cease to be so through
any discovery respecting the mode in which it has pleased
that Creator to effect them ? If, on the other hand,
these " evidences of design " are evidences only on a
particular supposition respectmg their mode of production,
is not the entire argument merely a vicious circle ?
And, indeed, unless there be some latent misgiving in the
minds of those who use it in this way, it is difficult to
understand why they should seem so fearful, or be so
prone to meet argument in favour of the production of
vital forms through law, with angry words. Far be it
from me to reduce to such paltry inefficacy the " argument
from design." I hold it absolute ; and affirm that on no
conceivable hypothesis can the demonstration of a Creator,
a personal Creator (though I would rather say The Creative
Person), given by the facts of organic life, have its force
in the least degree diminished. Much we may learn, in-
deed, by study of the means employed by Him, respecting
Himself, His ways, the scope and sweep, so to speak, of
His activity ; anything that would dim the brightness of
His presence, or render the stamp of His workmanship
less palpable, never ! It cannot be. There is no adapta-
tion in the case. There never was a more visionary terror
th^n the fear that the putting back God's " direct " action
by Science, tended or could tend to exclude Him.

What then does it do ? Exactly what we should wish

126 On the Relation of Science and Theology.

to see done. It brings back the direct action of the
Creator everywhere, and into everything. What would
come of trying to sweep away the ocean ? In our igno-
rance we divide natural events into two classes, those
which God does directly, and those which are only in-
directly done by Him. Science makes us know that God
directly does them all ; by showing us that those which
we do, modestly, ascribe to Him — meting out, as so weU
becomes us, the bounds of His activity — are done in the
same way as those from the burden of which we have
exonerated Him. Science puts to us this question :
" Does God not do this, on which you feel the stamp of
Divinity so strong, or does He also do this other, on which
you have, as yet, not apprehended it at aU ; for both are
one?" What response it has elicited we know; and
what it shall yet elicit we may weU be sure. For it
shaU teach us, has taught us in part already, and shall
teach us still more perfectly, to know that as they looked
in vain for God, who sought Him as an earthly king, and
they only knew Him who recognised His kingship in
humility and suffering, and owned His mightiest triumph,
when, to fulfil the Law, His head was bowed to death ;
so do they vainly seek the Divine in Nature who look for
it in arbitrary acts of power ; that the true stamp and
mark of Godhead, the sign manual of the King of Heaven,
on all His works, is law.

And teaching us this. Science frees us from a delusion,
that is natural to us, indeed, but happily not unescapable.
It shows us that the ordinary events which occur to us
are, not by any overruling or as a matter of faith, but
literally and in strictness, divinely sent; that they are
none the less divine because we can see their causes. It
elevates and fills with a religious grandeur that part of
Nature which we most need to find religious, but from

On the Relation of Science and Theology. 127

which our perverted feeling tends to banish all that can
nourish religious life — the ordinary events of our daily
experience. On moral grounds, that idea of E"ature which
recognises the specially divine in special and uncaused
events, is utterly to be condemned The grandest work
of Science is to make daily life religious.

There is another point of view in which the reference
of organic form to causes seated in the inorganic world
is favourable to piety, and that is by the vast elevation
it gives to our conception of the universe, and therein of
the Divine power. In this respect it is the correlative
of the extension given to our thoughts by the discoveries
of the telescope on the one hand, and the microscope on
the other. It supplies the element needful to give these
new revelations of creative energy their full value and
completeness, adding to the exhibition of extent and
variety that quality of exquisite perfection and profound
harmony — the operation of that attribute of Divinity
which we so unworthily express by the word " design " —
without which they are yet imperfect. For if the organic
world, with all the adaptations that characterise it, springs
from the connection of things in the inorganic, what is
the inference — the necessary and unavoidable inference ?
Evidently that this characteristic of profound and perfect
adaptation, of inconceivable and boundless delicacy of
adjustment and subservience to use, which seems to us
to distinguish the organic from the inorganic, and give
the former so immeasurable a superiority over the latter,
that this characteristic belongs also and equally to the
inorganic. The world of organic life is not different from,
or above, the rest of Nature in these grand properties, but
is a special revelation to us of what is common to the
whole ; only in what we call " living " things do we see
aright how glorious Nature is. We are blind to the im-

128 On the Relation of Science and Theology,

press of Divinity tliat is in her, except where it is shown
us on a small scale, in particular organisms ; on a scale
small enough not to surpass the limits of our vision.
And where we say, " How beautiful ! " may we not well
believe there are beings who would rather be disposed to
say, if they did not reverence too well the loving End,
"How paltry!"

Does it not impress the mind with a sense of over-
whelming wonder to conceive that every part of Nature
is pervaded by the exact and complex harmonies which
animal life exhibits to us ; must be so pervaded, because
those very harmonies result, and express themselves, in
that life ? Is it not a joy to feel ourselves warranted in
interpreting the seeming dead by the evidently living,
and to know that the highest conception of His power,
wisdom, love, which we gather from the works of God, is
true of all His works : or false, only because even that falls
short so far. It is like the new feeling which the dimen-
sions that modern astronomy reveals excite within us —
astonishment, and almost unwillingness to believe, until
we rebuke the pride which tempts us to suppose that
what seems incredibly magnificent to us must be hard to
our Maker.

All the complex harmony of life is everjrwhere in
Nature, though unperceived by us until we look through
the eyes of Science. We do not feel its presence till we
have realised its evidence by earnest thought ; but then
we carry the solemn impression ever with us, and the
universe is more to us from that time forth.

I must bring this letter to a conclusion, although there
are many other aspects of this subject which are exceed-
ingly interesting. Tor one thing, the vexed question of
" Force " receives a final answer in the confirmation which
our moral nature adds to the evidence of reason There

071 the Relatio7i of Science and Theology, 129

is nothing in which the researches of scientific men, and
the deductions of philosophy, more completely unite than
in the doctrine that our feeling of " force " does not answer
to any existence in Nature, but rests on our own constitu-
tion, like the sensations of colour, of sound, or of taste.
Our feeling of exertion, or resistance, implies no force in
Nature, as our feeling of pleasure or of pain implies no
sensation there. But this doctrin'e, simple enough though
it be, and evident enough on consideration, yet meets
with a difficulty in being received, because it seems to
dissolve the link between cause and effect, and to deny
the true connection of events which we feel to be de-
pendent upon one another. It reduces, in fact, the
course of physical events to an order, and denies to the
physical objects, or their properties, power to produce the
effects that appear to result from them. This conflict
between our feeling and the evidence which investigation
brings, might seem hard to decide ; but how emphatically
and conclusively a deeper and truer feeling within us
gives its verdict in favour of the latter ! We bear wit-
ness against ourselves. That natural events reveal an
order, and do not contain the power which determines
them, is the deepest and most irrepressible assertion of
the heart. This assurance is the comfort of the mourner,
the strength of the mart5rr, the confidence of the believer.
All that is not sense within us cries out and shouts with
joy and satisfaction at the report — a report which the
senses themselves do make. They have explored the
realm of sense, and bring back answer — Power is not
there. Not there, reply the conscience and the heart ;
power is His alone who sitteth in the heavens, and doeth
according to the pleasure of His own will.

The course of Nature is an order only. This sets aside
at once all tliat has ever been said about second causes

I

I30 0)1 the Relation of Science and Theology,

as antitlietic to the Divine action. The second cause is
truly only an apparent cause. E"o possible interlinking
of events, or tracing the law of causation through what
phenomena soever, can put the Divine farther off from
us. Such discoveries may reveal to us more and more
of the methods adopted by the Creator — they may even
throw a light upon His nature ; and, if we may trust the
experience of the past, the future shall be rich with such
fruits as these — but they can do no more.

( 131 )

ON THE RELA TION OF SCIENCE AND
PHILOSOPHY,

{January 1861.)

I HAVE often felt that the value of the facts, and still
more of the principles, with which, in recent times,
Science has enriched human thought, has never yet been
fully appreciated, and especially that the aid they are
calculated to afford in the prosecution of inquiries which
are not included in the sphere of Science strictly so called,
has been greatly overlooked. I may take one character-
istic of scientiiic investigation as an instance : — the dis-
trust with which the impressions conveyed by the senses
are treated. In the pursuit of physical truth men have
learnt this lesson, to repose no confidence in the ideas
which are first and most naturally suggested to them by
their experience ; but to use all such impressions as sub-
jects for testing and examination, maintaining the mind
— until such testing has been carried out — in a state of
doubt or equilibrium. Science accepts as its guiding
principle that man's tendency is towards error, and guards
against taking the apparent for the true, as the chief and
mortal foe of knowledge. What can seem less likely, for
example, than that the saltness of the ocean should be
due to the influx of fresh water, that is, to the saline

132 On the Relation of Science and PJiilosophy,

matter carried into it by the rivers ? or that the strata of
lofty monntains should have been deposited beneath the
sea ? Science accustoms men to abandon, it demands
as its first condition that they should abandon all con-
fidence in that which naturally seems certain, and look
to the patient exercise of their united faculties of observa-
tion and of reason for the grounds of their belief. So
much is this the case that, as Hugh Miller observes,^ " It
has been well remarked that when two opposing explana-
tions of extraordinary natural phenomena are given, one
of simple and seemingly common-sense character, the
other complex, and apparently absurd ; it is almost always
safer to adopt the apparently absurd, than the seemingly
common-sense one." These principles are so familiar, that
they have become common-place; yet their application
has been limited. There is at least one branch of inquiry
to which they are not applied. Science investigates par-
ticular things ; the forms, weights, and motions of the
heavenly bodies, electricity, light, heat, the chemical com-
position of all substances, the laws of life, &c. : but, rising
above and extending beyond all these special topics, there
appeals to the human intellect another question, " What
is the essential nature of that which is around us ?
What are we ourselves, and what is the universe ? Are
all things such as they seem, or if not, what is the reality
of them ? " This is the question of philosophy.

Philosophy is related to Science somewhat as the whole
is related to the part. It asks, respecting the whole, the
same questions that Science asks respecting particular
objects, or classes of objects, and seeks to do in respect
to existence, what Science does for the relations of indi-
vidual things.

Now we are impelled by an inevitable instinct to ask

1 Testimony of the Rocks, p. 297.

On the Relation of Science and PJiilosophy, 133

these questions, and to engage in this pursuit. Science
may be limited to a few, but we are all of us philosophers.
Whether we will or not, we make for ourselves, or adopt
from others, an idea respecting existence, and decide
positively on the question whether things are or are not
what they seem. And we have, besides, a feeling which
no one can escape, and which seems to me to be em-
phatically just, that the question of existence is truly a
religious question, and that, with the answer to it, are
connected the most momentous moral and spiritual issues.

But how are we to attempt to answer the questions
which are thus raised before us ? Are we to be guided
by the example which Science shows us, and mistrust our
natural convictions, or are we to adhere to them, and
what we tend strongly to believe are we to hold as true ?
This is the question I would raise. In all humility, I
would attempt to answer it. In all humility ; for if we
are not humble in the presence of questions such as these,
what power could elevate us from our abyss of pride ?
Never does the consciousness of utter weakness press so
painfully upon the heart, as when we gird ourselves to
grapple with these highest problems, from which yet we
m.ay not shrink. We may not shrink ; for God's hand
visibly beckons us on, and His voice within our conscience
forbids us to turn back. To refuse to try is not to be
humble ; it is pride, rather, that will not incur the risk
of failure. And besides, the world has ever advanced
through doubt and fear, and efforts made in sorrow or
despair ; in pain and weakness Truth is born.

I believe that the principles by which Science is guided,
and which have been proved true in its domain (namely,
that our impressions, however strong, are not to be tal^en
as true, but are to be corrected by the conjoined use of all
our faculties), will be found our true guide in philosophy

134 Oji the Relation of Science and Philosophy,

also : — that the law which is true for the parts is also
true for the whole. The history of thought, and the
nature of the case, alike confirm this view. For though
I said just now that aU men are philosophers by nature,
inasmuch as all have a belief respecting existence, yet
the opinion is widely entertained that we cannot have a
philosophy properly so-called, that is, a true knowledge
of existence apart from appearances. This doctrine has
been brought prominently into notice by the elaborate
application of the principle, in Mr. Mansel's hands, to the
questions of practical theology ; but it is held by various
schools of thought, and, curiously, is for the most part
found united with views respecting Divine things, the
reverse of those which Mr. Mansel seeks to establish by
its means. I do not intend here to re-open the Manselian
controversy ; yet it seems natural, in passing, to remark
that a principle which, so far as we can judge from facts,
appears to work with equal facility each way, and to be
relied upon at least as much by the most thorough
unbelievers as by their opponents, hardly seems the most
suitable foundation for religious faith. Mr. Mansel, before
he begins to build, thoroughly clears away all rubbish ;
and this, we grant, is well ; but we tremble while we ask,
if he have not also undermined the foundation.

Let us, however, be just to him. The undermining, if
undermining there be, is not Mr. Mansel's doing. He
has adopted, not originated, the principle that in very
truth we cannot know. There is an overwhelming con-
sent of the most commanding intellects, in modern times,
in affirmation of the doctrine, and the evidence on which
it rests is in its own way unassailable unless some entirely
new point of view can be taken. In addition to the
logical proofs of the inconceivableness of the Infinite, and
the contradictions which arise when we endeavour to

On the Relation of Science and Philosophy, 135

reconcile the idea of God as infinite with the existence of
other beings than Himself, — in addition to all this, there
is the broad fact, which is evident on reflection, that our
knowledge must be determined by, and related to, our
faculties. Knowledge, as it is in our experience, is not a
pure and simple thing. Two factors evidently enter into
it : the object to be known, and the being who is to know.
The apprehension we obtain of any object expresses the
effect of that object upon us, not what it is in itself
The senses of sight, hearing, &c., illustrate this fact. The
colour which we see, the sound which we hear, the savour
which we taste, are admitted not to be representations of
that which is external. They are resultants of the
external object, and our peculiar sensitive capacity. It is
said to be motion which makes us perceive light and
sound ; probably it is equally motion which causes us to
perceive taste or odour. The general proposition has
been summed up in an illustration. Our knowledge or
apprehension of things, it is said, is like a chemical pro-
cess, in which the resulting compound differs from, and
indeed may l)e utterly unlike, both of the elements. As
oxygen and hydrogen unite to form water, so do we, the
percipients, and the object perceived, unite in the impres-
sion— sensuous or intellectual — which we call knowledge.
That impression can no more answer to the object sup-
posed to be known, than water can be the same as
hydrogen alone, or oxygen alone. Our apprehension of
things therefore, cannot, it is said, be true.

A similar conclusion may be arrived at by a somewhat
different course, and by an argument which may carry
more general conviction, as being based upon a fact which
it does not even require reflection to perceive. Whether
our faculties have or have not qualities which give their
own hue to the things apprehended by their means, they

1 36 On the Relation of Science and Philosophy.

are certainly limited, partial, narrow in their range, and
imperfect in tlieir depth. Even if it were granted that
our perception is accurate, so far as it extends, it is at
least imperfect, it does not embrace all objects, it does
not cover all that is to be known of any. Now, imper-
fect knowledge is always so far false that it necessarily
issues in error. However true it may be so far as it goes,
delusion or mistake is its unavoidable result ; that is, if
any conclusions are based upon it at all. It is very
curious that this should have been questioned in respect
to philosophy, when it is so perfectly well understood in
practical life. How does a barrister, on the wrong side,
try to deceive a jury ? Is it not by giving them a partial
knowledge of the facts ? Does he not try to fix their
attention on certain circumstances of the case, omitting
others which are not less essential ? In truth, the cor-
rectness, so far as it goes of an imperfect knowledge, is
the most efficient of all agents in deceiving. Partial facts
falsely presented might, by chance, lead to a right con-
clusion ; the twist given to some might — by accident or
by design — counterbalance the absence of others ; but
partial facts, truly presented, must, just in proportion to
their partialness, involve delusion. An illustration, which
is none the worse for being mechanical, may render this
argument clearer ; a ball acted upon by various forces
moves in a line between them to a certain point, exactly
determined by their relative amount of each ; but if any
of these forces be absent, it will move to another point.
Now the mind is influenced in a similar way by the facts
which operate upon it ; if any of those v»^hich would con-
duct it to truth are wanting, it will inevitably be carried
to another point, which, whatever else it may be, is not
truth.

I infer, therefore, absolutely, that from the known

On the Relation of Science and Philosophy. 137

partialness of our apprehension of existence there must
arise, not partial knowledge merely, but error ; or at least
an inevitable tendency to error as soon as we begin to
draw conclusions. Of all ways the very surest is taken
to lead to that result. It must have been designed in
our very constitution and circumstances.

Men were meant to err, as soon as they began to think.
The forces are all arranged for producing that result.
Nature stands like a false counsellor before them, with
deliberate intention to deceive ; and they, with unsus-
picious innocence, jump eagerly at the false conclusions
it suggests. And it is to be observed, that this necessity
of being deceived becomes stronger and more lasting
precisely in proportion to the magnitude of the object
with which we deal. It is proportioned to the dispropor-
tion of our knowledge. Evidently, therefore, it must be
greatest — our tendency to err the most inevitable and
inveterate — in respect to that subject which is the largest
of all ; the problem of philosophy — " What is existence ?
What is it that exists ? "

There is a curious fact, of which I think my reader
will become conscious in himself, if he will take the
trouble of reflecting for a moment : he will find that he
has a tendency to think just in the opposite way to this ;
and that while he willingly concedes his liability to be
deceived in reference to particular things, he is very
prone to feel sure that he is not subject to deception
respecting existence as a whole. In fact, just where his
knowledge is really least and most inadequate, his assur-
ance waxes strongest. The minimum of means seems to
yield the maximum of result.

So prone indeed are we to be confident on this point,
and to take for granted that we are not liable to be
mistaken in our general ideas, that it seems to us almost

138 On the Relation of Science and Philosophy.

impious to question whether the fact be so. We are apt
to argue thus : — " Granting that our imperfection forbids
our having a full and complete discernment of existence,
why should we doubt that our discernment is right so far
as it goes ? It is incomparably more likely that things
(not individual things, but the entire system) are what
they seem than that they are not. Why believe that we
are gratuitously and needlessly deluded ? God made the
universe ; He placed us in it ; He gave us powers whereby
to discern it. Is it reasonable to think that He did so
in a fashion so blundering or so deceitful, that we can
only discern it wrong ? "

That is, we are disposed (in our haste) to think that
it would be a hard case if God had not contradicted the
nature of things, and violated the mental laws, to suit
our convenience.

There is surely here something worth inquiry. Why
should we feel so certain, where the proper grounds of
certainty are so defective ? And might there not be a
better plan of thinking ? It would be a pity to shut up
such an inquiry as this by the vague assertion that our
tendency to feel sure, on this question of existence, is
evidence of its own truth ; and that, in short, the seal of
the highest authority should be set upon the argument,
" It is because it is." Surely we can do better than that.
And we may be the more disposed to seek a little further,
when we call to mind that a confident assurance is a
characteristic fruit of ignorance. It is the nature * of
want of knowledge, to make men, not doubtful, but dog-
matic. The man who knows is emphatically the man
who either shows reason, or abstains from affirmation.
We need not, therefore, attach much weight to our posi-
tive conviction that we understand existence. Our
ignorance being so profound, might it not have been

On the Relation of Scioice and Philosophy, 139

expected ? Does it need anything but ignorance to
explain it ?

Let me try to illustrate this point by a parallel case.
Our ignorance, I say, is a known fact, and also the
tendency of ignorance to produce confident dogmatism is
known ; it is proved every day in ordinary life. These
known facts, then, I would apply to explain our tendency
to be confidently dogmatic respecting the nature of
things. Is not this, in a humble and far-off way (and I
have no hesitation in making the reference ; for if we
may use the works of God for illustration of our
thoughts, why should we not use the highest achieve-
ments of man ? Nay, the greatest work of man is ever
greatest in this, that it is parallel with, and capable of
throwing light upon, the common and ordinary things) —
is not the explanation of our confident assurance by our
known ignorance, instead of by some special faculty, say
of intuition or whatever else, like the explanation of the
planetary motions by the known fact of the tendency of
bodies to fall to the surface of the earth, instead of
supposing some wholly peculiar virtue in the sun, or
elsewhere, to produce their revolutions ? As the known
"weight" of bodies unfolds the nature of the plane-
tary motions, so does the known, ignorance of man, in
respect to existence, unfold the nature of his confidence
thereon.

But if our natural convictions are not trustworthy, are
we without guidance, and lost in a maze of doubt ? By
no means. It is a strange thing man should have sup-
posed himself in possession of a natural knowledge in
respect to existence; but it is no less strange that he
should think that, for the true purposes of knowledge, he
ought to possess it. We may see that he ought not.
He ought to have what facts prove that he has ; false

1 40 On the Relation of Science and Philosophy,

impressions, tendencies to err — with the power of cor-
recting them.

It is here that Science affords us such help and guid-
ance. For Science, as we have seen, wholly consists in
gaining true knowledge from false impressions, and has
for its ground and starting-point the conviction that our
natural tendencies are towards error. It is a striking
thing that the entire career of Science originated in the
establishment and acceptance of this doctrine. Why
then should philosophy fear to follow where her sister
has achieved so brilliant a success ?

But besides this, our limited experience tends to mis-
lead us also on another point. Born in a scientific age,
when scientific maxims and modes of proceeding have
become the common heritage of the race, we are apt to
forget that these are a late acquisition. We admit, so
readily, that we are apt to err on matters of detail, that
we fancy, or are disposed to act as if we fancied, men
were always aware of tliis. But we know well that it
took long to teach them; we know well that nations
untrained to scientific ways have not learnt it yet. They
are still sure wherever they are ignorant. It is not more
" natural " to man to be confident respecting existence as
a whole, than it is to be confident respecting individual
things. He can, also, as well be cured of the one confi-
dence as of the other.

He can be cured of the one because he has been
cured of the other. Science is the appointed physician of
the sick philosophy ; sick, as has been supposed by many,
unto death. It is true the fever heats of a vain confi-
dence contend in long succession with deadly chills of
sceptical despair ; and each so generate the other that it
seems as if the fatal oscillation could never end. Yet to
what does disease testify but to health? The pallid

On the Relatioji of Science and Philosophy. 141

rigour and tlie parching heat are but the balanced powers
of life, set in unnatural array against each other. These
hostile forces conspire and unite in health. And so the
contradictions also of our thought shall be seen one in
living unity.

For out of the eater comes forth meat, and from the
destroyer sweetness. It is the very discovery that our
impressions cannot be trusted, that gives a firm standing
ground to philosophy. Here, as ever, doubt is the source
of confidence ; it is the appointed means by which the
door is opened to admit more light, the shadow which
the coming knowledge casts before it. For the thought
that our impressions of existence are not to be received
as true, needs only to be boldly faced, and all that might
seem dangerous in it disappears. Accepted, it takes its
place among our other thoughts quite simply, and with-
out violence to any. The incorrectness of our perception
is one of those things that look formidable at a distance,
but turn out to be quite harmless when approached. It
arises not from a " blundering " or bad contrivance on
the Creator's part, but has been appointed, to subserve
evident, and most desirable, as well as necessary ends.
We need only recall the facts of our ordinary experience
to see this. How can we be consciously brought into
relation with very large objects, except by perceiving
them as they are not ? How can we, for instance, take
in the view of an extensive landscape, except by seeing
the objects it contains differently from what they are ?
Why are the impressions of sight modified, and altered
from the truth of things, except that, by fulfilhng this
condition, they may give us larger, and therein truer
knowledge than we could otherwise attain ? There is a
sufficient reason why our impressions of existence are not
true : they are false, as the impressions of sight are false,

142 On the Relatio7i of Science and Philosophy,

that we may thereby be related to a larger object, and
have the means of more truly 'knowing. For we must
never forget, that our impressions and our knowledge are
two things quite distinct. Impressions, natural convic-
tions (whether " intuitive " or not), are not knowledge ;
they are the means of knowledge. And the problem of
philosophy is — from false impressions to obtain true
knowledge.

It is thus made one with Science ; becomes a branch
of Science, or rather gathers up Science into itself, using
all subordinate inquiries as means and materials for its
grand guest. For in accepting this as its busiuess, to
gain a knowledge of the truth from impressions which
are not true (but which are inadequate and therein
falsified, and which are modified by the nature of our
own percipient faculties, and are therein also falsified),
philosophy adopts the methods of Science, and enters on
the path which has been proved to lead to certainty.

Of the means by which this inquiry is to be prosecuted,
and the results to which it promises to lead, I hope to
have something to say hereafter. At present it is enough,
if I have made it clear that there is nothing unreasonable
in taking this attitude towards the questions with which
philosophy deals, and demanding that our impressions
should be held as materials for learning, and not as
authorities. A path is thus opened out before us, which
is full of the richest interest, and problems which have
fascinated the human mind in all ages, present themselves
to us in new forms, and with whoUy new prospects of
success. " What are we ? Why have we these feelings,
this consciousness ? What are the objects with which
we have to do ? " All these questions show themselves
capable of new answers, and of altogether fresh investiga-
tion, when we accept as our basis and starting-point, that

On the Relation of Science and Philosophy. 143

our natural impressions on these points are modified and
insufficient, and are to be taken merely as data in an
inquiry which may lead us to results altogether different
from those from which we start. We may have mis-
givings lest such a pursuit should lead us into darkness
instead of light ; hut there is no real justification for them,
for then only do we fulfil the conditions for obtaining light.
Both reason and experience promise a different issue. The
plan is evidently accordant with the nature of things ; it
is appropriate to our faculties and to the relations in
which we are placed ; and so far as experience extends,
it has always succeeded. Wherever this method has
been tried, there has arisen a Science; knowledge, cer-
tainty, and power, have taken the place of dispute and
failure.

But what is meant by our impressions in respect to
existence being untrue ? Simply this ; that we naturally
attach to the objects we are conscious of perceiving, an
idea which is not suitable to their nature. We think of
them as existing ; we should think of them as being felt
to exist by us, and should remember that these are two
distinct things. Eightly we hold that there is existence,
and that we are in relation with it, feel it, and are made
conscious by it; wrongly we hold that this existence
pertains to objects which answer to our impressions. To
them it belongs only to answer to certain faculties of ours ;
to exist in relation to a mode of apprehension which is
partial and untrue. They are signs and revealers of
something which is higher and more than they, and of
which we have to learn by means of them. There is a
certain repugnance in us to admit this idea, yet it is
simply the expression of that which we all feel. Our
senses and our higher faculties unite in affirming it.
We are conscious that the material objects around us

144 0)1 the Relation of Science and Philosophy.

answer to our feeling and apprehension; we are well
assured that our feeling and apprehension fall short of
the reality.

I have argued for nothing more than this. And what
I would fain seek is, m what way our feeling and appre-
hension thus fall short. It is surely a reasonable search.
We can often know and understand more of a thing
than we can directly feel, or apprehend by any perceptive
faculty. Why should we not find this possible, also, with
respect to the whole of things ? I feel that reason does
not condemn the inquiry I would make, nor reverence
forbid it.

( 145 )

XL

THE TWO WORLDS.

{February 1861.)

In" my last letter I argued that we are endowed with
certain faculties which give us untrue impressions ; and
I tried to show that this might be the case. I also
just referred to a consideration which seems to me to
indicate that it is a good and desirable thing for us to
receive impressions that are not true ; namely, that thus
we are brought into larger relations than would else be
possible, and are placed in a position to acquire a more
extended and truer knowledge than could in any other
way be given us : — knowledge, rightly so called, coming
not first but last, and like true holiness being bestowed
on man, not passively, but as the fruit of earnest labour,
the reward of obedient toil. There is an illustration of this
position, which is so simple and yet so suggestive, that
though I can only present it very imperfectly, I think I
may venture to submit it to the candour of the reader.

We gain our knowledge respecting all material objects
chiefly through two senses — sight and touch. Now, these
two senses give us very different impressions of the same
object. Our apprehension of a solid by the eye may be
utterly unlike our apprehension of it by the hand. This
will be readily granted ; and also that, speaking in general

146 The Two Worlds.

terms, the touch gives us an apprehension of the object
as it is, the sight of an appearance merely. Apprehension
by touch is in a certain sense true — substantial ; that by
the eye is modified and altered.

The same idea may be expressed in another way.
That which we consciously and directly perceive by touch
is the thing itself; that which we immediately perceive
by sight is not the thing, but an appearance. And we
have to use the sight in a considerate and reflective way,
and to refer the impressions received by it, to those
conveyed by touch, as a standard, in order to interpret
them, and make them the means of true information.
If the reader will reflect, I think he will be conscious
that he always judges by his eye with a latent reference
to his tactile impressions ; and that, whatever object he
sees, he presents it, more or less distinctly, to his mind,
as it would be if he touched it.

The eye requires educating ; and when educated it is
to be not immediately relied upon, but used ; and used
with reference to a faculty different from itself.

We are, in short, related to all objects of sensuous
apprehension in two modes, or by two means, one of
which is subordinate to the other, and only gives us true
knowledge when it is made to speak another language
than its own. ITow, why should there not be a harmony
between man's relation to the individual objects which
surround him, and his relation to the great and mysteri-
ous universe of which he is a denizen ? Is there one
law for one part of our experience, and another law for
another part of it ? or, is not our condition in respect to
the whole of things similar to our condition in respect to
particulcjs? If God has given us two means of appre-
hending particular sensuous things, neither of which
could suffice without the other, may He not have given

The Two Worlds, 147

lis also two means of apprehending existence as a whole ?
If this were tlie case, let ns observe what would follow,
namely, that one means by which we perceive existence,
would present it to us, as it is not; one faculty, or
class of faculties, would deal directly with appearances,
and ought not to be immediately relied upon. And
certain of our impressions respecting the whole of things
would be not true, and would require to be interpreted,
and made to speak a new language.

I believe that God has made us so ; and that we do
apprehend existence by two faculties, one of which
answers to sight and tlie other to touch. These are re-
spectively the intellectual and the spiritual faculties of
man. Intellect (and sense with it) answers to sight ; the
conscience, the moral apprehension, the spiritual apprecia-
tion, answer to touch. The former faculty is subordinate
to, and is to be interpreted by, the latter. Like sight,
the intellect is to be not directly relied upon, but used,
and made to teaclt us more than itself conveys.

If we adopt this view, a great consequence follows.
Instead of thinking that we are in two worlds, a physical
and a spiritual one (as all religious men affirm), we shall
think that we are in 07ie world apprehended by two
faculties. Tlie physical world will become to our regard,
no more a distinct existence, opposed to the spiritual, but
that spiritual itself, as apprehended by faculties which
perceive but the appearances of things, and present them
to us not as they are. These two worlds — that which
intellect (using sense as its servant) sees on the one hand,
and that which conscience and the other faculties which
relate us to the spiritual, feel and touch, upon the other
— wUl unite and coalesce into one ; presented to us in a
twofold way — as material objects are — that we may
better, more truly, and more fixllv apprehend it.

148 The Two Worlds,

But if this is the case, why do we not know it ? Why
do we not feel it so ? Why have men always believed
these worlds, of sense and of spirit, to be essentially dif-
ferent worlds, instead of being one the reality, the other
the appearance ? Why do we still feel them two, and
find it strange to think otherwise ?

It is on this point that my illustration bears. The
question is : Why, supposing the worlds of sense and of
spirit are one, do we feel them and think them two ?
And the answer that I give is : Because we have not yet
learnt to 'iise our sight-faculty — our sense and intellect —
aright, and have not seen its true relation to the deeper
faculties of our nature. The human race has been, in
this respect, as a man is in his infancy.

May I not be pardoned the harmless eccentricity of
thinking metaphysics an amusing study ? I do not mean
that ambitious metaphysics which soars in clouds of ab-
stractions, and discusses m infinite detail the logical rela-
tions of the obscurest ideas ; nor that modern science of
psychology, which analyses into their elements all the
" processes " of the mind, and spreads out before us, as its
ultimate result, the human soul neatly tied up in parcels,
duly labelled, for convenient use. This may be highly
necessary, but it is not exhilarating ; let us hope its fruit
will be found greater than its fascination. But that
metaphysics which has its feet on the ground, though its
head is erect to heaven ; which seeks its food and sus-
tenance among the facts of daily life, and the common
experience of men, yet uses the strength thus given for
purposes of lofty thought, which bring it through unfor-
bidden paths into communion with creative wisdom —
this metaphysics, I cannot but believe, has charms which
need only to be known to be delighted in. Why need
men have invented such hard words, and run through

The Two Worlds, 149

such rounds of speculation (we cannot tell where we are
when we have got through them, we are so giddy), to
explain the laws of man's perception, and account for the
mysterious contradictions of his experience, when a baby
shows it all ?

A baby ? Let the reader judge. Let him ask him-
self what a baby thinks, what it learns, in the first few
months of life, before it begins to speak. Its mind is
certainly active. Most important advances take place in
it. We may not only be sure that this must be the
case ; we may even see that it is so. Look at the infant.
Note its gravity, its intent sedateness, its air and attitude
of earnest thought. Do these things indicate a vacant
mind ? Are not mighty problems pondered in that little
head, grave discussions carried on, and serious resolutions
taken ? No one can doubt it. I know a most judicious
grandmother, who always gives this caution to young
heads of families : " My dear, never disturb the baby
while it is thinking. You impede the development of its
mind. Let it go through its little puzzles in its own time
and way." (Thank God for grandmothers ! )

But do we know what the problems are which it thus
works out, or what preparation is made, during that
great epoch when the world is yet new to it, for its future
life?

I will venture a guess upon the subject : — it learns to
interpret sight by touch, and to know that the objects it
sees and those it feels are the same.

Every one is aware that when his eyes are not rightly
directed to any object, he sees it (if he see it at all)
douUe. If we hold a finger between our eyes and a book
that we are reading, for example, we see more or less
distinctly two fingers. Or if, while we are looking at
any near object, we suffer our thoughts to wander, and

150 The Two Worlds,

the eyes to fall quite passively upon it, we shall find
that two objects are seen. It is only by practice that
we so use our eyes as to see things singly ; by an effort
which long use has made unconscious. The child, not
having learnt to make this effort, naturally, at first, sees
double. I think there is proof that this is the case in
the inability which children manifest to grasp, im-
mediately, objects which are held before them. Let any
one try, when he has placed his eyes in that state
in which they see things double, to touch the object which
he thus perceives. He will find that, whichever of the
two images he tries to touch, his hand will pass to one or
the other side of the object. He will be grasping after it
with the same apparent inability to direct his muscles
which is manifested by the infant. ^

If then the child sees objects double, we shall easily
understand what an effect follows upon its little mind.
Of course, it will not know that there is only one object
when it sees two. It will tliink, so far as it can think at
all, that the two things it sees are two distinct things ;
but at the same time it will touch only one ; and thus,
there will be a clear contradiction, to it, between its
senses of sight and touch. I do not mean to say that
the child clearly thinks out the matter in this way, or
indeed at all employs its reason on the subject ; but the
practical effect must be the same. Now, from these things
it follows, that the child must feel itself to be at one and
the same time in two distinct worlds : the sight- world
and the touch- world. And these worlds will not at all
agree with each other. They are indeed quite contra-
dictory ; and it must be evident that the child can only
come to know and feel them to be the same by learning
to use its eyes ; that is, by acquiring the habit of so
directing them as to perceive one image, instead of the

The Two Worlds, 151

two, which they naturally present. Then, it can go on
to identify the single object thus perceived by sight, with
the single object which it also perceives by touch. That
is the beginning of its knowledge. Till then, it cannot
properly be said to know at all. And especially we may
note this, that the identification of the impressions of sight
and touch, on the part of the child, is the essential con-
dition for its speaking. It cannot talk, nor even begin to
talk, till it has done this. Till then, it can have no clear
perception of the objects to which names are applied.
But when once it has united these two senses, and per-
ceived that they relate to the same things, it feels itself
surrounded by distinct objects, and talking follows, as a
mere matter of memory and imitation.

This, I conceive, must be one phase, and a very
important one, of the mental history of infancy. The
child has to learn to do two things. First, to use its
eyes, so as to receive from them a single instead of a
double impression, and next, to recognise that the same
objects give it its impressions of sight and of touch. I do
not say, however, that this is the order which its thoughts
take. Probably, it is the opposite ; and the child first
discovers that the sight- world and the touch- world are the
same, and then finds out that it sees double.

This I think probable in respect to the child, because
it seems to me to be true of man. For the beariag of
this illustration, derived from the chUd's experience, upon
the larger question of man's relation to the universe, is
evident. We feel ourselves to be living in two worlds :
a world of sense and a world of spirit ; a world that we
can grasp by the intellect, and another world of which
we become conscious by other and deeper powers. Is
not our case like that of the infant ? It is unquestion-
able that man has these two classes of faculties ; it is

152 The Two Worlds,

evident that, until he has learnt to use and subordinate
them rightly, they must give him the impression of two
worlds. The supposition, then, that the worlds are truly
one, perceived by different powers, answers to the demands
of the case. Even if no direct evidence, no proof, could
be given of it, the conception would have claim to be
received as being at once the most simple, and supported
by an actual parallel. It would fulfil that law of thought
which demands that the fewest possible number of causes
be supposed, and that we always give the preference to
an idea which can be shown to have place in the creation,
over one that merely rests on inference. One world, with
two faculties, miglit give man his experience ; therefore it
ought to be believed to do so.

For no weight whatever attaches to the difference
which, we feel, exists between the objects of our sensuous
and our spiritual apprehension. The appearance must
differ — it ought to differ — from the substance. Two
faculties, given as means of knowledge, were merely
wasted, if that which they present to our consciousness
did not widely differ. If touch and sight gave us
identical impressions, what were we the wiser for having
both ? It is evident that we know the physical world
so much more perfectly through having both eyes, and
hands, than we could by either alone, simply because
these respective senses perceive in manners so excessively
unlike ; that is, because the objects which we seem to
perceive by each are as distinct from each other as tilings
can be.

Nor can v/e lay down any limit beyond which the
difference between an object and the appearance of it to
certain faculties of ours may not extend. Evidently we
are not in a position to do this. It would imply a know-
ledge much beyond our present attainments, to say in

The Two Worlds, 153

what way existence might or might not " appear " to us,
even if we had a very just idea both of it and of our-
selves. We can at once convince ourselves of this by
reflecting on the much smaller case of our various senses.
Could we have foretold, or can we now explain, the char-
acters which our apprehensions of things by sight, by
hearing, by taste, assume ? These things are as yet entire
mysteries to us. Indeed, so far as we are able to judge,
an object might affect us, through different faculties,
in any variety of different ways. And if hardly any
characters can be found common to spiritual and physical
things, neither can any common character be traced be-
tween the colour that the eye perceives, the hardness felt
by the hand, and the tone appreciated by the ear. Dif-
ferences in the things perceived by different faculties,
vouch for a distinction between the faculties, not for
diversity of object.

We shall not be disposed, then, to argue from the seem-
ing unlikelihood that the spiritual world could be pre-
sented to our faculties under the form of the physical,
that it is not so in fact. That would indeed be " exceed-
ing the limit of our powers." And, perhaps, our tendency
to take this position may be adduced as a striking in-
stance of the law referred to in my last letter — that
ignorance produces a false confidence. And then, if we
look at the case, apart from this natural yet inadmissible
presumption in favour of our first impressions, there are
many reasons which commend the view I have suggested.
And, first, I would refer to an argument which the illus-
tration of the child's experience directly brings before our
thoughts ; and that is, that the one world we might thus
believe in would be incomparably more, than the two we
naturally suppose, through our twofold feeling. At first
sight it seems, indeed, as if the contrary of this were true,

154 ^^^ ^^^ Worlds.

and that to conceive one world rather than two would be
to make existence so much less. But, in fact, the one we
might thus believe in, and gradually, by the conjoined
and mutually subservient use of all our faculties, learn to
know, would utterly outweigh, in magnitude and glory, the
two which answer to our impressions. If we do truly
believe that our impressions are inadequate, we may
easily feel the possibility of this. And the analogy of
sight and touch will bring it palpably before our minds.
For which is most, which is largest and most glorious —
the one physical world, on which both these faculties
spend themselves and are exhausted, leaving it un-
fathomed still, or two worlds, which should truly le such
as touch and sight, each by itself, respectively suggest ?
Evidently the two faculties, conjoined in apprehension
and exploration of one object, give results unutterably
exceeding anything that their dissevered operation could
attain. In a word, the appearances with which sight is
conversant rise almost infinitely in value, when inter-
preted according to the dicta of the deeper faculty of
touch, and made to teach us of the same things. In the
nature of the case it must be so. And it must just as
much be so, in reference to the intellectual, or sensuous,
and the spiritual, apprehension of existence. Whatever
value the former might have in and for itself, whatever
excellence or beauty a world answering to its perceptions
might possess, it could be (compared with what it might
reveal if used as servant to the spiritual powers of man)
but as the spangled veil of night, in the soft radiance of
which the eye delights, is" to the immeasurable universe
of worlds, which — educated, interpreted, and used as ser-
vant— it makes us know. Yes ; that immeasurable uni-
verse of worlds itself, to have revealed which is the
proudest intellectual achievement of the race, is, to that

The Two Woi'lds. 155

true universe which man may know, and glory and rejoice
in, but as the spangled veil of night to that unutterable
magnificence.

It must be so. If it demands that universe to be, to
our eye, that studded vault, what universe must it demand
to be, to our sense and to our thought, this world of life
and beauty, and those other mighty worlds, silent, yet
full of voices, hiding, yet therein more impressively re-
vealing, the treasures of creative power ?

What universe ? Imagination faints and staggers at
the thought, and cannot answer. What can be vaster
than the infinitude of space, more than the countless orbs
of heaven, more real than the solid earth, higher, lovelier,
more perfect than this organic frame, bounding with life ?
What universe should eclipse this utterly, and show it
but a pictured vision, narrowed to the sweei) of mortal
thought ?

Imagination cannot answer. ISTor need it. Happily
the question is not one for imagination, but for learning.
Not proud assurance, nor hasty speculation, but humble
willingness to be taught, and patient interpretation of the
facts, will avail us here. The field is open. By self
abandoning study of all that God presents to us, bending
and uniting to one end all our faculties, we shall learn
what God's world is.

We shall learn what God's world is. It cannot be too
bold to say it. For see. He has given proof to us that
He means us to do so. He has given us the means.
By giving us two faculties to apprehend it, two modes of
studying and investigating it. He has fulfilled the con-
ditions for giving us knowledge ; He has revealed His
will that we should know. It remains for us to do our
part, and use our powers. But on this point I must
take another opportunity to speak. As also of the

156 The Two Worlds,

proofs, wliich seem to be furnished both by present facts
and the history of the past, that the comparison I have
sought to exhibit is a just one. I may remark one point,
in conclusion, for the present. See how sight is glorified,
magnified, ennobled, in being made the minister to our
astronomical knowledge. What a noble task is com-
mitted to it, what splendid achievements it accomplishes,
in leading our thoughts through all that infinite domain
in which it expatiates, and which, indeed, it alone can
reach. Sight is honoured and made glorious, it receives
its worthy place and performs its true office, thus. But
how did it attain this noble function, and reach its right-
ful destiny ?

By being mistrusted; by beiog recognised as giving
false impressions, and misleading, and needing to be edu-
cated, used subordinately, and interpreted. That is how
sight attained its true office, and asserted its real dignity
and value. May it not be that the intellect must rise to
its true dignity and use in the same way ?

There is also a moral lesson here. He that humbleth
himself shall be exalted, is no arbitrary decree. The
secret pulses of universal nature vibrate to that law.
And, indeed, this is one proof that material objects are
exhibitions to us of holiest thiags. Spiritual facts speak
in them, spiritual light shines through them all, and will
not be concealed.

( r57 )

XII.

THE TWO SIDES OF A THING,
{October 1862.)

Nothing is more characteristic of man's advance in the
knowledge of the world around him, than the perpetually-
recurring demand he meets with to give up his own
imaginations, and accept simpler and larger thoughts.
Nor indeed could this be otherwise. Since in all our
investigations we are really measuring omnipotence by
the forms of our own minds, a continual approximation
to the truth is all that we can hope for. Nor could that
approximation come in any other way than as a perpetual
discovery that the powers and causes of which we seem
to trace the operation, are in truth only the semblances
under which larger agencies — of wider sweep and simplei:
character — have been partially discerned by us. Thus
the study of natural Science possesses a double value,
and teaches a twofold lesson. The beauty and order of
Nature, as it reveals itself more and more widely before
our minds, and puts to shame as manifestly inadequate
the suppositions by which we have sought to explain it,
teaches us lessons about ourselves which we should
never, and never can, forget. As we feel how prone we
are to mistake, to think what is too small, to erect
figments, and hedge ourselves about with limitations, and

158 The Two Sides of a Thing.

how, in order to let the true light even of nature shine
into us we have to expand our minds, to free ourselves
from shackles, and above all to cast out self from our
thought, we feel also what a moral expansion and deliver-
ance must be necessary for us, must be in store for us,
before we are fitted to see God. If the knowledge of
the creatures demand of us that we grow so much larger,
what must the knowledge of the Creator do ?

The immense number of new facts which Science
accumulates year by year, the unanticipated results which
it meets at every turn, the discoveries it makes of in-
numerable worlds in space, and of worlds within worlds
in every object which the microscope explores ; all these
seem as if they would merely overwhelm the mtud, and
leave it utterly lost amid the mazes of its own wealth.
And they would assuredly have this effect, if there were
not another process continually going on in Science, at
the same time with this multiplication of its materials
and extension of its view. This process is the simpli-
fication of the ideas around which these ever multiply-
ing facts are grouped, and with their simplification the
diminution also of their number. So constant and indeed
inevitable is this process, that it is no exaggeration to say
that when any branch of Science has attaiued a certain
perfection, the more facts and details it contains the
easier it will be to understand. And we outsiders, who
look on the process of Science with mingled admiration at
its advance, and alarm lest no human mind should prove
capacious enough long to grasp a single one of its
divisions, may take heart. We shall not be left so
utterly behind as we may fear. Our hope lies in the
discovery of principles; in that reformation, which is
sure sooner or later to come in every growing science, of
its radical organisation. When that comes, then comes

The Two Sides of a Thing. 159

the turn of the uninitiated world. The multiplied and
almost unmeaning series of phenomena receive expres-
sion in a law which most probably is self-evident, or at
any rate is capable of being easily apprehended. Then
we, who seemed to be left hopelessly behind, and con-
demned to gaze, in the wonder not of knowledge but of
ignorance, at a few striking experiments — at bright
sparks, pretty colours, or graceful forms — have our
opportunity. We take a short cut, and come up with
those more strenuous or hardy travellers who have made
a long circuit by the road. It is true we have not seen
the prospect, nor experienced the invigorating influence
of the walk. But still we enjoy the company and
appreciate the view.

