Science And Scientists In The Nineteenth Century

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SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS IN THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY

SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

IN THE

NINETEENTH CENTURY

BY THE REV.

ROBERT H. MURRAY, LITT.D.

AUTHOR OF "KRASMUS AMD LUTHER: THEIR ATTITUDE TO TOI.KRATIOK," ETC.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

SIR OLIVER LODGE, F.R.S., D.Sc.

LONDON

THE SHELDON PRESS

NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE. W.C.

NEW YORK AND TORONTO: THE MACMILLAN CO.
Priitttd in Grtat Britain

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

ERASMUS AND LUTHER :

Their Attitude to Toleration.

With two Portraits. Cloth
boards, 25s. net.

The Times says : "A work not only of
great erudition, but of profound insight
into the character of the men with whom
he deals."

The Times Literary Supplement s
" A fine piece of historical study.
In the skilful treatment of the complex
problems of character Dr. Murray shows
himself a careful psychologist."

The Tablet says : " A profound study of
the two central figures of the Renaissance
and Reformation period. . . . The book
affords us a wonderful glimpse of the
period, with its storm and welter of strong
passions, which make our modern times
seem so deplorably anaemic."

London: S.P.C.K.

First published 1925

TO THE

LADY ARDILAUN

FOR WHOSE STIMULATING FRIENDSHIP

I CAN NEVER FEEL SUFFICIENTLY

GRATEFUL

PREFACE

FIVE-AND-TWENTY centuries have passed since the greatest
of all Greek historians, Thucydides, wrote : " People do not
distinguish ; without a test they take things from one another :
even on things of their own day, not dulled by time, Hellenes
are apt to be all wrong. So little pains will most men take in
search for truth: so much more readily they turn to what
conies first/'* The Greek applied these mournful words to
history. It is the purpose of this book to apply them to
science. The scientist should be a man willing to listen
to every suggestion, to every hypothesis, but should also be
determined to be the slave of neither suggestion nor hypo-
thesis. With an open mind, uninfluenced by preconceived
ideas, he sets out on his quest for truth inspired by the desire
of ascertaining what Virgil deemed the fortunate lot of him
who found out the causes of events in the world of matter,
just as the historian seeks the causes of events in the world
of affairs. In " Gott und Welt " Goethe launched a
magnificent ideal :

Wide of world and broad in living,
Long years' single-hearted striving,
Ever seeking, fathoming ever,
Rounding oft, concluding never,
Oldest truth in fealty keeping,
Newest truth in gladness greeting,
Mind serene, and pure ambition:
Make good faring on life's mission. t

* iThucydides, i. 20 : ourwj draXatw^pos rots iro\\ois rj tfTrjffis TT}S
KCU ^TTI rd ^roi/ia /naXXoi' rpbrovTai.

+ Weite Welt und breites Leben,
Langer Jahre redlich Streben,
Stets geforscht und stets gegriindet,
Nie geschlossen, oft geriindet,
Aeltestes bewahrt mit Treue,
Freundlich aufgefasstes Neue,
Heitern Sinn, und reine Zwecke:
Nun! man kommt wohl eine Strecke.

vii

viii PREFACE

Such a scientist is one of the greatest benefactors of the
human race, and to him I pay my tribute of sincerest respect
for his patient observation and his persistent inquiry. If, in
addition to these gifts, he possesses insight and imagination
raised to the highest degree, we are fortunate to meet with
a Newton in the past or a Poincare in the present. The bio-
graphy of a Faraday or a Pasteur is enough to show what
years of labour a man will give when the love of knowledge
and the joy of discovery take possession of him. The life
devoted to the exploration of nature is one that commands
my admiration increasingly, and no one is more conscious
than myself of how many scientific men have aims and ideals
as noble as any which stimulate human endeavour.

Science, in the old sense, meant knowledge, and this know-
ledge might wear many forms as well as that of the
laboratory. Any investigator is such simply because he puts
truth high above everything. Some scientists they are not
the greatest seem to think that love of truth actuates a
man in their ranks more than anyone else. If one reads such
a tenth-rate book as J. W. Draper's History of the Conflict
between Religion and Science or even such a book as A. D.
White's History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in
Christendom, one is conscious that both authors assume un-
questioningly that the theologian is moved by prepossessions,
whereas the man of science is moved by nothing else than
the desire to ascertain the facts as they actually are. Would
that it were so with all men of science ! It might have oc-
curred to these authors that the history of science bears no
testimony to the accuracy of their assumption, and indeed
one main purpose in writing this book has been to prove that
there are just as many preconceived notions in science as
there are in theology. These pages have been written in the
hope that scientists will read them in order to detect the
presence of hypotheses that are inflicting grave injury on the
progress of their several departments. In a sense my book
forms an assault upon science, or, to put it more correctly,
upon the preconceptions that lie at its base far more than
most F.R.S.s are aware. Take the story told of Herbert
Spencer. He replied to an argument with the words, " That
can't be true, for otherwise my First Principles would have
to be re-written and the edition is stereotyped." Is it true

PREFACE ix

that much that passes under the name of science is also
stereotyped ?

In logic two blacks do not make a white, but in life
they sometimes do. Convince a man that he is acting upon
hypothesis, not upon ascertained truth, and he is your debtor.
I have enough faith in the candour of men of science to
think that if it is a big if it is possible to convince them
that there are every whit as many prepossessions in their
departments as there are in theology, we shall hear less of
the warfare between science and theology. For a similar
warfare is characteristic of EVERY form of human knowledge.
There are schools of science in, say, biology just as there are
such schools in mathematics; e.g. some mathematicians will
not allow the use of quaternions in any form, while to others
they are indispensable. Discoverers are not simply dis-
coverers: fundamentally they share the aesthetic tempera-
ment. The historian can only see truth, as it were, through
the hundred facets of a cut diamond; and he sits patiently,
mentally turning the diamond till he notes the gleam of which
he is in search. Nor is the attitude of the scientist a whit
different.

I have confined my attention to the nineteenth century, and
in the careers of the men investigated I stop my account of
them ten years after they effect their chief contribution to
their particular corner of the domain of knowledge.* Had I
gone to, say, the eighteenth century and studied Newton's
career, I could have made my account a thousandfold
stronger. In order to be quite fair, I determined to concen-
trate my attention on the nineteenth century.

Another matter calls for comment. There are many
biographies of scientists in English, but there are few in
German and fewer in French. For this reason I have been
compelled to pay more attention to England than to Germany
or France, simply because I have not the material for Euro-
pean scientists. In France there are, of course, the eloges of
the French Academies. In Germany there are memoirs of
Varnhagen von Ense and of Perthes; there are R. Haym's
great biographies of Hegel, Wilhelm von Humboldt, and
Herder; and there are Justi's Winckelmann and Dilthey's
Schleiermacher. None of these, however, are really scien-

* Cf . p. 307.

x PREFACE

tific in character. For that we have to fall back on the
incomparable Reden which E. Du Bois Reymond and K. E.
von Baer have bequeathed to us.

References to the utterances of the scientists under dis-
cussion are so desirable that in some cases I have employed
a good many quotations. The following publishers
generously allowed me to use extracts from books published
by them, and I desire to thank them most cordially: E.
Arnold & Co. (Lord Rayleigh, Life of Lord Rayleigh) ; the
Clarendon Press (Sir R. J. Godlee, Life of Lord Lister, and
L. Koenigsberger, Hermann von Helmholtz} ; Constable &
Co. (O. Metchnikoff, Life of Elie Metchnikoff, and R.
Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur) ; Longmans, Green & Co.
(J. Tyndall, Faraday as a Discoverer) ; Macmillan & Co.
(L. Huxley, Life and Letters of T. H. Huxley, T. H.
Huxley, Darwiniana, and S. P. Thompson, Life of Lord
Kelvin) ; John Murray (F. Darwin, Life and Letters of
Charles Darwin, Mrs. Horner, Life of Sir Charles Lyell,
and Sir Ronald Ross, Memoirs} ; the Council of the Royal
Society (Lord Rayleigh's Presidential Address in 1907) ;
and the S.P.C.K. (the Rev. R. H. Murray, Erasmus and
Luther: their Attitude to Toleration).

Nothing remains save to express my gratitude to those
who have helped me in what has necessarily been a long
task. I desire to give my sincere thanks to the following,
who have made valuable suggestions : The Earl of Balfour,
Sir W. F. Barrett, Mr. Havelock Ellis, Sir R. J. Godlee,
Lord Rayleigh, and Hon. Bertrand Russell. Alas ! Sir W. F.
Barrett and Sir R. J. Godlee, like some others, are beyond
the reach of my acknowledgment. The Rev. Dr. Tennant
most kindly went through the original book with me, and I
owe much to his advice. Six other Cambridge Fellows were
kind enough to give me the benefit of their accurate know-
ledge. The reader of my publishers and the Rev. W. K.
Lowther Clarke have bestowed the utmost pains upon my
manuscript. The Master of Christ's College, Cambridge (Sir
A. E. Shipley), and the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge
(Sir J. J. Thomson), read through my proofs and made

PREFACE xi

many helpful suggestions. I feel specially grateful to Sir
Joseph Larmor for his searching criticism of my proofs.
Sir Oliver Lodge aided me in numberless ways, and I thank
him most cordially for all his assistance and for the Intro-
duction he has been good enough to write for me. Last of
all, my wife has given me constant encouragement and con-
stant assistance. Indeed it is a genuine pleasure to me to
thank the many friends who have given me both counsel and
criticism.

ROBERT H. MURRAY.

BROUGHTON RECTORY,
HUNTINGDON.

CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTION BY SIR OLIVER LODGE, F.R.S., D.SC. . XV

CHAPTER I

JENNER AND VACCINATION I

CHAPTER II

SIMPSON AND CHLOROFORM 2O

CHAPTER III

LYELL AND UNIFORMITARIANISM ' . . . -39

CHAPTER IV

HELMHOLTZ, JOULE, AND THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY 66

CHAPTER V

THE PRECURSORS OF DARWIN . . . . 104

CHAPTER VI

DARWIN AND EVOLUTION 154

CHAPTER VII

PASTEUR AND MICROBES 213

xiii

xiv CONTENTS

PAOK

CHAPTER VIII

USTER AND ANTISEPTICS 255

CHAPTER IX

FORGOTTEN SCIENTISTS 305

CHAPTER X

LIMITATIONS OF SCIENTISTS 361

BIBLIOGRAPHY 409

INDEX ........ 427

INTRODUCTION

IT is not often that men of science are looked at with the
eye of an historian, and their merits and demerits parcelled
out with an impartial hand. I am not sure that the operation
is altogether pleasant. We like to be thought devotees of
truth uninfluenced by prejudice, as open-minded and serene
students of nature, free from presuppositions and welcoming
every fact that comes within our ken. Yet, in the past,
history has testified against us, and posterity has found it
needful to mingle some condemnation with its praise. It is
unlikely that the present generation is immune. Obituary
notices and biographies naturally and properly aim at em-
phasising positive merits and are niggard of blame ; but our
letters and contemporary utterances, some of which we
should like to forget, stand ready to condemn us in the eyes
of a future generation. For each generation, though doubt-
less it has difficulties of its own, has been enlightened by the
placid progress of knowledge, so that the strivings and
jealousies and bigotries of the past seem perverse and
difficult of comprehension.

We may find it difficult to realise that quite similar
prejudices and bigotries are not extinct to-day. We are not
historians, and sometimes we seem incapable of learning
from the past. When the errors of our predecessors are
forced upon our notice we may lament them or be amused at
them or may seek to excuse them, but that the same lamenta-
tions and excuses may some day have to be made for us we
can hardly think possible. Yet though our predecessors were
doubtless as single-eyed for truth as we are, they stood
forth as champions of scientific orthodoxy, they condemned
heresies unheard even when supported by asserted facts, and
they resisted novelties because they seemed incredible. Their
patiently acquired knowledge had grown so great that if

XV

xvi INTRODUCTION

confronted with phenomena which were unpalatable or in-
admissible, they felt certain that they could not be facts and
might be safely rejected without examination.

In the past we see the supporters of new doctrines, the
detectors of unwelcome facts, coming forward apologetically,
humbly presenting their credentials, and we see them im-
mediately snuffed out or else browbeaten and ridiculed by
the High Priests of Science. Surely that sort of thing cannot
happen to-day !

The suggestion that there may be a branch of inquiry
which even now has to run the gauntlet of fierce denial and
unbending hostility, and yet may be accepted by posterity
as a matter of course, is humiliating. Truth may be trusted
to prevail in the long run, but meanwhile the run is long,
and many shrewd blows may be received by the unfortunate
custodian of new truth. In theology the persecution of the
heretic has always been bitter, though a later age may
canonise the martyr. The world is full of prejudices and
presuppositions, and the birth of truth is seldom accomplished
without the pains of parturition.

Surely the world of science is free from prejudice and is
ever ready to welcome truth ! So we try to think. But is it
so ? Does history bear this out ? Are we in better case than
our colleagues in any other department of human activity?
The Author of this book, surveying the unparalleled develop-
ment of scientific knowledge in the nineteenth century as
a theme for historical inquiry, implicitly answers this
question, and answers it in the negative. Keenly admiring
the work of the pioneer, the Author finds that he had to
encounter in every case a lamentable hostility, a serious
opposition; and then he sadly recognises that when this same
pioneer has at length been received and honoured and
exalted, in too many cases the quondam sufferer metes out
the same treatment to the pioneer of the next generation.

Thus it can be claimed that science has no more open-
mindedness than any other profession. It can also be urged
that scientific method has no monopoly of the avenues of
trulh. A vivifying hypothesis may dawn on the mind
intuitively, aesthetically, and in other ways ; and verification
may be forthcoming from common experience.

A claim like these must be confronted with the history of

INTRODUCTION xvii

scientific discovery and with the records of all experience.
Few there are who can take a wide enough survey of human
knowledge even to enter on the discussion ; but that is what
the Author has attempted. The range of study exhibited
in this book is remarkable. The Author must have been
largely dependent on biographies and obituary notices, sup-
plementing his own scientific knowledge. To extract from
these rather sugary sources their essential essence can have
been no easy task. An immense range of subjects is com-
petently and ably dealt with, and the work of continental as
well as of English-speaking discoverers is passed under
review. The chapter on Helmholtz, too little known in this
country, is specially useful, though even so the Author has
hardly succeeded in the almost impossible task of conveying
to the general reader an adequate conception of the exceeding
brilliance and wide scope of the 1847 thesis of Helmholtz on
the Conservation of Energy; still less is it possible to deal
with that epoch-making paper on Vortex theory, which
may be said to have initiated modern hydrodynamics.
Mathematics, Biology, Geology, and Medicine are all
included in the survey, and the chapter on forgotten scientists
resuscitates the memory of many workers whose meritorious
contributions were either rejected or but slightly appreciated
by their contemporaries.

On the whole it may be said, without any exaggeration,
that the Author has succeeded in producing an eminently
readable book, full of personal reminiscences and biographical
details about the great men of science of the nineteenth
century, with their mixed strength and weakness; a book
also which is a serviceable storehouse of reference for the
coming generation of students in all branches of science, to
whom those stirring times and the personalities who enriched
and vivified them are fast becoming little better than a
tradition. Judiciously selected extracts and anecdotes make
it often amusing as well as interesting, and it may be safely
commended to a wide circle of readers.

OLIVER LODGE.

CHAPTER I

JENNER AND VACCINATION

EDWARD JENNER (1749 1823) was born at Berkeley,
Gloucestershire, of which place his father was vicar. His
mother's name was Head, and her father had also been vicar
of Berkeley. The celibacy of the clergy of the Church of
Rome stands in need of defence. The marriage of the clergy
of the Church of England stands in need of none, for the
volumes of the Dictionary of National Biography attest how
many men in the front rank have come from her rectories.
On his father's death when he was five, the education of
Edward Jenner fell into the hands of his eldest brother,
Stephen. When eight years old he was sent to school at
Wotton-under-Edge under a clergyman named Clissold.
Next he was placed under the tuition of the Rev. Dr. Wash-
bourn at Cirencester. There he acquired a respectable know-
ledge of the classics, and he also acquired what was no less
important some of those friends who bulked largely in his
life. The boy quite commonly is not the father of the man.
He was, however, in Jenner's case. Cirencester is a neigh-
bourhood abounding in fossils, and the lad of nine collected
them, as he also collected the nests of the dormouse.

Jenner 's profession was to be medicine, and accordingly
he was apprenticed to Daniel Ludlow of Sodbury, a surgeon
of note. At the end of his apprenticeship he was fortunate
enough in 1770 to become a resident pupil of John Hunter,
who was to become the head of the surgical profession. As
an investigator, as a stimulator of thought, and as an original
thinker Hunter left an exceedingly deep impression on his
contemporaries. With a profound ignorance of books he
possessed an intimacy with facts. Hobbes was of the
opinion that if he had read as much as other people, he would

2 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

know as little as they, and this was an opinion that Hunter
cordially shared. His pupils included John Abernethy,
Anthony Carlisle, Thomas Chevalier, Henry Cline, Astley
Cooper, Everard Home, and James Macartney. Distin-
guished as these men became, Jenner easily held his own with
them, and Hunter regarded him as a favourite pupil. When
the two met, the master was in his forty-second year and the
student in his twenty-first. The first time a young man
comes into contact with a genius of a commanding order
marks a distinct epoch in his mind. So it proved to young
Jenner, who met daily a penetrating thinker devoted to the
mastery of facts. For Hunter loved science with all the
passion of a devotee. He ardently pursued truth at all
costs, and succeeded in communicating this ardour to his
pupil. The two years Jenner spent under Hunter's roof left
an imperishable impression on him. Both men were direct
and straightforward in conduct, and both possessed an
unquenchable desire for knowledge. The relation of master
to pupil was replaced by that of friend to friend, and the
correspondence between them ranged over the wide circle of
Hunter's researches, lasting till within a short period of
Hunter's death in 1793. Jenner attached a great value to these
letters, carefully preserving them in a cover inscribed in his
own handwriting, " Letters from Mr. Hunter to E. Jenner."

Already the brain of Jenner was actively at work, and even
so early as 1770 he mentioned to his teacher facts bearing on
cow-pox. Hunter possessed the quality, rare in a professor,
of never damping the ardour of an investigator by suggest-
ing doubts or difficulties. His practice was to extend
encouragement, to urge that the matter in hand ought to be
brought to the test of experiment, and to advise absolute
accuracy and faithfulness in the procedure adopted. In
cases of this kind he would say, " Don't think, but try ; be
patient, be accurate." Hunter infected Jenner with this
Newtonian dislike of hypotheses. William Clift describes
Hunter as " standing for hours, motionless as a statue,
except that, with a pair of forceps in each hand, he was
picking asunder the connecting fibres of some structure he
was studying," and Jenner too proved capable of absorption
for hours in thought.

In 1771, when Jenner was living with Hunter, Captain

JENNER AND VACCINATION 3

Cook returned from his first voyage of discovery. Valuable
specimens of natural history had been collected by Sir
Joseph Banks, and Hunter recommended his favourite
pupil for their arrangement and preparation. Jenner
evinced so much dexterity and knowledge in this task
that he was offered the appointment of naturalist in the
next expedition, which sailed in 1772. Such a tempta-
tion enticed Darwin away, but it failed to entice Jenner,
whose heart was set on returning to his old home in the
country when he had finished his studies at St. George's
Hospital. At first sight it may seem as if the decision of a
young surgeon to bury himself in a country village was
unwise. In the light of his after-life the wisdom of his
choice fully justified itself, for the existence of such an
affection as cow-pox was known only in a few districts.
Hunter required the metropolis for his ever-growing
inquiries; his pupil, on the other hand, required a village for
the range to which he restricted himself. The genius of men
like Hunter and Jenner encourages investigation: the man
of lesser type asks Lord Melbourne's famous question, Why
can't you let things be ? This is precisely what the man with
an inquiring turn of mind cannot possibly do. Problems
fascinated Jenner, though he quickly found that they in no-
wise fascinated his professional brethren. Repeatedly he
tried to arouse their attention to them, and just as repeatedly
he failed. He became a member of a society he called the
Medico-Convivial, which met at the Fleece Inn, Rodborough,
and of the Convivio-Medical, which met at Alveston, a vil-
lage about ten miles from Bristol. Dr. Baron, the biographer
of Jenner, was a medical man, and he testifies : " Dr. Jenner
has frequently told me that at the meetings of this society
(i.e. the Convivio-Medical) he was accustomed to bring for-
ward the reported prophylactic virtues of cow-pox, and earn-
estly to recommend his medical friends to prosecute the
inquiry. All his efforts were, however, ineffectual; his
brethren were acquainted with the rumour, but they looked
upon it as one of those vague notions from which no accurate
or valuable information could be gathered, especially as most
of them had met with cases in which those who were sup-
posed to have had cow-pox had subsequently been affected
with small-pox. These discouragements . . . did not suppress

4 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

the ardour of Jenner's mind. He often recurred to the
subject in these meetings; at length it became so distasteful
to his companions, that I have many times heard him declare
that they threatened to expel him if he continued to harass
them with so unprofitable a subject." * Dr. Fewster of
Thornbury was a member of the Convivio-Medical, and he
persistently undervalued the efforts of Jenner even two years
after Jenner was able to show, in 1796, that cow-pox is pro-
tective against small-pox. In a letter to Mr. Rolph, sur-
geon, of Peckham, dated October n, 1798, Fewster still
writes : " I think it (i.e. the cow-pox in the natural way) is a
much more severe disease in general than the inoculated
small-pox. I do not see any great advantage from inocu-
lation from the cow-pox : inoculation for the small-pox seems
to be well understood, so that there is very little need of a
substitute. It is curious, however, and may lead to
improvements/' f

The maxim, " Youth will be served," is the maxim of the
prize-ring, and yet sometimes it applies to science. Bacon
surveyed his " Temporis Partus Maximus " and Newton
unfolded his doctrine of light and colours before either of
them had reached his twentieth birthday, and Jenner at the
same age contemplated the removal of one of the direst
scourges that afflicted the human race. He might have met
with hope : he met with despair. He might have met with
encouragement: he met with discouragement. Dr. Baron
sums up the state of feeling of those medical men who had
heard of the reported virtues of cow-pox : " We have all
heard (they would observe) of what you mention, and we
have even seen examples which certainly do give some sort of
countenance to the notion to which you allude ; but we have
also known cases of a perfectly different nature, many who
were reported to have had the cow-pox, having subsequently
caught the small-pox. The supposed prophylactic powers
probably, therefore, depend upon some peculiarity in the con-
stitution of the individual who has escaped the small-pox;
and not on any efficacy of that disorder which they may have
received from the cow. In short, the evidence is altogether
so inconclusive and unsatisfactory that we pufc no value on it,

* J. Baron, Life of Jenner, I, p. 48.
f Ibid., p. 48.

JENNER AND VACCINATION 5

and cannot think that it will lead to anything but uncertainty
and disappointment/'* When Mohammed attained fame,
he married many wives. One of them was young and beau-
tiful, and she slighted Khadijah, the first and now elderly
wife of the prophet, saying to him, " Am I not dearer to you
than Khadijah?" " No, by God, you are not. For
Khadijah believed in me when none else did." Not one of
his brethren played this part to Jenner, and it is not easy
to think of all that mankind might have lost had it not been
for the indefatigable pursuit of truth that characterised him.
That John Hunter continued to afford stimulus to his old
pupil is apparent from Drewry Ottley's Life of John Hunter
and John Baron's Life of Edward Jenner. The letters pass-
ing between the master and the student render it obvious
that each entertained a lively respect for the other. Critics
like Dr. E. M. Crookshank and Dr. Creighton minimise the
abilities or at least the originality of Jenner. It is not usual,
however, for a genius like Hunter to write so often to an
ordinary member of the medical profession. Some men in
the front rank owe part of their position to a combination,
at the same time, in their careers, of the advantages of youth
and age. Some of them have old heads on young shoulders,
and others have young heads on old shoulders. Either
peculiarity confers a marked advantage on its owner. Jen-
ner had an old head on his young shoulders. " I don't know
any one," Hunter tells him in 1776, " I would as soon write
to as you. I don't know anybody I am so much obliged to."
On January 18, 1776, he writes: " I have but one order to
send you, which is, to send everything you can get, either
animal, vegetable, or mineral." The next letter speaks for
itself, for on December 17, 1777, Hunter says : " I am always
plaguing you with letters, but you are the only man I can
apply to." The correspondence of the two men bears trace
after trace of the stimulus given by Hunter to Jenner. He
stirs up the country doctor to make observations on the
temperature of animals and the problems suggested by eels.
At Hunter's instigation Jenner investigated the migration
of birds, with the result that he disproved the view that
ascribes their disappearance to a state of hibernation ; and he
notably anticipated Darwin in exposing the action of earth-
* Baron, Life of Jenner, I, p. 125.

6 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

worms in rendering the earth readily fertile. Analogy was
his favourite guide, and it misled him into opposition to the
theory of population promulgated by the Rev. Thomas
Malthus. The young physician generally carried a large
pocket-book with him; and recorded his thoughts as they
occurred. These thoughts naturally are now and then with-
out any connection save that in the mind of the recorder.
There is reason to believe that, where he could test his ideas
by experiment, he was ready to do so. Once he was dining
with a large number at Bath and the conversation turned on
the question whether the temperature was highest in the
centre of the flame of a candle or at some small distance
from its apex. Various opinions were hazarded. Jenner
at once settled the matter. He placed the candle before him,
and, inserting his finger into the middle of the flame, he
retained it there for a short time. He then placed it a little
above the flame, but was compelled immediately to withdraw
it. " There, gentlemen," he observed, " the question is
settled."

Before the Medico-Convivial Jenner read papers on
angina pectoris, ophthalmia, and valvular disease of the heart.
Letters from Hunter continued to arrive, asking him to for-
ward salmon-spawn, porpoises, cuckoos, and fossils. The
young man's mind turned to science. He was disappointed
in love, and wrote to tell Hunter of his disappointment. Just
as Richard Cobden urged John Bright when he lost his wife
to throw himself into the abolition of the corn-laws, similarly
Hunter wrote on September 25, 1778: "Let her go, never
mind her. I shall employ you with hedgehogs/' The pay-
ties given by his wife Anne may have induced the great ana-
tomist to take this view of matrimony. It was not till March
6, 1788, that his friend married Catharine Kingscote, and
during the intervening ten years Hunter's questions combined
with his own provided him with sufficient mental occupation.
For several years to come Hunter sent him questions on the
problem of the winter-sleep of the hedgehog, the autumnal
storing of fat, the consumption of it during the winter, and
the like. In 1787 Jenner wrote a paper on the "Natural
History of the Cuckoo," publishing it in the following year
in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.
It sets forth the habits of the cuckoo at some length, observ-

JENNER AND VACCINATION 7

ing the contents of the stomach in the young bird, the small
size of the egg, the number of eggs in the oviduct of the
cuckoo, the fierce behaviour of the young cuckoo when
inspected in its nest, and the hedge-sparrow's, or other foster-
parent's, habit of ejecting its own eggs from the nest after
the cuckoo has deposited hers. Waterton, in his " Essay
on the Jay," has demonstrated that this last statement is
absurd. It seems that Jenner asked his nephew to conduct
some of the observations, and he, after the manner of boys,
was too indolent to furnish a correct report. In 1788, in
spite of this mistake, Jenner was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Society, before he was forty years of age.

As practice comes before theory, it is not surprising to
learn that it is to a Greek slave we owe the art of inoculation,
to an African the value of quassia, to the Jesuits the Peru-
vian bark, to the barbers the bold use of mercury, and to the
remark of a dairy-maid one of the causes that turned the
attention of Jenner to the cure of small-pox. So far back
as the days when he was pursuing his professional education
with Daniel Ludlow of Sodbury, a country girl came to
consult him. On mentioning small-pox to her, she imme-
diately observed : " I cannot take that disease, for I have
had cow-pox." This subject was in his thought, and of
course this incident fastened it on his memory. After his
recovery from typhus fever in 1794 he continued his investi-
gations into the protective power of cow-pox against small-
pox. The dairy-maid had discovered this empirically.
What were the causes underlying this empiricism? Jen-
ner's country life led him to observe his horses with care,
and he came to the conclusion that grease, a disease of the
feet in horses, and cow-pox were the same disease. This con-
clusion was erroneous. Still, the more he worked the more
he felt certain that cow-pox acted as a preventive of small-
pox.

How large a toll was taken by small-pox is clear from a
few facts. Dr. Jurin examined the London bills of mortality
for a period of forty-two years, and he calculated that one in
fourteen, of all that were born, died of small-pox. Of
persons of all ages taken ill of this disease, in the natural way,
he showed that one in five or six died. Dr. Heberden
reckoned that during the last thirty years of the eighteenth

8 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

century the proportion of deaths due to it was 95 in 1,000.
In 1777 and 1781 the deaths were 2,567 and 3,500 respec-
tively. As the population of England was then under ten
millions, it is easy to note how widespread was this disease.
In Europe it was every whit as prevalent. The deaths in
Sweden are given in the following table :

The Year The Number

1779 15.000

1784 I2,OOO

1800 I2,OOO

1 80 1 6,000

1822 ii

1823 37

There was evidently urgent need for a skilled physician to
stand between the living and the dead. Jenner made notes
of a few cases of immunity from small-pox after cow-pox
which he had encountered. In 1778 he inoculated with
small-pox a Mrs. H., but the result was a failure. This he
thought due to her having had cow-pox when very young.
In 1782 Simon Nichols had cow-pox, and " some years
afterwards " inoculation failed. In 1795 Jenner failed to
inoculate Joseph Merret, who had had cow-pox in 1770. He
did not shrink from trying experiments on his own family.
In November 1789 he had inoculated his eldest son Edward,
who was then about one year and a half old, and in March
1792 he inoculated him again.

One day Jenner was riding with Edward Gardner on the
road between Gloucester and Bristol, near Newport, when
the conversation of the two friends turned as it had so often
done before on the natural history of cow-pox. The mor-
tality returns were much in their mind, and as Jenner per-
ceived the possibility of reducing them, he remarked : " Gard-
ner, I have entrusted a most important matter to you, which
I firmly believe will prove of essential benefit to the human
race. I know you, and should not wish what I have stated
to be brought into conversation; for should anything
untoward turn up in my experiments I should be made, par-
ticularly by my medical brethren, the subject of ridicule
for I am the mark they all shoot at."

JENNER AND VACCINATION 9

In May 1796, cow-pox occurred in a farm near Berkeley,
and a dairy-maid, Sarah Nelmes, caught the disease. On
May 14 matter was taken from a sore on her hand and
inserted by means of two superficial incisions in the arm of
James Phipps, a healthy boy about eight years old. This
inoculation succeeded. The result was described as much
the same as after inoculation with variolous matter, except
that the usual efflorescence had more of " an erysipelatous
look." The whole died away, leaving " scabs and subsequent
eschars." May 14, 1796, used to be an annual festival in
Berlin to commemorate the day on which Jenner performed
this experiment. The day when Harvey discovered the circu-
lation of the blood, the day when Newton discovered the law
of gravitation, the day when Columbus discovered the New
World these are all memorable days. When John Keats
first looked into Chapman's Homer he felt impelled to
pen these words :

Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne^
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

The arm of James Phipps brought to Jenner the same deep-
seated satisfaction that the sight of the Pacific brought to
Cortez. S. T. Coleridge once planned a poem on Jenner's
discovery, but, like so many of his plans, it came to nothing.
Of course Jenner could not rest satisfied with the case of
Phipps, for, decisive as it was, it was only a single instance.
He waited a year in order to add the cases of William
Rodway, and of Sarah and Elizabeth Wynne. In 1796 or
1797 he sent his paper to a correspondent who was in the
confidence of Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal
Society. Jenner's paper on the habits of the cuckoo had
already been published in the Transactions of this Society,

io SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

and he entertained no doubt that a paper on so epoch-making
a matter as inoculation by cow-pox would meet with a similar
welcome. Informally his paper was circulated, and Sir
Joseph Banks showed it to Lord Somerville, President of
the Board of Agriculture. Sir Everard Home also looked
through it. The perusal of the cases and experiments pro-
duced no conviction on the Council of the Royal Society.
On the contrary Jenner received a friendly hint that, as he
had gained some reputation by what we now know to be his
incorrect paper on the cuckoo, it was inadvisable to present
what we now know to be his correct paper, which would
injure his established credit. In 1809 Jenner wrote: " I ex-
plained in conversation, as I said before, all that passed
respecting my first paper on the cow-pox intended for the
Royal Society. It was not with Sir Joseph, but with Home ;
he took the paper. It was shewn to the Council, and
returned to me. This, I think, was in the year 1797, after
the vaccination of one patient only; but even this was strong
evidence, as it followed that of the numbers I had put to the
test of the small-pox after casual vaccination. 55 *

Jenner performed a few additional experiments, and in
June 1797 he wrote: " I have shown a copy of my intended
paper on the Cow Pox to our friend, Worthington, who has
been pleased to express his approbation of it, and to recom-
mend my publishing it as a pamphlet, instead of sending it
to the Royal Society/' Edward Gardner and Henry Hicks
were often consulted about it, and the circle of the discoverer
read it repeatedly. Woodville criticised the " grease " origin
of small-pox. In spite of this criticism, Jenner persisted in
adhering to his belief. In London in 1798 he enjoyed the
opportunity of meeting his professional brethren, and he
brought before them the subject that occupied his thoughts.
To his infinite regret the whole time he was in the metropolis
he was unable to procure a single person on whom he could
exhibit the results of inoculation. Some of the virus he
carried home with him, presenting it to Henry Cline, who
successfully inoculated it into the hip of a patient by two
punctures.

In June 1798 appeared a slim quarto of seventy-five pages,
dedicated to Dr. C. H. Parry of Bath. Its title was " An

. ' * J. Baron, Life of Jenner, II, p. 364.

JENNER AND VACCINATION n

Inquiry into the Cause and Effects of the Variola Vaccine? , a
Disease discovered in some parts of the Western Counties of
England, particularly of Gloucestershire, and known by the
name of the Cow-Pox."* This booklet contained a fuller
account of his observations and conclusions. There are
some coloured plates, and one gives the hand of Sarah Nelmes
showing the vaccine pustules upon it. Twenty-three cases
are described, and the author sums up that " the cow-pox
protects the human constitution from the infection of small-
pox." That this summing up is sound the experience of a
century lends ready testimony. An Alfred Russel Wallace
may mock at it, but the majority of civilised mankind is con-
tent to adopt it, knowing full well that life proves its value.
Woodville had pointed out the objections to the " grease "
theory. Jenner weighed them, but remained unconvinced.
Accordingly as there are truth and untruth in his cuckoo
paper, so there are truth and untruth in his magnum opus.

An Inquiry into the Cause and Effects of the Variola
Vaccine? met with a mixed reception. One lady, of no
mean influence among its author's own townsfolk, met him
soon after it appeared. She accosted him in true Gloucester-
shire dialect. " So, your book is out at last. Well, I can
tell you that there be'ant a copy sold in our town; nor
shan't neither, if I can help it." On another occasion as she
heard of some rumours of failures in vaccination she came
up to the doctor with keen eagerness, and said, " Shan't us
have a general inoculation now ? " That he possessed that
saving quality, a perfect good-humour, is evident from the
glee with which he used to relate these two anecdotes.

That there were failures arose from the fact that vaccina-
tors were sometimes careless and that occasionally small-pox
pustules were ignorantly used. A medical man called at the
Small-pox Hospital in London in order to obtain from Mr.
Wachsel, the apothecary, leave to charge some threads with
vaccine virus, as he wished to distribute them to his medical
correspondents. Mr. Wachsel chanced to be called out of his
room. During his absence the doctor selected a patient, and
was busily engaged in charging the threads. Mr. Wachsel
observed on his return that he had fixed on a patient who had

* A facsimile edition was published in 1924 in London and Milan by
H. K. Lewis and A. Lier respectively.

12 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

a general sprinkling of small-pox pustules, and inquired
whether he intended to furnish his friends with the virus of
small-pox as well as of cow-pox. He replied, " With the
virus of cow-pox only." " Then, sir/' said Mr. Wachsel,
" you know not what you are doing. You are taking the
virus of small-pox." The threads thus charged, had it not
been for Mr. Wachsel's vigilance, would have been distri-
buted as vaccine virus !

On March 23, 1799, Jenner saw Dr. Woodville in London,
who informed him that in one of his cases the cow-pox had
been communicated by effluvia, and the patient had it in the
confluent way. In the same month, Woodville published
his reports, in which he concluded that cow-pox manifested
itself sometimes in an eruptive disease of great severity, for
three or four cases out of five hundred had been in consider-
able danger, and one patient had died. Was there variolous
matter which had crept into the constitution of the vaccine?
This was the natural question that came into the mind of
the discoverer. Bent on answering this question, he pro-
cured some lymph from the London dairies, and sent it to
Mr. Marshall by his friend Mr. Tanner, who used it on 127
cases without any eruptions resulting. Jenner therefore con-
cluded that in Woodville's cases the eruptions were due to
variolation, and in this conclusion Drs. Woodville and Pear-
son afterwards concurred. If blunders were committed in
the country of the discoverer, it was certain that they would
be committed elsewhere. Accordingly when we examine the
report that in Austrian Poland the vaccine inoculation was
in a backward state, we find that the village matrons and
barbers employed a very malignant kind of false cow-
pox.

The opposition Jenner experienced is nothing new in the
history of science. When Harvey announced his discovery
of the circulation of the blood, he met with vigorous denun-
ciation on the part of his professional brethren and loss of
practice on the part of the public. When Jenner lived down
opposition, he had to face men like Pearson in England and
Rabaut in France, who claimed to have anticipated him. Dr.
Baron philosophises on the hard fate of the distinguished
inventor. " A fact which has been lying common and at
waste, floating on the very surface of daily experience, is

JENNER AND VACCINATION 13

seized upon by some penetrating and inquisitive mind. Its
relations to the different branches of human knowledge are
examined and defined : it throws a light all around, and is a
lamp to the feet of the inquirer, while he surveys other
regions. Having thus explored a terra incognita, up starts
one, and says, Sir, you have not the whole merit of this
discovery ; I knew that such a land, as you have visited and
explored, existed, for I saw it, but did not approach it.
Another says, I was actually cast away upon the coast; I
noticed some things which you have described. I did not
examine them minutely, but I remember, from your descrip-
tion that such things did exist, and I therefore am entitled to
the merit and reward which you claim.

" A process similar to this marked the discussion regarding
the origin of vaccination. The subject had been forced
upon the attention of many individuals; but as far as they
were concerned all the information relating to it might have
remained in its original and unsatisfactory state. All the
pretensions, therefore, of the men that became wise by the
labours of Jenner, who achieved what they were unable to
accomplish, instead of detracting from his fame ought to
raise it still higher/'* So thirty-three eminent physicians and
forty surgeons of the metropolis felt, for they signed in 1799
a testimony to the value of vaccination. Dr. Erasmus Dar-
win, the famous author of Zoonomia, wrote to Jenner on
February 24, 1802: " In a little time it may occur that the
christening and vaccination of children may always be per-
formed on the same day/'

The day when vaccination would be warmly and uni-
versally welcomed was not yet to dawn. In a speech when
proposing a vote of thanks to Pasteur at the International
Congress, held in London in 1881, Sir James Paget, the emi-
nent surgeon, said, in his silvery tones : " Jenner had to fight
for the benefit of men's lives against a vehement opposition;
to that for the benefit of cattle, which are human property,
there is no such opposition. It is truly a fact that we may
well remember; though it is a novelty to many in our pro-
fession, who have frequent opportunities for seeing how
much more valuable a man feels his own property to be than
his neighbour's health. . . . Property and healthy life may
* J. Baron, Life of Jenner, I, pp. 563-4.

14 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

soon be regarded as more nearly equivalent than they have
been hitherto." This view did not hold good in 1881, and it
certainly held less good in 1799.

The contest Jenner was forced to wage was mainly with
men of his own profession. The most formidable of his
antagonists was Dr. Ingenhousz of Vienna, who left honour-
able mention of his labours in vegetable physiology and elec-
tricity. In the autumn of 1798, being then in his seventieth
year, he came to pay a visit to Lord Lansdowne at Bowood.
When An Inquiry into the Cause and Effects of the Variola
Vaccine was published, he read it, dissenting from its
conclusions. Taking advantage of his residence in Wilt-
shire, he investigated the " extraordinary doctrine " of pro-
tection by cow-pox. Jenner confided in his friend Edward
Gardner : " My friends must not desert me now. Brickbats
and hostile weapons of every sort are flying thick around me ;
but with a very little aid, a few friendly opiates seasonably
administered, they will do me no injury.

" Ingenhousz has declined my offer of receiving my letter
in print so that must be modelled anew. We must set off
by impressing the idea that there will be no end to cavil
and controversy until it be defined with precision what is,
and what is not cow-pox. " Ingenhousz found out from
Mr. Alsop of Calne, Dr. Pulteney of Blandford, and Major-
General Hastings that persons had contracted small-pox
after cow-pox.

It was plain that there was need of further inquiry. Jen-
ner replied frankly to Ingenhousz that his own observations
had been few, and no doubt they needed the confirmation of
other observers. As the opposition increased he published on
April 5, 1799, his Further Observations on the Variola
Vaccina or Cow-pox, in which he endeavours to meet the
points raised against his ideas. He continued to work at his
subject at Berkeley and at Cheltenham, and in 1800 he pub-
lished A Continuation of Facts and Observations relative
to the Cow-pock. He added two continuations of the same
subject. The first was entitled On the Origin of Vaccine
Inoculation (1801), and the second was On the Varieties
of the Vaccine Pustule occasioned by an Herpetic State of the
Skin.

Dr. Pearson informed Jenner that " you cannot imagine

JENNER AND VACCINATION 15

how fastidious the people are with regard to this business of
the cow-pox. One says it is very filthy and nasty to derive
it from the sore heel of horses! Another, O my God, we
shall introduce the diseases of animals among us, and we
have too many already of our own/' -It is easy to understand
the impatience Jenner felt when he wrote on March 7, 1799,
to Gardner : " I am beset on all sides with snarling fellows,
and so ignorant withal that they know no more of the disease
they write about than the animals which generate it. The
last philippic that has appeared comes from Bristol, and is
communicated by Dr. Sims of London. Sims gives com-
ments on it in harsh and unjustifiable language. It is
impossible for me, single-handed, to combat all my adver-

saries."

Dr. Benjamin Moseley, physician to Chelsea Hospital,
thought fit in a treatise on sugar to turn aside to attack the
artificial introduction of cow-pox. In Jamaica he had ren-
dered valuable service in military operations by his skill as
principal medical officer. He had published a standard
work on tropical diseases and the climate of the West Indies
that had reached three editions, and his versatility is clear
from the fact that his treatise on coffee had reached five
editions. On his return to London he gradually acquired a
large practice among the upper classes in St. James's. On
the appearance of An Inquiry, he spoke of it as a portent
in the heavens, whose significance is not altogether clear.
" Some pretend that a restive, greasy-heeled horse will kick
down all the old gally-pots of Galen. ... To preserve, as
far as in me lies, the genesis of this desirable, this excelling
distemper to posterity, I mention that it is said to originate in
what is called the greasy-heel distemper in horses. . . . The
virtues of this charming distemper are said to be an amulet

against the small-pox In this cow-mania it is not enough

for reason to concede that the cow-pox may lessen, for a
time, the disposition in the habit to receive the infection of
the small-pox ; all cutaneous determinations, catarrhal fevers,
and every disease of the lymphatics do the same. . . . The
small-pox and the cow-pox are not analogous, but radically
dissimilar. . . . Can any person say what may be the conse-
quences of introducing the lues bovilla, a bestial humour,
into the human frame after a long lapse of years ? . . . The

16 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

doctrine of engrafting distempers is not yet comprehended
by the wisest men; and I wish to arrest the hurry of public
credulity until the subject had undergone a deep, calm, dis-
passionate scrutiny; and to guard parents against suffering
their children becoming victims to experiment."

The efforts of Dr. Moseley to deepen prejudice were
seconded by Dr. William Rowley and Dr. Squirrell. They
actually published prints representing the human visage in
the act of transformation, and assuming that of a cow.
There was a " Master Jowles, the cow-poxed, ox-cheeked
young gentleman/' and " Miss Mary Ann Lewis, the cow-
poxed, the cow-managed young lady/' exhibited in clever
caricature by Dr. Rowley. Nor did he deem it unworthy to
collect absurdities like this and to term his work " a solemn
appeal, not to the passions of mankind, but to the reason and
judgment of all who were capable of deep reflection." There
was wisdom in his method, for the cartoon and the carica-
ture are the most effective of weapons. The late G. W.
Curtis used in Harper's Weekly to attack Tammany Hall
as it was run by William Marcy Tweed. Tweed felt the
sharpness of the weapon directed against him. He said
once : " I don't care a straw for your newspaper articles : my
constituents don't know how to read, but they can't help
seeing them damned pictures."

The King's Reader in Physic at Cambridge, Sir Isaac Pen-
nington, and John Birch, Surgeon Extraordinary to the
Prince of Wales and Surgeon of St. Thomas's Hospital,
opposed the new practice, and the latter published in 1806 a
temperate survey of Jenner's arguments, which by no means
consisted of sheer abuse. In Edinburgh the reception of the
new remedy was decidedly tepid. Nor was the welcome
warm in the United States, where some medical men, using
small-pox pustules by mistake, spread the very disease they
were trying to check. At home the Moseleys spread their
satire. The Continent, however, was more eager to give
Jenner a chance than England, though Ehrmann of Frank-
fort attempted to prove from quotations of the prophetical
parts of Scripture and the writings of the Fathers that the
vaccine was nothing less than Antichrist.

That curious woman, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, had
introduced inoculation into England, and accordingly we find

JENNER AND VACCINATION 17

that Lady Frances Morton, Lady Peyton, and Princess
Louisa of Prussia followed the excellent example she had set.
Lord Egremont (the patron of J. M. W. Turner), Lord
Hervey, the Earl of Aylesbury, the Earl of Ossory, Lord
Elgin, and the Earl of Berkeley were also favourably dis-
posed to Jenner s idea. The Duke of York recommended
vaccination in the army. On March 27, 1800, Queen
Charlotte asked Jenner many questions relative to the
progress of cow-pox.

For the most part the clergy showed themselves fully alive
to the importance of the cure placed before them. Men
like Mr. Holt, Rector of Finmere, near Buckingham, the
Rev. Dr. Booker of Dudley, the Rev. T. A. Warren of Kens-
worth, near Dunstable, and the Rev. T. T. A. Reed of Leck-
hamstead, proved warm advocates of vaccination. The Rev.
Dr. Booker did more than recommend the practice from the
pulpit. He printed pamphlets arguing in its favour, and one
of these he gave to everyone who brought a baby to be bap-
tised, also distributing regularly about twenty a week. At
home Bishop William Cleaver of Chester and abroad a
Danish Bishop, Balles, extended their valuable support. The
Rev. J. Plumptre of Hinxton, Cambridgeshire, and the Rev.
Dr. Ramsden of Grundisburgh, Suffolk, preached before
the University of Cambridge, seizing the occasion to eulogise
Jenner. - Plumptre employed at his own cost a medical man
to vaccinate the poor, and at times took that office upon him-
self. He also printed and circulated largely songs and
ballads calculated to impress the peasantry. For he was
emphatically of the belief of Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun:
" I knew a very nice man . . . that believed if a man were
permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should
make the laws of a nation."

The World War has rendered us all familiar with the
conception that a battle may be won in the munition factory
as well as at the front. It is no new idea. Arkwright and
Cartwright did their share every whit as efficiently as Nelson
and Wellington in defeating Napoleon. Nor can the labours
of the discoverer of remedies against disease be ignored.
What Sir Almroth Wright did in our generation, Edward
Jenner did in his. The sailors of our fleet were vaccinated
in 1 80 1, when the medical officers presented a gold medal to

18 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

Jenner. On it Apollo presents a vaccinated sailor to Britan-
nia, who holds a civic crown inscribed " Jenner," and the
reverse bears an anchor with the names of the King and Earl
Spencer, First Lord of the Admiralty. Ours is an age when
the forces of internationalism are supposed to be gaining in
strength, yet five of the episodes of the Napoleonic Wars may
well set us thinking. As Sir Humphry Davy received a
prize from the French Government while the war was raging
for his invention of the safety-lamp, so Napoleon transcended
his particularism in 1804 when he struck one of the most
beautiful of his medals in order to show his estimate of the
value of vaccination. The next year Jenner addressed to
the Emperor a petition, begging the release of two of his
friends, men of science and literature. Just as Napoleon
was about to reject the proffered petition, Josephine uttered
the name of Jenner. Her husband paused for an instant,
and exclaimed, "Jenner! ah, we can refuse nothing to that
man/' In 1808, while the war had still seven years to rage,
the National Institute of France elected him a corresponding
member, and three years later the same distinguished body
conferred upon him a still higher honour by placing him on
the list of its foreign associates. Could any of these five
episodes have occurred during the World War ?

On June 2, 1802, our House of Commons proposed, on
the motion of the Prime Minister, Addington, that ten thou-
sand pounds be given to the discoverer for his splendid
services, and this motion was carried. Parliament appointed
a committee to report on Jenner's claims before the motion
was proposed. Before its members Dr. Pearson endeavoured
to show that the discovery was not Jenner's but merely
a part of common knowledge, and in our day Dr. Crookshank
and Dr. Creighton prefer similar charges. That a man's foes
are those of his own household is common knowledge, and it
was certainly so with the discoverer of vaccination. In 1814
some members of the College of Physicians of London felt
that his name would do honour to a bead-roll on which were
the names of Linacre, Caius, and Harvey. Oxford Uni-
versity had conferred upon him its honorary M.D. " No,"
held some of the fellows of the College of Physicians, " it
is true that Dr. Jenner, coming from Oxford as he does, may,
if he chooses, claim admission into our body, but he can only

JENNER AND VACCINATION 19

take his place with us after undergoing the usual examin-
ation/'

It is the custom of the Roman Catholic Church, on the
proposal to canonise a man distinguished for his holiness, to
appoint an advocatus diaboli. His duties are largely per-
functory. Jenner felt the treatment to which he had been
subjected. " I told Dr. Moseley that in his assertion against
it [i.e. vaccination] he had acted the part of the devil's advo-
cate at a canonisation, who was to say all the harm he could
against the saint in order that his life might be thoroughly
scrutinised, and his merits appear all the more conspicuous."
Jenner erred. It was the role of the Moseley s, the Rowleys,
and the Squirrells to scrutinise his life thoroughly in order
that his demerits might appear the more conspicuous. The
century that has followed his death exposes his merits. For
the whole of Immunology, which has now become an inde-
pendent science, arises from vaccination. The work of
Pasteur, Lister, and Koch, and the whole of the modern
therapeutical movement are based as naturally on Jenner as
is astronomy on Copernicus.

CHAPTER II

SIMPSON AND CHLOROFORM

" EVERY Scottish man has a pedigree/' says Sir Walter Scott
in his autobiography. " It is a national prerogative as
inalienable as his pride and his poverty." Accordingly James
Young Simpson (1811 1870) has one, the ramifications of
which his biographer, Dr. J. Duns, spends some space in
detailing. His maternal grandfather, John Jarvey, farmer
at Balbardie, near Bathgate, Linlithgowshire, claimed descent
from a Huguenot family. John Jarvey had married Mary
Cleland, whose mother was a Cleland of Auchinlee, the
representative branch of the Clelands of Cleland. If Robert
Burns is right in maintaining that an honest man is the
noblest work of God, Simpson as well as possessing gentle
blood on his mother's side had noble blood on his father's.
His father was the village baker, who, we may feel assured,
gave his customers excellent value. James Simpson was the
seventh son borne by his mother, who during her short life
gave her family that sound Puritan training which has
done so much to make Scotland what it is. There is, as we
all realise, an evil side to Puritanism, but no one can read the
family record of the Simpsons without perceiving how it
steadied them to face the responsibilities of life. Puritanism
not only gave their mother that force of character which
impressed all who met her, but it also gave her the quiet
and loving heart that endeared her to many. If George
Herbert is correct in thinking that " a good mother is worth
a hundred schoolmasters," then the Simpsons were fortunate
young people. She believed that or are est lob or are, and, as
her family knew well, regularly retired to pray. When
Simpson was only nine, he lost her, and her death was a

20

SIMPSON AND CHLOROFORM 21

grievous loss. His brothers and his sister Mary were
devoted to him. " My second mother," he wrote of his
sister, " the only mother in later days I knew/ 1 If Mary
was a mother to him, his eldest brother Sandy was a
father. Of his Benjamin Sandy always thought, " I aye felt
he would be great some day/' Clearly this youngest
brother, unlike many, invariably had honour in his own
country and in his father's house.

In the early decades of the nineteenth century superstition
flourished in Linlithgowshire. Simpson's grandfather
Alexander, in order to bring to an end a murrain of cattle,
interred a cow alive. His uncle Thomas bought a little farm,
Gormyre, and enclosed a small triangular corner of one of
the fields within a stone wall. This corner, which remained
cut off, was called the " Gudeman's Croft." It was a species
of tithe to the Spirit of Evil in the hope that the foul fiend
would abstain from ever blighting or damaging the
rest of the farm. Of course the laird of Gormyre gave Auld
Clootie the most worthless piece of land on the whole farm.

Lessons proved easy to the lad and he was generally dux
of his class at school. His master was Mr. MacArthur,
and among the boys was John Reid, afterwards Professor of
Anatomy at St. Andrews. Simpson loved knowledge and
he loved facts on which to base his knowledge. When he
became a man, it was remarked in his presence that " the
Bible and Shakespeare are the best books in the world/'
Simpson made a characteristic addition : " The Bible and
Shakespeare and Oliver and Boyd's Almanac! At least I
know the Almanac would have been the greatest prize for me
when a boy/' This " lad o' pairts " entered Edinburgh
University when he was only fourteen. " Very young, very
young and very solitary, very poor and almost friendless,"
he said forty years later to his fellow-citizens, when receiving
the freedom of the City of Edinburgh from its Lord Provost,
Dr. William Chambers, " I came to settle in Edinburgh and
fight amongst you a hard and uphill battle of life for bread,
and name, and fame; and the fact that I stand here before
you this day so far testifies that in that arduous struggle I
have won." Yes, he had won, though nature by the short-
ness of the winner's life had exacted her price for the victory.
On his arrival at Edinburgh he joined John Reid, and the

22 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

two lads lodged with Mr. MacArthur, who had now taken
his medical degree. When they had been a short time with
him, Dr. MacArthur said to Simpson's brother Sandy, " I
can now do with four hours' sleep, John Reid can do with six,
but I have not been able to break in James yet." He did,
however, break in James. He himself was a man of
indefatigable energy who ever prophesied a brilliant place
for his two former pupils: "If only they would work. 55
When Reid and Simpson attained position he used to remark :
"Yes, but how they worked!" MacArthur belongs to the
class of man that does as an agent what he never could
have done as a principal.

The life of Simpson at Edinburgh University was the
life of a thrifty and hardworking student. He felt that
expenses at home were heavy, and the least he could do for
his family was to be as little burdensome as possible. His
means were so scanty that he was forced to reckon his
expenses even in pennies. In the entries in his undergraduate
note-book we meet with : " Subject 2, Spoon 6rf., and Bread
and Tart, one shilling and eightpence," and " Fur Cap 14 sh.,
Mary's Tippet 2 sh. and 6d." In the blank leaf of his little
cash-book he wrote :

No trivial gain nor trivial loss despise,
Mole-hills, if often heaped, to mountains rise.
Weigh every small expense, and nothing waste,
Farthings long saved amount to pounds at last.

If the poetry of the lines leaves something to be desired, the
sentiment they express leaves nothing to be desired.

The interest taken by Simpson in his studies is not simply
that taken by a young man anxious to attain a leading
position in the medical profession. Nor were his studies
merely of the bread-and-butter order, to use the apt German
phrase. For he read his botany, zoology, geology, and
meteorology with one eye upon his examinations and the
other fixed upon weaknesses in the explanations of his
lecturers. These weaknesses might be logical or due to
contradiction of facts the undergraduate had observed for
himself. No young man who cared merely for passing his
examinations, even with credit, would wish to find out " a
law determining the appearance of stragglers, as well as of

SIMPSON AND CHLOROFORM 23

the birds which regularly visit this country at particular
seasons." Just as Jenner noted every phenomenon of which
he had no adequate explanation, so did Simpson. He
admired Sir Isaac Newton, probably the greatest man of
science our race ever produced, and his admiration is based
in part upon his gigantic genius and intellectual strength
and in part upon his powers of patient thought and industry.
If Sir Walter Scott could toil terribly, so could young Simp-
son. In fact, throughout his life he leant to the view that
between men who attain unusual distinction and those who
do not there is not more than a one per cent, difference, but
it is just this one per cent, difference that counts. Of course
he had sleepless diligence, but so have many Scots. He had
originality of thought, and he took notes at college, as Opie
is said to have mixed his colours, " with brains."

Simpson flowered early, and was cut off early. Eager for
intellectual distinction, and for the rewards which would
enable him to repay the sacrifices made in his home, it seems
to us that he was careless of health. The strenuous work
of Edinburgh University is seldom undertaken by the under-
graduates of either Oxford or Cambridge, nor is it altogether
desirable that this should be so. For there is manifold truth
in the saying of Toppfer that a year of downright loitering
is a desirable element in a liberal education. Such an element
was entirely unknown to Simpson at any period of his life.
To toil terribly was part and parcel of his character. He
never had a margin in his life of hurried and unceasing
thought. To him " work was master and the lord of work,
who is God." He began his medical studies in 1827 and
graduated M.D. in 1832. He shrank so much from the
sight of suffering that at one time it did not seem as if he
would be able to remain a medical student. When he wit-
nessed the awful agony of a poor Highland woman under
amputation of the breast, he left the class-room with the
firm intention of seeking employment as a writer's clerk.
It is a feeling common to not a few sensitive medical students,
but he was unusually sensitive. On second thoughts, he
returned to the study of medicine, asking, " Can anything be
done to make operations less painful?" The note of this
question is never absent from the rest of his career. In 1836
he demanded, " Cannot something be done to render the

24 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

patient unconscious while under acute pain, without inter-
fering with the free and healthy play of natural functions ? "
For a time he turned his attention to mesmerism, a direction
in which he possessed wonderful powers. When he was
created a baronet in 1866, he took for his crest the healing
rod of ^Esculapius, and for his motto " Victor Dolore "
a motto he was amply entitled to assume.

Is early disappointment an element of later success? The
cases of Lord Tenterden and Simpson suggest that this is so.
When the former was about the age of fourteen, his father
put him forward as a candidate for a place as singing-boy
in Canterbury Cathedral. But as his voice was husky,
another lad was elected. In after-years, as Lord Chief
Justice, he went the home circuit with Mr. Justice Richard-
son, and visited the cathedral with his fellow-judge.
Pointing to a singer still in the choir, he said, " Behold,
brother Richardson, that is the only human being I ever
envied. When at school in this town we were candidates
for a chorister's place ; he obtained it ; and if I had gained my
wish, he might have been accompanying you as Chief Justice,
and pointing me out as his old schoolfellow, the singing-man."
When Simpson obtained his surgical diploma he sought a
situation as surgeon to the village of Inverkip, on the Clyde.
As he had some local influence, he deemed his chances good.
" When not selected," he informs us, " I felt perhaps a
deeper amount of chagrin and disappointment than I haye
ever experienced since that date. If chosen, I would probably
have been working there as a village doctor still. But like
many other men I have, in relation to my whole fate in
life, found strong reason to recognise the mighty fact that
assuredly

There's a Divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will."*

-,*

Simpson's doctoral dissertation was on death from inflam-
mation, and his examiner was Dr. John Thomson, the
Professor of Pathology, who was so much struck with this
Latin f dissertation that he engaged Simpson as his assistant

* J. Duns, Memoir of Sir James Y. Simpson, p. 33.
f Simpson was amon^r the last graduates examined through the
medium of Latin ; cf . H. Laing Gordon, Sir James Simpson, p. 39.

SIMPSON AND CHLOROFORM 25

at the salary of fifty pounds a year. Thomson steadily
suggested that his assistant should turn from pathology to
obstetrics, conduct that was on his part very self-denying.
The assistant took the proffered advice on the spot. Never-
theless, he gave his lectures on pathology with readiness and
fluency as well as with knowledge. The success of his
lectures was immediate, and his success came as the reward
of his hard work. He cared for his subject, and this care was
at once evident to the men who attended his first lectures.
He was an attractive lecturer whose mesmeric presence and
pleasing voice were undoubted assets. Distinction in the
academic world foreshadowed distinction in the larger world
of the Scots metropolis, and in 1835 ^ e was appointed
senior president of the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh
when only in his twenty- fourth year.

In 1839 Dr. James Hamilton resigned the Midwifery
Chair. A year or two previously Simpson had remarked to
some ladies he was escorting to the " capping " of the
graduates : " Do you see that old gentleman ? well, I intend
to have his gown/' There were obstacles in the way. When
are there not? The candidate was young and he was a
bachelor. The latter obstacle was removed by his marriage
to Miss Jessie Grindlay of Liverpool on December 26, 1839.
Time every day was removing the former. As Robertson
Smith and William Thomson (afterwards Lord Kelvin)
felt that their youth was a barrier in their way when they
desired chairs, so Simpson felt his. He longed for his
brother John's prematurely whitened head to give him at
any rate the appearance of the weight of years. The contest
lay between Dr. Evory Kennedy, who enjoyed the support
of much of the University, and Simpson. The electors were
Edinburgh Town Council, a body that on the whole has
shown discernment in its appointments. Its members were
vigorously canvassed, and documents of portentous length
the testimonials of one candidate extended to more than 150
large octavo pages were sent in to them for their considera-
tion. On February 4, 1840, the election took place. Out
of the thirty-three present, seventeen voted for Simpson and
sixteen for Kennedy. Immediately after the election he
wrote to Mrs. Grindlay : " My dearest Mother, Jessie's
honeymoon and mine begins to-morrow. I was elected

26 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

Professor to-day by a majority of one. Hurrah ! Your ever
affectionate son, J. Y. Simpson." *

His private practice was commensurate with his public
distinction. His fee-book testified how increasingly patients
sought his services. Indeed he became in such demand that
there was not time enough even for them. He burst out
with an " O that there were double twenty- four hours in
the day ! " Even this allowance would not have sufficed for
the demands constantly made upon him. Thrifty as he had
been in his student days, he was not thrifty towards himself
in the collection of his fees. It is possible to give a turn
to the old saying of " Street angel, house devil," for a man
may serve after-generations, and not his own. It is not the
least enviable jewel of Simpson's crown of success that he
served his own generation as faithfully as after-generations.
There were more names in his books than there was money
in his pocket. The generosity of the medical profession is
known to its members and to the clergy, who realise most
the amount of good done by stealth by the surgeon. Simp-
son's relatives and friends often urged him so to regulate
the management of his practice as to ensure his fee. His
answer was : " I prefer to have my reward in the gratitude
of my patients."

A Lammermoor shepherd hopes " the Lord will bless him
and his for all his kindness to Jean." A shoemaker tells him :
" Tammy's been another callant since you saw him ; we thank
God for such a doctor." A minister writes, enclosing a
fee, which was returned : " To you, under God, I feel indebted
that I have still her who is the light of my heart and hearth.
We cease not to remember you in our prayers." Nor did he
forget other professional struggling men. Many such a
man could call to mind that when he was bidding farewell to
his old Professor, Simpson would follow him to the door
with the apologetic inquiry if he had enough money to start
his professional career. If not, the loan was forthcoming
with the words, " for I was poor too, and if my brothers
hadn't helped me without stint, I would not be where I am
to-day."

There have been men who have been great obstetricians

* E. B. Simpson, Sir James K. Simpson, p. 40.

SIMPSON AND CHLOROFORM 27

and nothing more. Simpson was not one of these, for the
range of his curiosity was of the widest. The feeling that
the cobbler should stick to his last is even yet fairly wide-
spread. We see it when Huxley endeavoured to confine
Lord Kelvin to mathematical physics to the exclusion of
geology, and we see it in our own time. If the ramifications
of midwifery led Simpson to considerations of surgery, then
he was not to be deterred by the warnings of surgeons that
he should confine himself to his own proper subject. He
was a man whose aim was the healing of humanity, and no
object that could compass this end was foreign to him.
Fife caves, cup-marked stones, ancient sculptures, the pro-
vision of medical officers for the Roman army these are a
fraction of the subjects that surged in his ever-active brain.
The Lancet might call him to task for his dabbling in seances,
but the all-embracing explanation he tendered was that this
was a subject that deserved a fair trial. He always tried to
preserve an open mind. His foresight was at least as
remarkable as his insight. In advance of his time he
anticipated the development of ovariotomy, and he prophesied
in his graduation address the discovery of the Rontgen rays.
" Possibly/' we learn, " even by the concentration of electrical
and other lights we may render many parts of the body,
if not the whole body, sufficiently diaphanous for the
inspection of the practised eye of the physician and surgeon. "
For such a suggestion to have been made thirty-five years
before the actual discovery by Rontgen is very surprising.
He was also before his day in the welcome he extended to
the pioneers of the lady doctors.

In January 1847 Simpson was appointed one of Queen
Victoria's Physicians for Scotland, and the Duchess of
Sutherland added to his natural pride when she informed him
that her mistress deemed that this was a post " which his
high character and abilities make him very fit for/' * To
his brother Sandy he wrote : " Flattery from the Queen is
perhaps not common flattery, but I am far less interested in
it than in having delivered a woman this week without any
pain while inhaling sulphuric ether. I can think of naught
else/' f Ever since he had witnessed the agony of the poor

* J. Duns, Memoir of Sir James Y. Simpson, p. 201.
t Ibid., p. 202.

28 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

Highland woman, the problem of pain, of unnecessary pain,
had never been far from his thoughts. It is intelligible,
therefore, that he should write, " I can think of naught else."
Ether was one way out of it. Were there not other drugs?
Of course there were, and equally of course experiments must
be made with them, for there were disadvantages as well as
advantages in the use of ether. Faraday in our country and
Godman in America had realised the effects of the inhalation
of the vapour of this drug.

Perchloride of formyle, or chloroform, was first discovered
and described at nearly the same time by Soubeiran in 1831
and by Liebig in 1832. The first to ascertain accurately its
composition was the French chemist Dumas, and this he
did in 1835. None of these three, however, entertained any
idea that chloroform could be turned to the relief of pain
under an operation. Yet when Sir Humphry Davy had
applied nitrous oxide he wrote in 1830: " It appears capable
of destroying physical pain. It may be used with advantage
during surgical operations in which no great effusion of blood
takes place." Sound requires an atmosphere, and there was
no atmosphere for this fertile conception of Davy.
For forty years it lay dormant. As Mr. Colton was
lecturing on laughing-gas in Hartford, Connecticut, he had
among his auditors Dr. Horace Wells, dentist. He saw a
person, who inhaled it, fall and bruise himself badly, and
remain unaware of the fact. Next day Mr. Colton adminis-
tered the gas to Dr. Wells, and Dr. Riggs extracted one of
his teeth. " A new era in tooth-pulling ! " he exclaimed.
" It did not hurt me more than the prick of a pin." This
was the first anaesthetic operation in the United States, and
it took place in 1844. Dr. Riggs drew six teeth from another
patient, at one sitting, without any suffering. Dr. Wells
informed Drs. Warren, Heyward, Jackson, and Morton of
his discovery. There was then to be a public demonstration
before the Medical School of Boston and some surgeons of
the Massachusetts Hospital. There was a single slip in the
single experiment allowed Dr. Wells, and that sufficed to
end his career in hisses and hoots. The truth was that he
had not given a sufficiently large dose.

In 1842 Mr. Crawford Long of Georgia employed the

SIMPSON AND CHLOROFORM 29

vapour of ether.* Dr. Morton, a daring dentist of Boston,
proceeded to experiment on nitrous oxide gas along the line
of Dr. Wells. He applied to Dr. Charles T. Jackson, who
took a keen concern in the proposed experiment. Jackson
recommended Morton to try ether. On September 30, 1846,
Morton inhaled it, with the result that he was eight minutes
unconscious. He at once drew the conclusion that operations
were possible by means of ether. He asked for a public
trial of it at Massachusetts General Hospital on October 16,

1846, and, to quote the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes,
" by this priceless gift to humanity, the fierce extremity of
suffering has been steeped in the waters of forgetfulness,
and the deepest furrow in the knotted brow of agony has
been smoothed for ever." In a letter written by Simpson
to Morton on November 19, 1847, we read: " Of course the
great thought is that of producing insensibility, and for that
the world is, I think, indebted to you." The Americans died
without wealth or honour and with worry and disappoint-
ment, Wells dying insane.

Throughout the autumn and summer of 1847 Simpson and
his assistants, Dr. Matthews Duncan and Dr. George Keith,
tried narcotic drug after narcotic drug. On November 4,

1847, a red-letter day. in the history of the alleviation of
suffering, the first trial of chloroform as an anaesthetic
occurred. The experimenters were Simpson and his two
assistants. The witnesses were Mrs. Simpson, her sister
Miss Grindlay, her niece Miss Petrie, and her brother-in-law
Captain Petrie. Simpson wrote to Mr. Waldie, who had
thought chloroform worth a trial : " I am sure you will be
delighted to see part of the good results of our hasty con-
versation. I had the chloroform for several days in the
house before trying it, as, after seeing it such a heavy,
unvolatile-like liquid, I despaired of it, and went on dreaming
about others. The first night we took it, Dr. Duncan, Dr.
Keith, and I all tried it simultaneously, and were all ' under
the table ' in a minute or two. 5 * Dr. Keith told Miss
Simpson, the daughter of the discoverer, in 1891 that: " Dr.
Miller, in the appendix to his work on surgery, published
soon after, gives a pretty full account of the scene. It is

* H. H. Young, "Long, the discoverer of Anaesthesia," Johns Hop-
kins Hospital Bulletin, 1897, VIII, pp. 174-84.

30 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

pretty correct, only he says we all took chloroform at once.
This, with a new substance to try, would have been foolish,
and the fact is, I began to inhale it a few minutes before
the others. On seeing the effects on me, and hearing my
approval before I went quite over, they both took a dose,
and I believe we were all more or less under the table
together, much to the alarm of your mother, who was
present. " *

Professor Miller, who used to appear every morning to
see if the experimenters were still in the land of the living,
says that " these experiments were performed after the long
day's toil was over, at late night or early morn, and when
the greater part of mankind were soundly anaesthetised in the
arms of common sleep/' He describes how, after a weary
day's labour, the three sat down and inhaled various drugs
out of tumblers, as was their custom, and chloroform was
searched for and " found beneath a heap of waste paper, and
with each tumbler newly charged, the inhalers resumed their
occupation. . , . A moment more, then all was quiet, and
then a crash. On awakening Dr. Simpson's first perception
was mental. 'This is far stronger and better than ether/
he said to himself. His second was to note that he was
prostrate on the floor, and that among the friends about him
there was both confusion and alarm. Of his assistants, Dr.
Duncan he saw snoring heavily, and Dr. Keith kicking
violently at the table above him. They made several more
trials of it that eventful evening, and were so satisfied with
the results that the festivities of the evening did not terminate
till a late hour, 3 a.m." f

Miss Grindlay used often to speak of Dr. Keith's ghastly
expression when, ceasing to kick, he raised his head to the
level of the table and stared with unconscious eyes on the
onlookers. It was fitting that the first woman to feel the in-
fluence of this new agent was Miss Petrie, the niece of the
discoverer. The first child born under its influence was
the daughter of a medical contemporary of Simpson's. As the
first child in all the Russias that was vaccinated was baptised
Vaccinoff, so this baby girl was baptised Anaesthesia. " You
will be pleased to hear the Queen [Victoria] had chloroform

* E. B. Simpson, Sir James Y. Simpson, p. 58.
.. . t Ibid., pp. 58-9.

SIMPSON AND CHLOROFORM 31

administered to her during her late confinement. Her
Majesty was greatly pleased with the effect, and she .certainly
never has had a better recovery/' Sir James Clark, one of
Victoria's physicians from London, wrote in April 1853.

The experiments did not cease with those of that epoch-
making day, November 4, 1847. Miss Grindlay says that
her brother-in-law came into the dining-room one afternoon,
holding a little bottle in his hand, and his words were, " This
little bottle will turn the world upside-down." He then
poured some of the contents into a tumbler, breathed it, and
fell unconscious. Miss Petrie mentions that he " tried every-
thing on himself first." Once, after swalloiwing some
concoction, he remained insensible for two hours. Dr. Keith
recalled another experiment when he tried a compound of
carbon which brought on such irritation in breathing that
he had to be kept under chloroform in order to relieve him.
Sir Lyon Playfair (afterwards Lord Playfair) in 1883 told
the House of Commons no more than the bare truth when
he asserted that in experimenting upon himself Simpson was
ever " bold even to rashness." Lord Playfair was speaking
of vivisection, and told how Sir James, still searching for
something better, came to his laboratory, and Playfair put
in his hand a new liquid. On the spot he wanted to inhale
it. Playfair, however, insisted that this time the experiment
should first be made on two rabbits who speedily succumbed.
" Now was not this," he asked the House, " a justifiable
experiment on animals? Was it not worth the sacrifice of
two Babbits to save the life of 'the most distinguished
physician of his time, who by the introduction of chloroform
has done so much to mitigate animal suffering? "

No true scientist is ever content with what he has achieved,
and accordingly the discoverer persisted in his never-ending
search for something better than chloroform.* His butler,
Clarke, entertained a high opinion of the properties of
"chlory." On one occasion Clarke found Simpson in a
Lethean sleep, the outcome of yet another experiment.
" He'll kill himser yet wi' thae experiments ; an' he's a big
fule, for they'll never find onything better nor chlory."
Though Simpson was unable to speak at the time, he heard

* Sir J. Paget "Escape from Pain; the History of a Discovery," in
Ihe Nineteenth Century, VI, 1879, PP- 1119-32.

32 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

distinctly his butler's remark, and it decidedly helped to rouse
him. Among other experiments Simpson prepared an effer-
vescing drink made with chloric ether in aerated water. As
a beverage a dinner party pronounced it pleasant but rather
heady. The butler gave some of it to the cook, telling her
it was champagne. Soon after drinking it, she fell flat on
the floor. Rushing to the dining-room, Clarke cried out,
" Come doon, come doon, Doctor! I've pushioned the cook
deid." Naturally Clarke fell back on his old opinion. " I
tell ye, chlory's the best."

No one who knows the world of science will dream that
this wonderful discovery of chloroform was at once accepted.
What Simpson really achieved was clearly stated by Mr.
Lawson Tait at the British Medical Association in 1890 when
he pointed out that " we are apt to ignore the fact that all
our brilliant advancement to-day could never have been
arrived at but for chloroform. We could not have developed
the splendid work of the modern ophthalmic surgeon, and
the modern development of abdominal surgery never would
have been dreamed of, but for the genius and indomitable
fighting qualities of James Young Simpson, who threshed
out the victory of anaesthesia, and gave us the anaesthetic
which has held its own against all comers." In 1895 in
The Times the same surgeon, as he reviews the delicate opera-
tions now daily performed, asks : " But where should we have
been without anaesthetics ? No human being could undergo, in
a conscious state, such operations as I have spoken of : I doubt
if any human being could nerve himself to perform them. At
the head of the list for whom I claim the true credit, I place
the name of Simpson, the greatest genius our profession had
produced for centuries. He fought the fight of anaesthesia."

Theological opposition Simpson disarmed by his exegesis
of the passages bearing on the Fall and also by the fact
that he was fortunate enough to procure the adhesion
of the great Dr. Chalmers, then the foremost name in the
ranks of the ministry in Scotland. Dr. P., a medical
practitioner, curiously enough raised the question of the
primary curse.* Simpson was easily able to show that the
word translated " sorrow " is truly " labour " or " toil." That

* J. Duns, Memoir of Sir James Y. Simpson, p. 215.

SIMPSON AND CHLOROFORM 33

is, Adam was to eat of the ground with labour, which does not
necessarily mean physical pain. Though the ground was
cursed to bear thorns and thistles, yet we pull them up
without dreaming that it is a sin. He proceeded to argue
that as Christ in dying hath " borne our griefs and carried
our sorrows," He definitely removed " the curse of the law,
being made a curse for us." The deep sleep into which
Adam fell is ingeniously introduced as an argument on behalf
of the new use of the drug. " Those who urge, on a kind
of religious ground, that an artificial or anaesthetic state of
unconsciousness should not be induced merely to save frail
humanity from the miseries and tortures of bodily pain,
forget that we have the greatest of all examples set before
us. He follows out this very principle of practice. I allude
to that most singular description of the preliminaries of the
first surgical operation ever performed on man, which is
contained in Genesis ii. 21 : ' And the Lord God caused a deep
sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept, and He took one of his
ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof.' " *

Dr. Chalmers took such a liberal interpretation of Holy
Writ that he could not at first conceive that anyone could
raise objections on the ground that it enabled women to
avoid one part of the primeval curse. When Professor
Miller at length succeeded in convincing him that such ground
had been taken, Dr. Chalmers thought quietly for a minute or
two, and then added that if some " small theologians " really
took such an improper view of the subject, he should certainly
advise Dr. Miller " not to heed them." f His attitude was
probably the commonsense one that if God has given us the
means of mitigating the agonies of childbirth, it is clearly
His intention that we should employ those means.

As Jenner in 1798 when he first announced vaccination
had to encounter the opposition of members of his own
profession, so Simpson had to encounter precisely the same
kind of opposition. In the deliberate words of Dr. Duns,
" the leaders of the opposition were professional men/' J
and by professional men medical doctors are meant. " I dare
not try it upon the rich," wrote a leading practitioner of

* J. Duns, Memoir of Sir James Y. Simpson, p. 259.

t Ibid., p. 260.

$ Ibid., p. 248; cf. H. Laing Gordon, Sir James Simpson, p. 113.

3

34 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

Dublin, " for my own sake, nor upon the poor for their
sake, until I see something more definite about its dangers
and safeguards/'* On February 15, 1848, a Dr. G. thought
that chloroform " is almost sure to be used as the means of
debauching innocent women, which goes greatly to strengthen
the argument for Legislative interference. . . . For the
Burkes and Hares chloroform is the readiest implement they
could desire, if it can be got without restrict ion. " f A French
physiologist, M. Magendie, held " it was a trivial matter to
suffer, and a discovery, whose object was to prevent pain,
was of slight interest only/ 1 J " Should I," writes Dr. Greig,
" exhibit it to a thousand patients merely to prevent physio-
logical pain, and for no other motive; and should I, in
consequence, destroy only one, the least of them, I should feel
disposed to clothe me in sackcloth and cast ashes on my
head for the remainder of my days. What sufficient motive
have I to risk the life and health of one in a thousand in
a questionable attempt to abrogate one of the general con-
ditions of man? " Other doctors thought that the cold steel
of the surgeon formed a good tonic. Dr. George Wilson
describes his own feelings when in the hands of the surgeons,
and his powerful letter to Dr. Simpson is a painful revelation
of what an operation used to mean. His two opening
sentences reveal the fight Simpson had to make : " I have
recently read, with mingled sadness and surprise, the declara-
tions of some surgeons that anesthetics are needless luxuries,
and that unendurable agony is the best of tonics. Those
surgeons, I think, can scarcely have been patients of their
brother surgeons, and jest at scars only because they never
felt a wound; but if they remain enemies of anaesthetics after
what you have written, I despair of convincing them of their
utility."

Dr. Magnus Retzius, a Danish obstetrician of high
scientific standing, in a letter of April 6, 1847, succinctly
stated two of the main objections to the use of ether, and
these objections were the very ones to be raised with warmth
against the use of chloroform. These two objections were,

* J. Duns, Memoir of Sir James Y. Simpson* p. 271.
t Ibid., pp. 271-2.

t E. B. Simpson, Sir James Y. Simpson, p. 65.
Hora Subseciva, p. 377,

SIMPSON AND CHLOROFORM 35

first, the influence on the will of the patient, and, secondly, the
beneficial influences of the action of a creative law. The
first objection wore a serious form in the forties. Is there
not danger to the individual, it was asked, in the employment
of anything that suspends will-power or that destroys self-
consciousness? The second objection appeared in all sorts
of forms. One was that unnecessary interference with the
providentially arranged process of healthy progression is
sure sooner or later to be followed by injurious and fatal
consequences. So Dr. Ashwell argued on March n, 1848,
and so argued men like Bransby Cooper, Gull, and Nunn.
Simpson's retort was irresistible. "If you refuse to interfere
with a natural function because it is natural why do you
ride, my dear Doctor ? you ought to walk, in order to be con-
sistent. Chloroform does nothing but save pain, you allege.
A carriage does nothing but save fatigue. Which is the
more important to get done away with? your fatigue, or
your patients' screams and tortures? To confess to you the
truth, my blood feels chilled by the inhumanity and deliberate
cruelty which you and some members of your profession
openly avow. And I know that you will yet, in a few years,
look back with horror at your present resolution of refusing
to relieve your patients, merely because you have not yet had
time to get rid of some old professional caprices and
nonsensical thoughts upon the subject." * Another form
of the second objection was the question of the Irish lady,
" Is it not against nature to take away the pangs of labour? "
"Is it not/' he answered, " unnatural for you to have been
carried over from Ireland in a steamboat against wind and
tide?"

One moral aspect appealed to Simpson, and quite another
moral aspect appealed to a Liverpool surgeon in the paper
he read to the Liverpool Medical Society in 1847. He
regarded the whole question as a branch of medical ethics, and
argued against the use of chloroform on high moral ground.
His arguments are best given in his own language.
" I contend that we violate the boundaries of a most
noble profession when, in our capacity as medical men,

* E. B. Simpson, Sir James Y. Simpson^ p. 65 ; cf . J. Duns, Memoir of
Sir James Y. Simpson, p. 257. Contrast Galen's aphorism, " Dolor dolen-
tibus inutile est"

36 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

we urge or seduce our fellow-creatures, for the sake of avoid-
ing pain alone pain unconnected with danger to pass
into a state of existence the secrets of which we know so
little at present. I say secrets, because from the dark
chambers of that existence we have as yet had presented to us
but fitful and indistinct gleamings, and these so little to
encourage the gaze of a thoughtful and modest eye, that I
should be sorry to expose any human being unnecessarily
much less one whom I esteemed or loved to influences whose
nature I more than suspect.

" What right have we, even as men, to say to our brother-
man, ' Sacrifice thy manhood let go thy hold upon that noble
capacity of thought and reason with which thy God hath
endowed thee, and become a trembling coward before the
mere presence of bodily pain ' ?

"... In connection with this part of the subject, I was
struck with a remark in Professor Simpson's last pamphlet,
where it is said, 'that patients themselves will force this
remedy upon us/ Now, I ask, is not this a mark of
disorder ? Are they to be suffered for a moment to decide
upon such a subject? and are we to be influenced to give up
our judgment and place because they forsake theirs? . . .

" I have said nothing upon the natural or physical merits of
this preparation; that has yet to be determined by time;
but I cannot help suggesting to those who recommend it so
indiscriminately, how they would feel in the event of death
being clearly traced to its use in an ordinary labour, or
during or after some surgical operation, when it was merely
employed to relieve pain, and when there was no danger-
ous disease. If one death took place out of every five
hundred, and that one was caused by the remedy,
would it not be something to meditate upon? Besides,
we have as yet had no time to watch other consequences;
but one, I fear, in particular, will become more com-
mon I mean insanity. I wish I may be mistaken, but
I greatly fear it." * We have travelled far from this frame
of mind when we remember that the doctor, who is also
a psychologist, aims at re-creating the whole of the past
life of the patient, in nervous cases, in the attempt to under-

* J. Duns, Memoir of Sir James Y. Simpson, pp. 221-2,

SIMPSON AND CHLOROFORM 37

stand his complexes, and thus arrive at a cure. To-day
Simpson's fame as the discoverer of chloroform stands
securely. On a bead-roll of medical men with Harvey and
Jenner he claims a place alongside them, and this claim has
been universally conceded.*

In gynaecology Simpson laid the foundation of the structure
now raised. He gave new power in diagnosis, he gave new
power in precision, and he gave new power in instruments.
In diagnosis the uterine sound and the sponge tent bestowed
upon the practitioner the ability to carry out treatment
hitherto impossible. His amazing care with his patient gave
his fellow-obstetricians a new sense of the saying of Carlyle
that a quality of genius was the infinite capacity for taking
pains. In the use of the obstetric forceps and of the various
methods of ovariotomy his work was original. On December
19, 1859, he read a paper on acupressure before the Royal
Society of Edinburgh. Acupressure was an invention by
which veins were pinned, and thereby the use of ligatures
after amputations was rendered unnecessary. The point was
the avoidance of the danger of festering flesh. Objections
were urged by Professors Miller, Erichsen, Neudover,
Spence, Ferguson, and his old enemy, Syme, who resented
the intrusion of the gynaecologist into the operating theatre.
That this idea of Simpson has perished we all know. Paracel-
sus, when he dissented from the conclusions of an author, used
to burn the particular writing. Syme took the pamphlet on
acupressure by Simpson, his colleague in Edinburgh Univer-
sity, and in the presence of his class he tore it in two, and gave
the pieces to his assistant to be consigned to the sawdust box
with other surgical remains. A young student, Joseph Lister
by name, aimed at achieving by antiseptic treatment what
Simpson achieved by acupressure. At the Dublin meeting
Simpson had made some disparaging remarks on the use
of antiseptics. Unguardedly Lister wrote to The Lancet a
letter in which occurred the following passage : " The truth
is, that the treatment which I advocate has arrived at the
second stage of its progress in professional confidence. So
lately as the Association meeting in Dublin a feeble attempt

* It was estimated that no less than 80,000 a year was lost to the
hotel, lodging-, and boarding-house keepers of Edinburgh when he died;
cf. H. Laing Gordon, Sir James Simpson, p. 163.

38 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

was made to decry it as useless ; and now it is represented as
not original. Trusting that such unworthy cavils will not
impede the adoption of a useful procedure, I am, Sir, yours,
etc." *

In a temperate letter of June 16, 1865, Simpson urged
upon Lister the merits of acupressure, f We fear that
Simpson in an anonymous letter to the Edinburgh Daily
Review attacked Lister on the ground that his work had
been antedated by Dr. Lemaire of Paris and by others.
Lister had never read a line of Lemaire's and indeed had
never heard of him. In The Lancet Simpson continued his
attack, accusing Lister of almost culpable ignorance.^ The
writer did bring out the fact that Lemaire had employed
carbolic acid in the treatment of compound fractures, wounds,
and abscesses. He brought it out, however, in such a fashion
that the principle on which Listerian treatment was based
was ignored. In 1867 Simpson occupied the position of a
field-marshal in the medical army and Lister was the latest
recruit. The greeting the senior officer extended was any-
thing but friendly. Simpson himself had suffered so much
at the hands of objectors that one would have thought that
he would have had a fellow-feeling for Lister.

* Sir R. Godlee, Lord Lister, p. 200; cf Lancet, 1867, II, p. 444.
t Sir R. Godlee, Lord Lister, pp* 201-2.
j Lancet, 1867, II, p. 546.

CHAPTER III

LYELL AND UNIFORMITARIANISM

AT the beginning of the nineteenth century geologists were
divided into two hostile camps who waged against each other
a keen and even embittered contest. On the one hand were
the followers of James Hutton of Edinburgh, a man of a
singularly original and active mind, called from him Hut-
tonians, sometimes also Vulcanists or Plutonists; on the
other, the disciples of A. G. Werner of Freiburg in Saxony,
who were naturally called Wernerians or Neptunists.* The
strife lasted long, and deflected the current of geological
thought. The Huttonians maintained, as their fundamental
doctrine, that the facts of our planet in the past are to be
explained by what we can learn of it at present. The first
condition of the earth and all its subsequent phases they
regarded as outside their scope. Hutton declared with all
the emphasis at his command that the rocks around us can
never reveal to us any trace of the beginning of things. As
nature to him never made a leap, he summoned the fall of
rain, the flow of rivers, the dash of waves, the slowly-crum-
bling decay of mountain, valley, and shore as witnesses of
the slow and silent fashion in which even the most stupendous
changes are wrought. Living in a land devoid of fossil re-
mains of plants and animals, devoid of such rocks as are
found in Italy, Hutton ignored the long succession of life upon
the earth just as he ignored the fact that nature to our sur-
prise sometimes does make a leap. Still, he ascertained that
the great mass of the rocks which form the visible part of the
crust of the earth was formed under the sea, as sand, gravel,

* For a recent reminiscence of the strife, cf. Sir A. Geikie, A Long
Life's Work, p. 143.

39

40 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

and mud are laid down there now; and that these ancient
sediments were consolidated by subterranean heat, to be con-
torted and upheaved one day into dry land. He found that
portions of the rocks had been in a fused state, establishing
the former molten condition of granite and of many other
crystalline rocks, and he maintained that the combined influ-
ence of subterranean heat and pressure upon sedimentary
rocks could consolidate and mineralise them, thus converting
them into crystalline masses.

If it is the mark of genius to unite in one common origin
phenomena very different in their nature, then James Hutton
was a genius. He opened out a new path that has been
trodden by many men since. Of course he exaggerated the
extent to which his conceptions could be applied, but is not
this the commonest fault of genius? Hutton himself was
as strong in principles as he was weak in details. His fol-
lowers were deficient in accurate mineralogical knowledge.
In spite of this, the whole of modern geology testifies to the
influence of the Huttonian school.

From his infancy Abraham Gottlob Werner was familiar
with stones. When he did his lessons with proficiency, his
father used to allow him to look over a small collection of
minerals which he kept in a box. As an old man Werner
could vividly recall the very minerals that were the play-
things of his childhood various ores and spars, as well as
some varieties of which his father did not know the names.
Naturally he betook himself to the Mining Academy at
Freiburg, visiting all the chief Saxon mines, especially those
of note in the Freiburg district. He came to know his own
locality intimately, satisfying himself by repeated excursions
of the order and history of the rocks in it. Jowett used to
maintain that logic was neither a science nor an art but simply
a dodge. Werner held some such opinion, for despite the
laws of logic he reasoned from the particular to the universal,
concluding that the various rocks of the rest of the globe
were modelled on those of Saxony. Unlike the Huttonians,
he felt impelled to begin at the beginning. He supposed that
the earth had been originally covered with the ocean, in
which the materials of the minerals were dissolved. Out of
this ocean he conceived that the various rocks were precipi-
tated in the same order as that in which he found those of

LYELL AND UNIFORMITARIANISM 41

Saxony to lie. Obviously, on the retirement of the ocean,
certain universal formations spread over all the globe, and
assumed at the surface various irregular shapes as they
consolidated.

Werner enjoyed the advantage of being a good mineral-
ogist Previous cosmological systems produced chaos, not
the cosmos of the Saxon geologist. His system was as neat
and precise as he himself was. Besides, it could be readily
applied to other countries. Observations had been discon-
nected, isolated, and heterogeneous. Under Werner's skilful
method they proved to be connected, unisolated, and homo-
geneous. What Linnaeus effected for botany he effected for
mineralogy. This subject is narrow save in the hands of a
Werner. With him mineralogy embraced the whole of
human history, the whole pursuits and tendencies of mankind.
From a few pieces of stone, placed almost at random on the
table before him, he would pour forth an eloquent exposition
of the influence of minerals and rocks upon the geography
and topography of the earth's surface. He could contrast the
mountainous scenery of the granites and schists with the less
wild landscapes of the sandstones and limestones. Was not
the development of the arts and the industries guided by the
distribution of minerals? Were not the successes of a
Napoleon or a Wellington dependent not on their strategic
skill but on the distribution of minerals? In fact, Werner
anticipated the school of political economists of our own day
who trace everything in history to s. d. It seemed in
Werner's day as if efficient training for the affairs of life
was only to be found at the Mining School of Freiburg.

There were undoubted weaknesses in the Wernerian school
of geology. In what school of thought are there not weak-
nesses? He made the mistake of transferring the formation
and the aqueous origin of Saxon rocks to explain the forma-
tion of all rocks. Still, he had grasped a seminal idea in his
chronological grouping of strata and had noticed that the
remains of plants and animals imbedded in the strata became
fewer in number, and more unlike living forms, the older
the rocks in which they occur. The theory an entirely
unsupported one of a primeval universal ocean formed the
basis of his teaching. From the prominence given to the
sea in his geognosy, his followers were styled Neptunists,

42 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

while those of Hutton, who stressed the potency of the
internal fire of the earth, were dubbed Plutonists or Vul-
canists. Obviously, there is this question to be answered
by the Wernerians, What has become of the immense volume
of water that once covered and stood so high over the whole
earth? Robert Jameson, a typical Scots Wernerian, an-
nounced that " although we cannot give any very satisfactory
answer to this question, it is evident that the theory of the
diminution of the water remains equally probable. We may
be convinced of its truth, and are so, although we may not be
able to explain it. To know from observation that a great
phenomenon took place, is a very different thing from ascer-
taining how it happened."* The moment we examine this
answer we see that it resolves itself into a scientific creed : I
believe in Werner and you had better believe in him too.
The gravamen against this creed is that it announces as a body
of ascertained truth conclusions about which it was held that
there could be no further doubt or dispute, and such a position
implicitly denies the possibility of progress.

The unreasoning rivalry of the Wernerians and the Hut-
tonians was at its height when Charles Lyell was born on
November 14, 1797, in the family mansion of Kinnordy,
Forfarshire. His father was a botanist with diverse
interests. He is another example of that hereditary genius
on which Galton placed such stress. " The front of heaven/'
as Lyell himself wrote in a spirited fragment of auto-
biography, was not " full of fiery shapes at his nativity,"f but
the season was so exceptionally warm that his mother's bed-
room-window was kept open all night an appropriate birth-
omen for the future geologist, who had a firmer faith than
some of his successors in the value of work in the open air.
Scots by birth, English by education, Lyell was to turn out
cosmopolitan in his range over the earth. For twenty-eight
years his family lived on the edge of the New Forest, a
situation that afforded the lad many opportunities of gratify-
ing his taste for watching the habits of aquatic insects. " I
had," he confesses, " no companion to share this hobby with
me, no one to encourage me in following it up, yet my love
for it continued always to increase, and it afforded me a

* R. Jameson, Geognosy, p. 82.

t Homer, Life of Sir C. Lyell, I, p. 2.

LYELL AND UNIFORMITARIANISM 43

most varied source of amusement/'* Like Darwin at
Shrewsbury, he received " from almost everyone else beyond
my home, either ridicule, or hints that the pursuits of other
boys were more manly."f Mr. Lytton Strachey, in his
curious study of Thomas Arnold of Rugby, seems to imagine
that the boys of our day enjoy considerably less elasticity in
their amusements than those of Arnold's day. A study of
the early life of either Lyell or of Darwin would, on this
point at least, considerably disabuse him. To be sure, his
essay would not have quite so much point : it would, however,
have a good deal more truth.

As a lad Lyell had met with a copy of Bakewell's
Geology on the shelves of his father's library, and this
induced him while he was an undergraduate at Exeter Col-
lege, Oxford, to attend in 1817 the lectures of Professor
Buckland, who then enjoyed the height of his popularity.
On July 28 of that year he wrote to his father, and his letter
remarkable as that of a lad of nineteen contains the germ
of his future book on the Principles of Geology. "Dr.
Arnold and I examined yesterday the pit which is dug out for
the foundation of the Nelson monument, and found that the
first bed of shingle is eight feet down. Now this was the
last stratum brought by the sea; all since was driven up by
wind and kept there by the ' rest-harrow ' and other plants.
It is mere sand. Therefore, thirty-five years ago the Deens
were nearly as low as the last stratum left by the sea; and as
the wind would naturally have begun adding from the very
first, it is clear that within fifty years the sea flowed over
that part. This, even Mr. T. allows, is a strong argument
in favour of the recency of the changes. Dr. Arnold sur-
prised me by telling me that he thought that the Straits of
Dover were formerly joined, and that the great current and
tides of the North Sea being held back, the sea flowed higher
over these parts than now. If he had thought a little more
he would have found no necessity for all this, for all those
towns on this eastern coast, which have no river god to
stand their friend, have necessarily been losing in the same
proportion as Yarmouth gains viz. Cromer, Pakefield, Dun-
wich, Aldborough, etc. etc. With Dunwich I believe it is
Fuitllium."$
* Horner, Life of Sir C. Lyell, I, p. 14. t Ibid., p. 16. J Ibid., p. 43.

44 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

At twenty Lyell had seized hold of the germinal notion
that was to change the future of geology, at the same age at
which Pasteur became immersed in the puzzle of the right-
and left-handed crystals of tartaric acid. At eighteen
Perkin discovered the first aniline dye, mauve. At the same
age Einstein conceived the idea of his theory of relativity.
At twenty-two van't Hoff and at twenty-seven Le Bel simul-
taneously carried the ideas of Pasteur on his crystals a
marked stage along the road to completer knowledge. At
twenty-three Emil Fischer discovered what led ultimately
to the discarding of the type theory. At twenty-four
Svante Arrhenius devised the electrolytic theory of
solution that all salts are decomposed in water into positive
and negative elements. At the same age Berthelot dis-
covered his synthesis of benzene compounds. At twenty-six
that brilliant scientist Henry Moseley found a way to ana-
lyse the elements by the reflection of X-rays from their
atoms, one of the most important generalisations in the his-
tory of chemistry since Mendeleef's Periodic Law. What a
bullet in Gallipoli cost us, we can read in the measured esti-
mate Sir J. J. Thomson furnished of Moseley 's career in the
Transactions of the Royal Society. At twenty-eight Niels
Bohr conceived the atom as a sort of solar system in which
the sun is represented by a nucleus of positive electricity
and the planets by particles of negative electricity revolving
around it with astonishing speed. At twenty-eight Kekule
formulated ideas which led to the discarding of the prevalent
type theory. At twenty-nine Crookes discovered thallium,
a new metal by a new method, that of the spectroscope.

The undergraduate's father was a man of means, and for-
tunate is it for geology that this was so. For during the
long vacation of 1818 young Lyell accompanied his father,
mother, and two eldest sisters on a continental tour. They
drove in a ramshackle carriage. The slow pace of the car-
riage enabled Lyell inter alia to note the nodular flints in the
limestone of the Jura, the contrast between these mountains
and the Grampians of his native land, the rapid advance of
the glaciers in general and of the Glacier des Bossons in par-
ticular, the action of the torrent of the Alpbach and its effects
in carrying liquid mud and shattered slate. If we agree with
Heine that what we see depends on our powers of sight>

LYELL AND UNIFORMITARIANISM 45

then it is clear that the possibilities of the powers of this
young man were in excess of those of most men of his
standing.

On his return to Exeter College, he found that few of his
old acquaintances had come up after the long vacation. " It
will be less difficult/' he thinks, " therefore, to acquire what
Paley so strongly recommended to his pupils, ' courage to be
alone/ "* This courage Lyell readily acquired, and he
acquired it with all the more ease because he was forming the
purpose to devote his life to the furtherance of geological
discovery. In the spring of 1827 his ideas as to his future
work appear to be assuming a definite form. To Dr. Gideon
A. Mantell he writes that he has been reading Lamarck, and
is not convinced by that author's theories of the development
of species, " which would prove that men may have come
from the ourang-outang," though he makes this admission :
" After all, what changes a species may really undergo !
How impossible will it be to distinguish and lay down a line,
beyond which some of the so-called extinct species have
never passed into recent ones. That the earth is now quite
so old as he [i.e. Lamarck] supposes, has long been my
creed, and I will try before six months are over to convert
the readers of the Quarterly to that heterodox opinion. . . .
I am going to write in confirmation of ancient causes having
been the same as modern, and to show that those plants and
animals which we know are becoming preserved now, are the
same as were formerly preserved. E.g. scarcely any insects
now, no lichens, no mosses, etc., ever get to places where
they can become imbedded in strata. But quadrupeds do in
lakes, reptiles in estuaries, corals in reefs, fish in sea, plants
wherever there is water, salt or fresh, etc. etc. Now have
you ever in Lewes levels found a bird's skeleton or any
cetacea? If not, why in Tilgate and the Weald beds? In
our Scotch marl, though water birds abound in those lakes,
we meet with no birds in the marl ; and they must be at least
as rare as in old freshwater formations, for they are much
worked and examined. You see the drift of my argument
ergo, mamalia existed when the oolite and coal, etc., were
formed." f There were these differences between successive

* Horner, Life of Sir C. Lyell, I, p. 52.
t Ibid., p. 169.

46 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

fauna. What was their origin? What was the cause of
their extinction ? Answers to questions like these constituted
the prelude to the understanding of the relations between
existing genera and species.

As these ideas were revolving in the mind of Lyell he was
fortunate to meet a man slightly senior to himself, one
Roderick Murchison by name. Murchison had served at
Vimeiro, and had shared in Sir John Moore's Spanish cam-
paign and his famous retreat to Corunna. On the conclusion
of the war he married a thoughtful and affectionate woman
who so altered him that he pursued science with as much
ardour as he had formerly pursued the fox. Healthy and
wealthy, he became wise with the wisdom, of geological lore.
His strength lay neither in the philosophic spirit nor in the
imaginative power that marked out Lyell, but in his rapid
comprehension of the leading features in the geology of a
district. He possessed a patient and sagacious faculty of
gathering facts and marshalling them, thereby paving the
way for Lyell to draw conclusions from these facts. Mur-
chison never quite escaped from the influence of the Wer-
nerian school. To the end of his long life he maintained that
the present inequalities of the land are due to subterranean
action. In the Silurian system he certainly confused the Llan-
dovery rocks with the Caradoc sandstone. As one of the main
articles in his scientific creed was the occurrence of former
convulsions of nature, he inevitably offered stout opposition
to the views of the evolutionists. There were limitations to
Murchison's outlook, but some of these limitations supple-
mented deficiencies in the equipment of Lyell. With Mr.
and Mrs. Murchison, in May 1828, he toured by carriage
through Clermont Ferrand, one of the most interesting geo-
logical districts in Europe. Visiting Pontgibaud and the
gorge of the Sioul, they discovered a section that afforded
them a demonstration that a lava stream had dammed up
the course of a river by flowing down into its valley, and
had converted the part above into a lake. This in turn
had been drained as the river had carved for itself a new
channel, partly in the basalt, partly in the underlying gneiss.
Was it not obvious that a river could cut out a path for
itself? Was it not equally obvious that such a force was
still in operation? Surely, this was Lyell's conclusion, such

LYELL AND UNIFORMITARIANISM 47

forces, given time enough, could sculpture the features of the
crust of the earth. So saw Lyell, though Murchison saw
quite otherwise. At the Euganean Hills the Murchisons
and Lyell at the end of a four months' elaborate investigation
parted.

Lyell wended his way southward to Naples and Sicily. On
the coast of the Maritime Alps he encountered huge beds of
conglomerate, parted one from another by laminated shales
full of fossils, most of which were identical with creatures
still living in the Mediterranean. These masses attained a
thickness of 800 feet, and were displayed in the sides of
a valley fifteen miles in length. Did not the torrents from
the Maritime Alps, as they plunged into the Mediterranean,
build up these masses of stratified pebbles? Did not similar
torrents form the conglomerates and sandstones of Angus in
his native country? If rain and rivers could excavate val-
leys, the sea could slowly raise fossiliferous deposits. One
outcome of the tour was the three papers Murchison and he
wrote. On January 2.1, 1829, he tells his sister Marianne:
" My letters from geological friends are very satisfactory,
as to the unusual interest excited in the Geological Society by
our paper on the excavation of valleys in Auvergne. Seventy
persons present the second evening, and a warm debate.
Buckland and Greenough furious, contra Scrope, Sedgwick,
and Warburton supporting us."* Buckland was an eloquent
expounder of the view that the remains of animals found in
caves afford the means of judging the inhabitants of the
earth before the universal deluge. Greenough was the true
founder and first president of the Geological Society, yet he
displayed an obstinate scepticism towards new opinions, being
a kind of staunch geological Tory. Poulett Scrope believed
in putting notions to the test. When he put Werner's ideas
to the test of the evidence afforded by nature in the case of
volcanoes, he proved them to be mere " idols of the cave."
Sedgwick was an equal believer in laying up a store of facts
from which he could extract brilliant deductions. War-
burton was the very soul of caution.

The reception of this joint paper proved to Lyell the need
of accumulating further facts in support of his views, and
this meant more travelling. In later years he held : " We
* Horner, Life of Sir C. Lyell, I, p. 238.

48 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

must preach up travelling as the first, second, and third
requisites for a modern geologist."* What he preached he
practised, and accordingly we find him climbing Vesuvius,
seeing there for the first time the lava-streams and piles of
scoria of a volcano still active. The sections of the old crater
of Somma furnished a link between the living present and the
remote past between Italy and Auvergne. Visiting Ischia,
he ascended its old volcano, Monte Epomeo, to find at a
height of two thousand feet above the sea marine shells
which belonged to the same class as those in the lower regions
of Ischia. He discovered these fossils, and at once it struck
him, Had not the land been elevated two thousand feet with-
out any appreciable change in the fauna inhabiting the Medi-
terranean? Was there not here another proof of the slow
work of nature? In spite of the bad roads, the poor fare,
and the miserable accommodation he met with, the heart of
the geologist was rejoicing, for his results, as he told Mur-
chison, " exceeded his warmest expectations in the way of
modern analogies." On February 26, 1829, he confides in
his sister Caroline : " I will build up a system on data never
before obtained, by comparing the contents of the present
with more ancient seas, and the latter with each other."f

To the older school nature was always making a leap,
whereas to Lyell she seldom, if ever, made a leap. At all
times and in all places, he held, nature remained constant in
her operation. In April 1829 he tells Gideon Mantell: " A
splendid meeting last night. Sedgwick in the chair. Cony-
beare's paper on Valley of Thames, directed against Messrs.
Lyell and Murchison's paper, was read in part. Buckland
present to defend the ' Diluvialists/ as Conybeare styles his
sect, and us he terms ' Fluvialists/ Greenough assisted us
by making an ultra speech on the importance of modern
causes. No river, he said, within times of history, has
deepened its channel one foot! It was great fun, for he
said, ' Our opponents say, " Give us time, and we will work
wonders." So said the wolf in the fable to the lamb : " Why
do you disturb the water? " " I do not : you are further up
the stream than I." " But your father did." " He never was
here." " Then your grandfather did, so I will murder you.

* Horncr, Life of Sir C. Lyell, I, p. 233.
f Ibid., I, p. 252.

LYELL AND UNIFORMITARIANISM 49

Give me time, and I will murder you." So say the Fluvial-
ists!' Roars of laughter, in which Greenough joined
against himself. What a choice simile! Murchison and I
fought stoutly, and Buckland was very piano. Conybeare's
memoir is not strong by any means. He admits three deluges
before the Noachian and Buckland adds God knows how
many catastrophes besides, so we have driven them out of
the Mosaic record fairly/'*

To Mantell on June 7, 1829, he writes : " The last dis-
charge of Conybeare's artillery, served by the great Oxford
engineer against the Fluvialists, as they are pleased to term
us, drew upon them on Friday a sharp volley of musketry
from all sides, and such a broadside at the finale from Sedg-
wick, as was enough to sink the Reliquce Diluviance f f r
ever, and make the second volume shy of venturing out to
sea."J In a letter of June 10, 1829, he continues the account
of the Diluvialist v. Fluvialist controversy, ending his letter
with these words : " I am preparing a general work on the
younger epochs of the earth's history, which I hope to be out
with next spring. I begin with Sicily, which has almost
entirely risen from the sea, to the height of nearly 4,000 feet,
since all the present animals existed in the Mediterranean! "

The summer of 1829 Lyell spent at Kinnordy exploring the
quarries of Kirriemuir and the neighbouring districts and
encouraging the workmen to look out for the remains of
plants and the scales of fishes. What he was doing at home
Murchison and Sedgwick were doing abroad. For they
were exploring the geological structure of the Eastern Alps
and the basin of the Danube. Throughout their labours
they kept in touch with Lyell, who derived satisfaction from
obtaining results that he felt must keep Murchison sound in
the uniformitarian faith and must turn Sedgwick to that
faith. On October 31, 1829, Lyell writes: " Sedgwick and
Murchison are just returned, the former full of magnificent
views. Throws overboard all the diluvian hypothesis; is
vexed he ever lost time about such a complete humbug ; says
he lost two years by having started as a Wernerian. He says
primary rocks are not primary, but, as Hutton supposed,

* Horner, Life of Sir C. Lyell, I, p. 252.

t Buqkland's book bore this title.

i Horner, Life of Sir C. Lyell, I, p. 253.

ibid., i, p. 254. :

50 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

some igneous, some altered secondary. Mica schist in Alps
lies over organic remains. No rock in the Alps older than
lias! Much of Buckland's dashing paper on Alps wrong.
A formation (marine) found at foot of Alps, between
Danube and Rhine, thicker than all the English secondaries
united. Munich is in it. Its age probably between chalk
and our oldest tertiaries. I have this moment received a
note from C. Prevost by Murchison. He has heard with
delight and surprise of their Alpine novelties, and alluding to
them and other recent discoveries, he says, ' Comme nous
allons rire de nos vieilles idees ! Comme nous allons nous
moquer de nous-memes! ' At the same time he says, ' If in
your book you are too hard on us on this side the Channel,
we will throw at you some of old Brongniart's " metric and
peponary blocks/' which float in that general and universal
diluvium, and have been there " depuis le grand jour qui a
separe, d'une maniere si tranchee, les temps ante-des-temps
Post-Diluviens." ' " * It is inevitably a triumphant letter,
though all the statements in it have not been borne out by
subsequent investigation. Beyond all doubt there are many
rocks in the Alps older than the Trias. The modification and
mineral changes in the Secondary rocks of the Alps are quite
different from the metamorphism of the crystalline schists,
which are the older rocks.

The more he investigated the complicated processes by
which the rocky crust of the earth has been built up and by
which the present varied contour of the surface of the earth
has been produced, the more Lyell was satisfied that the slow,
yet persistent, operations of nature provided an all-sufficient
explanation. The study of the existing economy of the
world revealed the history of our planet in early ages. Nor
would he allow other matters to divert him from his self-
imposed task. He was so engrossed with the writing of his
magnum opus, Principles of Geology: being an Attempt
to explain the Former Changes of the Earth's Surface
by Reference to Causes now in Operation, that he
refused to stand for the vacant chair of Geology and Miner-
alogy in the newly-established London University. He
meant it to convince the ordinary reader that there was an
absolute uniformity in the order of nature. It was a con-
* Horner, Life of Sir C. Lyell, I, p. 256.

LYELL AND UNIFORMITARIANISM 51

elusion entirely opposed to the prevailing system of geo-
logical thought, but it was a conclusion to which he had been
forced by the evidence he had gathered during the course of
his repeated travels. He fully expected, as he wrote his
pages, that the publication of his book would bring a hornet's
nest about his head, but he had determined that, when his first
volume was attacked, he would waste no money on pamph-
leteering, but would work steadily at the second volume.
Then, if the book was a success, he would labour at the
second edition, for " controversy is interminable work."

Henry Milman had just published his History of the
Jews, and by this book he had incurred the disapproval of
the orthodox, who resented the idea of the past of the chosen
nation being treated like the history of any other nation. Its
publication pleased Murchison, who was far-seeing enough to
note that Milman's volumes would create a diversion in
Lyell's favour. For he was attempting to treat geology like
any other science, relying entirely on the evidence of the facts,
not on pre-conceived theories. Poulett Scrope was to review
Lyell's two volumes in The Quarterly Review, and in a letter
of June 14, 1830, to him he insists that the climate of a
region depends not only upon its latitude, but also upon its
geography, the distribution of land and sea, and the coinci-
dence of time between zoological and geographical changes
in the past. These, he thought, were the most novel ideas
in the book.

