MASTER NEGA TIVE NO. 93-81221 f MICROFILMED 1993 COLUMBI A UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES/NEW YORK ) as part of the 'Foundations of Western Civilization Preservation Project" Funded by the NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES Reproductions mav not be made without permission from Columbia University Library COPYRIGHT STATEMENT The copyright law of the United States - Title 17, United States Code - concerns the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. One of these specified conditions is that the photocopy or other reproduction is not to be "used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research." If a user makes a request for, or later uses, a photocopy or reproduction for purposes in excess of fair use," that user may be liable for copyright infringement. This institution reserves the right to refuse to accept a copy order if, in its judgement, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of the copyright law. A UTHOR: BILLING, SIDNEY TITLE: SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM AND ULTIMATE... PLA CE: LONDON DA TE: 1879 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT Master Negative # Restrictions on Use: BIBLIOGRAPHIC MICROFORM TARGET Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record -«.*•«-».■< iA6. Lcndok \?)^X'3 : 111 11 0. G »-w^a v'510 ^> O • N«.f ■"•"—•«»•■«« iill ■'►•^ r y TECHNICAL MICROFORM DATA FILM SIZE: 35 m/?^ REDUCTION RATIO: //^ IMAGE PLACEMENT: lA (llA^ IB IIB DATE FILMED: 3Io^±^2l INITIALS ^Br£.- HLMEDBY: RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS. INC WOODDRIDGE. CT Association for information and Image Management 1 1 00 Wayne Avenue, Suite 1 1 00 Silver Spring, Maryland 20910 301/587-8202 Centimeter 12 3 4 iiilmilnnlmimiiliinlniilmil rtfhw Inches 1 6 iiiliiii 7 8 9 iiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliin I T 1.0 I.I 1.25 T 10 11 12 13 14 15 mm iiiiliiiilniiliiiilii TTT Uil 2.8 112.5 15^ " ^^ Hi m 2.2 ■ 63 ^ 140 2.0 IS. ^ u 1.8 1.4 1.6 TTT IMMAiiwUiJiW I MfiNUFRCTURED TO fillM STRNDflRDS BY APPLIED IMRGE, INC. » >> >> »» >» >» >» »» »» >» }) » »> if ft ♦> ft >f f* f* it tt PART I. SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM. CHAP. I. The Methods of Mature. Animal Electricity and Vital Action, The Hypotheses of the Kosmos. God— Religious Reformers, Strauss. Spontaneity. Protoplasm. Only by a discussion of principles can we arrive at the methods of nature, or rightly estimate phenomena. Every effect should be rigidly criticised, or effects originating in effects may be mistaken for a "precession of causes," and thus by a multiplicity of causes y^Q may be led to accept an indiscriminatine materialism, u^hereby, "matter" enthroned in an indurate eternity, creates herself, and by an inconceivable series of self-constituted motions amazes the consciousness by making intelligence one of its states.i Whilst vi^e concede the chemistry and mechanics of nature we admire her resources, but when these creations of the cause are defined to be the infallible cause, the objective and subjective are involved in an indistinguishable chaos. The uni- versal and the unchanging alone are the true, and the true the for-ever subsisting eternal. The universal and unchanging are capable of infinite variation^ but the principles always remain constant in quality— as Heat^ Vitality^ Consciousness, and Intelli- gence. Until it be accepted that principles and their conditions are the working facts of science, speculation^ will never be banished and dogmatism will retain its ascendency.* Ultimate facts are the i\l ''^H purpose of the physical sciences throughout all their provinces is to answer ThT ??i^u''!, i'L ^^"^ i'"'^"'^ of the moral sciences is to answer the question Tule of"conducf ^^^(^^ntosh' s Ethical Dissertation '), or rather what should be our tPrM «*" ^^""f « Jn organs are but variations in the great system by which new raat- thel^^ri r ^^ *"" ^^•^ ""'""^u ''^^^^^ • • • «l^*iy« bear a certain relation to loe original type as parts ot the same design. (* Bell, Brid. Treat.,' p. 2J.) trnth'-T^" attain the certainty " that our conceptions are really identical with 8ci^n;« ^^'^'^^"^a^^^e investigation must be admitted yet even " in the so-called exact 4 " Q- • u • ■'^JO"^ a certain limit these cease to be exact.'' (Kekule). " arp tl"? bacon's time hypotheses are made and treated as proved, and finally are uer^i;^';^ t /^' 'T''^- *'' ^'^''^^' of faith," and all " who sin against these dogmas we perj,ecuted as heretics . . . '' {' KekuU; Boiiu, \b1H.) vitality. \\ only bases upon which exactness can be founded ; science then insLd of being a bundle of specialized threads, presents a umted whole; chemistry, mechanics and electro-magnetism, mter- dependent, are the streams of a vast river whose sources are unknown, whose termination is hidden; the whole mterlaced by vital energy. Where in phenomena is found an effect without an antecedent? Vitality, grand though its place be in the Kosmos, has its antecedent in the originating impulse which pre- cedes and coerces all,-that all in nature which wields the corre- lated forces as its methods of action whereby particle is interknit with particle, whether the form be animate or inanimate ; by which masses are raised and disintegrated, growing from imper- ceptible realities, and when resolved again into these imperceptions become viewless as the wind. Vitality, the proximate of nature due to the presence of its simple law, is universal, as spontaneity resulting in method. Where shall we seek an atom or a molecule in that absorption, the unity of the universe ? The correlated forces result in heat— electricity, heat ; magnetism, heat ; light heat , motion, heat; chemical affinity, heat; gravitation heat; for it it be not a correlated force to what shall its origin be assigned ? It in the forces we have a correlation beginning in and resulting m heat, is it not probable the material elements have their origin in the same universality ? What is an atom ?' a sand grain which can be split into imperceptible dust, and as a liquid solution further disintegrated ; vaporised, it passes into a beyond inap- preciable by the highest powers of the lens ; m reason, 't would seem to hive passed inlo its primordial. If the primordial be considered an existing entity, imponderable, imperceptible its conservation is a continuing fact ; a matrix ever giving to objec- tivity and ponderosity, units as representative dynamics— !■ orce and Matter. . . , , , . Chemistry and mechanics, as simulations of the working powers of nature, are the technics of physics, the expressions of a hnite intelligence acting by external agencies ; the vital tact, tne expression of an unlimited intelligence acting through an innate internal convulsion quantitatively and qualitatively assimulating materials and through affinities suiting them to the necessities ot varied combinations. The method of nature is shown in its resulting effects-the cause, in its purposed finality. U vital energy were the result of chemistry, mechanics and force whenever the chemist, machinist and electrician concentrated their sciences on their collected materials we have the right to expect 1 " The chemist will always welcome an explanation of his unit» bwause chemistry requires atoms only aj a starUng point, not as an end." ('h-ekuU, Benn.; Molecules and Atoms. in their compacted substance (simulated protoplasm) the exhi- bition of life If the vital energy be present in every Pardee tion between the inorganic and organic is broken upi and we make its di^ollv n"' '°™ "'"'"u^ '°^ '^^"^^ ''^''^^ " e^stin? ■ Tr'l ^"mpos.te substance can have qualities not existing in the elements composing it, though in the aggregation new forces become apparent.^ "ggrcgaiion Generally stated, science is perception. When atoms and molecules (not objects of perception) are presented as r^al and existing quantities, science becomes the imaginative 3 They to work out the problems presented ; but when theories are founded on supposititious quantities inexactness must result.* If an atom be distinguished as the smallest severable quantity of an quantri/ar"'-'"^ ^ ""'^^"'^^ ^ '"^^ -'"«^ -vefabTe have ?h„mLn°"'?°f fi ^°™' ^' set nearer to a definition and ,Z t Tu r ''^''""^ '"^^'^^ "^ ""^"er." It is easy to understand that the particles of elemental substances unite n definite proportions, the aeriform, liquid and solid, beinf dif- ferent states of the same substances.' When phenomena are crystal T^Z'^t-M.^f"*"' "' »"* «'»'" ■•^'^■"''les the architecture of the vffl.*™^-*"- "«).'"» »«>e">ing like saying that both exist bXlame 'Ljebig says "Vital force manifests itself in two conditions— that nf . ., .■ nihilated ; a.l chang^ i^onb^rmtt"^;:XVr:ti;°ofUS;S thV""" "" -"J to be the first scientific observation of matter ^^w^aJb ,■ ' ' ^^ '^ supposed element is that which is not ?„nher d^vt^le i!?.7L'e?aU;'dX:^;;:,t^■''^Ztf '•The whole value of science consists in the Dower it confBiv r ng to one object the knowledge acquired f,«m'^°^rob?ects ' ' ' ''S'^: an turro'" "r " r '"'<='"'"»-«'' register resemblants or d.'ffeien'ces" th,"t we ZilZv- "^ZZIT '° '''<=°"»''" f" " "•"" - '^o of one thmruTral'o'f Z otL ^.d a Sit idea" '" " ''* ""''"'"" '=''"''<='*' "' " »"""'Mtirl7aIcL':^ 3rd. Those "K wtehZe , Jl „f '" 1**"^ "'T ' "* """^^'^ '» form molecules, a 01 lucu. We must imagine matter consists of .mall particles uniform Malpighi's Littles. analysed only forms and forces are found their .nfimte modifica- tions objectively presented-Nature. By torce elemental sub- stances are disintegrated, but it is impossible to say nature recog- nises atoms, the composites arising through affinities resulting from an innate action. When Malpighi said all things were composed of littles, he spoke of the increase of substances through the cen- tralising focus or nucleus and by deposition. t ,s probable the germis%s much insisting in simple elemental substances as in composite organic forms, for a mass has no other q"^Jt'«;jha„ those of its elements ; germs have multiplication through an ac we vitality, whilst the particles in elemental substances cohere through a latent vitality ; in the processes of crystallization there is a some thing approaching interbreeding or multiplication, although the formation is said To be mechanical, because it is a deposition by InzW organic combinations carbon is present. In any of its forms it cannot be fused. In its perfect form (the diamond when combusted, there are no dibrh. In the gaseous form it ^ known only in combination, and in some phase or other it ap- peal in an substances ; a review of all the facts relating to . gives the idea of an objective form of heat.' Heat is a universal in thpir material and not further divisible, not even by chemical processes.' Of atoms ry'^rit "toonse<,aenceoffor^^^^^ . ''^^;ts S^rr, rrmT,r7eS". M. ll'leT^ots, and phvsios a, the re"«;V-""t•'a^nh^t.hicht^^^^^ chanics. Mechanic physics, and c en .s,ry • ■ "-^^jj;-- „ .^^ l„^ ^„1r :rthT: Sror-an-ima-l hoiy'cX but of • .-cbanical phys.al, or c,. Xfnature.-- ^o^^^^::" -^^^^^^^ '--^^ ^"-"'"'^ 'T'^'Tone bit X con rZ, each one is connected with only oneormth ?rertry;:;^^enr.'^e'c^^:i^^^^^^ ..for the oAe«..aaer.«/ conn c^^^ _^^,^^ P ,^^ ^„„„j;,i„„ „f ttie form of molecules. ln>esti2;ations miow •. ,_,, j .ug foj^es which atoL influences the -- f '^^^^f ^^^^^^^^^^ theory LSf must also be considered: whether the property of atoms ,s dependent on S ha^not been obtained," " but this seems certain, that the numeuca va neof Ae «!'»> weight is the variable by which the substanttal nature "^ f /'*''- trtTe7 ependeit on this are determinedr C Rector alMdress Bonn' 18 .8 ^ 1 HiS. considers the spectrum of a comet may be regarded as that of carbon. SeccM and VVolf came to the same conclusions. (' Proctor, Spectrescop.. p. 98.) Heaf a Principle conditioned. principle, and the more its active state can be nullified the nearer the solid IS approached, as shown in condensing into a liquid form oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and air. A great stress is laid on the mechanical action of heat, but its application should be to the antecedent working fact.i Motion is the result of heat, its con- dition (heat) being expressed as vibration ; as a principle heat is the parent of its conditions, heat, light, electricity, &c., known as the correlation of forces.^ To the expression of heat as an antecedent principle acting through its conditions we owe all we know of phenomena. Heat, instead of being " a mode of motion" is the principle to which motion is due. Motion is an effect ; an eff-ect may be the mode of the manifestation of a principle, but a principle cannot be the mode of an effect.^ What vitality is we do not know, but can say were there no heat there were no exhibition of life ; if, as said, life be only ani- mate motion, life becomes a modification of heat. Temperature merely expresses the dynamic state of heat. Heat and life may ninn^S"h'" ^^u''^°" '^"l^^^."' ^^^^' ^^l^res.sed an opinion, entertained in com mon with himself, by his uncle Montgolfier, of the identity of heat with mechani™! force, and calculated its equivalence. The idea has been practically iliuTtratedTn dependently by Joule and Helmholtz. ( Vide infra, article '^HeaP) '''"^^'^^^^ '"' Mr Justice Grove, in his work on the • Correlation of Physical Forces' Cp. 153 4th ed), says, -A prepared daguerreotype plate is enclosed^ in a box filled with >^ater having a glass front with a shutter over it. Between this glass and the nlate .s a gridiron of silver wire ; the plate is connected with one extremTt/of tlwt nometer coil, and the gridiron of wire with one extremity of a Breguet's helix-an elegant instrument, formed by a coil of two metals, the unequal expanln of whicS indicates slight changes in temperature-the other extremity of the galvanometer and helix are connected by a wire and the needles brought to zero As soon as a beam either of daylight or the oxyhydrogen light is, by raising the shutte , p^r! mi tted to impinge upon the plate, the needles are deflected. Thus light S^he nitiating force we get chemical action on the plate, electricity circulating through the wires, magnetism in the coil, heat in the helix and motion in the needles " ^ If hPHtT'f^h" ^^*^«',^it>':«t'on ; yet the heat of the sun is commented on as specific, an'! h««t Th ' h "'^^^'^" «f "^^^^'i^^ P^'-t'cles, there can be no exhaustion of the Wi^ iL The heat, or whatever the principle, the sun has the power to pro- duce its like and thus the planetary system depends on his energy. No science shows that the capacity for the excitation of the vibrations can be nullified The tex^ books continually speak of the store of heat in the sun, ^ ^'^ '^'' ^^^ '« ^^e v'lratLn' o th^ oi^\^! .f . H ^.^^ m' ^^^?' ^' •* ^i'^""^' ^"^''^^ '^'•°"S^ t^« l«n«^ whether of ice or PonderHhll o^ h° ^^ '"^"'"""^ *^"^ '* '' ^ something specific, a substance im- Sht ri^wl^'^r"^ fTTV'V.'' ^"^"""" sufficiently delicate to detect its vveigut. ( Vtde infra. Part 2, ♦• Heat.*) Finite Perception — Infinite Conception. Creation. \ I both exist without the expression of form ; form then becomes the objective expression of an activity through the operations ot law, thereby presupposing an intellectual predisposition. If all acts be the embodied facts of an intelligence subjective to itself, resulting in an objective form, then all analysis becomes m intel- ligence a synthesis. Perception is embodied in conception, and conception in result is perceptively embodied ; the image sym- bolised in the mind is as subjective a reality as phenomenon in its objective phase is real to the senses.^ Finite powers give but an imperfect presentment of objective forms, but when the finite is mao-nified into infinitude the analytical becomes the synthetical -, then intelligence embodied in principles works out in analysis, by a multiple of littles, all objective phenomena. If this subjective intelligence be existing, we have the creative idea embodied in substance. It appears idle to say from the objective or material is produced the intellectual and subjective or ethereal.^ It does not follow because we find the incomplete presentment of a form which, by progressive steps, becomes complete (the horse), that the first presentment was merely tentative ; in the completed form is seen the completion of the conceptive idea ; are we then to say that so vast a stretch of intellectual power is a resulting effect a potence of matter ?* The facts of natural phenomena, as we'trace them, show that the perfected organism is reached by a sequence of almost imperceptible differentiations in form and function. The finite commences in littles, and developes into magnitudes. Watt devised his engine, but did not conceive the magnitude of the perfected machine, and its almost infinite adap- tation to mechanical force. The infinite begins in conception, and presents the first form as the commencing step of the design, the perfected image being present in idea before its first present- ment became phenomenal ; in art the design is conceived before the idea is manipulated. 1 The great Creator of all thincfs has infinitely diversified the works of his hands but at the same time stamped a certain similitude on the features of nature that demonstrates to us that the whole is one family of ofie parent. ( Zoonomta, ^*M"tTbif'tX)'*exercfse'our reflections to find we are in the centre of a system wherein the strictest relations are established between our intellectual capacities and a material world. {BeW, * Bridg. T.') . . ^. _u *u 3 The mind is forced to interpret the impressions received through the senses as nroofs of the reality of a material world, and in like manner is forced to interpret the intuitions of dependence and moral obUsfation as proofs of the reality of a spiritual world." (Potter, ' ScL and Itevel.^' p. 33.) ,x n,r ^ ^j»\ u » a If the *• structure of the universe is * an insoluble mystery (' Belfast Ad. ), what evidence is it possible to adduce for the "potence of matter?" The riddle only becomes more perplexed. " I have asked myself can it be possible that man s know- ledge is the greatest knowledge— that man's life is the highest life? (Jyndall, It is said that the universe^ is a mere mechanical arrangement ; Helmholtz says there is no machine but is the result of intelli- gence. To this intelligence we direct our enquiry and find an infinite expansion of thought beyond the power of the finite to penetrate. When we are told that the germ^ contains all the successions of phenomena, we must conceive the intelligence which devised this germ machine and endowed it with powers which consummated the purposes of its institution. To speak of the universe as a machine is to speak also of the intelligence which designed,^ fashioned, and not only crushed it? energies into form and fact, but instituted them. If the universe as a consum- mated problem be unfathomable, how much more does it become so when we ponder on the little, the first condensed speck which, by the expansion of its law becomes all we know and see, or imagine we know and see. When human ingenuity has pene- trated the outlying facts of the material phenomena, it has its pause, for the mystery of life, the mystery of mind and the greater mystery beyond, hitherto have defied all human scrutiny. The Finite is a grouping without, the Infinite an expansion from the centre comprising all within its concentrating power. Physical force is a resulting agency, vital force is the fact of the cohesion and coherence of the universe. Vital func- tion thus becomes the inherent power which moulds masses, crystallizes the inorganic, and granulates the organic, the impulsive power of living forms. Huxley says " Our thoughts maybe delusive, but they cannot be fictitious." "Thus thought is existence,'^ for all our con- ceptions of existence are concentrated in thought.^ Objects are but symbols of things painted on the retina of the eye and Manchester.) Have we not his answer when he discerns •< in matter" all the forms and qualities of life ?'* (* Bel. Add.') ^Erasmus Darwin, in his preface ^ Zoonomia^ says persons "idly ingenious busied themselves in attempting to explain the laws of life by those of mechanism and chemistry ; they considered the body tis an hydraulic machine, and the fluids as passing through a series of chemical changes, forgetting that animation was its essential characteristic." ^ "Who could have believed that the germs of all the fair objects which we behold in nature were in that void and dark and formless earth over whose waters the Spirit of God spread his fostering wing ?" (* Thoughts on Person. Rel..' Goul- burn, p. 10.) ' " We cannot think at all about the impressions which the external world pro- duces upon us without thinking of them as caused ; and we cannot carry out an enquiry concerning their causation without inevitably committing ourselves to the hypothesis of a first cause." (Spencer, • First Principles,' p. 37.) * **The complexity of structure belongs to external nature." •< We do not per- ceive a relation between this complexity and the mind ... the mind may be as distinct from the bodily organs as are the exterior influences which give them exer- cise." (Bell, *^. T./p. 7.) -fr'^ ^l^im~~' 8 The Major and the Minor, States of Consciousness, translated in consciousness. In cases of colour blindness red appears to be green ; this would show that it is collective rather than individual experiences which determine a fact, and yet the green colour is as vivid a reality to the individual, as the red by collective experience, is determinative of the conception. As the external sense of vision is deceptive so may conclusions be which are ingrafted on perception. Physical science built upon perceptive experiences can be truly translated only as they are reliable. Intellectual phenomena are only known as effects connected with objects. Material philosophy therefore pronounces all to be the re- sultants of matter and molecular changes. Had we not intellectual consciousness there would be neither perception nor conception, objects, nor thoughts. When the symbol photographed in the eye receives translation it becomes our reality.^ How then can it be said the major (mind) has its origin in the minor ? (matter) ; logically we know all majors are composed of minors, but this can be said only of related things ; pile as we may atom on atom we should never elicit mind, pile idea on idea and a wisdom would be attainable approaching the precincts of infinitude. Percep- tive knowledge is built up of the symbols of things, not of things. How then can we say that the symbolical expression of that we term matter, objective forms, creates the subjecting intellect ? Water swells upon the application of heat, the mass being affected by an action within the particles,- the manifestation is influ- enced from without. How then can we say the closely com- pacted brain moves through it own motion ? Admitting molecular changes, they occur through an external impulsion. Water at an unchanging temperature uninfluenced by external forces would remain apparently a motionless mass ; and so the brain, unless influenced by a something external to itself, would exhibit thesame death in life; only on an irrefragable evidence can it be accepted that consciousness and intellect are the result of changes in the positions of its material particles— this evidence is wanting. Were it otherwise, we must say matter comprehends 1 « In tbe nervous syi^tem it holds universally that variety or contrast is necessary to sen:«ation." " The brain is insensible— thai part of the brain which, if disturbed or diseased, takes away consciousness, is as insensible as the leather of our shoe " ! «' Reason on it as we may, the fact is so— the brain, through which every impression must be conveyed before it is perceived, is itself insensible." (Bell, ' Bridg. Treat.y pp. 161, 162.) . ^ e c * u .» » Prout says, "heat envelopes each molecule in the form of an atmosphere. C Bridsewater Treatise:) Porter {* Science and Revelation: p. 11), objecting to Faraday's view that atoms are " centres of force," says. •' A centre of torce must either be material or immaterial ; if material the absurdity is as belore, if immaterial no aggregate of the immaterial could form the material universe." This is a mere question of definition. itself — " inert matter" thinks. When the confession is made that "our knowledge of anything we know and feel more or less . . . is a knowledge of states of consciousness^' (however we may dissent from the statement as to states of consciousness), it is diflicult to understand that these " states of consciousness" can originate from matter. The symbol of a thing is expressed in con- sciousness, and but for the intellect it would there stagnate like water uninfluenced by forces. To make the proposition more obscure, we are told that *' The self and the not-self," being "states of consciousness," that of them we cannot have " such unquestionable and immediate certainty as we have of the states of consciousness which we consider to be their effects." (§ 45.) Self and not-self, " states of consciousness," " states of con- sciousness" resulting effects of the self and the not-self ! is some- thing like saying a reflecting object is the result of the object it reflects ! Consciousnesss as the mirror of the mind is in itself a unity ; how that which is unity can be split into states is beyond my comprehension. We should not say a reflector is states of reflec- tion, and by a parity of reasoning it seems impossible to say that consciousness, being the reflector by and through which impres- sions are received, can be split into states. Science talks of states of consciousness, but science is not infallible. There may be states of mind, because the mind is composed of many parts ; there may be distinctive intelligences, because intelligence consists of degrees. We are conscious, or we are not conscious ; this fact in relation to consciousness stands in the place of all its facts. It is not because of the insight which has been achieved by the analysis of the substances surrounding us, or by deductions which announce that worlds have evolved from chaos ;^ that all we per- ceive and all we comprehend are questions of physics. The stati- cal and dynamical are phases of phenomena, but the hidden energy which transposes and transforms defies the powers of analysis. In science, mechanical agencies find their expression and are in- truded as causes, but the intelligence underlying all has no place in molecular physics, which, duly considered, if they have a place in a true system of nature, are found to be functional and deter- mined by their law. The dogmatism of science reaches its climax when we are told, " No one possessing any knowledge of physical science would now venture to hold that vital force is the ^ " Observation has never yet reached, or can ever reach, the development of a fiery cloud into emotion, intellect, will ; phenomena of the human mind." (Porter, • Sci. and Revet.,' p. 28.) lO Scientific Dogmatism. Thinking God's Thought, TI source of muscular power/'^ If this be the dictum of science, it becomes necessary to examine the data on which it is founded. Huxley says — " The tendency to disturb equilibrium — to take forms which succeed one another in definite cycles — is the character of the living world." When speak- ing of vital action, he says that he cannot tell *'the cause ot the wondeiful dif- ference between the dead . . . and the living particle of matter, appearing in other respects identical." It may be there will " be discovered some higher laws of which the facts of life are particular cases," and that a bond will be found " between physico-chemical phenomena on the one hand and vital pheno- mena on the other J at present we assuredly know there is none." (* L. S.,' p. 76.) The examination of this hypothesis brings us as a starting point to " the soul of the world," as an expression of universal vitality. We have Thales and his demons. The living active principle of Hippocrates called by him Nature, to which he re- ferred all sources of motion. An analogy of this thought is found in the philosophy of Spinoza and in the expressions of Goethe, that God is everywhere in nature, not that the method of nature is God. Kepler and others have thought that the exposi- tion of the methods of nature was thinking again the thoughts of God.^ Pliny's philosophy was his theology, for to him motion, whether vital or physical, was a display of the divine energy. Socrates had a conception that the changes in nature could be explained without having recourse to the direct agency of the Gods {vide ' Clouds of Aristophanes.^) Aristotle has his primum mobile as the first moving cause. Plato recognised a Divine being. ^ Aristotle's idea became to him a soul, for the first moving cause was active in animate forms through the instrumentality of a principle dis- tinct from the organism, and possessed an energy distinct from the organs through which it was manifested. It could receive nourishment, possessed sensation, motion, desire and intelligence. 1 " Dr. Frankland ascertained by direct calometrical determinations the potential energy locked up in a muscle, and in its chief products of oxidation — urea, uric acid, and bippuric acid— and proved that the store available was much less than would suflBce to account for the work done by Pick and Wislicenus in the ascent of tbe Faulhorn. Frankland's experiments conclusively proved that the muscular force expended by the two Professors . . . must have been chiefly derived from the oxida- tion of non-nitrogenous matters, since it could not have been produced by the oxida- tion of the muscle or otber nitrogenous constituents of their bodies." (Fide ' A'a^.,' vol. xvii, p. 319.) ' Persfeus, a follower of Zeno, says : — " Those who have made discoveries ad- vantageous to man should be esteemed as gods ; it is not sufficient to call them dis- coverers of gods, but that they should be deemed divine.'' (Wheelwright's transla- tion.) 3 Plato, referring to the early traditions, says, " One God froverned the universe ; but a change taking place in the nature of men and things, the command devolved on Jupiter and other inferior deitiestopresideover different departments under him." (' Mitiord's * Greece.') In his idea this soul descended to vegetables. He had a definite idea that the muscles are the seat of the motive power, and that some nerves had relations to movement and others to sensation. From the period of Aristotle mythic hypotheses have been in- vented to account for vital action. Von Helmont (with Paracelsus) held that the Archaeus (con- scious and personal) accounted for all vital manifestations, and assumed the credit of distinguishing the specific characters of ani- mate and inanimate nature. Stahl held matter to be essentially and necessarily inert, and that the powers of motion were derived from a special immaterial animating principle — ^«/W,^ " which does* without teaching and without consideration that which it ought to do." Hoffman followed with "nervous influence" or "nerve fluid," having powers of action or tone, which may be increased (if unduly, spasm results) or diminished (if unduly, atony). Then came Glissen's doctrine of muscular irritability. Haller expanded the idea, and drew the distinction between the special vital properties of the muscles and of the nerves, retaining for the muscle irritability, for the nerve sensibility ; for each property there was a something departing at death. The property was the life, of which, muscular contraction and nervation were acts. Brown added to the theory " stimulation," all things acting on the vital property acted as an excitant or stimulus. After the time of Paracelsus the hope was excited that because of the great revelations made of the mechanical methods of the universe (Galileo, Kepler and Newton) " that the mechanical principles of the macrocosm would supply the key to all con- tained in the microcosm." Hence followed the material and mechanical theories, with which science is so much infested, the expectation being that they would suffice for explanation. Gilbert struck another path, he came to the conclusion that magnetism was the key to the vital movement,^ but no fruit resulted until Galvani's accidental discovery. The movements he witnessed led him "to divine*^ that they were the resultants of animal electricity, due to the two kinds then known (vitreous and resinous)^ and contained in the jerking limbs, and that the ' Erasmus Darwin calls this tbe spirit of animation. '^ " I do not think the experiments conclusive of Galvani, Volta and others, they show a similitude between the spirit of animation which contracts tbe muscular fibre and the electric fluid. Since the electric fluid may act only as a more potent stimulus, exciting the muscular fibres into action and not supplying them with a new quantity of the spirit of life." (• Zoommia,* i, 83.) ' (tfOO years b.c.) It was known a piece of amber rubbed acquired tbe quality of attracting light bodies. Gilbert showed that glass, resin, wax, &c., possessed the same power. Dufay caused a feather to be repelled by an excited glass tube ** and intended to amuse himself by chasing it round the room with a piece of excited 12 Animal Electricity. Physical and Vital Force. 13 1^ p I ! 1 muscular fibres " were charged during rest as Leyden jars are charged''! and that muscular action was a discharge brought about by an electrical action of the nerve on the muscle. Volta was opposed to Galvani's views, his investigations led to the discovery of the voltaic pile and battery. Galvani continued his researches, Volta held that the contractions of the " galvano- scopic " frog were due to electricity arising from heterogeneous bodies in contact. Humbolt (1779) examined the question and held Volta was wrong in ignoring altogether the influences of animal electricity, and Galvani in recognizing nothing but this influence. Humbolt, although a believer in animal electricity, only rendered the theory highly probable.^ The discovery of the voltaic battery set the subject at rest until 1827, when Nobili detected an electric current in a frog's leg by means of a gal- vanometer he invented, since perfected by Du Bois Reymond, William Thomson and others. Some years later a treatise of Matteucci led Du Bois Reymond to investigate the subject. sealing wax/' but he found the feather was attracted, and he concluded there were two species of electricity, to which he gave the names vitreous and resinous electricity ; they are also called positive and negative. He found them to possess the same general physical properties ; they are self-repulsive, but one is attractive of the other. Early electricians observed the similarity between the phenomena of the electric spark and those of lightning. Franklin, intending to raise a pointed rod by way ol attracting electricity from the clouds, hit on the idea of making a kite of a silk hand- kerchief stretched on a light wooden frame, and attached to it a hempen string terminating in a silk cord, to which he attached a key. During a thunderstorm he raised his kite, but no result was obtained until the string became wetted, when he saw the filaments repelling one another ; on presenting his knuckle to the key he •♦ received an electric spark." Franklin's theory assumes but one fluid, Dufay's two, Faraday has proved that the inductive action takes place in curved lines the direction of which can be varied by the approach of bodies. Radcliffe throughout his treatise distinguishes the forms as Franklinic and Faradaic. 1 The gymnotus will deflect a magnetic needle, will magnetise a steel wire and decompose iodide of potassium. In an intercepted metallic circuit a spark was seen, and the induced spark was also obtained by a coil. The spark of the torpedo passes through conducting bodies, but not through non-conductors. Faraday experi- menting on a gjmnoius found the quantity of electricity passing at each discharge was equal to that of a Leyden battery containing 3500 square inches, charged to its highest degree, and this could be rei>eated two or three times without a sensible interval of time. The discharges were attended by nervous exhaustion. High pressure steam escaping through a narrow jet will produce electric sparks many feet in length, probably due to the friction accompanying the escai)e by the action of mmute drops against the tube. {Vide * Drapers Che/n.^* p. 143.) 2 Erasmus Darwin says, " The alterations of electricity or magnetism do not apply philosophically to the illustration of the contraction of muscular fibres, since the force of those attractions in some i)roportion acts inversely as the distance, but in muscular motions there appears to be no difference in velocity or strength during the beginning or end of the contraction but which may be clearly ascribed 10 the varying mechanic advantage in the approximation of one bone to another, not to that of "cohesion or elasticity." *' VVe must conclude that animal con- traction is governed by laws of its own and not by those of mechanics, chemistry, magnetism, or electricity " (p. 82). *' If nevertheless this theory should ever become established a stimulus must be called an eductor of vital ether } which West of Alford (1832) supposed "that the nervous influence which is pre- sent in relaxed muscular fibre is the only influence which the nerves of volition possess over that tissue, and its office is to restrain or control the tendency to contract, so inherent in the muscle, and that contraction can only take place when by an act of the will the influence is suspended, the muscle being then left to act according to its own innate properties." Again, he says "that nervous influence is imparted to muscular fibre for the purpose of restraining its contraction and that the action of the will and of all other disposers to con- traction is simply to withdraw for a while this influence so as to allow the peculiar property of the muscular fibre to display itself." Bell is reported to have said " that relaxation might be the act, and not contraction, and that physiologists in studying the subject, had too much neglected the consideration of the mode by which relaxation is effected." Later, Duges held " muscular contraction exists only by the annihilation of expansion." C. B. Radcliffe has contributed an important memoir on the subject (' Fital Motion as a mode of Physical Motion '), a scientific and practical application of S. T. Coleridge's idea that electricity was the method of organised function {^ Theory of Life ^)} If from RadclifFe's title the idea is to be gathered that physical motion is the forestaller of vital motion the casual is made the actual. That nature wrorks by the forces (correlated) as her stimulus may consist of sensation or volition as in the electric eel, as well as in the appulses of external bodies ; as the drawing off the charges of vital fluid may occasion the contraction or motions of muscular fibres and organs of sense." (* ZoonomiUy* p. 84, vol. i.) ' Sulzer (early in the 181h century) observed when silver and zinc are placed above and under the tongue, the metallic edges being in contact, a metallic taste is obtained. This is the first record of voltaic electricity. Galvani supposed the convulsions in the limb of a dead skinned frog, when a metallic connection was made between a nerve and muscle, arose from the muscular systems of animals being constantly in a positive elec- trical state, the nervous system being negative. Volta, on the contrary, held that these convulsions were not due to any peculiarity of the animal system, but to the contact of the metals employed. Erasmus Darwin, commenting on these efl'ects (the experiments of Sulzer apparently being unknown to him), says Volta experimented with clean lead and silver, placing one above and one beneath the tongue; on contact of the metals a saline or acidulous taste was perceived, " as if a fluid-like stream of elec- tricity passed from one to the other." Galvani, Fowler and Volta found silver and zinc more effective ; by placing a lozenge of one metal above and the other beneath the tongue, on contact a taste is perceived. If one of the metals be placed between the upper lip and the gum of the fore teeth and their external edges be brought in contact in a darkened room a flash of light is perceived in the eyes, showing " the great sensibility of these organs of sense to the stimulus of the electric fluid " in suddenly passing through them {vide ' ZoonoTfiia,' vol. i, p. 164). If Radcli lie's ably conducted experiments be accepted as proof that muscular action is the result of electric action, it is probable the effect on organs of taste and sight may be due to a similar agency and that electricity plays a greater part in nature's methods than has been heretofore conceived. We can only suppose that the vital |j'C^'^x*''"pl»fies its energy by physical means in its application to the animal economy. Whatever be the physics of the mechanism, they can but be conducted by waste. The vital energy using them as its methods repairs the waste and thus excludes all idea of physical force {per se) being the initiatory impulse. If vital action resulted alone in mechanical motion it might be said that muscular force was phy- sical force J but no physical force reproduces itself. H Vitality and Electricity. Progressive Advancement. 15 ii method is undoubted, hence it follows that the physical fact is a resultant of the vital fact, the universal principle in nature. In nature there is no distinction between the minutest material particle and the most perfect of composite forms, except in the conditions due to the aggregation and disposition of the particles. If the vital motion of man be manifested through electrical agency the same force is effective in the protamceba and even in cells ; the cellular fact is a polar fact, and hence an electrical fact, or its differentiation. The vital fact has formative besides mot'ive functions. The electrical, mechanical, and chemical amalgamations produce objective phenomena ; by the considera- tion of them an insight is given into the working methods of nature. It is more than doubtful, were there no vital principle as a directing agent, whether nature could be. These considera- tions show nothing of the interactions of interior principles. When analyses are made there are no disclosures of vitality, intelli- gence, or consciousness, or even of sensation, or the reason for the cohesion of particle with particle or whence by the interactions of force the differentiations we trace in the infinite variations of phenomena arise. Can we then say we have a knowledge of facts ? or shall we not say the knowledge we have attained is that of our ignorance of the ultimate impulses of nature ? RadclifFe appears to have said all that can be said of physical motion, and has said it well. Accepting all his facts, he nowhere explains what vital motion is ; but it must be conceded he dis- closes a method of its action, viz. that the physical motion of animated life is derived from vital morion and is not a creator of vital motion, and unless his title contains an equivoque it inaptly presents his subject, suggesting the idea that vital motion is. the casual and physical motion the actual. His mode of treatment utterly destroys the assumption of Frankland {supra), ^n6. if the reasonings are adopted it must henceforth be said that vital force is the source of muscular power. He concludes by saying (p. 1 83)— « In point of fact, electricity and elasticity would seem to be everything in vital motion, and vitality nothing. In saying this about electncity, how- ever, I have no wish to elevate that which is physical at the expense of that which is vital. On the contrary, I firmly believe-and with this remark I bring to a close what I have to say upon vital motion in its physiological rela- rions— that which is called electricity is only a one-sided mamtestation ot the workings of a single, central, cosmical law, which, when fully revealed, will be found to rule living and lifeless bodies alike, not by entombing spirit in matter, but by transfiguring and spiritualising matter-a law which without conf\ision of substance binds all things together in the very closest communion— a law which makes the old belief of multeity in unity and unity in multeity a sober fact." There is the same confusion here so obvious in other treatises, the confounding the perceived with the conceived. The method of the work is the perceptive ; the underlying element, inducing the work, the conceptive. When all is said which physical considera- tions can say, we have man (in his two or combined phases of being — the perceptive and conceptive), the thinking presentment of an organic fact. Physicists and chemists work by way of analysis. The philo- sopher accepts the facts and subordinates all to principles, for every object and living form, rightly understood, contains within itself the past history of the world. Organization as a vital fact is the expression of its work, as intelligence is digested thought. Reasonings fairly conducted open up truths whereby seeming facts, long accepted as truths, are overthrown by the slow march of induction. Copernicus prepared the way for Galileo, he for Kepler, and Kepler for Newton. Newton, by the discovery of the laws of gravitation, opened out a vast field for inquiry and gave scope for speculation, out of which eager thinkers constructed a scheme or foundation for Kosmical science. The speculations of Kant and Laplace led to the nebular theory, in the same way as the theory of light and Newton's observation of two lines m the solar spectrum led to the development of the present system of spectral analysis which discloses the elemental compounds of suns and planetary bodies. The minutiae of parts are but the stepping- stones of construction, the underlying energy moulds and fashions, and from heterogeneity produces homogeneity by the imperative force of law. Physics disclose the faculty of being adapted ; the po- tence discerned in physics thus becomes that inner capability we know as vital energy .^ Allow the physicist to construe the theme, and intelligence is but a problem of molecular physics.^ No experiment has yet proved that vital and physical forces are the same. ' The muscle lengthens or swells through vital action.^ If ^ All vital acts are associated muscular facts, as when the arm is extended to a distant object other muscles come into unconscious action in order to preserve the centre of gravitj-. So when threading a netdle, the pectoral muscle is brought into action to preserve the trunk of the body motionless, and for the moment respiration ceases. {Fide ' Zoonomiay' vol. i. p. 59.) ^ " The assertion that the universe is self-existent does not really carry us a step beyond the cognition of its present existence, and so leaves us with a mere restate- ment of its mystery." (* First Principlesy p. 32, Spencer.) ^ Bell, speaking of the muscular action of the eye, says — *'"Wben men deny the fine muscular adaptation of the eye to the sensation on the retina, how do they Hccount lor the obvious fact that the eyeball does move in such just degrees ? How is the one eye adjusted to the other with such marvellous precision ? And how do the eyes move together in pursuit of an object, never failing to accompany it cor- t^ectl)-, be it the flight of a bird, the course of a tennis ball, and even of a bomb-shell. Is it not an irresistible conclusion that H we follow an object, adjusting the muscles -..^M,js»,r„._^^,^^A^S*«»ilJ^53*; -SBS«*ft««*«*™*=-'-' Vitality and Physics, Germs, 17 this lengthening and swelling were mere physical results, why does the innate, or we might say the self-active power cease when the life is withdrawn P^ The materials are present, but their elasticity has passed away. If we collate the facts, what do we find ? Vital force as the inherent fact of all things ; physical or material force but a consequence of the organization. Vital force originates, physical force acts only through an impulsion. Vital force congregates, disintegrates, and multiplies itself; physical force acts only in masses through gravitation. Vital force cannot be originated, nor its issues directed ; but physical force may be directed and called into action at will, and may be made the play- thincT of the hour, as the incitation of muscular elasticity after death. By some it has been said that catalytic action is allied to, if it be not of the same nature as fermentation. Fermentation is the result of a living organism, and its changes are self-multiplica- tion, not due to the mere dissolution or disintegration of the parts. There may be decay without putrefaction, but no putrefaction can occur without the presence of living particles [Pasteur), Cata- lytic forms have no power of self-multiplication^ the living always have. The changes " in the living cells show that life involves more than chemical, mechanical, and catalytic changes, or of the whole together" [BeaUy An organic compound and an organ- ism can be presented in their original constituents ; the first has the capacity of life, i.e. the possibility of being the life bearer ; the last possesses the life fact, afFo-ding proof that the objective presentment of the elements in combination constitutes merely the vehicle through which vitality is manifested. It were better to accept the dogmatism of Theology as the social rule than that of Materialism. The former has at least its check in the communion of belief, the latter has no check ; for it is not to be supposed that the multitude have attained to such of the eye so as to present the axis of vision successively to it as it changes place, we roust ie sensible of these motions ? for how can we direct the muscles unless we be sensible to their action ? And must we not have a conception of the relations ot the muscles and of the position of the axis of the eye betore we can alter its direc tion to fix it on a new object?'' (* ^- '^"^ P'.