We see for instance how easy the system of the
heavens became when it was found that the idea of the
earth being in the centre was not large enough for it.
How magnificent it rises up, and yet how simple ! Every
child can understand it, and yet no man however wise —
however foolish — has been heard to say that he could
have given counsel to its Maker. It is the same with
the law of gravity, the same with the pressure of the air,
with the circulation of the blood. All truths of this
class, when discovered, put to flight a host of difficult
and tedious speculations, and add to the common heritage
of men what had been the questionable possession of a
few. It is like bringing the wild forests of the far west
under the plough. The pioneer toils amid savage wastes,
but the bright homes of Europe rejoice in the plenty
which his labours bring.

A revolution of this kind is taking place now, in
relation to a new class of ideas which extended obser-
vation is forcing on our scientific men. In respect to
everything with which they deal their old notions are

1 60 The Two Sides of a Thing,

found to be too small, and a view as much more simple
as it is more grand, is coming into their place. We
know how the electric spark, the lightning, the shock,
the attraction of the rubbed sealing-wax, and so on, used
to be referred to electricity ; the attraction of the magnet
to magnetism; rise of temperature, and expansion to
caloric ; growth, and the action of animals to the vital
force ; and many more such like things. There were in
short as many powers assigned to carry on the work of
nature, as the ancients had gods and goddesses in their
Olympus. The former were certainly almost as hard to
understand, or believe in, as the latter, especially as no
account could be given whence they came, or why or
where they disappeared. But an increased knowledge
has happily proved all such ideas as these too small.
Man's heart has grasped a sublimer thought. There is
no electricity, no heat, no vital force, no m.agnetism, no
chemical affinity ; none of all these mysterious and un-
accountable things. These are but the appearances of
something that is much more than they. What, then, is
there ? There is a Power (the action may we not say of
an Agent unperceived) — a power which appears to us as
a force present everywhere in nature : felt to a slight
measure in our own limbs, when we strike, or lift, or
resist a force applied, but equally at work in every corner
of the earth ; in plant, or rock, or stream ; in planet and
in sun, and orbs innumerable of the milky way : — re-
vealed to us in the flood of the noonday light, but
equally bespoken by the glimmerings of the remotest
star. There is a Power, ever present, ever ruling,
neglecting not the least, not quailing before the greatest ;
ruling-like law, as Hooker says, — " the lowest not ex-
cluded from its care, nor the highest exempted from its
dominion J " — a Power that presents itself to us as a

The Two Sides of a Thing, i6i

force, one force in nature, thrilling to its deepest heart,
and flowing forth responsive to every call. A Power
which does all things, and assumes all forms, which has
been called electricity in the lightning, heat in the fire,
magnetism in the iron bar, light in the taper, affinity in
the element, motion in the planet or the driven ball,
but in reality is ever one. It operates according to the
conditions which are present, but it is one Power, and it
is never either more or less.

Is it not a grand idea ; and as simple as it is grand ?
Are we not glad to lose our old acquaintances (if we can
call them even so much as that) of electricity, and so on,
and welcome this familiar friend ?

And, further, from this new conception there arises a
great principle to guide our thoughts. Every action
which takes place in nature is like a quarrel, and has two
sides to it ; two sides also which are opposites, but not
for that reason inharmonious. No change whatever that
takes place in nature can be single ; each is necessarily
double, and consists of two distinct changes, of which the
one is the exact counterpart of the other. It is evident
that this must be so. If there be one force operative in
all actions, then it can produce an effect in one place
only through ceasing to produce an effect somewhere
else. The case is exactly like that of removing a weight
from one scale and putting it into another. If the latter
is made heavier, the former is just as much the lighter.
And if the one goes down, the other as certainly goes up.
In all nature there is no down without an equal wp, nor
up without a down.

Of course, if this be so, a great part of the art of
understanding natural events wiU consist in ever bearing
in mind this law, and in looking out, whenever one action
is seen, for its corresponding opposite ;' which is in truth

L

1 62 The Two Sides of a Thing,

less a different action (however different it may look)
than an essential portion of the same. We n:iust in a
word see that everything has two sides.

The law is well shown in every case of vibration, as
that of the pendulum of a clock, where a motion down-
ward is followed by an equal motion upward ; allowing
for friction, and the resistance of the air. This friction
and resistance, in time, stop the motion, but in doing so
give one of the best illustrations of the oneness of all the
force in nature ; for they only seem to ' stop ' the motion
by turning it into other forms. The friction turns it into
heat, the resistance of the air into atmospheric currents.
As the air moves, and the pivot grows warm, the motion
stops ; the force acts in the one place only as it ceases in
the other. But the best possible exhibition of the two
sides which every natural action has, is given by a pair
of scales — however ordinary or to whatever common
purpose applied. No ignoble use can rob the balance of
the glory of displaying in its most telling form one of the
wildest, deepest, most fruitftd, and in some aspects last-
discovered laws of science. He who studies well the
balance, and seeing the opposite and equal actions there
displayed, looks at all nature with the light of that fact
in his eyes, and persists in spite of all appearance to the
contrary, that it exhibits an uniyersal truth, has the key
to innumerable secrets.

( i63 )

XIII.

THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY :
MR, HERBERT SPENCER}

{May 1863.)

It appears to us that there is now taking place in the
world a revolution almost as great, as happy, and as little
apprehended by many of the actors in it, as that which
in the early ages of the Koman Empire transferred the
faith of mankind from heathenism to Christianity. Great
movements are not easily appreciated by those who live
during their occurrence. Their range and issue are
beyond the sphere which the horizon of any single
generation embraces, and the time they demand for their
fulfilment outspans too far the life of the individual, to
allow him often to form more than a vague surmise of
their tendencies. It is probably owing in part to these
causes that history reveals to us the curious fact that the
ages in which the greatest transformations have been
wrought, and the greatest advances achieved, have often
been characterised by an emphatic disbelief in such
transformations, and even by a noisily affirmed assurance
of their impossibility. It may be that the first effect
upon the minds of most men, of the suggestion of any

1 First Principles. By Herbert Spencer, Author of '* Social Statics," &c,
London : Williams and Norgate, 1862.

164 The Positive Philosophy.

considerable change, of whatever kind, is to produce a
conscious repudiation of it as chimerical ; or, it may be,
that the negative and merely destructive side of any
great movement is so obtrusive and threatening, while
the first beginnings of the new life are apt to be so
hidden and apparently unimportant — not to say that
they may have to be sought in quarters from which
human pride would contemptuously turn away — or it
may be from both these causes combined with others ;
but it seems to be a law of our nature that the periods
of specially great and beneficent change are ushered in
rather by a despondent than an expectant state of the
general mind. At least, if there be some vague condition
of expectancy, there is a despondency in respect to the
kind of result which is really being brought about. Who,
for example, at the time when faith in Christ was begin-
ning to leaven the heathen community — who, living in
that community, expected, or could expect, a. moral
regeneration of belief or life ? The whole tendencies of
the age to the eye of the heathen moralist appeared, and
must have appeared, the opposite. The civilised world,
to his view, seemed given up to gross vices, or a fanati-
cism not less gross. Or at the time immediately preced-
ing the Eeformation, who could have foreseen that great
uprising of the mind and heart of man against immorality
and superstition ! Ever the true prophet amid a degen-
erate age, tliinks " I alone am left."

Or looking at the apparent tendencies of the human
mind in the present age, noting the disposition there is
to question everything that does not appeal to the
senses, and to materialise everything that does ; the
proposed exclusion of all that is spiritual from the
sphere of man's knowledge or concern, and the reduction
of all his interest within the domain of the laws of

The Positive Philosophy. 165

phenomena ; who conld suppose that even now the
vastest change in the opposite direction is not only
preparing, but actually taking place — that man's thought
is becoming Christian ! Yet we think we can make it
evident that it is really so; and this by the help of a
book that to many might seem the embodiment of the
most anti-christian tendencies of the age.

Mr. Herbert Spencer, whose " First Principles " has
recently challenged the attention of the philosophical
world, has been for some time known as a leading
representative, in England, of that school of thought
which takes as its foundation the doctrine that our
knowledge is necessarily only phenomenal. Perhaps,
however, we should rather say he is a leading represen-
tative of one of these schools ; for among those writers
who accept this doctrine as an unquestionable maxim,
more than one general tendency of thought may be dis-
covered. On the one hand, there is the class of whose
views Mr. Mansel is now the most prominent exponent,
who, af&rming the phenomenalness of our knowledge, yet
insist, in the interests of religion, on certain limits to the
consequences which may seem to flow from it. These
writers argue that though our thought cannot apprehend
the absolute, yet that we are capable of forming ideas
which are 'practically correct of objects which are in
themselves beyond thought, and that in the Christian
Scriptures we have a "regulative revelation." On the
other hand, Mr. Spencer represents a class of thinkers
who manifestly regard this representation as a quite in-
admissible compromise, and as involving a mean sur-
render of the claims of the intellect. " If," they may be
regarded as saying, " our apprehensions are but pheno-
menal, then it is in vain to affirm for them, on any pretext,
an opposite character. In respect to the true nature of

1 66 The Positive Philosophy,

all things we are simply ignorant, and must assume con-
tentedly the position of ignorance ; which position, more-
over, is one by no means so unsatisfactory as might have
been supposed." Here, however, this class of thinkers
themselves divide into two classes ; one of which holds
that this position involves the banishing of all reference
to any being superior to man; the other af&rms that
this idea of the nature of our knowledge involves an
essentially religious consequence ; namely, the constant
recognition of the relation of all events to, and their de-
pendence upon, an omnipresent but absolutely inscrutable
power. This class Mr. Spencer honours by his adhesion.

Thus, there are three distinct forms of opinion which
have in common the doctrine of the phenomenalness of
our knowledge. As representative men may be taken,
respectively, Mr. Mansel, Mr. Spencer, and Comte. The
first affirms positive religious doctrines ; the second asserts
a religion which cannot be formulated in doctrines ; the
.third allows no religion, or at least none but a regard to
Humanity.

But before we can enter further upon these details, it
is necessary that we should endeavour clearly to ascertain
what is meant by the doctrine that we know only pheno-
mena, and recall briefly the grounds on which it rests.
These grounds are set forth at great length (and with
great completeness up to a certain point) by Mr. Spencer :
but without following him in detail, we may shortly sum
up the argument.

When men first begin to think, nothing seems to them
more evident than that they have a very satisfactory know-
ledge of things around them. Our senses seem to convey
to us very complete information of this kind ; they give
us the strongest natural persuasion that they do ; nor can
anything be more completely out of the line of our

The Positive Philosophy, 167

expectations than the discovery that the case is not so.
Yet a very little experience suffices to break through this
natural persuasion, and to convince men that what the
senses present to them is appearance, and that a different
kind of knowledge is necessary. The obvious illusions
of the senses speedily produce more or less of this feeling
in any reflecting mind.

When this conviction is thoroughly produced, science
begins to be possible. For science characteristically con-
sists in a recognition of the incomplete, and therefore
illusory, character of the impressions given by sense, and
in the rectifying and completing them by combining the
operations of the senses with a controlling action of the
intellect. By this means the deficiencies of sense are
supplied, or at least are put in the way of being supplied ;
and instead of ideas based upon and corresponding to our
partial and isolated impressions, an idea embracing the
total facts of the case, of which the intellect compels the
senses to give evidence, is substituted : — truth for error.
Thus science consists radically and most essentially in
recognising the unseen. Its motto might well be
expressed in the words of the Apostle, "as seeing that
which is invisible." It- introduces, as elements of our
knowledge, things which are not directly within our
perception.

And this result accrues through a change in the
method of the mental procedure. Instead of bringing
the intellect, or rational power, into play only after the
operation of the senses — instead of first receiving from
sense our fundamental beliefs, and then bringing our
reasoning faculties to bear, and erecting ideas on that
foundation — we introduce a new order and method into
the use of our powers. The intellect, in science, is used
not after, or as supplementing sense, but both powers are

1 68 The Positive Philosophy,

used together ; and the deliverances of sense are made to
complete and check themselves under the guidance of
the reason. In other words, in the creation of science
the essential point is the different position and mode
of use assigned to the intellect. Instead of being used
secondarily, as we naturally tend to do, it is placed in a
position of practical authority; it is used as a guide to
direct, as a judge to test, and even to check and correct
the senses.

These two faculties, being thus used together, give
results which are altogether different from, and, in respect
to utility at least, superior to, those which ensue from
the opposite mode of using them. And the reason of
this is evident in the very nature of sense as being
limited and partial in its perceptions. These perceptions
need to have their partialness completed, if they are to
guide us right. Yet they give us in themselves no in-
dication of tliis necessity ; they do not betray their own
shortcomings, and it is whoUy out of their power to
suggest to us that which is beyond the bounds of their
perception. The remedy is that the intellect, which
apprehends in a different way from the senses, and is
capable therefore of presenting to us that which they
cannot grasp, should be united with them in their action,
should interfere to check them at every point, and guide
us througliout in the interpretation we put upon the im-
pressions we receive from them.

Tlie effect of thus using the intellect to guide and
correct the senses is that which we see in science ; a
truthful in place of a deceptive apprehension of natural
events, their order and conditions. It is that on which
the moderns so largely pride and congratulate themselves,
their command and use of nature through knowledge of
her laws ; the value of which, though it may be exag-

The Positive Philosophy. 169

gerated, is not to be lightly estimated. It is very mncli,
though it is not all that men are prone to think it.

For after a time it is discovered that even in making
this advance our essential condition of ignorance is not
altered. The knowledge which science gives ns does not
go to the point which men aim at, and which they fancy
they are attaining by its means. The question we ask is,
" What ? " and the answer we receive from science is only
— "In this order." It does not tell us that which we
sought to know, which is the very nature of the things
that are around us, and with which we have to do. On
this point science is silent, even when most it seems to
speak. What it tells us is simply that successive events
transpire in a certain sequence, and that all changes
conform to an ascertainable order. By that information,
which is eminently practical, and gives us the power,
within certain limits, alike of predicating the future,
and effecting our own desires, it is natural enough that
men's minds should be, for a time at least, contented, and
diverted from the other and natural inquiry, " What are
the things ? "

For a time they are so diverted ; but not permanently.
For when the sequences which science traces begin to
present some appearance of completeness the question
again arises. " What is the essence of all these things ? "
and presses for a distinct answer. Thus, to take an in-
stance from chemistry — which perhaps of all the sciences
most seems as if it would reveal more than the order of
change in nature, and might show us what its essence is :
— when the chemist has analysed all compounds into a
certain number of elements, and found that these com-
bine or decompose under certain fixed conditions, he can
hardly help feeling that he is no nearer knowing what
things are than he was when he started. His oxygen

1 70 The Positive Philosophy,

and hydrogen, and carbon and sulphur, and metals occupy-
in respect to his knowledge precisely the same position
that the compounds he has analysed into these bodies
previously held. He knows of the nature of the one
class of bodies just as much and just as little as he pre-
viously knew of the nature of the other. He has not ad-
vanced a single step. Nay, on the course he has been
pursuing he is not likely to advance. Suppose he were
to succeed in reducing all the elements to one, that one
would still be to him as the many are now. It would be
an unknown thing, essentially, as they are. He would
have learnt the possibility of reducing the many to the
one, or of educing from the one the many ; but the one
would still challenge the same inquuy that the many
did. He would ask, " What is it ? " as he before asked,
" What are they ? " and would feel the problem only the
more difficult, because in solving it he must account for
all the qualities of the derivatives. ,

It is the same with whatever branch of science we
take up. When we have traced all the sequences, we
still stand before the question, inevitable to a reason-
able creature, " What is the thing ? " or, " What is the
power ? " Say we take the functions of the living body ;
suppose our knowledge of them had become perfect, then
we ask, " What are the substances which compose the
body ; wliat is this life which dwells in it ? "

Now, it is from the asking of this class of questions,
after all the properly scientific methods have been em-
ployed, that the modern doctrine that "we know only
phenomena" has arisen. For the attempt to answer
questions of this kind has proved a manifest failure. Try
to conceive the objects of our experience as we may, it is
found that no conception will stand a rigorous testing.
We cannot present to our minds any idea of the idtimate

The Positive Philosophy, 171

essence of any thing, or of any power, in nature, wliicli
does not prove itself illusory when we enquire whether
it can really be the truth. On this point Mr. Herbert
Spencer expends a great part of his efforts in the volume
before us ; undertaking to show at length that every
notion men have succeeded in forming of the ulti-
mate essence of things involves contradictions, or some
other form of unreason. In this way he goes through the
ideas of time, space, matter, and force, and endeavours to
show, partly by old and partly by new arguments, that
our seeming knowledge in respect to each of these is real
ignorance. As a specimen of his argument on this point,
we may extract his remarks respecting matter. The
passage is somewhat lengthy, but it is interesting in
itself, if only as showing what kind of questions are
engaging the thoughts of those philosophers who busy
themselves with physics ; and it is only by presenting
it completely that we can enable our readers to judge
of its validity.

" Were it not for the necessities of the argument it would
be inexcusable to occupy the reader's attention with the
tlireadbare and yet unended controversy respecting the divisi-
biUty of matter. Matter is either infinitely divisible or it is
not : no third possibility can be named. Which of the alter-
natives shall we accept % If we say that matter is infinitely
divisible we commit ourselves to a supposition not realizable
in thought. We can bisect and re-bisect a body, and con-
tinually repeating the act until we reduce its parts to a size
no longer physically divisible, may then mentally continue the
process without limit. To do this, however, is not really to
conceive the infinite divisibility of matter, but to form a
symbolic conception incapable of expansion into a real one,
and not admitting of other verification. Really to conceive
the infinite divisibiHty of matter, is mentally to follow out the

1 72 The Positive Philosophy,

divisions to infinity, and to do this would require infinite time.
On the other hand, to assert that matter is not infinitely
divisible, is to assert that it is reducible to parts which no
conceivable power can divide ; and this verbal supposition can
no more be represented in thought than the other. For each
of such ultimate parts, did they exist, must have an upper and
an under surface, a right and a left side, like any larger frag-
ment. Now, it is impossible to imagine its sides so near that
no plane of section can be conceived between them ; and how-
ever great be the assumed force of cohesion, it is impossible
to shut out the idea of a greater force capable of overcoming
it. So that to human intelligence the one hypothesis is no
more acceptable than the other ; and yet the conclusion that
one or other must agree with the fact seems to human intelli-
gence unavoidable.

"Again, leaving this insoluble question, let us ask whether
substance has in reality anything like that extended solidity
which it presents to our consciousness. The portion of space
occupied by a piece of metal seems to eyes and fingers perfectly
filled ; we perceive a homogeneous, resisting mass without any
breach of continuity. Shall we then say that matter is as solid
as it appears ? Shall we say that, whether it consists of an
infinitely divisible element or of ultimate units incapable of
further division, its parts are in actual contact? To assert
as much entangles us in insuperable difficulties. Were matter
thus absolutely solid it would be, what it is not, absolutely
incompressible; since compressibility, implying the nearer
approach of constituent parts, is not thinkable unless there is
unoccupied space between the parts. Nor is this all. It is
an established mechanical truth, that if a body moving at a
given velocity, strikes an equal body at rest in such wise that
the two move on together, their joint velocity will be but half
that of the striking body. Now, it is a law of which the
negation is inconceivable that in passing from any one degree
of magnitude to any other, all intermediate degrees must be
passed through ; or, in the case before us, a body moving at
velocity four, cannot by collision be reduced to velocity two

The Positive Philosophy. 1 73

without passing through all the velocities between four and
two. But were matter truly solid — were its units absolutely
incompressible and in absolute contact — this Maw of con-
tinuity,' as it is called, would be broken in every case of
collision. For when, of two such units, one moving at velo-
city four strikes another at rest, the striking unit must have
its velocity four instantaneously reduced to velocity two;
must pass from velocity four to velocity two without any
lapse of time, and without passing through intermediate velo-
cities ; must be moving with velocities four and two at the
same instant, which is impossible.

*' The supposition that matter is absolutely solid being un-
tenable, there presents itself the Newtonian supposition that
it consists of solid atoms not in contact, but acting on each
other by attractive and repulsive forces, varying with the
distances. To assume this, however, merely shifts the diflS-
culty : the problem is simply transferred from the aggregate
masses of matter to these hypothetical atoms. For granting
that matter, as we perceive it, is made up of such dense ex-
tended units surrounded by atmospheres of force, the question
still arises. What is the constitution of these units % We have
no alternative but to regard each of them as a small piece of
matter. Looked at through a mental microscope, each becomes
a mass of substance such as we have just been contemplating.
Exactly the same inquiries may be made respecting the parts
of which each atom consists ; while exactly the same difficulties
stand in the way of every answer. And manifestly, even were
the hypothetical atoms assumed to consist of still minuter
ones, the difficulty would reappear at the next step ; nor could
it be got rid of even by an infinite series of such assumptions.

"Boscovich's conception still remains to us. Seeing that
matter could not, as Leibnitz suggested, be composed of un-
extended monads (since the juxtaposition of an infinity of
points having no extension, could not produce that extension
which matter possesses); and perceiving objections to the
views entertained by Newton, Boscovich proposed an inter-
mediate theory, uniting, as he considered, the advantages of

1 74 The Positive Philosophy,

both, and avoiding their difficulties. His theory is, that the
constituents of matter are centres of force — points without
dimensions, which attract and repel each other in such wise
as to be kept at specific distances apart. And he argues,
mathematically, that the forces possessed by such centres
might so vary with the distances, that under given conditions
the centres would remain in stable equilibrium with definite
interspaces. This speculation, however, ingeniously as it is
elaborated, and eluding though it does various difficulties,
posits a proposition which cannot by any efi'ort be represented
in thought : it escapes all the inconceivabilities above indicated
by merging them in the one inconceivability with which it
sets out. A centre of force absolutely without extension is
unthinkable : answering to these words we can form nothing
more than a symbolic conception of the illegitimate order.
The idea of resistance cannot be separated in thought from
the idea of an extended body which ofi'ers resistance. To
suppose that central forces can reside in points not infinitesi-
mally small but occupying no space whatever — points having
position only, with nothing to unite their position — points in
no respect distinguishable from the surrounding points that
are not centres of force ; — to suppose this is utterly beyond
human power.

" Here it may possibly be said that though all hypotheses
respecting the constitution of matter commit us to inconceiv-
able conclusions when logically developed, yet we have reason
to think that one of them corresponds to the fact. Though
the conception of matter as consisting of dense indivisible
units is symbolic and incapable of being completely thought
out, it may yet be supposed to find indirect verification in
the truths of chemistry. These, it is argued, necessitate the
belief that matter consists of particles of specific weights, and
therefore of specific sizes. The general law of definite propor-
tion seems impossible on any other condition than the existence
of ultimate atoms ; and though the combining weights of the
respective elements are farmed by chemists their ' equivalents,'
for the purpose of avoiding a questionable assumption, we are

The Positive Philosophy. 1 75

unable to think of the combination of such definite weights,
without supposing it to take place within definite numbers of
definite particles. And thus it would appear that the New-
tonian view is at any rate preferable to that of Boscovich. A
disciple of Boscovich, however, may reply that his master's
theory is involved in that of Newton, and indeed cannot be
escaped. ' What,' he may ask, ' is it that holds together the
particles of these ultimate atoms I' *A cohesive force,' his
opponent must answer. * And what,' he may continue, ' is it
holds together the parts of any fragments into which by suffi-
cient force an ultimate atom might be broken % ' Again the
answer must be, 'A cohesive force.' 'And what,' he may
still ask, * if the ultimate atom were, as we can imagine it to
be, reduced into parts as small in proportion to it, as it is in
proportion to a tangible mass of matter, what must give each
part the ability to sustain itself and to occupy space % ' Still
there is no answer but ' A cohesive force.' Carry the process
in thought as far as we may, until the extension of the parts
is less than can be imagined, we still cannot escape the ad-
mission of forces by which the extension is upheld ; and we
can find no limit until we arrive at the conception of centres
of force without any extension.

"Matter, then, in its ultimate nature, is as absolutely in-
comprehensible as space and time. Frame what suppositions
we may, we find on tracing out their implications that they
leave us nothing but a choice between opposite absurdities."

The reader who is familiar with the history of meta-
physics will perceive that these arguments are altogether
different from the celebrated ones by which Berkeley
endeavoured to overthrow the existence of matter, and
that they are urged with a different aim. Berkeley
sought, by insisting on the apparent qualities of things —
the whiteness of paper, for example — to prove that they
demand a mind in which to exist, inasmuch as these
qualities (such as whiteness) could not be except where

1 76 The Positive Philosophy.

there was consciousness. Thus his argument against
matter is of a positive kind, and has for its end the
affirmation of a definite doctrine : that mind, or spirit as
he terms it, is the only existence. But Mr. Spencer lays
hold of a different class of ideas, a class to which science
especially conducts, and seeks to establish by their means,
not a positive doctrine, but a condition of permanent
doubt. According to him we simply cannot affirm — we
are not justified even in believing — anything about
the reality of things. We must recognise that " in its
ultimate essence nothing can be known."

For if this be the case with the things presented to
our senses, it is also true of those other existences which
are the object of religion. Mr. Spencer points out, herein
using chiefly the same arguments as Hamilton and
Mansel, how unable we are to conceive the Absolute and
the Infinite. So that we come, under his guidance, to
this result — that in respect to both the ultimate religious
and the ultimate scientific ideas, we cannot attain true
conceptions. Or, in other words, in respect to all subjects
whatsoever, what we can conceive cannot he. We may
express the idea briefly by an extension of a celebrated
saying of Sir W. Hamilton's. As " a God that can be
thought is no God," so a substance that can be thought
is no substance. In other words — for it is worth while
to look at the position in every point of view that we
may thoroughly understand what it means, since it is full
of the most important practical consequences — we must
not attach the idea of existence to anything that we can
conceive.

Doubtless this is a considerable demand to make of us;
but, if reason be shown, it is not a difficult one. It is
perfectly possible, nay, easy, to separate the two thing —
our best notions of things, and our idea of existing —

The Positive Philosophy, 177

although we have been accustomed to unite them ; and
to think of that which we have supposed, or can suppose,
to be the true and real nature of things, as being only
what they are to our faculties, or what they seem to us.
Perhaps the easiest way of doing this, as it certainly seems
to us to be one of the clearest and most truthful ways, is
to avail ourselves of the analogy of the eye, and to
accustom ourselves to regard our intellect (or whatever
we may term that power by which we form thoughts or
ideas of things) as being like the sight. It gives us a con-
sciousness of that which is around us, we perceive by its
means ; but it presents to us, consciously, not existence as
it is, but only its — phenomena.

Thus we come to the very proposition of which we
have been endeavouring to trace the meaning. It is easy
to see why it is said, and what is meant when it is said,
that we know only phenomena. It is just the same, in
its way, as that which is meant when it is said that we
" see " only " appearances." Phenomena are the appear-
ances to the intellect. And we have to remember
respecting them that, strictly speaking, they are not ;
just as we remember familiarly enough and easily enough
that " appearances " are not to our touch.

But of course, if we detach our idea or belief of existence
from the phenomena, we do not thereby in any respect
give up or embarrass our belief in existence. It is just
the same as it is in respect to appearances to sight ;
though we do not believe in them as being solid objects,
we believe in solid objects which we perceive in and
through those appearances. So with respect to aU.
phenomena and all the ideas we can form of things;
though we do not believe in them as existing, we believe
in some existence which we perceive in and through them.
Matter and motion, for example, cannot be existing, they

M

178 The Positive Philosophy,

are but phenomena ; but in this T7ay — as matter and
motion — we perceive that which is existing.

We have said this is not difficult : nor is it so in one
aspect of the case ; that is, considered as a mere intellec-
tual proposition. It is as easy to understand as that in
the heavens at night there is not a small bright crescent,
but that under this form we perceive the moon. Nor is
it really difficult, though it may be rather dry and
abstruse, to weigh and appreciate the evidence on which
the proposition has been based; we have given the
reader the opportunity of testing this point in the extract
we have made from Mr. Spencer's book. But there is a
difficulty in the proposition nevertheless, and a difficulty
which must be admitted to be immense, though it is
greater to some persons than to others. This difficulty
arises from the fact that the proposition contradicts — or
perhaps we should rather say seems to contradict — the
evidence of sense. It is certain that whether matter
and motion truly exist or not, we feel them as existing.
They are true existences to our experience, however
phenomenal they may be demonstrated to be. Mr.
Spencer himself recognises and refers to tliis fact, though
apparently not discerning its full significance. He urges
(p. 227) that our feeling in respect to the phenomenal is
that of its being real or existing, just as much (he thinks)
as if we were conscious of the truly existing or essential.
And whether in this latter respect he be right or not,
there is no doubt about the fact he states. The things
which he and others have proved to be but phenomenal
are felt by us as not being phenomenal at aU, but as being
most veritable existences. Is not this the case with
matter and motion ? which are two of the things which
Mr. Spencer most elaborately demonstrates to be " only
phenomenal," proving them impossible to be, as involving

The Positive Philosophy. 1 79

utter contradictions ? Are tliey not felt as existing by
US ? do they not practically exist to us ? We all
remember Dr. Johnson's argument against the idealist —
mistaken though it was — a knock with his stick upon the
ground. It is enough to prove, at any rate, that matter
and motion are existences to us. But then, is our teeling
of existence all awry ? are we feeling that which is but
phenomenal to be not phenomenal, but actual ? If ]\Ir.
Spencer's arguments are true, unquestionably we are.
This is his affirmation — clearly involved, though not
expressly stated — and as it seems to us made good and
proved. This, as we have said, is the reason the doctrine
that we only know phenomena is difficult. It is so
because this consequence is involved, a distinct repudia-
tion of the apparent teaching of sense, or at least of the
impression naturally produced by sense. We must, if
we accept this position, learn again to feel in one way
and to think in another.

We must learn again to do this, for in truth it is by
no means the first time this demand has been made upon
us, though the lesson has not yet become easy by practice.
And it is most natural that this demand should be made
upon us, in this larger sphere, emphatically through the
teaching of science, for it is science which has ever been
the agent in enforcing it upon us in other cases. What
indeed is modern science but a continuous process, on
man's part, of rising above the impressions which his
senses produce, and learning to think otherwise than as
he feels. One instance it will suffice to adduce, since
others cannot fail to occur to the reader's mind. Do we
not feel the powers we exercise, in using our bodily
strength, to be our own, inherent in ourselves, original
and underived, at least from things around us ? But
science teaches us to thinJc of those powers as not our

1 80 The Positive Philosophy,

own, as being simply a part and mode of nature's force,
temporarily stored up in our nerves and muscles. In
almost every case of scientific knowledge it is the same ;
that which we rightly know is opposed to that which we
feel. Surely it must be so. Is it not evident when we
recall how limited our feeling is ? Though it is a diffi-
culty then, it is no real objection to this doctrine of our
knowing only phenomena (in the sense in which it is
affirmed) that it necessitates our thinking differently from
our feeling. This stamps it rather with an air of truth-
fulness ; gives it almost an a priori claim to be regarded
as a rightful fruit of science. Might we not even have
expected, or at least have hoped for, some such correction
of our too small impressions of the universe ?

The difficulty, therefore, which this doctrine presents,
in demanding of us to give up the existence of that which
we feel to exist, ought not to be, and indeed cannot be,'
permanent. It is a temporary obstacle till reflection has
done its work, and no more. But the value, the religious
value, of the doctrine is unutterable.

Mr. Spencer claims for his view that it is not only a
religious position, but pre-eminently the religious position ;
and we are most thoroughly disposed to agree with him,
though we think he does not appreciate the force of his
own arguments, nor fully understand his own words.
For let us now attempt to realise the meaning of this fact,
of which Mr. Spencer and his compeers have put us in
possession ; let us endeavour to see whether its bearings
really are favourable or adverse to religion.

They are put forward, indeed, avowedly as adverse to
any other religion than a mere reverential acquiescence
in ignorance concerning all that truly exists; but it
appears to us that this supposed opposition to positive
religion arises from the fact that the doctrine itself is so

The Positive Philosophy, 1 8 1

profoundly, so intensely, so overwhelmingly religions, nay,
so utterly and entirely Christian, that its true meaning
could not be seen for very glory. Like Moses wlien he
came down from the Mount, this positive philosophy
comes with a veil over its face that its too divine radiance
may be hidden for a time. This is science, that has been
conversing with God, and brings in her hand His law,
written on tables of stone — that grow beneath our very
gaze into the fleshly tables of a heart, the heart of His
own Son.

The positive philosophy is philosophy laying itself at
the feet of Christ; it is the emphatic testimony of man
to the Gospel, the more emphatic because unconscious
and undesigned. For when we consider what is implied
in its statements, they assume a meaning which only
some of the profoundest and most distinctive Christian
doctrines can adequately express ; while, at the same time,
its very denials, setting aside the bondage of apparent
truths and accepted notions, open the door freely to
methods of thought in which religion finds its surest basis
and its most perfect development. On the one hand,
there is the fact asserted by this philosophy in the most
unequivocal terms, that the things which we feel to be —
those which are expressed by matter and motion and force,
and time and space — are not; on the other, that our
faculty of thinking presents to us only appearances. But
this implies that our intellect is like the sight, and that
we are feeling appearances to be existences : for sight is
exactly defined as a perception of appearances ; and the
matter and motion, &c., which the intellect thus perceives,
are felt by us to he. Now this latter fact — the falsity of
our feeling — implies a false or depraved state of being ;
and the former — the scope of intellect being like that of
sight — gives power and authority to the moral faculties

1 82 The Positive Philosophy.

in us, to use. it as we use our sight, and to interpret its
indications into moral or spiritual terms. These two
results flow directly from the doctrines of the positive
philosophy — which is Mr. Spencer's.

And do we exaggerate at all in calling these results
emphatically religious, emphatically Christian ? Is not a
depraved state of the very being of man the very turning-
point of Christianity? Is it not on that fact that the
whole system, the redemptive and restorative process,
centres ? What more or better, as a tribute to Christi-
anity, could philosophy bring, than a demonstration from
its own sphere, and expressed in its own terms — the
more confirmatory for being different from those which
are familiar to us — that man is in a perverted, a defec-
tive state ?

And then, if we take the other element of philosophy
which we have noticed, that the intellect holds in us the
place of the sight, and gives us immediate knowledge, not
of the truth of being, but only of its appearances, what
more or better on behalf of piety could we ask from
philosophy ? Have we not other faculties by which to
guide, correct, interpret it ? Have we not moral emotions,
souls, consciences, feelings of the divine, the right, the
good ? Can we not use the intellect subordinately to
these, if only we know that we may .? and does not this
philosophy exactly inform us — you may do this ? Nay,
does it not tell us that unless we deliberately choose to
be deceived, or to abstain altogether from the full exercise
of our faculties, we must do so ? It bids us make our
thought wholly and in all its exercise religious ; as before
it has bidden us recognise in all our consciousness the
proof of man's need of a deliverer !

But even this is not aU. Mr. Spencer himself points
out that if all that we are conscious of, or can conceive,

The Positive Philosophy, 183

is 'phenomenal, then all that is in our experience, however
it may appear, is truly due to the action of some Power
Tinperceived, is the effecting of some hidden fact. We
can go — aided by him and thankfully acknowledging his
help — a step further still. All that we experience is the
action of a Power whom we must know by the soul, and
can recognise only in our conscience and our heart ; it is
the working out of some fact which the intellect cannot
picture, but which faith must grasp, the religious emotions
shape into its form. The positive philosophy makes all
our life religious, and bids us seek from the highest
sources within us — and, thank God, from the still higher
ones without — the fact which constitutes it all. This
negative foundation for a religious life, it lays broad and
strong : our life is not what we feel it. It is not the
vain struggle of a poor soul immersed in " matter and
force," the victim of their passive laws, the sport of their
blind impotence. There is another fact than this, that
constitutes our life ; and the intellect can present to us
only its " phenomena."

We cannot now, through limit of space, pursue this
aspect of the subject further, though it were not difficult
to show how simple the idea of our ^QiQQWmg phenomenally,
under the forms of matter and force, really is, when it is
examined without haste or prepossession. It might also
be shown quite easily, it seems to us, how curiously and
yet how naturally the exponents of the positive philosophy
have come to think that they have arrived at an end,
when in fact, by their own showing, they are instituting
a beginning. Granted that they have proved that we
cannot think matter and motion, &c., as leing, it does not
follow that we cannot ascertain how they come to be the
phenomena to us. These two questions have been con-
founded ; or rather the latter, which presses most invit-

184 The Positive PJiilosophy,

ingly for study, has been overlooked. Our philosophers,
many of them, eminently endowed as they are, and Mr.
Spencer among the number, seem to have had their
minds so filled with the negative results to which they
had succeeded in pushing the old questions, that they
had no eyes for the new ones which sprang up beneath
their feet. Far be it from us, however, to think slight-
ingly of them on this account. Each man does his part ;
and we all of us in this age, in our most successful work,
do but enter upon the fruit of other men's labour.

Yet some of these new questions really are inviting.
Thus, for example, in the very perception that anything
that has been supposed to be an existence is but pheno-
menal, what a new sphere for inquiry is opened ! How
simple it is to ask, " Which of its qualities may be referred
to the fact of its being phenomenal? " and, "In what respects
may the phenomenal be known to differ from the actual ? "
It is impossible to say that these questions are not open
to us till they have been tried. To us it seems that they
yield results remarkable at once for their value, and the
ease with which they are obtained. Is it not evident, to
take only one instance, that that which is only pheno-
menal, and does not truly exist, cannot truly act ? The
quality of not acting, therefore, which, under the name of
inertness, is held so distinctive of matter, may surely be
recognised as one that belongs to the phenomenal. In a
word, inertia marks phenomenalness, and has no other
basis.

"We might greatly multiply observations of this sort,
but there are more reasons than one for resisting the
temptation ; of which not the least is that we would not
divert the reader's mind from the religious to the specu-
lative aspects of the subject. Eather we would ask him
whether we were not justified in saying that the thought

The Positive Philosophy. 185

of man is becoming Christian ? that there is taking place,
unconsciously and undesignedly, in our own age and
nation, a change for good, of which the world has seldom
seen the equal ? And if so, is it not beautiful to live in
such a time, and watch such a work ? — and not only to
watch, but to hail it and to take part in it : for all of us
may do so. The task is not beyond the powers of any,
little as they may be fitted for abstruse speculations, or
much as they may mistrust their power of determining
between rival philosophers. For it is not to the intellect
only, or chiefly, that the appeal is made, but to the heart
and to the conscience. Our intellectual giants clear the
way for us, they cut down the rank growth of prejudice
and error ; but it is not for them to erect the temple in
which the worship of the future shall be paid. This is a
toil and an honour reserved for the sincere and humble
souls who have preserved their spiritual vision clear, and
kept unpolluted hearts. For them the mighty of this
world of thought and specidation toil ; from before their
eyes they remove the veil ; from their hands they strike
off the chains ; to their lips they give boldness. " Be-
hold," they say to the meek and poor in spirit, "that
which the heart affirms, not which the senses feel or
intellect devises, that is true. Tell it to us, that we may
hear and live."

To no age has God given a privilege more glorious
than to ours, to none a task that less could excuse
indifference. The gathering into unity of that which
man has discovered with that which God has revealed,
the ending of the fatal controversy between the intellect
and the soul, the bringing of the whole humanity within
us into a harmonious subjection to Christ, religion absorb-
ing and making its own the reason, and the reason taking
its place as the free servant of religion ; this is the work
in which we are engaged, the prospect to which we look.

1 86 TJie Positive Philosophy.

The first inevitable step, that carries with it all the rest,
is taken. The intellect has owned itself but a perceiver
of appearances ; and doing so it calls on the higher facul-
ties of man to assume their rightful place — tjo-annised
over and crushed so long — and guide and use it in their
service. For just as 'we have seen that science arises
when the senses — long ruling and subjecting reason —
place themselves as her servants, and do her bidding ;
even so is it when the reason bids the soul (as now it
does) assume the sway. Light must succeed to darkness,
harmony to strife ; the higher life present, but in a fairer
order and worthier fruition, the fruits that bless us, yet
deceive us so, upon a lower sphere.

Of the three forms of the doctrine that our knowledge
is phenomenal — represented by Comte, Mansel, and
Herbert Spencer respectively — it will be seen that the
first, which ignores all that is superhuman, is inconsistent
with itself; refusing to recognise what itself affirms — an
existence inconceivable, with which we truly have to do.
The second, which seeks to supplement its denial of the
human power to know, by the device of a regulative
revelation, telling us what it is good for us to believe,
frustrates the very object at which it aims by the meas-
ures it takes to secure it. Ignoring the power of the
moral nature, not to supersede or supplement, but to
guide and use the intellectual, it foregoes the ordained
development of the religious powers of man — which it
distrusts or denies — in order to grasp at a fallacious
refuge. It erects upon the sands a building which the
floods inevitably sweep away, not seeing the rock on
which the foundation is already laid. The third fonn,
presented by our author, marching boldly forward, yet
not closing its eyes to that which its own premisses
imply, accepts the foundation, but neglects to build.
Neglects to build, yet surely only for a time.

( i87 )

XIV.

ON TWO PENHOLDERS,

(1864, Unpublished.)

Very likely the reader has seen a notable invention of
our days — the "orthographic pen," designed to teach
children how to place their fingers "when they write.
It is curious to think with what a strange, half-amused,
half-melancholy interest we look upon all such aids in
childhood's path, forgetful of our own. They are real
instruments of torture, though they are trifles. Xot one
of them hut has been wet with bitter tears, yet tears that
laughter soon has chased. This orthographic pen, for
instance, what a formidable unmanageable look it has.
What despair it must strike into a poor child's heart.
Its three projecting plates, ranged spiralwise around, must
appear to his little soul the very sum of all mystery. He
has before thought pothooks and hangers unutterably dif-
ficult and provoking, but now he feels that an insuperable
obstacle has been placed in his path, and he renounces
writing in despair. That pen he can never learn to hold.
!N"or, indeed, in this case is he so far wrong. If ever there
was a device for making orthography an impossible
achievement, this penholder might well claim to be it.
Surely no mortal could write with it, least of all a child.
The poor little hand would labour under its burden like
a pigmy dressed in armour.

1 88 On Two Penholders,

So appears to have thought a man whom we may call
a real children's friend ; with the happiest perception of
juvenile requirements he has gone to the root of the
matter and produced another " orthographic penholder."
This man (he must be the father of a family) has solved
the problem. Those formidable plates have disappeared ;
the bloated form no longer offends the eye, nor over-
burdens the wearied hand. Yet all the object aimed at
is attained. There is the guidance for the little fingers,
the exact position marked out for each. The mystery of
penholders is solved : he has cut away certain portions of
the metal and the thing is done. Thumb and fingers fit
each into its own aperture ; the pen is simply so much
the lighter. This is the right thing, as clearly as the
other was not.

Orthographic penholders are a small affair ; the sorrows
and triumphs of the school-room do not count for mucli
in history, but in this little matter much is shown ; two
main principles in human life are exquisitely illustrated
by it.

For example, in what a tangible form it exhibits the
fact that negatives are practically positive things to us.
The absence of the portions of metal are guides as real as
the added plates. Though opposite in one sense, they are
precisely equivalent. They are equally things, or exist-
ences to us, and are equally efficient to affect us.

And so it is in matters of greater moment. To
remember that negatives are practical existences, influ-
encing our feelings or producing manifest effects without
us, is a great part of the art of understanding nature.
And to forget it is one of the chief errors to which we
are prone. For it always seems to us that everything
has its positive and special cause ; which cause of course
stands before our mind as a distinct thing added to that

On Two Penholders. 189

which would otherwise exist. And we see how often
men have thus misapprehended nature ; how many-
imaginary things or powers they have invented, and to
what difficult and complicated notions they have been
driven. The rise of fluids in a vacuum needs no special
property in nature, when it is seen to depend upon an
absence of the pressure of the air ; nor does the tendency
of light bodies to rise, when it is seen to follow from
their comparative absence of weight.

There can, indeed, be little doubt that much of the
obscurity in which natural phenomena are still enveloped
depends upon a similar misapprehension. Things that
are negatives in respect to the elements on which our
thoughts are fixed, being practically positive agencies to
us, pass muster in our minds as separate existences. And
we needlessly invent such existences, when we should be
recognising the leaving out, or absence, of that which is
elsewhere present. To borrow a term from pliysiological
science we imagine " cells " where perhaps we should see
" vienoles."

Always when we can take this step nature becomes so
much the simpler to our thought. There is one element
tlie less to be remembered or supposed. A single
element or power, with an absence of it, accounts for
facts for which we had before needed to imagine two.
And it is thus one of the chief means by which our grasp
of natural events becomes more complete. Nor is there
any fear lest by this process nature should become less
to us, or her infinitude cease to provoke our wonder. So
far from this there is nothing which more largely tends
to raise our thoughts of nature and to add to the force and
grandeur of the impression it produces upon us than this
simplification of our apprehension, and reduction of the
number of the means by which it seems to operate. In

190 On Two Penholders.

many ways this result follows. It is not only that the
more simple and unique impression we thus received
rouses our emotions more powerfully, and causes the
very same elements by concentration to produce a greater
effect upon the mind ; nor that every step in this direc-
tion facilitates our further advance, so that every seeming
loss is soon more than supplied ; but in fact, the very
recognition of a negative as at the root of any fact or
process in nature directly involves an elevation of our
thought. It immediately makes nature more ; for it im-
plies the presence in it of a larger power than that which
is excluded. For a negative to operate as a cause there
must be present some wider and more comprehensive
force from which it may derive its seeming power. In
the cases before adduced this is evident ; the filHng of a
vacuum by fluid rests upon the universal pressure of the
air; and can be ascribed to its true negative cause only
by the recognition of that pressure. So the using of
the lighter class of bodies rests upon the universal
property of weight.

These two processes, indeed — the recognition of negative
influences, and the discovery of wider-reaching and
higher powers in nature than had been known before —
must ever go on together. They are in truth two parts
of one process; and for this reason, partly it is that
science, which is essentially the discovery of nature's
greatness, has for so constant an element in it the
discovery of the effects of negatives. The latter process
is the very condition of the revelation of the deep, the
universal laws, — the knowledge of which is man's glory
and delight. Without it our knowledge would not tend
towards simplicity, would not become grander, more
fascinating, more ennobling every year. It would tend
to become a mere labyrinth of complex irrational details,

On Two Penholders, 191

in wliich no necessity and no order could be traced.
For the appearances which nature presents, exhibit a
continual variety ; apparently contradictory results con-
stantly take place. It is the recognition of negatives,
bringing opposite appearances under one law, that
emphatically introduces order.

How much more of order and of light this simple
process is destined to introduce into our thoughts we
cannot foresee. It may be that some hitherto dark and
barren regions in the mental world may be turned by it
into bright and fruitful fields. But we cannot anticipate
them here. The point we notice is, that be its effects,
past or future, however great or wonderful, the entire
principle is contained in the trivial instance of the second
penholder.