No one can peruse the epoch-making three volumes, which
appeared from 1830 to 1833, without perceiving many new
ideas. The strength of them lies not in their details but
in the views so convincingly elaborated. Was the method
of nature uniform, a process? Was it sudden, a leap? The
longer he looked facts in the face, the more they demonstrated
to him the gradual process by which nature proceeded.
Deluges were the favourite resort of the catastrophic geolo-
gist, and deluges Lyell could not discover on a universal
scale in the past. He laughs in one of his letters at the idea
of a French geologist that a sudden upheaval of South
America could have been the cause of the Noachian flood.
True, there were, as the catastrophists urged, breaks in the
succession of the strata, but these breaks were, in his judg-
ment, largely local in character. In the record of the rocks

52 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

he could discern no signs of a general destruction of living
:reatures. In a word, geology afforded no corroboration of
the Mosaic cosmogony. Lyell's task was the interpretation
[)f nature, and his clue to the handiwork of nature in the
present was the study of it in the past history of the earth.

The Wernerians faced the problem of origins. Such a
problem Lyell refused to face. He told Poulett Scrope that
" probably there was a beginning it is a metaphysical ques-
tion, worthy a theologian probably there will be an end.
Species, as you say, have begun and ended but the analogy is
faint and distant. Perhaps it is an analogy, but all I say is,
there are, as Hutton said, ' no signs of a beginning, no pros-
pect of an end/ Herschel thought the nebulae became worlds.
Davy said in his last book, ' It is always more probable that
the new stars become visible, and then invisible, and pre-
existed, than that they are created and extinguished.' So I
;hink. All I ask is, that at any given period of the past, don't
stop inquiry when puzzled by refuge in a beginning, which is
ill one with ' another state of nature/ as it appears to me. But
;here is no harm in your attacking me, provided you point out
:hat it is the proof I deny, not the probability of a beginning.
Mark, too, my argument, that we are called upon to say in
*ach case, ' Which is now most probable, my ignorance of all
possible effects of existing causes/ or that ' the beginning '
s the cause of this puzzling phenomenon? "*

When Macaulay had finished his history, he at once took
town his Thucydides. The master of the present turned to
:he master of the past. Lyell took down his master figura-
ively, for he once more travelled abroad to note if the exami-
lation of fresh facts would confirm or destroy his leading
lypothesis. He describes the scenery of the Pyrenees, con-
Tasting it with that of the Alps, and analysing the causes
)f this contrast. Moving on to Spain, he visits Olot, a
egion of extinct volcanoes. Poulett Scrope, the well-
oiown authority on volcanoes, had advised this visit, and
lere Lyell manifests his caution in refusing to assign dates
for eruption in bygone ages unless remains of quadrupeds
>r other organic substances be found. Evidence, not Wer-
lerian theory this is what he insistently demands. In the
:ourse of his wanderings he met with remains suggesting
* Horner, Life of Sir C. Lyell, I, p. 269.

LYELL AND UNIFORMITARIANISM 53

the gradual approximation of the fauna preserved in the
Tertiary deposits to that which still exists, and tending to
settle, as he hopes " for ever, the question whether species
come in all at a batch or are always going out and coming in."
Could he oppose the diluvialists by seeing any instance where
nature allowed visible growth? Joyfully he heard of the
eruption of Graham's Island. A few months before there
has been a depth of eighty fathoms, as sounding on the site
of this island proved. Now the cone " is 200 feet above
water and is still growing. Here is a hill 680 feet, with
hope of more, and the probability of much having been done
before the Britannia sounded." Nature herself was coming
round to his side by bestowing " her approbation of the
advocates of modern causes! Was the cross which Con-
stantine saw in the heavens a more clear indication of the
approaching conversion of a wavering world?" Precisely
so, but it also suggested another consideration, Does nature
make a leap? Yet this question does not seem to have
crossed the mind of Lyell. His evidence suggested proof
of his hypothesis, and, like many another investigator, it
never occurred to him that this evidence when scanned by
eyes other than his might point in quite a contrary direction.
During his tour he met that staunch Wernerian, Jean
Francois d'Aubuisson de Voisins, and the Frenchman fore-
saw that the contempt manifested by the Huttonians for
mineralogy must impede the progress of geology.
D'Aubuisson came to find out that Wernerian conception of
primitive rocks was a pure myth. Lyell was so strongly
possessed by his big idea that he records that D'Aubuisson
" thinks the interest of the subject greatly destroyed by our
new invention, especially our having almost cut mineralogy
and turned it into a zoological science. In short, like all
men, he dislikes that which destroys his early and youthful
associations, and he has too much to do as an engineer to
keep up with the subject."* No one who knows the state of
geology, in England at any rate, from 184010 1870 can avoid
noticing that the forecast of D'Aubuisson proved painfully
correct. Nor were the controversial articles directed by Elie
de Beaumont and others against his system more to Lyell's
taste. That there is an odium scientificum Edward Jenner
* Horner, Life of Sir C. Lyell, I, p. 275.

54 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

and Sir James Simpson attest. That there is an odium
geologicum Lyell was soon to find out.

The years 1830 to 1833 were marked by the publication
of the first edition, in three volumes, of Lyell's Principles of
Geology: being an Attempt to explain the Former Changes of
the Earth's Surface by Reference to Causes now in Operation.
His theory is said to have been suggested by the gradual
growth of the British Constitution. For five years its
author had steadily concentrated on its production, embody-
ing in it facts from physical phenomena, facts from botany
and zoology as well as facts from geology, in all parts of
the world and from observers of all ages. By wealth of
illustration just as much as by cogent reasoning, he drove
home the doctrine of uniformity on all who read his pages.
His three volumes deserve to be styled by that much-abused
adjective, epoch-making. To adapt the tribute Lord Bryce
paid to Lord Acton, Lyell wrote like a man inspired, seeming
as if, from some mountain summit high in air, he saw beneath
him the far-winding path of geological evolution from dim
Cimmerian shores of prehistoric shadow into the fuller yet
broken and fitful light of modern time. Unlike either
Sedgwick or Murchison, he added no new chapters to geo-
logical history. His function was far different, for he was
the philosopher of geology, possessing the rare faculty of
perceiving the connection of scattered facts with each other.
He wrote little, but his ideas have been as the grain of mus-
tard seed in the parable. As A. C. Ramsay once remarked to
Sir Archibald Geikie, " We collect the data, and Lyell teaches
us to comprehend the meaning of them/' Lyell's destruc-
tion of catastrophism in geology prepared the mind for Dar-
win's destruction of catastrophism in the animal kingdom.
As Blaise Pascal points out, " Qu'on ne dit pas que je
n'ai rien dit de nouveau: la disposition des matieres est
nouvelle." For originality lies as much in perception of
opportunity or fresh disposition of material as in invention.
Lyell saw, perhaps too vividly, the new conception of uni-
formity that was looming along the horizon of the geological
world. The essential point is not that he saw too vividly,
but that he saw at all. There were great masters of geology
at home and abroad from 1820 to 1840, the very generation
when Lyell was doing his most illuminating work. On its

LYELL AND UNIFORMITARIANISM 55

bead-roll were such men as Sedgwick and Murchison, De la
Beche and Elie de Beaumont, Von Buch and Boue, Omalius
d'Halloy. Before his fourth decade was completed Lyell
assumed the front rank even with such formidable competi-
tors. The influence of the catastrophic school of geologists
had long been dwindling when the publication of the Prin-
ciples administered the coup de grace.

Edition after edition of Lyell's magnum opus was called
for, and with the increase of knowledge he had " found it
necessary," as he states in his preface, " entirely to rewrite
some chapters, and recast others, and to modify or omit some
passages given in former editions." Naturally he was
delighted to enforce the doctrine of uniformitarianism with
examples produced from forces still at work upon the crust
of the earth. The accounts of Vesuvius and Etna, of the
vicissitudes of climate in the past, the connection between
climate and the geography of the surface of the earth, the
influence of astronomical causes on changes of climate these
were among the matters considerably reinforced by
the additional facts the author was able to adduce. There
were additions of serious importance. Convinced by the
biological evidence of Charles Darwin and A. R. Wallace
and by the botanical evidence of Sir J. D. Hooker, Lyell at
last saw his way to get rid of the objections raised by
Lamarck, and champions the theory of evolution. The
historian of the early history of geology will still find in the
first five chapters an account which is not superseded by the
works of Sir Archibald Geikie or of K, A. von Zittel. With
the process of revision the Principles lost not a little of their
literary charm. For books, like children, are apt to lose some
of their beauty as they increase in size and strength.

Like all men who conceive an original idea, Lyell pushed
it far, very far indeed. The Wernerian school had urged
that practically there were nothing but catastrophes, so now
the Lyellian school was to urge that there was nothing but
uniformity. This school attained a dominant position with
Lyell as its high priest, and its creed was almost universally
believed, notably in England. The high priest taught us all
to substitute for catastrophes glacial action, the slow denu-
dation by rivers, subsidence and elevation. In a word, there
is an orderly process. Uniformitarianism accounts for

56 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

many matters, but does it account for all? Does it a
for the volcanoes as it does for the glaciers, for the aberra-
tions of the atoms? Such questions suggest themselves,
though we can quite understand Darwin pronouncing in his
autobiography the verdict that " the science of geology is
enormously indebted to Lyell more so, I believe, than to any
other man who ever lived." * Galileo Galilei, according to
tradition, maintained that the earth still moved, and in a
far different sense Lyell demonstrated that this truth was the
very foundation of his system. According to Terence,
Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto. Adapting this
obiter dictum, Lyell held that though he was a geologist, yet
he regarded pothing in physics and natural history as foreign
to his purpose.

In March 1831 Lyell informed Gideon Mantell that he
had just been elected Professor of Geology at King's Col-
lege, London, then recently founded by members of the
Church of England. The electors to this chair were the
Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishops of London and Lan-
daff, and two " strictly orthodox doctors/' D'Oyley and Lons-
dale. The Bishop of Landaff showed some hesitation, but
the Rev. W. D. Conybeare, though opposed to Lyell's theories
on scientific grounds, vouched for his orthodoxy. The pre-
lates declared "that they considered some of my doctrines
startling enough, but could not find that they were come by
otherwise than in a straightforward manner, and (as I ap-
peared to think) logically deducible from the facts, so that
whether the facts were true or not, or my conclusions logical
or otherwise, there was no reason to infer that I had made
my^ theory from any hostile feeling towards revelation/ 1 f
This wise caution manifests, on the whole, that atti-
tude to science that has often marked the attitude of
the Church of England towards new discoveries. Nor is
there much cause for surprise at the action of the electors, for
Hooker in his consideration Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical
Polity manifests in the days of Elizabeth as warm an appre-
ciation of the reign of law in nature as Lyell himself. As a
comment on the moderation indicated by his election, Lyell
says that a friend in the United States affirms that there

* Life and Letters of C. Darwin, I, p. 76.
t Homer, Lift of Sir C. Lyell, I, p. 316,

LYELL AND UNIFORMITARIANISM 57

" he could hardly dare to approve of the doctrines even in a
review, such a storm would the orthodox raise against him.
So much for toleration of Church Establishment and No
Church Establishment countries." * Advocates of the dis-
establishment of the Church of England ought to bear in
mind that the course of the years has not diminished the
worth of this conclusion.

The young lady who figures in Pride and Prejudice as a
student of literature reappears in Sybil as a student of astro-
nomy or geology. Ladies flocked to hear Lyell's lectures at
King's College. George Eliot, in her evangelical days,
describes herself as " revelling in Nichol's Architecture of
the Heavens."^ Harriet Martineau points out that, in the
period following the Waverley novels, " the general middle-
class public purchased five copies of an expensive work on
geology to one of the most popular novels of the time." J

So long as Lyell lived he learnt. High priest as he was
of the doctrine of uniformitarianism, he was always willing
to make such modification of his opinions as the progress of
scientific inquiry demanded. Ready to receive new impres-
sions, he was every whit as ready to correct old views. Nine
editions of the Principles of Geology had appeared, and in
every one of them he had maintained the doctrine of Special
Creation. The only explanation which at the time seemed
possible to him of the perpetual change of life revealed by the
successive strata was, that when the material conditions of
any district became so changed that the old inhabitants died
out, a new creative fiat went forth, by virtue of which the
district was again peopled with fresh inhabitants especially
adapted to its new conditions. When Darwin showed that
causes were at work which slowly and gradually modified
the characters of plants and animals, so that they became
adjusted by a self -adapting process to the changing circum-
stances around them, he gladly adopted a view which was so
much in harmony with his general principles. Accordingly
in his tenth edition he renounced the doctrine of Special
Creation and adopted that of Evolution. Sir J. D. Hooker,
in his address to the British Association at Norwich, adduced

* Horner, Life of Sir C. Lyell, I, p, 317.

t Life, I, p. 80.

j History of England, II, p. 334.

58 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

as a signal example of heroism the fact that an author could
thus abandon " late in life, a theory which he had for forty
years regarded as one of the foundation-stones of a work
that had given him the highest position attainable among
contemporary scientific writers." Yet, if the facts upset the
theory so completely as Lyell imagined, is there anything
really heroic in his action? Or does Hooker think that when
a scientist holds a theory for a long time, the scientist, in spite
of facts, will persist in maintaining it? Even Darwin wrote,
" Considering his age, his former views, and position in
society, I think his conduct has been heroic on this subject." *
T. H. Huxley once met Herbert Spencer in the Athenaeum.
Wearing a lugubrious expression Spencer remarked, " Oh,
Huxley, there has been a tragedy in my house this morning."
Without waiting to hear its nature, Huxley at once retorted,
" Oh, I know what has happened. A beautiful scientific
theory has been killed by one nasty inconvenient fact." If
one may judge from the words of praise bestowed on Lyell
by Hooker and Darwin, the real tragedy is that with little
regard for facts, not a few scientists persist in expressing
opinions that ignore the " one nasty inconvenient fact."
It was part of the good fortune of Sir Charles Lyell that he
had suffered much from opposition. He had learnt tolera-
tion by bitter experience in early life. He had endured the
criticisms of the Wernerians, who, obsessed by their own
leading conceptions, refused to admit that other views were
possible. Lyell had shared the fate which usually falls to

Teachers whose minds move faster than the age,
And faster than society's slow flight.

N

Philosophic to the core in his outlook on the world, he ever
retained that mental plasticity which seldom attends the
scientist. John Henry Newman held that " in a higher
world it may be different. But here below to live is to
change, and to be perfect is to have changed often." In that
sense Lyell was always advancing towards perfection. From
such a point of view it is surely obvious that when Lyell
discarded the doctrine of Special Creation, he was acting in
no manner to occasion surprise. That it occasioned surprise
is enough to testify that in the struggle for truth the scien-
* Life and Letters of C. Darwin, II, p. 326.

LYELL AND UNIFORMITARIANISM 59

tist is swayed just as truly as any other thinker by the pre-
possessions of the doctrines in which he has been brought up.

There was a time when it was easy to jeer at the omni-
science of the Rev. William Whewell, Master of Trinity
College, Cambridge, yet he displayed keen sympathy with
the views enounced by Lyell. In spite of the pronounced
opposition of the geologists, Whewell announced in Novem-
ber 1830 to the startled University that Lyell had dis-
covered a new set of powers in nature which might be termed
geological dynamics. Whewell set to work to write an
article for The Quarterly Review, and in The British Critic
he warmly entered into the new conception of geology, see-
ing the bearing of uniformity on the subject, and explaining
it in a clear way.

The storm soon burst on the devoted head of Lyell. He
was afraid of the hostility of Oxford University, asking that
Poulett Scrope's article in The Quarterly Review on this
account may be toned down. Hard as Conybeare had
worked to secure Lyell the chair of geology at King's College,
London, he fired what Lyell termed " an explosion " against
the Principles of Geology. The friend of Elie de Beaumont
and Sir Henry de la Beche, Conybeare was sufficiently emi-
nent in geology to render his opposition serious. Steadfast
as he had once been on the Wernerian side, C. G. B. Daubeny
joined forces with Conybeare, and his open-mindedness lent
strength to all he said.

In his letter of April 7, 1831, to his sister Marianne Lyell
plainly thought that the attack of Adam Sedgwick was the
severest. Admirable as an observer, lucid and brilliant as
an expositor, he had been Woodwardian Professor of Geo-
logy at Cambridge since 1818, and in 1831 attained the
dignity of the presidency of the Geological Society. Enthu-
siastic and earnest, Sedgwick had a keen eye for the testimony
of the rocks, and could shed the charm of his own genial
nature over all his observations. The vigour, the originality,
and the eloquence with which he could set forth his views
were enough almost to daunt the courage of Lyell. Jtist as
Dean Milman had helped by his History of the Jews in giving
the geologist a hearing, so Archbishop Whately helped by his
lectures on Political Economy to diffuse the cold light of
reason as the only test of truth. Whately said that the cry

60 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

against economics is "louder 'than against geology/ be-
cause people will admit that the sacred writings were not to
teach us physics, but say that a science connected with human
concerns should be in accordance even with the letter." *
As Lyell notes this on August 13, 1831, it is plain that the
historian and the political economist, who were both in Holy
Orders, were extending assistance to the new views of the
geologist. The mental atmosphere was, then, altering.
Though Sedgwick had discarded the Wernerian hypothesis,
yet in 1830 from the presidential chair of the Geological
Society he criticised the leading argument of the Principles
of Geology in no friendly spirit. He considered that " my
[i.e. Lyell's] mode of explaining geological phenomena, or
my bias towards a leading doctrine of the Huttonian hypo-
thesis, had served like a false horizon in astronomy to vitiate
the results of my own observation/ 5 f Nor did Sedgwick
ever see reason to change his attitude, for in a letter of
October 6, 1855, Lyell writes: " Sedgwick's attempt to take
the Lower Silurian into his Cambrian is even worse than
Murchison claiming all that is older than the Devonian as
appertaining to his Silurian." $

Much of the early labours of Lyell and Murchison had
been in common, and it is intelligible that Lyell was taken
aback when he found he had to f ace th? active dissent of his
sometime colleague. Not many scientists retain complete
possession of their youthfulness and pliability of mind at the
close of a long life. Lyell was one of them, and Murchison
was certainly not another. Lyell and Murchison, like Dar-
win and Lecky, were wealthy men able to devote themselves
to the pursuit of truth. That pursuit demands inter alia
pliability, plasticity of mind, and this was not a quality
possessed by Murchison. With characteristic obstinacy he
fought against the uniformitarian doctrines in the organic
as well as in the inorganic history of the world to his death
in 1871. The concluding pages of the last edition of his
Siluria reiterate his faith in a former greater intensity of
the operations of nature. From the chair of the Geogra-
phical Society, as Sedgwick from the chair of the Geo-

* Horner, Life of Sir C. Lyell, I, p. 322,
t Ibid., II, p. 4.
t Ibid., II, p. 206.

LYELL AND UNIFORM1TARIANISM 61

logical Society, the Lyellian views were proscribed, though
naturally his greatest vigour of denunciation was reserved
for his private correspondence. Nor indeed can we deny
that the weight of official authority was employed for crush-
ing the new " heresy/' for so Murchison regarded it.

Murchison never used the argument commended by the
solicitor to the barrister, " No case : abuse your opponent."
He attached weight to the part played by glacier-erosion.
The force of the evidence brought forward by Lyell had con-
strained him to yield somewhat of the old exclusiveness with
which he had fought for his icebergs. Some of his points
had to be modified. He consented rather reluctantly to
admit the powers of glaciers to polish and score the face of
a country, and to pile up huge moraine-mounds. This was,
however, the extreme limit of his concessions. He felt him-
self free to set his foot down firmly and refuse to go a step
further in the way of excavation than his friends the " ice-
men " would have him go.

Once upon a time Murchison had laughed at the stubborn
adherence of men like Greenough to the antiquas vias. The
day came when he himself was to stand just as firmly in the
old ways. A letter he wrote to Sir William Denison on
October 6, 1864, forms saddening reading: " In my Anni-
versary Address to the Geographical Society you would see
the pains I have taken to moderate the ice-men, who would
excavate all the rock basins by glaciers eating their way into
solid rocks. ... In seconding the motion of thanks to
Lyell for his address at Bath, I felt bound to say a few
words in defence of my opinions as to the grander intensity
of causes in old geological times than in the present or Man
period ; and as Lyell had used the words ' some great convul-
sion and fracture/ to account for the great rent and fault
out of which the hot Bath water flows, I said I was happy
to receive that indication of the right view, and that I should
in future range my friend Sir Charles along with myself
among the ' convulsionists/ And again, I entirely disagree
with him when he adverts with triumph to the discovery of
animal life in the old Laurentian rocks of North America,
that this is any indication that we have here ' no trace of a
beginning.' On the contrary, the only animal which has been
found, being a zoophyte, adds nothing and changes nothing

62 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

in the general argument founded on the indisputable facts
recorded all over the world, viz. that there has been a
progression of creation from the lowest grades of animal
life up to man/' * Facts he had gathered all his life with
that untiring perseverance that does him honour. His
Silurian system had thrown light on these facts. The pity
was that for the rest of his days all facts must be interpreted
by their bearing on the Silurian system, and facts are too
much for such a theory.

The ranks of Conybeare and Daubeny, of Sedgwick and
Murchison, were joined by W. H. Fitton, who had laid down
the proper succession of the strata between the oolite and the
chalk ; by William Lonsdale, joint originator with Murchison
and Sedgwick of the theory of the independence of the
Devonian system; and by Henry Samuel Boase, F.R.S., who
investigated Cornish geology. Nor would Agassiz give up
the catastrophe system. Fitton regretted from the historical
standpoint that the fact that James Hutton had anticipated
the Principles of Geology was inadequately noticed. Lyell
retorted that Steno in 1669, Hooke in 1705, and Moro in
1740 deserved as much credit as Hutton, and that his earlier
chapters dealt equally with all. Fitton felt natural indigna-
tion at the unpardonable neglect with which the French and
Germans had treated Hutton, and he thought he perceived
similar neglect on the part of Lyell. Lonsdale laid stress
on the arguments put forward by Elie de Beaumont and by
Sedgwick, though Lyell succeeded in modifying this ob-
jector's views.

If opposition was vocal in England and America, it was
also vocal in France and in Germany. Elie de Beaumont
in 1868 still believed in the general sudden formation of the
organic world and of the particular sudden formation of
mountain chains. In 1857 there was a vacancy in the French
Institute and de Beaumont thought that Lyell was anxious for
election. De Beaumont frankly opposed Lyell, writing to him
" to let me know, in return for my enmity to his opinions (or
as they always say in Paris, to himself, ' mes ennemis/ etc.,
meaning my theoretical opponents) that he had the will and
power to thwart me in what he really imagines is the great
object of everyone's ambition. His message did not open my
* Sir A. Geikie, Memoir of Sir R. Murchison, II, p. 318.

LYELL AND UNIFORMITARIANISM 63

eyes to his course in the election, for I knew that before, but
was a gratifying testimony to the existence of a party in my
favour." *

Another opponent was Joachim Barrande, who had investi-
gated the extraordinary abundance and variety of Silurian
fossils in Bohemia. This keen observer noted the equiva-
lents of Murchison's Upper and Lower Silurian series, and
he also noted below that series a still older group of strata.
He discovered a ' colony ' of Upper Silurian fossils 3,400
feet deep, in the midst of the Lower Silurian group. These
fossils he regarded as " colonies " which reappeared at
higher horizons. This constituted a break in the theory for-
mulated by Lyell. With that loyalty to truth characteristic
of him Lyell investigated these fossils in 1856. " I never,"
he confessed, " saw Silurian fossils in such abundance except
in a few strata in Sweden ; but here they pass through many
thousands of feet. Yet the whole fossiliferous area is only
equal to one-sixtieth part of the Adriatic. As Barrande
himself has calculated this, I wonder he remains such a
finality man. I remember at the Geological Society when
Sedgwick and Murchison used to argue with me exactly on
the grounds now taken up by Barrande in proof of a begin-
ning of life on this globe, founded on the notion that no
fossils would ever be found below the stiper stones. Now
that a totally distinct fauna has turned up, and that the trans-
formation of some are traced from the egg to the adult,
the discoverer is just as sure that here at least we have the
true beginning." f

The German critics, Lyell notices on June I, 1836, were
attacking him vigorously. They held that by impugning the
doctrine of spontaneous generation, and substituting nothing
in its place, he had left them nothing but the direct and
miraculous intervention of the First Cause, as often as a new
species is introduced. Hence, in their judgment, he had
overthrown his own doctrine of revolutions, carried on by a
regular system of secondary causes. The tenth edition was
to meet attacks like this. Serious as was the opposition of
Murchison and Sedgwick in England, the opposition of
Leopold von Buch in Germany was just as serious. He was

* Horner, Life of Sir C. Lyell, II, p. 243.
t Ibid., II, p. 226.

64 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

the most illustrious geologist that Germany had produced
With Alexander von Humboldt he had attended the lecture!
of Werner at Freiburg. Conservative by nature, von Bucl
possessed width of knowledge and shrewdness of observa-
tion. To physical geography and palaeontology, to dyna
mical and stratigraphical geology, he made original contribu-
tions. He was quite as philosophic and almost as travelled as
Lyell himself. " We must/' held Lyell, " preach up travel-
ling as the first, second, and third requisites for a moden
geologist," * a doctrine to which von Buch w r ould readily
have subscribed. He resembled de Beaumont in conceiving
personal hostility towards those who did not embrace th<
theoretical doctrines which he published. He experiencec
difficulty in breaking with all that Werner had taught hin
as to the aqueous origin of basalt, and all that he himsel;
thought he had perceived in his extended journeys througl
his fatherland. The whole doctrine of the chemical precipi
tation of the rocks of the earth's crust was at stake. If h<
surrendered at one point, where was he to stop? The sigh
of the volcanoes and basalt-hills of Italy and Central Frana
and the proofs of the recent uprise of Scandinavia wiclenec
his geological horizon, which was still dominated by the sur
of Werner. Glacial geology of the type propounded b>
Lyell he could not bear. When Louis Agassiz put forwarc
such a view, von Buch " could hardly contain his indignation
mingled with contempt, for what seemed to him the vie\>
of a youthful and inexperienced observer." f On Alarcl
24, 1855, Lyell writes: " It is strange what influence voi
Buch exerted, for he had made both Kwald and Beyricl
entirely disbelieve all the glacial hypothesis. The other da]
I told Mitscherlich I would convert them both, and he saic
(both of them being present and laughing at the joke), ' No
you will never do that, for the one ' (pointing to Beyrich) ' i;
like a stone, and the other like india-rubber ; you think you an
making a great impression, and then find next day that uj
he comes again just in his former shape/' J

Lord Kelvin no more accepted in its entirety the uniformi
tarian doctrine than he accepted its supplement, the evolu

* Horner, Life of Sir C. Lyell, I, p. 233.

t E. C. Agassiz, Louis Agassis, his Life and Correspondence, I, p. 264

j Horner, 'Life of Sir C. Lyell, II, p. 203.

LYELL AND UNIFORMITARIANISM 65

tionist doctrine. He introduced from Kant's Collected Works
his remarks in the following parable : " A large proportion
of English popular geologists of the present day have been
longer contented than other scientists to look upon the sun
as Fontenelle's roses looked upon their gardener. ' Our
gardener/ they say, ' must be a very old man; within the
memory of roses he is the same as he has always been; it is
impossible he can ever die, or be other than he is.' " *

* S. T. Thompson, Life of Lord Kelvin, I, p. 539-

CHAPTER IV

HELMHOLTZ, JOULE, AND THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY

THE advocates of the advantages of a mixed ancestry can
turn with considerable confidence to the career of Hermann
Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz. He was the son of
Ferdinand Helmholtz, a teacher of philology and philosophy
in the Potsdam Gymnasium, a man of high culture and high
intelligence. His mother was the daughter of a Hanoverian
artillery officer of the name of Penne, a lineal descendant of
William Penn, the Quaker who founded Pennsylvania. She
possessed the faculty of penetrating obscure points by intui-
tion, a faculty she transmitted to her son. The grandmother
on his mother's side sprang from a family of French refu-
gees, of the name of Sauvage. Thus Helmholtz had the
blood of England and France as well as of Germany coursing
through his veins when he was born on August 31, 1821.
The width of the literary studies of the father is perhaps
seen in the comprehensive scientific tastes the son was to
develop. Is there a trace of any hereditary aptitude for
mathematics ?

The little we know of his early life was revealed by Helm-
holtz in a speech delivered in 1891, in reply to the toast of
his health at a banquet given in honour of his seventieth
birthday. For the first seven years of his life he was a
weakly boy, confined for long periods to his room, and fre-
quently to his bed; but he was fond of such amusements as
were possible, and he evinced wonderful activity of mind.
Thanks to his wooden bricks, he already knew, like Pascal,
all the facts the masters of his geometry class expected him
to learn. Frau von Bernuth, his father's cousin, daughter
of Surgeon-General Mursinna of Berlin, assured the parents
by the example of Alexander von Humboldt, who learnt
nothing before he was eight, " and now the King has made

66

THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY 67

him President of the Academy of Sciences, with the title of
Excellency, and a big yearly stipend and this is what I
predict for your son." The lad's health improved by degrees
with gymnastics and daily bathing, and his keen love of
nature was developed by his regular walks with his father
in the beautiful environs of Potsdam. His father encour-
aged him to study languages and literature. The quality of
his mind, however, did not fit him for following in his
father's steps. While the class read Cicero or Virgil, which
did not interest him, he was often engaged beneath the table
in working out the passage of rays through the telescope, or
in learning some of the optical theorems that served him in
good stead later on in the construction of the ophthalmoscope.
It is curious to find that in the textbooks he read on physics
and chemistry no attention had been paid to the discoveries
of Antoine Laurent Lavoisier and Sir Humphry Davy.
Phlogiston still played its part and galvanism ended with the
voltaic pile.

At school he met with no difficulty in learning off by heart
the poems of the great masters, though he found the task
far from easy when the verses were by second-rate poets.
History, as it was taught in those days, was beyond him.
It was a real torture to him to commit prose extracts to
memory. Indeed, in the lower classes, he felt hampered by
the want of a clear recollection of facts if they were discon-
nected. He even found it hard to distinguish between left
and right. It is a remarkable indication of the breadth
of his early education that he was able to read the fables of
Lokman in the original Arabic when he was twelve years of
age. His father exercised him in the composition of essays
and verses, and Helmholtz remarks that although the verses
showed that he was a poor poet, the practice proved invalu-
able to him in the way of training him to the proper use of
forms of expression. He also mentions that he used to listen
to the philosophical discussions between his father and his
friends, thus growing familiar with some of the problems of
metaphysics as enunciated by Kant and Fichte.

The home of the boy was decidedly intellectual, if it was
not scientific. Indeed it may well be that such an atmosphere
was best fitted to develop the many-sidedness of the future
scientist. Algebra and geometry were the keys with which

68 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

he hoped to unlock the secrets of physical phenomena that
increasingly attracted him. Of course he performed experi-
ments, to the detriment, he confessed, of his mother's linen
and furniture. He constructed optical apparatus with a few
spectacle glasses and a small botanical lens belonging to
his father. Filled with a passionate enthusiasm for the
causes of phenomena, he never felt satisfied with the apparent
solution of any problem, if there were still doubtful points
in it, and these he invariably endeavoured to clear up by
bringing them fairly before his mind. Caring for art and
science, he also cared for music and poetry. Nor is it devoid
of significance that some of the greatest masters of mathe-
matical physics, like Kelvin in the past and Einstein in the
present, have been fervently devoted to music.

While still in the second class of the Gymnasium, Helm-
holtz announced to his father that he had found his vocation
in life, and that it was undoubtedly science. The philoso-
pher was forced to tell him that he had to educate four
more children, explaining that he could not afford to provide
him with instruction in physics unless he also took up the
study of medicine. The lad acquiesced in this decision. As
early as 1835 his father applied for his admission to the Royal
Friedrich-Wilhelm Institute of Medicine and Surgery in
Berlin, which gave considerable assistance to medical
students. For it guaranteed them a complete course of
study and means of livelihood in return for a certain num-
ber of years' service as army surgeons. Thanks to the prac-
tical assistance of his relative, Surgeon-General Mursinna,
he obtained admission as bursar to this Institute in 1838.
Work was strenuous. There were forty-eight lectures in
the week. There were six on Chemistry by Mitscherlich,
six on General Anatomy, four on Splanchnology, three on
Osteology, three on the Anatomy of the Sense-organs. In
addition to these there were lectures on Osteology in the ana-
tomical theatre. Hecker gave two lectures on General Medi-
cine. Then there were four on Physics by Turte, two on
Logic by Wolf, three on History by Preuss, two on Latin by
Hecker, and one on French by Pastor Gosshauer. Beside
these the student had twelve hours of revision classes. In
spite of the severity of his attendance at classes, his spare
time was spent on music, even on the worst days practising

THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY 69

for an hour. He played sonatas of Mozart and Beethoven,
to whom he was as devoted as Bismarck, and any new pieces
he got hold of. In the evenings of his first year he read
Byron and Goethe, and sometimes for a change the integral
calculus. In his list of lectures there is no mention of mathe-
matics, yet his thoughts often strayed to this subject. No
one, however, fostered his talent for it, and it is significant
of the silence with which he pursued it that some of his
early friends, such as Brticke and Du Bois Reymond, who
were his fellow-students, remained unaware of the atten-
tion he was bestowing on the problems of analytical geometry.
He had no teacher save his own genius. One wonders
what might not have happened had he had a teacher of such
transcendent gifts as William Hopkins or Edward John
Routh.

For the development of his mathematical powers he had
to rely on himself. He continued during his scanty hours
of leisure to devote himself to music and poetry. He read
Homer and Byron with the same avidity as he devoured Biot
and Kant. He found time to take part in amateur theatricals,
enjoying a splendid performance of Euryanthe and admir-
ing also Seydelmamrs Mephistopheles and Clara Stich's
Gretchen. Nor did he stand aside from the growing national
feeling, watching its developments with eager interest.
Indeed in what was he not interested? More and more he
felt drawn to the teaching of that master physiologist,
Johannes Miiller, the greatest living force then in the Uni-
versity of Berlin, the Cuvier of Germany.* What John
Hunter f accomplished in England, he accomplished in Ger-
many, for he became the most outstanding biological teacher
of his time. He left the deepest impression upon all who
were fortunate to come into contact with him. Among his
pupils were Schwann and Henle in anatomy, Briicke and Du
Bois Reymond in physiology, and Virchow in pathological
anatomy. Nor was his influence confined to Germany.

* E. Du Bois Reymond reprints his Gcdachtnissrcde cntf Joh. Miiller f
with extensive notes, in his Reden, II, pp. 143-334, especially 219 ff. ; cf .
T. von Billroth, Lehrcn und Lernen dcr medicinischen Wisscnschaftcn,
pp. 307-66.

t Audubon, Cuvier, Benjamin Franklin, Gladstone, von Humboldt,
John Hunter, Samuel Johnson, Lord Kitchener, Scott, and Wagner had
fathers of over forty.

70 SLlliJNLE AND SCIENTISTS

Bonders in Holland ; Claude Bernard and Vulpian in France ;
Sir William Bowman, William Sharpey, and William Ben-
jamin Carpenter in England; and Allen Thomson and John
Goodsir in Scotland, all acknowledged the seminal ideas
Miiller was sowing. What William Harvey and Charles Bell
did for physiology in England, Albrecht von Haller (1708
1777) and Johannes Miiller (1801 1858) did for it in
Germany. Helmholtz lived entirely in the circle of Miiller's
pupils, since he had already formed a friendship with the
physiologists Briicke and Du Bois Reymond, who were two
years senior to himself, and like him devotedly attached to
their suggestive professor. What this intercourse meant to
him Helmholtz owned when he said, half a century later
so lasting are the impressions of youth " Whoever comes
into contact with men of the first rank has an altered scale
of values in life. Such intellectual contact is the most inter-
esting event life can offer."

Suggestive as the intercourse with Miiller undoubtedly
was, the intercourse with the students of his day at the Insti-
tute was no whit less powerful. For while the matured mind
can stimulate, young mind in touch with young mind can
kindle the flame as nothing else can. Du Bois Reymond,
who in due time became Professor of Physiology in the
University of Berlin, Briicke, who was to hold the same chair
in the University of Vienna, and Virchow, who was to
become Professor of Pathology in the University of Berlin,
were among the young men who felt that their master was
unquestionably right in the emphasis he laid on the investi-
gation of biological problems by the methods of physical and
chemical science. Fortunately at this time the chair of
Physics in the University of Berlin was held by Gustav
Magnus, who felt repelled by the assumptions of the meta-
physical school and attracted by the experiments of the school
of Johannes Miiller. Clausius and Heintz, Gustav Karsten
and Knoblauch, Kirchhoff and Werner Siemens, Quincke and
Wiedemann, Beetz and Tyndall in physics or in chemistry
advocated the methods employed by Briicke, Du Bois Rey-
mond, and Helmholtz in physiology. They formed " the
Physical Society," and in it members from the physical and
the physiological sides met on equal terms, though as Briicke,
Du Bois Reymond, and Helmholtz approached physiological

THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY 71

problems from the physical standpoint the physicists tended
to gain supremacy. The metaphysicians had assumed that
the fundamental problem of vital action was quite beyond
the domain of experimental science, and "the Physical
Society" implicitly set out to combat ideas that could not
be demonstrated.

Helmholtz never believed that the years he spent in medical
study were wasted. Nor were they. In a lecture on
"Thought in Medicine/' delivered in 1871, he remarked:
" My own original inclination was towards physics ; external
circumstances obliged me to commence the study of medi-
cine. It had, however, been the custom of a former time to
combine the study of medicine with that of the natural
sciences, and whatever in this was compulsory I must con-
sider fortunate ; not merely that I entered medicine at a time
in which anyone who was even moderately at home in
physical considerations found a virgin field for cultivation,
but I consider the study of medicine to have been the train-
ing which preached more impressively and more convincingly
than any other could have done, the everlasting principles
of all scientific work; principles which are so simple and yet
are ever forgotten again; so clear and yet always so hidden
by a deceptive veil." *

In 1842 Helmholtz, at the age of twenty-one, presented
his inaugural thesis, entitled De Fdbrica Systematis nervosi
Evertebratonim, or " The Structure of the Nervous System
in Invertebrates," and it was naturally dedicated to Johannes
Miiller. In 1833 Von Ehrenberg discovered in ganglia,
which are usually small, more or less rounded swellings
on nerves, often situated at the apparent junction of several
trunks, peculiar cells or corpuscles. These cells are also
found in all nerve centres, such as the spinal cord and brain,
and they lie in a fine variety of tissue, while numerous nerve
centres pass through the ganglia, apparently in close proxi-
mity to the cells. Was there a connection between the nerve
cells and the nerve fibres ? Mtiller had taught that there was
in all probability a connection. It was reserved for Helm-
holtz, with a very simple and primitive form of a com-
pound microscope, to discover in the ganglia of leeches and
crabs that the nerve fibre originates from one of the cor-
. * Popular Lectures, 1881, p. 202.

72 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

puscles. What the master had guessed the pupil had dis-
covered, thus furnishing a first-rate contribution to minute
anatomy. It was the first of the long series of discoveries
which added to our knowledge of no less than seven sciences.
As each of seven cities contended for Homer, so seven
sciences, mathematics, physics, chemistry, physiology, medi-
cine, philosophy, and aesthetics, claimed Helmholtz. From
1842 to 1894, the year of his death, paper after paper flowed
from his indefatigable pen. With the exception of one
year, 1849, ^ e always published at least one important paper,
usually three or four, each year, so that he had to his credit
a grand total of no fewer than 217 distinct papers and books.
It is a record just as impressive as Mommsen's for its quality
as for its quantity.

His discovery in 1842 showed what he might have accom-
plished in the realm of anatomy. He was a man who took
the practical side of medicine as seriously as did Sir James
Paget. In his lecture on " Thought in Medicine " he points
out that " perhaps only he can appreciate the immense im-
portance and the frightful practical scope of the problems
of medical theory, who has watched the fading eye of ap-
proaching death, and witnessed the distracted grief of
affection, and who has asked himself the solemn questions,
Has all been done which could be done to ward off the dread
event? Have all the resources and all the means which
science has accumulated become exhausted? " *

The scientific atmosphere in which he had lived with
Johannes Muller and his congenial friends he exchanged
for his duties as Hussar-Surgeon attached to the regiment
of Red Hussars, stationed at his old home, Potsdam. Such
was his work from 1842 to his appointment to the chair of
Physiology in Konigsberg in 1849. Private practice he
never had, and all his time off duty he devoted to science.
He arranged a small laboratory for physics and physiology
in the barracks, where he was frequently visited by Du Bois
Reymond and Briicke, who came out from Berlin to discuss
their plans for the future reconstruction of physiology.
True, the instruments were as elementary as those employed
by Michael Faraday, but the mind is what really matters.
Besides, there was the constant advice and assistance which
* Popular Lectures, 1881, p. 203.

THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY 73

Du Bois Reymond tendered, who, he writes, " tended me like
a mother, to enable me to attain a scientific position." At
once he set out to investigate the metabolism in muscular
activity, to embark on a series of laborious experiments on
the conduction of heat in muscle, and the rate of transmis-
sion of the nervous impulse.

There were metaphysical presuppositions in the mind of
his father, and even Miiller was not free from the older
quasi-metaphysical position, though in his later years he also
adopted the views of Ernst Heinrich Weber. He was the
first to demand an explanation of the phenomena of life by
examination of these phenomena by physical methods and by
the application of physical laws. Helmholtz was close to
his own home, and he increasingly felt that his whole scien-
tific attitude was irreconcilable with the wholly speculative
philosophy of his father. Ferdinand Helmholtz admitted
only the deductive method in science and refused to admit
the inductive. His father, Hermann, on the other hand, pro-
claimed with all the vehemence of a young discoverer that the
use of inductive reasoning constituted the salvation of
science in general and of the physical sciences in particular.
This is the clash of two generations which Edmund Gosse
has so pathetically portrayed in Father and Son, and it is also
the clash of men influenced by two sets of conflicting pre-
suppositions. We meet it in the case of Clara Schumann,
whose father opposed her marriage with the famous musician
because his son-in-law-to-be belonged to a school of music
different from his own, and he foresaw that when his daugh-
ter married she would fall not under her father's influence
but under her husband's. Treitschke the father was devoted
to Saxony, while his son was devoted to Prussia with conse-
quences which can still be felt. The outcome in the case
of Helmholtz was that he came to shun discussion of his
experiments with his father. The old man felt the altered
nature of the relationship keenly, but he came at last to
submit to it.

Definite and methodical experiment was the only method
by which he could advance the general principles of science.
" Vital forces " if there were such forces must be brought
within the scope of the laboratory. The Physical Society,
like Bacon, took all knowledge for its province. Miiller had

74 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

again and again raised such questions as whether the life of
organisms was the effect of one special, self -engendered,
definitely directed force, or merely the sum of the forces that
are effective in inorganic nature also, modified only by the
manner of their occurrence. Baron von Liebig, with all the
authority of his commanding position, transformed these
questions into the far more concrete problem of whether the
mechanical energy and the heat produced in an organism
could entirely result from its own metabolism, or not. Be-
hind these questions Helmholtz perceived that there was a
common bond in the validity of that law of Conservation of
Energy which had for years seemed incontestable to his
mode of thought. Proof was wanting. Nevertheless, he
felt convinced of its validity. The outer world was devoid
of his intuition, and for it there was necessary the proof to
be derived from endless experiments in different regions of
physics and physiology. Of the truth of his mathematico-
physical conception he entertained little doubt. In 1845 he
set about testing the accuracy of his physical conceptions
upon a highly complex physiological problem, and the result
was the paper he published in Miiller's Archiv, entitled
" Metabolism during Muscular Activity."

A paper like this cannot be understood nor its significance
appreciated unless we know something about the previous
history of the attempts to solve the problems of fermentation
and putrefaction. From time immemorial, as Sir Rickman
J. Godlee observes in his fine biography of Lord Lister, it
was common knowledge that grape juice turned into wine,
that beer was made from malt, and vinegar from wine, by
similar processes. The fermentations which lead to the pro-
duction of wine and bread have been known since the pre-
historic period, and must have been among the first of natural
phenomena which man learnt to control and adapt to his
needs. They attracted the attention of philosophers who, in
a succession from the early alchemists through Paracelsus to
Stahl, played with ideas and did little more than show the
absurdity of the older ideas which they in turn replaced by
new verbal fantasies. Then came the era of chemists, who
had learned how to handle gases and to distinguish one from
the other. The nature of fermentation was supposed to be
highly mysterious, and accordingly the scientific men up

THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY 75

to the beginning of the nineteenth century passed it by. The
chemists of the eighteenth century had spent precious time in
disputes about the number of the alchemical principles and
the phlogistic theory. It occurred to but few of them that
they ought to test their pre-conceived notions by experiment.
The ferment of the French Revolution shortened the days of
Lavoisier, a founder of modern chemistry, who was the first
to study fermentation scientifically. The Republic pro-
claimed it had no need for savants of the type of Lavoisier or
Condorcet, Bailly or Cousin, Vicq-d'Azyr or Dionis du
Lejour, and exterminated them, though nothing like so ruth-
lessly as the early Russian Revolutionists. Lavoisier re-
garded fermentation as a purely chemical process and felt
only interested in observing the chemical changes he per-
ceived. He introduced the chemical balance, and showed
that when a solution of sugar was fermenting under the
influence of a little yeast from beer, the sum of the weights
of the alcohol and carbonic acid that were produced was very
nearly equal to the weight of sugar that was destroyed. He
carried the analysis further, and came to the wrong conclusion
that if it were possible to recombine the alcohol and the
carbonic acid, the sugar would be recovered. He had
already shown by other experiments that a man who is
doing work requires more oxygen than a man at rest.
Obviously certain ponderable or imponderable substances
were consumed in the production of mechanical effects, and
were renewed by vegetative vital processes. He also noted
that the amount of excreted nitrogenous matters was in-
creased by muscular activity. The matter to be investigated
was, What were data concerning the initial and the inter-
mediate steps of the process? What precisely was the seat
of its occurrence?

Gay-Lussac, the pupil and the friend of Berthollet, had
turned his attention in manhood to physics, and in middle life
he changed to chemistry. In 1810 he carried on the experi-
ments stopped by the execution of Lavoisier in 1794.* They
had been suggested to him by what M. Appert, who had no
scientific education, had found out. Gay-Lussac published
the results of a series of these experiments on fermentation.

* Annales de Chimie, 1810, LXXVI, p. 245. Here my indebtedness to
Sir Rickman J. Godlee is very heavy.

76 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

M. Appert, a confectioner or food-purveyor, had preserved
alimentary substances by the received empirical methods,
such as desiccation or pickling, and " having spent 45 years
in this business," he records, " I have been able to avail
myself, in my process, of a number of advantages which the
greater number of those persons have not possessed who have
devoted themselves to the art of preserving." In his book
on The Art of Preserving all Kinds of Animal and Vegetable
Substances for Several Years he sets forth his results. By
order of the French Minister of the Interior in 1810 it was
published in a report of the Board of Arts and Manufactures.
Appert's plan was to place the substances he wished to pre-
serve in very carefully corked bottles, and to keep them for
a longer or shorter time at the temperature of boiling water.
The bottles were filled nearly full. Practically, the results
were almost always successful. In fact Appert anticipated
the modern methods of bottling fruit and vegetables. To
his extreme surprise Gay-Lussac found that grape juice thus
preserved for a year fermented in a few hours if decanted
into another vessel. He therefore assumed that oxygen was
necessary for starting the fermentation of grape juice, though
he was forced to own that it might not be necessary for
carrying on the process when it had once been set going, or
even for starting the growth of the yeast.

Gay-Lussac appealed to the experiments conducted by
Lavoisier, Fabroni, and Baron Thenard. The last was not
merely an experimenter but also belonged to that rare class
of great professors. He could truthfully boast that he had
had 40,000 pupils, and that he had left the impress of his
winning personality on all of them. The results of the
experiments of these three men had been to show that for
the development of alcoholic fermentation it is necessary to
bring together a saccharine matter and a particular ferment
" de nature animate." Gay-Lussac goes on to say that it has
been asserted that this can take place in the absence of oxygen.
But can it? For such an argument assumes that all living
ferments are identical, a proposition he vigorously contests.
By a series of experiments he found he was right, and he
succeeded in convincing Thenard that he was right. Gay-
Lussac concluded that " the ferment of the grape is not of
the same nature as the yeast of beer, or rather that they are

THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY 77

not by any means both of them in the same condition." * A
step had been taken, but that was all Gay-Lussac was only
too well aware that " fermentation still seems to me one of
the most mysterious of chemical processes; especially because
it only operates gradually, and because we cannot understand
why, when the ferment and the sugar are intimately mixed
together, they do not act upon one another more rapidly.
One would be tempted to believe that it is partly due to a
galvanic process, and that it has some analogy with the
mutual precipitation of metals." f Plainly, he was straying
away from the path of the true solution.

From 1810 to 1835 nothing further was done. Pasteur
was a boy of fifteen and Lister was only eight, when from
two or three quarters interest in the problem revived. The
darkness of the subject was pierced by a momentary ray of
light in 1836. Another distinguished French chemist,
Cagniard-Latour, presented his observations in a paper sent
to the Academic des Sciences on June 12, 1837. He was the
first to call in aid the use of the microscope. He had been
working for twenty-five years, he said, at first with very
imperfect instruments, but more recently with better ones
by Georges Oberhauser and Giovanni Battista Amici which
magnified 300 and 400 diameters.

Cagniard-Latour tabulated the result of his investigations
as follows:

1. Yeast is a mass of small globules which, as they can
reproduce themselves, are organic and not simply a chemical
substance, as was before supposed.

2. These bodies appear to belong to the vegetable kingdom
and to reproduce themselves in different manners.

3. They appear to act on a saccharine solution as long as
they retain their vitality, " from which it is fair to conclude
that very probably it is some effect of their vegetation which
sets free the carbonic acid whilst converting the sugar into
a spirituous liquor."

To these main conclusions he added three other minor
propositions :

i. That yeast can develop and increase under some circum-

*Annales de Chimie, 1810, LXXVI, p. 246.
t Ibid., p. 247.

78 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

stances with great speed, even in the presence of carbonic
acid, as in the brewer's vats.

2. That the manner in which it grows is different from
that previously observed in the case of similar microscopic
organisms.

3. That it retains its vitality even after exposure to the
low temperature obtainable from solidified carbonic acid.

Gay-Lussac had been puzzled by the slow and progressive
action of a living ferment. Cagniard-Latour solved the
puzzle when he demonstrated that this action depended upon
the gradual growth of an organism. The ferment of beer
called yeast was, in short, composed of cells " susceptible
of reproduction by a sort of budding, and probably acting on
sugar through some effect of their vegetation." Lavoisier,
Fabroni, Baron Thenard, Gay-Lussac, and Cagniard-Latour
were all Frenchmen who approached the problem from the
physical angle. Now it was the turn of Germans to approach
it from the physiological angle, though it was to be reserved
for the Physical Society to approach problems from all
angles.

How indispensable a new line of approach was is clear
when a man like J. B. Dumas, who was to be the academic
sponsor for Pasteur, said that perhaps there might be a sequel
to Cagniard-Latour's statement. So late as 1853, Anglada,
in his book On Contagion, expressed himself thus : " M.
Dumas, who is an authority, looks upon the act of fermenta-
tion as strange and obscure ; he declares that it gives rise to
phenomena the knowledge of which is only tentative at
present. Such a competent affirmation is of a nature to dis-
courage those who claim to unravel the mysteries of con-
tagion by the comparative study of fermentation. What is
the advantage of explaining one through the other since both
are equally mysterious ! " There was evidently comfort to
be derived when you labelled phenomena obscure or mys-
terious, and greater comfort when you labelled them both
obscure and mysterious. Berzelius, the Swedish chemist,
thought that fermentation was due to contact. Was there
not supposed to be a catalytic force? In his opinion, what
Cagniard-Latour believed he had seen was but "an imme-
diate vegetable principle, which became precipitated during
the fermentation of beer, and which, in precipitating, pre-

THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY 79

sented forms analogous to the simpler forms of vegetable life,
but formation does not constitute life/'

The heart of Helmholtz rejoiced to know that the first
German physiologist to get close to the solution of the vexed
question of fermentation was a friend and pupil of Johannes
Miiller, Theodor Schwann. Working independently of
Cagniard-Latour and in complete ignorance of his labours
Schwann wrote his first paper a few months before that
of the French physicist, though it was not published till a
few months later.* Schwann gave the first real proof that
the vegetable cells caused fermentation. Of course his
proofs encountered opposition from all who held the widely
diffused belief in spontaneous generation. The facts he
adduced went a long way to prove the truth of his conclusion.
In true scientific spirit, he admitted that he had met with
nasty, inconvenient facts which he could not account for. It
is of course the only justifiable method of presenting con-
clusions, but it is not exactly the way to produce conviction.
In spite of the corroboration of his striking facts put forward
by men like Franz Schtilze and Schroeder, the scientific
world remained unconvinced.

From the days of Lavoisier to those of Schwann there
had been marked advance. One of the then great men in
the world of science was Baron von Liebig, who was wont to
make oracular pronouncements on many questions. He
contemptuously brushed aside the arguments of Cagniard-
Latour and Schwann, and as his reputation was world-wide
men paid him attention. In his paper, " Sur les Phenomenes
de la Fermentation et de la Putrefaction, et sur les causes qui
les provoquent," he allows that the microscope reveals the
presence of certain globules in the deposit that takes place
during fermentation. He goes on to point out that "the
appearance they present in these circumstances has induced
certain savants to adopt the view that the ferment consists
of organised living beings, plants or animalcules, which,
in order that they may be able to develop, assimilate the
elements of the sugar and give them off as excrement in the
form of carbonic acid and alcohol ; this is how they explain

* " Vorlaufige Mittheihmg betreffend Versuche iiber die Weingahrung
und Faulniss," von Dr. Th. Schwann im Berlin; Annalen der Physik
und Chcmie, 1837, XLI, p. 184.

8o SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

the decomposition of the sugar and the increase in the amount
of the ferment during the formation of the must of beer.
This hypothesis is self -destructive." * Fermentations to
him were simply chemical processes.

We must do Liebig justice, for he has his own explanation
of both fermentation and putrefaction. They take place by
what he calls eremacausis, which is a species of slow com-
bustion. By eremacausis he understood certain changes that
organic substances undergo at normal or slightly raised tem-
peratures, and which only occur in the moist state and in
the presence of oxygen. His explanation of putrefaction is
that it is " a kind of eremacausis which takes place without
the influence of atmospheric oxygen ; it is a combustion of one
or of many of the elements of the organic substance at the
expense of its own oxygen, or possibly of that of the water,
or possibly even at the expense of the oxygen of the organic
matter and of the water at the same time." These theories
were adopted, taught, and were to be found in all treatises
on chemistry. Curiously enough, Liebig insisted that it was
the dead portion of the yeast and not the living which, being
an extremely alterable organic substance, " decomposed, and
in decomposing set in motion by the rupture of its own ele-
ments the molecules of the fermentative matter." f

Helmholtz set himself the task of investigating the modi-
fications produced in the chemical constitution of the muscle
by its own activity. Resorting to the frog, " that ancient
martyr to science," he succeeded by means of the electrical
machine he had constructed, and by a Leyden jar, in showing
that the components within a muscle undergo chemical trans-
formation during its activity in virtue of the chemical pro-
cesses he had described in his account of fermentation and
putrefaction. For a time these experiments on metabolism,
in spite of his other duties, engrossed him. But was there
not a preliminary step? What were the relations between
muscular action and the heat therein developed? With the
smaller issue there was inextricably connected the larger one
of a theory of animal heat. Is the material theory of heat
any longer tenable? All his thoughts led him to say, No.
Must a kinetic theory be substituted for it ? All his thoughts

* Annales de Chimie et de Physique, 1839, LXXI, p. 187.
t R. Vallery-Radot, The Life of Pasteur, I, p. 105.

THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY 81

were tending to make him say, Yes. Heat, he was coming
increasingly to hold, originates in mechanical forces, either
directly by friction, or indirectly from an electrical current
produced by the motion of magnets. At the beginning of
October 1846 he sent a " Report on Work done on the Theory
of Animal Heat for 1845," at the request of Du Bois Rey-
mond, to the Fortschritte der Physik, issued by the Physical
Society, and in the course of it he maintained that his con-
ception of heat as motion involves the conclusion that
mechanical, electrical, and chemical forces must always be
the definite equivalent of one and the same energy, whatever
the mode by which one force is transformed into another.
Such a far-reaching conception lacked confirmation. Obvi-
ously the physicists and the physiologists of the Physical
Society must set out with their experiments.

The study of fermentation and putrefaction is clearly one
that takes the student far afield. Helmholtz was able to
show that the oxygen produced by electrolysis in a sealed-up
tube containing boiled fermentable fluid did not cause fermen-
tation. Then he placed a bladder full of boiled grape juice in
a vat of fermenting juice, and found that the fluid in the
bladder did not ferment. Beyond question this ingeniously
proved that the cause of fermentation could not pass through
the wall of the bladder. Liebig held that if the fermentation
were excited by a substance formed by the yeast cells, and
presumably soluble, one would have expected it to pass
through the wall of the bladder. But Helmholtz proved that
it did not. On the other hand, if the process were caused by
the small yeast cells, then one can understand why fermenta-
tion was not excited, as the yeast cells could not pass through
the membrane. In effect, he had prepared the way for the
conclusion that the living organisms in the air and in the yeast
are the causes of putrefaction and fermentation.

The investigation had begun with the phenomena of animal
heat and it widened into the consideration of the causes of
the changes observable in energy. The subject continued to
agitate his mind from 1844 to 1848, and he returned to it in
1850, 1852, 1855, and 1859, a singularly epoch-making year
in the history of science. In order to judge the worth of his
contribution to one of the most far-reaching conceptions
in modern science, we must retrace our steps to note its
6

82 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

slow growth. Others had been working more or less
chiefly more vaguely in the field before Helmholtz.

Bacon, in his Novum Organum, states his conviction that
" the very essence of heat is motion and nothing else."
Descartes affirmed the doctrine of the constancy of the quan-
tity of motion in the world. Boyle, in his book On Cold,
published in 1665, when discussing the primum frigidum,
says: " For if a body's being cold signify no more than its
not having its insensible parts so much agitated as those of
our sensories, there will be no cause to bring in the primum
frigidum ... it suffices that the sun, or some other agent
which agitated more vehemently its parts before, does now
either cease to agitate them, or agitate them very remissly/ 1
John Locke makes a similar statement, but all these state-
ments are merely speculative, wanting any experimental veri-
fication. Newton was in possession of the principal facts
of the conservation and the transformation of energy.*

The first experiments of value were those of Count Rum-
ford about 1798. The scientists of his day held that heat
is an imponderable fluid, caloric, which flows from a body
at a higher temperature to one at a lower, much as water
flows from a place of higher to a place of lower level. They
also spoke of substances having different capacities for heat.
Lavoisier had demonstrated the truth of the conservation of
matter. Rum ford set to work to develop the consequences
of this conservation. He reasoned that if heat is a fluid, it
can neither be created nor destroyed. Hence either the same
amount of heat must be present in the hot chips and cannon
as in the unbored metal or else heat must have reached the
cannon from outside. He produced by friction sufficient
heat to raise 26*58 pounds of water from its freezing-point
to its boiling-point. Heat, he deduced, could not be a
material substance. It is a form of energy: it is motion.
Black had shown that heat could disappear as temperature
and become latent, that is, heat not discoverable by the ther-
mometer. Still, in his view heat was a material substance.
Rumford's experiments threw doubt on this conception. He
was in fact the first to suggest definitely the convertibility of
heat into mechanical work. It was not the disappearance of

* P. G. Tait, Lectures on Recent Advances in Physical Science, lect.
ii, p. 27.

THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY 83

heat but its appearance when mechanical work was performed
which attracted his attention. His conclusion was that " it
appears to me to be extremely difficult, if not quite impos-
sible, to form any distinct idea of anything capable of being
excited and communicated in the manner the heat was
excited and communicated in those experiments, except it
be motion."

Sir Humphry Davy showed that ice could be melted by
friction, even in a vacuum, when everything else in the neigh-
bourhood was at the freezing-point. His view was that
heat is not matter, but " may be defined as a peculiar " motion,
probably a vibration of the corpuscles of bodies tending to
separate them. Davy states that his experiments on the
generation of heat " were made long before the publication
of Count Rum ford's ingenious paper on the heat produced
by friction." The pity is that he did not pursue such a
promising line of investigation. If he had taken his state-
ments into account with the second interpretation of New-
ton's third law, he would have anticipated Joule and
Helmholtz.*

Thomas Young, physician, physicist, and Egyptologist,
directed his many-sided attention to this problem. We draw
attention to Young because he bears a striking resemblance to
Helmholtz. Both were remarkable for versatility and origin-
ality ; both possessed a vast extent of knowledge ; both were
physicists and physiologists ; and both conducted fundamental
researches. Helmholtz says of this Somersetshire scientist :
" He was one of the most clear-sighted men who have ever
lived, but he had the misfortune to be too greatly superior in
sagacity to his contemporaries. They gazed on him with
astonishment, but could not always follow the bold flights
of his intellect, and thus a multitude of his most important
ideas lay buried and forgotten in the great tomes of the
Royal Society of London, till a later generation in tardy
advance re-made his discoveries and convinced itself of the
accuracy and force of his inferences." When Young dis-
cussed the experiments of Rum ford he inferred that " heat

* Here I want to say, once for all, what a mine of wealth I find in
J. T. Merz, A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century.
His four volumes are marked by an insight of understanding and a pene-
tration of thought rare in books.

84 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

is a quality and that this quality can only be motion." He
refers to Newton's view that " heat consists in a minute
vibratory motion of the particles of bodies/' and to his own
undulatory theory of light. As radiant heat possessed the
same properties of reflexion, refraction, and polarisation as
light possessed, the analogy of this form of heat with light
for a long time served to unify the speculations of those who
were inclined to embrace a mechanical or kinetic view of the
nature of heat. James Prescott Joule was the first to eman-
cipate himself from it.

We met Liebig when we were considering the problem of
fermentation, and we meet him again in the attempt to ascer-
tain the nature of the correlation of forces. As his position
was amazingly commanding, this is what we should expect.
Vaguely the notion floated before the mind that there was
some sort of connection between heat and motion. The
circulation of matter, its fermentation, the phenomenon of
animal heat, its origin, and the part it plays in the living
organism attracted his attention. His width of interests
naturally compelled him to advocate an alliance of the differ-
ent sciences. This meant that he speculated about the con-
nection between them in general and the interdependence of
the various forces of nature in particular. He is in fact
one of those invaluable men in science whose general aims
are of more importance than their particular objects.
Johannes Miiller also powerfully stimulated thoughts leading
in the direction of the correlation of all the physical forces
of nature. Naturally such a teacher stamped this conception,
directly and indirectly, on the impressionable minds of his
pupils.

Clearly we need, as well as the idea, the mind fit to receive
it. As Heine puts it, what we see depends on our powers
of sight. The ideas that floated before the minds of
Liebig and Miiller germinated in the mind of that remark-
ably original thinker, Karl Friedrich Mohr. In 1837 in a
Viennese scientific periodical appeared his short memoir " On
the Nature of Heat." The following are startling words:
" Besides the known fifty- four chemical elements there exists
in nature only one agent more, and this is called ' Kraft ' ;
it can under suitable conditions appear as motion, cohesion,
electricity, light, heat, and magnetism." The pith of the

THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY 85

point is undoubtedly in this quotation, yet its publication
remained unknown, even to the author himself, and fell on
deaf ^ars throughout the scientific world for more than thirty
years. He had offered his paper to Poggendorff, who refused
it. A dread of introducing speculative matter into the
Annalen was the cause of this refusal, and of the refusal of
the later papers of Julius Robert Mayer and of Helmholtz.
Mohr then sent his manuscript to one who was interested in
theoretical physics, Baumgartner of Vienna, who printed it
in the Zeitschrift fiir Physik, and never informed the author
that he had done so. Curiously enough, Mohr himself did
not note the wonderful discovery he had made, contenting
himself with inserting a mere abstract of it in the Annalen
der Pharmacie^ The illuminating conception he held, but
it does not seem to have occurred to him that he ought to
measure the amount of energy appearing in diverse forms.

J. R. Mayer took five years later the next step. In a
paper published in 1842 he showed that he clearly conceived
the convertibility of falling force, or of the vis viva, which
is its equivalent, into heat, which again can disappear as heat
by re-conversion into work or vis viva as the case may be.
Sir Gabriel Stokes points out that Mayer drew attention to
the mechanical equivalent of heat as a fundamental datum,
like the space through which a body falls in one second, to be
obtained from experiment .f He went further. When air
is condensed by the application of pressure, heat is produced.
Taking the heat so produced as the equivalent of the work
done in compressing the air, Mayer obtained a numerical
value of the mechanical equivalent of heat, which, when
corrected by employing a more precise value of the specific
heat of air than that accessible to Mayer, does not differ much
from Joule's result. Sir Gabriel Stokes admits that this was
a bold idea. He proceeds, however, to observe that one
essential condition in a trustworthy determination is wanting
in Mayer's method : the portion of matter operated on does

* Vol. XXIV, p. 141. On the controversies over the conservation of
energy, the following works of G. Helm are fair-minded, especially the
second: Die Lchre von der Energie; Die Energetik nach Hirer geschicht-
lichcn Entivickelung ; Das Princip der Erhaltung der Energie.

f Sir J. Larmor, Sir G. G. Stokes, II, p. 51 ; P. G. Tait, Recent
Advances, pp. 53, 60; J. J. Weyrauch, Klcinere Schriften . . . von R.
Mayer, pp. 407, 408; G. Helm, Energetik, p. 24; E. Mach, Warmelehre,
p. 248.

86 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

not go through a cycle of changes.* Mayer reasons as if
the production of heat were the sole effect of the work done
in compressing air. But the volume of the air is changed at
the same time, and it is quite impossible to say a priori
whether this change may not involve what is analogous to
the statical compression of a spring, in which a portion or
even a large portion of the work done in compression may
have been expended. In that case the numerical result given
by Mayer's method would have been erroneous, and might
have been widely erroneous. Hence the practical correct-
ness of the equivalent given by Mayer's method must not lead
us to shut our eyes to the merit of Joule in being the first to
determine the mechanical equivalent of heat by methods
which are unexceptionable, as fulfilling the essential condi-
tion that no ultimate change of state is produced in the
matter operated upon. The happy generalisation of Mohr
and the numerical estimate of Mohr alike remained unnoticed
by contemporary philosophers, and indeed similar neglect,
for a time, fell to the lot of Joule. From 1841 to 1847 he
laboured without receiving attention from the men of science
of his day.

From that distinguished chemist John Dalton, Joule of
Manchester received his first introduction to chemistry.t In
1841 he read his first paper " On the Electric Origin of the
Heat of Combustion," before the Manchester Literary and
Philosophical Society. In a paper of the year before, " On the
Production of Heat by Voltaic Electricity/' he showed that he
had grasped the great importance of the law of electrolytic
equivalence as affording the means of accurately measuring
chemical processes. He gave definite expression to the vaguer
ideas supported by Faraday and others that force was inde-
structible, and that the different elements of nature were
mutually convertible. In magneto-electricity he discerned an
agent capable, by simple mechanical means, of destroying or
generating heat. Sir Humphry Davy, so far back as 1821,
had observed the fact that a current produced heat in a con-

* The italics are Stokes's.

t A valuable account of Joule's life and work, by Osborne Reynolds,
will be found in the Joule volume of the Manchester Literary and
Philosophical Society. It is a matter of regret that there is no adequate
biography.

THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY 87

ductor through which it had passed.* Davy had experi-
mented on wires of different materials but of the same
dimensions, arranging them in order according to the magni-
tude of the heat produced. Joule took a great step in
advance. For he announced in his 1840 paper and he was
the first so to announce the definite law that " when a cur-
rent of voltaic electricity is propagated along a metallic con-
ductor the heat evolved in a given time is proportional to the
resistance of the conductor multiplied by the square of the
electric intensity/' i.e. the electric current.f In the same
paper he showed that the law applies, when proper allowance
is made for certain disturbances, to heat produced in electro-
lytes. The paper also contained the first reference to a
" standard of resistance " ; this consisted of a coil of 10 feet
of copper wire '024 inch in thickness. Obviously, we are
coming close to the conception of the equivalence of heat
and energy.

The nearer he was coming to the goal, the more certain he
determined to make his approaches. He persisted in his
experiments with the electromotive forces of various forms
of voltaic cells and the heats of combination of the material
of the cells. The results of his experiments down to 1843
are summed up in a paper " On the Heat evolved during the
Electrolysis of Water/' J Here are some of his conclusions :
" Third Hence it is that, however we arrange the voltaic
apparatus, and whatever cells of electrolysis we include in
the circuit, the whole caloric of the circuit is exactly accounted
for by the whole of the chemical changes. Fourth As was
discovered by Faraday, the quantity of current electricity
depends upon the number of atoms which suffer electrolysis
in each cell, and the intensity depends upon the sum of
chemical affinities. Now both the mechanical and heating
powers of a current are (per equivalent of electrolysis in any
one of the battery cells) proportional to its intensity. There-
fore the mechanical and heating powers of the current are
proportional to each other. Fifth The magnetic electrical
machine enables us to convert mechanical power into heat by

* Phil. Trans, 1821 ; cf. H. L. F. von Helmholtz, Ueber die Erhaltung
der Kraft, I, p. 33.

t Proc. R.S., Dec. 17, 1840; G. Helm, Energetik, p. 34.
t Mem. Manchester Lit. and Phil. Soc., vol. VII.
i.e. the electromotive force.

88 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

aid of the electric currents which are induced by it, and I iuivc
little doubt that by interposing an electric magnetic engine in
the circuit of a battery a diminution of the heat evolved per
equivalent of chemical change would be the consequence,
and that in proportion to the mechanical powers obtained/ 1
The experimental question referred to in the fifth head was
soon submitted to a further test, and on August 21, 1843, a
paper "On the Calorific Effects of Magneto-Electricity and on
the Mechanical Value of Heat " was read before the British
Association at Cork.* This paper was as wonderful for its
detailed knowledge as for its sweeping conclusions. In it
Joule described a number of experiments in which a small
electro-magnet was rotated in water in a magnetic field pro-
duced either by permanent magnets or by a fixed electro-
magnet. The current induced in the moving coils, the total
heat generated, and the energy used in maintaining the
motion were all measured. It was proved that the energy
used and the heat produced were both proportional to the
square of the current. Thus a constant ratio exists between
the heat generated and the mechanical power used in its
production, so that, in Joule's words, " The quantity of heat
capable of increasing the temperature of a pound of water by
one degree of Fahrenheit's scale is equal to ... a mechanical
force capable of raising 838 pounds to a perpendicular height
of one foot." f We may say here that the correct result of
after-years is 778 foot-pounds. In a postscript to his paper
Joule adds : " I have lately proved experimentally that heat
is evolved by the passage of water through narrow tubes. . . .
I thus obtain one degree of heat per pound of water from a
mechanical force capable of raising 770 pounds to the height
of one foot. I shall lose no time in repeating and extending
these experiments, being satisfied that the grand agents of
nature are by the Creator's fiat indestructible, and that wher-
ever mechanical force is expended an exact equivalent of
heat is always obtained."

The details were ample, and the conclusion was no less
ample. Heat had long been suspected to be a form of energy,
and at last it had been verified to be a form of energy. From

* Phil Mag., 3rd ser., vol. XXIII ; Collected Papers, I, p. 123.
t G. Helm, Energctik, p. 34; J- P. Joule, Scientific Papers, p. 328;
H. L. F. von Helmholtz, Ueber die Erhaltung dcr Kraft, I, p. 33.

THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY 89

at least the days of Lavoisier men had been working at this
hypothesis, and now their work was practically over. One
pictures with what satisfaction the scientists welcomed this
striking verification of what they had long dreamt. It is
melancholy to relate that Joule's wonderful conclusion was
received with entire incredulity. The fate of Mohr was also
the fate of Joule.

The Manchester investigator plainly perceived that more
experiments were required. Entirely unaware of a sug-
gestion of Mayer, he proceeded in 1844 to inquire into the
changes of temperature due to the rarefaction and condensa-
tion of the air. In another fashion he arrived at a fresh
determination of the mechanical equivalent of heat. In this
paper he combated the views of Carnot and Clapeyron, and
put forth once more his own conclusion that the steam in the
cylinder of an engine loses heat while it is expanding and
doing work, and that on condensation of the steam the heat
thus converted into power is not given back. He prepared
a paper for the Royal Society, but the Royal Society rejected
it. His own discoveries cleared up the only point that was
really obscure in Carnot's cycle,* though he failed to perceive
this. Like Mohr, Joule lived too near to his own results to
be able to do justice to their many-sidedness.

The chilling reception of his paper at Cork and the rejec-
tion of another paper by the Royal Society would have been
enough to daunt many men. Joule quietly pursued his
experiments at his small laboratory at Pendlebury and later
at the one his father built for him at Whalley Range. Two
years passed, and Joule once more tried his fortune with a
paper read before the British Association at Oxford. In
the new apparatus brass paddles revolving in a fluid were
propelled by the descent of weights. Joule's account of the
circumstance by which he attracted attention, written in
1885, is worth recording:

" It was in the year 1843 that I read a paper ' On the
Calorific Effects of Magneto-Electricity and the Mechanical

* In this cycle Carnot conceived that heat should be given to a pre-
scribed quantity of air or steam ; then the hot fluid should expand, doing
work, but becoming cooler as it expanded, and giving put its heat to the
refrigerator; then it should be compressed to its original volume and
brought to the same pressure and temperature to recommence the cycle.
This cycle is reversible.

90 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

Value of Heat ' to the Chemical Section of the British Asso-
ciation assembled at Cork. With the exception of some emi-
nent men, among whom I recollect with pride Dr. Apjohn, the
president of the section, the Earl of Rosse, Mr. Eaton Hodg-
kinson, and others, the subject did not excite much attention ;
so that when I brought it forward again at the [Oxford]
meeting in 1847 ^ le chairman suggested that, as the business
of the section pressed, I should not read my paper, but confine
myself to a short verbal description of my experiments. This
I endeavoured to do, and discussion not being invited, the
communication would have passed without comment if a
young man had not risen in the section, and by his intelligent
observations created a lively interest in the new theory. The
young man was William Thomson, who had two years pre-
viously passed the University of Cambridge with the highest
honour, and is now probably the foremost scientific authority
of the age." *

Thomson's version, given in 1882, is also worth recording:
" I made Joule's acquaintance at the Oxford meeting, and
it quickly ripened into a life-long friendship. I heard his
paper read at the section, and felt strongly impelled to rise
and say that it must be wrong, because the true mechanical
value of heat given, suppose to warm water, must for small
differences of temperature be proportional to the square of
its quantity. I knew from Carnot's law that this must be
true (and it is true; only I now call it ' motivity ' in order
not to clash with Joule's 'mechanical value'). But as I
listened on and on I saw that (though Carnot had vitally
important truth not to be abandoned) Joule had certainly a
great truth and a great discovery, and a most important
measurement to bring forward. So instead of rising with
my objection to the meeting, I waited till it was over, and
said my say to Joule himself at the end of the meeting.
This made my first introduction to him. After that I had
a long talk over the whole matter at one of the conversaziones
of the Association, and we became friends from thence-
forward. However, he did not tell me that he was to be
married in a week or so; but about a fortnight later I was
walking down from Chamounix to commence a tour of Mont
Blanc, and whom should I meet walking up but Joule, with
* Collected Papers, II, p. 215; Lord Kelvin, Popular Lectures, II, p. 556.

THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY 91

a long thermometer in his hand, and a carriage with a lady
in it not far off. He told me that he had been married
since we parted at Oxford! and he was going to try for
elevation of temperature in waterfalls. We trysted to meet
a few days later at Martigny, and look at the Cascade de
Sallanches to see if it might answer. We found it too much
broken into spray. . . . Joule's paper at the Oxford meeting
made a great sensation. Faraday was there and was much
struck with it, but did not enter fully into the new views. It
was many years after that before any of the scientific chiefs
began to give their adhesion. It was not long after when
Stokes told me that he was inclined to be a Joulite.

" Miller and Graham, or both, were for many years quite
incredulous as to Joule's results, because they all depended
on fractions of a degree of temperature, sometimes small
fractions. His boldness in making such large conclusions
from such very small observational effects is almost as note-
worthy and admirable as his skill in extorting accuracy from
them. I remember distinctly at the Royal Society, I think
it was either Graham or Miller saying simply he did not
believe in Joule because he had nothing but hundredths of a
degree to prove his case by/' *

Endowed as he was with the magnificent audacity of youth,
Thomson found himself at first, and for many months to
come, unable to accept what Joule had laid down. To his
brother James he wrote after the meeting : " I enclose Joule's
papers, which will astonish you. I have only had time to
glance through them as yet. I think at present that some
great flaws must be found. Look especially to the rare-
faction and condensation of air, where something is decidedly
neglected in estimating the total change effected in some of
the cases." Thomson felt quite convinced that work could
be turned into heat. But could heat be turned into its
equivalent of work? This he could not, in spite of Joule's
reasoning, accept. Dominated by the reasoning of Carnot,
Thomson saw that heat could furnish motive power when
being let down from a higher to a lower temperature, or
when passing from a hotter to a colder body. Unlike Joule,
he could not as yet perceive that this would still be true even

* S. P. Thompson, Life of Lord Kelvin, I, p. 264; Nature, XXVI,
p. 618.

92 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

if during the transference some portion of heat disappeared,
as heat, to be converted into its equivalent in work. In
another account of the Oxford meeting given by Thomson in
1893, at the unveiling of the Joule statue in Manchester, he
declared that he was " tremendously struck with the paper,"
and added, " This is one of the most valuable recollections of
my life, and is indeed as valuable a recollection as I can con-
ceive in the possession of any man interested in science." *
Nevertheless, his attitude in 1847 was one f warm approval
mixed with disapproval

On his return to Manchester, Joule continued his
experiments on the production of heat by friction.
The results were communicated to the Royal Society by
Faraday on June 21, 1849, and this time the Council printed
his paper " On the Mechanical Equivalent of Heat." f
Joule mentions in it the series of observers who preceded
him. As the outcome of fresh experiments, conducted with
the utmost care, he concludes that " the quantity of heat
capable of increasing the temperature of a pound of water
(weighed in vacuo, and taken at between 55 and 60 Falir.)
by i Fahr. requires for its evolution the expenditure of a
mechanical force represented by the fall of 772 Ib. through
the space of one foot." For nearly thirty years this result
of Joule's stood alone as the one satisfactory determination
of a most important physical constant. Writing in the
Proceedings of the American Academy for Arts and Sciences
on June n, 1879, Professor Rowland of Baltimore points
out : " We find that the only experimenter who has made the
determination with anything like the accuracy demanded
by modern science, and by a method capable of giving good
results, is Joule, whose determination of thirty years ago,
confirmed by some recent results to-day, stands almost, if
not quite, alone among accurate results of the subject."
Professor Rowland undertook fresh experiments, and con-
cluded that the difference between his own results and those
of Joule is " not greater than I in 400, and is probably less."
So thought an American expert in 1879, but so did not
think the observers in 1850.

Lord Rayleigh in his biography of his father, the eminent

* S. P. Thompson, Life of Lord Kelvin, I, p. 265.

f Phil Trans., 1850, pt. i; Collected Papers, I, p. 298.

THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY 93

scientist, reveals the limitations of Thomson in arresting
fashion. He lived in a pre-Joule world, and he found it
excessively difficult to assimilate the ideas of that world
with those he had learnt at Cambridge. In spite of the
experiments of Joule, Thomson declares in 1848 that " the
conversion of heat (or caloric) into mechanical effect is
probably impossible, certainly undiscovered." * In actual
engines for obtaining mechanical effect through the agency
of heat, we must consequently look for the source of power,
not in any absorption and conversion, but merely in a trans-
mission of heat. In a footnote appended to the word " im-
possible " in the sentence quoted, he adds : " This opinion
seems to be universally held by those who have written on
the subject. A contrary opinion, however, has been advocated
by Mr. Joule of Manchester; some very remarkable discover-
ies which he has made with reference to the generation of
heat by the friction of fluids in motion, and some known
experiments with magneto-electric machines, seeming to indi-
cate an actual conversion of mechanical effect f into caloric.
No experiment, however, is adduced in which the converse
operation is exhibited ; but it must be confessed that, as yet,
much is involved in mystery with reference to these funda-
mental questions of Natural Philosophy." He had either
not read the evidence of Joule's experiments or else, in fear
of Carnot's reasoning, he doubted their relevancy.

Thomson was an unbelieving Thomas, but he was also an in-
vestigating Thomas. He expounded in a paper read before the
Royal Society of Edinburgh the Carnot cycle in detail, study-
ing the writings of Regnault and of Joule. $ He persists in
employing the term " mechanical effect " for work performed,
and persists in accepting as axiomatic " the ordinarily received
and almost universally acknowledged " principle that in the
cycle of operations as much heat must leave the body as
entered it. Though he admits the urgent necessity of a
most careful examination of the entire experimental basis of
the theory of heat and though he turns to Joule and to the
evidence which previously he had ignored, he sums up thus :
" In the present state of science, however, no operation is

* Lord Kelvin, Mathematical and Physical Papers, I, p. 102.
t This expression denotes work done.

j Trans. R. Soc. Edin., XVI, p. 541 ; Lord Kelvin, Mathematical and
Physical Papers, I, p. 113. Cf. also Ann. de Chitnie, XXXV, p. 248, 1852.

94 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

known by which heat can be absorbed into a body without
either elevating its temperature, or becoming latent, and
producing some alteration in its physical condition; and the
fundamental axiom adopted by Carnot may be considered as
still the most probable basis for an investigation of the motive
power of heat."

Thomson was evidently still an unbeliever, denying any
conversion of heat or caloric into mechanical effects. In
inquiring into the thermal agency spent in conducting heat
through a solid, Thomson asks, What becomes of the
mechanical effect which it might produce? Nothing, he
heartily believes, can be lost in the operations of nature, for
no energy can be destroyed. What effect then is produced in
place of the mechanical effect which is lost? He continues :
41 A perfect theory of heat imperatively demands an answer to
this question, yet no answer can be given in the present state
of science. A few years ago a similar confession must have
been made with reference to the mechanical effect lost in a
fluid set in motion in the interior of a rigid closed vessel, and
allowed to come to rest by its own internal friction; but in
this case the foundation of a solution of the difficulty has
been actually found, in Mr. Joule's discovery of the genera-
tion of heat by the internal friction of a fluid in motion.
Encouraged by this example, we may hope that the very
perplexing question in the theory of heat by which we are
at present arrested, will, before long, be cleared up. It
might appear that the difficulty would be entirely avoided by
abandoning Carnot's fundamental axiom. ... If we do so,
however, we meet with innumerable other difficulties in-
superable without further experimental investigation, and an
entire reconstruction of the theory of heat from its founda-
tion. It is in reality to experiment that we must look either
for a verification of Carnot's axiom, and an explanation of
the difficulty we have been considering; or for an entirely
new basis of the theory of heat." The very experiments he
desired had already been supplied by Joule, covering the exact
point raised by Thomson. Blinded by pre-conceived notions
Thomson could not perceive the whole meaning either of
the papers or of the experiments of Joule.*

* For Thomson's later views, cf. S. P. Thompson, Life of Lord Kelvin,
I, pp. 440, 529.

THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY 95

We have seen that the papers of Joule met with entire
incredulity at Cork by men of the scientific rank of Dr.
Apjohn, Lord Rosse, and Eaton Hodgkinson; with rejection
at the hands of the Royal Society of London; and with
hostility for many years on the part of the scientific chiefs.
The fate of Joule was indeed to be the fate of Helmholtz.

We left our study of Helmholtz at the stage when the
consideration of the causes of the changes observable in
energy was taking hold of his thoughts. He returned to his
labours on animal heat again and again, knowing nothing of
the labours of Mayer* and Joule. He watched the exchanges
of matter that occur in connection with muscular contractions,
noting that such exchanges are invariably accompanied by
the disengagement of heat. Did not this indicate that animal
heat, as produced by a muscle, arises from the chemical
phenomena occurring in the muscle? Just as Joule and
Thomson watched the mechanical engine, so Helmholtz
watched the human engine. He was able to establish that
the heat of the combustion of food, as determined by a
calorimeter, is equal to the heat given off by an animal. In
effect, an animal is a living calorimeter in which foodstuffs
are oxidised or burnt.

The researches on muscular motion and on heat inevitably
led the investigator far afield. What, for instance, is the
relation of the forces of nature to each other? What is the
relation of these forces to the phenomena of life? What is
life? Is it to be explained by the interplay of the mechanical
processes at work in the outer world? Was there what
thinkers of the older and idealistic schools aimed at by em-
ploying such terms as the " vis viva " of Leibniz, the " vital
force "of Stahl and Bichat, the " purpose and finality "of
Kant, the " nisus formativus " of Blumenbach, " the Idea "
of Hegel and Claude Bernard, or the " inherent tendency "
of von Baer? Between the two extremes of considering life
as a universal property of all matter and of considering it as
a casual and accidental occurrence attached to rare and ex-
ceptional conditions, there was room for much variety of
opinion. Vitalists like Bichat insisted on the independence,

* Cf. J. J. Weyrauch, Klcincrc Schriftcn und Brief e von Robert Mayer,
which forms a supplement to the edition by the same author of R.
Mayer's Schriften, entitled, Die Mechanik dcr Wtirme.

96 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

the incommensurability, and the originality of life which he
defined as the totality of those functions which resist death.
According to Claude Bernard, " L'element ultime du phe-
nomene est physique; Tarrangement est vital." * In accept-
ing a mechanical conception, we must be careful not, he
thinks, to fall into the common mistake of trying to explain
vital processes as due directly to mechanical causes. In 1783
Lavoisier and Laplace had presented a memoir to the Paris
Academy of Sciences, in which they attributed the generation
of animal heat mainly to a process of combustion which
took place by the conversion of oxygen into fixed air during
the process of respiration. Other chemists, stimulated by
this memoir, applied the new science of chemistry to ques-
tions of the individual and collective life of organisms. The
ideas of Liebig led to the extension of the idea of " Stoff-
wechsel " (that is, the continual change of matter connected
with maintenance of form in all living things) so as to
embrace heat, light, electricity, and the like. In the world
of Helmholtz, accordingly, there was the view that the living
body was only a minute portion of the mechanism of the
cosmos, and there was also the view that there was some-
thing beyond, some spiritual fuel continually being added to
its vital fires. Helmholtz thought that if life was fed from
such force of external energy, then the living body was an
example of a perpetuum mobile, a perpetual motion, an idea
he had often heard ridiculed in the philosophical discussions
that were not infrequent in his father's home.

Considerations like these induced Helmholtz, in his twenty-
sixth year, to write his paper " Ueber die Erhaltung der
Kraft" on the Conservation of Energy. In the days to come
Clerk Maxwell was to acclaim it just as the generation after
the printing of Joule's paper acclaimed his. Clerk Maxwell
wrote : " To appreciate to the full the scientific value of
Helmholtz's little essay on the Conservation of Force, we
should have to ask those to whom we owe the greatest dis-
coveries in thermo-dynamics and other branches of modern
physics, how many times they have read it over, and how
often during their researches they felt the weighty state-
ment of Helmholtz acting on their minds like an irresistible

* C. Bernard, Leqons sur les phenombnes dc la vie, II, p. 524.

THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY 97

driving power." As Lavoisier had rendered the persistence
of matter the fundamental principle of chemistry, so Helm-
holtz rendered the conservation of force the fundamental
principle of physics.* He showed how it could be con-
sidered as an extension of the theorem known in abstract
dynamics as the conservation of the vis viva of a mechanical
system. Sharply distinguishing between active (work)
forces and mere tensions (dead forces), Helmholtz proceeds
to draw all other forces of nature into his consideration,
showing, in the case of the phenomena of heat, electricity,
galvanism, and magnetic induction, how the different agencies
can be brought into comparison with mechanical ones by
measuring the work they perform. Referring to the attempts
to fix the mechanical value of heat, he ends with the words :
" I think in the foregoing I have proved that the above-
mentioned law does not go against any hitherto known facts
of natural science, but is supported by a large number of them
in a striking manner. I have tried to enumerate as com-
pletely as possible what consequences result from the com-
bination of other known laws of nature, and how they
require to be confirmed by other experiments. The aim of
this investigation, and what must excuse me likewise for its
hypothetical sections, was to explain to natural philosophers
the theoretical, practical, and heuristic importance of the law,
the complete verification of which may well be looked upon
as one of the main problems in the near future."

It is sad to have to record that the prophet was not received
with honour in his own country. Mohr and Mayer, Joule
and Helmholtz all met with the keenest hostility. As soon
as the paper was read, Helmholtz sent it to Gustav Magnus.
He declined to express an opinion on its worth, as he thought
there should be a distinction between mathematical and ex-
perimental physics. He warned Helmholtz against undue
partiality for mathematics, and the attempt to bring remote
provinces of physics together by its means. We have it on the
authority of Du Bois Reymond that only Jacobi, who him-
self had already done excellent work in mechanics, saw its
merit. Helmholtz, referring in after-years to this opposition,
said he was met by some of the older men by such a remark as

* H. L. F. von Helmholtz, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, I, p. 67. Cf
E. T. Whittaker, History of the Theories of Aether, pp. 240-3.

7

98 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

this : " This has already been well known to us ; what does
this young medical man imagine when he thinks it necessary
to explain so minutely all this to us?"* Poggendorf
thought that the subject-matter was not in his opinion suffi-
ciently experimental to justify him in publishing it in the
Annalen. The older physicists of Berlin like Dove and
Reuss would not admit the principle of the conservation of
energy. They seemed to fear that the speculations of the
paper would revive the phantasm of Hegel's " nature-philo-
sophy/' against which they had fought so long, and in the
end so successfully. Distinguished mathematical colleagues
like Eisenstein and Lejeune-Dirichlet seconded the opposition
of Dove and Reuss.

Some of this opposition sprang from the confusion in the
use of the term " force." Force might mean pressure or dead
force, in the Newtonian sense, or it might mean acting force,
vis viva in the Leibnizian sense. One way out of this diffi-
culty was to employ the term " work," as Clausius suggested
in 1850, or the term " energy," as Thomson suggested in
1852 in his adaptation of Young's already exact terminology.

Mohr,f Mayer, and Helmholtz gave few new experimental
facts, and as the German physicists were just escaping from
the dominance of " nature-philosophy " they felt afraid that
they had expelled it in one form only to witness its re-entry
in another. Such a consideration is of no avail, however,
when we come to the papers of Joule, who provided amply
experimental verification of the views he put forward.
There is, according to the old proverb, none so blind as those
who won't see, and it is melancholy to behold men refuse to
accept the truth vouched for by experiment after experiment.

Those who wished to disparage what Helmholtz had
brought to light said that he had borrowed the idea from
Mayer, but the singular matter is that Helmholtz had never
heard of Mayer's or Joule's papers. The law of the con-
servation of energy, like most scientific laws, had to face the
opposition of the scientists who found it contradicted some of

* Cf. his Redcn, II, p. 46; his Wisscnschaftliche Abhandlungen, I, p. 73.

t Cf. his Allgcmcine Thcorie der Bewcgung und dcr Kraft, p. 82;
J. J. Weyrauch, Kleiner e Schriften . . . von R. Mayer, p. 190; H. L. F. von
Helmholtz, Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen, I, p. 71 ; his Vortrage und
Redcn, pp. 39, 69 ; J. von Leibig, Die organische Chemie, p. 183.

THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY 99

the principles they held.* The day was to come when they
were to admit it. That day, however, was not yet. Kirchhoff
estimated this universal principle of Helmholtz as the most
important contribution to natural science made in our era.
This estimate came twenty years later. Hertz, the discoverer's
greatest pupil, could say that by it " physical research had
been diverted into an entirely new channel. Under the over-
mastering influence of Helmholtz's discovery of the conser-
vation of energy, its object was henceforward to refer all
phenomena in the last resort to the laws which govern the
transformation of energy/' At the close of 1853, Clausius
published in the Annalcn an attack upon Helmholtz's memoir
on the conservation of energy, conveying the impression to
non-mathematical physicists that his conclusions were erro-
neous. " The die is cast/' wrote Kepler, " I have written my
book. It will be read ; whether in the present age or by pos-
terity matters little. It can wait for its readers." Helmholtz
could and had to wait for his readers. He became con-
vinced of the universal validity of the law of energy for all
natural processes of the non-living as of the living world, and
thus arrived at the law of the conservation of energy. Its
discovery rendered a cohererit structure of theoretical
mechanics possible. The concept of force retreated into the
background; mass and energy emerged as indestructible
physical quantities.

We can scarcely read of the far-reaching discovery of the
German scientist without noting how little share experiment
played in it. Nor need we greatly wonder at this. He
delighted in describing how Faraday had with a mysterious
instinct made the most pregnant discoveries in natural science,
though he was unable subsequently to give any lucid account
of the train of ideas that led to them.f The intuition of
the Irish scientist was shared in no mean degree by the Ger-
man. This comes out in the reference of the latter to the
former. " It is," Helmholtz confesses, " very hard to define
new abstractions in universal propositions, so as to avoid mis-
understandings of all kinds. It is, as a rule, much harder

* Cf . the application Lord Balfour makes in his Theism and Humanism,
pp. 220 ff. E. Meyerson, in his Identite et Realitc, is singularly illu-
minating.

t L. Koenigsberger, Hermann von Helmholts, p. 248.

ioo SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

for the creator of such a new idea to make out why others
fail to understand him, than it had been to discover the new
truth. I will not disparage Faraday's contemporaries, be-
cause his words appeared to them uncertain and dark sayings.
I remember too well how often I have sat gazing hopelessly
at one of his descriptions of lines of force, of their number
and tensions, or have sought to puzzle out the meaning of
some law in which the galvanic current is treated as an axis
of force, and so on. A Clerk Maxwell was required, a
second man of the same depth and independence of insight, to
build up in the normal forms of our systematic thinking the
great structure whose plan was present to Faraday's mind,
which he saw clear before him, and endeavoured to render
apparent to his contemporaries/'*

To this insight, this intuition, Helmholtz harks back. In
the preface to his translation of Tyndall's Fragments of
Science, he describes in clear and beautiful language the im-
portance of the classics in the development of a moral and
aesthetic sense, and in the evolution of an intuitive knowledge
of human sensations, ideas, and conditions of civilisation.!
In his speech on the commemoration of his seventieth birth-
day, November 2, 1891, he pointed out: "There are many
narrow-minded people who admire themselves enormously if
they have one stroke of luck, or think that they have had one.
A pioneer in science, or an artist, who has a repeated run of
happy accidents, is indubitably a privileged character, and is
recognised as a benefactor of mankind. But who can count
or weigh such lightning flashes of the mind? Who can trace
out the secret threads by which our conceptions are united?

For

Was vom Menschen nicht gewusst,

Oder nicht bedacht,
Durch das Labyrinth der Brust

Wandelt in der Nacht.

11 1 must confess that the departments in which one has not
to trust to lucky accidents and inspirations have always had
the greatest attraction for me. Yet as I have often been in
the predicament of having to wait on inspiration, I have had
some few experiences as to when or how it came to me,

* L. Koenigsberger, Hermann von Helmholte, p. 293.
t Ibid., p. 212.

THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY 101

which may perhaps be of use to others. Often enough it
steals quietly into one's thoughts and at first one does not
appreciate its significance ; it is only sometimes that another
fortuitous circumstance helps one to recognise when, and
under what conditions, it occurred to me; otherwise it is
there, without effort, like a flash of thought. So far as my
experience goes it never comes to a wearied brain, or at the
writing-table. I must first have turned my problem over
and over in all directions, till I can see its twists and windings
in my mind's eye, and run through it freely, without writing
it down ; and it is never possible to get to this point without
a long period of preliminary work. And then, when the con-
sequent fatigue has been recovered from, there must be an
hour of perfect bodily recuperation and 'peaceful comfort,
before the kindly inspiration rewards one. Often it comes in
the morning on waking up, according to the lines I have
quoted from Goethe (as Gauss also noticed, Works, V, p.
609 : Law of Induction discovered January 23, 1835, at 7 a - m *
before rising). It came most readily, as I experienced at
Heidelberg, when I went out to climb the wooded hills in
sunny weather. The least trace of alcohol, however, sufficed
to banish it. Such moments of fertile thought were truly
gratifying, but the obverse was less pleasant when the inspira-
tion would not come. Then I might worry at my problem
for weeks and months, till I felt like the creature on the
barren heath

Von einem bosen Geist im Kreis herumgefuhrt,
Und ringsumher ist schone griine Weide.

Sometimes nothing but a severe attack of headache could
release me from my spell, and set me free again for other
interests/' *

On April 5, 1881, Helmholtz delivered the Faraday lec-
ture to the Chemical Society " On the Modern Development
of Faraday's Conception of Electricity," in the course of
which he gave not merely an estimate of the Irish physicist
but also threw light on the question of insight. His words
in opening the lecture are so characteristic of Helmholtz as
to merit quotation :

" The facts which he [i.e. Faraday] discovered are uni-
* L. Koenigsberger, Hermann von Helmholtz, p. 208.

102 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

versally known. Every physicist, at present, is acquainted
with the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light by
magnetism, with dielectric tension and diamagnetism, and
with the measurement of the intensity of galvanic currents
by the voltameter, while induced currents act on the tele-
phone, are applied to paralysed muscles, and nourish electric
light. Nevertheless, the fundamental conceptions by which
Faraday was led to these much admired discoveries have not
received an equal amount of consideration. They were very
divergent from the trodden path of scientific theory, and
appeared rather startling to his contemporaries. His prin-
cipal aim was to express in his new conceptions only facts,
with the least possible use of hypothetical substances and
forces. This was really an advance on general scientific
method, destined to purify science from the last remnants
of metaphysics. Faraday was not the first, and not the
only man, who has worked in this direction, but perhaps
nobody else at his time did so radically. But every reform
of fundamental and leading principles introduces new kinds
of abstract notions, the sense of which the reader does not
catch in the first instance. Under such circumstances, it is
often less difficult for a man of original thought to discover
new truth than to discover why other people do not under-
stand and do not follow him. This difficulty must increase
in Faraday's case, because he had not gone through the same
common course of scientific education as the majority of
his readers. Now that the mathematical interpretation of
Faraday's conceptions regarding the nature of electric and
magnetic forces has been given by Clerk Maxwell, we see
how great a degree of exactness and precision was really
hidden behind the words, which, to Faraday's contemporaries,
appeared either vague or obscure; and it is in the highest
degree astonishing to see what a large number of general
theorems, the methodical deduction of which requires the
highest powers of mathematical analysis, he found by a kind
of intuition,* with the security of instinct, without the help
of a single mathematical formula. I have no intention of
blaming his contemporaries, for I confess that many times
I have myself sat hopelessly looking upon some paragraph
of Faraday's description of lines of force, or of the galvanic

* I italicise this word.

THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY 103

current being an axis of power, etc. A single remarkable
discovery may, of course, be the result of a happy accident,
and may not indicate the possession of any special gift on
the part of the discoverer; but it is against all the rules of
probability that the train of thought which has led to such
a series of surprising and unexpected discoveries, as were
those of Faraday, should be without a firm, although perhaps
hidden, basis of truth. We must also in his case
acquiesce in the fact, that the greatest benefactors of man-
kind usually do not obtain a full reward during their life-
time, and that new ideas need the more time for gaining
general assent the more really original they are, and the
more power they have to change the broad path of human
knowledge." *

* Helmholtz, Vortragc und Redcn, II, p. 277.

CHAPTER V

THE PRECURSORS OF DARWIN

THE conception of evolution occupies no mean part in theories
of the universe so far back as six centuries before our era.
To the early philosophers of India no less than to those of
Greece, our globe, without haste and without rest, was
changing. Talking with Matthew Arnold in 1871, J. W.
Judd heard him say, " I cannot understand why you scientific
people make such a fuss about Darwin. Why, it's all in
Lucretius ! " On Judd replying, " Yes ! Lucretius guessed
what Darwin proved/' he mischievously rejoined, "Ah!
that only shows how much greater Lucretius was for he
divined a truth, which Darwin spent a life of labour in
groping for."

The intuition of the classical poets and writers is as
evident in the history of atomism as it is in evolutionism.
Democritus (450 B.C.) confidently asserts that the world
consists of atoms, and that its infinite variety is due to the
motions and positions of immutable and imperceptible units,
which, if they are not exactly alike, at least differ less than
do the visible objects into which they are comprehended.
He offered no proof for this theory, which, to say the least,
is not self-evident. Century after century this theory per-
sisted, and was held with unabated confidence. With the
Renaissance of science during the sixteenth century it
acquired fresh vigour. Bacon believed it, and so did Boyle
and Gassendi. Boyle held it stoutly, and Newton assumed
it without question and without proof. The first proof of
the atomic theory was given by John Dalton in 1802. For
over twelve centuries his views had been more or less held
without reasons for holding them. When they were put
forth, it is in keeping with the history of science that Sir
Humphry Davy and Berthollet were the most conspicuous
objectors to them. Of course we all admit to-day that

104

THE PRECURSORS OF DARWIN 105

Dalton started a new era in chemistry. Taken over by
the physicists, the atomic theory lies at the root of the
modern theory of gases or liquids, the modern theory of
matter, the modern theory of heat, and the modern theory
of electricity.

This is a very strange story, which becomes no less strange
when we find the same sort of story in the history of the
theory of evolution. Haeckel terms Anaximander the
Milesian (610 547) the prophet of Kant and Laplace in
cosmogony and of Lamarck and Darwin in biology.*
Anaximander assumed the idea of the Infinite, or the
Unconditioned, and on the basis of this assumption he put
forth a crude form of the nebular hypothesis and of the
evolution idea. He assumes that matter is primitive and
indeterminate, that there is necessarily in it eternal energy
and movement, and that through this energy and movement
the two original contraries of heat and cold separate. What
is cold falls to the centre and forms the earth. What is hot
arises to the circumference and forms the bright fiery bodies
of the heavens, which are only fragments of what once
existed as a complete sphere. In process of time this sphere
burst, forming the stars. The action of the sun's heat on
the cold earth generated films or bladders, out of which
proceeded different kinds of imperfectly organised beings:
they gradually developed into the animals now existing.
This is quite unlike Epicurus (342 270) and Lucretius
(95 55), who both imagined animals arising directly out of
the earth, much as Milton's lion long afterwards pawed its
way out. The pedigree of man with Anaximander goes
back to the fishlike creatures which dwelt originally in
muddy waters, and only as the sun slowly dried up the earth
did they become by stages fit for life on dry land. He,
however, confines his conception of progress to the evolution
of animals and man. He holds that there is a plurality of
worlds, and according to him one world springs out of
another. f This idea is also to be found in Heraclitus of

* Throughout my account of the slow growth of evolutionism, I desire
to state how ample is my debt to Mr. H. F. Osborn's stimulating book,
From the Greeks to Darwin.

t Cf. p. 406 ff. in the appendix on "The Conception of Progress in
Classical and Renaissance Writers" in my Erasmus and Luther: their
Attitude to Toleration.

io6 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

Ephesus (513 c. 473), who maintains that out of the
universal conflagration will issue a new world, and this
process will continue indefinitely. Nevertheless, in spite
of this continual transformation, Heraclitus does not speak
of any amelioration in the lot of man. The cardinal fact
to him was the ceaseless movement in the universe and the
utter hopelessness of it. With thoughts of the World War
in our mind, it is easy for us to hold that development
includes retrogression. There are many side currents as
well as the main current in the stream of evolution. As
Huxley pointed out, " So far from any gradual progress
forming any necessary part of the Darwinian creed, it
appears to us that it is perfectly consistent with indefinite
persistence in one state or with a gradual retrogression.
Suppose, for example, a return of the glacial period and a
spread of polar climatical conditions over the whole world." *

Xenophanes (c. 540 c. 500), a pupil of Anaximander,
agreed with his master's view of the beginning of man. He
traced the ultimate origin of life to spontaneous generation,
believing that the sun in warming the earth produced both
animals and plants, f The physicists like Heraclitus and
Empedocles, Democritus and Anaxagoras, developed these
notions.

The poetic view of Empedocles of Acragas (c. 490 430)
is not unlike the scientific conception of Anaximander, who
was the very first to teach the doctrine of abiogenesis, believing
that eels and other aquatic forms are directly produced from
lifeless matter. Empedocles assumes the four elements of
earth, air, fire, and water. Out of the conflict between love
and hate emerge plants, animals, and man in succession. The
greater number of the members of the animals was generated
by chance. $ After endless efforts on the part of the organs
to unite, the present shapes are evolved. . Empedocles finds
the origin of life in abiogenesis or spontaneous generation :
centaurs, chimaeras, and other creatures he brings under the
operation of this law.|| In a crude form he lays down the

* T. H. Huxley, Darwiniana, pp. 90-1.
t Stobseus, Eclog., I, 224.
t Parts of Animals, book i.

Mullach, " Empedoclis Carmina," 314-16, in Frag. Philos. Grac. ;
Aelian, H.A., XVI, 29; Aristotle, Physics, II, 8.
|| Lucretius, V, 860.

THE PRECURSORS OF DARWIN 107

theory of natural selection. Aristotle (384 322) in his
Physics is careful to inform the reader that he derived
his theory from Empedocles, who merely held the germ of
an all-important conception. Strangely enough, the idea
of one stage giving origin to another was absent from his
thought.

Empedocles tries to provide a human beginning for the
centaurs and chimaeras of Greek mythology. Lucretius
interpreted this teaching:

Hence, doubtless, Earth prodigious forms at first
Gendered, of face and members most grotesque:
Monsters half-man, half-woman, not from each
Distant, yet neither total; shapes unsound,
Footless and handless, void of mouth or eye,
Or from misjunction, maimed, of limb with limb:
To act all impotent, or flee from harm,
Or nurture take, their loathsome days t'extend.

These sprang at first and things alike uncouth
Yet vainly; for abhorrent Nature quick
Checked their vile growths; . . .

Hence, doubtless, many a tribe has sunk supprest,
Powerless its kind to gender. For whatever
Feeds on the living ether, craft or speed,
Or courage stern, from age to age preserves
In ranks uninjured : . . .

Yet Centaurs lived not; nor could shapes like these
Live ever, from two different natures reared,
Discordant limbs and powers by powers reversed.

Compare these lines with those of John Milton :

The Earth obeyed, and straight
Opening her fertile womb, teemed at a birth
Innumerous living creatures, perfect forms,
Limbed and full grown. Out of the ground up rose
As from his lair, the wild beast, where he wons
In forest wild, in thicket, brake, or den;
Among the trees they rose, they walk'd;
The cattle in the fields and meadows green :
Those rare and solitary, these in flocks
Pasturing at once, and in broad herds upsprung.
The grassy clods now calv'd; now half appeared
The tawny lion, pawing to get free
His hinder parts, then springs, as broke from bonds,
And rampant shakes his brindled mane.

If we understand evolution primarily to mean the series
of slow successive transformations, infinitesimal changes
which, when taking place, alter the condition of a plant or
an animal, then there is scarcely a trace of such a doctrine

io8 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

in Plato (c. 428 347). He, then, from our standpoint,
makes but a small contribution to our theme. Still, it is a fact
of enormous significance that the groundwork of modern
science, the evolution theory, was laid not by the early
naturalists or the speculative writers but by the modern
philosophers, by Descartes (1596 1650) and by Leibniz
(16461716). What Plato failed to accomplish directly he
himself accomplished indirectly. He is one of the sources
of that spirit of mysticism which tends to merge the particular
in the universal, the temporal in the eternal. He is also
one of the sources of that idealism which checks the evil
side of mysticism, for Plato sought the ideal in the real
world, the world of ideas.* The ancients did not realise
the modern conception of indefinite progress in a continuous
direction. If one may use an Irishism, the thought of
progress backwards was more familiar to them than progress
forwards.

Plato conceived society dynamically : Aristotle conceived it
statically. Order to the latter was heaven's first law. To
trace the general plan of the human evolution of the human
race is a task which does not concern him : his is the humbler
labour of showing under what conditions the City-State can
realise happiness. Its size, its site, its nearness to the sea,
its aloofness from the stranger these are the matters in his
mind. His closest approach to the consideration of the
ideal is his criticism of the Platonic conception. Has he
more than a glimpse of scientific progress when he discusses
changes in medicine which have modified the art of healing? t
Though he has not the resources of palaeontology at his
command, he entertains a general conception of the origin
of higher species from lower. In his consideration of the
factors of evolution it is amazing to note that he discusses the
" survival of the fittest " hypothesis, which he states quite
plainly, and dismisses a theory of adaptive structures in
animals surprisingly similar to that laid down by Darwin
almost twenty-three centuries later. In spite of Empedocles,

* The world of (sensible) experience was to him not real, though
things partook of the universals, or ideas, which alone were real, and
contributed, of themselves, a quite different world, viz. the intelligible
or noumenal.

t Politics, VII, 13.

THE PRECURSORS OF DARWIN 109

he held that adaptive structures are not produced by natural
selection.

Aristotle's view of the development of life ultimately led
to the correct interpretation of the Mosaic account of the
creation, and his view St. Augustine (354 430) cordially
accepted. Indeed, if the teaching of the African doctor, in
this respect at least, had remained the teaching of the Church,
the triumph of the theory of evolution might have been
anticipated by fourteen centuries.* St. Augustine was an
observer ; Aristotle was a scientific observer. The latter dis-
tinguished no fewer than five hundred species of mammals,
birds, and fishes. Underlying these and other species he
conceived of a single chain of events, which is among the
greatest of his achievements: it completely passed out of
the ken of man till the middle of the nineteenth century.
Nature, he maintains, proceeds constantly by the aid of
gradual transitions from the most imperfect to the most
perfect, while the numerous analogies we find in the various
parts of the animal scale show that all is governed by the
same laws. That is, all nature is essentially one in the
matter of causation. The ascent is from the inorganic to
the organic, and then comes man, who reaches the highest
point in one long and continuous process.

Details were in the mind of Aristotle: so too were
illuminating principles. He notices the effects of heredity,
of the influence of one parent or stock, of atavism, of
reversion. In the Generation of Animals f he analyses the
heredity theories of Hippocrates (460 357) and Heraclitus,
which were not unlike those of Democritus, who noted design
in nature and admired her adaptations. The variety of
nature moved him just as much as the variety of atoms.
Aristotle describes the difference between the vegetable and
the animal world, and marks off the organic world from the
inorganic. He clearly grasps the principle of adaptation,
understanding the physiological division of labour in the
different parts of an organism. Life to him is not a separate
principle: it is the function of the organism, a view which
anticipates the doctrine of epigenesis in embryonic develop-
ment discovered by Harvey (1578 1657).

* Cf. De Trin., Ill, 8, 9; IV, 21; De Genes, ad Lit., I, 39; De Doct.
Christ., II, 46. t Generation of Animals, I, sec. 35.

i io SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

How did Aristotle arrive at these notable advances?
Unlike Plato, who trusted intuition, he sometimes trusted
experiment and deduction,* though at others he revelled in
a priori thought, to the neglect of fact or observation, like a
Platonist. To a man with his scientific bent it was im-
possible to believe in the operation of chance. Nothing, he
holds, which occurs regularly, can be the result of accident.
The adaptation manifested in the world obliged him to be-
lieve in an intelligent First Cause. This theistic tinge
influenced the early Christians, especially St. Augustine, and
in time the authority of Aristotle in the Mediaeval Church was
elevated to a position as exalted as that of the Bible itself. The
lover of truth must regret -that the conquests of Philip (382
336) and Alexander (356323) and the loss of national
independence checked the love of free physical inquiry among
the Greeks, which promised to be so fruitful. The dynasties
founded by Alexander's generals left the City-State a mere
pawn in the game of militarism; the all-conquering arm of
Rome completed her destruction. In the post-Aristotelian
period Francis Bacon is right in thinking that for the ancients
moral philosophy supplied the place of religion. The new
school of thought is subjective and individualistic. Ethical
conceptions replace science. The Stoics or the Epicureans
came into possession of the vacant field. The happiness of
man was no longer bound up with the welfare of the State.
For the first time it became possible to lead a private life:
Diogenes (c. 412 323) and Aristippus (c. 428 350) were
no longer singular in their conduct.