^^V .u i. * ♦• •. 1 ♦• f 1 Mu««cular fibre ceases to have irritability alter death, but retains its elasticity, as shown in a harp string— a rude stroke and it becomes relaxed and has no energy to regain its former position ; in the living fibre the elasticity is restored by vital action when relaxed by too continued a strain. (Bell, » B. 7V) a "If the vital actions of man's frame were directed by his will, they are neces- sarily so minute and complicated they would immediately fall in confusion." " A tracery of nervous cords unites many organs in sympathy ; if one filament were broken pain, spasm, and suftbcation would ensue." The action of the heart, the circulation of the blood, and all vital functions are governed by laws not dependent on will, and to which the powers of the mind are altogether inadequate. A doubt, a viomenVs pause of irresolution, a fw get fulness of a single action at its appointed time, would terminate life. (Bell, ' Brid. Treat.,' 10.) culture that philosophical dicta would be adopted as the rule of conduct. Buddha is explicit on the point.i Burdon Sanderson and Tyndall, however they may differ in dehnition and explanation, agree in describing germs as inappre- ciable by the highest powers of the microscope, and even 20 so far as to assume them to be atmospheric specks. What conclu- sion can be drawn other than that the germs are not in themselves existing composite forms, but that they are elemental units which by an interaction and in an aggregation cement their life facts pro' ducing their like, as active organizations, or by contact with the juices of an organization producing morbid action. Pasteur bv his series of experiments showed that the infections of the vine and silk worm arose from germs. The processes of Tyndall were directed to the mere question of spontaneous growth, and he claims to have proved there is no such thing by ignoring the processes of nature. The methods he pursued are the same as those of Bastian and others. The later experiments on urea (Bastian) seem to have excited the atten- tion of Pasteur.2 There are no repeated boilings in nature, nor an exclusion of the elements of the protoplasm, which lives only by contact with environments filled with vital energies. The germ whatever it be, is the car of vitality whereon it is trium- phantly borne to consummate its conquests. Nature works in her own mode, and all these experimental distortions of nature's course appear to show that the law of nature is the spontaneous in- rush of life. Creation, or whatever the name most fitting, was accomplished once for all ; the first consolidated mass—jelly spot rr f ™-~co"ta"^ed within itself the vitality which became the life. According to the general theory the Kosmos arose from a for if Jh ^^^^^l !° ^"""^J® '" ^ ^"^"'^^ ^•'■^ »" ^^>cb happiness or misery can be felt • herl h. n ^^'^ ^''^"y ' ^^"''"' ** ^*" «^""^°" «*" «"d act virtuously ; and even f hitThn "\^^\""^^t.on, such a life will bring good name and the regard of many mav ch^,^ h ^^^''"' V^k"^''"/''°" ^} "^^^'^ ^''^ "°^ ^^^ t° ^^^^^ «"> «in that they' a future af^raTr^hl^^ ' n'w "f^i"^ *? " *"*"^^ ' «"^ '^ **^"« ^^^^^^ ^^PP«" ^o be pro:l:^;:""^/Vh:^^^ ^ disadvantage, they will be like traveller's without MiIn'l"Fdw!rH'^"**'*" ""^ ^"-r^'f"'' P'""^^'^ "^^^ proposed. Pasteur, Dumas, and on th;1nv?. fir'" ^^^T^^ f J"^^*^^- Through certain preliminaries insisted ""^ ine investigation was deferred. «re cL'odirnTrf.rTfH 'I' *' '"^«""P«t'ble with scientific analysis, yet physicists "e the i^fv "fhL i""''^ 1^^^ """«^«^ «°«^ »" tb« atmosphere. Of this character in^ to not 'hi f '"^^P^r'*^ g^^rms of Tyndall and Burdon Sanderson. It is amus- «Pontanei tv on f ^"^f'""'-^^ '"''*"*''•" hypotheses which deny on the one hand the anTosihert^vn^^^ ^^'^ °" the other gravely assume invisible niater^r ' ^'"""^ ^t'™'* 1?'=^ ^'^ality pervades air, earth, and water ; the plasma '^ vW in thJ^r^'^'V ^*>""'^ ^'"^^"^^^^ «^^«^ Titalities-a parasiUc life exist^ With the onfir J fr°K ?^- '*"'"^*^' ^"^ P^^"^-' ' "«t «^°"« >" c^^'t'es communicable I lue outer world, but in parts closelj sealed Irom contact with air, as the worms i8 The Flaming Chaos. The Ever-present Life, consolidation of igneous vapour.^ From such a state it is difficult to understand how the life emerged. To adopt the igneous theory, all we know of space, that Vast which glows with orbs filling the arc of the sky, spanning distances represented by num- bers the mind fails to grasp, was once a glowing fiery vapour. If this were the state of the sun and his system, it was that of all other suns and cycles of suns and astral systems, heat in its ex- treme aspect supreme as substance. If the law of combinations be followed, we find the elements existed in a fluid form ; through condensations, aggregations, and cohesions by afl[inities, the germ was developed and the earliest animated forms appeared ; the rocks were the results of the life thus generated. Science teaches, the polype deposits chalk, carbon in precipitation, absorbed from the surrounding fluids. There is also the globegerina ooze. Wyville Thomson was inclined to suppose that the red clay found on the bottom of the ocean resulted from it. The idea was dispelled when the naturalists accompanying the Challenger expedition proved it to be mainly due to decomposed and disin- tegrated pumice, through the action of sea water.- The flints are due to the sponges.^ Infusorial and the early forms of life, in sheep's brains, and the Trichina spiralis invadincc fleshy structure. Pantheists may be excused for assuminfir the universality of life — all the earth, as we know it, is composied of once \W\ns, debris. They erred in supposing si)ontaneity to be the originating cause; but for the ultimate impulse directed by intelligence, the nniver- sal chaos would have stagnated even although interpenetrated by a seething anima- tion. 1 The prevalence of heat as a principle in nature is proved by the ready production of combuje ; some have simple translucent bars, others are like rough flints rendered transparent, others star-shaped with several points. The greater number of them appear as knotted clubs of dif!erent coloured glass. The pumice stone sponge {dactylo chulix) is an agglomerate of spiculae, and 19 even as high as the Crustacea, have swollen the mass of deposits by their remains The great fact of all is that these deposits, in one mode or other are composed of the skeletons, secretions, and excretions of infusoria, and the simplest forms of life. Moun- tains are heaped up by their remains; they face us in every strata where oxydized carbon is the predominant constituent. In the depths of the sea far beneath the influence of the direct rays of the sun, we find the foraminifera, or their remains ; a crawling life, and eyeless creatures ; high on the mountain heights, even ol their most elevated points, the foraminifera and kindred orders meet us Schemes of creation and hypotheses of the advent of life on the earth are many ; we have the theocratic idea of direct manipulation,! and we have the astounding proposition of a dis- tinguished physicist that the precursor of life on the earth was the advent of a lichen concealed in the crevices of a fragment of an exploded world The lichen would have been inoperative unless the fungus had accompanied it. If the life was borne on the fragment of an exploded world, from whence was the life im- parted to the first world coagulated from the igneous fluid ? The only reasonable explanation of the presence of life on this clobe IS that of a vital spontaneity. Science regards with indifl^erence the theory of men developing from apes, and of automatic man and with complacency regards the materialistic theory that from matter we have "all the forms and qualities of life," throueh its own inherent power. Spontaneity, whatever it may mean, was doubtless the fact of creation ; law formulated the fact, and the beginning is the continuing present. In our ignorance of real causes, the hypothesis of spontaneity points to that be- gmniiig of life from which all the facts of science converge ^ finH i° r' ^"P^" f,'/^- '^^ '"^^ ''^^°™^ ^ "nan' but we do hnd the beginnings of life m the organless jelly spot. Law, con- resembles a madrepore rather than a s|.oni?e. It is hard and stiff, as though car»ed Ind iMl'?^ ""^ yet ,0 porous as scarcely to weigh more than a similar bu"k of cork b?i.K '?"'/"'"■"'•'' "f ''''«"• The reticulated structures are transparent eh« tubes, the silex forming the mass itself not being arranged as spicX 5 "^Ts p" fSlv «.d and sonorous vben struck. Sponges are numerous ; myriads of gemZIenl i nio the sea Irom every sponge inhabiting its waters. " So numerouf aTtbev -.nd marvellously prolific, the wonder is that they do not swarm ZsTb an extent "« . The rr""' ""'' "'"*''". ""= ^""'^ ''""' "y "•« odo" of their decavt" Kou.Cw?tri?i!!/"''"Tn'''"'.'u' ft"','»-K«ni^«'- of chaos as a feeble old man (Pan- Mu Lh«) toiling painfully at bis work, carving out the crusts of the riobe l\ the " g'oTmo"?'LU';"' ".""?" ITtt''"" T "' "'^''^- T^" Seandintfans L de «hLP ,,'' '"*'">^ *"'' ™''oubtable, endowed with an invincible eneror who ;nn.^;: ruXi„rattr '-""•'"^ ''- ""-'^ °' ^'^ -""- f-'-/;^- 1^" H»^Tfu"o'rfa tormTnuL'-rHrf Tk*'" ''''• "''"'' 8'"" » "i""' "^ ^«»>^. «"■! i" S lumsoria too minute to display their organizaUon. (Pouchet, FUnivers.) ao Intelligence the Law of Nature. stdered as the ideal of intelligence, is the insisting fact of all nature^ and that which at any time was the result of its action is the con- tinuing fact ^ or all human science and human knowledge becomes a bundle of contradictory absurdities. When formation by se- quential differentiation is considered, the kosmic theory of Kant and its more definite mathematical expression by La Place — viz. that the earth is due to the condensation of igneous vapour, a mass of heterogeneous gaseous substances in a state of violent ignition — appears open to grave doubts. Given heat as a distinct principle from its action we can view the emanation of objective phenomena, and conflagration becomes, as it continues to be, the casual exhibition. It appears improbable that a universal confla- gration ever existed. The hypothesis is that the covering or en- velope of the sun is flaming hydrogen in a state of violent com- bustion, but within it, floats the opaque ball, the true sun which the Herschels, Arago and Figuier supposed to be or might be inhabited. If their ideas be more than hypotheses, the seeming flaming hemisphere, which human ingenuity has found the means of inspecting, will receive another solution. It is impossible to conceive that an igneous mist, a flaming chaos of red hot elements, could ever have been the state of a life-bearing orb. Passing over the question of a primordial element we can say the elemental gases, metals and metalloids, were a mingled chaos permeated by heat, and that through some counteracting power the gases com- bined and the denser portions were precipitated as a fluid. We then get a floating liquid orb with no solid in its sphere, surrounded by a gaseous envelope of mingled elements which eventually suc- cumbed to vital energy.^ Protoplasmic elements cohered and jelly specks floated amid this partly condensed fluid sphere, and congregated in millions and multiplied in myriads of millions -f ^ " Everywhere throughout our planet we notice the tendency of the ultimate particles of matter to run into symmetric forms and that the very molecules are instinct with a desire for union and growth.'' — Tyndall at Manchester, ** With each new implement (mechanical structure) visible externally, there are a thousand internal relations established ; a mechanical contrivance in the bones and joints which alters every part of the skeleton ; an arrangement of muscles in just correspondence ; a new and appropriate texture of nervous filaments which is laid intermediate between the instrument and the very centre of life and motion ; and finally new sources of activity must be created in relation to the new organ otherwise the part will hang a useless appendage." — Bell^ Brid. Treat., 148. 2 *< ijo rapid is the progression of infusorial life — Ehrenberg calculated one of these invisible creatures, of :i3Vot*^ ^^ ^n '"ch in extent, became in twenty-four hours (by fission) a million, and \x\ four days one hundred and forty billions, a bulk nearly equal to two cubic feet; if the four days were multiplied by the eras of geology masses are disclosed which would construct thousands of worlds. Rechua showed that the mud of the harbour of Weimar (composed of half or a third of existing species) accumulates so immensely that in a century they probai)ly will The Hypothetical Kosmos. by secretions from their environments and from dead carcases, mhnitesimal m size, masses were formed which would obey the law of motion mcidental to inanimate substances collecting in a body by mutual attractions^ and by the action of the correlated forces cohesion would be manifested in the mass. Time being of no account m the tremendous impulse, the heterogeneous became the homogeneous, chaos became order. The mass, heat impreg- nated would difplay unequal distensions and chemical contentions, whereby swellmgs and eruptions would ensue ; the coao^ulated and aggregated mass would assume all shapes compatibk with that of a revolving sphere, and from the heat generated, protru- sions, hollows, and fractures would arise, which the waters would fill and form oceans and rivers, and interior forces would be initiated such as the earth experiences. Were it not for those forces, instead of the successions of heights and hollows, there would be a smooth water-washed surface which the ebb tide would leave bare and the flood submerge. In such a state, life in Its multifarious variety and in its active manifestation would be but sparingly exhibited. Following the phases of the geological eras m the deposition of strata, the simplest life-facts are first presented, and as the environments become ameliorated so the life presents itself in a higher form. Every departure from the chaotic admixture presents the life-facts lit up by a new energy. Dif- ferentiations and the admixture of elemental substances would account for the composition of the various rocks, and the infinite represent a million cubic yards. On the heaths of Luneburg there are beds of these accumulations ot large extent, forty feet in thickness. In America such beds are lo^nd twenty leet thick. Berlin is built on such a bed. The tiipolis (siliceous rocks) are almost exclusively skeletons of Dacellaria, MullioLz are heaped as mountains of limestone. Numtnelites form the chain of mountains which extend along the Nile. The sphinx and pyramids are formed of them. The edible dust lound in many parts contains numberless species of infusoria (Retzius). The life in the early geological eras leaves everywhere its mark on the strata. The calmness of Ihe sea was coequal with the fecundity. There are deposits of shells which show no mark of erosion, retaining their delicate projections and almost imperceptible stria and still glowing with colour. Again, there are deposits crushed and broken precipitated into a tumultuous sea and then elevated. MoUusks are piled in masses deep in the strata and upreared as mountains. Shells, corals, animalcule, or their remains, everywhere abound. Mountains of chalk are the debris of sponges and invisible foraminilera, encircling England, abounding on the Volga, in the north of !• ranee, Denmark, Sweden, Greece, Sicily, Arabia, &c. The strata of the earth capable of inspection are found to be composed of once living things and the ground- worn particles ot the plutonic rocks, and from which all marks of life are erased. Look Where we will it is life or its remains ! " 2 Maury in proof of his hypothesis of the collection of the weed in the sea of oaragossa says: '* if we throw into a vessel of water pieces of cork, grain, or any other floating bodies and communicate a rotary movement to the water, all these |»ght bodies will collect towards the centre because the water is less agitated there loan elsewhere.*' 22 The Alternative. The Unseen World. 23 variations of their admixtures. This hypothesis presents a picture more in accordance with scientific advance than that which a flaming incandescence presents. Fontenelle insisted intellect should be solely occupied with facts out of which grow all philosophy as a subject capable of universal application ; we may say all we know of objective forms is com- prised in three grand generalizations— Malpighi's littles, Grove s correlation^ (transmutations) of forces, and Darwin's evolution (developement). All substances are particled, and when acted on by forces, they develope into masses ; this is the method of Nature ; its continuity, due to recuperative energy. It is more consistent with the revealed facts that animation arose from an unbounded vitality, which energized as it produced, than to sup- pose all we know of animated nature are condensations from a fire mist. Conflagration produces but incandescence, a disintegration of masses ending in a gaseous exhalation ; the greater the heat the wider the interstices between particle and particle, and as space is an expanse, there could be no hounding lines. In infusorial life we have an invisible world, as mighty and grand as that of the seen. 2 Such a history announced before the application of the microscope would have been considered as the dream of lunacy. The discoveries of science are but percep- tive infinitesimals, worthless without intelligence as an interpreter. Science has growth 5 nothing in it is final.^ Pythagorus, hun- 1 If the true emphasis were given by science to this theory, we should miss much of the erudition v;e meet with to account for the changes of chmate in the early ffeoloffical eras, as changing polar positions, inversions ol the eqninox, oscillations, a cooling earth and sun, viscosity of the earth, &c. ea (Forskal). Bolta says the Sandwich Islanders use them for the same purposes. Our palaces, monuments, and statues are the carcases of animals which played heir part in life in aeons of geological eras. Whatever our habitations, whether limber or brick, all are composed of once-living forms. 24 The Method of Creation. assumptions of Huxley and Haeckel will never be realized until we go behind perception. With that only as our working fact, we have as an axiom '' ignoramus ignorabimus ;'* when we pierce the ideal and the scientifically unknown we may say, '' We know, and we shall know."^ Through the minute and invisible, through an unceasing vitality, with its adjunct — heat, earth assumed its form. Heat, expressed as animation, is soothing and developing ; as electric action, condensing and changing ; in excess destroying and re-fortn- ins:. Thus we miorht run the round of all the correlated forces. When we have thought all we can think, and proved all we can prove, we have alone spontaneity through the impress of law. We may formulate theories, and when all is done we arrive at Hume's probable possible. Whether we test the air, the waters, or the rocks, we find life or its remains, giving significance to Shelley's idea, "that every grain of dust was once indued with life."^ The hypothesis cursorily sketched may reconcile catastrophism, uniformitarianism, and evolutionism, or may be claimed by either or by all. Over it the theologian and materialist might shake hands ; for on the one hand it may be said that the earth emerged from the chaos of darkness by the fiat of an Almighty and Intelli- gent Will, and life became its fact by the institution of Law. And on the other hand that this was accomplished by the direct ordina- tion of mechanics and chemistry as the method of nature through vital evolution. Of Deity we can have no exact knowledge ; we see in nature ' Pouchet says, " I never see one of these gic^antic sponges (Neptuue's Cup) with out humbling myself before the wisdom of Providence. This monumental struc- ture is erected solely by myriads of polypi, fragile creatures shrunk within their holes to plunge their imperceptible arms into the waves. And who directs and guides the in- visible hands of these polypi, separated from one another and often a yard apart, so aa to give their works such harmonious symmetry? Who, when the narrow stalk is finished, tells its population that from henceforth they must widen it? Who tells them when the time is come lor hollowing the vase, and when it is the season for thinning its edges and adorning the exterior with elegant ribs? And, lastly, what supreme inspiration teaches a multitude of workmen, so scattered, and all caged in their little cells, that they mould the cup in all its artistic proportions" (L'Univers). •* This magnificent construction is the noblest challenge one can offer to the schools of materialism. Do physico-chemical sciences explain how these animals commu- nicate with each other so as to finish their common habitation, for it is absolutely necessary that all should be governed by one dominant idea " {Ibid.). The same idea may be extended to the germs of which all animal forms are composed. ' The flashing phosphorescence on the surface of the ocean is due to minute crea- tures. The miliary noctiluca, a tiny jelly speck, with numerous points and fililorm appendages, plays a great part, as also the medusa: or ihe physophoray trailing tresses spangled with stars like those of Berenice. Midden found the blood-showers and red snow were due to twenty species of animalculae and as many microscopic plants. Humbolt says that each bed of ocean is peopled with animalculae to depths exceeding the highest mountains. The Unseen. 2i working intelligence coextensive with phenomena, and find thereby an active interposition resulting in homogeneous order. Call this law or aught else, it is individualised in its facts. Whatever it may be, we can neither add to nor diminish the reality. This Intelligence must count for something in the order of nature ; if for something, then for all things.^ The dread of the unseen found with uncultured races and the idolatry of the cultured enthusiast has its origin in the same root. The solution of philosophical ideals and the extremes of theological dicta are found in that inherent sentiment common to the races of man, the sense of an existence without and beyond us — the presence of a life beyond the life we live. The first man who regarded the sun as the ruling principle of nature gave being to the intellectual sentiment expressed as religion.^ The ampli- fication of the idea is found in the theologies of civilization, in fact there is but little distinction between the fetish and ^ In the Vedic poems, of Chaos, cr the beginning, we read, *' Nothing that is was then, even what is not did not exist then, what was it that hid, or covered the existing? What was the refuge of what? Was water the deep abyss, the chaos which swallowed up everything ? There was no death, nothing immortal. There was no space, no life, and lastly no time. No solar touch by which the morning might be told from the evening. That one breathed, breathless by itself ; other than it, nothing has since been. That one breathed and lived; it enjoyed more than mere existence ; yet its life was not dependent upon itself as our life depends on the air we breathe. It breathed, breathless. Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled in gloom profound as ocean." {Hist. Sans., lit, Max Mulier.) In the Vedas there are other grand expositions of thought which may have afforded the nucleus of myths and theisms. As a pervading idea, " there is the expression of one supreme being in all and above all." — (^Tatboys fVheelcr.) * Dupuis (• Oriijine des Cultes') held the hypothesis that all religious belief arose from the worship of the elements. *' Light and darkness, its perpetual contrast ; the snccession of days and nights, the periodical order of the seasons; the career of the brilliant luminary which regulates their course ; that of the moon his sister and rival ; night and the innumerable fires which she lights in the blue vault of heaven ^ the revolution of the stars which exhibits them for a longer or shorter period above our horizon ; the constancy of this period in the fixed stars and planets ; their direct and retrograde course ; their momentary rest ; the phases of the moon waxing, full, waning, divested of all light; the progressive motion of the sun upwards, down- wards ; the successive order of the rising and setting of the fixed stars which mark the different points of the course of the sun, whilst the diff'erent aspects which the earth daily assumes mark here below also the same periods of the sun's annual motion.. ..All these different pictures displayed before the eyes of man, form the great and magnificent spectacle by which I suppose him to be surrounded at the moment when he is abo?it to create his gods.*' Hume says, "The first ideas of religion arose not from a contemplation of the works of nature, but from a concern with regard to the events of life, and from incessant hopes and fears which actuate the human mind" (^Nat. Hist. Hei.y p. 13.) It was the conviction of something divine which gave permanence to the mythic gods. •* The early thinker necessarily invested all external objects with properties and qualities similar to those he assigned to human beings, and these actions he assigned to human motives. Sun, moon, and stars seemed living beings ; flames, streams, and winds were supposed to be moved by feelings such as those known to move animals and men.'' — Phiios.o/ Mind, p. 307. 16 Religious Reformers. relic, or between the rude stone of sacrifice and the gorgeously decked altar. ^ The act of reverence in the bended knee and the utterance of prayer were sympathetic expressions of human sentiment originat- ing from the ideal conception of an unseen power, and thus becom- ing the intellectual communion of affinity — spirit seeking spirit. So true the conception, man universally adopted it. The bended knee is the symbol of dependence and propitiation. 'Wt\\\{Moise et le Talmud) says " in the Mosaic law there was no idea of prayer, intercession, or pardon." This conclusion appears to receive coun- tenance from Luke xi^ i, where one of the disciples said to Jesus, '' Teach us to pray." He gave the form, in which there is not a single supplication for spiritual blessing or for salvation. All the great religious reformers appear to have been impressed by the idea that they were expressly selected by God for the office, and assert that they were either in direct communion with Deity or subjected to such an influx that the system they promulgated was the direct announcement of the will of God. Buddha assumed to have achieved the position of Deity by means of his austerities. The followers of Jesus Christ assert that he was the Son of God, and co-equal with God.- He embodied a great philosophy — when he proclaimed the Sonship of man and the Fatherhood of God. Whether he said he was the Son of God in any other sense than that all men are the sons of God is a subject of controversy. By proclaiming the Sonship of man and the common Fatherhood of God he showed the intellectual kinship of man. Buddha, taught that all creatures were entitled to the consideration of man ; that cruelty to them was a crime against the divine nature, and subjected the perpetrators to a metempsychosis wherein they would experience a thousand-fold the cruelties they had inflicted. He inculcated purity of thought and act, and the denial of the amenities of life as the means of attaining to Nirvana. He imperatively stamped his sincerity by abandoning an august posi- tion, and becoming a wandering fakeer. The new thought in- culcated by Jesus was the kinship of man ; by Moses the institu- tion of the Sabbath ; by Zoroaster, the immortality of the soul ; by Mohammed, the continuation in a life to come of sensory 1 "The garlands which adorn a martjT's tomb cannot thrill with pleasure the decaying corpse within/' They may serve as beacons to the living, or as incl- tations to an idealism which presupposes that all acts of life but subserve the life to come and that an eternity of pleasurable bliss is concentrated in the con- templation of ineftable Deity, and lead to a faith built on a code whereby the selfishness of the human is merged in the enjoyment of the divine. When all is said we have but the fetish as an appreciation of the unseen. ■^ Indra deposed Dyaus, Jupiter Chronos, Jesus Jehovah. Theological Systems, 27 pleasures. In the parable of Lazarus and Dives the sensory fact of pain in the life to come is delineated. If there be pain, it is probable there will be the sensory fact of pleasure — the more agree- able doctrine ; yet this is pointed to as a fatal blot in the Mo- hammedan creed. If the life to come be of pure intelligence or spirit, it is difficult to conceive the presence of the senses as we understand their action. The moral precept of duty. Do unto others as you would they should do unto you, is the inculcation of all the teachers. Its earliest expression, as an axiom of conduct, is found in the writings of Confucius. The teaching of modern spiritualism is, that in the future the spirit will be instructed until the utmost knowledge and the utmost purity is attained ; as then only the spirit can endure and enjoy the presence of Deity.^ Systems of theologies are really philoso- phies suited to the mental conditions of the period of their insti- tution, and are usually tainted with the sense expression of the nation wherein they are promulgated. Thus, among the Jews there was the deification of slaughter, assumed to be the attribute of the God whom the people were bound to adore. With such an example, it should excite no wonder that the miserable fetish which at any time fanaticism can rear should engulf all patriotism or humane ideas. Of all the horrors with which man has cursed the world, foremost are religious W2ixs, The darkest pages of his- tory are those which depict the strife of creeds, always due to a selfish rapacity under the guise of the service of God : " God on the lip, but in the heart The gainful hope alone has part." The history of theologies presents the curious fact that none of the religious reformers have left a written thesis of their faith, if Mohammed be excepted (he could neither read nor write) and if the Leke, or book of rites, be doubted, it is so with the moral teachings of Confucius. The preservation of his philosophy, * Clark, Bishop of Rhode Island, prior to his elevation to that dignity (1850), preacbed the following as the creed of the Christian faith. Speaking of the condi- tions of our future existence, he said, in substance : 1st. Provision will be made '* for the culture and exercise of all intellectual and moral faculties. Heaven will not be a monotony. There will be full scope for development. Nothing we here learn will be lost," no elevated taste cultivated in vain, no healthy afteclion wither under the touch of death," &c., &c. 2nd. To the righteous the future will be a constant and unending progress, and will operate under greatly improved conditions. ** We shall never reach a point where we shall stop and make no further advance j lor there would then be an eternity before us without occupation." Finally, '* Our luture destiny will be in precise accordance to our deserts and characters: we shall reap what we have sown. We shall begin our life hereafter as we close it here. There is no such thing as separating the man from the character, and there is no such thing as separating the character from the destiny," 28 'Ihe Error of Theologies. then, is due to the memory of his followers. Five times his works were destroyed, but were restored by tradition.^ Strictly, he was a moral reformer, and avoided all discussion on death or a future state ; even on his death-bed, although repeatedly urged, he gave no decisive sign of his opinion ; but, withal, the national mind adheres to him. How, when the transmission of the doc- trines depends on traditions, are we to be assured we have the words, or even the sentiments of the reformers ? We know that all enthusiasts amplify when they relate the acts of the founders of their faith or the tenets upon which their faith is founded ; and the more they are absorbed in the doctrines they profess, the more they intensify their imaginings. All the creeds abound, viewing them as intellectual abstractions, with impossibilities, resulting in the substitution of the finityof the human mind for the infinitude of the primordial cause. The diversity of opinion shown in the various creedal expressions, should teach forbearance towards the beliefs of others, and when so-called inspired writings are in ques- tion the canon of criticism adopted should be applicable to all of them. The mistake in theologies lies in ignoring the instincts or physical nature of man, and substituting an ordeal by which the natural is to be suppressed.>{^They all start with the idea that death, dis- ease, pain, and misery are the results of sin. Death is merely organic change, whilst disease and pain are the results of inherited and individual abuse of natural law ; misery, the effects of conven- tional disparity or the neglect of social ordinances. To the theo- ogical reformer nature is vile, and all natural desires sin ; salva- tion — the eternal good — only to be attained by a suppression of the impulses of sensation ; hunger a weakness to be com- bated ; maternal affection to be ignored ; love a snare which hurls its indulgers into perdition, hence celibacy is enforced ; to enjoy nature is to enter the region of everlasting death, and thereby the reality of nature is transformed into a purgatory of denial, making being but a foretaste of the fabled hell ; inbreeding a habit to which no torture can come amiss. And through the system enjoined by strict theological rules we have the nun, the monk, the fakeer, the Buddhist devotee and Bonze — all examples of ecclesiastical rule, and all failures, or history has given a dis- torted picture. The religion of nature is the religion of percep- tion and the use of natural gifts ; the religion of the sentiment, ^ Cambyses destroyed the statue of Memnon ; Lepsius defaced many of the monu- ments by taking away their inscription3 for the museum at Berlin. The tradition among the Fellahs of Upper Ecr^pt is that Lep.sius destroyed the statue. Such is tradition! (Beke's Memoirs of 6inai.) Religion and Idolism, 29 conception, the merging the real in the ideal, intelligence into its ultimate. In this combination is found the true phase of religion, an appreciation of nature and her gifts, and a recognition of the spiritual merging in a supposed cognition of the unseen, an interweaving of the natural with the intellectual, culminating in the divine. Theology subverts nature and disregards her facts. Religion recognises the supremacy of nature in organized man, and in intellectual man discerns a reflex of the unseen, for it is through the homogeneity of the intelligence seen in nature that man con- ceives the being of God.^ The impossible can never become the probable ; by no intellectual effort can the attributes of Deity be depicted. It is possible to imagine what they are not, but this is far from knowing what they are. Every system of theology possesses the miraculous, and the evidences of thaumaturgy are analogous. If, then, the miraculous be the test of a system, how is discrimination to be made between the rival claims when the evidences each adduces are similar in character ? The great difficulty is that the marvellous always developes into the in- credible. The commencement is simplicity and truth ; the pris- tine type becomes lowered, priestcraft enters ; and the vulgar crowd heralds its own idolism. The Egyptian mob clamoured for their goddess Isis, and the devout Cyril developed the worship of '•the mother of God'' {Gibbon), The pageant becomes the power of the priest, and when political aspirations are ingrafted the power is cemented, the hierarch is evolved, the liberty of thought and conscience endangered, and persecution sustains the dominant faction. If an appeal be made to science the difficulty is increased, for God is " unthinkable ;'' unfathomable he may be, but the thought of God is the intellectual fact of the vast majority of cultured men, an idea always indefinite, yet always recurring, because the effort is always being made to make the indefinite the definite. According to science there is no God, for if He be a fact, the fact is inaccessible to reason, so, as a substitute Matter in its molecular aspect is presented. In "the potcnce of matter" are "all the forms and qualities of life." The potence of a thing is the possi- bility to become by its own inherent power. What is the potence of matter but the capability of being moved ? — a some- thing superadded to its mass. Forces act on matter 3 it has never * '• We fan the imagination and labour to comprehend the immensitj' of creation, and fall back with the impression of the littleness of all belonging to us ; our hves ceeni but a point of time compared with the astronomical and geological periods, and we ourselves as atoms driven about amid the unceasing changes of ihe material World.'' (^Drid. Treat., Bell, p. 228.) ^ \ 30 The Potence. The Reductio ad Absurdum. 3? been proved that matter generates the force which moves it. When the potence of intellect is spoken of, we face a something which, by an innate faculty, is capable of becoming — as the mind of a child or of a savage, by culture developes into intelligence. Matter has the capability of being moulded and changed ; heap matter on matter we get but weight ; a fact of gravity, in this matter has no part. Matter acted on by forces produces pheno- mena resulting in form ; form is no product of matter. The motion of matter, if it exists, arises from the polarization of its particles. The polar fact is a condition of heat, an undulation of ultimate particles, or as it is termed vibration.^ A picture is the effect of colours, but we cannot say there is a potence in colour to produce a picture ; yet without colour there could be no picture. The capability of being moulded and developed and the capability to produce are logical, and fact distinctions. Matter thus becomes the objective presentment of a primordial principle ; molecular energy (this panacea for our real ignorance of what are the real facts of motive power) is the action of a something by which motion is induced in the mass, thus motion is an effect ; not a cause. This potence of matter is the basis of the materialistic faith, reduced into definite phases ; we have a vibratory result real- ized in an unconscious insubstantiality ; add intellect to colour and the picture is formed ; add intellect to matter and we have Nature. Bence Jones says, " We are just ceasing to regard the nervous force as the origin of all power in the body. We have ceased to look on the human machine as the creator of vital force." It is obvious that vital force holds the organism together, and is the energy through which its motions are directed, therefore " the human machine '* cannot create " the vital force." To regard the " nervous force " as the originator ^ " The doctrine of Tibrations ... is quite at variance with anatomy.'' '*It requires, we should imagine, the existence of an ether, and that this fluid shall have laws unlike any other of which we have experience. It supposes a nervous fluid and tubes or fibres in the nerve to receive and convey these vibrations. It supposes every- where mo^io« as the sole means of propagatinf^ sensation." (Bell, ^ Brid. T.,' p. 176.) " Nor can 1 be satisfied with the statement that light and colours result from vibrations which varj' from four hundred and fifty-eight millions to seven hundred and twenty-seven millions of millions in a second, when I find that a fine needle pricking the retina will produce brilliant light, and that the pressure of the finger on the ball of the eye will give rise to all the colours of the rainbow." (U. 177.) •* The disturbance of the extremity of a nerve, the vibrations upon it, or the image painted upon its surface, cannot be transmitted to the brain according to any physical laws that we are acquainted with. The impression on the nerve can have no resemblance to the ideas suggested to the mind. All we can say is — that the agitations of the nerves of the outward senses are the signals which the Author of Nature has made the means of correspondence with the realities." (Bell, * B, T,/ p. 172.) of all the forces in the body is simply to ignore the fact of vitality. We do not say the conduit is the originator of the water which flows in its cavity, or of the properties concentrated in the water. " The human machine " is an aggregate of dissimilar particles held in cohesion by vital action, the nervous system, is but the conducting wires by which the life energy is presented throughout " the human machine," for a nerve fibre may be compared to a bundle of wires, each having its battery con- nected with it."' Those who teach that the nervous force originates all the forces in the organism, and that " the human machine is the creator of vital force, sin equally against true induction, as those do who assert that the molecular changes in the brain produce consciousness and intellect. Science cannot account for the origin of matter, or say what or whence it is ; then the attempt to account for life and mind as arising from a something — of the reality of which nothing is known — becomes a reductio ad absurdum. Abstruse theories have been built on sensation, yet there is the widest difference of opinion concerning the changes which occur even when a simple nerve is put in motion^. Sterling says the sensationalists, " shut up in the mysticism of an unexplained and unintelligible chaos of sense, throw all into the unknown and dwell in a dogmatism, an obscuration and an intolerance pecu- liar to themselves." Snow tells us '' Irritability involves sentience, sentience involves consciousness and self-consciousness, and these involve omniscience." If this be true, every organic irritation involves omniscience, when probably we are not sentient of its cause, or when it will cease, ergo irritation creates every possibility of knowledge \^ But this is scarcely more wonderful than, as we are told, " sheep is transubstantiated into man," or that " man is a sensible automaton." Strauss says " that we must not ascribe one part of the function of our being to a physical, and the other to a spiritual cause, but all of them to one and the same, which may be viewed in either ^ '* The beauty and perfection of the system (nervous) is that each nerve is made susceptible to its peculiar impression only." '« The nerve of vision is as insensible to touch as the nerve of touch is to light." (Bell, Bri. Treat., p. 152, lo3.) 2 The senses of touch and hearing acquaint us with the mechanical impact and vibration of bodies ; those of smell and taste seem to acquaint us with some of these chemical properties, while the senses of vision and of heat acquaint us with the existence of their peculiar fluids. (* Zoonomia,* vol. i, p. 69.) Ever}' gland of the body appears to be indued with a kind of taste by which it selects or forms each its peculiar fluid ... . and by which it is initiated into activity. (' Zoonomia,' vol. i, p. 68.) ' " Our senses are not given us to discover the essences of things, but to acquaint us with the means of preserving our existence. " (< Maiebranche,' 1. i, c. v.) / 32 High Science, Sun Theory. 33 lit aspect." That there are physical and chemical phenomena con- sequent upon the vital principle, and that there are intellectual impulses in which the physico-chemical has no part, is apparent to everyone who thinks— the aspects are distinct. He appears to have satisfied himself "that no one who has a clear kosmical con- ception, in harmony with the scientific facts of the time, can, if he be honest and upright, believe in a personal God, and must confess that he is not a Christian." What is "a clear kosmical conception"? Can we be sure that any kosmical hypothesis is true, or so positively delineated that it is a fact of evidence ? We know, all substances are resolvable into gases, but we never see them subsisting as flaming elements. We find contact elicits heat, and sometimes combustion, resulting in changed forms. If the primordial or kosmic chaos, as pronounced, be an igneous vapour, whence was that we term matter ? Whence were the forces we know per- meate it ? Whence was the life which renders it animate ? Whence was the intellect which governs and fashions ? We may Indulge in kosmical hypotheses, but we are entirely without those evidences necessary to substantiate them as facts. How then, can there be " a clear kosmical conception " in " harmony with the scientific facts of the time," when in no system are there agreed data as to the primordial element, or its cause ? There is^ no final science, so there can be no '^ clear kosmical conception." If there were, a man who had this " clear kosmical conception," could account for all origins and facts. As high science, illustrative of the teaching of the time, we have : " Molecular energy determines the form which the solar energy will assume. In the one case this energy is so conditioned by its atomic machinery as to result in the formation of a cabbage ; in another case it is so conditioned as to result in the form of an oak. So also as regards the union of the carbon and oxygen • the form of this union is determined by the molecular machmery through which the combining force acts i in the one case it may result m the formation of a man, in the other it may result in the formation of a grass- hopper.'' (Heat, a * Mode of Motion:) The molecular energy of earth substances controls the energy of the sun, producing a cabbage or an oak, a grasshopper or a man 1^ Is argument needed ? So we are informed, ''the sun forms muscle and builds the brain," so, possibly, it does wind- mills and weathercocks. There is equal evidence for either pro- position. Is it by such utterances we are to arrive at " a true kosmical conception ?" 1 There is in the true man of science, a wish stronirer than the wish to have his beliefs upheld, namely, the wish to have them true, which •' causes him to reject the most plausible support if he has reason to suspect that it is vitiated by error {' Belfast Ad.,' ^.^Q). The sun may be the energizer of the world, for the motes m space — the suns and systems — are like nerve centres transfusing and transmitting the energy with which they are stored, and equalizing, by a recuperating power, the energy used in work. In this sense only can the sun be considered as the storehouse of energy (heat), centralized as to his system, and possibly the mediate factor, through magnetic action, of the changes we know in phenomena, but to other systems he is relative as a part of the great astral cycle. By the necessity of the molecular theory heat is transfused into motion, hence heat is known as vibration. If the suns of the universe have flaming photospheres, or even if that we deem ignited gas is only a magnetic action, then heat is the motor principle, spread as a jelly-like stuff from the centre to the circumference of the universe. These suns and systems are but the active workers, the way-houses of transmission, by which the slightest particle is governed, and the zones of suns made to oscillate in unison. Whether .heat be a principle or the merest vibration, it is the pulsation from the great core where the afferent and efferent streams of force mingle.