But there is another point also in which some of the
largest laws of human nature are illustrated by this little
thing. If we consider for a moment, we perceive that it
was quite impossible that the last of these penholders —
the one with the portions of metal cut out — could have
been invented first. Even without regard to the manifest
superiority of the latter, their order could not have been
inverted. The worse, if it came at all, must have come
first. Nay, it could not but have come first, at least in
thought. For the idea being to put something as a guide
to the child's fingers, how could the first conception be
other than that of putting some positive substantial
thing ? The addition of the solid plates must have had
precedence in the mind to that of taking away. How
ever soon it might have arisen, the latter notion must have
been a second thought. And in this instance it did not
suggest itself until the first conception had been realised,
tried, and shown itself a palpable mistake. Probably it
only suggested itself to another mind. But if it had

192 On Two Penholders.

arisen immediately Tipon the first, and had been the only-
one realised in practice, it would still have been equally
the second thought.

In a word, we see that here a false method, a plan
essentially the wrong one, must by the nature of the case,
by the very nature of our faculties, have preceded the
right. Two steps were necessary for rightly doing this
little thing ; it could not have been accomplished by less :
one of them abortively aiming at a result, the other
achieving it ; one complex, the other simple : one natur-
ally, and indeed inevitably suggesting itself, the other
manifestly the right.

But this again is a great law. The order of human
progress is shown in it as truly, as completely — nay, with
an eminent precision and distinctness — as in the greatest
and most serious affairs. Man ever advances in this two-
fold course, and by a necessity inherent in his nature ever
must do so. His first thought, his first attempt is ever
an abortive one ; at once complex and ineffective for its
purpose. Especially it errs in introducing elements which
are unnecessary, and which, while inevitable, yet baffle
his own design. He finds the true only by perceiving
where the " natural " goes astray.

I say, this is at once a law rooted in his nature, and a
fact evident in his history. Plainly it must be the case
in every instance which agrees with this of the penholder
in being the recognition of a negative ; whether as a cause
in nature, or as a means to his own ends. In all these
cases the same necessity of first conceiving some positive
thing will be present. And in all other cases, too, there
is an evident necessity that the law should hold good,
and that man should arrive at truth not by a mere con-
tinuous progress but by two main steps ; one of them a
correction of the other. The necessity is evident in this,

On Two Penholders. 193

that man starts with insufficient knowledge; starts
indeed on each new inquiry essentially in ignorance,
which cannot be removed except through theories and
trials. " Starting from ignorance," it has been said,
" error must have precedence of truth." And surely it
is evident it must ; nay, if it were not so, where were
the benefit of knowledge ? Facts cannot be accurately
observed without a theory, or some supposition, by
which to connect them and make them significant ; but
how is this supposition, which has been formed without a
knowledge of the facts, to be a true one ? It is even a
contradiction to imagine it possible to be true. If the
human mind have any laws, and obey any order, the
conclusions it arrives at when the necessary data are
present must be different from those which it arrives at
when they are wanting. To say that man must first go
wrong ere he goes right is merely to say that he must
fulfil the inevitable conditions of acquiring knowledge.

And when we turn to experience and ask its verdict,
is it a doubtful one ? What is human progress but one
long history of success obtained through failure, and truth
at last triumphant after long conflict with established
error ? Do not our two penholders sum up the whole ?
Are they not history in miniature ; the course and fathom
of time compressed, as it were, into a needle's point ?

Nor need we be reluctant to concede — for our honour
or advantage sake — that such as this is the condition of
our knowledge, the price of our success. The deeper we
penetrate into nature the more plainly does it appear that
such as this is her course also ; a path retraced ; an action
doubled, as it were, upon itself; a power exhibited in
opposites, mutually linked together and dependent. This
is her life, her harmony. A poor and superficial view it
is that finds mere discord and disorder in this destined

N

194 ^^ Two Pe7iholders.

interlinking of truth with error, and co-operation of
disaster with achievement. Seen with a clearer eye, does
it not reveal itself rather as the very mystery of life ? of
life, which finds its basis in decay and draws support and
progress from its ceaseless interchange with death. That
is the perfect order from wliich no element of human
weakness, or of human error is excluded ; which absorbs
and turns to its own purposes all that most seems to
threaten it. A truth that lives and grows through error,
a success which makes failure tributary — before what
obstacles shall they succumb ? The progress of man's
thoudit, the achievement of his ends, are most assured in
this, that they are served by their enemies, strengthened
by that which seems to undermine them. Linked, in a
word, with nature, and holding verily by God's own right
hand — though he knows it not, or has forgotten — man
shares the very privilege he envies ; possesses what he
vainly seeks.

( 195 )

XV.

ON MIRACLE.

{April i2>66.)

It seems a pity that — owing to the feeling we have that
reducing things to law separates them from their imme-
diate relation to God — there arises a perpetual opposition
(felt more or less distinctly by most men, if not by all)
between science and religion ; at least between science
and religion in its emotional, if not in its theological
aspects. The perpetually recurring difficulty about
prayer, brought of late into so great a prominence,
illustrates, while it also establishes, the fact of this
opposition. It may seem easy to remove the difficulty
by the affirmation that the laws of nature are themselves
a direct expression of the divine activity ; but, if we may
judge by results, this solution is for the majority of
people rather verbal than real. To me it appears that
the view last suggested truly contains the key that is
needed, but that it co-exists, at least in the minds of
many, with certain other ideas which prevent their
applying it efficiently.

These ideas also appear to be very intimately con-
nected with the doctrine of the miraculous, for the
miracle — the essential character of which is that it is at
least an apparent suspension of the laws of nature, —
stands before us (who believe in miracles) as a special

196 On Miracle,

exhibition of the divine energy. We can hardly help
feeling, that in a miracle God comes nearer to us, that it
is an event in which something that otherwise intervenes
between Him and ourselves is put aside. Thus, to our
feeling the miraculous becomes the specially divine,
which is the same thing as to say that the non-miraculous
is to a certain extent not divine. Nor does it avail, that
in our reflective moments we repudiate this conclusion ;
we do but create a discord within ourselves, unless we
can also clearly account for the origin of the feeling we
repudiate. The strongest natural impression will become
the servant of a thought that can interpret it ; the weakest
absolutely refuses to be suppressed.

I venture to think, therefore, that a really hearty
acceptance of the teaching of science on the part of
religious men, — and what is, perhaps, even of more con-
sequence, a cessation of the feeling on the part of men of
science that religious men cannot accept its teaching,
depend in a very great degree, — upon an advance in our
conception in respect to miracle.

And thus : the miracle (all will probably allow) is
designed to reveal to us the fact of God's presence and
operation. Let us ask ourselves, then. How does God
reveal Himself ? How has He done so ? How, so far
as we can conceive, must He do so ? The answer surely
is in each case plain. To reveal His heart and life. He
emptied Himself, and took part in our infirmities. He
revealed Himself by (so to speak) putting aside infini-
tude ; making Himself less, that to us He might be more.
Nay, how should He do otherwise to come within the
range of vision so contracted, a heart so narrow ? For
us to see God, the infinite must become finite, the perfect
submit to imperfection, the untemptable struggle with
temptation.

On Miracle. 197

It is by a limitation God is revealed. Eatlier, He
withdraws Himself, than brings His infinite closeness
nearer, when He would have ns feel His presence ; puts
barriers between us rather than casts them down when
He would have us, — not touch Him, indeed — but know
that we touch Him. As between the infinite light and
the darkness of our eye, the more is less, the less is
more ; it is when the noontide fades into the evening we
can look upon the sun. This is surely true under every
aspect; infinitude is practically inapprehensible by us.
Let that which is constant cease, and its existence is per-
ceived ; that which is all-pervading be partially with-
drawn, and our consciousness is evoked. The bearing of
this on miracle is evident. We may well allow that the
divine action excels ours, not only in magnitude, but in
character. In ours, necessity is wanting ; nay, we can-
not, without a certain difficulty, conceive it present with-
out abolishing our agency. In God's action it is not so ;
necessity does not exclude His agency, but stamps it as
divine.

This lesson, science, if it do not really exclude God
from nature, emphatically teaches us ; but God's action,
which includes among its characters necessity (that
which we have been taught to call law), how should it
appear to us to be His ? It is too much for us ; too all
pervading — too divine. In it we live and move and
have our being ; we cannot put it away from ourselves,
point to it as at a distance, and say — "Behold, there
is God ! " Embraced and buried in it, as in the all-
surrounding air, we seek for tangible proof of it in vain ;
we cry with Job, " Oh that I knew where I might find
Him ! " " Behold, I go forward, but He is not there ; and
backward, but I cannot perceive Him. On the left
hand where He doth work, but I cannot behold Him r

198 On Miracle,

He liideth Himself on the right hand, that I cannot see
Him."

It is a cry that God has heard poured forth in
passionate complaints from thousand human lips, or
more pitifully acted on knees bent down to idols or to
Mammon. The prayer has entered into the ears of the
Lord God of Hosts; it has sunk into His heart. He
has made manifest His action. How ? — by coming
nearer ? — by doing more ? Ah, foolish heart, that would
think so of God, and thus fill its own path with dark-
ness ! How should an activity that is everywhere
reveal itself; a power which is never absent within us
or without be made palpable to us as a thing apart ?
There is but one way: it must be made less; for a
moment, for a point, withdrawn. Then we perceive it
— an action to which necessity is wanting, a miracle ;
an action arbitrary, like our own, the not-divine.

In a word, the miracle is not more divine than the
course of nature, yet it truly reveals God. It is God (so
to speak) becoming for our sakes less divine, — emptying
Himself, exhibiting Himself as sharing the imperfection
of our action, that we may see Him; that we may
perceive " that is AN act," recognising it as an action like
our own. God shares, in miracle, the imperfection of
our action ; as, in Christ, He shows Himself, sharing the
imperfection of our being. So He reveals Himself ; but,
truly, not as in a special act, but as everywhere and
for ever acting : the All-doer ; save, indeed, where our
arbitrariness comes in, and He is not. Yes, truly, God
reveals Himself in the miracle, as in His Son, by accept-
ing imperfections.

There is an analogy to this thought (as surely to all
true thoughts) so close and exact, that it would be
hardly just to the subject to leave it unmentioned. The

On Miracle. 199

air surrounds us, presses on us at every point, and
because of this absoluteness of its presence, is un-
perceived ; but let it be partially withdrawn — a vacuum
made, and we perceive an action ; apparently the action
(the suction) of the vacuum, but in truth not so, it is
the all-surrounding pressure we perceive. The vacuum
brings to our consciousness for a moment, and at a point,
the ever-present all-pervading air; its pressure is pre-
sented to our apprehension in this inverted form.
Naturally we think of it as a special act ; but when we
recognise it as a special absence, the whole truth stands
clear.

Blessed be God, that by miracles He has taught us to
know that He doth act. More blessed, that His action
is not in the miracle, but in that ever-constant order, the
necessity of which has its root in Love, its uniformity in
Holiness. More blessed, that He has given us the
privilege, not of beholding miracles — (even though we
" ate bread and were filled ; " nay, though we received
our dead raised to life, as even night is beautiful with
stars) — but of witnessing in the silent unfolding of the
great law before us, by new even though as yet uncon-
scious prophets, the proof that all things are of Him.
What if dawn banishes from sight — nay, almost from
belief — the nightly glory of the heavens ? It is the sun
arising.

( 200 )

XVL

SHORT NOTES ON LONG QUESTIONS,

NO. I. A HINT FROM LORD BACON.

Mat 1866.

A PASSAGE in Lord Bacon's " Essay on Truth " has often
afforded me a good deal of amusement. He says, speak-
ing of a certain class of people : " There be that delight
in giddinesse ; and count it a bondage to fix a beleefe ;
affecting freewill in thinking as well as in acting." I do
not know that we do very often, in these days, meet with
people of this sort, an affectation, at least, of rationality
having become the fasliion ; but the idea of them seems
to haunt my fancy, and in imagination I have often made
their acquaintance. Surely it would be a pleasant re-
freshment, after a hard day's work amidst realities, to
pass an hour with a friend who thought just as he chose,
and verily asserted as his sincere belief whatever pleased
him best. It would be as good as a trip to fairyland ;
and, indeed, in fairyland (where we must be excused for
transporting the reader in such haste) we might imagine
ourselves confronting a being who not only assumed, but
really did possess freewill in thinking. I think it is worth
our while to try and conceive him — a person with aU
the outward form and figure of a man, called upon to
fulfil life's duties, yet with a notion that two and two
might make five when convenient, and that if it suited
him best, to-morrow would obligingly come before to-day.

A Hint from Lord Bacon. 201

Let us conceive the man, moreover, proud of this power
of thinking as he liked, and supposing it the true intel-
lectual prerogative of manhood; drawing advantageous
contrasts between himself, whose thoughts were free, and
the poor creatures who could think only in one way.
Imagine him feeling himself to be not wanting, but in
possession of, a power. That would really be freewill in
thinking. And it would be, as we see, simply the ab-
sence of the rational nature of man ; it would be a
seeming power coming into existence by a want. The
true faculty of thought is based upon necessity, it has no
freedom but in the inevitable fulfilment of law, choice is
its death. Our man, endowed with a freewill in think-
ing and proud of it, is precisely, so far as reason is con-
cerned, an idiot.

It is worth our while, I say, to imagine this picture,
because perhaps there is another which may be put by
the side of it, and that picture is ourselves. This I affirm,
that man, in his seeming prerogative of freewill in acting,
is the spiritual idiot of the universe, and that the power
of acting rightly or wrongly, as we choose, is no other
thing than the want of the true spiritual nature. It is
the nature of action, as of thought, to be necessary ; nor
has it, nor can it have, other freedom than in a fulfilment
of law, inevitable and without possibility of deviation.

Our freewill is simply the expression of a want in man.
We are proud of our arbitrary power of doing, as an idiot
might be proud of his arbitrary power of believing.

Two objections, however, immediately appear to rise
against this view, one, that as a matter of fact, our free-
will or power of moral choice is the distinction which
raises us above the things around us. We are superior
to things, if not exclusively, at least pre-eminently, in
being called upon to take our stand for right or wrong ;

202 A Hint from Lord Bacon,

and if we were not, we were no longer men. The second
objection is like unto the first, and is, that to conceive
our action made necessary is to conceive it reduced to
passiveness, and make our deeds truly our acts no more.

To these two objections the answer is one. Our action,
although arbitrary, does elevate us above things which
have no relation, not even a defective one, to action; as
even an arbitrary power of thinking would elevate its
possessor above things which have no relation whatever
to thought. An idiot, though in the full sense he cannot
be called a man, is, at least, more than a stone. We may
say of him that he ought to be a man.

And so we may say of ourselves.

We are legitimately proud of our arbitrary action be-
cause the true action is not presented to us wherewith to
compare our own ; so might an arbitrary thinker be legiti-
mately proud if the range of his experience presented to
him no thinkers in the true sense of the word. Nor,
doubtless, can our false pride cease even to be legitimate,
so long as our sensuous apprehensions bound the scope of
our thoughts. But it is seen in its true light when we
suffer them to rise where our own best experience and
our religious faith unite to call them. Of action that is
necessary, and yet not passive, that is most perfect be-
cause necessary, we do know. We ascribe it to God ; it
is His great prerogative with whom " it is impossible to
lie." It may baffle conception, but it is not hard to
faith ; even to the heart it is easy also, for in our own
experience we almost know it too. In our best moments,
when God's lovingkindness shines on us most brightly,
does He not seem almost to share His own privilege with
us, and show us how necessity and action are at one in
Him ? He makes them one in us, banishing choice,

A Hint from Lord Bacon, 203

making choice hateful to us, by a compulsion which is
not bondage, a necessity we recognise as Freedom.

The standard that we take determines our feeling
here ; and for the standard of humanity we look in vain
if we do not look to God.

Necessity and action, then, truly are one and not
opposed ; the type of action is God's action. The want
that is in us making our action arbitrary, and the limita-
tion of our sensible experience which presents to our eyes
no action of the perfect type, have imposed on us the
contrary thought, from which, surely, sincerely to reflect
is to be free.

One or two thoughts may be added. The argument
rests on the basis of a want in our own nature ; it is
enough to say, surely, that this is a known fact; we
make no assumption to meet the exigencies of the case.
If human life has any significance, if the human heart
and conscience are not dreams, it is a " true cause " that
we assign. We have said, too, that the seeming posses-
sion of a power comes by an absence ; to this also mani-
fold experience testifies ; not to refer to more instances
than one, how much false feeUng of greatness comes by
mere absence of humility.

And finally, what would come of the possession of an
arbitrary power of thinking ? What but just that which
does come from arbitrary power of acting ? — failure, loss,
grievous error, distress, ruin. And what remedy, but in
learning to think as thought would be if its necessity
were not wanting ; and then, if it so might be, the restora-
tion of the intellectual life ? — our remedies, through God's
goodness : first, learning to act as if necessity were, where
alas ! it is not, and in the end the raising up — how can
we say it, but— to Life ?

204 A Fragment on Fragmejits,

NO. II. A FRAGMENT ON FRAGMENTS.

June 1866.
Knowledge comes to us piecemeal. If we look at a
child we see that it learns by the gradual accumulation
of minute items of intelligence, which its little faculties
must be often sorely taxed so to put together as to make
any reason out of the world at all. And when men
address themselves seriously to the task of understanding
things in any other than a childish way, they find that
they have the child's task again — to learn to interpret
fragments. For may not Science be altogether thus
described ? And unscientific fancies, what are they but
fragmentary impressions reasoned on as if they consti-
tuted wholes ? The floating of a feather, for example, is
but a fragment of the great phenomenon of weight ; the
tides are another fragment of the same ; the planetary
motions exhibit yet another. Fire is a fragment of
chemical afiB.nity ; respiration another fragment ; the
rusting of our knives another; light, heat, music, are
fragments again, fragments of one thing — ^vibration. So,
if we went on through the entire domain of Science, we
should surely find that it might all be thus described : it
is the interpreting of fragments. If, indeed, we consider,
do we not see that it must be so ? Our perceptions
must be partial, our consciousness fragmentary, by the
very limits which constitute us what we are. Nor need
we in the least degree complain (nor indeed do we) ; for
if we have but fragments to begin with, these fragments
yield us in the end very satisfactory results, and much
pleasure in their attainment. Our faculties are precisely
adapted — exquisitely adjusted, indeed, it seems to us, if
we had time to pursue the subject, to the work they are
called upon to perform. The interpretation of fragments

A Fragment on Fragments. 205

is just the tiling which man's intellect, rightly used, can
do ; which, when it is rightly trained, it most delights to
do. To have fragments given us is to possess the sure
means of knowledge.

One thing, however, needs to be noted, obvious though
it is ; that the fragments which are given us to begin
with are often, by virtue of their being fragments, most
imlike that which a complete knowledge shows them to
be ; nay, are most exactly adapted to mislead us : see
the floating feather, as remarked, or the rising of water
in a vacuum, as instances of the effect of weight. But
this matters little. The illusions arising from causes
such as these are illusions which we can, and with
infinite profit to ourselves in the process, correct.

From fragments to learn wholes, or out of natural
illusions to arrive at truth (which is the same thing),
this is manifestly man's problem. We refer to it for
this reason, that it seems to us to contain in a clear
and matter-of-fact form, the essence of the much-vexed
question of the " Authority of Consciousness." Those of
us who have not yet outgrown that weakness of the
world's infancy, a fondness for metaphysics, are aware
that this has become a grand problem in recent times —
whether we can trust consciousness ; and if not, whether
we can have any certainty at all, or must not ever
flounder in a hopeless quagmire. This question has
been argued and re-argued, and one sees no end. But
does not the whole perplexity arise from this simple
cause, that the nature of our consciousness to be frag-
mentary has been forgotten ? We may trust our
consciousness, certainly, to give us fragments. This is
what it ought to do — all it ought to do. That we so
desperately suspect we cannot trust it (our desperate
affirmations to the contrary beiag the sign of this

2o6 A Fragment on Fragments.

suspicion), is because we have been trusting to it to give
us more. We may call it more, for argument's sake ;
but in truth, any such more were infinitely less.

We receive from our consciousness fragments in the
metaphysical, just as in the physical or scientific sphere.
And for fragments we may trust it, in each sphere alike ;
in each also mistrusting it alike ; that is, knowing that it
will cheat us if we misuse it. Its chief misuse being
(above all things), to forget that it gives us fragments
only.

All this is in words conceded, or rather affirmed, by
the doctriue of the limits of man's nature, and the partial
character of his apprehensions. It would be curious
that it should have been so overlooked in the sphere of
metaphysics, if there had not been so many like cases,
in respect to men's thoughts of things physical for
example, to take off the edge of the singularity.

Consciousness, then, in respect to ourselves, as well as
in respect to external things, gives us fragments. Thus,
for instance, we have a fragmentary consciousness in
respect to our power of physical exertion. We are con-
scious of the power simply as our own, as if it were
inherent in ourselves ; but this is evidently a fragment.
The power by which we move our arms is not iaherent
in us; it is derived from our food, and is the very
force which was in air and herb. We are conscious
again of a power of freewill — of arbitrary acting of our
own choice — truly conscious of a fragment. What our
freewill is — the interpretation of this fragment — has
been before suggested in these pages. We are con-
scious, also, of being in, and surrounded by, a material
world ; again a fragmentary consciousness, open to, and
soliciting an interpretation. So our consciousness of an
isolated individuality — personality as we perhaps mis-

Of N attire, 207

takenly call it ; for surely God, and not ourselves, is the
true type of personality — this is a fragment too. And
in the moral region again, our consciousness of pain, of
sin, of virtue, and of joy ; of God's absence — nay, even
of His presence — these are fragments. Shall we fear to
learn their interpretation ? to find in them more perfect-
ness of reason, a wider harmony ? Granted that it were
to rise above ourselves, may we not rise nearer God ?

God has made everything double ; one over against
another. Everything in Nature has in Nature also its
symbol. And in respect to this task, this privilege, of
interpreting fragments, we see the symbol in geology.
When the Palaeontologist, taking the fragment of some
long-lost and buried animal, re-constructs from it the
whole, he represents the total work of man. That is the
universal problem : from the little given to find the
much withheld — best given in that withholding.

This is the sum : the " Authority of Consciousness "
dispute rests on a strange yet natural oblivion of what
our consciousness must be, and ought to be for its
greatest final use. Wholes have been sought, when
fragments are all that can be given ; and are besides the
best that can be given. While these fragments yet
await even a serious attempt at their interpretation, may
not discussions — surely now proved futile — as to what
consciousness does or does not vouch for, and how far
we may trust its vouching, be at least deferred ?

NO. III. OF NATUKE.

July 1866.

I AM gazing on a glorious landscape. From the hillside
on which I sit, as far as the eye can reach, the plain
stretches out before me in all the freshness of the early
summer ; green, and brown, and gold exquisitely mingled,

2o8 Of Nature,

and overarched by a sky of the deepest and tenderest
blue. The declining sun casts long lines of shadow
athwart the scene, toning its brilliancy as by a faint
whisper of coming rest. On my right hand rises in the
distance an amphitheatre of hills, while close beside me
on the left stands a group of oaks, from beneath whose
shade comes to my ear the music of childish voices.
As I drink in the scene it seems almost to raise the soul
to heaven ; hardly can one believe that this is a portion
of that poor earth on which man sins, and suffers, and
seeks rest in vain. An angel were surely cursed with
that primal sin of ambition if he craved an abode more
glorious. And yet I know that it is not enough even
for me ; the eye seems like a traitor to the heart — it
speaks an infinite promise, but the fulfilment fails. The
charm it sees in N'ature is like a halo round the brow of
an inquisitor ; it is the face of Nature that is fair — her
heart is stern and cruel. She may fill the child's lap
with flowers ; she crowns the man with thorns.

And no wonder ; for what do we find when we
examine this enchanting beauty ? What, but that it is
a transparent cheat ? Hear the philosophers discourse of
light and colour ; they are fictions only — baseless fabrics
of a " vision," which, as they vanish, leave nothing behind
but so much motion. " The splendour of the firmament
is the transmitted shiver of bodies millions of miles
distant, which translates itself in our consciousness into
the aspect of the stars." This shiver is conveyed through
an all-filling ether, as substance " almost infinitely more
attenuated than any gas, but its properties are those of a
solid rather than of a gas. It resembles jelly rather than

air Both light and heat [and all the other forces

that we find in Nature] are modes of motion." ^

^ Professor Tyudall, "Fortnightly Review," December 1865.

Of Nature, 209

Here is clearly put before us the problem of perception.
In one way or other we do not perceive N'ature as it is.
The view that we are taught to take, and in which,
though surely not without some unanswered questionings,
we for the most part acquiesce, is, that we perceive it as
ffiore than it is, marvellously and quite incomprehensibly
more ; for it is needless to remark that no one has yet
suggested even the hint of an explanation how or why
mere motion should make us perceive light, colour, beauty,
the soul-moving harmonies of sound, every thrill our
bodies feel of pleasure, every pang of pain. But the
causes of all these things, so far as they are in Nature
apart from us (we are taught), are motions merely —
vibrations for the most part of small particles.

This view — that matter and motion give us our
perception of Nature — appears to me totally untenable
on many grounds, but I waive, for the present, all other
arguments but these ; namely, that it is opposed to what
we know in all cases with which the question can be
compared, and that the fragmentary nature of our
consciousness gives us a solution at once more reasonable
in itself, and more comformable to experience. First, the
idea that the impressions we receive from Nature surpass
the object which causes them is opposed to experience in
all cases in which we can put the question to the test.
It is enough to refer in general to obvious circumstances
— that the eye can perceive only a part, cannot indeed
penetrate below surface, and that the apparent bulk of
objects is ever less than their true dimensions. If we
take the sense of touch, on the other hand, the extreme
inadequacy of the impressions which it gives us is manifest.
It is but a very small part of any bulky object that the
hands can feel at any given time, and many qualities of
bodies are altogether beyond their reach. In short, the idea

0

2IO Of Nature.

whicli we form of any solid object is based, not merely
upon the impressions conveyed to us, but upon a mental
process of reflection, by which that is thought of as
existing which is not contained in our impression ; we
add the unseen parts : if it be distant, we allow for
distance — we include weight ; we recognise the substance
as filling, with a certain structure, all the space it
occupies : in fact, we think of it not as we do perceive
it, but as we think we should perceive it if we perfectly
examiQed it. In tliinking of it thus, we add what is not,
what cannot be, in our impression of it. Therefore,
when I am told to think of Nature as being less than
my impression, I reply that to do so is contrary to my
experience — that is, to all my experience of a like kind
which I am capable of putting to the test.

There are, however, one or two apparent exceptions.
First, there are pictures which produce upon the beholder
an impression far surpassing that of a merely coloured
surface. To this it is to be said, that in so far as the
impression is other than that of a coloured surface merely,
it depends upon the spectator's previous knowledge, and
is an act of thought ; the feeling is mental, not sensa-
tional, and therefore is not parallel to the case we are
considering. Much might be said on Nature regarded
as a picture, but it does not belong strictly to our present
subject. Again, there are objects like the kaleidoscope,
in which by a simple mechanism, more or less beautiful
and surprising results are produced upon our senses. It
might seem that here we have an instance in which the
impression surpasses the object; but the case of the
kaleidoscope appears to me one of the most striking argu-
ments on the other side. In the first place it is true
the symmetrical figures presented to the eye are not in the
instrument ; but there is in the instrument an arrange-

Of Nature, 211

ment of reflecting glasses ; and, secondly, the case is most
precisely opposite to the view of Nature that I combat.
In the kaleidoscope there is found, on examination, an
adaptation to produce upon us the impressions we receive
from it. In respect to Nature the case is the reverse.
Here we seem to find, upon examination, no such adapta-
tion. What we are called on to believe is, that mere
motions produce in us ecstasy and horror — the very
raptures of heaven, the extreme of awe ; a belief which,
if there were no other grounds for rejecting it, even so
smaU an example of the reason that is in all things as
the kaleidoscope, would forbid us to entertain. Examina-
tion discovers reason in the one case, banishes it in the
other.

I repeat, then, that to suppose the impressions we
receive from Nature are caused by matter and motion
is contrary to all experience. There is, secondly, a better
thought upon the subject, presented to us in the reflec-
tion that our consciousness is fragmentary. Doubtless,
Nature is not less than our impression ; but may we not
with just as little doubt affirm that it is more ? Though,
in our perception, it is not magnified, it is made less. If
we would know Nature truly, how should we proceed ?
what course does reason dictate, experience sanction ? It
is this : to think of it as an existence, truly containing
qualities and powers which escape our immediate view;
powers which are adapted to effect all that Nature works
in our experience ; all impulses of delight or agony, of
passionate emotion or solemn aspiration ; but which can-
not be measured even by these. Deep as our apprehen-
sion may be, and doubtless truest when most deep, it is
but a fragment still.

And here, it seems to me, is the clue (not really less
probable, because so simple) to the idea of Nature, as

2 1 2 Of Nature,

" matter of force," which has obtained so firm a lodgment
in our minds. This idea is but an instance of a frag-
mentary consciousness, reasoned on as if it were a whole.
Taking their partial perception as the basis of their
thought, men have inferred a theory which proves, of
course, insufficient for the facts. The natural supposition
of a principle of " lightness " to account for the rising of
certain bodies, illustrates the case. Here was a partial
perception — the rising body being seen, but not the
superincumbent weight — and a false supposition followed,
corrected by a larger knowledge, and an allowance made
in thought for elements unperceived.

In fine, Nature cannot be " matter and motion," because
of what it does ; but that theory has been forced on us
by the fragmentary nature of our consciousness, whereby
a partial apprehension has come to be treated as a whole.

( 213 )

XYII.

THE MYSTERY OF PAIN,

The thought which is sought to be conveyed in "The Mys-
stery of Pain " is a simple one. For instance, we all know
that there is a very great pleasure in giving ; indeed, if
we are very fond of any one, there is no pleasure so great
as being able to give him something, or to serve him in
some way by our labour. Let us take a small instance to
begin with : — Suppose a father has a sick child ; has he
not much more pleasure in giving an orange to the child
than in eating it himself? And would he not nitlier
liimself give the child an orange than that ojie should
be supplied to him by any one else ? He has his best
pleasure in going without that the child may have. So,
too, does not a husband — if he deserves the name —
delight to take some trouble, or go without some little
pleasure, that he may give pleasure to his wife, and the
wife for the husband, and the child for his parents ? And
is not this the best of all pleasure when we do not merely
enjoy ourselves, but when we cause those we love to en-
joy themselves ?

But this simple fact contains, like a seed, the whole
thought of the book, which is, that our sufferings really
are a giving to others and serving others, though possibly
we may not see how. This case may be imagined. Sup-
pose a person loses out of his pocket a small sum of

214 The Mystery of Pain,

money : of course he is sorry. He is not willing to lose
it ; it is a pain to him, perhaps a very great pain, and
would seem quite a useless loss. But suppose, again,
that by some accident this lost money fell into the hands
of a dear friend of the person who lost it, and that it
saved his friend from some great misfortune, perhaps kept
him from starvation or prevented him from robbing.
Then would not the person who lost it — if he came to
know of this good result of his loss — be glad instead of
sorry ? Would he not be willing to have lost it, instead
of unwilling ? If he was a generous man, he would.
And then, as soon as he was glad his friend had had the
money, it would be just the same as if he had given it to
him. It would be as much his gift to his friend, when
he once said, " I am glad you had it, and you are quite
welcome to it," as if he had put his hand into his pocket
and given it to him. And he would have just the same
pleasure in serving his friend so — although he did not
know it at the time, and was very sorry for his loss — as
if he had goi^e to him and said, " Take this." Perhaps he
might have even more pleasure : he might be aU the
more glad because his friend was helped by his loss with-
out having to receive charity from him. Indeed, it
might be, that if he had wished to help his friend, he
might not have known what he wanted, or his friend
miojht have refused his aid. And so his not knowing
about it might be the very means of getting him that
great pleasure of helping one he loved. So we see that,
if others are served by our losses when we do not know,
that does not make our pleasure less when we do know,
and does not prevent the service being our gift to them,
as soon as ever we are willing that they should have
received it through our loss.

This illustration is used in the book ; it might possibly

The Mystery of Pain, 215

be objected, that in using money thus found, honesty
would be violated ; but this does not affect the argument.
Any other service rendered unknowingly to a friend
would illustrate it equally well.

In fact, it is so good a thing to serve others that the
goodness never can be got out of it. It may be hidden
from us, so that we may be grieved for what we should
rejoice in if we knew all about it ; but it cannot be lost.
Only let us come to know and be willing, at any time,
and then we have all the joy and all the good of our ser-
vice just as if we had known and intended it from the
first.

Letters are sometimes written in an ink which becomes
visible only when warmed by the fire, and a service un-
consciously rendered to another through our own loss is
like a letter written in such invisible ink, the words of
which exist none the less truly because they are not seen.
Our knowledge and our love are like the fire which brings
them into view.

Some things, then, may seem to be very bad, and yet
truly be very good ; nay, may be among the best things
that can possibly be. For it is wonderful, when we
think of it, how much better a thing it is to bear some-
thing painful for another than for ourselves.

It is very often the case that losses or pain do a great
deal of good to the person who suffers them. They may
make him wiser or more careful ; they may even warn
liim from sin and break the influence of bad habits, and
in this way be the source of infinite blessing. And be-
cause of this good they do us, by God's loving will, we
may be and ought to be willing, and even more than
wiUing, to bear them, sharp though they may be. They
are mercies in disguise, even though they should seem to
render service to no one but ourselves. But when we

2 1 6 The Mystery of Pain,

know that a pain or loss of ours does good to some one
else, to some one whom we truly love, then it is a very-
different thing. Then we are not only willing to bear it as
the least of two evils, but we rejoice in it ; we are glad
of the opportunity of bearing it ; we would not part with
it. Look at a mother with her child. Does she not re-
joice in her trouble ? Would she like to put it off upon
another ? unless indeed she be no mother. Which would
best reward us for struggling with the waves, to save
one's own life from danger, or to rescue a drowning man ?
Which would the Italian volunteers think best, to under-
go their toils to free their countrymen in Venice, or to
gain something for themselves ?

This, then, is the way in which it is proposed in the
book before us to look at all the misery and sorrow in
the world ; to think of it as being borne, not by each one
for himself, but by every one for others; as serving
others in some unseen way. So regarded, it is truly a
good, even now, while, because its uses are unseen, we
feel it as an evil ; and it may be destined — is destined
— to be the highest and most perfect joy of those who
have suffered it, to be their dearest possession and de-
light hereafter, when in the future state they are made to
see and know the good that it has done, and shall say
with all their hearts, '' I give it freely for that end ;
blessed be God, who has given me, however blindly,
however unwillingly, the privilege of serving." From
this thought the following words proceed —

"There are the materials, then, evidently within us
for an entire change of our thoughts respecting pain.
The world in this respect, we might almost feel, seems to
tremble in the balance. A touch might transform it
wholly. One flash of light from the Unseen, one word,
spoken by God, might suffice to make the dark places

The Mystery of Pain. 2 1 7

bright, and wrap the sorrow-stricken heart of man in the
wonder of an unutterable glory."

" If all pain might be seen in the light of martyrdom :
if the least and lowest in man's poor and puny life — or
shall we rather say, in God's great universe — might be
interpreted by its best and highest, were not the work
done ? It is done, for the light has shone, the word is
spoken."

That is, God has revealed to us in Christ both that His
own life is a life of sacrifice and service, and that ours
truly is so too; and also He has shown us what
service it is that our losses and sorrows render to the
world. He has shown us man's need of a new and
better life, of a higher nature. He has shown us that He
is the Eedeemer of mankind, and that He is carrying out
that redemption, and raising men up into a higher and
holier state, making man like Himself. This, God has
shown us, is the work He is doing in the world ; and this
work of making mankind perfect is helped on by all that
we are called upon to bear. God is the great Giver, and
He is giving life to men ; for this is not man's proper life
which leaves him as he now is, prone to sin and selfishness.
God is giving the best of all gifts to men — a new and
holy nature ; and when He lets us suffer or lose, be it
much or little, He joins us with Himself in His giving,
makes us the servants of humanity, bearing for it even
as He bears.

But in carrying out the thought that we are permitted
by God to help His work by our sorrows, it is -not meant
to imply that the sins of others are laid upon our head,
or that our sufferings have any merit. Christ has made
the one sacrifice, and worked the full salvation. But then
this work of raising man to holiness, which Christ has
rendered possible once for all, is now being carried out —

2 1 8 The Mystery of Pain.

is being carried out in all things, and in our pains and our
losses among the rest. Not that these have any special
virtue, or hear any special part; they are only God's
special gift to us of serving. He does not need our
services indeed, except as love needs the best blessedness
of all it loves, and cannot do without it. But, being
Love, He cannot be content unless He gives us the best
thing He has to give, and that is to join us with Himself
in giving. As a father makes room for his child's gifts
among his own, and will not so supply all domestic
wants, and so complete all charities, that the child shall
have no opportunity to add his mite, so God makes room
for our giving, gives us opportunities to bestow our mites
of service, takes us up, and links us with Himself as the
givers of life to man.

These are our losses and our pains ; this is our
wretchedness ; this glory clothes the darkness of our
grief. And surely we may at least say this — -if God
would give us the best and greatest gift, that which,
above all others, we might long for and aspire after, it is
this that He must give us, the privilege He gave His
Son, to be used and sacrificed for the best and greatest
end. Nothing else could so fill our nature or satisfy our
hearts as this, that Christ's own life should be renewed,
His work fulfilled in us ; that we should be united witli
Him so, and feel St. Paul's words true of our own poor
and blank-seeming sorrows, " I fill up that which is
behind of the afflictions of Christ," our sufferings being
related to an end which is not merely ours ; an end, that
is, of all ends, the greatest and the best.

But it must be remembered that -the result which thus
glorifies and makes good the painful part of human life
is one that we cannot see. We can, indeed, now and then,
trace how the sufferings of some do work good for others.

The Mystery of Pain, 219

How often does the sudden death of a neighbour turn
men from evil courses, or the grief of parents touch the
hardened feelings of a son. So, too, the world is benefited
by the strength its teachers gain through sorrow, and the
blood of martyrs secures their children's liberty. And
even in material things society is advanced by the
sacrifice of its members, and the losses of one generation
give birth to the successes of the next. The loss of life
in mines and manufactories leads men to the means of
safety ; shipwrecks improve navigation ; the bones of
discoverers whiten the plains that future generations see
white with harvests. But it is not of such visible results
that the book speaks. The good that is being worked out
in man is one that is not within our view, but is often
wrought in events that seem most opposed to good. It
is the regeneration of our nature ; a change so deep that
it involves the loss of much that seems very good to us,
much that would satisfy us ; for it is the raising mankind
up to a goodness that satisfies not us, but God who sees
not as man sees. So it is by faith it must be known and
felt. But, as it is pointed out, this is not a strange
demand, or one that should make the thought seem less
likely to be true. In almost aU cases whatever, we see
and know so little that it is only by thinking of that
which we cannot see, and should not naturally think,
that we can form true opinions. On this point the book
contains an argument which we need not follow into
detail, because, in fact, the simplest reflection is enough to
prove the point. We see so very little of the effects and
connections of things, that we may be sure their true
meaning will depend very much on what we do not see ;
therefore, when it is said that all human experience is
the bringing about of the restoration of man's nature, it
is no difficulty in the way, or evidence to the contrary,

2 20 The Mystery of Pain.

that it is not visibly so. It demands faitli ; but faitli is
the only true reason, for it alone takes into account that
which is not seen.

There is one other thought which it is necessary to
bear in mind, and that is — that to make sacrifice for others
always joyful to us, our own life must be made more
perfect. It would not be enough to make us good, or to
make us full of love ; we must have a more perfect
nature too, and tliat is heaven. The joy of heaven is a
joy in giving up, and there we shall have a nature fitted
for it. Here we may be willing, but we groan beneath
the pangs, as even Christ groaned, sharing our infirmity
to redeem us from it. He emptied Himself that so He
might feel sacrifice as pain. But in God we see perfect
sacrifice in perfect joy. He gives always and infinitely,
does that which is loss and sorrow to us, lives in sacri-
fice, and is wholly blest. Why, then, is sacrifice pain
to us ?

This is the answer : — Sacrifice, or giving, which is in
its true nature joy (as exercise is pleasure to a healthy
man), becomes painful to a being who is, as it were, under
disease, who is marred and weakened, and has not his
full powers of life ; just as exercise becomes pain to a
body that is diseased. A person suffering from rheuma-
tism feels it painful to move his arm ; but moving the
arm is not properly a painful thing, only disease makes
it so : and so we, being as it were diseased in our soul-
life, feel it painful to be sacrificed, though that is our
proper joy. But there is this difference, a person with
rheumatism does not lie and think, " Moving the arms is
a had thing, it hurts me so ; " he thinks, " I want curing ;
it hurts me so to move my arms." But we, feeling pain
in being sacrificed (which is our giving), do not say, " I
want curing, for I feel sacrifice painful ; " but, mistaking

The Mystery of Pain, 221

sadly, say, " It is a bad thing to be sacrificed, it hurts me
so." Bodily health loves exertion, and can only so
endure to live ; the life of man loves giving, and in
giving only can endure to be. That is heaven ; but to
aspire after heaven is our privilege, our duty, here, as
sickness aspires after health.

God wants our children sometimes, and we cannot
part with them ; it rends our hearts : but it is not a bad
thing to give a child to God ; it is a bad thing for human
life to be in such a state that we cannot give it but with
intolerable pangs.

But we may well ask, how can this be proved ? Well,
there are many proofs ; some lie deep down in science,
which proves all things to be necessarily joined together,
and to constitute some undiscovered whole ; some are in
reasonings which go to prove that the world must be
made thus, and that loss or suffering which is not giving
cannot be ; but there is another proof, open to us all, and
that lies in the heart.

Milton says — •

" They also SERVE who only stand and wait."

" And if they who stand and wait, do not those who suifer
too % Is it conceivable that God should give to some, whom
He blesses with health and vigour, and large gifts of influence,
the privilege of greatly serving Him, of doing a wide work of
use for others ; and that this privilege, which none else can
equal or supply, He withholds from those from whom He takes
health and strength, and every gift but that of suffering ?
Does He give the one the blessedness of serving, and refuse it
to the other ^ 'Are not my ways eqiial, saith the Lord.'

"If our life were ordained to be good, truly, satisfyingly
good, it could be made so only in one way. It must be a Ufe

22 2 ^ The Mystery of Pain.

of sacrifice, for all other goods fall short — we know they fall
infinitely short — of this ; and it must be sacrifice for unseen
ends, because the best ends must be unseen by us. To be the
best, our life must be sacrifice, and for ends unseen. It must
be, therefore, to us, just what our life is. Must we not believe,
then, that our life is this — the best %

"In its fruitless-seeming pains and failures, it fulfils the
conditions of being the best life, of presenting the highest
form of good, and of being turned to the best ends. It is this
God calls upon us to believe ; this is a demand He makes for
faith, showing us, to justify and confirm it, a life like our own,
of sori^ow and humiliation ; or, if in this unlike our own, un-
like only because the sorrow was greater, and the humiliation
more profound ; a life of sorrow in which the meaning and the
end are no more concealed, but made manifest to alL Kevealing
so the secret of our life. He calls on us for faitli.

" Appealing to the heart — to that moral feeling on which
the existence of God himself rests firm in man's belief, have
we not answer, distinct and clear, that pain must be sacrifice ;
a privilege, and not a loss ? Does not the thought, once seen
to be possible, affirm itself as necessary, and refuse to be held
in doubt ? Does it not link itself with the belief in God, so
that we are compelled to say, that if God is, then pain is
sacrifice — sacrifice for man ? For if we think otherwise, then
do we not choose to join evil with His name % Not to believe
our pains serve other's good is but to contradict the very
evidence on which we assert His being. Once recognised in
its true meaning, the thought ceases to be a question of argu-
ment and balanced evidence ; it sinks into the soul, and be-
comes part of that deep conviction on which all religion rests.
Pain cannot be interpreted otherwise than thus, when once
we see that it can thus be interpreted. The heart rises up
from its chains and rejoices. God has revealed Himself; He
has manifested joy, and we see it and are glad. Amid our
tears we smile, for, when our woes are deepest, then our joys
are highest. Then we are likest Him, are nearest to the
dignity of manhood; partakers most in that on which all

The Mystery of Pain, 223

living joy is based, needing only that our life be perfected to
make it joy."

Or if, when we speak and tliink of human sorrow in
general terms, we yet can doubt, can we doubt when we
call to mind the real things that we have seen and
heard ? — the cruel sorrows, the blighted hopes, the life-
long tortures that have befallen the innocent and weak,
and borne, or seemed to bear, no fruit ? widows who have
seen their sons consigned to the grave, no potent voice
recalling them, or buried in the worse grave of the mad-
house ; the strong man prostrated, and compelled to
leave aU that he loved to poverty ; the long agony of
hearts that prey upon themselves ; the cheerless martyr-
dom of slow disease untended by loving hands; the
wasted homes and dishonoured hearths that mark the
track of war; the raving horrors of fire or shipwreck;
the slow hours passed in the sick longiiig for help, and no
help has come, but only death — death, whose grim visage
has grown beautiful so often beside the more abhorred
face of life. Have all these things been for nothing ?

And that one great Sorrow, the shadow of whose black-
ness has made earth more bright for ever, shaU it for ever
fail to teach us how dark the glory of man's life may
seem ?

But we must end. There is a deeper and darker
problem in the world than pain ; and of that this little
volume does not speak, nor here do we. Pain and Sin
are not one mystery, but two ; and, though in some
respects closely linked, are not always allied. As man
rises he often suffers, more, not less ; and sorrow almost
as often seems a privilege bestowed on goodness as a
chastening on vice. Sin retains all its blackness, though
we know that pain is joy misfelt.

224 The Mystery of Pain.

Still we may ask — Would it really console us in our
griefs, and thus aid us in our struggles, to be sure of this ?
Could we be glad in losses and distress even though we
were sure that in them we were sacrificed for man ? No ;
if in our pleasant days our thoughts never or but seldom
turned joyfully to God's work in man, and dwelt on it
in gladness. If ever, save when sorrow struck us, we
dwelt wrapt up in our own interests, or the narrow
sphere of our own private affections, then the thought
of man's redemption would give us little comfort in our
griefs. It would seem a far-off, doubtful compensation,
if we then only sought to think of it, and to be glad
because of it. Not so wiU the joy of the Lord consent to
become our strength ; that were to seek selfishly an
unselfish bliss, which cannot be. But this may surely
be, that all of us should take up again our long-lost privi-
lege of being glad for man, and rejoicing for his sake
all the day ; long lost, but never forfeited, because it rests
upon the infinite bounty of that great Heart, with whom
to Be is to bestow. If we could live as seeing the
invisible, ceasing to cramp our thought and crush our
hearts within the too narrow sphere of things perceived —
marring the fair proportions of our life, which should be
moulded to the truth of things, and not their seeming —
if we could live thus, ever happy in the thought that in
all things God is raising man, finding in it a keener joy
in all delight, a deeper sacredness in every duty, then our
sorrows might be lightened by it too. No longer strange
and unfamiliar, it would come to us then as a long-trusted
friend, and say, murmuring sweet comfort in our ear,
" See, God, who is in all things giving His life to man,
accepts this gift from you."