The Oriental doctrine of vast chronological cycles forms
a fundamental tenet of the Stoic school. With its philoso-
phers the pantheistic notion that God is the creative soul
of the world was a commonplace. He is the eternal force
which forms and permeates the world, the spirit of ever-
acting and living fire, which manifests itself outwardly as
matter when its heat declines, and burns up matter when its
heat is intense.f Zeno (c. 362 264), the founder of Stoicism,
believed that the world would be reabsorbed into the fiery

* Aristotle, History of Animals, I, 6.

t Nemesius, De Nat. Horn., c. 38; Polybius, Hist., VI, c. Vff.;
II, pp. 462, 575 ff. ; Cicero, De Nat. Deor., II, 20, 46, 51 ; Origen, Con.
Cels., IV; Origen, De Principiis, III, 6.

THE PRECURSORS OF DARWIN in

ether, which is Reason and God. But how could Reason be
identified with a material substance which could be burnt?
Is this absorption final ? The mind of man is so constituted
that it refuses to derive satisfaction in the conflagration of
the world. There was one way out of the difficulty, and
that was to make the movement circular. What had hap-
pened once could happen again. When the period of
unification was ended, Zeno forecast the beginning of another
world-process which would follow the same course as its
predecessor, ending, like it, in fire. And for ever there lay
before men the prospect of this unvarying round. To us
such a notion is abhorrent ; still, we ought to remember that
men not only in Greece and in India but even in modern
Europe acquiesce in it.

From Zeno and other teachers the conclusion was drawn
that in a necessary and endless succession world after world
was created and destroyed, each world being exactly like its
predecessor, and all things in it without exception running
round in the same order from beginning to end. Aristotle
maintained that all the arts and sciences have been found
and lost an infinite number of times already.* Stoicism, in
some of its aspects, reflects the hopelessness and world-
weariness which sees in modern progress only " an endless
effort, and, if need be, by endless pain." The same sombre
tendency sees no evolution but rather a long series of cycles
of death and revival, of endless mutations in constant
progressions: tout lasse, tout passe, tout se re fait. Going
round in a circle, however, is in no wise the equivalent of
going on. It is easy to understand Seneca's tcedium vitcr
when he thought of it, to employ a modern phrase, as an
infinite recurrent series. He was really to finish nothing,
for in the revolution of the circle it must come again and
again to him.f

At the very time of the early Stoics, Epicurus (342 270)
was developing a conception of progress, and his philosophy
contains more than the beginning of the doctrine professed by

* Politics, II, 5, I264A, 1-5; IV (vii), 10, 13296, 25-7; DC Calo.,
I, 3, 2706, 16-20.

f Seneca, Ad Lucilium, Ep. XXIV. Cf. DC Tranquillitate Animi,
ch. i and ii; Horace, Carat., n, 18, 15; Lucretius, DC Natura Rerum,
III, 920-50.

ii2 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

the Sophists.* Were it not for Lucretiusf our knowledge
of Epicurus would be scanty, but he provides us with a full
account of a notable attempt to get rid of the supernatural.
The mind of Epicurus conceives the social state not as it ought
to be but as it actually is. For him, as for Lucretius, the
important matter is the survey of knowledge and of civilisa-
tion through past ages. Familiar as he was with Empedocles,
Epicurus knows that human life has passed from the darkness
of ignorance to the light of knowledge, the source of all quiet-
ism and happiness. J The mind of man has at last passed the
superstitious stage. In truth philosophy has taken the
place formerly occupied by superstition. Much as Lucretius
admires Epicurus, he lets fall hints which show, inconsistently
enough from his standpoint, that the past was better than the
present. Did not in olden times matters come easily to men ?
Did they not possess simple joys? Did voyages at sea, did
war, did luxury claim so many victims as to-day? || Is not
Nature right to tell man, greedy of pleasure and novelty,
that she can devise nothing new, for everything returns as
before? ft Will not the universe one day be destroyed?**
These questions no doubt are not the bedrock of the thought
of the poet; still, they are in his poem.tt On the other hand,
he argues that as the world is not the handiwork of the gods,
its increase in intelligence and industry affords evidence of
progress. Jt Advance, he argues, in material comfort is not
synonymous with advance in happiness, just as one might
argue that our material progress is nothing more than an
extra-flooding wave of an ebbing tide. Lucretius is strikingly
clear that material and even artistic improvement does
not increase the happiness of man.

The view set forth by Lucretius in the fifth book of the
De Natura Rerum is that the general law of existence is

* Cf. the speech of Callicles in Plato's- Gorgias.

t De Nat. Rer., V, nSiff.

t Ibid., 10.

Ibid., I, 62 ff.

II Ibid., II, 1157-745 V, 935 ff-, 988-1010.

1F Ibid., Ill, 945.
** Ibid. t II, 1148-74; V, 93-6.
ft Cf. Ovid, Met., I, 89-150; I, 256-8.
it De Nat. Rer., II, 181.
8 Ibid., V, 1379 ff. ; especially 1410.

THE PRECURSORS OF DARWIN 113

change. * Nothing remains as it was in the beginning : one
thing disappears and is replaced by another: what was
formerly is to-day impossible, and what has never been will
yet be realised, f In Lucretius the materialistic and agnostic
tendencies of Empedocles, Democritus, and Epicurus are
revived. Aristotle regarded the world as an organism,
Lucretius as a mechanism. Aristotle is teleological, Lucretius
is nothing of the kind. The former carries his conception of
nature into the law of the gradual development of organic
life; the latter does not. Lucretius, like Parmenides (flor.
513 B.C.), Democritus, and Anaxagoras (500 428), thinks
that plants arise directly from the earth, t From Epicurus he
takes the idea of the survival of the fittest : some men were
out of harmony with their surroundings, died, and were
replaced. Still, Aristotle is an evolutionist, and Lucretius is
just as certainly not. The latter does not believe in gradual
development by the ascent of the higher forms from the
lower, though he believes in the successive appearance of
different forms of life. The animals and plants of Lucretius,
unlike those of Aristotle, spring from the earth in their
present form : with them Nature makes a leap. This is not
evolution in the true sense, yet, curiously enough, it was one
day to take a great share in the growth of the idea. To Aris-
totle the process of evolution was like the emergence of the
plant from under the ground, where its germinative forces
have been slowly maturing, whereas Lucretius conceived it to
be the light of a spark for which the explosive train had not
long been laid.

Generation succeeds generation: there is no break. The
notion of continuity means more to Lucretius than to
Epicurus. The latter is not content with change in
nature: he believes that there are times in the span of
existence better than others. Lucretius was well aware that
in early society force was the only remedy: laws did not
exist. By virtue of mind men left this condition behind
them. || No Prometheus brought the fire which the ingenuity
of human beings discovered.^ Genius has accomplished
much : so too have the numberless groping efforts of ordinary

* De Nat. Rer. t V, 828-36. Ibid., V, 959.

t Ibid., Ill, 964; V, 855-77. II Ibid., V, 1107, 1187.

} Ibid. 9 V, 780. H Ibid., I, 208-14.

8

ii4 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

men. Steady work renders better what was primitive,
mediocre. According to Lucretius and Epicurus necessity
has always been the principal agent in progress. To need,
for example, we owe the names of things : this is the origin
of language.* To chance was due the first union of men
and women, and in time conjugal love succeeded. Kings
built fortified towns, and the cause of progress was served
by the necessity of avoiding aggression.! On the death of
kings democracy succeeded, and then came magistrates and
laws with justice in their hand. Force as the only remedy
disappeared indefinitely, and the reign of law was ushered in. J
At the same time human industry took its rise. The first
instruments of man were his hands, his nails, his teeth, then
stones, then branches of trees, afterwards the flame and the
fire. This is the closest approach Lucretius perhaps makes
to the doctrine of evolution. Later came the metals brass,
gold, iron, money, lead. The discovery of iron combined
with the discovery of fire permitted man to manufacture
implements adapted to agriculture and to war,|| and it assisted
in the improved clothing the tailor devised.^ Stage by stage
man developed, and in the course of his development nature
suggested experiments to him. What nature was doing of
herself suggested to imitative man the art, for example, of
grafting. The sighs of the wind through the reeds invited
man to invent the flute.** Once the stage in which physical
strength counted for everything was past, music and song
were cultivated. For the future there is an aesthetic as well
as a material side to life.f f Throughout all these changes and
chances man is travelling along the road to improvement of
his mechanical appliances, the amelioration of his earthly lot.
Time is required for this advance, for all growth is by
infinitesimal steps.ij Men do not become men at once; trees
are only shrubs in their early life. To Lucretius, as to
Diogenes Laertius (c. 412 323), time produces growth in
everything. Little by little experience taught man to note
the regular movements of the heavens and the return of the

* De Nat. Rer., V, 1450. || Ibid., V, 1281-1307.

f Ibid., V, 1109-20. ^ Ibid., V, 1350-60.

J Ibid., V, II43-S5. ** Ibid., V, 1382.

Ibid., V, 1028-90. ft Ibid., V, 1391.

Ibid., V, i8iff. Cf. I, 310 ff.

THE PRECURSORS OF DARWIN 115

seasons, foreshadowing the true nature of things. Once
the will of the gods was deemed sufficient to account for
everything, whereas now it is abundantly evident that there
are natural causes at work. Once chance ruled all things in
heaven and earth, whereas now clearly there is a sameness, an
orderliness in the phenomena all around us.

The speculations of Lucretius are evidently expressed in
the following lines:

And first the race she reared of verdant herbs,
Glistening o'er every hill; the fields at large
Shone with the verdant tincture, and the trees
Felt the deep impulse, and with outstretched arms
Broke from their bonds rejoicing. As the down
Shoots from the winged nations, or from the beasts
Bristles or hair, so poured the new-born earth
Plants, fruits, and herbage. Then, in order next,
Raised she the sentient tribes, in various modes,
By various powers distinguished: for nor heaven
Down dropped them, nor from ocean's briny waves
Sprang they, terrestrial sole; whence, justly, Earth
Claims the dear name of mother, since alone
Flowed from herself whatever the sight surveys.

E'en now oft rears she many a sentient tribe,
By showers and sunshine ushered into day
Whence less stupendous tribes should then have risen
More, and of ampler make, herself new- formed,
In flower of youth, and Ether all mature.

Of these birds first, of wing and plume diverse,
Broke their light shells in springtime : as in spring
Still breaks the grasshopper his curious web,
And seeks, spontaneous, foods and vital air.

Hence the dear name of mother, o'er and o'er,
Earth claims most justly, since the race of man
Long bore she of herself, each brutal tribe
Wild-wandering o'er the mountains, and the birds
Gay-winged, that cleave, diverse, the liquid air.

The originality of the conception of Epicurus and Lucretius
is so remarkable that it is not till the Esquisse of Con-
dorcet^( 1743 1794) that we meet with a similar theory.
Evolution there has been in the past: with that Lucretius
stops. Evolution in the future he scarcely contemplates. He
catches glimpses of the truth through the clouds, but there is
no clearness in his vision.

The elder Pliny (2379) counsels us " firmly to trust that
the ages go on incessantly improving. " * He, however,

* Hist. Nat., XIX, 1-4.

n6 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

feels more interest in collecting anecdotes than in collecting
facts. About twelve years after Seneca's death he published
his book on Natural History. He claims to have read 2,000
volumes of 100 authors, and in his Latin list he omits Seneca.
The preface to the Epitome of Roman History which Florus
(c. 60 138) has written anticipates ideas afterwards de-
veloped by Postel (1510 1581) andLessing (1729 1781).
The historian is clear that nations pass through a succession
of ages similar to those of the individual. " If any one,"
he points out, " will consider the Roman people as if it were
one man, and observe its entire course, how it began, how
it grew up, how it reached a certain youthful bloom, and how
it has since, as it were, been growing old, he will find it to
have four degrees and stages." It is not important to con-
sider these four degrees ; it is important to see that an author
in the reign of Trajan has been able to perceive them.

Of all the Roman writers on science none has greater claims
on our attention than Seneca. For real learning he feels a
genuine interest, but not for the study of what he regards
as " useless letters/' leaving to the one side such questions
as whether the same poet wrote the Iliad and the
Odyssey,* or whether Homer or Hesiod was the earlier, f
Stoic in the main as he was, he makes fun of the grammatici.%
Learning was apt to become logomachy, philosophy to become
philology. He has a sovereign contempt for the 4,000
volumes acquired by Didymus (52 128), for do they not
discuss such questions as the birthplace of Homer, the moral
character of Sappho and of Anacreon, and the like? ||

When he speaks of the restoration of the world, Seneca
holds that when it pleases God it will produce things. Will
there not be then the opening of a very happy era in which
man, born under better auspices, will be ignorant of all crimes
and will be innocent ? ^ This era, or rather this improved
world, will, on the Stoic hypothesis, pass away, being re-
placed through fire by another. The conflagration notion
made a strong appeal to the feelings, for with it the perpetual

* Dial, X, 13, 1-9; cf. Quest. Natur., IV, 13, I.
t Dial., X, 13, sect. 6.

I Ibid., sect. 3. Ibid., sect, 23. || Ibid., sect. 24-34.

If Qucest. Natur., Ill, chap, xxvii; cf. Plutarch, De Commun. Nat.;
]. Lipsius, Physiologic? Stocicorum, libri tres, p. 258.

THE PRECURSORS OF DARWIN 117

struggle between good and evil ceased. In the interval
between the appearance of a new world the Deity enjoys a
period of rest, during which he can leisurely meditate upon the
universe that has vanished into smoke * and plan improve-
ments in the one he is about to create, f The universe used
to be happy and innocent. $ Men lived together in the distant
past in societies, willing to obey the strongest and wisest of
their number ; none were tempted to wrong their neighbour.
The " return to nature " notion is plain in his account of
men dwelling in natural grottos or in the stems of trees, and
obtaining nourishment from tame animals and wild fruits.
In process of time they develop the arts, learning to bake,
to build, and to make use of the metals. According to Seneca,
his own age is one far removed from primeval simplicity,
though it is no worse than others. || It is necessary to
distinguish between moral and material progress. Seneca,
following Posidonius, believes that man had made progress
in science and in the material arts of life, but that this
advance in learning had been accompanied by a moral decline.
The political economist to-day reckons that the awakening
of human beings to the need of satisfying their wants is a
mark in advance, and the greater the range of these wants
the greater is the advance, whereas to Seneca the reverse
of the conception held good.fl There used to be no struggle
for existence: the earth supplied sufficient food for all.**
The moment gold was discovered, happiness fled: the love of
it was indeed the root of all evil.ff A crowd now is an
assembly of savage beasts, a spectacle of vice incarnate. JJ
This pessimistic outlook on life is in no wise peculiar to
Seneca: it is characteristic of first- and second-century
thought. There seems no indication that movement was

* Seneca, Ep., 9, 16.
t Quasi. Natur., Ill, 28, 7-
i Ep., ad Lucilium, 90; Horace, Odes, HI, 14.
Seneca, Ep., 90, 5.

|| De Benef., I, 10. 1F Ep., 90, sect. 42. ** Ep., 90, sect. 38.
ft Ibid.. 90, sect. 5, sect. 12, sect. 19, sect. 36.
it De Ira, II, 8, sect, i ; cf. II, 8, 9; Ad Marc., II, n, 17, 20.
Lucretius, De Nat. Rer. f II. 1150, 1174; V, 66-7, 1429-30; Horace,
Odes, t 2, 14; III, 6; Tac., Hist., I, c. Hi; II, 37; Tac., Ann., Ill,
cc. xviii and xxyii; IV, c. i; XVI, c. xvi; Cicero, De Opp., I,
c. xxv ; II, c. viii; III, c. xvii; Tusc. Quast., II, c. ii; Juvenal,
Satires, 6, 10, T2 f 13, 15; Seneca, De Ira, II, 8, 9; Seneca, Quasi. Natur.,
II, c. xxxv ; III, c. xxx.

n8 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

thought of as a spiral and not as an unvarying round. There
was not what Wordsworth called " the sweet air of futurity,"
or what George Meredith calls " the rapture of the forward

view."

The security afforded by the Empire was sufficient to
overcome internal disorders. With the pax Romana around
him Seneca could indulge in speculations on progress. With
Huxley he holds that though there are many clever men,
honest folk are as scarce as ever ; and this thought Rousseau
(1712 1778) borrowed.* Still, Seneca maintains the
sciences progress and their applications become more exten-
sive. The sagacity of men contrives inventions.! We can
live without science, for nature has allowed animals to exist ;
but as we create needs we devise arts to satisfy them. We
receive these discoveries from our forefathers, and when we
transmit them to our descendants we transmit an enlarged
inheritance. " There remains yet and there will remain much
to do; and the man who will be born a thousand years hence
will not refuse the opportunity of adding something more." J

The Natural Questions goes far to explain the action
of Gian Galeazzo in making not only Dante (1265 1321)
but also Seneca have chairs founded in their memory and
for discussion of their work. True, it is characterised by
hypothesis not founded on experiment. True, the author is
a moralist first, a physical scientist afterwards. To him there
were no natural phenomena compared with the fascination
virtue exercised over his soul. To him as to Kant
(1724 1804) there is a bond between the starry heavens
above and the moral law within. Throughout the Natural
Questions he is well aware of the necessity of procuring
correct data. Men like Lucilius suffered through Seneca's
desire to have phenomena recorded accurately, especially when
they were rare. He is anxious to be just to his predecessors :
" First of all I feel bound to say in general terms that the
old views are crude and inexact. As yet men were groping
their way round truth. Everything was new to those who

* Ep. ad Lucilium, 95; Rouss., Discours sur les sciences et les arts,
I, p. 20; cf. Montaigne, Essais, bk. I, chap. xxiv.
t Seneca, Ep., 90; cf. Cicero, De Legibus, I, c. ix.
j Seneca, Ep., 64.
Ibid., 73, sect. 13.

THE PRECURSORS OF DARWIN 119

made the first attempt to grasp it ; only later were the subjects
accurately investigated. But all subsequent discoveries must
nevertheless be set down to the credit of those early thinkers.
It was a task demanding great courage to remove the veil
that hid nature, and, not satisfied with a superficial view, to
look beneath the surface and dive into the secrets of the
gods. A great contribution to discovery was made by the
man who first conceived the hope of its possibility. We must
therefore listen indulgently to the ancients. No subject is
perfect while it is but beginning. The truth holds not merely
of the subject [i.e. earthquakes] we are dealing with, the
greatest and most complex of all, in which, however much
may be accomplished, every succeeding age will still find
something fresh to accomplish. It holds alike in every other
concern: the first principles have always been a long way
off from the complete science." * We are here far removed
from the Platonic notion that the whole body of truth has
been discovered. If there is the hope of the possibility
of discovery, there is also the hope of the possibility
of evolution.

This is more evident in the next quotation from Seneca:
" It is not a thousand years since Greece ' counted the number
of the stars and named them every one.' And there are many
nations at the present hour who merely know the face of
the sky and do not yet understand why the moon is obscured
in an eclipse. It is but recently that science brought home
to ourselves certain knowledge on the subject. The day
will yet come when the progress of research through long
ages will reveal to sight the mysteries of nature that are now
concealed. A single lifetime, though it were wholly devoted
to the study of the sky, does not suffice for the investigations
of problems of such complexity. And then we never make
a fair division of the few brief years of life as between study
and vice. It must therefore require long successive ages to
unfold all. The day will yet come when posterity will be
amazed that we remain ignorant of things that will seem to
them so plain." f

This book of Seneca's was the last word on science spoken
by the classical world, and it is the only work of importance

* Qii(ust. Natur., bk. VI, 5.
t Ibid., bk. VII, 25.

120 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

bearing on science that has come down to us in Latin. Here-
in he possessed a marked advantage over Aristotle, whose
Physics was written in Greek, a tongue much less familiar
to the mediaeval world. True, Lucretius unfolds ingenious
speculations in the direction of evolution, but Seneca possesses
true method that makes the discovery of evolution possible.
The Physics of Aristotle became a text-book of science to
the men of the Middle Ages. It has been the infinite loss
of mankind that the two following passages have not sunk
deeply into the mind of Europe. " Aristotle has finely said/ 1
remarks Seneca, "that we should never be more reverent
than when we are treating of the gods. We enter a temple
with all due gravity, we lower our eyes, draw up our toga,
and assume every token of modesty, when we approach the
sacrifice. How much more is all this due when we discuss
the heavenly bodies, the stars, the nature of the gods, lest
in ignorance we make any assertion regarding them that is
hasty or disrespectful ; or lest we unwittingly lie. Let us not
be surprised that what is buried so deep should be unearthed
so slowly. . . . But all these questions [i.e. on comets] are
foreclosed by my statement that they are not accidental fires,
but inwoven in the texture of the universe, directed by it
in secret, but not often revealed. And how many bodies
besides revolve in secret, never dawning upon human eyes?
Nor is it for man that God has made all things. How small
a portion of His mighty work is entrusted to us ! " * He then
proceeds to draw attention to the new discoveries : " How
many animals we have come to know for the first time
in our days. Many too that are unknown to us the people
of a coming day will know. Many discoveries are reserved
for the ages still to be, when our memory shall have perished.
The world is a poor affair if it do not contain matter for
investigation for the whole world in every age. Some of
the sacred rites are not revealed to worshippers all at once.
Eleusis contains some of his mysteries to show to votaries
on their second visit. Nature does not reveal all her secrets
at once. We imagine we are initiated in her mysteries : we
as yet but hanging around her outer courts. These secrets
of hers are not open to all indiscriminately. They are with-
drawn and shut up in the inner shrine. Of one of them this
* Quest. Natur., bk, VII, 30,

THE PRECURSORS OF DARWIN 121

age will catch a glimpse, of another the age that will come
after." *

In all the classical writings there are no four quotations so
plain in their views of all that the future holds for the man
of science. Were such statements much read? Take the
evidence of Quintilian (40 100), who obviously thought
Seneca an overrated man and placed Cicero far above him.t
He has no doubt of the popularity of Seneca in his own
times. $ Moreover, was he not a Christian who corre-
sponded with St. Paul? The Fathers reckoned him one of
themselves. Jerome (345 420) frankly gave him rank
among recognised ecclesiastical writers. His statements
must therefore be orthodox. In the Middle Ages he was
famous as the author of the Natural Questions, and still
more so as a moralist. Dante terms him " Seneca morale/ 1
He is quoted by writers like Albert Magnus (c. 1 193 1280),
Vincent of Beauvais (c. 1200 1264), Walter Burlay (1275
1357), John of Salisbury (c. mo 1180), and Friar
John of Wales (died c. 1285), w ^o were acquainted with the
Natural Questions, and by writers such as Otto of Freisingen
(died 1158) and Giraldus Cambrensis (c. 1146 1220)
oftener than Cicero or " Cato." Some of the manuscripts
of the Natural Questions only contain books I-IV, and this
was probably the only part generally known. || Books VI
and VII, which give us the four prophetic quotations, were
largely unknown. It is therefore not surprising that the
only mediaeval writer who quotes passages from the Natural
Questions with a distinct consciousness of the possibility of
future progress in discovery is Roger Bacon (1214 1292).^
Walter Burlay and John of Salisbury knew it indirectly.
The latter recommends expressly its perusal** and uses terms
borrowed from it.f f In the Annales Colimenses Maximi,%\

* Quasi. Natur., bk. VII, 31.

t Inst. Orat. f X, i, 125-8. J Ibid., 125. Inf., IV, 141.

|| There is a copy in the library of St. Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury
(cf. M. R. James's Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover, p. 305)
and at Eton (cf. M. R. James's Catalogue of MSS, at Eton College,
P- 3i).

H Bacon's Metaphysics, which is in Charles's monograph, quotes
Qucest. Natur., VI, 5, sects. 2, 3 ; VII, 25, sects. 3, 4.
** Policraticus, II, 320 (Webb).

tt Ibid., I, 70; John of Salisbury borrows from Quast. Natur.. I, u.
1-2. JJ Mon. Germ. Script., XVII.

122 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

A.D. 1235, there is a reference to the section of the Natural
Questions discussing halves.* It is therefore practically
certain, however, that all the mediaeval references to this
book quote it as an authority for natural phenomena except
in the case of Roger Bacon, who discerns in it an incentive
to future progress.

If any one is anxious to understand the originality of
St. Paul's conception of the future, the ideal method is to
peruse some of the authors here cited. As one reads them
one wonders that all save Seneca stop short at the very
point which is of the greatest interest, the nature of the
future, the sort of evolution to which it will give rise.
A perusal of the Natural Questions and then a perusal of the
Epistle to the Ephesians enable one to grasp in some measure
the originality of St. Paul. Indeed the true idea of progress
is a creation of Christianity, forming one of its finest
achievements. The transition from the Apostle of the
Gentiles to St. Augustine is easy, for the thoughts of the two
men were singularly kindred. Theologian as St. Augustine
primarily is, the invasions of the barbarians forced him to
become an observer. Society, according to him, is divided
into two orders : one is the ordinary society of men, the other
is the society of men who live according to God. Paganism
represents one city, Christianity the other, f He views the
history of Rome in the light of the establishment of the
" Civitas Dei. 5 ' This establishment constitutes progress for
humanity. J Christianity, however, is no radical innovation
without roots in the past ; the ages have been a preparation for
it. In spite of digressions, the Civitas Dei is devoted to
the moral evolution of history. The providence of God
in the life of the world is the burden of its message. St.
Augustine stood as firmly for this belief in the Christian
world as the Stoic did in the ancient world. This conception
is indeed the consummation of the moral and religious
evolution of humanity. The light of God appears every-
where: it shines under Moses and the prophets; it flickers
under the patriarchs; and it enlightens the world in Jesus

* In Apocrypha Anecdota (ed. M. R. James), Cambridge, 1893.

t De Civ. Dei, XVI, I.

J Cf. Vincent of Beauvais, XXVI-XXX.

De Civ. Dei, V, 11 ; cf. V, i.

THE PRECURSORS OF DARWIN 123

Christ, greater than the patriarchs, greater than the prophets.
With Clement of Alexandria (150 or 160 c. 213) St.
Augustine recognises that other beliefs, other ideas, prepared
the time for Him who is the Light of the World.* The
world advances, thanks to Christianity, towards perfection.
From God alone comes such a consummation; from Him we
hope for eternal life. As the world therefore advances, to
St. Augustine the cycle theory is sheer madness. Jesus
Christ died once : He will die no more, for death hath no
more dominion over Him.

It is noticeable that St. Augustine does not ignore the
development of industry f through the ages, and makes a
notable application of it in his consideration of the destiny of
man. He can allow no activity to be outside or apart
from God. There is a complete gradation of nature: there
is also a complete gradation of soul. There is, he observes, a
wide difference between the evolution of humanity and the
evolution of the individual. Old age is perfect in the former :
it is feeble and decadent in the latter. Here is the germ
of the idea which lies in the background of all the philosophy
of progress in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. St.
Augustine perceived it clearly. Limiting himself to the
study of civilisation which has preceded Christianity, he
compares the education of the human race to that of a single
man ; it must follow the progressive succession of the ages in
order to raise itself, by degrees, from time to eternity, from
the visible to the invisible, t " Divine Providence, which
guides marvellously all things, governs the succession of
generations, from Adam to the end of the ages as a single
man." In observing the action of God in history St.
Augustine also observes the successive epochs of humanity,
the steps towards progress. There are three epochs : youth,
characterised by the absence of law, from Adam to Abra-
ham; the virile age from Abraham to Christ, which is the
epoch of law ; at last, old age, which is the era of Christianity
and the epoch of grace. || In each of these three epochs there

* De Civ. Dei, II, especially 28.

t Ibid., XXII, 24. t Ibid., X, 14; cf. XXII, 24.

De quastionibus, octoginta tribus, quaestio 58.

|| De Civ. Dei, XV-XIX. Cf. Godet's striking remark: "L'histoire du
monde dans essence se resume dans trois mots: il vient; il est venu; il
revient" (Etudes Bibliques N.T., p. 292).

I2 4 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

are subdivisions, and, following the procedure of the Jewish
schools, he seeks parallels in other eras. He compares the
six epochs of the world to the six days of creation, seeking
analogies between the events of each period and the works
of each day of creation. For example, the third epoch is
distinguished by the separation of the people of God from
other peoples: similarly the third witnessed the separation
of the earth from the waters. In De Genesi contra Mani-
chaos he returns to a consideration of the ages of the world,
adding a seventh to correspond to the seventh day. * Then
the Lord will stand forth in clearness; then will those find
rest with Christ to whom He said, " Be ye therefore perfect,
as your Father in heaven is perfect." This seventh day
will not be quite like the other six : there will be no night.
The perfection then attained in Christ will be eternal.

St. Augustine formulates a serious contribution to the
growth of humanity, and the steps he traces there were not
devoid of stimulus to those who tried to trace evolution
in the kingdom of animals as well as in the kingdom of men.f
Like Gregory of Nyssa (332 395), he adopts an explanation
of the Creation which is in part naturalistic. He docs not
dream of thinking of the six days of the Creation as in any
wise equivalent to the solar days. In commenting on the
passage, " In the beginning God created the heaven and the
earth/' he writes : " In the beginning God made the heaven
and the earth, as if this were the seed of the heaven and the
earth, although as yet all the matter of heaven and of earth
was in confusion ; but because it was certain that from this
heaven and the earth would be, therefore the material itself
is called by that name." $ He thinks of Creation as of things
in process of coming into due order, " not by intervals of
time, but by series of causes, so that those things which in
the mind of God were made simultaneously might be brought
to their completion by the sixfold representation of that one
day." In his view of the origin of life he stands midway
between biogenesis and abiogenesis. It is perhaps too much

* De Genesi contra Manichaos, I, 24; cf. Tertullian, De Virginibus
relandes, c. i.

t Cf. W. Cunningham, S. Austin, p. 114.
i De Genesi contra Manichaos, bk. I, sect. 2 (vii),
De Genesi ad Litteram, bk. V, sect. 12 (v), . ,

THE PRECURSORS OF DARWIN 125

to say that he put forward a theory of evolution, but he
plainly rejected the doctrine of special creation.

In the twelfth century Hugh de St. Victor (1098 1141),
inspired by St. Augustine, considers evolution, in a loose
sense, as the universal law of creation; even the angels make
advances towards perfection. All creatures share in these
advances till the day of judgment, when all will share the
immutability and perfection of God Himself. Of course,
with some thinkers like Gregory of Tours (539 593), Lam-
bert of Her sf eld (flor. c. beginning of the eleventh century),
and Otto of Freisingen, the view of a catastrophic end of
the world prevails. With St. Hugh de St. Victor the painful
march of the race towards perfection is in no wise a con-
sequence of the fall. There exists a trace of the golden
age hypothesis in the notion that all things were perfect
in the very principle of creation in so far as God directly
called them into being. Everything else arriving after the
first process of creation is subject to the law of gradual
growth, beginning with imperfection and ending with
perfection. This is clear in the vegetable and animal worlds,
and is no less clear in the world of the human race.* Hugh
de St. Victor and St. Thomas Aquinas (1227 1274) insist
that all truth is one, that there is a progressive revelation of
it, that as the coming of the Saviour drew near the know-
ledge of the truth increased.! The sacraments of the law
of nature shadowed forth the truth; those of the law of
Moses were its image; and those instituted by Jesus Christ
are the reality. That is, the early is a preparation for the
later, but all are fundamentally one.J

According to St. Thomas Aquinas, " it is natural for
human reason to arrive by degrees from the imperfect to
the perfect. Hence the early philosophers taught imperfect
truth, which afterwards was more clearly discovered by their
successors." It is exactly the same with the practical sciences ;
from many standpoints the early inventions were defective,
later these defects were corrected, with the result that machines
were improved. He maintains, however, that faith remains

* Hugo de Sancto Victore, Summa, lib. I, part VI, c. xiv.
t Hugo de Sancto Victore, De Sacramentis, lib. I, part XI, c. vi;
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentes, IV, 57; Op., IX, p. 493.
J Hugo, De Sacramentis, lib. I, part XI, c. vi; lib. I, part XII, c. iii.
Summa Theologica, prima secundse, quaest. 97, art. I.

126 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

constant as thoroughly as Newton believed in the law of
change, of development. Dogmas are seemingly increasing
in number. In reality it is not so, for the germ of them lies
in the creeds of the primitive Church.* To us dogma
suggests a superfluous garment which trammels and incom-
modes the mind. The Stoics and St. Thomas Aquinas
realised the bitter need of dogma felt by minds which have
been stripped to the winds of heaven. They were acutely
aware that an unsolved enigma means intellectual discomfort.
Therefore St. Thomas bends all his energies to the removal
of the unsolved. There is another method of overcoming the
difficulty : truth is unchanged, though its aspects are always
changing.f The law of Moses was good, argues St. Thomas
in the spirit of St. Augustine and Prudentius, but it was
not perfect. Was not, for example, grace lacking ? $ He
holds the outline of the doctrine of development, but he holds
it as an ecclesiastic. Take an example. Why, he asks, was
not the New Law of Christ bestowed upon men from the
dawn of creation? The answer is St. Augustine's: " The
Gospel has not been preached to the first men because it
contains the law of perfection; now perfection cannot exist
in the very beginning of things." If we compare the law of
Moses with that of Christ, the former is unquestionably
imperfect; but if we compare it and it is the only proper
comparison with the needs of the men for whom it has
been provided, it was relatively perfect. || The Mosaic law
is the germ of the law of Christ just as much as the seed
contains the essence of the tree. If Here the comparative
standpoint is adopted, and had its consequences been realised
it would have constituted one of the greatest forward steps
that man has ever taken. Its consequences, alas! were not
realised till the days of our own fathers.

St. Thomas Aquinas possessed the Stoic passion for
definition. It is possible to meet with passages in the
Summa Theologica which may be taken to mean that he had
a vague conception of something that, in the hands of a

* Summa Theologica, Secundae scunda, quaest. I, art. 7.
t Ibid., quaest. 16, art. 8.
j Ibid., prima secundae, quaest. 97, art. I.
Ibid., quaest. 106, art. 3.
Ibid., quaest. 98, art. 2.
f., quaest. 107, art 3.

THE PRECURSORS OF DARWIN 127

dialectician, might be called a theory of evolution, just as in
his De Regimine Principum he has the idea of a contract
made between the king and the people. Influenced by the
teaching of St. Augustine, he lays down : " As to production
of plants, Augustine holds a different view, ... for some
say that on the third day plants were actually produced, each
in his kind a view favoured by the superficial reading of the
Scripture. But Augustine says that the earth is then said
to have brought forward grass and trees causaliter; that is,
it then received power to produce them/' When he dis-
cusses Genesis ii. 4, he remarks that " in those days . . . God
made creation primarily or causaliter, and then rested from
His work." From passages like these it is evident that it
would be as fair to call St. Thomas an advocate of Whiggism
or of democracy as an evolutionist. Indeed a candid perusal
of the Summa Theologica at once reveals the fact that the
mind of this great thinker was pre-scientifrc. The idea that
there might be endless knowledge, the view of Seneca, was
outside his scheme of things. The field of learning was
strictly bounded, and his mind was quite competent to explore
every part of it. Dean Colet (1466 1519) protested, not
against the ignorance of St. Thomas Aquinas for no one
could accuse the great Italian of lack of information but
against his confidence in thinking that he could define
everything.

Europe went through and required to go through
three Renaissances : the first in the eighth century ; the second
in the twelfth; the third in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries. The first reintroduced something of the old
Roman education; the second introduced Aristotle and the
learning of the Arabs ; the third resuscitated the whole culture
of the classical world. The first prepared the way for the
second ; the second for the third. The third originated that
new birth of the human spirit which we emphatically call the
Renaissance. Admiration for antiquity became its hall-mark.
Art and Literature threw off the forms of medievalism and
looked for all their inspiration to the models of the ancient
world. Platonic societies were formed in Italy, and Plato
was found to be a theologian, a prophet. The New Learning
tended in many quarters to place Plato on the pedestal
formerly occupied by Aristotle. That is, the scholar sub-

128 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

stituted for the works of a thinker with possibilities of
scientific progress foreshadowed, the works of one whose
ideal lay in the past. In political circles, as well as in literary
and scientific, it was not rare to meet with the ancient notion
of the circular theory of the movement of peoples and civilisa-
tions. If on the one hand there are the names of Rabelais
(c.i495 1553), Campanella (1568 1639), and Francis
Bacon (1561 1626), on the other there are the no less
renowned names of Machiavelli (14691527), Bodin
(15301596), and Montaigne (15331592).

The geographical discoveries of the age brought into
prominence cycles of another kind, the cycle of incessant
movement growth, expansion, short-lived conquest, followed
by shrinkage, defeat, expulsion, or absorption by another set
of migrants. The written history of mankind is to be read
largely in the shift ings of peoples, now going forward, then
thrusting back. Society was approaching a dynamic stage,
though of course it never is static. The great service
Copernicus (1473 *543) rendered to mankind was the con-
ception of perpetual motion of this world. Motion there is
in the worlds above, and incessant motion there is in the
worlds beneath. Petrarch (1304 1374) is sometimes called
the first modern man, and on the literary side a case may
be made out for this designation. He was, however, as
blind as Dante (1265 1321) to the forces about him which
made for political and scientific progress. What was fatal
to the work of Dante was the work of Copernicus. There
was no longer any distinction between the heavens and the
earth. True, the earth became a heavenly body, but for
all time to come the substance of the heavenly was precisely
the same as that of the earthly. It was no longer possible
to credit the belief that the stars influenced the destiny of
man, for their motions were governed by the same laws as
that of the globe we inhabit. Man was once more a mote
in the unfathomable universe. Four generations after
Copernicus, Blaise Pascal (1623 1662) could say, "Le
silence eternel de ces espaces m'effraie." The first modern
man was the astronomer, the first to cherish a scientific con-
ception of evolution in the heavens.

Naturalists like Leeuwenhoek, Malpighi, and Swammer-
dam contributed during the second half of the seventeenth

THE PRECURSORS OF DARWIN

and the beginning of the eighteenth century to the study of
the smaller organisms. They provided facts, but they did not
provide principles. These were set going from the days
of St. Augustine, who suggested that there were stages in
the history of the world just as there were stages in the
history of the animals, the relations of man. Seneca was
every whit as much a Stoic as he was a scientist, and it is
out of our power to separate the thought of evolution in
theology from the thought of evolution in science. The
remarkable fact in modern times is that the stimulus given
to evolutionary studies came much more from the moral
philosophers than from the scientists proper. As Mr.
Osborn takes care to show : " It is a very striking fact,
that the basis of our modern methods of studying the
Evolution problem was established not by the early
naturalists nor by the speculative writers, but by the
Philosophers. They alone were upon the main track of
modern thought. It is evident that they were groping in
the dark for a working theory of the Evolution of life, and
it is remarkable that they clearly perceived from the outset
that the point to which observation should be directed was
not the past but the present mutability of species, and further,
that this mutability was simply the variation of individuals
on an extended scale. Thus Variation was brought into
prominence as the point to which observation should be
directed."* Bacon pointed out the evidence for variation in
plants and animals and the bearing of this upon the pro-
duction of new species. Leibniz advanced beyond Bacon's
position in indicating that the evolution of life was a necessary
part of a system of cosmic philosophy. Kant's conception
of evolution is one of the most comprehensive, embodying
in it the views of philosophers from Aristotle onwards.

Francis Bacon grasped the idea of the renewal of the
modern world by the aid of the intellectual labours of
successive generations.! He is often reproached with making
no real contribution to science. The criticism Ls just, but it is
not well founded. His role was that of a herald. " I am but

* H. F. Osborn, From the Greeks to Darwin, p. 87.

t De Dign. et Augm. Scientiarum, I, 20; II, 23; IV, in ; V, 114; VIII,
287-8 (1638 ed.). Cf. Novum Organum, I, aphor. 56, 78, 84, 92; DC
Sapientia Vetcrum, 315-6 (1638 ed.) ; Nova Atlantis, 367 ff. (1638 ed.).

I 3 o SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

a trumpeter," he proclaimed, " not a combatant." Scientific
investigators work, as a rule, on facts and observations they
collect. Bacon urged them to amass facts and evolve cosmos
out of chaos. His method is wrong; still there is no
mistaking the enthusiasm of the man who writes that " with-
out such a natural and experimental history ... no progress
worthy of the human race in Philosophy and the Sciences
could possibly be made; whereas if such a history were once
provided, and well ordered, with the addition of such
auxiliary and light-giving experiments as the course of
Interpretation would itself suggest, the investigation of
Nature and of all the Sciences would be the work of only a
few years." * In this fashion he hopes to get rid of the
ancient hypothesis that men are condemned to return always
in a circle.

Did not the schoolmen employ experience? Truly they
did, but it was not to consult her as an adviser, but to drag
her at their chariot-wheels as a captive. In his Historia
Vitcz et Mortis, Bacon is well aware of the utility of pro-
visional hypotheses. In the preface to his magnum opus
Copernicus had announced, " Neither let any one, so far as
hypotheses are concerned, expect anything certain from
Astronomy; since science can afford nothing of the kind."
Bacon attacked the Copernican discovery, and no doubt
some of his hostility was prompted by the circumstance that
the astronomer was pragmatic in his outlook. To Bacon
science was making such progress that he could not bear this
pessimistic philosopher. In his Advancement of Learning,
which he published in 1605, he insists on the wisdom of
providing readers in science and of providing the expenses
of the experiments these men undertake. The foundation
of the Royal Society was one day to be the outcome of his
ideas. It is scarcely three centuries since the idea of the
possibility of indefinite progress through man's own conscious
efforts first emerged in the minds of a few thoughtful
persons. It is to Bacon the glory is due of first popularising
this seminal idea, one of the greatest single ideas in the
whole history of mankind in the vista of possibilities it
opens before us.

Bacon's Novum Organum is filled with hope. He raised
* Preface to Parasceue ad Historian Naturalem et Experimentalem.

THE PRECURSORS OF DARWIN 131

the problem of the mutability of species as a possible result
of the accumulation of variations. " In the eighth rank of
prerogative instances/' he remarks, " we will place deviating
instances, such as the errors of Nature or strange and mon-
strous objects, in which Nature deviates and turns from her
ordinary course. For the errors of Nature differ from
singular instances, inasmuch as the latter are the miracles
of species, the former of the individuals. Their use is much
the same, for they rectify the understanding in opposition
to habit, and reveal common forms. For with regard to
these, also, we must not desist from inquiry till we discern
the cause of the deviation; the cause does not, however,
in such cases rise to a regular form, but only in the latent
process towards such a form, for he who is acquainted with
the path of Nature will more readily observe their deviations,
and vice versa, he who has learnt her deviations will be able
more accurately to describe her paths." * There is no
reason to believe that the investigator is speaking here : it
is the prophet with which we are concerned, the man who
could divine that " plants sometimes degenerate to the point
of changing into other plants."

In his Novum Organum he proceeds to hint that man can
produce variations experimentally, and that living objects
are well adapted to experimental work : " They differ again
from singular instances, by being much more apt for
practice. For it would be very difficult to generate new
species, but less to vary known species, and thus produce many
rare and unusual results. The passage from the miracles of
Nature to those of Art is easy; for if Nature be once seized
in her variations and the cause be manifest, it will be easy
to lead her by Art to such variation as she was first led to by
chance; and not only to that, but others, since deviations
on the one side lead and open the way in every direction."

In the following passage his acumen enables him to per-
ceive the presence of transitional forms in Nature : " In the
ninth rank of prerogative instances we will place bordering
instances, which we are also wont to term participants. They
are such as exhibit those species of bodies which appear to
be composed of two species, or to be the rudiments between
one and the other. They may well be classed with the
* Novum Organum, bk. II, sect. 29.

132 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

singular or heteroclite instances; for in the whole system of
things, they are rare and extraordinary. Yet from their
dignity they must be treated of and classed separately, for they
point out admirably the order and constitution of things, and
suggest the causes of the number and quality of the more
common species in the Universe, leading the understanding
from that which is, to that which is possible. We have
examples of them in Moss, which is something between
putrescence and a plant ; in some Comets, which hold a place
between stars and ignited meteors; in Flying Fishes,
between fishes and birds; and in Bats, between birds and
quadrupeds."

What an Englishman suggested a German proceeded to
develop. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (16461716) was
familiar with the writings of Bacon, who enforced on him
his views on variation. Influenced by Aristotle, Leibniz
expressed the law of continuity as applied to life: " All
natural orders of beings present but a single chain, in which
the different classes of animals, like so many rings, are so
closely united that it is not possible either by observation or
imagination to determine where one ends or begins." His
conception of continuity is clear in the following : " All
advances by degrees in Nature, and nothing by leaps, and this
law as applied to each, is part of my doctrine of Continuity.
Although there may exist in some other world species inter-
mediate between Man and the Apes, Nature has thought it
best to remove them from us, in order to establish our
superiority beyond question. I speak of the intermediate
species, and by no means limit myself to those leading to
Man. I strongly approve of the research for analogies;
plants, insects, and Comparative Anatomy will increase these
analogies, especially when we are able to take advantage of
the microscope more than at present/' Huxley quotes a
passage from the Protogcza * which proves that Leibniz
had not merely a law of continuity, a law of perfecti-
bility, but also thought on the mutability of species. In
discussing the fossil Ammonites related to the living Nautilus
he notes : " Some are surprised that there are to be seen
everywhere in rocks such objects as one might seek for in
vain elsewhere in the known world, or certainly, at least, in
* Prolog^ XXVI; cf. T. H. Huxley, Darwiniana, p. 208.

THE PRECURSORS OF DARWIN 133

his own neighbourhood. Such are the horns of Ammon
(Ammonites), which are reckoned a kind of Nautilus,
although they are said to differ always both in form and
size, sometimes indeed being found a foot in diameter, from
all those animal natures which the sea exhibits. Yet who has
thoroughly searched those hidden recesses or subterranean
depth ? And how many animals hitherto unknown to us has
a new world to offer? Indeed it is credible that by means
of such great changes (of habitat) even the species of animals
are often changed/' In his world there are endless monads
and each of them is the centre of an endless evolution.

Most questions in moral philosophy have been so altered
by the thought of Immanuel Kant (1724 1804) that one is
not altogether unprepared to discern his potency in the world
of evolution. By his grand nebular hypothesis he suggested
the possible development of stars, suns, planets, and satellites
by the slow contraction of diffuse and incandescent haze-
clouds. If it be true that great minds think alike, we can
grasp the fact that about the same time there occurred
to Buffon and him ideas of selection and adaptation, of
environment and inheritance. Following in the steps of
Newton, who noted the uniformity of structure which
pervades animal types, and Leibniz, who noted the possible
perfectibility of monads, Kant in 1755 published his The
General History of Nature and Theory of the Heavens,
which endeavoured to reconcile Newton and Leibniz from
the mechanical and teleological standpoints. Influenced also
by Lucretius, Kant adopted an attitude unlike that of his
former book when he published in 1780 his The Teleological
Facility of Judgment. In the former he considers the world
to be under the domain of natural causes. In the latter he
divides the world into the inorganic in which natural causes
prevail, and the organic in which the teleological principle
prevails. His awe of the starry heavens predisposed him
to think that it was next to impossible for the mind of man
to discover all the laws of the universe.

In 1763 he traced back all the higher forms of life to
simpler elementary forms. He notes the changes produced in
man by migration, differences of climate, and deduces the
law of degeneration from the originally created types of
species. What is true of the world of animals is just as

i 3 4 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

true of the world of man. Is there not stage after stage in
both ? Is not man in fact an animal ? In 1790 Kant wrote a
pregnant passage: "It is desirable to examine the great
domain of organised beings by means of a methodical com-
parative anatomy, in order to discover whether we may not
find in them something resembling a system, and that too in
connection with their mode of generation, so that we may
not be compelled to stop short with a mere consideration of
forms as they are which gives us no insight into their
generation and need not despair of gaining a full insight
into this department of Nature. The agreement of so many
kinds of animals in a certain common plan of structure,
which seems to be visible not only in their skeletons so
that a wonderfully simple typical form, by the shortening
and lengthening of some parts, and by the suppression and
development of others, might be able to produce an immense
variety of species gives us a ray of hope, though feeble,
that here perhaps some results may be obtained, by the
application of the principle of the mechanism of Nature,
without which, in fact, no science ran exist. This analogy
of forms (in so far as they seem to have been produced in
accordance with a common prototype, notwithstanding their
great variety) strengthens the supposition that they have an
actual blood relationship, due to derivation from a common
parent; a supposition which is arrived at by observation of
the graduated approximation of one class of animals to
another, beginning with the one in which the principle of
purposiveness seems to be most conspicuous, namely man,
and extending down to the polyps, and from these even
down to mosses and lichens, and arriving finally at raw
matter, the lowest stage of Nature observable by us. From
this raw matter and its forces, the whole apparatus of Nature
seems to have been derived according to mechanical laws
(such as those which resulted in the production of crystals) ;
yet this apparatus, as seen in inorganic beings, is so incompre-
hensible to us, that we feel ourselves compelled to conceive
for it a different principle. But it would seem that the
archaeologist of Nature is at liberty to regard the great
Family of creatures (for as a Family we must conceive it,
if the above-mentioned continuous and connected relationship
has a real foundation) as having sprung from the immediate

THE PRECURSORS OF DARWIN 135

results of her earliest revolution, judging from all the laws
of their mechanisms known to us or conjectured by
him." *

The classical and the mediaeval conception of evolution had
been preserved by Bacon, Leibniz, and Kant. Bacon was a
philosopher and nothing else. Leibniz and Kant were
philosophers and mathematicians. During the eighteenth
century we meet men who are partly philosophers, partly
naturalists. Huxley has drawn attention f to Benoit de
Maillet (1656 1738), whose Telliamed was written before
the time of Haller and Bonnet, of Linnaeus and Hutton.
Influenced by Empedocles, de Maillet traces a theory of
transmission of acquired characters. Habit and trans-
formation are his leading explanations of all metamorphoses.
All terrestrial animals have their origin in marine forms.
Birds come from flying-fishes. Lions came from sea-lions,
and man from rhomme marin, the husband of the mermaid !
Huxley points out that de Maillet entertains a definite con-
ception of the plasticity of living things, but he omits to
mention that de Maillet is capable of thinking that this
plasticity can take place in a single life and he also omits
de Maillet's pedigree of man. Like St. Augustine, de
Maillet interprets the days of Genesis as so many gradual
periods or epochs.

Pierre 'Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698 1759) bore
traces of Greek thought in his speculations, for Democritus
and Anaxagoras left their mark upon him. There are to
Maupertuis psychical properties of the higher organisms in all
material particles, and these constitute the link between the
organic and the inorganic worlds. As he assumes that
non-living matter holds properties of living matter, he can
easily derive the latter from the former. He finds an
origin of new species in supposing that the elementary
particles may not always retain the same order : there may be
chance combinations producing differences which result
in the infinite variety of species.

Denis Diderot (1713 1784) continued the teaching of
Empedocles in his anticipation of the doctrine of natural

* Schultze drew Mr. Osborn's attention to this notable passage, and
Mr. Osborn drew mine,
j Darwiniana, p. 208,

I 3 6 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

selection. His reasoning he puts into the month of one
Saunderson. As to anterior states, Saunderson tells us * :
" You have no witnesses to confront with me, and your eyes
give you no help. Imagine, if you choose, that the order
which strikes you so profoundly has subsisted from the
beginning. But you leave me free to think that it has done
no such thing, and that if we went back to the birth of things
and scenes, and perceived matter in motion and chaos slowly
disentangling itself, we should come across a whole multitude
of shapeless creatures, instead of a very few creatures highly
organised. If I have no objection to make to what you say
about the present condition of things, I may at least question
you as to their past condition. I may at least ask of you, for
example, who told you you and Leibniz and Clarke and
Newton that in the first instances of the formation of
animals, some were without heads and others without
feet? I may maintain that these had no stomachs, and
those no intestines; that some to whom a stomach, a palate,
and teeth seemed to promise permanence, came to an end
through some fault of heart and lungs; that the monsters
annihilated one another in succession, that all the faulty
(vicieuses) combinations of matter disappeared, and that
these only survived whose mechanism implied no important
misadaptation (contradiction-), and who had the power of
supporting and perpetuating themselves.

" On this hypothesis, if the first man had happened to have
his larynx closed, or had not found suitable food, or had been
defective in the parts of generation, or had failed to find a
mate, then what would have become of the human race? It
would have been still enfolded in the general depuration of
the universe; and that arrogant being who calls himself Man,
dissolved and scattered among the molecules of matter, would
perhaps have remained for all time hidden in the number
of mere possibilities.

"If shapeless creatures had never existed, you would not
fail to insist that none will ever appear, and that I am
throwing myself headlong into chimerical hypotheses. But
the order is not even now so perfect, but that monstrous
products appear from time to time."

Saunderson continues to enlarge his views. " I con-
* I use Lord Morley's translation on p. 94 ff. of his Diderot, I.

THE PRECURSORS OF DARWIN 137

jecture then/' he proceeds, " that in the beginning when
matter in fermentation gradually brought our universe
bursting into being, blind creatures like myself were very
common. But why should I not believe of worlds what I
believe of animals? How many worlds, mutilated and im-
perfect, were peradventure dispersed, then re-formed, and are
again dispersing at each moment of time in those far-off
spaces which I cannot touch and you cannot behold, but where
motion combines and will continue to combine masses of mat-
ter, until they have chanced on some arrangement in which
they may finally persevere! O philosophers, transport
yourselves with me on to the confines of the universe, beyond
the point where I feel, and you see, organised beings; gaze
over that new ocean, and seek across its lawless, aimless
heavings some vestiges of that intelligent Being whose
wisdom strikes you with such wonder here !

" What is this world? A complex whole, subject to endless
revolutions. All these revolutions show a continual tendency
to destruction; a swift succession of beings who follow one
another, press forward, and vanish; a fleeting symmetry; the
order of a moment. I reproached you just now with estimat-
ing the perfection of things by your own capacity; and I
might accuse you here of measuring its duration by the
length of your own days. You judge of the continuous
existence of the world, as an ephemeral insect might judge
of yours. The world is eternal for you, as you are eternal
to the being that lives but for one instant. Yet the insect
is the more reasonable of the two. For what a
prodigious succession of ephemeral generations attests
your eternity! What an immeasurable tradition! Yet
shall we all pass away, without the possibility of assign-
ing either the real extension that we filled in space, or the
precise time that we shall have endured. Time, space,
matter all, it may be, are no more than a point/'

Diderot sent a copy of his work to Voltaire. The poet
replied with courtesy, but declared his dissent from the con-
clusions of Saunderson, " who denied God, because he hap-
pened to have been born blind." And indeed there is colour-
blindness on the part of not a few scientists. Huxley him-
self asked Professor Haughton of Trinity College, Dublin,
could he account for the circumstance that he was an agnostic

138 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

and Haughton was a Christian scientist. Haughton reflected
for a moment, and then replied, " Perhaps, in this matter,
you are colour-blind." "Of course,'' answered Huxley,
" if I were colour-blind I should not know it." We might
contend that Diderot, one of the heroic sceptics of the
eighteenth century, would very likely disown many of
those who profess his scepticism now. For scepticism, when
a virtue, is always an opportunist virtue, and it may become
a vice when the circumstances that have justified it have
passed away. The man who, like Diderot, is an heroic
sceptic when the world is cumbered with a mass of false
doctrine, might in another age affirm instead of denying and
might oppose the sceptic of that age every whit as eagerly as
he opposed the dogmatists of his own time. For scepticism
itself may be a false doctrine instead of the enemy of false
doctrines. It may become an end instead of a means, and a
drug to the intellect rather than a spur. In fact there are
two kinds of sceptics ; and it is very easy for the baser kind
to flatter themselves that they are followers of the nobler.
Diderot was a sceptic, but he was made one by his passion for
truth ; and that passion was not the least sceptical. For years
he toiled at the Encyclopedia at a salary of about 120 a
year, and mere disbelief would never have impelled a man of
such gifts to make so great a sacrifice for it. He disbelieved
many things because his faith in truth and in the value of
knowledge was so strong ; he was content to destroy because he
believed that truth would prevail when error was swept away.
There are sceptics who do not believe in truth or that
it can ever prevail, and, unlike Diderot, they find it easy to
accept beliefs readily enough just because they do not believe
in them. In an age of dogmatism they are comfortable
dogmatists; in an age of scepticism they are equally com-
fortable sceptics. But in any case their dogmatism is
sceptical and their scepticism dogmatic. When they seem to
affirm anything they are only denying that the effort after
truth is worth making; when they seem to deny anything
they are only affirming that truth cannot be discovered. To
them scepticism it not a means to an end, but an end in itself.
It is an animal lethargy of the mind which they flatter with
a philosophic name. Low forms of life seem to have adapted
themselves more perfectly to circumstance than the higher

THE PRECURSORS OF DARWIN 139

forms; and there is the same perfection of adaptation in this
low kind of scepticism. Whether it wears the guise of
belief or disbelief, its aim is always mere comfort; and it
can only be stirred to anger by anything which threatens its
comfort. The Sadducees, the comfortable sceptics of their
time, joined with the Pharisees against Christ; and they did
so, no doubt, not because He destroyed, but because He
affirmed. The baser sceptic tolerates an old affirmation
because he knows by experience that it will not interfere
with his comfort; but he hates a new one because he does
not know how uncomfortable it may make him. He is as
hostile to the passion for truth as to the passion for righteous-
ness ; for both of these try to answer questions, and he likes to
ask them only because he is sure that they cannot be answered.
A passionate sceptic like Diderot falls into the habit of
destruction, because in his time there is so much that needs
to be destroyed. Like every man who would do great things,
he becomes a specialist and sacrifices some of his own virtue
to his specialism. He knows well enough that there must be
reconstruction, but he leaves that to the future when the
destruction is accomplished. Unfortunately his habit of
destruction is often mistaken by his followers for his peculiar
virtue, and they persist in it out of mere imitation. They
think that they are heroic revolutionaries like him when they
continue to deny from mere conservatism. Revolutions, in
thought as in politics, cannot continue for ever; and the
effort to continue them is merely an effort to maintain
anarchy. A sceptic like Diderot is a soldier who practises
the arts of war in thought; but when he has won his victories
it becomes necessary to practise the arts of peace. He,
because he was a great soldier of thought, would have known
this, but the mechanical sceptic who persists in fighting the
errors of the past does not know it. He still enjoys slaying
the slain and winning easily victories that once were hard and
glorious. He is brave against superstitions that no one now
believes in and against old evils which he does not recognise
in a new form. He is, in fact, obsolete himself, and not the
less so because he is the attacker, not the defender, of lost
causes. There are White Rose leagues of scepticism as
well as of loyalty; and they do not even possess the advantage
of being romantic, They deny safely what no one affirms;

140 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

but Diderot denied at his peril what the whole world affirmed,
and by the peril of his denial proved that there was affirma-
tion behind it. For men are generally right in what they
affirm and wrong in what they deny at least after the
Diderot stage has been negotiated.

Charles Bonnet (1720 1793) champions the Greek
doctrine of pre-existing germs, holding that all living things
proceed from them. It is only in a loose sense that he can be
called an evolutionist, though he was the author of this term,
deriving it from e-volvo. Following the law of continuity
of Leibniz, he came to the conclusion that no such thing as
generation, in the strict sense of the term, occurs in nature.*

J. B. Rene Robinet (1735 1820) followed in the steps
of Leibniz in holding the law of continuity and of de Maillet,
pursuing his line of thought, though more soberly. Borrow-
ing a mistaken interpretation of Aristotle, he conceived
evolution in the Master's large-minded fashion. Like
Maupertuis, he minimises the differences between organic
and inorganic, reaching an " echelle des etres " which em-
braces all matter. Unlike Bonnet and de Maillet and like
Leibniz, he was a uniformitarian long before the days of
LyelL Holding Leibniz's law of continuity, he imagines that
Nature has for her aim a movement towards the perfection
of each type. From the very beginning she meant to produce
man, her chef-d'cciivre, and the higher apes appear as her
last efforts before she triumphed in making man. Fossils,
minerals, dogs, horses, orang-outangs are not these the
experiments of nature? Man is simply the last of the series,
and even he may be replaced. Curiously enough, like
Lucretius, Robinet has no true idea of the gradual change
of the lower form into a higher.

Lorenzo Oken (1776 1851) held a fixed scientific creed,
and its articles determined his attitude to all the conceptions
of his day. In his sea-slime theory and spontaneous genera-
tion views he harks back to the ideas of Anaximander. He
bases his whole philosophy upon the spherical form of his
metaphysical " All." The skull, for example, he held to be
one of these manifestations of the archetypal sphere. The

* C O. Whitman, Bonnet's Theory of Evolution (Woods Hall Bio-
logical Lectures, 1894), pp. 225-40; cf. also pp. 205-24 on evolution and
epigenesis.

THE PRECURSORS OF DARWIN 141

cell of course is also a sphere. His Philosophy of Nature
appeared in 1802, the very year in which Lamarck and
Treviranus independently outlined their theories of biology
and evolution. In spite of the praises lavished by Haeckel on
him, there is no comparison between their methods and their
results with his methods and his results. In 1805 appeared
his work upon Generation Die Zeugung containing his
Ur-Schleim doctrine. " Every organic thing," we learn,
" has arisen out of slime, and is nothing but slime in different
forms. This primitive slime originated in the sea, from
inorganic matter, in the course of planetary evolution. The
origin of life occurred upon the shores, where water, air,
and earth were joined." The Ur-Schleim took the form of
minute bladders containing fluid. This infusorium, as he
calls it, develops. The whole organic world, in fact, consists
of infusoria, and both plants and animals are merely modified
infusoria. Generation, in his view, is the synthesis of organic
spheres. With Robinet, he holds that it is the synthesis of
germs. With Maupertuis and Diderot, he holds that it is
the synthesis of particles. His conceptions of the beginnings
of life vary, nor is he afraid to be inconsistent. " All life,' 1
he declares, " is from the sea; the whole sea is alive. Love
arose out of sea-foam." Such a conclusion might have stood
in the days of Anaximander, but it could not stand at the
beginning of the nineteenth century. He is even able to
throw over his celebrated Ur-Schleim hypothesis when he lays
down that " man has not been created, but developed, so the
Bible itself teaches us. God did not make man out of
nothing, but took an elemental body then existing an earth-
clod or carbon; moulded it into form, thus making use of
water; and breathed into it life namely, air whereby gal-
vanism or the vital process arose." This, by the way, will
indicate the sort of teaching in which Helmholtz grew up.

The philosophers like Bacon, Leibniz, and Kant step off the
scene, and so too do the quasi-philosophers like de Maillet,
Maupertuis, Diderot, Bonnet, Robinet, and Oken. The
philosophers from Bacon to Kant had been the forerunners
of the naturalists of the rank of Linnaeus and Buffon.

The change in attitude effected by the naturalists is appar-
ent in the opening words of Charles Dickens's novel Hard
Times. " Now, what I want," says Mr. Gradgrind, " is Facts.

i 4 2 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone
are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out every-
thing else. You can only form the minds of reasoning
animals upon Facts; nothing else will ever be of any service
to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my
own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up
these children. Stick to Facts, sir ! " The wish of Mr.
Gradgrind was anticipated during the eighteenth century by
some naturalists. Views there had been in abundance, but
had not the time come to put facts before investigators?

Linnaeus (1707 1778), it is not unfair to say, founded
the school of facts, and Buff on and Cuvier adopted his
attitude. His magnum opus on the Systema Nature?
contained masses of facts. He saw behind the facts he
diligently collected the world of organic life as composed
of so many well-demarcated types, each separate, distinct, and
immutable, each capable of producing its life ad infinitum,
and each unable to vary from its central standard in any
of its individuals, except perhaps within very narrow and
unimportant limits. To him every species was exactly
intermediate between two others : " We reckon as many
species as issued in pairs from the hands of the Creator."
By defining a kind as a group of plants or animals so closely
resembling one another as to give rise to the belief that they
might all be descended from a single ancestor or pair of
ancestors, he implicitly gave the sanction of his weighty
authority to the Creation hypothesis, and to the doctrine
of the unchangeability of organic forms. Such were his
views before 1751. Observance of facts proved too much
for this attitude. He dropped the idea of the absolute
fixity of species, allowing for an increase of species when he
remarked that " all the species of one genus constituted at
first (that is, at the Creation) one species, ab initio unam
constituerint speciem; they were subsequently multiplied
by hybrid generation, that is, by intercrossing with other
species/' In the last edition of his Systema Nature?, which
appeared in 1766, the fundamental proposition of his early
years, nulla specie? nova, quietly disappears. He also
suggests that degeneration was the result of the influence of
climate or environment.
Like Linnaeus, Georges Louis Leclerc Buffon (1707

THE PRECURSORS OF DARWIN 143

1788) collected facts with the utmost care, and, like Linnaeus,
believed at first in the absolute immutability of species, and,
also like him, came to disbelieve in this immutability. The
early edition of Buffon's magnum opus, L'PIistoire Naturelle,
contains words that might be a quotation from the early
edition of Linnseus's Systcma Natures : " In animals, species
are separated by a gap which Nature cannot bridge. . . .
We see him, the Creator, dictating his simple but beautiful
laws and impressing upon each species its immutable char-
acters." The nasty, inconvenient fact of the pig stood so
early as 1755 * n the way of the acceptance of the Special
Creation theory. How could the pig have been formed
upon an original, special, and perfect plan? Was it not a
compound of other animals? Had it not parts like the toes
which are of no service to it?

Anticipating Goethe, Buffon refused to perceive a purpose
in every part. Six years later he came to hold a belief in the
frequent mutability of species. Plants and animals may
freely vary in every direction from a common centre, so that
one kind may gradually and slowly be evolved by natural
causes from the type of another. He points out that, under-
lying all external diversities of character and shape, funda-
mental likenesses of type occur in many animals, which
irresistibly suggest the notion of common descent from a
single ancestor. Thus regarded, he maintains, not only the
ass and the horse but even man himself, the monkeys, the
quadrupeds, and all vertebrate animals, might be viewed as
merely forming divergent branches of one and the same
great family tree. Every such family, he believed, whether
animal or vegetable, might have sprung originally from a
single stock, which after many generations had here developed
into a higher form, and there degenerated into a lower and
less perfect type of organisation. Granting this granting
that nature could by slow variation produce one species in the
course of direct descent from another unlike it (for example,
the ass from the horse) then, Buffon observed, there was
no further limit to be set to her powers in this respect. We
might reasonably conclude that from a single primordial
being she has gradually been able in the course of time to
develop the whole continuous gamut of existing animal and
vegetable life. It is the old Aristotelian notion worked out

144 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

upon a wide basis of facts. The relations of species he leaves
to the one side as a problem beyond our reach : " Nous ne
pourrions nous prononcer plus affirmativement si les limites
qui separent les especes, ou la chaine qui les unit, nous
etaient micux connus; .mais qui peut avoir suivi la grande
filiation de toutes les genealogies dans la nature? II faut
etre ne avec elle et avoir, pour ainsi dire, des observations
contemporaines. ' '

To students of heredity it is a fact of surpassing fascina-
tion to find that Dr. Erasmus Darwin* (1731 1802),
grandfather of the great naturalist, proves to be a poet of
evolution, following Empedocles and Lucretius, and followed
by Goethe. He wrote the Botanic Garden and Loves of the
Plants, two volumes of verse published about 1788, his
Zoonomia, published in 1794, and his Temple of Nature,
published after his death in 1802, a memorable year in the
annals of works published on evolution. Poor as his poetry
is, it everywhere evinces the working of an original mind.
Where Charles Darwin was to catch views, Erasmus Darwin
only caught glimpses. These glimpses leant towards the
ideas afterwards put forth by that outstanding scientist
Lamarck. Darwin held that modifications spring from
within by the reactions of the organism, and he also endowed
plants with sensibility and, going further than Lamarck,
attributed their evolution to their own efforts towards the
attainment of certain structures.

In the opening verses of the Temple of Nature Erasmus
Darwin revives the Greek doctrine of the spontaneous origin

of life:

Hence without parents, by spontaneous birth,
Rise the first specks of animated earth.

Organic life beneath the shoreless waves
Was born and nurs'd in ocean's pearly caves;
First, forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;
These, as successive generations bloom,
New powers acquire and larger limbs assume;
Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,
And breathing realms of fin and feet and wing.

In the transition from sea to dry land came the amphibious,

* Throughout this section I make much use of E. Krause's Erasmus
Darwin, and Mr. H. F. Osborn's From the Greeks to Darwin.

THE PRECURSORS OF DARWIN 145

and then the terrestrial forms of life. He notes the develop-
ment of the tadpole into the frog that surprised Canning so
much. He quotes Buffon to the effect that many features
in the anatomy of man point to a former quadrupedal position.
Man may have arisen from a single family of monkeys in
which, accidentally, the opposing muscle brought the thumb
against the tips of the fingers, and this muscle gradually
increased in size by use in successive generations. That is,
he discerns the part taken by the survival of an accidental
variation. The hand of man indeed stirs him:

The hand, first gift of Heaven! to man belongs;
Untipt with claws, the circling fingers close,
With rival points the bending thumbs oppose,
Trace the nice lines of Form with sense refined,
And clear ideas charm the thinking mind.

The development of the human faculties next receives atten-
tion. He describes the fierce struggle for existence in verses
that remind us of Tennyson's lines upon nature red in tooth
and claw. Animal destroys animal, and plant destroys plant.
Plants engage in an endless contest among themselves for
soil and air, for light and moisture. This bitter contest
results in the checks administered to the naturally rapid
increase of life. What Darwin put poetically, we may put by
means of the more prosaic medium of figures. If we assume
each plant to occupy a foot and if we assume the dry surface
of the earth to be 51,000,000 square miles, this provides us
with 1,421,798,400,000,000 square feet, room enough, we
should think, for reasonable expansion on the part of plants.
Take the process for nine years, and we find:

Plants Plants

i x 50 in ist year= 50

50 X 50 2nd - ; 2,500

2,500 x 50 3rd

125,000 X 50 4th

6,250,000 X 50 5th

312,500,000 X 50 6th

15,625,000,000 X 50 7th

781,250,000,000 X 50 8th

39,062,500,000,000 x 50 (jth

125,000

6,250,000

312,500,000

15,625,000,000

781,250,000,000

39,062,500,000,000

1,953,125,000,000,000

That is to say, at the end of the ninth year there are
531,326,600,000,000 square feet less than the descendants
of a single plant, unchecked, require. As Dr. Krause re-
marks, Darwin just misses the connection between this fierce
struggle and the survival of the fittest.
10

146 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

From such predecessors as Aristotle and Leibniz, Buffon
and Helvetius, Linnaeus and Blumenthal, Erasmus Darwin
draws, and draws heavily. Darwin confesses that " this idea
of the gradual formation and improvement of the Animal
world seems not to have been unknown to the ancient
philosophers. "

In his Zoonomia Darwin defends the idea of individual
development by successive additions of parts to the embryo.
Individual life begins from a single filament. " Shall we
conjecture," he asks, " that one and the same kind of living
filament is and has been the cause of all organic life? . . .
I suppose this living filament, of whatever form it may be,
whether sphere, cube, or cylinder, to be endowed with the
capability of being excited into action by certain kinds of
stimulus. " This excitability gives rise to the changes in the
structure of plants and animals, and these changes are trans-
mitted to their descendants. Coming to the largest problem,
he believes that " when we revolve in our minds the meta-
morphoses of animals, as from the tadpole to the frog;
secondly, the changes produced by artificial cultivation, as in
the breeds of horses, dogs, and sheep; thirdly, the changes
produced by conditions of climate and of season, as in the
sheep of warm climates being covered with hair instead of
with wool, and the hares and partridges of northern climates
becoming white in winter: when, further, we observe the
changes in structure produced by habit, as seen especially in
men of different occupations; or the changes produced by
artificial mutilation and prenatal influences, as in the crossing
of species and production of monsters ; fourthly, when we ob-
serve the essential unity of plan in all warm-blooded animals,
we are led to conclude that they have been alike produced
from a similar living filament."

As he reviews some of the arguments for mutability, he
speculates upon the causes of these changes. " From their
first rudiments/' he thinks, " or primordium, to the termina-
tion of their lives, all animals undergo perpetual transforma-
tions; which are in part produced by their own exertions in
consequence of their desires and aversions, of their pleasures
and their pains, or of irritation, or of associations ; and many
of these acquired forms or propensities are transmitted to
their posterity." * Here is the theory of the inheritance

* Zoonomia, I, p. 506.

THE PRECURSORS OF DARWIN 147

of acquired modifications enunciated, and enunciated for the
first time. Nor is it a stray remark of Darwin's, for he
repeatedly recurs to it.

Acquired characters are transmitted by animals. Discuss-
ing their wants, he arranges them from the point of view of
sexual characters. Horns and spurs, he thinks, are developed
for purposes of combat and for the procuring of females.
Though he misses the idea of the sexual selection of the
horns developed as ornaments to the male, he hits upon the
idea of protective colouring. For we learn that " there are
organs developed for protective purposes, diversifying both
the form and colour of the body for concealment and for
combat." He admits the limitations of his view of evolution
when he writes that " the final cause of these colours is
readily understood, as they serve some purpose of the animal,
but the efficient cause would seem almost beyond con-
jecture/ 5 *

The geologists had not then begun to ask for those
rcons with which men like Lyell have made us so
familiar. Darwin anticipates them when he holds : " From
thus meditating upon the minute portion of time in which
many of the above changes have been produced, would it be
too bold to imagine, in the great length of time since the earth
began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commence-
ment of the history of mankind, that all warm-blooded
animals have arisen from one living filament, which the first
great Cause imbued with animality, with the power of
acquiring new parts, attended with new propensities, directed
by irritations, sensations, volitions, and associations, and thus
possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own
inherent activity, and of delivering down those improvements
by generation (i.e. inheritance) to posterity, world without
end ? " This is a statement at least as far-reaching as that
of Kant, based of course on a profounder knowledge of
plants and animals.

All forms of life, Darwin holds stoutly, proceed from a
single filament. Irritability, excitability, sensibility these
stimulate the growth of this filament. " The most essential
parts of the system are first formed by the irritations (of
hunger, thirst, etc., above mentioned) and by the pleasurable

* Ibid., p. 510.

148 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

sensations attending those irritations, and by exertions in
consequence of painful sensations, similar to those of hunger
and suffocation. ... In confirmation of these ideas, it
may be observed that all parts of the body endeavour to grow
or to make additional parts of themselves throughout our
lives/' * Carrying this idea of sensibility and irritability
into plant life as well as into animal, he frames a theory of
plant evolution similar to that of animal evolution. On the
origin of plants he mentions the suggestion of Linnaeus:
" And that from thence, as Linnaeus has conjectured in
respect to the vegetable world, it is not impossible but the
great variety of species of animals which now tenant the
earth, may have had their origin from the mixture of a
few natural orders." Be this as it may, the plants possess
the sensibility and the irritability of animals. When he
digested these views we can well understand Charles Darwin
writing : " It is curious how largely my grandfather, Dr.
Erasmus Darwin, anticipated the views and erroneous
grounds of opinion of Lamarck in his Zoonomia"

The most outstanding name in the long history of the
theory of evolution between the days of Aristotle and Charles
Darwin is that of Jeanne Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet,
otherwise known as the Chevalier de Lamarck (17441829).
If ever there was a fair-minded man, it was Charles Darwin,
yet he never refers to either Lamarck or his work except
with disdain. His verdict on him is given in the following
passage of a letter to Sir Charles Lyell, written in March
1863 : " Lastly, you refer repeatedly to my view as a modifica-
tion of Lamarck's doctrine of development and progression.
If this is your deliberate opinion there is nothing to be said,
but it does not seem so to me. Plato, Buffon, my grand-
father, before Lamarck and others propounded the obvious
view that if species were not created separately they must
have descended from other species, and I can see nothing
else in common between the Origin and Lamarck. I believe
this way of putting the case is very injurious to its acceptance,
as it implies necessary progression, and closely connects
Wallace's and my views with what I consider, after two
deliberate readings, as a wretched book, and one from which
(I well remember to my surprise) I gained nothing."
* Zoonomia, XXXIX, 3.

THE PRECURSORS OF DARWIN 149

" But/ 5 adds Darwin, with a little touch of banter, " I
know you rank it higher, which is curious, as it did not in the
least shake your belief * ... to me it was an absolutely
useless book/' f There are not many instances where
posterity has refused to confirm such a judgment of the
man popularly supposed to be the father of evolutionary
doctrine. In this instance the step fatherly attitude is more
apparent than the fatherly.

The career of Lamarck is one of the most singular in
the whole history of science, for where, with the possible
exception of Kant, shall we meet with a man whose leading
ideas were given to the world after the age of fifty? lie
first turned his attention towards botany. He travelled in
Europe as a companion to Buffon's son, but, unlike Darwin
and Hooker and Huxley, he never travelled outside Europe,
and this proved a lasting loss to biological science. Devoid
of that rich experience of his three successors, there were gaps
in his knowledge which no mere reading could atone for.
Lyell regarded travel as the first, second, and third requisites
for a geologist, and one of the gravest blows to biology lies in
the fact that Lamarck never travelled save in Europe. This
meant that in the days to come he committed mistake after
mistake when he employed illustrations to confirm the truth of
his leading illuminating conceptions. Men argued that
because the illustrations were faulty, so too were the con-
ceptions. It proved not difficult to ignore the man
who explained the webbed feet of birds as clue to their being
attracted to swampy ground by hunger, to their then making
efforts to swim, thus spreading their toes, and stretching the
skin between them. It proved not difficult to ignore the man
who explained the origin of the horns in ruminant animals
by the efforts they have made to butt their heads together
in their periods of anger, thus giving rise to a secretion of
matter upon their forehead. J It proved not difficult to ignore

* F. Darwin, Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, III, p. 14.

t Ibid., p. 16; cf. pp. 23, 29, 39. Packard says that Darwin attributes
to Lamarck statements which so careful a student of Lamarck's writings
as Packard cannot trace. Cf. Packard, Lamarck, p. 74. As well as
Packard's important book on Lamarck, cf. also E. Perier, La Philosophic
Zoologique devant Darwin.

$ Cf. Cuvier, "Eloere de Lamarck," November 26, 1832, Mem. de
VAcad. des Sciences, XIII, p. 20. Lyell criticises Lamarck fairly in his
Principles of Geology, II, bk, III, chaps, i-iv.

150 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

the man who explained the rapid movements of the deer by
saying that the fleet types of ruminants have been exposed
to the attacks of carnivorous animals, and therefore have been
forced to fly. Take his account of the limbs of the snake :
" The snakes sprang from reptiles with four extremities,
but having taken up the habit of moving along the earth and
concealing themselves among bushes, their bodies, owing to
repeated efforts to elongate themselves and to pass out through
narrow spaces, have acquired a considerable length out of
all proportion to their width. Since long feet would have
been very useless, and short feet would have been incapable
of moving their bodies, there resulted a cessation of use of
these parts, which has finally caused them totally to disappear,
although they were originally part of the plan of organisation
in these animals/'

Men found it easy to note flaws in his illustrations, and
they jumped to the conclusion that there were just as many
flaws in his ideas. This of course was not the case, but the
scientists of his time choose to imagine that it was. At the
age of forty-nine the Directory transferred him from botany
to the chair in zoology at the Jardin des Plantes. As
Huxley turned from physiology to palaeontology, so Lamarck
changed from botany to zoology. At the same time Geoffroy
Saint-Hilaire assumed charge of the vertebrates, he assumed
charge of the invertebrates. Forty-nine is usually an age
when a man's big work is done. With Lamarck, on the
contrary, his big work lay before him. Poor as Diderot, he
was as devoted to truth as the famous editor of the
Encyclopedia. Too poverty-stricken to buy expensive in-
struments, his inferior instruments combined with his
devotion to the small forms of life gradually deprived him
of the use of his sight, and in 1819 he became totally blind.
There is a touch of pathos in the introduction to the last
edition of his Animaux sans Vertebres that might have
moved the heart of Darwin. Lamarck lacked appreciation
abroad, for his books found but few readers, but he never
lacked appreciation at home. His daughter was so devoted
to him that when his grievous calamity overtook him, she
never left him. The last two volumes of the first edition of
his Histoire Naturelle des Animaux sans Vertebres, begun

THE PRECURSORS OF DARWIN 151

in 1816 and finished in 1822, he dictated to his daughter. If
there were poverty of goods in his home, there was no
poverty of affection or spirit. If there was uncommonly
plain living, there was uncommonly high thinking. The
thoughts were met with a disdain that rivalled Charles
Darwin's and with a neglect that forms a permanent disgrace
to science.

His Recherches sur les Causes des Principaux Faits
Physiques was written in 1766, presented to the Academy
in 1780, and published in 1794, the year of the publication
of the Zoonomia. In it he exhibits his strong belief in the
immutability of species and his equally strong disbelief in
the theory of the spontaneous origin of life. These were his
botanical days, not his zoological ones. Just as it is possible
to maintain that there were two Carlyles (the one who wrote
before 1850, and the other after that date), so it is quite
possible to maintain that there were two Lamarcks (the one
who wrote before 1793, and the other after that date).
The second Lamarck published in 1802 his Hydro-
gcologie, anticipating Lyell in suggesting uniformitarian
ideas in geology, and proposing the term " biology "
for the first time for the sciences of life. The year
1802 was surely a memorable one in biology, for during it
Lamarck also put forth his Recherches sur V Organisation des
Corps Vivants. Employing the works of Aristotle, he lays
down two main principles * : first, it is not organs which have
given rise to habits, but habits, modes of life, and environment
which have given rise to organs. This he illustrates by the
blindness of the mole, by the presence of teeth in mammals
and by the absence of teeth in birds. His second principle
is that life is an order and condition of things in the parts
of all bodies which possess it, which renders possible all the
organic movements within. At the very time Lamarck was
proclaiming these views, Erasmus Darwin was pro-
claiming similar ones. Why not? Just as Charles Darwin and
Alfred Russel Wallace were simultaneously working at the
theory of evolution, just as John Couch Adams and Lever rier
simultaneously discovered the planet Neptune, so Lamarck
and Erasmus Darwin were working out similar evolutionary
conceptions which were nothing short of revolutionary.
* I use the convenient summary of Osborn, p. 160,

152 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

Lamarck's magnum opus was his Philosophic Zoologique,
published in 1809, but it made little stir, for Cuvier opposed it
with all the powers of his great genius. In it combined with
his later Histoire Naturelle we possess his generalisations
on the mutability and variability of species, on the influence
of the environment on the habits, and through them and
inheritance on the forms of living creatures. There is a
complete break with the doctrine of the fixity of species and
with the permanence and recurrence of types.* In a word,
there had been a statical or morphological attitude towards
problems, and it was now replaced by a kinetic or genetic
one. He distinctly lays down the doctrine that man is
descended from an ape-like ancestor, which gradually
acquired an upright position, not even yet wholly natural
to the human race. We may, if we like, lay stress on the
factor of adaptation put prominently forward, on the idea
of the dependence of living things on their milieu, on the
view that in the graduated scale of living things there is an
increasing independence with regard to the external environ-
ment, or on the modifying influences which Lamarck
emphasised. The vital matter is what he expressed in the
words : " All that Nature has caused individuals to acquire or
lose by the influences of environment to which they have been
long exposed, and consequently by the influence of the
predominant employment of a certain organ, or by that of
the continued lack of use of the same part all this Nature
conserves by generation to the new individuals which arise,
provided that these acquired variations (changements) are
common to both sexes, or to those which have produced these
new individuals." This is the law of the inheritance of
acquired characters, and was substantially enunciated by
Erasmus Darwin. In his Philosophic Zoologique Lamarck
put his doctrine concisely : " But great changes in environ-
ment bring about changes in the habits of animals. Changes
in their wants necessarily bring about parallel changes in their
habits. If new wants become constant or very lasting, they
form new habits, the new habits involve the use of new parts,
or a different use of old parts, which results finally in the pro-

* Cf. J. V. Carus, Geschichte der Zoologie, p. 723; K. E. von Baer,
Reden und wisscnschaftlichc Abhandlungcn, II, p. 258. Cf. Horner, Life
of Sir C. Lyell, I, p. 168; II, p. 365.

THE PRECURSORS OF DARWIN 153

duction of new organs and the modification of old ones."
He saw with the utmost clearness that lower types like the
Molluscs had given way to the higher, but he failed to see
that higher types like the Mastodon and the Paleotherium
could also be extinguished. He demonstrated the persistency
of these lower types. When his colleague, Geoffroy Saint-
Hilaire, brought back his collection of mummied cats and
other animals from the tombs of Egypt, it was at once evident
that they were identical with the actual living representatives
of the same species. This seemed rebutting evidence against
his Transmission theory. His reply was that in Egypt, that
land of surprises, there had been no substantial alteration in
the environment, the soil and the climate remaining un-
changed. Under these circumstances, animals naturally
retained their old habits. Why should they change them?
No cause was alleged for their doing so. Therefore the
persistence of their characters was readily demonstrated. If
he could only have explained away so satisfactorily his
explanation of the shape of the snake !

Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749 1832) was great as a
scientist, though the world will persist in forgetting this
aspect of his many-sided intellect. The recognition Lamarck
never received in his lifetime would have been his had
Goethe only happened to have glanced at the ignored
Philosophic Zoologique. Goethe, to the permanent loss of
science, abandoned Loder for Schiller, and Linnaeus for
Shakespeare. Yet he discovered the vertebrate theory of the
skull and made his studies on the metamorphoses of the
plants. In his Metamorphoses of Plants Goethe anticipated
Lamarck as an evolutionist, and to the very last he always
evinced the liveliest interest in scientific thought. In his
Metamorphoses of Animals, published in 1819, he writes:

All members develop themselves according to eternal laws,

And the rarest form mysteriously preserves the primitive type.

Form, therefore, determines the animal's way of life,

And in turn the way of life powerfully reacts upon all form.

Thus the orderly growth of form is seen to hold

Whilst yielding to change from externally acting causes.

It is tragical to have to record that the poet died three years
earlier than Lamarck, and yet had never heard of the blind
zoologist !

CHAPTER VI

DARWIN AND EVOLUTION

CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN (1809 1882) was the fifth child
and second son of Robert Waring Darwin and Susannah
Wedgwood, and was born on February 12, 1809,* at Shrews-
bury, where his father was a physician with a large practice.
No doubt he inherited from his grandfather Erasmus the
inborn tendencies to look at nature in the same observant way.
Erasmus Darwin had defined a fool to his friend Edgeworth
as " a man who never tried an experiment in his life."
Curiously enough, though he tried them, he was wanting in
that rigorous and patient inductive habit that was to mark
his grandson Charles. Sir Francis Darwin records that
R. W. Darwin had no pretensions to the character of a man
of science, no tendency to generalise his knowledge, and
" though a successful physician he was guided more by intui-
tion and everyday observation than by a deep knowledge of
his subject."! One of our facile generalisations is to remark,
in this and sundry other like cases, that the mental energy
skips a generation. People have said so in the case of the in-
termediate Mendelssohn who was the son of Moses Mendels-
sohn, the philosopher, and father of Felix Mendelssohn-
Bartholdy, the composer that mere link in a marvellous
chain who was wont to observe of himself in the decline of
life, that in his youth he was called the son of the great
Mendelssohn, and in his old age the father of the great Men-
delssohn. Is actual skipping possible in the nature of things?
We gravely doubt it. In the particular instance of R. W.
Darwin we may feel pretty confident that the distinctive
Darwinian strain lay latent rather than dormant. Attaining
in his time sufficient eminence to become a Fellow of the

* Abraham Lincoln was also born on February 12, 1809,
| F. Darwin, Life of C. Darwin, p. i (1892 cd.),

DARWIN AND EVOLUTION 155

Royal Society, an honour rarely accorded to a country doctor,
Charles Darwin records of him, " He was incomparably the
most acute observer whom I ever knew." Nor is there any
reason to think that this is simply a tribute paid by filial
piety. For potentiality is wider than actuality : what a man
does is no certain criterion of what he can do. When
Charles Darwin records that his father " formed a theory
for almost everything that occurred/'* we are not left in
much doubt on the influence of heredity.

Among the brothers of R. W. Darwin were Charles, the
eldest (1758 1778), who gave the highest promise, studied
medicine at Edinburgh, received the medal of the ^Esculapian
Society, and died from a wound received in dissecting.
Among the cousins of Charles Darwin are Hensleigh Wedg-
wood, the philologist ; the late Sir Henry Holland ; and Fran-
cis Galton, the author of that essentially Darwinian book,
Hereditary Genius. Among the sons of Charles Darwin
are Sir George Howard Darwin, Plumian Professor of
Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at the University
of Cambridge, and brother to three other Darwins who
have distinguished themselves in mathematics, engineering,
botany, and geographical science. Though the bent of the
Darwins was to natural science, the mind of Sir George,
tinged by the mentality of his mother's family, the Wedg-
woods, and more distantly by that of the Galtons, was mathe-
matical. R. W. Darwin married Susannah Wedgwood,
daughter of Josiah Wedgwood, the potter, who, by his
marked originality and force of character, succeeded in
turning the current of national taste towards wares of a
higher type of artistic workmanship. His trials of method
and materials were carried out in the exhaustive spirit of
true scientific inquiry, and conduced to many improvements.
He possessed a great power of adaptation, and an inventive
faculty which revealed itself not only in new methods and
new materials, but in the origination of new forms. Can
we doubt that an ancestor who was a practical thrower,f an
expert modeller, and an ingenious designer left his mark
upon his grandson Charles?

In the summer of 1818 Charles Darwin entered as a

* F. Darwin, Life and Letters of C. Darwin, I, p. 20 ; cf . I, p. 103.
t In handicraft

156 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

boarder at Shrewsbury school under Dr. Butler. The edu-
cation given was on old-fashioned classical lines, and the
lad gained little from it. In his Autobiography he tells us
that he had much zeal for whatever interested him, and he
worked pretty hard at Euclid and practical chemistry in an
extemporised laboratory. His enthusiasm for chemical
studies kept him late at work, earning for him the nickname
of " Gas " from his schoolfellows, and also earning for him
a public rebuke from the headmaster, " for this wasting my
time on such useless subjects; and he called me very unjustly
a poco curante, and as I did not understand what he meant,
it seemed to me a fearful reproach." * He learnt many
lines of Homer and Virgil off by heart, admiring greatly the
odes of Horace. He spent hours over the historical plays of
Shakespeare, Thomson's Seasons, and the recently published
poems of Byron and Scott. The pleasure he derived from
reading poetry conspired to arouse in him in 1822 a vivid
delight in scenery. Early in his schooldays a boy lent him
a copy of the Wonders of the World, which he often read,
and disputed with other boys about the veracity of some of
the statements; " and I believe that this book gave me a wish
to travel in remote countries, which was ultimately fulfilled
by the voyage in the Beagle" t

At school he had made himself notable by his love of col-
lecting the first nascent symptom of the naturalistic bent.
He collected everything: shells, eggs, minerals, coins, even,
since postage stamps had not then been invented, franks.
He has himself described the zeal with which, as a boy and
a young man, he gave himself up to shooting, a passion which
only gradually faded before his stronger delight in unravel-
ling the geology of an unknown country. As it was intended
that he should follow his father's profession of medicine,
in 1825 he joined his brother Erasmus at Edinburgh Uni-
versity. With the one exception of Hope, the Professor of
Chemistry, Darwin found them all " intolerably dull.'" We
learn that the Professor of Anatomy made his lectures " as
dull as he was himself." In spite of his early interest, the
prelections of the Professor of Geology and Zoology were
so " incredibly dull " that they produced on their hearer the

* F. Darwin, Life of C. Darwin, p. 10 (1892 ed.),
f Ibid., p. ii (1892 ed.),

DARWIN AND EVOLUTION 157

resolution never " to read a book on geology or in any way
to study the science. "* Jameson was a Wernerian geologist
who spent his time sneering at the Huttonians. The outcome
in the subject of anatomy was particularly unfortunate, for
as Darwin never practised dissection he was continually han-
dicapped in his future researches. Twice he attended the
operating theatre, and the ensuing nausea in one of these
cases was such that he felt obliged to rush away before the
surgeon had completed his task. As there was no chloro-
form in those days, it is not hard to imagine that these two
cases fairly haunted the young medical student for many a
long year. He gave, however, distinct evidence of his tastes
by contributing to the Plinian Society at the beginning of
1826 a paper on the floating eggs of the common sea-mat,
in which he succeeded in discovering for the first time organs
of locomotion. Like many an undergraduate, he experi-
enced more pleasure and profit in meeting his fellow-under-
graduates than in meeting the professors.

On the conclusion of two years at Edinburgh, medicine was
abandoned as a profession, and Darwin contemplated taking
Holy Orders. To his dismay he found that he had forgotten
his classics, and had to learn almost everything, " even to
some few of the Greek letters/' f Working with a private
tutor in Shrewsbury, he soon recovered his school standard,
and was able to translate easy Greek books, such as Homer
and the Greek Testament, with moderate facility. As he
must possess a degree in arts to be ordained, he entered
Christ's College, Cambridge, and came up in the Lent term of
1828. Christ's College claims that on its bead-roll it has the
name of John Milton, the writer of the epic of the special
creation theory, which another of its sons, Charles Darwin,
destroyed. He read the Thirty-nine Articles and he studied
Pearson's great book on The Creed, and the study of other
books, as well as these, left him convinced that he could con-
scientiously present himself for ordination. He read intently
Paley's Moral Philosophy, his Evidences of Christianity, and
his Natural Theology, and the perusal of the last two gave
him as much delight as did Euclid. J Was it the case that

* F. Darwin, Life and Letters of C. Darwin, I, p. 14.
t Ibid., p. 17.
t Ibid., p. 47.

158 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

just as Paley proleptically accepted the doctrine of evolution,
so Darwin was getting ready to accept it? It is rather
remarkable that three of the men who most influenced his
thought were all clergymen. For Paley, Malthus, the
author of Essay on the Principle of Population, and Henslow,
the Professor of Botany at Cambridge, were all three of
them in Holy Orders. Darwin's Edinburgh lecturers were
not clergymen, and they repelled him, whereas his Cambridge
lecturers were clergymen, and they attracted him. Nor
was this attraction due to the circumstance that he then
thought of becoming ordained, for the Rev. Dr. Sedgwick
and the Rev. J. S. Henslow were Professors of Geology and
Botany respectively in the University of Cambridge. Dar-
win's natural taste for geology, chilled by his Edinburgh
teachers, revived during an excursion with Professor Sedg-
wick, who insisted that " science consists in grouping facts
so that general laws and conclusions may be drawn from
them." * Both Sedgwick and Henslow used to take their
pupils field excursions, on foot or in coaches, to distant places,
and they lectured on fossils and plants to the utter content
of their audience. Henslow was a singularly attractive char-
acter who introduced into his parishes the voluntary study
of botany with signal success, and he also introduced cricket
and athletic clubs, allotments and parish excursions, benefit
clubs and horticultural shows in the fifties, when such insti-
tutions were very uncommon. Nor was his enthusiasm con-
fined to his successive parishes. In Cambridge he proved
that he could communicate to his men the zeal and the know-
ledge that eminently characterised him. Darwin, his
favourite pupil, always manifested the deepest regard for
him, calling him on his death in 1861 his " dear old master
in Natural History." |

While at Edinburgh, Darwin had taken a vow to cease to
think of geology. It was Henslow who induced him to
break it. Through Henslow the undergraduate obtained
permission to accompany Sedgwick on one of his excursions
in Wales. Above all, Henslow recommended him to buy and
to study the then recently published volume of Lyell^s
Principles of Geology. With this recommendation there

* F. Darwin, Letters of C. Darwin, p. 24.

t F. Darwin, Life and Letters of C. Darwin, II, p. 217.

DARWIN AND EVOLUTION 159

went also the admonition not to allow himself to be swept
off his feet by the fascination of Lyell's views. This warn-
ing was unheeded, for Darwin writes : " After my return
to England it appeared to me that by following the example
of Lyell in Geology, and by collecting all the facts which
bore in any way on the variation of animals and plants under
domestication and nature, some light might perhaps be thrown
upon the whole subject [of the origin of species]."* It
was through Henslow, and at his suggestion, that Darwin was
offered the appointment to the Beagle as naturalist. What
Helmholtz experienced when he came into contact with
Johannes Mtiller, Darwin, in his own fashion, felt when he
came to know the character as well as the mind of John
Stevens Henslow.

Darwin's passion for collecting renewed itself in Cam-
bridge. In childhood it had been damped by the moral
scruples of a sister, as to the propriety of catching and kill-
ing insects for the mere sake of possessing them. The
neighbouring fens afforded him the opportunity of capturing
beetles. It was, he confesses, the passion of collecting for
its own sake, for he did not dissect them, and rarely com-
pared their external characters with published descriptions.
" I will give a proof of my zeal : one day, on tearing off some
old bark, I saw two rare beetles, and seized one in each hand ;
then I saw a third and new kind, which I could not bear to
lose, so that I popped the one which I held in my right hand
into my mouth. Alas! it ejected some intensely acrid fluid,
which burnt my tongue so that I was forced to spit the beetle
out, which was lost, as was the third one. 11 f His delight lay
in the capture of a species which turned out to be rare or
new, for then he could read in print the magic words, " Cap-
tured by C. Darwin, Esq." Obviously this was his old love
of sport simply assuming a new form, and his father believed
that " he cared for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-
catching." :j:

If men like Sedgwick and Henslow influenced him, so too
did the books of men like Paley, Humboldt, and Sir J.

* F. Darwin, Life and Letters of C. Darwin, I, p. 83. Cf. Darwin's
dedication of the second edition of the Journal of a Naturalist.
f F. Darwin, Life of C. Danvin, p. 20 (1892 ed.).
t F. Darwin, Life and Letters of C. Darwin, I, p. 32.

160 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

Herschel. Humboldt's Personal Narrative and Herschers
Introduction to the Study of Natural Philosophy stirred the
undergraduate reader to think that he too might make a
modest contribution to the noble structure of Natural His-
tory. The attractions of science increasingly prevailed over
the labours of the ministry. " My whole course of life,"
says Darwin in sending a message to Humboldt, "is
due to having read and re-read, as a youth, his personal
narrative." * The description of Teneriffe moved him so
strongly that he was seized with a lively desire to visit the
island, inquiring about ships and the like.

While Darwin was turning over in his mind his project
of a trip to Teneriffe, the Government decided to send a brig
of 235 tons, the Beagle, under command of Captain Fitz-
Roy, to complete the unfinished survey of Patagonia and
Tierra del Fuego, to map out the shores of Chili and Peru,
to visit several of the Pacific archipelagoes, and to carry a
chain of chronometrical measurements round the whole
world. This was an essentially scientific expedition, and
Captain FitzRoy, afterwards famous as the meteorological
admiral, was an officer of the finest type. lie was anxious
to be accompanied on his cruise by a competent naturalist
who would undertake the collection and preservation of the
animals and plants discovered on the voyage, for which pur-
pose he generously offered to give up a share of his own
cabin accommodation. Professor Henslow seized upon
this opportunity of recommending young Darwin, " grandson
of the poet." In his letter of August 24, 1831, he writes:
" I have stated that I consider you to be the best qualified
person I know who is likely to undertake such a situation.
I state this not on the supposition of your being a finished
naturalist, but as amply qualified for collecting, observing,
and noting anything worthy to be noted in Natural History.
. . . The voyage is to last two years, and if you take plenty
of books with you, anything you please may be done." f
Darwin gladly volunteered his services without salary, and
partly paid his own expenses on condition of being permitted
to retain in his own possession the plants and animals he col-
lected on his journey. The Beagle set sail from Devonport

* F. Darwin, Life and Letters of C. Darwin, I, p. 336.
f Ibid., I, p. 193.

DARWIN AND EVOLUTION 161

on December 27, 1831, and she returned to Falmouth on
October 2, 1836. The opportunity that had been denied to
Lamarck was now in the fullest measure to be Darwin's,
and right nobly he used it.

Aristotle and Voltaire were never tired of dwelling on the
small springs on which the greater events of history turn.
Pascal continued this train of thought.* Does not Burke f
inform us of the case of " a common soldier, a child, and a
girl at the door of an inn " who " changed the face of for-
tune and almost of nature " ? t We are, however, getting
tired of hearing that another sort of tilt to Cleopatra's nose,
and the history of the world might have flown in a different
channel. Soberly, nineteenth-century thought might have
undergone a similar transformation, for Captain FitzRoy
was on the point of rejecting Darwin on account of the
shape of his nose. " The voyage of the Beagle/' confesses
Darwin, " has been by far the most important event in my
life, and has determined my whole career; yet it depended on
so small a circumstance as my uncle offering to drive me
thirty miles to Shrewsbury, which few uncles would have
done, and on such a trifle as the shape of my nose."

The last year of a man reading for high honours is by far
the most important, mentally speaking, in his whole
academical career. Up to that time for the most part
he takes the opinions offered to him by his tutors as a
matter of course. During his last year he weighs opinions
for the first time with critical care. The gulf separating
a man just matriculated or even a man in his third year from
a man in his last year is scarcely to be bridged by
any mental effort. This experience did not come to
Darwin, for he only took a pass degree. To the able man,
however, such an experience conies sooner or later, and
accordingly it came to Darwin on board the Beagle. " I have
always felt," he owns, " that I owe to the voyage the first
real training or education of my mind; I was led to attend
closely to several branches of natural history, and thus my
powers of observation were improved, though they were al-

* Pascal, Pcnsees, 1829 ed., p. 137.
t In the Regicide Peace.

t Cf. my Erasmus and Luther: their Attitude to Toleration, pp. 67-8.
F. Darwin, Life of C. Darwin, p. 27 (1892 ed.). Cf. N. Pirogoff,
Klinischc Chirurgie, p. 32.

II

162 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

ways fairly developed. " * Nor is the parallel with college life
without instruction when we note that he spent five years on
the voyage. These were his Wander jahre, the years on
which Goethe lays such stress, when he investigated at close
quarters the teeming life of the tropics.

It is significant that Darwin, Hooker, and Huxley began
their scientific career by long voyages or travels with the
Navy, Wallace and Bates in the South American tropics.
With most of them the way to science proved long and diffi-
cult. But this was not all loss ; strength grows in a man who

grasps the skirt of happy chance
And breasts the blows of circumstance
And grapples with his evil star.

The particular countries visited by the Beagle during the
course of her long and varied cruise, as Mr. Grant Allen
ably shows, happened to be exactly such as were naturally
best adapted for bringing out the latent potentialities of
Darwin's mind, and suggesting to his active and receptive
brain those deep problems of life and its environment which
he afterwards wrought out with such subtle skill and such
consummate patience in the Origin of Species and the
Descent of Man. The Cape Verde and the other Atlan-
tic islands, with their scanty population of plants and animals,
composed for the most part of waifs and strays drifted to
their barren rocks by ocean currents, or blown out helplessly
to sea by heavy winds ; Brazil, with its marvellous contrast-
ing wealth of tropical luxuriance and self-strangling fer-
tility, a new province of interminable delights to the soul of
the enthusiastic young collector ; the South American pampas,
with their colossal remains of extinct animals, huge geological
precursors of the stunted modern sloths and armadillos that
still inhabit the self-same plains; Tierra del Fuego, with its
almost Arctic climate, and its glimpses into the secrets of
the most degraded savage types; the vast range of the Andes
and the Cordilleras, with their volcanic energy and their
closely crowded horizontal belts of climatic life; the South
Sea Islands, those paradises of the Pacific, Hesperian fables
come true, alike for the lover of the picturesque and the
biological student; Australia, that surviving fragment of an
extinct world, with an antiquated fauna whose archaic

* F. Darwin, Life of C. Darwin, p. 27 (1892 ed.).

DARWIN AND EVOLUTION 163

character still closely recalls the European life of ten million
years back in the secondary epoch : all these and many others
equally novel and equally instructive passed in long alter-
nating panorama before Darwin's eyes, and left their images
deeply photographed for ever after on the lasting tablets of
his retentive memory. That was the real great university
in which he studied nature and read for his degree, which
assuredly this time was no pass degree. Our evolutionist
was undergoing a thorough process of education.

At all the places he touched he investigated geological phe-
nomena most carefully, for here he thought that reasoning
comes into play. On first examining a new district, he tells
us, nothing can appear more hopeless than the chaos of rocks ;
but by recording the stratification and nature of the rocks and
fossils at many points, always reasoning and predicting what
will be found elsewhere, light soon begins to dawn on the
district, and the structure of the whole becomes more or less
intelligible. The underlying causes plainly interested him,
and here he had to make his choice between the catastrophic
system of the Wernerians, of which his old Edinburgh pro-
fessor, Jameson, was a leader, and the system of the Hut-
tonians, of which Sir Charles Lyell was a master. His
Principles of Geology he perused with the utmost attention,
and, in spite of the cautious attitude advocated towards it
by another old professor, Henslow, Darwin became con-
vinced the moment he examined the very first place on the
voyage, St. Jago, in the Cape Verde islands, of the amaz-
ing superiority of the Lyell ian methods. Might he not apply
the principles of the great Scotsman to the geology of the
countries he was about to visit ? Such a thought gave him a
thrill of delight.* Even before the Beagle touched her first
land he had observed that the impalpably fine dust which fell
on deck contained no fewer than sixty-seven distinct organic
forms, two of them belonging to species peculiar to South
America. In some of the dust he found particles of stone so
big that they measured " above the thousandth of an inch
square " ; and after this fact " one need not be surprised at
the diffusion of the far lighter and smaller sporules of cryp-
togamic plants." May we not trace in these observations the
hereditary tendencies of Josiah Wedgwood, whose minute
* F. Darwin, Life of C. Darwin, p. 29 (1892 ed.).

164 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

investigation and accuracy of detail were reflected in his
pottery? May we not also trace in them the influence of his
incomparable teacher, Henslow?

Henslow had candidly stated that though he considered his
favourite pupil amply qualified for the task of collection, yet
he did not suppose he was by any means a finished naturalist,
and indeed some of Darwin's labours on the voyage suffi-
ciently attest this. The young naturalist collected copious
details upon the surface fauna. But as he had little
knowledge of drawing, less knowledge of comparative
anatomy, and least knowledge of dissection, it is not a
matter of wonder that he accumulated much manuscript
that was useless. True, he acquired acquaintance
with the marine Crustacea, and made observations on
Planariae and on the ubiquitous Sagitta and that was the
tale of all he had accomplished. Thanks to the train-
ing of Henslow and to Ly ell's book, the case was alto-
gether different with his geology. The work begun at St.
Jago was continued throughout a voyage that marked an
epoch in his mental growth. His subsequent study of the
tertiary deposits and of the terraced gravel beds of South
America turned his thoughts increasingly in a geological
direction. His letters from South America contain mostly
geological references, and even then he had begun to think of
his theory of the formation of coral reefs as due to the exten-
sive and gradual changes revealed by the geology of South
America. " No other work," he holds, " of mine was begun
in so deductive a spirit as this; for the whole theory was
thought out on the west coast of South America, before I
had seen a true coral reef. I had, therefore, only to verify
and extend my views by a careful examination of living;
reefs." * On May 18, 1882, he wrote to Henslow: "One
great source of perplexity to me is an utter ignorance whether
I note the right facts, and whether they are of sufficient
importance to interest others.

" Geology carries the day: it is like the pleasure of gam-
bling. Speculating, on first arriving, what the rocks may
be, I often mentally cry out 3 to I tertiary against primitive;
but the latter have hitherto won all the bets." f

* F. Darwin, Life and Letters of C. Darwin, I, p. 70.
t F. Darwin, Life of C. Darwin, p. 134 (1892 ed.).

DARWIN AND EVOLUTION 165

To an old Cambridge friend, the Rev. William Darwin
Fox, he wrote in July 1835, when about to start from
Lima to the Galapagos : " I am glad to hear you have some
thoughts of beginning Geology. I hope you will; there is
so much larger a field for thought than in the other branches
of Natural History. I am become a zealous disciple of Mr.
Lyell's views, as known in his admirable book. Geologising
in South America, I am tempted to carry parts to a greater
extent even than he does. Geology is a capital science to
begin, as it requires nothing but a little reading, thinking,
and hammering. I have a considerable body of notes to-
gether; but it is a constant subject of perplexity to me,
whether they are of sufficient value for all the time I have
spent about them, or whether animals would not have been
of more certain value." *

Henslow thought so much of Darwin's letters and obser-
vations that he had them printed and circulated them pri-
vately, and had read some of them before the Philosophical
Society of Cambridge. His collection of fossil bones, which
he had sent to Henslow, had also excited considerable atten-
tion among palaeontologists. Evidently Henslow wrote him
an encouraging letter. For " after reading this letter, I
clambered over the mountains of Ascension with a bounding
step and made the volcanic rocks resound under my geo-
logical hammer. All this shows how ambitious I was ; but I
think that I can say with truth that in after-years, though I
cared in the highest degree for the approbation of such men
as Lyell and Hooker, who were my friends, I did not care
much about the general public. I do not mean to say that a
favourable review or a large sale of my books did not please
me greatly, but the pleasure was a fleeting one, and I am sure
that I have never turned one inch out of my course to gain
them."f

The hearty praise of men in the position of Sedgwick and
Henslow meant everything to the young traveller. While at
Ascension he received a letter in which his sisters told him
that Sedgwick had called upon his father, saying that " I
should take a place among the leading scientific raen." J
Nor was this merely praise to warm the parental heart. For

* F. Darwin, Letters of C. Darwin, p. 135 (1892 ed.).
t Ibid., p. 30. t Ibid., p. 30.

166 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

Sedgwick wrote on November 7, 1835, to Dr. Butler, the
headmaster of Shrewsbury who had called Darwin a poco
cur ante, that the lad he had censured " is doing admirable
work in South America, and has already sent home a col-
lection above price. It was the best thing in the world that
he went out on the voyage of discovery. There was some
risk of his turning out an idle man, but his character will
now be fixed, and if God spares his life he will have a great
name among the naturalists of Europe." * We have heard
so much of clerical opposition to Darwin ideas that it is
refreshing, on investigating the facts, to ascertain that such
devoted clergymen as Henslow and Sedgwick, with all the
weight of their academic positions, did all they could to afford
encouragement to Darwin while he was winning not when
he had won his spurs. To his sister Susan he wrote in
August 1836: "Both your letters were full of good news;
especially the expressions which you tell me Professor Sedg-
wick used about my collections. I confess they are deeply
gratifying. I trust one part at least will turn out to be true,
and that I shall act as I now think as a man who dares to
waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.
Professor Sedgwick mentioning my name at all gives me
hopes that he will assist me with his advice, of which, in my
geological questions, I stand much in need.f

On his return home he wrote to Henslow on October 6,
1836 : " I am sure you will congratulate me on the delight of
once again being home. The Beagle arrived at Falmouth
on Sunday evening, and I reached Shrewsbury yesterday
morning. I am exceedingly anxious to see you, and as it
will be necessary in four or five days to return to London to
get my goods and chattels out of the Beagle, it appears to
me my best plan to pass through Cambridge. I want your
advice on many points ; indeed I am in the clouds, and neither
know what to do or where to go. My chief puzzle is about
the geological specimens who will have the charity to help
me in describing their mineralogical nature? Will you be
kind enough to write me one line by return of post, saying
whether you are now at Cambridge? " t We give this letter

* F. Darwin, Letters of C. Darwin, p. 137 (1892 ed.).
t Ibid., p. 137-
t Ibid., p. 139-

DARWIN AND EVOLUTION 167

in anticipation, for we desire to lay stress on the fact that
though he was writing to a botanist of the standing of Hens-
low, yet his inquiries are not about botany but about geology.
Indeed in 1836 he speaks of being " much more inclined for
geology than the other branches of Natural History." * So
little did Darwin, then in his twenty-seventh year, realise the
true bent of his genius !