^ What the brain is to the nervous system, the great central nucleus is to the uni- verse. Heat, in an active or passive form, pervades it ; where space is, heat is. To the presence of heat we owe all objective manifestations. As to wasted heat and degraded energy, the phrases should be erased. Tolver Preston, with reason, says : " The conclusion would seem warranted and necessary that work . . . must take place widely in nature, and thus part of the store of energy accumulated in materials on the earth's surface by the sun is made to fulfil a useful end, instead of being uselessly dissipated in space." (' Nature^ v. 17, p. 204.) Huxley, also, in his masterly address, delivered before the Geological Society (1869), demolished the theory of Thomson and Tait based on the degradation of energy hypothesis. Strauss asks : "Who, &c., can represent to himself a deity enthroned in heaven ? " Has not the ancient personal God " been dispos- sessed of his habitation," " by the revelations of physical science V Heaven is a conventional phrase. Heaven would be everywhere, if man would permit. The heaven of the kosmos may neverthe- less exist as the centralizing power. The heaven of Confucius was comprehensive as his idea of God. Whatever may be the denials of an unhesitating materialism as to the existence of the cause, to reason, it is apparent. Haeckel admits a cause, how- ^ Sensation and volition are movements of the sensorium in contrary directions. Volition begins at the central parts, and proceeds to the extremities, and sensation begins at the extremities and proceeds to the central parts (' Zoonomia: vol. i, P' ' 1). 34 Cause and Effect. Personality of God. M w ever he qualifies it. But with all these denials, law is admitted. And what is the law but that concentration of an energy intel- lectually directed which makes the homogeneity of nature possi- ble ? We are told all things are the consequences of law, but that law is a material consequent ; it is very like saying the law makes the thing, and then the thing makes the law. Hume says causation is an invariable antecedence, i,e, "we call that a cause which invariably precedes ; that an effect which invariably succeeds.''^ An effect is not always the result of a preceding effect, as day and night proceeding from a cause not apparent, the rotation of the earth. We trace effects backwards until we find no preceding mechanical or chemical effect. This we name the cause. Cause and force arrived at, force becomes the acting fact of the cause ; electricity, magnetism, &$:., we know as working powers in nature.^ The primordial force of phenomena is heat ; this accepted, all forces would proceed as conditions of the primal force. No motion ensues without heat being evolved, but no motion can ensue unless heat (static or dyna- mic) be existing. When bars of antimony and bismuth are in con- tact, an electric action results ; unite the extremities by a fine platinum wire, and it glows with heat. This shows that the heat latent in the bars has become active. Heat and electricity are correlated— possibly the same force exhibited in different aspects, the cause of which will probably remain a secret. As a principle, heat is universal : we cannot say the same of electricity, unless it be affirmed that polarization is a resulting fact of electricity, for all substances in their particles are said to be polar. When we meet with the universal as a motor fact, it is a power in nature. Grove has established the correlation of " heat, light, electricity, magnetism, chemical affinity, and motion." Before the display of any of these effects, heat must be existing as a specific power, 1 Conventionally, cause is succeeded by effects, and all effects preceded by a cause. Science talks of the precession of causes, of factors and facts. In rigid reason effects succeed eflects in endless successions, springing from one essential cause. In the things ol our knowledge, the sequent has its antecedent, and each antecedent springs from an effect. We trace the line backward until we pause, finding it im- possible in reason to go beyond an origination, to which there appears to be no antecedent. Call it what we may, Cause, Creator, God, we arrive at a lact which, perforce, we name the uncaused cause ; thus we arrive at a succession of effects originating from that of which we can conceive no beyond— in itself capable and concentering in itself all effects, because they result from a single impulse. » <• I have long held an opinion almost amounting to conviction, in common, I be- lieve, with other lovers of natural knowledge, that the various forms under which the force's of matter are made manifest have one common origin, or, in other words, are so directly related and mutually dependent that they are convertible, us it were, one into another, and possess equivaleuce of power in their action " (Faraday). Grove has verified the idea. 3S principle, all forms of power then become conditions of heat ;> methods through which it acts [vide supra, note 3 p c ) ' ' ' heJl A '° '^ u'"f '^' personality of God, no^JLcs can be adduced on which such a fact could be foJnded. Whatever M^TtI"^ fact of nature, it is centralized, hence nl vidualized. The onward induction does not appear difficult Rv ilZtf "TI"^ *'!Ptematically pull to pieces, sureTyateafr knowledge would be requ.red to construct, and this c'onstructiv^ fact general consent terms omniscience. The admission of omnf rrr.";*' """^ vy ^^^ ^^^ ^^misslon ofTp rsonificatTo,^' for the halt cannot he made in the exemplificatL of a S creative power ; there must also be a maintaining power 1 Strauss avowed h,s materialism, an honester procedure than leading to the same conclusions by ensnaring subtleties A Lions sSturaraf •'" "TT''^ ^ible " and^ lecture abonTin scriptural allusions which, according to the bias of the lecturer may be irony or faith, and an eulogy be written on the Se which might gracefully come from the pen of a theologiln but a 1 this in no way alters the tendency of the teaching Skers judge by the written and spoken themes. Huxley Ibiected to Stirling s critique on «' the physical basis of life." ^Of the rele concT ; k' ""'^'' ''''^ "" J^'ig^ (^'■'^ Yeast) ; bu when he concludes by saying-" one great object of my essay wasTshow ha what IS called materialism has no sound philoso^pS basis" there seems somehow to be a confusion of ideas. There c^ be no doubt that the tendency of the scientific teaching of the time IS to relegate all phenomena to matter as the creat^e fact 7uJ T""' ^ '"''"If^' '' '■" ^° ■■"Wreciable in quan ty-of quality there IS none-that it becomes but a waiting purpose of which «. estimate is to be taken. Strauss says, "ThecTmDre hensive Kosmos » or all « is the sum total of in^finite worldsTn ^] tages of growth and decay" and eternally unchanged a regards theconstancy of absolute energy amid the everlasting revolK of the mutation of things." Despite all the pronfunced and authoritative dogmas-with all their unthinkables, unfathomables and imposs.bles-man intellectually seeks for, thinks for, and en deavours by a mental analysis, or by an inte lectual synthesis ?o account satisfactorily, at least to himself, for the caCe oT'the l«ratio„, of pWpo^e and p Ji^oD.'J-^^wi,^ ^^^ ^^ iT'*"""^ ""'"'"• °^ ""- 36 The Bathyhius. effect. Hume says " The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intel- ligent author '* [Introd, Nat. Hist, Rei) Theologians present God as the cause or creative fact ; had they paused there, the position would have been unassailable, but ultra propositions have weakened the position. Whilst the general fact is probably incontrovertible, the adjuncts must be shattered in conflict. It is impossible to define the nature of the causal being, or God. We may think it, feel it, believe it, but cannot know it ! ... Strauss rejects the idea of spontaneous generation, and says it is only necessary " that matter and force already in existence should be brouo-ht into another kind of motion and combination " to produce^he effects. What then would the bursting forth of life be but spontaneous generation ? The Bathybius was presented to the admiration of the learned as the causative fact of life, and excited a storm of adverse criticisms. At the bottom of the Atlantic ocean was discovered a slime, " due to innumerable lumps of transparent gelatinous substances," " each lump consist- ing o^ granules, cocoliths^ and foreign bodies, embedded in a translu- cent, colourless, structureless matrix." " The granule heaps and the transparent gelatinous matter in which they are embedded represent masses of protoplasm." One of these masses [urschleim) is to ^e regarded as a new form of the simplest animated being, proposed as the " Bathybius^'' a relation being found to this proto- plasm in the spicula of sponges. The Bathybius, " a vast sheet of living matter enveloping the whole earth beneath the seas," and then a picture is formed of a new flora and fauna which will require thousands of years to bring to completion (' Microscopic Journ,^ October, 1868). Wallichon its introduction pronounced the Bathybius to be a myth ; it was a grand conception, but formed on insuflicient data. The Challenger expedition showed instead of this stuff" being spread over the bottoms of the oceans of the world, it occurs in comparatively few localities, and is not " a widely extended sheet of living protoplasm which grows at the expense of inorganic elements." Experiment has proved it to be an inorganic compound of sulphuric acid and lime. The whole imaginative machinery and its error arose from some masses of this stutF preserved in alcohol being sent to Huxley, on which he experimented. The dissipation of the dream was reserved for the naturalists of the Challenger expedition. Murray says " In the early part of the cruise many attempts were made to detect the presence of free protoplasm in or on the bottoms from our soundings and dredgings, with no definite result.'' It was un- doubted however, that some specimens of the sea-bottom pre- i Satisfaction of Religious Faith. 37 served in spirit, assumed a very mobile or jelly-like aspect, and also that flocculent matter was often present.' This mucus- like mass wanted motion. On analysis Buchanan found it to be sulphate of lime presenting an amorphous precipitate on the addition of spirits of wine ;— when dissolved in water, and allowed to evaporate, it crystalized into gypsum. The crystals were all alike and no amorphous matter was found. The treatment bv spirit created the whole difficulty." ^ Strauss hailed the discovery as perfecting his hypothesis. He says ; '* The existence of this crudest form has since been actually demonstrated. Huxley has discovered the Bathybius, a slimy heap of jelly on the sea bottom : HaecJce has what he has called the structureless clots of albuminous carbon which although morganic in their constitution, yet are capable of nutrition and accretion By these the chasm may be said to be bridged, and the transition ettected from the inorganic to the organic." Darwin is called by Strauss as a witness for his kosmic concep- tion, but Darwin affbrds no such evidence ; he distinctly admits a Creator. Strauss also speaks of "The magic formula, by which science solves the mystery of the universe Every mystery,' he says, * appears absurd,' and yet continues, * Nothing pro* tound, whether m hfe, in the arts, or in state, is devoid of mystery.'" The phenomena of life and structure do not appear to have been studied by him. The wonder is, not that he was wrong in his conclusions, but that others, well acquainted with organic structure and life, should inculcate analogous systems. Mechanics cannot account for the living protamceba ; there is no mechanical apparatus which by an inherent faculty can grow or multiply itself. The living machine does both.i The advantage of religious faith in the satisfaction it gives to the intellect " by fixing it on invisible ends and ties, render- ing life something more than it seems to be, can hardly be exag- gerated." A world of mere phenomena in the superficiality of scien- tific deductions, might become a greater danger to " society than even those stronger .... passions .... of which there is such wholesome fear, and which, it is justly said, only a deep religious taith can adequately restrain." In a world without faith there would be that " passionless ennui " which forces the enquiry is ' life worth living for ?" To some minds materialism may prove satisfactory. In all its schemes there is the quasi admission of the cause. The admission, however qualified, is the thin end of the 1 Where in phj-sical force are we to find the discrimination of the vifal force ? where II '^TT"^^ °^ VHriation the infinity of adaptation ? Where in physical force are we to find in apparent weakness the greater strength ? Huxley and Tyndall. i y 38 wedge which topples the structure into ruins. If religion be grou'de" even on superstitions, it has .ts -nsfacmn m th exigency of the fact ; but where in the material hypothesis is to be 'Tn'lntS'tuxS and Tyndall have, in the popular concep- tion! the foremost p Je as the'exponents of scientific opinion In their oarticular studies both have attained eminence ; but their their particular biu bevond the technics of their supremacy is gone when they stray Deyona '"= a^iantin sciences Both are advocates of material views. Huxley, a giant in his science, attempts an explanation, but appears .. g- too large view to what he terms " states of consciousness. When he says mpenetrability,extension, and resistance are states f J"-'ou-e s we then enquire what consciousness means, and And ^'o be an instantaneous impression or the experience of a sensation, both are pas?ve results ; neither resistance nor extension are such passive resuks ■ we know them through mental action, therefore they are not per se facts of consciousness, but facts of intelligence. John Stuart Mill [Essays on Religion) '^^l'^; -";^'^"" .f ^.^^'f sciousness the same. In the vagueness of the phrase states o consciousness," notwithstanding deductions from Kant, the dehn- ition becomes a confused riddle. „ In his lecture on "Descartes' discourse on method, he (Huxley) continues: "I am prepared to ?o with the materialist wherever the true pursuit of the ,,h nf neXesmav lead." (" But this path," he tells us, " leads two ways- Tv tha ° De L SrVe and Priestley to 'modem physiology and modern ma- teriaUsm and by that of Berkeley and Hume to Kant and .deahsm-and tha "^a h br'anch is'^ound and healthy, and has as much ''fe-.d vigour ah ^,\^er "1 " And I am glad ... to declare my belief that their tearless other. ) :fr ,u '„,,erial aspect of these matters has had an immense influ- ticuiar narm lu ^ machine capable of adjusting itself within LX" mifs*^" "B^ when the m^erialists st^ beyond^he herders of their pa^h and^gin to talk of there being nothing else in the universe but matter ?n^ We and necessary laws, I decline to follow them. I go back to the pafh from wWch we s^ted, and to the other path of Descartes." We have Len "Tn a manner, which admits no doubt, that all our knowledge is a know- edge of s'ates of consciousness. Matter and force, so far as we can know are mere names for certain forms of consciousness. Necessary, means that of whid. we cannot conceive the contrary; law means a rule which is a ways found to hold good. Thus it is an indisputab e truth that what «« call the material world is only known to us under the forms of the ideal world ; and ^Descartes tells us, our knowledge of the soul >s more intimate than the knowledge of our body. If I say impenetrability is a property of matter, all that I can really mean is that the consciousness I call extension, and the con- Huxley's Defence. 39 sciousness I call resistance, constantly accompany one another. Why and how they are related is a mystery, and if I say thought is a property of matter, all that I can mean is that the consciousness I call extension and that of resistance accompany all other sorts of consciousness. But as in the former case why they are thus associated is an insoluble mystery. From all this it follows that what I may term legitimate materialism, i.e. the extension of the conception and of the methods of physical science, to the highest as well as to the lowest phenomena of vitality, is neither more nor less than a short-hand idealism, and Descartes' two paths meet on the summit of the mountain, though they set out on opposite sides." We have subtlety on subtlety through the whole of the disser- tation ; from all that appears, the path by De la Mettrie and Priestley is the broad beaten way ; whilst that by the way of Berkeley and Hume, presents an occasional illusion. If the " subtle Berkeley" stepped " beyond the limits of know- ledge, when he declared the substance of matter did not exist," what do those who see in matter "all the forms and qualities of life," and in molecular vibration, heat, consciousness, life, and intellect ? Brute matter, as Hume expresses it, the cause, the effect, the creator, the thinker, the feeler, and this matter made up of inert indurate atoms, of the dimensions ^-~. -^~i.^^^-^th of of a line, an inch in extent. Yet science is stated to be the result of perception and experiment ! Berkeley denied matter existed, except as it existed in consciousness. Yet his system is consistently decried by those who argue that the qualities of things are bi^t states of consciousness. If we listen to commentators, the systems of Kant and Spinoza, like that of Darwin, mean only that which suits their views. Both Kant and Spinoza, construed in the spirit of their intention, pourtray the pre-eminence of Deity. Darwin attempts to show the mode by which the constructive faculty of the Creator works. The first has a kosmic theory, but in intelli- gence idealised finds his pre-eminent All. Spinoza sees God even in matter, yet spiritualizes all in his ideal of God ; and Darwin, whilst presenting his view of the constructive energy of organic life, acknowledged all was the work of the Creator. Descartes combines Kant, Spinoza, and Darwin, and, be his method what- ever it may, he had a firm conviction of the existence of God as the Creator, and antecedent of all things. Consciousness, to the mind and sensation, is what the retina is to the eye, a medium on which the symbol is instantaneously impressed (Helmholtz measured an interval), which symbol, when interpreted by intelligence, becomes a reality ; thus intelligence counts for all in the Great Kosmos by which we are surrounded. No thinking mind will doubt that mechanico-chemistry is the modus through which the kosmos is presented and is construed ^ 40 Omne Vivum ex Vivo. but this is different from saying mechanics and chemistry mi- tiated the Kosmos. If they be the creations of intellect, as un- doubtedly they are, they become, as the constructors of material forms, the agents of intelligence. Where are we to find the logic which makes resulting effects institutors of that of which they are the result ? If phenomena be regarded as a form of intelligence, we can have at the same time intellectual probabilities, ideal pos- sibilities, with mechanics and chemistry as constructive elements ; but never as creators. It is possible to understand a chain of effects resulting from a single cause, but it is impossible to conceive a cause being the result of the effect it had instituted. The method of the world must include intelligence, for there could be no mechanics without it ; the only conclusion to be arrived at, is that creation is the fact of intelligence. Vitality, as a principle, being the primordial of nature, makes the axiom omne vivum ex oyo true of the beginning of life, and its changes to omne vivum ex vtvo true of all the after facts of life. The life first proceeds from the the egg or jelly-speck, and the living organism reproduces it, and thus the apparent contradiction is satisfied, the living organism pro- ceeds from the egg and the egg from the living organism, /.^., the initiatory fact is always continuing. Chemistry and mechanics, as we know them, are supposed to be the invention of man, when in fact, they are processes by which nature compasses her designs. If it required intellect to disinter them from formulated matter, in order to apply them to the uses of man, surely it required intellect to institute them.^ If, then, intelligence instituted matter and its forms— for forms are all we really recognise in objective phenomena— to form is due the multitudinous variety we know as Nature.^ Have we not, then, in this exposition, the single factor and the single equation by which, according to Nageli, we can only correctly construe all that we find within and around us ? a factor fitted for all the purposes of production, and an equation filling the purposes of its detail. We call the motion apparent in matter, force, because we so name a moving power. When we talk of an unperceived 1 Man "can establish no new law of nature which is not a result of existing ones He can invest matter with no new properties which are not modifications of its pre- sent attributes. His greatest advances in skill and power are made when he chHs to his aid forces which before existed unemployed, or when he discovers so much of the habits of some elements as to be able to bend them to his purpose" {Whewelt^ * Bridg. Treat.,' 359). • '* The laws of nature ... are the rules for that which things are to do and suffer ; and this by no consciousness or will of theirs. They are rules describing the mode in which things do act." *• The metaphor is very simple, but it is proper for us to recollect it as a metaphor, in order that we may clearly apprehend what is implied in speaking of the laws of nature " {ibid^ pp. ti, 7). Nature^ 5 Fact, Spontaneity. 41 motion occurring in the inner recesses of a living substance, if it be force, it is inherent, the power of the formed particle. It may be called molecular, or vital, or polar, call it what we may, it means the interior power in the particled mass, acting through itself, without initiation, but by the inherent fact of its own existence, and may be said to be the nerve power of the Creator vibrating through the mass. Matter is but an aggregation of par- ticles forming a mass. Intellect is perfect in every particle, and by culture assumes its magnitude. A single particle of intellect is an idea, an idea produces an idea, but no aggregation of intel- lectual particles can produce more than an idea. If then, matter can only be perfected by a summation of particled aggregates, and intellect is perfected in its particle, what shall we say? •—that intellect arose from matter, or that matter is the result of intellect, constituted through appointed motors ? If intellect con- strues itself, we have then a knowledge only limited by the powers of intellect, and a probable verification of Nageli's pro- blem ; but if we deduce intellect from matter, we have the axiom of Du Bois Reymond and its pertinacious consequence, " Igno- ramus tgnorabimus.'" A thing can be no more than a product of its particles. Intellect, perfect in its particle, is only equal to itself in all its forms. Matter in its particle, being '-'' insignifi- cant'' {vide Nageli), cannot be more than form, whatever its im- portance \n the economy of nature. Naturalists are puzzled to define the vital principle. Physico- materialists affirm life is a property of matter, and deny the spon- taneity of life. Spontaneous life, as originating in matter, can- not be upheld, for nature exists through vital action. How the inert and evanescent can be the existing and real has never been proved. Despite Belfast orations and boiled substances,^ nature holds on her way by an existing and uncontrollable principle, through a vital spontaneity, awaiting conditions which when satis- fied, life bursts into being. Every evidence shows this is the fact ^ If it were wished to prove the power of an intricate mechanism depending on a little wheel {even although "a capricious'' God direct it), we should not take away the little wheel and then expect the machine to work. Yet this is precisely what is done by those who boil infusions and exclude them from the air. It is like expecting the machine to work when all conditions of action are destroyed. Con- tact with the air produces the conditions necessary for the exhibition of life. There may be germs or minute coagulations which require contact to perfect their condi- tions, and present them as vehicles of life. What is this but the first blushing of life? If organisms are progressively developed, spontaneity of life in the lowest stage must be its first and its only result; all else becomes development. Before the theory of evolution was practically applied to the things of life, spontaneity was scientifically impos>*ible. The theory recognised, spontaneity is its only reasonable outcome. Life from the germ is as old as the oldest recorded thoughts of the Egyptians. Who can say how long before them it existed ? 42 The Vehicle of Life, of phenomena : in the inorganic, expressed as the polar fact ; in animate forms breathing and reproduction, with a power to change position ; in plants breathing and reproduction. In living forms there is an ingeneration in an ingeneration, and if vitality be the persistent fact, then the inorganic must be capable of its presentment. The gaseous, moulded by vital power, presents the diversities of phenomena. By collection and condensation we have the vehicle of life^ hut not the life. The protoplasmic substances might be for ever exhibited, and yet there be no pre- sentment of life. What the particular modifying conditions are by which the inorganic becomes the organic, or how the inanimate substance becomes animate, is a secret not solved. We have the car- riage of life, we are able to dissect its parts, to note its changes, and to form some of its constituents, but the mystery of the albumen and of the vital fact defies analysis. In the ice cavern life is rarely engendered. Heat is incorporated before the life is displayed, and if heat be the primordial element, an atom does not exist because it is resolved into its primary. Steam issuing from an aperture under pressure is imperceivable ; on the tem- perature being lowered, we have the cloud or heat dust,i con- densing into the fluid and solid. If there be law, it must be universal in its operation ; then exactly what we know as a condensation of heat occurs in all substances. The conditions alone are varied ; we have the imperception, the cloud, the liquid, the solid. A pertinence is added to the argument now oxygen, air, and nitrogen have been condensed, and hydrogen presented in metallic drops.^ In nature the paraphernalia for the 1 TyndalPs water dust finds a parallel in Whewell's fine watery powder [Brid.T.), 2 Andrews, of Belfast, by experiment arrived at the conclusion that the gaseous and the liquid are but "extreme stages of one and the same condition of matter." He failed to liquefy either oxygen, hydrogen, or nitrogen. Cailletet, in September (1877), rendered acetylene (hydrogen and carbon) into a liquid ; on Novamber 27, nitric acid (hydrogen and nitrogen). He then succeeded in liquefying oxygen and carbonic oxide b> pressure and freezing. The pressure he obtained by means of hydraulic power, 4400 lbs. to the square inch, the temperature at the same time being reduced by freezing mixtures. On releasing the gas from the pressure, its expansion reduced the temperature to 200° below zero Cent. ; the partial liquefac- tion was shown as a dense cloud. Before he had made his discovery- public, Pictet, of Geneva, succeeded in liquefying oxygen ; be obtained not a cloud, but a jet of liquid. The results were independently obtained. Pictet's results were obtained through an elaborate machinery, the efficiency of which depended on the rapid eva- poration of volatile liquids, as liquid sulphuric acid (the condensed anhydride), and by a pressure of 500 atmospheres, eventually falling to 3o0. The gas subjected to experiment was generated in a strong iron vessel, and thence conducted into a strong long glass tube immersed in a larger tube containing solid (frozen) carbonic acid An orifice closed by a screw tap put the oxygen in relation with the atmosphere. On turning the tap the pent gas shot forth in liquid jets. By means of the electric light, the jet was shown to consist of two parts, an outer blue cone of condensed Imaginative Symbols, 43 conversion exists, the cold of space and the pressure of atmo spheres. If Cooke's calculation (' New Chemistry ') as to the enormity of weight involved by the undulatory theory of light be true, we have a pressure more enormous than any human in- genuity could supply. Heat as the primary must remain as an hypothesis ; but natural facts point to it as the true agent of nature as a principle, the undulation being a condition. When heat is combined with vital action, it becomes the factor of mate- rial phenomena. The life controls the substance, but without the substance there is no manifestation of life, without the life there is no manifestation of intellect. We cannot say that life is heat, nor that heat, as a substance, is life, or that life is intellect. As abstractions, we have three all-pervading principles, heat, life, intellect, as the sum of all we perceive, or conceive, think, or feel, translated by consciousness. Conscious- ness we cannot say is a principle, although, a necessity of life, pas- sively capable of instantaneous impression ; it reflects images, feelings, and thought ; an incident of life, not a vital fact, for life can be when consciousness has ceased. Lewes tells us, " the uni- verse exists, but does not live.'' The universe is an organization directing and possessing functions ; the distinction between life and existence is found in the active or passive fact. Vitality sub- sists in the universe, and the universe exists in its vitality. Atoms and molecules, Huxley tells us, are but imaginative symbols, and that he who mistook them for real quantities would err equally with the metaphysician who should so mistake his ;^'s andys. Whether they be facts due to "scientific imagination," or what, by him they appear to be treated as real quantities, for ' now-a-days the molecular theory is the expositor of every diffi- culty, not alone in the inanimate, but in animate forms ; it has possession of the brain ; molecular motion produces intellect ! Tyndall talks of the thinking brain as of a something more than an organ. People talk of a musical box not as creating the sound, but as the vehicle for its expression. The brain, notwithstanding what physicists say, never created the intellect.^ It, like the gas and an inner white portion, in which the oxygen exists in a liquid and probably, as suggested, in a solid condition. Cailletet released nitrogen from a pressure of 200 atmospheres, when, on its eruption, the temperature became so lowered that drops of liquid nitrogen were formed. On the last day of 1877 he succeeded in lique- fying air. Pictet (llJan., 1878) succeeded in producing hydrogen in a solid form by a pressure of 660 atmospheres. On opening the stop-cock, the hydrogen shot forth in a jet of blue-steel colour, the solidified drops falling on the floor with the ring of metallic grains, leaving little doubt that hydrogen is the vapour of a metal. Water thus becomes a metallic oxide. Dumas* idea. Perkins, of the Royal Society, in 1823, claimed to have liquefied atmospheric air under a pressure of 1 1 00 atmospheres. ^ In quadrupeds the brain is fully developed at the birth, i.e. all the parts are as 44 The Brain. musical box, is the vehicle of expression.^ It is impossible to understand a motion of molecules without a motion of neigh- bouring molecules. Huxley says : " * The mental states we call sensations and ideas are caused by modes of motion in the brain, and the mental causality of volitional and emotional movements really originate in certain movements of the brain, of which those mental states are merely concomitants.' The feeling we call volition is not the cause of the voluntary act, * but the symbol of the state of the brain is the immediate cause of the act.''* There is evidence that the brain is the organ of the nervous functions, but the assertion that the brain originates conscious- ness is the merest conjecture.^ The spider, the ant, the bee, perfect as in an adult animal of the same species (* Wentzell,* p. 246). In man, the brain makes continual progress to its ultimate magnitude and perfect state from con- ception to the seventh year after birth. Those parts which are formed subsequently to birth are those parts entirely wanting in lower animals, and as the parts are de- veloped peculiar faculties are proportionally developed ; but until this development those faculties are not clearly perceptible. From the age of seven to that of eighty the changes respecting size, collectively or in parts, are so trifling as to be unworthy of notice ('5. T.,' p. 247, 286, Bell). Combers opinion was the human brain in- creases in size until twenty-eight years; some assert tbe increase continues on until forty years of age. It is observable " the adult human being as much excels in de- sign and method the actions and operations of all other adult animals, as those of the infant are excelled in precision and adroitness by the young of all other animals (* B. T.,' ib, 247), corresponding with the relative constitutions of brain at the re- spective periods." 1 AX&s4ance at the Academy (1876), MM. Giacomini and Mosso showed the photograph of a woman who had lost a great part of the frontal and the two parietal bones through syphilis. She is now cured. The movements of this brain were studied by one of Al. Marey's tambours being applied to the cranial aperture. It was proved there are in the brain of man, even during the most absolute repose, three different kinds of movement. Pulsations, which are produced at each con- traction of the heart. Osciilations, which correspond to the movements of the respiration. Undulations^ which are the largest curves, and are due to the movements of the vessels during attention, cerebral activity, sleep, and other causes unknown ; they might be called spontaneous movements of the vessels (' Naturcj^ vol. xv. p. 264). Other interesting particulars are narrated. All tend to show that the brain is a mere functional organ impressed by causes external to itself — not creating and originating — so far as function is concerned, any other part of the body might as well be the thinking fact, as the '< thinking brain." It is probably the organ through which thought is manifested, as the musical box is an organ by which sounds are displayed, but the sounds depend on an impulsion. In the box, mechanical force ; in the brain — what? ' Erasmus Darwin has a somewhat similar expression, but he refers all to the spirit of animation and vitality ; and yet by a peculiar perplexity makes motion and other acts of the organism due to the excitation of pleasure and pain ; not as Bain has it, " pleasure in the distance and pain in the distance," but as the causes of im- mediate irritations to which by a series of augmentations, accumulative in character, be imputes the health or disease of the organism (vide * Zoonomia'). 3 »♦ The similarity of the texture of the brain to that of the pancreas" has led to the supposition *♦ that a fluid perhaps more subtle than the electric aura is separated from the blood by that organ for the purposes of motion and sensation ... the electric fluid is actually accumulated and given out voluntarily by tbe torpedo and Gymnotus electricuSt and an electric shock frequently stimulates a paralytic limb and Equivalent of Consciousness and Heat, 45 &ci-to judge by efFects-think, invent, and construct; but where he brrrtThVh '^T^'^K ^^"^p^-^^^^^^ ^"^^^-- ^^^^^^ true m all its bearings ; and unless all animated things doine in- telligent acts have this substance, how are we to sav that the stance whilh T'' ^'>^ ^" '^"' '^''^ '' ^ microscopic sub- stance which serves this purpose, and then the enquirer would be crushed down by a jargon of scientific presentments, asTangii^ &c. When we speak of the animal brain, we have pulp S n vaTn T ^t^^^^-^^-^^-h - the invertebrata'7e look in vain. By the convoluted surfaces, according to Gall and Spurzheim, the intellectual intensity is induced. In the ins pec- ^on of the nettle-sting the microscope discloses a fluid in modon SfrJTl^ '^" ''"'^ "^^'^'"" ''' ^ "^^'""^^ ^""g^s from t^ eye of a gold fish ; spores were extruded, which swam about like a/i- Ir tT '^?' '''^^''" ^^' ^"'^^^^^ ^y f^^^ckel in a minute alga The nettle-sting may be filled with a fluid protoplaTm as doubtless were the fungus and alga. It is probaL T ins'ec pable of conveymg sensory and will action, probably by some power analogous to electricity or magnetism, but the c^ondVcrrs of the electric and magnetic fluids no more Account for the Jre sence of the fluid than does the brain for the intellectual mani" festation. In another place Huxley says : ^'^'^'^^^^^^^ "^^"1- bu;^?vitai'fo?ct;eTtrs^^^^ which can only be7ud;dX^ti;own h^;::; V'lT' p!"^ ^"^^^^ ^'^"^^^ needs no perceptible tube to convev it Thl~ \ I ated by one spirit, moving backw«rH« f^Z^T exactly as it it were actu- When the fly took ^ngLdt^^Z^^^^^ ^V'^"^ ^'^^^"^ '^'^'^^> with the swiftness of thought and a^avs kln^ h^r h ^*^^^""t'T««' «»^« turned round pearance as immovable as one of the 7ail^ o^f fhJ . ^^^^'I^- 'l ^^°"^^ ^o all ap- till at last being arrived wi^hfn due disZl *^.«.^«°f. °» ^^'^h was her station, leap and secured hei preN- A DaraHp ^ fi' h"^'^^ ^' ^'^^*"*"^ «^« "^^^^ the lata spider as soon as he fSund hiierma k^S H '° k ^^^P,,^""ting a spider. <* The Mther and thither, wi^rlnyToubTe/anl turL" ''°"'' '\T'%'' terror, running accurately turn by turn, never quitt nffthe sJder's'tr^rk* ^^"^ "^"'^ ^°^'°^^^ at fault like a dog, until after an SL rhZ h ^?k ■' i ' recovering when vol. xvii, p. 381.^ It is suggested th^fra^ TTf u' ^^^^^'^^^ P^ey" CNat.,' I track. This idea is repudmted bv th^ nltl^ '^ ^F '^''' ^"^^ °" ^he spider's I ^onsr/A n 44S^ rt*;y"^'*7*^ °y the original correspondent and on sufficient rea- I ^ons 05., p. 448). f tde explanation by C. L. W. MerUn (*iVa^.,' vol. xviii, P 31!*; 46 Equivalence of Consciousness. Imagination may breed imagination, but none the more 's it prove/ that the material compound we ca^^ the bra.n by an fmaginative or a real motion breeds the mtelhgence. If mte h- «nce be induced by material changes, where .s the pertinence of the fuombn Huxley adopts from Emerson. " Truly it has been sa.d Ta clear eye the smallest fact is a window through which the in- finite can beseen" ('L. S.,' 104). If all be matter, or of matter, there can be no Infinite. The meaning becomes clearer when we read- " I hold with the materialist that the human body, like all living bodies is a machine the operations of which, sooner or later, will be explamed on a macnme, t"= "P^ „ „ . , ,. [^ j, ^„-^^^ ^t » mechanical equivalent Mag.," XXII, p. 79-) When it is really known what heat is, it will be time to say its equivalent is found ; but we have not arrived at an equivalent of heat even as we know it. The equivalent suggested, the foot pounds, is but a question of temperature or of work; all force fects, r^ore or less? are heat facts. The heat fact, either as a prin- ciple or in its conditions, is universal. An expression of capacity differs greatly from an expression of equivalence, and no foot pounds could be presented as the equivalent of universal power. We might iust as well say there are so many particles in a cubic foot ; the universe is composed of so many cubic feet, and the par- ticle thus becomes the equivalent of the whole ; either would how a measure of quantity, but it would be difficult to change a measure of quantity into an equivalence of its working fact. wTth more reason it could be said a looking-glass was the mechanical equivalent of consciousness, but to get a real equi- valent for a passive fact appears to be an impossibility. 1 here is no working power in consciousness, it merely notes received impressions; unless we mix in one heterogeneous heap, sensa- tion mind, life, intellect, conscience, and consciousness, we have inka me're passive 'implement We might just as wel take Thomson's infinitessimally small and imperceptible masses of matter as the equivalent of matter, or say with Hartley, that touch is the equivalent of the senses, or that the vj^.unticule are the equivalents of sensation and vital motion When all is said, we can only say the multiple of a particle is the expression of the mass; we can no more say a particle is the equivalent of a whole than we can say the infinitessimal portion of a grain is the equivalent of gravitation.! No authority can make the inexact I Gravitation is an accepted fact of science, but as explained by science, its ultimate (act J weight" A reasoning on oltimatea find, as a dehnitio,. a pressure on. or Paper Philosophy and True Teaching. 47 the exact. The fall of a pound 772 feet, raising the temperature 1°, the foot pounds is but the mechanical expression of force exhibited as work ; force is as much an objective thing as matter, for both probably are expressions of heat, latent or active. We can add particle to particle and make a sum of the whole, but no additions of temperature will make a sum of heat ; we merely arrive at an equalisation. In his lecture on biology, Huxley expresses great disgust at what he calls "paper philosophy." What is his dissertation, "the physical basis of life " in the main, but paper philosophy? Where are we to find an experimental proof for his deductions ? We have an aggregation of chemical elements, but there is no warrant for the assumption that they constitute the " physical basis of life " in the sense of creating the life. That, where life is found these elements are found is one thing, but to say they create the life is quite another. Virchow {infra) has shown us what science should be, and should do, and with a masterly hand has drawn the distinction between dogmatic assumption, and fact, and has shown a crowding to the centre. Were gravitation the primordial fact, there could be no phenomena ; it is to the combating of this passive energy we owe that we know as nature. The objective world is comprised of minute particles ; these particles possess the polar fact. On consolidation, they are things with two ends or poles, attraction at one pole repulsion at the other ; hence a power within the thing (particle, atom, or molecule, as a symbol, the phrase is indifferent). When repulsion is in the ascendant the passive fact of gravitation disappears, and that we knew as gravitation reappears by transference into an active form of force by the principle of correlation. If we have hydrogen gas in an open vessel we turn the mouth downwards if we wish to keep it there, otherwise it would pass into the atmosphere and thence into space and be lost to us ; but here it is arrested by the gravitative correlation of affinity, and by combination with another substance, subserves again the uses of nature. If, on the contrary, we have oxygen in the vase, we turn the mouth upwards because if reversed the vase would be emptied by the gravitating fact of weight. The oxygen being heavier than the atmosphere keeps its place in the vessel. We have two substances,oneamenable to the law of gravity expressed as weight, the other wholly free. Can we then say the gravitating fact is universal ? The universal alone is the true, hence we say gravitation is only universal by being amenable to the principle of inter- changing forces (correlation) , hence gravitation becomes correlated. Gravity in Its correlated fact liecomes repulsion; in its double aspect, attraction and repulsion, polar. We have then the force rushing in the straight line, which would be inter- minable but for the pull to the centre, hence the curve which unites the two ends of the line. The same polar fact presented in the particle is equally active in suns and planets, and to go further, systems of suns, as representing the particles of the universe. These masses are but aggregated infinitesimals, and the same law which governs them governs the congregated mat's. We have but a multiple of infinites- simals, which in their ultimates are force or lile units. We have then the eternal swelling from the centre, and the eternal repression, hence an interaction within an interaction, and arrive at Malpighi's littles (as polarised units); at Grove's correlation of forces (as transfusion or transference), at Darwin's evolution (as development). We have the grand generalisations, as principles, as the methods or working facts of nature; and hence can view the universe in its physics, as a machine. As Helm- holtz says, we can have no mechanics without intelligence ; we have in intelligence the directing power, the beyond, through which all was and is. 48 Firchow's Canon, u that scientific teaching consists in something more than supposi- titious inferences. If Huxley adhered to his definitions we should be spared trom such a priori assumptions, contrasting so unfavorably with his lecture on " a piece of chalk ; " his addresses to learned societies ; his comments on palaeontology, ethnology, and biology. Wild dreams flow sometimes from purely philosophical sources— the idiosyncrasy of talent. If the object of a lecture be amusement it is attained by the probable and the absurd, spiced with a crumb of science, and half thinkers and no thinkers leave the room sim- pering in their own satisfaction. If, on the other hand, it be to instruct, no hypotheses or assumptions, however dogmatically insisted upon, can stand in the place of details, the results of obser- vation, experiment, and thought. Virchow is great on the point. He says : « We should submit to the student the real knowledge of the fact in the first place and if we go farther we must tell him this is not proved .... but this is my opinion, my idea, my speculation - " That which is known and that which is only supposed, as a rule, get so thoroughly mixed up that, that which is supposed becomes the main thing, and that which is really known becomes only of secondary importance." Facts we know on proof, and accept the forces by which they are induced as principles, acting through the particular con- ditions of law which govern them ; we know little else. We can practically apply a principle, but the application of it does not involve an entire knowledge of its powers. Science is an aid to philosophy ; but all scientists are not philosophers, nor all philoso- phers scientists. Virchow, in his comment on the addresses of Haeckel and Nageli, at Munich (1877), says : " If any one wants by any means to connect mental phenomena with those of the rest of the universe, then he will come necessarily to transfer mental pro- cesses as they occur in man and the animals of the highest organizations to the lower and lowest animals, and afterwards a soul is even ascribed to plants Further on the cell thinks and feels, and finally he finds a passage down to chemical atoms, which hate, or love one another, or flee from one another. All this is very fine and excellent, and may after all be quite true. // may bey but I do not know in what I am to recognise all this." No wonder Huxley expected doubt where he announced the protoplasm as "the physical basis of life;" and that "such a doctrine . . . appears almost shocking to common sense.'' He might have said that the platter was the physical basis of that which is on it, in the sense of the text. The only fact of the protoplasm is the vital fact, the compounds, the vehicle through which the effect, life, is presented, so the plate is the vehicle of Is Mind of Matter ? 49 that it contains. The life and the substance on the plate, are each distinct presentments, empirically subsisting. We may col- lect the materials of the protoplasm and subject them to every process which art can devise, yet the life in them would be perdue as in a stone. The reasoning on this subject points rather that the vital energy moulds the compounds, collecting the environ- ments and creating its own conditions ; their intermingling in dif- ferent ratios presents the variety. Theine and strychnine are identical in their elements, but differ in combination. The forami- nifera shells are exquisite in construction, but the jelly-spot within through its vitality, without parts, without organs, without detected structure of any kind, builds these wondrous mansions. Physically we can simulate properties and forces ; but we cannot change one substance into another. In isomeric substances we have butyric acid and acetic ether, with exactly the same composition, the same chemical formula, the same vapour density and specific gravity, but art cannot change the rank pungency of the first into the delicious aroma of the latter, because there is behind a chemistry which places science at fault, as in vital action there are mechanics unknown to us. In animate forms we find a tracery of nerves which spring from or converge in a principal organ, but it does not follow that consciousness and motive power acting through them are in- generated by them, any more than we can say the conductors generate the electric power. In an open circuit there is no exhi- bition of force, close the circuit and the spark ensues, because the condition necessary for its display is presented.