I 225 )

XVIII.

Dec. 1863.
If there is one thing which, more than any other, might
seem to be beyond the sphere of explanation, and above
aU possible reducing within the bounds of law, it is per-
haps the mysterious gift of genius. Almost as weU might
we seek to explain creation, or trace to secondary sources
the soul itself, as hope to find any other origin than the
Maker's direct endowment for that transcendent power,
apparently the most capricious and the most unfathomable
attribute of the mind of man. Questions multiply on us
while we think of it. Why does not genius appear
oftener than it does ? or why so often ? What determines
it to this or that individual, in whose circumstances there
may have been nothing to warrant the expectation of it,
or to favour its growth ? Why is it so often linked with
peculiar weakness ? Above all, how is it to be defined ?
What is the difference, felt even by those who might be
disposed in theory to deny it, between genius and talent ?
What is that indescribable power, different from any re-
sult of toil, which compels our homage, we cannot say
why ? Whence comes that strange insight that goes
right to the heart of its subject, making aU. other men
appear mere outside labourers ? And why again are its
possessors so unable to give any account of it ? Why are
they so little aware even of its existence in themselves ?
Why, for instance, did Newton say that he thought there
was no difference between himself and common men,
except that he could fix his attention more continuously

P

2 26 Genius,

and patiently than they ? And how is it that so many
other men of unquestionable genius have disclaimed all
special power ? Were they utterly mistaken in this ?
and if so, what is that strange capacity which its posses-
sors are not conscious of possessing, and become aware
of only by a comparison of themselves with others ?

However often this question may have been asked in
vain, it is worth asking again. For if only it could be
answered, and thus the empire of law could be extended
over this uncultivated region in which imagination yet
runs riot ; and if this could be done without the sacrifice
of freedom ; if order here might supersede mere chaos to
our thought, and yet only add a subtler charm and higher
grace to its wild beauty — then what fact is there in
human life we might not aspire to bring in turn within
the intellect's domain? What part of our experience,
loftiest or deepest, might we not hope to see clothed with
new glory by a truer vision ?

And how deeply, too, the answer to this question
would open to us the springs of man's mental history,
and reveal the conditions of his progress. The secret of
the life of human thought lies in it ; for thought lives a
life : looking back upon its liistory, we see that it does.
It grows, develops, passes through successive forms vitally
dependent on each otlier. The development theory,
failing in its hold upon man's body, might well take
refuge in his mind, and claim its antitype in thought.
Had not this its obscure beginnings, half-conscious glim-
merings, like the first misshapen organisms of the animated
world ? — rising through brilliant insect-forms of fancy,
or sluggish gropings after sensuous good ; through creep-
ing reptile-forms of superstition, loving the dark and
hiding from the day, fearful, and cruel in their fear;
through floating bird-forms of fleet speculation, gifted

Genius, 227

with wings indeed, but dwelling in the air; up into
the substantial mammal-form of earth-subduing Science ?
Waits it not yet to rise into Humanity and claim its
soul ? In the long process of development shall not the
breath of life be breathed into the fair strong body of
our Science ; knowledge becoming manlike, erect, with
kingly sway, with queenly grace ? Is not the thought-
creation yet to have its crown ?

We will not discuss the question. Let those of us
who feel that our modern modes of thinking might be
pitched in a little loftier key, be pardoned the gentle
heresy of hoping so. Our work now is not with the
future, but with the past, and with the light which we
can find there respecting the nature and origin of genius.
But in attempting this subject it is necessary to claim
the privilege of confining ourselves to narrow limits. The
achievements of genius are too vast to be displayed, too
numerous to be counted up, too diverse to come within
the scope of the most universal information. All that
we can do is to select one special sphere of mental
activity, and to see how far we can penetrate into the
characteristic properties of genius as there displayed, and
thus obtain a key to them as exhibited on other platforms.
For this purpose, the subject best to choose appears' to
be rather that of intellectual discovery than poetic or
artistic imagination. The mental processes in the former,
if not simpler, are at least more definite, and if not easier
to trace, may be more within the power of words to
express.

It is not difficult to see in the very nature of our
minds, and the relations in which we stand to the world
we have to study and interpret, a necessity for our tak-
ing two kinds of steps in our advance towards knowledge.
If we had perfect apprehensions of things to start with,

2 28 Genius.

if we derived from our senses complete and therefore
accurate impressions of the objects which we have to
investigate, of course we might go on iq a direct liae from
less knowledge to more. We need never be in error,
though we might be ignorant. That which we knew
might be divided off by a definite line from that which
we did not know ; the former being right so far as it
went, and being gradually increased by additions from
without, each of which would at once,. and without diflO.-
culty, take its proper relative position. But seeing that
this is not our case, but that the impressions we derive
from Nature are almost always partial, and very often
exceedingly confused, our knowledge cannot, as in fact
it does not, advance in any such direct way. "We want
not only additions to its circumference, but often correc-
tions at its centre. The fundamental notions and primary
ideas on which all our thoughts are based need to be
made more perfect or more true.

Now, this can be effected only in one way. To think
more rightly we must first think more falsely. Error
must precede truth. We have not forgotten the old form
of demonstration we studied in our Euclids, when we
were boys — the redudio ad absurdum ; in which a false
supposition being made, it is proved false by the con-
sequences which follow from it. We are continually
carrying on this kind of reasoning within ourselves, and
guiding our lives by its results. Inadequate ideas, or
false suppositions, would often escape detection by them-
selves ; but when we trace them to their consequences
we perceive directly that they cannot be true. The pre-
mises are unsound, because the conclusions are inadmis-
sible. This is the appointed method of correcting false
ideas or rising above untrue assumptions, and it is hard
to see how there could be any other.

Genius. 229

!N"ow, it is plain that in this course of thought our
progress consists of two distinct, two even opposite,
portions. There is a building up and a pulling down ;
the piling up of the conclusions or results, and the
overthrowing of the premises or starting-point. By no
possibility can these portions be confounded, nor can
their order be reversed. They are mutual opposites, and
exist for, and by virtue of, each other. The construction
of the false scheme of consequences is but a means for
the revelation of the truth; that revelation is possible
only through that construction. The one is a more or
less elaborate effort, the other is an instantaneous
insight.

This is a process which takes place within each of us
many times every day, and in respect to every variety of
circumstances with which we have to do. It is applied
to the least and most trivial subjects ; but it is also the
method appointed for man in dealing with the greatest.
It must be so. For where are men's native suppositions
and natural assumptions more inadequate and deceiving
than in reference to the great questions with which
Philosophy and Science deal ? Where is a correction of
the starting-point more necessary ? Now in this neces-
sity, in this law of our knowing, I venture to suggest,
lies the basis of the distinction between talent and
genius ; as from it are deducible the leading characters of
each.

Ever there need to be taken, for each fresh achieve-
ment in our intellectual progress, two distinct steps : the
first an accumulation of results, either by observation and
experiment, or by reasoning, a more or less lengthy, often
a tedious process ; the second a rapid, often an instan-
taneous one ; the use and interpretation of these materials,
the sudden vision of their true significance, raising our

230 Genius.

apprehension to a higlier level. Talent and genius aie
here.

Por these two steps in thought — which in little things
each individual takes for himself consecutively, first
making and then interpreting his own reductio ad ahsur-
dum, or proof of mistaken thought — these two steps are
in great things parted, and assigned to separate indivi-
duals. The men of talent make the demonstration ; the
man of genius sees it.

So the decisive genius comes only once in a way, at
an epoch or crisis in human thought. It looks lilve a
sudden flash of mysterious light; it is in reality the
orderly consummation of a laborious process ; it is no
more mysterious or sudden than the explosion of a gun
that has been carefully loaded for that very end.

One of our poets, himself an eminent instance of
poetic genius, has expressed this very idea with equal
exactness and felicity. The passage is in the "Prome-
theus Unbound " of SheUey : —

" Hark ! the rushing snow,
The sun-awakened avalancke ! wliose mass,
Thrice sifted by the storm, had gathered there,
Flake after flake ! — in heacen-illumined minds.
As thought 6y thought is piled, till some great truth
Is LOOSENED, and the nations echo round,
Shaken to their roots, as do the mountains now." ^

'No words could more perfectly express the relation
between genius and talent than these. The thoughts are
piled, heaped up in gathering mass, until the time
comes for the accumulated weight to fall; then the
nations are shaken, and the power of a truth is felt.

1 "Prometheus Unbound." Act ii., sc. 3. Shelley says, "in heaven-
defying minds," but I have taken the liberty of altering his words, for the
sake of retaining more perfectly his thought. By heaven, now, we do not
mean the heaven that he defied.

Genius, 231

Let us take, as an instance in which the process is
seen on a large scale and in well-marked characters, the
discovery by Copernicus of the true construction of the
solar system. I suppose that every one would admit
that this was a work of genius. It may well be called
an inspiration. It made an epoch in the mental life of
man ; it was a revelation of a great and long-hidden
secret ; it grasped a truth which was in opposition to the
strongest prejudices and convictions of the age. The
man who saw it had unquestionably the insight which
we claim for genius.

How came he to see it ? This question resolves itself
into two : how was it possible that it should be seen at
all ? And why was Copernicus the man ?

In respect to the first of these questions, the earth's
motion was possible to be discovered and proved at that
time because the conditions for the discovery had been
fulfilled. Copernicus was not the first man to think that
the earth's motion was the true cause of our perception
of an apparent motion in the heavens. This is said to
have been the doctrine of Pythagoras, and was advocated
by Aristarchus and others of the Greeks. Nor is it an
unlikely supposition to have occurred to the minds of
men.^

But though thus early suggested, it is remarkable that
this opinion had not maintained itself, even as a probable
hypothesis. In the days of Copernicus the opposite
doctrine was universally established. "We know why
this was so. The idea of the earth's motion is available

1 "The Indians also had their heliocentric theorists. Aryabatta (a.D.
1322), and other astronomers of that country, are said to have advocated the
doctrine of the earth's revolution on its axis ; which opinion, however, was
rejected by subsequent philosophers among the Hindoos." — Whewell,
" History of the Inductive Sciences," I., p. 364. This fact is interesting, as
showing that the sequence of opinion on the subject rests on other than
accidental causes.

232 Genius.

as the explanation of only a part of the celestial motions,
and could not be maintained when a more accurate
observation revealed the whole of the appearances. The
perceived motions of the planets are quite irregular, and
cannot be referred to any possible motion of the earth
alone.

Observation, therefore, necessitated the lapse and loss
of the true opinion in this case. That opinion would
not answer the demands which accurate examination
made upon it. Evidently, it would not ; it was partial
and insufficient. What took place when men observed
the heavens accurately is simple enough. They formu-
lated the apparent motions carefully, and invented an
astronomy on the theory of epicycles.

Every one will agree that this astronomy, based on and
embodying the most obvious construction of the observed
facts, was a work of talent. It is an immense monu-
ment of human energy and skill, laboriously and wisely
directed. Dr. Whewell says of it : — " That which is true
in the Hipparchian theory, and which no succeeding
discoveries have deprived of its value, is the resolution
of the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies into an
assemblage of circular motions. The test of the truth
and reality of this resolution is, that it leads to the con-
struction of theoretical tables of the motions of the
luminaries agreeing nearly with their places as observed.
Such a resolution of the unequal motions of the heavenly
bodies into equable circular motions is, in fact, equivalent
to the most recent and improved processes by which
modern astronomers deal with such motions." But at
the same time every one will admit also that the
development and elaboration of this system — a false and
intolerably complicated one — could hardly be called a
work of genius.

Genius. 233

We have then before us in the history of astronomy a
work of talent and a work of genius ; the former pre-
ceded the latter. Is there not evident also a more
intimate relation between them — a connection of neces-
sary sequence ? or could the latter have taken place
without the former. Dr. Whewell shall answer for us
again : — " It is true that the real motions of the heavenly
bodies are simpler than the apparent motions ; and that
we who are in the habit of representing to our minds
their real arrangement, become impatient of the seeming
confusion and disorder of the ancient hypothesis. But
this real arrangement never could have been detected by
philosophers if the apparent motions had not been strictly
examined and successfully analysed. How far the con-
nection between the facts and the true theory is from
being obvious or easily traced, any one may satisfy him-
self by endeavouring, from a general conception of the
moon's real motions, to discover the rules which regulate
the occurrence of eclipses ; or even to explain to a
learner of what nature the apparent motion of the moon
among the stars will be." In fact, in the words of the
poet, the old astronomy was the piling up of thoughts
essential to the loosening of the great truth it was
destined to make known, and the power by which the
result was effected is evident. The natural tendency of
the mind to simplicity, to necessity, to unity in its
thoughts, was violated and placed under coercion by the
complexity and arbitrariness of the suppositions which
the old astronomy involved. There was a restraint
felt, a tension set up in the mind itself, against which it
could not but revolt. The saying of King Alphonso,
that, " If God had consulted him at the creation, the
universe should have been on a better and simpler plan,"
is well known ; and Copernicus's own words prove the

234 Genius,

same fact. He was dissatisfied, he says, in his Address
to the Pope, with the want of symmetry in the existing
theory, and weary of the uncertainty of the mathematical
traditions. He sought accordingly through the writings
of the ancients if he could 'find any better plan, and was
fascinated with the idea of the central position of the
sun. " Then I, too, began to meditate concerning the
motion of the earth ; and though it appeared an absurd
opinion, yet since I knew that in previous times others
had been allowed the privilege of feigning what circles
they chose in order to explain the phenomena, I con-
ceived that I also might take the liberty of trying
whether, on the supposition of the earth's motion, it was
possible to find better explanations than the ancient ones
of the revolutions of the celestial orbs." The true
interpretation is brought about by the strain which the
false idea, when carried out to its results, imposes on the
mind. The process is as clear and as easily understood
as the similar one in mechanics which it so immediately
suggests, and one of the most striking instances of which
Shelley has made his stepping-stone.

But from this point of view a further analogy presents
itself. Talent and genius, thus related, exhibit the same
phenomena as the life of our own bodies. The physical
and the mental life, so far, are strictly parallel. The
actions of the living body are referable to the same laws
of force that we thus trace in mind. A power gradually
accumulated and suffered to come into sudden play — this
is the view which Science presents of the activities of
animal life. There is a tension in the animal body which
fits it for its actions, just as there is a tension in the
mind which prepares for the revelations of genius. The
mind grows and acts alternately, as the body does. This
very illustration, the accumulation and fall of snow upon

Genius, 235

the mountain's side, has been used to elucidate the con-
nection of events in our bodily perceptions — to explain
the accumulation and operation of the nervous suscepti-
bility.

The very same ideas, therefore, which Science finds
appropriate to the life of the physical organic kingdom
are found appropriate to the life of the mind. From some
aspects, the phenomena of both are capable of expression
in the same terms, and a point of unity is grasped be-
tween them, the reality of which is vouched for by the
instinctive division which is made of our mental opera-
tions under the terms " talent " and " genius." It is, in
truth, an organic world on which we look within us, and
in which our own poor thoughts are included and built up.

It would be easy to multiply instances of a similar
relation of true and false thoughts in respect to almost
every branch of knowledge. The establishment of the
circulation of the blood, of the chemical doctrine of com-
bustion, of the main facts of geology, among others, would
afford striking examples. But there are few other cases
in which the facts are equally familiar, and therefore
equally appropriate for illustration. It is enough to refer
to the general proof which is furnished by that almost
universal occurrence of false ideas before true ones, which
is evident upon the face of human history. The one in-
stance given may suffice, if not to prove the doctrine, at
least to render it intelligible, and to place it fairly before
the reader's judgnient.

And is not the idea beautiful ? Is genius made any
the less glorious or attractive by being regarded, not as a
mysterious power, but as a necessary resultant of preced-
ing energies ? See how the very imperfection of our
powers, the disabilities under which a creature limited as
man is inevitably labours, are thus turned to account, and

236 Genius.

made to minister in a chain of mutual services. Out of
our very shortcomings a life is made to spring. Surely,
no better law for our mental structure could be planned
than this, which, from so small a starting-point of partial
apprehension and mistaken view, educes results so grand,
and from a basis necessarily so limited gives to knowledge
so wide a sweep. Of wonderful performance in the past,
is it not of still richer promise for the future ? And in its
simplicity, too, not less admirable than in its refiults ? Two
different orders of mind must co-operate in man's progress,
to carry out respectively the two stages of which it con-
sists. Power, activity, exertion, laboriously employed
skill, are needed, on the one hand, to make the observa-
tions, to construct the artificial system, and bring out the
hidden insufficiency of the native thought ; on the other
hand, there is needed — not power, nor skill, nor energy,
nor toil — but sensibility ; a special organisation, a capacity
not of acting, but of feeling. In the one case we want
] ower, in the other a channel ; for the work of talent is a
doing ; of genius a suffering to be done.

Seeing the necessity of this twofold process in human
progress, we cannot but admire the persistency with
which the distinction between these two modes of mental
operation has been maintained in the common opinion
and language of men, and this in spite of the difficulty
there has been found in defining it, and the frequent
attempts that have been made to deny it, and to resolve
genius into a special form or special application of talent.
Here, as is so frequently the case, men's words have many
times been truer than their thoughts, and the unreasoning
assertion of a natural conviction has preceded a rational
comprehension of its basis. But we can understand also,
how, without a perception of the true relation of talent to
genius, there have come doubt and obscurity over the

Genius, 237

-whole subject. Tlie mind is naturally intolerant, and
rightly so, of special and unaccountable entities, whether
in the shape of things or faculties, and seeks irrepressibly
to reduce the unfamiliar to forms of the better known.
Thus it has come, for instance, that the term " genius "
has been applied sometimes to the more imaginative and
artistic minds — has been made synonymous with the gift
of poetry, or music, or painting, with which it has no
more special relation than with any other branch 01
human activity. These display the mutually subservient
operation of talent and genius as clearly and as decisively
as Science itself. There are poets, and painters, and musi-
cians, and these among the greatest, who, we feel, are
men of talent, as well as others, in whom, as soon as we
look on them or listen to them, we recognise what is
called the magic fire of genius. It is not in the direction
of men's faculties, but in the mode in which they operate,
that the characters of genius are to be sought. But on
these characters, as displayed in other fields than that ol
intellectual progress, the present writer, lest he betray his
ignorance (not being learned in art), will not venture here
to speak. If the idea be once fairly grasped, no difficulty
can arise in testing it on every field.

Genius has been confounded, too, with simple great-
ness ; every man of remarkable power being called a man
of genius merely to indicate his eminence. This error,
though it is accounted for by the fact that the work
which is done through men of genius is incomparably the
greatest that is done at all, involves, notwithstanding, the
very utmost falsity. So far from genius being greatness,
and indicating power, it is emphatically the reverse. The
men of talent are the men of power ; they are the strong.
The affmities of genius are with weakness. His faculty is
that he opposes no obstacles ; that his strength is taken out

238 Genitis.

of the way, and Nature operates through him. The truth
is "loosened" in his mind, and falls ; but it falls by its own
weight, not by his energy. He may have great powers ;
if he does a great work most probably he has, but they
are of subordinate place. What distinguishes a man of
genius is rather the absence of certain tendencies and
powers, than the presence of peculiar ones. He is with-
out that strong power of sensuous perception, and that
consequent rule and control of the sense-faculty, which is
so common among men, and thus Lis more properly intel-
lectual powers can work freely, and assert their full
authority. Thus he is the first to see or do that which
all men can easily do or see after him; the difficulty
being not in the doing, but in being the first. For which
prerogative there is demanded not a stronger power, but a
weaker impression from accustomed views, a loosening of
the grasp which appearances lay upon the soul. As
colour-blind men (it is said) make the best engravers, be-
cause to them, being non -percipient of colour, the relations
of light and shade are unobscured, so it is with the " in-
sight " of genius. There is a special vision by virtue of
a special blindness.

We can easdy see, for example, what sort of a man
Copernicus must have been ; what mental characteristics
determined him to be the person in whose mind astronomy
righted itself. He must have been a man in whom the
sensuous impressions were weak, in whom the natural
impressions, which gave birth to irremovable convictions
in most other men, weighed very little in comparison with
the demands of the intellect for order and simplicity. If
a moving body had been pointed out to him, and it had
been said, " See how fast it moves !" we can imagine him
replying, " It seems so." Copernicus might have been —
I do not doubt he was — a man of strong reasoning

Genius. 239

powers; but the mere fact of his achievement does not
prove him to have been so. What distinguished him
from other men was not the strength of his reason, but
the weakness of his sense impressions, which left his
reason free to play ; as, thanks to him, all men's has be-
come on this subject since his day. He destroyed for us
the bondage of sense, because he himself was free from
it ; for our very faculties also are our prisons. It is ever
so. The genius of one age is the common sense of the
next.

But though genius is neither greatness nor strength,
but has its root in weakness rather, yet we see quite well
why it is that it bears the fruits — the chief fruits — of
greatness. It must do so for the very reason that it is a
weakness, and not a strength; an emptiness, and not a
fulness ; a channel, and not a force. It is a channel
through which the concentrated energies of mankind are
poured ; an emptiness which Nature's self condescends to
fill ; a weakness that enlists on its behalf the power on
which the world reposes. Well is its work called an
" inspiration ; " humanity speaks in its voice ; humanity,
and therefore Deity. The truth of that commonly false
saying, "Vox populi, vox Dei," is found here. It is the
voice of man that genius utters, the strength of man it
wields. The power which is embodied in its achievements
is the accumulated power of long generations, it may be
of long centuries, of workers ; they have laboured, genius
enters in and reaps.

And thus the work of genius seems often to be of even
superhuman power, to bear no relation to the capacities
of the individual worker, or to any capacities, indeed, that
can be conceived as dwelling in a man. This it is, in
part, that gives to genius its mysterious character; the
unaccountable, almost abnormal force which it displays.

240 Genius.

But the force loses this character of excess when we re-
gard it from the right point of view — the human, not the
individual. Referred to the man who seems to exert it,
the power displayed in a great work of genius is a
miracle ; referred to the human race, it is moderate and
natural. The force of innumerable minds comes into play
in one who offers to it a ready passage, and we exclaim,
" Behold a prodigy !" And we marvel the more, because
so often we can find in the man himseK nothing to ac-
count for, or even proportionate to, the amazing power.
It is as if we ascribed the force which elevates a fountain
to the immediate pipe from which it issues. We do not
look behind and note the pressing flood.

There is no ground for pride in genius ; it is a privilege
which may well make humble; not a possession which
might puff up. The man of genius is the servant of the
human race, privileged to wait on all its workers, gather-
ing up even the fragments that nothing may be lost.
Greatest of all, because the servant of all. Nor, indeed,
are men of genius proud ; a wise instinct in their heart
teaches them better. Unconscious of the true source
of their power in the labours of other men, they have yet
felt that it was not theirs. Hence those frequent dis-
claimers, that we have referred to before, of the possession
of any peculiar powers. They are not conscious of any ;
often, indeed, they are sure that they have none. But if
wrongly put ideas will right themselves in their minds,
how can they help it ?

If they could help being punished for it, that were
something — punished with incredulity, with scorn, with
bitter blame ; in days less polished and more in earnest
than our own, with cruel stripes and flames ; in our own
days — ^but perhaps we are better than our fathers. Yet

Genius.

:4i

wlio has held the balance for us between being quickly
burnt or slowly starved ?

This, however, we may say, in our own and their ex-
cuse, that it was very hard for us, or for them, to have
been called upon to receive what genius had to tell, not
understanding what its place and mission were. Think-
ing that man's labours run, or should run, in the true
line of his advance, how could men admit without long
struggles ideas which revolutionised them all ? Judging
that a man's possible achievements were to be estimated
by his own proper powers, how could they consent to
receive from him as true that which palpably transcended
the capacity of men ? Peace be to the ashes of persecutor
and persecuted man alike ! Both thought, and both still
think, to do God service ; and we will reverence the
incredulity as well as the revelation. How should the
world forego its martyrs — by fagot or by famine ?

RECOLLECTIONS.

Thefollozving Papers, contributed from various sources, have

been written in each case from the recollection of

one or of several conversations.

( 245 )

XIX.

AN ANALOGY OF THE MORAL AND
INTELLECTUAL LIFE OF MAN.

Weat history records is the hecoming of man's life,
intellectual and moral. The process of the making of
his knowledge is precisely analogous to that of the
creation or development of his moral life. As man's
progress is from ignorance to knowledge, he must, of
course, in all his investigations, start from a negative
condition, and the ignorance which is at the basis, and
affects the premiss from which he sets out, will influence
every step of the process ; and express itself most
forcibly in his conclusions. Starting thus, man proceeds
to acquire knowledge by means of observation, the
result of which he arranges on hypotheses, which are for
the most part the guesses of ignorance. It is evident,
therefore, that however logical the deductions he makes,
and however correct his observations, he will inevitably
be led further and further from the truth. This process
continues until he has arrived at conclusions so repug-
nant to reason, that the common sense of humanity,
expressed in the person of some man whom nature
creates for this special function, rejects them, and in so
doing overthrows the premiss which was linked to these
conclusions, and rectifies the starting-point by filling up
the negation contained in it.

246 The Mo7'al aiid hitellectual Life.

This is the way in which all advance in knowledge is
made, and it is perhaps best seen in the history of
astronomy. Ignorance of the earth's motion (due to the
sense-impression of stability) was here the negation in
the premiss. With this false thought modifying all his
reasonings, man proceeded to make his astronomy by care-
ful and accurate observation of the heavens. The result was
the hypotheses of the Ptolemaic system. The epicycles
will for ever remain as a monument of the triumph of
human skill ; they were an excellent piece of intellectual
work : none the less because they became at length so
complicated and involved (as every fresh motion dis-
covered had to be accounted for by a fresh epicycle) that
at length man (in the person of Copernicus) threw off
the yoke of the conclusion, and in so doing cast out the
negation in the premiss — viz., ignorance of the earth's
motion. Herein consisted the very excellence of the
epicycle astronomy, that by its inexorable logic it so
linked the false conclusion with the false premiss, that
the rejection of the one involved the rejection of the
other: it established, as it were, a dynamic connection
between them ; so that the force set free by the shaking
off the thraldom of the epicycles was available to bring
about a belief in the earth's motion. For observe what
this force was which had been stored up under the
pressure of the Ptolemaic system : it was the resistance
of the intellect to the rule of sense. The epicycles were,
in fact, an affirmation of the validity of the sense-
impression. Eeason was at work, indeed, in the making
of that system, but she was at work in chains. All her
activity was limited by the authority of the sense, which
affirmed the stability of the earth. She might speculate,
she might invent; but she must obey. In early days
she had, indeed, with the hardihood of a child, set that

An Analogy. 247

authority at defiance (Pytliagoras is said to have affirmed
the motion of the earth), but she was not yet fit for
liberty. She had to enter the house of bondage, and
gather through centuries of repression the force wliicli
was at length to issue in a glorious emancipation. Tor
the triumph of Copernicus was not the mere discovery of
the fact of the terrestrial motion, it was the announce-
ment therein made that the tyranny of sense over reason
was for ever at an end : he broke the yoke and bade
the oppressed intellect go free. And let it be observed,
that this deliverance was effected, not for the learned only,
who had trodden the toilsome path of the old astronomy,
but for the whole human intelligence. The toil had
been vicarious, the results were freely communicated to
all; only a small fraction of the human intellect was
capable of threading the intricacies of the Ptolemaic
system, but it was probably easy for the children of the
next generation to learn that the earth moved — so easy
that we might perhaps think no gain had been effected
for them, but in reality the gain was incalculable. They
had not to break the yoke, they had never come under
it. " With a great sum obtained I this freedom," boasts
the emancipated philosopher of the Old World. " But I
was born free," rejoins the child of the modern age.

But the paramount value of this chapter in tlie
Idstory of human thought lies in the key that it furnishes
to the development of man's moral life. That, too, may
be said to grow by a process analogous to that of the
reductio ad absurdum. Man is made conscious of the
ignorance, the "blindness," .that is in him by the
necessity he is under of working it out in the actions of
his life ; when the results of this working have become
intolerable evils to him, he finds there is no way for him

248 The Moral and In tellectual L ife.

to free himself from them but by rectifying the basis of
his life and starting afresh.

To trace this process more definitely ; as in the
making of knowledge, so in the " becoming " of life man
.starts with a negation latent in his consciousness.
Here, in the moral world, we have the " self " correspond-
. ing to the sense in the intellectual. It would be no
more true to say that at any period man's life expressed
nothing but the rule of self, than it would be to affirm
that in the pre-scientific periods his intellect was com-
pletely subordinated to sense-impressions; and yet we
have seen that the free play of reason was, in fact,
prevented by the authority of the senses ; and in the
1 same way the " self " controlled truly human powers, and
( will continue to do so until it is dethroned as Copernicus
^dethroned the sense. Whether this is possible is the
question which, above all others, it interests humanity to
have answered. As we turn heart-sick from one failure
to another of experiments, social, political, benevolent,
religious, directed to getting crooked natures to live
straight, and observe that all fail through one cause,
however variously it may work, viz., the selfishness of
man,^ we ask. Is it possible to cast out this self, this
unreasonable tormentor of humanity, that alone prevents
us from living a truly human life — a life to which
nature points as the only possible blessedness, in a world
where everything is created for mutual service, and has
its being only in giving — a world in which science in

1 It will be well to bear in mind that when the " self" is spoken of in Mr.
Hinton's writings, a negation, not a positive existence, is meant. Self
legard is an absence of regard to some of the' circumstances that have a
claim upon our emotional consciousness. This will make the astronomical
analogy the closei. For there it is an ignorance, an absence of knowledge,
that is the cause of the false opinion, as here it is the defective emotional
apprehension that is the cause of the wrong action. (See Essay on " The
Bases of Morals.'")

An Analogy, 249

her latest revelation of the correlation of forces seems to
echo in another tongue the words of Him who said, " He
that loseth his life shall save it nnto life eternal " ? How
glad would he the discovery if we could find, not only
that there was a hope of the "self" heing cast out of
man's life, hut that all human history has existed for
this very purpose, and that every event in that history
has heen a necessary part of the process ! How joyful,
too, if it should appear that this process were near its
termination, that the Kingdom of Heaven was " at
hand ! " ^ The signs of the times can only be read in the
light of a parallel experience in another department of
man's life, and the more closely we follow up this
parallel, the more does the certainty of the issue impress
itself upon our convictions. It seems impossible that,
after having exhibited the closest resemblance in every
feature of their course, the intellectual and moral life of
humanity should diverge at this crisis, that the intellect

* It must not be supposed from this and similar passages that Mr. Hinton
entertained extravagant hopes of a sudden change to be brought about in
human life, still less of any violent external revolution. If the intensity of his
convictions and the clearness of his spiritual vision made the distant view
seem near to him, he did not ignore the intervening space of years that
must elapse before his prophecy would be fulfilled. He expected that
it would take about six generations or two hundred years for the
thought of "right," as determined by "service," to leaven the world
For this he trusted simply to the ordinary agency by which every truth
by degrees permeates society : a small but increasing number of men
in each generation would adopt the idea, and cause their children to be
guided into the new moral p.ith, which, being easy to tread, though
hard to find, would never again be abandoned for the old one. Mr.
Hinton did not hope for anything more than that the altruistic idea
of right would influence men's actions as widely as does the existing idea,
but this, he said, would transform the world. He did not overlook the fact
that men's actions are determined by other causes besides the prevalent
theory of morals, but this last it was that he chiefly strove to correct, and
hoped in so doing, if not to create a new motive power, at least to effect
such a redistribution of it through new channels that the moral and social
life of man should be to an incalculable extent raised and purified, set free
from the artificial badness which now disfigures it.

250 The Moi'al a iid In tellectital L ife.

should cast oif its sliackles, but the heart remain in
bondage.

But to our parallel. Man starts, then, on his course
of " becoming " with a self-regard in the basis of his life ;
this is the negation, the ignorance which Nature is to
drive him ultimately to cast out. This she does by a
process analogous to that of the making of knowledge by
a reductio ad absurdum. Man is made to work out the
problem of trying to live on a self-basis to its bitter
end, and having tried all conceivable ways of doing
the impossible, he is to be brought to cast out this
self, the negation in his premiss, and live, " Nature-wise,"
an altruistic life. His action will then be related to the
being of Nature as Science is now related to its phenome-
non. Let us trace his course towards this goal.

We may roughly divide men into two classes — those
who seek goodness, and those who simply seek pleasure
and live to gratify their inclinations. It will not be
denied that there have been in all times men who cared
for Tightness, and that this passion, though never so widely
spread as that for pleasure, has shown itself — witness the
annals of asceticism — under all religions and amongst
various races, capable of sustaining the most gigantic
efforts, and of overmastering every other passion of
human nature. These two classes of men have one thing
in common — they start from a self-basis ; they pursue a
different course, the one tending to vicious excess, to law-
less indulgence, the other to self-torturinir asceticism, to
a cruel enforcement of rigid laws ; they seem wide as the
poles apart, each denounces the other. "What keeps
them asunder ? Their one point of agreement, self-regard.
The self-pleasing and the self-righteous man can never
be reconciled but by casting out the self; then "out of
twain is made one new man."

An Aiialo

y. 251

One cannot help being reminded here of the Pauline
idea, destined to receive an ampler fulfilment than any as
yet witnessed, of the union of Jew and Gentile in the
new humanity revealed by Christ. The law-regarding
Jew is to be seZ/-righteous no longer, but is to find all
law-keeping summed up in the one new command to
"love one another;" the passion -led, pleasure-loving
Gentile is to be brought under the law to Christ, but it
is on his heart that the law is written ; he indulges a
" passion," though he is no longer " self " indulgent.

These two classes are paralleled in the intellectual
sphere : the ignorant, who follow blindly the impressions
of sense or the natural afiirmations of reason, correspond
to the " pleasure-led ; " the makers of the epicycle astro-
nomy, those who frame an " observation-true " science,
are like the " self- virtuous." This latter intellectual class
may be composed of men of the highest endowments and
filled with a zeal for truth, but they are like the ignorant in
one point, that (in the old instance) their non-perception of
the earth's motion ruled their conclusion, forced their
reason to make a sort of virtue of doing that which was
repugnant to its instincts. The careful study of the ap-
pearance imposed on the man with the false thought in
his premiss the necessity of believing a false theory — a
wrong thing became his " duty." Just so with the " self-
virtuous " man. Nature's only " right " is in the mutual
service of all creatures, and the only fulfiUer of this right
is that " Love that makes Duty one with Delight." But
he in whom this love is not, who strives to be good /or
himself, will be driven to find some other measure and
standard of right than service : he will make it to con-
sist in the abnegation of pleasure."^ This is asceticism,

1 For further explanation how a self-regard in the beginning imposes false
duties upon the conscience, the reader is referred to the Essays on " The
Bases of Morals " and on "Others' Needs," in this volume.

252 The Moral and In telleciual L t/e,

a goodness held to be antagonistic to the natural desires.
The ascetic ages are marked by a tendency to multiply
the number of duties and restraints upon natural passion
far beyond the demands of utility and practical benevo-
lence. The perfect rule of service renders a certain amount
of pleasure-restraint necessary (but even here it is by a
higher pleasure that the check is imposed), but where
restraint is held to be a good thing in itself, a number
of artificial duties will be enforced which are often directly
opposed to service. This multiplication of burdensome
duties answers in the intellectual parallel to the com-
plicated system of epicycles, which it was impossible to
a "good" intellect to reject, as long as the earth's motion
was ignored. The self-right is to the moral what the
" observation-true " is to the intellectual process. There
is the same repression in both — of passion in one, of the
free play of reason in the other. And just as in the
" reductio ad ahsurdum " process, the force was being
gathered and collected (under repression) by which the
false conclusions, and through them the false premiss,
were to be thrown off, and thus the tyranny of the senses
broken; so in asceticism, which is a reductio ad dbsur-
dum of the self-life, the force was being stored up by
which the casting out of self is to be effected. Asceticism
had to be broken up that a true nature-goodness might
take its place. Nature has linked together pleasure and
service ; the self dissociates them, and in trying to follow
either alone, it ensures its own destruction in the end.
"0 Death, I will be thy destruction." No goodness
that is not happy ^ is good enough for God. Man offers
Him ' his difficult virtues, his mortified body and stifled
affections, as an acceptable sacrifice ; but God answers,
" Who hath required this at your hands ? " But though

* t'.e., Passion-led,

Aji Analogy, 253

this goodness is found wanting, and asceticism has to pass
away, it has done its work of slaying the self.

The triumphs of self-restraint and abnegation have not
been wasted any more than were the intellectual virtues
of the Ptolemaic astronomers. Self did indeed vitiate
the goodness of the ascetics, since it made them enforce
mischievous laws, and cherish their own saintship to the
neglect of social claims (just as the sense-rule perverted
the results of the best observation and logic of the astro-
nomers to a false conclusion), yet the power of living an
altruistic life was asserted in their perverted goodness,
and becomes to us a prophecy of possible achievement.
If man could perform such prodigies when striving against
Nature, what may he not accomplish when he is working
with her ? Even apart from this consideration, so attrac-
tive, in some of its aspects, is the ascetic life to us w^ho
groan under an imposed rule of self-regarding luxury,
stifling our best emotions, that we wonder sometimes why
it could not endure, and are disposed to think that the
phase into which man's moral life has since passed is a
retrogression rather than an advance. The prevalence of
this feeling meets us in a variety of forms — in sentimental
sighings after the martyr's crown or the virgin's wreath ;
in the exaltation of the Cross as the sole symbol of our
aspirations (while it recedes further and further from the
sphere of our practical life) ; in the revival, among the
Ptitualists and elsewhere, of mediaeval ascetic practices.
Christendom, or at least the most faithful and loving
portion of it, is still exploring the empty tomb and reve-
rentially handling the folded grave-clothes, while an angel
unheeded proclaims to ears too sad to listen, " He is not
here, but He is risen ; why seek ye the Living among the
dead? Christ could not be holden any longer by the
bonds of death, because He was to open the gates of

254 The Moral and Intellectual L ife.

heaven to all believers" And this is why the grave of
asceticism could no longer hold the spirit which for love's
sake had so willingly descended into it. His life, like
His death, was for others. " To this end He both died
and rose and revived — that He might be Lord of the
dead and of the living." And the Church, His body,
wore for a time the fetters of a dead restraining law, that
she might throw open the gates of a freer, nobler life
to the " Gentiles " — the passion-led pleasure-seekers (or
pleasure slaves), who, though incapable of virtue as long
as it meant legal restrictions and arbitrary denials of
nature, might enter into a kingdom where love was at
once the impelling and the restraining power. This
brings us back to the parallel of the epicycles — [indeed,
it requires a positive holding back of the pen to avoid
speaking of one in the terms of the other. As I write,
three things are before me at once — the life of Jesus as
it was transacted on this earth eighteen centuries ago ; the
moral life of man or the Church (divesting that term of
any associations which limit it to a particular set of per-
sons arrogating to themselves an exclusive title to it) ; and
the development of the human intellect by the creation
of science; and these three are one]. For we saw just
now that the laborious construction of the Ptolemaic
astronomy, undertaken by a small fraction only of the
race, issued in a discovery of truth which could be im-
parted to all, and, more than that, in an emancipation of
the reason for all unborn generations. So was it also
with the subjection of the moral nature to a false law
by asceticism : and the issue is the same ; that deliver-
ance is made possible for a much larger portion of man-
kind than could ever have been induced to go through
the process. How plain this is in the New Testament,
where the Gentiles are represented as pressing into the

Aji Analogy, 255

Kingdom of God, opened to them by the abolition of the
Jewish law contained in ordinances, to which they could
never have subjected themselves ! And yet, be it remem-
bered, here too " salvation is of the Jews!' It was wrought
out by one "born under the law; " it was "through death"
that He " overcame the power of death." How ready we
are to load the envious Jews of that time with oppro-
brious epithets, because they grudged the Gentiles so easy
a way of salvation, could not bear to think their own pain-
ful law-keeping, their tithe-paying, and Sabbath observance
secured them no immunity from the common necessity
of owing all to grace, and gave them no position of pre-
eminence in the new kingdom. How we sympathise
with the generous indignation of Paul, who considers all
his former gain as loss that he may preach to the Gen-
tiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and is well content
to have trodden the difficult path himself that he may
open the easy road to others. But it is not so easy to us
to see that the same crisis repeats itself in our own day,
that our " goodness " has to die to the law, and become
passionate, enthusiastic, that it may be possible to the
" Gentiles " of the present day, those who cannot wear the
legal yoke, but who are as capable as we — nay, it may be
more capable than we — of the sacrifice that a life of ser-
vice requires. Men who cannot obey a law of " things "
which rests on a mere conventional basis, and which (as
is the case with much of our morality) even requires the
crushing of some truly human emotion, may come under the
sway of the " love that worketh no ill to his neighbour."
If this change took place (and it seems too good
not to be true), we should perhaps see at once the ex-
planation and the cure of a phenomenon which has
puzzled and distressed all thoughtful Christian observers
of the features of this age, namely, that Christianity, as

256 The Moral and Intellectual L ife,

embodied in the professing Churcli, does not attract to its
side in large numbers its own natural allies, the ardent,
the loving, the true, the unconventional, the heroic souls,
who, if Christ Himself could speak, would surely hear
His voice, for they are His " sheep." These, as a rule,
are aliens to nominal Christianity, and the streams of
heroic activity which in former times gained the
triumphs of the Church go now, mainly, to swell some
irregular destructive revolt against organised society.
On the other hand, it is not to be denied that our
churches are largely filled by men who, judged by their
own professed theory, are chiefly bent on " making the
best of both worlds," and who cannot in any sense be
said to have adopted the Christian principle of self-
sacrifice, any serious application of which to practical life
they would stigmatise as Quixotic. How is it, we say,
that the life and teaching of Jesus still being our professed
model and guide, w^e seem to be fighting under a wrong
banner, and our host is swelled by those against whose
principles we would gladly wage war to the death, "whilst
in the hostile ranks are those to whom our hearts yearn
as to long-lost brothers ? Will not this change that we
so long for, and to which all things point, bring about an
altered state of things ? Fight we must ; we would not
have it otherwise ; but at least we shall have some of the
healthy joy of combat when we know we are striking
the old dragon, S>elf^ whose death is the life of humanity,
and not aiming cruel blows at those who themselves
are at war with the same enemy. There is heroism enough
in the world to bring about the social revolution for which
we groan, if it were only directed into the right channels.
But this is a digression. To return to our parallel.
If asceticism corresponds in all its characteristics to
the hypothetical stage which precedes the birth of

An Analogy, 257

a true Science, what shall we say of the present
age ? Asceticism is past ; the true human life for
which it was the preparation is not yet come. We
seem to be in a muddle — hopeless muddle, I was going
to say ; but if it were, how should we know it for
a muddle at all ? Surely a muddle implies a struggle be-
tween the organising instinct and the chaos around it, and
all our blindly furious tugging at the threads only makes
the tangle harder to unravel. We feel somehow we do
well to be angry, but against whom or what is not clear.
Never surely was there a time when the theory and the
practice of life diverged so widely ; and, again, our theory
is so inconsistent with itself. The whole aim of modern
life seems to be to make existence as pleasant as pos-
sible, to remove everything that taxes endurance. Science
is tasked to make the powers of Nature do all our hard
work for us, and to bring to every avenue of sensation
the ministers of delight. And yet there is a latent feel-
ing, that betrays itself in a variety of ways, that goodness
consists essentially in a restraint of pleasure. The result
is, that we habitually lavish extravagant praise upon
self-denial, whilst we relegate it to a safe distance from
our Christian lives. And even in those cases where
there is most of earnest activity for others, of self-sacri-
ficing effort, these are not, with rare exceptions, the
basis of the life, but are superadded on a foundation of
acting for self, so that the life is a patchwork of incom-
patible materials. We put, meanwhile, an immense strain
upon our emotions, tolerating evils that we feel ought to
be utterly intolerable, persuading ourselves that they are
part of the necessary order (or disorder) of the universe,
whereas they have been introduced by man's mistake,
and only exist for the purpose of showing him his error
and leading him to rectify it. It seems at first as if the

258 The Moral and hi tellectual L ife,

parallel broke down here : if the work of asceticism is
complete, and we have come to the end of the reductio
ad ahsurdum, why is not the " seK " turned out of our
action ? We seem, in fact, to have thrown off the con-
clusion without rectifying the error in our starting-point,
and it looks as if the logic in the intellectual process
which forbids this had not its analogue in the moral.
But perhaps, if we look a little closer, we shall see that
even our moral " muddle " has its parallel. Are we not
like one who, having perceived the absurdity of the con-
cli^^jl^n, should, before denying the premiss, go over the
logical process, trying, if possible, to break the chain that
links the two together, and make, in fact, a number of
futile attempts to get rid of the conclusion without giving
up the premiss ? He has been, it may be, so enamoured
of the intellectual work that he has been doing, that he
is loth to give it all up and begin again ; he does not see
(and that is the vital point) that he has all the ejffect of
that work in his new start, that he truly possesses the
result of his labours in letting go ; he wants to hold on,
after nature and reason tell him to loosen his grasp, and
what but a sad perplexity can ensue ? But how should
it be permanent ? So we persist in holding on to certain
ascetic duties which imply restraint from service and
bring upon us countless miseries, whilst all the while we
are dimly conscious that the force thus held in check is
panting for another and a nobler employ. Our practical
denial of asceticism implies that we have faced our false
conclusion and refused it in our hearts, whilst the fact of
our goodness being in it makes us still cling to it with
regret. It cannot, in fact, be expelled by a mere negative
denial. Part of the world is trying to do this — that is
the bad side of Protestantism, its easy virtue, its contempt
for the foolish austerities of the monks, its contented en-

An Analogy. 259

joyment of the good things of this life while the world is
perishing : all this looks and is a far more pitiful thing
than asceticism, and cannot be more than a transient
phase of human history. Not until the force that was
in asceticism has passed into the new altruistic life, not
until the restraint is in the heart instead of in the
external law, can the power of asceticism to fascinate the
imagination and command the obedience of men depart
from it. So that here also the parallel holds good. Try
as men may, they cannot get. rid of the conclusion with-
out denying the premiss. And this is how the very
obstinacy of the evils under which we groan gives us a
ground of infinite hope. If man could remedy his
miseries by a mere readjustment of the social machine,
as he is always trying to do, without bringing a new
force to bear upon the action, his case would indeed be
hopeless, there would be no moral regeneration possible
for him. For verily if salvation had been attainable by
Acts of Parliament, by Declaration of Eights of Man or
Wrongs of Woman, by charitable enterprises, by schemes
of Political Economy, by nicest balancings of mutual or
opposing interests, by any of the Utopias that it has
entered into the heart of man to conceive, he would not
now be bound hand and foot waiting for deliverance.
But if he is not to lose the pain, keeping the disease, it
is because a cure is possible which will cleanse the foun-
tains of his nature, and restore to their right channels
the currents of his moral health.