A passage in his Autobiography is of such supreme import-
ance in indicating the doubt whether zoological studies might
not have been more profitable that we transcribe it :

" During the voyage of the Beagle I had been deeply im-
pressed by discovering in the Pampean formation great fossil
animals covered with armour like that on the existing arma-
dillos ; secondly, by the manner in which closely allied animals
replace one another in proceeding southwards over the Conti-
nent ; and thirdly, by the South American character of most
of the productions of the Galapagos Archipelago, and more
especially by the manner in which they differ slightly on each
island of the group; none of the islands appearing to be very
ancient in a geological sense.

" It was evident that such facts as these, as well as many
others, could only be explained on the supposition that species
gradually become modified ; and the subject haunted me. But
it was equally evident that neither the action of the sur-
rounding conditions, f nor the will of the organisms J (espe-
cially in the case of plants) could account for the innumerable
cases in which organisms of every kind are beautifully
adapted to their habits of life for instance, a woodpecker
or a tree-frog to climb trees, or a seed for dispersal by hooks
or plumes. I had always been much struck by such adapta-
tions, and until these could be explained it seemed to me
almost useless to endeavour to prove by indirect evidence that
species have been modified.

" After my return to England it appeared to me that by
following the example of Lyell in geology, and by collecting
all facts which bore in any way on the variation of animals
and plants under domestication and nature, some light might
perhaps be thrown on the whole subject. My first note-book

* F. Darwin, Life and Letters of C. Darwin, I, p. 275.

t This refers to Buffon's factor.

t This refers to Lamarck's factor, and misconceives it,

168 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

was opened in July 1837. * worked on true Baconian prin-
ciples, and without any theory collected facts on a wholesale
scale, more especially with respect to domesticated produc-
tions, by printed inquiries, by conversation with skilful
breeders and gardeners, and by extensive reading. When I
see the list of books of all kinds which I read and abstracted,
including whole series of Journals and Transactions, I am
surprised at my industry. I soon perceived that selection
was the keystone of man's success in making useful races of
animals and plants. But how selection could be applied to
organisms living in a state of nature remained for some
time a mystery to me.

" In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun
my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement
Malthus on Population, and being well prepared to appre-
ciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on
from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and
plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances
favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and un-
favourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be
the formation of a new species. Here, then, I had at last
got a theory by which to work ; but I was so anxious to avoid
prejudice, that I determined not for some time to write even
the briefest sketch of it. In June 1842 I first allowed myself
the satisfaction of writing a very brief abstract of my theory
in pencil, in thirty-five pages; and this was enlarged during
the summer of 1844 into one of 230 pages, which I had fairly
copied out and still possess." *

We have travelled on with the scientist to the stage when
he is able to perceive a view about the facts he is industri-
ously collecting. Now we return to the collector as he was
on his voyage. At St. Paul's Rocks, a mass of volcanic
peaks rising abruptly from the midst of the Atlantic, he notes
that feather- and dirt-feeding and parasitic insects or spiders
are the first inhabitants to take up their residence on recently
formed oceanic islands. Was there here not light on the
problem on how new lands were peopled? As one problem
leads on to another, next came the question, How were some
of the singular species he met evolved? How, in fact, was
a new species evolved?

* F. Darwin, Life of C. Darwin, pp. 39-40 (1892 ed.).

DARWIN AND EVOLUTION 169

On the last day of February 1832 the Beagle came to
anchor in the harbour of Bahia, and he caught sight for the
first time of the self-strangling luxuriance of tropical vege-
tation. " Delight itself/' he writes in his Journal, " delight
itself is a weak term to express the feelings of a naturalist
who for the first time has wandered by himself in a Brazilian
forest. The elegance of the grasses, the novelty of the para-
sitical plants, the beauty of the flowers, the glossy green of the
foliage, but above all the general luxuriance of the vegetation,
filled me with admiration/' Nor was this admiration unming-
led with penetration. As yet he had had no distinct views
of the forces at work, but had he not had glimpses? Was
he not vaguely feeling that there was some principle of selec-
tion behind them ? As he began, in however faint a measure,
to grasp the scheme of nature he experienced that keenest of
pleasures, the pleasure felt by the man of far-reaching brain
who can perceive all minor details fall at once into their
proper place, as component elements in one consistent and
harmonious whole a sympathetic pleasure akin to that with
which a musician listens to the linked harmonies of the
Messiah or the Creation, or an architect views the soul-satis-
fying interiors of those glories of eastern England, Ely and
Lincoln Cathedrals.

At Monte Video kindred problems aroused his active
interest. Here he was in the moist plain-land of Uruguay,
and there was barely a tree. On the other hand, Australia,
which had a far drier climate, possessed quantities of gum-
trees. What part did climate play in this distribution ? What
part did geography play in distribution? Clearly when he
was asking questions like these, he was attaining to more than
a glimpse of the solution of such problems. In Uruguay
he met the tucutuco, a true rodent with the habits of a mole.
Here was another problem. " Considering the strictly sub-
terranean habits of the tucutuco," he writes, " the blindness,
though so common, cannot be a very serious evil; yet it
appears strange that any animal should possess an organ fre-
quently subject to be injured. Lamarck would have been
delighted with this fact, had he known it, when speculating
(probably with more truth than usual with him) on the
gradually acquired blindness of the Aspalax, a gnawer living
under the ground, and of the Proteus, a reptile living in dark

170 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

caverns filled with water; in both of which animals the eye
is in an almost rudimentary state, and is covered by a tendi-
nous membrane and skin. In the common mole the eye is
extraordinarily small but perfect, though many anatomists
doubt whether it is connected with the true optic nerve; its
vision must certainly be imperfect, though probably useful to
the animal when it leaves its burrow. In the tucutuco,
which I believe never comes to the surface of the ground,
the eye is rather larger, but often rendered blind and useless,
though without apparently causing any inconvenience to the
animal : no doubt Lamarck would have said that the tucutuco
is now passing into the state of the Aspalax and Proteus/'
There is a zeal manifested here, but not a zeal manifested
on any true knowledge or, rather, understanding of
Lamarck's ideas.

For the two years after her arrival at Monte Video, the
Beagle was employed in surveying the eastern coasts of
South America, and here there was ample scope for the in-
vestigating mind. He noted inter alia the absence of recent
geological formations along the lately upheaved coast of
South America; the strange extinction of the horse in La
Plata ; the affinities of the extinct and recent species ; the effect
of minute individual peculiarities in preserving life under
special circumstances; the influence of insects and blood-
sucking bats in determining the existence of the larger
naturalised mammals in parts of Brazil and the Argentine
Republic, the curious relationship between the gigantic fossil
armour-plated animals and the existing armadillo and be-
tween the huge megatherium and the modern sloth, and the
curious instincts of the cuckoo-like molothrus, of the owl of
the Pampas, and of the American ostrich.

Though much of the keenness of Darwin ran to geology,
still, it is evident that biology was never long out of his ken.*
If he observes a certain singular group of South American
birds, we hear that " this small family is one of those which,
though from its varied relations to other families, although
at present offering only difficulties to the systematic naturalist,
ultimately may assist in revealing the grand scheme, common
to the present and past ages, on which organised beings have
been created." In 1670 Wood had found the agouti abun-
* His last book on The Earthworm was in a sense geological.

DARWIN AND EVOLUTION 171

dant as far south as Port St. Julian, though Darwin could
not find it there in his time. Here is material for another
question, " What cause can have altered, in a wide, un-
inhabited, and rarely visited country, the range of an animal
like this? " He felt the force of the analogies between the
fossil armour-plated animals and the armadillo, between the
megatherium and the sloth, between the colossal ant-eaters
and their degenerate descendants, between the extinct camel-
like macrauchenia and the modern guanco, as well as those
between the fossil and the living species of South American
rodents. This moved him to write : " This wonderful rela-
tionship in the same continent between the dead and the
living will, I do not doubt, hereafter throw more light on
the appearance of organic beings on our earth, and their dis-
appearance from it, than any other class of facts. "

The Journal of the " Beagle " shows up many specimens
as well as geological ones. Of course we must bear in mind
that on his return home, he rewrote it after he perused for
the first time the Essay on the Principle of Population which
the Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus (1766 1834) had written
in 1798. For almost fifty years this epoch-making essay had
been in the hands of the public before one of its most serious
implicit prepositions had been revealed to the minds of both
Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, for it is an astonishing
fact that Malthus's book set both naturalists on the track of
the principle of natural selection. Under the account of
events observed in the year 1834 Darwin records: "We do
not steadily bear in mind how profoundly ignorant we are of
the conditions of existence of every animal ; nor do we always
remember that some check is constantly preventing the too
rapid increase of every organised being left in a state of
nature. The supply of food, on an average, remains con-
stant; yet the tendency of every animal to increase by
propagation is geometrical, and its surprising effects have no-
where been more astonishingly shown than in the case of the
European animals run wild during the last few centuries in
America. Every animal in a state of nature regularly
breeds; yet in a species long established any great increase
in numbers is obviously impossible, and must be checked by

some means."

There are coincidences in the reading of great men, but is

172

SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

there anything in its long arm to equal the parallelisms of
Darwin and Wallace? It is not altogether surprising that
both should have read Chambers's Vestiges of the Natural
History of Creation (1844) or Lyell's Principles of Geology
(1830-33). Nor is it extremely surprising that they both
should have read Humboldt's Personal Narrative (1814-18).
But surely it is most amazing that both should have read
Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population, a book pub-
lished so far back as the year 1798. How out of the common
it is appears from the following quotations :

DARWIN

" In October 1838, that is,
fifteen months after I had
begun my systematic inquiry,
I happened to read for my
amusement, Malthns on Pop-
ulation, and being well pre-
pared to appreciate the
struggle for existence which
everywhere goes on from
long-continued observations
of the habits of animals and
plants, it at once struck me
that under these circum-
stances favourable variations
would tend to be preserved,
and unfavourable ones to be
destroyed. The result of this
would be the formation of
new species. Here, then, I
had at last got a theory by
which to work ; but I was so
anxious to avoid prejudice
that I determined not for
some time to write even the
briefest sketch of it. In
June 1842 I first allowed
myself the satisfaction of
writing a very brief abstract

WALLACE

" In February 1858 I was
suffering from a rather severe
attack of intermittent fever
at Ternate, in the Moluccas ;
and one day, while lying on
my bed during the cold fit,
wrapped in blankets, though
the thermometer was at 88
Fahr., the problem presented
itself to me, and something
led me to think of ' the posi-
tive checks ' described by
Malthus in his Essay on
Population, a work I had read
several years before, and
which had made a deep and
permanent impression on my
mind. These checks war,
disease, famine, and the like
must, it occurred to me,
act on animals as well as man.
Then I thought of the enor-
mously rapid multiplication
of animals, causing these
checks to be much more
effective in them than in the
case of man; and while pon-
dering vaguely on this fact

DARWIN AND EVOLUTION 173

of my theory in pencil, in there suddenly flashed upon
thirty-five pages, and this me the idea of the survival
was enlarged during the sum- of the fittest that the indi-
mer of 1844 into one of 230 viduals removed by these
pages. " * checks must be on the whole

inferior to those that sur-
vived. In the two hours
that elapsed before my ague
fit was over, I had thought
out almost the whole of the
theory; and the same even-
ing I sketched the draft of my
paper, and in the two suc-
ceeding evenings wrote it out
in full, and sent it by the next
post to Mr. Darwin." f

As the Rev. Thomas Malthus is at least the grandfather
of the evolution theory, it is well worth while to see what Jie
actually taught. J He left a book which everyone abuses
and nobody reads, a book that attempted to prick the bubble
of an earthly paradise set before thoughtless folks by Thomas
Godwin in his Political Justice. Godwin imagined a society
where all were equally comfortable and equal in fact all round.
Assuming that it could be established and Malthus plainly
deemed this an unwarranted assumption it would inevitably
crash through the growth of population. Malthus's proof
is short and sharp. Population, when unchecked, increases
in geometrical ratio, whereas subsistence increases only in
arithmetical. Malthus points out, with remorseless logic,
that " the race of plants and animals shrinks under this great
restrictive law, and the race of man cannot by any efforts of
reason escape from it. Among plants and animals its effects
are waste of seed, sickness, and premature death, among men
misery and vice." In old countries like Europe population is
constantly checked by want of room and want of food, by

* F. Darwin, Life of C. Darwin, p. 40 (1892 ed.).

t A. R. Wallace, My Life, I, p. 232.

j E. Hacckel, History of Creation, chap. vi. Haeckel dwells at
length on the connection of Darwin with Malthus. Cf. The Journal of
the Llnnean Society, III, p. ST.

T. R. Malthus, Essay, p. 14 (ist ed.).

174 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

vice and misery, and by the fear of vice and misery. In
new countries like America there is room and there is food,
but the price of the latter is toil, and the toil of the women,
for example, will interfere with the rearing of the children.
In old Europe people double their numbers once a century.
In new America they perform the same feat, despite toil and
the difficulty of rearing children, once in twenty-five years.
Obviously in the happy society of Godwin,

Where all are proper and well-behaved,
And all are free from sorrow and pain,

the rate of increase will be infinitely faster than doubling the
population once in twenty-five years.* Godwin and the
whole French school, like the Socialists of our own day, are
entirely wrong in attributing all inequality to human institu-
tions. The passion of man and woman to reproduce them-
selves is the root cause of the whole difficulty,! and always
will be until, at least, we all become as wise as the eugenists
want us to be. " Where goods are increased, they are in-
creased that eat them/' The " struggle for existence "
Malthus uses this very phrase is a present fact, as it has
been a past fact, and will be a future one. Nothing is gained
by rhetorical references to the wideness of the world and the
possibilities of the ages. People increase in numbers up to
the limit of food, and a " great restrictive law " prevents
them, as it prevents all other animals, from multiplying
beyond that limit. J

In a herd of animals the units are simply the fittest who
have survived in the struggle for existence. The principle
of population is in the foreground there; there is no check
to it but famine, disease, and death, the very checks on which
Malthus was the first to lay emphasis. We can therefore
understand how the study of the Essay on Population led
Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace to explain the
origin of species by a generalisation which Malthus had
known and named, though he did not pursue it beyond man.
So much indeed is Sir Charles Lyell impressed by these con-
siderations that he even denied the originality of Darwin

* T. R. Malthus, Essay, pp. 20, 173, etc. (7th eel),
t Ibid., pp. 17, 47-8 (ist ed.).
t Ibid., pp. 15, 1 6 (ist ed.).

DARWIN AND EVOLUTION 175

and Wallace.* Darwinism is Malthusianism on the largest
scale : it is the application of the problem of population, ani-
mal and vegetable.

In the autumn of 1835 the Beagle made her way to the
small and unimportant Galapagos Archipelago. Small and
unimportant as these little equatorial islands are from
the geographical and commercial point of view, they are any-
thing but this from the biological. They form a group of
tiny volcanic islets, never joined to any continent and never
joined to one another, yet each of them possesses its own
special zoological features. They contain no frogs and no
mammal save mice brought to them likely by a passing ship.
The only insects are beetles, which possess peculiar facilities
for transportation in the egg or grub across salt water upon
floating logs. There are a few snails and two kinds of
snake, one tortoise, and four lizards. There is a genus of a
gigantic and ugly lizard, the amblyrhyncus, unknown else-
where, but here assuming the forms of two species, the one
marine and the other terrestrial. On the other hand there
are no less than at least fifty-five distinct species of native
birds. Besides, the differences of fauna and flora between
the various islands force one to think that each form must
necessarily have been developed not merely for the group, but
for the special island which it actually inhabits. Darwin's
brain reeled as he contemplated the amount of creative force
employed, and it also reeled as he thought of " its diverse,
yet analogous, action on points so near to each other/' The
fauna and flora of the islands are different from one another,
and they are also different from that of Ecuador, the nearest
mainland. The law cares nothing for de minimis: Darwin
cared everything for de minimis.

Darwin perceives that once again he is met by another
question set by Nature. What is the key to the riddle of
organic existence? It seems almost in his hand. He writes
that " most of the organic productions are aboriginal crea-
tions, found nowhere else ; there is even a difference between
the inhabitants of the different islands : yet all show a marked
relationship with those of America, though separated from
that continent by an open space of ocean, between 500 and

* Origin of Species, ch. iii, p. 50. Cf. Sir C. Lyell, Antiquity of Man,
ch. xxi, p. 456.

1 76 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

600 miles in width. . . . Considering the small size of these
islands, we feel the more astonished at the number of their
aboriginal beings, and at their confined range. Seeing every
height crowned with its crater, and the boundaries of most
of the lava-streams still distinct, we are led to believe that
within a period geologically recent the unbroken sea was
here spread out. Hence, both in space and time we seem to
be brought somewhat nearer to that great fact that mystery
of mysteries the first appearance of new beings on this
earth."

In New Zealand he met with fauna and flora of the most
amazing meagreness and poverty of species. In the woods
he noted very few big birds, and he remarks with astonish-
ment that so large an island the same size as Great Britain
should not possess a single living indigenous mammal, save
a solitary rat of doubtful origin. It is the most insular
extensive mass of land in the whole world, constituting a
wonderful contrast with the Galapagos Archipelago.

For nearly five years the young geologist had been travel-
ling. Occasionally we meet with the young biologist, but
he came home a geologist. As Lamarck altered the course
of his studies, so Darwin altered the course of his. It may
very well have been that Lyell had laid down principles that
would go towards the solution of many geological problems.
Where, on the other hand, were the principles of the biolo-
gists? Collection and observation had given him one-half
the subject-matter of the Origin of Species. It was reserved
for reflection and Malthus to give him the missing half. As
naturalist to the Beagle he had been obliged to consider all
sorts of problems as well as the geological ones that absorbed
so much of his attention. Oceanic phenomena, the forma-
tion of coral islands and of icebergs, the transport of boul-
ders, volcanic phenomena, the height of the snow-line, the
climate of the Antarctic islands, the effects of slavery, the
appearance of the Patagonian and other races a thousand
and one problems like these compelled the geologist to con-
sider many matters outside the range of the narrow specialist.
For the time being, at any rate, Darwin acted on the Baconian
maxim of taking the whole world of science for his special
problem. As he appreciated the labours of Sedgwick and
Henslow on his behalf, so he appreciated those of Captain

DARWIN AND EVOLUTION 177

FitzRoy, to whom he wrote after his return and settlement
in London : " However others may look back to the Beagle's
voyage, now that the small disagreeable parts are well-nigh
forgotten, I think it far the most fortunate circumstance in
my life that the chance afforded by your offer of taking a
naturalist fell on me. I often have the most vivid and
delightful pictures of what I saw on board the Beagle pass
before my eyes. These recollections, and what I learnt on
Natural History, I would not exchange for twice ten thou-
sand a year." *

When he landed in England on his return from the five
happy years spent on board the Beagle, he was nearly twenty-
eight. When he published the first edition of the Origin of
Species he was over fifty. The intervening years were
mainly devoted to seeing where his material led him, and
when he was sure of this direction he spent his time in
proving to the satisfaction of all its truth. Like Lyell,
Darwin was a man of independent means, and thus was
spared the necessity of frittering away his intellectual powers
in earning his living.

On board the Beagle he had believed in the permanence
of species, though vague doubts occasionally flitted across
his mind. On March 7, 1837, he took lodgings in London,
and remained there for nearly two years,^ until he married
his cousin, Emma Wedgwood. During those two years
he finished his Journal of his travels, read several papers
before the Geological Society, began preparing the manu-
script for his Geological Observations, and arranged
for the publication of the Zoology of the Voyage of
the "Beagle." This affords clues to the position
geology occupied in his thoughts. In July he opened
his first note-book for facts in relation to his thoughts
on the origin of species. The character of South Ameri-
can fossils and the many species on the Galapagos
Archipelago had seriously struck him. The brilliant hypo-
theses of his grandfather, Erasmus, were to be replaced by
twenty-two years of drudgery with fact after fact. The
hard, dry, scientific mind dislikes speculation, and is im-
pressed by masses of facts, and these Darwin prepared to
gather and to go on gathering for a generation if need be.

* F. Darwin, Life of C. Darwin, p. 139 (1892 ed.).
12

i;8 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

In after-days men compared him with Newton, and the
comparison is a just one.* Newton discovered the law of
gravitation and Darwin the law of natural selection. Newton
also laid the foundations of dynamics and natural philosophy
and Darwin introduced a conception of nature that viewed
it as a scene of ceaseless conflict and ceaseless development. f
If we like, we can continue the parallel by suggesting that
as Newton was condemned by his contemporaries on the basis
of the philosophy of Bacon, so Darwin suffered condemnation
on the basis of the philosophy of Bacon and Newton. For
the moment the item in the parallel that concerns us most is
the enormous energy and accuracy both men gave to their
main conception.

In a manuscript quoted in the preface to A Catalogue of
the Newton MSS., Portsmouth Collection, written probably
about 1716, Newton writes $ : " In the beginning of the year
1665 I found the method for approximating series and the
rule for reducing any dignity [power] of any binomial to
such a series [i.e. the binomial theorem]. The same year in
May I found the method of tangents of Gregory and Slusius,
and in November had the direct method of Fluxions [i.e.
the elements of the differential calculus], and the next year
in January had the Theory of Colours, and in May following
I had entrance into the inverse method of Fluxions [i.e.
integral calculus], and in the same year I began to think of
gravity extending to the orb of the Moon . . . and having
thereby compared the force requisite to keep the Moon in
her orb with the force of gravity at the surface of the earth,
and found them to answer pretty nearly. All this was in the
two years of 1665 an d 1666, for in those years I was in the
prime of my age for invention, and minded Mathematics and
Philosophy more than at any time since." From 1666 to
1686 the problem of gravitation lay at the back of the mind
of Newton, and from 1836 to 1859 the problem of the origin
of species lay at the back of the mind of Darwin. The

* Contrast A. Wigand, Der Darwinismus und die Naturforschung New-
ton's und Cuvier's, III, p. 14.

f A. R. Wallace, Darwinism, p. 9. Cf. E. Du Bois Reymond, Reden,
I, p. 216.

t Cf. Appendix to Rigaud, Essay on the Principia, pp. 20, 23; Letter
to Leibniz, Oct. 24, 1676, No. LV in the Commercium Epistolicum:
Pemberton, Preface to A Viciv of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy, 1728,

DARWIN AND EVOLUTION 179

perseverance of the two men is at least as remarkable as
their modesty. Another experiment enables us to grasp in
some measure the patient and painstaking plan of inquiry
Darwin pursued. In order to test the reality of earthworm
castings, in 1842 he began to spread broken chalk over a
field in Down, his Kentish home, in which in 1871 a trench
was dug to test the results. How could any matter-of-fact
scientist resist the man who was capable of waiting twenty-
nine years in order to ascertain the outcome of a single
experiment ?

Darwin used to say that no one could be a good observer
unless he was an active theoriser, a circumstance that explains
the failures as well as the successes of scientists. " I am
a firm believer," as he stated, " that without speculation there
is no good and original observation." * As the facts accumu-
lated under his never-ceasing industry, Darwin in 1838 read
his Malthus, and the Essay on the Principle of Population
performed not the least of its services to mankind when it
enabled Darwin to render the principles Malthus applied to
man applicable to plants and animals as well. Without this
Essay we might never have had the Origin of Species in 1859.
The caution and the self-criticism of Darwin demanded the
clearest evidence, rejecting the most welcome support if it be
not flawless. With accuracy of statement went his sincerity
of opinion. Yet all can seek truth and show sincerity without
necessarily attaining correctness ; for that, a power of logical
reasoning, though no virtue, is a most necessary talent; it
was a faculty that Darwin and his co-discoverer, Wallace,
valued highly in themselves. Love of one's subject comes
of course first, and no one can doubt the love of Darwin for
geology and biology. Only because love must be first do we
place truth second. Perhaps indeed truth is one facet of
love; for love's self-effacement leads to that objective treat-
ment, freed from sentiment and prejudice, which forms the
very foundation of science. First of the virtues, for the
man of science as for all men else, is love. Love of his
fellow-creatures, so beautifully illustrated in the story of
Pasteur and the first child he saved from hydrophobia, has
led many an investigator through suffering and privation,
even to his death. But without a burning love of his subject,
* F. Darwin, Life and Letters of C. Darwin, II, p. 95.

i8o SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

be it the life of men, or of animals, or of plants, or of stones,
no man of science has achieved greatness, the greatness of a
Jenner and a Simpson, the greatness of a Lyell and a Helm-
holtz. For the true lover the object of his affection is all,
he himself is nothing: self -suppression is the hall-mark of
the great discoverer.

There are memorials to Newton and to Darwin in their
own colleges, Trinity and Christ's It is appropriate that a
plaque modelled by T. Woolner, made by Josiah Wedgwood
& Sons, is on Darwin's rooms in Christ's College. A sin-
gularly beautiful statue of Newton by Roubiliac was given
to Trinity College by the Master, Dr. Robert Smith, in 1750,
and is now in the ante-chapel. Wordsworth, in his " Pre-
lude " (bk. Ill), detected in Newton's "silent face," as
depicted in this work of art,

The marble index of a mind for ever

Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.

The scientist in the front rank requires the power of such a
voyage every whit as real as that in the Beagle. He must be
able to live a lonely life with his idea, content to see men
ignore it when it is put before them, content to believe with
Kepler that if God can wait six thousand years for one to
contemplate His works, the discoverer too can wait. Loneli-
ness is the fate of genius. It is noteworthy that the pro-
foundest book St. Paul wrote, the Epistle to the Ephesians,
and the greatest work of uninspired religious genius, the
Pilgrim's Progress, were written in the seclusion of a prison.
Mohammed meditated his message on the mount above
Mecca, Dante pondered his poem in the sylvan solitudes of
Fonte Avellana, and Cervantes wrote the saddest book in the
world in the seclusion of a prison. All men who have a mes-
sage for their fellows come to realise the justice of the remark
Dr. Cppleston addressed to Newman, once meeting him tak-
ing his solitary walk, " Nunquam minus solus quam cum
solus."

The solitary is by no means a figure confined to religion :
he is the type of all whose labours endure. Love of one's
subject, the desire of truth, the power to lead a lonely life
these are qualities of genius. But let us not forget hope
the hope that tramples on failure, " is baffled to fight better/'

DARWIN AND EVOLUTION 181

and through mists of doubt presses forward to the goal.
Hope is the virtue of youth; but the truly great man pos-
sesses perpetual youth, in mind if not in body : ever ready for
new ideas, ever looking at the heights. Do we always realise
that practically all Darwin's volumes on evolution were pub-
lished after he was fifty? " The substance of things hoped
for " is faith, and this too is a necessary virtue of the man
of science. Faith assures him that what he is doing is
worth while ; faith gives him that singleness of purpose with-
out which no great task was ever accomplished ; faith endows
him with that patience and industry which Darwin claimed
as his chief qualities. On faith in the unity and meaning of
creation depends that breadth of view without which few men
make discoveries of fundamental importance; and surely it is
" the evidence of things not seen " which kindles in the
natural philosopher the fire of imagination that " Phan-
tasie " which the great physiologist Johannes Miiller
acknowledged to be " ein unentbehrliches Gut."

One eminent quality of a man in authority in the Church
is the power of suffering fools gladly, and it is also an emi-
nent quality of a man in authority in the world of science.
In a super-eminent degree Darwin possessed this quality.
In 1844 Robert Chambers (1802 1871) published anony-
mously his Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. It
was vivid, it was graphic, and it gave the world a glimpse of a
theory of development. How prepared the public was for
such a theory is witnessed by the fact that in nine years it
leaped to no less than ten successive editions. Two years
sufficed for Chambers, and we cannot wonder that Darwin
thought it showed " a great want of scientific caution. "
Since 1838 he had been in possession of his main conception,
and though there were adumbrations of it in Chambers's book
he kept silence, and this was not the least notable of his
triumphs. It was a triumph, however, accompanied with a
warning that he might be forestalled.

Preoccupied as he was with his leading idea, he was far
from idle in other directions. A second edition of his
Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology
of the Countries visited during the Voyage of H.MS.
" Beagle " appeared in 1845. His Zoology of the Voyage of
PI. MS. (f Beagle " appeared in 1840; his Structure and Dis-

182 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

tribution of Coral Reefs in 1842; his Geological Observa-
tions on South America in 1846; his Monograph of the Fos-
sil Lepapidce or Pedunculated Cirripedes of Great Britain in
1851 ; his Monograph of the Tubeless Cirripedia, with figures
of all the Species, in 1851; his Monograph of the Fossil
Balanidce and Verrucidcz of Great Britain in 1854. No one
could doubt that the sometime Secretary of the Geological
Society, who had eight such tomes to his credit, was a man
to be reckoned with. The average F.R.S. was sure to be
impressed by such masterly marshalling of facts.

Darwin's Autobiography contains a vivid history of the
process by which he was able to revivify " the oldest of all
the philosophies that of evolution." * In 1838, thanks to
Mai thus, he had grasped the idea of natural selection. In
1842 he first allowed himself to write out his progress in
thirty- five pages. In 1844 ^ e enlarged this sketch into one of
230 pages. Struggle, selection, sexual selection, and variation
all were in his mind, though he attached much more weight
to the influence of external conditions and to the inheritance
of acquired habits than he did later. Must man be included
with other animals in his quest for the origin of species?
Yes. So far back as 1837 or 1838 he collected facts on this
point, and they convinced him of the " Descent of Man "
from an animal, though the book with this title was not
published till 1871. Early in 1859, on Lyell's advice, he
began to write out his views on the origin of species on a
scale three or four times as extensive as he did in 1856. By
1856 he had sent Hooker his manuscript. Swinging away
from any sympathy with the theories of Buff on and Lamarck,
he reached an extreme position on the work of natural
selection. In the July of that year he gave a brief sketch
of his theory in a letter to Asa Gray, the American naturalist,
mentioning the cardinal conceptions of the Origin of Species.
The formation of a species he thought almost wholly due to
the selection of " chance " variations. Neither the " blind
fortuity " of Empedocles nor the " progressive principle " of
Aristotle is in his mind. What he means by " chance "
variations is that they occur under unknown laws.

A fortunate accident forced the pace of the slowly-working
mind of the investigator. In 1858 A. R. Wallace had sud-
* F. Darwin, Life of C. Darwin, p. 169 (1892 ed.).

DARWIN AND EVOLUTION 183

denly reached a theory similar to Darwin's, and sent him a
paper, written in February, " On the Tendency of Varieties
to depart indefinitely from the Original Type/' * Darwin's
feelings are plain in what he writes : " If Wallace had my
MS. sketch written out in 1842 he could not have made a
better short abstract of it. Even his terms stand now as
heads of my chapters. Please return me the MS., which he
does not say he wishes me to publish, but I shall, of course,
at once write and offer to send it to any journal. So all my
originality, whatever it may amount to, will be smashed,
though my book, if ever it will have any value, will not be
deteriorated; as all the labour consists in the application of
the theory." f He then doubted what course he ought to
pursue. Urged by his friends to publish an abstract of his
own views, lie wrote to Lyell : " Wallace might say, ' You
did not intend publishing an abstract of your views till you
received my communication. Is it fair to take advantage of
my having freely, though unasked, communicated to you my
ideas, and thus prevent me forestalling you ? ' The advan-
tage which I should take being that I am induced to publish
from privately knowing that Wallace was in the field. It
seems hard on me that I should thus be compelled to lose my
priority of many years' standing, but I cannot feel sure that
this alters the justice of the case. First impressions are
generally right, and I at first thought it would be dishonour-
able in me now to publish."

The feelings of this sensitive soul were left to the judg-
ment of his friends Lyell and Hooker, the latter of whom
had read the sketch of 1844. He suggested, as an un-
doubtedly more equitable course than Darwin's first impulse
to publish Wallace's essay without note or comment of his
own, that extracts from the manuscript of 1844 and from
the letter of Dr. Asa Gray should be communicated to the
Linnean Society along with Wallace's paper. This was the
fairest course, and it was the course pursued. Accordingly
the two papers were read together on the memorable evening
of July i, 1858, and published under the title On the Ten-
dency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation
of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection.

* F. Darwin, Life of C. Danvin, p. 189.

t F. Darwin, Life and Letters of C. Darwin, II, p. 116,

184 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

It is a satisfaction to be able to record that Wallace was as
generous-minded as his co-discoverer. As when Joule pro-
claimed his views, there was not the semblance
of a discussion.* Darwin wrote in his Autobiography:
" Our joint productions excited very little attention,
and the only published notice of them which I can
remember was by Professor Haughton of Dublin, whose
verdict was that all that was new in them was false, and what
was true was old. This shows how necessary it is that any
new view should be explained at considerable length in order
to arouse public attention." f Darwin worked for thirteen
months more, and in November 1859 a ^ last appeared his
book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selec-
tion, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle
for Life.

The world of science, on its publication, began to undergo
a profound transformation that has affected every depart-
ment of it. The situation reminds one of the campanile of
St. Mark's at Venice in July 1902. The guardian of the
tower wanted a few inches more elbow room in his little
kitchen and took away a sort of lintel in order to enlarge the
passage. Next day there was a crack in the wall above, and
the week after the whole campanile sat down upon itself.
Nothing was changed; the same bricks and mortar were
there; only the situation was different. Darwin's magnum
opus rendered the whole scientific situation wholly different.
The idea of natural selection had been conceived by Wells in
1813, by Patrick Matthew in 1831, and by Wallace in 1858.
That second-rate philosopher, Herbert Spencer, came close to
it in 1852. It is remarkable that Wells and Spencer, as well
as Wallace, based their ideas on the Malthusian principle.
There is infinite variability in wild and domestic animals.
There appears indeed to be hardly any limit to the almost
infinite plasticity and modifiability of domestic animals. " It
would seem," said a great sheep-breeder, speaking of sheep,
" as if farmers had chalked out upon a wall a form perfect
in itself, and then proceeded to give it existence."

Granting individual variability, then, how do species arise

* F. Darwin, Life of C. Darwin, p. 186 (1892 ed.).
t Ibid., p. 41.

DARWIN AND EVOLUTION 185

in nature ? And how are all the exquisite adaptations of part
to whole, and of whole to environment, gradually initiated,
improved, and perfected?

Here the book of Malthus comes to our assistance. For it
teaches that here and now the world is over-populated. It
is not going to be over-populated, but is actually at this
moment over-populated. Species perpetually outruns sub-
sistence. Linnaeus reckoned that if an annual plant had two
seeds, each of which produced two seedlings in the succeeding
season, and so on continually, in twenty years their progeny
would amount to a million plants. The roe of a cod contains
nearly ten million eggs. If each of these produced a young
fish which arrived at maturity, the whole sea must imme-
diately become a solid mass of codfish. There is, then, a
struggle for existence between members of the same species
not between members of different species and this
struggle is never ending. This struggle is between cod and
cod, tiger and tiger, snake and snake. Homo homini lupus,
so runs the old proverb which Hobbes applied to his own
purpose. Lupus lupo lupus, so runs the proverb Darwin
might have coined for his purpose.

The three men Darwin looked to for judgment on his work
were Lyell, Hooker, and Huxley, and they all signified their
agreement with it.* That is, from the angle of geology,
botany, and zoology, three men of mark were on the side of
the hypothesis launched upon the scientific world. All of
them had their reservations, but they cordially accepted the
main idea. Hooker did not disguise his opinion that he
thought it had been pressed too far,f holding that Darwin
had ignored the view of the mutability of species held by
G. Saint-Hilaire and Lamarck.J Huxley pointed out, for in-
stance, that the logical foundation of the Origin was insecure
so long as experiments in selective breeding had not produced
varieties which were more or less infertile, and he thought
that that insecurity remains. In his Romanes lecture, given
in 1892, Huxley held that natural selection failed to explain
the origin of our moral and ethical nature. Lyell shrank

* F. Darwin, Life of C. Darwin, pp. 214, 235 (1892 ed.).
f L. Huxley, Life and Letters of Sir 7. D. Hooker, I, p. 512.
J F. Darwin, Life of C. Darwin, pp. 207, 254, 256.
L, Huxley, Life and Letters of T. H. Huxley, I, p. 170.

186 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

from accepting the Darwinian teaching, for he foresaw its
inevitable extension to the descent of man, and that was
repugnant to his feelings. Ultimately, he ceased to shrink,
and Darwin thought this one of the noblest acts he knew. For
Lyell " to have maintained in the position of a master, one
side of the question for thirty years, and then deliberately
give it up, is a fact to which I * much doubt whether the
records of science offer a parallel."!

Sir Richard Owen (1804 1892) was a naturalist who
occupied such a foremost position in science that he has been
called the British Cuvier, and he could not see his way to
accept the old-new view. Darwin's special doctrine of
natural selection he never appreciated. He attacked it with
acerbity in an anonymous article in the Edinburgh Review for
April i86o.{ Darwin believed him to have inspired the
hostile notice given to this book by Samuel Wilber force,
Bishop of Oxford, in the Quarterly Review of the same
date. There is also reason to think that Owen proved the
source of inspiration of the speech made by Wilber force at
the meeting of the British Association at Oxford in 1860.
That is, what has long been believed to have been an epis-
copal attack was in fact an attack by a scientist with a
first-class reputation. Wilberforce had taken a first-class in
mathematics, and when Owen assured him that the new
theory was an untrue theory he believed his informant. His
ignorance was pardonable if he had not ventured to speak.
Not only was he foolish enough to speak, but he was more
foolish to sneer. Turning to his antagonist, Huxley, with
smiling insolence, he begged to know, Was it through his
grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed his descent
from a monkey? No wonder Huxley exclaimed to Sir
Benjamin Brodie, who was sitting beside him, " The Lord
hath delivered him into mine hands ! " With an effectively
quiet manner, he retorted that he was not ashamed to have a
monkey for his ancestor ; but that he would be ashamed to be
connected with a man who used great gifts to obscure the
truth. " Close to them stood one of the few men among the

* Darwin.

t F. Darwin, Life of C. Darwin, pp. 212, 260 (1892 ed.). Cf. Horner,
Life of Sir C. Lyell, II, p. 384.

t On Owen's attitude, cf. R. Owen, Life of Professor Owen,
II, p. 91.

DARWIN AND EVOLUTION 187

audience already in Holy Orders, who joined in and indeed
led the cheers for the Darwinians."* An eye-witness
adds, " I was much struck with the fair and unprejudiced way
the black coats and white cravats of Oxford discussed the
question, and the frankness with which they offered their
congratulations to the winners in the combat." f The feeling
of the audience was very hostile to the Bishop, and Simpson,
who had been most anti-Darwinian, declared that if that was
all that could be said in favour of the old idea, he was a con-
vert. The President of the section, Henslow, adjourned
the discussion until the following Monday, but it was then
thought by the leaders on both sides that it had better be
dropped, and so the matter rested. On the Sunday, at the
University Church, Frederick Temple, the future Archbishop
of Canterbury, treated his audience to a sermon on Dar-
winism, in which he espoused Darwin's ideas very fully. $
Huxley, when describing the mammalian heart, used to
remark on the difficulty of distinguishing the tricuspid valve,
on the right side, from the bicuspid valve, on the left, which
resembles a bishop's mitre. His rule was that as a bishop
is never known to be on the right, the mitral valve is on the
left. In 1860, at any rate, a bishop-to-be was on the right!
The 1860 meeting of the British Association has attained
a high degree of notoriety. There was another meeting of
this Association at Oxford in 1894 which is sometimes for-
gotten^ The President then was Lord Salisbury, who pro-
ceeded to attack, in the presence of Huxley, conceptions of
the evolution theory. With delicate irony he spoke of the
" comforting word, evolution," passing to Weismannism.
Lord Salisbury quoted Lord Kelvin against Darwin, imply-
ing that the diametrically opposed views so frequently ex-
pressed nowadays threw the whole process of evolution in
doubt. This of course irritated Huxley, who naturally
considered Lord Kelvin a non-expert witness on a biological
question. When the President had finished his address, Lord
Kelvin proposed a vote of thanks, and he did so with genuine
conviction. For he saw grave difficulties from a physico-

* L. Huxley, Life and Letters of T. H. Huxley, I, p. 182 ; F. Darwin,
Life of C. Darwin, p. 236 ff. (1892 ed.).
f F. Darwin, Life of C. Darwin, p. 241 (1892 ed.).
$ A. F. R. Wollaston, Life of A. Newton, p. 118.
J. Mavor, My Windows on the Street of the World, I, p. 320.

i88 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

mathematical point of view in reconciling the Darwinian
hypothesis of evolution in biology with the physical data he
had in his mind. Huxley contented himself with a formal
speech. The triumph of 1860 was not destined to be re-
peated, for Lamarckianism inter alia was at last coming into
its own. If the shade of Sir Richard Owen or of Samuel
Wilber force could have been present, how he would have
chuckled at the retribution falling on their former antagonist !
Huxley had the rare good fortune to review the Origin of
Species for The Times, and a notice in the leading newspaper
of 1860 rendered incalculable service to the new contribution
to thought. Still, writing in 1887, he writes : " There is not
the slightest doubt that, if a General Council of the Church
scientific had been held at that time, we should have been
condemned by an overwhelming majority/' * Not a few
clergymen naturally followed the lead given them by a Bishop,
but it occasions surprise to find that, in the opinion of a com-
petent judge, the scientists would also have condemned Dar-
win. The severe criticism passed by the Quarterly Review
of July 1860 rendered a notable disservice to the reception
of the evolution theory. In the Life and Letters of Charles
Darwin there is a letter written by Hooker which we quote :
" Huxley has sent me the proof of his contribution to the
Life.^ I do not think it too severe. The Quarterly then
held the highest place amongst the first-class Reviews and
was most bound to be fair and judicious, but proved unjust
and malicious and ignorant. It went indefinitely beyond
' severity ' and into scurrility, and for all Huxley says he cites
abundant proof. It is not for us, who repeat ad nauseam
our contempt for the persecutors of Galileo and the sneerers
of Franklin, to conceal the fact that our own great dis-
coverers met the same fate at the hands of the highest in
the land of Literature and Science, as represented by its
most exalted organ, the Q.R"$ Poulett Scrope in two

* J. W. Clark and A. C. Seward, Order of the Proceedings at the
Darwin Celebration held at Cambridge, June 22-24, 1909, p. 20.

f Of Darwin.

j L. Huxley, Life and Letters of Sir J. D. Hooker, II, p. 300; F.
Darwin, Letters of C. Darwin, p. 242 (1892 ed.). Cf. Ibid., p. 221.
Hooker wrote to Darwin in 1859, " I saw a highly flattering notice [of
the Origin} in the English Churchman, short and not at all entering into
discussion, but praising you and your book, and talking patronisingly
of the doctrine ! "

DARWIN AND EVOLUTION 189

luminous articles in the Quarterly Review did for Lyell
what Huxley accomplished for Darwin in his famous
review in The Times* Sir Richard Owen controlled
this great Review in 1860, and this created a world of
difference.

It is one of the ironies of the situation that in their views
Darwin and Wallace did not continue to see eye to eye. The
longer Wallace worked practically, the more he perceived
difficulties in the way. In his World of Life he states three
of the most formidable of these. The first is that the slight
beginnings of new organs would be useless, and could not
therefore be preserved and increased by natural selection to
which it is answered that the usual method of evolution is to
make apparent novelties by the transformation or specialisa-
tion of old-established structures. The second difficulty is
that new adaptations imply a number of concurrent variations
to which it is answered that time is long and variability
great, and that coincident variations are demonstrably numer-
ous in connection with both difficulties. Professors Baldwin,
Lloyd Morgan, and Osborn have suggested that adaptive
individual modifiability may serve as a life-saving screen till
hereditary germinal variations in the same direction have
grown strong. The third difficulty is in the excessive
development of characters, such as decorations and weapons,
beyond the limits of utility, and the answer, we glean, is
found in Weismann's ingenious hypothesis of germinal
selection. Huxley and Hooker took the field with enthu-
siasm when Darwin extended his theory to the descent of
man. From Wallace he received no support in this matter.
Wallace admitted everything in regard to the morphological
descent of man, but maintained, in a mystic manner, that
something else, something spiritual, must have been added
to that inherited from his animal ancestors. f Though he
urged that natural selection accounted for the evolution of
man's bodily frame from the simian stock, yet from this point
of view some extraneous power had inspired him with his
mentality, and with a future purpose in view had provided
the mere savage with a brain disproportionate to his require-

* F. Darwin, Letters of C. Darwin, p. 221 (1892 ed.).
t Cf. G. Schwalbe in A. C. SewarcTs ed. Darwin and Modern Science,
p. 116.

190 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

merits, whether compared with civilised man or with the
brutes.*

The well-known Essays and Reviews was an able effort to
contribute to one of the many reconciliations between science
and religion or rather theology. In it a thoughtful observer,!
the Rev. Baden Powell (1796- 1860), Savilian Professor of
Geometry at Oxford, records that : " Just a similar scepticism
has been evinced by nearly all the first physiologists of the
day, who have joined in rejecting the development theories
of Lamarck and the Vestiges. . . . Yet it is now acknow-.
ledged under the high sanction of Owen that ' creation ' is
only another name for our ignorance of the mode of pro-
duction, . . . while a work has now appeared by a naturalist
of the most acknowledged authority, Mr. Darwin's masterly
volume on the Origin of Species, by the law of ' natural
selection/ which now substantiates on undeniable grounds
the very principle so long denounced by the first naturalists
the origination of new species by natural causes: a work
which must soon bring about an entire revolution of opinion
in favour of the grand principle of the self -evolving powers
of nature/' These striking words appeared in 1860 in a
study of the evidences of Christianity, and attest that the
lead given by Temple at Oxford in 1860 was not altogether
forgotten. Canon Henry Baker Tristram (1822 1906) was
the first zoologist of any note who publicly accepted the Dar-
winian views in his paper in the Ibis of October 1859, though
on mature thought he modified his language.

Lyell, Hooker, and Huxley had so often discussed the
Origin of Species with Darwin that many of its difficulties
and objections are met by anticipation. Of his three friends,
Lyell and Hooker contributed most to this result. Darwin,
in spite of all this preparation, found trouble in convincing
naturalists who had "a bigoted idea of the term species/' {
His ideas were more readily understood by intelligent people
who were not professed naturalists. Among scientific men
they were accepted most commonly by geologists, thanks to
Lyell's Principles of Geology, next by the botanists, and least

* A. R. Wallace, Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection,

p. 359-

t Essays and Reviews, pp. 138-9.

J L. Huxley, Life and Letters of Sir J. D. Hooker, I, p. 508; F. Darwin
and A. C Seward, More Letters of C. Darwin, I, p. 175.

DARWIN AND EVOLUTION 191

by the zoologists.* Darwin wrote to Lyell on December 2,
1859 : " H. C. Watson tells me that one zoologist says he will
read my book, ' but I will never believe it/ What a spirit
to read any book in!"f Sir Roderick Murchison was a
geologist who believed " that the evidence of the older forma-
tion lent no support to the views now enunciated. Darwin
" will have no creation no signs of a beginning millions
of living things before the lowest Silurian no succession
of creatures from lower to higher, but a mere transmutation
from a monad to a man. His assumption of the position of
the Lyellian theory, that causation never was more intense
than it is. now, and that former great disruptions (faults)
were all removed by the denudation of the ages, is so gratui-
tous, and so entirely antagonistic to my creed, that I deny
all his inductions, and am still as firm a believer as ever that
a monkey and a man are distinct species, and not connected
by any links." J

Darwin's old teacher, the Rev. Professor Henslow, made
a stout stand on his side, thinking the matter a legitimate one
for investigation^ Some of the geologists relied for criti-
cism on the assumed perfection of the geological record.
On November 22, 1860, Darwin wrote to H. W. Bates,
" As you say, I have been thoroughly well attacked and re-
viled (especially by entomologists Westwood, Wollaston,
and A. Murray have all reviled and sneered at me to their
hearts' content), but I care nothing for their attacks." || We
can understand Darwin writing : " I am actually weary of
telling people that I do not pretend to adduce direct evidence
of one species changing into another, but that I believe that
this view in the main is correct, because so many phenomena
can be thus grouped together and explained. But it is gener-
ally of no use; I cannot make persons see this. I generally
throw in their teeth the universally admitted theory of the
undulation of light, neither the undulation nor the very

* L. Huxley, Life and Letters of Sir J. D. Hooker, I, p. 508; F. Dar-
win and A. C. Seward, More Letters of C. Darwin, I, p. 167.

t F. Darwin, Life of C. Darwin, p. 218 (1892 ed.).

j Sir A. Geikie, Life of Sir Roderick Murchison, II, p. 321. Contrast
Sir A. Geikie, A Long Life's Work, pp. 71, 143.

L. Huxley, Life and Letters of Sir J. D. Hooker, I, p. 508. Cf. F.
Darwin, Letters of C. Danvin, pp. 227, 234 (1892 ed.).

II F. Darwin and A. C. Seward, More Letters of C. Darwin, I, p. 118.

192 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

existence of ether being proved, yet admitted because it
explains so much/ 1 *

The influence of an hypothesis comes out in the repeated
references made to the difficulty of convincing the naturalists.
Botanists and geologists proved more reasonable people. " I
am much pleased/' Darwin records, " that the younger and
middle-aged geologists are coming round, for the arguments
from geology have always seemed strongest against me. Not
one of the older geologists (except Lyell) has been ever
shaken in his views of the eternal immutability of species." t
On March 3, 1860, he wrote to Hooker : " One large class of
men, more especially I suspect of naturalists, never will care
about any general question, of which old Gray, J of the
British Museum, may be taken as a type; and secondly,
nearly all men past a moderate age, either in actual years or
in mind, are, I am fully convinced, incapable of looking at
facts under a new point of view. 1 ' The same despair of
middle and old age breaks out in a letter to Huxley on
December 2, 1860 : " I can pretty plainly see that, if my view
is ever to be generally adopted, it will be by young men
growing up and replacing the old workers, and then the
young ones finding that they can group facts and search out
new lines of investigation better on the notion of descent, than
on that of creation." Throughout this correspondence we
have instance after instance of elder men losing that elas-
ticity of judgment and modifiability of intellect which are
so indispensable for the reception of new and fundamental
concepts. No wonder Hewett Cottrell Watson wrote to
Darwin on November 21, 1859: "Now these novel views
are brought fairly before the scientific public, it seems truly
remarkable how so many of them could have failed to see
their right road sooner. How could Sir C. Lyell, for in-
stance, for thirty years read, write, and think on the subject
of ' species and their succession ' and yet constantly look down
the wrong road ? " || H. C. Watson might have gone on to
ask, Why did the scientific public, after 1859, persist in still
looking down the wrong road ?

* F. Darwin and A. C. Seward, More Letters of C. Darwin, I, p. 184.

t F. Darwin, Life of C. Darwin, p. 230 (1892 ed.).

j Ibid., p. 219.

Ibid., p. 244.

jj F. Darwin, Life of C. Darwin, I, p. 352; II, p. 226.

DARWIN AND EVOLUTION 193

The quarrels of the scientific men are satirised in Public
Opinion of April 23, 1863, in a graphic account of a police-
case. Mr. John Bull gave evidence that

" The whole neighbourhood was unsettled by their dis-
putes; Huxley quarrelled with Owen, Owen with Darwin,
Lyell with Owen, Falconer and Prestwich with Lyell, and
Gray the menagerie man with everybody. He had pleasure,
however, in stating that Darwin was the quietest of the set.
They were always picking bones with each other and fighting
over their gains. If either of the gravel sifters or stone
breakers found anything, he was obliged to conceal it imme-
diately, or one of the old bone collectors would be sure to
appropriate it first and deny the theft afterwards, and the
consequent wrangling and disputes were as endless as they
were wearisome.

" LORD MAYOR. Probably the clergyman of the parish
might exert some influence over them?

" The gentleman smiled, shook his head, and stated that he
regretted to say that no class of men paid so little attention
to the opinions of the clergy as that to which these unhappy
men belonged." *

In Bret Harte's Poems there is " Truthful Sammy's "
account of the row " That broke up our Society upon the
Stanislow."

Now nothing: could be finer or more beautiful to see
Than the first six months 1 proceedings of that same Society,
Till Brown of Calaveras brought a lot of fossil bones
That he found within a tunnel near the tenement of Jones.

Then Brown he read a paper, and he reconstructed there,

From those same bones, an animal extremely rare ;

And Jones then asked the Chair for a suspension of the rules,

Till he could prove that those same bones was one of his lost mules.

Then Brown he smiled a bitter smile, and said he was at fault,
It seemed he had been trespassing on Jones's family vault;
He was a most sarcastic man, this quiet Mr. Brown,
And on several occasions he had cleaned out the town.

Now I hold it is not decent for a scientific gent
To say another is an ass, at least, to all intent;
Nor should the individual who happens to be meant
Reply by heaving rocks at him, to any great extent.

Then Abner Dean of Angel's raised a point of order, when
A chunk of old red sandstone took him in the abdomen,

* F. Darwin, Life of C. Darwin, p. 259 (1892 ed.).
13

194 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

And he smiled a kind of sickly smile, and curled up on the floor,
And the subsequent proceedings interested him no more.

For, in less time than I write it, every member did engage

In a warfare with the remnants of the palaeozoic age;

And the way they heaved those fossils in their anger was a sin,

Till the skull of an old mammoth caved the head of Thompson in.

Of course these lines form amusing reading, but is it not
pathetic to note that what should have been a contest for
truth in the eyes of the public was regarded as a personal
matter? It is a relief to turn to a letter the Rev. Charles
Kingsley wrote on December 18, 1859. Kingsley was no
match for such a subtle dialectician as John Henry Newman,
yet there is an honesty of outlook in the man that commands
our hearty respect. He wrote to Darwin : " I have to thank
you for the unexpected honour of your book. That the
naturalist whom, of all naturalists living, I most wish to
know and to learn from, should have sent a scientist like
me his book, encourages me at least to observe more carefully,
and think more slowly.

" I am so poorly (in brain), that I fear I cannot read your
book just now as I ought. All I have seen of it awes me;
both with the heap of facts and the prestige of your name,
and also with the clear intuition, that if you be right, I must
give up much that I have believed and written.

" In that care I little. Let God be true, and every man
a liar. Let us know what is, and, as old Socrates has it,
7TT0at, TOJ \oy<w follow up the villainous shifty fox
of an argument, into whatsoever unexpected bogs and brakes
he may lead us, if we do but run into him at last.

" From two common superstitions, at least, I shall be free
while judging of your book :

" (i) I have long since, from watching the crossing of
domesticated animals and plants, learnt to disbelieve the
dogma of the permanence of species.

" (2) I have gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble
a conception of Deity, to believe that He created primal
forms capable of self-development into all forms needful pro
tempore and pro loco, as to believe that He required a fresh
act of intervention to supply the lacunas which He Himself
had made. I question whether the former be not the loftier
thought.

DARWIN AND EVOLUTION 195

" Be that as it may, I shall prize your book, both for itself,
and as a proof that you are aware of the existence of such a
person as Your faithful servant, C. Kingsley." *

The Vicar of Down, Darwin's parish church, was the Rev.
J. Brodie Innes, of Milton Brodie, and he writes : " We never
attacked each other. Before I knew Mr. Darwin I had
adopted, and publicly expressed, the principle that the study
of natural history, geology, and science in general should
be pursued without reference to the Bible. That the Book
of Nature and Scripture came from the same Divine source,
ran in parallel lines, and when properly understood would
never cross. . , .

" In [a] letter, after I had left Down, he [Darwin] writes,
' We often differed, but you are one of those rare mortals
from whom one can differ and yet feel no shade of animosity,
and that is a thing [of] which I should feel very proud if
any one could say [it] of me.'

" On my last visit to Down, Mr. Darwin said, at his din-
ner-table, ' Innes and I have been fast friends for thirty years,
and we never thoroughly agreed on any subject but once, and
then we stared hard at each other, and thought one of us
must be very ill." f

Darwin had to face the opposition of William Henry
Harvey ( 181 1 1866), an Irishman whom he terms " a first-
rate botanist/' For seven years Harvey worked hard at the
botany of South Africa, and became the chief authority on
algae. In 1853 he visited India, Australia, and the South
Sea Islands, a voyage of three years, covering much of the
ground Darwin had covered. In 1859 he was forty-eight,
not too advanced an age, one would have thought, to receive
a new idea, yet it seems, as with most men of science of his
time who were already in mental maturity, the Origin con-
tained doctrines too revolutionary to be readily accepted by
him.J So far from accepting Darwin's theory, he delivered
an address against it, and he had this address printed. Sub-
sequently he came round to accept some of the views pro-
pounded, and did his best to call in copies of the address,
which to the end of his life he sincerely regretted having

* F. Darwin, Life of C. Darwin, p. 228 (1892 ed.).

t F. Darwin, Life of C. Darwin, p. 229 (1892 ed.).

j W. V. Ball, Reminiscences and Letters of Sir R. Ball, p. 44.

196 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

published. But he never became a real Darwinian. In one
of his letters to Asa Gray he wrote, " A good deal of Darwin
reads to me like an ingenious dream," * which is pretty much
the attitude of Sedgwick. Harvey's own work lay in
botanical discrimination, description, and illustration.
Though ready to admit natural selection as a vera causa of
much change, he would not go so far as to admit
it a vera causa of species. He suspected that Dar-
win had ascribed too great efficacy to secondary causes
and, as it were, deified natural selection, f Hooker,
who was an old friend of Harvey, told him that he had been
of the views of Darwin for fourteen years before he had
adopted them, and that he had done so solely and entirely
from an independent study of the plants themselves. Hooker
wrote to Harvey, " I am profoundly indifferent to the
sneers and contempt I have received from the opposite side
of your passage [the Irish Sea], Asa Gray alone has
treated me with candour and fairness; all other botanists
are either indifferent, hostile, or contemptuous.":}:

John Hutton Balfour (1808 1884) was a Scots sys-
tematic botanist who conducted botanical excursions with
pupils energetically, and extended them to almost every part
of Scotland. Impartial in the breadth of his teaching, he
was ever anxious to assimilate new knowledge. The know-
ledge of 1859 proved too much for him, and he found him-
self unable to accept it. Just as Harvey turned Irish
opinion in general and Dublin University opinion in particular
against Darwin, so Balfour turned Scots opinion in general
and Edinburgh University opinion || in particular. Nor was
the attitude of Oxford University more friendly. John
Phillips (1800 1874) was Professor of Geology there.
More than a hundred papers stand under his name in the
Catalogue of the Royal Society, and the variety of their
subjects attests the wide range of his knowledge. Attractive
as a speaker and lecturer, he was, we learn, eminently judi-
cious, ever courteous, genial, and conciliatory. It was
serious for Darwin that he too stood on the side of opposi-

* W. V. Ball, Reminiscences and Letters of Sir R. Ball, p. 44.
t L. Huxley, Life and Letters of Sir J. D. Hooker, I, p. 26.

Ibid., I, p. 515.

Ibid., p. 202.

Ibid., p. SIS.

DARWIN AND EVOLUTION 197

tion. William Clark (1788 1869) was Professor of Ana-
tomy in Cambridge University, and carried out his duties so
efficiently that he laid the foundation of the school of bio-
logical science at Cambridge. He always lectured from the
actual subject, which was not usually done in his time, and
performed the dissections himself with singular neatness.
Like Phillips, with Sedgwick he opposed the opinions of the
Origin.* We have given enough from the Universities of
Dublin and Edinburgh, of Oxford and Cambridge, to prove
that the scientific world displayed no undue eagerness to
believe what was set before it. The three men who knew
Darwin thoroughly well, Lyell, Hooker, and Huxley, ac-
cepted his ideas, but the members of the world of science
outside this narrow range set their faces like a flint
against them. Nor was Oxford University the only home
of lost causes. The academic world felt pretty unanimous
on this point.

Hugh Falconer (1808 1865) was a botanist and a
palaeontologist of more than common distinction. Marked
by a penetrating intellect, he had the charm of a frank and
winning disposition. Securing a nomination as assistant-
surgeon on the Bengal establishment of the East India Com-
pany, he turned his attention to the two subjects in which
he has won permanent fame. For twenty-five years he
laboured at them, discovering the earliest fossil quadrumana,
many species of the mastodon and elephant, several species
of rhinoceros, new sub-genera of hippopotamus, the colossal
ruminant sivatherium, species of ostrich, crocodiles, the enor-
mous tortoise collossochelys, and numerous fishes. On his
retirement from the Indian service in the spring of 1855,
he resumed his palaeontological researches, visiting almost
every museum in Western Europe. Researches on the
fauna of the ossiferous caves of Gower led him in 1860 to
prove that elephas antiquus and rhinoceros hemitoechus were
members of the cave fauna of England. In his latter years
he spent much time in examining the evidences as to the
antiquity of man, which he had been led to anticipate in
India in 1844. I* 1 f act > every current question about fossil
mammalia and prehistoric man Falconer investigated and

* Huxley, Life and Letters of Sir J. D. Hooker, p. 514.

198 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

commented upon in a patient, impartial, and candid spirit.
He was always seeking fresh evidence and developing his
ideas, many of which he never committed to writing, owing
to the tenaciousness of his memory. Having returned hastily
from Gibraltar to support the claims of Darwin to the Copley
Medal, the highest award of the Royal Society, he suffered
much from fatigue and exposure, and on January 31, 1865,
he passed away. In 1861 he had been rambling through the
north of Italy and Germany, and everywhere he heard Dar-
winism discussed " the views of course often dissented
from, according to the special bias of the speaker but the
work, its honesty of purpose, grandeur of conception, felicity
of illustration, and courageous exposition, always referred
to in terms of the highest admiration." * In spite of all
this praise, he was among those who did not fully accept the
views expressed in the Origin, but he could differ from its
author without bitterness.f

Sir Edward Sabine (1788 1883) was a distinguished
general of the Royal Artillery who also attained the position
of President of the Royal Society. With his scientific
capacity he possessed a personality as attractive as that of
Hugh Falconer himself. His grace of manner and invin-
cible cheerfulness rendered him universally popular. Astro-
nomy, terrestrial magnetism, biology, and ornithology were
his favourite studies. He was anti-Darwinian, and not un-
willing to deliver a left-handed attack on the new Copley
medallist. Darwin records that " some old members of the
Royal [Society] are quite shocked at my having the Cop-
ley. "$ He goes on to say that " such a feeling existed is clear
from the action of the Council in pointedly omitting from the
grounds of their award the theory set forth in the Origin.
That this book could within five years of its publication be
valued by the Royal Society merely as a ' mass of observa-
tions, etc./ is striking evidence of the slow progress of Evo-
lution. It may perhaps be said that 1870 is the date at which
the current of scientific opinion is seen to be definitely flowing
in the direction of Evolution." J

* F. Darwin, Life of C. Darzvin, p. 247.

t F. Darwin and A. C. Seward, More Letters of C. Darwin, I, p. 253.
^ J. W. Clark and A. C. Seward, Order of the Proceedings at the
Darwin Celebration held at Cambridge, June 22-24, 1909, p. 20.

DARWIN AND EVOLUTION 199

At the Anniversary Meeting and Dinner of the Royal
Society in 1864, Sabine wrote the only part of the address to
Darwin : " Speaking generally and collectively, we have
expressly omitted it [Darwin's theory] from the grounds of
our award." * Hooker wrote to Darwin on December 2,
1864 : " Have you heard of the small breeze at R.S. a propos
of your reward? Busk told me thus: Sabine said, in his
address, that in awarding you the Copley ' all consideration
of your Origin was expressly excluded.' After the address,
Huxley gets up and asks how this is, and being assured it is
so, he insists on the Minutes of the Council being produced
and read, in which of course there was no such exclusion or
indeed any allusion to the Origin. Busk and Sabine were
afterwards discussing the point, Sabine saying that no
allusion = express exclusion, and shuffling as usual, when up
comes Falconer, and to Busk's horror compliments Sabine's
address unreservedly. Busk, thinking that Falconer had
overheard the discussion, said nothing at the time, but calls
Falconer to account, upon which Falconer is grievously put
out at finding what he has done and forthwith goes and
writes a letter to Sabine on the subject. May the Lord have
mercy on Sabine, is all I can say; for Falconer will have
none." f

It was reserved for a Professor of Engineering at Edin-
burgh to deliver what Darwin felt to be the most valuable
criticism ever made on his views, J and this professor was
Henry Charles Fleeming Jenkin (1833 1885). His taste
in literature was as broad and unconventional as in science.
His determinative work in electricity is of the highest value,
while his varied originality as an inventor is testified by his
thirty-five patents, and by his scientific papers. He criti-
cised natural selection on mathematical grounds. It was,
he urged, an infinitesimal chance that an individual with a
particular variation should meet with a similar varying
mate and so propagate the variation.

* L. Huxley, Life and Letters of T. PL Huxley, I, p. 254.

t L. Huxley, Life and Letters of Sir /. D. Hooker, II, p. 75 ; L. Huxley,
Life and Letters of T. H. Huxley, I, p. 254; J. W. Clark and A. C.
Seward, Order of the Proceedings at the Darwin Celebration held at
Cambridge, June 22-24, 1909, p. 20.

J F. Darwin, Life of C. Darwin, p. 274.

L. Huxley, Life and Letters of Sir J. D. Hooker, II, p. 83.

200 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

St. George Jackson Mivart (1827 1900) was a brilliant
biologist and anatomist who formally opposed Darwinism
while he supported evolution by the side-issue of derivative
creation. He consistently maintained an essential disparity
between organic and inorganic matter, and between human
reason and the highest faculties of the brutes. Natural
selection he relegated to an extremely subordinate place, and
attributed the formation of specific characters to a principle
of individuation, which he postulated as the essence of life.
He freely criticised the hypothesis of the great naturalist
both in the Quarterly Review * and in a substantive essay
" On the Genesis of Species/' and this assertion of the right
of private judgment led to an estrangement from both Hux-
ley and Darwin. Huxley replied in an article in the Con-
temporary Review which was extremely effective.! Mivart
had attempted to show that evolution, at least in his sense,
had been accepted in advance by such authorities in his com-
munion as the Jesuit Suarez. Turning up the references
quoted, Huxley ascertained that the precise opposite was
stated, and with delicious irony was able to pose as the
defender of Roman Catholic orthodoxy against a heterodox
son of the Church. At the same time he was full of cold
anger against the man who was writing privately to express
his friendship for Darwin, yet, as the anonymous critic in
the Quarterly Revieiv, was treating Darwin in a manner
Hooker terms " alike unjust and unbecoming." J For
Mivart sneered at Darwin's candour, one of the most
attractive of his many attractive qualities, and at the mutu-
ally generous relations between him and Wallace over the
enunciation of natural selection. This Mivart criticism is
one of the least edifying episodes of the whole controversy.
Asa Gray occupies a high position in the ranks of Ameri-
can ^ men of science, and it is plain that Darwin was most
anxious to enlist his adherence. Gray was impressed by the
masterly manner and the no less masterly matter of the
Origin. On January 23, 1860, Gray wrote to Darwin: " It
naturally happens that my review of your book does not

* CXXXI, p. 47.

t T. H. Huxley, Darwiniana, pp. 120-86. It is one of the most pun-
gent and penetrating articles Huxley ever wrote.
$ L. Huxley, Life and Letters of Sir J. D. Hooker, II, p. 128.

DARWIN AND EVOLUTION 201

exhibit anything like the full force of the impression the
book has made upon me. Under the circumstances I suppose
I do your theory more good here, by bespeaking for it a fair
and favourable consideration, and by standing non-committed
as to its full conclusions, than I should if I announced myself
a convert ; nor could I say the latter, with truth. Well, what
seems to be the weakest point in the book is the attempt to
account for the formation of organs, the making of eyes,
etc., by natural selection. Some of this reads quite
Lamarckian." * Any reference to the labours of Lamarck
stirred Darwin to fury, and we can readily conceive how this
letter must have made him writhe.

Louis Jean Rodolphe Agassiz (1807 1873) entered a col-
lege at Bienne at the age of 10, and from 1822 to 1824 he
was a student at the Academy of Lausanne. He afterwards
spent some years as a student in the Universities
of Zurich, Heidelberg, and Munich, where he gained a
reputation as a skilful fencer. It was at Heidelberg that
his studies took a definite turn towards natural history. He
took a Ph.D. degree at Erlangen in 1829. He published his
first paper in Isis in 1828, and for many years devoted him-
self to ichthyology. During a visit to Paris he became
acquainted with Cuvier and Alexander von Humboldt; in
1833, through the liberality of the latter, he began the publi-
cation of his Recherche s sur les Poissons Fossiles, and in
1840 he completed his Etudes sur les Glaciers. In 1846116
went to Boston, where he lectured in the Lowell Institute, and
in the following year became Professor of Geology and Zoo-
logy at Cambridge. During the last twenty-seven years of
his life Agassiz lived in America, and exerted a wide influence
on the study of natural history in the United States. In
1836 he received the Wollaston Medal of the Geological
Society of London, and in 1861 was selected for the Copley
Medal of the Royal Society. In an article on " Evolution
and Permanence of Type " he repeated his strong conviction
against the views embodied in the Origin. " A physical
fact/' to him, " is as sacred as a moral principle. Our own
nature demands from us this double allegiance. ... I hope
in future articles to show, first, that, however broken the

* F. Darwin, Letters of C. Darwin, p. 225. This letter is better given
in A. Gray, Letters, II, p. 457.

202 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

geological record may be, there is a complete sequence in
many parts of it, from which the character of the succession
may be ascertained ; secondly, that, since the most exquisitely
delicate structures, as well as embryonic phases of growth
of the most perishable nature, have been preserved from
very early deposits, we have no right to infer the disappear-
ance of types because their absence disproves some favourite
theory; and lastly, that there is no evidence of a direct
descent of later from earlier species in the geological suc-
cession of animals." *

The high opinion Darwin f entertained of Agassiz comes
out in a letter he wrote to Longfellow : " What a set of men
you have in Harvard! Both our universities put together
cannot furnish the like. Why, there is Agassiz, he counts
for three." J And it is pleasant to record that of Darwin
personally Agassiz had none but good words.

In a letter to Sir Philip de Grey Egerton, Agassiz wrote :
" My recent studies have made me more adverse than ever
to the new scientific doctrines which are flourishing in Eng-
land. This sensational zeal reminds me of what I experi-
enced as a young man in Germany, when the physio-philo-
sophy of Oken had invaded every centre of scientific activity;
and yet, what is there left of it? I trust to outlive this
mania also. As usual, I do not ask beforehand what you
think of it, and I may have put my hand into a hornet's nest ;
but you know your old friend Agassiz, and will forgive
him if he hits a tender spot." Nor were the effects of the
criticism of Agassiz confined either to America or to Eng-
land. The Professor of Zoology at Gottingen, Keferstein,
wrote in 1862 in the Gottinger Gelehrte Anzcigcr: " It gives
great satisfaction to the earnest scientific worker to see a
man like Agassiz, with an authority based on the finest zoo-
logical works, reject unreservedly a theory [i.e. Darwin's]
that would discredit the whole work of classifiers for a cen-
tury, and to see the views built up by several generations and
the general consent of humanity hold a stronger position than

* C. F. Holder, Louis Agassis, p. 181. Cf. F. Darwin, Letters of
C. Darwin, p. 225.

t Ibid., p. 180. Cf. J. Marcon, Life, Letters, and Works of Louis
Agassis: E. C. Agassiz, Louis Agassis, his Life and Correspondence.

J C. F. Holder, Louis Agassiz, p. 180.

Ibid., p. 180. Cf. the Smithsonian Report, 1873, p. 198.

DARWIN AND EVOLUTION 203

the views of a single individual, however eloquently they
may be cited." *

Agassiz, like Asa Gray, could not renounce his firmly-
established conceptions, and the remark Hooker makes of
Gray applies to him also, and alas ! to many another scientist
as well. Hooker records, " I did not follow Gray into his
later comments on Darwinism, and I never read his Dar-
winiana. My recollection of his attitude after acceptance
of the doctrine, and during the first few years of his active
promulgation of it, is, that he understood it clearly, but
sought to harmonise it with his prepossession without dis-
turbing its physical principles in any way." f A mind that
has hardened down into the last stage of extreme maturity
may assimilate fresh facts and fresh minor principles, but
it cannot accept fresh synthetic systems of the cosmos.
Besides, some of the senior thinkers were committed before-
hand to opposing views, with which they lacked either the
courage or the intellectual power to break. A scientist
wants that state of mind Goethe defined as " Thatige Skep-
sis " active doubt. What he possesses is not uncommonly
passive acquiescence in accepted opinion. There is a scientific
orthodoxy which works untold harm. Like the Bourbons,
it neither learns nor forgets. It owns a scientific creed, and,
though it commits intellectual suicide by so doing, imposes
official punishments on those who refuse to accept it.

Among the English-speaking races in our own islands and
in North America there was frank hostility displayed to the
Origin. Nor is there any reason to believe that European
opinion was very much more friendly. The Secretaire
Perpetuel, P. Flourens, published J in 1864 his dull, weak,
and shallow Examination du Livre de M. Darwin snr
rOrigine des Especes. The work of Jean Louis Armand de
Quatrefages de Breau was largely anthropological, and in
his writings and lectures he always combated evolutionary
ideas. Gaspard Auguste Brulle, Professor of Zoology and
Comparative Anatomy at Dijon, could not comprehend these
ideas, and was in 1864 still unconvinced of their truth. ||

* W. Bolsche, Haeckel, his Life and Work, p. 148.

t L. Huxley, Life and Letters of Sir J. D. Hooker, II, p. 305.

J Cf. T. H. Huxley's delicious critique in his Danviniana^ pp. 98-106.

F. Darwin and A. C. Seward, More Letters of C. Darwin, I, p. 186.

|| Ibid., I, p. 257.

204 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

Frangois Jules Pictet, the palaeontologist, in the Archives des
Sciences de la Bibliotheque Universelle, Mars 1860, delivered
himself, and of his deliverance Darwin wrote : " There has
been one prodigy of a review, namely, an opposed one . . .
which is perfectly fair and just, and I agree to every word
he says ; our only difference being that he attaches less weight
to arguments in favour, and more to the arguments opposed,
than I do. Of all the opposed reviews, I think this the only
quite fair one, and I never expected to see one." * If there
were a de Breau and a Pictet on the one side, there was a
Gaudry and a Ribot on the other. In 1878 Darwin was
elected a Corresponding Member of the French Institute in
the Botanical Section. In 1872 an attempt had been made
to elect him in the Section of Zoology, when he only received
fifteen out of forty-eight votes, and Loven was chosen
instead. The zoologists cherished their dislike of his ideas
longer than the other scientists.

In all the labours of Jean Henri Casimir Fabre (1823
1915) there is the touch of the poet who can exclaim with
Browning :

The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians know.
His method of working combined with his patience in
research rendered him what Darwin called him, " an incom-
parable observer/' f Fabre came of a humble stock, like
many other great men. But he had received a good educa-
tion, partly in village schools and local colleges, partly the gift
of his own resolute perseverance. He was something of a
chemist, a mathematician who had conquered the binomial
theorem, and a fair classical scholar. He was a schoolmaster
at Carpentras, a professor at Ajaccio and Avignon, before
whom the possibility of a chair at one of the greater universi-
ties lay open. The complete story of what led to his retire-
ment, first to Orange and then to Serignan, and to the need
of supporting himself by his pen, is not told in his own books.
It had something to do with politics, something with a
quarrel with the Church of which he always remained a
devout member, and something to do with the destruction of
madder-growing by artificial dyes. But if it seemed a mis-

* F. Darwin, Life of C. Darwin, p. 231.

t A. Fabre, The Life of J. H. Fabre, p. 215. Darwin was acquainted
only with the first volume of Fabre's Souvenirs. Darwin died in 1881,
and the second volume of the Souvenirs appeared in 1883.

DARWIN AND EVOLUTION 205

fortune at the time, he faced it bravely, and the world was
the gainer. There are many who can make morphological
studies and accomplish the systematic work on which Fabre
had started, and which doubtless he would have con-
tinued in academic ease. But there have been very few
Dbservers of living things so untiring or so understanding.
His peaceful yet arduous years at Serignan provided him with
:he environment and the occupations most congenial to his
latural bent. Had his early ambitions been realised, we
should have had another great entomologist, but not the
Virgil of the Insects. Fabre was an artist in words, as
>vell as an incomparable observer. He adopted an attitude
leasing to himself and pleasing to his audience. Here am I,
le continued to say, a poor peasant, in my sun-baked southern
lelds. I have neither the riches of the tropics nor the
issistance of libraries and laboratories. But it is the truth
- "i ve y u > an d not the theories by which scientific men are
)eguiled. Great people, no doubt, but overwhelmed by their
;cience, puffed up with pride! Let me show you what can
>e done in a field, with patience. Away with names and
:lassifications and all their fusty jargon! In actual fact
here was never anyone more careful to identify the creatures
le was observing or to use their names correctly. This
mnctilious exactitude, combined with almost vehement dis-
:laimer of it, has set pitfalls into which critics have fallen.
\nd in the same fashion, his real obedience to the scientific
nethod of observation, deduction, and confirming experi-
nent, joined with a lyrical denunciation of science, has snared
nany an unwary commentator.

His stubborn opposition to evolution was a logical conse-
[uence of the evidence before him, as it was to Milne-
dwards, a French scientist who remained to the end uncon-
r inced by the arguments of Darwin. The greater part of
? abre's life was concentrated on the study of instinct among
reatures which show that quality in its highest form. He
ame on the theory of descent at a time when the effort was
nade to derive the higher structure or quality from the
Lighest stage of the structure or quality next below it.
Assuming that intelligence had arisen from instincts, the
omparison was made between human intelligence and the
Lighest types of instinct. We now know that to be a wrong

206 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

method. Intelligence must be traced down to its lowest
grades, and instinct must similarly be traced backwards until
it is possible to compare the most primitive forms of each.
One might as readily try to derive a cat from a canary as the
intelligence of man from the instincts of the mason wasps.
Fabre's contention against evolutionism, on its negative
side, was sound. " Can the insect/' he asked, " have
acquired its skill gradually from generation to generation, by
a long series of casual experiments, of blind gropings? Can
such order be born of chaos; such foresight of hazard; such
wisdom of stupidity? Is the world subject to the fatalities
of evolution, from the first albuminous atom which coagu-
lated into a cell, or is it ruled by an Intelligence ? The more
I see and the more I observe, the more does this Intelligence
shine behind the mystery of things."

In 1 86 1 Charles Nauclin presented to the French Academy
a paper, with coloured plates, on " Nouvelles Recherches sur
THybridite dans les Vegetaux."* In it he proceeds to
develop a mechanical theory of reproduction of the same
general character as pangenesis. In the Variations of
Animals and Plants,^ Darwin states that in his treatment
of hybridism in terms of gemmules he is practically follow-
ing Naudin's treatment of the same theme in terms of
" essences." Naudin, however, does not clearly distinguish
between hybrid and pure gemmules, and makes the assump-
tion that the hybrid or mixed essences tend constantly to
dissociate into pure parental essences, and thus to lead to
reversion. It is to this view Darwin refers when he says
that Naudin's view throws no light on the reversion to long-
lost characters. $ Mr. Bateson takes occasion to point out
that " Naudin clearly enunciated what we shall henceforth
know as the Mendelian conception of the dissociation of
characters of cross-breds in the formation of germ-cells,
though he apparently never developed this conception,"
The need of co-ordination in science is manifest when we

* Nouvelles Archives du Museum d'Hist. Nat., vol. I, p. 25. The
second part only appeared in Ann. Sci. Nat., XIX. A review of Naudin
is in the Natural History Revieiv, 1864, p. ix. George Bentham dealt
with hybridism in Proc. Linn. Soc., VIII, 1864, p. 50.

t Vol. II, p. 395 (2nd ed.).

Ibid., II, p. 595-

W. Bateson, Mendel: Principle of Heredity, p. 38.

DARWIN AND EVOLUTION 207

say that Darwin never in any way came across Mendel's
work. Remarkably enough, the late Mr. Laxton of Stam-
ford was close on the track of Mendelian principle. Mr.
Bateson writes that " had he [Laxton] with his other gifts
combined that penetration which detects a great principle
hidden in the thin mist of ' exceptions/ we should have been
able to claim for him that honour which must ever be Men-
del's in the history of discovery." Johann Gregor Mendel
(1822 1884) carried out in the garden of the monastery
of Brunn, in Bohemia, his plant-breeding experiments. Those
on peas lasted for eight years, and he took as much care with
them as Darwin himself. Then in 1865 he laid the results
before the Brunn Society, and published them in 1866. They,
however, attracted little attention from the savants and were
simply forgotten for thirty-five years, and the neglect em-
bittered the heart of the discoverer. What effect might
they not have had on the mind of Darwin had he met with
this discovery? *

Though Bronn translated the first German edition of the
Origin, he thought of evolution as no more than a possibility.
" From the first," declares Wilhelm Bolsche, " Darwin
Haeckel was the first to experience it was branded with the
anathemas of the two opposite schools of science in Germany.
On the one hand the vigorous and exact workers declared that
his teaching was pure metaphysics, because it sought to prove
evolution and contemplated vast ideal connections. On the
other hand the Dualist metaphysicians denounced him as an
empiric of the worst character, who sought to replace the
great ideal elements in the world by a few miserable natural
necessities. It is significant to find that Schopenhauer, the
brilliant thinker, regarded the Origin of Species as one of
the empirical soapsud or barber books produced by exact
investigation, which he thoroughly despised from his meta-
physical point of view. And there were already (there are
more to-day) whole schools of zoology and botany that
looked upon Darwin's theoretical explanations as unscientific
mysticism, metaphysics, and philosophy in the worst
sense." f

* Yet contrast J. W. Clark and A. C. Seward, More Letters of C.
Darwin, II, p. 339.
t W. Bolsche, Haeckel, his Life and Work, p. 132.

208 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

The geologist Otto Volger is not an unfair representa-
tive of views like these. Curiously enough, he was the man
who preserved from destruction the venerable Goethe-house
at Frankfort-on-the-Main, but the spirit of the poet-scientist
in no wise rested on him. He declared that Darwinism in
general was an unsupported hypothesis, but he made a con-
cession. The species of animals and plants need not be abso-
lutely unchangeable. The only thing that is impossible is a
continuous upward direction in evolution. All the groups of
living things, even the highest, may have been present
together from the earliest days. Local changes in
the distribution of land, water, etc., must have brought
about a certain amount of variation in life forms.
The proper symbol of the story of life is the wave
that rises out of the sea and sinks back into it.
The real image of human life is the analogy of its
obvious development : youth, maturity, then old age and back
once more. This conception, he urged, retained the idea of
an " eternal becoming/' which he deemed better than a rigid
fulfilment. If there were a Volger and a Kolliker on the one
side, there were the brothers Fritz and Hermann Miiller and
Riitimeyr on the other. Rudolph Albert von Kolliker
attained fame for his researches in anatomy, embryology,
and above all histology. In 1845 ^ le demonstrated the con-
tinuity between nerve-fibres and nerve-cells of vertebrates.
Three years later he isolated the elements of smooth muscle.
In 1849 to I ^5 * le ^d fine work on the development of the
skull and the backbone. He gave marked impetus to the
cell theory, and he traced the origin of tissues from the seg-
menting ovum through the developing embryo. With such
wealth of knowledge he faced the problems raised by the
Origin.* In his Ueber die Darwin' 'sche Schopfungstheorie,
ein Vortrag he enumerates and discusses eight objections! :

1. No transitional forms between existing species are
known ; and known varieties, whether selected or spontaneous,
never go so far as to establish new species.

2. No transitional forms of animals are met with among
the organic remains of earlier epochs.

* L. Huxley, Life and Letters of Sir J. D. Hooker, II, p. 57.
t I use the convenient summary of T. H. Huxley, Darwiniana, pp.
82-92.

DARWIN AND EVOLUTION 209

3. The struggle for existence does not take place.

4. A tendency of organisms to give rise to useful varieties,
and a natural selection, do not exist.

5. Pelzeln has also objected that if the later organisms
have proceeded from the earlier, the whole developmental
series, from the simplest to the highest, could not now exist ;
in such a case the simpler organisms must have disappeared.

6. Great weight must be attached to the objection brought
forward by Huxley, otherwise a warm supporter of Darwin's
hypothesis, that we know of no varieties which are sterile
with one another, as is the rule among sharply distinguished
animal forms.

7. The teleological general conception adopted by Darwin
is a mistaken one.

8. The developmental theory of Darwin is not needed to
enable us to understand the regular harmonious progress of
the complete series of organic forms from the simpler to the
more perfect.

Von Baer broke the spell laid by Cuvier on natural science.
He broadened the principle of development beyond the limits
of morphology and comparative anatomy to which Cuvier
was confining it. From 1819 to 1837 he was engaged in the
task of demonstrating in thorough fashion the truth of epi-
genesis. Development was to him the sole basis of zoological
classification, bringing the study of living forms back to
their origins. He persisted to the end of his long life in
minimising the transformation of species, which is " very
probable, but only to a limited extent." *

The bulk of the criticisms we have given appeared almost
immediately after the publication of the Origin of Species,
and we do not think that, on the whole, we have given any
criticism of later date than the year 1864, within five years
of its appearance. They leave on the mind of the candid
reader the impression Huxley took the trouble to record in
1887: " There is not the slightest doubt that, if a General
Council of the Church scientific had been held at that time
[c. 1860], we should have been condemned by an overwhelm-

* K. E. von Baer, Das Allgemeinste Gesetze der Natur in aller Ent-
wickclung, I, p. 60. Cf. pp. 37, 39- Cf. his Uebcr Entwick clung s-
geschichte der Thiere Beobachtung and Reflexion, 5th ed.

210 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

ing majority.' 7 * In 1885 he had written : " It is curious now
to remember how largely, at first, the objectors predomin-
ated/' f The case is strong enough, if we survey the Ameri-
can, French, and German evidence, to hold that any
Ecumenical Council of the Church scientific would have
reached precisely the same conclusion.

Of course it is not fair to employ against Darwinism
developments of the doctrine since 1864. Work of the
highest character has been carried out by men like Mendel
and Weismann, De Vries and Pavlov of the University of
Petrograd, who with others had introduced a new interest in
inheritance of acquired characters and therefore a revival in
Lamarckism. Take a particular instance. Dr. Patrick
Geddes became assistant lecturer at University College,
London, and he also became a disciple of Lamarck rather
than of Darwin. He used to say that the hypothesis of evo-
lution through natural selection accounted for our survival
by explaining the deaths of our uncles and aunts, and that
it was consequently rather a theory in necrology than in
biology. Within twenty years the divines had become recon-
ciled to the teaching of evolution given in 1859, while the
biologists evinced a growing scepticism about some of the
Darwinian conclusions. J

The mutation theory of De Vries explains the origin of
species by sudden and saltatory leaps rather than by gradual
modification and is received by botanists and rejected by zoo-
logists. The distinguished French palseobotanists C. Grand
Eury and R. Zeiller, think that the facts of fossil botany
lend weight to the view of the sudden appearance of new
forms. 1 1

* J. W. Clark and A. C. Seward, Order of the Proceedings at the Dar-
win Celebration held at Cambridge, June 22-24, 1909, p. 20.

t T. II. Huxley, Darwiniana, p. 249.

j In 1873 Kelvin, when off the coast of Madeira, said: "It has been
impossible to keep off Darwinism, and although Madeira gave Darwin
some of his most notable and ingenious illustrations and proof s( !), we
find at every turn something to show (if anything were needed to show)
the utter futility of his philosophy." S. P. Thompson, Life of Lord
Kelvin, II, p. 637.

R. Zeiller, " Les Vegetaux f ossiles et leurs Enchainements," Revue dii
Mois f III, February 1907.

|| The present Lord Rayleigh asked his father in 1906 whether, on the
whole, he could accept natural selection as a sufficient explanation of evo-
lution. " Well, no," he said, " I don't think I can quite swallow it." Cf.
Rayleigh, Life of Lord Rayleigh, p. 45.

DARWIN AND EVOLUTION 211

Weismann has challenged the evidence that use and disuse
have any transmitted effects at all. Expounding the theory
of the continuity of the germ-plasm, he has changed the
fashion of science, and attention is now directed to the
chemico-physical processes of life, and to heredity merely in
so far as it throws light upon these processes. Biologists of
the standing of Sir E. Ray Lankester and Professor J,
Arthur Thomson, of Mr. Francis Galton and Nageli, regard
this theory of the continuity of the germ-plasm as the most
striking advance of evolutionary science. On the other
hand, Herbert Spencer and Sir William Turner, Hertwig and
Haeckel, Gegenbaur and Kolliker, are agreed in rejecting it.

Though this matter is not entirely pertinent to our pur-
pose, we think it deserves a few words more. Darwin, like
most of his contemporaries and predecessors, believed that
characters stamped by environment on a living creature could
be inherited by its descendants. There was indeed difference
of opinion as to the extent of such influences and as to their
total effect in producing permanent modifications such as
might lead to a new species or to new adaptations. Reflective
persons understood that the same environmental force, per-
chance the influence of heat or of light, would produce
different effects on different organisms, the " acquired charac-
ter " being a composite reaction between the inborn capacities
of response or resistance to impinging forces and the direct
effect of the forces themselves. But there was general
acceptance that the characters could be inherited and were
inherited.

No reasonable theory existed as to how these characters
could be transferred to the reproductive organs and stored
in their reproductive cells in such a fashion that when one
of the latter grew into a new organism the character acquired
by its parent would reappear in the progeny without the
presence of external stimulus. Darwin appreciated the diffi-
culty, and offered his theory of pangenesis not so much as a
suggestion of what actually did occur as of the kind of
machinery required to explain what appeared to be the facts.
According to this theory, every part of the body discharged
into the blood minute particles stamped with its qualities.
These were collected by the reproductive organs, entered the
reproductive cells, and thus formed a material link between

212 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

parent and progeny. Other theories, similar in character,
were propounded. But there was no exact evidence for the
existence of any of these hypothetical " pangenes " ; and
increasing knowledge of the cellular details of fertilisation
and development increased the difficulty of believing in them.

Then came Weismann's insistence on the distinctness of
the body plasm and the reproductive plasm and the doctrine
that the reproductive plasm formed a unicellar chain on
which the individual lives hung as temporary pendants. His
germ plasm rested on so large a body of visible evidence and
joined so many hitherto discrete facts in apparent harmony
that it gave a new direction to biological theory. Incident-
ally, it appeared to put out of court the inheritance of
acquired characters a view that was confirmed by careful
examination of the rather vague evidence for this process.
Darwin was out-Darwined, and the whole burden of evolu-
tion was thrown upon the principle of natural selection.

The exclusion of Lamarckian factors from evolution found
no favour with many writers, whose chief interest in biology
was its application to man, and to whom it seemed incredible
that the influences of education and civilisation affected only
the generation which experienced them. But it was also
distasteful to some competent and experienced naturalists in
France, America, and England, who continued to insist that
natural selection was insufficient to explain the origin of
species. Mr. J. T. Cunningham is one of the most persistent,
ingenious, and well-informed of our " neo-Lamarckians."
In his remarkably penetrating book on Hormones and Here-
dity he claims to have been one of the first to see the possible
bearing of the new physiological conception of " hormones "
on the theory of heredity. It seems certain that every organ
and tissue of the body liberates chemical messengers into
the blood, and that these may have a profound influence on
some organ or tissue far removed from their place of manu-
facture. Hormones are not theoretical substances like pan-
genes; they are definite chemical bodies which in many
cases have been isolated and experimented with. Why,
therefore, should not the hormones of an organ or tissue
become modified when the organ or tissue acquires a new
character at the stimulus of a new environment?

CHAPTER VII

PASTEUR AND MICROBES

Louis PASTEUR (1822 1895) came of simple country folk
whose family had been for three generations tanners in the
district of Dole in the Jura. The name is to be found in the
old registers in the province of Franche-Comte as far back
as the early seventeenth century. His great-grandfather
was the first freeman in the family, for he bought himself
out of serfdom with four gold pieces of twenty-four livres.
Claude Etienne Pasteur desired to be freed and succeeded in
achieving this at the age of thirty, as is witnessed by a deed,
dated March 20, 1673, drawn up in the presence of the Royal
notary, Claude Jarry. Messire Philippe-Marie-FranQois,
Count of Udressier, Lord of Ecleux, Cramans, Lemuy, and
other places, consented " by special grace " to free Claude
Etienne Pasteur, a tanner, of Salins, his serf. The deed
stipulated that Claude Etienne and his unborn posterity
should henceforth be enfranchised from the stain of mort-
main.*

Louis Pasteur's father, Jean Joseph, as a young man had
been one of Napoleon's conscripts and had won the Cross of
the Legion of Honour on the field of battle, for valour and
fidelity. Jean Joseph attained the rank of sergeant in the
3rd Regiment, called " the brave among the brave/' Though
carefully brought up, he was without much learning. To
be able to read the Emperor's bulletins in those days was con-
sidered ample for a man in his position in life. In later
years he painted on an inner door of his house a soldier
in an old uniform pausing in his digging to lean on his spade
and dream of past glories. For him, as for so many other

* There is an admirable biography of Pasteur by Rene Vallery-Radot,
and I feel much indebted to it. There is an excellent translation of it
by Mrs. Downshire. M. Vallery-Radot is Pasteur's son-in-law.

213

214 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

Frenchmen, Napoleon had been a demi-god. On the
resumption of his work in the tannery after the conclusion
of peace in 1815, he came to know a family of gardeners.
His tannery stood on the bank of the river Furieuse, and
from the steps leading to the water he used to watch a young
girl working in the garden at early dawn. She soon per-
ceived that the old soldier of twenty-five was interested in
her every movement. Her name was Jeanne Etiennette
Roqui, a native of Marnot, a village about four kilometres
from Salins. Like the Pasteurs, the Roquis came of old yet
humble stock and of such warm affections that " to love like
the Roqui " was a local saying. In 1815 they married, and
on December 27, 1822, their son Louis was born. He at
first attended the Ecole Primaire, attached to the college of
Arbois. He in no wise distinguished himself, belonging
merely to the category of good average pupils. He liked
drawing and he liked fishing, but he did not extend his liking
to lessons. His patriotism was kindled by such stories of
local patriotism as the siege of Arbois under Henry IV, when
the Arboisians held out for three whole days against a
besieging army of 25,000. Though his father's language
and manners were retiring, the lad felt impressed by his regu-
lar walk on Sundays. Then the sergeant, wearing a military-
looking frock coat, spotlessly clean and adorned with the
showy ribbon of the Legion of Honour it was then worn
very large invariably walked out towards the road from
Arbois to Besan^on. Patriotism spelt duty for the father
and it came to spell the same for the son.

The headmaster of Arbois college, M. Romanet, was the
first to discover that hidden behind the face of his pupil there
was genuine intelligence. The mind of the lad worked but
slowly, for he could never bring himself to affirm anything
of which he was not absolutely certain. Romanet, during
their strolls around the college playground, tried to awaken
the leading qualities of the boy's nature. He succeeded in
firing him with the desire of going to the Ecole Normale,
there to prepare himself to become a " professor," as school-
masters are called in France. This Ecole Normale Supe-
rieure was a training college, and candidates for it had to be
between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one and be already
Bachelors of Letters or of Science.

PASTEUR AND MICROBES 215

At the end of October 1838 he accompanied his dear
school friend, Jules Vercel, to Paris to work for his " bacca-
laureat." The wrench of leaving home and his loved Jura
proved too much for the boy of sixteen. When he arrived
in Paris he was far from sympathising with Balzac's student
hero, confidently defying the great city. The nostalgia so
persisted that he avowed to Jules Vercel, " If I could only
get a whiff of the tannery yard, I feel I should be cured."
He was not, however, cured, and his father came after a
month's struggle to take him home. To the Arbois college
he returned, and on recovering from his home-sickness he
settled down to read, grasping the fact that his education
imposed a stiff charge on the family funds. As there was
no " philosophy " class at the college at Arbois, he made up
his mind to go to the college at Besan^on only twenty-five
miles from home where he could continue his studies, pass
his " baccalaureat," and then prepare for his examinations of
the Ecole Normale.

Besangon owned the Royal College of Franche-Comte,
and on his arrival there Pasteur found that the science
master, M. Darlay, was nothing like so good as the philo-
sophy master, M. Daunas. As Pasteur grew interested in
his science work, he asked questions that proved embarras-
sing to M. Darlay. He disapproved of saying, " I don't
know/' and used to try to keep his pupil in his place by
telling him that questions were to be asked by the teacher,
not by the scholar. On August 29, 1840, he took the degree
of " bachelier es lettres " with no particular brilliancy. The
three examiners, doctors " es lettres/' put down his answers
as " good in Greek on Plutarch and in Latin on Virgil, good
also in rhetoric, medicine, history, and geography, good in
philosophy, very good in elementary science, good in French
composition/' *

The character more than the degree of the young bachelor
had impressed the college authorities, for at the end of the
summer holidays the headmaster of the Royal College, M.
Repecaud, offered him the post of preparation master, and
the offer was gratefully accepted. For this work, as he
boasted proudly to his parents, he received beside his board
and lodging 300 francs a year. To his sisters at home he

* R. Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, p. 14.

216 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

wrote : " Let me tell you again, work hard, love each other.
When one is accustomed to work it is impossible to do with-
out it : beside, everything else in this world depends on that.
Armed with science, one can rise above all one's fellows." *
At another time he wants to pay for the education of his
little sisters, saying that he can easily do it by giving private
lessons. This he had already been asked to do at the rate of
20 to 25 francs a month. His parents sensibly would not
listen to his making this sacrifice, but wanted instead to give
him a small allowance for extra coaching for himself.

If the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts, the
friends of youth are long, long friends. Michelet, in his recol-
lections, tells of the hours of intimacy he enjoyed with a
college friend named Poinsat, and thus expresses himself:
" It was an immense, an insatiable longing for confidences,
for mutual revelations. " What Mutianus meant to his
circle of admirers, what Melanchthon meant to Camerarius,
what Montaigne meant to La Boetie, what Goethe meant to
Schiller, what Bliicher meant to Gneisenau, Pasteur meant to
Charles Chappuis, a fellow-student of the BesanQon college.
Save sympathy in scientific taste, everything else that friend-
ship can give in generous strength and in brotherly confi-
dences, everything that, according to Montaigne who knew
more about it than even Michelet, in spite of his ardent friend-
ship for Quinet " makes souls merge into each other so that
the seam which originally joined them disappears," Pasteur
and Chappuis felt for each other. Of all the gifts that col-
lege life affords, this gift of ardent interchange of ideas is
the most valuable. To treat the masters of literature with
or without the deference that is justly theirs, to elevate a
minor poet of one's own discovery to their rank, to criticise
all and sundry to one's heart's content what joys of after-
days can rival these? Does any man, to the end of the
longest life, ever forget that proud and happy day when he
first met his other self at college? There have been later
successes other first days, memorable in their way. The
first day to make a scientific discovery, f the first on the
Bench, the first speech in the House, the first command in

* R. Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, p. 14.

t Pasteur's first scientific joy was to extract sixty grammes of phos-
phorus from bones, Cf. R. Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, p. 31.

PASTEUR AND MICROBES 217

the field but the couleitr de rose had paled by that time.
There is no colouring so bright as the long-faded colours of
those wonderful early days! Who does not look back on
them, realising only when they are long past how happy they
were ? One is very much wiser now, and richer, and, maybe,
has reached the highest round of the ladder; but who does
not remember the daisies that grew around the foot when
one was climbing that lowest rung! Ah, but the old days
were the best! So Pasteur and Chappuis believed, and, at
any rate, so they experienced. With Chappuis he exchanged
his thoughts and his ideals, and together they mapped out,
with the happy confidence of youth, a life together. When
Chappuis set out for Paris, the better to prepare himself for
the Ecole Normale, Pasteur longed to set out with him.
Chappuis wrote to him with that open spontaneity which
forms such a charm of youth, " I shall feel as if I had all my
Franche-Comte with me when you are here." Fearing a
crisis like that of 1838, Pasteur's father, after some hesita-
tion, refused his consent to an immediate departure. " Next
year/' he said.

Though master at the Royal College of Besangon, Pasteur
never ceased to be a student, even to the last day he lived.
In October 1841 he resumed his attendance of the classes for
special mathematics. But he was constantly thinking of
Paris, " where study is deeper," and where Chappuis was.
" If I do not pass this year," he wrote to his father on
November 7, " I think I should do well to go to Paris for a
year. But there is time to think of that and of the means
of doing so without spending too much, if the occasion
should arise. I see now what great advantage there is in
giving two years to mathematics ; everything becomes clearer
and easier. Of all our class students who tried this year for
the Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole Normale, not a single
one has passed, not even the best of them, a student who
had already done one year's mathematics at Lyons." *

Dry and exhausting as the young student found mathe-
matics, he persevered with his studies. In spite of his appli-
cation he passed even less brilliantly his examination, before
the Dijon faculty on August 13, 1842, for the baccalaureat
es sciences than he had passed the baccalaureat es lettres. In

* R. Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, p. 19.

2i8 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

chemistry the examiners reported that he was simply
" mediocre/' Nor is there any reason to think that this
report was not a correct one. For on August 26 when he
entered the examination for admission to the Ecole Normale,
he was only fifteenth out of twenty-two candidates. This
place he considered too low, and he resolved to try again the
following year. In order to redeem himself, he determined
at last to set out for Paris, and this time his father con-
sented. In company with Chappuis in October 1842 he
arrived at the Barbet Boarding School, and the arrangement
was that he only paid one-third of the pupil's fees, and in
return he had to give the younger pupils some instruction
in mathematics every morning from six to seven. " Do not
be anxious about my health and work/' he wrote to his
friends a few days after his arrival, " I need hardly get up
till 5.45 ; you see it is not so very early. ... I shall spend
my Thursdays in a neighbouring library with Chappuis, who
has four hours to himself on that day. On Sundays we
shall walk and work a little together; we hope to do some
philosophy on Sundays, perhaps too on Thursdays ; I shall
also read some literary works. Surely you must see that I
am not homesick this time." * Of all his new acquaintances
there was none like Chappuis, who believed in those far-off
days that his friend was bound to make his mark. " You
will see what Pasteur will be," so he used to say and so he
always maintained.

There were fine lecturers at the Ecole Normale and at the
Sorbonne, and among the finest was Balard, the discoverer
of bromine, and J. B. Dumas, a man with magnetic powers of
attraction exercised over his students. Balard and Dumas
had both begun life as pupils of an apothecary, and Dumas
was wont to say in his grand manner, " Balard and I were
initiated into our scientific life under the same condition."
At the Sorbonne Dumas commanded an audience of six to
seven hundred people, and there was a great deal of applause
at his lectures. Dumas's allusions to science in other depart-
ments as well as his own chemical one seemed to open the
doors to Pasteur into all sorts of roomy and spacious labora-
tories. It used to seem to him that Dumas habitually lived
in a world that was bigger, brighter, and more entertaining
* R. Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, p. 21.

PASTEUR AND MICROBES 219

than the ordinary world. Dumas was able to bring, like the
wise householder, out of his chemical and other treasures
things old and new ; and Pasteur came to feel that he would
like to have similar treasures in the background too.

Inspired by such really great chemists as Balard and
Dumas, Pasteur began to do better even in his examinations.
At the end of 1843 he took at the Lycee St. Louis two acces-
sits and one first prize in physics, and at the Concours
General, an open competition held every year at the Sorbonne
between the elite of the students of all the colleges in France,
he won a sixth accessit in physics. At last he was admitted
fourth on the list to the Ecole Normale. As a small token
of his gratitude for past kindness, he offered to M. Barbet
to give some lessons at the school of the Impasse des Feuil-
lantines. " There is nothing more easy," Pasteur thought
with that simpleness of character that invariably distin-
guished him, " than to come regularly at six o'clock on Thurs-
days and give the schoolboys a physical science class." * " I
am very pleased," wrote his father, " that you are giving
lessons at M. Barbet's. He has been so kind to us that I was
anxious that you should show some gratitude; be therefore
always most obliging towards him. You should do so, not
only for your own sake, but for others'; it will encourage
him to show the same kindness to other studious young men,
whose future might depend upon it." * The only matter
that worried the father was that his son would work so im-
moderately. Writing to Chappuis, Joseph Pasteur begged
him: " Do tell Louis not to work so much; it is not good
to strain one's brain. That is not the way to succeed but to
compromise one's health."* In another letter of December
1843, to hi s son this time, he writes : " Tell Chappuis that I
have bottled some 1834 bought on purpose to drink the health
of the Ecole Normale during the next holidays. There is
more within those 100 litres than in all the books on philo-
sophy in the world; but as to mathematical formulae, there
are none, I believe. Mind you tell him that we shall drink
the first bottle with him. Remain two good friends." *
That Pasteur had a genius for friendship is obvious, for he
owned the patience and the powers of trust such a genius
implies. The letters between father and son reveal full con-
* R. Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, p. 23.

220 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

fidence between them, so that Louis's own judgment was
fostered, and his humour had free play. If it is a healthy
home where the young and the old share the same joke, it
is a no less healthy home where the old welcome the friends
of the young, and such a home was Pasteur's.

Inspired by his teachers, Pasteur felt this impulse as he
perused the biographies of either great scientists or great
patriots, for few have loved " la patrie " as he loved it.
There was always the impulse to research to be derived from
men like Balard and Dumas. Was there a better way of
spending a holiday than to be shut up the whole afternoon at
the Sorbonne laboratory? Chappuis half-loved and half-
feared this ardour of mind. Anxious to obey the injunc-
tions of his friend's father, " Do not let him work too
much ! " he used to wait patiently if not philosophically
sitting on a laboratory stool, until the experiments were
finished for the time being. Conquered by the reproachful
silence no less than by his patient attitude, Pasteur would
take off his apron, saying half-angrily yet half-gratefully,
" Well, let us go for a walk! " Just as nothing else thrives
when a man is absorbed in a piece of work, so the conversa-
tion between the two languished when it turned in the
direction of philosophy. But when it turned in the direction
of science that was a totally different matter!

When Sir James Paget was only nineteen he discovered
the Trichina spiralis* Dr. Cobbold has told the story of the
several steps leading to the discovery and following it, in his
work on the Entozoa. Paget's share was the detection of
the " worm " in its capsule ; and he justly ascribes it to the
habit of looking-out, and observing, and wishing to find new
things, powers he had acquired in his previous study of
botany. All the men in the dissecting-rooms, teachers in-
cluded, " saw " the little specks in the muscles : but Paget
alone " looked at " them and " observed " them. He notes
that no one trained in natural history could have failed to
do so, but all up to his time had so failed. When Thomas
Henry Huxley was also only nineteen he discovered a
hitherto undiscovered membrane in the root of the human

* S. Paget, Memoirs and Letters of Sir J. Paget, p. 55. May I com-
mend this extremely fine book? It is one of the most enjoyable bio-
graphies I know.

PASTEUR AND MICROBES 221

hair, which received the name of Huxley's layer, and this
was the only discovery Huxley ever succeeded in making.*
Not long after these two discoveries Pasteur was conducting
investigations that were to lead to his first discovery. The
first observations on the fact that for every compound which
possesses the power of turning the plane of polarisation to
the right, there is another which, while possessing the same
composition, rotates equally to the left was beginning to
occur to him while he was working in the wretchedly-equipped
laboratory of the Sorbonne.

There are two saline combinations, tartrate and paratar-
trate of soda and ammonia, and in these two substances of
similar crystalline form, the nature and number of the atoms
and their distances are the same. The problem was to ascer-
tain why dissolved tartrate rotates the plane of polarised
light and paratartrate remains inactive. Mitscherlich and Biot
had been puzzled by this curious difference, and it was now
the turn of Pasteur to be also puzzled. Chappuis was then
absorbed in the series of lectures on philosophy given by
Jules Simon, but he was plainly affected when he saw his
friend so upset by the optical inactivity of paratartrate. In
the meantime Pasteur was writing his thesis for his doctorate
on the applications of crystallography and physics to chemical
problems. While labouring at this thesis, he was most
anxious to turn aside to the behaviour of paratartrate. The
father here at least proved wiser than the son. " Before
being captain," thought the old sergeant-major, " you must
become lieutenant. " Accordingly Louis returned to his
thesis on " The Phenomena relative to the Rotary Polarisa-
tion of Liquids/' and duly won his doctorate in 1847.

At the end of 1846 a newcomer entered Balard's labora-
tory, which was as poorly equipped as that at the Sorbonne,
and this man was Auguste Laurent, poet as well as scientist.
Laurent asked Pasteur to assist him with his experiments,
and Pasteur was so delighted with this proposed collaboration
that he wrote at once to Chappuis to tell him of it. Though
Laurent went off to the Sorbonne to become the assistant
of Dumas, Pasteur continued his researches. On March 20,
1848, he read before the Academic des Sciences a portion of
his paper on " Researches on Dimorphism." Some sub-
* L. Huxley, Life and Letters of T. H. Huxley, I, p. 21.

222 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

stances crystallise in two different ways. Sulphur, for
instance, gives quite dissimilar crystals according as it is
melted in a crucible or dissolved in sulphide of carbon, and a
substance like it is termed dimorphous.

In the midst of his labours the Revolution of 1848 broke
out, as European a Revolution as the memorable one of 1789.
La patrie always moved the inmost fibre of his very being.
On the spot he enrolled with his fellow-students. " What
a transformation of our whole being," has written one who
was then a candidate to the Ecole Normale, already noted by
his masters for his sound sense, Francisque Sarcey. " How
those magical words of liberty and fraternity, this renewal
of the Republic, born in the sunshine of our twentieth year,
filled our hearts with unknown and absolutely delicious sensa-
tions ! With what a gallant joy we embraced the sweet and
superb image of a people of free men and brethren! The
whole nation was moved as we were; like us, it had drunk
of the intoxicating cup. The honey of eloquence flowed un-
ceasingly from the lips of a great poet, and France believed,
in childlike faith, that his word was efficacious to destroy
abuses, cure evils, and soothe sorrows. " One day when
Pasteur was crossing the Place du Pantheon he saw a gather-
ing crowd around a wooden erection, inscribed with the
magic words : " Autel de la Patrie." With more patriotism
than prudence, he hurried back to the Ecole Normale and
emptied all his hard-won savings into the Autel. " You say,"
wrote his father on April 28, 1848, " that you have offered to
France all your savings, amounting to 1 50 francs. You have
probably kept a receipt of the office where this payment was
made, with mention of the date and place? " And consider-
ing that this action should be made known, he advised him to
publish it in the journal Le National or La Reforme in the
following terms : " Gift to the Patrie : 150 francs, by the son
of an old soldier of the Empire, Louis Pasteur of the Ecole
Normale."

From the days of 1848 for the moment we gaze ahead to
the disastrous ones of 1871, and we experience no difficulty
in grasping the emotions of Pasteur when he saw the terms
the Germans forced on his beloved land in 1871. Men who
feel inclined to commiserate the Germans in their plight in
the Treaty of Versailles of 1919 are invited to turn their

PASTEUR AND MICROBES 223

attention to the Treaty of 1871. The feelings that inspired
Napoleon when he understood the work of Jenner were not
the feelings of Bismarck when he understood the work of
Pasteur if ever he understood it. Just as the German
artillery battered down the Cathedral of Rheims, so the Ger-
man artillery fired on the Pantheon and other non-warlike
buildings in Paris.

On January 9, 1871, Chevreul read the following declara-
tion to the Academic des Sciences:

The Garden of Medicinal Plants, founded in Paris
by an edict of King Louis XIII,

dated January 1826,

Converted into the Museum of Natural History
by a decree of the Convention on June 10, 1793,

was Bombarded,

under the reign of Wilhelm I, King of
Prussia, Count von Bismarck, Chancellor,
by the Prussian Army, during the night

of January 8-9, 1871.

It had until then been respected by all parties

and all powers, national or

foreign.

When Pasteur read this protest, his regret that he had not
been present to sign it was poignant. In 1868 the Univer-
sity of Bonn had conferred upon him its honorary diploma
of Doctor of Medicine, acknowledging that " by his very
penetrating experiments, he had much contributed to the
knowledge of the history of the generation of micro-organ-
isms, and had happily advanced the progress of the science
of fermentation." Naturally Pasteur had been proud to
receive this diploma.