^ We have the latent and the active form in all processes of Nature ; she mar- shals her forces, by the fact of her law she closes the circuit, and we have the resistless whiz of the electric fluid. So it is with life. We will consider the protoplasm as a fact without the assump- tion, " the physical basis of life.'* The organless protamoeba, the plant, animals, and man have all the same ultimate organic com- ^ A beautiful idea is presented of unity in the mechanics of nature by Hughes's ** Micropbone," whereby we have a philosophical explanation of the echo. His experiment shows substances are " resonant.** The same principle is found in the echo bounding from rock to rock, and in the whispering gallery of St. Paul's where articulated words may be heard in any part of its circuit. The microphone realizes Malpighi's idea — that all, by which we are surrounded, are accumulated littles. Sounds made apparent in the experiments do not accord with the rule of the inverse square, as they appear to magnify with the square of the surfaces of contact, — the '* walk of a fly " is rendered audible, and " the delicate rubbing of a fine camel hair pencil over a smooth wooden surface." Of course the irrepressible molecule appears. The editor of * Nature ' say*:, " It is not too early, however, to see that We have in the microphone a new method of attaching and qualifying molecular motions."— (A^a/. v. 18, p. 58.) 50 The Normal or Alnormal State. position ; the nucleated or non-nucleated cell-germ or seed. This community of organism pervades the realm of life, with faculty, form, and '' substantial composition." When we are told " mani- festations of intellect, of feeling and will . . . are not excluded from this classification, inasmuch as to every one, but the subject, they are known only as transitory changes in the body," for " all are resolved into muscular contraction, and muscular contraction is but a transitory change in the relative parts of the muscles '* (L. S.), we demand to know what intellect, feeling, and will have to do with muscular contraction, excepting as the means of their mani- festation. We create distinctions and differences, but when we go to nature they fade into homogeneity. Muscular contraction is an effect of vital energy set in motion by an act of the will or of sensation, and those processes, so dwelt upon as automatic, are vitally directed facts, although unconsciously manifested.^ If every functional motion were consciously enacted, life, instead of having its pleasures and moments of repose, would be occupied by an anxious consciousness, and we should be constantly dwelling on the movements of the organization {vide sup. note 2, p. i6). It is not because our organic functions are unconsciously conducted that they are without sensation. All we know of sensation is that its fact is impressed on the consciousness ; and when we become conscious of the irritability of a nerve, were such con- sciousness continuous, sensation would be an agony. On a diag- nosis of the facts we must assume there is sensation in every organic function, because on derangement we become conscious of it. In a perfect automatic theory pain would be the normal and its absence the abnormal state of the organism. In conson- ance with all phenomenal facts we may assume consciousness to have latent and positive qualities, although passive to impression. If muscular contraction, as a transitory change, creates con- sciousness, will, mind, and sensation, then every motion produces them ; what then becomes of the automatic theory- — volun- tary and involuntary actions ?^ In a living form muscular con- * A machine might move of itself we may grant, but what constructed the machine so that its movements might answer the purposes of life? How came the candle in the candlestick ? How the fire on the hearth ? Did they •* fall into their places by the casual operation of gravity." — {Fide fFhewelly B.T., p. 172). ' Erasmus Darwin ascribes conscious action (automatism) to the irritation of a nerve inducing muscular association. He says, ♦' when 1 am walking in that grove before my window 1 do not run against the trees or benches, thoui^h my thoughts are strenuously exerted on some other object .... the idea of the tree or bench .... exists on my retina and induces by associntion the action of certain locomo- tive muscles ; though neither itself oor the actions of these muscles engage my attention.'' — (Zoono/muy v. i., p. 50.) ' ** The lowest stage ot vitality and irritability appears to carry us beyond mechanism, beyond chemical affinity."— (Z/.T. WUewelly p. 147.) Coleridge's Hypothesis. 51 traction is due to vital energy. Frog antics induced by external stimulants may remotely simulate life action, so a twitching in the limb of a paralysed patient may be excited by a stimulus. If this be the same power as that manifested by vital action, how is it when the muscular contraction ensues that the patient does not walk .? as undoubtedly he would do were the parallel true. Unbiassedly examined the examples prove the contrary of the hypothesis, and show that the vital energy is not inbred by the organism but that the organism requires an impulse external to itself to incite it to motion. If this be true of muscular con- traction how can we say this " transitory change" induced by will created " manifestations of intellect, feeling, and will ?" We may have electrical action as the method of nature, but we cannot say the physics create vitality. ^ Exactly what occurs in a machine made by art occurs in the human machine — in the latter the inciter, vitality, and will, acting through a directing intelligence, in the former, manipulations intelligently directed, determining action. S. T. Coleridge's hypothesis, as interpreted by S. Watson, defines — *' Life as a principle of individualitation, or the power which unites a given all into a whole which is presupposed in all its parts." Thus Reproduction corresponds to magnetism. Irritability to electricity j sensibility, constructive, or chemical affinities, are all results of magnetic polarization, the power to connect or disconnect, to retain or produce attachment. Individuality is " the one greac end of Nature, her ultimate object, or by whatever word we may designate that something which bears to a final cause the same relation that Nature herself bears to the supreme intelligence." *' The most general law is polarity, or the essential dualism of nature, arising out of its productive unity and still tending to reaffirm it, either as equilibrium, indifference, or identity. Life then we consider as the copula, or union of thesis and antithesis, position and counter- position — life itself being positive of both ; as, on the other hand, the two counter points are the necessary manifestations of life." Thus in the identity of the two counter powers life subsists, in the strife it consists, and in their con- ciliation it at once dies, and is bom again into a new form, either falling back into the life of the whole, or starting anew in the process of individualization {Theory of Life). There are many hypotheses of life, but to modem science is due the discovery that life and mind are derived from matter and muscular contraction. In nature — the same law every where appears^ — the same habits and conditions in the varied forms of life, modified to suit particu- lar needs. In the main ramifications the vascular, nervous, 'The millions of millions of particles which the world contains must be finished up in as complete a manner, and fitted into their places with as much nicety, as the most delicate wheel or spring in a piece of human (art) machinery {B.T. fVhewelly 1>. 14G). He enquires, *' What are the habits of thought to which it can appear possible that this could take place without design, intention, intelligence, purpose, knuwledgi . 5j> 52 The Progression of the Life Forms. Protoplasm. S3 and other systems differentiated hold true in all forms.^ In the foetus can be traced the progression of the new forms of life.^ Com- mencing with the "jelly-blob,'' the distinctive characteristics can be traced through the grand gradations of living forms ;^ the inter- mediate links cannot be shown, but the types are always apparent. *' Gestation acts by development through inferior types, and brings the being to maturity when its point of development is reached. Thus the foetal con- dition would reach a certain point. If the fish diverges, the reptile, bird, and mammal go on together, and in turn diverge j the reptile first, then the bird, The structural organization continuing, in the mammal reaches the highest point of organization. This generalization shows the main ramifications — the differences of orders, tribes, families, genera, and varieties can be imagined, and when an almost illimitable period of time is introduced, we have probably the programme of the workings of nature. An ephemeron viewing a tadpole in the morning (its youth), seeing the same in the noon (its age), could not assume the brachiae would change and be replaced by longs, nor that the tail would be erased and feet formed, and that the land would be its future habitat. The work of nature is done in aeons of time. Man's life and that of the ephe- meron in these stretches of time are on a par. The changes come in periods, like those of the calculating machine ; the law continues its force to a certain point, then interposes a condition, a change appears, and so may be traced the diversities of natural phenomena." (Hde * f^es. Great,,'' p. 212, et seq.) All living things grow and reproduce their kind, and have irri- tability and contractibility ; the nettle owes its irritating power to stiff needle-like delicate hairs which taper '* from a broad base to a slender summit/' readily penetrating and breaking off. This hair has a delicate outer casing of wood, within is a fluid matter full of granules — " protoplasm.'^ Under the lens it appears to be in continual activity, streaming up one side and down the other ; 1 " We recognise the bones of the hand in the fin of the whale, in the paddle of the turtle, and in the wing of the bird. We see the same bones perfectly suited to their purpose in the paw of the lion or the bear, and equally fitted for motion in the hoof of the horse or in the foot of a camel, or adjusted for climbing * or cling- ing* in the long-clawed foot of the sloth.'' — {Bell, • Bnd. Treat,* p. 21.) Cuvier says: " Never do w^e see in nature the cloven hoof of the ox joined with the pointed fang of the lion ; nor the sharp talons of the eagle accompanying the flattened beak of the swan." Galen asks, How happens it ** that the teeth and talons of the leopard and lion should be similar, also the teeth and hoofs of sheep and goats 1'' 2 The extraordinary fact of animated life is the infinite variation of a funda- mental plan modified by conditions, radiations from given centres, or divergencies from particular forms. (* Fes. of Creat.^ 2nd ed. p. 119.) This idea amplified, and we have the modern theory of evolution. " From the moment of birth there is a new impulse given to growth." " Few are aware the foetus has a /(/«? adapted to its condition, and ... .if protracted beyond its appointed time must die ... . because the time is come for a change of its economy."— (i?e//, * Brid. Treat.* \i. J 46.) 3 All analysis tends to show the oneness of design in creation — the dependence of each fact on the purposeness of the whole, and thus we are irresistibly compelled to admit the unity of the power of which phenomena are but diversified manifesta- tiouM. — ( Vide * Carpenter Pres. j4d.*) sometimes diverging in different routes {vide L. S.). In the nettle is found the same fact as in the virus of the viper. Protoplasm is a name applied by Mohl to the colourless, or yellowish, or smooth, or granular viscid substance of nitroge- neous composition, the formative substance in vegetable cells, which the Germans call schieim^ and the English mucilage or mucus. The surface of the protoplasm pelicle, he re- garded of the highest importance, and named it the primordial utricle ; this primordial utricle Huxley called protoplasm, but formerly he restricted the term to matter within it, and he re- garded it as an accidental modification of the endoplast and of little importance. The varioles of his periplastic substance are now tenanted by simple or nucleated protoplasms, endowed with subtle influences; this is immaterial, supposing the vital principle is meant. Max Schultze called the active moving matter, forming the sarcodeof the Rhizopods, protoplasm, as well as the substance circulating in the cells of the Valisnaria, the hairs of nettles and other vegetable cells, and the active moving matter constituting the white blood corpuscules, and other contractile bodies variously dis- tributed. Contractility is held by some to be the peculiar charac- teristic of the protoplasm. This was the view of Kiihne, who included different forms of muscular tissue in the same category as the amoeba and the white blood corpuscules. Muscular tissue exhibits structure which the amoeba is said not to do. Beale says the living matter of the cells corresponds to the substance of which the white corpuscules, pus corpuscules, &c., are composed. *' In all living beings the matter upon which existence depends is germinal matter, and in all living structures the germinal matter contains the same general characters." This he calls bioplasm, and con- tends the term protoplasm should only be applied to living sub- stances. The author of the ' prestiges of Creation ' says, white blood corpuscules are produced by the expansion of contained granules, and are multiplied by fission. The nucleated mass of protoplasm is the structural unit of the human organism. The lowest forms of life find their repetition in the blood corpuscules ; the polype (coral builders) are analo- gous in class. In plants the protoplasm appears in a sheath ; m ova within a sac, or as a jelly mass, or speck with no external skin, with or without a nucleus. The grand divisions of the kingdoms of life were instituted for convenience. All living forms are cognate as to origin, however they differ in function ; this shows an initiatory and inherent power active and acting in a given * Even in ** the lowest creatures the sense of touch implies the comparison of two distinct senses."— (£e//, B. T.) 54 The Mechanics and Chemistry of Nature. ^ direction. The calc spar can be resolved into carbonic acid and quick lime, and resolved back to carbonate of lime, but art cannot re-form the calc spar. We may simulate nature ; two colourless cold liquids may be mixed and there W\\\ foUovir an exhibition of heat accompanied by considerable ebullition. Again, two colour- less liquids on admixture will glow vividly with colour ; agam mix two colourless liquids, and, after stirring, the solid rock will grow before our eyes. The facts appear, but we do not know why the heat and motion is evolved in the one, why the colour glows in the other, or why in the third cohesion has taken place. The modus of phenomena is shown, the initiative escapes us ; a law is found in their recurrence, but the motor power is beyond our purview. If the protoplasm, be a living substance, as Beale insists, no animal or plant can make it. By it they live and multiply through vital power. When the life ceases we have again organic substance, nothing remaining, save structure. To affirm that plants make pro- toplasrn and animals exist by taking into them ioxm^A protoplasm, is not consistent with the natural fact. The protamceba absorbs its fellow, but where, excepting in the very earliest forms of living substances, do we find its repetition, however significant it may be as showing, that absorption is the generative fact of vitality. The granules by the same process increase by collecting the environ- ing gases necessary for nutrition, the growth being from the centre. In the simplest forms (cells) the protoplasm is found, all animal forms being composed of cells ; we have millions of absorbing machines bound into one by a directing vitality.^ When we are seriously told matter forms, in the sense of creating, life and mind, sense and feeling, in the hocus-pocus of such material changes we have a thaumaturgy far more astounding than the decried miracles of the creeds. Life in one form is necessary to life in another form, and life inbreeds life in due successions ; a resulting homogeneity.2 As each particle of the great whole we term, the universe is relative to and necessary for the maintenance of the other particles, they can be neither wasted nor destioyed. This is due to the inherence of vital action ; the consonance of nature. The potence of life first appears in the germ, in the core or nucleus of the living substance. So we might speak of the core or nucleus of the universe, whence the energy of being emerges and diverges to its circumference ; knitting and bonding » " God," as was said by the ancients " works by j?eometry." 2 If it be admitted that " the life principle is modified to meet the requirements of its environments" (S/x-weer), how would it be possible to predicate any recurrinir animal form ? And if it be, as doubtless it is, that the lile principle modifies the environments, then the recurring form becomes the continuity of a precedenc etiect. Parallel Nature and a Machine. 55 all by an " iron law," multiplied in its conditions, directed by an intelligence, which conceived its purpose, resulting in an orderly fact infinitely diversified.^ When the mechanics and chemistry of nature are dwelt upon it were proper to confine the words to their true signification ; it is well to say mechanical this and chemical that, &c., for they designate the facts of nature which does its work through the appointed means. Earth may be eulogized as " the great mother " out of whose womb proceed all things. The earth is the matrix, the vehicle or bearer, but does not initiate any thing — the store- house of elemental substances, the great natural vat from whence the vital principle dips that it wants. Earth (matter) supplies the materials in which the life subsists, but it is the vital power which converts the inorganic into the organic ; and when, by the wear of its action, the energy supplied to the material is exhausted, it is exuded and the organic again becomes the inorganic. Thus we have the ever-recurring round, — vitality supreme, energy ex- hausted and energy rehabilitated. A watch marks the lapses of time by the perfect adaptation of its parts and their action ; so nature exists through the perfect homogeneity of its parts and their action. Intellect created the homogeneity of the parts of the watch by which its action became possible, and, as materialists in- sist on parity of reasoning, we can say Intellect created 2in^ perfected the homogeneity of the parts of that mechanism we term nature. If we cannot " quite comprehend the modus operandi of an electric spark which traverses a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen," it seems presumptuous to suppose science can comprehend the more intricate mystery, life, and present " the physical basis." It may he all quite true but there are no proofs, " Martin us Scriblerus " and his "meat jack" is quite in analogy with the physical account- ings for the being of life, sensation, intellect, and consciousness. Scientific language " should be precise and definite, and define facts and their action." The prevailing fashion, the adoption of a materialistic terminology, does not make a thing to be other than it is, despite the ingenuity of our professors, it only gives an inaccurate idea, by substituting " the nomen for the numen. "2 ^ ** The heavenly bodies in their motions through space are held in their orbits by tbe combination of a power, not more wonderful . . . than that by which a globule of blood is suspended in a mass of fluids — or by which in due season it is attracted and resolved ; than that by which a molecule entering into tbe composition of a body is driven through a circle of revolutions and made to undergo difterenc states of aggregation, becoming sometime a part of a fluid, sometime an ingredient of a solid, and finally cast out again by the influence of living forces." — [Belly * Bridg. Treat.; p. 231.) 2 The readers of modern treatises on science and attendants at lectures should have their reason so armed as to form independent conclusions ; then by the habit 56 The German ^Association, 1877. CHAP. 11. The Phases of German Thought. Nageli^ Haeckel^ and Fir chow, — The Ape Ancestry. At the jubilee meeting of the German Association, held at Munich, 1877, addresses were delivered by eminent German phy- sicists. The addresses of Nageli and Haeckel were expositions of popular ideas. The opinions delivered by these gentlemen were combatted by Virchow. These addresses, pertinently bearing on the subject of this treatise, are condensed from the reports in ' Nature ' (vols. i6and 1 7 ),wheretheyy?ri/ appeared in an English publication. The axiom of Du Bois Reymond is " Ignoramus Ignorabimus.** That of Nageli, " We know and we shall know, if we be satisfied with human insight ^ Virchow more modestly says, " That which honours me is a knowledge of my ignorance ^^ The inaugural address at Munich was delivered by Pettenkofer. He said : '' If knowledge be power .... then among sciences natural science is ... . destined to play a great part, perhaps the greatest in the history and culture of mankind. Natural science has but to look for facts and truths, and never need busy itself about the immediate practical application of what has been found." On the Limits of Human Knowledge. — Nageli. Among many practical and scientific men the opinion is widely spread that a certain and lasting knowledge and understanding of natural phenomena is on the whole impossible ; and they think that scientific theories, generally, are only attempts to approach the in- accessible reality ; and change their tenor and expression with the views of the time. This law is not a view based on prin- ciples, but only despair caused by failure, the necessary conse- quence of wrong method and of scientific incapacity. The problem of natural phenomena is an algebraic equation with many unknown factors; the solutionis only possible if just as of *• intellectual effort" they would be enabled " /o discern the truth from a phrtiseotogy which has only the appearance oftrtUh'^ (HeltnAottx'g Rectoral Lecture, Berlin, 1878). Nageli at Munich. SI many equations can be obtained as there are unknown factors, and if the same unknown factors are obtained in all ; as this is im- possible, we try to get an equation in which there is only one unknown factor. This is done by scientific experiment, in which all unknown factors are removed, save one. A snail, which takes the straight road for its goal, progresses, while a grasshopper, with its bounds in all directions, remains always on the same spot. Thus scientific investigation proves that by an exact method certain and permanent knowledge of natural phenomena may be gained. The opinion is that belief begins where knowledge ceases, but with this our interest is not satisfied. We wish to know whether the limit where human knowledge must stop can be determined. What is the fundamental difference between know- ledge and belief? From two sides the absolute power over nature is claimed with certainty; with decreasing energy by natural philosophers, with increasing energy by materialists. The former think they can construct nature out of herself, and natural knowledge for them is finding the concrete natural phenomena for the constructed abstract ideas. The latter only admit force and matter in time and space, and that Man, built up of matter and force, shall master nature, which is built up of the same factors. Du Bois Reymond, on the same subject, arrived at three con- clusions : — 1. Natural knowledge or understanding is the reduc- tion of a natural phenomenon to the mechanics of simple and in- divisible atoms. 2. There are no atoms of this description, and therefore there is no real understanding. 3. Even if we could understand the world through the mechanics of atoms, we could not nevertheless understand sensation and consciousness through them. Nageli says Du Bois Reymond does not go beyond this negative. The investigation of natural sciences cannot define the limits of a domain she does not possess, and in their incompleteness leads to false deductions which contradict our natural scientific con- science. We must go beyond the negative side and examine whether the human mind is not capable of natural knowledge, and of its nature and extent. The way in which I understand nature is determined by the answers to the following questions: — i. The condition and capacity of the Ego. 2. The condition and accessibility of nature. 3. The demands which we make of knowledge— subject, object, and copula participate in the conclu- sion. The capacity of the Ego is our power of thinking, in what- ever condition it may be, and only gives us nature as we perceive her by the senses. Our knowledge is only correct in so far as obser- vation by the senses and internal perception are correct, the pro- bability being that both lead us to objective truth. Scientific 58 Nageli at Munich. Ndgeli at Munich, 59 analysis shows that in the totality of force-endowed matter— the world— each particle of matter, all its inherent forces, are in rela- tion to all others. It is influenced by all, and, in its turn, acts upon all \ the effect which it causes and receives is the total effect of all the single particles ; but these effects are so insignificant, as regards the infinite majority of cases, that they are neglected because imperceptible. Man and the higher animals have certain parts in them developed into organs of sensation by which they are sensi- tive to certain natural phenomena, and have been developed from the smaller beginnings to high degrees of perfection. The idea of Darwin, that in organic nature only such arrange- ments attained full development as were useful to the bearer is simple and reasonable ; sensation corresponds, and is exactly portioned to the requirements of the organism. We are sensitive to temperature and to light, for they are necessities ; but we are not organised to perceive the electricity which surrounds us. We perceive the increase and decrease of heat and light, but we do not know whether the air contains free electricity, nor whether it is positive or negative. We touch a telegraph wire but find no result. We can imagine the atmosphere without the light- ning and the thunder, but their presence has helped us to our knowledge of its fact. Had not accident revealed the attractive and repulsive force generated by friction, it is probable we should have no idea of electricity. Our senses are organized for the requirements of our bodily existence, not to satisfy our intellectual wants ; to acquaint us with and to explain all phenomena of nature. If they perform this function only incidentally, we cannot rely on them to explain all phenomena of nature ; it is indeed very probable that there are still other natural forces, other forms of molecular motion of which we obtain no serious impressions, because they never unite to any remarkable outcome, and therefore remain hidden from us. We are probably deficient in the power of sen- sation for the whole domain of natural life, and, as far as we can have the power, it is confined in time and space to an insignificantly small part of the whole. Our natural knowledge is not confined to what we perceive by our senses; by conclusions we attain to a knowledge our senses do not reach. The knowledge of the place of Neptune was obtained by calculation.^ We know, although the best micro- » Before the scientific world knew that Le Verrier and Adams were calculating the disturbing cause which led to the discovery of the planet Neptune, a clair- voyant or mystic somnambulist (Andrew Jackson Davis, U.S. America, then a lad utterly uncultured, unlettered, and ignorant of science), predicted, when in a som- nambulistic state, there was another large planet belonging to the solar system beyond the orbit of Uranus (in fact two). The calculations of Le Verrier and Adams were scopes do not show it, that water consists of infinitesimal par- ticles, or molecules, which are in motion. In other preparations of water we know the proportionate number and weight of the particles composing it. By the conclusions drawn from facts we know facts not perceived by the senses. We may therefore indulge the hope that starting from the small domain open to our senses, little by little the entire field of nature will be con- quered by reason ; but this hope can never be fulfilled. As the effect of a natural force decreases with its distance, the possi- bility of knowledge also decreases as the distance in space and time increase. Thus, the condition, the composition, and history of a fixed star, of the life in its satellites, of the mate- rial and spiritual movements in these organisms, we cannot know anything, nor of the discovery of a still unknown natural force, of an unknown form of motion, of the smallest material particles ; the less this force or motion possesses the peculiarity of accumu- lating and causing collective effects the more it eludes us. The confined capacity of the Ego allows us only an extremely fragmen- tary knowledge of the universe. The boundaries which nature opposes are more evident if we adopt the hypothesis that man has the most perfect capacity for natural knowledge. If time and space did not exist then every phenomena could be judged in the past as well as in the present. The largest stellar systems as well as the minutest atoms would be in purview ; for if man were provided with perfect senses then all the phenomena of nature, all forces and all forms of motions, would be perceived directly by him. La Place says : " A mind which for a given moment knew all the forces which are active in nature, and the respective positions of the beings of which she con- sists, if it were comprehensive enough to analyse these data, would unite in the same formula the motion of the largest heavenly body and the lightest atom. Nothing would be uncertain ; — the future as well as the past would be present to its gaze. The human mind, in the perfection which it has been enabled to give to astronomy, offers a weak reflection of a mind of this des- cription." This mind would not solve the problem given. La Place starts from the finiteness of the world in all directions ; but this finiteness is not given. The difficulty nature opposes to human knowledge is its endlessness. In space nature is endless. not then made public, and consequently before their calculations were verified by its discovery the prediction was made. The evidence of this fact is preserved, and if it be possible for human evidence to be complete this is so. He also announced Faraday's discovery of dia-magnetism, giving the details before the discovery was known in America, and named Faraday as the discoverer. This evidence is also com- plete. This is one of those peculiar mental facts to which physical science has no key 6o Ndgeli at Munich. li To travel with the speed of light (192,500 of miles in a second) through the known universe of fixed stars would require some 20,000,000 of years, according to a probable estimate. If in thought we placed ourselves at the end of this immeasurable space we should still see a new starry firmament, and as the earth appears our centre of the universe, we should peer on the beyond and still imagine we were in the centre of the universe. The starry heavens we now see, compared with the universe, are after all, infinitely smaller than the smallest atom compared to the world. What applies to space applies equally to the groupings in space, to the composition, organization, and individualization of matter ; the object of morphological natural science. All consist of parts, itself a part of a bigger whole. We have organs composed of cells, and these of smaller elementary particles ; further we get chemical molecules and atoms of chemical elements ; these resist further subdivision at present, and are considered as compound bodies on account of their properties ; but no physical atoms strictly can exist, no little particles which would be really indi- visible. Size is but relative; the smallest body in existence which we know, the particles of light, heat, and ether, may be of any size we choose in our conception — even infinitely large, if we imagine ourselves sufficiently small by side of it ; indivisibility never ceases. The composition of individual particles, separated, continues endlessly downwards or upwards in continually larger individual groups. The heavenly bodies are the molecules which unite in groups of lower and higher orders, and our whole system of stars is only a molecular group in an infinitely larger whole, which we must suppose to be a unit organism, and only a particle of a still larger whole. As space is endless in all direc- tions so time is endless on two sides, it has never begun and will never cease. The Bible teaches In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Geologists say : In the beginning the world was a gaseous mist, from which heavenly bodies were formed by condensation. But this beginning is only a finiteness, and the time which has passed since this beginning is only as a moment compared to the eternity before. From the union of time and space, an empire of phenomena results. Matter in motion which fills space, the particles of which act on one another and then with diverse forces (attraction and repulsion), motion causes motion and a change of motion, and this is the chain of cause and effect ; an endless one — it neither could begin with a first cause nor finish with a last effect. Nature is everywhere uninvestigable where she becomes endless Nageli at Munich, 61 or eternal ; we cannot conceive her as a whole, because that which has neither beginning nor end does not lead to conception, and this is why La Place's problem is futile from the beginning. A formula is unthinkable for which we have not component factors, and which if these factors were given would never come to an end. A formula of this kind would give us, as astronomical calculation really does, a solution correct within certain limits, a practical solution, not a fundamental one. The investigator of nature finds his investigations limited in all directions, for the uninvestigable eternity bids him stop. The in- finitely large and the infinitely small have been mixed with end- lessness and nothing, leading to erroneous conceptions. Amongst them are the theories of physical atoms on the one hand and the beginning and end of the universe on the other. Matter consti- tuting the heavenly bodies is supposed in the beginning to be gaseous ; in this Du Bois Reymond finds a difficulty. If this matter had been at rest and distributed equally he cannot find out whence motion and unequal distribution have come. The condensation of matter has gone on for an infinite time ; we have the nebulas, then burning liquid drops which cool down to dark bodies. The world is a condensed and no longer an in- candescent world drop. The still incandescent already dark heavenly bodies must give off their store of heat to universal space. By-and-by they must fall upon one another, and if a local rise of temperature takes place this only serves to accelerate the process of cooling on the whole. At last, all heavenly bodies will unite in a dark, solid icy mass upon which there will no longer be motion or life. This is the result of correct physical consideration, and the consequence of our confined insight ; it would only be a logical necessity if we knew everything. But we see but a small part of the universe, and possess but a fragmentary knowledge of the forces and forms of motion in the part we know ; our deduc- tions may be without perceptible error for billions of years, but with the lapse of greater periods they must become more uncertain and eventually be totally erroneous. In illustration, we are most certain of the incandescent state of the earth at one period, and by analogy conclude that the other planets were incandescent bodies, as the sun is still. Going back- wards from suns we get to accumulated masses of clouds, the embryos of later suns, then to cloud belts, eventually to the gaseous mass distributed with tolerable uniformity, beyond which, with our present insight, we cannot go. This proves a constancy of change, each change consisting of a sum of motions and sup- poses a former change, or sum of motions, from which it resulted 62 N'dgeli at Munich. with mechanical necessity, and, further on, a chain of changos from all eternity ; and if our scientific insight does not lead to this, does not justify us in this supposition, it proves only its inadequacy. On the contrary we must conclude that the series of developments of the heavenly bodies is only one of the numberless successive periods, and that analogous periods and consequences have preceded and will follow endlessly. We know a mass of gas in a state ot progressive condensation produces heat, and how the hot condensed mass ag-ain gives forth this heat, until its temperature is that ot its surroundings, but we do not know how the solid mass can again become gaseous, and how the necessary heat distributed in space can again be collected. This gap we fill with supposi- tions The example shows we may use our experiences of tne finite only for deductions within the finite. As soon as man wishes to overstep this domain opened to him by his senses, and which is accessible, and wants to form a conception of the whole, he falls into absurdities ; either he leaves what is gained by experience and meditation, and then loses himself in arbitrary and empty fancies, or he proceeds logically by the laws of the hnite, and then he finally arrives at perfectly ridiculous consequences. Supposino; we follow changes according to the laws of causality, we arrive at the standpoint of nebulosity, and adopt what is known there as the measure ; then we find stages both in the past and in the future which more and more approach to perfect rest without ever reaching it. But if we suppose the heavenly bodies and systems arise and perish without end in the universe,wehnd two possibilities : according to the materialistic conception the sue- cessive changes are of the same value, or according to the philosophi- cal conception they continually change their relative value, becom- ing more perfect every time, in which case the universe in the eternal patt would more and more approach absolute imperfection (there- fore rest), and in the eternal future absolute perfection (therefore aaain rest). These conceptions are equally irrational. The fi'^rst (physical) and the last (philosophical) let the world awake from dead rest and return to it ; the materialistic conception con- demns it to eternal rest, because a change which always repeats itself means for an eternity nothing else but rest. With space we do not fare better than with time. As space filled with matter can but everywhere be limited by more space filled with matter we arrive at the absurd deduction that the world in its circumference is bordered by itself. If we allow infinity to universal space, then heavenly bodies follow on heavenly bodies without end. Thus we arrive at the mathematically correct, but, according to our ideas, absurd deduction, that our earth, just \ Ndgeli at Munich. 63 as it now is, must occur several times, indeed an infinite number of times, in the universe. The examples show our finite reason is only accessible to finite conceptions, and when we wish to raise our conception to the Eternal we fall back upon finite and obscure ideas. All conceptions are exclusively the results of sensuous percep- tions, and our knowledge cannot go further than to compare the phenomena we have observed and judge of them with reference to one another. The comparison of many phenomena gives a unit by which we can measure and determine; we therefore obtain as many measures as there are properties in nature, and, as they are reduced from finite facts, they have only a relative value. We may not only compare different objects and measure them one by another, but also a system, a unit group of things of similar nature with itself and measure it by itself. The knowledge is complete if the later stage be proved to be the necessary consequence of the earlier one, or the earlier the pre- decessor of the later. In the elementary domains of the material this causal relation is the mechanical necessity. In higher domains of the material we cannot from our causal knowledge uphold the demand for this causal necessity. As in the case of struc- ture, it cannot be definitely explained why the origin of a chemical compound and of a crystal must be the necessary result of known forces and motions of elementary atoms and molecules ; still less in cells and the growth of organisms and propagation and the inheritance of peculiarities. Yet in these domains we may speak of causal knowledge with some show of right. A time will arrive when we need no longer presuppose ontogenetic and phylo- genetic necessity as a matter of course, but when we shall also be able to understand its cause. The mechanics of the heavens are based on general gravitation and centrifugal force, both are simple forces acting in a straight line ; both are hypotheses resting on our experience, but of the reasons we are ignorant. If we were to demand that our know- ledge of the " why ? " should be clear there would be neither astronomical nor physical knowledge ! Natural knowledge need not begin with the hypothetical and smallest unknown thino-s. It begins wherever matter has shaped itself into unities of the same order, which may be compared to, and be measured by one another, and wherever such unities combine to form compound unities of a higher order. It may begin at every age from the organization or the composition of matter ; at the atom of chemical elements which forms the chemical compounds ; at the molecule of the compounds which composes the crystal, at the 64 Nageli at Munich. crystalline granule which composes the cell and its parts ; at the oraanism, or individual, which becomes the element of the formatfon of a species. Each scientific disciplme has its justih- cation essentially in itself. r 1. c u I have tried to determine the capacity of the tgo, the accessi- bility of nature and the essence of human understandmg. It is easy now to fix the limits of human knowledge. We can only know that our senses acquaint us with, and this is limited in time and space to an infinitesimal domain, perhaps to only a part ot the natural phenomena occurring in this domain, on account ot a deficient development of our organs of sense. Of that with which we are acquainted we only know the finite, the changeable and perishable, only what is relative and diflFers by degrees, because we can only apply mathematical ideas to natural things and judge them by the measures we have gained from them. Ut all that is endless or eternal, stable or constant, of all absolute differences we have no conception. We have a perfect idea of an hour, a metre, a kilogramme, but we have no idea of time, space, matter and force, motion and rest, cause and effect. The extent and limit of our possible natural knowledge may be shortly and exactlv stated : We can only know the finite, hut we can know all the finite which comes within the reach of our sensory perceptions. When we consider the consequences which have arisen from a departure from a correct method based on principles, the most remarkable are, that finite nature is divided into two radically different domains, and particularly that there is an insuperable limit between the inorganic and the organic, or between material and spiritual nature. The antagonists of an intimate connection between material and immaterial nature draw the line of separa- tion in different places ; some ascribe living nature (life endowed nature) to plants ; life is ascribed to represent something special, whilst others admit this only for the animal world endowed with sensation, and others only for the spiritually conscious human race ; new immaterial, or eternal principles, are said to apply to higher grades. Du Bois Reymond holds the second of these views : He says, " that in the first trace of pleasure which was felt by one of the simplest beings in the beginning of animal life upon our earth an insuperable limit was marked, whilst upwards from this to the most elevated mental activity and down- wards from the vital force of the organic to the simple physical force he nowhere finds another limit." Experience shows the clearest consciousness of the thinker downwards, through the more imperfect consciousness of the child, to the unconsciousness of the embryo and to the insensi- Ndgeli at Munich. 65 bility of the human ovum, or through the more imperfect con- sciousness of undeveloped human races and of higher animals to the unconsciousness of lower animals, and of sensitive plants ; there exists a continual gradation without definable limit, and that the same gradation continues from the life of the animal ovum and the vegetable cell downwards through organised ele- mentary or less lifeless forms, (parts of the cell) to crystals and chemical molecules. The conclusion to be drawn by analogy is this : Just as all organisms consist of and have been formed of matter which occurs in inorganic nature, so the forces which are inherent in matter, have entered into the formation as well. If matter combines with other matter their forces unite to the same total result, and this represents the new property of the resulting body — thus life and feeling are the new relative properties which albumen molecules obtain under certain circumstances. Expe- rience shows that spiritual life is everywhere connected in the most intimate manner with natural life and that the one influences the other and cannot exist without the other. As everywhere in nature forces and motions are united only with material particles, so the spiritual forces and motions only appertain to matter, i.e,y they are composed of the general forces and motions of nature and are connected with them as cause and effect. No natu- ralist can avoid the idea of a causal conception of this nature, unless he becomes unfaithful, consciously, or unconsciously, to his first principle. The problem is therefore to understand how the forces of inorganic matter combine in matter and form into organisms so that their result represents life, sensation, and con- sciousness. The solution of this problem is very remote ; but it is yet possible. The mind can indeed be looked upon as the secretion of the substance of the brain in the same way that the gall is the secre- tion of the liver as K. Vogt, and previously Cabanis had said.^ According to Nageli, Du Bois Reymond says the finite mind as it has developed itself through the animal world up to man, is a double one : on the one side is the acting, inventing, unconscious material mind which puts the muscles into motion and determines the world's history ; this is nothing else but the mechanics of atoms and is subject to the causal law ; and on the other side the inactive, contemplative, remembering, fancying, conscious im- material mind which feels pleasure and pain, love and hate ; this 1 It is difficult to seethe similitude, the gall is an objective presentment proceed- ing from a material substance through vital action. The mind is not an objective presentment, how it should follow as a material consequent from a material f:ub- stance is not clear. 