Ptegarding the moral history of man as a process of
redudio ad absurdum for the purpose of the correction of
the premiss, one sees how the paradox can be affirmed ^
that, on the one hand, the world is perfectly good, so
good that nothing could improve it, and that, on the
other, it is so bad that nothing could by any possibility

26o The Moral and Intellectual Life,

make it worse. These are the characters of a reductio ad
absurdum ; the errors into which it leads you cannot be
too gross or revolting to reason, for it is their ofi&ce to
revolt reason. It would be no improvement to the pro-
cess if these could be palliated ; and at the same time
the process as a whole is exquisitely beautiful to the
intellect. Ignorance could not wish for knowledge to
come in any other way.

C 261 )

XX.

THE MORAL LA W,

Most readers of the New Testament are aware that the
founder of the Christian faith gave to His disciples two
distinct summaries of His teaching — one at the beginning
of His career, the other towards the close of it. The
first of them was, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all
thy heart. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."
The other simply, " Love one another."

A glance will suffice to show in what the principal
difference between these two consists. All mention of
God is omitted in the latter and the love of our neighbour
left absolute. We will not here discuss whether this
omission was intentional or not, or what other differences
there may be between these two commandments. At
present we will consider the latter of them alone, and
without reference to the former.

Lorn one another. But to love is by no means easy,
and the child Humanity (represented in this case by the
would-be followers of Christ), instead of concentrating its
whole soul on doing the thing which it was commanded
to do, stared helplessly at the great problem before it
and shook its head, saying, " No, no ; that is impossible.

262 The Moi'al Law.

I am too young yet; my faculties are not developed,
my powers are not matured. When I am older, when I
am in a different state, then I can think about loving ;
but meantime what shall I do instead ? "

What shall I do instead ? A fatal question, which pre-
sents itself sooner or later to almost all men, which passes
away too often leaving behind it the print of its footsteps
in misery and crime. '' Let us shut ourselves away from
the world and save our own souls," said some. Hence the
monastic self-torture. " Let us go out into the world and
force it to worship as we worship," said others. Hence
religious wars and persecution. " Let us keep ourselves
respectable at all costs to ourselves and others ; let us
believe that outward ceremony can purify that which is
inwardly defiled ; let us respond to the claims of society
rather than to the claims of humanity," said others
still.

But — need we say it ? — all these plans have failed ; and
the poor child, having assumed at starting that " To love
is impossible," finds itself face to face with the fact that
nothing will do instead.

Now the foregoing is not a history of something which
happened once at a given time, but the expression of a
process which is continually repeating itself. We to-day
are in the midst of it. We to-day are fiijiding out by
bitter experience that wanton, suffering our own and others,
is of no avail. We are beginning to realise that love
always and love only can purify, and that self-righteous-
ness is not our duty. And we too are continually saying,
"I cannot love; what shall I do instead ?"

It is with reference to one of these substitutes for the
true law that I wish now to speak, viz., the following : —
" Love your neighbour, or at least, act as if you did."

The Moral Law, 263

Here there are two fundamental errors. In tlie first
place, this precept contains an impossibility ; for the action
which results from " loving " must be essentially different
from the action which results from " not loving." A
person who did not love could not act like a person who
loved (unless he possessed an almost superhuman genius
for representation and great experience). Secondly, for
unlove to imitate love's action, even were it possible,
would be of no value whatever, in a moral point of
view.

A moment's reflection will suffice to make this clear.
The moral law is " Love thy neighbour " (every serious
thinker, whether he does or does not accept the theologica^
doctrines of Christianity, acknowledges this). The duty
which we owe to our neighbour is " to love him ; " not
loving him, we cannot do our duty by him. And to
any one who asks, " I do not love my neighbour ; what
shall I do ? " there can be but one answer, " Love
him."

"We can imagine an objector saying, " This assertion is
ridiculous. Of course if man were in a perfect state he
could love his neighbour. Being as he is, he must do
the next best thing, which is — act as if he did. Do
you mean to imply that supposing I owe my neigh-
bour some money, I need not pay it to him unless I
love him ? Is it not my duty to be honest whatever
ray own feelings may be ? If people saw no reason
for paying their debts, what a chaos society would
become ! "

" Very true," we should make answer. " Under such
circumstances society would become a chaos ; but the cir-
cumstances never could exist, for society would organise
itself according to its own convenience. People would
^nd it impossible to retain their social position without

264 The Moral Law,

paying their debts, and therefore they would pay them.
Do not think that moral force is required to make people
honest. As a matter of fact, the most scrupulously
honest people often are so because their own welfare
depends upon other people's being able to trust them.
That business relationships should be kept inviolate is
by no means valueless; but it is valueless m a moral
point of view, a mere matter of pohcy outside the
domain of morals altogether.

But our imaguiary objector is not yet satisfied. Let
him speak for himself. " I grant you that the moral
law, in its perfect fulfilment, is To Love ; but I cannot
rid myself of the conviction that I am morally responsible
for my actions as well as for my emotions. To do to all
men as I would they should do unto me, whether I love
them or not, is not a ' mere matter of policy ; ' it is a
moral duty, less exalted perhaps than the moral duty of
love, but nevertheless of great value in a moral point
of view."

We should reply, that the moral value that belongs
to that action belongs to it as a means and not as an
end, belongs to it only in so far as the action tends to
produce the feeling of love.

We have admitted that the moral duty of love is the
highest of all. If that duty were fulfilled indeed, there
would be no need of any other. All others would be ful-
filled in it. Seeing, then, that to do anything involves ex-
penditure of force, were not the moral force of humanity
more profitably expended in. loving than in any other
way ?

And love may be likened to a plant which requires to
be watered. Wasting our moral force upon things to he
done iTistead, is like driving a stick into the ground at a

The Moral Law. 265

little distance from tlie plant, and watering the stick.
"Would that make the plant grow ?

Here, then, is the answer to the question. No end can
be attained without means to that end ; and the greater
the end, the wider, the more numerous the means to it.
To sow, to build, to manufacture, require labour both in
their accomplishment and in the process of acquiring them.
If you wish to become a musician, the means widen almost
to infinity ; they vary for every individual ; they cannot be
stated in words. Musicianship is rather a state of the soul
which grows from employing all the means that a life can
lay hold of. And love also is a condition of the soul.
"We might say, ' Love your neighbour ; and, as a means
to loving him, try to act as if you did." But even that
would be imperfect, for the means to loving are infinite.
What are they then ? Everything — all that surrounds
our existence, whether within us or without. Acting as
if you loved your neighbour, in so far as that is possible,
is at least one of the means to loving him, — invaluable,
but not to be laid an undue stress upon, lest men should
mistake it for an end — invaluable in a moral point of
view, if we use it as a means only, remembering that it
is one amidst very many.

And one more question suggests itself. Is it possible
for men to love ? On the other hand. Is it possible for
men not to love ?

Look what experience teaches. Of old, men's love for
God lay crushed beneath the pressure of ceremonial
duties which they thought they owed to Him. Because
and inasmuch as we (through Christ) have swept all
these away and given back to love its rightful throne,
our hearts, which they had usurped — in so far as we
have done this (if the rest is equal) our love exceeds
the love of bygone ages.

266 The Moral Law.

Let man lay hold upon the moral law — fhe moral law
we call it, because there is no other, because all others lie
beyond the domain of morals altogether; and let every
individual find the means to obey it in all the facts that
surround his existence.

( 2(^1 )

XXL

WHAT WE CAN KNOWX
1868.

It is a common fact of experience that our senses give us
only appearances of things, which appearances differ from
the things themselves in many' important points. Our
impressions are determined or modified by subjective
elements which may be either positive or negative. For
instance, we see light and colour which have no existence
apart from the eye that sees, because it is the nature of
our vision to be thus affected by certain vibrations of an
ethereal fluid ; here our impressions are positively modi-
fied.

Again, we see objects smaller as they recede into the
distance ; here our perceptions undergo a negative modi-
fication. Or again, a morbid condition of the subject may
introduce a further subjective element into his conscious-
ness, and cause the world to appear other than it is.
Thus to the blind man the world is dark. If all men
were blind they would probably never discover that there
was anything amiss in their condition.

It is necessary for those so affected that their condition
and the tmth of things which it conceals from them
should be " revealed " by some being not suffering from
the same defect.

^ The following are notes of the lecture referred to p. 229 of " Life and
Letters of James Hinton. "

268 What we can Know,

The word " appearance " is not to be limited to the
impressions made upon sight. All our senses present
objects to us under similar subjective modifications. We
are naturally inclined to conceive of the sense of touch
as presenting to us a truer idea of Nature than the others,
but the fact is that in none of the senses is there a larger
admixture of subjective elements, for in touch we are
conscious of putting forth activity, and it is the resistance
to this pushing and pulling of ours which gives us the
notion of solidity. It is easy to see that touch, no more
than sight, gives us the true nature of objects. Water,
for instance, is constantly evaporating into air, and thus
becoming impalpable to touch. Touch would thus tell
us that water had ceased to exist when it was reaUy there
under a changed form. If man had no faculties but the
senses, these " appearances " of the physical world would
be to him the sole realities, and he would probably be
haunted by no misgivings respecting their actual exist-
ence. But he has another power — intellect — by means
of which he can derive accurate knowledge from the
inaccurate testimony of the senses. It is the function of
the intellect to interpret the appearance of things, though
it is true that man did not at first put his intellect to
this use.

The Greek philosophers, who of all men might be sup-
posed most capable of discovering the province of the
intellect (if the world had been ripe for the discovery),
distinctly taught that the physical world was not accord-
ing to reason ; it was, in fact, an absurd world; and Socrates
dissuaded his disciples from the study of material pheno-
mena on this ground, bidding them turn their attention
rather to Ethics and the improvement of social life. The
beginning and ending of things was the great puzzle to
them. Eeason refused to justify such an existence : it

What we can Know, 269

demanded the alcovto<;, the Eternal. Plato and others
therefore imagined their "intelligible world" to satisfy
the demands of the reason, using their intellect to specu-
late instead of to judge. The application of intellect to
its true function of interpreting appearances has been the
work of Science. When once it became accepted as a
truth that the fact of Nature was according to reason,
the dicta of Eeason came to have an objective validity,
and if any phenomenon seemed to contradict them, it was
set down therefore as an appearance merely. The appear-
ance might be unreasonable, the fact could not be. But
observe, the intellect did not go forth ready-made to its
work — it was, as it were, created in doing this very work.
(This has its parallel in the animal structure, the organs
do not precede the functions, but are made, so to speak,
in the discharge of those functions.) The work of Science
has in our day obtained a completeness which is attested
by the convergence of its various branches of investigation
in the doctrine of the " Correlation of the forces." And
now, in its maturity. Science repeats on a higher octave of
experience the truth with which it set out, " We do not
yet know the true existence." To the last residuum of
scientific analyses, there still remain subjective elements
which have reduced the whole physical world — the cause
of such manifold sensations — to mere matter and motion.
But in these there are the subjective constituents of space
and time, which have been proved to have no objective
existence.

Again, force is a conception altogether based upon
our sensation of exertion, and can no more be proved
to exist in Nature apart from ourselves than luminous-
ness could. The conception of nature as matter and
force is in fact but an indorsement by the intellect of the
sensuous impressions of touch which (ut supra) of all the

2 70 Wkai we can Know.

senses introduces most of the subjective elements. "We
are thus brought to the conclusion that this world of
"phenomena" is no more the actual existence than was
that other world of " appearances."

At this point the question meets us, Can we know the
true existence, or are we shut up to the study of these
phenomena ? A large school of thinkers (of which Comte
is the representative in France and Lewes in England)
assure us that that is the limit of our attainable know-
ledge, assigning as a reason for their answer that there
are subjective elements in these phenomena; that we
cannot transcend our own consciousness.

Now I affirm that we can transcend this phenomenal
knowledge ; that we can eliminate its subjective elements ;
and that so far from this process being strange in our
experience, it is the very means by which all intellectual
progress has been made. We are, in fact, only required
to repeat with regard to the intellect that which has been
accomplished with the senses. Observe that our power
to transcend any impression depends upon our possession
of some other faculty by which that impression is inter-
preted. Had we been destitute of intellect, we should
have been shut up to the impression of sense, but then,
probably, we should never have felt the need of getting
beyond them. They were felt to be unsatisfactory and
imperfect only because man had within him the latent
power of transcending them.

This parallel suggests the a 'priori probability that we
possess some faculty that stands to the intellect in the
same relation that the intellect does to the senses, since
the need has been felt of " transcending " the knowledge
gained by the intellect. This discovery that the world
which science reveals is but phenomenal would probably
never have been made if we had not some powers which

What we can Know. 271

relate us to the true being of Nature. These powers are
the moral faculties. We have used the intellect and the
moral faculties apart from each other, as the Greeks used
the intellect and the senses, transferring the Tightness
which we fail to find in this world to a " heaven " which
corresponds to the "intelligible" world of the ancient
philosophers.

Let us consider what is implied in the doctrine that
our intellect presents to us only phenomena. If that
which we think of when we think, in the best way we
can, of the things around us, does not correspond with
that which truly exists, then there is not this book which I
hold, this floor on which I stand — but some other existence
is, differing from them as the appearance of a book to
the eye differs from the book itself. This difference is
due to certain elements which our own consciousness
introduces into the phenomena. The intellect presents
the world to us as inert, dead matter; but that which
acts upon us and is the cause of our experience cannot
be inert. Inertness is the characteristic of the pheno-
menon ; the true existence, which is spiritual, must act.
The reason why that which is active appears to us under
the form of a passive necessity is a morbid condition of
man whereby negative elements are introduced into his
consciousness. It is from his own defect of life that
the living world becomes to him dead matter. This
condition, affecting as it does the whole of humanity,
could not have been detected had it not been revealed to
man. Eecognising the true existence, then, as spiritual,
we see that it must and can only be apprehended by the
moral faculties.

But those moral facilities have themselves to be trained
and developed, as in the parallel case of the intellect;
they do not come ready-made for the work, but are per-

272 What we can Know.

fected by that very work. Thus trained, it will be found
that their judgments have an objective validity like those
of the intellect, but of higher worth. But although they
have to be trained, they will not be transformed ; and as
the ancient geometry was found to be the key to the
processes of Nature, although it was founded on supra-
sensuous conceptions — for the line, point, and plane are
inapprehensible to the sense but easily conceived by the
intellect — so it will be in conceptions paradoxical to the
intellect but clear to the moral sense that the key to the
world of thought will be found. Eight is, in fact, the
true test of existence. If a thing is, it is right ; if it is
wrong, it may on that very account be proved not to le,
but only to appear.

I affirm that this is the world on which the moral
sense is to exercise its functions, here or nowhere shall
we find rightness. If we shut our eyes on that which
is, and construct for ourselves some ideal heaven to satisfy
the craving of our moral nature, we are making impos-
sible to ourselves all true interpretations of the facts of
human life ; just as the belief in the " intelligible world,"
as long as it lasted, made it impossible to find Nature
intelligible. We have to " submit ourselves to the right-
eousness of God " in this sense, not to go about and in-
vent a righteousness for ourselves.

One thing appears to be done in human experience ;
something quite different is being truly effected. We
do wrong ; yes, but wrong is not done. The wrong goes
as deep as our own consciousness, deep enough for
responsibility, repentance, punishment, forgiveness, and
all the experiences that come out of sin, but not deep
enough to stain indelibly the fair work of God. Does
not the inmost heart demand this satisfaction, " Yea, let
God be true and every man a liar " ?

What we cajt Know. 273

Is not tliis the true work and privilege of faith, to lay
hold on that within the veil, to be emancipated from the
thraldom of the appearance through the revelation of the
eternal fact ?

( 274 )

XXII.

ART.
1874.

In looking at pictures, I have noticed this, that there are
three wajs oLpainting. There is a way whioli ig bad^
atrociously bad-^-of which there are in many places a
great deal too many specimens — where the drawing has
no accurate resemblance to the objects intended to be
delineated. There is another way of drawing, of paint-
ing, in which the things put down are very accurately
delineated. There is a third way of drawing, in which,
if you regard the general impression, the general likeness
to the objects much more reminds you of the first than
of the second class ; but it is altogether a different thing.
Yet it would be very difficult indeed for a person
without some knowledge of the subject to say why it
was different. The objects presented are certainly not
more accurately delineated than in the first class of
pictures ; indeed, in many specimens of the third class
the resemblance is more grossly defied than in any bad
picture that ever was painted. Now the first of these
pictures are bad, and the last class are good ; that is, the
sense of the competent part of mankind pronounces
them good ; they give us pleasure, they affect us with a
decided sense of being true, although they do absolutely
embody an intense and extreme degree of untruth of a
certain kind. And between them stands the other class.

ArL 275

in which the delineation of the objects is made in a
manner somewhat approaching to perfection — certainly
to a degree quite wonderful and even incredible, if proof
were not given of the ability of the human hand to
attain it. The question which everybody who gets an
impression of that kind would do well to ask himself is
this : Is this second class of pictures good or bad ? If
good, why are others better ? If not good, what prevents
so much goodness from being good ? I am not sure that
any amount of looking at pictures, or even looking at
pictures with your eye as far as possible upon nature,
would give you an exact key to the relation of these
classes of pictures ; at least, I notice this, that an
immense amount of the best study of both pictures and
nature together does not seem to have given tliat key to
the people most competent to study the subject. But
when I looked at them, the question suggested itself to
me, not only in respect to painting, but in a more general
way. What I observed was, that those painters who
painted the third class of pictures had acquired a
curious art — an art of doing right and wrong at once.
For there was a palpable wrongness. The first thing
which anybody who wanted to paint ought to be taught
to do is to draw with exactness and accuracy, and not,
when the object is of one shape, to put another shape ;
so that there lies a distinct duty upon the person who
designs to paint. And yet, somehow, the painters
manage to paint the best pictures by setting that rule at
defiance. It is quite clear, if you generalise the terms,
that these people have managed to do at once right
and wrong ; and we call that being true to nature — we
call it Art; and we find in it the highest development of
the human faculty. Then in domg at once wrong and
right they have succeeded in doing a right that is

276 Arl.

lighter than the right which they tried to do. You find
that right is capable of existing in two quite distinct
forms, and that one of them is a true right, and that the
other is not a true right. For when you come to look
at those pictures which attain such an extreme degree of
exactness, you perceive distinctly that though you might
be pleased with them so long as you did not see the
others, yet that they become at length distinctly un-
satisfying, repugnant, tiresome ; you get after a time, in
spite of their beauty, nay, because of their beauty, to feel
a certain anger with them. I notice this about them,
that they deserve to make us angry because they profess
to be what they are not. They profess to be the
representations to us of what nature is, but to our eyes
as clearly as possible they do not look like what nature
is ; they look like pictures ; men so drawn do not look
like men, they look like dolls — images of men. Clearly
something tells us, when we get the chance of comparing
a picture of that sort with a picture of the third sort,
that what we want from a painter is not something that
looks like an image of an object, but a picture that does
truly produce upon us the impression of the object. So
our eyes become absolutely intolerant of this kind of
goodness of the painter.

Well, then, to go on — thinking about this painting,
with a glance cast now and then at the moral world, we
perceive that the painter has got three ways of painting
— that one of them is truly good, and that two of them
are bad. This is an important point with regard to
painting. Art is different from the business of an
architect, who makes designs to be worked by. The right
of the architect is the wrong of the artist. The architect
has got two ways of drawing — a good way and a bad
vay — the accurate and the inaccurate way. The painter

Art. 277

counts both of them wrong, and sets up a third way wliich
is his right, and that right is more akin to the architect's
wrong than to his right — indeed, so much akin, that,
except for some mysterious odd kind of difference (which
I have never heard any one define), mere bad drawing
might pass for true art. So that what one comes upon
is this, as it seems to me — that the very nature and be-
coming of art consists in making right coincident with a
wrong. It is the art of doing right and doing wrong to-
gether ; that is the thing in which the emotional faculties
of men find their truest delight, so far as painting goes —
I do not mean to speak of other arts. Now I believe, as
to the inexplicable charm of a true painting upon us,
which it produces quite independently of its subject or of
any ideas which it is designed to express, which we feel
almost more purely when there is nothing in the painting
at all, and when unromantic, unsublime subjects are
sought out, because then we get this peculiar charm of
art alone, and feel it by itself there is a magic in it, a
Tightness and a wrongness that fascinates us — we don't
know why, but we know this, that it is true to nature.
If that fact gets hold of the mind as a really important
thing, as a thing worth thinking about, I do not think
it is so difiicult to see why the artist's right must have a
wrong in it. You know that nature is really infinite in
its complexity, and that if a person puts down on a piece of
canvas simply just so much of what presses upon his eye as
he can reproduce upon a plain contracted surface with
extremely gross fingers, as compared with the delicacy of
Nature's, he does not represent Nature; he chooses out
certain parts of her, and gives them all that belongs to
them as far as he is able ; but an innumerable number of
other things he totally leaves out. He says, "These things
have certain rights, and I have given them." But in

278 ArL

giving them these rights he has left out an immense num-
ber of things which he could not put upon his canvas.
If he delineates accurately a few objects, he does this at
the expense of others. But further, nature does not con-
sist merely of objects, even supposing he was able to put
them all on to his canvas, but it consists of objects
bathed in light, and the painter has to paint this light as
existing, this atmosphere which bathes them. And then
there is another thing which seems more important still :
when you come to think about what nature is, Science
has a word to say ; and it turns out, I think from the
scientific point of view, that these objects which our eyes
seem to see and our hands to handle — these separate
things, the aggregation and juxtaposition of which make
up nature to our apprehension — these are not the true
nature at all ; Science teaches us quite differently ; it
represents nature as a constant flux of forces, a constant
process and series of changes, in which it can recognise
action but knows nothing of substance. Now, if art
could be true to nature by representing a destined num-
ber of things side by side, there would be a conflicting
representation. I think the human sensations would have
little tranquillity in the presence of such a fight. As it
is, it so happens there is really no fight, because Art has
simply outstripped Science, making before her her own
afiirmations. For Art, whenever it becomes art at all,
denies all things, and treats things with the utmost ima-
ginable unconcern, making them to be anything which
suits some other truth of nature. The fact is, that Science
has struggled up to the position of Art. The affirmation
which Art from a long period has been making is, that
nature is not " things," because, in order to be true to
nature, it is compelled to be false to things — which
is only another way of saying that nature is not

Art. 279

things. Art represents nature as a process. The only-
pictures which your eye can regard with true complacency
or judge as being true to nature show that photographic
representation of objects is not the secret of art.

The artist repudiates the duty of accurately delineating
all the objects before him. But the question really is a
moral one. Tor though morals are one thing and art
another, there is nothing which can escape from the
dominion of the moral law. There is a right and a wrong
— a moral right and a moral wrong — in painting as in
everything else. Now the painter affirms this liberty in
his pictures ; he says, " I concede there is a duty here,
but my right is in breaking it." Why is he right in
breakiag it ? I think that also is visible. Granted that
the reason a painter must be untrue to things is because
nature is a process — a constant flux; yet the painter
takes no account of that ; he did not wait till Science
had found out that nature was forces and not things ;
that was not the paiuter's reason ; it did not justify him.
People meaning a wrong thing may do a right one, but
that does not justify them. So you see it is not because
nature is a process and not things that a painter would
be justified in painting what he believed to be wrong to
nature. Clearly he is not at liberty to sacrifice the truth
of any object because it suits his purpose ; that would be
absolutely to set all standard of art at defiance : it would
make art lawlessness. Yet still he does quite recklessly
set aside the claims of the things that he deals with. He
does not do this arbitrarily and merely for his own plea-
sure ; we can see what he sets them aside for, it is what
we have said. To present those objects with accuracy,
he would have to set aside and refuse the claims of other
objects. He says, " The right of that would be such and
such lines, but here is this other object which has claims
too ; I must use this first object to fulfil the claims of

28o Art.

the other." I must sacrifice (not that he says so, it is
what he does) this object if I do justice to that : that is,
he paints the sacrifice of one thing for another. You
see why he must be true to nature if he represents the
act of one thing becoming subservient to another. That is
what Science says, each thing merges itself into another.
But more than Science says it. In painting nature so,
the artist paints her truly to our own life.

But we may put it in more than one way. While the
painter is endeavouring to accurately represent certain
things which come before him, he is serving those things.
When he is sacrificing those things to fulfil the claims
of other things, he is not serving them, but using them.
It does not seem too much to say that the painter in
painting truly makes the objects which he seems to be
delineating part of the instrument with which he paints ;
it is the means of his action, not the end of it. It is a
thing which he uses instead of serves. But though I
say this, I feel, and you must feel, that it is not the, truth.
AVhen we get into the domain of art, it is not true ;
though it may have a superficial truth, it is absolutely
untrue to say man uses nature at all. The true state-
ment is that nature uses him, that is what makes him what
he is : it is nature operating through the artist that
divides art from what is not art. Therefore, when we
say that the painter sacrifices one object in order to fulfil
the claims of another, we are giving exactly an instance
of that kind of truth to which the painter has to be un-
true. The true truth, which is got at underneath all that,
is this : — while the painter truly uses that one object to
fulfil the claims of another, although he does truly do so,
he is painting this object inaccurately, and by this very
inaccuracy he makes it serve the demands of some other
object which thus becomes represented.

Art. 281

I have said that the painter uses one object to fulfil
the claims of another, making it, as it were, its instru-
ment ; but in truth the object makes him its instrument,
uses him as the means of its sacrifice for another thing.
That is what we mean, or ought to mean, when we say
the painter is true to nature. The fact of nature is
perpetual sacrifice of all things — that is, of all that being
which we perceive under the form of things ; perpetual
sacrifice of all being for every other being. The painter
paints truly to nature by being the instrument of the sac-
rifice of one thing in nature for its fellows. He is true
to nature, not in reproducing any appearance, but in
representing that absolute fact of nature — the act of
sacrifice.

If we see this in art, we see clearly that there is good
reason for the world looking with such admiration, with
such transported eyes, upon the works of the painter.
For observe, he is not painting pictures alone ; he is paint-
ing life, he is painting humanity, showing us not only
the art of using the brush, but the art of living. He
has been painting for us the very fact and law of sacri-
fice. We may well wish to know the limits and the
laws of this wrongness which the painter puts into his
lightness. I have looked at pictures a good deal, in
order to make them tell me what were the rules and
what the limits by which and up to which the painter
might deviate from accuracy in his drawing, and I came
to this conclusion — that there were no rules and no
limits ; that he might deviate in any way and to any
extent ; that there need be no shadow of resemblance
between the patch of colour and the object it is sup-
posed to stand for. The painter seems to act with
absolute license, yet we know, of course, that he obeys an
absolute law. What is the law ? It evidently has no

282 Art.

relation to the thing. The only law laid upon a painter
is — that his sacrifice of the object shall be one that
nature gives him a right to make ; that he shall make it
for her sake and not for his own ; the sacrifice shall not
be wanton, but for the sake of something else. The
departure from accuracy must be a sacrifice of one claim
to another. That is the only law and limit. The painter
need not paint accurately at all, (nay, he paints badly
if he does) ; but in deviating he must paint two things
at once. If he does, he is painting rightly, however
wrongly — that is to say, he is right in his action so far as
it serves : he is wrong when it does not serve. His
duty of truth may be sacrificed to any extent for service.
Or, to take it in another way, we perceive a duty lies
upon him. We cannot see the moral relations of the
subject unless we bear in mind that to the painter
accuracy is a duty absolutely laid upon him, and yet not
laid upon him. What takes its place then ? If he has
not to fulfil that duty, what is it that he has to do ? In
sacrificing one object to the claims of another, he fulfils
two duties at once. I do not say one duty is greater or
higher than another, but it is to be noticed that there
are duties which are laid upon us by ignorance because
we do not know. The duty that doubt imposes is
always different from that given by complete knowledge.
What I think is that any duty may be sacrificed to
any other duty, but it must be duty to which it is
sacrificed, for in sacrificing one duty to another he is
fulfilling two duties together. The duty sacrificed is
fulfilled in the heart. For if it were not so it would
not be for another duty, but for self, it would be sacri-
ficed. Thus, then, what the painter shows us is the art
of fulfilling two duties at once, for which observe we
must in a certain sense do wrong.

Art 283

All true art has an outside appearance of wrongness.
Look back at the earliest art. The painter (speaking ol
the race) began with endeavouring to be exact to the
object that he drew. What was the power that forced
him from that, and compelled him to be inexact ? Ee-
member what sort of man the artist is. No man ever
gained the homage of the world to whom the rightness
of his art did not take the place of all rightness else ;
who could not have refused to falsify his picture for the
sake of heaven. He must have found all righteousness,
all holiness, all virtue, all sacredness, in the truth of his
picture. If he was not that, he was not of importance ;
he might be a very good man, but he was not a person
who could have advanced the art of painting. His
whole soul, his whole moral nature, centred round paint-
ing, and painting stood to him in the place of everything
that we call virtue to us ; and the success in making his
picture what it should be was what heaven is to us. So
we see what a terrible thing this man did, from his point
of view. We might say, "He would like his picture
better if it were so and so." But that man would never
speak so. To him it would have been the simple obli-
teration of his whole moral nature.

He did not care whether he liked his picture or not.
He would no more have made it false than you would
steal a man's property because you do not like to be
poor. I suppose that not having money in your purse
would not have much effect towards making you put
your hand in another man's pocket. But the painter
would steal not from another man, but from nature.
What he saw was that his picture was not true, and of
course he tried to make it more true — that is, more and
more exact — and yet it became more and more unlike
nature. On this point I have a theory — whatever else

284 Art.

may be in nature, certainly our hands are in nature,
and, of all hands, a painter's hands are pre-eminently so.
Now my guess is this, a painter comes to paint rightly
in painting wrongly, but he does not give up trying to
paint rightly ; in mere weariness, I fancy, he shuts his
eyes a little while, and, meaning nothing-, lets his strokes
express the nature of his hand. Now this hand has
got in it, having been trained in exactness to the object
which he sees, a habit which it would be torture to put
away; so when he does not try to restrain it any more,
but gives it liberty, as it were, to express two natures at
once, I believe he finds out that way the true right of
art. He gets so tired that he indulges in a little bit
of freedom, and finds that he has for the first time truly
fulfilled law. I do not believe that he plans it all, but
that he yields to the " natural passion " of his hand ;
he finds out that his hand cannot draw anything that is
not true to nature — that it can have no pleasure in it.
The hand is a wonderful exliibition of the true form of
nature ; man's hand goes very deep indeed into nature's
heart. What is true to the nature of the hand must be
true to the make of nature down to the very bottom.
Anything that is true to the make of an instructed hand
must be true to her. You cannot go into a true artist's
studio and take up a single scrap of paper that he has
touched without seeing how true to nature it is; his
hand will not do anything else. But observe, he has
broken the law, though he did not mean any breaking
of the law. I believe that this is very important, that
the hand is truly an art organ, and that its structure is
a power by which nature leads the painter to his truth.
The natural desires, the emotions, we might almost say,
of the hand express themselves against the restraint
which the mere outside appearances impose. It is the

Art. 285

affirmation of the natural impulse of one part of the
body. I believe there is more than an outside resem-
blance between the mere bad drawing and the true
drawing. You will observe there is a reason why there
should be ; for mere bad drawing expresses the natural
motion of the hand, though it lacks those elements which
the practice of the painter gives. I believe that if you
take that mere bad drawing, such as a child scribbles,
you will find it divisible into two parts, and that one
part only is the mere wanton deviation from truth. For
observe, fulfilling two duties at once must have the
appearance of not fulfilling any duty ; there is the curious
point that fulfilling two duties at once must have the
look of refusing duty ; it is a refusing one duty. There is a
part of a child's drawing which really does serve and ex-
press the wider claims of nature. The true artist, as it were,
divides the bad drawing into two parts ; he incorporates
into his drawing that which will serve ; that part which ex-
presses the natural motion of the hand, and puts aside that
lack of skill which causes the mere badness. That natural
motion of the hand is a permanent element of good
drawing, and in so far as bad drawing contains it, it
contains an element of good drawing ; for we must
remember that the true artist has not only to deviate
from exactness when he draws many things together,
but in drawing even the minutest thing. There is an-
other point also ; bad drawing is a pleasant thing to a
person who cannot draw well ; he may enjoy it very
much ; and, indeed, it is much easier to draw badly than
well ; but if we look at that pleasure, we find that it
demands an analysis. It is evident there is pleasure in any
kind of true drawing ; there is pleasure in accurately repre-
senting an object; there is pleasure in that kind of bad draw-
ing which makes the drawing more true because it serves.

286 Art.

But how can there be pleasure in merely drawing
badly ? In as far as any one draws simply falsely, he
simply fails. Failure is essentially pain ; pleasant as it
may be, there must be incorporated a pain with the
pleasure. There is that which serves the truth, which is
pleasure. Then there is failure, which must be the con-
trary. Bad drawing, though if you take it as a whole, it
may be very pleasurable, has incorporated in it something
which is painful. Only the inability to draw well may make
it tolerable. The pleasure of bad drawing is a mixed thing.
The false part of it is no constituent of the pleasure, but a
detraction from it. If you take away the inability on which
it depends, it simply becomes an impossible thing. It
merely expresses failure, which is the painful thing; because
when failure is no longer inevitable it is always avoided.
The question may be asked, Why do not people always do
their best if it is more pleasant ? But what is here meant
by their " best " is the false right. In trying to make any
one draw better you are trying to make them draw more
exactly. Then, again, all science may be summed up in
this — in the discovering that the truth of things is very
different not only from the appearance but from what is
practically true. Science is not practically true ; what is
true is this : if you take what it affirms as the key to
your experience, you can give it a rational interpretation.
Yet it is still held absurd to affirm anything of men that
is not practically true. The truth of human nature
unquestionably is not practically true. That is the truth
in respect to man which, if you take it as a key, will
account for your experience of him. The great illustra-
tion in respect to science is this — that motion never
ceases — which is practically entirely false. The planets
gravitate to the sun. Do they practically do that ? Yet

Art. 287

how strange it is that we take for granted that the only-
truth about man must be that which is practically true ?
It simply means that there is no science respecting man.
So I adhere to my proposition, failure is painful ; and
it is proved that it is nothing but failure that makes
really bad drawing ; for if you give ability to draw well,
failure is impossible, — it is so painful. Now surely three
things are parallel : — Mere bad drawing answers a life of
pleasure ; good drawing answers to self-righteousness ;
and good art answers to true goodness. Now, if that
analogy holds good, although the proposition does not
rest on that analogy, a curious thing follows. True art
divides bad drawing into two elements — one part of it
which serves (and serves, very probably, because it
expresses the true and natural motion of the hand), and
another part of it which is no more failure. Suppose
true goodness should stand in the same relation to the
life of pleasure. You will observe that the thought of
good drawing that makes it to consist in exactness draws
the line of right wrongly ; it puts into the line of badness
all that deviation from exactitude which belongs to true
art; it divides goodness against itself; it prohibits good-
ness from being reckoned as goodness. Altogether it is
a false line ; it is not the true line of right. It makes a
false division. If you want to show the true line of
right in art, you must take in a certain portion of that
which is included in bad drawing, and transfer it into
good drawing ; then you will observe the very accuracy
divides itself in some way ; a part of it belongs to good
drawing, all true bad drawing, though it is one, yet looks
lilie two. All that false drawing and aU that exact
drawing alike which is not for service, these make up
bad drawing ; all false drawing which serves is included
in good drawing. The line of goodness is drawn falsely ;

288 • Art

whatever serves in what is called bad belongs rightly to
true goodness. It is the same in respect to right and wrong,
restraint and pleasure, as it is in respect to drawing ; all
that serves is good. We have to draw afresh the line as
art teaches us. Every duty that forbids service is a duty
that we ought to sacrifice ; the duty that forbids service
is a false duty, and men will only be good as they
repudiate it. Man has to be able to take the pleasant
things that serve, not for the pleasure of them, but for
the service of them : that is the true goodness.

When nature shows that a thing would be of service,
that is, I take it, her teUing us to do it. Now there is
a special difficulty which nature puts in her own way in
our comprehending that she is telling us to do pleasant
things in the fact that pleasant things, because of their
pleasantness, have been done by vicious people. If we
are sincerely anxious to do good, the unpleasantness of a
duty will not be a hindrance; it almost becomes a
reason for our doing it. Nature can tell us with perfect
ease. Do the things that are unpleasurable. If she has
to tell us to do a thing that is pleasant, that is a dif-
ficulty in her way, for that is a thing which some people
do wrongly. We say, " How can I do that ? She has
made it more difficult for those who wish to be good to
do pleasant things."

Now human life must bear the mark of that ; it will
inevitably be visible in human life that men have been
hindered from doing things which are pleasant to them
through the fact of their having been done badly.

You will find there are a number of useful things
which we should never dream of refusing to do except
because they are pleasant. But people doing a thing for
themselves, is not a reason why nature should not want
it to be done. Surely there is no design more beautiful

Art. 289

than this. It keeps man's life from failing of its full
development. Nature will not let a tree bear fruit too
soon. An animal that is worked too early never reaches
its full strength. So she contrives that the " nutrition,"
the restraiat in human moral life, shall reach its full
development. By this means partly she ensures it.

Human action is divisible into two portions, — the portion
that is pleasure, and the portion that is not pleasure.
When men outstep the line of service they take pain as
well as pleasure. It is nothing but failure. Give them
the ability to avoid the failure, and they prove to you
that it is painful.

PAPERS

ON

SCIENTIFIC SUBJECTS,

( 293 )

XXIII.

ON THE PROXIMATE CAUSE OF
FUNCTIONAL ACTION.

1856.

The actions which take place in the animal body natu-
rally divide themselves into two classes — the nutritive
and the functional ; or those which are concerned respec-
tively in the formation of the organs and their use. In
some instances it may be difficult to draw the exact line
at which nutrition ends and function begins, but for the
most part the distinction is clearly defined, and theoreti-
cally the separation of the two forms of action is always
easy. There are three forms of function — nervous action,
muscular contraction, and secretion. Taken in a large
sense, these divisions appear to include all the active
functions known to exist in the human body.

In the following remarks, no explanation will be
attempted of the phenomena of nutrition : accepted for
the present as ultimate facts, they form rather the basis
upon which it will be sought to found a consistent theory
of the cause of functional activity.

Little doubt can be entertained that the force which is
operative in the vital processes is but a peculiar mani-
festation of the same force (or forces, if there be more
than one), with which we are familiar under other names,
as regulating the phenomena Of inorganic nature. But
although thus, in its origin, one with the other physical

294 ^^^ ^^^ Proximate Cause

forces, the peculiarity of the conditions under which it
exists in the living bodies imparts to it specific properties,
to designate which the term vital is employed. One of
the most characteristic of these peculiar modes of action
of the vital force is the opposition which it presents to
the operation of those forms of force which are termed
chemical — an opposition not of essential nature, but of
special direction. The vital force (or, as from this point
of view it might be called, the vital affinity, for the sake
of bringing out more clearly at once the relation and the
contrast) controls and holds in abeyance the chemical
tendencies of the matter in which it subsists.^

From the state of chemical tension thus arising, it
results that there exists in all living matter a constant
tendency to change. No sooner are the conditions re-
quisite for the manifestation of vital properties withdrawn,
than chemical affinity resumes its sway and decay com-
mences. Even during life the same process is continually
going on. The tissues waste, and are renewed, and waste
again.

A certain connection between this waste or disintegra-
tion of the tissues and the functional activity of the
body in which it takes place, is universally admitted.
Yet the relation which subsists between them is by no
means satisfactorily established. For the most part, the
activity is held to precede and cause the waste.

" Discharge of function, consequent degeneration^ absorption,
and replacement by new structures."

" In the history of a cell there are three stages — that of its

1 There can be no difficulty in conceiving forces essentially the same acting
thus circumstantially in opposition. Innumerable instances will occur to
the mind in which heat, for example, opposes chemical affinity, or gravita-
tion itself raises or suspends a weight.

of Functional Action, 295

growth, of its decay, and the intermediate one of its functional
activity, which is dependent upon the first, and> which causes
the third:' 1

" We may look upon the death of such cells (the muscular
tissue), whose term of life might otherwise have been con-
siderably prolonged, as the result of the expenditure of their
peculiar modification of force under the guise of mechanical
power." 2

In this representation it appears to me that the rela-
tion of cause and effect is inverted — that the existence
of a controlled and subjugated tendency to chemical
change in living bodies is the origin of all the capacity
for functional action which they display, and that the
disintegration of their tissues is not a " result " or " con-
dition" of their activity, but rather the moving spring
and source of that activity itself.

The life of the body being one, its functional power
must be one also. Widely as they may differ in their
immediate form and object, the functions, when regarded
in relation to their origin, may not be isolated from each
other. They are common products of a single power,
which requires to be investigated at once in all its modes
of action. Hence probably the want of success which
has attended the various attempts that have been made
to trace the physical causes of separate functions. But,
on the other hand, much of the obscurity which attaches
to the ideas of life and the vital force appears to have
arisen from the attempt to include under one denomina-
tion, and to refer to one mode and development of force,
phenomena of diverse, and indeed opposite characters.

Broadly as the line of demarcation is drawn by nature

1 Dr. Bucknill, British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, No. 29,
p. 226.

^ Dr. Carpenter, Human Physiology, p. 109.

296 On the Proximate Cause

between those processes by which the living organism is
built up and maintained, and those which involve the
death and disintegration of the tissues in which they
occur, the prevailing tendency of physiological speculation
has been to include both series of actions under one
name, and to refer them to the immediate operation of a
common power. They have been termed indiscriminately
vital actions, and adduced without distinction as instances
of the direct operation of the vital force.

Thus Liebig says : " The active or available vital force
in certain living parts is the cause of the mechanical
phenomena in the animal organism." ^

And Dr. Carpenter thus expresses himself: "The con-
traction of any muscle upon the application of a stimulus
must be attributed to an exercise of vital force engendered
by previous acts of nutrition." ^

And again, speaking of muscular and nervous action,
he says : " We are entitled to affirm that each is a pecu-
liar modus operandi of the same force as that which is
concerned in cell- formation."^

According to this view, the vital force is made the
direct agent in actions essentially different. Hence arises
the impossibility of defining it ; for while the words are
so used it is surely in vain to seek to attach to them any
signification more definite than that of a general expres-
sion for all the changes which take place in a living body.
Any term similarly used would become equally obscure
and unsettled. By thus including in one category
actions so opposed as function and nutrition, the pheno-
mena of life are placed in an attitude of irreconcilable
variance with those which pertain to all other branches

1 Organic Chemistry of Physiology and Pathology, p. 221.

2 Human Physiology, third edition, p. 476.

^ Philosophical Transactions, Part 2, p. 737. 1851.

of Functional A ction, 297

of physical science. The fatal error has been to overlook
the fact that two forces (or modes of force) are at work
in the living body. It has not been perceived that the
chemical affinities of the animal organs constitute a source
of power co-equal with, and precisely measured by, the
power of the vital force. The work of two agents has been
assigned to one. If now the omission be supplied, and
the vital and chemical forces be recognised as the two
forces of organised matter — the former as the resistance,
the latter as the resisted force, and therefore the force
available for action — a large part of the obscurity which
envelopes the theory of vital action is at once removed. An
uniformity of principle is seen to prevail between the laws
of the organic and inorganic worlds, and the facts hitherto
so intractable arrange themselves without difficulty in
accordance with some of our most familiar conceptions.

Bearing in mind that no explanation is offered of the
nutritive processes in the living body, it will be seen that
upon the theory propounded there is a perfect analogy
between the animal body and a self-acting machine.

In both there exists a mechanism adapted to the per-
formance of certain defined actions, and a reservoir of
power or force by which that mechanism is kept in opera-
tion. In both, the source of this power is essentially the
same. In living bodies one tendency of matter, its
chemical affinity, is held in check ; in any machine that
is to manifest a capacity for action, art must bring into
a like condition of restraint some tendency of matter,
either the -same or similar.

In the simple instance of a clock, the gravitation of
the weights, controlled by an adapted mechanism, is the
power which effectuates its functions — the revolution of
the hands, the striking of the hour. In the watch, the
restrained elasticity of the spring holds the same rela-

298 On the Proximate Cause

tion. The steam-engine owes its power to the repressed
expansiveness of the vapour. There is no instance,
indeed, of an artificial accumulation of force or capacity
for action that does not depend upon this principle.
Matter restrained from the fulfilment of any of its natural
tendencies affords power ; tlie removal of the restraining
force, permitting the play of the tendencies so controlled,
produces action ; which action may be made to subserve
any purpose by suitable modification of the resistance, and
the employment of an adapted mechanism.

In this respect the organic and inorganic worlds obey
a common law. Organisation gives capacity for action
only by virtue of the resistance it presents to the chemical
forces; these chemical forces, acting under definite limits,
and in connection with various structures, being the true
sources of all functional activity. A living body is a
divinely-made machine, constructed, indeed, with a mar-
vellous delicacy, perfection, and complexity, and depend-
ing upon a power, the vital modification of force, which
it is wholly beyond our skill to imitate or comprehend,
but still involving in its working no other principles than
those which we every day apply, and see to regulate the
entire course of nature.

For the inorganic world furnishes abundant instances
of the same balancing of forces resulting in a similar ac-
tivity or capacity for action. The term irritability, in so
far as it denotes a capacity for respondiag to stimuli, con-
fined hitherto to organised structures, might with perfect
accuracy receive a more extended application. It exists
in whatever form of matter there is found the same
powerful tendency to change of state with which it is
associated in living bodies. Thus, in the chloride or
iodide of nitrogen the slightest touch induces an explosion.
In the case of gunpowder, the tendency to change in which

of Functional Action, 299

is less energetic, the chemical affinities of the materials
are brought into action by the momentary application of
intense heat. In the same way a solution of certain salts,
when the cohesive force is barely counterbalanced by the
solvent power of the water, will assume the crystalline
form upon the gentlest touch, or the mere passage of a
vibration. The slightest scratch causes unannealed glass
to break.