" Now," he wrote on January 18, 1871, to the Head of
the Faculty of Medicine, after recalling his former feelings
of pride, " now the sight of that parchment is odious to me,
and I feel offended at seeing my name, with the qualification
of Virum clarissimum that you have given it, placed under
a name which is henceforth an object of execration to my
country, that of Rex Gulielmus.

" While highly asseverating my profound respect for you,
Sir, and for the celebrated professors who have affixed their
signatures to the decision of the members of your Order, I am
called upon by my conscience to ask you to efface my name
from the archives of your Faculty, and to take back that

224 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

diploma, as a sign of the indignation inspired in a French
scientist by the barbarity and hypocrisy of him who, in order
to satisfy his criminal pride, persists in the massacre of two
great nations." Pasteur's protest ended with these words:
" Written at Arbois (Jura) on January 18, 1871, after read-
ing the mark of infamy inscribed on the forehead of your
King by the illustrious director of the Museum of Natural
History, M. Chevreul."

" This letter/' thought its writer, " will not have much
weight with a people whose principles differ so totally from
those which inspire us, but it will at least echo the indignation
of the French scientists." *

That the great scientist is also a great artist we hold to be
indubitable truth. Man has a heart as well as a head. Like
many another great man, Pasteur thought through his feel-
ings as well as through his brain. " La coeur a ses raisons,"
wrote Blaise Pascal in a pregnant saying, " que la raison ne
connoit pas," f and the saying is eminently true of Pasteur.
How deeply the calamities of his country stirred him is clear
in his letter of September 17, 1870, to his pupil Raulin:
" What folly, what blindness, there are in the inertia of
Austria, Russia, England! What ignorance in our army
leaders of the respective forces of the two nations! The
real cause of our misfortunes lies there. It is not with
impunity as it will one day be recognised, too late that a
great nation is allowed to lose its intellectual standard. But,
as you say, if we rise again from these disasters, we shall
again see our statesmen lose themselves in endless discussions
on forms of government and abstract political questions,
instead of going to the root of the matter. We are paying
the penalty of fifty years' forgetfulness of science, of its
conditions of development, of its immense influence on the
destiny of a great people, and of all that might have assisted
the diffusion of light. ... I cannot go on, all this hurts me.
I try to put away all such memories, and also the sight of
our terrible distress, in which it seems that a desperate resist-
ance is the only hope we have left. I wish that France may
fight to her last man, to her last fortress. I wish that the
war may be prolonged until the winter, when, the elements

* R. Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, p. 190.
t Pensees, p. 32 (1829 ed.).

PASTEUR AND MICROBES 225

aiding us, all these Vandals may perish of cold and distress.
Every one of my future works will bear on its title-page the
words : ' Hatred to Prussia. Revenge! Revenge! ' " *

Unfortunately Pasteur did not live to see the glories won
by his countrymen in the World War of 1914 1918. The
bitter memories of 1870-1 were to be washed in the waters
of Lethe by the experiences of 1914-18. We, however,
return to the Revolution of 1848. After its days of
national exultation, Pasteur turned once more to his
crystals. Influenced by certain ideas, he considered that
some objects, placed before a mirror, give an image which
can be superposed to them. These, like a chair, possess a
symmetrical plan. Other objects, placed before a mirror,
give an image which cannot be superposed to them. These,
like a spiral staircase, possess a dissymmetrical plan. If it
turns to the right, its image turns to the left. Pasteur
noticed that the crystals of tartaric acid and the tartrates
had little faces, a matter that had escaped Mitscherlich.
These faces, which only existed on one half of the edges or
similar angles, constituted a hemihedral form. When the
crystal was placed before a mirror the image that appeared
could not be superposed to the crystal ; the comparison of the
spiral staircase was applicable to it. Pasteur proceeded to
think that this aspect of the crystal might be an index of what
existed within the molecules, dissymmetry of form corre-
sponding with molecular dissymmetry. Clearly the deviation
to the right of the plane of polarisation produced by tartrate
and the optical neutrality of paratartrates could be explained
by a structural law. All the crystals of tartrate proved to
be hemihedral.

The next stage in the experiment was to examine the crys-
tals of paratartrate. They, so he reasoned, could not' be
hemihedral. As a matter of fact, they were. Keenly dis-
appointed, he cast about for a fresh explanation of the new
difficulty, and he at last found it. Were not some of the
faces of the crystal inclined to the right and others
to the left? Here was food for thought. It then
occurred to him to take up these crystals one by
one and sort them carefully, putting on the one side
those which turned to the left, and on the other those

* R. Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, p. 183.
15

226 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

which turned to the right. He thought that by observing
their respective solutions in the polarising apparatus, the
two contrary hemihedral forms would give two contrary
deviations. Then, by mixing together an equal number of
each kind, the resulting solution would produce no action
upon light, the two equal and directly opposite deviations
exactly neutralising each other.

With beating heart he proceeded to carry out his experi-
ment with the polarising apparatus and exclaimed with fer-
vour, " I have it! " In his excitement he rushed out of his
laboratory, not unlike Archimedes, embracing the first man
he met in the corridor, the curator, Bertrand, as he would
have embraced Chappuis. He dragged the puzzled curator
out to the Luxembourg garden to explain his discovery. He
had found out the relations between the crystalline forms of
the several tartaric acids, and their action on polarised light
led him to perceive the necessity of some kind of theory to
account for the internal structure of the molecules of such
compounds. If the atoms composing the molecule in one of
such a pair of compounds be conceived as arranged in a
particular order, then the atoms in the other must be
arranged in the same order but inversely, so that if the atoms
could be made visible they would be seen to exhibit the rela-
tion of an object to its image in a mirror. Twenty years
after Pasteur's discovery in 1848 the subject again attracted
attention, and after the study of lactic acids by Wislicenus,
a theory was put forward, by the Dutch chemist van't Hoff
and the French chemist Le Bel, which provided the neces-
sary clue, and provided the basis for that large department of
chemistry we to-day know as stereo-chemistry, or chemistry
in space.

The mystery of the inactivity of paratartrates was a mys-
tery no more. " How often/' he wrote to Chappuis on May
5, 1848, as he thought of the difficulty of explaining his dis-
covery, " how often have I regretted that we did not both
take up the same study, that of physical science. We who
so often talked of the future, we did not understand. What
splendid work we could have undertaken and would be under-
taking now ; and what could we not have done united by the
same ideas, the same love of science, the same ambition. I
would we were twenty and with the three years of the Ecole

PASTEUR AND MICROBES 227

before us." Yes, the old days were the happy days, even if
" we who so often talked of the future, we did not under-
stand." J. B. Biot was seventy-four when he heard of this
discovery, affording mankind a first glimpse of molecular
construction. During thirty years he had investigated the
phenomena of rotatory polarisation, and his satisfaction was
deep when he verified the results of a young man of twenty-
five.

Mankind remembers Pasteur largely for his memorable
labours on micro-organisms, and it might seem at first sight
as if the inactivity of paratartrate was far removed from it.
Yet his researches on this very matter were logically as well
as actually connected with his practical researches on fermen-
tation. He had examined racemic or paratartaric acid,
which resembles tartaric acid in chemical composition, but
has a different crystalline form and is as optically inactive as
paratartrate. One hot summer day he noted in his laboratory
that a tartrate solution had begun to ferment. Instead of
throwing it away he examined it in the spirit of Faraday,
who, when asked how he made so many discoveries,
answered, " By always inspecting the refuse of my experi-
ments." Similarly, Pasteur inspected his refuse, and it
suggested to him the question, Would fermentation exercise
any effect on racemic acid? To solve this problem, he set
up fermentation in a racemate, ascertaining that the inactive
liquid gradually became as a result optically active. Fermen-
tation, in fact, separated the two active constituents, destroy-
ing the one and leaving the other. This discovery, in turn,
led on to his wonderful work of fermentation. The study
of one form of asymmetrical molecules led to the examination
of another form of such molecules. He had found that the
rotary power of a body disappeared when that body was
chemically broken up, and that life alone seemed to be capable
of producing new asymmetrical molecules. Step by step he
had found experimental verification for the new ideas which
his work on crystals had introduced into fermentation. He
had reached the empirical construction of a solution contain-
ing only mineral substance and ammonia, in which yeast
would grow and would begin to set up alcoholic fermenta-
tion. Fermentation was therefore due to the action of
a living organism. We set out with racemic or paratartaric

228 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

acid, and we end or do we end? with the epoch-making
experiments on micro-organisms. At first sight the con-
nection is remote, but of its reality no one can doubt. It is a
tale that has been repeated again and again in the annals
of science. What is the connection between the twitching
legs of Galvani's frog and the flicking needle of the tele-
graph? What is the connection between Oersted in 1822
deflecting a magnetised needle and the electric telegraph?
What is the connection between the walks of William Smith,
the father of geology, and the finding of our mineral re-
sources ? What is the connection between the highly abstract
work of Lagrange in mathematics and wireless telegraphy?
What is the connection between Lord Kelvin's stiff piece of
mathematical analysis, published in 1853, and the study of
electric oscillations that led to the invention of wireless tele-
graphy? What is the connection between the discovery of
Sir William Crookes in 1892 that a strong electric current
produced nitrous and nitric acids and the fixation of nitrogen
which enabled Germany to prolong the War ? What is the
connection between the dyes of Perkin and the industrial
predominance of Germany before and since the War? What
is the connection between the knowledge gained by the zoolo-
gists when they counted the hairs on the backs of flies and
quarrelled over the specific distinctions between one gnat and
another and the opening up of tropical Africa or the comple-
tion of the Panama Canal ? The truth is, as Pasteur was to
demonstrate in a hundred different ways, no generalisation
of science is really remote from any other generalisation. If
it appears to be remote, to-day or to-morrow may give birth
to the wide conception that will unite such generalisations.
At the end of the summer of 1848 Pasteur was appointed
Professor of Physics at the Dijon Lycee. The Minister of
Public Instruction, at the request of Biot, consented to allow
him to postpone his departure in order to let him finish some
work. His appointment came as a real blow to Biot. " If
at least/' he indignantly remarked, " they were sending you
to a Faculty ! " He turned his wrath on to the Government
officials. " They don't seem to realise that such labours stand
above everything else. If they only knew it, two or three
such treatises might bring a man straight to the Institut ! " *
* R. Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, p. 43.

PASTEUR AND MICROBES 229

In spite of this outburst, Pasteur had to go. He wrote to
Chappuis on November 20, 1848: " I find that preparing my
lessons takes up a great deal of time. It is only when I
have prepared a lecture very carefully that I succeed in
making it very clear and capable of compelling attention.
If I neglect it at ^11 I lecture badly and become un-
intelligible." * His two classes of first- and second-
year pupils engrossed all his time and all his strength,
and the outcome was that he could not possibly pursue
his favourite studies. Biot appealed to Baron Thenard,
who was Chairman of the Grand Council of the Uni-
versity, and in 1849 Pasteur became Professor of Chemistry
at Strasburg. The new Professor met the Rector of the
Academy of Strasburg, M. Laurent, and within a fortnight
of meeting his daughter Marie he proposed marriage to her.
He was so deeply in love with her that he forsook his labora-
tory " I," he remorsefully adds, " who did so love my crys-
tals." " I believe/' he confided in Chappuis, " that I shall
be very happy. Every quality I could wish for in a wife I
find in her. You will say, ' He is in love ! ' Yes, but I do
not think I exaggerate at all, and my sister Josephine quite
agrees with me."f The union of the two lovers proved
ideally happy, though there is a story that on the wedding
day the bridegroom was so wrapped up in his experiments
that he entirely forgot the ceremony and had to be fetched by
a friend. " Why are you not a professor of physics or
chemistry ? " he asked Chappuis. " We should work together,
and in ten years' time we should revolutionise chemistry.
There are wonders hidden in crystallisation, and, through it,
the inmost construction of substances will one day be revealed.
If you come to Strasburg, you shall become a chemist ; I shall
talk to you of nothing but crystals." J Was Pasteur wiser
than even he knew? For behind his solution of the mystery
of racemic acid lay the first real glimpse of the construction
of the molecule. By dint of amazing trouble he succeeded
in transforming tartaric acid into racemic acid. He found
that one of the salts of racemic acid, paratartrate or racemate
of ammonia, for instance, in the ordinary conditions of fer-

* R. Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, p. 51.
t Ibid., p. 44.
t Ibid, p. 54-

230 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

nentation, the dextro-tartaric acid alone ferments, the other
remaining in the liquor. Why does the dextro-tartaric acid
ilone become putrefied ? His answer was that the ferments
}f that fermentation feed more easily on the right than on
;he left molecules. By a wonderful coincidence, just at the
/ery moment when his studies were bringing him more and
nore to the problem of fermentation he was appointed Pro-
fessor and Dean of the new Faculty of Science at Lille, the
:ountry of distilleries, in September 1854. Here he opened
i new chapter in the annals of science.

In the summer of 1856 a Lille manufacturer, M. Bigo,
:ame to the young Dean for advice. Bigo had met with
jrave disappointment in the manufacture of beetroot alcohol.
3n his return to his primitive laboratory, Pasteur examined
he globules in the fermentation juice, compared filtered with
mfiltered beetroot juice, and conceived hypothesis after hypo-
hesis to explain the puzzling phenomena. A long line of
ihemists had been trying to solve the problems of fermenta-
ion and putrefaction. Lavoisier, Fabroni, Thenard, Gay-
^ussac, Cagniard-Latour, Dumas, Berzelius, Schwann,
Jebig, Helmholtz all had given time and thought to these
lerplexing problems. It was now the turn of Pasteur to give
hem his best attention.

Men of the school of Liebig and Berzelius rejected the
dea of an influence of life in the cause of fermentations. In
hem Pasteur began to perceive phenomenon correlative to
ife.* In lactic yeast he discerned the budding, multiplying
ind offering the same phenomena of reproduction as beer
reast. He showed that the yeast plant assumes different
itages in the fermentation of wine, thereby demolishing the
caching of Liebig which dominated the scientific world. He
ecognised for the first time the presence of a micro-organism
n connection with the process of lactic acid fermentation,
rle showed that fermentation could be set up in vinegar by
he addition of minute cultivations of the special organism
connected with each particular process. He prepared a fluid
consisting of a solution of sugar to which only mineral sub-
;tances had been added, in which he could produce at will
either the alcoholic or the lactic fermentation by inoculating

* Here and elsewhere I am deeply indebted to chap, xii of Sir Rick-
nan Godlee's fascinating biography of Lord Lister.

PASTEUR AND MICROBES 231

it with the appropriate organism. Liebig persisted in re-
garding the processes of decay, decomposition, and fermen-
tation as purely physico-chemical in character. " Those
who," he held, " attempt to explain the putrefaction of animal
substances by the presence of animalcules, argue much in the
same way as a child who imagines that he can explain the
rapidity of the Rhine's flowing by attributing it to the violent
agitation caused by the numerous water-wheels at Mayence."

To Pasteur it seemed increasingly, on the other hand, that
the living animalcules caused the phenomena he was rigidly
investigating. Experiment after experiment confirmed the
view of the French scientist. For a generation the old school
fought against the new. That the new could show experi-
ments that demonstrated the truth of their view mattered
nothing. The old school persisted in holding that the
chemical actions taking place during fermentation could only
be explained in terms of molecular physics. Pasteur equally
persisted in experimenting, and his experiments taught him
that fermentation, putrefaction, decomposition, all are
" acts of life, and in the absence of life do not take place."
" A liquid really sterile, exposed to air really sterile, will
remain sterile for ever/ 5 and in that condition will neither
ferment nor putrefy. The truth is what Pasteur concisely
stated : " La vie c'est le germe et le germe c'est la vie."

This was by no means all. He had proved that the minute
living things called animalcules caused it to break up into
simpler compounds. He proceeded to demonstrate that cer-
tain organisms grow, not in the presence of air, but in its
absence. Such is the case with the organism which he
described as associated with the butyric fermentation. He
afterwards extended these observations and demonstrated that
the butyric ferment is not an isolated example, but that there
is a whole class of organisms which, though they cannot do
without oxygen, are unable to flourish in the presence of free
oxygen. They obtain their oxygen from the compounds of
little stability which they decompose. This observation
naturally led the investigator on to the study of putrefaction
and to the development of a new theory of fermentation
and decay. He determined the point that putrefaction does
not occur independently of the agency of micro-organisms.
As life was thought to be absolutely dependent on air for its

232 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

maintenance, Pasteur's discovery of the possibility of an-
aerobic life, which grows by the absence of air, was received
with incredulity. Belief in the existence of the anaerobes
aroused a storm of criticism and opposition on the part of
Pasteur's contemporaries.

The reply Pasteur made to the unbelief of scientists was
to concentrate on his experiments. In December 1857 ^ ie
recognised complex phenomena in alcoholic fermentation.
The chemist had been content to say, So much sugar
gives so much alcohol and so much carbonic acid.
He wrote to the ever-loyal Chappuis in June 1858:
" I find that alcoholic fermentation is constantly ac-
companied by the production of glycerine; it is a very
curious fact. For instance, in one litre of wine there are
several grammes of that product which had not been sus-
pected." * He also recognised the normal presence of suc-
cinic acid in alcoholic fermentation. " I should be pursuing
the consequences of these facts/' he adds, " if a temperature
of 36 C. did not keep me from my laboratory. I regret to
see the longest days in the year lost to me. Yet I have grown
accustomed to my attic [i.e. his poor laboratory], and I
should be sorry to leave it. Next holidays I hope to enlarge
it. You too are struggling against material hindrances in
your work; let it stimulate us, my dear fellow, and not dis-
courage us. Our discoveries will have the greater merit."

The link between many kinds of phenomena was the
organism detected. Organisms produced fermentation and
putrefaction. Organisms are carried on particles of dust
floating in the atmosphere. These particles of dust can be
destroyed by heat, or filtered off by cotton wool, or inter-
cepted in the finely-drawn-out or tortuous necks of flasks,
through which the free ingress and egress of air takes place
owing to the diurnal variations in temperature. Conclusions
of this nature shaped themselves in Pasteur's mind with that
logical precision in which he delighted.

Particles of dust carried the organisms in which he was
interested. But these particles of dust differed in the degree
of their abundance. They were as conspicuously present in
a dusty room as they were- conspicuously absent in an
undisturbed cellar or on a mountain top. Was air the cause
* R. Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, p. 85.

PASTEUR AND MICROBES 233

of putrefaction? Was it not rather due to the presence of
filtrable dust? Was not, in fact, the atmosphere the sole
vehicle of all the harm done? This, of course, is not the
case, but there was enough in it to set Pasteur thinking. It in
no wise escaped him that germs not only people the air but are
carried by it to all solid and liquid substances, and therefore
will be found adherent to the hands of the experimenter, to
the insides of bottles, to corks, and even to such unlikely
materials as mercury, through which some were in the habit
of passing their sterilised putrescible fluids and purified air.
Along with all this the investigator proceeded to show that
certain natural substances, such as blood and urine, are free
from micro-organisms, and can be kept from decomposing
for an indefinite length of time if received with proper pre-
cautions into previously sterilised vessels.

In fact, by varying the solution and the conditions of
growth, Pasteur reached the conception of pure cultures,
cultures in which only one kind of organism throve and one
kind of fermentation took place. So he paved the way for
the exact methods which turned brewing and the making of
wines and vinegars into scientific industries. Above all,
at the same time he rendered possible the vast progress which
was to come in the transference of the new theories and
methods of disease. For the preparation of culture media,
the growth of pure cultures, and the possibility of associating
particular organisms with particular diseases are the founda-
tions of bacteriology.

As Darwin found that under his hands all questions
widened, so Pasteur under his found exactly the same. On
February 7, 1860, he wrote to his father*: "You know I
have always told you confidentially that time would see the
growth of my researches on the molecular dissymmetry of
natural organic products. Founded as they were on varied
notions borrowed from divers branches of science crystal-
lography, physics, and chemistry those studies could not be
followed by most scientists so as to be fully understood. On
this occasion I presented them in the aggregate with some
clearness and power and every one was struck with their
importance.

" It is not by their form that these two lectures have de-
* R. Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, p. 88,

234 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

lighted my hearers, it is by their contents; it is the future
reserved to those great results, so unexpected, and opening
with such entirely new vistas of physiology. I have dared to
say so, for at these heights all sense of personality disappears,
and there only remains that sense of dignity which is ever
inspired by true love of science.

" God grant that by my persevering labours I may bring a
little stone to the frail and ill-assured edifice of our know-
ledge of those deep mysteries of Life and Death where all
our intellects have so lamentably failed.

" P.S. Yesterday I presented to the Academy my re-
searches on spontaneous generation ; they seemed to produce
a great sensation."

The history of the question of spontaneous generation
goes so far back as the classical writers.* Thales of Miletus
thought animals came from moisture. Anaximander be-
lieved life originated in inorganic mud. Aristotle and
Lucretius, Virgil and Ovid, and Pliny all believe in it. Does
not Virgil describe the way in which a swarm of bees can
be made to originate from the rotting carcase of a young bull ?
Taking over the Virgilian belief, our ancestors thought that if
you put a piece of beef in the sun, and allowed it to putrefy,
they conceived that the grubs which soon began to appear
were the outcome of the action of a power of spontaneous
generation which the beef contained. And they could pro-
vide you with recipes for making various animal and
vegetable preparations which would produce the particular
kinds of animals you required. Thus Van Helmont
(1577 1644), the Belgian physician, actually supplies a
recipe for the spontaneous generation of the domestic mouse.
His prescription consists in squeezing some soiled linen into
the mouth of a vessel containing grains of wheat, where-
upon, after the lapse of twenty-one days, thrice the mystic
number seven, the wheat will be found to have been trans-
formed into mice adult ones to boot, with both sexes equally
represented! Some time later an Italian, Buonanni,
announced a fact no less weird. Certain timberwood, he
said, after rotting in the sea, produced worms which

* J. Tyndall, " Spontaneous Generation " in Popular Science Monthly,
XII, 1877, pp. 476-88, 591-604.

PASTEUR AND MICROBES 235

engendered butterflies, and these butterflies became in their
turn birds !

Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, like
his contemporaries believed in spontaneous generation. A
less credulous Italian, Francesco Redi (1626 1698), studied
the phenomena. In order to demonstrate that the worms
found in rotten meat did not appear spontaneously, he placed
a piece of gauze over the meat. Flies, attracted by the colour,
deposited their eggs on the gauze. From these eggs were
hatched the worms, which up to the time of the experiment
had been supposed to begin life spontaneously in the flesh
itself. He demonstrated the fact that life begins from life,
and for a while his demonstration was remembered. A
medical professor of Padua, Vallisneri (1661 1730), also
recognised that the grub in a fruit is hatched from an egg
deposited by an insect before the development of the fruit.
Not becoming part of the mental stock of mankind, the work
of Redi and Vallisneri was overtaken by oblivion.

The microscope bolstered up this belief by disclosing to the
gaze of men thousands of creatures, those infinitely small
beings which appeared in rain-water as in any infusion
of organic matter when exposed to the air. How could
bodies capable of producing a million descendants in the
course of less than forty-eight hours do so save by spon-
taneous generation? Diderot was intrigued by the problem
of evolution, and he was also intrigued by the kindred problem
of spontaneous generation. " Does living matter/' he asked,
" combine with living matter ? how ? and with what result ?
And what about dead matter ?" Such questions appear in
his Interpretation of Nature, which Comte, absurdly enough,
placed beside Descartes's Discourse on Method and Bacon's
Nomtm Organum. Still, it is startling in 1754 to find
Diderot asking, What is the difference between living matter
and dead? Does the energy of a living molecule vary by
itself, or according to the quantity, the quality, the forms of
the dead or living matter with which it is united ? Questions
such as these are samples of what he thought philosophers
might perhaps count worthy of discussion.

About the time of Diderot two priests, one an Englishman,
Needham, and the other an Italian, Spallanzani, took the
subject up. Needham had studied with Buffon microscopic

236 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

animalculse. The force which Needham found in matter, a
force which is called productive or vegetative, he regarded
in 1745 as charged with the formation of the organic world.
Buffon explained this force by holding that there are certain
primitive and incorruptible parts common to animals and
vegetables. These organic molecules cast themselves into
the moulds or shapes which constituted different beings.
When one of those moulds was destroyed by death, the
organic molecules became free. Ever active, they worked
the putrefied matter, appropriating to themselves some raw
particles, and forming by their reunion a multitude of little
organised bodies. All these bodies, according to Buffon,
only existed through spontaneous generation.

Spallanzani studied in 1763 the infinitesimal beings through
his microscope. Needham had affirmed that by enclosing
putrescible matter in vases and by placing those vases on warm
ashes, he produced animalcule. Spallanzani shrewdly sus-
pected firstly that Needham had not exposed the vases to a
sufficient degree of heat to kill the seeds which were inside;
and secondly that seeds could readily have entered those vases
and given birth to animalcule, for Needham had only closed
his vases with cork stoppers, which are very porous. " I
repeated the experiment with more accuracy/' wrote the Abbe
Spallanzani : " I used hermetically sealed vases. I kept them
for an hour in boiling water, and after having opened them
and examined their contents within a reasonable time I found
not the slightest trace of animalcuke, though I had examined
with the microscope the infusions from nineteen different
vases." It would seem as if Spallanzani had anticipated one
of the most renowned of the experiments of Pasteur with
results that would have satisfied the French investigator.

Voltaire, after his wont, took an interest in this scientific
dispute. In his Singularities of Nature, written in 1769, he
laughed at Needham, whom he turned into an Irish Jesuit
in order to amuse his readers. Jesting at this race of so-
called eels which began in the gravy of boiled mutton, he
said : " At once several philosophers exclaimed at the wonder
and said, ' There is no germ ; all is made, all is regenerated
by a vital force of nature/ ' Attraction/ said one. ' Organ-
ised matter/ said another, ' they are organisable molecules
which have found their casts/ Clever physicists were taken

PASTEUR AND MICROBES 237

in by a Jesuit." In this effusion of Voltaire nothing
remained of what he termed " the ridiculous mistake, the un-
fortunate experiments of Needham, so triumphantly refuted
by M. Spallanzani and rejected by whosoever has studied
nature at all." " It is now demonstrated to sight and reason
that there is no vegetable, no animal but has its own germ."
In his Philosophic Dictionary, at the word God, he remarks,
" It is very strange that men should deny a creator and yet
attribute to themselves the power of creating eels/'

It would seem as if the experiments of the Abbe Spallan-
zani had proved that there was no such thing as spontaneous
generation. Nor were his results suffered, like those of
Abbot Mendel, to languish in the obscurity of a local
scientific journal. Voltaire was as great a journalist as
Jonathan Swift himself, and with the publicity given to
Spallanzani's work in the Singularities of Nature, it might
have been thought impossible that such a striking demonstra-
tion either would or could have been forgotten. Forgotten it
undoubtedly was. After all, sound requires atmosphere,
and, for that matter, results require their atmosphere. If a
Joseph II lived before his own proper age, it is no less true
that the Abbe Spallanzani lived before the age when scientists
were likely to listen to what he had carried out.

The subject dropped in one form only to be revived in
another. Experiments of course, in the eyes of men even
in the middle of the nineteenth century, were rather absurd
methods of demonstrating the truths of nature. A priori
conceptions were a far more satisfactory fashion, so they
believed. In 1846 a moralist called Ernest Bersot employed
this plan when he wrote his book on Spiritualism : " The
doctrine of spontaneous generation pleases simplicity-loving
minds ; it leads them far beyond their own expectations. But
ft is yet only a private opinion, and, were it recognised, its
virtue would have to be limited and narrowed down to the
production of a few inferior animals."

On December 20, 1858, a correspondent of the Institut,
M. Pouchet, Director of the Natural History Museum of
Rouen, sent to the Academy of Sciences a " Note on
Vegetable and Animal Proto-organisms spontaneously
generated in Artificial Air and in Oxygen Gas." The note
began thus : " At this time when, seconded by the progress

238 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

of science, several naturalists are endeavouring to reduce the
domain of spontaneous generation or even to deny its exist-
ence altogether, I have undertaken a series of researches with
the object of elucidating this vexed question." Declaring
that he had taken excessive precautions to preserve his results
from any cause of error, he showed apparently convincing
experiments, demonstrating that organisms developed spon-
taneously when hay which had been previously heated to a
high temperature was introduced into the atmosphere of
pure oxygen. In 1860 the French Academy offered a prize
for a series of experiments that would tend towards a
solution of a question that had occupied the attention of
mankind since the days of the classical writers.

The world of science discussed the whole question. Pasteur
contented himself not with discussion but with tests of the
results that M. Pouchet had claimed to be true, and therefore
verifiable. At one of the extremities of the fa$ade of the
Ecole Normale in Paris, on the same line as the doorkeeper's
lodge, a pavilion had been built for the school architect and
his clerk. Pasteur succeeded in obtaining possession of this
small building, and transformed it into a laboratory which
any student of our day would describe as totally inadequate.
For four years he experimented, and en route made many
discoveries. For example, he made clear the efficiency of a
cotton- wool plug in the neck of a flask as a means of
preventing the entrance of air germs, and he invented a flask
with a long-drawn-out neck, known to the researcher as
Pasteur's flask. It is easy to understand why so exact an
experimenter should write to Pouchet that the results he had
attained were " not founded on facts of a faultless exactitude.
I think you are wrong, not in believing in spontaneous
generation (for it is difficult in such a case not to have a
preconceived idea), but in affirming the existence of spon-
taneous generation. In experimental science it is always
a mistake not to doubt when facts do not compel affirmation.
... In my opinion, the question is whole and untouched
by decisive proofs. What is there in air which provokes
organisation? Are they germs? is it a solid? is it a fluid?
is it a principle such as ozone? All this is unknown and
invites experiment/' *

* R. Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, p. 94.

PASTEUR AND MICROBES 239

The more he laboured in the laboratory, the more Pasteur
became convinced that there is nothing in the air itself able
to produce life, and he gradually came to the conclusion that
it was the germs in the air that did the mischief. Such an
idea was preposterous to Pouchet How many millions of
loose eggs or spores, he derisively inquired, would then be
contained in a cubic millimetre of atmospheric air if the
Pasteurian hypothesis were true? He proceeded to advise
investigators to accept the doctrine of spontaneous generation
adopted of old by so many men of genius from the days of
Aristotle downwards. Of course this is the argument of
authority draped in scientific clothing, but it is authority
emphatically that Pouchet invoked.

Into a series of flasks of a capacity of 250 cubic centi-
metres Pasteur introduced a putrescible liquid, such as yeast
water, which he boiled. While the liquid was still boiling he
closed, with an enameller's lamp, the pointed opening through
which the steam had rushed out, taking with it all the air
the vessel contained. If the air were pure, the contents of the
flask remained pure. If the air were impure, the contents of
the flask remained impure. On August 10, 1860, he wrote
to Chappuis*: "I fear from your letter that you will not
go to the Alps this year. . . . Besides the pleasure of having
you for a guide, I had hoped to utilise your love of science by
offering you the modest part of curator. It is by some study
of air on heights afar from the habitations and vegetation
that I want to conclude my work on so-called spontaneous
generation. The real interest of that work for me lies in the
connection of this subject with that of ferments which I
shall take up again in November." He started for Arbois,
taking with him seventy-three flasks. He opened twenty of
them not very far from his father's old tannery on the road
to Dole. Of those twenty vessels, opened some distance
away from any dwelling, eight yielded organised bodies.
He then walked on to Salins and climbed Mount Poupet,
850 metres above sea-level. Out of the twenty vessels
opened, only five were altered. Pasteur would have liked to
charter a balloon in order to prove that the higher you go
the fewer germs you will find, and that certain zones
absolutely pure contain none at all. Instead, he ascended
* R. Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, p. 96.

2 4 o SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

Montanvert at Chamonix. A mule carried the case of
thirty-three vessels, followed very closely by Pasteur. The
twenty flasks were brought to the Mer de Glace. Pasteur
gathered the air with infinite precautions; he used to enjoy
relating the details to those people who call everything easy
after it has been found out. After tracing with a steel
point a line on the glass, careful lest specks of dust should be-
come a cause of error, he began by heating the neck and fine
point of the bulb in the flame of the little spirit-lamp. Then
raising the vessel above his head, he broke the point with
steel nippers, the long ends of which had also been heated in
order to burn the specks which might be on their surface.
These would have been driven into the vessel by the quick
inrush of the air. Of those twenty flasks, closed again
immediately, only one was altered. "If all the results
are compared that I have obtained until now," he wrote, on
March 5, 1880, when relating this journey to the Academy,
" it seems to me that it can be affirmed that the dusts sus-
pended in atmospheric air are the exclusive origin, the
necessary condition of life in infusions." *

Bacon long ago reminded us that Saul set out to seek
his father's asses, and instead of finding the asses he found
a kingdom. It is a tale that is being constantly told in the
realm of science. An investigator re-starts the old idea of
spontaneous generation, and another investigator tries to seek
the truth about the subject. He proves that there is no such
thing as spontaneous generation, and incidentally he founds
the brand-new subject of bacteriology. For Pasteur points
out : " What would be most desirable would be to push those
studies far enough to prepare the road for a serious research
into the origin of various diseases." * It was dawning upon
him that germs were not merely the active cause of putre-
faction and of fermentation, but they were also the active
cause of disease. Such was the far-reaching result of an
attempt to discover the validity of the belief in spontaneous
generation. The Pasteurisation of wine or of milk, the
process of sterilisation, Listerism, and a thousand other -isms,
all date their origin from these renowned results. Yet in
1860 a scientist could write in La Presse: " I am afraid that
the experiments you quote, M. Pasteur, will turn against you
* R. Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, p. 98.

PASTEUR AND MICROBES 241

. . . The world into which you wish to take us is really
too fantastic. . . ." *

There was a vacancy in the Institut in 1861,
and despite the efforts of Balard and Dumas the votes of
the members elected Duchartre, not Pasteur. The follow-
ing year he was elected on December 8, receiving thirty-six
votes out of sixty. Biot did not live to see this outcome of
his canvass on behalf of Pasteur. The very next morning,
when the gates of the Montparnasse cemetery were opened,
a woman walked towards Biot's grave with her hands full of
flowers. It was Mme Pasteur, who was bringing them to
him who lay there since February 5, 1862.

After his election to the Institut, in March 1863, the
Emperor Napoleon III, who professed an interest in all that
was going on in the small laboratory of the Rue d'Ulm,
desired to speak with Pasteur. Dumas claimed the privilege
of presenting his former pupil, and the interview took place at
the Tuileries. Napoleon questioned Pasteur, who assured
" the Emperor that all my ambition was to arrive at the
knowledge of the causes of putrid and contagious diseases."!
The spontaneous generationists, Pouchet, Joly, Professor of
Physiology at Toulouse, and Musset, made fresh experiments
which apparently verified their ideas. Ascending higher
than Montanvert, they found alteration in their flasks.
These, filled with a decoction of hay, showed germs.
Pasteur's flasks, filled with yeast water, showed sterility.
Our conclusion would be that the different results de-
pended on the circumstance that the hay water con-
tained the spores of the bacilli. Pouchet, Joly, and Musset
of course thought nothing of the kind, and were convinced
even in 1876 when Dr. Bastian raised the question again
that they were as indubitably right as Pasteur was as
indubitably wrong. " Therefore/' said Pouchet triumph-
antly,:}: " the air of the Maladetta [the glacier they ascended],
and of high mountains in general, is not incapable of pro-
ducing alteration in an eminently putrescible liquor; therefore
heterogenia or the production of a new being devoid of
parents, but formed at the expense of ambient organic
matter, is for us a reality."

* R. Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, p. 99.
t Ibid., p. 104. J Ibid., p. 105.

Ibid., p. 105.
16

242 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

Before the world of fashion as well as before the world
of learning in the lecture-room of the Sorbonne, on April 7,
1864, Pasteur gave his conclusions. Duruy and Alexandre
Dumas, senior, George Sand and the Princess Mathilde, were
present, as well as representatives of science. Beginning in
his deep, firm voice, Pasteur said : " Great problems are now
being handled, keeping every thinking man in suspense;
the unity or multiplicity of human races ; the creation of man
a thousand years or a thousand centuries ago ; the fixity of
species, or the slow and progressive transformation of one
species into another; the eternity of matter; the idea of a
God unnecessary. Such are some of the questions that
humanity discusses nowadays." * Then he came to his own
subject. Can matter organise itself? Can living beings
come into the world without having been preceded by beings
similar to them? Explaining how the microscope had
given a fresh lease of life to the idea of spontaneous genera-
tion, he narrated the results of his experiments, showing the
part played by germs. " And, therefore, gentlemen, I could
point to that liquid and say to you, I have taken my drop
of water from the immensity of creation, and I have taken
it full of the elements appropriate to the development of
inferior beings. And I wait, I watch, I question it, begging
it to recommence for me the beautiful spectacle of the first
creation. But it is dumb, dumb since these experiments were
begun several years ago; it is dumb because I have kept it
from the only thing man cannot produce, from the germs
which float in the air, from Life, for Life is a germ and a
germ is life. Never will the doctrine of spontaneous generation
recover from the mortal blow of this simple experiment/' f

The fashionable and the scientific audience applauded these
stirring words, which ended the lecture : " No, there is now
no circumstance known to me in which it can be affirmed
that microscopic beings came into the world without germs,
without parents similar to themselves. Those who affirm it
have been duped by illusions, by ill-conducted experiments,
spoilt by errors that either they did not perceive or did not
know how to avoid." J -.

* R. Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, p. 107.

t Ibid., p. 108. Cf. Sir R. Godlee, Lord Lister, p. 176

fc R. Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, p. 109.

PASTEUR AND MICROBES 243

George Eliot used to say that of all forms of mistake,
prophecy was quite the most gratuitous. In 1876 twelve
years after the date of the famous Sorbonne lecture Pouchet
and Musset, Joly and Bastian * alike announced experiments
which, they claimed, proved the truth of the doctrine of
spontaneous generation. Therefore this doctrine, in spite
of Pasteur, did recover, though the recovery was a poor one.

Minute organisms were the vera causa of what was called
spontaneous generation. Might they not be the causes of
much else? Might they not set up diseases in animals and
men as well as fermentation in liquids ? While these general
conclusions were in his mind, J. B. Dumas asked him to
turn his attention to the poisonous plight of the silkworms.
In the reign of Louis-Philippe the income from the silk
industry was 100,000,000 francs. In Pasteur's day the loss
in one arrondissement of Alais for fifteen years was
120,000,000 francs. This huge income was in process of
vanishing, for disease attacked the silkworms. The symp-
toms were serious in 1843 an d 1845, an( l became increasingly
so in 1849, I ^53, and 1864. As the spots on the diseased
worms resembled pepper grains, the disease was called
" pebrine," from the patois word pebre. To the deep disgust
of the silkworm cultivators, Pasteur studied hundreds of
moths under the microscope. They thought that the
services of a zoologist or one of themselves infinitely
preferable to one who was a " mere chemist." Pas-
teur contented himself with saying, " Have patience,"
and continued experimenting. He ascertained that
there were two distinct maladies at work. One was the real
pebrine, due to a protozoal organism. The other was
" flacherie," due to an actively mobile bacillus. He diagnosed
the causes and he provided a remedy for both, and this, in
spite of the hostility or the scepticism of scientists and
cultivators, he successfully accomplished. In the spirit of
Faraday, he informed Napoleon and Eugenie, in the course
of a private interview with them when they manifested some
surprise that he did not apply his discoveries to his own
profit, " that in France scientists would consider that they
lowered themselves by doing so." f The real man comes out

* Cf. the remarks in M. Onslow, Huia OnsloWj pp. 108-9.
t R. Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, p. 129.

244 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

no less clearly in the answer he gave to Henri Sainte-Claire
Deville when Claude Bernard and Pasteur tried blood taken
from patients during the cholera epidemic of 1865. Deville
remarked to Pasteur, " Studies of that sort require much
courage." "What about duty?" said Pasteur simply, in a
tone, said Deville afterwards, worth many sermons. Like
Sir Walter Raleigh, he continued to toil terribly. Friends
were tempted to make a comparison with the legendary demon
of Michael Scott, who had to be found a task lest he should
turn upon his master.

The old adversaries, who proclaimed their belief in
spontaneous generation, and the new ones, who announced
that there was nothing in " pebrine " or flacherie," were ex-
tremely en evidence in 1867. Pouchet was as confident as
ever, announcing that the question of spontaneous genera-
tion was being taken up in Italy and Germany, in England
and America. In his illuminating biography of his father-in-
law of which we have made so extensive use, M. Vallery-
Radot records : " Now that the scourge [of the silkworms]
was really conquered, Pasteur imagined that all he had to do
was to set up a table of results sent to him. But, from the
south of France and from Corsica, jealousies were beginning
their work of undermining; pseudo-scientists in their vanity
proclaimed that everything was illusory that was outside their
own affirmations, and the seed merchants, willing to ruin
everybody rather than jeopardise their miserable interests,
' did not hesitate (we are quoting M. Gernez) to perpetrate
the most odious falsehoods.' Instead of being annoyed,
saddened, often indignant as he was, Pasteur would have done
more wisely to look back upon the history of most great
discoveries and of the initial difficulties which beset them.
But he could not look upon such things philosophically;
stupidity astonished him and he could not easily bring himself
to believe in bad faith. His friends in Alais society, M. de
Lachadenede, M. Despeyroux, Professor of Chemistry,
might have reminded him, in their evening conversations, of
the difficulties ever encountered in the service of mankind. . . .
But such comparisons had no weight with Pasteur; he was
henceforth sure of his method and longed to see it adopted,
unable to understand why there should be further discussions
now that the silkworm industry was saved and the bread of

PASTEUR AND MICROBES 245

so many families assured. He was learning to know all
the bitterness of sterile polemics, and the obstacles placed one
by one in the way of those who attempt to give humanity
anything new and useful." *

The opposition Pasteur experienced was the opposition that
Jenner had experienced when he proclaimed the truth of
vaccination, it was the opposition that Simpson had ex-
perienced when he proclaimed the truth of 'chloroform effects,
it was the opposition Lyell had experienced when he pro-
claimed the truth of uniformitarianism, it was the opposition
Helmholtz and Joule had experienced when they proclaimed
the truth of the conservation of energy, and it was the
opposition Darwin had experienced when he proclaimed the
truth of evolutionism. The doctrines change, the discoverers
change, but the opposition never changes. Our studies in the
conflict if they teach us anything of science with scientists
during the nineteenth century teach us that the discoverer
can always reckon on meeting with opposition from his
fellow-scientists. True, the opposition may wear different
forms, but plus ga change, plus c'est la mcme chose.

The case of Liebig adds to the truth of this grave French
saying. Pasteur had met him on paper, and he had not
convinced him of the truth of his ideas on fermentation.
Pasteur, optimistically enough, believed that if he met the
illustrious German chemist in the flesh he might convert him
to the truth of his ideas. He forgot, foolishly enough, that
if he converted Liebig to the truth of his ideas, he proved
the falsity of Liebig's idea. In face of decisive experiments,
how could Liebig affirm that the presence of decomposing
matter should be necessary to fermentation ? Had not Pasteur
sown a trace of yeast in water, containing but sugar and
crystallised salts, and had he not seen this yeast multiply
itself and produce a regular alcoholic fermentation? How
could Liebig deny the independent existence of ferments in
their infinite littleness and their power of destroying and
transforming everything? Besides, Liebig, who hailed
Dumas as a master, had seen this master acknowledge the
truth of the new views. Since then Pasteur had extended
his theory to the disease infecting the silkworms and had
shadowed forth its extension to the diseases of men as well
* R, Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, p. 170.

246 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

as of animals. In 1870, full of hope, Pasteur paid his visit.
" To convince Liebig," writes M. Vallery-Radot, " to bring
him to acknowledge the triumph of those ideas with the
pleasure of a true savant, such was Pasteur's desire when
he entered Liebig's laboratory. The tall old man, in a long
frock coat, received him with kindly courtesy; but when
Pasteur, who was eager to come to the object of his visit,
tried to approach the delicate subject, Liebig, without losing
his amenity, refused all discussion, alleging indisposition.
Pasteur did not insist, but promised himself that he would
return to the charge." *

If law is silent during war, research is no less so. On the
outbreak of the Franco-German War of 1870-1, Pasteur
longed to serve, but an attack of paralysis had disqualified
him for active service. The disasters of his native land fell
on his ardent heart with the deepest pain and grief. " Should
we not cry : ' Happy are the dead ! ' " he wrote when he heard
of the surrender of Metz, the strongest in France, by Bazaine
without a struggle.

Lister had been meditating on Pasteur's theory of germs
with the outcome that he proclaimed himself a follower of the
new ideas. He attempted the destruction of germs floating in
the air by means of a vaporiser filled with a carbolic solution.
But it occurred to no one in France except Pasteur to
apply the Pasteurian conceptions to the cure of wounds.

Pasteur, as we have seen, returned his diploma of M.D.,
honoris causa, bestowed upon him by the University of
Bonn. The reply was : " SIR, The undersigned, now Prin-
cipal of the Faculty of Medicine of Bonn, is requested to
answer the insult you have dared to offer to the German
nation in the sacred person of its august Emperor, King
Wilhelm of Prussia, by sending you the expression of their
entire contempt. MAURICE NAUMANN. P.S. Desiring to
keep its papers free from taint, the Faculty herewith returns
your screed."

Part of the reply of Pasteur was : " And now, Mr.
Principal, after reading over both your letter and mine, I
sorrow in my heart to think that men who, like yourself and
myself, have spent a lifetime in the pursuit of truth and
progress should address each other in such a fashion. This
* R. Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, p. 175.

PASTEUR AND MICROBES 247

is but one of the results of the character your Emperor has
given the war. You speak to me of taint. Mr. Principal,
you may be assured that taint will rest until far-distant ages
on the memory of those who began the bombardment of
Paris, when capitulation by famine was inevitable, and who
continued this act of savagery after it had become evident
to all men that it would not advance by one hour the sur-
render of this heroic city."

The brilliant young painter, Henri Regnault, enlisted as a
Garde Nationale, though exempt by law from any military
service as he was a laureate of the Prix de Rome. In the last
sortie attempted by the Prussians at Buzenval, the last
Prussian shot struck him in the forehead. The Academy of
Sciences rendered its homage to one whose coffin enclosed
so many hopes of a great future in the world of art.

The Franco-German War forms an essential part of
Pasteur's life not only as a Frenchman but also as a scientist.
Accustomed to diagnosis in science, he extended his diagnosis
to la Patrie. He put his finger on what he conceived to
be the main fault, the forgetfulness, the disdain, that France
had exhibited for intellectual men, especially in the domain
of exact science. If in 1792 France was able to face danger
on all sides, had she not Berthollet and Chaptal, Fourcroy
and de Moreau, Monge and Lavoisier? The day after
Lavoisier's execution, Lagrange said : " One moment was
enough for this head to fall, and two hundred years may
not suffice to produce such another." If Lavoisier and Con-
dorcet perished, the Republic had many scientists behind it.
Were there such men in 1870-1? The more he reflected
on the plight of his beloved land, the more Pasteur felt that it
was the most urgent of all calls to persistent research as much
to redeem the reputation of France as to contribute to the
cause of truth.

In a fever of anxiety, he set to work. He had improved
the silk industry. Could he not seek means of making his
seed-selecting process applicable by cultivators on a small
scale as well as a large? Could not each village own its
own microscope? Could not the village schoolmaster
examine the moths? Italy and Austria adopted his plans
for the diagnosis of the disease of the silkworms long before
his native country, which was the very last to be convinced,

248 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

Austria offered him a handsome prize for his remedy against
pebrine, and then it struck French sericultors that there was
something in it. M. Vallery-Radot seems to think that the
French character offers this strange contrast, that France
is often willing to risk her fortune and her blood for causes
which may be unworthy, whilst at another moment, in every-
day life, she shrinks at the least innovation before accepting
a benefit originated on her own soil. The French often wait
until other nations have adopted and approved a French
discovery before venturing to adopt it in their turn. Here
we think that the biographer is too hard on his fellow-
countrymen, for just as a prophet has no honour in his
own country, the discoverer has every whit as little. When
other countries become aware of the merits of the discoverer,
then his own begins to appreciate them. R. Meldola, in his
memoir of Sir William Henry Perkin (1838 1907), insists
on this very point. Perkin discovered mauve, the first
aniline dye which had created the important coal-tar dyeing
industry and had revolutionised industrial processes in varied
directions. The Germans, however, were more alive to the
merits of mauve than the countrymen of its discoverer.

Inspired by patriotic motives, Pasteur hoped to make
French beer capable of competing with German beer, and he
sought for the causes rendering beer acid or putrid, sour or
slimy. Were not these alterations due to germs in the air,
or in the water, or in the utensils of the brewery? Whether
he investigated silkworms, vinegar, or wine, germs always
afforded the clue, the clue of which he was the real discoverer.
As the silkworm cultivators had turned aside from his plans
till their brethren in Italy and Austria had adopted them, so
the beer manufacturers turned aside. English brewers
received a visit from the French scientist in a more friendly
spirit than the French, though this arises partly from the
fact that the visitor was foreign. Pasteur felt glad of the
opportunity of rendering assistance to the practical English
brewers, who concluded that the stranger possessed ideas out
of which they could reap profit. " We must make friends
for our beloved France," he would say, and certainly men
like him rendered possible the Entente of our own day. He
combined in his person the faith of a patriotic apostle with the
patience of a fervent scientist.

PASTEUR AND MICROBES 249

Pouchet, in his book on The Universe: the Infinitely Great
and the Infinitely Small, published in 1872, condescended
to admit that some " microzoa did fly about here and there/'
but as for the theory of germs, why, that was simply "a
ridiculous fiction. " Liebig had apparently recovered from the
indisposition he felt at his interview with Pasteur in July
1870, for he published a long treatise disputing the facts put
forward by Pasteur. He declared that in the German
process of vinegar-making the chips of beech-wood placed in
the barrels acted as supports for the Mycoderma aceti.
Liebig, who consulted at Munich the chief of one of the
largest vinegar factories, affirmed that he himself had not seen
a trace of fungus on chips used in that factory for twenty-five
years. Pasteur had offered to Pouchet, Joly, and Musset
to bring their conflicting views to the test of experiment,
and they had in effect refused. Pasteur offered to dry some
of the chips rapidly in a stove and to send them to Paris,
where a commission, selected from members of the Academy
of Sciences, would decide this dispute. Liebig refused to
submit to this test.

A member of the Academy of Sciences, M. Fremy, took
part in what proved to be an almost interminable discussion
on the origin of ferments. So far back as 1841 he had
investigated lactic fermentation, " at a time when our learned
colleague M. Pasteur was barely entering into science,"
and his conclusion was that ferments arose from organic
bodies, not from dust. Some bodies, he held, by reason of
the vital force with which they are endowed, go through
successive decompositions, and give rise to new derivatives.
Thus, only thus, are ferments engendered. His theory was
in fact a form of the spontaneous generation view combined
with the vital force of the school of Natural Philosophy,
a school Helmholtz had to encounter.

M. Trecul, a botanist who sincerely sought the truth,
insisted that he had witnessed a whole series of transforma-
tion of microscopic species each into the other. Besides,
Pouchet, Joly, and Musset had proved the matter. There-
fore, spontaneous generation must be true. Pasteur offered
experimental proof if Messieurs Fremy and Trecul cared
to avail themselves of it. Like Liebig, like Pouchet, Joly,
Musset, they did not care to avail themselves of it. Balard

250 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

and Dumas implored Pasteur to continue his researches, dis-
regarding the attacks made upon them. Pasteur felt as
strongly as Huxley that he had been given truth, and that
he must at all costs proclaim it. On his way to the Diet of
Worms, Martin Luther, according to tradition, retorted to
those who would have prevented his going there : " Here I
stand, I can do no other. God help me. Amen." Here
Pasteur stood, and he too could do no other. " What
you lack, M. Fremy, is familiarity with the microscope,
and you, M. Trecul, are not accustomed to laboratories/'
Trecul persisted that he had witnessed the transforma-
tion of cells or spores from one into the other. Yes,
cordially agreed Pasteur, there was one transformation,
that of Mycoderma vini into an alcoholic ferment, but there
was certainly no other. The controversy dragged on. How
could it help dragging on when Messieurs Fremy and Trecul
were thrifty of experiment and extravagant with speech?
Their opponent was extravagant with experiment and thrifty
of speech. They were like two Euclidian parallel
straight lines: they could never, in spite of Einstein,
meet.

The experiments all through the fierce dispute went on.
Pasteur observed the aerobiae, requiring air to live, the
anaerobice, perishing when exposed to air, and a class of
organisms capable of living for a time outside the influence
of air. Surely fermentation was simply life without air.
The old researches joined on to the new, reinforcing the old
conclusions by fresh examples which served to deepen their
truth. Liebig and his school insisted that fermentation was
a phenomenon of death. Pasteur equally insisted that it was
a phenomenon of life without air.

If germs are in the air, it would seem as if ideas were
also in the air. Men by their intuition divine what they do
not experimentally know. The theory of atomism and the
theory of evolution were divined in classical times before
there was a shred of real proof offered in support of either.
Similarly, the theory of germs has a long history, though
nothing like so lengthy a pedigree as either the theory of
atomism or the theory of evolution. Robert Boyle (1627
1691), the seventh son and the fourteenth child of the
" great " Earl of Cork, had announced that he who could

PASTEUR AND MICROBES 251

probe to the bottom the nature of ferments and fermentation
would probably be more capable than anyone of explaining
certain morbid phenomena. Nor was this the only flash of
Boyle's genius. Did he not demolish the peripatetic doctrine
of the four elements, the Stagiristic doctrine of the tria
primal Did he not tentatively substitute the principles of a
" mechanical philosophy" for that of mere hypothesis?
Did he not suggest fresh ways of looking at the old atomic
views? Did he not suggest the transmutability of differing
forms of matter by the rearrangement of their particles?
Views on the nature of fermentation and its bearing on
disease he possessed. It remained for a man of the genius
of Pasteur to win verification, by patient investigation, for
what Boyle had divined. If Boyle was the Moses who led
men to Mount Pisgah, Pasteur was the Joshua who led them
to the Promised Land.

Medical men seem to resent with peculiar emphasis
the intrusion of the criticisms of anyone who does
not belong to their ranks. Darwin thought with grave
reason that intelligent men, who were not naturalists,
would grasp his ideas on natural history. Zoologists, botan-
ists, and geologists, in a diminishing scale, would certainly
offer stout opposition. His forecast was amply warranted
by the hostile reception given by the naturalists in general and
by the zoologists in particular to his Origin of Species. The
microbe of conservatism in opinion had infected them.
Medical men also possess this microbe in no scanty measure.
So Jenner had found, so Simpson had found, so Lister had
found, and so Pasteur was about to find. What is the cause
of this attitude of conservatism to ideas? Is it because the
surgeon and the physician feel themselves to be ruling
powers? Is it because they are accustomed to offer daily
advice to their patients? Is this the cause why they so
frequently adopt the authoritative tone of " I ain't a-arguing
with you. I'm a-telling you "?

There are of course many exceptions to the microbe of
conservatism infecting medical men. Dr. Villemin, the
physician of Vale de Grace, formed such an exception.
Working patiently from 1860 to 1865, he came to the con-
clusion that tuberculosis was a specific and contagious disease.
Dr. Pidoux, a typical representative of traditional medicine,

252 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

with his gold-buttoned blue coat and his reputation equally
outstanding in Paris and at the Eaux-Bonnes, declared that
the idea of specificity was a fatal thought. As Matthew
Arnold said of religion, that it is morality touched with
emotion, so practice in medicine is science touched with
emotion. The pity is that the emotion not seldom assumes
the form of prejudice. " Le medecin artiste ne cree rien,"
said Claude Bernard, Pasteur's close friend; but surely he
is wrong. For the doctor of the type of Pidoux creates the
atmosphere of a stately practice, unassailable, fortified in
authority. The surgeon of his class, when he possesses skill,
comes to have a name that is a household word, his face
known everywhere, his presence felt, his anger dreaded, his
verdict final. Such a surgeon is sometimes the honour of his
profession, sometimes the dishonour. His is the honour
if with his experiences he preserves something of an open
mind. His is the dishonour if with his experiences he holds
a mind hermetically sealed with seven seals against the
admission of all new ideas.

Pidoux was naturally a staunch supporter of the doctrine
of diathesis and of the morbid spontaneity of the organism.
To him " disease is in us, of us, by us." He was not
even sure that smallpox could only proceed from inocula-
tion and contagion. Did Villemin, in the true spirit of
Pasteur, declare there were germs of tuberculosis?
Then it was for Pidoux to declare that " then all we doctors
have to do is to set our nets to catch the sporules of tuber-
culosis, and find a vaccine. " If truth is sometimes spoken in
jest, it is also sometimes spoken in sarcasm, and Pidoux
spoke it in sarcasm. Spontaneous generation, we can imagine
his saying, is right, always has been right, and always will
be right. As for these new-fangled notions about germs, no
doctor with any reputation to lose would dream of believing
in them ! Following in the steps of Villemin, Davaine, who
had perused Pasteur's books on fermentation, had the
audacity to put forth the idea that the filaments found in
anthrax were bacteria.

As Pasteur had been attacked, as Villemin had been
attacked, so Davaine was now attacked. Dr. Chassaignac, a
prominent surgeon, spoke before the Academy of Medicine
of what he called " laboratory surgery, which has destroyed

PASTEUR AND MICROBES 253

very many animals and saved very few human beings/' *
He elaborated his ideas by pointing out that " laboratory
results should be brought out in a circumspect, modest, and
reserved manner, as long as they have not been sanctioned
by long clinical researches, a sanction without which there is
no real and practical medical science." * That is, the
surgeon of his class should hear from the scientist what he
had discovered, should impart his discovery to him, and then
he himself should employ it in his operating theatre, and of
course claim all the credit of the work of another. Besides,
"everything," he held, " cannot be resolved into a question
of bacteria!" All unconscious of the truth, he growled,
" Typhoid fever, bacterisation ! Hospital miasma, bacterisa-
tion ! ! " Dr. Piorry, with all his accustomed solemnity of
tone, found not germs, but pus! Trecul still thought that
the vera causa was his hypothesis of transformations.

The appreciation denied Pasteur at home was to be his in
abundant measure abroad. If his ideas did not for the
time bear fruit in the hospitals of Paris, they did in the
hospitals of Edinburgh, as the following letter, dated from
Edinburgh, February 13, 1874, testifies:

MY DEAR SIR, Allow me to beg your acceptance of a
pamphlet, which I send by the same post, containing an
account of some investigations into the subject which you
have done so much to elucidate, the germ theory of fermenta-
tive changes. I flatter myself that you may read with some
interest what I have written on the organism which you were
the first to describe in your Memoire sur la Fermentation
Appelee Lactique.

I do not know whether the records of British " surgery "
ever meet your eye. If so, you will have seen from time to
time notices of the antiseptic system of treatment, which I
have been labouring for the last nine years to bring to
perfection.

Allow me to take this opportunity to tender you my most
cordial thanks for having, by your brilliant researches,
demonstrated to me the truth of the germ theory of putre-
faction, and thus furnished me with the principle upon which

* R. Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, p. 228.

254 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

alone the antiseptic system can be carried out. Should you
at any time visit Edinburgh, it would, I believe, give you
sincere gratification to see at our hospital how largely man-
kind is being benefited by your labours.

I need hardly say that it would afford me the highest
gratification to show you how greatly surgery is indebted
to you.

Forgive the freedom with which a common love of science
inspires me, and

Believe me, with profound respect,
Yours very sincerely,

JOSEPH LISTER.

CHAPTER VIII

LISTER AND ANTISEPTICS

JOSEPH LISTER (1827 1912) came of that Quaker stock
which has left such an indelible impress on the character of
England. Originally of Yorkshire descent, John Lister came
to London, becoming a freeman of the Bakers' Company.
His son Joseph Jackson entered the wine business, and
attained distinct business success. Marrying Isabella Harris,
his fourth child and second son was born on April 5, 1827,
in Upton House, a capacious old Queen Anne house with
fields and gardens, at Upton in Essex. The atmosphere the
child breathed was scientific from the very first. Between
1824 and 1843, * n the intervals of business, his father
found time to make mathematical calculations and to investi-
gate the true shape of the red 'corpuscles of the blood. His
work gained for him the Fellowship of the Royal Society
in 1832, thus bringing him into contact with Airy and
Herschel, Dr. Hodgkin and Sir Richard Owen. Unlike
Darwin, his son learnt science at school, and at the age of
fifteen he had already a sound all-round education, well
grounded in mathematics and modern languages, natural
science in general and comparative anatomy in particular.
His bent towards surgery was unmistakable from the time
he was a child, and this bent gradually became more
confirmed.

He left school in the spring of 1844, an d entered University
College, London, to read for the B.A. degree. In the winter
session of 1848 he began his preliminary medical studies
under such men as Lindley, Professor of Botany; Graham,
Professor of Chemistry; Grant, Professor of Comparative
Anatomy; Ellis, Professor of Anatomy; Carpenter, Pro-
fessor of Medical Jurisprudence ; Wharton Jones, Professor
of Surgery; and Sharpey, Professor of Physiology. All

255

256 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

were competent men, and Jones and Sharpey were much more
than competent.

Two of the finest biographies we have the pleasure of
knowing are Mr. Stephen Paget's Memoirs and Letters of Sir
James Paget and Sir Rickman Godlee's Lord Lister. *
Among the many matters common to these two entrancing
volumes there is the enthusiasm with which both speak of the
teachers at their respective medical schools. It is a joy to
note that when Paget and Lister looked back to their early
days, both of them could testify to the abilities, the characters,
and the workmanship of the men who lectured them. As they
were at different medical schools, they do not naturally
mention the same lecturers. This we regret, for as they both
belonged to about the same period in surgery it would have
been invaluable to compare the estimates they respectively
formed. The rank Lawrence and Latham, Burrows and
Stanley, occupied in Paget's eyes was filled in Lister's by
Graham and Lindley, Wharton Jones and Sharpey. At
University College, as at St. Bartholomew's, there was what
Paget called " constant dissension and mischievous rivalry
among the teachers." f

The extent and the precision of the knowledge of Wharton
Jones combined with his investigations on the circulation
of the blood and the phenomena of inflammation rendered
him, in the opinion of Jenner, one of the greatest Englishmen
who ever lived. Even making allowance for the enthusiasm
of a fellow-student, this is extremely liberal praise, and
Lister was fortunate in having such a man as a teacher, and
in this capacity Huxley spoke warmly of the method and
quality of his physiological teaching. J William Sharpey
(1802 1880) was a few years older than Wharton Jones,
and has been called the father of modern physiology, because
he was the first to give a special course of lectures on this
subject, which had formerly been treated as an appanage
of anatomy. He had studied at Edinburgh and at Paris,
where he worked at clinical surgery under Dupuytren and

* Once for all we acknowledge our vast indebtedness to Sir Rickman
Godlee's book. We are glad to notice it has just gone into another new
edition. Ours is the 1917 one.

t S. Paget, Memoirs and Letters of Sir /. Paget, p. 40.

j L. Huxley, Life and Letters of T. H. Huxley, I, pp. 20, 21, 26, 99.
It is a pity there is no account of Jones in the D.N.B.

LISTER AND ANTISEPTICS 257

operative surgery under Lis franc. At Berlin he dissected for
nine months under Rudolphi, proceeding to Heidelberg to be
under Tiedemann, and afterwards to Vienna. Commencing
his medical studies in 1818, he did not settle in Edinburgh
till 1829, a course almost unprecedented for thoroughness in
those days. Appointed in 1836 to the chair of anatomy
and physiology at University College, London, he taught
there for thirty-eight years, exercising his undoubted power
as a great teacher who was able to bind his pupils to himself
both by ties of personal affection as well as by their common
scientific interests. Among them were Michael Foster of
Cambridge, and Burdon Sanderson of Oxford, and Lister.

The staff of University College Hospital included such
well-known men as Sir John Erichsen and Sir William Jenner,
who were careful observers. Thanks to J. Y. Simpson,
the use of anaesthetics had robbed the operating theatre of
much of its horrors. Yet the old days had left their mark,
for operations were still performed with that breathless
haste that characterised the pre- Jenner clays. The need for
the haste had disappeared, but the tradition of it remained,
and the celerity of the operation was regarded as the out-
ward and visible sign of a first-class surgeon. Pain no longer
was the evil to be dreaded. Sometimes it almost seems as if
in getting rid of one evil we have merely provided the
opportunity for another to appear. If pain had largely gone,
there were such subjects of dread as erysipelas and gangrene,
pyaemia and septicaemia, and purulent infection. In the
opinion of the surgeon Velpeau, so grave were these calam-
ities that he said, " A pin-prick is a door open to Death."
The terror expressed by ovariotomy was such that a physician
declared that it ought to be " classed among the attributes
of the executioner." Views like these impressed the young
medical student with the risks undergone by the patient. If
coming events sometimes cast their shadow before them, we
can understand Lister reading a paper before the hospital
Medical Society on hospital gangrene. In 1852 he won the
M.B. of the University of London and the Fellowship of the
Royal College of Surgeons, concluding his nine years at
University College, and he also won that taste for original
research which he owed principally to Wharton Jones and
William Sharpey.

258 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

As Paget and Huxley when young students made their
discoveries, so Lister made his. Kolliker of Wiirzburg, the
leading histologist, had been the first to show that the
contractile curtain in front of the lens of the eye was made
of involuntary muscular tissue, and this tissue in turn was
made of cells. Lister confirmed and extended Kolliker's
observations, and for the first time demonstrated the exist-
ence of two distinct muscles in the iris, the dilator and
sphincter, for enlarging and diminishing the size of the
pupil.* Sir Richard Owen, an old friend of Lister's father,
was pleased with this and another paper confirming observa-
tions of Kolliker on the involuntary muscular fibres of the
skin.f Naturally that fine man, Kolliker, felt pleasure in
deriving support from the young surgeon.

The circumstances of Quaker families are usually easy,
and accordingly we find that Lister travelled at home and
abroad. He felt interested in geology and architecture, in
manners and customs, and he improved his knowledge of
French, German, and even Dutch. As Sharpey had pursued
his studies at different medical schools for eleven years,
he recommended Lister to go to the famous one of Edin-
burgh, there to complete his studies by attending the practice
of Syme. There was the James Syme (1799 1870)
James Simpson knew, and there was the far different James
Syme that Joseph Lister came to know with intimacy. Dr.
John Brown, the author of Rob and his Friends, described
Syme as " verax, capax, perspicax, sagax, efficax, tenax," and
Lister plainly came to entertain an equally high opinion of
him. Indeed, Lister thought that to enumerate all the con-
tributions made by Syme during his career to the science and
art of surgery was out of the question. In September 1853
Lister presented Sharpey's introduction to Syme, who at once
received him most warmly.

The attraction between Syme and Lister was as great as
the repulsion between Syme and Simpson. Lister had
intended staying a month in Edinburgh, and he actually
remained seven years. Syme made him house surgeon at the

* Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, 1853, I, p. 8; Lister,
Collected Papers, I, p. I.

t Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, 1853, I, P- 262; Lister,
Collected Papers, I, p. g.

LISTER AND ANTISEPTICS 259

hospital, and the two grew to be friends whose union was
cemented when Lister married Agnes Syme on April 24,
1856, the daughter of the surgeon. As Pasteur had a real
helpmate in his wife, Lister was fortunate enough to find one
in his. Mrs. Lister sometimes wrote for her husband from
dictation for seven or eight hours a day and " was most
helpful in suggestion as to words and arrangement of
sentences/' By this marriage according to the strict customs
of those days Lister was obliged to sever his connection with
the Quakers, and he joined the Anglican communion. Here
perhaps we ought to mention that in 1909 he wrote : " I have
no hesitation in saying that, in my opinion, there is no an-
tagonism between the religion of Jesus Christ and any fact
scientifically." * There are many parallelisms between Paget
and Lister, and their religious faith forms one of them.
Jenner, Simpson, Lyell, Helmholtz, Joule, and Pasteur were
all men who cared deeply for their common Christian religion.
There is just one exception, and it is the outstanding name of
Darwin.

, There were dissensions within and rivalries without in the
case of the medical schools of London. " Students of the
medical history of the first half of the nineteenth century,"
remarked Sir Rickman Godlee, " cannot fail to be struck
by the acrimony with which discussions were carried on,
the amount of jealousy they excited, and the personal element
which was constantly introduced. There is scarcely an
author who does not speak of the odium medicum. It was
a relic of the still more quarrelsome times of Mead, Jenner,
and the Hunters, and indeed had been handed down from the
long past." f None of this spirit animated Lister, who,
strangely enough, thought that he should have less difficulty
in avoiding it in Edinburgh than in London. Clearly he
knew nothing of the fierce strife between Syme and Simpson,
which was by no means unique, and he certainly had never
heard of the even fiercer contests between the Wernerians
and the Huttonians, waged most bitterly of all places in the
University of Edinburgh herself. Is there a fieriness in the
Celt that is lacking in the stolidity of the English? Be that
as it may, neither Oxford, nor Cambridge, nor London can

* Sir R. Godlee, Lord Lister, p. 613,
t Ibid., p. 31.

260 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

equal the scientific acerbity marking the annals of Edinburgh
University during the first five decades of the nineteenth
century. It is, therefore, with astonishment we read a letter
of Lister to his father in which he writes : " I shall not have,
as in London, to fight with jealous rivals, and contend or
join ingloriously with quacks, but I shall be able, if all be
well, to acquire a solid reputation in a legitimate manner, and
then, if it seem desirable, move to London, and stand on my
own ground there. I am by disposition very averse to
quarrelling and contending with others, in fact, I doubt if
I could do it, though I have never tried much, but at the same
time I do love honesty and independence, which without con-
tention would be almost impossible in London." *

Liston, Sir William Fergusson, and Sir Charles Bell had
all done signally well in London, and Syme himself in 1848
had been Professor of Surgery at University College.
Edinburgh was not an abode of quiet, yet the atmosphere of
the place proved uncongenial to him. " I found/' he said,
" such a spirit of dispeace in the College as to forbid any
reasonable prospect of comfort," and therefore he returned to
a metropolis where he better grasped the conditions of
hostility. Whatever foes Syme encountered abroad, he met
none in his own home. Lister was his house surgeon, and the
intimacy between the two grew with extreme rapidity. John
Hunter was Lister's greatest hero, as he had been the hero
of Edward Jenner before him. Nor did he ever fail
in his allegiance to the man who revolutionised surgery by
putting it on a scientific basis more than any other man
before the introduction of anaesthetics and antiseptics. A
proof of Sharp's engraving of the portrait of Hunter by
Reynolds, which had belonged to Syme, hung in Lister's
study. He set such store by it, that, when Sir Rickman
Godlee asked to borrow it about a fortnight before he died,
he said, in giving permission, " As I value it very highly,
I should be glad to have it returned to its place at Park
Crescent as soon as you have finished with it." f

Lister seldom spoke while he was operating, feeling as he
said, that " to introduce an unskilled hand into such a piece
of mechanism as the human body is a fearful responsibility."

* Sir R. Godlee, Life of Lister, p. 31.
t Ibid., p. 597.

LISTER AND ANTISEPTICS 261

To some surgeons this body is a collection of sewers, but to
Lister it was nothing short of the temple of the Holy Ghost.
The point of view of the patient towards him is expressed by
W. E. Henley in his sonnet " The Chief/* written when he
was under him in Edinburgh Infirmary:

His brow spreads large and placid, and his eye

Is deep and bright, with steady looks that still

Soft lines of tranquil thought his face fulfil

His face at once benign and proud and shy.

If envy scout, if ignorance deny,

His faultless patience, his unyielding skill,

Innumerable gratitudes reply.

His wise, rare smile is sweet with certainties,

And seems in all his patients to compel

Such love and faith as failure cannot quell.

We hold him for another Herakles,

Battling with custom, prejudice, disease,

At once the son of Zeus with Death and Hell.

The friends of Syme were the friends of Lister and the
enemies of Syme were the enemies of Lister. Syme had views
of his own on the treatment no less than the pathology of
club-foot and allied diseases. William Adams, a London
surgeon, attacked them, and Lister defeated the attacks with
a heat that was as lively as Syme's. Indeed he became so
closely identified with him that there was some excuse for his
father playfully suggesting, " nullius jurare in verba
magistri." By June 1854 we see how he spent his day.
He rose at 7; visited one of the hospitals from 8 to 10;
breakfasted; made notes of what he had seen till 12 ; operated
from 12 to 2.30 or 3; and devoted the rest of the day to
correspondence, exercise, and reflection. On September 16,
1855, he is beginning to be immersed in his investigation of
the early stages of inflammation.* As Pouchet and his school
had spoken of spontaneous generation, so Lister in those
days spoke of spontaneous inflammation. Of course Pasteur
had not then conducted his researches into the nature of
bacteria. Germs are so much in the atmosphere we breathe
physically and mentally that it always comes upon us with
a shock of surprise when we realise that in 1855 such know-
ledge was utterly unavailable.

Preoccupied as Lister was with the subject of inflamma-

* Phil. Transactions, 1858, CXLVIII, p. 645 ; Lister, Collected Papers,
I, p. 209.

262 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

tion, he was also occupied with such subjects as the parts
of the nervous system which regulate the contractions of the
arteries * and the cutaneous pigmentary system of the frog.f
On November 7, 1855, he delivered the first of a course of
lectures on the principles and the practice of surgery. At first,
like .most lecturers, he read his remarks or had full notes.
In time he trusted less and less to notes, and at last dispensed
with them. His early pupils, just as much as his later ones,
felt impressed by the personality of their teacher. John
Stewart, writing in 1910, describes this magnetic influence:
" The difficulty will be for any man to find language to
express what our master was to us. We knew we were in
contact with Genius. We felt we were helping in the making
of history and that all things were becoming new." J The
admiration for the genius was mingled with love for the
man. " Many of the students of my day," owns Dr. Mai-
loch, " reading of the honours conferred upon their old
teacher (late though they were in coming) , have seen the page
blurred before them and, while returning thanks for the great
privilege that had been theirs, must have regretted that they
had not made a better use of it." " In the Hospital
wards," confesses Mr. Roxburgh, the last of his Edinburgh
house surgeons, " it was not only the healing art which was
taught. They were a school of gentleness and human
sympathy, and we can well remember the darkening of his
countenance as, with stern severity, he rebuked an unthinking
student for lifting a broken leg somewhat roughly. In his
clinical lectures, which were models of pure English, such
expressions as ' this poor man/ or * this poor woman/ were
much oftener heard than ' this case/ " ||

As all medical studies ramify, he soon found that the
analysis of the problems of inflammation led him on to
consider coagulation of blood which is closely related to it.
The observations of even John Hunter did not altogether
satisfy him. Lister's first article^! on coagulation of the

* Phil. Transactions, 1858, CXLVIII, p. 607; Lister, Collected Papers,
I, p. 27.

f Phil. Transactions, 1858, CXLVIII, p. 627; Lister, Collected Papers,
I, p. 48.

J Sir R. Godlee, Lord Lister, p. 604.

Ibid., p. 604.

!! Ibid., p. 605.

If Edin. Med. Jour., 1858, III, p. 893 ; Lister, Collected Papers, I, p. 69.

LISTER AND ANTISEPTICS 263

blood was written in 1858, and his fifth and last * in 1891,
a proof that once he took a matter in hand, though now and
then the pressure of work forced him to lay it down, it still
remained at the back of his mind to be resumed when suit-
able opportunity presented itself. Nor was it in any wise a
side issue. His labours on the blood proved indispensable to
his study of inflammation, and the study of the causes and
the prevention of inflammation in v/ounds formed his
outstanding achievement. His paper on spontaneous gan-
grene contained a lucid account of the facts combined with an
equally lucid survey of the principles to which the facts led
the investigator. It was read before the Medico-Chirurgical
Society of Edinburgh on March 18, 1858, "comfortably
read/' according to Mrs. Lister, " though unfortunately there
was no one at the meeting who seemed capable of apprecia-
ting it, and the remarks made upon it were very poor. The
President (Professor Millar) was not present, and in his
absence the Vice-President, Mr. Benjamin Bell, was in the
chair (there is no harm in giving names even though you
don't know the people). He (Mr. Bell) said something about
the ' ingenuity ' of the paper and the valuable suggestions
which Mr. Lister had thrown out. ' Suggestions ! ' when the
paper contained perfectly clear demonstration of facts having
the most important bearings. . . . When we went to dinner
the paper was in a most incomplete state, and it required con-
siderable exercise of faith to believe that an hour's more work
could bring it nearly to a close. However, about 7 we resumed
our labours, and how we did work, Joseph's dictating was
really wonderful, keeping me writing as fast as I possibly
could, and the sentences flowing out so smoothly, hardly a
word having to be altered." | This is only a sample of the
efficient assistance she tendered to her husband when he was
pressed with work. His practice in Edinburgh did not attain
large proportions, and his wife once referred to " poor
Joseph and his one patient."

On January 28, 1860, the Crown appointed Lister Regius
Professor of Surgery at Glasgow University. He had
testimonials from Syme, his father-in-law, Dr. Gourlay, a
student attending his lectures, and Dr. Joseph Bell, the

* Brit. Med. Jour., 1891, I, p. 1057; Lister, Collected Papers, I, p. 189.
t Sir R. Godlce, Lord Lister, p. 72.

264 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

original of " Sherlock Holmes." Bell writes : " To the
excellency of what you taught us your published papers and
the approval of the scientific world bear witness; but to the
manner in which it was taught none can testify so well as
your students. Your Lectures were no mere prelections the
teacher's thoughtfulness compelled the student to think, and
his enthusiasm urged his hearers to a like love of science.
Neither were they mere scientific curiosities, but at every
point the dry details were clothed with life and interest by the
manner in which you pointed out the bearing of structural
changes as affecting Surgical practice." * The big oppor-
tunity had at last come when he was only thirty-two, and
he was fitted to seize it.

In Edinburgh Lister had been dwarfed by the personality
of his father-in-law, and the numbers at his lectures used to
be seven, and we even hear of his beginning one session with
one student, who arrived on the opening day ten minutes late !
It is accordingly easy to understand the anxiety of the young
wife when her husband gave his inaugural lecture. While
waiting at home she wrote to her mother-in-law, describing
the theatre and " how nice it looks. All so clean and bright
the green baize on the three doors and the diagram-frame
setting off the oak colouring, and the bright brass handles
on the doors setting them off ; and a very handsome slate on
a frame on one side, and the skeleton nicely mounted on the
other . . . now it is just about 12. Oh! I trust he may
be blessed, and believe he will be. His gown will be going on
for the first time except when I saw it tried on here. About
5 minutes past ! he will be beginning ! and how is he getting
on?"f She need not have been anxious, for he got on
remarkably well with his audience of close on two hundred
students. It was a lecture delivered in the spirit of Paget
can one say more? One cannot say less. There was the
quotation from Ambroise Pare, " I dressed him, God cured
him," and there was the closing reference to the two
requisites for the medical profession, first, a warm loving
heart, and secondly, truth in an earnest spirit.

No doubt Agnes Lister wrote to her father. At any rate
he wrote to his son-in-law one of his characteristic letters:

* Sir R. Godlee, Lord Lister, p. 82.
t Ibid., p. 91.

LISTER AND ANTISEPTICS 265

" MY DEAR J.,

I am glad to hear from Ramsay that all went well.
It being now established that you -can please a large class as
well as a small one or I should rather say still better the
game may be considered in your own hands. Wishing you
all comfort in playing it out.

Yours affectionately,

JAS. SYME.
Let me hear your numbers." *

As an examiner he proved as conscientious as he was as a
lecturer. In March 1862 he asked the question, Explain
the principles on which simple incised wounds ought to be
treated? It is significant of the man that he analysed the
answer he expected under nine heads with a total value of
15. It is no less significant of his mental growth then that
he only allotted 1/30 of the marks to the subject of decom-
position. In August 1 86 1 he wrote an article on amputation
that appeared in Holmes's System of Surgery. There is
much in it about inflammation and coagulation of the blood.
He observes that we can never be secure against the forma-
tion of some pus, and provides instruction as to what should
be done in the case of the onset of erysipelas or hospital
gangrene. For either was inevitably expected after an
amputation in the sixties. In 1863-4 he devised a method of
bloodless operating, and " it is remarkable," notes Sir Rick-
man Godlee, " that this very important advance in surgery
made little impression till many years later." f

It is an astonishing fact that during the first half of the
nineteenth century surgery had retrograded. J Earlier
centuries had practised such amateur antiseptics as cauterisa-
tions by fir, boiling liquids, and disinfecting substances.

No doubt all such methods are very imperfect, but they
were better than nothing. " Pus seemed to germinate every-
where," saicl a student of that time, " as if it had been sown
by the surgeon." M. Denonvilliers, a splendid surgeon of

* Sir R. Godlee, Lord Lister, p. 91.

t Ibid., p. 99.

J H. L. F. von Helmholtz, Vortriige und Reden f I, p. 361. Cf. his
discourse < Ueber das Denken in der Medicin," reprinted in his Vortrdge
und Reden, II, p. 178.

R. Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, p. 235.

266 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

the Charite Hospital, a first-class operator, used to say to his
pupils : " When an amputation seems necessary, think ten
times about it, for too often, when we decide upon an opera-
tion, we sign the patient's death warrant " * Another sur-
geon declared : " There was no longer any precise indications,
any rational provisions; nothing was successful, neither ab-
stention, conservation, restricted or radical mutilation, early
or postponed extraction of the bullets, dressings rare or fre-
quent, emollient or excitant, dry or moist, with or without
drainage; we tried everything in vain!"| Surgeons had
come to think that purulent infection was the inevitable
consequence of any important operation. Nor was the tale
in Scotland a whit different from that in France. As certain
as the course of the planets came with the operation
erysipelas, gangrene, pyaemia, purulent infection, and septicae-
mia, with all their ghastly accompaniments. As early as 1872
Lister guessed that tetanus had a microbic origin, but in 1863
Pasteur had already arrived at a similar stage.

Sir James Simpson collected statistics of more than 2,000
amputations performed in hospitals' and more than 2,000 in
country practice. His analysis seemed to prove that the
mortality was larger in hospitals than in private houses, and
that it increased exactly in proportion to the size of the
hospitals.t He asserted that " the man laid on the operating-
table in one of our surgical hospitals is exposed to more
chances of death than the English soldier on the field of
Waterloo." His remedy lay in the replacement of the
hospital by small iron huts to accommodate one or two
patients each, and these were to be pulled down and re-erected
periodically. The substitution of the hospital by the hut was
a heroic remedy, but that it should be suggested at all proved
the gravity of the issue. " The question of hospitalism,"
writes Sir Rickman Godlee, " however, was one of special
interest for obstetric physicians (like Simpson) owing to
the fearful mortality from puerperal fever in most of the
large lying-in hospitals. The controversy with regard to the
nature and cause of this disease had been carried on with
unnecessary bitterness for twenty years and more ; it was still
raging, and was continued for many years to come. The

* R. Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, p. 235. f Ibid., p. 236.
J Sir J. Y. Simpson, Works, II, pp. 289-392.

LISTER AND ANTISEPTICS 267

storm centre was the doctrine of one of those unfortunate
geniuses who happen to light upon a truth prematurely, but
are not gifted by nature with the ability to proclaim it con-
vincingly to the world. Many of those pioneers, whom
succeeding generations glorified as heroes, have sunk under
the burden of perverse misrepresentation and neglect." *

Some teachers have been so bound up with their own
generation that they have been strangers in the outer world
like plants which flourish in one zone and die in the next.
Their message may have been effectual, but it was provincial ;
their accent may have been forceful, but it was a dialect.
Other teachers have had such a breadth of thought, such a
grasp of principles, that their work could not be confined
to a small corner of the earth. Such was Ignaz Phillip
Semmelweis. Between the man and his time there must be
a certain correspondence. Nothing is more pathetic than
the experience of one who has arrived too soon, delivering a
message which will be understood to-morrow, but which
to-day is a dream ; attempting a work which to-morrow the
world will welcome, which to-day it considers madness.
Such was the fate of Semmelweis. Nothing is more ironical
than the effort of one who has arrived too late, for whom
there was an audience yesterday, for whose cause there
was an opportunity ; but now the audience has dispersed, and
the field is taken ; he has missed his tide, and for him another
will not come.

The tragedy of Semmelweis's life is that he arrived too
soon, not too late. Born in Buda-Pesth in 1818, in 1846
he was assistant in the huge lying-in hospital in Vienna, to
which about 7,000 women were admitted annually. It con-
sisted of two divisions. In the first the male students were
admitted, and in the second the midwives were admitted. In
the latter the mortality was constantly much less than in the
former. For the six years from 1841 to 1846 the average
was 3.38 compared with 9.92. The monthly average
reached the appalling total of 25 to 30 per cent. Naturally
expecting mothers shrank from the first division. Semmel-
weis felt'puzzled by the different rates of mortality. " All this
reduced me/' he owned, " to such an unhappy frame of mind
as to make my life unenviable. Everywhere questions
* Sir R. Godlee, Lord Lister, p. 137.

268 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

arose; everything remained without explanation; all was
doubt and difficulty. Only the great number of the dead was
an undoubted reality." *

When pondering over the ver& causes, a colleague died
of septicaemia following a poisoned wound received while
making a post-mortem examination, and Semmelweis per-
ceived that the disease was identical with puerperal fever and
due to the same cause, infection from without. " In my
excited state of mind/ 5 he owns, " it flashed across me with
irresistible clearness that the disease of which Kolletschka
had died was identical with that from which I had seen so
many hundreds of lying-in women perish."

Questions suggested themselves to the mind of Semmel-
weis. What forms of antisepsis should be used? Was the
eighteenth century, in this respect at least, wiser than the
nineteenth? Was chlorine water the best antiseptic? Was
infective matter from a dead body the chief cause of disease
as he met it? Was puerperal fever caused by decomposed
animal organic matter regardless of origin, whether from the
dead body or from a living person affected with a disease
which produced a decomposed animal organic matter? He
provided answers to these questions that ought to have
satisfied the practitioners of his day. They remained un-
satisfied. He was not an author. He was a scientist who
had made a valuable discovery, but he was not able to clothe
it with the words that won assent for it. His instructions
were carried out by men with no hearty belief in them, and
Lister was never more right than in Semmelweis's case when
he laid down that two great requisites for the medical
profession were a warm loving heart and the pursuit of
truth in an earnest spirit. Semmelweis trusted the diffusion
of his views to his pupils and his friends. Among the latter
were three men of outstanding rank in Vienna, Hebra, Skoda,
and Rokitanski. They adopted Semmelweis's ideas, but they
did so from the special angle of cadaveric infection. His ideas
became lop-sided, and lent themselves therefore to mis-
apprehension. Ridicule and persecution befell Jenner and
Simpson, and it befell Semmelweis. Deprived of his
appointment, he left Vienna in 1850, and set out for Buda-

* "Die Aetiologie, der Begriff, und die Prophylaxis des Kindbett-
fiebers," Pest. Wien, u. Leipzig; C. A. Hartleben's Verlags-Expedition,
1861, p. 51.

LISTER AND ANTISEPTICS 269

Pesth, his native city. His work for the future was to lie on
a smaller scale. His work had to be done, and he did it with
that whole-hearted devotion that characterised him even in
adversity. On his honeymoon in 1856 Lister visited
Rokitanski. By then Semmelweis had left Vienna, and
Rokitanski never mentioned him to Lister. It was one of
those lost opportunities that do not return, for possibly if the
two had met Lister's work in 1865 would have been antici-
pated by nine years. On what small events do great oppor-
tunities turn !

In 1 86 1 Semmelweis* published his magnum opus, " Die
Aetiologie, der Begriff, und die Prophylaxis des Kind-
bettfiebers," and the outcome of publication was the even
fiercer attacks that its poor author had already encountered.
Incensed by them, he met them by pungent " open letters "
which simply deepened the antipathy to his views. For four
years he continued, almost unsupported, to face mis-
apprehensions of his labours, and the outcome was that his
mind became unhinged. The body of Semmelweis was put
under restraint. By a strange coincidence he passed away
in August 1865, from the effects of blood-poisoning follow-
ing a wound in his finger inflicted in the course of his duty.
He was a martyr to his professional duty, in the ordinary
sense of the term, and he was a martyr in a higher sense
of the term. For he really died from the assaults of pro-
fessional men who were neither afraid nor ashamed to be
the means of the death of one of the heroic spirits of the
nineteenth century. Virchow, even Virchow, had sneered
at him as " Der Kerl der speculiert"

Prophets in science in their own day are for the most part
unheard. After the lapse of a generation and a half the
scientific world awoke to the greatness of the man who had
been called " Pesther Narr." Then instead of hurtling
stones at him, they placed one over his body. The thou-
sandth part of the compliment paid to him in 1891 would
have cheered the lonely fresh investigator to fresh efforts on
behalf of mankind had he heard them during his lifetime.
The pity of it is that he never heard them. The last words of
his " Die Aetiologie " are words still able to move us after

* On Semmelweis cf. Sir W. Sinclair's moving account in his Sem-
melwefc, his Life and Doctrine.

270 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

the lapse of the sixty-four years since they were penned:
" When I, with my present -convictions, look back on the past,
I can only dispel the sadness which falls upon me by gazing
at the same time into that happy future when within the
lying-in hospitals, and also outside of them, throughout the
whole world, only cases of self-infection will occur. . . . But
if it is not vouchsafed me to look upon that happy time with
my own eyes, from which misfortune may God preserve
me, the conviction that such a time must inevitably arrive
sooner or later after I have passed away will cheer my
dying hour."

One is irresistibly reminded of the dying words of Fulton,
who was the first to apply the steam-engine to ships. In
vain he besought Napoleon to give his invention a chance.
Well was it for us that Napoleon was so blind, for Lord
Acton thinks that the moment Fulton brought his invention
to the greatest genius in war this earth has ever seen was
the most dangerous moment of all the long struggle that raged
from 1793 to 1815. Fulton asked to be buried near the
waters of the Mississippi, for " I long to hear the plash of the
wheels near my grave, though I shall never see them/'

Oblivion fell upon Semmelweis as it fell upon Fulton for
many a long day, and neither Pasteur nor Lister owed any-
thing to him. Semmelweis undoubtedly anticipated Lister in
proving that one form of blood-poisoning did not depend
on unascertainable causes but on such ascertainable causes
as abrasions and external wounds ; and in proving that neither
the size of the hospitals, nor their age, nor their crowded
wards was due to the demerits of what Simpson termed
hospitalism.

The recognition of sepsis is no new thing on the part of
Semmelweis. The wine in the parable of the Good Samari-
tan owed its powers of healing to the antiseptic power of
alcohol. Benzoin, Friar's Balsam, alcohol, glycerine, chlorine
and its compounds, iodine, coal-tar with such derivatives as
carbolic acid all these had been employed. Jules Lemaire
served as " pharmacien interne des hopitaux de Paris/' and
then became a pharmaceutical chemist. Another pharma-
ceutical chemist, Le Beuf of Bayonne, drew his attention to
coal-tar, and he thereupon conducted an arduous series of
investigations into the properties of carbolic acid. He

LISTER AND ANTISEPTICS 271

published his results in two books, and the second of them,
De I'acide phenique, won so much notice that a second edition
of it was called for in 1865, within two years of the
publication of the first. Working pretty empirically, Lemaire
employed carbolic acid for many different diseases, medical as
well as surgical. He also used it for hygienic purposes as a
disinfectant and for the preservation of foodstuffs. It is
to his credit that in 1860 he proposed the use of a weak
carbolic solution for the treatment of open wounds, and
the following year Dr. Declat proposed the same remedy.

Not a few surgeons in the sixties did not read any foreign
language, save French, with any degree of fluency. This
was not the case with Lister, for he read French, German,
and some Dutch. He travelled abroad repeatedly. This
makes it all the more remarkable that he never met with the
articles or the book of Semmelweis. Nor did he meet with
the writings of Pasteur independently. His colleague, Dr.
Thomas Anderson, Professor of Chemistry, induced Lister
to turn his attention to the work of Pasteur. Now in 1856
for his labours on crystallography Pasteur was of sufficiently
outstanding position to receive the Rum ford Medal of the
Royal Society. Apparently had it not been for Anderson,
Lister might not have read till much later than 1865 the
writings of one who was preoccupied with the science of the
problem that concerned Lister as an art.

Lister's study of inflammation had led him to certain
definite conclusions regarding wound infection which for
several years he had publicly taught :

1. That putrefaction or decomposition which for him
were then synonymous terms caused suppuration and wound
infection; and that wound infection did not occur without
suppuration.

2. That decomposition was, in some unexplained way,
set up by the air.

3. That the air alone that is, the gases of the air did
not give rise to decomposition.*

Behind these three conclusions there lay the unanswered
question, What is the mysterious relationship between the
air and decomposition?

To Lister's absolute amazement he learnt that the missing
* I use Sir R. Godlee's summary in his Lord Lister, p. 163.

272 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

half of his conclusions lay in the possession of Pasteur.
According to the French savant, putrefaction was a fermenta-
tion. Was it not caused by the minute growth of minute
microbes which were carried everywhere by the dust floating
in the air? Was it possible to free the air of this dust by
any means? What about filtration? What about heat?
What about some means? For there must be some means of
freeing the air from pollution. There was room no longer for
any mystery in the infection of wounds. Did not the air, er
rather the germs in the air, start all the trouble? In a flash
he saw that the proper time to employ antiseptics was before
putrefaction was established, not after. Could he so purify
the air before it gained access to the wound that putrefaction
should not have a chance to begin ? Such was the illuminat-
ing idea that began to dawn upon him.

Pasteur's discoveries had been nine years before the world
that wanted them so badly. Erysipelas and gangrene,
pyaemia and septicaemia were known in every hospital
throughout the length and the breadth of Europe. Pasteur,
moreover, had plainly indicated in his interview with
Napoleon and Eugenie that the end he had in view was the
extension of his discoveries in fermentation in wine to fer-
mentation in wounds. " I assured the Emperor that all my
ambition was to arrive at the knowledge of the causes of
putrid and contagious diseases. " Sir Rickman Godlee offers
his explanation, which does not quite satisfy us. We read:
" In any case it must be remembered that the question of
fermentation was in the main a very technical one : of vital
importance to brewers and wine-producers, but apparently far
enough removed from that of wound-treatment. When at
last it attracted the attention of scientific men it interested
primarily chemists and only secondarily physiologists and
botanists, and lastly, if at all, the medical profession. Busy
surgeons, at all events, are not in the habit of reading abstruse
chemical reviews; and physiology advances with such rapid
strides that the practitioner of medicine makes no pretence
to keep up with it. Lister himself " he was then holding
a chair of surgery "was much engrossed with his own
special occupation and investigations, upon each step of which
he was in the habit of concentrating the whole of his attention
for the time. No doubt they involved a fairly wide survey

LISTER AND ANTISEPTICS 273

of recent physiological work, but they were not likely to
entice him into the field of chemistry, and they certainly
left him little time for promiscuous reading." * The defence
would appeal to us more if Pasteur had not definitely indi-
cated his intention of applying his conceptions to the world of
disease. Putrefaction and decomposition in the wine cellar
were to him precisely the same matter as putrefaction and
decomposition in the cells of the human body, and his was
the missing half of the knowledge that Lister sorely required.

Lister was ignorant of the work that was being done in his
own decade, though that work vitally concerned him. In
common with many scientists, even of the year 1925, he was
equally ignorant of the genesis of such vital work in the
labours of past scientists. Robert Boyle in 1662 had
thrown out his flash of inspiration when he gave forth a form
of the germ theory. Lavoisier, Fabroni, Thenard, Gay-
Lussac, Cagniard-Latour, Schwann, Liebig, Pasteur all had
been in the field before Lister, and the experiments of
Lavoisier ran back to the days of the French Revolution.
From 1 794 to Lister's time is surely a sufficient interval for
men to become aware that germs count. Sir Rickman Godlee
believes, with reason, that " perhaps the most remarkable
characteristic [of Pasteur] was the intuition with which he
saw how one discovery led to another. No doubt it is
especially true in his case that, to quote his own words, ' in
the field of observation chance only favours the mind which
is prepared ' ; no doubt he explored the valleys as well as the
heights, but his apparently infallible instinct suggests the
quaint apophthegm of Nietzsche, ' in the mountains the
shortest way is from summit to summit; but for that thou
needest long legs/ Lister possessed such legs. Was their
control intuitive? Or, was their control guided? "f

Pasteur was led on by apparently inevitable steps from
investigations in crystallography to fermentation in alcohol
in 1856. In his writings before 1865 Lister found the
following points :

Putrefaction is a species of fermentation.

It is caused by the growth of micro-organisms and does not
occur independently of their presence.

* Sir R. Godlee, Lord Lister, p. 164. Contrast p. 172 on Pasteur,
t Ibid., p. 171.

18

274 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

The micro-organisms that produce fermentation and
putrefaction are carried by the air on the dust that floats.
They also occur on and in solid and liquid substances.

These micro-organisms can be destroyed by heat and other
agencies or separated from the air by filtration.

Certain recognisable organisms produce definite and distinct
fermentative processes.

All of these organisms require oxygen. Some of them
flourish only in the presence of free oxygen (aerobic), others
only in its absence (anaerobic). The latter acquire their
oxygen from the bodies which, by their growth, they are
causing to ferment and putrefy.

Many natural animal and vegetable products have no
tendency to ferment or putrefy, even in the presence of
oxygen, if collected with proper precautions and kept in
sterilised vessels.

Spontaneous generation has never been observed to occur,
and thus may be regarded as a chimera.*

Lister came to the conclusion, founded on these Pasteurian
points, that vibrios or micro-organisms caused putrefaction
and that they swarmed in the air. Such a conclusion seems
inevitable to us to-day, but it was by no means inevitable
then. The proof of this remark is easy, for Lister was really
the only surgeon who drew it.f Besides, we have to bear in
mind that Pasteur had just given rise to the subject of
bacteriology. We are apt to think in terms of microbes
to-day, but the men of 1865 were not at all so inclined to
think. In fact, we have always to remember that the world
of the sixties was a pre-Pasteur world. If we remember this
steadily, we have some means of appreciating the grandeur
of the simple Listerian conception. Lister showed the way,
and once he showed the way it was quite straightforward for
others to walk in his steps. He was, however, pre-eminently
the pathfinder, and as such we hold him in honour. Men
could make an egg stand on its end after Columbus showed
them how, but emphatically it was Columbus that showed
them how. The honour is always to the pioneer. The anti-
septic system is Lister's, we prefer to give it in his own
words : " In the course of an extended investigation into the

* This is Sir R. Godlee's summary on p. 177.
t Spencer Wells is a possible exception.

LISTER AND ANTISEPTICS 275

nature of inflammation, and the healthy and morbid con-
ditions of the blood in relation to it, I arrived several years
ago at the conclusion that the essential cause of suppuration
in wounds is decomposition, brought about by the influence of
the atmosphere upon blood or serum retained within them,
and, in the case of contused wounds, upon portions of tissue
destroyed by the violence of the injury.

" To prevent the occurrence of suppuration, with all its
attendant risks, was an object manifestly desirable; but till
lately apparently unattainable, since it seemed hopeless to
attempt to exclude the oxygen, which was universally
regarded as the agent by which putrefaction was effected.
But when it had been shown by the researches of Pasteur that
the septic property of the atmosphere depended, not on the
oxygen or any gaseous constituent, but on minute organisms
suspended in it, which owed their energy to their vitality,
it occurred to me that decomposition in the injured part might
be avoided without excluding air, by applying as a dressing
some material capable of destroying the life of the floating
particles.

" Upon this principle I have based a practice of which
I will now attempt to give a short account." *

How was he to get rid of the germs present in the air when
it approached wounds? There were three methods heat,
filtration, and treatment by a chemical antiseptic. He chose
the last because it was at the moment the most practicable, and
the chemical antiseptic he chose was carbolic acid, which his
colleague, Dr. Thomas Anderson, supplied.

The very first occasion on which he used carbolic acid
in the treatment of a compound fracture was in March 1865,
but he had a much better instance of its worth in the spring
of 1866. The pleasure with which he welcomed the relief
his discovery gave is evident in the letter he wrote to his
father on May 27 : " There is one of my cases at the In-
firmary which I am sure will interest thee. It is one of
compound fracture of the leg: with a wound of considerable
size and accompanied by great bruising, and great effusion of
the blood into the substance of the limb, causing great swelling.
Though hardly expecting success, I tried the application of

* British Medical Journal, 1867, II, p. 246; Lister, Collected Papers,
II, p. 37.

276 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

carbolic acid to the wound, to prevent decomposition of the
blood, and so avoid the fearful mischief of suppuration
through the limb. Well, it is now 8 days since the accident,
and the patient has been going on exactly as if there were
no external wound, that is as if the fracture was a simple
one. His appetite, sleep, etc., good, and the limb daily
diminishing in size, while there is no appearance whatever
of any matter forming. Thus a most dangerous accident
seems to have been entirely deprived of its dangerous
elements." *

The treatment was adopted in case after case, and the
results were uniformly successful. Such results had never
been obtained before by any surgeon, and we can well imagine
the thankfulness that welled from the heart of the discoverer
to God when he realised that he was in a fair way to banish
the noxious effects of the germs that had devastated every
hospital in Europe. " For many years afterwards/' records
Sir Rickman Godlee, " many who had not seen Lister's
practice or obtained similar results themselves positively did
not believe that his account of it could be accurate. They had
been accustomed to see the opening of such an abscess
followed in a day or two by a profuse and evil-smelling dis-
charge, instead of which under the new treatment they were
told that only a small quantity of inodorous clear serum,
perhaps only a few drops, escaped at each changing of the
dressing. They had been accustomed to see the patient pass
at once into a hectic state, from which he was too often only
relieved by death. Under the new treatment they heard
instead of a gradual improvement in general health, while case
after case was brought to a successful conclusion. It was
perhaps naturally thought that Lister's enthusiasm had made
him forget failures and exaggerate successes." f As Newton
disclosed to us the new heavens and as Darwin disclosed to
us the new earth, so Pasteur and Lister disclosed to us the
new redemption of man.

In the memorable paper in the Lancet,^, which appeared
in a series of articles between March and July 1867, he
records what had actually happened as well as giving a

* Sir R. Godlee, Lord Lister, p. 187.

t Ibid., p. 190.

j Lister, Collected Papers, II.

LISTER AND ANTISEPTICS 277

balanced survey of the causes of infection. Out of eleven
cases, two had suffered from hospital gangrene and one had
died of haemorrhage four months after the accident. This
explains his saying, " I have had some rather sorrowful
experience in bringing the method of treatment to a trust-
worthy state." Still, he had obtained nine successes out of
eleven consecutive cases, and this constituted an event of the
deepest significance.

Urged by his father-in-law, he prepared a paper on the
antiseptic principle in surgery which he read before the
British Medical Association meeting in Dublin in August
1867. Criticised as it was by men like Sir James Simpson,
this paper on the whole was well received. Criticism, well-
informed and ill-informed, soon made its appearance. The
Lancet recognised what Lister had accomplished, and then
proceeded to mix up the discovery of the antiseptic principle
with the discovery of the use of carbolic acid. The Medical
Times and Gazette wrote : " We cannot concede to him the
credit of having introduced to the Medical public carbolic
acid as a local application." *

Provoked by the attacks made upon him, Lister wrote an
unguarded letter which characterised, without mentioning
names, Simpson's assault on antiseptics as a feeble attempt
to decry them as useless. Stung by this reply and fearing
that the new system might threaten the place of his favourite
invention of acupressure, Simpson wrote to Lister on June
1 6, 1865, on behalf of it. In turn, Simpson was forced to
undergo the pains of mortification, for men hinted that his
work on acupressure had been anticipated by an Italian sur-
geon, Giovanni de Vigo, in the sixteenth century. Besides,
though acupressure had been employed in Aberdeen, it had
not been much employed in either Edinburgh or Glasgow.
Was not Syme in as leading a position in Edinburgh as Lister
was in Glasgow ? Did not father-in-law and son-in-law form
a conspiracy to condemn a rival remedy?

In September 1867 there appeared an anonymous letter in
the Edinburgh Daily Review, nominally signed by Chirurgicus
but really signed by Simpson, and this letter accused Lister of
appropriating credit for what had really been accomplished
by Lemaire of Paris. According to Simpson, Lemaire
* Medical Times and Gazette, 1867, II, p. 355.

278 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

" points out very fully and elaborately its power of destroying
microscopic living organisms, germs, or sporules adduces
the opinions of Pasteur, Helmholtz, Schultze, Schwann, etc.,
and shows its utility in arresting suppuration in surgery, and
as a dressing to compound fractures and wounds. He dwells
upon its use in many other diseases, medical and surgical/ 1 *
The last sentence is true, but who would recognise Lemaire's
De I'acide phenique in the first? Certainly not Lemaire
himself. Richard Bentley was fond of saying that no man
was ever written down save by himself, and his saying is
most true. No antagonist ever wrote Simpson down so
much as himself by his conduct in this controversy.

As Lister had never heard of Pasteur till a colleague in-
formed him of his extensive labours, so he had never heard
of Lemaire till a rival informed him.

Neither of Lemaire's works was to be found in the library
of Glasgow University, and he had to send to Edinburgh
for them. In the Lancet in October 1867, Simpson returned
to the attack on antiseptics.f He accused Lister of gross
ignorance of medical literature, and he accused him of being
the appropriator of another man's ideas. In fact, Lister's
theory was neither new nor true. What was new in it if
there was anything was not true, and what was true in it
undoubtedly belonged to Lemaire. In any case was not
acupressure an infinitely better remedy than any antiseptic?

The big hound had barked disapproval, and the lesser
hounds hastened to follow his example. Their barks ap-
peared in the Lancet, and here are some of them:

" Mr. R. has occasionally sponged the wound, in the
operating theatre, before applying the sutures, but not
having found any advantage arise from it, he has discontinued
the practice." J

" Mr. C. does not approve of Lister's method, which he
considers meddlesome. Mr. C.'s experience is that wounds
unite readily when left alone. "

" A considerable portion of cases have been attended with
very satisfactory results; some have conformed in every

* Sir R. Godlee, Lord Lister, p. 202.
t Lancet, 1867, II, p. 546.
t Ibid., 1868, II, p. 634-
Ibid., 1868, II, p. 728.

LISTER AND ANTISEPTICS 279

respect with the theory of action promulgated by Professor
Lister; but in a good number of instances, while the anti-
septic action has been uniformly effective in utterly destroying
putrefaction and fetor, yet in regard to its antipurulent
properties such satisfactory results have not been obtained
from the putty method." *

Lister's carbolic acid treatment was shortened to carbolic
treatment and even to the putty method, a phrase that re-
flected the ignorance of those who used it. Lister felt
grievously hurt by the controversy, and on October 13, 1867,
he wrote to his father : " I think I have now said all that I am
called upon to say, and if I feel sure of that I shall be willing
to let people think and talk as they please, and devote myself
with fresh ardour to the work that remains to be done
in the way of perfecting the methods of the treatment. It
is long since I gave up any idea of having any work I might
do measured according to its deserts, whatever they might be :
and I have always felt that for the editors of these medical
journals to take no notice at all of any articles I might write
was the best that could happen; so that the good, if there
was any, in my work might quietly produce its effect in
improving the knowledge and treatment ^of disease. ' Fame
is no plant that grows on mortal soil ' is a passage thee quoted
to me in a letter many years ago. . . .

" . . . I quite agree with what thee say about perfect
candour in a discussion of this kind. But the truth is I
never thought of such a thing as any merit attaching to
happening to be the first to apply carbolic acid, whether to a
sore, a wound, a fracture, or an abscess. Various anti-
septic lotions have long been in use in surgical practice, and
as soon as the antiseptic powers of carbolic acid became
known, it could not be but that many surgeons would try it,
as they had tried other antiseptics. Supposing that I had
made the experiment with one of the antiseptics in ordinary
use, say chloride of zinc, I really think it likely I should have
got very much the same results, had I gone upon the same
principles. And supposing I had afterwards learnt that
some other surgeon had previously dabbled a preparation of
chloride of zinc upon one or two compound fractures, but
upon an entirely erroneous principle and so as to lead to no

* Lancet, 1868, II, p. 763.

280 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

practical result, this would not at all have interfered with my
originality in the plan of treatment." *

Still, Lister must have felt cheered by a question asked by
the Lancet on the results obtained in the Dowlais Iron
Works. " Mr. Cresswell, whose surgical experience is very
great, says that the use of carbolic acid in the treatment of
wounds has revolutionised surgical practice at Dowlais. And
yet Mr. Lister's treatment does not find much favour in
London. Are the conditions of suppuration different here
from those in Glasgow or Dowlais? Or is it that the
antiseptic treatment is not tried with that care without which
Mr. Lister has always pointed out it does not succeed? " f

In 1866 the chair of Systematic Surgery at University
College, London, fell vacant. It was Lister's old college, and
if one looked at his standing in Glasgow University com-
bined with the outcome of his researches it seemed as if he
possessed a strong claim to the vacancy. On the other hand,
John Marshall, a capable if not an outstanding surgeon, was
also a candidate, and he had already served as assistant
surgeon for eighteen years. In the issue Marshall was
elected, though in the light of after events such an appoint-
ment makes curious reading. Lister's father-in-law consoled
him : " I am glad you take this conduct on the part of U.C.
in the right way, not as a discouragement but as an induce-
ment to exertion. In the end you may not improbably have
reason to feel grateful for not being allowed to quit your
present position. It is a great field, much greater for hospital
practice than you could possibly have had in London and
also much more favourable for the acquisition or, as I
should rather say, the extension of professional character.
London has its advantages no doubt, but, when these are com-
pared with its disadvantages, your present position, I sin-
cerely believe, is more fruitful of rational happiness. In
order to maintain a good metropolitan place it is necessary
to do a great deal of dirty work which I am quite sure you
would decline and therefore have the discomfort of all sorts
of worthless persons puffed up as your equals, or superiors,
while at present you are perfectly secure from such conse-
quences. It was such considerations that led me to return

* Sir R. Godlee, Lord Lister, p. 205.
t Ibid., p. 207.

LISTER AND ANTISEPTICS 281

from London, and they should, I think, reconcile you to not
going there/' *

On the resignation of Syme in 1869 Sir James Simpson
was bold enough to propose that the chair of surgery Syme
held in Edinburgh University should be abolished! Seem-
ingly he was afraid that the son-in-law of his detested rival
should be appointed, though it does seem amazing that the
holder of the chair of midwifery should be anxious on any
pretext whatever to put an end to the chair of surgery. It
was the misfortune of many to see in his nature ever the
malevolent Mr. Hyde, while to others he possessed the be-
nignant figure of Dr. Jekyll. Though Sir James Simpson
was prepared to go to such lengths, Lister was appointed.
The Professor of Materia Medica at Anderson's University,
Dr. James Morton, had been Surgeon to the Glasgow Royal
Infirmary. How little he cared to keep in touch with progress
in his profession is evident from the circumstance that he
never set foot in one of Lister's wards in order to observe for
himself what sort of treatment the antiseptic was. This did
not in the least prevent his stating that " Pasteur's theory
in regard to the existence of certain spores or germs in the
air " had not been proved to his satisfaction.! Even if
there were germs, they were neither injurious nor did they
cause " suppuration of a bad kind." The astounding point is
that a colleague of Lister's should stoop to make such an
attack without knowing a single thing practically of anti-
septic treatment. There are none so blind as those who
won't see, and Morton belonged to this terrible variety of
scientific man.

At the meeting of the British Medical Association at Leeds
in 1869, Nunneley, a prominent surgeon in the city, attacked
Listerism and Pasteurism. The arguments of Pouchet and
Hughes Bennett (1812 1875), the Professor of Physiology
in Edinburgh, who opposed the germ theory,$ were put
forward. Careful physician and physiologist, Bennett was a
careless controversialist, who did not fail to stir up much
antagonism. Nunneley admitted that he had never tried

* Sir R. Godlee, Lord Lister, p. 211.
t Ibid., p. 250.

t J. H. Bennett, " The Atmospheric Germ Theory " (Edin. Med. Jour.,
1868, XIIJ, p, 816), Cf. Brit. Med. Jour., 1869, II, p. 256.