66 Ndgeli at Munich. one lies outside the mechanics of matter and cares nothing for cause and effect. Generally both sides of the mental life are called mind. If the separation existed as described, this would be truly the unintelli- gible secretion of the material mind, or of the atoms of the brain ; it would not be anything but the useless ornament of this material mind, its infallibly following unreal shadow, because as standing outside the chain of cause and effect, it is powerless and without nfluence upon actions ; without it the world's history would have run exactly the same course ; therefore without a conscious and perceived mental life we should have thought, done, and spoken everything, but only mechanically, and not otherwise than a very artistically-invented dead automaton would think, act, and speak. Can we imagine that so many occurrences which most evi- dently resulted from sensation and consciousness, have some other sensationless and unconscious origin ? can we imagine that sensation and consciousness are so entirely useless, whilst every where utility is so evidently prominent in organic nature, that so useless and superfluous a phenomenon should occur just where we expect the greatest utility ? Can we imagine that the causal principle which governs the whole of nature fails us just at the most important part ? Can we imagine that organised matter accidentally and without cause acquires a property (sensation and consciousness) and loses it again accidentally and without effort, because in the ovum and in the embryo the conscious and per- ceived mental life would not be present, it would arise gradually, it would be lost in every sleep, obtained again more or less completely in the waking state, and be annihilated for ever in death ? It is quite correct for Du Bois Reymond to say we can only know the material conditions of mental life ; but how life results from those conditions remains a secret to us forever. It would be an error to suppose that we generally understand the origin of natural life from its causes. In all purely material phenomena we find the same barrier as in the mental ones. In the inorganic world the cause is lost in the effect ; but we cannot understand the nature of the transfer. We know that two bodies which are apart, if there be no obstacles, approach one another until they touch; what induces the mutual motion is just as unintelligible, and will remain just as eternal an enigma as the origin of sensation and consciousness from material causes. The view is generally held, that nature in her simpler inorganic phenomena offers no difficulties to our conception. Whereas, in reality, the difficulties everywhere are the same in principle. Mental life is Ndgeli at Munich. 6^ known by subjective experiences, and these Nageli traces from irritations which produce sensations^, whether in plants or animals, and he sums his conclusions by saying, sensation is therefore a pro- perty of the albumen molecules, and if it be granted in the case of the albumen molecules, we must grant it likewise to the mole- cules of all other substances. If the molecules feel something which is related to sensation, then this must be pleasure ; they can respond to attraction and repulsion, we follow their inclination and disinclination; it must be displeasure if they are forced to execute some opposite movement, and it must be neither pleasure nor dis- pleasure if they remain at rest. We have the gratification and offence of the molecules, but these different sensations are neces- sarily unequal with regard to conditions and intensity according to the forces acting. The simplest organizations which we know are the molecules of chemical eleqj^ents, and, therefore, simultaneously influenced by several qualitatively and quantitatively different sen- sations which agglomerate to a total sensation of pleasure and pain. If we look upon mental life in its general significance as the immaterial expression of material phenomena ; as the mediation between cause and effect, then we find it everywhere in nature. Mental force is the capacity of material particles to act upon each other i the mental phenomenon is the manifestation of this action which consists in motion. So changes of the position of material particles and of the forces lead to new mental occurrences. The cogency of the argument as to the materiality of the mind is summed in the following conclusions (which I have italicised) : Just as the stone would not fall if it did not feel the presence of the earthy so the trampled worm would not wriggle if it had no sensation^ and the brain would not act reasonably if it had no consciousness. We are then told natural science must be exact ; must rigidly avoid everything which oversteps the limits of the finite and intelligible^ and must proceed in a strictly materialistic manner^ because its sole object is finite force-endowed matter. All that is eternal and stable, the how and the why of the universe, remains for ever incomprehensible to the human mind, and if it tries to overstep the limits of minuteness, it can only puff itself J Erasmus Darwin in his work ' Zoonomia,' published at the end of the last century, draws >«imilar deductions — he does not say pleasure and displeasure, but pleasure and pain — commencing in irritation, and so on. Bain, in * Bodi^ and Mind,^ «ets forth somewhat similar ideas. Have we then three thinkers independently arriving at the same conclusions ? Such coincidences do occur, but tliey are not very Irequent. Erasmus Darwin, although not a materiahst, abounds in arguments (in his effort to prove the derivation of sensation and mind through irritations producing pleasure or pain), which might afford handy wedpohs for materialistic arguments. 68 Haeckel on Evolution. up to a ridiculously adorned idol, or desecrate the Eternal and the Divine by human disfiguration. Such are the reasonings which are to lead man to reject Du Bois Reymond's motto, Ignoramus et Ignorabimus, and adopt that of materialism, which, according to Nageli is, '' we know and we shall know "! Haeckel on Evolution. No doctrine for the last decade has claimed such general atten- tion ; no other afFects our important convictions so deeply as that of Evolution and the monistic philosophy united with it ; because by this doctrine the question of all questions can be solved--the fundamental question of the position of man in nature. 1 he highest principles of all science must depend on the position which our advanced understanding of nature assigns to man. By the conception of natural selection in the struggle tor existence, a firm foundation is afl?-<^ded to biology m ^ts^^part- ment of morphology, Lamark, G. St. Hilaire, Oken, and Schel- lins have presented their conclusions. The natural philosophy of their time could only draw up a general plan of construction. Between 1830 and 1859 a strictly empirical investment of nature was flourishing, and two principal branches of real natural history started from totally diflTerent bases. Lyell's geology, and the history of the development of living creatures, animals, and plants ; vet side by side with them stood the irrational myth that every single species of animals and plants, like man himself, had been created independently of one another. The contradiction of the two doctrines, the natural development theory of the geologists and of the creation myth, was decided in favour of the former by Darwin in 1859. Since then it has been recognised that forma- tion and changes in the living inhabitants of the globe follow the same areat eternal laws of mechanical development as the earth itself, and the whole world system. Comparative anatomy and the history of germs, systematic zoology and botany, cannot be explained without the theory of descent ; by it the relations of organic forms can be deduced •, by it alone can we understand the existence of rudimentary organs, eyes which do not see, wings which do not fly, muscles which do not move, and which most emphatically refute the old system of teleology, because they prove in the clearest manner that the utility in the structure of organic forms is neither general nor perfect, that it is not the result of a plan of creation worked with an object in view, but necessarily caused by the accidental coincidences of mechanical causes.^ 1 In the'*Rei£rn of Law" (p. 150 f/.seyOtbere is a description of the wings of birds; if they be the ''mere accidental coincidences of mechanical causes,' weniust exciude Intelligence in Nature. 69 In biology, the historical and historico-philosophical method takes the place of the exact mathematical. If the botanist fol- all ideas of intelli gence in nature, and all idea of such a formative fact as law origi tiaiing from an intelligent cause. The birds' wings, whether they be long, short, broad, or narrow, are exactly suited to the exigencies of the possessors. In the lifting the body of the bird there is a contravention of the laws of gravity, the dead subsUince of the bird weighing as much as the living. How then is this contravention of a special law achieved? By a lever, which is the bird's wing. The mechanical law is " a small amount of motion, or motion through a very small space, at the short end of a lever produces a great amount of motion, or motion through a long space at the opposite or longer end '' (p. 151) This is exactly the motion "transmitted*' to the end of a long wing. The albatross aftbrds such an example. The bird sometimes accepts the aid of gravity, sometimes opposes it, as is exemplified in the power of exposing the wings at the exact angles which produce the desired effects, and is on the same mechanical principles which account for the resisting force of the narrow blades of a screw propeller. The quills of a bird's wings at the lower ends are called primaries, those from the mid vein secondaries, and those next the body tertiaries, *' The motion of a bird's wing increases from its minimum at the shoulder pointto its maximum at the tip." The propelling power of a bird's wing is distinct from the sustaining power, " and depends on the reaction of the air escaping backwards.'* *' The perpendicular stroke .... has the double effect of both propelling and sustaining .... this brings two different forces to bear .... a direction upwards and one forwards," and arises from what mechanicians call " the paral- lelogram of forces." A kestrel will hang in air in a half gale of wind, " with wings folded close to its body, with no visible muscular motion," so nice * is the adjust- ment of position * to produce this exact balance." The change of position results in a forward motion. The tail of a bird has not a function analogous to that of the rudder of a ship ; it assists in the turning motion ** and serves to stop the way of the bird " when it rises or turns to take a new direction, and also serves as a balance. " The whole order of nature is contrivance," and " that kind of arrange- ment by which the unchangeable demands of law are met." The distinction between a bird and a balloon is, birds fly, balloons float — the active and passive representations of force. The heron, one of the slowest in flight, is computed to make from 240 to 300 movements in a minute, with some other birds the velocity is so great the eye cannot follow it, ... . the vibration of the wings leaving only a blurred im|)ression." Connected with the forces {supra), the explanation of flight appears. — When a bird supports itself by the downward stroke of the wings, it must, at the end of each stroke, lift the wing upwards to the apparent danger of the neutrali- zation of the force " for it must be made with equal velocity, and, if it required equal force it must produce equal resistance and an equal rebound from the elasti- city of the air." The difficulty is evaded— ^/Jr*^, by the upper surface of the wing being convex, the under surface concave. The air struck by the concave surface is gathered up, whilst that struck by the convex surface escapes on all sides. Secondly, " the feathers of the bird's wing are made to underlap each other, so that in the downward stroke the pressure of air closes them against each other, and converts the whole series into a connected membrane, through which the air cannot escape .... in the upward stroke the same pressure has a precisely reverse effect ; it opens the feathers, separates them from each other, and converts each pair of feathers into a self-acting valve, through which the air rushes at every point." Thus the same implement is at one time a close continuous membrane impervious to air, at another a series of disconnected joints, through the interstices of which the air passes without resistance, *• the machine being so adjusted that when pressure is required, the maximum of pressure is adduced, and when it is to be avoided, it is avoided by con- verting the continuous membrane into open valves.'' Thus is contradicted the dictum of Haeckel, that the mechanical contrivances found in nature are " not the result of a plan of creation worked with an object in view.*' But for the sequence of effects 7° Haeckel at Munich. Haeckel at Munich, 71 m i\ lowed the formation of the plant from the seed, and the zoolo- gist from the ovum they considered the morphologica task com- plete by observing the history of these germs. Wolft Baer, Remack, Schleiden, and the school formed by them, understood until lately the individual ontogeny exclusively. Now the mystery of germs no longer confronts us as unmtelligible. By the laws of inheritance, the changes of form the germ passes through are but an abbreviated repetition of the corresponding changes of form which the ancestors of the organism have passed in the course of many millions of years. If an egg is placed in the incubator, and in twenty-one days a chicken creeps forth, we are not astonished. The simple cell leads to the two-leaved gastrula, then to the worm-shaped and skull-less germ, thence to the further germ-forms, which, on the whole, show the organiza- tion of a fish, an amphibian or reptile, and lastly that of a bird. The series of the germ-form of the chicken gives a sketch of its ancestors. Ue history of the germ is an extract from the history of its ancestors occasioned by the laws of inheritance.. The phylogenetic interpretation of the ontogenetic phenomena is up to the present time the only exposition of the latter ; their common object is the investigation of historical events which happened in the course of many millions of years before man lived on earth. Phylogeny uses these historical archives in the same manner as other historical disciplines do ; as the linguist, by the comparative investigation of living languages, proves their origin from a common ancestral language. Only the ignorant smile incredulously when it is said the chain of the Alps is but the hardened deposits of the bottoms of seas ; the nature of the fossils they contain admits of no other explanation. The hypo- theses of Phylogony and those of Geology difter in that those of Geology are more simple. The question of the origin of man is decided by the theory of evolution, or doctrine of descent. If the theory of evolution be true, if there exists a natural philogony, then man has resulted from the form vertebrata^ from the class mammalia, from the sub-class placentalia, from the order apes. All attempt to shake this deduction, from the evolution doctrine, is futile {vide infra, p. 80). The phylogenetic archives of compara- tive anatomy, ontology and palaeontology speak too distinctly in favour of an identical and uniform descent of all vertebrata from a single ancestral form, to permit our having any doubts now, thanks to the most illustrious morphologists, Gegenbaur and Huxley. It is often supposed that only the origin of the human in the union of forces, the flight of the bird would have been an impossibility, and without an intelligent arrangement of all its parts it never could have been. body is explained, but not that of our spiritual activity ; in the face of this objection we must remember the physiological fact that our intellectual life is inseparably united with the organiza- tion of our central nervous system, which is composed exactly like that of all higher vertebrata and originates exactly in the same way. Whatever we may imagine to be the connection of soul and body, of mind and matter, so much results from the evolution doctrine that at least all organic matter— if indeed not all matter- is in a certain sense animated. Microscopical investigation dis- closes that the anatomical elementary parts of the organism, cells— universally possess individual animated life. Since Schleiden founded the cell theory for the vegetable kingdom and Schwann applied the same to the animal world, we ascribe to these microsco- pical life-beings an individual and independent life. They are the elementary organisms of Brucke and of Virchow ( Cellular Pathology) Naturalists now consider the cells no longer as the dead passive building stones of the organism, but as the living active state citizens of the same. This conception is confirmed by the study of infusoria, amoeba, and other unicellular organisms— here we find with the single cells, living in isolation, the same manifestation of soul-hfe, sensation, conception, volition, and motion, as with the higher animals, composed of many cells, and the soul-life of the cell is tied to the cell s\xhst2incc— protoplasm. In the monera we see single detached pieces of protoplasm possess motion and sensation like the whole cell. Accordingly, we must suppose that the cell-soul, the foundation of empirical psychology, is a compound itself, viz! the total result of the psychic activities of the protoplasm mole- cules, which we will shortly call plastidule. The plastidule-soul would therefore be the last factor of organic soul-life. Modern organic chemistry shows that the peculiar physical and chemical properties of an element, of carbon, in its complicated combination with other elements cause the peculiar physiological properties of organic compounds, and before all others of proto- plasm. The monera, consisting exclusively of protoplasm, forms the bridge over the deep chasm between organic and inorganic nature. If, in spontaneous generation, a certain number of carbon atoms unite with a number of atoms of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and sulphur, to form the unity of a plastidule, we must regard the plastidule-soul, i.e, the total sum of its life activities, as the necessary product of the forces of these united atoms. In this most extreme psychological consequence of our monistic doctrine of evolution we meet with those old conceptions of the anima- tion of all matter, w^hich already in the philosophy of Democritus, Spinoza, Bruno, Leibnitz, and Schopenhauer, have found varied \ 72 Virchow at Munich, Virchow at Munich. 73 expressions, because all soul-life can finally be reduced to the two elementary functions of sensation and motion ; to their re- ciprocal action in reflex motion. The simple sensation of inclination and disinclination, the simple forms of motion, attraction^ and repulsion^ these are the true elements out of which all soul activity is built in infinitely varied and complicated com- binations. Monism avoids the one-sidedness of materialism, as well as that of spiritualism, it unites practical idealism with theore- tical idealism, it combines natural science with mental science, to form an all-comprising uniform, general, or total science. The recognition of common simple causes for the most varying and complicated phenomena leads to the simplification, as well as to the deepening of our education and culture ; only by causal conception dead knowledge becomes living science. Not the quantity of empirical knowledge, but the quantity of its causal conception is the true measure of the education of the mind. The conclusion of the lecture was a comment on Theology, &c. Virchow on the Liberty of Science in Modern States, Vichow, in his address, comments on those of Nilgeli and Haeckel, denying their conclusions because not founded on scien- tific data. ^ .... In celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of this association, it is becoming to remember the change which has taken place in Germany since the days when Oken assembled the German naturalists and physicians for the first time. In 1822, the time of the first meeting at Leipsic, it was thought to be so dangerous to hold such a meeting, that it was held in perfect secrecy. Indeed, the names of the Austrian members could only be published in 1861. Oken, the valued teacher, died in exile, in the same canton in Switzerland in which Ulrich von Hutten ended his life, full of troubles and contests ; the exile of Oken will remain the signature of the time we have gone through, and vve should remember he bore all the signs of a martyr ; we shall point to him as one who with his blood conquered and obtained for us the liberty of science. It is now easy to speak of the liberty of science when in calmness we can discuss the highest and most difficult problems of life and the hereafter. We have arrived at a point when it becomes necessary to investigate whether we may hope to retain securely the possession we enjoy, and we ought to ask our- selves what we are to do to maintain the present state of things. For the present we have nothing more to ask, our special task is to render it possible — through our moderation^ through a certain resignation with regard to personal opinions and predilections — that the favorable dispositions now entertained towards us do not change to the contrary. In my opinion we are really in danger of doing harm to the future by using too amply our liberty in the arbitra- riness of personal speculation which now claims prominence in many domains of natural science. In reference to the address of Nageli I should like to adduce a few practical incidents from the experience of natural science and show how great is the diflFerence between real science— for which alone we can claim the totality of our liberties— and that larger domain which belongs more to speculative expansion, which formulates a series of doctrines which are yet to be proved. There is a limit between this speculative domain and that which is actually proved and perfectly determined. The practical questions lie very near. Whatever is considered to be secured scientific truth demands complete admission into the scientific treasures of the nation. This the nation must admit as part of itself. In this lies the double promotion which natural science offers. On the one hand, the material progress made ; on the other, the mental importance is similar. W here scientific truth is completely proved every one can convince himself of this truth, and then it will become a part of his thought. Each essentially new truth must necessarily influence the whole method of the conception of man — the method of thinking. By the examinations of the human eye, microscopically and anatomically, we have learned to know its vital qualities and phy- siological functions ; at last, by the discovery of the retina purple, we learn in a perfectly certain manner how the action of light takes place in the interior of the human body, and it is quite an outside organ of the human body, not the brain, but the eye, which experiences this action. We learn that the photographic process is not a mental but a chemical phenomenon, which occurs by the help of certain vital processes, and that in reality we do not see external things, but their images in our eye, and are thu& enabled to separate the purely mental part of vision from the purely material. I may therefore say that each true step of pro- gress in natural knowledge produces new conceptions, new trains of thought, and nobody can avoid placing even the highest problems, of the mind in a certain relation with natural phenomena. There is a practical consideration nearer to us. When we con- sider the educational movements, the question arises— What is to. be taught ? If natural science demands to be admitted into edu- cation, so that its fertile materials may be early inculcated, the. question is— What should be the demand ? for it is not, as Professor Haeckel says in the matter of descent, a question for the peda- gogues ; if it be as certain as he thinks, it would force its ad- 74 Virchow at Munich, Virchow at Munich, 75 mission consciously or unconsciously, according to the bias of the teacher. He could not ignore his own knowledge, if, indeed, he did not know where man goes to, he would at least believe he knew certainly, exactly how man had originated, and how in the •course of years the progressive series shaped itself, and I should say if he did not demand its admission into the educational series it would be accomplished. When I promulgated the opinion I held in opposition to the theory of development of organic life then held, that each cell had its origin in another cell, and I still consider it correct, there were not wanting those who extended the doctrine far beyond the limits I intended. I have received the most wonderful theories based on the cellular theory, as that the heavenly bodies represented so many cells flying about universal space, and playing a part similar to that of the cells in our bodies. I do not say they were simpletons, for I gathered that many cultured men had enter- tained the idea, and could not understand that the heavenly pheno- mena were based on something else than the utility of the human body. And in order to gain a monistic conception, the idea was arrived at that the heaven must be an organism. 1 cite this to show how our doctrines are enlarged, and how they may return to us in a form frightful to ourselves. Imagine how the theory of descent may be shaped in the head of a Socialist ! I am not afraid of the charge of half knowledge^ nor of the inquiry of one of our liberal journals '' whether one of the great faults of our time. Socialism, was not based upon the diffusion of half knowledge." All human knowledge is only piece work ; we only possess pieces of science, for none here is able to represent each science in the same light. It is exactly because they have developed themselves in a certain onesided direction that we esteem the special scientific men so highly. In other fields we are all in half knowledge, as it were. I have tried to obtain chemical knowledge, but I feel incompetent to sit down at a meeting and discuss modern chemistry in all directions, yet I have progressed so far that a chemical novelty does not strike me as in- comprehensible, but I have to learn and relearn. " That which honours me is the knowledge of my ignorance''' I must do as every one else does who enters the domain of science. The error is in not remembering that it is impossible for any single person to command the totality of all these (scientific) details. We get far ♦enough to know the foundations of natural science. Every time we find a gap in our knowledge we should say, " now we enter a xiomain quite unknown to us.'' If every one were sufficiently aware of this he would own it is a dangerous thing to draw con- clusions with regard to the history ot all things when he is not even master of the material from which the conclusions are to be drawn. It is easy to say a cell consists of small particles called plasti- dules, composed '^ of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and sulphur," endowed with a special souT, the sum of the forces the chemical atoms possess ; it is possible but unapproachable for me. Until it be defined, in a manner I can understand, how by the com- bination of these elements a soul results, lam not justified in in- troducing the plastidule-soul into the educational programme, or in asking that it be recognised as a scientific truth. Before it can be said this is modern science, it should be completed by a series of investiga- tions, for thus only can the doctrine be confirmed. There are in science many problems which are long in suspense before a true solution can be found. It does not follow that when they are only speculation or presentiment they should be taught as scientific facts. The doctrine of the contagium animatum loses itself in the obscurity of the middle ages. In the sixteenth century works exist which place the dogma as a certainty of fact, as now-a-days the plastidule-soul is set up. More than two centuries have passed, and we now find in the nineteenth century some contagia anlmata^ bit by bit, but the end of the proof is not yet. Cattle disease and diphtheria are diseases caused by special organisms we know, still we must not say all contagia, or even all infectious diseases, are caused by living organisms. The doctrine formulated in the six- teenth century has emerged again and again in the ideas of men, but it is only in the second decade of this century that more positive proofs have been obtained, and it is now only we infer, in the sense of an inductive extension of our knowledge, that all contagia and miasmata are living organisms. Even those who go not so far, have yet said they resemble living beings very closely, and have pro- perties which we know in living beings only; they have waited until proof was afforded, and this caution commands reserve even now. Science presents a number of facts which teach that similar phe- nomena can happen in very different ways. When fermentation was reduced to the presence of certain fungi, it was open to imagine all fermentations happen in the same way all those processes included as " catalytic " which occur in the animal body as well as in plants. Digestion, we know, has nothing to do with fungi, although possessing catalytic properties. If the saliva changes starch and dextrine into sugar, when we eat, this new formation takes place ; no fungus takes part in this nor in any fermentation in organisms, but there are chemical substances which, much in the same way, as it happens in the interior of the fungus, bring about the chemical change. In the one case the process is connected with 76 Virchow at Munich. Virchow at Munich. 77 i I I a certain vegetable organism, whilst in the other it takes place simply through a liquid. Each single case should be examined, whether the supposition, highly probable, be true, and whether it be justified by facts. Among infectious diseases there is poisoning by snake-bites ; this is compared with those diseases termed infec- tious (for infection does not signify much else than poisoning) ; after a snake-bite the phenomena which occur might be sup- posed to be caused by fungi producing the change in the organs, for certain forms of snake poisoning resemble certain forms of septical infections, and yet there is no cause to suspect the impor- tation of fungi, whilst in other cases the importation is recognised and acknowledged. There are numberless instances in natural science which should constrain us to confine the validity of doctrines to what we can prove, and not by induction to extend it because there is proof in one of several cases. Nowhere is the necessity more expressive than in the field of the theory of evolution. The question of the first origin of organic beings is extremely old. The old popular doctrine was that things of life could pro- ceed from a clod of clay. The doctrine of generatio aquivoca and that of eplgenesis are closely connected. With Dar- winism the theory of spontaneous generation is taken up ; the idea is very seductive, a series of living forms from the protozoa to the highest organism, and connected with the inorganic world. This is that tendency to generalization which has found place in speculation at all times, and extends even to the most obscure periods. We have the desire not to separate the organic world from the Universe as a something divided from it. In this sense carbon and company has separated itself from ordinary carbon and founded the first plastidule under special circumstances. The beginning of our real knowledge of higher organisms dates from the day when Harvey said Omne vivum ex (wo^ although incorrect in its generality, for a whole number of generations exist without (wa. From Harvey to Von Siebold, who obtained the general recognition of parthenogenesis, there lies a whole series of increas- ing restrictions. It were ingratitude not to acknowledge in the opposition which Harvey assumed against the old generatio aquivoca the greatest progress has been made. In the place of a single scheme we have a variety of data, but we have no uniform system which explains, once for all, how a new animal begins. Generatio i^quivoca has many times been refuted, nevertheless it faces us again. No single positive fact is adduced to show it fever 1 Huxley says he cannot find in Harvey's works the axiom, but the general meaning conveys the idea. occurred. Nevertheless we do want to form an idea how the first organic being could have originated by itself -, nothing remains but spontaneous generation. I do not wish to believe a special creation existed. If I want to form a conception in my own u^ay, I must form it in the sense oi generatio aquivoca^ although there is no proof of it. We always have our weapons in ourselves to fight that not justified. To be outspoken, we must own Naturalists have a slight predilection for generatio aquivoca. It would be very beau- tiful if it could be proved. Proofs are still wanting, but if any kind of proof could be successfully given we should acquiesce but then we should have to continue our investigation, because no one will think that spontaneous generation is valid for the totality of organic beings. All attempts to find a certain basis for generatio aquivoca in the lowest forms from the inorganic to the organic world have failed. It is doubly . dangerous to demand that this ill-reputed 'doctrine should be adopted as a basis of all conceptions of life. With the Bathybius the hope has again vanished. As to the connection between the organic and inorganic we know nothing. Supposition may be set down as certainty ; our problem as a dogma that cannot be admitted. Just as in the progress of the doctrines of evolution it has been found more certain to analyse the original doctrine part by part ; we shall have to keep apart the organic and inorganic things in the old way — not prematurely throw them together. Nothing has been more harmful and dan- gerous to natural science than premature synthesis. Father Oken was damaged in the opinion of his contemporaries and the following generation, because he admitted synthesis to a greater extent than a stricter method would have allowed. We must not forget that every time a doctrine which has assumed the air of a well founded and reliable one, claiming general validity, turns out faulty in its outlines, or is found arbitrary and despotic in essential points numbers thereby lose their faith in science. " You are not sure your doctrine which is called truth to-day is not a falsehood to- morrow ; how then can you demand that your doctrine can be- come the object of instruction and of the general consciousness V^ If half knowledge be the characteristic of all naturalists, then in the lateral branches of their science they are only half knowers. If the true naturalist is aware of the limit between his knowledge and his ignorance, he must confine his claims with regard to the public in demanding that only each investigator can designate as reli- able truth ; that which is confirmed truth only should be admitted into the plan of education. Generally, a distinction alone is made between objective and subjective knowledge, but there is an inter- mediate part — Belief, It exists in science, with the difference that 78 Virchow at Munich, Virchow at Munich, 19 t i it its application is to other things than rehgion ; every man instructs himself by means of tradition. The cause in the human mind is a simple one, and carries the method it follows in one domain, finally, into all others. Each creed has its peculiar historical side, and in the garb of an objective fact it appears with certain proofs. This is the case with the Christian,the Mohammedan, with Judaism and Buddhism. On the ether side we find subjectivity reigns ; there the individual dreams, there visions come and hallucinations. All this we find in natural science ; there too we have the currents of dogma, there too we have the currents of the objective and subjective doctrines. First we try to reduce dogmatic currents. The aim of science has been the conservative side. This side collects the ascertained facts with the full consciousness of proof This side adheres to experiment as the highest expression of proof This side in the possession of the scientific treasury, has always grown larger and broader at the expense of the dogmatic stream. Only thirty years ago the Hippocratic method of medicine was spoken of as something sublime ; it is now annihilated nearly down to the root. During the last seventy years the science has under- gone a complete reformation, and at the end of the present century the objective current will probably have consumed the dogmatic one. In this science, any one who wants to speculate, plenty of opportunity is offered. I do not go so far as to make "the inhuman demand,'' that every one is to express himself entirely without any subjective vein, but I do say, we must teach a know- ledge of facts in the first place, and if we go further must say, " This is not proved, but this is my opinion, my idea, my theory^ my speculation." This we can do only with those who are edu- cated and developed. We cannot carry the same method into elementary schools, and say to each peasant boy, '' This is a fact, that we know and that we only suppose.'' On the contrary, that which is only known and that which is only supposed, as a rule, get so thoroughly mixed that the supposed becomes the main thing, and the really known appears of secondary importance. We cannot give facts only, they must be arranged in systematic order. Professor Nageli has discussed in a philosophical manner the difficult questions he has chosen, but he has taken a step extremely dangerous. He has done in another direction what in one way is done by the generatio aquivoca. He asks that the mental domain shall be extended, not only from animals to plants, but finally that we shall actually pass from the organic world into the inorganic with our conceptions of the nature of mental phenomena. All this may be very fine and excellent, and may after all be quite true. It may be. Is there any scientific necessity to extend the domain of mental phenomena beyond the circle of those bodies in which we see them really actmg? I have no objection that carbon atoms should have a mmd, or that they obtain a mind in their union in the p astidule association. I do not know in what lam to recognise this It IS playing with words. If attraction and repulsion arf declared to be mental occurrences, then mind ceases to be mind. The human mind may eventually be explained in a chemical way, but it is not Zi 1 '.^ ""'"^ '^r ^^")'4^- ^^ '^^^^ "^^ ^^-^^^- ""less we limit the domain of mental phenomena to where we perceive it We are not to suppose mental phenomena where perhaps they may be although we do not notice them perceptibly. There is no doubt the whole sum of mental phenomena is attached to certain anima s, not to the totality of organised beings, not even to all animals general y. I admit that certain gradual transitions, certain points can be found, where from mental phenomena we get to phenomena of a simply material or physical nature. I do not declare that it will never be possible to bring psychical phenomena mto immediate connection with physical ones, but I say ^/ present we are not justified m settling down this possible connection as a scientific doctrine. We must distinguish between what we want to teach and what we want to investigate. At this moment there are few naturalists who are not of opinion that man is alhed to the rest of the animal world. Vost is of opmion that a connection will be found, if indeed not wifh apes then perhaps in some other direction. I should not be alarmed ammals. I work by preference m the l^eld of anthropolo2v, yet I must declare that every step of positive progress which wThave made m the domam of prehstoric anthropology has really m^ed further away from the proof of this connection. Cuvier maintained m the quaternary period man did not exist ; but now quater- nary man is a real doctrine, tertiary man a problem, and yet there are questions in discussion for the existence of man during the tertiary period. Even ecclesiastics admit, as Bourgeois, that man existed in the tertiary period. Quaternary fossil man we shVr' f f"^^ ^ ourselves Only ten years ago, when a skull was found in peat, or in the lake dwellings, a wild and unde- hnlTl! ''TJ "^"'i'?" '" "• ^^ "^"^ "''" '''"f'"S ^nonkey air, but these old troglodytes turn out to be quite respectable society! Uur i. rench neighbours warn us not to count too much on these b>g heads ; It may be possible the old brains had more intermediary tissue than those of the now day, and that their nerve substance, notwithstanding the size of the receptacle, remained at a low state of development. Comparing the total of fossil man found 8o The Ape Theory. The Jpe Theory, 8i \ with the existing types, we find that in the present there is relatively a much larger number of lower types than there were in that period. In the fossil types the lower developments are absolutely wanting. That only the higher geniuses of the quaternary period were pre- served I dare no? suppose, but this can be said that one fossil monkey skull or ape-man has never been found. It is possib e in some special spot on earth tertiary man lived, for the remarkable discovery of the fossil ancestors of the horse in America, from which the horse had entirely disappeared, gives countenance to the idea. It may be that tertiary man has existed in Greenland or Lemuria and will be brought to light somewhere or other, ^e cannot teach, we cannot designate it as a revelation of science, that man descends from the ape, or any other animal Bacon said with perfect truth, '^ scientia est potentia'' (knowledge is power) but the knowledge he meant was not speculative not the knowledge of problems, but the objective knowledge of facts We should abuse and endanger our power if in our teaching we do not fall back upon this perfectly justified, perfectly safe,and impregnable domain. The lectures concluded, I now advert to Haeckel's theory of the ancestral ape. The variations of the human form can be perpetuated as six-toed and six-fingered, or spotted, or warted, he. {Fide Law- rences Lee, vol. ii, p. 178), and by interpropagation such types may become heritable. If we carry the idea backward to the descent of man, what have we ? By the doctrine of evolution the animal which emerged from the animal is man,i tailless or hairless-articulated speech, or brain power, or whatever be the difl?-erentiation-he is alone, and propagated his variety through the stock from which he originated. The variation eventuates in a species, association producing culture through the communication of ideas, if this variation occurred only once it is sufficient to account for all the races of man by the perpetuation of particular organized forms, or faculties. Some of the progeny would probably revert to the 1 Organic man has a similarity to other animals ; there is the same necessity for air, Sand sleep, digestion do/s "otmaterially differ, the nutnmentsare^^^^^^^^ into blood and distributed by the arteries and >-ems through the ^Jstem, the absorb- ents extracting and appropriating to each part those ingredients adapted to their t"e^X part^ of the body and modes of growth ; the bone, muscle, tendon, sk n, idr,'and b?ain, scarcely differ in their physical and chemical characters ; the secre- S, as oile, tears, saliva; the senses exhibited through similar organs, modified in species; emotions, passions, and propensities, are manifested m the .«"g anv other creatures than man they would pronounce them to be of dSinct species. We know not what was the origin of man, all r sts in hyi^thesis, but we may assume that as development. s Se oSer of'nature, that by differentiation, f"--" i"^;«f;,£ witless Vedda may become the parent of a highly gifted intellec- Tua race; as the^ow-shanked, coloured negro, by a success on of judicious crossings becomes the straight-limbed white- skinned Caucassian. We judge only by that we 6"^^ R^^^ inry merge into race as animals into species, but we miss the Smediate links. In this view the races o man may have orriMted from a single pair, or more probably fron. an indi- Xl This is supposing' that the variation occurred but once ; but for such an assumption there appears "Y'hrrlHlla maj be generation through a lower grade Man and ^^^ Gor Ha may be the offspring of the same parental stock differentiated in structure fnd intelligence. We have not a few thousand years only to work these changes, but xons on sons. CHAP. III. Hypothesis and Philosophies. In nature we have everywhere unconscious selection,^ as we have chemistry by affinities. As a mechanical illustration there are the dunes heaped on the shore on parts of the Bay of Biscay by the force of the wind and waves, and so it may be nZl\ selection acts by an amalgamation and differentiation of of men and animals, (,ib. p. IIH, et i>eq.) in F^""' "* , . „.,..ijort the and all other animals, he says *' no animal except man . . . • could ^'^^^^]''^ bl n equUihrio on o^e foot only " {ih. p. 145) and no J>t»^" ^'{"'"^''^^^^^^^^ 1 -Every gland seems to be inHuenced to separate from ^»'^ ^^°f ?'. ^° ".^.'°J^ Sr n on^. Hence" U Tpplt^^rt^Lh of these ^^-ds has a ,>^uliar^^^^^^^^^^^ ^rceive these irritations " but %Thich are not - succeeded by .en.^ation {Zoonoima, •vol. i, p. n3). properties in assorting the races of man ; a given end arising from a given direction through the impulsion of nature's law. I ■cannot suppose a creation according with the orthodox idea* for if we imagine a Creator, when in idea we view the vastness of the universe it is impossible to suppose each detail arose from a personal superintendence, but that the presence of the Creator is expressed in His fiat, the governing law. The intelligence which could conceive creation, could consummate its purpose by the interposition of law, as an antecedent,by which all natural facts became creative conceptions. In the face of what Virchow has told us it will be useful to examine that which Huxley urges : ** Let us suppose we do know more of cause and effect than a certain order of succession among facts and that we have a knowledge of the necessity of that succession and hence of necessary laws— and I for my part do not see the escape there is from utter materialism and necessitarianism " (L. S., 141).! Necessary laws imply a law giver ; how such a presentment can lead to " materialism " is not clear, the law is its own fact, hence as the cause of the fact, a manifestation of intelligence. What can materialism have to do with the disposition of facts, from other than material agencies? unless k he proved th2Lt msLttQV institutes law and thus creates its facts. When it can be shown that acci- dent can be universal in its effects and produce invariable order and a homogeneity in facts, it will be time enough to say that it is impossible " to demonstrate that any given phenomenon is not the effect of a material cause,- // may be true *' that any one who is acquainted with the history of science Will admit that its progress has in all ages meant and now more than ever means, the extension of the province of what we call matter and causation, and the concomitant gradual banishment from all regions of human thought of what we call spirit and spontaneity." {ib.) When the new philosophy can show what mind, heat, con- sciousness, intelligence, and life are, it were time to present such a dogma. To say they are the result of the molecular changes of matter is an unevidenced assumption. We know "that every future grows out of past and present," but whether the finity of "To call life the property of organization would be unmeaninff: it would be nonsense'' ( Lawrences Lee, vol. i, p. 73). = Ray, speaking of first breathing, quaintly says, ** Here methinks appears a neces- *«ity o bringing in the agency of some superintendent intelligent being, for what else should put the diaphrHgm and the muscles, saving respiration, in motion all of a s'Jdden, as soon as ever the foetus is brought forth ? Why should they not have rested ;is well as they did in the womb? What aileth them that they must needs oesfir themselves to get in air to maintain the creature's life ? AVhy could they not pMiently suffer to die ? You will say the spirits do at this time flow to the organs o» respiration and the other muscles which concur to that action and move them. out what raise.s the spirits which were quiescent, &c., I am not subtle enough to <'iscover. ( IVisdom of Uod manifested in the works of creation). 84 Molecular Iheory of Mind. Materialistic Terminology, m man will attain to a knowledge commensurate with material facts as expressed "in feeling and action^' is doubtful. Niigeli infers such a possibility ; Du Bois Revmond and Virchow emphatically say so. Thinkers may deplore, but need not dread the " progress of materialism." Whatever the " advancing tide of matter'* may do, it certainly cannot be said to tend to the advantage of or to- " the increase of wisdom." Were the new philosophy founded on evidence and experiment it probably would produce a new era ; but as the facts stand, the want of knowledge is made up by confi- dent surmises ; there is no need to dread that thinking men will fall down " in terror before the hideous idols" our professors have reared. No one, unless a bigot, fears a true interpretation of the laws of nature ;^ but every thinking mind must despise all phases of dogma, and when we meet with scientific dogmas they are simply ridiculous, being subversions of the fundamental bases of science. The advice is sa2:e that we should not " trouble ourselves about matters of which .... we can know nothing" ('L. S.'), although the observation is addressed to Theology it abates nothing of its pertinence when applied to supposititious Science. What molecular hypothesis of mind can account for the in- cident mentioned by Meadows Taylor ('Story of my Life') ?