In these instances — and very many more might be
adduced — it is surely correct to say that action ensues on
the application of a stimulus; and in them aU it is obvious
that the action is immediately due to pre-existing and re-
strained tendencies to change of state. The stimulus is
only in a secondary sense the cause of the phenomenon,
and evidently determines it by removing the condition
which forbade the previous operation of those tendencies.
In all such cases the modus operandi is the same as that
of the mechanisms previously referred to, and they are
precisely analogous to the simpler contrivances in which
a suspended weight is made to fall upon the disturbance
of its equilibrium by slight causes.

If the doctrine of the correlation of the physical forces
be applied to material actions or changes of this class, it
becomes at once apparent that the correlated force is
neither the resistance nor the stimulus, but the controlled
or latent tendency to change.

Thus, e.g., the application of a certain amount of heat
to a magnet suspends its attractive power. If, therefore,
to a magnet sustaining a mass of iron sufficient heat be
applied, there results an action — the fall, namely, of the
iron to the earth, the cause of this action being the
gravitation which the magnetic force had previously been
exerted in controlling. It might be said that the gravi-
tation is converted into motion ; it would never be pro-

300 On the Proximate Cause

posed to attribute the motion to a conversion either of
the magnetic force or of the heat into mechanical force.
But in respect to the animal functions, this very error
has been committed; for in the illustration above cited
the magnetic attraction represents the vital affinity or
force, the gravitation the repressed chemical affinities of
the living tissues, the heat the stimulus, and the fall of
the weight the function.

Many arguments may be adduced to show, that while
the Correlation Theory affords a consistent and beautiful
expression of the relation which exists between the forces
of the external world and the developments of the vital
force in the growth and nutrition of the body, it is entirely
misapplied w^hen it is proposed as an explanation of the
connection of the vital force with functional activity.

In the first place, this view entirely ignores the
balanced state of the forces in the animal economy, and
the accumulation of power arising from the repressed
chemical affinity, which it regards merely as operating,
after the vital force has discharged the function, in re-
ducing to simpler compounds the devitalised tissue.
Surely this is utterly opposed to all we know of the
economy of force w^hich prevails throughout nature, and
pre-eminently in the living body, in which no power, how
subordinate soever, or apparently trivial, is ever wasted.

It is unquestionable, that in this state of equilibrium
of the chemical and vital forces there exists an arrange-
ment by which great results might be accomplished.
Everything is prepared for the exhibition of a large amount
of power by the mere permission of the play of chemical
affinity. Would it not be a gratuitous squandering of re-
sources that such a capability for action should be turned
to no account ?

2ndly. To suppose a conversion of the vital force into

of Functional Action, 30 1

functional action, is to set aside an actual and sufficient
cause in favour of one that is entirely hypothetical. The
state of chemical tension in the animal body, and the co-
existence of chemical change with functional activity, are
admitted facts : that this chemical action in the tissues
gives rise to the external manifestations of function,
is an inference as simple as that the chemical change
among the particles of gunpowder is the cause of its ex-
plosion. How, then, are we justified in assuming the
existence of another process, hard to conceive, and im-
possible to demonstrate ?

3rdly. The theory in question, while it rejects a
cause so natural and obvious, in reality involves the
idea of an effect without any adequate cause at all.
No intelligible relation of cause and effect can be shown
between the stimuli which excite the functions and the
conversion of force which they are supposed to cause,
or for which they " supply the condition." No propor-
tion is maintained between the amount of the stimulus
and the amount of force converted. In what way,
for instance, can gentle pressure on the thumbs of the
frog, during the season of coitus, produce a conversion
of the vital force of nearly all the muscles of the body
into an energetic contractile action ?

4thly. Waiving all theoretical objections to the view
of the correlation of vital force and functional activity,
it may be remarked that the facts do not agree with
the principles of that doctrine. The "material substra-
tum" is wanting. In the conversion of the vital force
of a muscle into mechanical force, for example, there is
no change of the matter in which the force subsists.
The conversion supposed is precisely such as would
occur if a heated body were suddenly and without
adequate cause to lose its heat, and manifest electricity

302 On the Proximate Catise

instead, or shoot into spontaneous motion. The view
propounded by Liebig — viz., that the vital force which
is converted into mechanical force in muscular contrac-
tion is not that of the muscle itself, but may be derived
from any other part of the organism, and conveyed to it
by the nerves — would be more accordant with the terms
of the theory, but we- know experimentally that it is not
correct.

5thly. The vacillating language used in reference to
this part of the subject, by those who have most success-
fully applied the doctrine of correlation to vital pheno-
mena, betrays the unsoundness of their position.

" Muscular contraction," says Dr. Carpenter, " may be
regarded as proceeding from the expenditure or meta-
morphosis of the cell force, which ceases to exist as a
vital power, in giving rise to mechanical agency." But
speaking of the external stimuli of muscles, he adds :
" These agencies are concerned in occasioning that meta-
morphosis of living organised tissue into chemical com-
pounds, whereon the development of the muscular force
seems to be immediately dependent." ^

Are not two different origins here assigned to muscular
contraction ? Again, Dr. Carpenter observes (p. 747),
" We are, then, to regard the nervous, electrical, and
other stimuli under whose influence the muscular force
is called forth, less as the immediate sources of that
force than as furnishing the conditions under which the
vital force, acting through the muscle, is converted into the
mechanical force developed in its contraction." But at p.
745, we read: "The nervous ioYQQ appears convertible into
motion through the medium of the muscular apparatus."

With regard to the nervous force. Dr. Carpenter
writes as follows : " We find only one kind of tissue

1 Philosophical Transactions, Part ii., p. 746. 1850.

of Functional A dion. 303

serving for the generation and transmission of nervous
power, this alone affording the material substratum
through which the mtal force, can manifest itself as
nervous agency." And again : " Nerve force wMch has
its origin in cell-formation may excite or modify the
process of cell-formation in other parts" (p. 743)' ^^^»
on the following page, he argues, that "all the facts
that have been adduced in support of the identity (of
the nervous forc^f and electricity) will be found readily
explicable on the idea of their correlation or mutual con-
vertibility."

Can the nerve force be both a manifestation of vital
force and a result of the conversion of electricity ?
Can it have its origin at once in cell formation and in
a galvanic current ? And yet, further, are there not the
same reasons for holding that the electrical stimulus only
furnishes the conditions under which the vital force is
converted into the nervous force, as exist in respect to
muscular contraction ?

Even Liebig's perspicuity fails him upon this subject
In his observations " On the Phenomena of Motion in
Living Bodies," he writes thus : " All experience proves
that there is in the organism only one source of mechani-
cal power; and this source is the conversion of living
parts into lifeless amorphous compounds." ^

But at p. 220, "As an immediate effect of the mani-
festation of mechanical force, we see that a part of the
muscular structure loses its vital properties, its character
of life."

Is not the same change thus made both cause and
effect ?

The last writer on this topic. Dr. Eeynolds, in an
able article " On the Objects and Scientific Position of

^ Op. cit., p. 242.

304 Oil the Proximate Cause

Physiology," ^ is not more definite in his language.
Compare the following passages: — "The partial dis-
integration of the tissues (of the muscular and nervous
systems) is one condition or source of their action"
(p. 1 1 2). " We have therefore to regard these animal
properties (sensibility and muscular contraction) as
functions of the mtal force inherent in the cell, and as
constituting two of its special endowments " (p. 1 1 8).

In the passages above cited — and many more of the
same character might be adduced — two contradictory
ideas appear to have been struggling in the writer's
mind, and alternately giving the colour to his language.
One is, that motion, or nervous action, as the case may be,
is a direct expression of the vital force ; and the other,
that it is the result of the chemical disintegration of the
muscular or nervous tissues. Owing to this cause, the
words used virtually assert that the retrograde metamor-
phosis of the tissues, or their conversion into lifeless
compounds, is a result or manifestation of the vital force,
which is in its very terms a contradiction.

To these considerations it may be added, that to
affirm the function to be the result of the accompanying
disintegration, is to adopt the negative side of tlie
argument. It enables us to reject altogether sensibility
and contractility^ as separate properties of the nervous
and muscular tissues, apart from their known tendency
to chemical change. And no principle in science is
better grounded than that nothing may be assumed to
exist without a proved necessity.

The substance of what has been advanced may be
briefly stated thus. Dynamically considered, the changes
which take place in the inorganic world are divisible
into two classes — those which directly result from the

1 British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, No. 31.

of Fiinctio7ial Action. 305

application of some new force to the matter in which
they occur, and those which ensue from pre-existing
tendencies to change when some force previously opera-
tive is neutralised or overcome. The former class of
material changes are characterised by an absolute pro-
portion between the force applied and the resulting
action ; the latter are distinguished by their spontaneity,
or the disproportion (often extreme) between the apparent
cause and the result.

The endowments of living beings embrace both these
forms of action. The first is seen in the processes of
nutrition, development, and growth, the forces engaged
in which are truly correlated, as Dr. Carpenter has most
ably shown, to other forms of force. The changes in
which function consists exemplify the second, being
effected by the chemical affinities of the elements of the
tissues, when the vital resistance is in definite manner
and degree diminished.

Treating the question thus on abstract grounds, it can
hardly be denied that the view of the vital functions
above propounded possesses great simplicity, and by
virtue of its wide analogies, a certain amount of a 'priori
probability. It aids in reducing to the smallest number
" the assumptions which, being granted, the order of
nature as it exists would be the result," But it cannot
on such grounds claim acceptance, unless it be capable
of an unstrained application to all the phenomena which
come within its scope. It. would almost appear, indeed,
to be so natural an interpretation of the facts of animal
existence, that had it been the true one, it could hardly
have been overlooked or rejected, and that the class of
functional actions must have presented characters which,
indicating the direct agency of the vital force, forbade
them to be grouped under so simple an expression. I

u

3o6 On the Proximate Cause

shall proceed, therefore, to an examination of some of
the leading facts connected with the animal functions,
and inquire : —

I. How far the actions of the nervous system may be
interpreted upon the principle suggested. From such an
inquiry it is of course necessary to exclude altogether
the phenomena of thought and volition, viewed in their
psychological relations. Of the mysterious process by
which a material change in the brain awakens a per-
ception or kindles a thought, we are entirely ignorant;
nor can we form any conception of the mode in which
the spiritual will communicates its behests to its obedient
instrument. Whatever theory be adopted of nervous
action, these relations must remain equally inscrutable.
Confining our attention, therefore, to those operations of
the nervous system which are strictly physical in their
character, it may be remarked that all the stimuli which
excite them are adapted to bring into activity the re-
pressed chemical affinities of the organic elements. Thus
the nervous force is called into action by mechanical
irritation, or motion in whatsoever form applied, by
changes of temperature, by chemical reagents, electricity,
light, or sound, and byjbhe sapid and odorous properties
of matter. It is hardly possible to perceive in these
various agents any property in common to which their
influence upon the nervous system can with reason be
referred, except the power they all (so far as they are
known to us) possess of disturbing an unstable chemical
equilibrium. They cannot all supply a force which is
converted into the nervous force. They have no visible
adaptation to cause such a conversion of the vital force.
No analogy warrants the assumption that they can im-
mediately produce a state of active polarity. But acting
upon a tissue in which the affinities of the component

of Functional Action. 307

elements are so delicately balanced, and the inherent
tendency to chemical change so strong, it can hardly be
otherwise than that they should overthrow that balance,
and bring into play the latent and coerced attractions.

'*In compounds in which the free manifestation of chemical
force has been impeded by other forces," says Liebig, speaking
of inorganic substances,^ "a blow, or mechanical friction, or
the contact of a substance the particles of which are in a state
of transformation, or any external cause whose activity is
added to the stronger attraction of the elementary particles in
another direction, may suffice to give the preponderance to
this stronger attraction, and to alter the form and structure
of the compound."

That such an actual change of the composition of the
nervous tissue does ensue from the action of the stimulus,
is proved by the fact that the same stimulus will not
reproduce the effect until after the lapse of a certain
interval. This should not be the case if the stimulus
merely induced a polar state, or itself assumed the form
of the nervous force. The necessity of time for the
renewal of the irritability is evidence of an altered
composition.

Instances have been adduced from the inorganic world
of the production of action in substances prone to change
by slight mechanical irritation, which may be referred
to as the analogues of the sense of touch. The senses of
sight and hearing are susceptible of illustration by similar
analogies.

To prepare a plate or paper for photographic purposes,
it is only requisite to apply to it a suitable chemical
compound, the elements of which tend to assume other
relations, and of affinities so weak as to be overcome and

^ Op. cit., p. 207.

o8 On the Proximate Cause

neutralised by light. Thus prepared, the paper is called
sensitive, and it would appear to furnish a very exact
illustration of the process by which vision is affected.

The retina consists of matter prone to change. Its
elements break up and enter into new relations imme-
diately the vital force or affinity which holds them in
their existing combinations ceases, or becomes impaired.
What hypothesis can be more simple than that the
luminous rays of the spectrum should have the power,
to a certain extent, of neutralising this delicate affinity,
and thus causing, or, to speak more correctly, permitting,
a definite chemical change to take place in the retina ;
just as the actinic rays, overcoming the affinities of the
photographic salts, cause or permit a new arrangement of
their elements ?

The sense of hearing also admits of explanation by
the application of the same principle. In the texture of
the auditory nerve it appears that the chemical and vital
forces are so balanced that the sonorous vibrations over-
throw the equilibrium, and bring into activity, as in the
case of light, the chemical affinity. An illustration of
the nature of the action is furnished (if we may compare
great things with small) by the fact mentioned by Eogers,
that masses of ice and snow of considerable magnitude
may be precipitated from the Alpine ridges by the sound
of the human voice. The gravitation of the masses, and
the resisting forces which maintained them in their places,
being in such exact equilibrium, that even so slight a
motion of the atmosphere suffices to give the preponder-
ance to the former. This illustration, remote though it
may seem, is valuable, as bringing clearly before the
mind the essential character of the process which consti-
tutes the animal function. For the stimulus in this case,
the aerial vibration, palpably induces the resulting action,

of Fwictional Action, 309

not by any direct agency, nor by a conversion of one form
of force into another, but solely by disturbing tbe equili-
brium of the counteracting forces, and neutralising the
resistance which opposed the force of gravity.

Such a change of composition in the nervous substance
must tend directly, in conformity with all our knowledge
of physical laws, to produce a polar state or force, corre-
sponding in every respect with that which we term the
" nervous force." The close analogy which exists between
the nervous force and electricity, strongly confirms this
view of its origin and nature. Tor we recognise chemical
change, and especially the decomposition of compound
bodies, by means of stronger affinities acting on their ele-
ments, as an invariable source of the electric force; and
Mr. Grove has demonstrated its existence as a result of
the changes which take place in the photographic process.
In the living body, it would appear that the decomposi-
tions (if they may be so called) in which the exercise of
function consists, give rise to a force — not electric, indeed
— but of a peculiar though analogous character, inasmuch
as the changes in which it has its origin, though analogous
to those which take place in inorganic matter, are yet of
a distinct and peculiar order. Thus regarded, the nervous
force, in its relation to functional activity, may be defined
to be a polar condition, or other molecular change in a
nerve, akin to that which exists in a body conveying a
current of electricity, and arising from a chemical change
either in itself or in any of the tissues with which it is
in relation. This change being the result of the chemical
affinities of the elements of the tissues, which come into
play when the vital resistance is diminished by any force
which, so disturbing the equilibrium, is called a stimulus.
I have said the nervous force may be thus defined in its
relation to functional activity, because there appears to

3 1 o On the Proximate Cause

be mucii evidence tliat the changes which constitute the
development and nutrition of the tissues also give rise to
a force, which, traversing the nerves, contributes materi-
ally to the energy of the vital processes, and more espe-
cially, perhaps, to the sympathetic development of various
portions of the body, and the general condition of vigour
which is denominated tone. This question, however, does
not fall within the scope of the present paper, which
relates only to those actions in the living body that are
attended with a retrograde change of structure.

The nervous force, therefore, having its origin in
chemical or anti- vital changes, must possess an especial
adaptation for exciting changes of a similar character.
Hence it is pre-eminently the excitor of function, causing
in any organ to which it may be conveyed the same sub-
ordination of the vital to the chemical affinity from which
it sprang. To take another illustration from the eye.
Light impinging on the retina determines therein a
chemical change, which develops in the optic nerve the
nervous force. This force causes in the brain an action
of the same order as that in the retina. Hence again
originates a nervous force, which, conveyed to the iris,
causes yet a third time a chemical change, which is the
source of its contraction.

That the nervous force, as excited by stimuli, is opposed
to the vital affinity, and tends to the induction of changes
resulting in the disintegration of the tissues, is rendered
probable, not only by its relation to the functional activity
of the organs, which is always connected with such disin-
tegration, but also by various facts which show ulcerative
or other destructive action to be the result of abnormal
stimulation of a nerve, or even of the excessive applica-
tion of the normal stimuli. An interesting case of this
nature is mentioned by Mr. Paget, in which obstinate

of Fu7ictio7ial Action. 311

ulceration of the palm of the hand was caused by pressure
on the median nerve, and which healed immediately the
pressure was removed. Another case is mentioned by
Mr. Simon, of ulceration accompanying neuralgia of the
knee. Nor can such destructive effects be attributed
rather to the withdrawal than to the derangement of the
nervous force ; for although ulceration may occur as the
consequence of the division of a nerve, there is ample
evidence that it is not due to the mere loss of nervous
stimulus, but either to the "irritation" consequent on the
division, or to the absence of necessary protection to
the organ implicated; and that the abnormal stimulus
is often the cause of the ulcerative process in these
cases, appears highly probable from a case related by
Mr. Simon, of disease entirely destroying the fifth nerve,
in which the cornea of the affected eye had ulcerated
and healed again.

The view of the nervous force which refers its origin
to retrograde metamorphosis receives confirmation from
various facts which, upon any other hypothesis, are
difficult of explanation. Such are —

1. The increased proneness to functional activity
which (with certain limitations) always coexists with
diminished vital power, and is implied by the expression
tliat irritability is proportionate to debility.

2. The phenomena of certain diseases : as tetanus
arising from the disorganising changes caused by a
wound, in a debilitated constitution; or those cases of
epilepsy in which the cause of the convulsion appears
to be merely the mechanical irritation of spicul^e of bone
pressing upon the nervous tissue, and the more perma-
nent convulsive action connected with that retrograde
change in the brain which is denominated red softening.
And lastly, the fact that the mere destruction of the

3 1 2 Oil the Proximate Cause

central ganglia, as by crushing or otlier mechanical
violence, induces a vehement exhibition of nervous
energy.

II. An examination of the conditions which determine
muscular contraction wiU show them to be in perfect
conformity with the principles laid down. The proposi-
tion affirmed being that the motor power of a muscle is
simply an expression of the state of chemical tension in
which it exists, and that its contraction is the immediate
result of a change of composition ensuing whenever the
vital state which maintains such tension is, within
certain limits, thrown into abeyance.

When placed beneath the microscope, the ultimate
muscular fibre is seen to contract first at any spot where
it has been broken or otherwise subjected to injury.
The slightest mechanical irritation, even the presence
of the least particle of matter, determines a local con-
traction, as also do chemical reagents and water. The
contact of the atmosphere, which we know, from the
history of subcutaneous wounds, to have a lowering in-
fluence on the vitality of the internal tissues, excites
irregular contractions on the surface of an exposed
muscle.

In cases of protracted phthisis, or other diseases
attended with exhaustion of the vital power and emacia-
tion, contraction of the muscles arises with increased
facility, and may be visibly excited by a light blow upon
the muscles of the thorax.

And during vigorous life, the stimuli which best
excite the action of the muscles are precisely those which
most powerfully evoke their inherent tendency to change
of composition. The nervous force has been shown to
stand in a special relation to such change. Electricity,
which as a muscular stimulus ranks second to it in power.

of Functional Action, 3 1 3

stands first among the physical forces as a promoter of
chemical change, and manifests its opposition to the
vital force by the instant death which accompanies its
excessive action ; by the coldness, pallor, and depression
of vital energy which follow its local application in a
powerful form; and the more speedy putrefaction of
muscles which have been electrified immediately before
or after death.^

The phenomena of post-mortem contraction of the
muscles are, perhaps, not strictly comparable with those
of their living action. It may be doubted whether they
are facts of the same order ; but so far as the former are
available for illustration of the latter, they entirely
support the view that contraction depends upon a dimi-
nution of the vital resistance, allowing to a limited
extent the play of chemical affinity.

The simplicity and adequacy of this theory are well
exemplified by its bearing upon the dynamical problem
involved in the motion of the heart. Of the various
extraneous forces to which the maintenance of its action
has been assigned, all have been rejected by Dr. Carpen-
ter, who prefers to regard —

" An alternation of contraction and relaxation as the
characteristic and constant manifestation of its vital activity.
. . . Just as the Leyden jar," he adds, " may be so charged
with electricity as to discharge itself spontaneously, so it is
easy to conceive that a muscle may be so charged with
motility or motor force as to execute spontaneous contrac-
tions. "2

1 The varying eflPects of electricity upon the muscles according to the
direction of the current and other circumstances, are perhaps not yet
entirely explicable upon any general principle. It is believed that they are
not more difficult of explanation upon the view maintained above, than upon
any other hypothesis.

2 Human Physiology, p. 476.

314 On the Proximate Cause

A few considerations will show that this hypothesis
cannot be accepted as a correct representation of the
action to which it relates.

For, in the first place, the motion of the heart or any
muscle (as Dr. Carpenter himself represents the case)
is not a manifestation of the vital force, but a conversion
of it. And such conversion cannot occur without a
preceding change in the conditions under which the
force exists. To suppose it to take place spontaneously,
is to suppose a material change to originate itself; an
effect without a cause.

Again, the words " motility or. motor force " are most
unhappily wanting, in precision ; and whether they be
held to mean actual motion, or capacity for motion, the
idea seems to be alike inapplicable.

The illustration, also, adduced by Dr. Carpenter, does
* not assist his argument. In the Leyden jar, electricity
received from without is accumulated by resistance, and
transmitted when the resistance ceases, either being
neutralised by the use of the discharger, or overpowered
by the excessive accumulation of the resisted electricity.
That is, as if a real momentum of motion were imparted
to the muscle, and stored up within it by resistance,
until it had accumulated to a sufficient intensity. But
the heart, on Dr. Carpenter's view, is in no such case :
no account is taken of any force resisted ; the entire
process is a continuous development of one force, sud-
denly altering its character and mode of operation.

The deficient element is the force which determines
this sudden change from a form of action which builds
up the living tissue to one that disintegrates and destroys
it. The chain is broken at that point ; but the recogni-
tion of the two forces which inhere in every part of the
animal body, at once supplies the wanting link. The

of Functional A ction, 3:5,

heart, like every living muscle, is charged with force,
not motor or contractile, but chemical. The chemical
affinity of its elements, resisted by vital or nutritive
action, accumulates within it, creating a state of tension
and proneness to action, precisely such as exists in the
Leyden jar. The comparison is just, though incorrectly
used. Muscular contraction from a stimulus is the
analogue of the electrical discharge by means of me-
tallic contact, in which the resistance is removed ; and
the spontaneous contraction of the heart is parallel to
the spontaneous discharge which ensues when the resist-
ance is too weak.

An adequate account of the facts appears to be con-
veyed by the following statement. In the muscular
structure or nervous ganglia^ of the heart, the chemical
and vital forces are so balanced, that they assume a
state of alternating activity. It might be said that the
vital force exists in large quantity, but of low intensity.
Hence, when, by the process of nutrition, the chemical
affinity has been accumulated to a certain amount, it
overpowers the vital resistance, and that chemical change
which is the cause of contraction ensues. And the same
series of changes continually recurs, because the vital
state is constantly renewed. It is possible that the
maturity of the cells which constitute the muscular fibre,
being accompanied by a failure of their vital power, may
give the occasion for the ascendency of the chemical
force; but the phenomena of voluntary muscular con-
traction, and the fact that the heart's action is often
more rapid in proportion to the debility of the vital
power, seem opposed to such a view. The action may
be roughly compared to the alternate formation and

^ There are many circumstances which favour the idea that the action of
the heart is dei)endent upon the ganglia contained in its substance.

3 1 6 Oil the Proximate Cause

decomposition of the ammoniuret of mercury in tlie
course of an intermittent electric current.

In the foregoing remarks, it has been assumed that
the vital force is characterised by a varying intensity of
action. In proof of this law, it is sufficient to refer to
the normal succession of the sleeping and waking states.
The heart may be said to wake and sleep with each
recurrence of its beat.

With regard to the mode in which chemical change of
the muscular tissue effects its contraction, nothing certain
is known. There is no difficulty, however, in the con-
ception of such a causal relation, since the production of
mechanical force by means of chemical action is one of
the most familiar of facts, and the muscular structure
may, without any violence, be regarded as a mechanism
adapted for the development of mechanical effects from
slight changes of composition.

III. With regard to the process of secretion, there is
ample evidence that it depends upon a modified exertion
of the chemical affinities. The following facts may be
referred to : —

1. The lower composition of the secreted fluids. In
the case of the great mass of the secretions, including
those of a nutritive character (as the milk), this less
vitalised constitution is evident, and the seminal fluid,
there is reason to believe, is no exception. To what,
e.g.^ but an exercise of chemical affinity can the forma-
tion of sugar by the liver be referred ?

2. The dependence of the secretive action upon the
same stimuli and general conditions as the other functions,
and especially upon the nervous force.

3. Its promotion by the local application, or presence
in the blood, of medicinal or other substances, the influence
of which cannot increase, but must tend to diminish the

of Functional A ction. 317

vital resistance of the organs. It is not unlikely that in
some instances the secretive action is normally main-
tained by the decomposing influence upon the gland
tissue of substances, themselves in a state of decom-
position, circulating in the blood.

4. An over-stimulation of secretion leads directly to
destructive and anti- vital changes. Thus, as Mr. Paget
has observed, the first stage of inflammation appears to
be merely an increase of secretion. Salivation runs on
to ulceration. One efiect of destructive agents applied
to the surface of the body, as a burn, severe pressure, or
chemical irritants, is to induce secretion.

5. Professer Graham has rendered it probable that the
passage of osmotic currents through animal membranes
is dependent upon slight decomposing changes taking
place in them.

6. Secretion may continue after death, being then
analogous to the post-mortem contraction of the muscles.

The production of electricity and of light must be enu-
merated among the animal functions, but it will be suffi-
cient merely to allude to them. There is no cause to
which they can be referred with more probability than
to chemical changes in the electrical and luminous organs.
And the generation of electricity is known to be deter-
mined, like the other functions, by any stimuli which
tend to overthrow the chemico-vital equilibrium, either
in the organs themselves, or those portions of the nervous
system which supply them.

The view of the vital functions advocated above has
many important bearings upon special branches of physi-
ology and pathology, which cannot now be enlarged upon.
The great advantage which seems to result from it is the
simplification it effects in the conception of the vital
force itself. One whole division of what under other

3 1 8 On the Proximate Cause, etc.

views is considered as vital action, being thus transferred
to the domain of chemical agency, the idea of the vital
force stands out clear and distinct before the mind as
the peculiar molecular action which forms and nourishes
the living body. That is its nature ; that its entire scope.
Thus, by resistance, it accumulates chemical force, and
furnishes the conditions under which the functions —
motion, nervous action, secretion — exhibit themselves as
the results of chemical afi&nity.

And the idea of the animal body, the fundamental
conception or plan on which it has been framed, appears
to be simply that on which we ourselves act when we
wish to construct a machine. We use one modification
of force as a resistance to another, privileged herein with
the power of imitating, at an infinite distance indeed,
the sublimest of the material works of the great Creator
of all things.

And further still, this view of life opens to us yet
another indication of the unity of principle that binds
creation into one. On earth we see the antagonism of
two forms of force yielding a well-nigh boundless variety
of beautiful, useful, and happy action in the successive
grades of animal existence. In the heavens, the anta-
gonism of two forms of force develops the regular motions
of the planets, and constitutes the l^-w which ordinates
the universe."^

1 I have perhaps failed to indicate with sufficient clearness that the pro-
duction of functional action by chemical change depends upon the mode in
which such change takes i^lace. It is not every decomposition in the living
body that necessarily results in a function, but such changes only, and
changes of such intensity, as are adapted to act upon the functional mechan-
ism. In a steam-engine it is not eveiy possible expansion of the steam that
causes a revolution of the wheels, but only an expansion which takes place
in a sufficient and yet limited degree, and in a special direction. In the
animal, passive decay of the tissues, as of an unused muscle, and excessive
decay, as in some forms of disease, do not cause, but abolish, function.

( 319 )

XXIV.

ON PHYSICAL MORPHOLOGY, OR THE
LA W OF ORGANIC FORM,

1858.

In studying the development of the mammalian ovum
my attention was struck by the form in which the
lamince dorsales make their first appearance. The
layer of cells which constitutes the germinal membrane
being completely formed, and separated at one point
from the enclosing membranes, the laminae dorsales rise
up in this portion as two parallel ridges or folds. The
thought suggested itself to me that interstitial increase
of the germinal membrane, under the limiting influence
of the external capsule of the ovum, must result in a
folding of the membrane upon itself just in some such
manner. If a flexible layer increase in length while its
ends remain at the same distance from each other, it is
wrinkled up ; by laying a handkerchief on a table, placing
the hands firmly upon it at a short distance apart, and
gradually approximating them, such folds may be pro-
duced.

The idea thus suggested to my thoughts led me to
further investigation, and many instances soon presented
themselves in which the forms assumed by developing
structures seemed at least to. be distinctly traceable to
the mechanical conditions that were present. The law
which prevails so generally in the vegetable world, that

3 2 o Physical Morphology.

buds are formed in axils, occurred to me in this light.
For an axil is an interspace, a point of separation, at
which the resistance to the outgrowth of the plastic
material might naturally be supposed less than at other
portions of the stem. Following this clue, I perceived
that the conception of gemmation in axils appeared
applicable, to a large extent, to the processes in which
development consists. The eye and the ear bud out in
the interspaces between the primary divisions of the
encephalon ; the vascular lamina is formed between the
two layers of the germinal membrane ; the allantois
insinuates itself between the layers of the amnion,
while the amnion itself and the ventral laminae repeat
the process observed in the formation of the laminae
dorsales.

Everywhere I met witli facts of the like apparent
significance : the coiling up of the intestines would be
a simple result of the greater length of the bowel than
of the cavity in which they are contained, and answers
to a series of such foldings as I first referred to ; the
convolutions of the cerebrum would necessarily arise
from the expansion of its surface within the cranium.'^

Instances of this kind, multiplying indefinitely in
whatever direction I looked, and becoming more con-
vincing the more carefully they were examined, there
was gradually forced upon me the perception that all
organic form was determined by simple mechanical con-
ditions. Which conclusion, startling as it appeared on
its first enunciation, I had no sooner clearly grasped,
than I perceived it to be self-evident. It presented
itself to me thus :

Organic form is the result of motion

Motion takes the direction of least resistance.

1 This has been observed by Mr. Solly in his work upon the Brain.

Physical Morphology, 321

Therefore organic form is the result of motion in tlie
direction of least resistance.

This is the position which I now propose to illustrate
and maintain.

Organic form is the result of motion. By this expres-
sion nothing more is meant than that, as we consider
form to depend upon the position of the particles of
which any body consists, so, in the case of organic bodies,
these particles must have assumed their various positions
by moving into them. I use it as a postulate in this
abstract statement, because it is the simplest formula I
can find to express our necessary conception of the facts.

That motion takes the direction of least resistance
also is an axiom. It is involved in the meaning of the
words ; for by resistance is meant that which preventing,
thereby necessarily directs, the motion.

It is necessary, however, to notice an ambiguity which
may here present itself. Motion doubtless takes the
direction of least resistance, but every motion must have
an original direction, and a momentum which enables it
to overcome a greater or less amount of resistance. Do
these circumstances detract from or destroy the value of
the axiom ?

Certainly they do not practically. Mechanics, as an
art, reposes on it, and with none the less certainty or
success because these conditions have to be remembered.
Nor does the axiom appear to me to be even theo-
retically defective. It is true every motion must be in
a certain direction, but this direction must have been
assumed under the operation of the same laws as deter-
mine its subsequent course. We here, as in every case,
strike upon a chain which has to the human intellect no
beginning. Whatever we may suppose concerning the
primary origination of motion, of every motion that we

X

322 Physical Morphology,

can perceive or conceive we must say that it is such as
it is because motion takes the direction of least resistance.
And the fact that impulse or momentum overcomes resist-
ance only reminds us that we are apt to use the word
resistance in too limited a sense. For what is it that
resists motion but force ? and what is force but that
which, if unresisted, produces motion ? It is therefore
motion, or the cause of it, that is the true resistance
to motion. Thus we of course include the momentum
of the moving body among the resistances to be con-
sidered, and the axiom assumes the utmost logical com-
pleteness. An opposing resistance deflects or changes
motion, or is overcome by it, according to whether it be
greater or less than the resistance to such change or
deflection presented by the momentum. For the mo-
mentum clearly becomes a resistance in relation to such
change or deflexion. If it were not so, indeed, the
axiom itself would be unmeaning.

These few remarks may sufficiently guard against a
misconception of the general statement which I have
introduced thus broadly. Fortunately there is the less
need to dwell upon such speculative views, because the
position to be established is a matter of fact and demon-
stration.

It is remarkable that, in the various hypotheses which
have been framed to account for the forms of organic
bodies, no attention has been paid to the fact that they
are formed, as it were, under pressure ; that the process
of expansion in which growth consists takes place under
conditions which limit it in definite ways. It must
surely have been from overlooking this circumstance that
a mode of speaking has established itself among us, as if
there were in the organic tissue a power of forming itself
into peculiar shapes ; as if masses of cells, by some power

Physical Morphology. 323

of their own, could mould themselves into complicated
structures. How strangely all such modes of speaking
(howsoever they may be disguised, or whatever specious
terms may be called in to conceal their nakedness) are
at variance with all the principles which are held in
regard by us who use them, whether as students of Nature
or as professiQg to recognise a higher agency than Nature's,
it is needless to point out. It suffices to show a way of
escape from them. For it is certata that such assump-
tions would never have been tolerated either in our words
or in our thoughts, if we had not been driven to them
by our inability to refer the phenomena to demonstrable
or intelligible causes, such as science, properly so called,
concerns herself with.

I say, therefore, that a release from the imagined
necessity of assuming such inherent virtues in organic
bodies is afforded by two simple facts — ist, that the
increase in bulk of developing structures takes place
under resistance ; and 2dly, that we can, in very many
cases, trace the forms assumed by organic bodies, or parts
of them, to the operation of the ordinary mechanical laws
taken in connection with other conditions known to exist.

In some instances it has been found impossible to
ignore this relation of morphological changes to me-
chanical conditions, in spite of opposing hypotheses. In
the case of the ovum, for example, the cells of the ger-
minal membrane are said to become apparently hexagonal
by mutual pressure, arising from the increase of the mass.
Doubtless this is natural and true ; we could not force
ourselves to attribute this change of figure to any other
cause. But if this be so, does not the folding of the
membrane into laminae stand in an equally simple rela-
tion to pressure from increase of mass ? And if some
lamince, why not all ? The admission of mechanical

324 Physical Mo7^phology,

conditions as normal agents in morphological change, in
any one instance, involves the necessity of taking them
into consideration in all, and of admitting no other agents
except in cases in which these are demonstrably insuffi-
cient. How entirely this principle has been neglected
it is curious to reflect, nor perhaps does the history of
the human intellect furnish a more striking example of
the power of an hypothesis to enslave thought and deaden
observation. So intent have we been on pursuing the
specific vital tendencies, or the final causes manifested
in the uses of the parts, that it would appear as if we
had entirely forgotten that living matter is matter after
all. "The tail (of the cercaria), which was previously
employed for locomotion, is now useless, and falls off I " ^
Perhaps nothing has contributed so much to divert
attention from real to hypothetical causes of morphologi-
cal change, as the fact that structures entirely alike to
the eye, and under analogous external conditions, under-
go very different changes. This is especially the case
in the development of the ovum, which being alike in
almost all animals, so far as we can observe, is yet the
parent of the boundless diversity of form that animated
nature exhibits. No theory has seemed capable of
accounting for this fact but that of a peculiar power

1 Agassiz and Gould's Comp. Phys., p. 343. Bacon's warning has not yet
lost its bearing : "To say that the hairs of the eyelids are for a quickset and
fence about the sight ; or that the firmness of the skins and hides of living
creatures is to defend them from the extremities of heat or cold ; or that the
bones are for the columns or beams, whereupon the frame of the bodies of
living creatures is built ; or that the leaves of the trees are for protecting of
the fruit ; or that the clouds are for watering of the earth ; or that the solid-
ness of the earth is for the station and mansion of living creatures, and the
like, is well inquired and collected in metaphysic ; but in physic they are
impertinent. Nay, they are indeed but remoras and hindrances to stay and
slug the ship from further sailing, and have hrought this to pass, that the
search of the physical causes hath been neglected and passed in silence.''—
Advancement of Learning, Book ii.

Physical Morphology, 325

inherent in eacli germ ; yet when the phenomena are
contemplated simply, and without such haste to refer
them to their cause, the mystery becomes much less,
and even disappears. For, what though the appearance
to the eye, and even to the microscope, of all ova be the
same, is it not certain that there is a difference of struc-
ture which escapes our observation ? Nay, does not the
ascription to them of different powers involve that very
difference of structure or composition which it is supposed
to supersede ? And what can be simpler than that germs
of different structure should, under like circumstances,
undergo different changes ? It is to be considered, also,
that the external conditions of the ova of different
animals are not precisely alike ; they have only a general
correspondence, w^hile the nutritive materials and the
molecular changes on which the process of growth
depends also present differences in each case. Would
it not be time enough to invent specific powers when
these known conditions have been proved insufficient ?
Add to all this that each change of structure in the
process of development modifies all the succeeding ones,
and it becomes no longer hard to understand how, from
even imperceptible incipient diversities, the widest con-
trasts of form may accrue. Every divergence is continu-
ally multiplied.

But how come the germs to differ ? Clearly because
formed under differing conditions. They are diverse,
because their structure is the result of motion in the
direction of least resistance. There is no leginning in
a germ.

I shall proceed to mention some instances in which
the production of organic forms by motion in the direc-
tion of least resistance has struck my own attention.
But I do not design to make a formal induction of such

326 Physical Morphology,

cases, still less to present the evidence on whicli the
proposition rests. That no man can do, for such evi-
dence must embrace nothing less than every living form.
The proof for each man must be his own observation, the
testimony of his own senses. Let any person who wishes
to put it to the test take any developing part of a plant
or animal, and watch the process. Let him endeavour
to trace the causes which determine the form that is
assumed, and see whether it be not the fact that the
expanding tissue adapts itself to the mechanical conditions
that are present, just in such way as any other expand-
ing substance of similar consistence would do. He may
not in very many cases be able to succeed in this exami-
nation, the process may be beyond his grasp ; our means
of exploration must be greatly improved before it can be
otherwise; but before even the most moderate attention
these cases become daily fewer.

It may be objected here, that in manifest instances
development takes place in the direction, not of the least,
but of the greatest resistance, as in the growth of the root
beneath the soil. Such cases constitute a class of facts
most necessary to recognise ; but a little reflection suffices
to show that they do not, as indeed they cannot, affect
the principle.

The growth, or expansion, must exist before any
question can arise of the direction it shall take; the
molecular actions which result in organic increase must
be presupposed. Now, these molecular actions come into
operation under laws which are unquestionably fixed and
determinate, and which it may not be impossible to
ascertain, but of which no theory is attempted here. In
the germinating seed the vital action commences first,
and exists most powerfully in the radicle; the roct,
therefore, has the first tendency to grow. From this

Physical Morphology, 327

point the application of the morphological law com-
mences.

It is the more necessary to bear in mind this considera-
tion because it is of constant application. In almost all
cases of growth or development the vital action manifests
itself in some parts rather than in others ; it exhibits foci,
as it were, of greatest energy. It is only by duly mark-
ins these that the effect of the mechanical conditions in
determining form can be appreciated.

In truth, however, the formation of the root furnishes
a beautiful illustration of the law of least resistance, for
it grows by insinuating itself, cell by cell, through the in-
terstices of the soil ; it is by such minute additions that it
increases, winding and twisting whithersoever the obstacles
it meets in its path determine, and growing there most
where the nutritive materials are added to it most abun-
dantly. As we look on the roots of a mighty tree, it
appears to us as if they had forced themselves with
giant violence into the solid earth. But it is not so ; they
were led on gently, cell added to cell, softly as the dews
descended, and the loosened earth made way. Once
formed, indeed, they expand with an enormous power,
but the spongy condition of the growing radicles utterly
forbids the supposition that they are forced into the
earth. Is it not probable, indeed, that the enlargement
of the roots already formed may crack the surrounding
soil, and help to make the interstices into which the new
rootlets grow ? Nor is there any good reason for assum-
ing that the roots encounter from the soil a greater resist-
ance to their growth than the portions of the stem meet
with from other causes. We must not forget the hard
external covering of the parts exposed to air and light.

Like this are the cases in which fungi grow up beneath
great pressure, which they overcome. The opposition to

328 Physical Morphology.

the law of least resistance is here also only apparent.
The plant is altered in form in proportion to the pressure
on it, if it be great ; and manifestly the pressure is over-
come precisely when the resistance to growth in any
other direction, arising from causes in its own structure,
becomes greater than such pressure. It is impossible
even to think otherwise or to express the contrary with-
out uttering a contradiction. We are naturally prone to
under- estimate the force exerted by molecular actions as
compared with those mechanical agencies which more
directly present themselves as force to our sensations.

Throughout almost the whole of organic nature the
spiral form is more or less distinctly marked. Now,
motion under resistance takes a spiral direction, as may
be seen by the motion of a body rising or falling through
water. A bubble rising rapidly in water describes a
spiral closely resembling a corkscrew, and a body of
moderate specific gravity dropped into water may be seen
to fall in a curved direction, the spiral tendency of which
may be distinctly observed. Theoretically, the explana-
tion of this fact is very simple : the motion of the falling
body being resisted, is deflected or turned at right angles,^
and a motion constantly turned at right angles, and yet
continuing, is a spiral. In this prevailing spiral form ot
organic bodies, therefore, it appears to me that there is
presented a strong 'prima facie case for the view I have
maintained. Parts which grow freely, as the horns of
animals, and the roots of plants when caused to grow in
water, often present the spiral form in great perfection ;
if a thread be uniformly wrapped round the buds of a
tree in early . spring, so as to prevent their expansion,
they will frequently grow into a spiral. The spiral form

^ In theory it might not be deflected if both the body and the medium
■vrere perfectly homogeneous, but in fact the deflection is certain to occur.

Physical Morphology. 329

of the branches of many trees is very apparent, and the
universally spiral arrangement of the leaves around the
stem of plants needs only to be referred to. If now we
examine more deeply, the spiral form maybe traced with
scarcely an exception in every organ of the body. The
heart commences as a spiral turn, and in its perfect form
a manifest spiral may be traced through the left ventricle,
right ventricle, right auricle, left auricle, and appendix.
And what is the spiral turn m which the heart com-
mences but a necessary result of the lengthening, under a
limit, of the cellular mass of which it then consists ? it
is just such a folding as constitutes the laminse in the
germinal membranes, as one of which laminae or wrinkles,
indeed, it may at its first appearance be regarded. The
intestines fold themselves, by similar increase under
resistance, in like manner into spirals ; the head is formed
by a turning of the anterior extremity on itself. The
entire embryo, indeed, takes half a spiral turn, being
twisted so as to lie with its side upon the yelk, the heart
being on that side, so that of the mammal we may say
that it represents a left-handed spiral.^

It would be tedious to go through the cases which
illustrate this point, for indeed it is one process that is
observed in all. Is there any organ which does not
commence thus, a ridge, a lamina rising up, a turning at
right angles, an increase under limitation, of which that
first lamina dorsalis may be taken as the type ? In the
adult frame, is there any part that is not spiral more or
less decidedly? The spinal column describes a spiral
from the pelvis to the skull ; the ribs have every one of
them a spiral twist ; the skeleton of the arm and leg are

^ See Glasgow Medical Journal, July 1853. Dr. A. Thomson on a case
of Transposition of the Viscera. The opposite direction of the spiral in the
animal and vegetable worlds is very interestiag.

330 Physical Morphology.

spiral, though hut slightly; the hand and foot are each
an expanded spiral. The very meatus of the ear winds
spirally, and the tympanic hone of the foetus describes a
spiral turn. The resemblance in form of the ramifying
organs to those of the vegetable kingdom is too obvious
to be insisted on. In the lower forms of the animal
world the spiral form is even more plainly evident than
in the vertebrata.

Every one must have noticed the peculiar curling up
of the young leaves of the common fern. The appearance
is as if the leaf were rolled up, but in truth this form is
merely a phenomenon of growth. The curvature results
from the increase of the leaf, it is only another form of
the wrinkling up, or turning at right angles by extension
under limit.^

The rolling up or imbrication of the petals in many
flower-buds is a similar thing ; at an early period the
small petals may be seen lying side by side, afterwards
growing within the capsule, they become folded round
one another. It appears to be thus also that many cavi-
ties are formed in organic structures ; the ovaries of plants,
lor example, into which, then, we may easily understand
that the ovules should gemmate, even as the viscera into
the cavities of the thorax and abdomen. Thus, too, the
lateral ventricles of the brain appear to be formed, the
hemispheres in their expansion rise up and leave a central
hollow lilce the fern leaf; nor should we omit to notice
that this cavity has a distinctly spiral form. The bulg-
ings in the large intestine between the bands of muscular
fibres, are a simple instance of the same thing. As hol-
low protrusions from the brain the organs of sense arise.

It is hardly necessary to point out how simply the
production of septa, which forms so important an element

1 This was kindly pointed out to me by my friend Dr. Gull.

Physical Morphology. 3 3 1

in development, comes within the scope of this principle.
They are but laminae rising up ; ridges from extension
turned at right angles. From the septa of the heart we
may pass to the valvulse conniventes of the intestine ;
they are palpably one fact, the difference is of degree.
The corpus callosum, and perhaps other commissures of
the brain, are the same thing, and in the corpus striatum
and optic thalamus may we not recognise bulgings formed
on the same principle upon the crura cerebri ?

I cannot resist the temptation that arises in this con-
nection, to suggest a theory respecting the striae in volun-
tary muscles. According to Mr. Savory,^ those markings
commence at the boundaries of the fibrils, and proceed
gradually to the centre. Now, precisely this appearance
would result if the internal layer of the wall of the fibril
greatly increased in length ; it would inevitably be raised
in folds which would pass inwards from each side, and
might meet in the centre, as do the septa of the heart
or new vessels in forming parts. This, however, is but
theory ; it has only in its favour the simplicity, and the
great frequency in other parts of the body, of the process
which it supposes. We see it constantly in the sub-
division of cells by the bending inwards of their walls.