282 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

the antiseptic .method, but his colleagues had ! Their results
were unsatisfactory, and its employment in Leeds was
exceptional. Writers in the local press, even from Glasgow,
supported Nunneley.

Simpson passed away in May 1870, and Syme in the
following June. " The two most outstanding personalities,
Syme and Simpson, had both received unmistakable warn-
ings that their warfare was accomplished, . . ." writes Sir
Rickman Godlee. " The removal of these two men, as it
were, cleared the atmosphere of the medical world in Edin-
burgh, and in very different ways affected Lister's position
there. Syme and Simpson had for the most part been in
conflict, and each had so many devoted followers that it
was not easy to avoid being a partisan of one or the other.
This led to a cleavage in the ranks of the profession and
some bitter feelings, which only gradually declined after the
disappearance of the protagonists.

" This is not the place to form an estimate of Simpson's
character. Few men who could claim so many friends had
so many detractors. For the former he was the embodiment
of all the virtues ; the latter were unable to speak of him with
moderation. We have already seen the position which he
took up with regard to Lister and his work, and the way in
which he conducted his opposition. If he had lived longer
and they had been constantly thrown together in the Univer-
sity and civic affairs, it is hardly to be supposed that further
causes of friction could have been avoided. Simpson was
one who entered into such contests con amore; to Lister
they were repugnant and distressing to the highest degree.

" The death of Syme was an unmixed sorrow. Coming
as it did, soon after that of his own father, it emphasised the
fact that the last link with the preceding generation was
severed. It was one of Lister's characteristics to admire
some men with a whole-hearted devotion that hardly admitted
the possibility of faults, and Syme was conspicuously one
of these. In the Scotsman of June 28, 1870, there was an
obituary notice the authorship of which was attributed to
Lister, and was never disowned by him. ... It ends with the
following words : * ' The hostility which he excited in a few
was greatly outweighed by the friendship he inspired in the
* Sir R. Godlee, Lord Lister, p. 253.

LISTER AND ANTISEPTICS 283

many. Rarely is it granted to any one to attach to himself
the enduring love and admiration of so large a number of
his fellow-men.' " *

Lister, on his father-in-law's death, stepped into his posi-
tion as the first surgeon in Scotland. At Edinburgh Univer-
sity he numbered among his medical and surgical colleagues
men like Patrick Heron Watson and James Spence, Matthews
Duncan and Thomas Keith. The physicians included men of
rank equal to that of the surgeons, for they were Laycock
and Fraser, and Grainger Stewart. " It was," in the com-
petent opinion of Sir Rickman Godlee, " a self-contained,
highly intellectual University circle somewhat cliquish, no
doubt, but becoming less so. The conflicts of the past were
not completely forgotten, but a calmer and more charitable
spirit was descending upon Edinburgh, as well as upon the
rest of the scientific world. Doctors, at all events, were be-
coming accustomed to the idea " in the year of grace
1870 " that it was not only possible, but far best, to conduct
their discussions in moderate language unblemished by
personalities." t

The master requires disciples if his teaching is to prevail.
If the pupils possess the graceful style of a Huxley or the
attractive eloquence of a Tyndall, so much the better for the
diffusion of his views. Darwin was supremely fortunate in
owning such a master of English as Huxley as his disciple,
for Huxley constituted himself " Darwin's bull-dog." Just
as Darwin's motto was peace at any price, so Huxley's was
war whatever its cost. Though Lister himself wrote many
articles, he never wrote a book. Darwin wrote inter alia
the Origin of Species, and Sir J. D. Hooker and T. H.
Huxley are not the only readers who found it to be a tough
morsel to digest. * John Tyndall (1820 1893) came to the
rescue of Lister, as Huxley came to the rescue of Darwin,
and rendered Lister undoubted assistance. Attractive as a
writer, Tyndall was even more attractive as a speaker. While
engaged upon a series of striking experiments on the decom-
position of vapours by light, he observed that a luminous
beam, passing through the motionless air of his experimental

* R. Paterson, Memorials of the Life of J. Symc, p. 327.

t Sir R. Godlee, Lord Lister, p. 254.

j L. Huxley, Life and Letters of T. H. Huxley, II, p. 192.

284 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

tube, was invisible. The happy thought occurred to him
that such a beam might be utilised to detect the presence
of germs in the atmosphere. For air incompetent
to scatter light, through the absence of all floating
particles, must be free from bacteria and their germs.
Experiment after experiment yielded the conclusion that
" optically pure " air is incapable of developing bacterial
life. In properly protected vessels infusions of fish, flesh, and
vegetables, freely exposed after boiling to air rendered mote-
less by subsidence, and declared to be so by the invisible
passage of a powerful electric beam, remained permanently
pure and unaltered. On the other hand, when the identical
liquids were exposed afterwards to ordinary dust-laden air,
they soon swarmed with bacteria. In spite of these experi-
ments and in spite of the experiments of Pasteur and Lister,
Dr. Bastian could still persist in the belief in spontaneous
generation.

As Huxley thought that a cobbler like Kelvin ought to
stick to his last in the shape of physics, and not intermeddle
with geology, some scientists thought that a cobbler like
Tyndall ought to stick to his last in the shape of physics, and
not intermeddle with bacteriology. The Lancet furiously de-
nounced Tyndall for stepping outside his province. Even
Lister wrote to his brother : " It is almost a pity that Tyndall
should have meddled with things beyond his beat." * Tyndall
himself pertinently pointed out : " My own interference with
this great question, while sanctioned by many eminent names,
has been the object of varied and ingenious attack. On this
point I will only say that when angry feeling escapes from
behind the intellect, where it may be useful as an urging
force, and places itself athwart the intellect, it is liable to
produce all manner of delusions. Thus my censors, for the
most part, have levelled their attacks against positions which
were never assumed, and against claims which never were
made." f To this position we can guess how sympathetically
Jenner and Simpson, Lyell and Helmholtz, Darwin and
Pasteur would have listened, for had they not all suffered

* Sir R Godlee, Lord Lister, p. 280.

t J. Tyndall, Essays on the Floating Matter in the Air in Relation to
Putrefaction and Infection, p. 27.

LISTER AND ANTISEPTICS 285

grievously " when angry feeling escapes from behind the
intellect'*?

It is amazing to note how the specialist scientist seems
to imagine that no one, save the man working in his own
narrow field, possesses the slightest right to examine or,
worse still, criticise his results and the conceptions under-
lying them. Darwin used to contend that intelligent men
were those who most readily gave adhesion to his views,
while those whose studies qualified them to grasp particular
portions of his investigation, for the most part, stood aloof.
The curse of science is the narrow-minded specialist who
cannot see a single inch beyond his nose. Such a man is
absolutely of the mind of Cardinal Newman, who did not
ask to see the distant scene. His aim is :

Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,

Lead thou me on;
The night is dark and I am far from home,

Lead thou me on.

Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.

The man who is going to leave his mark in science must
be a man capable of watching the distant scene as well as
watching the ground under his feet. Tyndall did see the
distant scene, and therefore he wrote with strength : " I am
dealing with a question on which minds accustomed to weigh
the value of experimental evidence are alone competent
to decide, and regarding which, in its present condition, minds
so trained are as capable of forming an opinion as regarding
the phenomena of magnetism or radiant heat. ' The germ
theory of disease/ it has been said, ' appertains to the biologist
and the physician/ Where, I would ask in reply, is the
biologist or physician, whose researches, in connection with
this subject, could for one instant be compared to those of the
chemist Pasteur? It is not the philosophic members of the
medical profession who are dull to the reception of the truth
not originated within the pale of the profession itself." *
Herein Tyndall was seriously mistaken. For do we not find
such philosophic members of the profession as Sir James
Simpson and James Morton, and Hughes Bennett, not to
speak of such men as Mr. R. and Mr. C, all stoutly opposed

* J. Tyndall, Essays on the Floating Matter in the Air in Relation to
Putrefaction and Infection, p. 42.

286 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

to the reception of truth not originated within the pro-
fession?

Tyndall intervened in the dispute about germs possibly
because he was an Alpine climber and probably because he
cared to seek a general view of truth. " II faut cultiver
notre jar din " is the motto of some scientists who only
cultivate the merest patch. " II faut cultiver notre jardin "
is the motto of some scientists who, though they do not
cultivate the whole of their garden, insist in taking a com-
prehensive survey of it. The Tyndall type is surely the
finer type of the two. Such a type seeks truth, but he
seeks truth that enables him to glance all around him. He
seeks truth, but he seeks it with beauty. In fact, the scientist
is at bottom a creative artist who takes a Terentian view of
his domain. " Le savant," wrote the wonderful Henri
Poincare, " n'etudie pas la nature parce que cela est utile; il
Tetudie parce qu'il y prend plaisir, et il y prend plaisir qu'elle
est belle. Si la nature n'etait pas belle, elle ne vaudrait pas
la peine d'etre connue, la vie ne vaudrait la peine d'etre
vecue." There is, of course, the bread-and-butter view of
science, but does man either in science or for the matter
of that in anything else live by bread alone?

A colleague of Lister, Thomas Keith, had done remarkable
pioneer work in ovariotomy. Keith and Spencer Wells
had skilfully reduced the mortality rate in this operation
to 30 per cent. It is a measure of the progress of surgery
to say that the present rate is 5 per cent. Yet there are
sceptics who tell us that the main task of the surgeon has
been to devise complex operations for the fresh diseases
he has discovered, darkly hinting that he himself is, in some
mysterious fashion, the cause of these diseases. Keith's
success was partly due to his manual dexterity and partly
due to his amazing attention to all manner of details,
especially in the matter of cleanliness. By 1870 he had
reduced his mortality after ovariotomy to 16 per cent., which
was a startling result. Should he, in order to diminish
even this rate, adopt the antiseptic treatment? Should he
adopt the spray which created an antiseptic atmosphere?
Lister himself felt doubtful in this particular instance, for
the peritoneal cavity possesses natural protections against
the attacks of micro-organisms. Keith, however, decided

LISTER AND ANTISEPTICS 287

to adopt the plan of his colleague. According to Lister,
" on at length adopting strict antiseptic measures with an
improved spray, for a while he surpassed himself by an
unbroken series of eighty successful cases. Yet, wonderful
as this achievement was, it was only a difference in degree
from his former experience, and assuredly no absolute
proof of superiority of the new means employed." * Keith
afterwards abandoned the spray, partly, it is believed, because
he thought its effect injurious to the patients, partly because
it was certainly injurious in the highest degree to himself.
He continued, however, to use the other antiseptic pre-
cautions, and to this he attributed the superiority of his
later results.

As time went on, for we must now look some distance
ahead, the question was discussed with bitterness, almost with
ferocity, amongst the ovariotomists. Some, whilst dis-
owning the antiseptic principle root and branch, apparently
unconsciously adopted much of its practice; others adopted
both principle and practice with the exception of the spray,
and there were yet others who omitted no jot or tittle of
Lister's methods. Meanwhile it was obvious to candid
observers, through all this strife of tongues, that, although
the statistics of the antiseptic surgeons were on the whole
the best, some at least of their opponents could show very
excellent results indeed; and this provided a stumbling-
block to many, though not to Lister.f

Lister was the very man who insisted in taking a com-
prehensive view of the garden he so assiduously cultivated.
Among the many advantages of such a plan, it preserved
that openness of mind that is so essential in the task of
discovery. Even the man with the open mind welcomes
something in accordance with its main bent more cordially
than something that tells against that main bent. For in
the course of time an inquiring mind takes up a certain
attitude to some truths which means, at bottom, that he
does not care for other truths not quite on the same lines
as those he adopts. In 1883 Metchnikoff announced his
discovery of phagocytosis, a discovery that supplemented

* Lister, Collected Papers, II, p. 276.

t Sir R. Godlee, Lord Lister, p. 288. Cf. Brit. Med. Jour., 1869, II,
P. 335.

288 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

the work that Pasteur had begun.* If a proof of the
internationalism of science is required, here it is. A French
chemist does part of the task, and a Russian pathologist com-
plements it. Pasteur had discovered the existence of the
micro-organism, Metchnikoff had observed the actual contest
between the invading micro-organisms and the phagocytes
or defending living cells. If the phagocytes win, they
devour the micro-organisms. If they lose, the micro-
organisms devour them. Eat or be eaten such is the law
of their life. The Russian discoverer afforded Lister
another proof of the correctness of what he was doing,
and we can imagine the glee with which he welcomed such
a result. The use of the spray was causing Lister search-
ings of heart, but the use of the spray was not fundamental
to his antiseptic method. If, to take a present-day example,
Metchnikoff had altered his ideas on germs as much as
Einstein has altered Newton's ideas, what would have
happened? Would even Lister's openness of mind have
stood the test of anything so unwelcome?

Lister kept his treatment before the members of his
profession. He delivered, for example, an address before
the 1871 meeting of the British Medical Association at
Plymouth, f In 1875 he wrote a paper extending over no
fewer than seven numbers of the Lancet. $ The same year
he gave two impressive demonstrations of antiseptic surgery
before the 1875 meeting of the members of the British
Medical Association at Edinburgh. The heads of the
profession listened, and not a few of them went on in their
accustomed ways. The young graduates came to Glasgow
to see for themselves, and they were not sufficiently hardened
by the customs of their profession to keep their eyes blinded
and their ears shut.

Sir Rickman Godlee surveys the situation in the seventies,
and holds : " And yet it is not too much to say that in
London it [i.e. Listerism] made but little way until these
younger men had reached a sufficient degree of seniority to

* Biol. CentrabL, 1883, III, p. 560.

t Brit. Med. Jour., 1871, II, p. 225; Lister, Collected Papers, II, p. 172.

J Lancet, 1875, I, pp. 365, 401, 434, 468, 603, 717, 787; Lister, Col-
lected Papers, p. 206.

Edin. Med. four., 1875-6, XXI, pp. 193, 481 ; Lister, Collected Papers,
II, p. 256.

LISTER AND ANTISEPTICS 289

have the charge of wards, and that, even in Edinburgh and
Glasgow, some of the old spirit and much of the old practice
prevailed well on into the seventies, when Lister's old pupils
began to occupy positions on the full staffs of their hospitals.

" This may seem strange to those who were not taught by,
and have not served under, the surgeons of the old school,
or who do not appreciate the limitations imposed upon
assistant surgeons in those days. There was not, so to say,
more than enough of either hospital or private practice, at
that time, to go round, as there is now; and the seniors
stuck with much tenacity to their posts, thus allowing but
little opportunity to the juniors to expand themselves. Night
and day, Sundays and week days, they would turn out
to do their ' casualty ' work. Visits to continental schools,
week-ends in the country, and long summer holidays were
almost unknown, and the orthodox point of view was that
of a well-known surgeon who said, ' My moors are in Old
Burlington Street.'

"It is only fair to make allowances for these men and
to add that the description applies only to a class, amongst
whom there were striking exceptions. They were following
in the steps of their predecessors. They had been brought
up to think much of the art and comparatively little of the
scientific side of surgery. Their minds were not trained
for the reception of such an abstract idea as that of the
germ theory, or to weigh the arguments of its supporters
against the louder and more incessant replies of its opponents.
For the most part indeed they were convinced that it was the
dream of cranks and enthusiasts. It was therefore incredible
to them that the true light had been revealed to such men,
that their own time-honoured creed about inflammation was
a delusion, and that a complete change in their methods of
treatment was essential.

" Still, for decency's sake, the thing had to be given a
trial. But it was done in a perfunctory manner, with a
scornful half-faith or no-faith; and as the new method
involved great difficulties, even for enthusiastic disciples
working in the old surroundings, it is no wonder that the
seniors, almost without exception, failed to obtain Lister's
results. Their failures caused them but little sorrow, but
rather the satisfactory feeling that, after all, this new doctrine

19

290 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

had nothing in it, and that they had not all their lives been
following cunningly devised fables.*

" When I was a student full of the confidence of youth,
and doing my best to educate my superior officer no less
distinguished a man than Sir John Erichsen I lamentably
failed with a compound fracture, for reasons now easy to
recognise, and received from him the stern injunction, ' No
more antiseptics/ Erichsen was by no means a bigoted
man, and he was always very friendly to Lister. He was
simply old-fashioned, and would have paid but little atten-
tion to, and perhaps hardly have understood, Lister's explana-
tion of my failure." f

There is no reason to think, in spite of Sir Rickman
Godlee's reasoning, that the medical profession is really a
much more grievous offender in its rejection of the new
ideas that occasionally come into contact with its members.
Lyell found the same want of an open mind in geology,
and the precursors of Darwin found the same want of an
open mind in evolution as Darwin himself experienced.
In some respects the case of Joule and Helmholtz is even
more significant. For the doctrine of the conservation of
energy did not touch any of the ordinary prejudices of
scientists, yet Joule and Helmholtz found the same want
of an open mind as Lyell and Darwin.

No form of literature is more attractive than autobiography
when it is thoroughly sincere, as Sir James Paget's is. It
is this quality combined with its simple style that gives
this book its literary charm. Sir James takes the reader
into his confidence and lifts the veil from his early life. As
he was a man of as rare nobility of character as Lister
himself, the book in which his character is enshrined is
extraordinarily well worth reading. His son, Mr. Stephen
Paget, tells the story of the later life of the great surgeon,
and the outcome is a volume of surpassing interest. Why
is it that such typical men of action as soldiers and states-
men, travellers and adventurers, seldom have great bio-
graphies? Why is it that the literary and scientific men
have such great biographies? The lives of Johnson and
Macaulay stand as high in the class of literary men as Sir

* I italicise these words.

t Sir R. Godlee, Lord Lister, p. 315.

LISTER AND ANTISEPTICS 291

Rickman Godlee's Lord Lister and Mr. Stephen Paget's
Memoirs and Letters of Sir James Paget stand in the class
of scientific men.

We have spent our scanty leisure in reading hundreds of
the biographies of men and women of all ages, and we
do not know a single man we respect more than Sir James
Paget. To us, therefore, it is a personal sorrow to find
that even he made the following comment on a case of
compound fracture of the leg treated by Lister's method:

" Collodion was put on at once, and then carbolic acid
applied. You know we are trying the effects of carbolic
acid for compound fractures and some other forms of injury,
after the manner which has been so strongly recommended
by Professor Lister. In this case I would say that the
carbolic acid was applied, if not with all the skill that Pro-
fessor Lister would employ it, yet with more than is ever
likely to be generally used in the treatment of fractures;
and yet it certainly did no good. I will not say that it did
harm; if it did harm, it was rather through my fault in
leaving it too long when the wound should have been left
open to discharge itself. But, at any rate, carbolic acid,
applied here with a considerable amount of care and skill,
failed altogether to attain its end; for, three days after the
fracture, we observed that the limb was becoming the seat
of inflammation of the acutest kind." * So in 1869 Paget
informed his students when he gave them a clinical lecture
at St. Bartholomew's. When the leading surgeon in a
leading London hospital gave such qualified condemnation
to Listerism, we can imagine what other surgeons were
saying at their clinical lectures. As Paget was warmly
respected by the members of his profession and as his
language was studiously moderate, the harm he did was
incalculable. In a similar fashion Tyndall did injury to
Lister, for his lectures tended to concentrate the attention
of surgeons upon the air as the prime source of infection.
With dejection of spirit Lister replied to the lecture of Paget.
He pointed out imperfections in Paget's treatment of technical
interest. The fact, however, was that assistant surgeons

* Sir J. Paget, Clinical Lecture on the Treatment of Fractures of the
Leg in the Lancet, 1869, I, p. 317. Cf. ibid., 1869, I, p. 380; 1870, I,
p. 91 J i873, II, P- 182.

292 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

had to be trained in the antiseptic treatment, and occasionally
they came for a single day to Glasgow, and such a flying
visit was worse than useless. For it made surgeons con-
fident that they understood the details to be employed at
operations, whereas they did nothing of the kind. In any
revision of the Prayer-Book, there ought to be such a clause
as " Save me from my friends/' The scientist feels inclined
to vary this clause, " Save me from my ill-instructed
friends " (who, of course, fondly believe that they are well-
instructed).

We are afraid that the influence of Sir James Paget
dominated London medical opinion. At any rate, there was
little progress effected by the antiseptic methods. At the
1873 meeting of the British Medical Association in London,
John Wood, of King's College Hospital, spoke unfavourably
of it.* We are so anxious to represent the contemporary
attitude of hostility correctly that we venture upon another
quotation from Sir Rickman Godlee's biography:

" On the whole, as time went on, there was a tendency
for apathy to pass into opposition. To mention antiseptic
surgery was to cause irritation, or at least to elicit a scoff
or a sneer; and Lister's name became to London surgeons
like that of Aristides the Just to the Athenians.

" If any one should think that the case against the majority
of London surgeons f has been overstated they should read
the report of a confused debate at the Clinical Society of
London which took place in 1875.$ The antiseptic system
was introduced incidentally on the report of certain cases
supposed to have been treated antiseptically, but in none of
which the treatment was properly carried out. It is almost
incredible that the leading London surgeons could unblush-
ingly discuss such a vital question in so loose a manner.
It can only be explained by the assumption that they had
no conception of its importance; and yet the meeting took
place very shortly after Lister's striking demonstrations to
the British Medical Association at Edinburgh. The com-
ments of the Lancet are instructive :

" ' Mr. Lister and his disciples are themselves to blame

* Sir R. Godlee, Lord Lister, p. 319.
t I italicise these words.
$ Lancet, 1875, II, pp. 562, 628, 737.
Ibid., 1875, II, P. 565.

LISTER AND ANTISEPTICS 293

for much of the obscurity that overshadows this question,
inasmuch as they have never yet openly and fairly met the
challenges that have been thrown out to them to produce
the statistical results of their practices, say, for five or six
years past. . . . Notwithstanding the very able papers on
the recent improvement in the details of antiseptic surgery
which Mr. Lister lately published in these columns, followed
as they were by demonstrations at Edinburgh at the meetings
of the British Medical Association, there is less antiseptic
surgery practised in the metropolitan hospitals than ever
there was/

" The article goes on to refer to other rival systems, such
as the ' open method ' advocated by Humphry of Cambridge,
that of Spence who used warm water and tincture of iodine,
or that of Callender who trusted to cleanliness alone, for
all of which brilliant results had been claimed. Further
on it is said, ' Oddly enough, there is at least one metropolitan
hospital where one surgeon follows, strictly and exclusively,
Lister's plan, and the other surgeons as persistently reject
it. Here, one would think, there is some ground on which
to stand and view impartially the merits of the two modes
of practice. What is the result? After the experience of
several years, not to put too fine a point on the matter, it
is found that the success of the antiseptic system is certainly
not greater than that of the ordinary methods, and it is
stated to be actually less/

" The following week the Lancet returned to the charge :
* Happily, it is no part of the business of the clinical surgeon
to bolster up theories, be they good or bad, or to make
facts rigidly conform to them. The germ theory may be
perfectly well founded ; but nine surgeons out of ten do not
care much whether it is or not, so long as they cure their
cases and reduce their mortality to the lowest possible
degree/ * In these words, ' such is the measured judgment
of Sir Rickman Godlee/ the mental attitude of the average
London surgeon in 1875 was accurately described/' f Nor
can we forget that one of the leading London surgeons,
Sir James Paget, and one of the leading Edinburgh sur-
geons, Sir James Simpson, had pronounced similar verdicts.

* Lancet, 1875, II, p. 597-

t Sir R. Godlcc, Lord Lister, p. 320 ff.

294 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

Now we can well understand that in the case of rare
diseases like Vincent's angina and bulbar paralysis, elephan-
tiasis and exfoliative dermatitis, a surgeon should suspend
his judgment. But the diseases Lister set out to combat
were of everyday occurrence, and were levying a frightful
toll of death throughout the whole of Europe. Of course
it is difficult to obtain exact figures, but the following rough-
and-ready ones are sufficient to enable us to grasp the gravity
of the situation facing every surgeon, wherever he was
practising. The result was that a mortality of 24 to 26 per
cent, of cases of major amputations of limbs was considered
very satisfactory in London. In Edinburgh the death-rate
after such operations was 43 per cent. ; in Glasgow, 39 per
cent. ; in Paris, 60 per cent. ; in Zurich, 46 per cent. ; and
in Vienna, 43 per cent. In the Army, the death-rate some-
times reached such appalling proportions as 75 to 90 per cent.
Nobody, save the antiseptic people, quite knew why. Surely
it constitutes a grave indictment of the medical profession
during the seventies, when Listerism was well under way,
to note how callously the average surgeon behaved when
what promised to be a remedy was put before him. One
would have thought that he was prepared to try anything
whatever if it gave the least promise of a cure for such
terrible rates of mortality. It was not enough to read
about Listerism. We should have thought that surgeons
would have emigrated on the spot to Glasgow or to Edin-
burgh in order to learn at first-hand the proper fashion to
employ the antiseptic apparatus. One thinks of the patients
who suffered from erysipelas and gangrene, septicaemia and
purulent infection, and one sorrowfully reflects on all the
lives that might have been saved had surgeons preserved
somewhat of an open mind. One patient lingered on in
pain and discomfort. Another counted the days of sick-
ness, not by pain and weariness, but by the sufferings of
those who were left at home without a guide, and, perhaps,
starving. Suffering there is and there, one supposes, must
be, but what are we to say to avoidable suffering? If, to
use a pregnant remark of King Edward, preventable, why
not prevent it?

There is the man who can criticise and there is the man
who can construct, and we must never forget that there

LISTER AND ANTISEPTICS 295

is a legitimate place for criticism. For often before a
reform can be effected old obstructions must be swept away,
and in this task of destruction the work of the critic is
essential. To take an historical example, the destruction
wrought by the men of the first French Revolution was
necessary if any true conception of liberty was to become a
working reality. For that work men like Diderot paved
the way, though Voltaire did much less than people imagine.
For though he attacked much that deserved attack, at heart
he was a dogmatist of dogmatists, a fact that seems to
escape Lord Morley in his penetrating study of the French
satirist. Still, though there is the critic who is wanted, is
there not a critic who is not wanted, the critic who simply
spends his own time and wastes that of others in
criticising? Lister, like all pioneers, met this class of critic.
Sir William Scovell Savory (1826 1895) did not quite
belong to this class. In that wonderful year, 1859, he
succeeded Sir James Paget as lecturer on general anatomy
and physiology at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. Though
his lectures differed from those of his great predecessor,
they were no less admired by those who attended them. The
emolument he received for his clinical duties and lectures
in 1 88 1 -2 exceeded 2,000, probably the largest income ever
received for surgical teaching in London. The mediaeval
fashion of putting down awkward questioning was to invoke
the phrase, " Ita scriptum est." The fashion of Savory
was no less effective, for he spoke as a great authority,
delivering final judgment on the problems of surgery. We
are irresistibly reminded of Fustel de Coulanges, the French
historian. " Do not applaud me," he said one day to an
enthusiastic audience, " it is not I that speak to you but
history that speaks by my mouth." He regarded his results
as independent of himself, and criticism as something like
blasphemy. The dissent of competent scholars never led him
to modify his conviction not only that he had reached truth
but that truth is easy to reach.

Savory possessed the solid conviction that he had reached
truth and that Lister had reached error. He attended the
1879 meeting of the British Medical Association at Cork,
and there pronounced a verdict against Listerism and its
works, and he fondly believed that his verdict was the verdict

296 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

of science. For fourteen years antiseptics had been in the
possession of the medical profession if its members cared
to employ them. With his dignified features and with
his distinct voice, he pronounced the doom of the new ideas,
and he pronounced it with all the confidence that sprang
from his prominent position in London surgical circles.
He set his points in so strong a light, and placed his con-
tention on so solid a basis, that it seemed impossible that
any answer could be found to his weighty manner and his
no less weighty so it seemed to him conclusions. One
felt, as his periods rolled forth, as if the voice of pure reason
was speaking through his lips. Lister had attempted to
prevent suppuration. Were his attempts a whit more suc-
cessful than his own? Were they even as successful? He
considered his annual average of about 6 cases of pyaemia,
20 of erysipelas, and 26 of blood-poisoning following opera-
tions represented as good a result as it was reasonably possible
to expect.* He concluded by making the usual demand for
statistics.

The demand for statistics was easy to make and difficult
to supply. Ridiculous people prefer the charge that figures
can prove anything. They can do nothing of the kind in
the hands of skilled statisticians who are seeking the truth.
Figures can be made to prove anything in the hands of
the partisan trying to establish a case. Savory was such a
partisan. Lister undertook operations that Savory would
not dream of undertaking. How could anyone compare
Lister's operations with Savory's? What was required were
statistics showing the average of cases in which suppura-
tion occurred and the incidence of septic diseases among com-
pound fractures and after operations when no previous wound
was present. Unless such considerations could be taken
into account, what use were the ordinary bald statistics of
mortality after amputations? Such considerations were
rightly present to the mind of Lister when he refused to
embark on a contest where the odds would have been heavily
weighted against him, a fact of which Sir William Savory
was perfectly aware.

From 1859 Pasteur had been investigating the origin and
the reality of microbes and from 1865 Lister had been

* Brit. Med. Jour., 1879, II, p. 212.

LISTER AND ANTISEPTICS 297

putting these investigations to practical account. That is,
in 1879 Savory had had twenty years to meditate over the
labours of Pasteur and fourteen years to meditate over
those of Lister. The amazing outcome of his meditations
was the worthlessness of the antiseptic method ! " Savory's
address," records Sir Rickman Godlee, " is still spoken of as
the swan-song of the already dwindling race of pre-antiseptic
surgeons. It expressed, however, the views of a consider-
able proportion of the senior members of the staffs of the
London and provincial hospitals at the time. Like a poultice,
it warmed and comforted the soul of many a middle-aged
man, who had begun to feel the discomforts of an under-
mined faith; though it almost made some of the younger
men, to whom time passes but slowly, despair of the
future." *

At an influential meeting in December 1879 f t^ e South
London Division of the Metropolitan Counties Branch of
the British Medical Association Lister dealt with Savory's
Cork address. He met the statistical charge preferred
against him, and he emphasised the new facts he had
proved, saying, "If these matters have not attracted atten-
tion, it cannot be because they are not worthy of it; I pre-
sume it is because I have not the capacity to bring them
before my professional brethren with sufficient force to im-
press them upon them. It is not, I say, that these things are
unimportant; but that they are not believed." f His perora-
tion should have moved any surgeon, even Sir William
Savory : " I feel I owe an apology to the meeting for having
detained it so long, and I return you my sincere thanks
for having listened to me so patiently. In such a gathering
of medical men as I see before me I cannot avoid speaking
warmly on a matter so near to my heart. I have been
charged with enthusiasm; but I regard enthusiasm with
reference to the avoidance of death, pain, and calamity to
our fellow-creatures as a thing not at all to be ashamed of ;
for I feel this to be a matter of which I may say in the
words of Horace:

Aeque pauperibus prodest, locupletibus aeque,
Aeque neglectum pucris senibusque nocebit." t

* Sir R. Godlee, Lord Lister, p. 323. t Ibid., p. 324.

298 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

There were practically only two London surgeons who were
moved to carry out what this speech eloquently and reason-
ably suggested, and they were (afterwards Sir H. G.) Howse
of Guy's and Marcus Beck of University College. Sir
William Savory was in no wise moved: such men never
are. Even at the Seventh International Medical Congress,
held at London in 1881, he referred to his Cork address
as still the epitome of his creed. Nor did he stand alone
at this Congress, for Sampson Gamgee (1828 1886), an
old fellow-student of Lister's, eloquently supported Savory.

The debate of 1879, according to Sir Rickman Godlee,
" also clearly showed how the often unconscious adoption
of portions of Lister's practice interfered with the accept-
ance of the doctrine as a whole. From the very first the
antiseptic leaven began to work and led to a general diminu-
tion of hospital diseases, which was forthwith attributed
entirely to improvements in hospital hygiene. And yet,
though this was the favourite view to hold and to express,
one surgeon after another made attempts to obtain results
equal to Lister's by simpler, or what were thought to be
simpler, means. One satisfied his conscience by merely sub-
stituting oakum for lint as a dressing, another by supplying
weak solutions of iodine to his wounds. Callender of St.
Bartholomew's had a system of his own which Lister
described as ' a thoroughly antiseptic treatment/ and
Jonathan Hutchinson of the London Hospital kept his dress-
ings constantly soaked with spirit of wine and lead lotion.
So did Croft and MacCormac, who followed Lister's practice
implicitly, though not with complete success, in the fine new
St. Thomas's Hospital the first up-to-date pavilion in
London/' * It is enough to startle one to ascertain that
" long after Lister came to London [in 1877] it was hard
to find a dozen surgeons in the metropolis who were really
competent to carry out the antiseptic treatment of a serious
case/' f

The Irish surgeons in Dublin and Belfast, with a few
notable exceptions, ignored the innovation of Lister or
laughed at it. Even while he was at Edinburgh, Lister
received no support from his colleagues on the senior staff,

* Sir R. Godlee, Lord Lister, p. 324.
t Ibid., p. 326.

LISTER AND ANTISEPTICS 299

though he secured adherents among the juniors. The sur-
geons of the Royal Infirmary, Glasgow, pretended to give
the new treatment a trial, but the clear evidence is that
" the thing was a sham." * Nor is it true to hold that
antiseptics were more readily accepted abroad. The prophet,
save in Germany, Switzerland, and Scandinavia, had no
more honour abroad than he possessed at home.

In Germany Ernst von Bergmann of Berlin, Tillmans of
Leipzig, Thiersch of Leipzig, and his intimate friend,
Richard von Volkmann of Halle, Esmarch of Kiel, Konig
of Gottingen, Trendelenburg of Bonn, Nussbaum of Munich,
and Stromeyer of Hanover, adopted the antiseptic treatment.
Von Langenbeck of Berlin preserved an attitude of
neutrality. Thamayn of Halle, and a man in such an out-
standing position as Billroth of Vienna, were frankly hostile.
In 1880 Volkmann maintained at a clinical lecture that in
medico-legal cases a surgeon could be called to account if
he completely ignored antiseptics and lost a patient from
pyaemia. " For this/' he writes, " I was reproached in the
most violent manner both verbally and in print. A dis-
tinguished medical- jurist (Gcrichtsarst) wrote a letter about
me in which he called me a fanatic, and said that no medical
jurist alive would reproach a practical surgeon who had
acted faithfully according to the teaching of the text-books
recommended at the University, because a practical surgeon
could neither buy all the new books, nor ought he to allow
his principles to be shaken by every new discovery/' f These
sentiments stand for those of a class, and are therefore
important. But it is easy to note the stages by which such
principles harden into a scientific creed which nothing and
no one can shake.

A. W. Schultze, who was a convinced Listerian, points
out that by 1875 the early enthusiasm in Germany had
cooled because surgeons could not succeed in obtaining
Lister's results, so that in some places actual opposition had
set in. Schultze had visited our schools as well as those on
the Continent, and he records that " in London Lister has
few adherents. The principal surgeons [in 1875] have
nothing to do with it, because they say they do not obtain

* Sir R. Godlee, Lord Lister, p. 328.
t Ibid., p. 340.

300 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

from it any better results, and, speaking generally, the whole
affair is too complicated for them. Precise objections you
do not hear; the details of the practice are usually unknown
to them/'

Not less instructive was his round of the Continental
schools. It was the same story in Holland, Belgium, South
Germany, and Vienna. He never saw the treatment pro-
perly carried out. It had been tried and given up. No
rational objections were offered. For the most part surgeons
were content to clap carbolic acid dressings on to wounds
and suppurating surfaces, and looked upon Lister's publica-
tions with distrust.*

Billroth stood in the same rank as Bergmann. Great as
a man, he proved equally great as a teacher, training such
men destined to make their mark as Czerny, Mikulicz, and
Wolfler. They diffused his ideas and his inspiration to
Heidelberg, Breslau, Prague, and other Universities not
merely in Austria and Germany, but in Universities so far
away from Vienna as those of Belgium and Holland. The
intimacy between Billroth and his pupils was as intimate
as that between Paget and his. Billroth looked up to Liebig,
and expressed the same disbelief as Liebig in micro-organisms
as a cause of decomposition. Twice in October 1875 h e
confided his opinion to Volkmann. " If you were not," he
wrote on October 27, " so energetic a supporter of this
method I should say the whole thing was a swindle; but
still Lister's personality charms me." f Again he wrote to
Volkmann : " I find the failures in Lister's treatment very
instructive. I would on no account miss them. Absolute
perfection has no interest for me. I am curious what will
come after Lister; as a rule such things do not last more
than five years." f To Neudorfer, an Austrian Army sur-
geon who vehemently opposed Lister in November 1876^
Billroth wrote : " I share your opinion that Lister's theory
still has a hole somewhere ; most investigators probably hold
this opinion." f

In the Franco-German War of 1870-1, in spite of the lead
Pasteur had given to the French surgeons, the French did
very little to extend Listerism to the wounded. The Germans

* Sir R. Godlee, Lord Lister, p. 343.

t Ibid., p. 349. Cf. Briefe of Theodor Billroth.

LISTER AND ANTISEPTICS 301

did much more. Lister devised a specially simple method
of his treatment readily applicable to the wounded.* Sur-
geons like Berger and Perier, Terrier and, above all, Cham-
pionniere bestirred themselves on behalf of the success of
antiseptics, and the last published in 1876 the first complete
account of antiseptic surgery. Vilmos Manninger thus
accounts for the French failure to seize the new ideas:
" France, the land of fashions, was occupied with the dis-
cussion of so many other methods which their inventors
advocated in preference to this new doctrine from abroad,
that it advanced with tardy steps. One particular method,
the ' pansement ouate of Alphonse Guerin/ was set up in
opposition to Lister's treatment and held its own until 1880.
It was because France in mere method of dressing was looked
upon as the hinge upon which antiseptics turned, that the
essence of Lister's teaching was long in obtaining a secure
foothold." f O ne remedy held the field, and therefore no
other remedy was worth trial. Championniere, a highly
competent witness, agrees with Manninger that the French
surgeons insisted in regarding Lister's system as a kind of
dressing, not as a method of treatment. In 1909 Cham-
pionniere told his class that in the war of 1870 his chief
prevented him from bringing carbolic acid to the field hos-
pital where patients were dying by the thousand of septic
disease. His chief objected to such new-fangled ideas, and
the carbolic acid was taken back to Paris unopened. Many
bodies of Frenchmen, thanks to this prejudice, were left on
the battlefield, and were also not taken back to Paris. " I
only remind you/' Championniere remarked to his students,
" as a matter of history, that for many years I was the
subject of a sort of persecution on the part of those whose
scientific repose I was violently upsetting, a persecution which
only our contemporaries can remember/' J

In Italy the adoption of Listerism was even slower than
in France. Writing in 1878, Dr. Giuseppe Ruggi mentions
seven Italian surgeons as the rare exceptions who had at
least given it a trial. One of these was Bottini of Pavia,

* Brit. Mcd. Jour., 1870, II, p. 243; Lister, Collected Papers, II, p. 161.

t V. Manninger, Dcr Entwickclungsgang dcr Antiseptik und Aseptik,
p. ioo.

t Sir R. Godlee, Lord Lister, p. 355 ; Championniere, Brit. Med. Jour.,
1902, pp. 1819-21.

302 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

and he speaks in 1878 of the acceptance of it in other
countries, though in his own it " has been suffocated, up
to that time, by the terrible and insidious weapon, apathy." *
Ruggi testifies: " Italy is the most indifferent of all nations
and seems as if she neither interested herself nor wished
to interest herself in this method of treatment, which has
been estimated so highly by the great surgical leaders of
Germany." *

If Europe was slow to adopt antiseptics, America and
that is saying a good deal was slower. This is all the
more remarkable when we bear in mind how often Americans
visit Germany, and how lively the admiration for German
opinion used to be and, for that matter, still is. In
November 1877, Dr. Robert F. Weir, Surgeon to the New
York and Roosevelt Hospitals, said : "It is only lately that,
in America, attention has been given practically to the
teachings of Lister in respect to the treatment of wounds.
In fact, aside from an article by Schuppert in the New
Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, little or nothing has
appeared in our medical journals relative to the results of
the so-called antiseptic method. . . . The reason why
American surgeons who justly have the reputation !of
being eager to seize upon any improvement in their art
have been tardy in testing the success of this mode of treat-
ment, may, perhaps, be stated as follows: i. That the
treatment, as enunciated by Mr. Lister, has been repeatedly
changed in its details; 2. That it was too complicated, and
demanded the supervision of the surgeon himself, or, in
a hospital, of a carefully-trained staff of assistants; 3. That
many who had tried it had been unsuccessful in the cases
where the essay had been made. But the most weighty
objection which was asserted or entertained, was the posi-
tiveness of the enunciation of the germ-theory in explanation
of the process of decomposition in the secretions of a
wound.' 1 t

In 1877 Lister left Edinburgh University for the chair
of Clinical Surgery at King's College, London, and there
is little doubt that he came to the metropolis as a man with
a mission. This mission was to convert London to the

* Sir R. Godlee, Lord Lister, p. 356.
t Ibid., p. 357.

LISTER AND ANTISEPTICS 303

antiseptic doctrine, where, after the lapse of twelve years
since it was first announced, it had made but little progress.
What the state of surgical opinion was like is evident from
the fact that John Wood, a colleague of Lister's at King's
College, never in his heart thought that there was much in
antiseptics. In 1877 he openly declared that his new
colleague " owed his fame to Germany," drawing the con-
clusion that " the Germans were a dirty people," and that
accordingly the new treatment " was not really necessary in
England." As Wood was a good anatomist, and a better
surgeon and a still better operator, his opinion possessed
weight.

There was growth, there was development, with Listerism,
and this is what we should naturally expect. Men stood on
the shoulders of Lister, and gazed ahead. Aseptic surgeons
like Ernst von Bergmann, known to some of us as one of
the surgeons who attended Frederick the Noble and also
known to fewer of us as one of the commanding scientific
men of his age, held that organisms falling on a wound after
an operation might be washed away by an unirritating fluid
like salt-solution. Bergmann had been destined first for
the ministry and then turned to philology. During the
Franco-German War he had the foresight to divine the
enormous extension of surgery to which antiseptics would
give rise. Conscious of his great powers, this supremely
able man abandoned pure science and turned to applied
science in the shape of surgery. His pupils sought to get
rid of chemical antiseptics even from their dressings, apply-
ing only materials, such as cotton wool or gauze, which had
been rendered sterile by super-heating. Did Lister ever
understand how aseptics arose out of antiseptics? Did
Virchow ever understand how the young men would pour
the new wine of bacteriology into the old bottle of cellular
pathology? Did Ehrlich ever understand how the new
generation altered his conceptions of immunity?

The outcome of the extension of aseptic surgery was
antagonism to antiseptic surgery. Lister was honest enough
to admit that in the light of newer knowledge a certain
number of the beliefs upon which his system was founded
had to be modified or even discarded. " But it is to be
regretted/ 5 observes Sir Rickman Godlee, "that so much

304 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

should have been made of this, and that in the feud that
has arisen between the advocates of antiseptics and aseptics
intemperate language should have been used. Such was
never employed by von Bergmann or by Lister. There
ought not to have been a contest at all ; for the two systems
are not really opposed to one another. . . . The pity of it
is that, for the moment, surgeons appear to feel bound to
range themselves either on one side or the other." * In
the nineties, and even in 1925, there is the spirit of attack
that Lister had to endure so far back as the sixties. The
idea underlying the modern practice is sound, but it is not
new. " Nothing/' Sir Rickman Godlee judiciously points
out, " is gained by strong language either on one side or
the other. It is painful to hear the modern school spoken
of as heretics, or the old school as effete. Lister himself
seldom referred to the matter in public, and then it was in
words not of anger but of grief." f

The old opposition gradually died away, though oc-
casionally men like Lawson Tait and Bantock, the gynae-
cologists, joined the ranks of the aseptics in their abuse.'!
Men came to acknowledge Lister's creative share in the
movement for the prevention and the relief of human suffer-
ing, which Sir William Osier termed man's redemption of
man. In 1902 Lister received the Copley Medal of the
Royal Society. At the anniversary dinner he returned
thanks on behalf of the Medallists, and ended his speech
by a reference which showed how the man of seventy-five
felt his old wounds. " He had often thought that if he did
deserve any credit, it was at the time when, perfectly con-
vinced of the truth of the principle on which he acted, and
persuaded also of the enormous importance to mankind of
being able to carry out that principle in practice, he worked
for years with exceedingly little encouragement from his
professional brethren. There were, however, two great
exceptions, his father-in-law and his students."

* Sir R. Godlee, Lord Lister, p. 458.

t Ibid., p. 466.

j L. Tait, " The Antiseptic Theory tested by the Statistics of One Hun-
dred Cases of successful Ovariotomy," Medico-Chirurg. Trans, 1880,
LXIII, p. 161 ; Trans. Internat. Med. Congress, London, 1881, II, p. 228.

Sir R. Godlee, Lord Lister, p. 576.

IX

FORGOTTEN SCIENTISTS

HOSTILITY to new ideas is as marked a feature of the ancient
world as it is of the modern. The search for natural law
is expressed in Cato's reply to Scipio : " My wisdom consists
in the fact that I follow nature, the best of guides, as I
would a God and am loyal to her commands." Reuchlin
could say : " I reverence St. Jerome as an angel, I respect
De Lyra as a master, but I adore truth as a God." A Cato
might follow nature as a God or a Reuchlin might adore
truth as a God, but in classical times such a pursuit was
dangerous. The Athenians banished Anaxagoras on the
ground of impiety. They also banished Protagoras and
burned his books publicly. When Carneades of the New
Academy visited Rome on political business, and took occa-
sion to deliver some of his sceptical discourses, the Romans
promptly expelled him. Aristophanes attacked Socrates
for impiety and materialism in teaching that the clouds were
mechanical emanations and not divine persons.

Socrates, in Plato's Phcedo, attacks the physiological
studies of Anaxagoras on the same ground. He is ex-
plaining to his disciples why he refused to take the hint
conveyed to him by the Athenian Government that his
escape would be connived at. " All my splendid hopes were
dashed to the ground," Socrates holds, " my friend, for as
I went on reading I found that the writer [i.e. Anaxagoras]
made no use of Mind at all, and that he assigned no causes
for the order of things. His causes were air, and ether,
and water, and many other strange things. I thought that
he was exactly like a man who should begin by saying that
Socrates does all that he does by Mind, and who, when he
tried to give a reason for each of my actions, should say,
first, I am sitting here now, because my body is composed of
20 35

306 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

bones and muscles, and that the bones are hard and separated
by joints, while the muscles can be tightened and loosened,
and, together with the flesh, and the skin which holds them
together, cover the bones ; and that therefore, when the bones
are raised in their sockets, the relaxation and contraction of
the muscles makes it possible for me now to bend my limbs,
and that that is the cause of my sitting here with my legs
bent. And in the same way he would go on to explain why
I am talking to you : he would assign voice, and air, and
hearing, and a thousand other things as causes; but he
would quite forget to mention the real cause, which is that
since the Athenians thought it right to condemn me, I have
thought it right and just to sit here and to submit to what-
ever sentence they may think fit to impose. For, by the dog
of Egypt, I think that these muscles and bones would long
ago have been in Megara or Boetia, prompted by their
opinion of what is best, if I had not thought it better and
more honourable to submit to whatever penalty the state
inflicts, rather than escape by flight. But to call these
things causes is absurd/'* So the age-long conflict of
idealism with materialism proceeds in the fifth century B.C.,
as it proceeds in the nineteenth.

As Cato endeavoured to follow nature, so St. Augustine
pleaded for freedom for all in her pursuit. He accepted
the fact of organic evolution as readily as a naturalist of
our day, but a study of its factors was a matter of extreme
uncertainty. " It very often happens/' he points out, " that
there is some question as to the earth or the sky, or the
other elements of this world . . . respecting which one who
is not a Christian has knowledge derived from most certain
reasoning or observation (by a scientific man), and it is
very disgraceful and mischievous and of all things to be
carefully avoided, that a Christian speaking of such matters
as being according to the Christian Scriptures, should be
heard by an unbeliever talking such nonsense that the un-
believer perceiving him to be as wide from the mark as
east from west, can hardly restrain himself from laughing/'f
Such was the liberal view he laid down in the fifth century
of our era, and such was the view on which he long con-

* Plato, Phado, p. 179.

t De Gcnesi ad Littcram, bk. I. sect. 39 (xix).

FORGOTTEN SCIENTISTS 307

tinned to act till the days of the Donatist controversy.
Fourteen hundred years after the death of St. Augustine
we still breathed the air of hostility to new forms of
thought. From the days of Jenner to those of Lister,
who passed away in 1912, we experience its all-pervading
presence.

Portions of the careers of Jenner, Simpson, Lyell, Helm-
holtz, Joule, Darwin, Pasteur, and Lister we have surveyed.
These portions stop, for the most part, with the publication
of the great conception with which the particular genius is
associated. We stop our analysis of the career of Jenner
with his publication of his book, An Inquiry into the Cause
and Effects of the Variola? Vaccines 9 in 1798 and the criti-
cism thereof; of the career of Simpson with his discovery
of chloroform in 1847 an d the criticism thereof; of the
career of Lyell with his publication of his Principles of
Geology in 1830-3 and the criticism thereof; of the career
of Hclmholtz to his discovery of the conservation of energy
in 1847 an d the criticism thereof; of the career of Joule
to his discovery of the mechanical equivalent of heat in 1843
and the criticism thereof; of the career of Darwin to the
publication of the Origin of Species in 1859 and the criticism
thereof; of the career of Pasteur to his discovery of micro-
organisms in 1859 and the criticism thereof; and of the
career of Lister to his discovery of antiseptics in 1865 an( l
the criticism thereof. Inevitably the task of analysing the
criticism takes us, in some cases, beyond the date we have
fixed for the end of our labours. There is no reason to
think that the strictures levelled at any of these men ceased
with the dates we have taken. If this book were not to
grow to a portentous length, there must be limits set to
it, and we have chosen limits that may well seem to some to
be arbitrary. These limits are dictated by considerations
of space, and by nothing else.

Helmholtz himself tells us how a Professor of Physiology
replied testily when invited by a physicist, during a discussion
on the images of the eye, to accompany him home to see
the experiment. With annoyance, he retorted that " a
physiologist had nothing to do with experiments, though
they might be well enough for physicists/' * Another Pro-
* L. Koenigsberger, Hermann von Hclmholtz, p. 49.

308 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

fessor of Pharmacology, and an academic reformer as well,
taking the intellectual part himself, and leaving the lower
experimental side to a colleague, gave up all hopes of him
when he explained he regarded experiment as the true basis
of science. Towards the end of 1850 Helmholtz discovered
the ophthalmoscope. One distinguished surgical colleague
told the discoverer that he should never use the instru-
ment. For it would be too dangerous to admit naked
light into the diseased eye ! Another was of opinion that the
mirror might be of service to oculists with defective eyesight.
For his part he had good eyes and wanted none of it. *

No one thinks that hostility to Darwin ceased soon after
1859. It certainly had not ceased in 1871 when he pub-
lished the Descent of Man. St. Augustine rejected the
doctrine of special creation, and the Church rejected it till
the days of John Milton, whose Paradise Lost was the cause
of its reception. Huxley fondly believed that Moses wrote
" Trespassers will be prosecuted " across the path of the
naturalist. He was wrong. It was John Milton who
affixed this notice. Will the pleasure his poems have given
atone for the pain of such a conception as special creation?
For hundreds of years the Church entertained no such idea,
and men of the stature of St. Augustine emphatically repu-
diated it. The genius of one man was enough to plant it
in the heart of Europe.

In passing, we may note that simultaneous discoveries
such as that of Wallace and Darwin are by no
means so uncommon as some suppose. Bichat and
Lamarck in France, and Treviranusf made simultaneously
three independent attempts to treat the phenomena of
organic life as a whole and in connection. Karl Friedrich
Gauss, whose discoveries were forestalled as often as New-
ton's, and Legendre simultaneously developed the so-called
method of least squares. Gauss followed out the theories of
Laplace and Legendre at the same time as George Green,
whose fundamental Essay on the Application of Mathematical
Analysis to the Theories of Electricity and Magnetism, pub-
lished in 1828, was so long ignored. H. C. Schumacher and
Gauss also simultaneously arrived at the same conclusions on

* L. Koenigsberger, Hermann von Helmholtz, p. 40.

t E. Haeckel, NatUrliche Schopfungs Geschichtc, Band I, Vorlesung 4.

FORGOTTEN SCIENTISTS 309

Abel's Memoir on Elliptic Functions* Saccheri performed
at the close of the seventeenth century, the task of developing
a logically consistent geometry which accepted the other
Euclidean axioms, though denying the parallel axiom.
Gauss, with his penetrating genius, pondered on this question,
doubting the absolute necessity of the Euclidean geometry.
Once again he was anticipated, for Johann Boylai (1802
1860), a Hungarian, and Lobatschewski, a Russian, also
doubted the absolute necessity of traditional geometry. It
was quite in keeping with the extraordinary genius of
Gauss, which so resembled that of Henry Cavendish, that
in the cases of Schumacher and Boylai and Lobatschewski,
he should simply have experienced relief that there was
now no necessity for him to publish his own results, results
that affected the very foundations of the whole of geometry!
There is a right spirit of detachment, but surely the limits
of it are reached in the cases of Gauss and Cavendish.
Think only of some of the consequences of the ideas of
Boylai and Lobatschewski. In the hands of Riemann they
assumed new possibilities when he contemplated the effect
of denying the infinity of the straight line. For it meant
the amazing extension of geometry in our days the exten-
sion to space of four, five, or any number of dimensions.
Some trace the Einstein principle of relativity back to
Descartes. There can be no manner of doubt that it goes
back in its pedigree to the simultaneous work of a Russian
and a Hungarian, which had all been done by Gauss.

The tale of simultaneous discovery can readily be length-
ened. In fact, if we had at our disposal the n dimensions
in space on paper, at least we should require it if we were
to give all the examples. Young and Laplace independently
developed the theory of capillary action. Avogadro and
Ampere practically suggested at the same time that equal
volumes of different gases contain an equal number of
smallest independent particles of matter, a far-reaching hypo-
thesis. Sir Norman Lockyer and the French astronomer,

* K. F. Gauss, Wcrkc, III, p. 395- We may here say that all
Gauss's letters are worth reading, and fortunately there are many of
them. There are : " Brief wechsel zwischen C. F. Gauss und H. C.
Schumacher " ; " Brief wechsel zwischen Gauss und Bessel " ; " Brief-
wechsel zwischen C F. Gauss and W. Boylai"; and "Briefe zwischen
Humboldt und Gauss."

310 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

Janssen, announced together the existence of three bright
lines in the solar spectrum. Jacobi and Abel developed, in-
dependently of Gauss, what Gauss called the " new tran-
scendent f unctions. " Jacobi and Abel, following out the in-
vestigations of Legendre, came to Gaussian conceptions
entertained a generation before them. Hermann Grassmann
(1809 1877) quite independently worked at similar
extensions of our arithmetical and geometrical con-
ceptions, leading him on to quaternions as presenting a
special form of the extended algebra and geometry elaborated
from different beginnings. Mobius and Plucker at the same
time threw their strength into purely geometrical researches
as contrasted with the dominant French school of analysis.
Independently and quite unknown to Michael Faraday, or
to each other, Sir William Rowan Hamilton, the discoverer
of quaternions, at Dublin and Grassmann at Zurich were
elaborating, between 1835 an d J 845, the geometrical con-
ceptions and vocabulary required in the representation of
" directed " quantities. To-day we know these quantities
as vector analysis, and we also know what a large share
vector analysis takes in the scientific labours of our time.
As Helmholtz at Potsdam and Joule in Manchester were
working at different sides of the conservation of energy,
so were Clausius at Zurich and Kelvin at Glasgow working
at the same side of this problem simultaneously. Clausius
and Kelvin simultaneously sought to reconcile Sadi Carnot's
conceptions with Joule's experiments. Kelvin, character-
istically enough, developed his views in a generalised attitude,
and Clausius, just as characteristically, developed his from
a particularised angle and gave his treatment a more purely
mathematical turn. Kelvin, Clausius, and Macquorn Ran-
kine at the same time applied the Carnot doctrine that heat
and work are convertible to the discovery of new relations
among the properties of bodies. In 1869, Mendeleef, the
Russian, and Lothar Meyer, the German, published almost
together their classification of the periodic arrangements of
the elements, according to their atomic weights. In 1900, De
Vries from Holland, Correns from Germany, and Tchermak
from Austria simultaneously rediscovered and repeated
Mendel's experiments recorded in 1865.

People say that ideas are in the air. They are nothing of

FORGOTTEN SCIENTISTS 311

the kind. They are in the minds of men and women who have
the genius to perceive them. That they should perceive them
simultaneously every now and then is no matter of surprise.
Rather, the matter of surprise is that such simultaneous
discoveries should not occur more frequently than they do.
We can scarcely avoid raising the question, Why should
not two men of genius in science collaborate? Supposing
Darwin and Wallace had collaborated? Supposing Adams
and Leverrier had collaborated ? It does not seem to have
occurred to the co-discoverers of the evolution principle that
they should have joined forces, and we almost doubt the
possibility. A couple of cases may be given. Liebig
(1802 1875) anc l Wohler (1800 1882) co-operated suc-
cessfully, in spite of the fact that they pursued different
lines of thought and were trained in different schools. Of
course many scientific memoirs bear two names, but the
status of the joint authors is generally known to be unequal.
One of them is either paying a kindly compliment to the
younger worker, or (alas! for poor human nature) he is
assuming credit for work done in his laboratory with a
minimum of exertion to himself. One of the rare exceptions
is the association of G. D. Liveing, so long the Grand Old
Man of Cambridge University, and Sir James Dewar, and
this association undoubtedly carried no suggestion of in-
equality. Real scientific partnership is much rarer than
successful literary collaboration.

No scientist has carried out a long series of experiments,
leading him to formulate conclusions, without wishing that
he had anyone with whom he could discuss their worth.
Pasteur ached for Chappuis to take up science in order to
afford him that scientific partnership for which he longed.
Chappuis, however, turned aside to philosophy, and Pasteur
was obliged to tread his solitary path. Long before him,
Milton had remarked, " I have chosen the lonely way." It
was as lonely for Pasteur as it had been for Newton,
journeying in strange seas of thought unaccompanied. The
motto prefixed to Pasteur's " Etudes sur la Biere " is : " The
greatest distortion of the intellect is to believe things because
one wishes them to exist." At one of the meetings of the
Academic Frangaise, while the interminable Dictionary was
being discussed on January 29, 1885, ^ flashed across his

312 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

mind, bursting for a Chappuis in whom to confide : " I do
not know how to hide my ideas from those who work with
me; still, I wish I could have kept those I am going to
express a little longer to myself. The experiments have
already begun which will decide them.

" It concerns rabies, but the results might be general.

" I am inclined to think that the virus which is considered
rabic may be accompanied by a substance which, by im-
pregnating the nervous system, would make it unsuitable for
the culture of the microbe. Thence vaccinal immunity. If
that be so, the theory might be a general one : it would be
a stupendous discovery.

" I have just met Chamberland in the Rue Gay-Lussac,
and explained to him this view and my experiments. He was
much struck, and asked my permission to make at once on
anthrax the experiment I am about to make on rabies as
soon as the dog and the culture rabbits are dead. Roux,
the day before yesterday, was equally struck/' *

Working inductively, Jenner had discovered his vaccina-
tion. Working scientifically, Pasteur was, to the permanent
benefit of mankind, to develop his remedy. The day came
when the remedy was to be tested on Joseph Meister, the
little Alsatian boy, who had been bitten by a mad dog at
Meissengott near Schlestadt. M. Vallery-Radot reveals
how tenderly and how anxiously Pasteur watched the
cure of the boy, for to him as to Lister a patient was never
an item in a ward. He was " this poor lad " who has the
misfortune to be inoculated with hydrophobia. Meister was
cured. Did the doctors believe in the cure? Not at all. At
the time when Dr. Grancher first accepted the responsibility
of conducting inoculations, one of Pasteur's most determined
opponents, M. Peter, reiterated his requests to the Academy
of Sciences almost weekly, that they should order the
laboratory in the Rue d'Ulm to be closed. Passionately
Peter declared that, instead of curing rabies, they were in
reality communicating the disease. One morning Dr.
Grancher met Pasteur listening to a physician who was
putting forth his objections to the doctrine of microbes in
general and of the treatment of hydrophobia in particular.
Wearied out with the objections at last, Pasteur replied:
* R. Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, p. 413.

FORGOTTEN SCIENTISTS 313

" Sir, your language is not very intelligible to me. I am
not a physician and do not desire to be one. Never speak
to me of your dogma of morbid spontaneity. I am a
chemist; I carry out experiments and I try to understand
what they teach me." * Opponents discussed in April 1886
the three deaths of Russians who came at an advanced stage
of the disease. The failures they could see : the successes,
such as Meister, they were unable constitutionally to see.

In 1886 Pasteur was a man of forty- four, one of the
most outstanding scientists in the length and breadth of
France, yet even he was subject to the hostility of men like
Peter. When in August 1886 the discoverer read some
articles of fierce criticism, he exclaimed: "How difficult
it is to obtain the triumph of truth! Opposition is a useful
stimulant, but bad faith is such a pitiable thing. How is it
that they are not struck with the results as shown by
statistics? From 1880 to 1885 sixty persons are stated to
have died of hydrophobia in the Paris hospitals ; well, since
November i, 1885, when the prophylactic method was
started in my laboratory, only three deaths have occurred in
those hospitals, two of which were cases which had not been
treated. It is evident that very few people who had been
bitten did not come to be treated. In France, out of that
unknown but very restricted number, seventeen cases of
death have been noted, whilst out of the 1,726 French and
Algerians who came to the laboratory only ten died after
the treatment/' f

There was open hostility on the part of medical men,
and there was concealed or anonymous hostility on the part
of some members of the public. The discoverer suffered
from that pestilential person, the writer of the anonymous
letter. Envy, malice, and hatred employed their trumpet
tones against him. In 1886, with a career of scientific bril-
liance behind him, newspaper after newspaper wrote insulting
and scurrilous articles. Colleagues, knowing his sensitive
nature, endeavoured to console him. " I did not know I had
so many enemies," he mournfully thought. " You know,"
said M. Grancher, " that M. Pasteur is an innovator, and
that his creative imagination, kept in check by rigorous ob-

* R. Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, p. 425.
t Jbid. t p. 433-

3H SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

servation of facts, has overturned many errors and built
up in their place an entirely new science. His discoveries
on ferments, on the generation of the infinitesimally small,
on microbes, the cause of contagious diseases, and on the
vaccination of those diseases, have been for biological
chemistry, for the veterinary art and for medicine, not a
regular process, but a complete revolution. Now, revolu-
tions, even those imposed by a scientific demonstration, ever
leave behind them vanquished ones who do not easily forgive.
M. Pasteur has therefore many adversaries in the world,
without counting those Athenian French who do not like to
see one man always right or always fortunate." * The
Greek did not admire Alcibiades because he was invariably
called Alcibiades the Just, and apparently this Greek owned
successors in the France of the eighties. In spite of M.
Grancher, we entertain a shrewd suspicion that the obstacles
Pasteur encountered in the medical world can be traced
back to the motto of his Etudes sur la Biere. For medical
man after medical man believed things because they wished
them to exist, or perhaps we may say medical man after
medical man believed things because they had existed while
they were young men, and therefore they were resolved that
they should go on persisting in their existence. The fact
that Pasteur or, for the matter of that, any other scientific
man had taken them to a stage beyond what they had
known in their college days was absolutely immaterial.
Their motto was, " The thing that hath been is that which
shall be, and there is no new thing under the sun." At
least, if there was a brand new thing under the sun, ostrich-
like they were determined to hide their heads in the sands
and not see it. Nelson was not deliberately more blind
at Copenhagen than these medical men were resolute in
being. They applied the telescope to their blind eye. Of
course they saw nothing in Pasteurian research. But they
might have been asked another question, How could they
with eyes wilfully shut see anything in it? They might
also have been asked a second question, How are they
going to account for his results? Of course they could say
what stupid folk are always saying when any one of them
was buttonholed, Results? My dear sir, there really are
* R. Vallery-Radot, Life of Pasteur, p. 441.

FORGOTTEN SCIENTISTS 315

no results. You can invariably juggle with figures. Be-
sides, have you heard of the deaths? With a shake of the
professional head, it could be implied that if discretion per-
mitted it could be whispered perhaps the doctor could
effectively remark, THREE deaths! Think of that. If I
only could tell you all and then he could break off, imply-
ing far more deaths than three. Pasteur the discoverer ! But
we all know the rigorous implacability of his reasoning!
We all know the absolute form he gives to his thought!
In theory, he MAY be right. True, he has made lucky
guesses before. But this time his guess has been unlucky!
There are those deaths! Those he cannot explain away!
So the wiseacres shook their heads, so they shrugged their
shoulders. Time proved them wrong. That time proved
them wrong does not prevent the successors of those wise-
acres shaking their heads and shrugging their shoulders,
even in the year of grace 1925, when a new idea is placed
before them.

It is a law of mechanics that to every action there is an
equal and opposite reaction. The mightier the wave, the
greater is the stretch of sand ultimately left exposed. The
example of Francis of Assisi raises his followers to a
pinnacle beyond the reach of mankind; but the work of the
satirist and the record of the annalist agree in their evidence
that the friars of the sixteenth century were as much below
the level of good men as their predecessors were above it.
Through the mouth of Pericles, Thucydides praises the
Athenians for the exact qualities which, in the eyes of
Demosthenes, they utterly lack. The energy of the Athen-
ians of one century was as much above the normal level as
that of their descendants of the next century was below it.
There are many swings of the pendulum backwards and
forwards before the repose of the mean is reached. In
the world of science there is the inevitable reaction against
a man who has stood on a height. The discovery of any
great truth is always followed by an over-valuation, from
which there is certain to be a reaction. There is such a
reaction, for example, against the theory of natural selection
which will inevitably come into its own. All the criticism,
however, we have recorded has not been of this class, which
is, after all, an incident of human nature, though it ought

316 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

not to be so. The criticism we have recorded has generally
been of the type which insists and persists that the new view
is not true, it cannot be true, and anyhow, we should not
dream of accepting it. It is of the class of the Scots who
announced, " I am open to conviction, but I am a dour
deevil to convince. " The creed of the scientist is that he
stands open to every form of truth that the laboratory
could bring him. No creed could be more correct. Creed
and practice in science, however, are by no means precisely
the same thing. Not a few scientists resembled the Scots.
They were open to conviction, but the examples of Jenner
and Simpson, Lyell and Helmholtz, Joule and Darwin, Pas-
teur and Lister proved that the)* were " dour deevils " to
convince, and many of them permanently remained uncon-
vinced. Take an instance. Sir Arthur Shipley informs us
that Alfred Newton (1829 1907) was in some respects
old-fashioned and with fixed ideas, he was like Mr. Chris-
parkle's mother, " always open to discussion, but he invari-
ably looked, as the China shepherdess looked, as though he
would like to see the discussion that would change his mind/'
Long before there was a Christian Church the Greeks em-
ployed their autos da fe. Anaxagoras and Protagoras, Car-
neades and Socrates knew by practical experience what they
meant in real life. To-day science can proclaim if she
chooses that she employs no autos da fe. In fact, she
can proudly claim that she has never done so. We, however,
are not so sure. Is there any punishment equal to that
which, in the name of Science and with the august authority
of Science, has been inflicted upon Jenner and Simpson,
Lyell and Helmholtz, Joule and Darwin, Pasteur and Lister,
in some cases by ignoring their epoch-making ideas, and in
other cases by fighting them to the death? Did any set of
men so torture the body as scientists tortured the minds
of these discoverers by bitterly criticising them ? One would
have thought that the thanks of the whole scientific world
would at once have been their rightful due. In not a single
case was this so. We may be told that such things do not
happen nowadays. Of this we are by no means sure. Our
scientific autos da fe take a new form. If your conceptions
are revolutionary, you are not elected, say, quite so soon
a Fellow of the Royal Society. You are not elected to

FORGOTTEN SCIENTISTS 317

committees to which other men, with not a tithe of your
abilities, are elected. If you are a young lecturer with a
big idea in your mind, you had better be careful. For if
your Professor does not report well of you, you may remain
an assistant Professor or a mere lecturer all your days.
Men able to practise concealment of views like Cavendish
and Gauss though with none of their genius are men
likely to beat you in the days when the selection committee
chooses the new Professor. Nor are these dangers by any
means imaginary. What hope is there for a man whose
papers are systematically declined by the Royal Society of
England, or the Royal Society of Edinburgh, or the Royal
Irish Academy of Ireland? The same question exactly
applies to such foreign bodies as the Academic Frangaise des
Sciences or the Preussische Akademie d. Wissenschaften.
The old motto for the aspiring scientist can be revised, for
it is, " Abandon all hope ye who do not enter here."

The want of recognition, we do not doubt, has brought
the work of many a promising man to an end. We might
as well say that the harm of the Index Expurgatorius may
be measured entirely by the books on its list. Of course,
this is utterly out of the question. We measure the harm
done by the Index Expurgatorius not merely by the books
put on it, but also by those never written because their
authors were afraid. Authors, even scientific ones, are not
all brave men physically. Many a man is not afraid for his
own sake. But he is afraid for the sake of truth and
for he is a human being for the sake of the girl to whom
he is engaged. Sir Isaac Newton was not the only man in
the seventeenth century who shrank from publishing his
results because he feared the hostility his ideas might excite.
Henry Cavendish was not the only man in the eighteenth
century who shrank from publishing his results because he
preferred to attack new questions. Nor was Karl
Friedrich Gauss * the only man in the nineteenth century
who shrank from publishing his results because he feared
the hostility his ideas might excite. In Shakespeare's Henry
IV there is a description that applies : " I am not yet of
Percy's mind, the Hotspur of the north; he that kills some

* On Gauss, cf. Hanselmann, K. F. Gauss] W. von Sartorius, Gauss
zum Gedachtniss] and E. Sobering, C. F. Gauss.

318 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

six or seven dozen of Scots at a breakfast, washes his
hands, and says to his wife, 'Fie upon this quiet life! I
want work! ' " There is a class of scientist who aches for
strife. Thomas Henry Huxley cared for truth. No one
who has read the fine biography of him his son, Mr. Leonard
Huxley, has written can doubt that for a single moment.
Did he never care for controversy for controversy's sake?
He spawned hypotheses, though he never, so far as we know,
originated a single discovery save the one he made as
the undergraduate of nineteen. He went astray over his
Bathybius hypothesis, and he went astray over the phylo-
geny of the horse. Now before both these mistakes were
discovered, would it, we imagine, have gone well with a
young man who pointed out the errors in either? A pure
lover of truth, like that supreme genius, Faraday, would
probably have admitted the error. We are not altogether
so sure in the case of a man who loved controversy as
Huxley did, for it was the very breath of his nostrils.
Can you always chase truth with a logical forceps ?

Nothing came amiss to the destructive powers of Hux-
ley. It might be the views of General Booth on social
reform or it might be the folks who talk about the natural
rights of man. He lashed them all, and right vigorously
he laid on the lash. To use present-day phraseology, his
controversial complexes suffered no repression. No doubt
the subconscious is as much overworked as x, y, and z in
algebra, and we hesitate to employ this term. Still, sub-
consciously this attitude of Huxley towards controversy,
psychologically speaking, affected his attitude towards the
pursuit of truth. Instead of constructive work, his is
destructive work, and it is seldom possible for the same brain
to undertake these two types of creative energy. Even the
elan vital of Bergson is not sufficient for such a task. Hux-
ley's coinage of the word Agnosticism has always seemed
to us to be a parable of the whole man in science as well
as in political economy and in political philosophy. Glad-
stone wrote foolish articles on matters with which he was
not conversant, like his account of Creation as revealed
in Genesis and the order of evolution as shown by modern
biology. Huxley confided in Mr. H. F. Osborn : " When
this article reached me, I read it through and it made me so

FORGOTTEN SCIENTISTS 319

angry that I believe it must have acted on my liver. At
all events, when I finished my reply to Gladstone I felt better
than I had for months past."* The question, however, is,
How did some young men of science feel as they read such
slashing attacks? Was truth to be clutched by the hair in
the pages of the Nineteenth Century as a constable might
capture a ferocious prisoner?

Because Huxley is one of the most typical of the Victorian
scientists we spend some more space on him. On September
29, 1890, he informs Sir J. D. Hooker: "I wish quietude
of mind were possible to me. But without something to
do that amuses me and does not involve too much labour, I
become quite unendurable to myself and to everybody else.

" Providence has, I believe, specially devolved on Glad-
stone, Gore, and Co. the function of keeping ' home 'appy '
for me.

" I really can't give up tormenting ces droles" f

Did it ever occur to him that just as there is a scientific
atmosphere so there is a theological one, to be lived and not
merely to be crammed up in Suarez or in any other authority ?
We verily think that such an idea never crossed the mind of
Huxley. As well might one learn anatomy from book-work
only !

On January 10, 1891, he confides in Sir Michael Foster:
"I knew the saints were not bad hands at lying before;
but these Booth people beat Banagher.

" Then there is awaits skinning, and I believe the

G.O.M. is to be on me! Oh, for a quiet life." J

We return to Shakespeare's Henry IV, for the parallelism
is marked. " I am not yet of Percy's mind, the Hotspur
of the north; he that kills some six or seven dozen of Scots
at a breakfast, washes his hands, and says to his wife,
'Fie 'Upon this quiet life! I want work! ' '" Huxley never
secured the deeply reflective mind, simply because he did not
care for it. He could not say, with Alfred de Vigny, " J'ai
porte dans une vie toute active, une nature toute contem-
plative/' The brooding spirit of truth never dwelt among

* Impressions of Great Naturalists, p. 93.

t L. Huxley, Life and Letters of T. H. Huxley, II, p. 269.

t Ibid. f II, p. 275. I italicise the words.

I italicise these words.

320 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

his manifold activities, spreading peace and the atmosphere
of fruitful ideas over everything. Gladstone had written
articles which laid them open to his facile pen. Very well,
then. Pen must be put to paper, and the articles demolished
as a contractor demolishes an empty house. Lord Randolph
Churchill had set the fashion. Did it strike the mind of
Huxley that in attacking Gladstone, he, in spite of Mr. Win-
ston Churchill's brilliant biography of his father, lowered
himself to the rank of Lord Randolph Churchill?

The case of Sir Richard Owen is far more serious, for he
had won for himself a serious scientific position. We read
in 1851 that Huxley writes: "It is astonishing with what
an intense feeling of hatred Owen is regarded by the
majority of his contemporaries, with Mantell as arch-hater.
The truth is, he is the superior of most, and does not conceal
that he knows it, and it must be confessed that he does
some very ill-natured tricks now and then. A striking
specimen of one is to be found in his article on Lyell in the
last Quarterly, where he pillories poor Quekett a most in-
offensive man and his own immediate subordinate in a
manner not more remarkable for its severity than for its
bad taste. That review has done him much harm in the
estimation of thinking men and, curiously enough, since
it was written, reptiles have been found in the old red sand-
stone, and insectivorous insects in the Trias ! Owen is an
able man, but to my mind not so great as he thinks himself.
He can only work in the concrete from bone to bone, in
abstract reasoning he becomes lost witness Parthenogenesis,
which he told me he considered one of the best things he had
done." * Huxley was then but twenty-six when he pro-
nounced this cocksure judgment. Then and always his
was an esprit positif.

He tells his sister Lizzie, on March 27, 1858, that " I have
a high standard of excellence and am no respecter of
persons, and I am afraid I show the latter peculiarity rather
too much. An internecine feud rages between Owen and
myself (more's the pity) partly on this account, partly from
other causes." |

In Punch for May 15, 1862, under a picture of a gorilla,

* L. Huxley, Life and Letters of T. H. Huxley, I, p. 93.
t Ibid., I, p. 158.

FORGOTTEN SCIENTISTS 321

bearing the sign, " Am I a Man and a Brother? ", appeared a
squib, and we give the concluding verses :

Next HUXLEY replies

That OWEN he lies
And garbles his Latin quotation;

That his facts are not new,

His mistakes not a few,
Detrimental to his reputation.

" To twice slay the slain "

By dint of the Brain
(Thus HUXLEY concludes his review),

Is but labour in vain,

Unproductive of gain,
And so I shall bid you " Adieu."

Did Huxley bid Owen adieu? Of course he did nothing
of the kind. On May, 13, 1871, he writes to John Tyndall:
" You know Mrs. Carlyle said that Owen's sweetness re-
minded her of sugar of lead. Granville's was that plus
butter of antimony ! " *

When Sir Richard Owen died, his son had the temerity
to ask Huxley to write an appreciation of the labours of his
father. Putting aside his private feelings, Huxley, with
a magnanimity that does him credit, did the task in 1894
in a way that proves the standing of Owen to all who
care for what a big man undoubtedly did. Huxley pro-
nounced, after the death of Owen, that " Owen's time . . .
might have been fully occupied by the famous Memoir on
the Pearly Nautilus, which was published in 1832 and placed
its author, at a bound, in the front rank of anatomical
monographers. . . . During more than half a century,
Owen's industry remained unabated; and whether we con-
sider the quantity, or the quality, of the work done, or the
wide range of his labours, I doubt, if, in the long annals
of anatomy, more is to be placed to the credit of any single
worker. ... It is a splendid record; enough, and more
than enough, to justify the high place in the scientific world
which Owen so long occupied. If I mistake not, the his-
torian of comparative anatomy and of palaeontology will
always assign to Owen a place next to, and hardly lower
than, that of Cuvier, who was practically the creator of those
sciences in their modern shape; and whose works must
* L. Huxley, Life and Letters of T. H. Huxley, II, p. 167.
21

322 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

always remain models of excellence in their kind. It was
not uncommon to hear our countrymen called " the British
Cuvier," and so far, in my judgment, the collocation was
justified, high as the praise implies.

" But when we consider Owen's contributions to ' philo-
sophic anatomy/ I think the epithet ceases to be appropriate.
For there can be no question that he was deeply influenced
by, and inclined towards, those speculations of Oken and
Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, of which Cuvier was the declared an-
tagonist and often the bitter critic. . . . When Owen passes
from matters of anatomical fact and their immediate inter-
pretation to morphological speculation, it is not surprising
that he also passes from the camp of Cuvier into that :of
his adversaries. . . .*

" But it will cease to be so remarkable to those who reflect
that the ablest of us is a child of his time, profiting by one
set of influences, limited by another. It was Owen's limita-
tion that he occupied himself with speculations about
the ' Archetype ' some time before the work of
the embryologists began to be appreciated in this country.
It had not yet come to be understood that, after the publi-
cation of the investigations of Rathke, Reichert, Remak,
Vogt, and others, the venue of the great cause of the mor-
phology of the skeleton was removed from the court of
comparative anatomy to that of embryology. " f

Many of the details of this J long and this generous eulogy
we have left out, though the student of the growth of science
will care to read the whole of it. Readers of the first
volume of Mr. Leonard Huxley's biography of his father
cannot help noticing the bitterness of the feeling existing
between Huxley and Owen, and this is evident in the
biography Mr. Huxley has also written of Sir J. D. Hooker,
a couple of extremely important pieces of work. They can
hardly help thinking that if some of this generosity of
feeling had been manifested by T. H. Huxley towards Sir
Richard Owen during the lifetime of the great anatomist,
what a happier place the world of science would have been !
Psychology teaches us that if complexes are repressed, they

* R. Owen, The Life of Professor Owen, II, p. 306.
t Ibid., II, p. 309.

J It occupies pp. 273 to 332 in vol. II of R. Owen, The Life of Pro-
fessor Owen.

FORGOTTEN SCIENTISTS 323

nevertheless make their influence felt. Huxley, like all the
rest of us, was under the sway of these complexes, and
they undoubtedly altered his attitude to Owen. Lately a
friend of mine was asked her opinion of a lady who possessed
a pair of beautiful eyes and a sharp tongue. Reflectively

she answered, " Mrs. . Oh, she has the most beautiful

pair of eyes I have ever seen in a woman's head." There
was a pause in the conversation, and then came another
question, " But what about her tongue? " " I leave that to
speak for itself/' Huxley perceived the beauty of the
anatomy and the palaeontology of Owen, and it is a thousand
pities that he allowed his private grudges to sharpen his
tongue on one who, in spite of mistakes, is the Cuvier of
England.

Of all the melancholy reading we know, there is nothing
quite so melancholy in the annals of the nineteenth century
as the scientific controversies that disfigure it. Men who
ought to have co-operated together are to be found, privately
and publicly, slaying one another in reputation. Goethe, who
was inter alia a scientist, wrote :

Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille,

Sich ein Charakter in dem Strom der Welt.

Ein Talent certainly comes to its own in der Stille, but
does it come to its own in der Streit? There is that atti-
tude of waiting, that passiveness, Wordsworth attractively
sets forth as part of our position to the world of nature :

Nor less I deem that there are powers
Which of themselves our minds impress;

That we can feed this mind of ours
In a wise passiveness.

Think you mid all this mighty sum

Of things for ever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come,

But we must still be seeking?

Disagreement in the mathematical sciences might seem at
first sight incredible. Yet who does not know the con-
troversies connected with the theory of parallel lines, the
meaning of infinitesimals, the correct measurement of force,
the conservation of energy, and the like? There are
fashions in the methods employed in the solution of equa-

3 2 4 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

tions, and men of one set of fashions in this matter denounce
men of another set of fashions. Despite the labours of
Gauss and Sir William Hamilton, P. G. Tait could never
convince Lord Kelvin that the method of quaternions was
a fruitful one. Tait himself used this method, but Lord
Kelvin would never countenance it. Tait in turn disputed the
discovery and the enunciation of the second law of thermo-
dynamics with Clausius. Him and Zeuner fought hotly
as to the cause of the serious discrepancy between the theor-
etical and practical figures referring to the work in the
steam-cylinder. This was known as the " Water or Iron "
Controversy.* The three brothers Weber,f freeing them-
selves from the metaphysical assumptions of their day, occu-
pied themselves with the method of exact measurement
applied to physical, physiological, and mental processes. A
subject, however, so remote from human passions as Wil-
helm Weber's law of electro-dynamics or Ernst Heinrich
Weber's law of psycho-physics aroused long controversies.
We travel on to another grave question, What were the
relations between mathematical and experimental physics?
During the first half of the nineteenth century men like
Gustav Magnus (1802 1870) and Hermann von Helm-
holtz perceived a danger existing. Just as " Natur-philo-
sophie " had enticed many from nature and observation, so
mathematical theories, involving prolonged calculations,
they feared, might similarly entice them from nature and
observation.

Helmholtz used to lay stress on the transcendent genius
of Thomas Young (1773 1829) and competent thinkers of
our time cordially agree in this opinion. The average
scientist thought, however, that a man who was physician,
physicist, and Egyptologist was probably Jack of all trades
and master of none. For Newton alone Gauss reserves the
adjective " summus," and we feel tempted to extend it to
Young. Tscherning terms Young the founder of physio-
logical optics. The emission theory of light held the day
till he made his investigations, setting forth the wave theory
of light. Radiant light, he concluded, consists of undula-
* Prof. Unwin's Forrest Lecture, The Electrician, XXXV, p. 46 ff.,

p. 77 ff.

t Ernst Heinrich, 17951878; Wilhelm, 18041891; and Eduard,
18061871.

FORGOTTEN SCIENTISTS 325

tions of the luminiferous ether. The far-reaching nature
of his investigations was not grasped at the time, and
Lord Brougham had an easy task in criticising one so
unknown to fame as Young then was. Sydney Smith re-
marked that Brougham had made two great discoveries in the
Edinburgh Review. The first was that Byron was no poet,
the second that Young was no philosopher.* Young pub-
lished a masterly reply to Brougham, who had asserted that
he could find in the papers, containing the investigations,
" nothing which deserves the name either of experiment or
discovery/' deemed them " destitute of every species of
merit," and admonished the Royal Society for printing such
" paltry and unsubstantial papers/' Thoughtful people
read the Edinburgh Review : they did not read the pamphlet
of Young, which remained unknown. He accounted for the
first time for the constancy of the angle of contact of a
solid and of a liquid. He was the first to formulate the term
" energy/' He introduced absolute measurements in elasticity
by defining the modulus as the weight which would double
the length of a rod of unit cross-section to which it was
hung. He quite saw the impossibility of any material theory
of heat, holding that it consisted of vibrations of the particles
of bodies, " larger and stronger than those of light/' With
interests as wide as those of Leonardo da Vinci, he turned
his attention to the hieroglyphic inscriptions found on Egyp-
tian remains. He provided the beginnings of a hieroglyphic
alphabet and he provided a hieroglyphic vocabulary of about
two hundred signs, most of which have been confirmed by
recent research. The thoughtful public, however, was per-
suaded that the enormous labours of Young were worthy of
little respect, and, thanks to controversialists like Brougham,
little was heard of Young's contributions till they were
adopted abroad.

Sir Humphry Davy opposed the atomic theory of Dalton,
and Dalton in turn opposed the law of volumes of Gay-
Lussac. Hermann Kolbe broke down the formalism of the
older chemical type theory, but he stood out virulently against
the representatives of modern chemistry. Fierce battles
raged between rival optical theories of emission and undula-
tion, and they also raged between rival theories as to the
* Horner, Life of Sir C. Lyell, I, p. 4?o.

326 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

origin and maintenance of the power of the Voltaic Pile.*
The lively contests of the Wernerians and the Huttonians
occupy a large chapter in the troubled history of geology.
Nor has the controversial aspect of science disappeared in
our own day. Take an example. The labours of Gregor
Mendel have been a long time coming into their own. After
prolonged experiments he wrote a paper, giving a clear and
concise account of his results, and sent it to the able botanist
Nageli. This met with no response. Undaunted at first,
he sent it to a local scientific journal in 1865, where it lan-
guished in obscurity. Meeting with no recognition, he
died a disappointed and embittered man. Despite all ap-
pearances to the contrary, he frequently remarked, " Meine
Zeit wird schon kommen." The time came, but it came to
him as it came to Semmelweis, too late, for his body lay
in the grave. Mr. Bateson and Mr. Punnett of Cambridge
are the prominent exponents of his ideas, which of course
they have developed. The leaders of the Biometric School
of Inheritance are the late W. F. R. Weldon and Mr. Karl
Pearson, f Is it unfair to hold that this School of Inherit-
ance viewed with marked disfavour the Mendelian School?
The spirit of stillness, not the spirit of strife, is the spirit
in which illuminating ideas fill the mind of the investigator.
His brilliancy and his daring may be spoilt by his com-
bativeness. Brilliant he must be, daring he must be. The
qualities of patience and perseverance, of cautiousness and
conservatism, are qualities also demanded in due proportion.
When the discoverer broods over his conceptions, there often
flashes upon him the big notion that will co-ordinate the
lesser ones. The shores of the world of science are strewn
with the wrecks of prophecies that remained unheeded be-
cause many who might have recognised their value were
either preoccupied with conceptions with which they clashed
or were thick in the fray with other scientists. How many,
except de Candolle,J cared for Goethe's divination of the
nature of vegetable organism or for his anticipations of
colour-theory? How many cared for the prophecy of
Marcus Antoninus Plenicz of the germ theory of disease,

* J. Tyndall, Faraday as a Discoverer, p. 73 ff.
t Cf., for instance, M. Onslow, Huia Onslow, p. 78.
t Organographie, I, pp. 243, 551. Cf. Goethe, Werke, Abth. I, Bd. VII
(Weimer ed.).

FORGOTTEN SCIENTISTS 327

anticipating Pasteur by almost a hundred years? How
many cared when in 1846 Rasori announced that parasites
produced fevers? * How many cared for the prophecy of
Faraday of the electric telegraph or the similar prophecy
of Gauss f in 1835 ? How many cared for the anticipation of
the principle of spectrum analysis discerned by Bolzano
of Prague in 1842? How many cared for the experiments of
Joseph Henry, the American, who so far back as 1842
carried out experiments similar to those carried out by the
greatest of all the pupils of Helmholtz, Heinrich Hertz, and
Henry prophesied that the discharge was oscillatory? J
How many cared for the mathematical demonstration of the
oscillatory nature of the discharge given by Lord Kelvin in
1853? How many cared when James Thomson predicted
in 1850 that when you knew the mechanical equivalent of
a degree of temperature and the work of the expansion of
ice, you could calculate how much the freezing point of water
must be lowered by pressure? How many cared for the
anticipation of spectrum analysis in 1845 or ^ le prophetic
work on the nature of fluorescence announced by Sir Gabriel
Stokes in 1860? How many to the year 1900 cared for the
outcome of Gregor Mendel's experiments?

A list of predictions like this sets one in a frame of mind
to raise again the old question, Can a man do his work too
soon? Kant is reported to have said to Stagemann in
1797: " I have come too soon; after a hundred years people
will begin to understand me rightly, and will then study
my books anew and appreciate them." || Did Thomas
Young, as Helmholtz maintained,^ come a generation too
soon? Did James Hutton, as Huxley maintained,** come

* Sir R. Ross, Memoirs, p. 119.

t Gauss wrote to Schumacher: "With a budget of 150 thalers [22
ios.] annually for Observatory and Magnetic Institute together, really
extensive trials cannot of course be made. But could thousands of
thalers be bestowed thereon, I think that, for instance, electro-magnetic
telegraphy might be carried to a perfection and to dimensions at which
imagination almost starts back." Cf. Briefwechsel swischen Gauss und
Schumacher, II, p. 41 iff.

J M. Pupin, From Immigrant to Inventor, p. 266.

Kirchhoff, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, p. 625; Kelvin, Baltimore
Lectures, p. 100.

II Tagebucher, von Varnhagen von Ense f I, p. 46.

II H. L. F. von Helmholtz, Vortrage und Reden, I, p. 279.

** T. H. Huxley, Geological Reform, 1869.

328 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

before his time ? Kant, Young, and Hutton of course stand
in the front rank. We may, however, raise the question
about much smaller men. Did Jeremias Benjamin Richter
anticipate the labours of Dalton too soon? * His mind was
filled with the idea of applying mathematics to chemistry in
general and with ascertaining the atomic weight of the
different elements, and we must not forget that Cuvier dates
the revolution in chemistry from the introduction of the
mathematical spirit.

While it is possible that some men arrive too soon for
the absolute appreciation of their services, it is certain that
many have been denied this appreciation because scientists
were engrossed with the suppositions they entertained or
were too busily employed in fighting other discoverers to
afford time to note the worth of their views. William
Smith (1769 1839) is reckoned the father of British
geology to-day, but in his own day William Whewell notes
that Smith " had long pursued his own thoughts without aid
and without sympathy." f " No literary cultivation of
his youth awoke in him the speculative love of symmetry and
system; but a singular clearness and precision of the classi-
fying power, which he possessed as a native talent, was exer-
cised and developed by exactly those geological facts among
which his philosophical task lay. Some of the advances
which he made had been entered upon by others who preceded
him; but of all this he was ignorant, and perhaps went on
more steadily and eagerly to work out his own ideas from
the persuasion that they were entirely his own." J He be-
longed to that race of amateurs who have assisted so greatly
by their discoveries, a race that used to flourish more in
Great Britain than in any other country. But " Stratum
Smith," though known at home, was unknown abroad. The
Continent took as little notice of his geological conceptions
as he himself took of Continental conceptions.

If anyone wishes to disbelieve in progress, we commend
to his attention the able book F. Rosenberger has written on
the Geschichte der Physik. He gives a long list of
references to theories of forgotten scientists whose labours

* H. Kopp, Geschichte der Chcmic, II, p. 350; A. Wurtz, Histoire dcs
Doctrines Chemiques, pp. Q, 13.

f W. Whewell, History of the Inductive Sciences, III, p. 427,
{ Ibid., p. 423-

FORGOTTEN SCIENTISTS 329

before and after 1850 lay buried in unkindly oblivion till
an historian like himself resurrected them. It is a saddening
and maddening piece of work. It is saddening when we
reflect that men have toiled and their toil has been ignored.
It is maddening when we also reflect that because their toil
has been ignored their work has had to be done all over again.
The proportion of first-class brains in the world is always
small. The Pearson curves show that out of a hundred candi-
dates in a mathematical examination only six of them will
gain out of a total of 100 over 80 marks, while in a literary
examination only one out of a hundred candidates will gain
over 80 marks. In blunt English, this means that on the
literary side of the activities of a college out of a hundred
undergraduates there is only one of them likely to prove
his worth by gaining a first-class in the Tripos examination.
Oddly enough, the Pearson curves allow of a higher propor-
tion of mathematical candidates turning out well. The
examination success does not perhaps prove very much, for
there is a whole world between the powers of absorbing the
contents of a book and the powers that originate ideas.
When Robertson Smith was at Aberdeen University he took
for his degree mental and moral science as well as mathe-
matics. Bain was his Professor in the former subject.
Temperamentally, Robertson Smith, who was a most pug-
nacious individual, did not care for Bain's school of thought.
At his degree examination he answered Bain's questions as
Bain would have them answered, and then he characteristic-
ally appended his own refutations of the answers he had
written. Bain was too fair-minded not to give Robertson
Smith his first-class. Then, to Bain's astonishment, Robert-
son Smith asked his Professor for a testimonial. He re-
ceived it, and here it is : " Mr. Robertson Smith has shown
unequalled capacity in absorbing knowledge : whether he can
reproduce it remains to be seen/' This testimonial puts the
point precisely. There are many who can absorb knowledge.
How many can reproduce it? Few indeed are the men
capable of this high task, and, as we turn over the leaves
of Rosenberger's volumes, we sigh as we witness the striking
results of investigator after investigator washed in the waters
of Lethe.

The fruits of the labours of Berthollet in chemistry re-

330 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

mained ungathered till Professor Ostwald put his hands to
this tree of knowledge. Berthollet and Bergmann gave rise to
the view of the " manifold play of forces acting to and fro,
the result being that every one gets its due. The more
powerful substance gets more, the weaker less. Only in
cases where one of the possible compounds in consequence
of its properties entirely leaves the field of contest, either
by falling down as insoluble or escaping as gas, can that
complete decomposition take place which Bergmann held
to be the normal result" * These ideas were neglected till
1867 when two Norwegian chemists, Guldberg and Waage,
" put the ideas of Berthollet into precise mathematical form
and subjected the resulting equations to the test of observa-
tion and verification." f Another chemist, Berthelot, re-
vived Bergmann's theory in his famous third law derived
from thermo-chemistry, and this in turn was corrected by
Willard Gibbs,J who also endured neglect for a generation.
Bergmann anticipated some of the work of Berzelius. Ber-
thollet favoured the view that heat was a material substance,
for did he not belong to the range of ideas favoured by the
French physicists brought up in the school of Newton and
Laplace? In chemistry Laplace dominated Berthollet, who
held himself aloof from the teaching of a founder of chem-
istry, Lavoisier. Presuppositions were present to his mind.
Influenced by the mathematical theory of attraction and by
the mechanical laws of equilibrium, on which Laplace and
his school laid so much stress, Berthollet sought to co-
ordinate chemical affinity with what he called astronomical
attraction. There was a germ of truth in Berthollet's ideas,
but Proust and Richter came along with their theory of
fixed proportions, and the work of Berthollet sank into
oblivion.

The atomic theory of Dalton was as ill received in Eng-
land on its discovery in 1803 as it was well received on the
Continent. His English contemporaries paid as scanty

* W. Ostwald, Die Energie und ihre Wandlungcn, p. 20.

t Ibid., p. 21.

j W. Ostwald, Lehrbuch der allgemcinen Chemie, II, p. 163 (pt. II) ;
Berthelot, Comptes Rendus, p. 118.

W. Ostwald, Lehrbuch der allgemeinen Chemie f II, p. 557 (ist ed.) ;
Die Energie und ihre Wandlungen, p. 20; H. Kopp, Entwickelung der
Chemie, p. 271 ff.

FORGOTTEN SCIENTISTS 331

attention to it as Bacon paid to Harvey's discovery of the
circulation of the blood or to Napier's invention of log-
arithms. Yet the facts on which Dalton based his theory
are incontrovertible. Sir Humphry Davy propounded
objection after objection : that was his contribution to
Dalton's mighty achievement.

By his celebrated hypothesis on the behaviour of equal
volumes of different gases towards pressure, temperature,
and chemical combination, Pietro Avogadro took in 1811
the first step towards the establishment of the atomic theory
of matter. Forced by difficulties in his hypothesis, he con-
ceived the idea of a compound atom or particle which he
called the molecule. His conception commended itself to
Ampere. It was, however, 1840 before a chemist of the
standing of Laurent would consider it. It is curious to ob-
serve that there was a " radicle " or German way of looking
at the atomic theory and a " type " or French way of looking
at it. Avogadro and Ampere were in a position to explain,
for instance, how a certain number of molecules of hydrogen
were able to combine with an equal number of molecules
of chlorine.* Avogadro put forward this significant fact,
and it suffered neglect. Ampere also put it forward, and it
similarly suffered neglect.

In 1849 Foucault showed the direct reversal of the
sodium line in the spectrum of the electric arc. His
anticipation of a fruitful line of activity was lost sight of
till Gustav Kirchhoff took it up. He wrote in 1859 : " I
conclude that coloured flames in the spectra of which bright
lines present themselves, so weaken rays of the colour of
these lines, when such rays pass through them, that in place
of the bright lines, dark ones appear as soon as there is
brought behind the flame a source of light of sufficient in-
tensity, in which these lines are otherwise wanting." f Kirch-
hoff " at once gave birth to two great applications of this
principle the search, through the study of the spectra of
distant stellar sources of light, after the ingredients which
are present in those distant luminaries, and the search,
through the study of the flames of terrestrial substances,

* A. Wurtz, Theorie Atomique, p. 64; A. Rau, Die Theoricn dcr
modernen Chcmie, II, p. 107 ff.

t Sir G. Stokes, Philosophical Magazine, March 1860, p. 194 ff.
Cf. J. Scheiner, Astronomical Spectroscopy, p. 148.

332 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

for new spectral lines announcing yet undiscovered ele-
ments/'

Geology, chemistry, and physico-chemistry all alike wit-
ness to the indifference of the followers of these subjects.
Discoveries are made, and are made to be ignored or to be
forgotten. There is a book supposed to be written on the
snakes of Iceland, and when you open it you turn over
page after page till in the middle of it you meet the sentence,
" There are no snakes in Iceland/ 1 There are at times when
we feel sorely tempted to think that not a few scientific men
have come to the conclusion, There are no discoveries in
science, or rather, There are no discoveries in science except
those that fit in with our preconceived ideas. Save on
some such hypothesis as this, how are we to account for
so MANY cases of neglect? A case here and a case there
we might understand, but we encounter many cases. What
are we to conclude? All the names we have given are those of
men admittedly to-day in the foremost position. They are
not the names of second-rate and third-rate observers.

The indifference and the neglect we behold in geology,
chemistry, and physico-chemistry we behold in the biological
sciences, and, above all, as we shall see, in mathematics and
mathematical physics. Christian Conrad Sprengler was a
naturalist filled with enthusiasm who " after being ejected
from the rectorate of Spandau for neglecting his flock in
favour of flowers, settled down to a frugal life in Berlin,
and gave lessons in language and botany. The commonest
plant became new by what he had to say about it; a hair,
a spot, gave him opportunities for questions, ideas, investi-
gations/'* He pointed out that many flowers are " dicho-
gamous " that is, that though the organs for self-fertilisa-
tion exist in the same flower, nevertheless because of a want
of time-keeping or for other reasons, pollination is carried
out by crossing, wherein the visits of the insects are, through
elaborate existing arrangements, instrumental. In 1793 he
published his astonishing book, The Secret of Nature dis-
covered in the Structure and Fertilisation of Flowers.
Johann von Sachs, in his Geschichte der Botanik, considers
Sprengel's little work to contain " the first attempt to explain
the genesis of organic forms out of definite relations to their
* J. A. Thomson, The Science of Life, p. 192.

FORGOTTEN SCIENTISTS 333

environment.'' * To-day it is a classic, but from 1793 to
1859 it remained on the topmost shelves of the library,
covered with the dust of sixty years.

In 1837 Darwin had written in his note-book, "Do not
plants which have male and female organs together, yet
receive influence from other plants ? "f The answer to such a
question seemed to him " full of truth." The answer had
already been given by Sprengel forty-four years before. In
other words, Darwin was doing work that had been done
once for all. In 1841 he heard of The Secret of Nature
through Robert Brown, who, " in common with the rest of
the world, looked on Sprengel's ideas as fantastic." t

Ah, yes, remarks the objector, this happened during the
first half of the nineteenth century. To-day scientific
periodicals are taken in every laboratory, and such scanda-
lous neglect is utterly out of the question. Is this really
the case? We shall come to Fabre in a moment, but now
we must glance at the career of that astonishing Russian,
Karl Ernst von Baer. As we all know, the ancestors of
many Russians like von Baer have gone to Russia just as the
ancestors of the Huguenots like Emil Du Bois Reymond
have gone to Germany. Von Baer (1792 1876) broke
the spell that Cuvier had cast on the natural sciences. He
stands midway between Cuvier and Darwin. With his geo-
graphical and anthropological studies, he combined his out-
standing morphological labours, and all of it is characterised
by a rare breadth of mind and an even rarer sense of balance.
T. II. Huxley shows that von Baer recognised development
as the " sole basis of zoological classification ; while in France
Cuvier and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire were embittering each
other's lives with endless merely anatomical discussions and
replications, and while in Germany the cautious study of
nature was given up for the spinning of Natur-philosophies
and other hypothetical cobwebs." || Von Baer's work was
negative as well as positive. His negative work was to get

* J. von Sachs, Geschichtc dcr Dotanik.

t F. Darwin. Life of Darwin, I, p. 90; III, p. 257.

j Nature, 1874, p. 80.

His Autobiography wa s published in 1865, and Stieda published
his Life in 1877. Professor R. Stolzc gives many documents in his
K. 11. von Baer nnd seine Weltanschauung.

|| T. H. Huxley in Taylor, Scientific Memoirs, New Series, p. 176.

334 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

rid of the metaphysical speculations that were hampering the
rising school of biology. Some men competent to judge
assign to him the position of being the greatest embryologist
of his age, if not indeed of all time. By his positive work
he augmented our knowledge of the early development of
the germs of animals by discovering the ovum in the body
of mammals before fructification.* Nor is this by any
means his sole contribution to embryology. He pursued his
researches in order to perceive what light the facts of classi-
fication threw on the facts of development. In effect, he
raised the question, Does the changing embryo of the higher
animal gradually pass through the permanent forms of the
lower animals ? f Do animals recapitulate in their own de-
velopment the ancestry of the race ? As Arthur Milnes Mar-
shall put it (1852 1893), "They climb up their genea-
logical tree/'

Opposed as he was to extreme Darwinianism, von Baer
recognised that " the higher and lower development of the
animal coincides perfectly with that histological and mor-
phological differentiation which gradually arises in the course
of the development of the individual/' J Development is in
truth the establishment of differences. He sums up his
conclusions when he states that the " development of an
individual of a certain animal form is determined by two
conditions : first, by a progressive development of the animal
by increasing histological and morphological differentiation;
secondly, by the metamorphosis of a more general form
into a more special one/' It is melancholy to have to add
that the greatest embryologist of all time, though he was
known in Russia and Germany, was completely unknown
elsewhere. In England, W. B. Carpenter and T. H. Huxley
drew attention to his manifold activities. The latter gave
extracts from von Baer's principal writings thirty years
after the Russian had begun his researches. The reaction
against natural selection is now in full swing, and there is

* Cf. J. A. Thomson, The Science of Life, p. 123. Cf. also Lebens-
gcschichtc Cuvier's von H. E. Bacr, ed. Stieda, 1897, p. 72.

t K. E. von. Baer, Ucber Entwickclungsgcschichte der Thiere Beo-
bachtung und Reflexion, fifth scholion. Cf. T. H. Huxley in Taylor,
Scientific Memoirs, pp. 186, 189.

J T. H. Huxley in Taylor, Scientific Memoirs, p. 219.

Ibid., p. 220.

FORGOTTEN SCIENTISTS 335

every reason to expect that at last the writings of von
Baer, who passed away in 1876, will at last come into their
own. But look at the time that day has been deferred!
It took Huxley thirty years, and it is going to take us if
von Baer's writings really are read close on a hundred.

The life of Jean Henri Casimir Fabre extends to almost
a hundred years, for he was born in 1823 and lived to 1915.
He was always that incomparable observer Darwin deemed
him to be. The English scientist read the first volume of
Fabre's Souvenirs, dying before the second volume of them
appeared in 1883. ^ n spite of the recognition of men of the
rank of Darwin, the neglect of Fabre persisted to the year
1910. By then he had reached the mature age of eighty-
seven, and surely that was a late stage in his life for recog-
nition at last to be flung to him. True, this recognition
continued to increase from 1910 to 1915, so that Fabre had
gleams of sunshine to brighten the declining days of one who
suffered the bitter winter of neglect. It is, we fear, per-
fectly possible even in our day for a man to do research of
the highest class, and for this work to fail in securing recog-
nition.

On November 30, 1897, Lord Rayleigh, the President of
the Royal Society, delivered the address at the anniversary
meeting, and the burden of it was the neglect which so
often fell to the scientific pioneer of new paths. Think of
the President of the Royal Society facing the assembled
P'ellows of that august body, and the chief matter in his
address is the ignorance and neglect of work done by the
very scientists who were present! For the Fellows of the
Royal Society number among them or ought to number
among them all the ablest scientists of the day. " For the
advancement of science/ 3 Lord Rayleigh announced, " the
main requirement is, of course, original work of a high
standard, adequately explained and published. But this is
not enough. The advances so made must be secured, and
this can hardly be, unless they are appreciated by the scien-
tific public. In some branches of Pure Mathematics it is
said that readers are scarcer than writers. At any rate the
history of science shows that important original work is
liable to be overlooked, and is perhaps the more liable the
higher the degree of originality. The names of T. Young,

336 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

Mayer, Carnot, Waterston, and B. Stewart will suggest
themselves to the physicist ; and in other branches, doubtless,
similar lists might be made of workers whose labours re-
mained neglected for a shorter or a longer time. In looking
into the more recent progress of Geometrical Optics, I have
been astonished to find how little correlation there has been
between the more important writings. That Coddington
should have remained unknown in Germany and von Seidel
in England need not greatly surprise us; but in this subject
it would appear that a man cannot succeed in making even
his countrymen to attend to him. Coddington seems to have
heard nothing of Cotes and Smith, and Hamilton nothing
of Airy and Coddington.

It is true that no two writers on theoretical subjects could
differ more in taste and style than do Hamilton and Cod-
dington. The latter addressed himself to special problems,
the solution of which seemed to have practical importance.
Among his achievements was the rule relating to the curva-
ture of images, generally known as PetzvaFs, although
Petzval's work was of much later date. Hamilton, on the
other hand, allowed his love of generality and of analytical
developments to run away with him. In his Memoir on
Systems of Rays, with its elaborate and rambling supple-
ments, there is little to interest the practical optician, though
the mark of genius is throughout apparent. It was only
in two or three pages of a later paper that he applied his
powerful methods to the real problem of Optics. As Fin-
sterwalder has remarked, his " six radical constants of aber-
ration," expressing the general properties of a symmetrical
instrument, are at once an anticipation and a generalisation
of von Seidel's theorems. But the published work is the
barest possible summary. If Hamilton had been endowed
with any instinct for Optics proper, he could have developed
these results into a treatise of first-class importance. In
more recent times Hamilton's footsteps have been followed
by Maxwell as well as by Thiesen and Bruns, of whom the
two latter do not seem to have realised that Hamilton (or
even Maxwell) had concerned himself with the subject at
all. The natural development of Hamilton's ideas will be
found in an able memoir by Schwarzschild ( 1905).
I have spoken of English work that lay neglected, but a

FORGOTTEN SCIENTISTS 337

scarcely less notable instance is the splendid discovery of the
microscopic limit by Fraunhofer, a man who combined in
the highest degree practical skill with scientific insight.
Thanks to the researches of Abbe and Helmholtz, it is now
well known that there is a world that lies for ever hidden
from our vision, however optically aided; but neither of
these eminent men realised that the discovery had been
anticipated by Fraunhofer. Some, perhaps, may doubt
whether Fraunhofers argument, founded upon the disap-
pearance of spectra from gratings of extreme fineness, is of
adequate cogency. To this I may reply that I was myself
convinced by it in 1870, before either Abbe or Helmholtz
had written a word upon the subject/' *

The annals of the nineteenth century bear testimony to
many examples of neglect besides those mentioned by Lord
Rayleigh. Among its most outstanding names is that of
Laplace (1749 1827). His attitude to the universe was
a purely impersonal one. There are forces at work, and his
object was to understand the nature of those forces. There
was therefore no sceptical tendency in his mind when he told
Napoleon his reason why in the volumes of his masterpiece,
the Mecanique Celeste, the name of God did not appear.
His answer meant that personality did not come within the
scope of his labours : " Sire, je n'ai pas besoin de cette hypo-
these." In his book he gave, between 1799 and 1825, an
admirable analysis of the outcome of Newton's work. True,
Newton's body had lain in the grave if we take the latter
date for ninety-eight years, but what of that? If nature
never makes a leap, why should scientists be in a hurry?
Of course the higher the originality of the work, the less
danger of any scientist being in an undue hurry. Many in-
vestigators had been labouring since Newton's death in 1727,
and Laplace had popularised their labours in his Exposition
du Systeme du Monde, which appeared in 1797. Behind the
Mecanique Celeste and the Exposition du Systeme du Monde,
we perceive the whole time the Principia is looming in the
background of Laplace's thought.f It is not a little remark-
able to note that much as Laplace busied himself with the

* Royal Society Proceedings, Series A, LXXX, 1908, p. 239 ff .
f On the influence of Newton, cf. R. Wolf's informing Handbuch
der Astronomic, ihrer Geschichte und Litteratur.

2,2,

338 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

calculation of the combined effects of gravitational forces at
various points in space, he entirely ignored the question how
such effects come about. Kant thought that he had come
too soon, and the writings of Laplace bear their witness to
the pathos of this fact. Forty years before Kant put forth
his nebular hypothesis,* Laplace, in complete ignorance of
the work of the Konigsberg philosopher, performed the task
once again. There is a certain nemesis in the circumstance
that just as Laplace neglected to read Kant, so some scientists
in the opening decades of the nineteenth century placed the
Mecanique Celeste in the dusty recesses of their library.

We know no one we can quite range alongside Laplace,
except Lagrange, who is one of the greatest mathematical
geniuses of the nineteenth century. At a not too respectful
distance, however, we think Evariste Galois (1811 1831)
claims a place. Cut off in his twenty-first year, he did work
of rare suggestiveness. During his brief span of days it
was beginning to be recognised that geometrical transforma-
tion had its counterpart in the transformation of algebraical
forms by the processes of substitution. These processes of
substitution received some attention at the hands of young
Galois. " Le merite de Galois/' points out Professor Sylow,
" ne consiste pas essentiellement dans ses propositions, mais
dans la generalite de la methode qu'il appliqua. Cest son
admirable theoreme fondamental qui a clonne a la theorie des
equations sa forme definitive, et d'ou est sortie, en outre,
la theorie des groupes generalisee, qui est d'une si grande
importance, on peut le dire, pour toutes les branches des
mathematiques, et qui deja, entre les mains de Jordan, de
Klein, de Lie, de Poincare et d'autres, a enrichi la science
d'une longue suite de decouvertes importantes." f From 1831
the fragments of Galois remained unpublished, and of course
unrecognised. Then Liouville published them in 1846. %
When submitted to the Academic Fran^aise des Sciences,
Lacroix and Poisson had reported on them as almost un-
intelligible. In 1866 Serret made some attempt to render
the ideas of Galois accessible to the general public interested

* Lord Kelvin, Popular Lectures and Addresses, II, p. 65; G. F.
Becker, American Journal of Science, V, 4th series, 1898.

t Professor Sylow's paper on Abel's work is in the " Memorial
Volume," and our quotation is from p. 24.

t Liouville, Journal, II ; cf . Picard's reprint.