^ No material theory of mind can claim such an incident, nor charlatanry and trick on which Carpenter is so logical Tindi Hammond- assumes to be so scientific. The incident shows the impossibility of the material hypothesis of mind ; if there be a rule, the rule would account for all its facts. * Whewell inquires — Is it by chance that the air and the ear exist together ? Did the air produce the organization of the ear? Or the ear independently organized anticipate the constitution of the atmosphere ? Or is it . . . . that there is a nuitual adaptation produced by an intelligence acquainted with the properties of both, and adjusted them to eacli other (B. T., p. 123). - Lying in his cot, fatigued, sleep being impossible from noises without, his tent doo r open, there he saw a figure in a wedding dress which held out her arms to him^ and said, *' Do not let me go," he sprang from his couch. As he advanced the figure receded until it vanished (vol. 2, p. 32.) What is the solution, preoccupation of mind ? Probably, but no molecular brain change could present such an object. He also relates (vol. 2, p. 294 : — Captain , the senior officer of the 74th Highlanders^ was in his tent writing letters, the side wall of the tent being open, where a young man in hospital dress appeared without cap, and without saluting said : *' I wish, sir, you would kindly have my arrears of pay sent to my mother, who lives at 85 »> The captain took down the address and said, ** All right, my man, that will do." When the figure was gone, the irregularity of the whole aflair struck him ; he sent for the sergeant and inquired why he permitted " to come to him in that irregular manner." Appearing thunderstruck, the sergeant said, " Sir, do you not remember he died yesterday in hospital, and was buried this morning.** The captair>> showed the address he had taken down. The sergeant then stated the kit had been sold, but there was no entry in the company's register, so he did not know where to send the money. The general registry of the regiment was searched and the address given by the appearance proved to be correct. We are told " that the order of nature is ascertainable by our faculties to an extent practically unlimited ;" "our volition counts for something as a condition of the course of events;'-' and that "each of these beliefs can be verified as often as we like." If the human faculties have power to an unlimited extent toascertain "the order of nature,^' why should there ever be a question on its phenomena ? and if " the volition" of man be alone molecular change, how is it possible it can account for anythino-, even though It be " a condition in the course of events V If \t arises from an accident of matter it has but the faculty of its origin and if It be impelled by an "iron law,'' what can the will have to do with any " condition'' occurring in the course of events ? Yet these conditions can be experimentally " verified ;" How? Can our unlimited faculties experimentally show what the mind is, its connection with matter, and its springs of action ? When it is said—" If there is one thing clear about modern science it is the tendency to reduce all scientific problems, excepting those which are purely mathematical,! to questions of molecular physics, that is to say to attractions and repulsions, motions and co-ordinations of the ultimate particles of matter." It had b^en well had we been told what these ultimate particles of matter are. Attractions, repulsions, and motions, are not objec- tive things ; and when " we know nothing, can know nothing of matter," by what are we to recognise these ultimate particles ? If we are to understand they are the objective presentment of an Infinite idea/ it is easy to conceive that everything can then be, and there is no more to say ; but if, on the other hand, the intention be to express they are material substances out of which intellect emerged, it is not a very consecutive logic to except mathematics, purely a child of the intellect, and yet subject intellect to the trammels of matter. We may have another mode of escape— "the language of science" being "materialistic," the language and not its substance is involved, and " the molecular changes" so much dwelt upon, may after all be intended to mean creative and life impulses. Each thinker thinks for himself; the irrefragable laws of nature controlling matter, and presenting intelligence, continue their courses irrespective of the hypotheses suppositions, and dogmas of our "unlimited faculties" (finalities)! We are compelled to be content with the scattered pebbles by the wayside as our insight into that which is, and that which will be. • The difficulties which appear to reside in numbers and magnitudes arise by measuring with our own sounding line-the greatness is no qualify of numbers, all that belongs to number, space, and ratio is equally true of the largest and smallest— and have relatives to our own faculties {vide fVhewelt, B. T., p. 277 ) God, however " unknowable,'^ is consistent with all the facts we know, hence tnere is a consequence even in an idealization. '^'■'MMiiiAAwiiMippviiUNii . .- y ^„.^.^.. ^^ , .■^. -T-^^.^* * •' 86 Lecture-room Phraseology. No assumptions or presumptions of new philosophies, nor old ones, can make the cause and its effects other than they are. More than half the difficulties and obscurities of modern science arise from the affectation of professors using the materialistic terminology, as if they supposed the phrases could become evi- dences. These terminologies have become necessities for the material philosophy, because they give a mechanical expression to the subjects in comment. Tyndall, when lecturing on Fermenta- tion at Glasgow, describing the effect of "the bacteria," says, " they exercise a useful and valuable function as the burners and consumers of dead matter." Anything more misleading (presuming science to be intended) than such phraseology can scarcely be conceived. The bacteria neither burn nor consume the dead matter, but, in accordance with their special place in nature, change the character of the substances which the living energy has for the time deserted (latent). They complete the office the vibrio had commenced ; both are the agents of a f/z^w/V^/ transmu- tation whereby the used substances are reconverted into their elemental states, to reappear and work out the purposes of nature. Lecture-room verbiage makes nature to appear as^a series of catastrophisms ; as if quiet events were brought about and accom- panied by violent commotions. Who would conceive two por- tions of oxygen and one of carbon combined in orderly affinities to form dioxide of carbon ? No, we have the oxygen atoms, like highwaymen lying in wait, to seize on and misuse their fellow con2;ener, and convert his properties to their use. When we breathe we have burnings and combustings, &c. {vide Physio- graphy^ 227). Nervous persons might expect at any moment^ without premonition, that their bodies, by a spontaneous explo- sion, might be strewn over the room. The silence of order is disturbed by rushings and crushings, collidings and oscillations, as though elemental substances were not orderly and homogeneous^ and did not cohere in affinities, excluding the surplus heat which prevents their more intimate union. These crushings and rush- ings even accompany the snow-flake when it sends forth its images with gentlest touch. From the description, we might prepare to meet the crushing march of the glacier, and even in the commonest facts expect the disastrous rush of the electric fluid, and when atoms meet the detonating crash of the thunder. Such grandiloquous phraseology may excite the wonder of the ignorant, amuse the idle, and instruct no one. Such absurdities do not depict true science, are not good taste, nor do they describe the workings of nature. As a general principle, tall talk only more emphatically displays paucity of ideas and want of know- y//> and Water. 87 ledge ; it may be endured from those who by real knowledge occupy a deserved place in the scientific arena, but is execrable in imitators. There is no rhythmic ring in it, although now-a-days we have " rhythmic adjustments" and even " the rhythmic march of the molecules.'' Gases in nature, whatever their weight, intermingle in accord- ance with their specific gravities. The denser permeate the lighter and the lighter descend into the denser. The explanation probably is that the denser gases unimpededly occupy the inter- stices between the particles of the lighter, and again these the particles of the denser {Le Sage's idea of gravitation). Experi- ment shows a cubic foot of steam, alcoholic vapour, and ether vapour, will each fill a vase containing a cubic foot, and that the three together will occupy only a similar vase without chemically intermixing — the temperature of all being equal, and so main- tained. In their liquid form, as water, spirit, and ether, the result is not obtained {Cooke). Recent science generally affirms the formation of water to be a chemical, but air a mechanical result 1. What are we to understand, that electricity combines the hydrogen and oxygen of the water, but that the oxygen and nitrogen are united by pressure into particles of air, or that they merely lie to- gether as the steam, the alcoholic and ether vapours do in the vase ? - The components of air neutralize each other, and therefore must be supposed to form a compound or new substance. We cannot pick the nitrogenous particle from the air, nor that of the hydrogen from the water, unless by art. The gases of water and air combine equally by their affinities ; if it were not so, how are the proportions of either formed ? — water in weight 8 to i, air in parts 23 to 77. Air may be called mixed^ and so it is pronounced to be, but why the admixture is called mechanical is not clear, were it so, the gases would be in strata unequalized as to quandty and quality. Oxygen acting alone would bring death as surely as would the nitrogen alone, the former from its vividness and the latter from its inertness of action. Crystallization may be a mechanical combination because it is formed by layers. The substance, air, is invisible, besides nitrogen and oxygen there may * *' The atmosphere is essentially composed of one volume of oxygen and four of azote (nitrogen), and is at least constituted upon strictly chemical principles^'* and " may be considered to be as much a chemical compound as water (Prout, i^ Bridgewater Treatise, p. 100). * Substances may frequently be expressed in their modes, as by the atom, the- weight, and the volume {e.g.)^ water by the atom, is one of oxygen to one of hydrogen ; by weight, one of hydrogen to eight of oxygen ; by volume, two of hydrogen to one of oxygen. These seeming differences are reconciled by the statement that an atom of oxygen is eight times as heavy as that of hydrogen, but only halt the size {Draper's Chemistry y p. 153). fi 58 The Chemistry and Mechanics of Nature. The Beginning of Creation, 8 be aquafortis (nitric acid), ammonia, sulphuretted hydrogen, carbonic acid, and other substances ; are all combinations of air, or do they only float in the atmosphere ? Dissimilar substances float in water ; they are not said to be component parts of water. To call air a mechanical arrangement does not subvert its nature any more than if water was said to be a mechanical composition. In the sea water we have a something more than oxygen and hydrogen. Where are we to fmd a separate chemistry and mechanics for air and water when the elements of both can be presented in a liquid form ? Electrical force will disentangle oxygen from nitrogen and oxygen from hydrogen. The dis- entangled oxygen of air combining with the hydrogen floating in the atmosphere falls as rain ;• the oxygen is not consumed [Mackay^ s Physiography)^ there is merely a change by aflinities. The chemistry and mechanics of nature neyer consume or destrgy, they only institute changes. AH the components of the protoplasm are of air, or float in the air in its generic phase of atmosphere, and through heat, by the agency of the great cosmic might of vitality, are congealed into substances. Mediately vital force is the great mechanician and chemist of nature, the conservative power which makes all the sequences of natural facts possible. The germ theory of disease illustrates the hypothesis of the spontaneity of life, presenting a condition of things always awaiting vitalization. It appears equally unscientific to present the germs as active living substances as to present them as dead germs awaiting animation. We have the perplexed question of the rotifers over agam." If we assume the spontaneity of life to be the fruition of the cause, we can then say that the vesicle to support life is always present, and when conditions are suitable the life becomes apparent or active. In the axioms ^ ** The properties of water, with regani to heat, make one vast watering engine of the atmosphere" (B. 7'., Wliewelly p. 95.) * So I'ar was the idea of resuscitation carried that Spallanz;ini insisted that mummies could be revivified, yet appears to have doubted. He says : '* An animal which revives after death, and revives as often as one will, is a phenomenon so unheard of that it appears improbable and paradoxical, it confuses all our ideas of animal life." Three classes of animalcula, the Rotifera, the Tartli grades, and JnguillnUcy were supposed to be indestructible, because in a dry state they appear to be dead, but revive by moisture ; when they are really dry they never recover. l*ouchet proved this in his experiments on tlie Rotifera, Tinel on the Tardigrades, and I'ennetier on the Anguillulai. Ehrenberg and Diesinsf nullified the hypothesis of the resurrec- tionists. The former said : " They only resuscitate animals which are not dead." The resistance of the Rotifera to cold is marvellous, "the lowest temperature we can obtain in our laboratories does not seem to have any elVect on them'' ( L'Univers). Pouchetsays : ** 1 have removed them quickly from a freezing apparatus and thrown them info a stove heated to 17b° Fahr. When they emerged, on being immersed in water they Mere seen to recover their animation and run about full of life" {ib.) " omj7e vivum ex ovo " and " omne vlvum ex vivo " we find the genesis and continuance of life, the commencing fact is the contmumg fact, the life from the Qgg and the egg from the life, exactly what Koch found when waitching the Bacillus anthracis\ the cause of splenic fever. The creature burst and strings of spores were exposed as Dallinger and Drysdale found, "Who watched for a weary time other forms of the same species, the free-swimmmg spot, split up into germs or spores. These spores are the life-bearers, not the life, that arises from conditions. As the ova IS fructified by the sperm in animal organizations, so the germs entermg a wound find there the suitable condition or fructifymg element inducing erysipelas. In small-pox the germ IS m the lymph ; no one would say the lymph or the dried coagu- lated blood of the splenic disease were substances active with life, though the blood-dust kept by Koch for years produced the disease. Grove, of Wandsworth, first called attention to the germ theory of disease (1842). His treatise was a great advance on the ideas then held by the medical profession, and may be con- sidered to be the nucleus of its present development ; in principle there does not appear to be much advance. Lister's idea carried into practice has been found to be efficacious; destroy the spore, or make the condition for its fructification impossible, and there would be no life (/. e., no disease), is exactly what occurs in all the experiments by which it is attempted to show that there is no spontaneous life— in fact, exactly what Liebig did when he destroyed the torula cells (yeast) to disprove their fermenting power, and as others do when they boil their compounds. Heat will kill the bacteria, cold will numb them, but neither heat nor cold will kill the spores unless the operations are continuously repeated. Stop a man's breath and his life is soon extinct ; boil a lobster and it blushes in death ; deprive the germ of its nitro- genous compound, air, and the life cannot be; the natural condition is wanting. If the air be laden with life-vesicles or germs chere can be no doubt life is spontaneous, and the sub- stances of the protoplasm form in the atmosphere so as to produce varied and difi-erent results. All of living nature inhale these germs, which in their new habitations find the conditions for their exhibition as a living thing, or as contributing to the continuation of the living thing.^ Diseases may be communicated by inhalation as well as by contact. Burden Sanderson, who passed the whole facts in review, comes to the con- clusion that the '' contag ium nj'i^um'' exists in two distinct forms, '* the one ^ Bell says: ** Jt is just to say that all animals consist of the same chemical elements"— and perlorm their functions " by the same vital actions" (Z?. T., p. 126). • \ 9° Germ and Glandular Theories. The Continuing Beginning. 91 fugitive and visible, as transparent rods, the other permanent and latent^'"' but imperceptible and not yet presented in the field of the lens. Richardson, on the other hand, in vvhnt he calls *' the Glandular Theory,'' in effect says, " The base of the poisonous matters of communicable disease I call septine, and it is the product of the secretions of the animal body, which contain and yield an organic product, as a gastric secretion, pepsine, a salivary secretion, ptyaline, and so on ; each of which has a different function although their bases have the same organic construction. Diseases are thus of a glandular origin, and the poisons producing them modified forms of one or other of the secretions. Each poison is specific and the parent of the same disease through endless time. The type of all being the snake virus, and as an example, he gives that of hospital fever, the poison of which, after evaporation and pulverization, strongly resembles that of the snake. In the dry powdered state they are inert, but will, when kept for long periods, absorb water, when their activity is revived, but excessive dilution will destroy their life-principle, as proved by Fordyce (vaccine lymph), as also will heat, oxidising, and other agents — but cold is a preservative. It is an error to suppose these poisons are propagated by germs, the multiplication occurring by changing the secretions and the albu- minous substance of that with which the virus comes in contact, the change being catalytic. The mode of the introduction may be by swallowing, or by contact, and may enter the system as dust, fluid, or vapour. The diseases are " distinctly the offsprings of living animals," ;. e. they are parasitical, and can be communicated to other bodies. As a rule, " the human body furnishes all the poisons that the human body suffers from — that is to say, there is a progression of poisons from one body to another, and that ordinary secretions may change and become poisonous without previous infection. These illus- trations present the general principles of the theory of infectious diseases.' 1 A series of experiments on sewage and ammonia appears more or less remotely to have a bearing on the ^erm theory of disease. Schliessincj and Muntz filled a long glass tube with sand and limestone heated to redness. When cold a stream of liquid sewage was run throuQ;h it ; the percolation occupied eight days, for eight days after no nitrifaction took place, the ammonia in the liquid being merely that con- tained in the sevvasfe. After eight days small quantities of nitre were founds gradually the quantity increased, at length no trace of ammonia existed in the fluid. The only explanation appears to be fermentation. The experiment was repeated by filling the tube with vapour of chloroform, and whilst it was present no nitre was dis- coverable. On its removal (after fifteen days) a month elapsed before nitrifaction began. The experiments showed that the presence of the vapour of carbolic acid has a marked power of stopping the formation of nitric acid, but the presence of bi-sulphide of carbon and of chloroform stops the whole process. Warrington experimented on four vessels containing solution of chloride of ammo- nium with a little acid phosphate of potassium. Two were sown with earth from a fairy ring (containing decaying fungi) ; one bottle containing the earth and one the solution only were put in the dark, the two others kept in the light At the end of three months the bottle sown with the earth kept in the dark, contained an abun- dance of nitric acid, but no ammonia, the other three, ammonia but no trace of nitric acid. A small quantity from the seeded bottle was added to the two unseeded bottles, one of which was kept in the light, the other in the dark, in a month that only kept in the dark contained nitric acid. The whole process appears to be analo- gous to that by which the alcohol of wine is converted into acetic acid {vide Chem, News, Dec. 14, 1877). If the theory to which the experiments point be established, it probably will have an important bearing on the germ theory of disease. If the nitrogen, a necessity of the germ, is not present as nitrogen, it is clear the germ is not formed, so there can be no potence of life. It may also throw some light on the formation of the *< atmospheric germs.'' The atmosphere containing all the ingredients necensaryfor The one system calls the introduced substance a germ, which multiplies by propagating itself and converts a healthy into a diseased state ; the other, by a virus introduced through the absorbents or it may be inbred, and by a catalytic process acts noxiously on the secretions. The former makes the germ foreign to the body infected ; the latter is an animal product bred by an animal, and communicable, or bred by the body in vi^hich the disease occurs. It is difficult to discriminate between the two ; that of Sanderson appears as a conditional spontaneity ; that of Richardson as a poison acting on present living substance, or inbred by it. Practically the effect is the same ; in the sequel both are blood-poisoning. The germ theory of disease, with its imperceptible living or " at- mospheric '* germs, is something like talking about the beginning of creation.^ The beginning is always a beginning in the continuity of its fact, for a law once in being is always existing ; that which originated life on earth is in continuous action. There is no law for a particular purpose, it is one continual law conditioned to its purpose and as to that particular purpose unchanging. These conditions in infinite variation produce that chain of effects we term phenomena. We talk of eternity as if it were only a possibility. Eternity is always eternity, nor beginning nor end ; the beginning was eternity and eternity the totality ; the past, the present and that to come, have but one aspect, being synchronous in action ; we cannot think of the present but it is the past and is the future. the formation of the protoplasmic compound. Assuming they are at first partially compounded and chemically amalgamated through affinities on contact, innocuous as air, but poisonous by imbibition in the blood, setting up an abnormal state Inducing disease — sowing the blood with poisonous matter in the same way as in the latter experiment Warrington sowed the ammoniacal solution. These experiments appear to confirm Richardson, and more so when we consider that the elements, by themselves, of the most important of natural combinations, may be said to be poi- sonous, as singly, being unable to support life. In air — oxygen and nitrogen there is too great an activity, corrected by a too great inertness. Water — oxygen and hydrogen (a metallic oxide, Dumas) — neither life supporters, and Salt, chlorine and sodium, both poisons in their pure state. Yet these inorganic substances in com- bination are life-bearers and necessities of nature. Probably, this is the state of the floating germs which induce disease — germs difter as much as animal tissues differ. Taking the isomeric compounds as examples, the animal and human tissues, however apparently identical in form and in their microscopic appearance, by a particular com- bination of the particles widely differ in results (the blood-corpuscules of some ani- mals difter widely from others). Assuming vitality as the principle of nature, the variations in animation in the first instance are probably due to particular chemical amalgamations, and the life once established is perpetuated by multiplication, diffe- rentiated by additions imbibed from the environments, and again differentiated by a new admixture of the particles composing the organism ; hence as are conditions so may the germ be innoxious or noxious. '. *' The short progressive changes from the lowest to the highest state of exist- ence of organization and enjoyment point to a beginning.'' (Bell, BriU. Treat, y 223.) 92 Finite and Infinite Conception, In time there can be no beginning or end, it is eternity. The practical application of time is a finite distinction ; there is the past, the present, and the to come, but in infinitude all is a continuing present. We talk of space and the centre of the universe as though all intelligence were concentrated in earth, and the ideas jnan conceives u^ere the rule of the universe. Such finiteness of conception led to the assumption that the u^orld comprised the universe and that the sun svi^ung in the firmament but as its atten- dant. The sun of science, the regenerator, almost creator^ is but an attendant mote in the throng of suns which, pulsate in space. Man standing in his place on the earth, had he a microscopic vision vi^ould find himself on the apex of a hill, with declina- tions on every side. If he were removed to the most distant star art discloses, he would still be in the centre of the universe, around and beyond he would have the same vision of astral systems, and if then removed to the remotest of them, he would have a similar horizon, bounded only by shining suns and whirring worlds. We talk of space and pursue the idea until we come to the ridiculous conception of a thing bounded by itself. What is space ? a finite idea, a way mark of limitation.^ The same character of limitation occurs when we attempt a conception of the Creator. Is it because we cannot conceive a space unlimited, and a Creator unshackled and of boundless power that it is to be said intelligence is the mere vibrations of material particles, not those of a glorious sun, or of an ethereal world, but those of a diminutive speck, a particle of creation ? Is it because the illimitable and the infinite is incomprehensible to the finite, that we are to bound the boundless and make the Creator, or cause an emanation from created and moulded substance ?— Omnipotent INTELLIGENXE the THode of the thing /—The law of the substance is the antecedent of the substance, but in the beyond we have in the antecedent of the law, the power by which it was evolved. We are amazed at the science which brings the stars within our reach, and speaks confidently of the substance of suns. What is this wondrous science but the link chain of the infinitessimal ? We know the method, but we do not know the fact of the method. The sum of knowledge, even could " all the finite^' be mastered, compared with that beyond, is like the dancing mote which reflects the point of light striking it, — only brilliant by a borrowed influence. Our powers are finite, we think the finite; "human intelligence shines so mere a speck amid the abyss of the unknown and the unfathomable." We may gather shells on » Nageli has the same iilea,^the text was written before Nagelfs address was delivered. The Relativeness of Phenomena, 93 the ever recurnng shore of the vast ocean of eternity, and when some ghtter more brightly than others, the aspiring, in their assumption, may say with Nageli, " we know and we shall know - but the thoughtful, in the sadness of disappointment, with Du iJo^ Keymond will confess : " ignoramus ignorabimusr Things are only equal to themselves and relative to all else A pound of water produces a pound of steam-the force expressed by raised temperature. The heat imponderable in the vapour IS external to the substance on which it acts, the motion bein^ in\ not ./ //;. fluid. If heat be only vibration, or wave motion whence the power that caused the vibration ?i The steam in Ic receiver reverts back to water-its expansive power apparently exhausted ; repeat the process and we have the same result a bristling energy ; unconfined it passes into the air, an imponderable vapour, and its elements combine in other affinities. * The ponderosity of steam is expressed, because of its elemental form, as It is possible to make a sum of its particles. Heat alters the relation of the particles ; experience alone teaches us, whereby we know steam will revert to water. Surely we cannot say the quality which caused this change, the quantity of which can be measured although imponderable, is a vibration ; if a vibration, of what ? If of the water, it is due to the excitation ; then due to a somethin^; although weightless, yet impulsive as a force. Weight is but » ''The heat and light of the snn (according to astronomers) do not reside in its TZ : :^ ''" coating which lies on its surface. If such i coating were fiVed there by the force of universal gravitation, how could we avoid having a similar coatmg on he surface of the earth and all the other globes of the system ^ If S consists .n the vibrations of an ether, why has the sun alone the poweTof exc fnl Huch Vibrations ? It the light be the emission of material particles wbTdoes the sun alone em. such particles ? Similar questions may be asked in regard to heat what" ever the theo^; we adopt on thesubject." (\Vhewell, B. T., 171.) He cor^mencea by saying, "No one probably will contend that tb^ materials of our sylm are h?minn",^' TihT u *^?^- ^^^'"^"^^ P^^"^'^ ^° ^^« ^^^^ that all the orbs arrself! um nous, and that all astral and planetary bodies are magnets. This established the theory ol the direct transmission of heat as heat from the sun to the other orbs composing h.s system is untenable, the rule of the inverse square interposes The action induced IS that of a force, magnetic for instance, which by it^cofrelation becomes heat. We can then understand the bond of unity which connects orb w th s. «;. x^'r'^f T'\^^ ^^^ P^'"*^^«^y ^>'^^^"^' •'"t ^^^ t*^« orbs which throng in fepace. No heat hypothesis as heat would afford the universality of action ; by the correlation of forces alone can any reasonable theory be suggested. We then have heat as a principle, conditioned as to facts, transfusing and transforming. Now one h?,? I'mi" ^:;PT"*'"S ^(^« P^'"^*P»«> "ow another. Heat as a vibration accounts for but little heat as a principle accounts for all the forces. If heat (the principle being denied) be adduced as the solar fact, why when on the top of\ mountain, nearer the sun. is the temperature reduced } Newton^s first letter to Bentley waj' induced by the vagueness of the heat hypothesis. Had the bearings of magnetic action in his time been understood, we should probably have had a difterent hypothesis to that which is now assumed as the basis of astral and planetary 94 Vibrations and Correlations, the expression of a force, the gravitating power, and if gravita- tion (vide note I, p. 46) be correlated v^^ith the other forces then heat has weight in its expression as gravity. All the forces in the view of science are vibrations, but if correlated with gravity, force becomes the expression of weight. There is no distinction in effect between the pressure of bulk (as a grain, a cwt., or a ton) and the pressure induced by the action of force, as for instance the hydraulic press. The forces can be tested by the weigh beam ; because not objective substances, is it to be said that they are but the vibrations in the substance which shows their presence as effects ? Weight, like other terms of the finite, is but a relative expression. If gravitation be correlated with the other forces the difficulty, whether heat be a substance or a vibration, vanishes. Weight then becomes the expression of a principle : Force (impul- sion and weight). If heat has the power to change the relations of substances, it has quality, and if the quality be measurable it has , quantity, and, more, it has objectivity. All combustion is due to heat ; if heat be only a vibration why does it consume the sub- stance in which it acts ? If alone the " vis viva " of the mass, why does it waste and destroy it ? and why in the same substance is it unequal in action ? We know and judge only by effects. What- ever our assumptions, infinitesimals, the working units of nature alone are disclosed ; with them science is familiar and great its insight, a wondrous chain of effects is disclosed resulting and in- terdependent. By minimums we judge. We talk learnedly of germs, particles, atoms, and molecules, but when a complex phe- nomenon arises, in the maximum result we confuse our jninimums^ the initiation and its accompanying stages are lost sight of. When by a possibility the initiatory fact is discerned, we find the perfect adaptation of a means to an end. When the perfected organism, Man, is in discussion, motion, a casual and subsidiary fact, is substituted for life and intellect. We can have no motion without heat -, on the other hand it can be said, we have no heat without motion. Which is the antecedent ? The white light is split by the prism into coloured spectra — that is, the 'colours comprised in the white light are disentangled by the refractive powers of the prism. Yet it could be as consistently said that the constituent colours of the white light are the creations of the prism, as that heat (as a principle) is the effect of motion. If by a possibility heat could be removed from the universe all things would collapse ; with life and conscious- ness perception would be annihilated, there would be a resolution into the primordial cause ; dissipated it could not be, because as was its commencement so is its continuance. The Eternal Circle, 95 In every fact we find intelligent^ arrangement ; that which arranges cannot be the condition, or the mode of the thing arranged, — hence intelligence cannot have arisen from that which it formed and moulded. Finite intelligence and infinite intelligence have the same fundamental root, the difference being degree and quality. The first, the relative fact ; the latter, the agglomerated whole, comprising in itself both quantity and quality, in it there can be no parts ; each part is the whole and the whole is present in every part, thus we can say intelligence is eternal, the beginning and the end (the for ever present) its unity. The beginning is always beginning, at least such must be the reasoning of a finite intelli- gence which can only comprehend that it can perceive or conceive. No conception can present a beginning which is always existing, and continuing, as a tangible fact, and no individualization of thought can present an end as a demonstrable fact. We see change and only change, an eternal circle of things beginning in its end and ending in its beginning. The condensation of evapo- rations collected in the atmosphere falls to the earth as rain, this forms springs and brooks, springs and brooks rivers, rivers seas ; the evaporation of the seas again possesses the atmosphere, and we have the same round of effects ; this is the law of all phenomena, we have the gas, the liquid, the solid : reversed, the solid, the liquid, the gas, conditioned as facts, the mechanics, chemistry, and physics of intelligence. A thousand years ago, John of Erigena said, and thousands of years before him the Druids had said, in their synopsis of the old world science, " 7« intelligence all Being commenced and into intelligence all Being will return" Thus' eter- nity is Intelligence and Intelligence Eternity. If then Intelli- gence be the eternal fact of all things. Intelligence, whatever may be its particled presentment, is individualized in man ; being eternal, it must be immortal, because in itself it has all quality and quantity and is not subjected to change. Thus we go the round of the mill horse, we argue in a circle. A vicious circle logicians call it, but any way it is the fact of nature. All ideas of beginnings and endings are finite ideas, and in the Infinite alone can find their solution. We conceive of the unseen world as a possible or a probable, and so it remains the unknown, an " open secret." If the significance of spiritual facts are ignored in this life there can be no explanation.^ The eternal fact of phenomena is intelligence, all springing from it must inherit its qualities or be in unison with it : hence we are sur- * As well a symmetrical figure might be soujjht for in a lens of an unequal surface as to expect from science a solution of the piiMciples of the inner nature of man. *' The wise man accepts details, investigates, balances evidences, and then decides. The fool decides." 96 Nature^ s Mechanics. rounded by Eternity, Immensity, Continuity ; that which we per- ceive being but effects resulting from changes. If in the unknown there be existence, it is an existence in intelligence ; Synthesis will there take the place of analysis, and in theprinciple will be discovered all it comprehends. All parts of an organism are relative to the whole, and by evolution are developed from pre-existing parts.^ Here we meet the recuperative energy which repairs its waste. A machine is composed of unrelated parts, not one part proceeding from the other ; when specially adapted they become related umts, having no recuperating energy ; waste implies their destruction. The action of the machine is subordinated to the movino- power. Organisms are sympathetically co-ordinated. Thus, undue action in one part produces its effect on different organs, as the action of a secreting cell in the liver re-acts on the brain. An undue action of the brain will check the secretion of a gland, or relax the sphincters of the bladder. A variation, however slight, in the composition or structure of the parts, will frustrate the oro-anic activity, or spend its energies in a new direction. To state the problem of the evolution of life truly, we go back to the monad or protamceba, the living jelly speck, nourished by absorption and multiplied by fission, germination, or spores ex- hibiting the merest faculties of vitality, nutrition and multipli- cation ; life could not be the outcome of these faculties, because before they could act the life must have been instituted,^ and this rule must hold in all animate forms. The initiatino- fact must be the preceding fact; hence it follows that the functions in their endless display, consciously or unconsciously performed, are the facts of the motor-vitality. If the life ceases the function ceases, but if a function ceases the life may exist, as in the severance of a nerve. When the life-energy increases muscular action, there is no alteration in principle ; the vehicles of conduction work with increased effect, but there is no creation of the moving principles. Give to the water channel a greater capacity and we have a broader sheet and an increased power, but no logic can prove the channel created the function of the water. Organ can only mean the vehicle by which a function is displayed ; the lowest rhizopods are said to exhibit the life without organization, yet they display function, and function implies organization. It is J *' The system of animal bodies is simple and universal, notwithstanding the amazing diversity ot forms, (it) not only embraces all living creatures" and "has been continued from periods .... before the last revolution of Uie earth's surface had been accomplished." (Bell, Bridg. Treat., p. 223.) - " Nerves can perform no functions unless supplied with blood, all qualities of life being supported through the circulating blood." (Bell, Bridg. Treat., p. 185.) Automacy. 91 to subtleties we owe the assumptions of automatic action for animals and man.i The ivhole stress of the argument is present or absent consciousness. The argument/>r (South Africa, Livingstone, 1875 ed., p. U ) ^ Lberwegsays Averrbes interpreted the doctrine of Aristotle "resoertin^ fh^ ■trT^ rf", '"'""*^^'' •" " ^^"^« ^^'^^ ^^ »^-^'y pantheistic and exctdfs the Wf H '"^'^'^"^^ immortality. He admits the existence of only one act ve intel ect and affirms it belongs in common to the whole human race^- thatTt i^com^^^^^ temporarily particularised in individuals, but that each of its emfln«f,l: P^^"""®^ finany absorbed in the original whole, in which ale therefore, t'eyp^^^^^^^ ^ Ity Averroes d,d not himself identify the universal mind with the S hZelf" Z ^eTeXuirde:!''^" ''^^^'^ '^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^ ^ — -* ^^ ^elweTof Al Gazzali (1010) the Mahommedan has a more beautiful theory « God created tte spirit 01 man from a drop of His own light, its destiny is to return to^ni Do Him Wh^'"/K''''^ with a vain imagination that it will return to H^nT^s it left Him. When the body dies, the form you had on your entrance into thi world and 8- 1 * 1 I t 114 Character. Giordano Bruno taught this truth, and they repeated 'he ph lo- s^phy of an older time : in all eras the record was true m nature Man the central link in which phenomena and essence culm.- !fa?e ; by hbperceptions he is linked with the th.ngs of sense, .n his conception of ideal truth he soars to his Liod. The poet Spenser says : « For of the soul, the body form doth take, _ For soul is form and doth the body make. All are threads in the loom of time. We live in o^rin^ight^v but the world we mingle with is not the world we think. In solitude man has revelations which, in the ^'^.--"Xh others 'are will carry with him. Character is a force by which others are guided-a moral order ; thus men of character become the con- science of the society to which they belong. The unthinking, w 11 have a principle^ersonified. When the desire was to have Tods, whole generations were heaped into one person, combming fn one hero^he conception of a Cycle thus heroic 'dols were obtained, a Romulus or a Numa (vide ^-^f '/ ^f f ?" .^J" t In these historic fictions eventually were centred the faith of the people— the human merging in the divine. We perceive through sensation, but when sensation is trans- lated n'consciousness^ymbols by collation become perceptions We can know by collective evidences ; we do "ot attempt^o pss through a barrier which experience has shown ^ be imp^saWe If we%assively accept the position, then we are act ng through our perceptions. If we would know the reason o^the o^tmc^ tion we must define. In defining another principle is d'sclosed- Mind, and we arrive at an abstraction. There can be mernory and comparison in perception, but these are Us h-ghest function . Instinct in itself is sufficient for every purpose of life. It is objected that instinct has no choice Were this ^rue .^^PPj^ equally to judgment, the guidance directing an •■-?" s^ s a^w=»ys selective arising from what and how it may. If intelligence oe r etS to idL and abstractions there are "one m .nst.nct All the complicated variations of instmct may be r^soWed in o sensation, experience, comparison, '"^"'•y.' .f.^ '^°"^3"^"2 will, and we have the range of ^^n'-^^^P^f^'^' '' f" . '^^^'"hrse speak of mind, we speak of ideas. It is doubtful whether these ,o„r present form are no. .he --- ''-C^-huTar t:11,lto'^5T:'rn'^e; account ot the perishing of your bod>. \om ''P'^^J^^^^'^ ^ tempests of this it is only sojourning in a temporary home F^om t e^ tnab -jl^te ^^p^^^^ ^^^^^^ troublesome lite our refuge '^ ^" ^^^ V. /','"" "/°'\^,tr^ without infirmity, a {Conflict of Religion and Science.— l>ra\^er.) ■-.* i-™,.:#-(.*!" |l^ .-^ ; .. - Animal Immortality. "5 Ideas have relation to sensation as their primal condition. Ideas and memory of experiences in relation to instinct (leavln. out at present all notions of « the heredity " of descent) have a different ongm from mental ideas and spring from a different source Ideas are thoughts, as contradistinguished from sensations The S tf Tr'!"^'' "^''^ ^"^^ "^'"'1' but are never transposed S af a ?act o ? ''"' '^ ' ''^"t''"^ "^ P^^^P^'"- -^^ concep- tion, as a fact of consciousness. Instinct is a property or orinciole man"'w"h'aral''''^ '^"" "^ "^^^ "■"S-- oriScXe man , we have also conceptive or mental man. Instinct never originates, mind does. As the subject has been treated in the sefarated. The hypothesis has been, that the instinctive facultv of the animal and the mental faculty by which man is S guish^^are one, and thereby has arise/thl confusion so genSy If it were possible to form a mechanical theory of mind it must be grounded on the distinctive faculties of the cerebn.m and the cerebellum. Phrenology makes this d^tinction Th^ assumption on which the Scienc/is founded presents the brain as an instrument of many keys, the pulpy Ltter of the brain acting as a tympanum, or rather as a mirror, in which all obiects sensations and thoughts are reflected, the 'players on the key ' phrenologists term organs. They pkce the organs of sensatbn m the lower bram (the cerebellum), those of mind in the otE hemispheres (the cerebrum), the cineritious matter semngas the connecting link of organ with organ. ^ /W.^«« on Instinct): " The sceptical or free- thinking philosophers always lowered human nature as much as possible. They regarded it as something gained to their argu- ments against religious belief, if they could show the difference to be slighter than is supposed between man and brutes ; " they appear to aim at the constitution of the universe without the " hypothesis of Deity. And that «' Active memory and conception is im- plied in comparison, and that the animal possesses abstraction," and concludes « that the animal mind and that of man are on y dilterences in degree. •' Sensation acts on the efferent nerves. Ideas, which become abstractions, are excited independently of sensation : although they convey the fiats of will by the efferent nerves, they are im- pressed on the consciousness without the aid of external images and ofthemselves symbolize themselves. There is paralysis, where consciousness, thought and life exist, but sensation has ceased. It consciousness were a fact of sensation, consciousness were not exhibited without it. The same remark is applicable to intel- ligence. An existing consciousness without sensation appears to subvert the automatic hypothesis, for if they be not resulting facts each may exist independently of the other. The facts of instinct are all resolvable into sense expressions and sense expe- riences, as creatures banding together for the purpose of hunting, appointing sentinels, &c., the power of construction, whethtr ii8 Jnimal Prevision. of the insect or the animal, even the remarkable fact of the seeming prevision of depositing food for a progeny it w." "ever see, as with the ichneumon fly, carpenter bee wasp, &c 1 here are a few instincts which may be difficult to explam, and do not hnd their explanation in the distinction between " simple and compo- site faculties." If experience, " heredity," memory and tribal transmission do not explain them, they must result from an innate potence : they cannot be assumed to be reasoned con- clusions. There may be also an .rror in the observer or re- Dorter The wasp (cerceris cuprestiada) , paralysing the beetle that there may be living food for its larva, is ^'ated on the autho- rity of Lubbock. The ant architect is reported by Huber, the ants rolling themselves into balls, and floating on the floods; those spoken of by Livingstone, who built their nests on reeds above the flood mark -, the driver ant, forming ladders of their own bodies that the others might ascend; the ants m Ceylon nassing from branch to branch over bridges of their bodies formed bv a double section, some leaving the main body and ascending to the opposite point, and there forming the half-link of the bridge, over which the others pass. The ring- tailed monkeys of Texas are said to pass rivers in a similar manner ; linking themselves together by forearm and tail, they hang in a string suspended from a tree carefully selected, by an oscillation imparted to the whole group, a swinging motion is produced and eventually a Tree on the opposite bank is reached, and a bridge formed, over which they pass, and, as with the ants, the first link eaves its hold of the tree and ascends the suspended string, followed by ifc fptlows. until all have passed. At Dublin [British Association, 1878), Lubbock made some interesting remarks on ants whose habits he had observed having cXc dfhirty species, which he had i" captivity In England there are thirty species out of seven hundred which comprise the family The ants are hunters, pastorals, and agriculturists. The first lived chiefly by the chase, hunted alone, and ^their battles were single combats ; the second domesticated certain soecies of aphides, which they kept and tended, acting in concert; ofthe third he c^uld not speak. He confirmed the statements which had been made as to their architectural skill, and had observed their attention to their young and the institution of slavery and that other insects lived with them (according to Andre^^S •J species) ; in some cases the association was accidental. He had not observed that varieties lived together, except there were slaves. The sanguinea zr^A fusca he mentioned ; the latter did the domestic work and foraged, but appeared free to come Animal Instincts, 119 and go. One species he noticed would starve had they not slaves to feed them. They were kind to their friends, and recognised thenii after long absence ; strangers were enemies— them they killed. He found no traces of warm affection, although when one had fed it would fetch others to share the banquet. They were capable of distinguishing colours, violet they avoided. Their sense of touch was delicate, but he had not observed they distinguished sounds, and could not say whether there was any difference of character in the same species, but there was in the habits of the different species. He seems to be of opinion that workers as well as queens produced eggs, as he had found them in habitations where there were no queens. The Texan ant [Atta malefaciens) (communicated to Darwin by Dr. Lincecum, and by him to the Linnean Society, 1861). According to him they prepare the ground, sow, reap, store the grain and expose it to the air to dry. (Homes without Hands, p. 370.) These are difficult questions,^ and yet may be brought within the purview of the perceptive faculties, joined with " heredity" of descent, which in fact is the transmission of ancestral experiences, culminating in an individual species. On the attributes of the various species of dogs the great argument of the hereditary transmission of instinct is founded. 