Here are a few instances in which I think I have
seen the effect of mechanical conditions in determining
form. The strawberry-leaf consists of three leaflets, of
which the central one is symmetrical, the lateral ones
unsymmetrical. If it be examined before it unfolds, the
cause of this difference may be traced; the lateral
leaflets, each folded on itself, are placed in contact side
by side, the effect of which is, that the inner portion of
each is truncated as it were ; being covered in by the

^ Philosophical Transactions, 1856.

2,2,^ Physical Morphology,

outer, it has not room to grow to an equal size. Tlie
central leaflet is free, and expands equally on each side.

If a flower-bud be opened at a sufficiently early
period, the stamens will be found as if moulded into the
cavity between the pistil and the caroUa, which cavity
the anthers exactly fill ; the stalks lengthen at an after
period. I have noticed also in a few instances, that in
those flowers in which the petals are imbricated, or
twisted together, the pistil is tapering as growing up
between the petals ; in some flowers which have the
petals so arranged in the bud as to form a dome (as the
hawthorne, e.g), the pistil is flattened at the apex, and
in the bud occupies a space precisely limited by the
stamens below, and the enclosing petals above and at the
sides. I have not, however, satisfied myself that this
holds good in all cases.

I have endeavoured to trace the formation of the pea
within the pod. It seems to take place thus : the seed
grows into a ceU containing fluid, springing up, from the
point of attachment of such cell, by a narrow pedicle
which expands as it increases, and divides into the two
cotyledons. In the interspace between these is formed
the plumule, which is thus but the first "gemmation in
an axil." Should we not conceive the plumule to be
formed, when the resistance to the increase of the lobes
of the seed is greater than that to a growth from the
axil between them ? When made to germinate in water
the radicle lengthens and bursts the containing capsule,
assuming a spiral twist, then the plumule gradually
increases also, but in less degree, rising up into an acute
curve before its extremity is free from its position
between the cotyledons. Simple as it is, nothing can
better illustrate the nature of those folds, elevations, or
turnings at right angles, in which almost aU the organs

Physical Morphology. '^'^'^

of the body have their origin, than this curving of the
plumule as it grows, its free end being fixed by the
pressure of the cotyledons ; it is increase under limit.^

Mr. Tyndal, in discussing the movements of glaciers,
relates some experiments, which go to prove that pres-
sure causes a splitting or lamination in ice and other
plastic substances, at right angles to the direction in
which it is applied.^

It is difficult to avoid connecting this fact with some
of the phenomena of organic development in which
lamination, or the splitting of a mass into parallel
layers, occurs so frequently, and plays so large a part.
Consider the division into two layers of the germinal
membrane which takes place only in the vertebrata,
animals destined to a comparatively high development;
the lamination of the plumule of the seed, the leaf-bud
of the plant. In reflecting on the cause of these things,
do not our thoughts involuntarily recur to the pressure
that continually arises, must arise, in the growing tissues ?
What shall we say of the primary cleavage of the yelk
in directions at right angles to each other ?

In endeavouring to trace morphological change to its
causes, we cannot overlook the very striking connection
between growth and decomposition in developing organ-
isms. Continually in the ovum the central portion of
the germ mass liquefies, while the circumference
develops, one portion seeming to serve as food to
another. It is thus that the vascular system is chiefly
formed, the walls assuming consistency as the central
parts are dissipated. Surely it is not « mere fancy that

1 So powerful an influence has mechanical pressure on grpwth that, as
stated by Mr. Lindley, those endogenous trees of which the external layer
cannot expand, are stopped in their growth by the resistance which is thus
opposed to the formation of the new bundles of fibres.

2 Westminster Review, 1857.

334 Physical MorpJiology ,

finds in this decomposition one source of the fcn^ce,
which produces the growth of the adjacent parts. To
remember this relation of decomposition and growth
would render simple many things in the living body that
are otherwise mysterious. Let it be conceded that where
there is decomposition there is a source of force which
may be manifested in the production of mtal change,
and a flood of light is poured upon development. For
decomposition is a process ever apt to occur, and it is a
known result of pressure. " The cells in the embryo sac,"
says Dr. Carpenter, "deliquesce again as the embryonic
mass increases in bulk and presses upon it." ^

If such decomposition, besides producing growth, tend
also to increase the bulk of the organised mass (and
what can be more certain, when we consider the gaseous
nature of some of the organic elements), certain processes
in development are seen to be perfectly intelligible.
Take, e.g., Dr. Carpenter's account of the fertilisation of
the plant. I conceive a process of decomposition is set
up in the pollen, when it falls upon -the stigma.

"The pollen grains fall upon the stigma and begin to
absorb the viscid mucus which bedews its surface. In con-
sequence of this absorption, the inner membrane or proper
cell wall becomes distended, and either breaks through the
thinner points of the external envelope, or pushes this before
it so as to form one or more long slender projections, which
are known as the pollen tubes. These insinuate themselves
among the loosely aggregated cells of the style, and grow
downwards until they reach its base, a distance in some cases
of several inches. Arrived at the ovarium, they direct them-
selves towards the micropyle of the ovules, and entering these
they make their way towards the embryo sac, usually through
a channel formed by the diffluence of a sort of cord formed of

1 Qeneral and Comp. Phys., Third Edition, p. 898.

Physical Morphology, 335

peculiar cells that previously passed from the apex of the
embryo sac to that of the mammillary protuberance of the
nucleus." 1

Just such, again, is the germination of the seed : the
decomposition of the albumen produces at once vital
action and expansion, and growth takes place first in the
radicle, then in the plumule, these being the directions
of least resistance.

May not the curious fungus which forms in certain
caterpillars be classed with these ? First occupying the
body of the animal, it finds its way out as it increases
always at the junction of the head with the body, the
direction of least resistance.

My conception of the nature of these changes is illus-
trated by the fact that separated portions of cactus will
grow and increase in size while they gain no increase of
weight. The starting-point here I take to be a decompo-
sition analogous to that which takes place in a germinat-
ing seed.

Does not the power of repair resolve itself into an in-
stance of growth in the direction of least resistance ? Is
not a wound an axil ? and the granulations which form
in it, or the new member which grows in the place of a
lost one, do not they correspond to the buds which form
in axils in the growth of plants or the development of
the embryo? The solution of continuity removes the re-
sistance of the external investiture. Is there, therefore,
any basis for the supposition of a special power by which
a living body can recover itself from accident or injury ?
The law of its formation involves its repair. So if some
leaves be incised, buds spring up from the cut surface ;
the hydra gemmates from a wound. These are artificial
axils. I do not mean to imply that no other circum-

1 Op. cit., p. 896.

33^ Physical Morphology,

stances are to "be regarded in relation to the reparative
process. Irritation, of whatever kind, produces special
modifications of the vital action, but I suggest that the
general fact of the repair of wounds is an illustration of
growth taking the direction of least resistance. The new
material is deposited where the resistance to expansion is
removed ; is it not deposited there rather than in other
portions of the' body, because the resistance at that point
is least ? We know that repair is eflected at the expense
of the general nutrition, and we know, too, the effect of
scabbing, or pressure otherwise applied, in limiting the
process of granulation. Perhaps I may state the case
thus : if growth take the direction of least resistance
(other circumstances being the same), then it is certain
that wounds must be repaired.

In truth an entirely new conception of homology arises
out of the recognition of a Law of Form ; a parallelism
of various organs, according to the dynamical conditions
exhibited in their morphology, which embraces all parts
of all bodies, and extends itself through the whole of or-
ganic nature. On this point I will confine myself to one
suggestion. Observe the form of the intestinal canal (I
speak of the mammalia), straight for a short distance
from its orifice, then convoluted, then terminating in an
expanded portion, the stomach. Compare this now with
the form, of the tubuli in the kidney — a straight portion,
a convoluted portion, an expansion, the Malpighian cor-
puscle. Again, take the nervous tubules in the brain ;
there is a straight portion, the white substance; is not
the grey matter a convoluted cortical portion (like that of
the kidney), and are not the cells intermingled with the
convoluted fibres expansions, not without a formal re-
semblance to the Malpighian bodies ? I do not wish to
erect any strainalogy ; perhaps this is a dane fancy alto-

Physical MorpJiolog y. 337

gether, but to my mind there is indicated by this simi-
larity of form a similarity of mechanical conditions not
without its interest.

Development, then, is due to increase under limit ; it
is determined by resistance. Is it not self-evident ?
Conceive an ovum germinating with all other circum-
stances unaltered, but with no external limitations, no
membranes, no uterus, nothing to check expansion in any
form. Could anything else result but a shapeless multi-
tude of cells ? But if it be so, let us fairly face the
position that we take. The mechanical limitations must
act mechanically, and form be the result of mechanical
conditions. Consider how every organism intended to
develop is subject to external resistance, the tough cap-
sule of seeds, the shell of eggs, the womb of the vivipara.
Are not the marsupials and monotrems which escape so
early from the uterus less developed than animals whose
gestation is more prolonged ? Think of the firm sheath
of every muscle, the capsule of every viscus, the bony
case of the nervous system ; remember how every free
surface in the body is covered with cells, and with cells
alone. If the membranes of the brain be divided, a
cellular fungoid growth protrudes; is it not that the
maintenance of the organisation of the brain demands
the resistance of its coverings ?

Using the term " uterus," therefore, to denote a definite
external resistance to extension, is it not an axiom that
everything is developed in a uteriis ?

It should be remarked here that the forms of parts of
animals are often greatly altered, after their first develop-
ment, by growth under conditions different from those in
which the development takes place. Growth modifies
the form which development primarily determines ; the
body moulded within the uterus, expands freely there-

Y

00

8 Physical Morphology.

after without external resistance. Hence the result is
changed, but not the law. A single instance will make
clear my meaning: in the early bud the anther constitutes
the entire length of the stamen ; as the flower expands
the stalk has room to grow.

There is one other class of cases to which it is neces-
sary to refer; those, namely, in which the form imme-
diately results not from growth or expansion, but from
wasting; an extreme instance of which is presented in
the cellular formations constituting the pith of plants.
Indications of such relative decay are of great frequency
in the animal body, especially in the higher grades of
development, but this slight mention may suffice for them
here. It is clear that the law of least resistance, which
means no more than that mechanical conditions deter-
mine mechanical results, applies equally to them. The
wrinkling up of the lining of the corpus luteum, partly
we may be sure from the contraction of the capsule, is a
marked example.

If it should be remarked that there exist in develop-
ing structures certain definite modes or operations of
force, such as attractions or repulsions in particular direc-
tions, which serve to determine the form assumed, apart
from any influence of the visible mechanical conditions,
this is willingly admitted to be true. The morphologi-
cal law suggested does not contravene, but rests upon,
these phenomena. They may be regarded in two ways ;
either as constituting part of the molecular process in
which nutrition consists, as instances of those local mani-
festations of growth before referred to, and which are
presupposed as the foundation on which the law is
based ; or perhaps more properly they may be themselves
considered as coming within its scope. In so far as
these changes consist in the motion of particles, the law

Physical Morphology. 339

of least resistance may be asserted of them, or at least
cannot be denied. Such molecular changes, indeed, form
no portion of the evidence on which the proposition can
be based, inasmuch as the nature of the process and all
its conditions are as yet beyond our investigation. But
that in so far as they consist in motion they conform to
the nature of motion, we may be quite sure. The striLc-
ture of the germ must be such as to determine the opera-
tion of whatever chemical or other forces come into play
within it, to produce motion in these particular directions.

This, then, is my argument. The illustrations I have
adduced may be insufficient, or unsatisfactory, or false,
or misconceived, but no defect of this kind in the proof
can affect the proposition; for it rests upon necessary
laws of thought. Physical morphology is like an applied
geometry ; if I have failed in the application, others will
certainly succeed."^

Eesistance to motion is of necessity an opposing force ;
force and resistance are indeed interchangeable terms,
two aspects of the same thing, as when the two hands
are pressed together, each mutually resists the force ap-
plied by the other. Viewed in relation to this law of
least resistance, therefore, the idea of organisation is
beautiful. It is the result of motion in the direction of
least opposing force. Certainly : how should it be any-
thing else ? Is not organisation a perfect mutual adapta-
tion and exact conformity to each other of all the parts,
even to the minutest details, an absolute rightness and
order ? And how should this be attained except through

1 It may be urged that in magnetism and other forces, and in human
actions, we have instances of motion to which this conception of least resist-
ance is not applicable. It would be too great a licence to enter on a discus-
sion of these matters under cover of an inquiry into organic form ; but it
appears to me that, in so far as they come within the domain of the physical,
the conception of least resistance as determining the form and direction of
the action is neither inapplicable nor infertile in results.

340 Physical Morphology.

motion in the direction of least opposing force ? Wliat
else is this law of motion but that exact lightness seen
from the human point of view ? Does it not mean that
each minutest part determines the being of every other,
a perfect mutual interaction and subordination, a right-
ness from the very first, and through every step, that
must end in a completed rightness at the last ? Let us
try to think of this, freeing our minds from preconcep-
tions. How can there be other than perfect order and
adaptation in that organisation in which each part has
had its equal share in the moulding of the whole ?
There unity must be, and beauty, and most exquisite
harmony, for there law has been perfectly fulfilled.
What else is it than that each particle of the growing
organism goes where it is most wanted (as we might say),
where there is most room for it ; it is like water finding
its level, the very idea of exact adjustment. Manifestly
it involves the existence of specific forms, such as we see,
and forms maintained and repeated as we see. Constancy
of forms means constancy of conditions.

Contrast with it any other supposition respecting vital
forms. What of a specific tendency to a definite form
in each animal ? Is not that as much like " Nature ab-
hors a vacuum" as we can well conceive ? Is it anything
but a deceptive formula, used to give an appearance of
accounting for that which is in truth a mere matter of
observation wholly unaccounted for ? Not to mention
that it supposes something to act before it is^ is it not
open to the practical refutation that the case is not as
stated ? Nature only abhorred a vacuum to a certain
and a variable extent, so do living things assume a defi-
nite specific form only to a variable degree of accuracy.
Monsters and deformities of all kinds disprove the hypo-
thesis altogether. Besides, we know how, by artificial

Physical Morphology, 34 1

means, organic forms are altered. Tie up a bud upon a
tree so as to prevent its growing, and in most cases
another bud, that would not otherwise have appeared at
all, will be developed in its place. Is not this proof that
of all possible buds in any given case, that one develops
to the growth of which there is the least resistance ?

And what are we to say of that revived doctrine of
" Ideas," the type of which is the typical vertebra, and
respecting which, if we had not profited by the experience
of other ages, as fierce a conflict would arise as was ever
waged between realist and nominalist of old ? Let it be
granted that it is an admirable means of grouping and
arranging our ideas ; let it be granted even indispensable,
while no law was known for vital forms, no order and
necessity otherwise discoverable, and therefore no ground
for scientific treatment. Surely it was never regarded
as satisfactory or final. There is no need to argue against
the conception ; until such place is claimed for it, it may
well be left to die in honour when its work is done.
Nor is there any fear that aught of value in the homo-
logical doctrines, for which it has served as an expression,
would perish with it. They have a deeper foundation
than that which has been claimed for them.

AU that I maintain is involved in these words of Mr.
Huxley's: "The lateral canals (of hydatina) are much
longer than the body, and are therefore disposed in coils
here and there." ^ Only let the principle here recognised
be applied to every case to which it is found applicable.

Here I should cease. But it would be affectation to
ignore that the view I have taken will be felt by some
as contravening the design that they delight to recognise
in Nature ; as another step towards excluding God from
His creation. I do not feel it so. I may not enlarge

^ Medical Times and Gazette, 1856, Lecture v., p. 8i.

342 Physical Morphology,

upon tliis aspect of the question, but the entire subject
has been so mixed up with theological ideas that I may be
permitted briefly to indicate my own view. I hold all
vital forms to be what we call necessary, but it is the
necessity of Tightness that I recognise, and no other.
God's act in Nature appears to us under the form of
'physical or merely passive necessity, but that is our in-
firmity and defect of vision. It is necessary truly, every
least fact and part of it, but necessary by a truer, deeper
necessity than we perceive, the necessity that Love should
do infinitely well aAd wisely. Welcome to me are all
proofs of necessity, all indications of law, all demonstra-
tions that things could not be otherwise than they are.
Never does Nature bring us nearer to God than when
science excludes from it all arbitrariness, and teaches us
to say, This must be as it is. For an intellectual we
must learn to substitute a moral conception of creation ;
we need to rise above contrivance, it is holiness that
claims our reverence in nature. Well said Bacon, " The
three true stages of knowledge are as the three acclama-
tions, sancte, sancte, sancte ; holy in the description or
dilatation of His works, holy in the connection or con-
catenation of them, and holy in the union of them in a
perpetual and uniform law." Was Newton ever held to
be an irreligious philosopher ? Yet of him " it is recorded
that whilst contemplating the simplicity and harmony of
the plan according to which the universe is governed, his
thoughts glanced towards the organised creation, and he
remarked, ' Idemque dici possit de uniformitate ea,
quae est in corporibus animalium.' " ^

1 Dr. Carpenter, op. cit., p. 559.

( 343 )

XXV.

MR. HERBERT SPENCERS PRINCIPLES
OF BIOLOGY}

Unquestionably life is the touclistone of any system of
philosophy. Not only is it in itself the most eminent
fact in nature, the one which, above all others, challenges
attention and puts curiosity upon the stretch; it is, to a
thoughtful apprehension, much more than this. Though
to a superficial view unlike, nay, in many aspects most
opposed to the phenomena which lie outside the pale of
organisation, life is in reality, and is, more or less con-
sciously, universally felt to be, the most perfect exhibi-
tion of the universe to us. We might call it Nature's
revelation of herself; the mode in which she delights
to make known her secret meaning. Yet, if it be a
revelation, it is still a hiding. If the ends are manifest,
the methods are obscure. Nature seems here to put her-
self into our hands, and yet eludes us when we seek to
hold her. Life seems close to us, and yet is far off;
it seems well known, and yet impenetrable ; it seems
distinct from all other things, yet its roots twine about
the centre. We grasp it as Thor grasped the cup that
drained the ocean. It furnishes our first draughts of
knowledge, but the whole depth of nature must be pierced
before its mystery is exhausted.

^ The Principles of Biology, vol. • L By Herbert Spencer. London :
Williams & Norgate, 1864.

344 -^^^' Herbert Spencer'' s

Yet that life should stand to us as the interpreter of
the universe is necessary. The organic body constitutes
the point at which man touches the world. It is here
our consciousness and the external meet; here, if any-
where, we have direct apprehension of nature, and obtain
a standard by which our other apprehensions may be
judged. Nor can we, on reflection, fail to see that the
distinction which exists so broadly between the organic
and inorganic worlds, may be founded less on a true
external difference than on a difference of relation to our-
selves ; and that, if ever our knowledge is to penetrate
below the surface, the living organism furnishes the clue
by which we must be guided. Accordingly, we do not
wonder that Mr. Spencer, in fulfilment of the great task
which he has set himself of summing up the main items
of human knowledge, and ordinating them under the
broadest and simplest principles attainable, has sought at
once to test the value of his conceptions by their appli-
cation to Biology ; feeling, doubtless, not only, as he says,
that it is of more immediate importance to interpret
organic than inorganic nature, but also, that to interpret
life is to interpret all.

Nor is the tendency of science in this respect doubt-
ful. While, on the one hand, extended observation has
been constantly eliciting new points of apparent contrast
between the organic and the inorganic, on the other a
more minute examination has been almost as constantly
resolving them on principles of universal application.
The identification of the two regions can hardly, indeed,
yet be said to be accomplished, but so far as their general
aspects are concerned, it seems to be approaching. And
the doctrine — to which Mr. Spencer's volume furnishes a
powerful contribution — that organic and inorganic nature
are one, is manifestly gaining an increased ascendancy.

Prhiciples of Biology. 345

It is probable, however, that the march of thought on this
subject, though on the whole decisive, has been much
impeded by a certain one-sidedness. Almost all the effort
bestowed on it hitherto has been exerted in one direction ;
namely, towards bringing vital phenomena into conformity
with those of the inorganic world. To us it appears
that this process should be at least in part reversed, and
the endeavour made to read inorganic phenomena by the
light of vital. We may illustrate our meaning thus.
The motions of the heavenly bodies are in various
respects unlike the motions which take place upon the
earth ; especially, perhaps, in this, that the latter never
continue for more than a limited time ; the former are
unceasing. So palpable is the difference, that by the
natural sense of men these motions were absolutely con-
trasted ; opposed, much as the organic and inorganic have
been opposed among us. By the Greeks they were called
respectively corruptible and incorruptible. But they are
now wholly identified ; the same laws are seen to prevail
in each case, under different conditions. This identifi-
cation was effected by a mutual interpretation. The
"apparently superior celestial motions were not reduced
into terrestrial ; the true nature of the latter was revealed
by the former. The corruptible were raised up in
thought and identified with the incorruptible. It was
discovered that the apparent ceasing was an illusion of
the sense. The seemingly simpler were the least truly
seen — the least intelligible.

So, it appears to us, it must and will be in respect to
the phenomena of the organic and inorganic world. The
seeming higher wiU not be brought down to the lower ;
but the seeming lower will be raised up to the higher.
The celestial regions where dwell vitality will explain to
us the humbler terrestrial sphere of lifeless matter. We

346 Mr, Herbert Spencer 's

shall first learn to understand inorganic nature when we
discern in it, though hidden, the same characters as those
which seem the sole prerogative of life.

To complete our illustration, we might ask whether
each class of motions — the celestial and terrestrial — did
not contribute its own elements to the laws of motion :
for example, the character of continuance by the celestial,
that of taking a straight line until deflected, by the ter-
restrial ? So, perhaps, the organic and inorganic spheres
have each some special elements to contribute to our
comprehension of the laws of force.

In the sequel we may better see the bearing of this
view. "We will now no longer detain our readers from
Mr. Spencer — who having, perchance, by a wise instinct,
pretermitted the inorganic region, may come to his subject
with hands less bound — but shall proceed to lay before
them a brief recapitulation of his views of life.

In order to understand the present volume it is neces-
sary to recall the main positions laid down in the former,
and some of the fundamental conceptions there given.
Premising that the absolute verity of things is unknow-
able by us, and their 'actual cause wholly inscrutable
(wherein lies a rec9nciliation between science and religion),
Mr. Spencer proceeds to show, that from the fundamental
ideas of matter and force — the indestructibility of which
is demonstrated — the general characters of natural phe-
nomena may be deduced. Starting from matter as a
homogeneous mass, subject to the operation of force in
some quite simple form (say as attraction and repulsion,
or as a mere undefined motion), there must ensue a pro-
cess of " evolution ;" that is, this homogeneous mass must
become characterised by more and more differences ; the
unlike portions being separated from each other, and the
like portions aggregated. Thus there will arise a pro-

Principles of Biology. 347

gressively more and more complex structure of the uni-
verse, each portion undergoing its own particular changes,
connected by a widely ramifying chain of mutual depen-
dence. In short, from the embryo universe, as above
presented, must be evolved the universe which so con-
veniently surrounds us, but which we so imperfectly know.

This great series of changes, which constitutes evolu-
tion, arises in conformity with certain necessary laws, all
of them based upon the one great axiom of the persistence,
or indestructibility, of force. The first is the instability
of the homogeneous. Since different parts of a mass,
which is throughout perfectly alike, must be differently
acted upon by the same force, this force will produce
upon these parts different effects, and will thus modify
them differently ; in a word, will " differentiate " them.
So the homogeneous mass will become " heterogeneous."
Another law also comes into immediate bearing — that of
the multiplication of effects. For a force operating upon
differing portions of matter itself becomes modified and
assumes different forms, again producing new differences
of arrangement, which in their turn still further differen-
tiate the forces. So, from the simple indeterminate force
there arise definite movements, heat,, electricity, light,
chemical phenomena, &c.

Besides this ever-increasing diversity, there ensues an
answering process: the like elements are grouped together,
and more and more distinguished from unlike groups.
This is integration, of which we see an instance in the
successive strata of the earth's crust; and finally, the
whole process tends towards equilibrium, a perfect balance
of force in every direction.

Thus we find, from a mere unvaried aggregate, played
upon by an unbalanced force, is evolved a mutually con-
nected variety; or, in other words, " evolution is a change

34^ Mr. Herbert Spencer ^s

from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite
coherent heterogeneity, through continuous differentiations
and integrations." And this is exactly what takes place
in chief perfection in the organic world. The history of
life is the history of a typical process of evolution, as this
second volume is designed to show. Herein the general
principles laid down in the first are applied to the special
field of biology, or at least to that part of the science
which concerns the wider phenomena of life. In one
aspect it is a cumulative argument for the doctrine of the
development of life through natural forces as opposed to
that of special creations. Mr. Spencer begins with a
discussion of the data of biology — the mutual actions
between the organism and surrounding forces, — and
attempts a definition of life : then, in the absence of
sufficient knowledge to allow of complete treatment of
the subject, he reviews the main inductions at which
biology has arrived ; and finally applies the gathered
materials to demonstrate the process of evolution. We
will attempt briefly to follow him.

It is not hard to understand that organic matter
should be peculiarly unstable. Three of its four chief
constituents are gaseous, the fourth a solid ; all are very
unlike each other, and nitrogen is especially prone to
quit its compounds. Several exist in a variety of forms,
among them oxygen, carbon, sulphur, phosphorus. The
organic molecules consist of numerous atoms, and pro-
bably possess a spherical form, which tends to keep their
polarities unbalanced. They belong largely to the group
termed colloid by Graham, and thus possess tenacity
sufficient for plastic purposes, and yet permit an easy
diffusion through them of substances belonging to the
crystalline group, which freely tra\'erse the body; some
entering as exciters of its actions, others passing out as

Principles of Biology. 349

the results of decomposition. Some of the organic sub-
stances possess a greater molecular, others a greater
chemical mobility. Upon the substance thus constituted
the forces of nature are continually operating. It is
changed by pressure, rapidly imbibed and gives off fluids,
is modified by heat and light, and is especially suscep-
tible to chemical influences ; rapidly falls from its unstable
to a stable composition under the influence of oxygen, or
of changes communicated in a manner akin to fermenta-
tion. Influenced thus from without, the organic body
reacts ; develops heat, light, electricity, nervous force,
motion, all dependent on molecular change.

For a definition of life, Mr. Spencer, admitting that any
definition must be imperfect, prefers this : " The definite
combination of heterogeneous changes both simultaneous
and successive, in correspondence with external co- exist-
ence and sequences ;" or more briefly, " The continuous ad-
justment of internal relations to external relations." The
characters of life as thus defined are emphatically those
of evolution. The highest animals present the widest,
most rapid, and relatively the most prolonged series of
changes ; the higher the life the greater the variety of
structure and of function, and the more definite the
combinations or integrations. The correspondence in life
between the internal and external is the establishing of a
balance or equilibrium, " which ever leads an evolution to
become more complete."

" On the one hand, for the maintenance of that correspondence
between inner and outer actions which constitutes life, an organism
must be susceptible to small changes from small external forces
(as in sensation), and must be able to initiate large changes in
opposition to large external forces (as in muscular action). On the
other hand, organic matter is at once extremely sensitive to disturb-
ing agencies of all kinds, and is capable of suddenly evolving
motion in great amounts ; that is to say, the constitution of organic

350 Mr. Herbert Spencer's

matter specially adapts it to receive and to produce the internal
changes required to balance external changes."

The natural scope of biology would be a detailed inter-
pretation of all structural and functional phenomena in
their relations to the phenomena of the environment and
in their mutual reactions ; but this being in the present
state of knowledge impossible, Mr. Spencer takes up, one
by one, the chief biological inductions, analysiQg them
and referring them to the laws of evolution, as already
laid down. The inductions are: growth, development,
function, waste and repair, adaptation, iudividuality,
genesis, heredity, variation, classification, and distribu-
tion.

Growth is essentially the same iu the organic and
inorganic world, the growth of a crystal, for example, and
of a plant ; except in this, that inorganic substances, in
growing, integrate with themselves such particies only as
are already essentially the same as themselves ; organic
bodies first cause such particles to be formed from their
elements, present in the surrounding medium, and then
unite them with themselves. Growth is due to the surplus
of food over expenditure, and therefore in all animals it
necessarily reaches a limit more or less definite, because
with increase of bulk the expenditure of force must rela-
tively increase; the masses of sinularly-shaped bodies
varying as the cubes of the dimensions, the strength vary-
ing as the squares. An animal that has doubled iu bulk
needs twice the intensity of muscular contraction to move
its body through a given space. Thus, however great, at
first, the excess of nutrition may have been, there must
come a time at which the expenditure overtakes it. Plants,
in which there is nothing to call expenditure of force, go
on growing till they die ; the crocodile and the pike, which
from their habits expend very little, do almost the same.

Principles of Biology. 351

The possible limits of growth depend first on complexity
of organisation, as subserving supply and distribution of
nourishment ; and, secondly, on initial size, as the profits
obtainable in a business are proportionate to the capitaL

Development, meaning by the term not increase of
bulk, but growing complexity of structure, corresponds
precisely with the idea of evolution : it is a change from
indefinite homogeneity to definite heterogeneity. The
embryo of every higher animal, as Von Baer pointed out,
passes from the general to the special, by degrees assum-
ing characters " less common to all embryos and more
peculiar to its own group. It is at the same time, with
certain exceptions, progressively differentiated from the
medium which surrounds it, alike in structure, form,
chemical composition, specific gravity, temperature, and
self-mobility. Of types of development there appear to
be essentially two: the first round one or many centres,
the second around one or many axes. Cellular plants and
animals illustrate the former ; trees and all animals above
the lowest exhibit the latter.

The functions which life embraces may be arranged in
three groups. They subserve either the accumulation of
force, the expenditure of force, or the transfer of force :
that is, either the incorporation of the food, the supply
of the various organs by the blood and possibly by the
nerves, or the actions of the various organs. Like the
structure, the functions are made more complex and
distinct by evolution, and at the same time more strictly
inter-independent. In the lowest animals — mere lumps
of jelly-like substance — every part serves every office :
absorbs, breathes, secretes, acts. Gradually different parts
are appropriated to different offices. In the hydra and
sea-anemone there are an internal surface to digest, an
external to respond to the outer world, and arms to seize

352 Mr. Herbert Spencer's

the food. So the differentiation proceeds, while, as they
become more complex, all the organs depend for their
maintenance on each other. Stomach and brain cannot
live without the heart, nor the heart without these. From
an indefinite simplicity there has arisen a definite variety.
Eemnants, however, of the primary convertibility continue
to exist within narrow limits. (In disease, especially one
organ may often be seen to take on partially the functions
of another.) This is the doctrine of the Physiological
Division of Labour, first worked out by M. Milne-Edwards :
the body becomes a complex and mutually dependent
whole, just as society does. Function precedes structure.
In the simplest animals — the rhizopods — which are
structureless, yet move and feed, it evidently does : and
deductively it must; for it is by the operation of
external forces on the action of a part that structure is
determined.

Of waste and repair, the former is immediately dedu-
cible from the persistence of force, since no expenditure of
force can take place but through the faU of the organic
matter from an unstable towards a more stable equilibrium.
Eepair is not so readily to be understood, yet with a power
in the molecules of the body to combine into their own
form separate elements around them, it becomes a simple
case of integration. The assumption of this power seems
to be justified by some phenomena of disease. In small-
pox, e.g., the blood appears to be altered by the poison,
and the altered particles mould into their own model all
those by which they are replaced. Hence the comparative
immunity from the disease after the first attack. The
restoration of a lost member, or production of the whole
body from a part, which occurs in many of the lower
organisms, is like the power of a crystal to reconstruct its
lost apex when placed in a like solution. The aggregate

Principles of Biology, 353

forces of the body control the formative process in each
part. Here Mr. Spencer proposes an hypothesis, " that the
form of each species of organism is determined by a pecu-
liarity in the constitution of its units ; that these have a
special structure in which they tend to arrange themselves,
just as have the units of inorganic matter."

" A fragment of begonia leaf, imbedded in fit soil and kept at an
appropriate temperature, will develop a young begonia ; and so
small is the fragment which is thus capable of originating a com-
plete plant, that something like a hundred plants might be produced
from a single leaf. Various succulent plants have like powers of
multiplication. ... As many as fifty polypes may result from the
section of one. . . . What now is the implication % We cannot say
that in each portion of the begonia leaf, and in every fragment of
the hydra's body, there exists a ready-formed model of the entire
organism. . . . We have, therefore, no alternative but to say that
the living particles composing one of these fragments have an
innate tendency to arrange themselves into the shape of the organ-
ism to which they belong. We must infer that a plant or animal
of any species is made up of special units, in all of which there
dwells the intrinsic aptitude to aggregate into the form of that
species, just as in the atoms of a salt there dwells the intrinsic
aptitude to crystallise in a particular way. It seems difficult to
conceive that this can be so, but we see that it is so. Groups of
units taken from an organism (providing they are of a certain
bulk, and not much differentiated into special structures) have
this power of rearranging themselves ; and we are thus compelled
to recognise the tendency to assume the specific form as inherent
in all parts of the organism. . . . For this property there is no fit
term. If we accept the word polarity, as the name for the force
by which inorganic units are aggregated into a form peculiar to
them, we may apply this word to the analogous force displayed
by organic units. But polarity, as ascribed to atoms, is but a
name for something of which we are ignorant — a name for an hypo-
thetical property, which as much needs explanation as that
which it is used to explain. Nevertheless, in default of another
word, we must employ this . . . — organic polarity, or polarity of
the organic units— to signify the proximate cause of the ability
which organisms display of reproducing lost parts." — P. 180.

354 ^^' Herbert Spencer's

For the particles thus endowed, Mr. Spencer proposes
the name "physiological units." They are not the
chemical units, albumen, fibrin, &c., because from these
all forms alike are built, nor can they be the morpho-
logical units or cells, for these are not universal, and their
existence implies the operation of the formative power.
The " physiological units " are therefore something be-
tween these. The chemical units he infers must combine
into units immensely more complex than themselves, com-
plex as they are, these units differing in each organism.

Adaptation consists in the changes produced in the
organs of animals or plants by the circumstances to
which they are exposed, and the actions thereby called
forth. The increase of an actively exercised limb, the
thickening of an exposed surface, the acuteness of a
cultivated sense, the false joint which may form after
a fracture, are instances. But such adaptations have an
early limit. They reach a certain point, but cannot be
carried beyond, and without a continuance of their causes
soon disappear. This is referable to the secondary
changes which an altered, especially an increased, func-
tion of any organ involves. From increased action
arises increased circulation, increase therefore of arterial
and nervous supply. But these secondary changes imply
others still in successive ratios, and these can only ensue
slowly, and to a small extent. This point is illustrated
in Mr. Spencer's favourite way.

" From the laws of adaptive modification in societies we may
hope to get a clue to the laws of adaptive modification in organ-
isms. Let us suppose that a society has arrived at a state of
equilibrium hke that of a mature animal — a state not like our
own, in which growth and structural development are rapidly
going on, but a state of settled balance among the functional
powers of the various classes and industrial bodies, and a con-
sequent fixity in the relative sizes of such classes and bodies. In

Prmciples of Biology. 355

a society tlms balanced, there occurs something which throws an
unusual demand on some one industry — say an unusual demand
for ships (which we will assume to be built of iron) — in con-
sequence of a competing mercantile nation having been prostrated
by famine or pestilence. The immediate result is the employ-
ment of more workmen and the purchase of more iron by the
shipbuilders ; and when, presently, the demand continuing, the
builders find their premises and machinery insufiicient, they
enlarge them. . . . Let us go a step further. Suppose that this
iron shipbuilding industry, having enlarged as much as the avail-
able capital and labour permit, is still unequal to the demand,
what limits its immediate further growth % The lack of iron.
The iron-producing industry yields only as much iron as is habit-
ually required for all the purposes to which iron is applied, ship-
building being only one. If, then, extra iron is required for ships,
the first efi'ect is to withdraw part of the iron habitually consumed
for other purposes, and to raise the price. Presently the iron-
makers feel this change, and their stocks dwindle. [The iron
trade, however, expands under this demand much less rapidly
than the ship trade, because only a part of the demand for iron
depends on shipbuilding, and meanwhile the growth of the ship-
building industry must i)e limited by the deficiency of iron. A
remoter restraint of the same nature meets us if we go a step
further, in the requisite expansion of the coal-producing industry ;
and this restraint can be overcome only in a still longer time,
because the additional demand on the coal-owners and coal-miners
will be comparatively small, and will not for a long time overcome
the inertia encountered in drawing capital and labour from other
spheres.] Thus in a community which has reached a state of
moving equilibrium, though any one industry directly affected by
an additional demand may rapidly undergo a small extra growth ;
yet a growth beyond this, requiring, as it does, the building up of
subservient industries less directly and strongly affected, as well
as the partial w?fcbuilding of other industries, can take place only
with comparative slowness ; and a still further growth, requiring
structural modifications of industries still more distantly affected,
must take place still more slowly."— P. 194.

Thus also in the animal organism adaptive modifications
will be both slow and limited, and will readily revert to
the original type. The fixity of species, therefore, as it

356 Mr. Herbert Spencer's

exists in nature, does not contradict tlie evolution of
life.

Genesis, heredity, and variation, Mr. Spencer groups
together. The union of slightly unlike units renders
equilibrium more easily disturbed, as is seen in the lower
melting point of amalgams than of their constituent metals.
Thus when the organic forces are approaching equilibrium
mobility is restored. The likeness of offspring to parents
results from the similarity of the " physiological units."
Acquired properties are thus perpetuated. Dr. B. Sequard
having produced epilepsy in certain guinea-pigs, found
that their descendants were epileptic ; Mr. Lewes records
that the pup of a mother that had been taught to beg
spontaneously adopted the practice.

Variation has for its causes the unlikeness of parents,
changes wrought in them by functional adaptations, and
the varying quantity or quality of the units, which in no
two cases can be alike. Variations are greatest where
the species differ most, and fundamentally they owe their
origin to changes of function which are necessarily adapta-
tions. The doctrine of " physiological units " accounts for
all classes of phenomena under these heads.

In the classification of the organic world, no linear
arrangement will stand. The groups touch one another
on all sides. The most extensive groups are distinguished
from each other by profound physiological differences.
There is first no distinction of functions ; then the accu-
mulation of force is differentiated from its expenditure ;
next a provision is made for its transfer, and action is
distributed between the two factors, muscle and nerve.
The smaller groups are distinguished by modifications in
these parts, or by the presence or absence of subsidiary
ones.

In the local distribution of organisms there exists a

Principles of Biology. 357

perpetual tendency to intrude on each other's spheres and
habits, and the expansion of each is limited only by
suitability of circumstance or by local obstacles. Eesem-
blance of types is found even in distant and unlike places
if there be no obstacle to migration, and the most closely
related localities present different types if migration is
difficult. There is no exact adaptation of organisms to
localities, as is proved by the frequent extermination of
indigenous plants or animals by new arrivals. Of the
distribution in time our knowledge is very fragmentary ;
but we see that change has been continuous and gradual
where we have continuous evidence : where there are gaps
in the record there are sudden changes in the forms.
There is no proof of universal 'progress : where higher
animals in succession make their appearance in the strata,
it is probably owing to migration from previously existing
continents to the present. With few exceptions, each
species lives its life and ceases ; and types that have once
disappeared do not appear again.

Recurring now to the proofs of the evolution of life,
Mr. Spencer urges that the distribution of organisms can-
not be said to imply that they have been designed for
and placed in particular habitats, because they are by no
means always found where they are most suited ; nor is
there evidence of any design to multiply tjrpes, because
similar types are found wherever migration is facile. On
the other hand, changes corresponding to change of
habitat or circumstance are everywhere visible, and the
changes are more extensive in proportion to the variety
of circumstance to which any group is exposed. Even
the change from water to air has its intermediate links
in molluscs and Crustacea, which live only partially in
water, in fish which migrate or bury themselves during
drought, and in the amphibia. In respect to the distribu-

358 Mr, Hei'bert Spencer's

tion in time, we cannot but ask, if animals were specially
created, why was there no valuable life so long ? or, if
circumstances were not fitting — of which there is no
proof — why were they not ? And why — if creative
wisdom be shown in multiform adaptation of one type to
many ends — did types, instead of being modified, become
extinct ? Strongly suggestive of evolution, on the other
hand, are the kinship between recent existing forms and
the special relationship that exists between the present
and the former inhabitants of each region. The classi-
fication of organisms, again, affords confirmation of the
evolution of life. It corresponds precisely with that of
languages, which are acknowledged to have arisen by
evolution. Both present the same fundamental character
of subordination of groups, the largest being radically
unlike ; the groups are of indefinite value, they are
united by their lowest members, and they present unity
and multiformity.

Further evidence is derived from embryology, in the
gradual divergence of the groups as they proceed in their
development, and the circuitous course through which
many of them pass. The numerous modifications, under-
gone in some cases before the final form is assumed,
point to ancestral modifications produced by external
conditions. Again, the suppression of organs once formed
and their substitution by others — the teeth in foetal
whales and in some embryonic birds — point to the same
source : modifications gone through by their progenitors.
Indirect and direct development are illustrated by the
social organism. Society at first arises by a long series
of changes, individuals gradually specialising or altering
their operations as demand increases or arises ; but when
society is fuUy developed, offshoots from it are complete
in aU their elements at once. The units, being influenced

Principles of Biology, 359

by the whole, at once reproduce its form. So even
among mammalia there is seen the commencement of a
direct development ; for example, in the heart, which
arises by direct transformation of the germ- cells. This
is an organ which must have been early developed, and
has undergone throughout little change in its conditions;
so that the action of the whole upon the particles, in
respect to it, has been fully exerted. Direct thus tends
to take the place of indirect development : the traces of
ancestral modifications to be obliterated.

And yet again morphology — the ultimate forms of
living things — may be summoned in evidence. These
forms present characters which cannot otherwise be
explained but by evolution. All vertebrata, from the
whale to the giraffe, have seven vertebrae in the neck —
except a few. If so many, why not all ? Insects and
Crustacea have all of them twenty segments in their body,
though applied to the most various purposes, from feet to
jaws; spiders and mites, though closely akin, have not.
Are not the twenty segments derived from some common
ancestor ? See again the unity of plan, or homology, in
organs differently used. Snakes need a spinal column,
which is movable in all its parts ; mammals, on the other
hand, require portions of them to be rigid — the sacrum,
for example, which supports the lower limbs. Yet in
them the sacrum is still composed of several portions.
In its development it is first one, then is divided into
several, then grows into one again. There are many use-
less rudimentary organs : snakes have abortive hind feet ;
the seal" has nails on its toes; the man^itoe has rudiments
of them hidden beneath the skin.

How then has evolution been brought about ? !N^either
an inherent tendency to progress .(the elder Darwin), nor
efforts made to satisfy new desires (Lamarck), has any

360 Mr, Herbert Spencer's

valid basis. Adaptive modifications of function are the
true cause ; but this formula requires to be reduced again
to the ultimate laws of evolution. The factors in vital evolu-
tion are external and internal. Among the external come
first the larger astronomical rhythms. In 2 1 ,000 years
the earth presents a larger part first of one and then of
the other hemisphere to the sun at the time of its nearest
approach to him, giving rise to seasons sometimes temper-
ate, sometimes of extreme heat and cold. This cycle is
included in another of some millions of years, during which
the orbit of the planet becomes more and less eccentric, in-
creasing and diminishing the above-described effects. The
direct influence thus exerted on the fauna and flora, great
as it is, is less than that arising from the alternate exten-
sions and limitations of their habitats, occasioned by the
changing temperature, which carry each species into the
presence of new physical conditions. Next there are the
perpetually recurring geological changes which give an
increasing complexity to the earth's surface in most
various ways ; and with these the accompanying revohi-
tions in atmosphere and climate. There are also the
influences exerted by organisms on each other, especially
by intrusions on each other's habitats ; the conditions
becoming more varied with every new accession of loco-
motive or other faculty in the subjects of them. Among
the internal factors of evolution are the increasing hetero-
geneity involved in the very nature of force, which applies
alike to the individual and tlie species : the additional
changes brought about by every previous change — the
modified development, for example, of neck, forelimbs,
and therefore of every part, involved in increased weight
of head. An increasing definiteness of structure also is
implied ; and this in spite of varying conditions, because
the variations must be trivial in comparison with the con-

Principles of Biology, 361

stant elements, or life would be overthrown. Some
organisms, however, may escape the effect of these multi-
plied causes of change, neutralising them by migration.
Hence the perpetuity of a few species from the earliest
times to the present. Finally, these accumulating changes
must be such as to subserve the life of the individual,
because they necessarily constitute a process of equilibra-
tion, or balancing of external by internal forces. This
equilibration is direct or indirect. Direct is adaptation
— modified function answering to external conditions ;
indirect equilibration is brought about by natural selec-
tion, or, as Mr. Spencer terms it, " survival of the fittest."
By this means are rendered permanent those structural
conditions which subserve the life of the individual, but
which cannot have their source in adaptation ; such as
protective thorns on plants, a firm shell around an egg,
the long leg of a wading bird. If, from severity of
season, or from stronger enemies, the weaker portion of
a species are destroyed, the next generation being derived
only from the stronger remnant of the race, is itself of a
stronger order. Thus the external and internal force is
balanced, and vice versa. But as the faculties of a
species multiply, and the want of one can be com-
pensated by the possession of others, natural selection
becomes of less influence. It is of least influence among
civilised mankind, with whom indeed, in advancing evolu-
tion, changes in the brain or mental organisation tend to
take the place of modification of external structure.

Thus, even apart from the physiology of individual
organisms, many evidences converge to demonstrate evolu-
tion of life by natural forces against the doctrine of
special creations. Various d 'priori considerations may
be added. The latter view is probably false, as being
an early belief arising in ignorance, as being one of a

362 M7\ Herbert spencer's

class of similar views which have been found to be
erroneous, as being countenanced by no known facts,
and incapable of being formed into a coherent thought.
If we suppose a being capable of witnessing only a
small part of the life of man, he would have as good
a reason for supposing each individual specially created.
There are also theological difficulties arising from the
evils incident to organic life, which reach their climax
in the existence of entozoa. For, if special creation
be true, these must have been created specially to
torment the higher lives, without even the poor excuse
in many cases of a capacity for pleasure in themselves :
created and endowed with special powers of existence
and multiplication to cut off the chances of escape.
The doctrine of evolution is contrasted in all these
respects. It comes with knowledge and arises among
those who are best informed ; it is one of an increasing
class of opinions ; it can be conceived, and so forms a
legitimate hypothesis ; we see like things, e.g., straight
lines, passing through every stage into circles, which are
utterly opposed to them in properties ; we see, too, that
formless germs do evolve into the highest organisms;
there is some direct evidence, in the shape of known
modifications of structure, and though it is not much, it is
proportionately equal in amount to that on which the
evolution of the structure of the earth is inferred from
present geologic change. Evolution is morally more
satisfactory, for though it does not teU us why evils could
not have been avoided, it puts aside the question, why
were they deliberately inflicted ? These evils no longer
suggest deliberate malice ; nay, slowly but surely evolu-
tion brings about an increasing amount of happiness ; all
evils being but incidental and diminishing.