FORGOTTEN SCIENTISTS 339

in science.* The first really valuable step to make them
generally known was taken by Camille Jourdain when he
dealt with them in his Theorie des Substitutions, published in
1870. Forty years after his premature death, one scientist
perceived in his short papers the germs of the quite novel
and comprehensive " Theory of Groups." There is no more
competent judge than Arthur Cayley (1821 1895), and
those who require to know his opinion of Galois can note it
in the Encyclopedia Britannica. It is a tribute paid by one
master-mathematician to another master-matheniatician.t

The importance of Evariste Galois's " Theory of Groups "
is evident in all that Marie Sophus Lie (18421899) did
to 1877. This outstanding Norwegian thinker believed that
this theory was destined to fill a central position in the mathe-
matical science of the future. " The conception of Group
and Invariant was for him [i.e. Lie]/' writes M. N6ther,$
" not only a methodical aspect from which he intended to
review the entire older region of mathematics, but also the
element which was destined to unify the whole of mathe-
matical science." For many a weary day after he set forth his
wonderful conception, his numerous writings remained with-
out any sign that the scientific world had ever heard of it.
" Like my teaching or dislike it," said one of our teachers at
school, " but don't say you don't care."

On the principle that, as Willard Gibbs found to his cost,
no good thing could come out of Connecticut, so Lie found
that scientists clearly thought that no good thing could
come out of Oslo. If it did, they did not care for it. In
process of time M. Picard and Henri Poincare but what
was there that Poincare had not the intuition to see came
to perceive the worth of Lie's ideas. || The man, however,
who brought Lie's conception before the world of science
was undoubtedly F. Klein, whose " Erlangen Programme "
of 1872, entitled Vergleichende Betrachtungen uber neurere
geometrische Forschungen, forced its members to see,

* Serret, Algkbre Superieure.

t Cf. Cayley's article on " Equation," p. 32.

t Mathematische Annalen, XLIIL

Trade d'Analyse, 1896, III.

II Cf. Ency. Math. Wiss., II, p. 402; Mother, Mathematische Annalen,
XLIII, p. 22; F. Meyer, Bericht, p. 231 ; Ency. Brit. art. on the " Theory
of Groups."

340 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

whether they were willing or not. Cayley and James Joseph
Sylvester (1814 1897) had been working on lines similar
to Lie's. The form in which our mathematicians accept the
invariant theory is the form in which the great Sylvester
presented it. The terminology of it which they accept is
the terminology he introduced. Still, it was not till 1897,
when Professor Burnside published his Theory of Groups
of Finite Order, that Lie's points came before the average
F.R.S. Lie had begun his work in 1873, and he threw
himself so whole-heartedly into it for the next three years
that he once spoke of himself as having, during that period,
lived only among his groups of transformations. In 1877
he published some results in a number of memoirs in a new
journal in Oslo, edited by Sars, Mtiller, and himself, and
some of them in the Mathematische Annalen, a paper that
surely ought to have rendered them accessible. He suffered
severely from the entire lack of interest bestowed upon his
papers, for the mathematicians practically said, despite men
like my old teacher, " We do say we don't care." Mr.
A. R. Forsyth writes that Lie's " story at this time reads
like the occasional experience of the investigator who lives,
remote from his fellow-workers and unstimulated by eager
pupils, voyaging through his sea of thought alone, at the end
finding himself weary, isolated, unacknowledged, perhaps
therefore discouraged, and certainly left uncheered by any
confident satisfaction that others are following him." * He
went through his Gethsemane alone, and his cri du cccnr
moves more than the morbidly sensitive.

Like Gauss, who suffered in the same fashion for a while,
Sophus Lie ceased to look after invariants, and busied
himself for the rest of his life with differential geometry.
In 1886 he left Oslo for the chair of mathematics at Got-
tingen. " Unhappily," speculates Mr. A. R. Forsyth,
" recognition appears to have been, not merely slow in
coming, but almost too late when it came. There is no
doubt that his ceaseless activity in thought and work had
undermined his strength, and his spirit had brooded in lone-

* Proceedings, Royal Society, LXXV, 1905, p. 64. It is greatly to
be desired that this Society should gather the obituaries of its Fellows
into single volumes occasionally. Vol. LXXV is a notable saving of
time to him who wants to grasp the personalities of scientists. We
are not all Laplaces in our indifference to personality.

FORGOTTEN SCIENTISTS 341

liness." * At Gottingen honours came to him. He received
the honorary or foreign membership of societies and acade-
mies in great numbers. Four years before his death, he
became a Foreign Member of our Royal Society. At the
back of his mind lay the thought that from 1877 to 1899
he was only forty-seven when he died he might have been
working at the discoveries we now know to be so brilliant,
and thanks to the absence of recognition he had not been
able to execute the task he had meant to execute. Other
tasks had come, but they were not this is the sting of the
whole matter the tasks he had himself chosen when he
was a man in the heyday of life. He was barely twenty-
one when he set to work on his great contribution, and in
his case it was certainly true that the thoughts of youth
are long, long thoughts. As for his belated honours, he
felt precisely as Thackeray felt. " When I was a lad/' the
great novelist remarked, " I wanted toffee but I hadn't a
shilling. Now I'm a man and I have the shilling, but I
don't want the toffee." What Sophus Lie wanted was
recognition for his ideas in 1877 : what he did not want was
honours for himself. For he experienced the feeling that
every true worker experiences, and that is that his concep-
tions are dearer, far dearer, to him than any membership
of any Academy or any Society when it comes far too
late. Then he has the shilling, but what does he care for
the " toffee " ?

The fame of Henry Cavendish (1731 1810), son of
Lord Charles Cavendish, has only come to be recognised in
any widespread form during the last century. True, Clerk-
Maxwell knew Cavendish to be that supreme genius he
is now recognised to be. Was it that his interest in science
was as passionless as that of Machiavelli was passionless in
politics? He made discoveries, without giving a single
sign that they were of signal value. Of enormous wealth,
he was, as Biot expressed it, le plus riche de tons les savatts
et le plus savant de tons les riches. In secret and in soli-
tude he began his work, and in secret and in solitude he
continued to the end. As Darwin was content simply to
watch when Chambers published a hasty book on evolution,
so Cavendish was content simply to watch when men advo-

* Proceedings, Royal Society, LXXV, 1905, p. 67.

342 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

cated theories that he had demonstrated to be wholly erro-
neous. Everything came to him, quantitatively, and his
family motto, " Cavendo tutus," marked the care he took
with his experiments.
Tennyson sang:

Yet all experience is an arch, wherethro'

Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rest unburnish'd, not to shine is use!

As tho' to breathe were life. Life piled on life

Were all too little, and of one to me

Little remains; but every hour is saved

From that eternal silence, something more,

A bringer of new things; and vile it were

For some three suns to store and hoard myself,

And this grey spirit yearning in desire

To follow knowledge like a sinking star

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

Of all the poets of the Victorian Age, Tennyson was the
most scientific in spirit, the one to whom the workings of
the mind of the scientist were most openly revealed. Senti-
ments like these were far more foreign to Cavendish's nature
than the pregnant remark of Pascal : " On se persuade mieux,
pour Tordinaire, par les raisons qu'on a soi-meme trouvees,
que par celles qui sont venues dans Tesprit des autres."
No man was ever more single in his desire to know the
causes of things than Cavendish, and we may be sure that he
felt far more than three suns the happiness Virgil promised
to those who understood those causes. Passionless as he
undoubtedly was, he must have experienced some of the
joys of the spirit as well as those of the mind. His lucid
and subtle brain was content to record his observations in
papers that have only seen the light really in 1921 when
the two large volumes containing them were published by Sir
Joseph Larmor, who edited incomparably the electrical
and dynamical papers, and by Sir Edward Thorpe, who
edited the chemical papers.* To the non-specialist reader the
electrical volume is more absorbing than the chemical one.
In the latter it is obvious that Cavendish was never able
to free himself from the presupposition of the existence of
phlogiston. He did, however, free himself from the almost

* H. Cavendish, Scientific Papers, 2 vols., Cambridge, 1921.

FORGOTTEN SCIENTISTS 343

prehistoric belief, from the classical belief, in the four ele-
ments, earth, air, fire, and water, and he took a man's
share in freeing others from the burden of this belief. As
Sir Edward Thorpe shows, it was one of his papers which
" gave a final and decisive blow to the conception of a uni-
versal air, elementary and primordial. That its true sig-
nificance was everywhere clearly perceived is abundantly
proved by the literature of the period. The Royal Society
showed its appreciation of its merit by awarding its author
a Copley medal." Trying to ascertain the true nature of
air and fire, he furnished the first clear and incontestable
proof of the compound nature of water, and of the nature
and relative proportion of its constituents. He established
that common air was sensibly uniform in character, and this
for the first time.

Thomas Young was a scientist with cosmopolitan tastes
who knew Cavendish well, and yet, to quote Sir Joseph
Larmor's words, his " account of his [i.e. Cavendish's]
electrical researches shows a complete ignorance of Caven-
dish's unpublished work, and this ignorance must have been
shared by the whole scientific world." * Cavendish was
aware of the leading nature of the " degree of electri-
fication " or, in our phraseology, potential. He had no
galvanometer, and he made none. Why indeed should he?
For he himself was a natural one, able to compare in accurate
terms numerically the intensity of the currents he caused to
pass through his body. Then he compared the sensations he
felt in his wrist and elbows, estimating which of the two
shocks he felt the more powerful. Clerk-Maxwell
remarks : " The accuracy which Cavendish attained in the dis-
crimination of the intensity of the shocks is truly marvellous,
whether we judge by the consistency of his results with
each other, or whether we compare them with the latest
results obtained with the aid of the galvanometer, and with
all the precautions which experience has shown to be neces-
sary in measuring the resistance of electrolytes." f Such
an accurate human galvanometer almost staggers belief !

The thrill which Lord Rayleigh's announcement of
the discovery of argon caused to the scientific world has

* H. Cavendish, Scientific Papers, I, p. 17.
t Ibid., I, p. 25.

344 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

scarcely been damped out by the lapse of time. By patient
whittling away of known constituents of the air constituents
which of course had long been believed to constitute it com-
pletely he had found a small residuum which was thereto
unknown. Lord Rayleigh himself had drawn attention to
the fact that Cavendish had, a century earlier, also noticed a
residual " small bubble/' More than this, he himself repeated
this early Cavendish experiment and showed that this " small
bubble " must have consisted of argon and the other gases
which were found later as a corollary. This anticipation of
the most modern work astounds one, and it is by no means
the only instance of the kind. What is the most recent
development in meteorology? Undoubtedly it is the study
of the constitution of the upper atmosphere. Cavendish
began that study twenty years before anyone else, by arrang-
ing with a balloonist to collect samples of air at different
heights. What is almost the last discovery in astronomy?
Is it not that a ray of light is bent on passing near the sun ?
Cavendish computed the amount of bending more than a
century ago. We cannot, of course, regard him as having
handed down the succession of Einstein, for he undoubtedly
held Newton's view that light consisted of material cor-
puscles. In between came a whole dynasty committed to the
immateriality of light and the existence of ether on which
gravity could not act. Lord Kelvin, for instance, " gave
strong reason to feel certain that aether was outside the law
of gravitation." It is notable that Cavendish obtained a
result which is only half Einstein's, and is now known not
to correspond with the facts. The remarkable point, how-
ever, is that he should in any wise have anticipated these
essentially modern developments. In passing, we may
remark that among the pecuniarily independent devotees
of science there are such outstanding names as those of
Cavendish, Herschel, Joule, Murchison, Spottiswoode, Lyell,
and Darwin.

A man who could foresee in 1842 the principle of spec-
trum analysis was no common man. Accordingly, Bern-
hard Bolzano (1781 1848) had long given proof of his
powers by his brilliant setting forth of the first rigid de-
duction of the various algebraical series.* His notions, in
* Cf. his tract on the Binomial Theorem.

FORGOTTEN SCIENTISTS 345

the opinion of Hermann Hankel, as to convergency of series
are " eminently clear and correct, and no fault can be found
with his development of those series for a real argument
(which he everywhere presupposes) ; in the preface he gives
a pertinent criticism of earlier developments of the Binomial
Theorem,* and of the unrestricted use of infinite series,
which was then common. In fact, he has everything that
can place him in this respect on the same level with Cauchy,
only not the art peculiar to the French of refining their
ideas and communicating them in the most appropriate and
taking manner. So it came about that Bolzano remained
unknown and was soon forgotten; Cauchy was the happy
one who was praised as a reformer of the science, and
whose elegant writings were soon widely circulated." f Still,
Hankel has the merit to detect value in the forgotten con-
ceptions of Bernhard Bolzano just as he had precisely the
same merit to detect value in the forgotten conceptions of
Hermann Grassmann. Indeed the line of reasoning started
by Bolzano has been carried on and developed by Weier-
strass with unexpected and important results. %

In his Puissance Mo trice du Feu, Sadi Carnot attempted
in 1824 to determine mathematically the power of a steam-
engine. His original memoir lays down that " the produc-
tion of motion in steam-engines is always accompanied by a
circumstance on which we must fix our attention. This
circumstance is there establishment of equilibrium, or level,
in the caloric that is to say, its passage from one body
where the temperature is more or less elevated, to another
where it is lower. . . . The production of moving force is
therefore due in steam-engines, not to a real consumption of
caloric, but to a transference from a hot body to a cold
body." Implicitly he had introduced into mathematical
and physical science the question of the availability of the
forces of nature. Following in the steps of Laplace, Black,
and Fourier, he held that heat was an imponderable sub-
stance which might hide itself might become latent but
could be neither created nor destroyed. Such a view was far

* On this point cf. O. Stolz, Mathematische Annalen, XVIII, pp.
255, 257.

t H. Hankel in his article on " Limit," p. 210.
j H. A. Schwarz, Journal fur Mathcmatik, LXXIV, 1872, p. 22.
S. Carnot, Puissance Motrice, pp. 5-6 (1878 ed.).

346 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

from the mind of such a sagacious observer as Henry
Cavendish, and it was also far from the mind of Davy
and Rum ford. There are specks on the sun, and we can
afford to admit that there are specks on the reasoning of
Carnot. Yet his speculations form the starting-point for
the modern theory of thermo-dynamics. They were un-
known in 1824 and they remained unknown long after
1824. Benoit Pierre Emile Clapeyron, an engineer, came
across them in 1834, and he published in the Journal de
VEcole Poly technique * his " Memoire sur la Puissance
Motrice de la Chaleur." Through a translation of this
paper in Taylor's Scientific Memoirs, Lord Kelvin heard of
Carnot's early work, and he never rested content till he had
found it.f Through a translation in Poggendorf's Annalen,
in 1843, Helmholtz became acquainted with the great tract
published in 1824.

Lord Rayleigh did more than read a Presidential Address
to the Royal Society in 1897, for he took as lively an interest
in the papers of other scientific men as Sir William Rowan
Hamilton himself. The majority of scientists simply care
for the plot they cultivate, and seldom trouble with the broad
expanse before them. It was a sacred writer who pointed out
that " where there is no vision the people perish," and science
perishes with them. In the Archives of the Royal Society
Lord Rayleigh found an abstract of a paper written by J. J.
Waterston, who published books that are but little known.
Interested by the brief reference, Lord Rayleigh perused
the paper, finding, to his astonishment, that in 1845 Water-
ston had for the first time enunciated the conception that
the temperature of a gas is to be measured by the vis viva
or kinetic energy of the colliding molecules. In addition to
this, his paper contained the first calculation of molecular
velocity, and all this had been done ten to fifteen years in
advance of his time, anticipating much of the work of
Clausius, Joule, and Clerk-Maxwell. Waterston enunciates
the principle that " in mixed media the mean square mole-
cular velocity is proportional to the specific weight of the
molecules/' $

* I4th Cahier.

t Cf. S. P. Thompson, Life of Lord Kelvin, I, pp. 132, 210, 252, 256-8,
273, 279; II, P. 949-
J Lord Rayleigh, Life of Lord Rayleigh, p. 45.

FORGOTTEN SCIENTISTS 347

As Samuel Johnson stood as a man in the market-place
to atone for an act of disobedience as a boy, moved by a
kindred feeling of compunction Lord Rayleigh took steps
to have the paper published.

Waterston was Scots, and Lord Rayleigh wrote to Tait
at Edinburgh, and Tait replied on February 13, 1891 : " This
promises to be a somewhat sensational inquiry worthy
of a detective! I have reached this point, that J. J. W.
was a civil engineer, a near relative of people living here
now, and that he was in the employment of the East India
Company, but disappeared about seven years ago, and not
a trace of him has been discovered in spite of the most
anxious search." * One of the referees of the Royal Society
reported on Waterston's work thus : " The paper is nothing
but nonsense, unfit even for reading before the Society.''
Lord Rayleigh, persisting in his search, came into communi-
cation with George Waterston, a nephew of the writer of
the paper. George Waterston wrote: "He [i.e. his uncle]
talked however in a manner that seemed to me strangely
contemptuous of scientific men with but few exceptions.
He had not a word of complaint, nor did he speak of being
neglected or ill-used, but I distinctly remember the Royal
Society was characterised in very strong terms useless now
to repeat. We have it on record what they thought of his
paper. . . . He returned the compliment in no measured
terms. He would not attend the meetings of the Royal
Society of Edinburgh, though some friends sent him billets,
and rather avoided the society of scientific men. He was of
a most social, kind disposition, enjoying the society of young
people. He never married, and besides his mathematical
work he was fond of music, chess, and billiards.

" When in India he published a book, Thoughts on Mental
Phenomena. It had no sale and he continued his physical
and mathematical studies, contributing papers to the Philo-
sophical Magazine. . . .

" His friends share your surprise that he should not have
put forward more definite claims, but he was of a very
retiring disposition. To me he appeared to put forth his
papers like some mathematical question for others to tackle,
and not being a scientific man I was never sure whether

* Lord Rayleigh, Life of Lord Rayleigh, p. 45.

348 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

all his contemptuous words of other scientific men were not
the fruit of some exaggerated views of the importance of his
own work, though he was always so simple and straight-
forward that I put it down to his not stating his views in
a sufficiently practical manner. I remember at one time
in a popular magazine seeing his name coupled with that
of Mayer in regard to the heat of the sun, and when I
spoke to him about it he simply made a grimace. " *

The seminal mind of Karl Friedrich Gauss (1777 1855)
required a generation or more before it penetrated the mind
of the average able scientist. It was more than a quarter
of a century before the spirit of exact research he introduced
leavened in any wise the German Universities. He lived a
life as lonely as that of Newton, the man he placed on a
pedestal. For twenty years his explorations on the theory
of numbers remained as unknown as Sophus Lie's, and when
it at last came within the ken of mathematicians, it proved
as inexhaustible as Newton's Principia had been a century
earlier. The parallel between the English genius and the
German genius might be drawn out far, and the neglect of
their respective labours fills certainly one item in it, and
the intuition, common to them both, fills another. We can
in part, at least understand the feelings of Gauss when as
an old man he heard Riemann touch a string, in a great
dissertation, that had been vibrating in the master's mind
for fifty years, unheard and unheeded by any other mathe-
matician, f The reluctance to publish was common to New-
ton, J Gauss, and Cavendish, for Cavendish takes an illus-
trious place in the history of thought. It was twenty years
before Newton's Principia or Gauss's Disquisitiones Arith-
metics attained any adequate meed of recognition. The
Academic Frangaise des Sciences, after the manner of learned
Academies, received both books with dignified but decided
disapproval. Such a devoted member of the University of
Cambridge as William Whewell, the Master of Trinity,
undoubtedly is slow to admit that there was the least reluc-
tance on the part of the University to accept Newtonian

* Lord Rayleigh, Life of Lord Rayleigh, p. 45. The Dictionary of
National Biography contains no notice of Waterston.

t The Preface in Riemann, Mathematische Werke, ed. Weber, p. 517.

J K. F. Gauss, Werke, III, pp. 401-6; V, p. 627, an important
passage.

FORGOTTEN SCIENTISTS 349

philosophy.* It is, however, a well-established fact that the
University of Edinburgh taught such philosophy thirty-five
years before the University of its discoverer.f

Mobius and Plucker in Germany (1801 1868), recog-
nising that too much attention had been bestowed by the
French on mathematical analysis, turned their talents to
refined geometrical researches, and their simultaneous labours
long remained unknown and unrecognised. In our day, no
doubt, their labours in the development of algebraic and geo-
metrical methods bear notably on modern algebra and modern
geometry. Plucker himself, curiously enough, was ignorant
of the researches of his fellow-German, Mobius, and he was
also ignorant of the Traite of Poncelet, published in 1822.
Above all, he was ignorant of the mathematical theories of
Poisson and Lord Kelvin as well as those of Gauss and
Weber. For a long time even Gauss did not know the
arithmetical discoveries of Fermat and the proofs of Euler,
Lagrange, and Legendre.J Obviously, the President of the
Royal Society might in the decade after 1867, with perfect
propriety, have given an address of a nature similar to that
of Lord Rayleigh's of 1897.

George Green (1793 1841) published his extremely
striking essay on the application of mathematical analysis
to the theories of electricity and magnetism in 1828, and
for all the mark it left on scientific opinion it might as well
have remained unpublished. The latest edition of the Dic-
tionary of National Biography contains an article on Green,
and in the course of it Mr. G. J. Gray, the writer of it, never
once mentions the most important piece of work Green ever
did. To-day it is universally recognised as containing
some of the most illuminating conceptions of the nineteenth
century. Not till 1845 did that ardent student, Lord Kelvin,
contrive to catch sight of it,|| and the vast majority of

* W, Whewell, History of the Inductive Sciences, II, p. 149 ff.

t Sir A. Grant, The Story of the University of Edinburgh, II, p. 296.

j K. F. Gauss, Werkc, ed. Schering, I, p. 6; II, p. 444.

Dictionary of National Biography, VIII, pp. 485-6. We ought to
say at the same time that from a scientific point of view, as well as
of course from an historical point of view, this Dictionary is in-
finitely above the Biographic Univcrsclle and the Allgcmcine Deutsche,
useful as both these series are.

I! S. P. Thompson, Life of Lord Kelvin, I, pp. 45, 84, 99, 108, 113,
115, 117, 141; II, PP- 686, 822, 824, 827, 829, 831, 872-3.

350 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

scientists neither knew of it nor what is infinitely sadder
wanted to know of it. He took it off to Paris when he
succeeded in securing a copy from his tutor, Hopkins, and
published it in Cr die's Journal, thus making it known if
anyone cared as the fundamental treatment of the potential
theory. Nor is Green the only case of such gross neglect,
for McCullagh, the Dublin mathematician, and Sir Gabriel
Stokes, that remarkable son of a Sligo rectory, suffered
from it, though not quite so conspicuously as Green.

Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1768 1830) published in
1822 his famous Theorie Analytique de la Chaleur, which, in
the hands of Ohm and Lord Kelvin,* has been applied to
physical science, and in the hands of Dirichlet and Riemann f
to subtle mathematical conceptions.! For fourteen years the
manuscript of it lay hidden among the archives of the
French Institut.

Augustine Fresnel (1788 1827) with Thomas Young
contributed in establishing the undulatory theory of light.
The Academic Frangaise des Sciences received his first
memoir on the diffraction of light, and did not print it till
i826. Despite neglect and despite the opposition of the
leading authorities, except Arago, he pursued his own course,
though not altogether undauntedly. Other papers of his the
Academic Fran9aise either lost or mislaid. There is reason
to believe that the cavalier treatment of his papers was due
to the opposition of Laplace and his party at the Institut,
and this opposition even Arago failed to overcome. Reaumur
also experienced the tyranny of the Academic Fran9aise.||

Neither Hermann Grassmann ^[ (1809 1877) nor
Jakob Steiner attained the positions at Stettin and Berlin
respectively worthy of their powers. In his Ausdehnungs-
lehre, published in 1843, Grassmann introduced a novel

* H. L. E. von Helmholtz, Vortrdge und Rcden, I, p. 101 ff. ; Lord Kelvin,
Mathematical and Physical Papers, passim, and II, p. 41 ff. especially.

t B. Riemann, Mathematische Werke, p. 218; G. A. Gibson, Pro-
ceedings of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society, XI and II.

t E. Mach, Principien der Wiirmlehre, p. 78 ff., Ii6ff.

Sir J. Herschel in his article on " Light " in the old Ency. Metrop.
Cf. W. Whewell, History of the Inductive Sciences, II.

|| A. Maury, Les Academies d'Autrefois, I, pp. 123, 280; T. H.
Huxley, Critiques and Addresses , p. 112.

1f Cf. Schlegel, Hermann Grassmann and his Grassmann' sche
Ausdehnungslehre.

FORGOTTEN SCIENTISTS 351

fashion of considering geometrical relations. His is a
science of pure extension, the application of which to em-
pirical space is geometrical. He began in 1844 what Rie-
mann continued in 1854. For his investigations he con-
sidered space of three dimensions to be simply a particular
case of pure extension in any number of dimensions, which
are not necessarily determined by the same propositions as
our empirical space. Lacking appreciation, Grassmann
translated the Rig -Veda in 1876 and 1877, and composed a
dictionary for it in 1872 to 1875. Like Young, he was a
mathematico-physical student who was also a philological
student. Alas! there is another resemblance, for both had
to endure the prospect of no audience for their ideas. Alas !
the admirer of Young, Helmholtz, came close to the re-
searches of Gauss and Plucker, and passed them by. The
writings of Young, like those of Faraday, lay buried in
print with none to erect a monument over the grave. Comte
praised Gall the phrenologist, censured Cuvier, condemned
Young's undulatory theory of light, and spoke derisively of
the " abuse of microscopic investigations."

Michael Faraday (1791 1867) was an experimentalist
of unsurpassed and perhaps unsurpassable genius and divined
the nature of magnetic and electrical action, bringing his
divination invariably to the test of the laboratory.* Though
not a trained mathematician, yet in spite of this serious hin-
drance f Clerk-Maxwell was able to translate his far-reaching
conceptions into mathematical language. In process of time
both Clerk-Maxwell and Helmholtz J came to recognise
the translation of Faraday's lines of force in the mag-
netic and electrical phenomena he taught them to gaze at
through his eyes. While his experiments attracted attention,
his theories attracted but little till Clerk-Maxwell, who per-
formed for him the task of popularising that Voltaire per-
formed for Newton, and Helmholtz compelled scientists to
perceive the enormous worth of his theories. France and

* For Faraday's life there are Bence Jones's two volumes and
Tyndall's graceful sketch. There is need of a fresh biography which
will take into account recent developments of Faraday's views. No
such book exists, and we earnestly hope it will soon exist.

t For other hindrances cf. H. Bence Jones, Life and Letters of
Faraday, II, p. 344, and his The Royal Institution, p. 311.

$ H. L. F. von Helmholtz, Vortrage und Reden, II, p. 277.

352 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

Italy became aware of the importance of Faraday's views
before his own countrymen, who bestowed too little atten-
tion on the conceptions of his transcendent genius. His
electrolytic law exercised hardly any influence on the de-
velopment of chemistry.* The labours of Sir J. J. Thomson
and Sir William Crookes in our day and of Lord Kelvin
in his day on the discharge of electricity in rarefied gases
bring us back to the " dark discharge " Faraday witnessed
in 1838 in the days before there was either spectrum analysis
or vacuum tubes, f It is startling to find that the researches
of Faraday could remain unknown in Germany just as
those of Cavendish were unknown in France or even as
those of Coulomb were unheard-of in England, The labours
of Gauss, save by Sabine, were also ignored by our country-
men. Of course this means that the same problems were
attacked in the different countries, and sometimes attempted
by men who, blissfully unaware of this circumstance, were
once more attempting their solutions. There is conservation
of energy in the world of matter. There is none in the world
of mind. One point in writing this book is to draw the at-
tention of scientists to this circumstance, and to show that
while there has not been conservation of energy in the
world of mind, is that any sufficient reason why there never
should be any such mental conservation? This mental
conservation is one of the most urgent needs of this mo-
ment.

John Tyndall wrote with all his wonted power in his
spirited sketch of Faraday as a Discoverer. He points out
that " the objects of scientific thought being the passionless
laws and phenomena of external nature, one might suppose
that their investigation and discussion would be completely
withdrawn from the region of feelings, and pursued by the
cold dry light of the intellect alone. This, however, is not
always the case. Man carries his heart with him into all
his works. You cannot separate the moral and the emo-
tional from the intellectual ; and thus it is that the discussion
of a point of science may rise to the heat of the battlefield.

* H. L. F. von Helmholtz, WissenschaftUche Abhandlungen, III,
the Faraday Lecture, II, W. Ostwald, Der Allgemeine Chemie, II,
Part I, p. 530.

t Lord Kelvin, Presidential Address before the Royal Society,
November 1893.

FORGOTTEN SCIENTISTS 353

The fight between rival optical theories of Emission and
Undulation was of this fierce character; and scarcely less
fierce for many years was the contest as to the origin
and maintenance of the power of the voltaic pile. Volta
himself supposed it to reside in the contact of different
metals. . . . Volta's theory of metallic contact was so
clear, so beautiful, and apparently so complete, that the
best intellects of Europe accepted it as the expression of
natural law.

" Volta himself knew nothing of the chemical phenomena
of the pile ; but as soon as these became known, suggestions
and intimations appeared that chemical action, and not metal-
lic contact, might be the real source of voltaic electricity. This
idea was expressed by Fabroni in Italy, and by Wollaston in
England. It was developed and maintained by those ' ad-
mirable electricians,' Becquerel of Paris and De La Rive
of Geneva. The Contact Theory, on the other hand, received
its chief development and illustration in Germany. It was
long the scientific creed of the great chemists and natural
philosophers of that country, and to the present hour there
may be some of them unable to liberate themselves from the
fascination of their first-love.

" After the researches which I have endeavoured to place
before you, it was impossible for Faraday to avoid taking
a side in this controversy. He did so in a paper, ' On the
Electricity of the Voltaic Pile/ received by the Royal
Society on April 7, 1834. His position in the controversy
might be predicted. He saw chemical effects going hand-in-
hand with electrical effects, the one being proportional to the
other; and, in the paper now before us, he proved that when
the former was excluded, the latter were sought for in
vain. He produced a current without metallic contact; he
discovered liquids which, though competent to transmit the
feeblest currents competent therefore to allow the elec-
tricity of contact to flow through them if it were able to
form a current were absolutely powerless when chemically
inactive. . . .

" The memoir of the Electricity of the Voltaic Pile, pub-
lished in 1834, appears to have produced but little impres-
sion upon the supporters of the contact theory. These
indeed were men of too great intellectual weight and insight

23

354 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

lightly to take up or lightly to abandon a theory. Faraday
therefore resumed the attack in a paper communicated to
the Royal Society on February 6, 1840. In this paper he ham-
pered his antagonists by a crowd of adverse experiments. He
hung difficulty about the neck of the contact theory, until in
its efforts to escape from his assaults it so changed its char-
acter as to become a thing totally different from the theory
propounded by Volta. The more persistently it was defended,
however, the more clearly did it show itself to be a con-
geries of devices, bearing the stamp of dialectic skill rather
than that of natural truth.

" In conclusion, Faraday brought to bear upon it an
argument which, had its full weight and purport been under-
stood at the time, would have instantly decided the con-
troversy. ' The contact theory/ he urged, ' assumes that a
force which is able to overcome powerful resistance, as
for instance that of the conductors, good or bad, through
which the current passes, and that again of the electrolytic
action where lodies are decomposed by it, can arise out of
nothing * : that without any change in the acting matter,
or the consumption of any generating force, a current shall
be produced which shall go on for ever against a constant
resistance, or only be stopped, as in the voltaic trough, by
the ruins which its exertion has heaped up in its own course.
This would indeed be a creation of power, and is like
no other force in nature. We have many processes by
which the form of the power may be changed, that an
apparent conversion of one into the other takes place. So
we can change chemical force into the electric current, or the
current into chemical force. The beautiful experiments of
Seebeck and Peltier show the conversion of electricity into
magnetism. But in no case, not even in those of the Gym-
notus and Torpedo, is there a pure creation or a production
of power without a corresponding exhaustion or something
to supply it.'

" These words were published more than two years before
either Mayer printed his brief but celebrated essay on the
Forces of Inorganic Nature, or Mr. Joule published his
first famous experiments on the Mechanical Value of Heat.
They illustrate the fact that before any great scientific
* All the italicised portions are so done by Tyndall.

FORGOTTEN SCIENTISTS 355

principle receives distinct enunciation by individuals, it
dwells more or less clearly in the general scientific mind.
The intellectual plateau is already high, and our discoverers
are those who, like peaks above the plateau, rise a little
above the general level of thought at the time." *

Long as our quotation has been, its length has been
required in order to reinforce our conclusion that a man
who soared so high in the intellectual heavens was eclipsed
during and after his day.

Faraday and Georg Simon Ohm did work on similar lines,
though Ohm occasionally anticipated his great contemporary.
This he notably did in 1827,! when he established the pro-
portionality of the quantity of electricity passing through
a circuit with the same electro-motive force in the same
conductor. J Ohm also introduced the conception of electric
resistance, and showed how this varies as the length and
inversely as the thickness of the same conductor, and is
different in different conductors. Fechner and Pouillet
tested Ohm's law, finding it true. In spite of this confirma-
tion of his results, Frenchmen remained sceptical of its
validity and Englishmen scarcely heard of it. With us the
labours of Ohm shared the same fate as those of Laplace,
whose astronomical attitude to nature remained unknown
except to a few specialists. Weber followed a train of ideas
similar to those of Laplace, with the outcome that our
text-books passed it by. Clerk-Maxwell announced that
Faraday and himself were opposed to Weber's theory.

In 1831, in his Krystallometrie, Hessel introduced a
strictly geometrical treatment of problems in planes of sym-
metry, taking the lead in deducing the different possible
forms of symmetry and in showing that in all thirty-two
different forms of symmetry or groups are geometrically
possible. These thirty-two fundamental groups of crystals
fall into six classes, according to the different systems of

* J. Tyndall, Faraday as a Discoverer, p. 73 ff.

t Cf. his Die galvanische Kettc, mathematisch bcarbeitct.

t Cf. Lommel's introduction to Ohm's collected papers, Gesammelte
Abhandlungen, VII; Sir C. Wheatstone, Bakerian Lecture, 1843, in
Philosophical Transactions, 1843, P- 303 ff. ; Lord Kelvin, Popular
Lectures and Addresses, I, p. 76.

Liebisch, Physikalische Krystallo graphic, pp. 3-50; Groth, Physik-
alische Krystallographic, p. 324 ff .

356 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

crystallographic axes or the number of planes of symmetry
belonging to them. His Krystallometrie was forgotten for
a generation, and then Bravais rediscovered it in his Etudes
CrystallographiqueSj which appeared in 1851.

In the course of his short career James McCullagh
(1809 1847) did geometrical work sufficient almost to
place him beside Chasles and Poncelet. He disagreed with
Fresnel in holding that the vibrations of plane-polarised
light are parallel to the plane of polarisation, and Fresnel
proved right. This does not, however, take from the high
degree of value possessed by McCullagh's geometrical
papers and by his able attempts to construct a dynamical
theory of the luminiferous ether. Sir Joseph Larmor
illuminatingly traces the modern vortex theory beyond Mac-
quorn Rankine to McCullagh. Sir Joseph Larmor thinks
that in his Essay towards a Dynamical Theory of Crystalline
Reflexion and Refraction* McCullagh " arrived at a type
of elasticity (of the ether) which was wholly rotational, . . .
somewhat after the manner that a spinning flywheel resists
any angular deflection of its axis." f Sir Joseph Larmor
proceeds to point out that " Rankine, never timid in his
speculations, expounded McCullagh's analytical scheme
soundly and clearly, in full contrast with the elastic proper-
ties of matter, as representing a uniform medium or plenum
endowed with ordinary inertia, but with elasticity of purely
rotational type. 35 $ However, " up to the period of Lord
Kelvin's vortex atoms . . . the earlier theories . . . could
only have been hypothetical speculations/' McCullagh's
extant papers remained but very imperfectly known. He
died by his own hand in a fit of temporary insanity, induced
by his devotion to science. Careful search was made of
his manuscripts for his physical and geometrical investiga-
tions, which it is well known he had ready for publication,
but no trace of them could be found.

William James Macquorn Rankine (1820 1872) was a
civil engineer who spent his leisure in a series of researches
on molecular physics. Rankine the Scots, Clausius the

* Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, 1839.
t Sir J. Larmor, Aether and Matter, 1900, p. 26.
t Ibid., p. 77. Cf. p. 73-
Ibid., p. 25, note.

FORGOTTEN SCIENTISTS 357

German, and Lord Kelvin the Ulsterman were the three
who realised profoundly the implications of Carnot's Puis-
sance Motrice du Feu, a tract that Lord Kelvin had sought
for as ardently as Green's tract. Rankine, Clausius, and
Kelvin are the three founders of theoretical thermo-
dynamics. From 1850 onwards Rankine put forward his
theory of molecular vortices, " which assumes that each
atom of matter consists of a nucleus or central point enve-
loped by an elastic atmosphere." * Clerk-Maxwell thought
in 1878 that "whatever he [i.e. Rankine] imagined about
molecular vortices was so clearly imaged in his mind's eye
that he, as a practical engineer, could see how it would work.
However intricate, therefore, the machinery might be which
he imagined to exist in the minute parts of bodies, there
was no danger of his going on to explain natural phenomena
by any mode of action of this machinery which was not
consistent with the general laws of mechanism. Hence,
though the construction and distribution of his vortices may
seem to us as complicated and arbitrary as the Cartesian
system, his final deductions are simple, necessary, and con-
sistent with facts. Certain phenomena were to be explained.
Rankine set himself to imagine the mechanism by which
they might be produced. Being an accomplished engineer,
he succeeded in specifying a particular arrangement of
mechanism competent to do the work." This procedure
was exactly in keeping with that of Lord Kelvin, who never
felt happy till he had reduced his conceptions to a working
model. Then but not till then he realised that he was
making progress. With perfect truth, therefore, Clerk-
Maxwell informs us that " as long as the training of a
naturalist enables him to trace the action only of particular
material systems, without giving him the power of dealing
with the general properties of all such systems, he must
proceed by the method so often described in histories of
science he must imagine model after model of hypothetical
apparatus, till he finds one which will do the required work.
. . . The theory of molecular vortices was distinguished
from other theories which attribute motion to bodies ap-
parently at rest, by the further assumption that this motion

* W. J. Rankine, Scientific Papers, p. 17.

358 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

is like that of very small vortices, each whirling about its
own axis." *

The practical profession to which Macquorn Rankine be-
longed is enough to show folks that they are not dealing with
a mere theorist whatever that term of opprobrium may
mean. Influential he has been at home, but uninfluential
he has been abroad, especially in Germany. The reason of
this lack of European fame arises from the circumstance that
the theories of Clausius occupied so dominating a position
that they left no room for the ideas of Macquorn Rankine.

Macquorn Rankine, James Thomson, and William Thom-
son (Lord Kelvin) gradually came to realise that there was
a general doctrine of energy, breaking with the older physical
theories in so doing. Chemistry had become an exact
science since mathematics had been applied to it. These
three came to hold that there ought to be a broader inter-
pretation embracing more than certain restricted groups
of natural phenomena. Such an interpretation led to
the Phase Rule of Willard Gibbs of Yale, who proceeded
in 1874 logically from a few of the general notions we
possess on the subject of matter and energy. Contem-
plating actual aggregate of bodies, he found them in the con-
dition approaching thermodynamic equilibrium on which
the reduction of the Phase Rule depends. By the way of
abstract theory, he introduced into physics the so-called
semi-permeable membrane and the osmotic pressure against
it, which now plays so fundamental a part in the study,
and is regarded as a mode of expression of actual reversible
energy-relations between solutions in nature. He marked
out the channels of chemistry within which a scheme of
reactions can proceed by aid of a discussion of the rela-
tions of co-existing states or phases of the material. With
insight he considered the phenomena of inter facial films in
relation to their physical and chemical combination. Wil-
lard Gibbs published his views in the Transactions of the
Connecticut Academy, in a memoir of over three hundred
pages, and they were as much buried there as those of
Sophus Lie were in his Oslo journal. Clothed in mathe-
matical form, European chemists were not quite prepared

* J. Clerk-Maxwell, Nature, 1878; his Scientific Papers, II, p. 662;
P. G, Tait's memoir of Rankine in the Collected Papers, XXIX.

FORGOTTEN SCIENTISTS 359

for them. Horstmann had done kindred work which re-
mained long unrecognised.* True, Clerk-Maxwell f divined
their value, but, like Henri Poincare, of what did he not
divine the value ? The papers of Willard Gibbs, with this out-
standing exception, were left severely alone. Helmholtz bare-
ly heard of them later. Gibbs's colleagues at Yale do not seem
to have manifested any concern in the conception of " Hetero-
geneous Equilibrium/' a neglect that always puzzles us. The
Dutch chemist Roozeboom, after the lapse of years, per-
ceived the importance of the Phase Rule. He brought the
abstract relations of Gibbs to the test of the laboratory,
and subjected to this test they emerged from it triumphantly.
Willard Gibbs made deductions in the seclusion of his study
at Yale, and Roozeboom actually found that these
deductions were true in fact as well as in theory. Wilhelm
Ostwald collected and translated the memoirs of Gibbs in
1892,$ and to-day a whole literature has gathered around
them. Carnot and Clausius, Joule and Kelvin are outstand-
ing names, but the name of Willard Gibbs stands alongside
theirs.

Riemann worked in the same abstract manner as Gibbs.
He constructs a certain mathematical space, and in the pro-
cess we see that, so far as mathematical activity itself is
concerned, there is no reason why this space should be
dowered with three dimensions, and with three dimensions
only. But we see more than that. We see that the primary
notions have nothing peculiarly " spatial " about them. We
can deduce from them not only certain characteristics of
space, but certain properties of linear algebraic equations,
of mixtures of gases of a large number of things, in fact,
that are not spaces. As for what differentiates space from
these non-spatial things, our equation tells us nothing. But,
in this simple region, we find that all the mathematical rela-
tions we derive admit of obvious geometrical interpretations.

* W. Ostwald, Allgcmcine Chemie, II, Part II, p. 111 ff. ; G. Helm,
Energctik, p. 141 ; P. Duhem, Traite de Mccanique Chimique, I, p. 84 ff.

f In his Theory of Heat. Cf. his paper in the Transactions of the
Cambridge Philosophical Society, 1876. Cf. A. D. Ritchie, Scientific
Method, p. 80.

$ Thermodynamische Studien, von Willard Gibbs. Cf . W. Ostwald,
Allgemeine Chemie, II, Part II, p. 114; G. Helm, Grundsiige der
mathcmatischen Chemie, and his Energetik, passim.

360 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

And by defining congruence in a suitable way we can bestow
metric relations upon this space; we build up an Euclidean
space. Have we now formulated the properties of " real "
space? For about two thousand years it was supposed that
this particular mathematical development had its precise
analogue in the relations of bodies in the external world,
that it was a perfectly correct account of the geometrical
properties of real space. Even the greater assumption was
made that this particular geometrical development was the
only one of which man's mind was capable. It is true
that this assumption had its critics. From Proclus to Gauss
there were always doubts about the entire necessity of
Euclidean geometry, even though its descriptive validity
might be admitted. But with the erection by Boylai and
Lobatchewski of a self -consistent, non-Euclidean geometry,
the mind became aware of its own powers. The mind,
having won this freedom, proceeded to exercise it, and with
the work of Riemann, a mathematician of almost unequalled
insight and profundity, a vast new region was opened up
to it. This new mental adventure, profound, subtle, and
vigorous as it was, seemed for long to be a mere efflorescence
of the free intelligence. Like the world of music, it seemed
a region exhibiting the free activity of the mind when no
longer bound by the arbitrary conditions of experience.
That Riemann himself saw a possibility that these researches
might throw light on the properties of actual space is
evident from a prophetic remark in his famous " Probevor-
lesung," Ueber die Hypothesen, welche der Geometric zu
Grunde liegen, when, after remarking that, if space is a
continuous manifold, its metrical relations must be sought
outside it, in " darauf wirkenden bindenden Kraften," and
concludes by referring this problem to the science of physics.
This remark excited no response at the time it was made;
most probably, indeed, it appeared completely unintelligible,
for a genius as great as Riemann's own was necessary to
perceive its full significance. The genius at last appeared in
the person of Einstein,* who has succeeded in identifying
Riemann's " binding forces " with gravitation.

* Did Johann Soldner in 1801 anticipate Einstein? If so, he is a
remarkable instance of a forgotten scientist.

CHAPTER X

LIMITATIONS OF SCIENTISTS

HUMAN life is the old in the new, the old being in a new
aspect. History exhibits that union of two opposites, per-
manence and progress, which is so baffling to the mind. It
has a permanent identity and sameness because it exhibits
the same species of being and the same eternal truth in all
its sections. It also presents a constant variety and change,
because it shows this same human nature and this same
common variety in new forms. This co-inherence and this
co-working of the two factors, of the old and the new, of
the conservatism and the progress, is the very essence of
history. It is difficult to seize and hold both conceptions
at one and the same time, as the constant controversies of
scientists show. It is easy and it is very natural to
separate past discoveries from present, and to make a choice
of the one or the other as the key to all new ideas and
the foundation of their application to practical life and
action. It is simpler to say that the scientist is concerned
wholly with the present or that he is wholly concerned with
the past. The extremists on both sides have a much easier
task than one who occupies the central position between
them. For a simple idea is much easier to define and
manage than a complex one; but it is neither so fertile nor
so completely true.

Turn to Bacon's New Atlantis, and there we find its
author protesting against the mistaken use of imagination
and authority in science, root causes of the limitations of
scientists. " There is not/' we read in Bacon's grave
language, " and there never will be an end or limit to this ;
one catches at one thing, another at another; each has his
favourite fancy; pure and open light there is none; every
one philosophies out of the cells of his own imagination,

361

362 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

as out of Plato's cave; the higher wits with more acuteness
and felicity, the duller, less happily but with equal per-
tinacity." Are these words one whit less true in 1925 than
they were in 1625? Yes, they are not nearly so true, and
for that we are grateful. If there, however, be any truth
in the preceding nine chapters we have written, notably the
ninth one, then it is still lamentably obvious that presupposi-
tions stand in the way of that greater scientific progress
we all desire. Aristotle is always in Bacon's mind when
he protests against the easy assent to authority and against
the willingness of most men to receive, without discussion,
symmetrical and agreeable yet fictitious theories. These
he brands with the name of the Idols of the Theatre.

In his Novum Organum, Bacon investigates the internal
impediments to knowledge, those inherent in the human
mind itself. Thence he proceeds to analyse them closely.
The mind, so it seems to him, instead of being a perfect
mirror to reflect the truth, distorts everything that it
reflects by its unevenness. " I do find," we see, " there-
fore in this enchanted glass four Idols, or false appear-
ances of several and distinct sorts, every sort comprehending
many subdivisions : the first sort I call Idols of the Nation
or Tribe; the second, Idols of the Palace (or Market-place) ;
the third, Idols of the Cave; and the fourth, Idols of the
Theatre."

" Plus qa change, plus c'est la meme chose," such is the sad
saying that comes into our head. Baconian phraseology
we no longer employ, but the idea underlying it is still
present with us. Shelley sings splendidly:

Happiness

And science dawn though late upon the earth ;
Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame;
Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here,
Reason and passion cease to combat there,
Whilst mind unfettered o'er the earth extends
Its all-subduing energies, and wields
The sceptre of a vast dominion there.

The serious factor, disturbing the truth of these lines, is
that the mind of the scientist is very far from an unfettered
condition. In his Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse, one
of the most fascinating of all his books, Renan tells us how
he felt drawn to Treguier, that sombre old town, " ecrasee

LIMITATIONS OF SCIENTISTS 363

par sa cathedrale/' which gave him his " indestructible pli."
"On y nageait en plein reve, dans'im atmosphere aussi
mythologique au moins que celle de Benares ou de Jagat-
nata. ... Je n'etais a Taise que dans la compagnie des
morts, pres de ces chevaliers, de ces nobles dames, dormant
d'un sommeil calme avec leur levrette a leurs pieds et tin
grand flambeau de pierre a la main." How many scientists
have their Treguier in the shape of some hypothesis, some
Idol of the Cave, giving them an " indestructible pli " ? This
" indestructible pli " has been the curse of science in the past,
and the present has not altogether shaken it off its shoulders.
Is it possible, for example, that Mr. Bateson is so pre-
occupied with the study of Mendelism as to be blind to other
laws ? Is it possible, to take another example, that De Vries
is so preoccupied with Mutationism as to be blind to
other laws? The obsession of a hypothesis turns to the
possession of a mind, taking it into complete captivity. Each
of us has his Treguier, and unfortunately we are not always
aware of the hold that such a sombre mental dwelling-
place has over us.

Sir William Osier once upon a time hinted that a man
was too old, mentally speaking, at forty. After that age
he seemed to contemplate the lethal chamber for the scientist.
There is considerable truth in his contention. For after
forty or (say) fifty the scientific mind loses much of its
elasticity, becoming too cautious and too conservative and
too seldom brilliant and too seldom daring. In history a
Lord Bryce and a Sir Adolphus Ward become younger men
as their weight of years increases. How many Lord Bryces
or Sir Adolphus Wards are there in science? These two
historians proved receptive of new opinions to the very last,
and this is the desideratum for the man of science who is
going to grasp fresh truth so long as he lives. The serious
difficulty for him is that so much of his labours is con-
cerned with details. Immersed in these details, he tends
to become like Bunyan's man with the muck-rake. He was
busy with the filth, and never raised his eyes to gaze at
the vision over his head. Similarly the scientist is often so
busied with petty facts that he cannot see the wood for the
trees. The myopic offender has little to say for himself.
If a man is content with the view "one step enough for

364 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

me," he is lost. He must of course take one step at a
time, but he must also be prepared to gaze at the distant
scene. Must he labour intensively? Of course he must.
Must he labour extensively? Of course he must. The long
view and the short view are equally essential, but in com-
bination, not in an abstract and false antithesis. It is
well to lift our eyes to the sunlit range; but we shall reach
it only by taking heed to our footsteps in the shadowy plain.
The command to see things sub specie alternitatis is no com-
mand to close the eyes to things temporal. On the contrary,
it is a command to see them steadily and whole in their right
perspective. The long view proves indeed to be no separate
act of distant vision, but a lamp to our scientific path in a
workaday world.

One of Mr. Brooke's good sayings in Daniel Deronda is,
" I want that sort of thing not ideas, you know, but a way
of putting them." The way of putting them is vital to
the man who wants to make a seminal discovery. With
Candide " cultivons notre jardin," but at all costs let us oc-
casionally look around all of it. In our plot we may, if
we please, say with Marshal MacMahon, "J'y suis et j'y
reste." If we are content so to say, we shall in science meet
our Sedan. Sir Richard Owen was uncrowned king of one
department of the scientific world in England to the year
1858. About then he ceased to grow as he had been growing,
with the outcome that where he was he remained, and in
so remaining he lost his crown. Similarly Sir Roderick
Murchison lost his crown which he had worn with so much
honour for so many years. Sir Richard Owen and Sir
Roderick Murchison are gone from our midst. Have they
left no successors ? Are there scientists at this moment who
are cast in a mental mould which they are incapable of
bursting? Treguier maintained its fascination over Renan
to the close of his life. Treguierism, if we may coin a
word, is not confined to an extraordinarily graceful French
writer. There are scientists who profess the faith of
Treguierism quite unconsciously. For there are depart-
ments in their world afflicted with crude heresy and with
withered orthodoxy. As the years of life advance very few
of the members of these departments escape that conservatism
and distrust of new ideas that mark the veteran thinker.

LIMITATIONS OF SCIENTISTS 365

If anyone takes the trouble and the exquisite pleasure
he will reap will be his reward to read the biography of
Henry Sidgwick, he will find a man close to our ideal
thinker. Every sentence of his writing illustrates the
familiar slowness and cautiousness in method combined with
a sincerity of spirit so constant and so intense that the heart
of it may almost be heard throbbing as the words are read.
Characteristic of Sidgwick, it is also, we like to think, the
very quality which made him so typically English a thinker.
Our love of truth is not intellectual) but moral; the virtue
of the gentleman rather than that of the man of science.
The typical Englishman among our men of letters is Samuel
Johnson. But Johnson is not the typical English thinker,
because he was not primarily a thinker at all. For the
thinker all questions were open. For Johnson, however,
many questions the wisdom of the English constitution,
for instance, the wickedness of the Whigs were closed.
" Quieta non movere," the policy of not questioning the actual
system of things but making it somehow workable, may be
the wisest for the majority of men. But it cannot be the
method of the thinker or inquirer. And it was not the
method of those who are most typical of English thought,
especially Joseph Butler, the most typical of all. No one
was so like Butler in the nineteenth century as Henry Sidg-
wick. There is of course more play of the intellect in
Sidgwick a play which sometimes goes so far as real
humour and there is far less of that sorrowful earnest-
ness as of a prophet calling to a perverse generation which
is so frequent a note in Butler. But there is the same
visible and audible sincerity, the same resolute and per-
sistent will to give its fair weight to every objection and
never to say one syllable more than the truth allows. Such
a spirit in science would change the tone and temper of the
twentieth century, turning it into a brotherhood of men
striving for the whole truth and turning it aside from
making this brotherhood into the sheerest of rivalry. The
common aims and the common interests of all scientists,
whatever their nationality, ought to bind them into a unity.
The tale of the nineteenth century from the days of Edward
Jenner onwards is that it has given them diversity instead
of this vaunted unity.

366 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

T. H. Huxley was not wont to speak evil of science, and
his witness is not accordingly prejudiced against it. Some-
times he is afraid of the specialists and sometimes he is
afraid of their jealousies. In memorable words he dwells
on the former danger : " We are in the case of Tarpeia, who
opened the gates of the Roman citadel to the Sabines and
was crushed by the weight of the reward bestowed upon her.
It has become impossible for any man to keep pace with the
progress of the whole of any important branch of science.
It looks as if the scientific, like other revolutions, meant to
devour its own children; as if the growth of science tended
to overwhelm its votaries; as if the man of science of the
future were condemned to diminish into a narrow specialist
as time goes on. It appears to me that the only defence
against this tendency to the degeneration of scientific workers
lies in the organisation and extension of scientific education
in such a manner as to secure breadth of culture without
superficiality; and, on the other hand, depth and precision
of knowledge without narrowness." The dangers he feared
in his day are of course enormously greater in ours, and
his remedy is one that we cannot apply. The reason is
obvious. As science advances, it grows increasingly com-
plex. The words employed in any particular department
acquire a specialised meaning. Moreover, fresh words have
to be coined in order to express brand-new conceptions. Can
the discoveries of Riemann be put into plain English? Can
those of Mendel? We feel convinced that if Huxley himself
were alive to-day, and were to undertake to do for Mr.
Bateson what he did for Darwin, he would miserably fail
in the attempt. This does not mean for a single second
that Mr. Bateson's writing is so much below the level of
Darwin's. It does mean that Mr. Bateson is working with
more complex material. In point of fact, he has to face
all the accumulations of knowledge since 1859. The plan,
then, Huxley suggested is plainly an unmanageable one.

Huxley stood in dread of the rivalries existing among men
of science. Obviously this comes out more clearly in the
early part of his career than in the later part. For in the
early part he was making his way, and therefore felt the
weight of opposition on the part of his rivals. In the later
part he had made his way, and therefore could bear opposi-

LIMITATIONS OF SCIENTISTS 367

tion down. On March 5, 1852, he had finished a piece of
work on the morphology of the cephalous mollusca, and here
is what he writes:

" I told you I was very busy, and I must tell you what
I am about and you will believe me. I have just finished
a Memoir for the Royal Society, which has taken me a world
of time, thought, and reading, and is, perhaps, the best
thing I have done yet. It will not be read till May, and
I do not know whether they will print it or not afterwards;
that will require care and a little manoeuvring on my part.
You have no notion of the intrigues that go on in this blessed
world of science. Science is, I fear, no purer than any other
region of human activity; though it should be. Merit alone
is very little good ; it must be backed by tact and knowledge
of the world to do very much.

" For instance, I know that the paper I have just sent in is
very original and of some importance, and I am equally
sure that if it is referred to the judgment of my ' particular f
friend that it will not be published. He won't be able
to say a word against it, but he will pooh-pooh it to a dead
certainty.

" You will ask with some wonderment, Why? Because for

the last twenty years has been regarded as the great

authority on these matters, and has had no one to tread
on his heels, until at last, I think, he has come to look upon
the Natural World as his special preserve, and ' no poachers
allowed.' So I must manoeuvre a little to get my poor
memoir kept out of his hands.

" The necessity for these little stratagems utterly disgusts
me. I would so willingly reverence and trust any man of
high standing and ability. I am so utterly unable to com-
prehend this petty greediness. And yet withal you will
smile at my perversity. I have a certain pleasure in over-
coming these obstacles, and fighting these folks with their
own weapons. I do so long to be able to trust men im-
plicitly. I have such a horror of all this literary petti-
fogging. I could be so content myself, if the necessity of
making a position would allow it, to work on anonymously,

but I see is determined not to let either me or any one

else rise if he can help it. Let him beware. On my own
subjects I am his master, and am quite ready to fight half

368 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

a dozen dragons. And although he has a bitter pen, I flatter
myself that on occasions I can match him in that depart-
ment also/' * Huxley was only twenty-seven when he
wrote such a searching criticism of the section of the scientific
world with which he came into contact. The gravity of
the last paragraph can be best estimated by the fact that
there always have been and there always will be young
men anxious to carve out their careers. Were such stratagems
necessary in 1852? Are they necessary in 1925? In spite
of the World War, human nature has not been perceptibly
modified during the last three score years and ten.

In August 1876 Lister gave the graduation address when
the new graduates were capped. In homely verse Sir Douglas
Maclagan wrote:

I'm passed, I'm passed,

And capped at last;
I'm qualified and free now,

On pasteboard neat,

Or brass door-plate,
To write myself M.B. now.

Lister seized the occasion to hold out what he considered
to be Religio Medici. " In investigating nature/ 5 he warned
the graduates, " you will do well to bear in mind that in
every question there is the truth, whatever our notions may
be. This seems, perhaps, a very simple consideration, yet
it is strange how often it seems to be disregarded. I re-
member at an early period of my own life showing to a
man of high reputation as a teacher some matters which
I happen to have observed. And I was very much struck
and grieved to find that, while all the facts lay equally clear
before him, those only which squared with his previous
theories seemed to affect his organs of vision. Now this,
gentlemen, is a most pernicious, though too prevalent, frame
of mind. When I was a little boy I used to imagine that
prejudice was a thing peculiar to some individuals. But,
alas ! I have since learned that we all are under its influence,
and that it is only a question of degree. But let us ever
contend against it ; and remembering that the glorious truth
is always present, let us strive patiently and humbly to dis-
cover it. And considering the weakness of our nature makes

* L. Huxley, Life and Letters of T. H. Huxley, I, p. 97.

LIMITATIONS OF SCIENTISTS 369

it often hard for men to recant an error to which they have
once committed themselves, you will see an additional reason
against such rash and premature publication." * In 1852
Huxley found Treguierism in London and in 1876 Lister
found it in Edinburgh, and it is of course present to-day
throughout the world of science. English law presumes
in the world that a man is innocent until found guilty.
Treguierism presumes in the scientific world that a man is
found guilty of error until proved innocent. Rudolf Virchow
( 1821 1902) was not unknown in the arena of controversy.
Moved by the harm it had done, he wrote in the preface to
his collected writings in 1861 : " No doubt science cannot
admit of compromises, and can only bring out the com-
plete truth. Hence there must be controversy, and the strife
may be, and sometimes must be, sharp. But must it even
then be personal? Does it help science to attack the man
as well as the statement? On the contrary, has not science
the noble privilege of carrying on its controversies without
personal quarrels?" Such a privilege ought to be used,
but has it?

The attitude of a Joseph Butler or of a Henry Sidgwick
is the ideal of the scientist just as much as it is the ideal
of the moral philosopher. Creed and practice, even in the
domain of science, do not always coincide.

In an ideal world of science all the members are moved
by a pure love of truth and there are no such things as envy,
hatred, and malice. In the actual world there is much love
of truth. Is it pure? Of course it is not, as the preceding
chapters amply testify? Are scientists beings who move
in a world of thought where such human failings as envy,
hatred, and malice are not so much as mentioned? Of course
they are not. There is, as Huxley's letter of 1852 reveals,
much envy on the part of the investigator towards the young
graduate who brings to him a piece of original work which
trespasses on his chosen domain. There is, as Lister's
address in 1876 reveals, deep-seated prejudice. Now of
course in the world of reason two blacks do not make one
white. In the world of ordinary life they sometimes do.
Did not Jowett darkly hint that logic is neither a science nor

* Sir R. Godlee, Lord Lister, p. 389.
24

370 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

an art, but is simply a dodge? Not a few graduates prac-
tically shocking as it is to relate hold a similar view?
Convince such a man that there have been conflicts in science,
that there are conflicts in science, and it is not nearly so
hard to open his eyes to the circumstance that theology is
not the only domain where such a warfare has been waged.
Quite frankly, one object in writing this book has been to
show the scientist from the annals of the past that his domain
has been and is infected with precisely the same virus that
has been at work in the world of religion. It is for the
reader to judge whether we have proved this or not. It
is part of our thesis, and by it, for the most part, this book
stands or falls.

In the world of science new ideas have not in the past
met with that welcome that a priori we should have thought
possible. Nor has this lack of friendly greeting been alto-
gether unmixed with professional jealousies. If we
take the case of Huxley again, it is simply because his
biography is one of the fullest with which we are acquainted,
and the biographer writes it with a frankness which is wholly
admirable. In 1879 there was a proposal to remove the
School of Mines from such a crowded part of London as
Jermyn Street to the dignified seclusion of South Kensington.
It was a matter that commended itself warmly to Huxley.
Naturally the alumni of the School by no means saw eye
to eye with him in this matter. They met at a public
dinner to which Huxley had been invited. The chairman,
stirred by the presence of so many friends of the School,
spoke enthusiastically in favour of the present position of
the School. The applause was vigorous when, to the sur-
prise of everyone, Huxley stood up, and signified his protest
by walking out of the dining-room. Of course he was
entitled to his opinion, but so too were the alumni.

In England and Scotland professional jealousies are miti-
gated by the circumstance that the Crown has the right to
appoint to some chairs. Is there any subject that gives rise
to so much feeling as the appointment to a Professorship?
In different ways we have been connected with the three
older Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin, and
one of the sorriest spectacles we know is to observe occasion-
ally how a School of Science has been seriously hampered

LIMITATIONS OF SCIENTISTS 371

because one colleague will not work harmoniously with
another. If we may speak of our own profession for a
moment for in it such feeling is not altogether unknown
it is pleasant to note how a newcomer in a diocese is so
much more warmly received in England than in Ireland.
No doubt part of this difference arises from the fact that
the Crown in England, though not in Ireland since 1869,
possesses the power of nominating men to all the Bishoprics,
all the Deaneries, and not a few Canonries. It is impossible
to feel jealousy of the Crown in England. It is possible to
feel jealousy of the Board making an appointment in Ire-
land. Of course in England, as in Ireland, Treguierism
is not wholly unknown.

The examples we have given of the conflict between
scientists and science stop with the days of Lister, and the
reason of this is obvious. It is not that fresh cases of
conflict do not exist: it is simply that such evidence is not
available simply because the scientists are still alive. On
the ground of taste as well as on the ground of lack of
evidence we do not proceed to the present moment. Recent
biographies and biographies are essential for our purpose
reveal the melancholy fact that this conflict persists. In
1921 the English edition of the Life of Elie Metchnikoff
appeared and in 1923 Sir Ronald Ross published his
Memoirs. In 1924 Lord Rayleigh's biography of his great
father also appeared.

Madame Metchnikoff wrote a revealing study of her
husband in which we catch almost as many glimpses of the
man as we do of the scientist. A devoted lover of music,
he possessed much knowledge of art and had many friends
in the art world of Paris. Like so many of the greatest
discoverers, he was attracted to the field of his life's work
by a delight in its beauty. His aesthetic sense was gratified
by the observance and discovery of the phenomena of struc-
ture and function. Metchnikoff (1845 1 9 1 ^) was a Rus-
sian zoologist who breathed a serene atmosphere which
altered the second he changed to pathology. Feeling his
way to a startling discovery in pathology, he tells us that
while he was Scientific Director of the bacteriological station
at Odessa, medical society met with hostility every work
which issued from the laboratory. Tentatively he issued his

372 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

phagocyte theory, by which he proved that natural history
could be applied to medicine. This theory he had seen in
a flash of prophetic insight. But this was an innovation,
retorted some. Metchnikoff pursued his researches, which
were to show that recovery and immunity depended on the
absorption and digestion of living, virulent microbes by
phagocytes. Emmerich in 1887 attacked the new view
violently, and even though the discoverer travelled to Munich
in order to afford a personal explanation, it was unavailing.
There was peace neither at Odessa nor at Munich. Koch
lived in Berlin, and he was a discoverer. Surely he would
listen to his evidence. Accordingly, to Berlin he hastened
in 1887. Koch " received him coldly. For a long time,
while examining specimens of the spleen in relapsing fever,
he refused to recognise in them an example of phagocytosis.
Though he was obliged to bow to the evidence, he yet re-
mained unfavourable to the phagocyte theory, and all his
assistants followed his example. Metchnikoff was much
surprised and grieved by this hostility towards his ideas,
notwithstanding that they were based on well-established
facts." *

Madame Metchnikoff is of course the only person really
to know the effects of such marked opposition towards her
husband's ideas. The outcome of Bacon's Idola could not
be more marked. " Here," she tells us, " was the realm of
secular traditions, deeply rooted, and of theories generally
admitted but resting on no biological basis. Attacks and
objections against his theories came following each other with
a rush, only to be compared with the racing clouds of a
stormy sky or the hurrying waves of a tempestuous sea.
An epic struggle began for Metchnikoff which was to last
for twenty-five years, until the moment when the phagocyte
theory, his child now grown up, was to emerge victoriously.
To each attack, to each objection, he answered with fresh
experiments, fresh observations annihilating objections; his
theory was assuming wider and wider scope, becoming
more solid and convincing. . . . But only his intimates knew
how much the struggle cost him in vital force, what sleep-
less nights, due to continuous cerebral tension, and to the

* O. Metchnikoff, Life of Elie Metchnikoff 9 p. 133.

LIMITATIONS OF SCIENTISTS 373

effort to conceive some new and irrefragable experiment,
what alternations of hope and depression. . . ." *

Now if Metchnikoff had been the very first to perform
such experiments, if there had been no Pasteur, no Lister,
we could better understand such determined opposition. But
he was by no means a pathological Columbus. The objec-
tion of the average man to a proposal is, Why, I never
heard the like of that before! To him such an objection
is fatal. There were even scientists who replied of course
in proper terminological exactitude Why, I never heard
the like of that before. The tragedy is that in the eighties
a genius like Metchnikoff was forced to spend twenty-five
years of his precious time in meeting their attacks. The
years that might have been devoted to the perfecting of his
toil had to be given to meeting attack after attack. By
experiments on the rouget of pigs he met the objections of
Emmerich. By experiments on the anthrax of pigeons he
met the objections of Baumgarten and his pupils. By ex-
periments on the anthrax of rats he met the objections of
Behring, who affirmed that immunity was purchased by the
bacteriological power of the serum. His attacks were serious,
for he discovered antitoxins, and this seemed to favour the
chemical or humoral theory of immunity. According to
the latter, microbes and their poisons were rendered harmless
by the chemical properties of the blood serum, properties
similar to those of disinfecting substances. A series of fresh
researches was imperative. What part was played by phago-
cytes? What part was played by antitoxins? The investi-
gator was at last enabled to draw the required conclusion.
He ascertained the nature of the narrow link between im-
munity and the function of the phagocytes which probably
elaborate the antitoxins as a product of their digestion of
vaccinal toxins. His Lemons sur la pathologie, published in
1892, contained conclusions, with the evidence for them,
that ought to have silenced all opposition. Of course it did
nothing of the kind.

Madame Metchnikoff records that "the persistent and
bitter opposition of physicians to the phagocyte theory
made a great impression on Metchnikoff, and, while stimu-
lating his energy in defence of his ideas, it maintained
* O. Metchnikoff, Life of Elie Metchnikoff, p. 146.

374 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

him in a state of nervous excitement and even depressed
him.

" He asked himself why this obstinate opposition to a
doctrine based on well-established facts, easily tested and
observed throughout the whole animal kingdom? To him,
a naturalist, it seemed clear and simple and all the more
admissible that it was confirmed by the generality of its
application to all living beings.

" But, he thought, perhaps the real cause of the attitude
of the contradictors lies in the very fact that medical science
only concerns itself with the pathological phenomena of higher
animals, leaving their evolution out of account, as well as
their starting-point in lower animals whilst it is the very
simplicity of the latter which allows us to penetrate to the
origin of the phenomena.

" Perhaps a general plan of the whole, in the shape of a
comparative study, embracing the whole animal scale, would
throw light over the generality of phagocytic phenomena and
would make their continuity understood through normal and
pathological biology. He determined to make this effort/' *

His Lemons sur la pathologic covered the whole ground,
and, so far as the objectors were concerned, covered
the whole ground in vain. The attacks made upon Edward
Jenner at the beginning of the nineteenth century were made
upon Elie Metchnikoff at the end of the nineteenth century.
By a curious coincidence the problems at which Jenner and
Metchnikoff were working were kindred in nature, for Jenner
was working at the beginnings of Immunology. Pasteur
and Lister, Koch and Metchnikoff and indeed the whole
modern therapeutical movement trace their descent
logically from what a country doctor in Gloucestershire
initiated. Immunology has made progress, distinct progress.
In spite of this, however, in 1925 the Medical Research
Council assures us that not one of the causal organisms of
the common communicable diseases has been discovered in
any of our University laboratories. Yet when Elie Metch-
nikoff presented results, the reception of them was so cold
that it daunted even his warm heart. With his keen
imagination, keen vitality, keen persistence, he saw far down
the corridors of time, new vistas alluring him ever onward.
* 0. Metchnikoff, Life of Elie Metchnikoff, p. 150.

LIMITATIONS OF SCIENTISTS 375

His gaze ever was fixed on the far-off hills and on the giant
peaks of the far-distant and unknown country beyond. Some
of that unknown country he was happy enough to win, but
some was hidden by mists raised by men, and

This high man, with great things to pursue,
Dies ere he knows it.

The history of scientific discovery attests the need there
is for a clearing house for men who are engaged in research.
For one's labours may be either superfluous or assistance
for them may be provided. The labours may be super-
fluous, for one may ascertain through such a clearing house
that one's idea has been exploited to its limits. Assistance
for them may be provided when this is not so, for one
may meet another worker engaged in a kindred task.
Then there are all the advantages gained through discussion
with some one who is qualified to afford light and leading.
The clearing house is not always possible, for the simple
reason that there may not be another man in a position
to give help of any kind. We must also remember that
the discovery may be a welcome one or an unwelcome one.
It may be a welcome one for which many are clamouring,
for it will co-ordinate scattered tiny generalisations into
the whole to which they belong. It may be an unwelcome
one for which nobody is clamouring, for it may be the
very first of a set of generalisations which will not be
sufficiently ripe for the large generalisation for another
generation. An example will explain what we mean. Dr.
Banting discovered insulin, and everyone wanted it. Dr.
Edridge-Green discovered a new theory of colour vision,
and nobody wanted it. Dr. Banting's discovery of insulin
was a sort of keyword that completed a cross-word puzzle.
It completed, co-ordinated, and explained the researches of
nearly a generation of laboratory workers. Dr. Edridge-
Green's discovery set out with the destruction of the current
colour-theory, and the outcome was that he saw his theory
neglected for twenty years. The supporters of the current
theory were horrified at the unorthodoxy of the views of
the discoverer. We never heard the like of that before!
The United States and Germany paid some heed to his
view, but the body most difficult to convince was our own
Royal Society,

376 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

Discoveries appear in learned papers, but there are no
less than 24,000 of them throughout the world, and more
than half of them are devoted to the biological sciences.
Very few libraries in the world contain more than a fraction
of these publications. In our country an effort is being
made to group the libraries of provincial universities, and
to pool borrowing and consulting powers. Geographical
distances in America put such co-operation out of the
question. The proposal the Americans make is to start a
journal of abstracts of the researches that are being actually
pursued throughout the world. The National Research
Council of the United States and many of the leading
American scientific institutions have given a general support
to the proposal. The Rockefeller Foundation is reported
to have promised an annual contribution of fifty thousand
dollars a year for ten years for the editorial expenses.
On a small scale this plan has been tried. Our Physiological
Society, for instance, issues a valuable series of abstracts
of papers dealing with physiological research. The
Imperial Bureau of Entomology circulates abstracts and
bibliographies dealing exhaustively with the economic
side of insect life. Since 1864 the annual volumes of the
Zoological Record have provided classified lists of zoological
memoirs, with detailed indexes to their contents. The
proposal, then, is one that has been tried on a national
scale, and ought to be tried on a cosmopolitan one. When
a scientific society has its annual meeting, why, in addition,
should there not be a list with its secretaries, specifying
what pieces of original work members are pursuing? We
feel convinced that such a list would have saved, for example,
some of the heart-sickness from which a man like Metch-
nikoff suffered so bitterly. If the clearing house method is
not always feasible, probably the list is not always feasible.
Still, for the sake of a Dr. Edridge-Green or a Metch-
nikoff we should risk it.

Less than a year ago Sir Ronald Ross * published his
ielightful " Memoirs/ 1 and they reveal his many-sided nature.
Mathematicians deplore him as a worker wasted in alien
researches. Poets have recognised his gifts by electing him
President of the Poetry Society. His musical talent is

* He was born in 1857, and happily he is still with us.

LIMITATIONS OF SCIENTISTS 377

evident when we remember that on the marriage of his
daughter it was one of his compositions that was selected
for the wedding march. As child, youth, and man he
felt obsessed with the idea of undertaking research in mathe-
matics, of writing great verse, and of composing trans-
cendental music. Entering the Indian Medical Service he
became immersed in mathematics, poetry, music and polo.
" Homo sum ; humani nihil a me alienum puto " this could
evidently have been taken for his motto. The interest in the
malaria problem was bound to come, and it did come in 1880.
Malarial fevers proved the main obstacle in the way of
the conquest of the Papacy by the Holy Roman Empire.
Had a Frederick I or a Frederick II possessed a remedy
for these fevers, how the course of the world's history
would have been deflected ! They have swept away millions
until in 1640 the Countess d'El Chinchon, wife of the
Governor of Peru, introduced Chinchona Bark into Europe.
In 1700 this remedy was in widespread use. A century
later men ascertained that a parasite inhabiting the body
of a water-fowl was also found in the bodies of fish on
which that type of fowl habitually feeds. May a parasite
own two sets of hosts in the animal kingdom? This pos-
sibility became a probability when Sir Patrick Manson
discovered that the small worm producing that rare disease,
elephantiasis, is carried by a mosquito in whose body it
has passed a portion of its existence. In 1878 Laveran,
a French army surgeon, working at Bone in Algeria with
a microscope as inadequate as any instrument in Pasteur's
early laboratory, discovered and described the malarial
parasite as it appears in the human blood.* He watched
the small, wriggling bodies, each ensconced in its blood
corpuscle. Golgi, who continued his work, noted fully the
budding process in the blood the so-called asexual cycle
of the malaria parasite.f Ross thought in terms of malaria,
and wrote in terms of it:

In this, O Nature, yield, I pray, to^me,
I pace and pace, and think and think, and take

The fever' d hands, and note down all I see,
That some dim distant light may haply break.

* Sir R. Ross, Memoirs, pp. 40, Q2, IOT, 119-22, 125-6, 128-9, 194.
t Ibid., pp. 121, 134, i94 339, 39*5-7, 48-

378 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

The painful faces ask, Can we not cure?

We answer, No, not yet; we seek the laws.
O God, reveal thro' all this thing obscure

The unseen, small, but million-murdering cause.

On leave in London in March 1894, Ross met Dr. (as
he then was) Patrick Manson.* Curiously enough, Ross
had at that time formed the conclusion that Laveran's
result was inaccurate, for he had been unable to repeat it.f
Manson convinced him that in forming this conclusion he
was wrong. On a November afternoon in Oxford Street,
Manson declared, " Do you know, I have formed the theory
that mosquitoes carry malaria just as they carry filarise? "

There had been precursors of Darwin from time im-
memorial, and there had been precursors of Ross, but it
was reserved for him, just as it was reserved for Darwin,
to furnish the complete proofs of the accuracy of the view
propounded by Manson. Any able man can enunciate views.
It takes a Darwin or a Ross to demonstrate their truth,
and to spend, if necessary, a lifetime of hard work in
the task of demonstration. Thanks to Ross the Panama
Canal has been built and the tropics have become habitable
by the white race. Millions of lives have been saved, and
their saviour is Sir Ronald Ross.

The story of the discovery made by Ross on the after-
noon of August 20, 1885, is as pathetic as any in the
career of Elie Metchnikoff. Unsupported by his profession,
subject to constant interruption, raised to the heavens as
he seemed to be on the brink of success, dashed down to
the depths as he seemed to be on the brink of failure, yet
he persisted grimly in his self-chosen labours. As he notes,
" I was up against a very difficult problem indeed an
equation containing two unknown quantities." There is
romance in the way the essential discovery was at last
made. Mosquito after mosquito had been examined that
day with negative results, and about one o'clock Ross started
the dissection of an anopheles mosquito. Nothing was
found on examination, and only the stomach tissue remained
to be looked through. His eyesight felt already strained,
and it seemed hardly worth while to continue the search.

* Sir R. Ross, Memoirs, pp. 122, 124, 127-9, I3ii ^34-5, 155-6, 187-98,
207, 233-4, 238, 245, 287-8, 305-8, 318, 33I-4-
t Ibid., p. 129.

LIMITATIONS OF SCIENTISTS 379

Methodically, however, he persisted, and, to his delight,
discovered the malaria parasite living and growing in the
mosquito. If admirers of Jenner deemed May 14, 1796,
a red-letter day in the annals of mankind, we, as admirers
of Ross, deem August 20, 1885, another red-letter day.*
Ross records his awe:

This day relenting God

Hath placed within my hand
A wondrous thing; and God

Be praised. At His command

Seeking his secret deeds

With tears and toiling breath,
I find thy cunning seeds,

O million-murdering Death I

I know this little thing

A myriad men will save.
O Death, where is thy sting?

Thy victory, O grave?

During all the time Ross had been pursuing his researches
we find that the authorities of the Indian Medical Service,
the India Office, and the Colonial Office hampered him
negatively and positively, f In all these he found Tre-
guierism absolutely rampant. Negatively, these bodies
offered him no encouragement during an arduous piece of
work of the last possible importance to all three depart-
ments. Positively, they actually and it seems deliberately
placed many obstacles in the path of one who found suffi-
cient natural obstacles in tracking the devious ways of the
anopheles mosquito without requiring any artificial obstacles. {
In disgust in 1899 he resigned his commission in the Indian
Medical Service. In fact, there was more assistance ten-
dered to Jenner at the end of the eighteenth century than
was tendered to Ross at the end of the nineteenth. His
Memoirs describe with justifiable bitterness and scorn the
scandalous attempts made to pirate his work by such Italians
as Bastianelli, Bignami,|| and Grassi,fl and others, and the

* Sir R. Ross, Memoirs, pp. 223-6.

t Ibid., pp. 201-2, 240-3, 315, 317, 355-6, and indeed passim. Cf. also

PP. 367, 391, 412-13.

J Ibid., pp. 93, 2H-I2, etc.

Ibid., pp. 335, 348-52, 392, 398, 400-10, 480-1.

II Ibid. f pp. 121, 127, 194-6, 207, 288, 335-54, 366, 392, 398, 400-10,
480-1, 485.

H Ibid., pp. 122, 194, 263, 287-8, 33S-52, 366, 382, 398-412, 414, 440.

380 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

scientific scepticism he met with in various quarters. In
connection with these grievous injustices he was asked on
one occasion which he preferred, the thieves who stole his
pearls or the swine that trod them in the mire. His retort
was that at least the thieves knew their value, for it required
some audacity to be a pirate, whereas it required none to
be a pseudo-scientific sceptic.*

Lord Kelvin was a genius who might have found the
clearing-house system or the list useful. For it is perfectly
plain, if we take one section of his vast work, that Macquorn
Rankine and Clausius, Joule and Helmholtz not to mention
others were all working pretty simultaneously at aspects
of the problem of the conservation of energy. Instead of
a clearing house or a list, Lord Kelvin continued all his
life to consult Sir Gabriel Stokes, probably the man whose
mind was in closest sympathy with his own. Be that as it
may, the moment a matter seized hold of him, his very first
thought was what Stokes would think of it. " I must
consult Stokes," was a remark often to be heard on his lips.
Examples of genuine scientific co-operation are few. There
is a couple of such well-known cases as Liebig and Wohler,
of Liveing and Sir J. Dewar. Examples of genuine scientific
consultation are many, and among the most conspicuous of
these is that of Kelvin and Stokes. When the latter died,
Kelvin attended the funeral at Cambridge. When he was
leaving the grave, Kelvin remarked to a friend, " Now
that Stokes is gone, I shall never return to Cambridge."

The gigantic genius of Lord Kelvin was generally re-
cognised in his own day. That singularly competent
authority, Sir Joseph Larmor, attended the funeral of this
genius in Westminster Abbey. As he walked away from
the Abbey in company with Sir Archibald Geikie to the
rooms of the Royal Society, Sir Joseph made a remark
which graphically brings before us the greatness of Lord
Kelvin. " Conceive," he held, " a perfectly level line drawn
from the summit of Newton's genius across all the inter-
vening generations ; probably the only man who has reached
it in these two centuries has been Kelvin." f

* Sir R. Ross, Memoirs, pp. 430, 468, 475.

tSir A. Geikie, A Long Life's Work, p. 350. Sir Joseph Larmor
tells me that this remark is apocryphal.

LIMITATIONS OF SCIENTISTS 381

In pure mathematics Lord Kelvin was excelled by others,
but as Helmholtz said of him, the power of translating
real facts into mathematical equations, and vice versa, is
far more rare than that of finding a solution of a given
mathematical problem, and it was in this direction that he
displayed his striking qualities. Another aspect of the same
quality was the extraordinary combination he showed of
the theoretical with the practical. He was not an Ulster-
man for nothing. He once remarked that there could be
no greater mistake than to look superciliously on the prac-
tical applications which were the life and soul of science.
So it was that he did not think it beneath him to turn
from the most abstruse inquiries into the constitution of
matter or the doctrine of energy to the invention of a
common water tap.

The most fruitful period of his life was the first ten
years he was Professor at Glasgow University. His fertility
from 1845 to 1856 remains unparalleled. Then, inter alia,
he conducted his investigations in thermodynamics with its
reconciliation of the ideas of Carnot with the experimental
results of Joule. Then he enunciated the principle that in
the material world there is a universal tendency to the
dissipation of mechanical energy, and that any restoration
of mechanical energy, without more than an equivalent of
dissipation, is impossible in inanimate material processes
and is probably never effected by means of organised matter,
whether animal or vegetable. Of this principle Sir Joseph
Larmor has remarked that the advance brought about by
its mere enunciation is to be measured by its very inevitable-
ness to our present modes of thought, and that it is more
difficult now to recognise the limitations that must have
belonged to the time when its formulation gave rise to such
surprise and wonder. Lord Kelvin proceeded to the deduc-
tion that within a finite period of time past the earth must
have been unfit for the habitation of man as at present
constituted, and within a finite period of time to come must
again become so, unless operations have been or are to be
performed that are impossible under the laws to which the
known operations going on at present in the material world
are subject.

On what subject has there been more nonsense written

382 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

and spoken than on the end of the world? From classical
times, from the days of the millenarians to those of the
World War is it not always appearing under one guise or
another? Geologists intervened in the discussion, and some
talked sense and some nonsense. Even the biologists why
it does not quite transpire entered into it. Huxley taught
men political philosophy and he taught them political
economy. In 1869 he spoke out. " The critical examina-
tion/' he held, " of the grounds upon which the grave
charge of opposition to the principles of Natural Philosophy
has been brought against us rather shows that we have
exercised a wise discrimination in declining to meddle with
our foundations at the bidding of the first passer-by who
fancies our house is not so well built as it might be." *
Is this a scarcely veiled hint that outsiders should not
meddle in a matter that was no concern of theirs? Is it,
in fact, a form of Treguierism? So Lord Kelvin took it,
for a few weeks later at Glasgow he pertinently inquired :
" 1 cannot pass from Professor Huxley's last sentence with-
out asking, ' Who are the occupants of " our house/' and who
is the " passer-by " ? 5 Is not geology a branch of physical
science ? Are investigations, experimental and mathematical,
of underground temperature not to be regarded as an integral
part of geology? Are suggestions from astronomy and
thermodynamics, when adverse to a tendency in geological
speculation recently become extensively popular through the
brilliance and the eloquence of its chief promoters, to be
treated by geologists as an invitation to meddle with their
foundations which a 'wise discrimination' declines? "f

An eminent scientist, Silvanus P. Thompson, wrote an
able biography of Lord Kelvin which is curiously supple-
mented by the biography Lord Rayleigh published last year
of his father. Thompson reveals the limitlessness of Lord
Kelvin's intellect, though occasionally he hints at the limita-
tions, a matter on which Lord Rayleigh has just told us
a great deal. Kelvin neither altogether accepted Clerk-Max-
well's electro-magnetic theory of light nor the notion of
" displacement currents " on which that theory is based. J

* Quarterly Journal of the Geological Survey of London, 1869, XXV,
part I, pp. xxxviii to in.

t S. P. Thompson, Life of Lord Kelvin, I, p. 549.
J Ibid., II, p. 879.

LIMITATIONS OF SCIENTISTS 383

Of course we all know the triumphant investigations that
have been conducted by such pupils and disciples of Clerk-
Maxwell as Lord Rayleigh and Sir J. J. Thomson, Sir
Oliver Lodge and Sir Richard T. Glazebrook, G. F. Fitz-
Gerald and John Hopkinson, J. H. Poynting and Oliver
Heaviside. In 1896 Lord Kelvin wrote to Colonel (as
he then was) Baden-Powell, " I have not the smallest mole-
cule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning, or
of the expectation of good results from any of the trials
we hear of." * Of metaphysics he entertained as hearty a
hatred as Boltzmann himself. f In 1871 he regarded war
here he was in keeping with true Victorian spirit as a
relic of barbarism probably destined to become as obsolete
as duelling.^

Like Cayley, he would never allow the use in physics of
the method of quaternions. Nor was this a matter of old
age. For in 1845, when only in his twenty-first year, he
met Sir William Hamilton and point-blank refused to enter-
tain this ingenious method of symbolic analysis. His colla-
borator, P. G. Tait, was in this respect more open-minded.
Lord Kelvin, despite the arguments of Tait, refused to
employ quaternion notation or quaternion methods. To
his dying day he would have none of these things, and
in process of time grew to hate the name of vector. He
waged a thirty-eight years' warfare with Tait on this matter,
refusing to admit quaternions into the Natural Philosophy
they both wrote. " When confronted with a new factor in
discovery, Thomson's attitude of mind," points out his
biographer, || " varied according to the circumstances of the
case. Thus when Kerr in 1876 announced his discovery
of electro-optic stress, Thomson was instantly and almost
explosively excited; he had predicted this very effect thirty
years before, and had written of it to Faraday, who had
himself looked for it in vain at a still earlier date. When
Rontgen's discovery of the X-rays was announced at the
end of 1895, Thomson was entirely sceptical, and regarded
the announcement as a hoax. On the other hand, when

* S. P. Thompson, Life of Lord Kelvin, II, p. 1122.

t Ibid., II, pp. 1 122, 1124.

t Ibid., II, p. 1128.

Ibid., I, pp. 450, 452; II. pp. H37-8.

II Ibid., II, p. 1125.

384 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

Crookes first showed him the radiometer, one evening in
1874, he sat down watching it in perfect silence for nearly
an hour, gazing at it, shading the light from it at intervals
with his hand, or moving it towards the lamp or from it,
and thinking thinking. Not even in 1906 was he satisfied
that the true theory of the radiometer had ever been given. "

Treguierism afflicted Lord Kelvin to a marked extent, as
Lord Rayleigh reveals in a number of instances. He was
anxious to secure recognition for the grossly neglected work
of Willard Gibbs of Yale. His Phase Rule, with all its
implications, concerned many of the ways in which the
different sciences intersect, e.g. biology and chemistry. The
chemical members of the Council of the Royal Society
deemed it " not chemistry. " * Rayleigh insisted that the
title of Gibbs's great paper, The Equilibrium of Hetero-
geneous Substances, would serve as a first-rate definition of
that subject. On September 13, 1891, Lord Kelvin objected :
" I feel very doubtful as to the merits of Willard Gibbs's
applications of the Second Law of Thermodynamics re-
ferred to by J. J. Thomson. Do you attribute merit to
them? " f On February 9, 1892, he wrote, " I find no light
or leading for either chemistry or thermodynamics in Willard
Gibbs." f To-day Willard Gibbs, his mark, is written over
chemical lectures and even chemical text-books.

In 1895 the labours of van't Hoff and Arrhenius had
brought before the scientific world their theory of electrolytic
dissociation which, in spite of opposition, has now won
general assent. Lord Kelvin had learnt something of it
from friends, and was fierce in his denunciation of it. Lord
Rayleigh lent him a book in which the views of van't Hoff
and Arrhenius were duly set forth. Lord Kelvin proved
as dour as any Scots to convince. Meeting with an incon-
clusive argument, he felt exultant. " I remember meeting
Kelvin," writes the present Lord Rayleigh,$ " in the con-
servatory as he was leaving the book-room, and I was going
to it. He waved the book in triumph as he crucified the
fallacy. ' He is not equal to pdv,' he said triumphantly,
repeating the words several times with emphatic relish.

* Lord Rayleigh, Life of Lord Rayleigh, p. 172.
t Ibid., p. 172.
$ /Mrf., p. 238.

LIMITATIONS OF SCIENTISTS 385

' It is Meyer's old mistake of 1842, and here we have it
again in 1893.'

" However, his indignation abated somewhat as he read
further. ' He will think before long that he discovered it
himself/ Rayleigh [the father] remarked, after his visit

was over."

W. Wien developed his " displacement law " of black-
body radiation in a fashion that has won approval. Lord
Rayleigh was convinced, but Lord Kelvin was not. When
he met with the conception of work done by a piston moving
against radiation pressure, he stigmatised it as " Thermo-
dynamics gone mad ! " * At first he proved every whit as
antagonistic to the new views of gaseous conduction de-
veloped by Sir J. J. Thomson, Sir E. Rutherford, and Sir A.
Schuster. Lord Rayleigh happened to mention something
about the carriers of the electric charge, a term employed
by one of these writers. " Why," Lord Kelvin burst out,
"do you call them carriers?" The new name signified
the new idea and it was abhorrent to him.*

" Kelvin," such is the conclusion of Lord Rayleigh, " was
equally eager in discussion of theoretical views, but in his
mature years at any rate he was by no means laudatory
about the theories of other workers as he was about their
experimental results. Indeed to those who did not realise
the tremendous record of achievement that stood to his
name, his way of discussing new views might well have
seemed not a little perverse. As Rayleigh often said, ' He
is a most interesting personality, not only for his powers,
but also for his limitations/ f Kelvin's scientific dis-
cussions or arguments with my father were often on abstruse
questions, and I cannot now attempt to reproduce any of
them from recollection. But it was as good as a play to
hear them. ' I cannot see the shadow of an argument in
that/ Kelvin would say. ' Well/ Rayleigh would reply, ' I
regard it as rigorously proved: and I think you will be
convinced if you will only read it as I have set it out here
in half a page of print/ But it was not easy to get him
to do this. He would take it up, but the first line or two

* S. P. Thompson, Life of Lord Kelvin, p. 238.
t Lord Rayleigh, Life of Lord Rayleigh, p. 238.

386 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

would send him off on some train of thought of his own,
and his eye would wander from the printed page." *

The idola of Bacon and the Treguierism of Renan are
plainly written on the course of their thought. Renan
realised it, but did Kelvin? Rayleigh realised it in the case
of Kelvin, but apparently Kelvin did not recognise it in
his own case. The limitations of Kelvin are only tolerably
plain in the biography Silvanus P. Thompson wrote. It
was reserved for Lord Rayleigh to dot the i's and stroke
the t's of Silvanus P. Thompson. And we cannot help
shrewdly suspecting that in not a few other cases, did we
but possess another writer to dot the i's and stroke the
t's of the biographer, we should have before us the limita-
tions of the man depicted in the Life and Letters of ,

be the scientist whom he may.

Now the causes of the idola of Bacon and the Treguierism
of Renan actively at work in the mind of Lord Kelvin are
by no means due to his rigid conceptions of the many
meanings how elusive some of them are! given to that
phrase, the reign of law. He well knew no one better
in what a wide sense one must use that other phrase
.how elusive some of its meanings are! natural law. To
listen to some scientists a law of nature is as rigid as the com-
mand of General Martinet of the French Army used to
be. " Go," said the centurion to his soldier servant and
he went. " Come " and he came. Such used to be the
idea of a natural law. Lord Kelvin knew infinitely better
than all this. In the controversy with Huxley on the right
of the physicist to criticise the conclusions of the geologist,
he takes occasion to remark, " I have not presented definite
results. I have amply indicated how * loose ' my data are ;
and I have taken care to make my results looser." f There
is a haze around all seminal thought, and there is a haze
around all scientific law. C. J. Vaughan (1816 1897), the
Master of the Temple, was once asked the question, What
is the main difference between the conceptions of Westcott
and Lightfoot? He pondered, and then gave his answer.
The difference he found to lie in the circumstance that
when Lightfoot got hold of an idea he wanted to make

* Lord Rayleigh, Life of Lord Rayleigh, p. 243.
t S. P. Thompson, Life of Lord Kelvin, p. 549.

LIMITATIONS OF SCIENTISTS 387

it as definite as ever he could, whereas when Westcott got
hold of an idea he wanted to make it as indefinite as ever
he could. Lord Kelvin amply realised the wisdom lying
behind this remark of Vaughan's. Illuminating conceptions
cannot he tied up into neat parcels carefully corded. What
at bottom is a law of science but such a conception generalised
as skilfully as its discoverer can make it? * An American
scientist to-day of the standing of Mr. H. F. Osborn can
seriously ask the question, Are the biological laws of life,
like the ultimate laws of physics, beyond analysis? When
we have traced all vital functions to the primordial living
ovum, and " Nature's self untwisted lies into its first con-
sistencies," the untwisted knot is as hard to be explained as
ever. Is it as Du Bois Reymond held, Ignoramus et Ignora-
bimus? Still, as Poincare remarked, thought is the light-
ning flash between two infinities of blackness. But it is
the lightning which matters.

A scientific theory exists to assert a correspondence between
the laws of our mind and the happenings of the external
world. Man can recognise no other order except the order
to which he himself is obedient; a universe which did not
obey this order would be an irrational universe and for ever
inaccessible to the methods of science. The extraordinary
success of scientific explanations in accounting for observed
phenomena sometimes seems very surprising; that mathe-
matics, in particular, should be applicable to material hap-
penings seems little short of the incredible. For mathe-
matics is the fruit of a free activity of the mind ; the mind
is here conditioned only by its own laws. The empirical
origins of mathematics were mere points of departure;
henceforth the mind proceeds under its own momentum,
with no further reference to experience; the exciting cause
is really as insignificant as were the notes of the yellow-
hammer which gave birth to Beethoven's C minor Symphony.

Thinkers like the great German physicist Boltzmann feel
the difficulty in bringing the apparently dissociated activity
of the department of mathematics into contact with the
happenings of the external world, and in his absorbing piece
of work on Space Time Matter, H. Weyl unquestion-

* Cf . the remarkable paper of Dr. F. R. Tennant on " The Reign of
Law," The Modern Churchman, September 1924, pp. 305-22.

388 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

ably experiences the same trouble. Boltzmann exhibits dis-
trust of many of the workings of the mind. Science, in
his opinion, though very often abstract, possessed a certain
validity, since it issues in the prediction of events which
are accessible to sense perception that is all. A profound
thinker like Weyl forces us to adopt the conclusion that
the only thing that is behind everything is mind. It is a
conclusion as old as Berkeley and as new as Weyl. Does
the mind create space? Does the mind create time? To
both questions Weyl returns an unhesitating affirmative.
Does the mind create matter? Here his conclusion is not
so unhesitating, but he leans to the affirmative view. At
any rate, mind has put space and time within the frame-
work of matter. The old jest against Berkeley ran, What
is matter? Never mind. What is mind? Never matter.
Nowadays the whole emphasis is shifting to the dominant
position increasingly being held by mind. We have moved
so far from the materialistic attitude put forward by John
Tyndall in his Belfast address that this once famous counter-
blast is to-day almost wholly unintelligible.

Clerk-Maxwell in his day was implicitly feeling after views
like those of Weyl and Boltzmann, and what he used to feel
implicitly scientists of the rank of Einstein, Eddington, and
Weyl are feeling explicitly. Professor Eddington suggests
that the fundamental entities towards which the theory of
relativity leads us may be " the very stuff of our conscious-
ness/* Weyl insists towards the close of his magnum opus,
Raum Zeit Materie that accordingly " it must be em-
phatically stated that the present state of physics lends no
support whatever to the belief that there is a casualty of
physical nature which is founded on rigorously exact laws."

The nineteenth century lived on the idea of law, the sense
of continuity, the theory of evolution. And suddenly with
the discovery of radium combined with the novel doctrines
of Clerk-Maxwell and Lorentz, Monsieur and Madame
Curie, Poincare and Minkowski, Niels Bohr and Einstein,
the very principles and foundations of our scientific world
crash about our ears. Are there any principles? Does the
earth move, after all? Is there any ether? What do we
mean exactly by the conservation of energy? Are all
mechanical forces merely phases of electro-magnetism? Do

LIMITATIONS OF SCIENTISTS 389

laws evolve and change like living things? Is it a case
where there is as well as a living chess-player also living
chess-pieces ? Do laws advance disconcertingly by leaps and
bounds and brusque mutations? Is their simplicity a mask
which we set on the complex anarchy of nature? Is science
a mere convention, a set in fact of cunningly devised fables?
Are the laws of science just the rules of the game? Is
there anything of which we can be sure that it will be true
in another thousand years ?

Questions like these can be found in all the fructifying
essays of Henri Poincare, the genius of France but yester-
day, and to-day he is with Newton and Kelvin, with Laplace
and Lagrange. He is not read among us to anything like
the extent his delightful writings entitle him. His was an
intelligence as universal as Leonardo da Vinci's. He began
with mathematics, and only the mathematician can appre-
ciate his discoveries in mathematical analysis and in differen-
tial equations. He is the creator of the fonctions fas-
chiennes which gave a fresh impetus to the non-Euclidean
conceptions of Boylai, Lobatchweski, and Riemann. Poin-
care was an inventor in geometry, he was an inventor in
physics, he was a discoverer in astronomy; and it is not
amazing to us to find that he occupied, one after another,
the chairs of these sciences at the Sorbonne. One day the
Dean exclaimed, " Unfortunately the Faculty possesses no
Chair of Scientific Philosophy, or we could ask Poincare
to fill it!"

What this universal scientific genius discovered, others
popularised, for he had and deserved to have many
pupils. Seldom was a master more worthy of the homage
his students unstintedly rendered to him. In astronomy
he could write : " Les methodes de Lagrange et de Laplace
ne sont plus valables que pour quelques siecles et non,
comme on le croyait, pour des milliers et des milliers d'annees ;
les fondements sur lesquels s'appuient les astronomes pour
faire leurs merveilleuses predictions sont, en realite, ruineux."
Is there a page of his many volumes we could wish that
there were many more volumes of his essays in which
there does not appear how " ruineux " is the conception of
laws eternally true? Is there a page where we do not
hear of the contingency, the transitoriness, the approxi-

390 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

mateness, the imperfection, without exception, of the laws
of science? What, then, is there? Is there any such thing
as absolute truth? Not at all. There are scientific
hypotheses which sensible men employ because they must,
despite the Newtonian idea of Non Fingo Hypotheses, em-
ploy them. Is it very surprising that Boutroux and Bergson
hived his honey in their nests? Is it startling to meet
Boutroux teaching us La Contingence des Lois de la
Nature? Is it surprising to meet Bergson teaching us
how to grasp L' Evolution Creatice?

In 1914 Professor A. Aliotta gave us his book on the
idealistic reaction against science. Throughout his pages
the influence of Poincare, as well as that of Boutroux and
Bergson, is plainly traceable. So far indeed has this re-
action proceeded that instead of the reign of law, we hear
much more of the total absence of law. Activism and
Agnosticism (in the scientific sense, a position enough to
make the body of Huxley turn in its grave), Bergsonianism
and Voluntaryism, Anglo-American Pragmatism and the
Primacy of Practical Reason such were some of the forms
of thought to which the last couple of decades have given
birth. The swing of the pendulum against reason, in all
its forms, has come, and come with a vengeance.

Bubble after bubble like Bergsonianism and all the rest
of them arose in France and other countries, and the subtle
brain of Henri Poincare enjoyed himself in pricking them.
Did Boutroux reproduce his teaching in one form? Did
Bergson reproduce it in another? Did Brunetiere proclaim
the bankruptcy of science? Did Le Roy announce that
it was a means of manipulating matter? Did Le Roy say,
" Le savant cree le fait " ? Then it was for Poincare to
show how far the answers to such questions were or were
not warranted. " The experimenter," he maintained, " does
not create the fact; he only creates the language in which
he describes the fact ; Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry,
for instance, speak different languages but express the same
truth, as you may translate the same fact into French or
German. Our formulas are fragmentary, our hypotheses
approximative and sometimes contradictory. Yet a mind,
of our own sort and quality, but vaster, could merge their
variety into a coherent hypothesis. And, from the point

LIMITATIONS OF SCIENTISTS 391

of view of such a mind, the laws of science would show no
imperfection, only men of science would appear at different
moments more or less well informed."

The volumes of the extremely lucid French which Henri
Poincare has written are the best place to note all that he
can tell us in his matchless style of how contingent are all the
laws of Nature. This matter, however, is so important that
we spend somewhat more of our space in quoting from a
clear book that Mr. Bertrand Russell, who has given so much
thought to scientific method not to speak of other matters
has given us. In his A B C of Atoms, published less than
a couple of years ago, we have his views on the transitori-
ness of the laws of science :

" It is necessary, however, to utter a word of warning,
in case readers should accept as a dogmatic ultimate truth
the atomic structure of the world which we have been
describing, and which at present seems probable. It should
not be forgotten that there is another order of ideas, tem-
porarily out of fashion, which may at any moment come
back into favour if it is found to afford the best explana-
tion of the phenomena. The charge on the electron, the
equal and opposite charge on a hydrogen atom, the mass
of an electron, the mass of a hydrogen nucleus, and Planck's
quantum,* all appear to modern physics as absolute con-
stants, which are just brute facts for which no reason can
be imagined. The aether, which used to play a great part
in physics, has sunk into the background, and has become as
shadowy as Mrs. Harris. It may be found, however, as a
result of further research, that the aether is after all what
is really fundamental, and that electrons and hydrogen nuclei
are merely states of strain in the aether, or something of
that sort. If so, the two Elements' with which modern
physics operates may be reduced to one, and the atomic
character of matter may turn out to be not the ultimate
truth." f

* Is it sufficient to say that this quantum is a certain fundamental
constant h, such that when a body is vibrating ^ times per second the
energy of this body is, because of this periodic motion, h v or some exact
multiple of h v? Is it enough to say that, concretely, a billion billion
times h (taking a billion to mean a million million) is a quantity barely
appreciable by our senses?

t B. A. W. Russell, The A B C of Atoms, p. 152.

392 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

In a striking passage Mr. Russell comes to his own con-
clusions, and it is not difficult to read between the lines of
what he writes : " But even if the size of an electron should
ultimately prove ... to be related to the size of the universe,
that would leave a number of unexplained brute facts, notably
the quantum itself, which has so far defied all attempts
to make it seem anything but accidental. It is possible that
the desire for rational explanation may be carried too far.
This is suggested by some remarks of Eddington. The
theory of relativity has shown that most of the traditional
dynamics, which was supposed to contain scientific laws,
really consisted of conventions as to measurement, and was
strictly analogous to the ' great law ' that there are always
three feet to a yard. In particular, this applies to the
conservation of energy. This makes it plausible to suppose
that every apparent law of nature which strikes us as
reasonable is not really a law of nature, but a concealed
convention, plastered on to nature by our love of what we,
in our arrogance, choose to consider rational. Eddington
hints that a real law of nature is likely to stand out by
the fact that it appears to be irrational, since in that case
it is less likely that we have invented it to satisfy our in-
tellectual taste.* And from this point of view he inclined
to the belief that the quantum principle is the first real
law of nature that has been discovered in physics.

" This raises a somewhat important question : Is the world
'rational/ i.e. such as to conform to our intellectual habits?
Or is it ' irrational/ i.e. not such as we should have made
if we had been in the position of the Creator? I do not
propose to suggest an answer to this question/' f

Mysticism has come back to life. The contemptuous atti-
tude of R. A. Vaughan (1823 1857) * s no longer possible
to anyone who cares to grasp the whole round of the experi-
ences of life, and what is true of life is true of science.
" Mathematics/' writes Mr. Bertrand Russell in his
Mysticism and Logic, " may be defined as the subject in
which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether
what we are saying is true." So Clerk-Maxwell found it,
and so many of his scientific descendants are finding out.

* S. Eddington, Space, Time, and Gravitation, p. 200.
t B. A. W. Russell, The A B C of Atoms, p. 169.

LIMITATIONS OF SCIENTISTS 393

Words like the following sound like an echo of Boltzmann
or Brunetiere, of Eddington or Einstein, yet they were
penned by Clerk-Maxwell long before their day or even
before the day of Henri Poincare :

"If, therefore, those cultivators of physical science from
whom the intelligent public deduce their conception of the
physicist, and whose style is recognised as marking with a
scientific stamp the doctrines they promulgate, are led in
the pursuit of the arcana of science to the study of the
singularities and instabilities, rather than the continuities
and stabilities of things, the promotion of natural knowledge
may tend to remove that prejudice in favour of determinism
which seems to arise from assuming that the physical science
of the future is a mere magnified image of that of the past/'

Unexpectedness has marked the course of science during
the last two decades. Now here the necessarily dogmatic
nature of the text-book has gravely tended to confirm the
limitations of not a few scientific men. The idola of Bacon
and the Treguierism of Renan have laid their marked im-
pression on them. How could it in some respects, as we
reflect on the character of the ordinary text-book, be much
otherwise? For the author who writes a book of science
for use in schools and even in colleges writes with an air
of authority. Any man of thought in any subject, even
far removed from the domain of science, realises the haze
that surrounds thought every whit as well as C. J. Vaughan
(1816 1897) when he set forth the difference between the
fluid form of Westcott's thought compared with the hard-
ness of outline presented by that of Lightfoot. .The text-
book provides one clear-cut explanation that is all. So
far as the boy or the average undergraduate can tell, this is
the only explanation. For sheer dogma, commend us to
the book in the hand of a boy or a young man. How can
either of them realise that there are other explanations,
that the one offered to them is but one of them and
may not even be more than in part correct? In any case,
it is only a short statement of a highly condensed nature.

From the text-book turn to any scientific masterpiece,
say, to Newton's Principia. There we read:

" But they, that like not this, may suppose light any other
corporal emanation, or any impulse or motion of any other

394 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

medium or aethereal spirit diffused through the main body
of aether, or what else they can imagine proper for this
purpose. To avoid dispute, and make this hypothesis
general, let every man here take his fancy; only whatever
light be, I suppose it consists of rays differing from one
another in contingent circumstance, as bigness, form, or
vigour."

In Newton, as in any other genius, there is nothing of
that cocksure air in the scientific manual that, we feel con-
vinced, so injures the spread and the advance of scientific
knowledge. Another object in writing our book will have
been gained if we can persuade more of the rank and file
in science, the average lecturer and the like, to peruse not
merely le dernier cri but also the magnum opus of the
genius of the past. Many matters were found in Newton's
Principia by P. G. Tait and Lord Kelvin even after the
lapse of almost two centuries, and we are certain that there
are many other matters still hidden in it. We urge, then,
the perusal of the magnum opus of the past, and we urge
whole-heartedly the perusal of the biography of the writer
of the magnum opus. Is there any form of reading more
likely to dispel that air of certainty which in our day inflicts
so much injury on science? A reading of memoirs is sure
to lead one to see more in old conceptions than one has
imagined, and in many an instance to be set on the track of
an idea long hidden from the ken of men.

The perusal of biographies is our own favourite amuse-
ment, but of course it is more than this. No one can read
hundreds of biographies without reflecting on the nature
of the scientific man. The illusion that he is a being
actuated by pure reason has long been shed, partly because
he is found by his controversies to own a heart as well as
a head ; partly because by his heart, moving on the lines of
Pascal he has arrived at discoveries; and partly because he
is at bottom an artist. Truth is as many-sided as man's
nature, and it takes the whole of his nature to grasp it.
It is not for nothing that Leonardo da Vinci was so many
professions in turn. So he enlarged his experience of the
tout ensemble of existence, and therefore he made his endless
discoveries in widely-differing branches of knowledge. He
was a great military engineer, he was a great civil engineer,

LIMITATIONS OF SCIENTISTS 395

he was a discoverer in many fields of knowledge, and he
was a great artist. True, he never attained the assured
craftsmanship of Titian or Paul Veronese, the free facility
of Velasquez or the amazing audacity of Rubens. Still,
he painted pictures that the world will not willingly forget.
Leonardo da Vinci has left many a descendant among men
of science in their artistic temperament. The artist pos-
sesses intuition as well as reason, and we are inclined to
think that many of the past controversies arose because of
this very matter. The intuition of one investigator com-
bined with his set of presupposition led him to regard
truth so exclusively from his own angle that he could not
allow for the circumstance that another investigator was
regarding it every whit as exclusively from his own angle.
If we assume that in science there is no such thing as in-
tuition, no such thing as the artistic temperament, and if
we also assume that men are guided entirely by pure
reason, then we utterly fail to understand the scientific
quarrels we have chronicled. On the other hand, if we
assume that in science there is intuition, there is such a
tiling as the artistic temperament, and if we also assume
that men are not entirely guided by pure reason, then we
understand these scientific quarrels. Men of science have
been led, and are being led, along certain lines of research
by a feeling of intuitive probability.* For intuition, like
conscience, stands in need of guidance. Lotze gave in-
tuition a place in thought to which it had been a stranger,
but, like all who did a piece of pioneer work, he claimed
far too much for intuition. Feeling f and intuition have,
all the same, their due place, even though it is a subordinate
one, in the discovery of all truth in general and of scientific
truth in particular.

Science is poetry in the profoundest sense of the term.
It is, of course, not true, save in a case like Tennyson's,
that poetry is science. " The wind bloweth where it listeth,
and thou canst not tell whence it cometh nor whither it
goeth." So spoke Jesus Christ of old, and as we peruse
the history of scientific discovery we realise afresh

* Lord Balfour expounds this admirably in his Gifford Lectures.
t The dedication of J. H. Muirhead's The Service of the State is
to " M. T. M., who taught me to feel what Green taught me to think."