1 he attachment of a dog to his master is a sensory impulse. Instinct has combinations and contrivances which approach abstraction, but never become it, the peculiarity being that the particular instinct is not that of an individual but of the whole species In the animal world the dog, the elephant, the horse, and the monkey, make the nearest approach to what may be termed reason, as the setter bringing the wounded duck across the nver, and returning for the dead one, the monkey that had sugar given it wrapped in paper : on an occasion a wasp was in- serted, and the creature was stung ; from thenceforth, when any- thing was given it wrapped in paper, after shaking the parcel and placing It near its ear, if no motions were observed it was opened, but If there was movement within, it was flung away. Elephants used as decoys, &c. The horse which had lost its shoe going to the •H. S. McCook calls this ant Myrmica malefaciens. He presented to the Academy 01 Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, a memoir on their habiurin which he connrms the observations of Dr. Lincecum , except as to the planting ; t<^ thaHe say ". "they seem most fond ot the grass AuMUa sMcta, and it even seeis possible they »ow this for themselves." Althongh he will not commit himself to this fact, he jays "the ants proved true harvesters. The seeds were carried into g anarie^ refuse heaps. Prof. Leidy said he had studied an allied species (M. ocoidentali,\ ^mL^T^^ Mountams. whose habits were like those described by McCook, but ^^ additwn they fostered a fine large coccus for its saccharine production (vide Nat, ( I \ 120 Man alone the Fire Raiser, \ farrier to have it replaced. The sparrows assembling when the school children were leaving, whose habit was to throw them crumbs, but which did not appear on Sundays when there was no school, is noticed by Carpenter. An analogous fact may be observed by any feeder of poultry; not a bird is to be seen, but no sooner does the distributor of the grain arrive than the adjoining fences and trees become lined with them. There are cases where instinct appears to approach abstraction, but in these cases, what- ever the peculiarity, it is always tribal, therefore inherited, all approaches to reason being the collective experiences of the species. If one ant had formulated a thought which had been adopted by the others, it were purely a mental fact, as contradis- tinguished from instinct, but not so when generalised throughout the species wherever found and hereditarily transmitted. Each genus of ants appears to be invested with some peculiarity confined to the species. The facts of mind are individual conceptions, not the characteristics of particular races of men. The increase of the power of the mind by means of culture appears to be con- fined to man, and it is often found that some individuals possess ^ greater natural powers than those with whom they are associated, but this is not hereditarily transmitted, nor does it become the peculiar characteristic of a family. In uncultured races the mental power is limited, because the ideas are limited. Instances are recorded of individual members of savage tribes attaining to high culture, (the singularity being that in most of the recorded in- stances the individual has forsaken civilization and resumed the tribal habits). This shows the mental capacity is common to the races of man, but when it appears in a higher ratio than usual it is an individual and not a class distinction. No animal has yet been discovered using fire for any purpose. Monkeys will sur- round a fire which has been left in the woods, but never place on the flame a stick. To connect the fuel with the warmth is an abstraction they have not reached, but if the animal instinct and the reason of man were the same, man would not be the only fire user.^ Back in the boulder c\2.y {Paleolithic epoch) chdixred bones and sticks were discovered by Skertchly and Geikie, near Brandon, in Suffolk. I Ingenious theories have been formed as to the discovery by man of the use of fire. The most probable appears the finding some edible root in the vicinity of » lava stream. Humboldt states twenty years after the eruption of ToruUo, shaving* could be ignited in the ti-ssures (Hornitoes). Healed stones in holes covered with earth is the cooking apparatus of many primitive tribes, and none have been dis- covered who do not possess artificial means of procuring fire. Its production at will was of importance, and doubtless exercised the early intelligence. Their usual mode of producing it is by hand- friction ; the drill and turning string was a far-oft intellectual advance. \ Huxley on Instinct, 121 Huxley says : '' No one can doubt that the rudiments and out- lines of our mental phenomena are traceable among the lower animals {Uses of Biology), Here we face the real question. It the human mmd be merely perceptive energy, then it is instinct. It the only Ime of demarcation were the power to draw (ib \ there were no distinction between animal instincts and mental processes. I The spider makes a geometrical web, the stays short- ened or lengthened in accordance with the coming weather. The spider s web and the bee's cell, &c., are merely illustrative of a constructive power to delineate figures— an animal instinct. The power of abstraction appears to be an innate mental characteristic. U we follow historical records there is no time known when man had not this power. If we take as an illustration astrono- mical data for thousands of years before the Christian era this power of abstraction was exercised ; the discovery of the cycle of the equinoxes is a grand illustration. If it be traced for a period of 25,000 years where are we to assign a limit ? The split liints fashioned as arrow and spear heads imply their hafting, the perforated bone needle shows an adaptation to a use ; the shaping, the hafting, and perforation, arise from an abstraction— and beyond, as mental characteristics, we have the sentiments— these no animal possesses ; they exhibit emotions— emotions are instinctive dis- plays ; sentiments, abstract facts of mind, and beyond there is con- science - the guiding rule of man with man ; it has neither rudiment nor outline in any instinctive propensity, and further, it may be said to be an abstraction, not traceable to any perceptive instinct, nor to any mental conception, an inherited characteristic belonging to the races of man, in principle the same, but varied by conditions. 1 o instinctive perception the sun is but an increment of heat, the «nH^^^ "*"!'' '*^''f*'""'*i!2".V^''*^''*'^' the great difference between the human and the brute creation. The ideas and actions of brutes are perpetually employed abou present pleasures or their present pains .... They seldom biisy ^them^lves r, p. 75) "'*'**"' °^P'°^"""«*"ture bliss or of avoiding future misery." \zoonomia, fh! "PrT^f ^'! ^^^'^'^'f^ ^^^^ • " Conscience although beautifully described by many of •SndamJn? 1 """'"'"f ' ""T "°* ^^^^'^^tly attended to by modern writers a^s a tundamental principle in the science of ethics till the time of Dr. Butler " He is Tcover UmTof whi^/h^ discoverer of the great principle, but no one can ie said to^ fXommHnt R. 1 "•■^^.^"f '«"« : he was the first who made it the subject of a Jul comment. Butler says, it is the principle " by which we survey and either approve- or disapprove our own conduct &c., . . from its very nature claiming superforify oveT w thouttarnt i^ iT™^^'!^'' you cannot form a notion of this fa^ulty'conscience without taking in judgment, direction and superintendency Had it strenfftb as woHH 'yfrll '^ ^""^^"^ .^J* ^^' '"'*"'''«=** authority, it would absolutely govern Jbe Tver in «nv r^'? "^^" \ ^^'' '*^?^°^' °^ Conscience has been greatly olfscured but Si«fl? w K^'^'^^.r^'P""^'* ^" the history of the world has it been wholly obliterated. We behold the vestiges of it in the simple theology of the desert; and c^v hTh ^°^«,*^'^.^'«^ y "^^^ than in the complex superstitions of an artificia and civilized heathenism " (Brid. Treat., p. 78.) 122 Instinct and Mind. stars points of light, the moonlight a dimmer day, but m abstraction, the sun is the centre of the planetary system and the intercommunion of star with star is attained. The power of communicating by cries or touch is a sense expression. We do not think in words, yet the power of expressing ideas in words is another feature of mental man. But for the grand distinctions between intellect and instinct man would not have condensed his individual experiences and added to them those of others, and could never have advanced beyond the highest instinctive combi- nations.i If ^he records of the instinctive faculty be true the highest achievements are found with the araneida. The water and trap-door spiders have contrivances outreaching the structural capacity of any creature below man. In the distinction between instinct and intellect and its crown- ing conscience is found the dual nature of man. With the animal world he has organic utility and instinctive faculties ; were this all there were no distinction between animal and man. In the beyond is the mind in its individualised potence, unmistakably drawing the distinction between individualised thought and tribal instinctives.2 The immortality of animals is probably a perpetual » Galen says : '* To man is given, in lieu of every other natural weapon or organ of defence, that instrument, the hand, an instrument applicable to every art and every occasion .... man therefore wants not hoof or horn or any other natural weapon, inasmuch as he is able with the hand .... to grasp the sword or spear {lib, i, c. 11). /. i ^u ♦ I Ray says : '" Some animals have horns some have hoofs, some teeth, some talons, some claws, "some spurs and beaks ; man hath none of all these, but weak and feeble and unarmed came into the world— Why ? a hand, with reason to use it, supplies the use of all these." ...••. c 2 Marshall Hall, on the hypothesis of Unzer and Prochaska. founded his idea ol reflex nervous action which Carpenter extended to the phenomena of intelligence as well as to those of muscular contraction. The idea was first directed to "je instincts, or it might be said to the seeming prevision of insects, which were held to be the automatic results of reflex impulses, or, a.s Unzer says, " laws written upon the nervous pulp;" in other words, the nervous system ol the^ insect is so adjusted as to react on its accustomed surroundings. Does it follow that a manliest design in an action, of necessity implies design in the actor ? To Carpenter is given the credit of recognising that by a fundamental principle nervous activity produces in response to nervous stimuli, sensations and ideas. This system was that held by Erasmus Darwin nearly one hundred years ago, and discussed in his work ' Zoo- nomia: He does not limit the hypothesis to animals only, but extends it to man ; it is the very principle on which he bases his theories ol disease. He attributes emotions and ideas to pleasure and pain as their roots. The distinction between instinct and mind is that in the latter there is a power to determine the snccessioH of ideas and detain any of them before the consciousness ; to make them the guides of conduct and to combat opposing ideas. Instincts appear to have no such povver of control. This great dltlerence consists in the power of volition in the mind which is wanting in instinct, unless directed to a natural want. Cuvier said that the lower animals were experiments prepared for the elucidation of psychological problems ; in so far as mind, like the organism, is an initiative development, Cuvier's saying has force. There is nothing tentative, but throughout ft purpose- ness pursued through uses to a given end. .J Animals act by Sense Experiences. 123 metempsychosis of the tribal distinction, in man of a continuing In the actions of animals there sometimes appears to be a ba ancmgof probab,I,ties.. A careful examination shows the animat lenhW ^YT ^'°'" o^°'"g °"ly by sense experiences Td mechanical adaptations^ Animals and birds have the brain sub- stance, msects and fishes something tantamount to it, which to neL"' ' h° rr. " ''r'T °' '"P^^^^'""^ - -g- of cons ou2 ness It could not be otherwise if the doctrine of progression i, rtV .^''^'""^["^'°ns of Darwin and others afFord no room to doubt the prmcples upon which the theory is based.* JJ:^7:,f:xZKT^ --•'^— - .thei^rt"he'^o;'(tlar;;';Lrr;brm'^;- ^^^ theory of evomtion as »» «„-« / vwuaiever uses maj be made of it b\ some of its adviir»tp«^ io ni once a crime and a m stake.'* «* I airrp** with r»- a n *"""'"' ,^ aavocaies; is ai on Darwin that thp tP»wit„« / ^ ^ . ^^* ^^* ^"^"^y* '" ^'^ admirable pamphlet matter but^heomn^^^^^^^^^^ Physical science is not towards the omnipitenL of Tf an ovum acco3^ r^ H '^"Ik' *"^ ^ ^™ *"^^'"«'^ *° ^«^"J t^e development aeencv - rK7nT«^^^^^^^ / / /V^^ '*^^"" *»^ ^ '^'^^^y immaterial and spiritual agency (Kingsley>s Ltfe and Letters). The continual assault from the pulpit 124 The Physical Mind. Tyndall says : " When we ponder it is the brain that thinks." The brain is the organ of consciousness, by which impressions of sensation and thought are transmitted; did the brain think, thought were merely a material presentment. That the brain is a mere vehicle for the exhibition of effects is shown in that its action accords with the respiratory and pulsatory movements, or as Giacomini and Masso call them, " Pulsations, occultations, and undulations." [vide note i, p. 44). Tyndall continues : — " It is by a kind of inspiration we rise from the wise and sedulous contempla- tion of facts to the principles on which they depend/' " Newton pondered on all things." " He could look into the darkest object until it became entirely luminous ; how light arises we cannot explain, but as a matter of fact it does arise." '* Newton marshalled his thoughts, or rather they came to him, whilst he intended, his mind rising like a series of intellectual births out of chaos (Mirac. and Spec. Prov. Frag. Science, 5th edition). With such contradiction we cannot wonder at his exclamation, " Let us lower our heads and acknowledge our ignorance^ priest and philosopher one and all !" {Frag, Science ^ 5th edition, p. 421). In " the new school of philosophy" we do not find that a sentiment^ is an expression of mind, but that mind itself is non- existent, except as it exists as a physical consequent (see Bain, Mind and Body)., thus sentiment becomes emotion. The modulations of tone (music) may be an instinctive power. We find it with birds, but the existing thing (sound) has no part in instinct. The power to perceive differs from the thing perceived. Instinct uses that it finds, but does not define or create. Intellect defines, and may be said to create, for it constructs implements by which sounds are divided or condensed. The bird sings by an innate volition. The instincts feel a noise, the intellect seizes the noise, or rather so marshals the wave-impulses as to create a harmonious cadence from that which otherwise might be an undistinguishing clamouring. " Pythagoras is said to have devised his theory of numbers by on the Darwinian theory is emphatically denounced by Canon Farrar, who advises unscientific preachers should at the least inform themselves of the facts of science before they assume to assail its premisses. 1 " All the moral feelings, Argvll says, are founded on sentiment and nothing but sentiment;" we may *• despise sentimentality " and forget <* that sentiment rules the world.'' (House of Lords, Feb. 8th, 1877). Dugald Stewart, in this connection, said : " The word sentiment agreeable to the use made of the word by our best English writers, expresses, in my own opinion^ very happily those complex determinations of the mind which result from the co-operation of our entire rational powers and of our moral feelings, and Mr. Hume sometimes employs (after the manner of the French metaphysicians) sentiment as synonymous with feeling, a use of the word quite unprecedented in our tongue." Helmholtx on Sound. 125 accidentally remarking that the hammers at a forge gave out musical cadences. On investigating the facts he found the sound was regulated by the weights of the hammers. His tests were the tension of strings by a weight, whereby he obtained the same accord ; first a tone, then an octave,'and so on. On his experiments he founded his theory, which still holds its place in physL.'^ Sounds arise from substances in a state of amtation or vibration Tl,. rapid changes striking on the interior apparatus of tWerrreTde^ tim audible. In a second of time it is computed they range from wenty to thttT two thousand J when they occur in regular succession they areThe cadences we" term music. An irregular agitation generates noise. oLInctions arise whTn of^resrdScTsrnl"'^ '" ''^'^' ^^^^^-"^ and the'ariado^^^ or these distinct sounds m a given time are notes in music; e^ if twice :,c many variations m the particular period occur it is said to ^e an t Le "bo '^ a tone, and has twice as many vibrations as the tone itself j the second octave has four tunes as many vibrations, the next eight, each oc avrdrublhi^ kself Thus an instrurnent having seven octaves thf highest tone it accornplfsies k one hundred and twenty-eight vibrations in the same time the Towe7 ate to make one vibration. A tone of the same number of vibrations LTawavs the same pitch however produced. The waves of sound are likfthe undulation. on the surface of a liquid when its equilibrium is disturtd/occS^^^^^^ succession of circ es. Two waves of sound which are similar wiHdesrof each other scientifically called - the interference of sound." Thus two tones ^11 perpetually reinforce or perpetually destroy each other {HelmhoU^\ For attaining to the higher beauty which appeals to th~Lt both harmony and disharmony alternately urge and moderate the flow of tones while the mind sees in their immaterial motion an image of its own ner petually streaming thoughts- and moods, just as in tTe^rollne ocean ^t^. aTdTu^r"; r lt?">^ ''.%T'r' ''^h Y-y'-^^ ^^ur^Xntfon ana nurries us along. " The streams of sound, in primitive vivaritv h^ar over mto the hearer's soul unimagined moods which tL artist his overheard from his own, and finallv raises him nn fr. ^Ko*. r , . overtieard be umted mto one, reuniting two forces, the princ plesof two kind'of moTions one that whu^h .s always the same, the other, that'^which is^Xsch^^ne The proportions of the mixtures were according to harmonising^numbefs s^o that It IS possible to know of what and by what rule the sonl ntl, • was compounded. Since the ancients concdved of7he soul by L^ans of moHoT tn ,r \ , P?"'^'P'« ™^ ^PPl'^d to the motion of the heavenly bodies In the school of Pythagoras twenty-seven had a mystical si ""^ «"" ' onel'om the Sun to a^d ^ 'tnn. In^ h >f T "^c ■■' '" J"P"" • ''^'*" » t""^ from '"Piter to Saturn, and a tone and a half from Saturn to the fixed stars. Cicero said, "Such grca 126 Huxley a Materialist ! Matter or Intelligence. 127 I motions cannot take place in silence, and it .s natural the two extremes should have related sounds, as in the octave." Kepler improved on this ; he says, « Tupiter and Saturn sing base, Mars takes the tenor. Earth and Venus the con- tralto, and Mercury is the Soprano." Pythagoras says, " We are alway s sur- rounded by this melody, and our ears are accustomed to it from our birth j so that, having nothing different to compare it with, we cannot perceive it. When we look for these celestial harmonies in the relative dis- tances of the planets we do not find the rhythm. Stated roundly, they are as 100, 67, 55, 44, H, 16, 12, 10. Observation has shattered the harmony of the divine relation of numbers and tones ; yet it was a pleasing idealization. Gravitation is a grand dis- turber, and resolves all into true mechanics. The planets with the sun and moon formerly made the mystic seven. We have the seven superior angels, the seven gates of Mithra, the seven worlds of purification of the Hindus, the seven hells of the Ma- homedan, the Judaic seven angels, and the seven stars of the Pleiades (one now wanting). General opinion points to Huxley as being a materialist. Is he one ? He says : *' I take it all will admit there is a definite government of this universe, and that its pleasures and pains are not scattered at random, but are distributed in accordance with orderly and fixed laws, and it is in accordance with all we know of the rest of the world, that there should be an agreement between one portion of sensitive creation and the other" {Lay Sermons), *' harmonious order governing eternally continuous progress, the web and the woof ot matter and force intenveaving by slow degrees, without a -broken thread, that veil vvhich lies between us and the Infinite, that universe which we alone know and can know Such is the picture which Science draws ot the world, and in propor- tion as any part of that picture is in unison with the rest, so may we tcel it is rightly painted" (ib.). Helmholtz appears to hold the same opinion. Else- where in the Lay Sermons we read : '* The phenomena ot lite are dependent on neither physical nor chemical causes, but on vital powers ; yet they result in all sorts ot physical and chemical changes which can only be judged by their own laws " " Thought is existence, and certainly is to be found in conscious- ness • this may be conceived to be an idealism, which declares the tact of all knowledge to be consciousness, in other words, a mental phenomenon, and therefore affirms the highest of all certainties, and indeed the only absolute certainty, to be the existence of mind." , , r^ , , u r Novalis (Frederic von Hardenberg), as interpreted by Carlyle, comes before us as the most ideal of idealists. *' For him the material creation is but an annearance, a typical shadow in which the Deity manitests Himselt to man. world is near us, or rather is here, in us and above us. Were the fleshy coil removed from our soul, the glory of the unseen were even now around us, as the ancients fabled of the spheral music." The contention of the day is Matter or Intelligence. The first is continually passing from perception, the latter always existing. Viewing the question as one merely of phenomenal effects on which side is the doctrine of probabilities ? That there is " a definite government of the Universe'' shows an antecedent to objective effects. Bain says that '« thought Is at times so quiet . . that we might suppose It conducted in a region of pure spirit, merely imparting its conclusions through a material intervention. Unfortunately for this supposition, the fact is now generally admitted that thought exhausts the nervous substance as surely as walking exhausts the muscles " {Mind and Body). Unquestionably, but what does it prove? that the body Tthe organism) has within it a power which uses the nerves as a conducting apparatus, and that the passage of its energy wears Its conductors in the same way as the electric energy will fuse a wire. All energies wear that through which they work : by the spec- tral analysis it is shown the material of the conductors of the fluid are printed on the spectrum. Heat will dissipate the material which presents its eflects. Can it then be a matter of surprise that the passage of intellect should wear the conducting media ? Were it not for the recuperative power of vital action the machine would wither under the impelling energies. What greater proof of the dual fact of man can we have ? As man is constituted, cause and effect are commingled. Does it therefore follow that mind IS a consequent of the material organism ? Aristotle, according to Bain, speaks of the soul as exercising command. This, he says, " is a familiar enough mode of pre- senting the relation of the two, but it has no scientific validity. The power commanding is not pure, but embodied mind.'' Whether we speak of soul or mind, as we conceive them, both are embodied, both are immaterial presentments. If there be a scientific validity for mind, there may be for soul, certainly, if the doctrine of evolution be fact. Each exists and is expressed in the phrase volition. Quoting the professor : "Aristotle held the nous emanated from a peculiar and select influence of the celestial body, and its own operations are correspondingly dignified. It cognizes the abstract and the universal. It has two modes or decrees on which hang great insults. There is, on the one hand, the receptive intellect (intellectus patiens), and, on the other hand, the constructive or reproductive intellect {intellectus agens). The first perishes with the body, the second, the agens, is intellectual energy m the purest manifestation, separable from the animal body " • ^he climax is noh° ?"" '^ "^P'"g^ P^^Pted by the excavate that idea from amid the «r, *"?"' '^' ?"" of wisdom is to ~ jjro m amid the strange mcrustations u nder which it is fully disclosed (Bell, liHU. Treat., ^"22^) ' ' ^^'^-W^^ole design will stand more 9 m 11 Constancy of Nature. 130 hidden to understand its significance, and to estimate its value- [Anal, of Rel power, origin, or cause " (i*. 415-) The scientific postulate of the persistence of force, or rather the "conservation of energy," is the expression of the fact that every effect must have an adequate cause ; that in nature nothing can be lost, no particle of force can be destroyed, or pass into nonentity. Concentrated forces may be dissipated, and dissipated forces may be concentrated, and one condition of force may pass into another, but the ultimate fund of the power remains for ever unchangeable, and it may be said as nothing is ever destroyed, nothing is tver created, creation being the expression of mtel- We„ce%erceptively rendered to endure >-«// //^.. When science speaks of its discoveries as the laws of nature it simply predicates a constant unvarying force, which is always per- sistent and consistent, and which under like conditions produces like results. To declare the uniformity of nature is merely to say that the methods of force never change ; that it is the same nJw as it ever was, and will be the same through the eternal '^ Thf hy"Jothesis of Thomson and Tait, " the degradation of energy," is a denial of the scientific postulate of the " conserva- tion of energy." Tt is asserted that red stars are extinct worlds. What is the fact ? a urs^ majons " has a periodical change of colour, from intense fiery red to yellow, and is sometimes white. The red or reddish hue continues for a shorter time than the white or the yellow. Fading worlds have been likened to cooling cinders.- 1 TT,.rbert Silencer says (First Principles), '.' By the persistence of force »e really „e.n^r;eSi:/nce J Le po^ X°"of- as;e;t nVan .ro'^ ItionaT -m.y J^ beginning without end." mode 01 "^/"".V^-hiLn ,hv or reasoned tliou-lit and science, or reasoned obsena- ^"'•^irvlboth ledl to admit ^aTm^^^ principle, the necessary existence oran unknown ^conceWable and omnipotent ,H,wer, whose operations are ever m •""^Tockje'r, speaking of the progression of a planetary bo.ly, »»>-^^;' » !h"'^;«^»'f as a hti>;bt star, «hich afterwards becomes dim and perhaps '«J', ''/f^^ '''* ^ "^\°' Extinction is reached, to which it™-' surely .ur,>.-^r-U.no^^^^ ftf matter must in time cease tocive out neat and iigni— wuemcr uiui le Tco I n the Sre or a star in the heavens " (Scie^iee Pum. of ^stromrnyl. The dead coal or the dimmed star, is merely an altered c«f '/>«" ^^^^^^ ."^^ ceases to glow through a loss of its combustible prmciple, but the principle i. T/ie Postulate of a God. 131 The experiments of Joule prove where energy appears to be lost it exists in another form. There is no worthless refuse, all reappears, reclothed with its pristine energy. The hypothesis of Thomson and Tait is endorsed by Balfour Stewart as joint author with Tait of the " Unseen Universe ,' wherein an attempt is made to reconcile the scientific world and scientific facts with the Pauline theology. The authors postulate a God, and on the assumption of a received axiom of science the fabric is reared. Spinoza held that the finite was an outbirth of the infinite, but the authors of the Unseen Universe appear, by an inverse mode of reasoning, to assume that because there is a finite world which must pass away, therefore there must be an existing unseen universe; that as this world must pass into nothingness through " the degradation of energy,^' by the force of continuity, the great principle is manifested, and we are told that because of this because, the Pauline dogmas must be a con- tinuing existing truth, existing in an archetype.^ In infinite intelligence we conceive a universality, comprising in itself all things, although presented as the omniscient^ omnipotent^ and omnipresent cause , this probable possible, this existence as God, is only a postulate until His being is proved. It is insufficient to assert that because all effects must have had an antecedent competent cause, that therefore this cause is Deity. To some minds the statement carries conviction ; others accept the facts of the cause but deny its Divinity; others reject all ideas of a creative cause, and refer all phenomenal effects to automatic action, to chemistry, mechanics, and spontaneity; some refuse to still an existing qiutntity, and reproduced through recuperative energy. Either *^ the conservation ol" energy*' and '* the conservation of matter " are the merest hypo- theses, or there are neither dead particles, dead worlds, degraded energy, nor wasted heat. * Attempts to reconcile Theology with Science never succeed, we only get Dogma which postulates Deity, and the material aspect of a boundless idea culminating in motion. If the great continuity is to be sought in material bases fruitless indeed is the faith founded on creeds. Were there no unseen universe the continuity of worlds would l)e preserved as existing in the idea, the vitality of which thrust them into being. If the earth were resolved into its primary, yet as a particle of the universe its continuity would exist whilst one particle of its substance floated in space. The spectrum analysis leads to the conclusion that galaxies and astral systems, suns, planets and meteorites are of analogous composite substances, and if all were resolved into that from whence they evolved the continuity would be un- broken so long as that primordial principle existed. If the universe be the expres- sion of the primordial intelligence objectively presented, then in that intelligence is* to be sought the bond of continuity. Worlds, suns, and systems, may fade into nothingness, yet in an unbounded consciousness the creative continuity would be for ever continuing. It requires great imagination to conceive that because there is an existing material world that therefore there is an existing, to us, unseen material: universe ; at least such must be the confession if we accept the atsumpti on of type- and archetype as a theological hypothesis. ^- ngg^im^Smmsi^i''-^^ 132 Idealism and Realism. argue, and are satisfied with the conclusion that if there be a God there is no manifestation of His Providence, and that if He exists He is "unknowable, unthinkable, unfathomable," He may be all these, and although this ultimate conception may be unde- monstrable by finite reason it yet may exist, and all our ideas be but the reflex of creative thought. In the design and purposes of nature, in the causative intelligence expressed in phenomena, faith finds both a God and a Provfdence. All men more or less idealize their conceptions. The physicist considers his concep- tion as the summation of facts, and as an idealization of his dream finds the basis of all things in "eternal matter.'* The theologian in his conception idealizes the human until it becomes the divine, and on human attributes founds his ideal of Deity. These conceptions are idolisms. The true idealization is that entity of thought expressed as the Religious sentiment, engendered by the personation of the impersonal self, conceiving Deity as a Providence, a fact and a purpose, existing in the supersensual as the prseter-natural/ an uiiembodied entity, with neither attri- butes nor parts, perfected in its own perfection, not as an idol, but as an idealization, infinite and beyond the finite conception. The ancients supposed they could unfold the processes of nature by reason only. Imagination had its fling, and for elements they had earth, air, water — all compounds, and fire as destroying and purifying. Hooked atoms and other incongruities held the place of chemical aflinities, and Physics became a string of ingenious speculations. We can never by scientific analysis know how the kosmic ultimate became objective r how the germ 1 <'Let us acknowledge the practernatural is not the sui>ern;ttural, and that whether the praeternatural is present or absent, the supersensual, the true super- natural, may and will remain unshaken, and what is supernatural ? " 'Mt has come to he recoi?nised the supernatural elements of religion are those which are moral and spiritual" (Dean Stanley, Aberdeen, 1877). The supersensual and the super- natural both imply something above and beyond sense, effects. All facts ol abstrac- tion are supersensual, but not supernatural. We know phenomena by perception, we know intelligence, or cause, by conception ; as both exist in phenomena, super- sensual in the phrase supernatural does not lift us beyond cause and effect, as they are known in nature. When we arrive at an abstraction we apprehend Wx^i Prater- Naturaly or as the better word would be, the super-mundane. Prcctcr is over, above, more than, by the side of, near to, and also contrary to, or against, before. Hence we may say our apprehension of Deity, because it is above, over, more than nature, is Praeter-Natural, and we may even say contrary to, or against, or before, as in the relation of cause and effect ; thus Praeter-Natural would stand for the cause, or ►creator, or the caused and cause combined. ' Germ Formation : The Ideas of Garrod, Sanderson^ Thomson^ and TyndalL Garrod (Royal Inst.) said in respect to amoebiform bodies {Amoeba, Foramini- fera, &c.), the protrusion of fine filaments (pseudopodia) is really a tem- porary growth, and not, as generally supposed, a search for food, as the nutrient particles are in solution in the water, and furnish the materials for the Ihe Multiple of Littles. 133 by the most simple variations multiplies itself, as it would seem, m mathematical progression, almost realizing the Pythagorean notion of number ; how the first simple living spot became the lofty tree, or the grand organism, the human form ; nor whence nor what is that vitality by which all these changes have been wrought ; nor how the first conscious sensation becomes conscious instinct ; nor how an idea multiplies, yet unifies itself, until it becomes an abstraction. We know the constituents of the simple spot ; we see the ovu?n and the cell ; we see the tree, the lichen, and the fungus ; we can verify an enormous variety of forms, and when this is done we fall back on its first expression, the life-bearing plasma. We see the falling body, slow m its originating motion, a moment, and its velocity is such that no growth of the amoeba, and when the supply ceases growth ceases, and death ensues. Thus he explains it:— "If an amceba be surrounded equally by nutrient fluid the outer portion is well nourished. The inner part is less well nourished, and the activity of this, the nucleus, is simply the result of motion towards nourishment. In the case of the amoeba which have shells, such as the foraminifera, the salts of lime are deposited by simple chemical precipita- tion (as illustrated by putting a hank of wool, soaked in turpentine, into a jar of chlorine). Turpentine is simply carbon and hydrogen. The hydrogen united with the chlorine, and solid carbon was precipitated. The salts ot lime which form shells and the bones of the higher animals are," he seems to consider, " all due to precipitation through chemical action around the amoebiform bodies.'' *' The blood of amoebiform bodies may also be studied in the same way, and may be called physical rather than vital." If the physics are the methods by uhich vitality assimilates her materials, to call It physical seems very like saying vitality exists and that it does not. Mechanics are methods of formation, but the antecedent is intelligence, and so the physics are modes, but the antecedent is vital action. The terminology does not rid us of the reality ! Burdon Sanderson says :— " Wherever those chemical processes go on, which we collectively designate as life, we are in the habit of assuming the existence of anatomical structure. The two things, however, although con- comitant, arc not the same, for while anatomical structure cannot come into existence without the simultaneous or antecedent existence of the molecular structure which we recognise as living, the proof is at present wanting that the vital molecular structure may not precede the anatomical. At the same time It must be carefully borne in mind that there is no evidence of the contrary " Alan Thomson (Brit. Ass. Plymouth, 1S77), says:— «^^ are just as Ignorant of the mode of the first origin of the compounds of the inorganic eUments as ive are of those of lining matter r " No student of embryology (ia the present state of science) can escape being an evolutionist. No one could say that the development of the individual in the higher animals does not repeat, in its more general character, as in many of its specific phenomena,, the development of the race, and in some respects we cannot refuse to recog« nise the possibility of continuous derivation in the history of the origin of both plants and animals, however we may fail to realize the precise chain of connection." He appears to reduce the ?nystery to the smallest possible dimen- sions—to assume a germ, and construct the nvhole series out of it {The Times), 4 ,i i- it 134 Laplace and Newton. speed can overtake it ; we are conscious of an idea, but we are not conscious how the idea becomes a thought. Internally we know we are thinking men ; we can dwell on the diversity of thoughts, not alone those of our own experiences, but can collate those of others, and perforce we are forced back on the unit, the idea. The idea, the increment motion, and the plasma spot, are each units, and by an interchanging multiple they become magni- tudes. Here scientific analysis ends, and Malpighi s littles are resolved by causative intelligences. . The last sentence of Laplace was, « What we know is little, what we are ignorant of, immense." Of the same character was the utterance of Newton, who said, « I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem only like a boy playing Burdon Sanderson's theory was attacked by Tyndall. The difference between them appears to be the sense in which the words germ and struc ure are em- pWed Sanderson holds, "the corpuscules are evidently organ^ed i that they Resemble in every respect the germs of the lower organisms, and d.fferfrom each other so much i^n vo^lume an^l structure that they --<\-^^'f^^^J^^lZ verv numerous species." Such are the germs of M. Pasteur. In Tyndall s sense Ihe^ ""enot germs but finished organisms ; " yet it was ot these that Pasteur said that it was mathematically proved that they wr. the onstnators of the C»»«,. which are developed in albuminous liquids contammg ^"g" when :?posed .0 the atmosphere." There are many thmgswhuh, >f '" "^"«^ ^^J /;. hold when argued in extremes become absurd, e.g. to say that the charac terisJic stmcttues of nerve, of muscle, or of gland, exist m the o-vum at the moment after impregnation. From the moment it is supposed ^' "'«";! '"^?5^ anatomical structure, the argument used by Tyndall loses aU force He fTvndall), after referring to the germ, says, " some of those particles (atmo- spheric) develop into globular bacteria, some into rod-shaped bacter.a, some into long flexile filaments, some into impetuously moving "•'g^"'*'"^' ='"^^X! into organisms without motion. One particle will emerge as a BactUus anthrads, which produces deadly splenic fever ; another wil develop into a Sum, the spores of which are not to be microscopically distinguished from thos; of the former organism ; and yet these undistinguishable spores are Surely powerless to produce the disorder which BacUusanthracs never faik to produce. It is not to be imagined that particles which, on develop- ment emerge into organisms so different from each other, possess no struc Jiral differences. But if they possess structural differences they must possess the thing differentiated, viz. structure itself." Sanderson says in the definition he has overlooked the distinction between anatomical " observation and mole- cular structure." Of germinal particles of " ultra microscopical minuteness we know nothing (although such particles exist) nor of their structxiral attributes or their development ; nor can it be held there is any connection between mole- cular limit" and " microscopical visibility." In speaking ot disease germs, he savs " It has been found that ordinary bacteria may be introduced '■"<> «"« blood of healthy animals in quantities, without disturbmg the health. Ihe danger of the morbific action of the atmosphere arises from their having been infected by miasma or contagium. The statements which Tyndall (.876) characterised as incautious had been, two years before, confirmed by expert, inenters of acknowledged competence. i Idealization in Consciousness, ^3S on the sea shore, diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble, or a more peculiar shell than ordinary, whilst the vast ocean of truth lays open before me." [PoweFs Nat. Phil.) Herbert Spencer says {Essays^ vol. i, ^07), « There is a warrant higher than that which any argument can give for asserting an objective existence, mysterious as it seems— the consciousness of something which is yet out of consciousness." If the something which is yet out of consciousness be an idealization, the idealiza- tion exists as it is formulated in consciousness. Although the subject of the idealization may not exist in conscious knowledre, the thought which discloses consciousness exists in consciousness, and is an image of the mind as positive in its presentment as an image thrown by objective phenomena. What, then, can Spencer's " something outside of consciousness" be but the pre- siding essence which we cannot define, however we may think it ? CHAPTER V. Faith. — Religion. — Immortality. — Sociology, y IRCHOW, in his address at Munich, assumed a prominence for belief. Belief is faith. Faith may be a reasoned or an unreasoned conclusion. Its postulates taken for granted the consequents flow in seeming sequences. When reasoned premisses are assumed as a basis, whether true or false, the acceptance of the theory is exactly in accord with the mental condition, and its inception presupposes its truth. The basis may be mere authority {i.e. un- reasoned) \ it may arise from the conception of a creative cause, with an ideal so extended that it is clothed with attributes which may be imaginative, or springing from a given bereasoned conse- quents, or be so utterly inconsequential as to be wholly impro- bable. Whatever the idealization may be, and however arising, it constitutes the real elements of faith. Whatever variations may arise, the broad principles exist and become a conscience in consciousness. Whatever are the inconsistencies of the thought or the changes in its condition the conception remains unchanged. The same principle which induces faith in imaginative theories has its place with science, where there is much of the speculative. 136 The Finite and the Infinite. there is too little of the proved. No man knows all sciences, their bases are presumed to be established ; when weighted by a name a faith in them is formulated, perhaps in turn to be shattered by a balance of probabilities. Theology and Science, presumptively, are reasoned conclusions : on the one hand, a theoretical God, on the other hand, theoretical Matter, but neither can be presented with the precision of evidence. The ruling principle in each is the same, whether it be dogmatic presumption or scientific assumption. In this view materialism^ may be as much a faith as the most exalted moral code, or the most transcendental theo- logy, or the most mystical idealism. Words present difficulties, and as are the peculiarities of thought so are the distinctive meanings they convey. Ask a dozen men to define civilisation, the definition would be different with each. Sharon Turner's is " Political order, social courtesy, pleasurable amusements, and domestic employments ;" Guizot's, in its abstract principle, is perhaps the more correct, " The develop- ment respectively of social and individual activity, as marked by two signs, the improvement of man's outward condition, and the improvement and development of his fliculties.