Scanty as is the summary thus given, and little as it

Principles of Biology. 36

o

represents the wealth of Mr. Spencer's volume, by far too
many points present themselves for remark for us to
attempt to touch upon more than a few. But we have
thought it well to present with a certain completeness
the outline of the argument, both because we felt that
in no other way could anything like justice be done to
it, and because we think many readers will thank us for
laying before them the leading points of what is cer-
tainly a very powerful and valuable, as well as novel
train of reasoning. Never before, that we are aware of,
has the attempt been made with any degree of scientific
precision, to subject the phenomena of life to a deduc-
tive process. Yet if we are ever to gain a real and
commanding knowledge of physiology, this attempt mast
sooner or latter be made — and succeed. And whatever
may be Mr. Spencer's success in detail, there can be no
doubt that the path he treads, and to which he has at
least given an unprecedented scope and completeness, is
one that promises great results, while many of his own
conclusions bear the stamp of truth. In respect to the
main position he aims to establish, that organisms have
been " evolved," and not specially created, it is enough
to say here, that we entirely agree with him. The
hypothesis of special creations has, to our mind, nothing
in its favour except human ignorance and the good
intentions of its authors. Yet we confess that we were
somewhat struck with the novel view in ethics presented
by the doctrine that there is so great a moral difference
between instituting a chain which involves certain results
and directly bringing them about. Suppose the idea
applied to social life : a man does not directly fire
the gun which destroys an innocent life; he only so
arranges, or consents that so should be arranged, the
gunpowder and the fire, that in the course of inevitable

364 Mr. Herbert spencer "^s

" differentiations " it will be destroyed. Mr. Spencer,
however, is reserving ethics for another volume, and
perhaps we do wrong, though we do but follow his
example, prematurely to start questions of morality.
Our parallel also implies that the inscrutable first cause,
even on the theory of evolution, is still a being with whom
power dwells and who accepts its responsibilities. But
on any view it is surely an undesirable thing (and Mr.
Spencer, who places all religion in the sense of mystery,
would not dissent from this) to endeavour illegitimatelt/
to lessen the feeling of mystery with which the pheno-
mena of nature, moral as well as material, affect the
student. That entozoa should devour men, should
subject to loathsome and torturing disease or madness
the sensitive nerves and brain of the world's chief
denizen, is a dark mystery. Face it fairly, see it a
thing as much meant and designed, as much embodied
in the whole scope and make of life, as cool water,
or the breath of flowers, or the answering glance of
eyes, and it becomes dark enough to be full of infinite
suggestions. It has a meaning fearfully attractive —
perhaps yet destined to be read ; perhaps capable of
bearing its part in raising our whole thought to a new
level of moral elevation. Who knows what a felt
mystery may not do for us in the sphere of morals
as in that of knowledge ? or how should it be less
fatal to banish it unsolved in the one case than in
the other ? Evolution or no evolution, the moral pro-
blems of this great phenomenon, the world, form a book,
the reading of which has yet to be re-attempted by man-
kind. Let us spare ourselves the task of whitewashing
its solemn characters.

Perhaps in the ardour of his controversial zeal, Mr.
Spencer is betrayed into speaking alittle too contemptuously

Prmciples of Biology. 365

of tlie views men frame in ignorance. To us it has long
appeared that the beauty of organic connection and cor-
related evolution is nowhere more strikingly visible than
in the development of thought from its earlier to its later
forms, and that scarcely less beauty and adaptation are
traceable in the first than in the last. Often it might
surprise us, if a law were not recognisable in it, to see
how an early thought anticipates the latest, or lays hold
of the essential conditions of a problem which subsequent
ideas, framed with a greater amount of knowledge but
less insight, fail to maintain. We may remind Mr. Spencer
how early, on this very subject of evolution, his own
doctrine was affirmed, and amid how much of ignorance
it was nursed. So far from having arisen only in recent
and scientific times, and driven out the opposite as light
advanced, the process seems rather to have been the other
way. In a dark and mistaken form, doubtless, the evolu-
tion of living organisms by natural force is as old as the
most ardent lover of antiquity could desire. Nay, what
could be more naturally suggested to an ignorant eye by
the teeming life of the warmer countries of the world ?
It was growing knowledge, accurate observation, that
banished the conception, which now, in more reputable
associations, again solicits our suffrages. This is a point
worth remembering, especially perhaps with reference to
the probable future of opinion, or even* — which is more
important — the correct estimate of our own. Did not
observation of the heavens banish utterly and put to rout
the heliocentric doctrine of Pythagoras ? — restored too, not
by observation, but by private meditation in a cell. Those
primitive ideas of life based upon the primordial impres-
sions which it makes on us, and which led men to endow
it with even superstitious self-directive and sustaining
powers, are not without their justification, and will

366 Mr. Herbert Spencer's

perhaps, hereafter, be invested with fresh meaning. "We
are the more confirmed in this opinion by noting, as we
have done, not without some surprise, that not even so
trained and guarded a mind as Mr. Spencer's is fully
emancipated from their power. Surely in the doctrine of
"Physiological Units," endowed with "inherent tendencies"
to assume the form of each particular organism, we can-
not be mistaken in recognising the identical lineaments,
however shorn of their fair proportions, of our old friends
the Archseus, vital principle, nisus formativus^ and so on.
Though yielding thus to a fascination too strong, and
doubtless too firmly based on some deep necessity, to be
entirely overcome, Mr. Spencer has himself, in treating of
another subject, most emphatically pronounced their con-
demnation. " In whatever way it is formulated, or by
whatever language it is obscured, this ascription of organic
evolution to some aptitude naturally possessed by organ-
isms or miraculously imposed on them is unphilosophical.
It is one of those explanations which explain nothing, a
shaping of ignorance into the semblance of knowledge."
In what way does " the tendency to assume the specific
form inherent in all parts of the organism," affirmed by
Mr. Spencer, differ from the " aptitude for organic evolu-
tion naturally possessed by organisms," thus condemned
by him ? Unless it be in this, that the organism or the
germ, to which the aptitude to evolve is ascribed, is a
known phenomenon, while the physiological units are
postulated for the occasion. The analogy of the crystal,
to which reference is made, is not available, for two
reasons : first, that it is equally unscientific to infer an
inherent tendency to assume certain forms in the one case
as in the other; and, secondly, because the circumstances
are radically different. The atoms of the crystal are
simply deposited in a certain form, which, having once

Principles of Biology, 367

assumed, they passively retain, so that we might almost
conceive that certain peculiarities of shape alone might
account for the phenomena ; but the living body in its
development presents a long succession of differing forms ;
a continued series of changes for the whole length of
which, according to Mr. Spencer's hypothesis, the physio-
logical units must have an " inherent tendency." Could
we more truly say of anything, " it is unrepresentable in
thought"? When Mr. Spencer says (p. 181), "It seems
difficult to conceive that a plant or animal of any species
is made iip of special units, in all of which there dwdls
the intrinsic aptitude to aggregate into the form of that
species ; but we see that it ^s so ; " it is difficult to think
where his extraordinary philosophical acumen could for
the moment have been laid aside. Surely we see nothing
but that it appears as if it were so. The truth is, simply,
that in nature there is no " inherent tendency " whatever,
nor can be. The idea is essentially one and the same,
wherever it appears, or under whatever guise ; and is the
one enemy with which science contends. It is simply
the denial of causation. All tendencies whatsoever are
manifestations of effects, are the results of operant forces,
either present or past. The "inherent tendency" of
a cannon ball under certain circumstances to shatter
whatever opposes it is a type of all.

"We have the more freely expressed our dissent on this
point, because on the one hand it is a position quite in
antagonism to the rest of Mr. Spencer's book, and seems
to us by its indirect influence materially to detract
from its perfection, as leading to the omission of certain
physical elements involved in vital phenomena, which, if
he had not held this phantasm before his eyes^ he would
necessarily have more fully recognised. And on the other
hand, the inconsistency itself, when traced to its roots, is

368 Mr, Herbert spencer's

amply justified and most significant. It is not given to
Mr. Spencer, who has shown so many evidences of a truly
religious nature — not yet, perhaps (if we may use his own
formula), perfectly equilibrated with his scientific appre-
hensions— to discuss the phenomena of life on the basis
of matter and force alone, without reference, express or
latent, voluntary or involuntary, to that which is beyond.
By his own statement, life is not truly reducible to these
abstract and empty terms ; it only seems to be so. These
are not the actual verity, but conceptions unrealisable even
in thought, and far enough from fulfilling tlie true condi-
tions of the source of life. We feel reverently towards the
" intrinsic tendencies of physiological units," recognising
in them a peering forth of the actual from beneath the
phenomenal ; obscuring its outlines indeed, yet witnessing
to that for which alone it is of worth, by which alone it
is. But we are treading here on forbidden ground, and
must forbear. "We cannot, however, but note the essen-
tial dependence of the scientific on the philosopliical
portion of Mr. Spencer's book. It is on condition that
the terms in which he works are first expressly abandoned
as known, and affirmed only as unknown quantities, that
he can work with them. Life may be represented in terms
of matter and force — because they are merely terms. It
is expressible so, not thence derived. The mechanical
elements in which the problem is resolved are products,
not genuine ediccts, of the analysis. They are resultants
of our mental processes, and rejected even by the faculties
to which they owe their origin — a progeny devoured by
its parent.

Probably it would have been well if this position, clearly
enunciated at the outset of the work, had been more
distinctly kept in the reader's view (as doubtless it has
been in the author's) during its course. The language

Principles of Biology. 369

necessarily employed is so apt to seem to affirm more than
it truly does affirm, that an occasional recurrence to princi-
ples might be more than pardoned. It need never be for-
gotten that, however vital phenomena may be formulated in
these ic's and 2;'s of molecules and forces, what life is still
remains open to all the emotions of the soul ; it is uncrys-
tallised and fluent as ever to the heart; and this above all is
certain, that the greater can never be derived from the less.
If personal elements of ^consciousness and will have been
falsely introduced, their expurgation can leave no vacuum.
There is an atmosphere which forbids a void — that from
which conscience and reason are derived can never be
expunged.

For this digression we make no apology. The twofold
aspect of physiology cannot be ignored. Nor could more
be done to facilitate and advance its scientific study than
by pusliing wholly aside the obstacles which result from
the substitution of mechanical for vital terms. There are
necessarily many minds to whom nothing but a clear appre-
hension of this point can make the physical treatment
of physiology tolerable, far less induce their active co-
operation ; whereas, in truth, its interest and significance
from the emotional and poetic side are infinitely increased
by this rigid formulation. That life, be it truly what it
may, is susceptible of this ordination under the forms of
the intellect ; that besides what it presents to our percep-
tive and moral sensibility, it possesses also this boundless
and almost incredible simplicity, is capable of being
summed up in a few self-evident or rigidly deducible
axioms, multiplies its wonder a hundredfold. Embodied
in it, with all its variety of beauty and of use, are an ab-
solute simplicity, an absolute necessity. It is, as it were,
tlie bare and rigid pole that is clothed thus with flowers.
There is no beauty of adaptation here, no grandeur of

2 A

3 /O Mr. Herbert Spencer 's

liarmony, that is not necessary, rooted deep as tlie
foundations of the earth, implied when we have said
" existence." Nor any defect or failure, no loss or seem-
ing ruin, no sacrifice of myriad lives or slow wasting of
a solitary frame, that does not root itself equally upon
the centre and lay its hand upon the universal heart.

Before we turn to Mr. Spencer's definition of life, on
which we have a few remarks to offer, we may present,
in a summary form, a view of the phenomena of the
organic world, which seems to us to exhibit, in a clear
light, some of its most important characters. We do not
say it is better than other representations, especially than
that, given by Mr. Spencer, of a "Moving Equilibrium
between Internal and External Forces." Probably for its
due exhibition life needs to be represented in many ways.

Evidently involved in the doctrine that force neither
increases nor diminishes, is this consequence, that every
change which takes place in nature nmst have two
aspects : it must be, on the one hand, a new exhibition
of force, and, on the other, it must involve the with-
drawal of force from a previous mode of operation. The
importance of observing this twofold bearing of all natural
changes lies in this — that the withdrawal of force from
a previous mode of operation is also practically an action,
and involves a change. Every action in nature, there-
fore, is truly two opposite and equal changes, and, to be
adequately apprehended, requires to be seen in both its
aspects. If one of the two constituents alone be recog-
nised it is half unseen.

But since we necessarily regard natural changes in
their particular bearings, and with reference to special
results, rather than from a point of philosophical abstrac-
tion, this result of the persistence of force presents itself
to us under another form. Natural chancres constitute

Principles of Biology, 3 7 1

two groups oppositely related in respect to force. Some
of these changes exhibit the new operation of force, as
when a weight is raised ; others show the ceasing of the
operation of some force, as when a weight begins to fall.
It is true that in every case such action has somewhere
its equal opposite ; but this is often unseen by us, or is
practically of no moment. The two classes of changes
present themselves to us as opposites, and as such they
need to be distinguished, and deserve to be marked by
distinct names. We do indeed so distinguish them in
special cases : we speak of " rise " and " fall," apart from
mere direction, to represent the opposite dynamic relations
of two processes. But we do not seem as yet to have
thoroughly generalised the distinction. For these two
kinds of change accordingly we propose here to use the
terms " force-absorbing " and " force-liberating." The
elevation of a heavy body absorbs force ; the fall of it
liberates force. All natural changes are of one kind or
the other.

But again : there is an evident link between these two
classes of changes — a logical order of succession. The
force-liberating must precede the force-absorbing ; the fall
must produce the rise. This is practically so familiar
that it needs no proof In a balance, it is the fall of
one scale which causes the opposite to rise ; the sinking
of the fluid in one leg of a syphon elevates it in the
other. In every force-liberating change we have given
to us the necessity for an equal change of the opposite
character ; for every force-absorbing change we must
seek the cause in some equivalent force-liberating change.
The simplest corollary of the persistence of force is, that
every fall produces some rise ; every rise depends upon
some fall. This law of course is universal ; it applies to
all forces, to all forms of change ; and whenever, there-

372 Mr. Herbert Spencer's

fore, there are found in mutual relation two changes, or
tendencies, thus opposed — one force-absorbing, the other
force-liberating — there is 'prima facie evidence that they
stand to each other as effect and cause.

It is further evident that force-liberating changes imply
the presence of some force shut up or rendered latent in
the form of tension. Gravity is the great, or at least the
most obvious, form of tension in the universe ; but there
can hardly be any force that may not exist in that form,
since force necessarily becomes tension in so far as it is
balanced by resistance. In organic matter the tension is
based upon chemical affinity. It presents two sets of
changes, or tendencies, mutually related : one force-libe-
rating— the ordinary chemical action or decomposition ;
the other force-absorbing — the vital action, or nutrition.
These are true opposites in respect to force ; they are
bound up together in the living body, and they are bound
up as cause and effect. That in life chemical force should
be the cause of an opposition to chemical force is as
simple as that the gravity of one weight should support
another ; the requisite adjustments . being in each case
supposed. Not that chemical force is to be assumed as
the only source of the resistance in organic matter to
chemical affinity ; other forces doubtless share in the
action: in plants light works visibly to this end. But
to recognise chemical action as also working thus, seems
to give an insight into many of the processes which char-
acterise organic life, in the animal world especially, and
may possibly aid us in judging how it should be defined.

For the fact which, almost more than any other, strikes
the mind wdien vital phenomena are traced but a short
distance below the surface, is this : that the total activity
of the body, its total existence almost, consists in the
perpetual interweaving of these two opposite processes —

Principles of Biology, 373

nutrition and decay, the raising up, the fall, succeeding
each other, or going on coincidently in every part. Re-
cognising the mutual dependence of these opposites, and
that the chain which unites them is knit doubly close, we
see that, though ultimately dependent on the external
world, the body has within itself, to a limited extent, the
source of its own life. Besides its power of external
action, wrought through the fall of the raised molecules,
it has in that same fall also a spring of renovated vitality ;
the chemical, the anti-vital, processes continually going
on within it, do thus support and maintain its life.
Wheresoever is decay, the force of which is not expended
as external function, or as heat, there is a focus at which
the torch of life may be fresh kindled — a new turn of
tension given to the relaxing textures. That the various
activities of life have this connection, is palpable. Take
respiration, for example. The force-liberating process
involved in the union of oxygen with the elements of
blood (whether in the lungs or capillaries),^ institutes
and supports a force-absorbing process. It not only
purifies (this is but a half view), it vitalises the blood.
Very significant in this respect is the fact that heat can-
not be distinctly shown to be generated in the lungs.

A similar office may unquestionably be discerned in
some, at least, of the secreting glands. A decomposition
of the blood in more ways than one takes place in the
liver, producing bile and other substances. Here is a
force-liberating change. Is not the correlative force-
absorbing change to be recognised in a higher vital
tension of the fluid which has furnished them? The
fact at any rate is to be accounted for, that from the less

1 The recent experiments of Professor Stokes on cruorine, and its varying
relations to oxygen, render it most probable that the blood undergoes a true
oxidation in the lungs.— See Trans, of Royal Society, June 1864, p. 355.

374 -^^- Herb 67' t Spencer's

highly- vital food, as the liver and the lungs successively
fulfil their offices upon it, the more vital, that is, the more
force-containing, blood is formed. To these may be added
the fact, discovered by Bernard, that during active secre-
tion (of saliva, for example), the blood tliat has traversed
the gland passes out of a bright scarlet hue, while in the
intervals of inactivity it presents the ordinary venous
tint. Another familiar instance is the vitalisation of
the vegetable germ through the oxidation of the starch
laid up in the seed. Even the process of nutrition
itself presents characters which suggest the same inter-
pretation. Amid the various tissues flows the blood,
bearing elements for all. But all do not stand in a like
relation to it. Some have (probably, for we are here on
somewhat conjectural ground) a higher vital status, an
intenser concentration of force. Among these we may
place brain and muscle. Others are lower than itself —
bone, tendon, cartilage. Does not the blood, by sinking
into the one, partly gain the power whereby it rises into
the other class ?

Is not the contemporaneous development of the vari-
ous systems component of the body, each of which with-
out the other were of no avail, in part determined thus ?
The frequent wasting of the internal portion of an
embryonic tissue, while the circumference develops,
might lend the idea countenance. It is true the use
and renewal of brain and muscle vastly exceed that of the
merely passive lower tissues ; but the latter do waste, and
are repaired. Their formation and maintenance claim
place as one factor, though but a subordinate one, in the
vitalisation of the blood. And, finally, though our
instances are but begun, may not the apparent renovating
effect of some severe diseases find its explanation here ?
The excessive waste and fall of matter in the fierce pangs

Principles of Biology. 375

oT fever, if, happily, they leave all vital parts undamaged,
may they not transmit a remnant of the force thus
violently freed to that portion of the blood and tissues
which have preserved their balance ? May not a fever
sometimes be an act of respiration on a larger scale ?

Let us now take up the definition of life proposed by
Mi, Spencer. It is scarcely necessary to remark that he
disclaims the pretence of giving anything more than an
approximate definition; and we agree with him in the
value he attaches to the attempt. Nothing can better
serve to test our knowledge, and to give precision and
completeness to our ideas. Previous formulas need not
detain us now. Mr. Spencer's is, as we have seen, " the
definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simul-
taneous and successive, in correspondence with external
coexistences and sequences." In framing this definition,
Mr. Spencer proceeds upon the plan (which he counsels
for general adoption) of taking two extreme instances,
and finding the characters possessed in common. He
chooses the lowest form of physical life as one element,
and reasoning^ as an example of the highest mental life,
as the other, and frames a definition on that which they
possess in common. It is, at least, interesting and valu-
able to see the result; but for our own part, we should
prefer for physical life to take the narrower basis of
physical phenomena alone ; nor does it appear to us that
in this relation Mr. Spencer's definition, ingeniously
and scrupulously as it is constructed, will bear a rigid
scrutiny.

It is obvious to remark, first, that it only includes
dynamic and not statical phenomena. Not only does it
exclude from the domain of life a seed, but even a tree
in winter. These, we presume, are held as not possessing
life, but only a capacity for life. Yet surely this is not

2) J 6 Mr. Herbert Spencer's

satisfactory. It appears to us, rather, that not only seeds
and dormant trees ought to be fully included in the
definition, hut also organic matter in its most indefinite
form — a portion of white of ^gg, for example. The dis-
tinctive character of this substance is that it is living.
Secondly, the definition affirms of living things that
which is not universally true, even of those which it is
meant to include. By the "correspondence between
internal and external relations," Mr. Spencer expressly
states, that he means not a mere succession of internal
changes directly answering to external, but that one
change produced by external conditions in the organism
institutes another change within it, which is in corres-
pondence with another change about to ensue externally.
He says (p. 78): " Let some change. A, impress on an
organism a change, C ; then while in the environment A
is occasioning a, in the organism C will be occasioning c ;
of which a and c will show a certain concord in time,
place, and intensity." We cannot see that such consecu-
tive correspondences are present in all living bodies —
hardly, even in the majority. The amoeba surely responds
simply to direct external impressions, in so far as it
responds to them at all. What secondary process,
answering to a future change about to occur around
it, is set up in it by stimuli ? or even in the
hydra ?

Mr. Spencer does not furnish illustrations here, and we
confess we cannot supply them. To us it seems that this
description answers rather to the presence of a nervous
system than to life. One of the chief functions of the
nervous system is to institute such secondary adaptations, to
enable one part to be modified by modifications of another.
Thus such correspondent series of external and internal
changes come to be characteristic of the higher grades of

Principles of Biology, 377

life, but they do not penetrate to the lowest strata. Mr.
Spencer's own words imply as much. He says, " If we
take Ob living hody of the requisite organisation" we shall
find this nexus ; but this gives up the definition. On
the other hand, if this complexity of correspondence be
given up, the definition ceases to be distinctive ; for the
motions of the earth furnish surely as complete a fulfil-
ment of it as could be desired. These motions are
definite, they are combined, they are in certain respects
heterogeneous, they are both simultaneous and successive,
and they take place in the strictest correspondence with
external coexistences and sequences.

But further, even if it were granted that this succes-
sion of internal changes in correspondence to external, to
which Mr. Spencer refers, were universally present in
living organisms, the definition would still not be satis-
factory; for if we could not discover anything else in
nature answering to it, we could construct something.
Let us suppose a water-mill, with a float placed upon the
stream above, and so attached as to raise or lower a sluice
as the amount of water varied. Would not Mr. Spencer's
definition of life be perfectly fulfilled in this ? Using
electric wires for nerves, surely innumerable such pseudo-
living creatures could be manufactured. Nay, look at the
chronometer. Does not here an internal change — expan-
sion— produced by an external cause, lead to a second
internal change, an adjustment of tension in strict corres-
pondence with the external sequence ?

Other objections of a different order might perhaps be
urged: such as that the definition refers only to the
external phenomena of life, and takes no note of its
hecoming, the process by which it is ; that though recog-
nising the correspondence of the internal with the external,
it ignores its identity and absolute dependence ; that in

378 Mr. Herbert Spencer's

it the individualisation involved in life, wliicli, as truly
affirmed by Sclielling and Coleridge, is its chief charac-
teristic, sinks into the background ; and finally, that it is
not expansive, that it does not suggest, but gives rather a
feeling of finality. These, however, are matters on which
it is not worth while to dwell. The point of interest
that arises from the discussion is in our view this : that
what may be called a qualitative definition of life is not
to be obtained, because the differences on which it could
be founded do not exist. Sincerely we believe that if
life could in its distinctive characters be defined by man,
Mr. Spencer would have done it. As every definition in
the past has broken down, so, we believe, must every
definition in the future, which seeks to draw any other
than a merely relative distinction between the organic
and the inorganic. The difference is but relative ; it is
one of form and mode alone, and no definition can stand
which does not recognise this fact.

It is hardly fair, perhaps, to criticise another man's
definition without presenting an opportunity for return.
We will venture, therefore, undeteiTed by the disjecta
menibra which lie around, though with no vague fore-
bodings of the fate before us, to try another ; keeping,
however, within the humbler field of material or organic
life. Our definition would be this : Organic life is the
limiting, within certain forms determined by external
conditions, of molecular changes, both force-absorbing
and force-liberating ; with the effects of such limitation.
Or more briefly : Life is a local limiting of molecular
change.

If there is nothing more in organic life than in the
rest of nature — and we have seen that if- there be any-
thing it is impossible to discover it — may there not be,
in spite of appearances, something less ? may not the

Principles of Biology. 2>79

organic be derived from the inorganic, not by a plus but
by a minus ?

We intend here simply to suggest whether the idea of
a limit might not be found useful in physiology, and can-
not pursue the subject into detail ; yet having exhibited
our wares, we may perhaps, like other showmen, be per-
mitted modestly to praise them. This mode of regarding
life answers precisely to that series of united force-liberat-
ing and force-absorbing changes, repeated within the same
compass, which we have seen that organic bodies present.
Throv{jh all inorganic bodies force passes ; it enters them,
affecting them more or less intimately, continuing in them
for a longer or a shorter time, and then leaves them, being
transmitted onwards to another recipient; but within
organic bodies it circulates. Part of it is passed on in
external function, but part of it is retained. The forces
of the living body, besides being transmitted externally,
are bent inwards on itself. They are limited in their
circuit ; and thereby establish those permanent yet ever-
shifting centres of force which we call living. Kor could
such centres be otherwise established save by a limit to
the circulating force, unless we imagined it endowed with
the power to direct itself. An illustration will aid our
conception here. Life was likened by Cuvier to a whirl-
pool, as being a constant form with ever-varying substance ;
but the idea will bear a deeper probing. Let us think
not of a whirlpool simply, but of an eddy in a stream.
All around it runs a large continuous current, from which
it is marked off — individualised, we might almost say —
by a certain difference of form and mode. Yet it consists
of the very same elements, material and dynamic, as the
stream around, upon which it is entirely dependent.
That stream represents the great stream of force ; that
eddy the living organism. The eddy exhibits to us the

380 M7\ Herbert Spencer'' s

current locally limited and turned upon itself. Save by
such limit (be it from inequality of ground or whatever
other cause) it could not be so turned; but a limit
inevitably by the persistence of force must turn it so.
The motion of the stream, being limited in its onward
course, takes the reverse direction, becomes the opposite
to itself, flows to a certain extent, measured by ' its
momentum, upwards against gravity. The eddy presents
to us opposite motions, down and up, united and mutually
dependent. The force-liberating downward motion pro-
duces the force-absorbing upward, and they dwell together
in one definite shape — definite yet transient; for the
force in it, however long the circulation may continue, is
given off into the outer stream at last, and the temporarily
isolated fragment is resolved into the surrounding elements.
But not until it may, serving as a new limit, have imparted
its existence to another. Surely it is life in all but name.
Does our definition fail, then, by including too much ?
No. Dynamically an eddy answers to the simplest form
of life, but not in respect to the nature of the changes
involved. Life is a limiting of molecular changes — it
mights be simpler to say chemical changes, but that the
term is open to objection — the eddy exhibits a limiting
of mechanical ones. By laying stress upon the molecular
character of the changes primarily concerned in life, the
definition excludes those mechanisms which form in
some respects the closest analogues of living organisms,
and so greatly embarrasses any definitions which dwell
most upon their mechanical phenomena. It places those
mechanical phenomena in their right place, as secondary.
Some other advantages also the definition proposed seems
to possess. It lays hold not of the mere phenomena of
life, but of the process which constitutes it ; and so to a
certain extent gives an account of its becoming. It em-

Principles of Biology. 381

braces tlie statical as well as the dynamical phenomena
involved ; the things in which life is latent as well as
those which exhibit vital activity. It puts the individual-
ising tendency in the foreground, and expresses in its
terms the essential identity of the organic with, and its
intimate dependence upon, the inorganic. It is true the
correspondence between the organism and its environment
is left out, but this is necessarily involved in its depen-
dence, and is therefore implicitly included among the
" effects of the limitation." It is probable, also, that its
remarkable correspondence, or adaptation to conditions, is
only an apparent distinction of organic structure. Inde-
finite and more or less incoherent, from our point of view,
as are inorganic phenomena, it would be a narrow con-
ception that should refuse to allow them, under other
aspects than those directly cognisable by us, at least as
perfect a connection and as definite and unitary a sub-
ordination, as are visible to us in the more contracted
organic sphere. An entozoon — with whatever powers of
reason endowed — would probably make little beyond
accidental stratifications and aggregates out of the body of
a man. Its sphere of definitely combined and correspon-
dent changes would probably be pretty much confined to
its own body and those of its compeers. Here again it
sliould not be forgotten that evolution from homogeneous
formlessness, though true according to some of the laws
of our apprehension, is phenomenal only. According to
other elements of our intellectual being, it would seem
not less demonstrable that the adaptations which are seen
in organic nature, must involve fully equal adaptedness in
that from whence it flows. Nor probably are the two
views, each maintained with due relations, at all contra-
dictory. The multiform correspondence, with its results
of use, characteristic of the organic world, is not introduced

382 Mr. Herbert spencer's

by the limiting on which the organic condition depends,
but only the direction of that correspondence to certain
limited and particular results. Another advantage, indeed,
which the suggested definition of life possesses, is that it
brings nothing out of nothing : does not derive the more
from the less/

But it is in the expansiveness and the many ulterior
bearings of the conception of a limit, as applied to life,
that perhaps its chief attraction lies. It seems to cast a
light alike on the fundamental postulates of the theory
of evolution, and on the most widely ramified vital pheno-
mena. For example, Mr. Spencer's first great deductive
law from the persistence of force, is, as we have seen, that
of the instability of the homogeneous ; or, that change
must necessarily commence wherever all parts are per-
fectly alike. But as he himself allows there is an ex-
ception to this statement, " one stable homogeneity only
is hypothetically possible. If centres of force, absolutely
uniform in their powers, were diffused with absolute
uniformity through unlimited space, they would remain
in equilibrium."^

1 It seems worth considering whether the philosophical method used by
Mr. Spencer might not be fruitfully extended. Matter and force, he says,
can neither be destroyed nor introduced. When we seem to do either, we
do but change the form. Nor does it invalidate this deduction, that to all
appearance, and to all practical purposes, we create what was not, or annihi-
late what was, Llay not the same class of propositions be applied further;
for example, to such things as order 1 Can order come into existence, or
cease from existing? Granted that, apparently, and to all practical purposes,
it is created or destroyed, there is not in this the least presumption that
such creation or destruction truly takes place. Is not the form merely of
the order changed ; from an apparent to an inapparent one, and vice versd f
It is true that order is not an existence, is perhaps only a conception of our
minds, a purely relative term. But this would not affect the argument, for
force and matter are the same. It may be said that order is a mode or
condition only ; but the same is true of motion. Can we any more think
beitiff and not-being together in the one case than in the other?

2 "First Principles," p. 386. Mr. Spencer goes on to say that "this,
though a verbally intelligible sui)positiou, is one that cannot be represented

P^'inciples of Biology. 383

Thus the idea of a limit is one around whicli evolu-
tion centres, in its widest as well as in its narrowest
sphere.

And again in the same relation, the idea of a limit is
equally suggested by the phenomena of force. Entirely
unreconcilable with any complete dynamic theory is the
idea of permanently fixed centres of force — any inherent
powers. Gravity, for instance, refuses to be correlated
with other forces ; it remains as a permanent stumbling-
block. What we rationally demand is an ever- current
force always equal in amount, but never traceable to a
final home : — a force which we might trace back and back
under shifting forms indefinitely. Nay, this doubtless is
the true theory of force ; the mind can never be at rest
under the incubus of supposed fixed centres, howsoever
imagined, beyond or before which force is not. These
fixed centres, these apparent primary foci of force, how
then do they arise ? Clearly by a limit. Limit force in
time, and the phenomenon of " centres " of force is given.^

But to descend to regions less remote. The influence
of this relation to a limit is visible in other phenomena

in thought ; since unlimited space is inconceivable. All finite forms of the
homogeneous— all forms of which we can know or conceive— must inevitably
lapse into heterogeneity." But is it not remarkable that Mr. Spencer should
make representability in thought a condition of his postulate, when he has
himself taken so much pains to show that matter and force and motion are
themselves not represen table in thought? He says, for instance, p. 6i : " It
is impossible to form any idea of force in itself, (and) it is equally impossible
to comprehend either its mode of exercise or its law of variation." It would
appear surely that the starting-point at which Mr. Spencer legitimately
found himself, was not a limited, but an unlimited homogeneity, in which,
therefore, no evolution would occur, and that the one condition required to
establish the whole process was precisely that of a limit — the very concep-
tion which we have found to constitute the starting-point of that new
evolution upon the old, the organic world. The coincidence here seems
striking.

1 And since "matter" is resolved into "centres of force," do we not,
though somewhat vaguely, seem to trace matter to a limit ?

384 ^^^. Herbert Spencer's

belonging to the organic body, besides those before re-
ferred to. Its effect may be traced in the progressive
increase in the amount and complexity of life. Upon
the evolution theory the organic world has grown up out
of the inorganic ; that is, more and more force has as-
sumed the vital form, and become expended in producing
that unstable union of certain molecules which con-
stitutes matter organic. At the same time, the forms
into which this matter is built up assume more and more
complexity of structure, and exhibit an increasing
intensity of force. A limit is the general idea to
which these phenomena point. That occurs in respect
to the organic world which occurs when a fluid is pressed
into a space from which there is no proportionate egress.
There arises a continually heightening tension. The
force being retained, and, as it were, turned inward on
itself, becomes more intense. Possibly we may witness
the results of this process in the highly complex structure
of the organic molecules and the successive stages in
which their decomposition takes place. None but the
simplest organic substances are resolved directly into the
ultimate chemical compounds. Almost all of them, in
their fall from their unstable equilibrium, sink by suc-
cessive slips, each containing less force than the preced-
ing. In this complex structure and manifold process of
decomposition, do we not see evidence of a complex pro-
cess of upbuilding — successive impulses of force applied
to the same molecules ?

If we turn from development of force to that of form,
the same view recurs. Without reference to the con-
stant tendency to increase of organic matter, and a resist-
ance to its mere expansion, the extremely involved and,
as it were, convoluted structure of the higher animals,
can hardly be explained. Mere modifications by external

Principles of Biology. 385

circumstances have no adaptation to make life more, though
they may tend to alter its distribution; and simple
differentiations and integrations do not account for the
immense concentration of structure as well as force, the
compressed and implicated variety of parts, which is
characteristic of the more developed organisms. The
general conception, which, as it seems to us, should be
applied to the evolution of life, is one which recognises a
pressure of the natural forces tending to give rise to the
organic state of matter, and a constant resistance under
which this process is carried on, leading to a higher ten-
sion of the force, and a more involved structure in the
forms in which it is exhibited. This view furnishes also
a partial justification of the otherwise untenable doctrine
of an inherent tendency in life to progress. There is not
an inherent tendency ; but there is, apart from changing
circumstances, an external constraint.

This pressure from without, arising from increase of
the vital form of force, Mr. Spencer does not expressly
note as bearing on evolution; nor does it appear to us
that he assigns it even by implication a due place.
Without it, the causes he assigns for evolution appear
insufficient to bear the weight which rests on them.
Adaptations do not alter totals. It is possible that he
may design to make more reference to phenomena of this
class in the succeeding volume, to which the discussion
of individual structure is deferred ; but it seems to us
that they should find a place in the treatment of the
general doctrine of evolution, Nature becoming organic
— that being so far the direction of least resistance for
her force — we believe is the great element which lies at
the root of the whole process ; nature becoming organic
under limit.

And this balance of vital action and limit or control,

2 B

386 Mr, Herbert Spencer's Principles of Biology.

again, has the most striking illustration in the life of the
individual organism; in which the whole nutrition and
every function seem to be thus held in check, a special
nervous organisation existing for this very end : —
which organisation itself, may we not say in accordance
with Mr. Spencer's own views, is but the specialisation
of an universal function in the organic world ? But into
this point and many others equally full of interest which
press upon us, we have not space to enter now. It is
with regret we leave so great a topic so scantily treated,
and see our task cut off at its commencement ; but we
hope to resume it at no very distant day.

( 387 )

XXVI.

ON THE RELATION BETWEEN CHEMICAL
DECOMPOSITION AND NUTRITION.

(1862.)

My attention has been drawn to the question which heads
this paper by my having become unwillingly involved in
a controversy as to the origination of the view that the
motor power in nutrition is chemical decomposition.
Dr. Waters, of St. Louis, in America, on the one hand,
claims to be the first propounder of this thought, and
Dr. Freke, of Dublin, on the other, affirms his priority.
Between them I am not competent to decide, though I
am of opinion that both claims are practically just ; Dr.
Waters' statement being full and complete, but later;
Dr. Freke's being earlier, but more indistinct, and perhaps
capable of more than one interpretation.-^

Dr. Freke says, " We find the living atom has imparted
its organic properties to the inorganic matter, and in part-
ing therewith has itself become inorganic." Dr. Waters,
and others after him, trace out in express dynamic terms
the process as they apprehend it ; namely, that in the
decay of one portion of organic matter force is set free,
which acts as the "organising" force of other matter,
either causing it to become organic (having previously
not been so), or raising it from a lower to a higher vital

^ " On the Origin of Species by means of Organic Affinity. " By H. Freke,
M.D., &c. London : Longmans. i86i. P. 48.

388 On the Relation between

state. It is in respect to the true order of ideas here
that I wish to say a few words. Which is the true
thought : — Does the first organic matter " impart its
force," and thereupon decay ? Or does it undergo decay,
as representing a " tendency " of the elements, and so come
to impart its force ?

There is no doubt that, with our accustomed ideas of
the properties of matter, the latter is the view into which
we most readily fall. But on reflection it by no means
appears clear that it is the true one. Granting an
"inherent chemical affinity," leading, e.g.^ oxygen and
hydrogen to combine into water, there would be a
certain natural order in beginning with it. But this
conception is one which science now repudiates. The
tendency of oxygen to combine with hydrogen is not an
inherent property, it is determined by antecedents, and
depends on relations apart from those elements. Decom-
position, we know, will not take place except under
certain conditions. Now, when vitalisation of another
portion of matter ensues upon such decomposition, may
not the possibility of this vitalisation be precisely the
condition which allows or determines the decomposition ?
Let me take what I consider an analogous case. In a
heated body, let me suppose (I think it is in such sense
true as to serve the purpose of the illustration) there is
a tendency of the particles, which the heat has separated,
to approximate to one another, i.e., a tendency of the body
to contract (on cooling). But this contraction cannot
take place if the heat cannot be radiated. The condition
for the contraction is that there shall be some body to
which the expansion-producing (or the contraction-con-
trolling) principle (the heat) can be passed on — some cooler
body, in a word, within a certain distance. As the one
body expands the other contracts ; but which comes first.

Chemical Decomposition and Nutrition, 389

the contraction of the cooling body, or the radiation —
the transit — of the heat ? To me it seems that this
question goes deep into the most recondite questions of
molecular physics; but in the representation of vital
action as " produced by " decay, is it not quietly assumed
that the cooling, or contraction, stands as cause ?

I grant that when we take parallels of another sort, as,
e.g.j a clock moved by weights, the order seems simple
enough. The hands move, &c., hecause the weights fall,
and the weights fall because of their gravity, and so on.
But we must remember there is no gravity except as a
result of conditions. Will the weights fall if the hands
cannot move ? Or take the simpler case of the balance.
Suppose it in equilibrium ; two changes will equally set it
in motion, increase or diminution of weight in one scale.
The raised condition must be imparted — transferred —
or it cannot cease. It may be said, indeed, sever the
connection of the scales, and the one will fall and the
other will not rise ; but something else will rise, or
undergo some change equivalent to rising. The law is
not altered, but only its particular application. The fall
is seen, while the rising escapes our vision. We must
be on our guard here lest the particular character and
limitations of our experience deceive us, bringing, as it
does, before us so preponderating a number of instances
in which the downward process is the prominent one,
the upward secret or out of reach.

But that the order of our experience must not be relied
upon is evident from the fact that it differs in different
cases, and in each produces on our minds the same
impression, although mutually contradictory, of "natural
tendencies," and of the beginning being in reality where
it seems to be. So from the inorganic world we derive,
from preponderance of instances, the impression that the

390 On the Relation between

downward process comes first, and we suppose gravity,
chemical affinity, and so on accordingly. But from the
organic world we receive the impression of the correlative,
or upward, processes coming first ; the decay is hidden ;
there is the seemingly spontaneous vitalisation, warmth,
activity. Accordingly, we have invented life, or vital
force, as a primarily existing power. But in what
respects do these two classes of ideas differ? On what
firmer basis stands gravity than vitality — chemical
affinity than the " organising influence " ? In each case
we have simply put up as a first thing what comes first
to us, what our particillar relation to the series of pheno-
mena suggests as primary or as the starting-point.

Now, doubtless these two opposite conceptions have to
be brought into harmony, and here appears to me to be
one chief value of the recognition of the connection
between nutrition and decay; it brings into unity our
fundamental conceptions in respect to organic and inor-
ganic nature. But let us observe : this unity is obtained
through interpreting the organic by the inorganic.
Doubtless the phenomena may be marshalled intelligibly
(up to a certain point) in this order. If we assume the
unintelligible points in the inorganic world as granted,
we may bring the phenomena of life into unity with its
phenomena ; but then we must remember that we do
assume these unintelligible data. We are haunted still
by those dim ghosts of gravity and chemical affinity and
the like, and listen in vain for the cock-crowing that is
to banish them. I do not know, indeed, that the flash
that seemed to promise so fair an illumination does not
make the darkness around us more painfully visible.

But perhaps there is a different plan. We try inter-
preting the near, the better known, the living world, by
that far off, dimly apprehended one, which we call dead,

Chemical Decomposition and Nutrition. 391

and we find that to a certain point we can succeed.
But if we can succeed so, cannot we succeed also the
other way ? How if we could interpret — they being
proved the same — the dead by the living ? May not the
vital force, after all, give us a better key to chemical
affinity than chemical affinity gives to vital force, and
leave us finally not standing spell-bound before a ca^nt
mortuum of inconceivable attractions and repulsions, but
face to face in presence of a power plastic to the intel-
lect and cognate to the soul.

Let us for the present avoid, or at least defer, the
phenomena of gravity, not denying, in the meantime, that
they present special difficulties. But it seems to me that
from the point of view above suggested the phenomena of
the so-called chemical affinity appear in a fresh and less
hopeless light. Take, on the one hand, oxygen and hydro-
gen, and on the other, water. It is evidently an incom-
plete statement to say that the latter " consists of " the
former. An essential part of the phenomena is thus
ignored. For oxygen and hydrogen will combine and
form water only on the giving out of a large quantity of
heat, i.e., of force. The two gases are water plus force,
and water represents the gases minus force, for they can-
not be obtained from it except by the addition of the
same amount of force that they gave out in uniting.

Now, this relation which exists between oxygen and
hydrogen in the form of gas, and their equivalent of water,
evidently is traceable throughout the entire domain of
chemistry. In relation to chemical phenomena, all sub-
stances may be classified in one of two groups — as having
**fclbrce present with them, or as not having it. Not that
such classification perhaps ever ceases to be relative ; but
it is, for this reason, none the less real. For example,
oxygen and sodium contain force, which soda does not ;

392 On the Relation between

so, too, carbon and oxygen contain force, which carbonic
acid does not ; but soda and carbonic acid contain force
which carbonate of soda does not. But I take it that
neither this relativity nor any doubtful points of detail in
the least degree obscures the general distinction; which,
indeed, in a more limited scope, has been laid down by
Professor Graham as obtaiaing between the crystalline
and colloid groups, and which is obvious enough as
between hot bodies and cold ones, charged and uncharged
nonconductors of electricity, and so on. We take, then,
water on the one hand, and oxygen and hydrogen on the
other, to stand to us as representatives of the whole
domain of chemistry. Considered substantially, they are
one ; the water expresses the condition of the substance
witJwut (a certain kind and degree of) force ; the gases
present the same substance with that force. Now, what
is the simple statement of the phenomena given in the
formation of water ? This surely : imder certain con-
ditions (say an electric spark coming into relation with
the gases) the force is " transmitted," ceases to be in them,
and begins to be in something else, and coincidently the
substance is found in the condition which it has in tlie
absence of the force (water).

Here arises evidently the same question as that which
I raised before : which comes first in thought-order, the
transmission of the force, or the alteration of condition
of the substance ? Is not the balance of reason on the
side of the former ? To say of force that it is transmitted
or transmits itself, what is it but to say that it is force
— that motion is motion, and exists in its movement ?
It is the nature of motion to be transmitted to whatsoever
that is capable of moving comes into relation with it.
That force should be transmitted at whatsoever oppor-
tunity occurs, is but saying in other words that motion
takes the direction of least resistance.

Chemical Decomposition and Nutrition. 393

Our thoughts may be helped here by referring to
another form of chemical process — the galvanic current.
Chemical action, as we say, is set up on union of the
poles ; but what is the union of the poles but making a
passage for the " easier transmission of force ; " in a word,
presenting a direction of less resistance ? Then, when
the force which is in the zinc and sulphuric acid can be
transmitted, the substance presents itself in the condition
which it has in the absence of force (sulphate of zinc).
Now, are not the production of water on application of
an electric spark and the production of sulphate of zinc
on union of the poles of a battery analogous dynamic
processes ? Is not the presentation of a direction of less
resistance to the force the determining moment in each
instance, and is not this change in the relation of the
force the true dynamic process ?

If so, then what follows is, that we have no need to
assume any chemical affinities ; the apparent change of
substance is a passive phenomenon ; it expresses simply
the law that force cannot at once be and not be in the
same place.

I would add only, in respect to life, the question,
whether the " conditions of decay " — the heat, moisture,
air — be not rather, in truth, the conditions of the trans-
mission of force. Then, when the force is transmitted,
whether to the surrounding air, as heat, in which case no
life results, or to other particles, making them living, alike
decomposition ensues ; the recurrence of the state in which
the force thus transmitted is no longer present.

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14

A List of

HINTON Qsimes).— continued.

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HOCKLEY (W. B.).
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HOLMES (E. G. A.).
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HOOPER (Mary).
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HORNE (William), M.A.
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HULL (Edmund C. P.).
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INCHBOLD(J. W.).
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i6

A List of

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Alfred W. Bennett. A Hand-
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17

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VolumeXVII. of The International
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JONES (Lucy).
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KAUFMANN (Rev. M.), B.A.
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i8

A List of

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19

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ao

A List of

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