396 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

the truth of this saying. There are such surprises as
a Newton from a Lincolnshire farm or a Tennyson from
a Lincolnshire rectory or a Kelvin from the heart of busy
Belfast. The greatest personalities in science have not
obviously been the product of their environment. Nor is
it a whit more true of literature or war or statesmanship.
Literature has its surprise in a Shakespeare from Stratford-
on-Avon, war its surprise in a Napoleon from Ajaccio, and
statesmanship its surprise in a Lincoln from the backwoods
of America. Environment, no doubt, in skilful hands will
explain much, but will it explain the origin of a Newton
and a Kelvin, of a Shakespeare and a Tennyson, of a
Napoleon and a Lincoln?

A Kelvin, a Weismann, an Einstein, care passionately
for music, a Hooker and a Cayley care passionately for
art, thereby revealing the affinity of the scientist with the
artist. Such men can say with Landor :

Nature I loved, and, after Nature, Art;

I warmed both hands before the fire of life;
It sinks and I am ready to depart.

Nor do we wonder at such love of music when we remember
that Leibniz held that " music is the pleasure the human
soul experiences from counting without being aware that
it is counting." We recall that music and mathe-
matics originated together in the discovery of Pytha-
goras. The connection between the two dates back
to classical times, and in our own day Spengler exerts him-
self to trace the connection over again, holding that the
development of music throughout its various stages in our
European culture has been intimately related with the stages
of the development of mathematics.* Thought for the
ordinary mortal requires complete consciousness. Thought
for the extraordinary mortal does not require it. The
artistic temperament can carry on a process of thought for
a long period with almost complete unconsciousness. Wagner
describes, for instance, how after a sleepless night followed
by a dull walk : " I stretched myself dead tired on a hard
couch awaiting the long-desired hour of sleep. It did not
come; but I fell into a kind of somnolent state in which I

* Dcr Untergang dcs Abendlandes, I, p. 576.

LIMITATIONS OF SCIENTISTS 397

suddenly felt as though I were sinking in swiftly flowing
water. The rushing sound formed itself in my brain into
a musical sound, the chord of E flat major, which continually
re-echoed in broken forms; these broken chords seemed
to be melodic passages of increasing motion, yet the pure
triad of E flat major never changed, but seemed by its
continuance to impart infinite significance to the element
in which I was sinking. I awoke in sudden terror from my
doze, feeling as though the waves were rushing high above
my head. I at once recognised that the orchestral over-
ture to the Rheingoldj which must long have lain latent
within me, though I had been unable to find definite form,
had at last been revealed to me." *

What happened to Wagner in music happened to Poin-
care in mathematics. He had been working for a consider-
able time at a complicated problem about Fuschian functions.
" One night/' he confesses, " I took some black coffee,
contrary to my custom, and was unable to sleep. A host of
ideas kept surging in my head; I could almost feel them
jostling one another, until two of them coalesced, so to
speak, to form a stable combination. When morning came,
I had established the existence of one class of Fuschian
functions, those that are derived from the hyper-geometric
series. . . ." f :

The next step was when he endeavoured to represent these
functions by the quotient of two series. Consciously he
thought this out, and then he had to leave his home at Caen
in order to take part in a geological conference arranged
by the School of Mines. The incidents of the journey drove
his mathematical work out of his brain. " When we arrived
at Coutances, we got into a brake to go for a drive, and,
just as I put my foot on the step, the idea came to me,
though nothing in my former thoughts seemed to have
prepared me for it, that the transformations I had used
to define Fuschian functions were identical with non-
Euclidean geometry/' $ A set-back for some days occurred,
and he set out for the seaside, turning his attention com-
pletely away from his unsatisfactory mathematics. " One

* My Life, II, p. 603.

t H. Poincare, Science and Method, p. 53.

t Ibid., p. S3-

398 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

day, as I was walking on the cliff, the idea came to me,
again with the same characteristics of conciseness, sudden-
ness, and immediate certainty, that arithmetical transforma-
tions of indefinite ternary quadratic forms are identical with
those of non-Euclidean geometry/' *

On his return to Caen, Poincare reflected on his result
which carried him a stage further. The example of quad-
ratic forms demonstrated to him that there are Fuschian
groups other than those which correspond with the hyper-
geometric series. Could he apply to them the theory of
the Theta-Fuschian series? He saw he could. Could he
then deduce that there are Fuschian functions other than
those derived from the hyper-geometric series? He also
saw he could. Then came the crucial step of forming all
these functions?. Systematically he set to work on the
problem, and solved the whole of it save one part. This
he could not bring in, and it defied all his conscious efforts.
Leaving Caen in order to serve as a conscript, he naturally
had his mind preoccupied with drill and the duties of the
barrack-room. " One day, as I was crossing the street,
the solution of the difficulty which had brought me to a
standstill came to me all at once. I did not try to fathom
it immediately, and it was only after my service was
finished that I returned to the question. I had all the
elements, and had only to assemble and arrange them.
Accordingly I composed my definitive treatise at a sitting
and without difficulty." f Someone $ has laid down that
the coming upon the natural scene of the musician's soul
reveals a new range of meaning and beauty which before
were dormant in the physical structure of the natural world;
and reality as a whole assumes through him a new way
of being. Such was essentially the nature of the experience
of Henri Poincare.

That the experience of Poincare is by no means unique,
the lives of Sir William Rowan Hamilton and of Kekule
attest. The former tells us that " quaternions started into life,
or light, full grown, on Monday, October 16, 1843, as I was
walking with Lady Hamilton to Dublin, and came up to the

* H. Poincare, Science and Method, p. 54-
t Ibid., p. 55.

J I cannot trace the source of this. When the Sinn Feiners stole
my books and manuscript, they also stole all my note-books.

LIMITATIONS OF SCIENTISTS 399

Brougham Bridge, which my boys have since called the
Quaternion Bridge. That is to say, I then and there felt
the galvanic circuit of thought close, and the sparks which
fell from it were the fundamental equations between i, j, k;
exactly such as I have used them ever since. I pulled out
on the spot a pocket-book, which still exists, and made an
entry on which, at the very moment, I felt that it might
be worth my while to expend the labour of at least ten
(or it might be fifteen) years to come. But then it is fair
to say that this was because I felt a problem to have been
at that moment solved an intellectual want relieved which
had haunted me for at least fifteen years before. Less than
an hour elapsed before I had asked and obtained leave of
the Council of the Royal Irish Academy of which Society
I was, at that time, the President to read at the next General
Meeting a Paper on Quaternions ; which I accordingly did, on
November 13, 1843."

The German chemist Kekule informs us of how he came
in 1865 to hit upon the ring formula for the benzene mole-
cule. When twenty-eight he was living in London, and used
to discuss chemistry with a friend. He says : " One fine
summer evening I was returning by the last omnibus, out-
side as usual, through the deserted streets of the metropolis,
which are at other times so full of life. I fell into a
reverie, and lo, the atoms were dancing before my eyes.
Whenever, hitherto, these diminutive creatures had appeared
to me, they had always been in motion, but up to that time
I had never been able to discern the nature of their motion.
Now, however, I saw how, frequently, two smaller atoms
united to form a pair; how a larger one embraced the two
smaller ones; how still larger ones kept hold of three or
even four of the smaller; whilst the whole kept whirling
in a giddy dance. I saw how the larger ones formed a
chain, dragging the smaller ones after them but only at
the ends of the chain. I saw what our past master, Kopp,
my highly honoured teacher and friend, has depicted with
such charm in his Molecular-Welt] but I saw it long
before him. The cry of the conductor, ' Clapham Road/
awakened me from my dreaming, but I spent a part of the
night in putting on paper at least sketches of these dream
forms. This was the origin of the structure theory/'

400 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

This provided him with the conception of the chain for-
mula for the ordinary hydrocarbons of the paraffin series,
but benzene still remained a mystery till he had another fit
of inspiration. " I was sitting/' we read, " writing at my
text-book, but the work did not progress. My thoughts
were elsewhere. I turned my chair to the fire and dozed.
This time the atoms were gambolling before my eyes. My
mental eye, rendered more acute by repeated visions of
this kind, could now distinguish larger structures of manifold
conformation, long rows, sometimes closely fitted together,
all twining and twisting in snake-like motion. But look!
What was that? One of the snakes had seized hold of its
own tail and the form whirled mockingly before my eyes.
As if by a flash of lightning I awoke, and this time also
I spent the rest of the night in working out the consequences
of the hypothesis/' Such is the account Kekule gave
in 1890 when men celebrated the anniversary of this
discovery.

If the scientist is not attracted by music, he may be by
architecture, which is the art Goethe called " frozen music/'
The laws of statics and dynamics are at work in the structure
of the building. If the building is worthy of the name of
architecture, the laws of statics and dynamics are translated
into a thing of beauty which is a joy for ever. If neither
music nor architecture exercises magnetic force over him,
painting may. If none of these three can weave its spells,
literature may succeed where it fails?. Here of course
biographies ought to help us, but very often they do not
reveal a single artistic taste of the subject. It does not
follow from this omission that the scientist has had no such
tastes, for it sometimes means that the biographer has a false
impression of the dignity of his labour, deeming such matters
as love of music or of architecture as beneath his notice.
There is no adequate life of Newton, and what Sir David
Brewster has done for us is to depict the mathematician
and to leave the man to the one side. We may be sure that
Newton, different in most matters from ourselves, was com-
posed of the familiar flesh and blood. We want new
biographies of Newton and Clerk-Maxwell, drawing the men
and setting their results against the background of the newer
knowledge gained since their time. We also require an

LIMITATIONS OF SCIENTISTS 401

elaborate biography of Henri Poincare, taking account of
the man as well as of his philosophy. The men who write
these biographies must be of imagination all compact, as
Sir William Osier has put it. For scientific subjects are by
no means aliens in the land of imagination. Our work-a-
day world is bounded by the three dimensions of the space
in which we live and move. The mathematician like Weyl
or Einstein has long transcended these three dimensions,
forming a conception of space of 4 or 5 or n dimensions.
A Sir J. J. Thomson or a Sir Ernest Rutherford, engaged
on the mass of an electron or the mass of a hydrogen
nucleus, piercing the secrets of the smallest entities, brooding
over the dance of vortices imagined by a Kelvin, with his
magic wand summons elemental forces to reveal the nature
of their powers to his scientific gaze. From one aspect we
behold the disciplined brain of the man of science. From
another aspect we behold the imaginative inspiration of the
poet. Newton's transition from a falling apple to a falling
moon was, at the outset, a leap of the imagination.

Instead of the processes of mathematics being the most
inhuman, they are, rightly regarded, the most human. For
if the brain of the scientist is present, the inspiration of the
poet must also be present if any great discovery is to be
revealed to the sight of mankind. " The mathematician's
best work is art," holds Mittag-Leffier, " a high and perfect
art, as daring as the most secret dreams of the imagination,
clear and limpid. Mathematical genius and artistic genius
touch each other. " In a past generation James Joseph
Sylvester (1814 1897) was deemed one of the greatest
mathematicians of his day, taking rank with his friend Cay-
ley. We learn that he was wont to write in language
enriched with poetical imagination, and by illustrations
drawn from themes far afield from pure science. Men re-
proached him for so doing. But he could proudly point to
the fact that he not only made mathematics but he also made
mathematicians who were attracted by his graphic methods.
He had a genuine love of literature and cared intensely
for the structure of English verse, publishing in 1870 The
Laws of Verse, an attempt to illustrate from his own verses
and those of others the principles of what he called phonetic
syzygy. His own verses show ingenuity and invention, and

26

402 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

there is the authentic note of true poetry in his translations
from German. As an undergraduate member of St. John's
College, Cambridge, he cared for music as fervently as
Kelvin or Helmholtz or Einstein. Indeed he had taken
lessons in singing from Gounod. It is intelligible, therefore,
that in his Theory of Reciprocals Sylvester should ask,
" Does it not seem as if Algebra had attained to the dignity
of a fine art, in which the workman has a free hand to
develop his conceptions, as in a musical theme or a subject
for painting? It has reached a point in which every
properly-developed algebraical composition, like a skilful
landscape, is expected to suggest the notion of an infinite
distance lying beyond the limits of the canvas." Nor is
he singular in his opinion. " Mathematics," maintains Mr.
Bertrand Russell in our generation, " possesses not only
truth, but supreme beauty a beauty cold and austere, like
that of sculpture. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation,
the sense of being more than man, which is the touchstone
of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as
surely as in poetry." Sir Christopher Wren may have built
St. Paul's Cathedral out of stone, but we can say of him
that " he was really an artist using the stuff of science as his
material." The same remark applies to every scientist
worthy of his high calling. " There is no such thing as
an unimaginative scientific man," we have heard G. F. Fitz-
Gerald declare. He was in this matter wildly astray.
There are indeed unimaginative scientific men. As an
undergraduate in two universities we heard them lecture,
and since graduation we every now and then meet
them.

Arthur Cayley (1821 1895) ranks with the greatest of
mathematicians. Nor were painting and architecture aloof
from him. The works of such painters as Masaccio, Gio-
vanni Bellini, Perugino, and Luini proved a special source
of delight to him. Architecture attracted him as much as
painting. With all this range of knowledge, he was a mathe-
matician of as catholic tastes as Euler himself. Singularly
learned in the labour of other men, he owned a width in his
range of reading that was enviable. Clerk-Maxwell *
wrote lines based on a profound admiration of Cayley.

* His Life, p. 636.

LIMITATIONS OF SCIENTISTS 403

O wretched race of men, to space confined!

What honour can ye pay to him, whose mind

To that which lies beyond hath penetrated?

The symbols he hath formed shall sound his praise,

And lead him on through unimagined ways

To conquests new, in worlds not yet created.

First, ye Determinants I in ordered row
And massive column ranged, before him go,
To form a phalanx for his safe protection.
Ye powers of the nth roots of minus one!
Around his head in ceaseless cycles run,
As unembodied spirits of direction.

And you, ye undevelopable scrolls!

Above the host wave your emblazoned rolls,

Ruled for the record of his bright inventions.

Ye cubic surfaces! by threes and nines

Draw round his camp your seven-and-twenty lines

The seal of Solomon in three dimensions.

March on, symbolic host! with step sublime,
Up to the flaming bounds of Space and Time!
There pause, until by Dickinson * depicted,
In two dimensions, we the form may trace
Of him whose soul, too large for vulgar space,
In " n " dimensions flourished unrestricted.

Cayley's favourite authors were Sir Walter Scott and
Jane Austen. Guy Mannering and The Heart of Mid-
lothian among Scott's, and Persuasion among Jane Austen's,
were the books he liked best. He was fond of George
Eliot's novels, particularly of Romola. Ian Maclaren's
Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush met with words of warm
praise. On the other hand, he did not like Thackeray, and
would not read Dickens. He had a keen liking for many
of Shakespeare's plays, notably Much Ado about Nothing,
and some of the historical dramas. He liked Milton's
shorter poems as much as he disliked Paradise Lost. Did
this dislike spring from a subconscious feeling of all the
harm Milton inflicted upon both science and religion by his
special creation theory? Scott's poems Cay ley often read,
and he displayed a lively appreciation of Coleridge's Ancient
Mariner. A good linguist, he read French, German, Italian,
and Greek, entertaining profound regard for Plato. Grote's
History of Greece and Macaulay's History of England were
favourites, and he never seemed to tire of Lockhart's Life
of Scott.

* Lowes Dickinson painted his portrait.

404 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

In our day Einstein brings to whatever he deals with a
breadth of outlook, a wide generality of conception, that
remind us of Cayley and Poincare. The piano to Einstein
forms, to use his own words, " a necessity of life." He is
a good violinist, an accomplished musician. His face, we
learn, is illumined when he listens to music. His favourites
are Bach, Haydn, and Mozart. He likes much less
Beethoven and Wagner, while to such romantics of music as
Chopin and Schumann he is as frankly indifferent as he is
to painting. Architecture and literature both attract him.
While not attracted by Ibsen, he is warmly attracted by
Cervantes, Keller, and Strindberg. Goethe he reads, but
Shakespeare he adores. Above all, he admires Dostoevsky,
notably his masterpiece, The Brothers Karamazov. Ein-
stein confesses that " Dostoevsky gives me more than any
scientist, more than Gauss." All literary analysis or aesthetic
subtlety, it seems to Einstein, fails to penetrate to the heart
of a work like The Brothers Karamazov: it can only be
grasped by the feelings. His face lights up when he speaks
of it, and he can find no word for it but " ethical satis-
faction." Men say that the keynote of this thinker's emo-
tional existence is the cry of Sophocles's Antigone : " I am
not here to hate with you, but to love with you."

Insight combined with intuitive probability marks the
labours of Blaise Pascal. Walter Pater thus depicts his
powers : " Hidden under the apparent exactions of his
favourite studies, imagination even in them played a large
part. Physics, mathematics, were with him largely matters
of intuition, anticipation, precocious discovery, short cuts,
superb guessing. It was the inventive element in his work,
and his way of painting things that surprised most of those
most able to judge. He might have discovered the mathe-
matical sciences for himself, it is alleged, had his father,
as he once had a mind to, withheld him from instruction in
them." At the end of his days Rousseau realised that the
great labour of his life, which had been to express intuitive
certainty in words which would carry intellectual conviction,
had been in vain, and his last words were : " It is true as soon
as it is felt."

Helmholtz was as well aware as Tyndall of the large share
taken by intuitive probability in the striking results of Fara-

LIMITATIONS OF SCIENTISTS 405

day. He guessed by hypothesis, but he was always careful
to subject his hypothesis to the test of experiment. He
provided himself with a guess in order to guide him in
the laboratory. The series of experiments suggest that
this guess will not cover the results at which he has arrived.
Very well, then. The next step is to form another hypo-
thesis more adapted to cover all the fresh facts. Theoretic
divination formed the prelude to all his experiments, but
he never for a single second hesitated to throw away any
preconceived notion the moment facts stood in its way.

Last year was the centenary of the birth of Lord Kelvin,
and accordingly the anniversary was honoured by speeches
testifying to the nature of his labours. By a striking co-
incidence in the speeches of Lord Balfour at the centenary
banquet and Sir J. J. Thomson at the Institute of Civil
Engineers, stress was laid on Lord Kelvin's intuitive quali-
ties. " What was characteristic of Kelvin above all others/'
observed Lord Balfour, " with the exception of Archimedes,
was that he almost instinctively applied the knowledge which
the study of natural laws gave him to the needs and happiness
of mankind." Sir J. J. Thomson observed, " To the intui-
tion of the engineer Kelvin allied the genius of the mathe-
matician, and he could so apply mathematics to the solution
of physical problems that he justified Bacon's statement that
' research begins with physics and ends with mathematics.' "
Kelvin's friend Rayleigh informed John Aitken in 1917:
" I recommend you not to be too modest ! a good instinct
and a little mathematics is often better than a lot of calcu-
lations."

In theoretical investigations intuitive probability has suc-
ceeded beyond all expectation, and in practical ones it has
similarly succeeded. This was proved during the World
War, when, for example, Lord Moulton was diverted from
his duties as a judge in order to attend to the production
of nitrogen and other matters indispensable for our success.
Before he had been elevated to the bench, he had had a large
practice in patent-cases. There he used to say that his first
impression of the validity of a disputed patent was in all
probability the right one. Men might argue him out of his
impression, but the verdict generally confirmed what he
had thought at first. He entertained a lively sense of what

406 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

he termed " back-of-the-brain " working. His scientific
knowledge was wide, and it was backed by a real scientific
instinct. Whether a new scientific suggestion was practic-
able or impracticable, he divined. We give an example.
During the war the question of our devoting our energies
to the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen arose. It was per-
fectly possible, and Moulton knew that it was actually being
tried in Germany. Of course were he successful, here was
a source of nitrogen which neither foreign interference nor
U-boats could affect. He divined that with the limited
stores of goods and labour available, the plan would very
likely not prove of any benefit to us before the end of 1918.
He accordingly rejected the project of the fixation of atmo-
spheric nitrogen. As a matter of fact, experiments con-
ducted since the signing of the Peace of Versailles demon-
strate the correctness of his decision.* This peculiar power
of feeling for new truths is a prime requisite for an original
investigator: it is the Forscherblick quality of genius.

The scientist shares many of the artistic gifts in no
scanty degree if he is conducting researches of the highest
class. Such gifts, by their very nature, lead occasionally
to misunderstanding that sometimes develops into bitter con-
troversies. Of Max Planck, the deviser of the quantum
theory, Einstein entertains a warm admiration, saying of
him that " the emotional condition which fits him for his
task is akin to that of a devotee or a lover. " The quarrels
of lovers in the past have not invariably led to the renewing
of love. But what if the scientists recognise that they are
artists swayed by the artistic temperament? Such a recog-
nition may lead them to make more allowances for those
who differ from them. At a celebration given in honour of
Planck in 1918 Einstein gave a glowing picture of the
ideal physicist. " I agree with Schopenhauer/' he said,
" that one of the most powerful motives that attract people
to science and art is the longing to escape from everyday life
with its coarseness and desolating barrenness, and to break
the fetters of their ever-changing desires. It impels
those of keener sensibility out of their personal existence
into the world of objective perception and understanding.
It is a motive force of like kind to that which drives the
* H. F. Moulton, Life of Lord Moulton, pp. 49, 205.

LIMITATIONS OF SCIENTISTS 407

dweller in noisy, confused cities to restful Alpine heights
whence he seems to have an outlook on eternity. Associated
with this negative motive is the positive motive which impels
men to seek a simplified synoptic view of the world conform-
able to their own nature, overcoming the world by replacing
it with this picture. The painter, the poet, the philosopher,
the scientist, all do this, each in his own way/' Each of
them can attain towards this goal if the idola of Bacon and
the Treguierism of Renan do not interpose obstacles.

The man of science lives in relation to a world infinitely
greater than ourselves, offering a spectacle perpetually re-
newed, incomparably vast, and behind the splendid harmony
of natural laws he derives something vaster, brighter still.
Such a vision will enable him to forget the prepossessions
that have blinded him in the past. For our chapters contain
record after record of his errors of omission and of com-
mission. Long ago Hegel pointed out that tragedy is not the
conflict between right and wrong, but the conflict between
right and right. When we regard the scientist as an artist,
this renders the causes of conflict all the more intelligible.
The vision of all we might be and the contrast of how much
we have fallen short of this vision in the annals of the
nineteenth century are enough to make us yearn to get
rid of the idols that block the path. The man of science
has learnt the beauty of exactness, the horror of tampering
with the result, and the difficulty in the interpretation of it.
Knowledge in general and science in particular render us
yet another service. In her fields, in her courts, no one of us
labours alone. To her monuments each of us can bring
but a stone, nor hope to add more than a fragment. The
man of science works for humanity, and we all love that for
which we labour and offer ourselves up in daily sacrifice.
He will respond to the sense of solidarity. As he responds
to this sense, the feeling of awe and wonder steals over him.
Truth is his quest. Truth is the quest of other scientists.
They and he are co-workers in the creative process which
eternally proceeds. They all realise that love of truth, that
care in its pursuit, and that humility of mind which make
the possibility of error always present. Where is there place
for cocksureness of attitude, for infallibility in pronounce-
ment? Where is there room for that dreadful trinity,

4 o8 SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

envy, hatred, and malice, when all ought to have rid them-
selves of the idola of Bacon and the Treguierism of Renan?
As the feeling of awe and wonder steals over the scientist,
and as he rids himself of his prepossessions, the sense of
strife dies away, to be replaced by the sense of the services of
other labourers in the same field.
Tennyson sings :

Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell,
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before
But vaster.

And to this prayer with all my heart and head, I say,
" Amen/ 1

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INDEX

Abbe, Ernst, his work neglected,

337

Abel. Niels llenrik, simultaneous
discovery with Gauss and Schu-
macher, 308-9 ; simultaneous
discovery with Jacobi. 310

Abernethy, John, 2

Acton, Lord, 54 ; obiter dictum,
270

Adams, John Couch, simultaneous
discovery with Lcverricr. i.si, 311

Adams, William, attacks Symc's
views, 261

Addington, Henry, Lord Sid mouth.
proposes a grant to Jenner, iS

Agassiz, Jean Louis Kodolphe, the
catastrophic system, 62 ; ideas
on glacial geology, 64 : his career,
201 ; criticises Darwin, 202-3

Airy, Sir George Hiclddl, 255 ; his
work neglected, 336

Aitken, John, Kaylcigh's advice,

Albertus Magnus, 121
Alrihiades, 314
Alexander the Great, no
Aliatta, Antonio, the idealistic re-

action against science, 390
Allen, Grant, quoted, 101
Alsop, Mr., 14

Amici. Giovanni Tiattista, 77
Ampere, Andre Marie, simultaneous

discr>very with Avogadro, 309 ;

receives" A vogadro's work, 331
Anacreon, 116
Anaxagoras. ion, 113, 135; ban-

ished by the Athenians, 305, 316
Anaximander, 141 ; the nebular

hypothesis, 105 ; plurality of

worlds, iof> ; spontaneous genera-

tion, 140
Anderson, Thomas, introduces

Lister to Pasteur's work, 271 ;

supplies Lister with carbolic acid,

275
Anglada. Joseph, On Contagion, 78 ;

origin of life in inorganic mud,

234

Apjohn, James. 90. 05

Appert, Francois, empirical results,
75-6

Aquinas, St. Thomas, a progressive
revelation. 124 7

Arago. Dominic Francois Jran, en-
courages Frcsnel, 350

Archimedes, 227

Aristidcs, 292

Aristippus, no

Aristophanes, attacks Socrates, .<>/>

Aristotle, 127, 132, 140. 143 4,
14(1, 148, 234, .i<>2 ; n.itural
selection, 107 ; static o inception.
loS ; Generation of Annuals, HHJ \
an intelligent First C.':iuse. no;
the cyclical theory, in ; the
world an organism, 113; Physics,
120; the small springs of great
events, lOi ; the progressive
principle, 1X2

Arkwright, Sir Kichard, 17

Arnold, Dr., 43

Arnold, Matthew, the insight of
Lucretius, 104 ; obiter dictum, -25-2

Arnold, Thomas, 43

Arrhenius. Svantcr August, drvises
the. electrolytic: theory of solu-
tion, 44 ; electrolytic: dissocia-
tion, 384

Ash we'll, Dr., objects to thn use; of
chloroform, 3.5

Augustine, St., lio, 12(1, 127, 129,
135. 151 I an evolutionist, 109,
124-5, 300-8 ; stage's in sorirty,
122 3; DC Gcnc\i iontra Mani-
chaos, 124

Austin, Jane, Pride and I*rciudirc t
57 ; Persuasion. 403

Avogadro. Pietro, simultaneous dis-
covery with Ampere, 30*^ ; his
work ignored, 331

Aylesbury, the Karl of, 17

Bach, Johann Sebastian, 404
Bacon, Francis, his Tempnris Partus
Maximus, 4 ; Novum Organum,
82, 130-2, 235, 362, 405 ; the

427

428

INDEX

place of moral philosophy, no;
evidence for variation, 129 ;
obiter dictum, 240 ; ignores
Harvey's discovery, 330-1 ; New
Atlantis, 361-2 ; his idola, 362,
372, 386, 393, 47> 48

Bacon, Roger, quotes Seneca, 121

Baden-Powell, Sir Robert Stephen-
son Smyth, 383

Baer, Karl Ernst von, inherent
tendency, 95 ; minimises trans-
formation of species, 209 ; his
career of work, 333-5

Bailly, Jean Sylvain, 75

Bain, Alexander, relations with
Robertson Smith, 329

Bakewcll, Robert, his Geology, 43

Balard, Antoine J&rome, 219, 220,
the discoverer of bromide,
works for Pasteur's election,

221
218
241

implores Pasteur to dis-
regard attacks, 249-50

Baldwin, James Mark, 189

Balfour, the Earl of, Kelvin's
intuition, 405

Balfour, John Hutton, opposes
Darwin, 196

Balles, Bishop, supports Jenner, 17

Balzac, Jean Louis Guez de, 215

Banks, Sir Joseph, 2

Banting, Frederick Grant, discovers
insulin, 375

Bantock, George Granville, op-
poses Lister, 304

Barbet, M., kind to Pasteur, 219

Baron, John, summaries, 3, 4 ; the
fate of the inventor, 12-13

Barrande, Joachim, opposes Lyell,

63

Bartholomew's, St., 256, 291
Bastian, Henry Charlton, believes

in spontaneous generation, 241,

243, 284

Bastianelli, Carlo, 379
Bates, Henry Walter, 162 ; Dar-
win's letter, 191
Bateson, William, 363, 366 ; Naudin

anticipates Mendel, 206 ; Laxton

close to Mendelism, 207 ; exponent

of Mendelism, 326
Baumgarten, Paul, objects to the

phagocyte theory, 373
Baumgartner, Andreas, prints Mohr's

paper, 85
Beche, Sir Henry Thomas de la,

55 ; friend of Conybeare, 59

Beck, Marcus, adopts Listerism, 298

Becquerel, Antoine Cdsar, 353

Beethoven, Ludwig van, 69, 404 ;
his C minor Symphony, 387

Beetz, Wilhelm, 70

Bell, Benjamin, Lister's ingenuity,
263

Bell, Sir Charles, 260 ; work in
physiology, 70

Bell, Joseph, testimonial to Lister,
263-4

Bellini, Giovanni, 402

Bennett, John Hughes, 285-6 ;
opposes Lister, 281

Bentley, Richard, obiter dictum,
278

Berger, Oskar, adopts antiseptics,
301

Bergmann, Ernst von, 300, 330 ;
adopts antiseptics, 299 ; aseptic
method, 302 ; temperate lan-
guage, 303 ; anticipates the work
of Berzelius, 330

Bergson, Henri Louis, elan vital,
319; "L'Evolution Creatrice,"
390

Berkeley, the Earl of, 17

Berkeley, George, 388

Bernard, Claude, 70 ; the Idea,
95 ; ultimate element in pheno-
menon, 96 ; tests blood of
patients with cholera, 244 ; " le
m&lecin artiste," 252

Bermith, Frau von, the future of
Helmholtz, 66

Bersot, Ernst, employs a priori
conceptions, 237

Berthelot, Pierre Engine Marcellin,
discovers his synthesis of benzine
compounds, 44 ; revives Herg-
mann's theory, 330

Berthollet, Claude Louis, Count,
247 ; the friend of Gay-Lussac,
75 ; objects to the atomic theory,
104 ; his work ignored, 329-30

Bertrand, M., 226

Berzelius, Jons Jakob, 230 ; the
origin of fermentation, 78 ; Berg-
mann anticipates him, 330

Beyrick, Ernst Heinrich von, hard
to convince, 64

Bichat, Marie Frangois Xavier,
vital force, 95 ; definition of
life, 96 ; simultaneous discovery
with Lamarck and Treviranus,
308

INDEX

429

Bignami, Amico, 379

Bigo, M., asks Pasteur's advice,
230

Billroth, Theodor von, hostile to
antiseptics, 299-300

Biot, Jean Baptiste, 69 ; the tar-
trates and polarised light, 221 ;
Pasteur's discovery, 227 ; indigna-
tion at Pasteur going to Dijon,
228 ; obiter dictum, 341

Birch, John, opposes Jenner, 16

Bismarck, Otto Eduard Leopold
von, Prince, 69, 223

Black, Joseph, 345

Bliicher, Gebhard Leberecht von,
216

Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich,
nisus formativus, 95

Blumenthal, Karl August, 146

Boase, Henry Samuel, investigates
Cornish geology, 62

Bodin, Jean, 128

Boetie, Etienne de la, 216

Bohr, Niels, 388 ; his conception of
the atom, 44

Bolsche, Wilhelm, quoted, 207

Boltzmann, Ludwig, 393 ; hates
metaphysics, 383 ; mathematics
and the external world, 387-8

Bolzano, Bernhard, his work for-
gotten, 327, 344-5

Bonn University, Pasteur's action,
223-4, 246-7

Bonnet, Charles, 135, 141 ; pre-
existing germs, 140

Booker, Rev. Dr., writes on behalf
of vaccination, 17

Booth, William, attacked by
Huxley, 318

Bottini, E., of Pa via, adopts Lis-
terism, 301-2

Boue, Aime, 55

Boutroux. Emile, La Contingence
des Lois de la Nature, 390

Bowman, Sir William, 70

Boylai, Johann, anticipates Gauss,
309 ; self -consistent non-Eucli-
dean geometry, 360, 389

Boyle, Robert, 104 ; On Cold, 82 ;
the nature of ferments, 250-1 ;
the germ theory, 273

Bravais, Auguste, reintroduces
Hessel's work, 356

Brewster, Sir David, his life of
Newton, 400

Bright, John, 6

British Association, meetings at
Norwich, 57-8 ; Cork, 88 ; Ox-
ford, 89-91 ; 186-8

Brodie, Sir Benjamin Collins, 186

Brongniart, Alexandre, 50

Bronn, Heinrich Georg, evolution a
possibility, 207

Brougham, Lord, criticises Young,

325
Brown, John, high opinion of Syme,

258
Brown, Robert, regards Sprengel's

ideas as fantastic, 333
Brticke, Ernst Wilhelm von, 69,

72 ; Professor of Physiology, 70
Brulle, Gaspard Auguste, cannot

comprehend Darwin, 203
Brunetidre, Ferdinand, 393 ; the

bankruptcy of science, 390
Bryce, Lord, 54 ; remains young,

363

Buch, Bartholomaus Christian Leo-
pold von, 55 ; opposes Lyell,

63-4

Buckland, William, his popular
lectures, 43 ; furious with Lyell,
47 ; defends the Diluvialists,
48-9 ; his paper on the Alps,

50

Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc,
Count, 141, 142, 146, 148, 182 ;
idea of selection, 133 ; no im-
mutability of species, 142-3 ;
relations of species, 144 ; Need-
ham a pupil, 235-6

Bunyan, John, Pilgrim's Progress,
i 80, 363

Buonanni, Giacomo, origin of
worms, 235

Burlay, Walter, 121

Burns, Robert, quoted, 20

Burnside, William, Theory of Groups
of Finite Order, 340

Burrows, Sir George, 256

Busk, George, 199

Butler, Joseph, his mental outlook,

365, 3^9
Butler, Samuel, 156 ; calls Darwin

a poco-curante, 166
Byron, Lord, 69, 156

Cagniard-Latour, Charles, 230, 273 ;

investigates fermentations, 77-9
Caius, John, 17
Callender, George William, his

method, 293, 298

430

INDEX

Cambridge University, 23, 259 ;

hostile to Darwin, 197 ; ignores

Newton, 348-9
Camerarius, Joachim, 216
Campanella, Thomas, 128
Canning, George, 128
Canterbury, the Archbishop of

(William Howley), elects Lyell,

56

Carlisle, Anthony, 2
Carlyle, Jane Welsh, obiter dictum,

321
Carlyle, Thomas, 151 ; a quality

of genius, 37
Carneades, expelled by the Romans,

305, 3i6
Carnot, Sadi Nicolas Leonard, 31,

359, 381 ; his cycle, 89, 93 ; his

law, 90 ; his axiom, 94 ; his

conceptions, 310 ; neglect of his

work, 336, 345-6 ; Rankine,

Clausius, and Kelvin realise his

implications, 356-7
Carpenter, William Bowman, 70,

254 ; Baer's work, 334
Cartwright, Edmund, 17
Cato, reply to Scipio, 305 ; follows

nature, 306
Cauchy, Augustin Louis, Baron,

345
Cavendish, Henry, 346, 352 ; spirit

of detachment, 309 ; conceal-
ment of views, 317 ; his work

neglected, 341-3 ; reluctance to

publish, 348

Cavendish, Lord Henry, 341
Cayley, Arthur, 383, 401, 404 ;

appreciates Galois, 339 ; Lie's

lines, 340 ; cares for art, 396 ;

range of interests, 402-3
Cervantes, Miguel de, Don Quixote,

1 80
Chalmers, Thomas, favours the use

of chloroform, 32-3
Chamberland, Charles Edouard,

312
Chambers, Robert, Vestiges of the

Natural History of Creation, 172,

181, 341
Chambers, William, Lord Provost

of Edinburgh, 21
ChampionniSre, Just Lucas, adopts

antiseptics, 301

Chapman, George, his Homer, 9
Chappuis, Charles, the twin soul

of Pasteur, 216; exchange of

ideals, 217 ; at Paris with Pas-
teur, 217 ; belief in Pasteur, 218 ;
letter from J. Pasteur, 219 ;
walks with Pasteur, 220 ; his
lectures on philosophy, 221 ;
Pasteur's confidant, 226-7, 229,
232, 239,311-12
Chaptal, Jean Antoine Claude,

Count, 247
Charlotte, Queen, 17
Chasles, Michel, 356
Chassaignac, E., denounces labora-
tory work, 252-3
Chevalier, Thomas, 2
Chevreul, Michel Eugdne, 223, 224
Chinchon, the Countess d'El, in-
troduces chinchona bark, 377
Chloroform, its discovery. See

Chap. Ill passim
Chopin, Fran9ois Ferdinand, 404
Churchill, Lord Randolph, 320
Churchill, Winston, his brilliant

biography, 320
Cicero, 67, 121
Clapeyron, Benoit Paul Emile, 89 ;

meets Carnot's work, 346
Clark, William, hostile to Dar-
winism, 197
Clarke, Sir James, appreciates the

use of chloroform, 31
Clarke, Mr., watches experiments

with chloroform, 31-2
Clausius, Rudolf Julius Emmanuel,
70, 359,380; the term "work,"
98 ; attacks the conservation of
energy, 99 ; simultaneous dis-
covery with Kelvin, 310; simul-
taneous discovery with Kelvin
and Rankine, 310 ; Tait disputes
with him, 324 ; Waterston antici-
pates him, 346 ; realises Carnot's
implications, 356-8
Cleaver, William, supports Jcnner,

i?

Cleland, Mary, 20
Clement of Alexandria, 123
Clerk-Maxwell, James, 100, 102,
388, 400 ; appreciates Helm-
holtz's paper, 96-7 ; appreciates
Cavendish's genius, 341 ; Water-
ston anticipates him, 346 ; trans-
lates Faraday's conceptions, 351 ;
opposes Weber's theory, 355 ;
describes Rankine's conceptions,
357-8 ; divines Gibbs's worth,
359 ; Kelvin did not accept his

INDEX

theory of light, 382 ; his anticipa-
tions, 392-3 ; lines on Cayley,
402-3

Clift, William, 2

Cline, Henry, 2 ; receives views
from Jenner, 10

Clinical Society of London, 292

Clissold, Mr., i

Cobbold, Thomas Spencer, Paget's
discovery, 220

Cobden, Richard, 6

Coddington, Henry, his work
neglected, 336

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, plans
poem on Jenner 's discovery, 9 ;
Ancient Mariner, 403

Colet, John, protests against
Aquinas's confidence, 127

Colton, C. Q., lectures on laughing-
gas, 28

Columbus, Christopher, 274, 373 ;
the New World, 9

Comte, Auguste, 235 ; praises Gall,
35i

Condorcet, Marie Jean Antoine
Nicolas Caritat, 75, 247 ;
Esquisse, 115

Conservation of energy. See
Chap. IV passim

Constantine, 53

Contemporary Review, 200

Convivio-Medical Society, 3, 4

Conybeare, William Daniel, 62 ;
his paper on the Thames valley,
48-9 ; advises Lyell's election,
56 ; opposes Lyell's book, 59

Cook, James, 2

Cooper, Astley, 2

Cooper, Bransby, objects to the
use of chloroform, 35

Copernicus, Nicholas, 19 ; concep-
tion of motion, 128 ; uncertainty
of science, 130

Copleston, Edward, remark to
Newman, 180

Correns, Karl, simultaneous dis-
covery with de Vries and
Tchermak, 310

Cotes, Roger, his work neglected,
336

Coulomb, Charles Augustine de,
his work unheard of, 352

Cousin, Jacques Antoine Joseph, 75

Cow-pox, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, n, 14, 15, 17

Creighton, Charles, 18 ; criticises
Jenner, 5

Cresswell, Mr., his experiences at
Dowlais, 280

Critic, The British, 59

Croft, John, his method, 298

Crookes, Sir William, 352 ; dis-
covers thallium, 44 ; the fixation
of nitrogen, 228 ; his radio-
meter, 383-4

Crookshank, Edgar Marsh, 18 ;
criticises Jenner, 5

Cunningham, Joseph Thomas,
Hormones and Heredity, 212

Curie, Pierre, 388

Curie (Mme Sklowodska), 388

Curtis, George William, 16

Cuvier, Georges, Baron, 69, 142,
209 ; opposes Lamarck, 152 ;
acquainted with Agassiz, 201 ;
Owen near him in rank, 321 ; the
bitter critic of Oken and Geoffroy
Saint-Hilaire, 322 ; the mathe-
matical spirit in chemistry, 328 ;
his spell broken, 333 ; Comte
censures him, 351

Czerny, Vincenz, 300

Dalton, John, introduces Joule to
chemistry, 86 ; proves the
atomic theory, 104-5 > Davy
opposes the atomic theory, 325 ;
Richter anticipates him, 328 ;
his work ill-received, 330-1

Dante, Alighieri, chair in his
memory, 118 ; high opinion of
Seneca, 121 ; effect of Copernicus
on his work, 128

Darlay, M., Pasteur's science master,

215
Darwin, Charles, died from a wound,

155

Darwin, Charles, Chap. VI passim,
3. 55. 60, 144, 149, 150, 151, 255,
259, 284-5, 307, 311, 316, 333,
344, 378 ; the action of earth-
worms, 5-6 ; ridiculed at Shrews-
bury, 43 ; his destruction of
catastrophism, 54 ; his apprecia-
tion of Lyell's work, 56 ; influ-
ence on Lyell, 57 ; his view of
Lyell's heroism, 58 ; refers to
E. Darwin, 148 ; his disdain of
Lamarck, 151 ; widens all ques-
tions, 233 ; intelligent men
grasped his ideas best, 251, 285 ;
discloses the new earth, 276 ;
Huxley his disciple, 283 ; want

432

INDEX

of open mind, 290 ; hostility,
308 ; simultaneous discovery
with Wallace, 308 ; did not know
Sprengel's book, 333 ; high
opinion of Fabre, 335 ; content
to wait, 341-2

Darwin, Erasmus, 156

Darwin, Erasmus, 177 ; welcomes
Jennet's discovery, 13 ; Temple
of Nature, 144-5 , defends the
idea of individual development,
146 ; inheritance of acquired
modifications, 146-7 ; plant
evolution, 148 ; views similar to
Lamarck's, 151-2 ; definition of
a fool, 154

Darwin, Sir Francis, quoted, 154

Darwin, Sir George Howard, 155

Daubeny, Charles Giles Bridle, 62 ;
his open-mindedness, 59

Daunas, M., Pasteur's philosophy
master, 215

Davaine, Casimir Joseph, the
bacteria of anthrax, 252

Davy, Sir Humphry, 67, 346 ;
receives a prize from France, 18 ;
applies nitrous oxide, 28 ; the
creation of stars, 52 ; matter is
motion, 83 ; production of heat,
86-7 ; objects to the atomic
theory, 104 ; opposes the atomic
theory, 325, 331

De Beaumont, Elie, 55 ; writes
against De Voisin's system, 53 ;
friend of Conybeare, 59 ; opposes
Lyell, 62-3 ; personal hostility, 64

De Breau, Jean Louis Armand de
Quatrefages, 204 ; combats Dar-
win, 203

De Candolle, Auguste Pyramus,
cares for Goethe's divination, 326

Dechat, Dr., uses carbolic solution,
271

De Coulanges, Fustel, obiter dictum,

295

D'Halloy, Omalius, 55

Democritus, 106, 113, 135 ; exist-
ence of atoms, 104 ; hereditary
theories, 109

De Moreau, M., 247

Demosthenes, 315

Denison, Sir William, Murchison's
letter, 61

Denonvilliers, Charles Pierre, obiter
dictum, 266-7

Descartes, Ren6, the constancy of

the quantity of motion, 82 ;
theory of evolution, 108 ; Dis-
course on Method, 235 ; the
principle of relativity, 309

Despeyroux, M., Professor of
Chemistry, 244

De Vigny, Alfred, quoted, 319

Deville, Henri Sainte-Claire, his
question to Pasteur, 244

De Voisins, Fran9ois d'Aubuisson,
the importance of mineralogy, 53

De Vries, Hugo, his mutation
theory, 210 ; simultaneous dis-
covery with Correns aiifi Tcher-
mak, 310

Dewar, Sir James, co-operates with
Liveing, 311, 380

Dickens, Charles, 403 ; Hard Times,
141-2

Diderot, Denis, natural selection,
135-7 nature of his scepticism,
138-40 ; synthesis of particles,
141 ; his poverty, 150 ; the
problem of evolution, 235 ; the
problem of revolution, 295

Didymus, 116

Diogenes Laertius, no, 114

Dirichlet. See Lejeune Dirichlet.

Discoveries, simultaneous, 308-11

Disraeli, Benjamin, Sybil, 57

Donders, Franz Cornelius, 70

Dostoevsky, Feodor Mikhailovich,
The Brothers Karamazov, 404

Dove, Heinrich Wilhelm, opposes
conservation of energy, 98

D'Oyley, Dr., elects Lyell, 56

Dublin University, hostile to Dar-
win, 196

Du Bois Reymond, Emil Heinrich,
69, 72, 81, 97, 333 ; Professor of
Physiology, 70 ; helps Helm-
holtz, 73 ; the laws of nature, 387

Duchartre, M., elected a member of
the Institute, 241

Du Lejour, Dionis, 75

Dumas, Alexandre, 242

Dumas, Jean Baptiste Andr6, 78,
220, 221, 230 ; ascertains the
use of chloroform, 28 ; inspires
Pasteur, 218-19 ; works for
Pasteur's election, 241 ; pre-
sents Pasteur to Napoleon III,
241 ; the plight of the silkworm,
243 ; Liebig a pupil, 245 ; im-
plores Pasteur to disregard
attacks, 249-50

INDEX

433

Duncan, James Matthews, experi-

. ments with narcotics, 29-30
Duns, John, traces Sir J. Simpson's

pedigree, 20 ; traces opposition

to chloroform, 33-4
Dupuytren, Guillaume, Baron, W.

Jones works at his clinical

surgery, 256
Duruy, Jean Victoire, 242

Eddington, Arthur Stanley, 392,
393 ; the fundamental entities,
388

Edgeworth, Mr., 154

Edinburgh Daily Review, 38, 277-8

Edinburgh Review, attacks Darwin,
1 86 ; attacks Young, 325

Edinburgh Town Council, its dis-
crimination, 25

Edinburgh University, 22-3 ;
hostile to Darwin, 196 ; bitter
feeling among the staff, 259-60 ;
Lister on the staff, 281, 283, 302 ;
teaches Newtonian philosophy,

349

Edriclge-Green, Frederick William,
theory of colour vision, 375-6

Edward VII, obiter dictum, 294

Egerton, Sir Philip de Grey, Agassiz's
letter, 202

Egremont, Lord, 17

Ehrenberg, Christian Gottfried, dis-
covery in ganglia, 71

Ehrlich, Paul, conception of im-
munity, 303

Ehrmann of Frankfort, denounces
Jenner, 16

Einstein, Albert, 68, 250, 344, 388,
393, 401 ; conceives the idea of
relativity, 44, 309 ; identifies
Ricmann's binding forces with
gravitation, 360 ; cares for music,
396, 402 ; range of interests,
404 ; his opinion of Planck,
406-7

Eiscnstein, Ferdinand Gotthold
Max, opposes Helmholtz, 98

Eliot, George, revels in Nichols's
Architecture of the Heavens, 57 ;
obiter dictum, 243 ; quoted,
364 ; her novels, 403

Elizabeth, Queen, 56

Ellis, George Viner, Professor of
Anatomy, 255

Emmerich, Rudolf, attacks Metch-
nikoff, 372-3

28

Empedocles, 108, 112, 113, 135,
144 ; teaches abiogenesis, 106-
107 ; blind fortuity, 182

Epicurus, 114 ; origin of animals,
105 ; conception of progress,
1 1 1-12 ; the notion of continuity,
113 ; the agent in progress, 114

Erichsen, Sir John Eric, 257 ;
objections to acupressure, 37 ;
Godlee's failure with him, 290

Esmarch, Johannes Friedrich
Augustus von, adopts anti-
septics, 299

Eugenie, the Empress, 272 ; inter-
views Pasteur, 243

Euler, L6on, 349, 402

Eury, C. Grand, sudden appear-
ance of new forms, 210

Ewald, Julius, disbelieves the
glacial hypothesis, 64

Fabre, Jean Henri Casimir, 333 ;
his career, 204 ; opposes evolu-
tion, 205-6 ; long neglect, 335

Fabroni, Giovanni Valentino, 76,
78, 230, 273, 350

Falconer, Hugh, 193 ; opposes
Darwin, 197-8 ; compliments
Sabine, 199

Faraday, Michael, 72, 243, 310, 351,
355 383 ; realises the effect of
ether, 28 ; force indestructible,
86 ; does not enter into Joule's
views, 91 ; communicates Joule's
results to the Royal Society, 92 ;
his intuition, 99-103 ; recipe for
making discoveries, 227 ; his
supreme genius, 318 ; his work
ignored, 327 ; the nature of his
genius, 351-5 ; opposes Weber's
theory, 355 ; the share of intui-
tive probability, 404-5

Fechner, Gustav Theodor, tests
Ohm's law, 355

Ferguson, Professor, objections to
acupressure, 37

Fergusson, Sir William, 260

Fermat, Pierre de, 349

Fermentation, 74-81, 227-8, 230-4,

273-5

Fewster, Dr., 4

Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 67

Finsterwalder, Sebastian, appre-
ciation of Hamilton, 336

Fischer, Emil, discovers the hy-
drazine reaction, 44

434

INDEX

Fitton, William Henry, the true
succession of strata, 62

FitzGerald, George Francis, 383 ;
imagination in science, 402

FitzRoy, Robert, 176-7 ; com-
mands the Beagle, 160 ; about
to reject Darwin, 161

Fletcher, Andrew, the worth of
ballads, 17

Florus, Epitome of Roman History,
116

Flourens, Marie Jean Pierre, at-
tacks Darwin, 203

Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier de,

65

Forsyth, Andrew Russell, appreci-
ates Lie's genius, 3401
Foster, Sir Michael, a pupil of W.

Jones, 257 ; Huxley's letter, 319
Foucault, Jean Bernard L6on, his

work ignored, 331
Fourcroy, Antoinc Fra^ois de,

247
Fourier, Jean Baptiste Joseph, 345 ;

his work neglected, 350
Fox, William Darwin, Darwin's

letter to him, 165
Francis of Assisi, 315
Franklin, Benjamin, 188
Fraser, Dr., 283
Fraunhofer, Joseph von, his work

neglected, 336-7
Frederick I, 377
Frederick II, 377
Frederick the Noble, 303
Fremy, Edmond, the origin of

ferments, 249 ; lack of experi-
ments, 250

French Academy, 238, 240, 350
French Institut, 62, 204, 350 ;

elects Jenner a member, 18
Fresnel, Augustine Jean, his work

neglected, 350 ; MacCullagh

disagrees with him, 356
Fulton, Robert, his dying words,

270

Galeazzo, Gian, founds chairs in

memory of Seneca and Dante,

118

Galen, Claudius, 15
Galilei, Galileo, 188 ; the motion

of the earth, 56
Gall, Franz Joseph, 351
Galois, Evariste, his work neglected,

337-8

Galton, Sir Francis, 155 ; his stress
on hereditary genius, 42 ; the
continuity of the germ plasm, 211

Galvani, Lodovico, 228

Gamgee, Sampson, against Lister,
298

Gardner, Edward, conversation with
Jenner, 8 ; consulted on Jenner's
paper on inoculation, 10 ; Jen-
ner's confidence in him, 14 ;
Jenner's letter to him, 15

Gassendi, Pierre, 104

Gaudry, Jean Albert, 204

Gauss, Karl Ferdinand, 101, 310,
324, 351, 356, 404 ; simultaneous
discovery with Legendrc, 308 ;
simultaneous discovery with La-
place, Legendre, and Green, 308 ;
simultaneous discovery with
Abel and Schumacher, 308-9 ;
anticipated by Boylai and
Lobatschewski, 309 ; conceal-
ment of views, 317 ; terms
Newton " summus," 324 ; his
work ignored, 327 ; suffers
neglect, 340, 348-9, 352

Gay-Lussac, Joseph Louis, 230,
273 ; experiments on fermenta-
tion, 75-8 ; Dalton opposes his
law of volumes, 325

Geddes, Patrick, evolution a theory
in necrology, 210

Gegenbaur, Karl, rejects the con-
tinuity of the germ-plasm, 211

Geikie, Sir Archibald, 54, 55, 380

Generation, spontaneous, 106, 140,
234-43, 261

Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Etienne,
assumes charge of the verte-
brates, 150 ; his collection of
Egyptian animals, 153 ; muta-
bility of species, 185 ; influence
on Owen, 322 ; bitter contests
with Cuvier, 333

Geology, the disputes of the Hut-
tonians and the Wernerians, 39-
42, 4 8 ~9, 52-3, 55> 5 8 59, 60,
163, 259

George III, 18

Gernez, M., 244

Gibbs, Joseph Willard, neglected
for a generation, 330, 339, 358-9 ;
Kelvin doubtful of his merits, 384

Giraldus Cambrensis, 121

Gladstone, William Ewart, his
foolish articles, 318-20

INDEX

435

Glasgow University, 263-4, 278,

280, 381
Glazebrook, Sir Richard Tetlcy,

383
Gneisenau, August Wilhelm Anton

Neidhardt, 216
Godlee, Sir Rickman John, his

fine biography of Lister, 74, 256 ;

quoted, 259, 265, 266-7, 272-3,

276, 282-3, 288-90, 292-3, 297,

298, 303-4 ; borrows Hunter's

portrait, 260
Godman, John D., realises the

effect of ether, 28
Godwin, Thomas, Political Justice,

173-4

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von,
69, 101, 143, 144, 216, 404 ;
anticipates Lamarck as an evolu-
tionist, 153 ; the Wanderjahre,
162; his "Thatigeskepsis," 203 ;
quoted, 323 ; nature of veget-
able organism, 326 ; architecture
is frozen music, 400

Golgi, Carlo, watches the malarial
parasite, 377

Goodsir, John, 70

Gore, Charles, 319

Gosse, Edmund, Father and Son, 73

Gosshauer, Pastor, lectures Helm-
holtz, 68

Gounod, Charles Franois, 402

Gourlay, Dr., testimonial to Lister,
263

Graham, Ihomas, 256; Professor
of Chemistry, 255

Graham, Thomas, incredulous as to
Joule's results, 92

Grancher, Jacques Joseph, con-
ducts inoculations, 312-14

Grant, Robert Edmond, Professor
of Anatomy, 255

Grassi, Battista, 379

Grassmann, Hermann, simulta-
neous discovery with Hamilton,
310 ; his work forgotten, 345,

350-1

Gray, Asa, Darwin sketches his
theory, 182-3 ; Harvey's letter,
196 ; criticises Darwin, 200-1 ;
his firmly established concep-
tions, 203

Gray, George Robert, 193 ; un-
shaken in his views, 192

Gray, G. J., 349

Green, George, simultaneous dis-

covery with Gauss, Laplace, and
Legendre, 308 ; his work un-
known, 349-50

Greenough, George Bellas, furious
with Lyell, 47 ; assists the
Fluvialists, 48-9 ; adherence to
traditional ideas, 61

Gregory of Nyssa, 124

Gregory of Tours, 125

Greig, Dr., minimises the effects of
pain, 34

Grindlay, Jessie, marries Simpson,

25

Grindlay, Miss, watches experi-
ments with chloroform, 29-31

Grindlay, Mrs., 25-6

Grote, George, his History of Greece,

43

Gu&rin, Alphonse, his method, 301
Guldberg, Cato Maximilian, the

ideas of Berthollet, 330
Gull, Dr., objects to the use of

chloroform, 35

Haeckel, Ernst, 105, 141, 207 ; re-
jects the continuity of the germ-
plasm, 211

Haller, Albrecht von, work in
physiology, 70, 135

Hamilton, James, Professor of
Midwifery, 25

Hamilton, Lady, 398

Hamilton, Sir William Rowan,
324, 346 ; simultaneous dis-
covery with Grassmann, 310 ;
knows nothing of the work of
Airy and Coddington, 336 ;
Kelvin against his symbolic
analysis, 383 ; the origin of
quaternions, 398-9

Hankel, Hermann, 344-5

Harris, Isabella, marries J. J.
Lister, 255

Harte, Francis Bret, Poems, 193

Harvey, William, 18, 37 ; circula-
tion of the blood, 9 ; opposition
to his discovery, 12 ; work in
physiology, 70 ; Aristotle anti-
cipates him, 109 ; believes in
spontaneous generation, 235

Harvey, William Henry, opposes
Darwin, 195-6

Hastings, Major-General, 14

Haughton, Samuel, answer to
Huxley, 137-8 ; criticises Dar-
win, 184

436

INDEX

Haydn, Franz Joseph, 404

Heaviside, Oliver, 383

Heberden, Sir William, small-pox
mortality, 7-8

Hebra, Ferdinand von, 268

Hecker, Justus Friedrich Karl,
lectures Helmholtz, 68

Hegel, Georg Friedrich Wilhelm,
the Idea, 95 ; nature-philosophy,
98 ; obiter dictum, 407

Heine, Heinrich, quoted, 44,
84

Heintz, Wilhelm, 70

Helmholtz, Ferdinand, teacher of
philosophy. 66 ; exercises his
son in composition, 67 ; the
deductive method, 73

Helmholtz, Hermann Ludwig Fer-
dinand von, 1 80, 230, 259, 278,
284-5, 316, 327, 380, 402 ; an-
cestry, 66 ; early education,
67-70 ; De Fabrica Systematis
nervosi Evertebratorum, 71 ; Pro-
fessor of Physiology, 72 ; " Meta-
bolism during Muscular Activity,"
74 ; the problem of fermenta-
tion, 79-82 ; parallel with
Young, 83 ; animal heat, 95 ;
" Ueber die Erhaltung der Kraft,"
96-7 ; meets hostility, 98-9 ;
his intuition, 99-101 ; his early
atmosphere, 141 ; influence of
Miiller, 159 ; opposition to his
ideas, 245 ; encounters the vital
force school, 249 ; want of open
mind, 290 ; objections to experi-
ments, 307-8 ; discovers the
ophthalmoscope, 308 ; simul-
taneous discovery with Joule,

310
324
337

emphasises Young's genius,
his optical work neglected,

meets Carnot's work, 346 ;
ignorant of the researches of
Gauss and Plucker, 351 ; trans-
lates Faraday's conceptions, 351 ;
never hears of Gibbs's papers,
359 > appreciation of Kelvin,
381 ; the share of intuitive
probability, 404-5
Helmont, Jean Baptiste van, recipe
for spontaneous generation, 234
Helvetius, Jean Claude Adrien, 146
Henle, Friedrich Gustav Jakob, 69
Henley, William Ernest, The Chief,

261
Henry IV, 214

Henry, Joseph, his work ignored,

327

Henslow, John Stevens, 176 ; Pro-
fessor of Botany, 158 ; influence
on Darwin, 158-9, 164 ; recom-
mends Darwin, 160 ; cautious
attitude to Lyell, 163 ; Darwin's
letters to him, 164-5 ; encourages
Darwin, 166-7 ' adjourns the
Oxford debate, 187 ; asks for
the examination of evolution,
191

Heraclitus, plurality of worlds, 105-
106 ; heredity, 109

Herbert, George, quoted, 20

Herschel, Sir John Frederick
William, 255, 344 ; the origin of
nebula, 52 ; influence of Darwin,
159-60

Hertwig, Oskar, rejects the con-
tinuity of the germ-plasm, 211

Hertz, Heinrich Rudolf, appreci-
ates Helmholtz's law, 99 ; Henry
anticipates him, 327

Hesiod, 116

Hessel, Johann Friedrich Christian,
his work forgotten, 355-6

Heyward, Dr., 28

Hicks, Henry, consulted on Jenner's
paper on inoculation, 10

Hippocrates, hereditary theories,
109

Hirn, Gustave Adolphe, contro-
versy with Zeuner, 324

Hobbes, Thomas, i ; obiter dictum,

185

Hodgkin, Thomas, 255

Hodgkinsori, Eaton, 90, 95

Holland, Sir Henry, 155

Holmes, Dr., System of Surgery, 265

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, appreci-
ates the use of chloroform, 29

Holt, Mr., 17

Home, Sir Everard, 2 ; looks
through Jenner's paper on in-
oculation, 10

Homer, 69, 72, 116, 156, 157

Hooke, Robert, anticipates Lyell,
62

Hooker, Sir Joseph Dalton, 55, 149,
162, 165 ; his view of Lyell's
heroism, 57-8 ; reads Darwin's
MS., 182 ; advice to Darwin,
183 ; agrees with Darwin with
reservations, 185 ; attitude of
first-class reviews to evolution,

INDEX

437

1 88 ; the descent of man, 189 ;
discusses Darwin's ideas before-
hand, 190 ; Darwin's letter, 192 ;
his arrival at Darwinism, 197 ;
knows Darwin intimately, 197 ;
the breeze at the Royal Society,
199 ; reference to Mivart, 200 ;
comments on A. Gray, 203 ;
finds the Origin of Species tough,
283 ; Huxley's letter, 319 ;
cares for art, 396
Hooker, Richard, Of the Laws of

Ecclesiastical Polity, 56
Hope, Thomas Charles, Professor

of Chemistry, 156
Hopkins, William, 69 ; Kelvin

borrows Green's book, 350
Hopkinson, John, 383
Horace, 156, 297
Howse, Sir H. G., adopts Listerism,

298

Hugh de St. Victor, considers evolu-
tion, 125

Humboldt, Friedrich Heinrich
Alexander von, 64, 66, 159 ;
influence on Darwin, 160, 172 ;
influence on Wallace, 172 ; ac-
quaintance with Agassiz, 201
Humphry, Sir George Murray, his

open method, 293
Hunter, John, 259 ; his qualities,
I ; friendship with Jenner, 2 ;
range of inquiries, 3 ; stimulates
Jenner, 5-6 ; his work in Eng-
land, 69 ; Lister's great hero,
260 ; coagulation of blood, 262
Hutchinson, Sir Jonathan, his

method, 298

Hutton, James, 49, 135, 328 ; his

position in geology, 39-40 ; his

views on origins, 52 ; anticipates

Lyell, 62 ; before his time, 327-8

Huttonians, the, 39-42, 48, 53,

60, 163, 259, 326
Huxley, Eliza, her brother's letter,

320

Huxley, Leonard, his fine bio-
graphy of his father, 318, 322 ;
equally fine biogniphy of Hooker,
322

Huxley, Thomas Henry, 118, 132,
135, 149, 162, 193, 258, 327-8 ;
seeks to confine Kelvin's ener-
gies, 27 ; meeting with H.
Spencer, 58 ; possible retro-
gression of the world, 106 ;

questions Haughton, 137-8 ;
turns from physiology to
palaeontology, 150 ; agrees with
Darwin with reservations, 185 ;
his speech against Wilberforce,
186-7 ; the jibe against bishops,

187 ; his formal Oxford speech,

1 88 ; the overwhelming majority
of scientists against evolution,
188, 209 ; the descent of man,
189 ; discusses Darwin's ideas
beforehand, 190 ; Darwin's letter,
192 ; knows Darwin intimately,
197 ; the Copley medal row,
199 ; criticism of Darwin, 209 ;
Huxley's layer, 220-1 ; feels he
has been given truth, 250 ; his
graceful style, 283 ; censures
Kelvin, 284 ; mistaken idea of
Moses' work, 308 ; care for
controversy, 318-21 ; apprecia-
tion of Owen's work, 321-3 ;
Baer's work, 333-5 ; the pre-
possessions of science, 366-9,
370 ; seeks to limit Kelvin,
382, 386 ; scientific agnosticism,

390
Hydrophobia, 312-15

Ibsen, Henrik, 404
Immunology, 19, 303, 374
Inflammation, spontaneous, 261-

263, 271-2
Ingenhousz, Johann, objects to

Jenner 's views, 14
Innes, J. Brodie, estimate of

Darwin, 195

Inoculation, 4, 8, 9, 10, n, 13, 16
Internationalism, the decline of, 18

Jackson, Charles T., 28 ; advises
Morton to try ether, 29

Jacobi, Karl Gustav Jakob, sees
the worth of Helmholtz's paper,
97 ; simultaneous discovery with
Abel, 310

Jameson, Robert, a typical Scots
Wernerian, 42, 163 ; sneers at
the Huttonians, 157

Janssen, Pierre Jules Cesar, simul-
taneous discovery with Lockyer,
309-10

Jarvey, John, 20

Jenkin, Henry Charles Fleeming,
criticises Darwin, 189

Jenner, Edward, his inoculation, 8

INDEX

Jenner, Edward, Chap. I passim,
37, 180, 257, 259, 268, 284-5 ;

37 3 J 6, 365, 374 379 ; notes
phenomenon, 23 ; opposition to
his ideas, 33, 245 ; feels the
odium scientificum, 53-4 ; the
microbe of convervatism, 251 ;
Hunter his great hero, 260 ;
empirical discovery of vaccination,
312

Jenner, Stephen, i

Jenner, Sir William, 257 ; high
opinion of W. Jones, 256

Jerome, 305 ; gives Seneca high
rank, 121

John Friar of Wales, 121

John of Salisbury, 121

Johnson, Samuel, 290-1, 347 ; his
mental outlook, 365

Joly, Nicholas, Professor of Phy-
siology, 241 ; believes in spon-
taneous generation, 243, 249

Jones, Wharton, Professor of Sur-
gery, 255 ; praised by Huxley,
256 ; a great teacher, 257

Joseph II, 237

Josephine, the Empress, asks Napo-
leon to release prisoners, 18

Joule, James Prescott, 95, 259,
307. 3i6, 344, 354, 359, 380, 381 ;
the kinetic nature of heat, 84 ;
the electric origin of the heat of
combustion, 86 ; the evolution
of heat by electricity, 87-8 ;
many-sidedness of his work, 89 ;
mechanical equivalent of heat,
90-1 ; the Royal Society accepts
his paper, 92 ; Kelvin's criticisms,
93-4 ; meets hostility, 97 ; gives
many experimental facts, 98 ;
no discussion of his views, 184 ;
opposition to his ideas, 245 ;
want of open mind, 290 ; simul-
taneous discovery with Helm-
holtz, 310 ; Waterston anticipates
him, 346

Jourdain,Camille,deals with Galois's
ideas, 338-9

Jowett, Benjamin, his contempt of
logic, 40, 369-70

Judd, John Wesley, the guess of
Lucretius, 104

Jurin, James, small-pox mortality,
7

Kant, Immanuel, 67, 69, 118, 141,

147, 149, 328 ; Collected Works,
65 ; purpose and finality, 95 ;
conception of evolution, 129,
134-5 ; nebular hypothesis,
133 ; his work premature, 327,

338

Karsten, Gustav, 70

Keats, John, his sonnet, 9

Keferstein, Christian, attacks
Darwin, 202-3

Keith, George, experiments with
narcotics, 29-31

Keith, Thomas, 283 ; pioneer work
with ovariotomy, 2867

Kekule", Friedrich August, finds his
theory of types, 44 ; the benzine
molecule, 399-400

Kelvin, Lord, 68, 95, 35O, 352,
359, 389, 396, 401, 402 ; feels
his youth, 25 ; accepts neither
Lyellism nor Darwinism fully,
64-5 ; raises discussion on
Joule's paper, 90-1 ; investigates
the mechanical equivalent of
heat, 92-4 ; his limitations, 92-
93 ; denies the conversion of heat
into mechanical effects, 94 ; the
term energy, 98 ; difficulties in
Darwinism, 187-8 ; his mathe-
matical analysis and wireless,
228 ; censured by Huxley, 284 ;
simultaneous discovery with
Clausius and Rankine, 310 ;
Tait cannot convince him, 324 ;
his work ignored, 327 ; ether
outside the law of gravitation,
344 ; meets Carnot's work, 346 ;
Pliicker ignorant of Kelvin's
work, 349 ; Kelvin secures
Green's book, 349-50 ; realises
Carnot's implications, 356-7 ; a
general doctrine of energy, 358 ;
his limitations, 380-7 ; new
matter in Newton, 394 ; cares
for music, 396 ; Lord Balfour
and Sir J. J. Thomson on his
intuition, 405

Kennedy, Evory, rival of Simpson,

25

Kepler, Johann, quoted, 99, 180

Kerr, John, discovers electro-optic

stress, 383

Khadijah, faith in Mohammed, 5
King's College, London, 56, 292, 302
Kingscote, Catherine, marries

Jenner, 6

INDEX

439

Kingsley, Charles, appreciates
Darwin, 194-5

Kirchhoff, Gustav Robert, 70 ;
reckons Helmholtz's law as most
important, 99 ; takes up Fou-
cault's work, 331-2

Klein, Felix, 338 ; the worth of
Lie's ideas, 339-40

Knoblauch, Karl Hermann, 70

Koch, Robert, 19, 374 ; unfavour-
able to the phagocyte theory,

37 2

Kolbe, Hermann, stands out viru-
lently against modern chemists,

325

Kolletschka, 268

Kolliker, Rudolph Albert von, his
researches, 208 ; his criticism
of evolution, 208-9 ; rejects the
continuity of the germ-plasm,
211 ; the contractile curtain,

258

Konig, Franz, adopts antiseptics,

299
Krause, Ernst, quoted, 145

Lachadende, M. ele, 244

Lacroix, Sylvestre Fran9ois, re-
ports Galois unintelligible, 338

Lagrange, Joseph Louis, 228, 349,
389 ; obiter dictum, 247 ; in
rank close to Laplace, 338

Lamarck, Jean Baptiste Pierre
Antoine de Monet, 141, 144, 161,
169, 170, 176, 182, 191, 212 ; the
development of species, 45 ;
doctrine of development, 148-9 ;
flaws in his illustrations, 150 ;
his two principles, 151 ; the
variability of species, 152, 185 ;
anticipates later views, 201 ;
Geddcs a disciple, 211

Lambert of Hersfeld, 125

Lancet, The t censures Simpson, 27 ;
the antiseptic controversy, 37-
38; Lister's articles, 276-8, 280,
288 ; denounces Tyndall, 284 ;
criticises Lister, 292-3

Landor, Walter Savage, quoted,
396

Langcnbeck, Bernard Rudolf
Konrad von, neutral towards
antiseptics, 299

Lankester, Sir Kclwin Ray, the
continuity of the germ-plasm, 211

Lansdowne, the Marquess of, 14

Laplace, Pierre Simon, Marquis,
33* 345 35 3 8 9 ; generation
of animal heat, 96 ; simultaneous
discovery with Gauss, Green, and
Legendre, 308 ; simultaneous
discovery with Young, 309 ;
dominates Berthollet, 330 ; his
work neglected, 337-8, 355

La Rive, Charles Gaspard de, 353

Larmor, Sir Joseph, appreciates
Cavendish, 342-4 ; traces the
vortex theory, 356 ; appreciates
Kelvin, 380-1

Latham, Peter Mere, 256

Laurent, Auguste, poet and
scientist, 221 ; receives Avo-
gadro's work, 331

Laurent, M., Rector of the Academy
of Strasburg, 229

Laurent, Marie, marries Pasteur,
.229

Laveran, Charles Louis Alphonsc,
discovers the malarial parasite,

377-3

Lavoisier, Antoine Laurent, 67,
76, 78, 89, 230, 247, 273 ; fer-
mentation a chemical process,
75 ; the conservation of matter,
82 ; generation of animal heat,

96 ; the persistence of matter,

97 ; his presuppositions, 330
Lawrence, Sir William, 256
Laxton, Mr., almost anticipates

Mendel, 207

Laycock, Thomas, 283

Le Bel, Joseph Achille, works at
crystals, 44 ; the basis of stereo-
chemistry, 226

Le Beuf, M., coal-tar, 270

Lecky, William Edward Hartpole,
60

Leeuwenhoek, Anthony van, 128-9

Legendre, Adrien Marie, 310 ;
simultaneous discovery with
Gauss, 308 ; simultaneous dis-
covery with Gauss, Green, and
Laplace, 308

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 135,
136, 141, 146 ; vis viva, 95, 9$ ;
theory of evolution, 108, 129 ;
law of continuity, 132-3, 140 ;
the pleasure of music, 396

Lejeune-Dirichlet, Karl Gustav,
350 ; opposes Helmholtz, 98

Lemaire, Jules, supposed anticipa-
tion of Lister, 38, 277-8 ; phar-

440

INDEX

maceutical chemist, 270 ; experi-
ments with carbolic acid, 271

Leonardo da Vinci, wide interests,
325, 389, 394-5

Le Roy, Edouard, a means of
manipulating matter, 390

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 116

Leverrier, Urbain Jean Joseph,
simultaneous discovery with
Adams, 151, 311

Lie, Marie Sophus, 338 ; his work
ignored, 339-4 1 * 34 8 > 35$

Liebig, Justus von, Baron, 230,
273 ; discovers chloroform, 28 ;
mechanical energy, 74 ; the
causes of fermentation, 79-81 ;
the correlation of forces, 84 ;
extension of the idea of " Stoff-
wechsel," 96 ; Pasteur demolishes
his teaching, 230 ; fermentation
physico-chemical, 231 ; opposes
Pasteur, 245-6; disputes Pasteur's
facts, 249 ; fermentation a
phenomenon of death, 250 ; dis-
believes in micro-organisms,
300 ; co-operates with Wohler,

3". 3 8
Lightfoot, Joseph Barber, 386-7,

393

Linacre, Thomas, 18
Lincoln, Abraham, 396
Lindley, John, 256 ; Professor of

Botany, 255
Linnaeus, Karl von, 41, 135, 141,

143, 146, 153 ; no absolute

fixity of species, 142 ; origin of

species, 148 ; progeny of the

plant, 185
Liouville, Joseph, publishes Galois's

writings, 338
Lisfranc, Jacques, W. Jones works

at operatic surgery, 257
Lister, John, a freeman of the

Baker's Company, 255
Lister, Joseph Jackson, gains the

fellowship of the Royal Society,

255 ; letters from his son, 260,

275-6, 279-80
Lister, Lord, Chap. VII, passim,

19, 77. 3<>7> 3*6, 373, 374 : aim of

antiseptics, 37-8 ; meditates on

Pasteur's theory of germs, 246 ;

the microbe of conservatism,

251 ; writes to Pasteur, 253-4 ;

his graduation address in 1876,

368-9

Liston, Robert, 260

Liveing, George Downing, co-
operates with Dewar, 311, 380

Llandaff, the Bishop of (Edward
Copleston), elects Lyell, 56

Lobatschewski, Vasiliev, anticipates
Gauss, 309 ; self-consistent non-
Euclidean geometry, 360, 389

Locke, John, 82

Lockhart, John Gibson, Life of
Scott, 403

Lockyer, Sir Norman, simultaneous
discovery with Janssen, 309-10

Loder, Justus Christian, 153

Lodge, Sir Oliver Joseph, 383

Lokman, called Al Hakim, 67

London, the Bishop of (Charles
James Blomfield), elects Lyell, 56

London University, 50, 259-60

Long, Crawford, uses ether, 28-9

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth,
Darwin's letter, 202

Lonsdalc, William, elects Lyell,
56 ; the independence of the
Devonian system, 62

Lorentz, Hendrick Antoon, 388

Lotze, Rudolf Hermann, the place
of intuition, 395

Louis XIII, 223

Louis Philippe, 243

Louisa, Princess, of Prussia, 17

Loven, Svenon Louis, Member of
the Institute, 204

Lucilius, 118

Lucretius, 33, 140, 144, 234 ; origin
of animals, 105 ; beginning of
centaurs, 107 ; admires Epicurus,
112 ; De Natura Rerum, 112-15 ;
direction of evolution, 120

Ludlow, Daniel, teaches Jenner,

i. 7

Luini, Bernardino, 402

Luther, Martin, the Diet of Worms,
250

Lyell, Carolina, her brother's
letter, 48

Lyell, Sir Charles, Chap. Ill
passim, 140, 147, 163, 165, 176,
180, 193, 259, 284-5, 307, 316,
344 ; Darwin's letter to him,
148-9 ; the importance of travel,
149 ; Lamarck anticipates him,
151 ; Henslow recommends his
magnum opus to Darwin, 158-9 ;
influence on Darwin, 164-5, 167,
172 ; influence on Wallace, 172 ;

INDEX

441

denies the originality of Darwin
and Wallace, 174-5 ; advises
Darwin to write out his views,

182 ; the Wallace bombshell,

183 ; agrees with Darwin with
reservations, 185-6; the
Quarterly Review favourable, 189 ;
discusses Darwin's ideas before-
hand, 190 ; Darwin's letter, 191 ;
the only geologist shaken in his
views, 192 ; knows Darwin in-
timately, 197 ; opposition to his
ideas, 245 ; want of open mind,
290 ; Owen's article, 320

Lyell, Marianne, her brother's

letters, 47, 59
Lyra, Nicholas de, 305

MacArthur, Mr., Simpson's master,
21 ; his remark to A. Simpson,
22

Macartney, James, 2

Macaulay, Lord, 290-1 ; his His-
tory of England, 52, 403

MacCormac, Sir William, his method,
298

McCullagh, James, his work neg-
lected, 350, 356

Machiavelli, Nicholas, 128 ; his
passionless interest, 341

Maclagan, Sir Douglas, quoted,
368

Maclaren, Ian, his novels, 403

MacMahon, Marie Edmond Patrice
Maurice, 364

Magnus, Gustav, 324 ; Professor of
Physics, 70 ; warns Helmholtz
against partiality for mathe-
matics, 97

Maillet, Benoitcle, 140, 141 ; theory
of transmission, 145

Majendie, M., minimises the effects
of pain, 34

Mallock, Archibald E., appreciates
Lister, 262

Malpighi, Marcello, 128-9

Malthus, Thomas Robert, theory
of population, 6, 158, 173-5, 185 ;
influence on Darwin, 168, 171-2,
174, 176, 179, 182 ; influence on
Wallace, 171-2, 174

Mannigcr, Vilmos, the French failure,

301
Manson, Sir Patrick, the work of

the mosquito, 377-8
Mantell, Gideon Algernon, 320 ;

the confidant of Lyell, 48 ;
Lyell's letters to him, 48-9, 56
Marshall, Arthur Milnes, his obiter

dictum, 334

Marshall, John, his capacity, 280
Marshall, Mr., 12

Martineau, Harriet, the craze for
geology, 57

Martinet, General, 386

Masaccio (Guidi Tommaso), 402

Mathilde, the Princess, 242

Matthew, Patrick, anticipates
Darwin, 184

Maupertuis, Pierre Louis Moreau
dc, properties of higher organisms,
J 35 ' organic and inorganic,
140 ; synthesis of particles, 141

Mayer, Julius Robert, 89, 95, 354 ;
the convertibility of heat, 85-6 ;
meets hostility, 97 ; few experi-
mental facts, 98 ; neglect of his
work, 336

Medical Association, British, Bristol
(1890), 32 ; Dublin (1867), 277 ;
Leeds (1869), 281-2 ; Plymouth
(1871), 288; Edinburgh (1875),
288 ; London (1873), 292 ; Cork
(1879), 295-6

Medical Congress, International,
London (1881), 13-14, 298

Medical Society, Liverpool, 35

Medico-Chirurgical Society, 263

Medico-Con vival Society, 3, 6

Meister, Joseph, 312-13

Melanchthon, Philip, 216

Melbourne, Lord, his question, 3

Meldola, Raphael, 248

Mendel, Johann Gregor, 210, 366 ;
his forgotten experiments, 207,
237, 310 ; long neglect, 326-7

Mendeleef, Dmitri Ivanovich, his
Periodic law, 44 ; simultaneous
discovery with Meyer, 310

Mendelssohn, Moses, 154

Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Ernst von,

154
Mendelssohn - Bartholdy, Jakob

Ludwig von, 154
Meredith, George, the rapture of

the forward view, 118
Merrett, Joseph, 8
Metchnikoff, Elie, 378 ; discovery

of phagocytosis, 287-8 ; his work

meets with hostility, 371-6
Metchnikoff, Olga, her revealing

study of her husband, 371-5

442

INDEX

Meyer, Julius Lothar, 385 ; simul-
taneous discovery with Mendeleef ,
310
Michelet, Jules, hours of intimacy

with Poinsat, 216
Mikulicz-Radecki, Johann von,

300

Millar, Mr., 263

Miller, Dr., describes experiments
with chloroform, 29-30 ; inter-
course with Chalmers, 33 ; objec-
tions to acupressure, 37
Miller, William Allen, incredulous

as to Joule's results, 91
Milman, Henry Hart, his History

of the Jews, 51, 59
Milne-Edwards, Henri, criticises

Darwin, 205

Milton, John, 105 ; quoted, 107 ;
the special creation theory, 157,
308 ; the lonely way, 311 ; his
poems, 403

Minkowski, Hermann, 388
Mitscherlich, Eilhardt, hard to
convince, 64 ; lectures Helmholtz,
68 ; the tartrates and polarised
light, 221, 225

Mittag-Leffler, Gosta, the mathe-
matician an artist, 401
Mivart, St. George Jackson, criti-
cises Darwin, 200

Mobius, August Ferdinand, simul-
taneous discovery with Pliicker,
310 ; his work unknown, 349
Mohammed, his wives, 5 ; his

message, 180

Mohr, Karl Friedrich, the nature
of heat, 84-5 ; suffers neglect,
89 ; many-sidedness of his work,
89 ; meets hostility, 97 ; few
experimental facts, 98
Mommsen, Theodor, 72
Monge, Gaspard, Count, 247
Montaigne, Michel de, 128, 216
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley,

introduces inoculation, 16
Moore, Sir John, 46
Morgan, Conwy Lloyd, 189
Morley, Lord, his penetrating study,

295
Moro, Antonio Lazzaro, anticipates

Lyell, 62
Morton, James, 285-6 ; never in

Lister's wards, 281
Morton, William T. G., 28 ; uses

nitrous oxide, 29

Moseley, Benjamin, criticises
Jenner, 15-16; Jenner's reference
to him, 19

Moseley, Henry, his work on X-
rays, 44

Moulton, Lord, his powers of
divination, 405-6

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 69, 404

Mtiller, Fritz, 208

Muller, Hermann, 208

Muller, Johannes, 72 ; the great
physiologist, 69 ; influence on
students, 70 ; connection be-
tween nerve cells and nerve
fibres, 71 ; quasi-metaphysical
position, 73-4 ; the correlation
of forces, 84 ; influence on Helm-
holtz, 159 ; the fire of imagina-
tion, 181

Murchison, Lady, 46

Murchison, Sir Roderick Impey, 50,
54 55 344 I his character and
outlook, 46-7 ; his paper read,
48-9 ; pleased with Milman's
History of the Jews, 51 ; Silurian
views, 60-3 ; attacks evolution,
191 ; ceased to grow, 364

Murray, Andrew, sneers at Darwin,
191

Mursinna, Christian Ludwig, 66 ;
helps Helmholtz, 68

Musset, Charles, believes in spon-
taneous generation, 241, 243,
249

Mutianus, Konrad (Konrad Muth),
216

Nageli, Karl Wilhelm von, the
continuity of the germ-plasm,
211 ; ignored Mendel, 326

Napier, John, his invention ignored,

Napoleon, 41 ; releases prisoners
for Jenner's sake, 18 ; Pasteur
regards him as a demi-god, 213 ;
understands the work of Jenner,
223 ; Fulton asks him to give his
invention a chance, 270 ; his
question to Laplace, 337 ; the
surprise of his birthplace, 396

Napoleon III, 272 ; actively
interested in Pasteur, 241 ; inter-
views Pasteur, 243

Naudin, Charles, treatment of
hybridism, 206

INDEX

443

Naumann, Maurice, writes to Pas-

teur, 246
Needham, John Turberville, works

at spontaneous generation, 235-7
Nelmes, Sarah, 9,11
Nelson, Lord, 17, 314
Neudorfer, Ignaz Josef, 300
Ncudover, Professor, objections to

acupressure, 37
Newman, John Henry, 194 ; quoted,

58, 285 ; Copleston's remark, 180
Newton, Alfred, hard to convince,

Newton, Sir Isaac, 126, 133, 330,
389, 396, 400 ; his doctrine of
light, 4 ; law of gravitation, 9 ;
Simpson admires him, 23 ; the
transformation of energy, 82 ;
the nature of heat, 84 ; the mean-
ing of force, 98 ; parallel with
Darwin, 178 ; his statue in
Trinity College, Cambridge, 180 ;
discloses the new heavens, 276 ;
Einstein alters his ideas, 288 ;
discoveries often forestalled, 308 ;
the lonely way, 311, 348 ; shrank
from publication, 317 ; Gauss
calls him " summus/' 324; his
work neglected, 337 ; light and
material corpuscles, 344 ; Vol-
taire popularises him, 351 ;
Newton and Kelvin, 380 ; his
Principia, 393-4

Nichols, Simon, 8

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, his
apophthegm, 273

Nineteenth Century, 319

Nother, Max, 339

Nunn, Dr., objects to the use of
chloroform, 35

Nunneley, Thomas, attacks Lister,
281-2

Nussbaum, Johann Nepomuk von,
adopts antiseptics, 299

Oberhauser, Georges, 77

Oersted, Hans Christian, deflects a

magnetised needle, 228
Ohm, Georg Simon, 350 ; his work

ignored, 355
Oken, Lorenzo, sea-slime theory

140-1 ; his physio-philosophy,

202 ; influence on Owen, 322
Opie, John, how he mixed his

colours, 23

Osborn, Henry Fairfield, 189 ;
quoted, 129 ; Huxley confides
in him, 318-19; the laws of
nature, 387

Osier, Sir William, 304 ; too old at
forty, 363 ; obiter dictum, 401

Ostwald, Wilhelm, gathers Ber-
thollet's results, 329-30 ; gathers
Gibbs's results, 359

Ottley, Drewry, Life of John
Hunter, 5

Otto of Freisingen,i2i, 125

Ovid, 234

Owen, Sir Richard, 188, 193, 255 ;
attacks Darwin's special doc-
trine of natural selection, 186 ;
controls the Quarterly Review,
189 ; ignorance of the mode of
production, 190 ; pleased with
Lister's discovery, 258 ; Huxley's
appreciation, 320-3 ; ceased to
grow, 364

Oxford University, 23, 259 ; hostile
to Lyell, 59 ; hostile to Darwin,
196

Paget, Sir James, 258, 259, 295 ;
proposes a vote of thanks to
Pasteur, 13-14; the practical
aspect, 72 ; discovers the
Trichina spiralis, 220 ; his en-
thusiastic regard for his lecturers,
256 ; rivalry among the lecturers,
256 ; criticises Lister, 291-3

Paget, Stephen, Memoirs and
Letters of Sir James Paget, 256,
290-1

Paley, William, his power of being
alone, 45 ; his writings, 157-9

Paracelsus, Theophrastus Bombast
von Hohenheim, 37, 74

Pare", Ambroise, quoted, 264

Parmenides, 113

Parry, Caleb Hillier, Jenner dedi-
cates his Variola Vaccina to him,
10

Pascal, Blaise, 66 ; quoted, 54,
128, 224, 342 ; his intuitive
probability, 404

Pasteur, Claude Etienne, succeeds
in being free, 213

Pasteur, Jean Joseph, serjeant in
the 3rd Regiment, 213 ; regards
Napoleon as a demi-god, 214 ;
thinks his son works too hard,

444

INDEX

219 ; reculer pour micux sauter,
221 ; his son's savings, 222 ; his
son's letter, 233-4
Pasteur, Louis, Chap. VII passim,
44, 77, 278, 284-5, 307, 316, 373,
374 ; vote of thanks to him, 13,
19 ; the puzzle of the crystals,
44 ; love of his fellow-creatures,
179 ; his wife a real helpmate,
259 ; microbic origin of tetanus,
266 ; owes nothing to Semmelweis,

270 ; unknown at first to Lister,

271 ; owns the missing half of
Lister's conclusions, 272 ; ap-
plies his conceptions to disease,

273 ; the rise of bacteriology,

274 ; minute organisms in the
atmosphere, 275, 296-7 ; Morton
attacks the germ idea, 281 ;
Metchnikoff supplements his
work, 287-8 ; the flash discovery
of rabies, 311-12; wearied with
objections, 312-14; Plenicz anti-
cipates him, 326-7

Pater, Walter, characterises Pascal,
404

Pavlov, Ivan Petrovic, 210

Pearson, G., opposes Jenner, 12 ;
alludes to objections, 14-15 ;
opposes the prize to Jenner, 18

Pearson, John, 157

Pearson, Karl, leader of the Bio-
metric school, 326

Peltier, Jean Charles Athanase, 354

Penn, William, 66

Pennington, Sir Isaac, opposes
Jenner, 16

Pericles, 315

Perier, M., adopts antiseptics, 301

Perkin, Sir William Henry, dis-
covers mauve, 44, 228, 248

Perugino, Pietro Vanucci, 402

Peter, M., objects to Pasteurism, 312

Petrarch, Francesco, the first
modern man, 128

Petrie, Captain, 29

Petrie, Miss, 29 ; the first woman
under chloroform, 30 ; watches
experiments, 31

Petzval, Joseph, the curvature of
images, 336

Peyton, Lady, 17

Philip II of Macedon, no

Phillips, John, hostile to Darwin,
196-7

Phipps, James, 9

Physical Society, 70-1, 73

Physicians, the College of, insists on
its right to examine Jenner, 18-19

Picard, Jean, the worth of Lie's
ideas, 339

Pictet, Fran9ois Jules, criticises
Darwin fairly, 204

Pidoux, Dr., the idea of speci-
ficity, 251-2

Piorry, Pierre Adolphe, finds no
germs, 253

Planck, Max, his quantum, 39 ;
Einstein's judgment, 406

Plato, no, 148, 362 ; no evolu-
tionist, 107-8 ; a prophet, 127 ;
Phcedo, 305-6

Playfair, Lord, describes Simpson's
pluck, 31

Plenicz, Marcus Antoninus, the
germ theory of disease, 326

Pliny, 234; belief in progress, 115-16

Plticker, Julius, 351 ; simultaneous
discovery with Mobius, 310 ;
his work unknown, 349

Plumptre, James, supports Jenner,

i?

Plutarch, 215

Poggendorf, Johann Christian, re-
fuses Mohr's paper, 85 ; refuses
Helmholtz's paper, 98

Poincare', Henri, quoted, 286, 336,

359, 387* 388, 393, 4 OI > 44 : the
worth of Lie's ideas, 339 ;
his range of thought, 389 ; the
laws of science, 390-1 ; the
Fuschian functions, 397-8

Poinsat, M., hours of intimacy with
Michelet, 216

Poisson, Simeon Denis, pronounces
Galois unintelligible, 338 ; his
work unknown, 349

Poncelet, Jean Victoirc, 356 ; his
work unknown, 349

Posidonius, 117

Postel, Guillaume, 116

Pouchet, Henri Charles Georges,
241, 281 ; believes in spon-
taneous generation, 237-9, 243-4,
261 ; the theory of germs ridi-
culous, 249

Pouillet, Claude Servais Mathew,
tests Ohm's law, 355

Poynting, John Henry, 383

Prestwich, Sir Joseph, 193

Preuss, Johann David Erdmann,
lectures Helmholtz, 68

INDEX

445

Provost, Constant, writes to Lyell,

50

Proclus, 360

Protagoras, banished by the Athe-
nians, 305, 316

Proust, Joseph Louis, fixed pro-
portions, 330

Prudentius, 126

Public Opinion, 193

Pulteney, Dr., 14

Punch, 320-1

Punnett, Reginald Crundall, ex-
ponent of Mendelism, 326

Puritanism, its strength, 20

Pythagoras, 396

Quarterly Review, 45 ; reviews
Ly ell's book, 51, 188-9, 320
Whewell's article on Lyell, 59
Scrope's article on Lyell, 59
attacks Darwin, 186, 188, 206

Quekett, John Thomas, pilloried by
Owen, 320

Quincke, Heinrich Friedemann, 70

Quinct, Edgar, the intimate friend
of Michelet, 216

Quintilian, 121

Rabaut, M., opposes Jcnner, 12

Rabelais, Franois, 128

Ramsay, Sir Andrew Crombie, his
remarks on Lyell, 54

Ramsay, George H., 265

Ramsden, Dr., supports Jenner, 17

Rankine, William John Macquorn,
380 ; simultaneous discovery
with Clausius and Kelvin, 310 ;
his theory of molecular vortices,
356-8

Rasori, Giovanni, his work for-
gotten, 327

Rathke, Martin Heinrich, 322

Raulin, Jules, Pasteur's letter,
224-5

Rayleigh, Lord (3rd), neglected
scientists, 335~7. 349 ; discovers
argon, 343-4 ; his interest in
Waterston, 346-8 ; Kelvin's
limitations, 382-7 ; on good
instinct, 405

Rayleigh, Lord (4th), his able
biography of his father, 92

Reaumur, Rene Antoine Ferchault
de, suffers from the French
Academy, 350

Redi, Francesco, believes in bio-
genesis, 235

Reed, T. T. A., 17

Reid, John, Professor of Anatomy,
21-2

Regnault, Henri, gains the Prix de
Rome, 247

Regnault, Henri Victor, 93

Reichert, Karl, 322

Remak, Robert, 322

Renaissance, the, 127-8

Renan, Joseph Ernest, the influence
of Treguier, 362-4, 386, 393, 407,
408

Repecaud, M., impressed by
Pasteur's character, 215

Retzius, Magnus, states objections
to ether and chloroform, 34-5

Reuchlin, Johann (Capnio), obiter
dictum, 305

Reuss, August Emmanuel von, op-
poses conservation of energy, 98

Ribot, Theodule Armatid, 204

Richardson, Sir John, 24

Richtcr, Jeremias Benjamin, antici-
pates Dalton, 328 ; fixed pro-
portions, 330

Riemann, Georg Friedrich Bernhard,
350, 366, 389 ; denies the in-
finity of the straight line, 309 ;
takes up Gauss's work, 348 ;
takes up Grassmann's work, 351 ;
his work neglected, 359-60

Riggs, Dr., uses laughing gas, 28

Robinet, Jean Baptiste Rcn6, the
law of continuity, 140 ; the
synthesis of germs, 141

Rodway, William, 9

Rokitanski, Karl von, Baron, 268 ;
Lister visits him, 269

Rolph, Mr., 4

Romanet, M., discovers the intelli-
gence of Pasteur, 214

Rontgen, Konrad Wilhelm, 27 ;
Kelvin sceptical about his X-rays,

383

Rontgen rays, prophesied, 27
Roozeboom, Bakhuis Hendrik

Willem, sees the importance of

the Phase Rule, 359
Roqui, Jeanne Etiennette, marries

J. J. Pasteur, 214
Rosenberger, Friedrich, Geschichte

der Physik, 328-9
Ross, Sir Ronald, his work ignored,

376-80

446

INDEX

Rosse, the Earl of, 90, 95

Roubiliac, Louis Fra^ois, makes
the statue of Newton, 180

Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 118 ; his
intuitive certainty, 404

Routh, Edward John, 69

Roux, Wilhelm, 312

Rowland, Henry Augustus, veri-
fies Joule's results, 92

Rowley, William, his prejudices
against Jenner, 16

Roxburgh, Robert, appreciates
Lister, 262

Royal Society Council, rejects
Jenner's paper on inoculation,
10 ; rejects Joule's paper on the
work of steam, 89 ; prints
Joule's paper, 92 ; hard to con-
vince of the worth of Dr. Edridge-
Green's theory, 375 ; sceptical of
Gibbs's Phase Rule, 384

Royal Society (Edinburgh), Simp-
son's paper on acupressure, 37 ;
Kelvin's paper on Joule, 93

Rubens, Sir Peter Paul, 395

Rudolphi, Charles Asmund, W.
Jones dissected under him, 257

Ruggi, Giuseppe, the Italian failure,
301-2

Rumford, Count, 346 ; heat is a
fluid, 82-3

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William,
the nature of the atom, 391-2 ;
the beauty of mathematics, 402

Rutherford, Sir Ernest, 385, 401

Sabine, Sir Edward, opposes Darwin
198-9 ; realises Gauss's worth, 352

Saccheri, logically consistent geo-
metry, 309

Sachs, Johann von, praises
Sprengel's work, 332

Salisbury, the Marquess of, attacks
evolutionary concepts, 187-8

Sand, George, 242

Sanderson, Sir John Burdon, a
pupil of W. Jones, 257

Sappho, 116

Sarcey, Francisque, the effects of

1848, 222

Sars, Michael, co-editor of the
Mathematische Annalen, 340

Savory, Sir William Scovell, at-
tractive lecturer, 295 ; pro-
nounces against Lister, 295-8

Schiller, Johann Christoph Friedrich
von, 153, 216

Schopenhauer, Arthur, 406 ; de-
nounces Darwin, 207

Schroeder, Johann Friedrich
Ludwig, 79

Schultze, A. W., a convinced
Listerian, 299-300

Schtilze, Franz Ferdinand, 79

Schumacher, Heinrich Christian,
simultaneous discovery with
Abel and Gauss, 308-9

Schumann, Clara, the clash of two
generations, 73

Schumann, Robert Alexander, 404

Schuppert, Mr., 302

Schuster, Sir Arthur, 385

Schwann, Theodor, 69, 230, 273,
278 ; the causes of fermenta-
tions, 79

Schwarzschild, Karl, 336

Science, the laws of, 389-94

Scipio, 305

Scotsman, The, 282

Scott, Sir Walter, 156; the right of
the Scots to a pedigree, 20 ;
his toil, 23 ; his novels, 403

Scrope, George Julius Poulett, sup-
ports Lyell, 47 ; reviews Lyell's
book, 51, 188-9 ; letter from
Lyell, 52 ; advice to Lyell, 52 ;
his article in the Quarterly, 59

Sedgwick, Adam, 54, 55, 63, 176,
197 ; supports Lyell, 47 ; Pre-
sident of the Geological Society,
48-9 ; severe attack on Lyell,
59-60 ; the independence of the
Devonian system, 62 ; attracts
Darwin, 158-9 ; praises Darwin,
165 ; encourages Darwin, 166

Seebeck, Thomas Johann, 354

Seidel, Philip Ludwig von, his
work neglected, 336

Semmelweis, Ignaz Phillip, arrived

too soon, 267 ; the microbic

origin of disease, 268 ; his

magnum opus, 269 ; recognition

of sepsis, 270 ; unknown to

Lister, 271 ; long neglect, 326

Seneca, tadium vitce, 1 1 1 ; the cyclical

theory, 116-18; Natural Questions,

118-22 ; a Stoic, 129

Serret, Joseph Alfred, tries to make

Galois's ideas accessible, 338-9
Seydelmann, Karl, 69
Shakespeare, William, 153, 156,

INDEX

447

396. 403, 404; quoted, 317-18,
319

Sharp, William, 260

Sharpey, William, 70, 258 ; Pro-
fessor of Physiology, 255 ; the
father of modern physiology,
256-7

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, quoted, 362

Shipley, Sir Arthur Everett, 316

Sidgwick, Henry, his mental out-
look, 365, 369

Siemens, Ernst Werner von, 70

Simon, Jules, lectures on philosophy,
221

Simpson, Alexander, 21, 27

Simpson, John, 25

Simpson, Mr., 187

Simpson, Sir James Young,
Chap. Ill passim, 180, 258, 259,
268, 284-6, 307, 316 ; feels the
odium scientificum, 54 ; opposi-
tion to his ideas, 245 ; the
microbe of conservatism, 251
fierce strife with Syme, 259
amputation statistics, 266
hospitalism, 270 ; criticises
Lister, 277-8, 295 ; proposes to
abolish the chair of surgery,
281 ; his death, 282

Sims, James, comments adversely
on Jenner's discovery, 15

Skoda, Joseph, 268

Small-pox, 4, 7, 8, 15

Smith, Robert, gives Newton's
statue, 1 80 ; his scientific work
ignored, 336

Smith, Sydney, criticises Brougham,

325
Smith, William, the father of

geology, 228
Smith, William Robertson, 25 ;

relations with Bain, 329
Socrates, attacks Anaxagoras,

305-6. 3i6
Somerville, Lord, sees Jenner's

paper on inoculation, 10
Sophocles, 404
Soubeiran, Eugene, discovers

chloroform, 28
Spallanzani, Lazzaro, works at

spontaneous generation, 235-7
Spence, James, 283 ; objections to

acupressure, 37 ; his method, 293
Spencer, Earl, 18
Spencer, Herbert, meeting with

Huxley, 58 ; almost anticipates

Darwin, 184 ; rejects the con-
tinuity of the germ-plasm, 211

Spengler, Ostwald, music and
mathematics, 396

Spottiswoode, William, 344

Sprengler, Christian Konrad, his
work ignored, 332-3

Squirrell, Dr., his prejudices against
Jenner, 16

Stagemann, Friedrich, Kant's re-
mark, 327

Stahl, Georg Ernst, vital force, 74,

95

Stanley, Edward, 256
Steiner, Jakob, his work ignored,

35

Steno, Nicholas, anticipates Lyell, 62

Stewart, Balfour, his work neg-
lected, 336

Stewart, John, appreciates Lister,
262

Stewart, Sir Thomas Grainger, 283

Stich, Clara, 69

Stoicism, no-n, 116, 122, 126

Stokes, Sir George Gabriel, Mayer's
work, 85-6 ; inclined to be a
Joulite, 91 ; his work ignored,
327, 350 ; Kelvin's confidant, 380

Strachey, Lytton, 43

Strindberg, Johann August, 404

Stromeyer, Louis, adopts anti-
septics, 299

Suarez, Cyprian, 200, 389

Sutherland, the Duchess of, writes
to Simpson, 27

Swammerdani, Jan, 128-9

Sylow, Peter Ludvig Mejdell, the
work of Galois, 338

Sylvester, James Joseph, Lie's
lines, 340 ; a lover of literature,
401-2

Syme, Agnes, marries Lister, 259 ;
Lister's paper, 263 ; Lister's
lecture, 264

Syme, James, the enemy of
Simpson, 37, 259 ; J. Brown's
high opinion of him, 258 ; a
spirit of dispeace, 260 ; the
pathology of club foot, 261 ;
testimonial to Lister, 263 ; letter
to Lister, 265 ; urges Lister to
write an account of his discovery,
277 ; letter to Lister, 280-1 ;
his death, 282-3

Tait, Lawson, emphasises the worth

448

INDEX

of chloroform, 32 ; opposes
Lister, 304

Tait, Peter Guthrie, cannot con-
vince Kelvin, 324 ; inquires
about Waterston, 347 ; employs
quaternions, 383 ; new matter in
Newton, 394

Tanner, Mr., 12

Tchermak, Erich, simultaneous dis-
covery with de Vries and
Correns, 310

Temple, Frederick, 190 ; preaches
on the side of Darwinism in
1860, 187

Tennyson, Lord, 145, 395, 396 ;
quoted, 342, 408

Tenterden, Lord, failure at Canter-
bury, 24

Terence, quoted, 56

Terrier, M., adopts antiseptics, 301

Thackeray, William Makepeace,
403 ; obiter dictum, 341

Thales of Miletus, origin of
animals, 234

Thamayn of Halle, hostile to anti-
septics, 299

Thenard, Louis Jacques, Baron,
78, 230, 273 ; a great professor,
76 ; Biot appeals to him, 229

Thiersch, Karl, adopts antiseptics,

299

Thiesen, Max Ferdinand, 336
Thomas's, St., 298
Thompson, Silvanus Phillips, his

able biography of Kelvin, 382
Thomson, Allen, 70
Thomson, James, 156
Thomson, James, 91 ; his work

ignored, 327 ; a general doctrine

of energy, 358
Thomson, John, Professor of

Pathology, 24-5

Thomson, John Arthur, the con-
tinuity of the germ-plasm, 211
Thomson, Sir Joseph John, 352,

383, 384, 385, 401 ; Mpseley's

work, 44 ; Kelvin's intuition, 405
Thomson, William. See Kelvin,

Lord
Thorpe, Sir Edward, appreciates

Cavendish, 342-4
Thucydides, 52, 315
Tiedemann, Friedrich, W. Jones

with him, 257
Tillmans, Robert Hermann, adopts

antiseptics, 299

Times, The, 32 ; reviews Darwin's
Origin of Species, 188

Titian (Vercellio Tiziano), 395

Topffer, Rudolf, on loitering, 23

Trajan, 116

Tr6cul, Dr., believes in spontaneous
generation, 249 ; lack of experi-
ments, 250 ; his hypothesis of
transformations, 253

Treguierism, 363-4, 369, 379, 382,
384, 386, 393, 40?

Trcitschke, Heinrich Gottard von,
the clash of two generations, 73

Trcndelenburg of Bonn, adopts
antiseptics, 299

Treviranus, Rudolf Christian,
theory of evolution, 141 ; simul-
taneous discovery with Bichat
and Lamarck, 308

Tristram, Henry Baker, the first
zoologist of note to accept Dar-
winism, 190

Tscherning, Marius Hans Erik,
terms Young the founder of
physiological optics, 325

Turner, Joseph Mallord William, 17

Turner, Sir William, rejects the
continuity of the germ-plasm ,211

Turte, lectures Helmholtz, 68

Tweed, William Marcy, loathes
cartoons, 16

Tyndall, John, 70 ; Fragments of
Science, 100 ; his attractive
eloquence, 283 ; experiments
with germs, 284-6 ; injures
Lister, 291 ; Huxley's letter,
321 ; appreciates Faraday's
genius, 352-5 ; his Belfast ad-
dress, 388 ; the share of intuitive
probability, 404-5

Udressier, Comte de, frees C. E.

Pasteur, 213
Uniformitarianism, : Chap. Ill

passim
University College, London, 255-7,

280

Vaccination, 4, 8, 9, 10, n, 13, 19
Vallery-Radot, Rene, quoted, 244,

246, 248, 312
Vallisneri, Antonio, believes in

biogenesis, 235
Van't Hoff, James Hendrik, works

at crystals, 44 ; the basis of

INDEX

449

stereo-chemistry, 226 ; electro-
lytic dissociation, 384
Vaughan, Charles John, 386-7, 393
Vaughan, Robert Alfred, con-
temptuous attitude to mysticism,
392
Velasquez, Diego Rodriguez de

Silva y, 395
Velpeau, Alfonse A, L. M., obiter

dictum, 257
Vercel, Jules, school-friend of

Pasteur, 215

Veronese, Paul (Cagliari Paolo), 395
Vicq-d'Azyr, F&ix, 75
Victoria, Queen, appreciates Simp-
son, 27 ; uses chloroform, 30-1
Vigo, Giovanni de, anticipates

Simpson, 277

Villemin, Dr., tuberculosis con-
tagious, 251-2
Vincent of Beauvais, 121
Vincent, John Painter, his angina,

294

Virchow, Rudolf, 69 ; Professor of
Pathology, 70 ; sneers at Semmel-
weis, 269 ; cellular pathology,
303 ; deprecates controversy,

369

Virgil, 67, 156, 215 ; origin of life
in a carcase, 234 ; the causes of
things, 342

Vogt, Paul Friedrich Immanuel, 322

Volger, Otto, declares evolution
an unsupported hypothesis, 208

Volkmann, Richard von, adopts
antiseptics, 299 ; Billroth's con-
fidant, 300

Volta, Alessandro, his theory of
metallic contract, 352-4

Voltaire, Francois Marie Arouet de,
dissents from Diderot, 137 ; the
small springs of great events,
161 ; ridicules Needham, 236-7 ;
the problem of revolution, 295 ;
popularises Newton, 351
Vulpian, Adolphe, 70

Waage, Peter, the ideas of Ber-

thollet, 330
Wachsel, Mr., notes carelessness

with vaccine, 11-12
Wagner, Wilhelm Richard, 404 ;

the overture to the Rheingold,

396-7

Waldie, Mr., 29
Wallace, Alfred Russel, n, 55, 148,

29

151, 162, 311 ; reads Malthus,
171-2, 174-5 > values the power
of logical reasoning, 179 ; sudden
grasp of evolution, 182-3 I bases
his ideas on Malthusianism, 184 ,
difficulties in the way of evolu-
tion, 189-90 ; generous relations
with Darwin, 200 ; simultaneous
discovery with Darwin, 308

War burton, Mr., supports Lye 11, 47

Ward, Sir Adolphus William, re-
mains young, 363

Warren, Dr., 28

Warren, T. A., 17

Washbourn, Dr., i

Waterston, George, 347

Waterston, John James, his work
neglected, 336, 346-8

Waterton, Charles, his Essay on the

Jay, 7
Watson, Hewett Cottrell, 191 ;

letter to Darwin, 102
Watson, Patrick Heron, 283
Weber, Ernst Heinrich, 349, 355 ;

law of psycho-physics, 324
Weber, Wilhelm, law of electro-
dynamics, 324
Wedgwood, Emma, marries Charles

Darwin, 177

Wedgwood, Hensleigh, 155
Wedgwood, Josiah, affects artistic
workmanship, 155 ; minute ob-
servations, 163-4
Wedgwood, Susannah, 154, 155
Weierstrass, Karl, 345
Weir, Robert F., the American

failure, 302

Weismann, August, 210 ; germinal
selection, 189 ; use and disuse
no transmitted effects, 211 ; the
distinctness of the body-plasm,
212 ; cares for music, 396
Weldon, Walter Frank Raphael,

the Biometric school, 326
Wellington, the Duke of, 17, 41
Wells, Horace, his single experi-
ment fails, 28 ; dies insane, 29
Wells, Sir Thomas Spencer, reduces

the mortality rate, 286
Wells, William Charles, anticipates

Darwin, 184

Werner, Abraham Gottlob, 64;
his position in geology, 39-42 ;
his ideas tested, 47
Weraerians, the, 39-42, 48-9, 52-3,
55. 58, 59. 60 163, 259, 326

450

INDEX

Westcott, Brooke Foss, 386-7, 393
Westwood, John Obadiah, sneers

at Darwin, 191
Weyl, Heinrich, Space Time

Matter. 387-8
Whately, Richard, lectures on

Political Economy, 59-60
Whewell, William, sympathy with

Lyell, 59 ; sympathises with

W. Smith's fate, 328 ; the ignor-
ing of Newton, 348-9
Wiedemann, Georg, 70
Wien, Wilhelm, his displacement

law, 385
Wilberforce, Samuel, 188 ; attacks

Darwin, 186-7
Wilhelm I, 223
Wilson, George, maximises the

effects of pain, 34
Wislicenus, Johann von, the study

of lactic acids, 226
Wohler, Friedrich, co-operates with

Liebig, 311, 380
Wolf, lectures Helmholtz, 68
Wolfler, 300
Wollaston, Thomas Vernon, sneers

at Darwin, 191

Wollaston, William Hyde, 353
Wood, John, speaks unfavourably

of Lister, 292, 303
Wood. Mr., 170
Woodville, William, objects to

the grease theory, n ; meets

Jenner, 12

Woolner, Thomas, models a plaque

of Darwin, 180
Wordsworth, William, the sweet

air of futurity, 118 ; quoted, 180,

323
Worthington, Mr., approves of

Jenner 's paper on inoculation, 10
Wren, Sir Christopher, 402
Wright, Sir Almroth Edward, 17
Wynne, Elizabeth, 9
Wynne, Sarah, 9

Xenophanes, spontaneous genera-
tion, 1 06

York, the Duke ox, 17

Young, Thomas, 328, 350 ; parallel
with Helmholtz, 83 ; the quality
of heat, 84 ; the term energy,
98 ; simultaneous discovery with
Laplace, 309 ; his far-reaching
genius, 324-5 ; a generation too
soon, 327 ; neglect of his work,
335-6 ; ignores Cavendish, 343-
344 ; parallel with Grassmann, 351

Zeiller, Ren6, sudden appearance

of new forms, 210
Zeno.the end of the world, 1 10 1 1
Zeuner, Gustav, controversy with

Him, 324
Zittel, Karl Alfred von, 55

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