^' Max Miiller (Science of Language) recognises the difficulty. He says, " A history of such terms (among others, the ' finite and infinite') would do more than anything else to clear the philosophical atmosphere of our days." Berkeley struggled with the same diffi- culty. Max Miiller says : Tht infinite, we are told, is a negative idea, it excludes only. " We are assured in the most dogmatic tone that the finite mind cannot conceive the infinite." " There is no infinite, for as there is a finite the infinite has its limits in the finite," and *' cannot be infinite." " It is negative because the negative particle in is used." " The same idea may be expressed by the Perfect, the Eternal, the Self-existing." Here is no negative idea: that negative words may express positive ideas was perfectly well known to the Greek philosophers. The tnie exposition ot *'the finite" is *'the shadow of the infinite." Whatever may be the etymology of *' finis," it stands for something " which the senses do not supply," but " has an existence in the language of reason." We *' have besides reason two other organs of know- ledge, Sense and Faith ; " neither subordinate to the other," but "co-equal." *' Faith is that organ of knowledge by which we apprehend infinitude." " The infinite hidden from the senses, denied by reason, is conceived by faith underlying the experience of the senses and the combinations of reason. What to our reason is negative, in-finite^ becomes to faith positive " — the " infinite," and '* if our eyes" are once opened we see even with our senses straight into that endless «//by which we are surrounded." The external senses apprehend the finite, as being in their own ' If a profound argument lor materialism were required it may be found ir> Berkeley, but able as is the structure raised, he meets it by an ar j^u me nt equally able in refutation. Definition of the Saxon Word God. 137 nature limited, and reason arranges and organizes that which the senses present, terminating in consciousness, but this is a consciousness of reasoned results based on observation and expe- riment. The element Faith gives another aspect to the argu- ment, and opens out another channel, another consciousness, that of the innate interior consciousness. " The religious senti- ment*' is that which conceives infinitude, or "self-existence eternally prolonged. '^ The perceptive mind is bounded by its own sources of information, and cannot rise higher than its source. Faith shows a higher source. There is a perceptive faith, based on facts, evidences, and authorities, and a conceptive faith, which grasps the Unseen. It is by faith only the unseen can be appreciated. Reason leads to its confines, and faith, enforced by inductions drawn from phenomenal nature, leaps the chasm, and in the unseen finds the factor to which the existing harmonies of nature are due. By this action of faith we receive the consciousness of a higher self — of an interior something existing with, yet not of the environ- ing substance. By an induction we associate the mind and the unseen power, visible only by its effects, with that other intelli- gence also unseen, but predicated only by results. Then, being associated by their affinities, an influx is established, recognised by the religious sentiment, and in faith is constituted an invisible existence, to the inner consciousness unbounded. Congregated in faith by the religious sentiment, the belief of a spiritual kingdom existing in the unseen is embodied. Thus the ideal of the idea presented in language means, " the Eternal, the Perfect,, the Self-Existing," the Infinite, the Everlasting, whatever the phrase may be, all are embodied in the Saxon word — comprisiJig all being— God. In this idea there can be no limit, nor can a secular principle be connected with it. Science and religion are easily reconciled. It is but to accept the facts as they are condensed in consciousness and asserted by conscience ; then all we know of this world and of the universe appears as one thought, an idea of extended vastness, comprised in one universal intelligence. Martineau has asked, " What indeed have we found by moving out of all radii into the infinite ? That the whole is woven together in one sublime tissue of intellectual relations, geometrical and physical, the realised original of which all our science is but a practical copy Unless, therefore,. it takes more mental faculty to construe a universe than to cause it, to read the book of nature than to write it, we must more than ever look upon its sublime face as the living appeal of thought to thought." We see a thing and infer the existence of something externali , A ■w—- ■■■ .^.■^»gfS'jj^)|^;^;i^t>fig-.- * 138 The, Tu quo que. to ourselves. The presence of the sensations is conceived to be an adequate warrant for asserting the presence of their cause. Precisely in the same way we feel the presence of the Unknowable being, and " because we feel it we infer the existence of a real object both external to and within ourselves. The presence of the emotion is conceived to be an adequate warrant for asserting the presence of its cause."' " The object of the sensations and the object of emotion might be illusory: this is conceivable in logic, but not in fact. There can be no reason for maintaining the iinreality of the emotional and the reality of the sensible object. Existence is believed in both instances on the strength of an immediate intuitional influence." The mental process is active in each; and *' if it be contended that sensible perception carries with it a stronger warrant for our belief in the existence of its objects than internal feeling, the reasons for this contention must be exhibited before we can be asked to accept it, otherwise it will turn out to be a pure assumption, constituting, not a reason for the rejection of religion by those who accept it, but a mere explanation of the conduct of those who do not.'' "The denial of religion is not the less emotional than its affirmation 5" and when men *'quit the emotional stronghold to speak of those to whom that unknown cause is perceptible, as the victims of delusion, these latter may confidently meet them on the field which they themselves have chosen" (vide An. Rel. Faith, vol. ii., p. 477.) Max Ml'iller says, " True reverence does not consist in declaring a subject, because it is dear to us, to be unfit for free and honest inquiry. . . True reverence is shown in treating every subject, however sacred, . , with perfect confidence, without fear, and without favour . . but before all with an imflinching and uncompromising loyalty to truth" {Science of Rel.), ** He who wants to find out what religion is, what foundation it has in the soul of man, and what laws it follows in its historical growth, . the study of error is to him more instructive than the study of truth, and the smiling augur as interesting a subject as the Roman suppliant who veiled his face in prayer that he might be alone with his God" (/^.). *' If we say that it is religion which distinguishes man from the animal . . we do not mean any special religion, but we mean a mental faculty which, independent of, nay, in spite of sense and reason, enables man to apprehend the infinite under diflferent names and under various disguises;" and " when man turns his face to heaven certain it is that he alone yearns for something which neither sense nor reason can supply" {ib.).^ "The highest morality that was ever taught before the rise of Christianity was taught by men with whom the gods had become mere phantoms, who had no altars, not even an altar to the Unknown God." (ib. 14.3). {Buddhists). (This dictum is more than questionable in the face of the teaching of the Vedic hymns and the Zend-avesta.) Religion in its origin lies in a small compass : " A few words recognised as names of Deity, a few epithets which have been raised from their material meaning to a higher and more spiritual stage," " words which originally expressed bodily strength, or brightness, or purity, came gradually to mean greatness, goodness, holiness," and eventually more technical ideas. The word ex- plaining breath, as Psyche 2iV[\ov\g the Greeks, represents life, spirit, ' The watch cry of the men of the day, that is, " Nothing exists in the intellect but what has before existed in the senses," is answered by the epigram of Leibnitz. *' Yes, nothing but intellect." The Links of Thought. 139 mind. The same idea is found in the Sanskrit Atman.^ which eventually became the self. The Spaniards in their earliest visits to Nicaragua found it in the Aztec word Tuli (to live), having the same significance as psyche and atman. The Aztecs believed that when a person died in battle he went to the gods, and also when he had led a good life ; otherwise the yuli perished with the body. There goes forth from the mouth, they say, a something resem- bling the person (yuli). The same thought is found among many uncultured nations. With the Zulus, Uthlanga.^ a reed, meta- phorically, is the source of being, the original meaning being lost. Everywhere we find the ghost, spirit, or shadow, as a perceptive embodiment of the conceptive thought, the mythic expression of the religious idea, that the man exists although the body dies. The link of thouglit expressed in words is found when the Greek says ^x-//, he is ; the Roman est.^ the German zj/, the Slav yesti.^ the Hindu asti. The Sanskrit word is a compound of the root ^j, to be, and the pronoun // ,• the root originally meant, to breathe. We may then gather from language and mythology that each accent had its original meaning, and each myth a history (vide PhiL MythoL^ Max Miiller). Words are not alone expressions of thought, as by originating ideas they frequently engender them. Blackie contemns the attempts to explain mythology, even under the guidance of a Bopp, a Grimm, or a Max Miiller \ yet by their labours, and those of Cox, a meaning has been given to seemingly unmeaning legends. If they have done no more they have knitted world-thought with world-thought, and in tracing these myths to their roots have shown how the dawning mind of man allegorized nature, idealizing the perceptions by a concep- tion of the Divine. This idealization occurred not alone among the Greeks and the Hindus in long-past ages, but all nations in the dawn of a faith have done the same. However distant or barbarous, the same strain of thought, and frequently the same images, are presented in their legends. India, Egypt, Mexico, have the same myths in their religious rites, with festivals regu- lated by the same stellar signs; but wherever the Aryan has placed his foot the similarity in derivative customs is greater, disclosing in mythic guise, a common origin. The distinctive character of the sentiment prevailing with all peoples goes further to verify the kinship of race^ than the similarity of speech and of customs. 1 The Hottentots have a beautiful myth of the moon sending an insect as a messenger to man. ** Go thou to men and tell them, as I die and dying live, so shall ye also die, and dying live." " The insect deputed the hare to deliver the message, who rendered it, the moon says *' As I die, and in dying perish, in the same manner ^hall ye also die and come wholly to an end." The moon in anger split the hare*s 140 Community of Faith. Flood legends can be gathered all over the world ; no race is without them. Taking into consideration the distinctive attri- butes of race, they appear to be the narrative of the same incident. With all races is the same idea, the symbolising the unseen.^ Whatever the position of man, his dual nature pertlnehtly speaks in all his conclusions. The physicist by perception continuing the action of his elements pronounces for material causes. The philosopher, whilst contemplating the piinciples by which the elemental substances cohere, combine, and change, whilst accepting the analysis, unearths the principle, and by a conceptive induction idealizes his theory, and finds beneath the moulded sub- stances an intellectual organizer. Uncultured man finds an expla- nation of nature in his superstitions, and extends his ideal into the unseen.- Civilised man founds on his superstitions his ideal and centres his hope on an imaginative given. The natural philosopher, viewing nature as a whole, divines a cause, nameless in his thought, and because nameless and undefined, he hypothecates an origin whilst awaiting his proof. Thus the uncultured, the cultured, lip, continuing to this day ; in revenge the hare scratched the moon's face, and the traces contiiuie. We have here a conceptive philosophy perverted into a per- ceptive distinction. * Plato aptly depicts the thought. " He will reason that the sun is he who gives the seasons and the years, and is the guardian of all that is in the visible world, and in a certain way, the cause of all things which he and his fellows have been accus- tomed to behold." In the Natural History of Relif^fon, Hume says, he would show himself but little acquainted "with the ignorance and stupidity of the people" who thought " the doctrine of one supreme Deity "owed its snccess to the prevalent force of reason. In this day, in Europe, ask one of the uncultured why he believes in an Omnipotent Creator ? He" would not hold out his hand and bid you contemplate the joints in his fingers, the counterpoise they receive from the thumb, the softness and fleshy part of the inside of the hand, i^-»wir'^^3^*tfil-v3^^Ei^(]|^!E»a|^ r. 142 Theologies symbolize Science, Fathers, delineated in the parable of Lazarus and Dives, and en- shrined as a dogma by the Church. Rehgion is the acknowledg- ment of an existing, unseen, and praeternatural power ; its inculca- tions moral conceptions,^ in its unity and universality a concen- tration of sentiment, intelligence and mind, and as an idealization, God the Creator. The Greeks took the expression of beauty as their kosmos, concentrating in the word the harmonious relations of phenomena. Symmetry is an outbirth of sympathy, as consti- tuting a Providence, thus the kosmos in its element beauty, becomes centralized in universality. It is possible the theologies of the world are symbols of the science of their eras, and the science we know and have, probably existed \n a long forgotten past.^ Philosophy, or reasoned thought, and Science or reasoned perception, admit of, as a fundamental principle, the existence of an unknown and omnipotent power. Experience cannot be appealed to asassertmg an infallibility, and observation is frequently mis- leading. It was asserted as a fact of observation, none more unhesitatingly, none considered more settled, than that the pulsa- tions of the heart occurred in all animal organisms in one mode punishment words have lost their significance. A doctrine of the Anglican Church is founded on the parable of Dives and Lazarus, Luke xvi. v. 24. It will be comforting to the^abused spiritualists to find they are not such ignorant dolts as they are pronounced to be by Dr. Carpenter who in pure ipwrance of what was inculcated and believed tn by Me/wvented his vituperations, when their ideas are upheld by so accomplished a divine as Dr. Farrar. Our professors may now indulge a materialistic terminology, deny the intendence of their words, and so escape the charge of materialism I Zeno (564 b.c.) insisted that culture was the true foundation of virtue. We must trust to sense to furnish data of knowledge to be condensed by reason ; that nature aims at the universal, hence individuals are the means by which her ends are accomplished ; that everything around us is in mutation, decay follows reproduction, and reproduction decay. The cataract preserves its shape but its waters are ner- petualh- changing— this is the aspect of nature. The universe as a whole alone is unchangeable. He doubted whether the mind can ascertain absolute truth 3 The researches of Layard in Assyria have disclosed great advances in art. At Kougunjik, the scene of the late Mr. G. Smith's researches, ruins of edifices and a literature, which had existed more than five thousand years beiore the Christian era, have been found ; also elaborate designs in sculpture, drawing, engraving both m relief and surface cutting, executed with a fineness of touch which demonstrated high attainmants, glass bowls, enamelled bricks in all colours ornamented with flowers and scrolls, fragments of earthen vases, with figures so highly glazed as to have assumed . . .the iridescence of ancient glass, bronzes inlaid with gold, one ot which is the Egyptian sacred scaraha:us with extended wings : bells formed ot an admixture of brass and tin, modulated in cadences, chairs formed of ivory, copper rings, &c., the arch wanting in the Egyptian, early Grecian, and Romlu archtecture; the lens ot rock crystal with opposite convex and plane facets, pointing to optical instruments (as does the tube of the Druids. Diodorus). We have at least the true microscope in a simple form, buried even before Rome had being. a lost art. In the ages of Pliny an.l Cicero, a water-filled glass bulb served as a microscope We have besides the impressions of fixed characters on baked clay tablets, which, as deciphered, disclose histories and philosophies. Was Babylon the mine from whence Egypt drew her knowledge ? and the . Scientific Uncertainty. 143 only. Von Hasselt discerned a variation.^ When it is found that there is an innate (because universal) conception, according in principle in the minds of all peoples, it may be assumed to be fixed, however inexactly defined, involving no question of necessity, it is one of being?' The experiential and experimental schools have effected at the least this good, they guard against accepting, as necessary and ultimate beliefs, effects which are frequently con- tingent and dissoluble. Man cannot escape a faith.^ Religion, formless in intelligence, postulates its position as fixed and final. It no sooner appears than a formula is instituted, against which it is continually protesting. The attempt is always made to confine it within a set of dogmas. Sooner or later the religious senti- ment bursts from the imposed thrall, but awaiting the new advent is another scheme of dogmas. This is the history of creeds in all ages of the world, and it is not the less true '^ that the deepest hostility to theological systems is inspired by the very sentiment to which these systems seek to give a formal and definite expres- sion '^* (Amberley). columns of Hermes but the rescript of an older era? The pyramids of Gizeh (according to Piazzi Smyth) show there were adepts in astronomical lore. The Chaldeans were noted as astronomers and workers in occult arts. The temples were their treasuries of knowledge; the tile-records, recopied in Assyria, show an advanced civilization, founded on philosophy and commerce, for amongst them were found trade accounts, and if those records be as old as the flood legends written on the tiles, we have records of an advanced civilization preceding the time of Jacob, if not that of Abram. The Chaldeans are famed in history as being deeply skilled in science, and by the tiles we are assured their fame was not an idle romance. In the time of Alexander, Berosus gave the mythic histories of Babylon, which, until the discovery of the Assyrian ruins, were doubted by the learned, if they were not re- jected as impostures. ' Up to 1824 it was supposed of every animal possessing a circulation, " that the current of the blood took one definite and invariable direction. In 1824, "Von Hasselt, happening to examine a transparent animal of a class {Ascidians^, found to his infinite surprise that after the heart had beat a certain number of times, it stopped, and then began beating the opposite way, so as to reverse the course of the current, whichjreturned by and by to its original direction. I have myself timed the heart of these little animals ; 1 found it as regular as possible in its periods of reversal" (Huxley, L, . 113.) Can the idea of immortality be a phantasy ? the idea exists wherever culture exists. No race of man has been discovered who have not some idea of an existence beyond the life they live. With some uncultured races it is the conception of beings for- merly inhabitants of earth who return as evil spirits ; again, others suppose their ancestors return as spiritual presences, con- tmuing but for few generations ; others that there is a forever existing evil spirit, haunting and injuring ; others recognise a good 148 Argument for Immortality, and evil spirit, some only a good spirit ; with all there is an im- pression of the unseen ; its lowest expression an unformulated superstitious dread. With some tribes there is an evil spirit to be propitiated and an exalted being to be regarded and reverenced as the author of all good {vide Lubbock and Tyler). It therefore may be said that the conception of the unseen (spiritual agencies) is universal with man, but it is doubtful whether in all cases the idea of the immortality of man is ingrafted with it. The consideration then arises — Are superstitions the debase- ments of a religious faith, or is the idea of the unseen an inborn con- ception originating with the various tribes with whom it is found ? We have then to fall back on the meaning attached to the idea of Immortality, and have to inquire whether it be an innate con- ception or the result of culture ? All formulated creeds have as an article of faith ^ the belief in the immortality of its professors. Whence does the idea arise ? The general answer is, that it is founded on a sentiment (the religious sentiment). Is this suffi- cient ? if so the fact is formulated through a mental conception inherent in man and perfected through culture. Accepted as an answer we must inquire in what does it consist ? Some answer it is a continuation of consciousness. Animals are conscious, can it be said they are immortal ? The answer should be in the negative, because (as far as we know) they have no individualism, as the expression of thought, nor the mental power in its condensation as an abstraction, hence there can be no continuing consciousness, because there is no conscience. In man, in the abstract idea there is an individualism and conscience, as elements and condi- tions. Is this individualism a continuing abstraction ? If answered affirmatively, then man as an individualized intelligence is im- mortal ; if the individualism, being a mental abstraction, is once in existence, it must be accepted as being for ever existing, because it is an intellectual unit, not existing merely as an idea, but because it is interwoven in intellectual conception, itself ^ quality of intelligence. It can be no phantom thought, because else, it would fade away as wanting in intensity, or be obliterated through the crowding in of other ideas ; on the contrary, it is continuing and for ever re- curring. We then arrive at the conception of the perpetuation of an existing individualism consciously impressed, hence we have an indefinite idea as to objectivity, but as to subjectivity definite. This individualism, from whatever source it be derived, is an existing fact in intelligence ; even if it be denied that intelligence is other than a material consequent, it still as an ultimate unity would be self-perpetuated, linked with consciousness, a conscious individualism. Sociology. 149 f Questions of embodiment or disembodiment are merely relative ideas. We recognise the disembodied as an existing quality {e.g.), thought. The thoughts of men, dead ages ago, are recorded, and thoughts flow from mind to mind without a cognizable embodiment in substance. Hegel says, " The interior world, the sentiments, the contem- plations, and the emotions of the soul, instead of retracing the development of an action, its essence, and its final goal are expressions of interior movements in the mind of the individual." If it be true that there is no moment in life when we do not {consciously or unconsciously) think,^ it must be conceded that with organic life there is soul-life j it then follows, that in the continuity of each fact there are separate existences, the material components forming new material components, and that which, constitutes soul, through a universality of action, in its indivi- dualism is for ever continuing. Another view of man is the social. On this Herbert Spencer has written an admirable work {The Study of Sociology). To be practical its address is to another being than man as he is. The ameliorations of class distinctions are admirably put, but there is a point beyond which the principles cannot go, and that is " the «elf." The whole philosophy merely discloses the selfishness of man, the legacy of his ancestral descent. The ruling trait throughout animal organisms is the instinctive self; which includes, not only, so-called cultured but uncultured, unprogressed, or savage man. The true exigence of life is the culture of Matter in its Potence. ^S3 muscles, the organism thrilling in synchronous unison ; effects inducing effects, and so perfect the mechanical arrangement that each separate part is endued with a motion of its own, and these motions so blended that the whole mechanism acts as a vibrating spring, and in its elastic rebound repairs its own waste. If we suppose this animate motion originated in matter, it follows that all objective substances are endued with vitality, and we must assume that vitality and matter are synonymous terms. Besides material presentments we have imponderable forces, and these imponderables in their blended energy create the diversity we know as phenomena. Beyond matter and force there is sensation. If we suppose sensation to be an outbirth of matter, we must suppose that each inanimate particle composing the universe has sensation. Beyond sensation we have instincts, which in such relations would become arranged sensations. Beyond instinct we have mind, a directing and controlling impulse. If we conceive intellect to be derived from matter then every particle of matter is self-intelligent. If force, sensation, instinct, and intellect, be derived from matter — the conclusions drawn are necessary con- sequences, as the mass cannot have properties which are wanting in the particles of which it is constituted. We must then say Stahl's inert mass and Hume's "brute matter" is its own creator j that it has form, sensation, force, and intellect, by its own institu- tion, and that in matter is a postulate of Deity. In an alternative view we find a greater probability. When we consider the perfect arrangement and adaptation of part to part, whether viewed in the minutest presentment or in the most wondrous prodigy, we find in matter only the plastic material upon which every force acts, which every sense permeates, and intelli- gence commands, all being in, yet not of it. Are we to suppose that the particles arranged themselves, and that so perfect was the accident of the arrangement that the accident is endlessly repeated. If we suppose that Intelligence created, that it adapted, and objec- tively presented its conception as phenomena, we get nearer to a probable possible. We are ignorant of what matter is, the whence of intelligence, and how it interpenetrates and underlies all phen- omena. Order is but a form of intelligence. In conceiving all phenomena as material consequences and all things inborn of it, without impulsion, without intelligence, we plunge into difficulty, and march from absurdity to absurdity ; but if we consider that all things are the outcome of intelligence, the darkness is less obdurate, the gloom has radiations of light. It is not because we do not know what intelligence is that we can deny it to be a power ; we see and experience its action in I f » I * 154 Man's Technics Nature's Technics. each moment of time. It is not because we see around us objec- tive forms that we are to say that the substance of which these forms consist inbreeds its own powers. We know that the substance to perception can be rendered as impalpable as the intelligence and the imponderable forces. We know as art the technics of man, and we know there is no technic adaptation without intelligence. If we contrast the technics of man with the technics of nature, we are bound in reason to admit that the technics of nature are the results of an intelligence with a power sufficing to execute all its purposes; and when everywhere we see arrangement and the interdependence of effect on effect, we are compelled to conclude there was a purpose in the institution of a Universe, and that it is the objective presentment of an intel- ligent thought. If, then, there be a thought of this magnitude we can but conceive it as a particle of an intelligent immensity concentrated in itself. We may indulge in a no cause hypothesis, and confess our ignorance ; we may indulge in an uncaused cause hypothesis, and show our aspirations for wisdom. In our abso- lute ignorance of the originating cause, other than the manifesta- tion of intelligence, we cannot present a God, however we may think him ; but we can conclude this originating intelligence is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent ; that it is in but not of that we know and see. We know not what it /V, we only know that it is, Man alone of all things organic and organized is an individualism through his mentality ; hence, because of his individualism, we must conceive him to be an intellectual entity, with a potence to become^ to be achieved by culture. When we contemplate " man's place in nature," we must conceive that there was an object to be accomplished by his existence, and that the purpose was worked out by development. He stands at the head of creation, mind and matter. We know the grand and the mean are relative as to sequences, and that each are but agglomerations of particles, in each differentiated until they reach a finality, that the finality of one stage is the commencing step ^f the next, until the purpose is effected through the adaptation of existing principles. Nature is a consummation of means. All physics are vital, although not sentient facts ; hence life arises by the impulsions of law from the spontaneity of the cause. Can we conceive that the pur- pose of creation is accomplished by man being born but to die I We can conceive the wondrous development of organized forms, as we know them, and that they were instituted that man might be developed. If there be after this life no beyond for man, he exists but as a thought and expires in its utterance, and all we Hume, i5f know of that immensity, the Universe, is as of an ingenious and wasted mechanism springing from nothing and ending in nothing. We assume to know, but what do we know, as a certainty " of the great kosmic might ?" Experience shows there is no finality in the finite. Each man in the impressiveness of his impressions must judge in his own conceptions — by faith, or by facts, a God and intelligence, no God or matter, a Creator or a chance. In assumption, Nageli says, " We know and we shall know." Do we or shall we ever know all of the finite ? Du Bois Reymond, in a true appreciation, says, " Ignoramus ignorahimusP God, the Universe, and Man, as a collective fact (whatever be the postulates of faith), is ^^an open secret^^ only to he resolved in the Unknown, The wont of the age in which Hume wrote was to consider him as an atheist and an infidel. His thoughts, although in advance of his time, were founded on a true philosophy, his object being to induce men to think, and thereby to free themselves from the trammels of dogma. Sir William Hamilton says, "The man who gave the whole philosophy of Europe a new impulse and direction, and to whom, mediately or immediately, must be referred every subsequent advance in philosophical ideas, was David Hume." Accepting the principles of Locke and Leibnitz, he showed the insufficiency of their results. To him mediately is due the philosophy of Kant, of Reid, of Royer Collard, Victor Cousin, and Maine de Biran. Thus German, Scotch and French philosophy is indebted to Hume; but for him " Kant would have continued in his dogmatic slumber, Reid would have remained in quiet adhesion to Locke, and the materialism of Condillac would still be reigning over the schools of France." Searchers for truth must commence, as great poets do, with Nature, thence ascending to humanity, end by idealizing all in Deity ,^ as the rock which by the stroke of the chisel is sculp- tured into form, takes from art both its form and its soul. Hel- vetius held that the literature and spirit of the age move in concert. " The time was when in Italy the word virtus meant both morality and valour " but, transposed into virtik^ it means antiquities and knicknacks. So also there was a time when science meant something more than an apotheosis of matter. Thus the genius of an age means exactly the interest its denizens take in it. A vitiated taste, in a morbid sympathy, may mistake 1 Schiller, in the Ideals, says, ** When to me lived the tree, when to me sang the silver fall of the fountain ; when from the echo of my lile tiie soulless itself took feeling.'* In the ideals and the life the two existences unite as the crowning result of perfected art ; the life yielding the materials through which the ideal accomplished its archetypal form. 156 Faith, the Destiny. scientific imaginings and their consequent hypotheses for sound deductions, and vicious subtleties for sound moralizings ; those healthy at the core will not be corrupted by meretricious inter- pretations, however much they be the fashion of the day, and may be likened to the philosopher, who, when called upon to observe an enormous creature crawling on the surface of the moon, dis- pelled the illusion by showing it was induced by a blue bottle fly lubricating itself on the surface of the lens. In all we think, in all we feel, there is a needed faith in a something not yet in experience, involving an archetype in a some- thing higher than our thought, and yet beyond all analyzation in thought, hidden in shadows unpierced, but which notwithstand- ing, culminates in the illimitable and the unknown. Faith is the destiny of man, without which neither science nor philosophy could not be ; it is " the twinkling of that sacred particle of fire which does not confine its light and its warmth to the altar on which it glows." No theory the mind can devise can exist without faith ; it being that restless, productive, vivifying, indis- pensable principle which is the support of our reason. What is the belief in the potence of matter, the fortuitous concourse of atoms, the materiality of the mind, and the omnipotence of physical force, but faith in unproved dogmas ? It is a perversion of faith when it embitters itself into intolerance. The most intolerant, perhaps, are those who have an intense faith in the wisdom of of their own irreligion.^ Whatever a man be, whether politician, experimentalist, poet, or cobbler, if he exclusively cultivates that calling, he becomes as narrow-minded and bigoted as the Chinaman who, when mapping the world, represented the Celestial empire with all its Tartar villages in full detail, and, without that limit, characterized the rest of the world as wilds and deserts, peopled by barbarians. " Strike from mankind the principle of faith, and men would have no more history than a flock of sheep'^ (Bulwer). The great thing of all is to know on which side we stand, and where. It is impossible to predicate a Deity without a Pro- vidence, and it is equally impossible to predicate a Providence with- out an immortality of spirit. The assumption of pseudo- science is that there is no God, or if there be, that He is undemonstrable,^ 1 Addison, with exquis'ite irony, say?, " that the zealots in atheism would be exempt from the simple thought which seems to grow out of the imprudent fenour of religion. But so it is, that irreligion is propagated with as much fierceness and contention, wrath and indignation, as if the safety of mankind depended upon it " (^Spectator). 2 Jacobi says, " To demonstrate God's existence would be to point out a ground or causes of His existence, whereby God would be made a dependent being. Culture. 157 unthinkable ; hence that it is impossible to predicate a Pro- vidence on the face of phenomena ; and as matter is the only existing fact, there can be no immortality for man as a sentient entity j but if there be a God^ a Providence^ and an immortality of spirit} then, as "this world is a school for the education, not of a faculty, but of a man," it follows that the only true culture is that of the rnind^ its culture^ in the immortality of spirit, being the pre- paration for an eternity. All thirst for an immortality. The scientific name it fame,^ thus seeking in the evanescent the abiding ; thereby the spirit or essence of man, wherein alone the immortal principle can reside, becomes dependent on a fading or failing memory. There are those who, in a truer wisdom, find an immortality in unending progress, and thereby lift their ideal — virtue and wisdom, " fur- ther and further from the breath of man, nearer and nearer to the smile of God." The renown of the sage rarely lives in tra- dition, and but for the power of picturing thoughts in hierogly- phics, would find no world echo. The material, ruling the thought, obliterates the ideal, and ends in the nothingness of its own creation. With wisdom and hope as the ruling impulses, there were on earth peace and good will. Man in his dual con- dition unites in himself the perceptive and conceptive : the per- ceptive bears through life, the ancestral taint of the organic descent; the conceptive finds its ideal even in a chaos of worlds. In the materialistic thought is met the heterogeneous and chaotic. In the ideal thought the homogeneous and intelligent. When man forsakes the ideal for the material, what is the gain .? He leaves hope behind, yet does not attain to certainty. *' Between two worlds lite hovers like a star — 'Twixt night and morn upon the horizon's verge j How little do we know that which we are ! How less what we may be ! The eternal surge Of time and tide rolls on and bears afar our bubbles'' {Byron). * Man in the only sense **in which philosophy can employ the word is super- natural." Sir Wiiliam Hamilton termed Jacobi ** the pious and profound,'^ who says, " With a felicitous boldness, that it is the supernatural in man which reveals to him the God whom nature conceals. '' •* Mere nature does not;reveal a Deity to such of her children as cannot conceive the supernatural. She does not reveal Him to the cedar and the rose, to the elephant and to the moth.'' (Bulwer). There is no art, whatever may be the symbol, whether borrowed from nature, or whether it be^ a thought objectively presented, which does not give the expression of an idea be- yond external nature, in which there is not some creation which is not found in nature, and which does not appeal to sentiments which would still exist in the innermost shrine of man's being, even if eternal nature were annihilated and maa were left a spirit in a universe of spirit (vide Caitoniaym, p. 114). 2 Mallock," Is Life worth living for?" {XIX Cetitury, Sept., 187T), quoting George Eliot, remarks, " in these remarkable verses we have the whole gospel o£ atheistic ethics, as it is now preached to us, presented in an impassioned epitome." It. i Is! t" 158 Ultimate Conceptions, PART II. ULTIMATE CONCEPTIONS. CHAP. T. The Atomic Theory. — The Doctrine of Proportion. — Berkeley's Hypothesis. The atom and molecule are necessaries in scientific disqui- sitions and are asserted to be existing and ponderable, although analysis has never disclosed them. That all substances are par- ticled is undoubted, and that, matter exists as the basis of objec- tive phenomena, but in its primordial or ultimate element it has neither impenetrability nor substantial form} Berkeley said matter existed only as it existed in the consciousness of the per- ceiver, and that unless perceived, to the particular perception it had no existence, but, withal, it continually existed in the great consciousness which permeates, pervades and surveys all things, i.e. in that consciousness which perceived its existence and by whose conception it became what it is^ — positive to sensation, but neo^ative to the conception which can conceive its ultimate. The particle, as an atom, appears to be capable of dissolution, but is not capable of infinite division, and yet it is assumed to have both weight and dimensions. Water containing a resin in solution, reflected on the screen, under an enlarging microscopic power of 250,000,000 (15,000 diameters), has neither speck, film, nor mote, the spectrum is that of distilled water. If matter were the indurate substance some physicists pronounce it to be, the atom by such an experiment, if existing, must have been detected. When Thomson's infinitesimal weights and dimensions are reached the infirmities of the original proposition still exist. By sensation alone the objective material is perceived ; that which is 1 Graham was of opinion, that the various elementary substances, now recognised as matter, may possess one and the same ultimate or atomic molecule existing in difterent conditions of movement. Were this ultimate form at rest its uniformity would be perfect; but it always possesses motion, due to a primordial impulse, and as the dift'erences in the amount of this motion occasion differences of volume, matter only differs in being lighter or denser matter {Graham^s Researches). The Atomic Theory. 159 not perceived by sensation, if it exists, exists only in its primate, and then, so far as sensation is concerned, it is non-existing. That a unit exists it is easy to conceive and that in it is the potence of phenomena,^ hence it would contain vitality, force, and form, and would as a fact be the unit of life. Research is at fault, and we should be content to say that possibly the ultimate of matter is some amorphous imponderable principle which by an interior action is objectively presented.^ Anaxagoras propounded that the ultimate atoms of every sub- stance were the same as the substance itself. The theory of Leucippus of Abdera, was adopted by Democritus and Epicurus, who, it may be said, were the founders of the atomic theory .^ According to them Matter and Space alone exist, infinite and unbounded, and have existed from all eternity, and enter into the combinations of all forms, but have no common property, the solid particles being matter, the interstices space. Anterior to the projection of the universe, space and matter existed uncombined, ultimate space existing as a perfect void. The ultimate of matter consists of atoms so small that the corpuscules of light, heat and vapour, are compounds of them, and so solid that they can neither be abraded nor broken, and vary in shape, as round, square, pointed, and jagged, each form possessing an intrinsic power of motion. Democritus held that the motion was perpetual and of ^ Lehrbuch says, '* if atoms can neither be measured nor weighed it is plain in the hypothetical assumption of determinate atomic weights we have nothing to guide us but speculative reflection." Pouchet says, " the atomic system of Leucippus and Epicurus, defended by Descartes and Gassendi, is overthrown. Leibnitz defined an atom *' to be a simple substance which had neither figure nor extent, nor capacity of division." Clark Maxwell observes, *< that which has neither figure nor extent can have no existence." Thomson (Wm.) says, " the assumption of atoms can explain no property of a body which had not been previously attributed to the atoms themselves." *' If an atom admits change of form and altered relations where is its unity ? It cannot slide upon itself, and if it would admit of partition it would not be an atom." Balfour Stewart says, " a simple elementary atom is probably a state of ceaseless activity and change of form, but nevertheless always the same." ^ By a delicate test it is shown that the iron core of the electro- magnet was increased in length by magnetization. When the magnetizing force was removed, the iron returned to its former dimensions (A. and T. Gray, Nat.^ vol. xviii, p. 329). This appears to prove that the magnetic force resides in the particles of the iron,-^ latent — active only when excited. 3 The poem of Lucretius embodies the atomic theory. Dugald Stewart speak- ing of the poem of Lucretius, says, ♦« Its sublimity will be found to depend chiefly on those passages where he denies the intemperance of the gods in the government of the world : in the lively images which he indirectly presents to his readers of the attributes against which he reasons The sublimest descriptions of Almighty power forming a part of his argument against Omnipo- tence." ( On Sublimity, Essay 2) . Bulwer asks, ** Could any one reading the poem conceive that these harmonious lines could be strung together by a fortuitous con- currence ? and follows it not as a corollary of common sense that if a poem cannot be written without a poet, the universe cannot be created without a Creator ? {CaxtonianUy p. 19). s. -• i6o Lucretius. The Atomic Theory, i6i i ! . h ' two kinds, a descending motion and an abounding motion, occa- sioned by their collision and clash. To these motions Epicurus added a third, by which an oblique or circumlinear motion was engendered. These motions induced ^e collision of the atoips, which flying in every conceivable direction adhered by their jagged points ; the interstices between them becoming filled with other atoms, masses resulted, in figure globular, square, or oval ; when closely compacted they produced solids, when lax of texture, water or vapour, and by their agglomerations a world grew into form, which was perpetually sustained by clouds of atoms rushing with inconceivable velocity into the interstices left unfilled through others flying ofF. They held that the only eternity and immutability were the elementary atoms, that the com- pound forms of matter were always decomposing and resolving into their original corpuscules, and in this manner the world will perish. It had a beginning and will have an end, and when re- solved into its original atoms, a new world will arise from its ruins. This theory, with various modifications, kept possession of the philosophical thought of Greece, and is insisted on by some in the present time.^ * The poem of Lucretius is the basis of the material dream " the potence of matter." He concluded that atoms are indivisible bodies, and must be perfectly solid. He impugned the idea of Heraclitus that all things were formed from fire, and of others, that they were formed of air, earth, or water, or were of a binary combi- nation ; and that also of Empedocles, who taught all natural substances were pro- duced from the joint union of fire, earth, air, and water. He (Lucretius) supposed, that the atoms of matter, by variations in combination, produced all the objects of na- ture, animate and inanimate, and llustrates his idea by showing that the endless array of words, meanings, and sounds, are but combinations of letters. He believed in the eternity of matter, denying its creation or destructibility and asks, if everything which disappears through age or decay is actually annihilated, whence is the renewal of animal or vegetable life? and how do rivers continue to flow?" "Nothing really perishes, nature producing new forms of matter from the materials of those which apparently have been destroyed." Some philosophers of Lucretius's time were of opinion, to which he was opposed, that there exists a universal law of gravi- tation, by which all bodies tend towards the centre of the earth as the centre of the universe, and that in consequence, the bodies of those animals which inhabit the opposite^ or as it were, the inferior surface of the earth, are no more capable of falling into the sky which surrounds them than the animals inhabiting our side are capable of rising into the sky above them ; they also held that when it is day on the opposite side it is night with us (lib. i, 1051 -1065). He seems to have had no idea of the character of positive gravity, yet of specific gravity he gives a true explanation, *'that the heaviest bodies have most matter and have fewer pores." He says, these pores exist not only in wool and similar bodies, but in those hard and com- pact, and instances the percolation of water through the roofs of caverns, and the transmission of food both in animals and plants to their extreme limbs and branches. Light he conceived to be a subtle matter which from its tenuity is capable of arv inconceivably swift motion. That colour cannot exist without light, and is not nherent in bodies but produced by the direction in which the light impinges on them or on the eye of the perceiver, and argues colour does not belong to the con- stituent parts of bodies, for when they are reduced to minute particles the colour The atomic theory is sometimes called the doctrine of chemical proportion. The earliest illustrations appear to be those of Wenzell (1777), who showed when two neutral salts decom- }50sed each other the resulting compound was neutral. Dr. Bryan Higgins (1786) held elastic fluids unite with each other in definite proportion only. W. Higgins, relative and pupil of the Dr., propounded the same views, and mentions various com- pounds of azote, azote and oxygen as combining in varying num- bers of atoms. His idea of the atomic composition of water is that of science. Neither of the Higginses, Davy says, attempted to express in numbers the quantities in which the atoms combine. Richter endeavoured to determine the capacity or saturation of each acid and its base, and to indicate by number the weight of the mutual saturations. Proust attempted an accurate analysis of metallic oxides. He found metals unite with determinate propor- tions of oxygen, and with sulphur, and that the proportions might be designated by figures. Daltoij, of Manchester (1803), laid down clearly and numerically the doctrine of multiples, and en- deavoured to express by simple numbers the weights of all bodies then known as elementary.^ His general rule was that when vanishes (lib. ii, 825-832), and employs terms which correctly express the angles of incidence and of reflexion, and describes the effect of refraction in altering the line of direction of the rays of light (lib. i, 1051-1066). He supposed heat to be a material substance, because it excites a specific sensation in animal bodies, and that the heat rays and light rays emitted from the sun are distinct (lib. i, 299, 304, lib. v, 609-612), The sources of heat were produced by rapid motion and friction, aud observing that a spring of water was periodically warmer in the night and colder in the day, he supposed the heat to be forced out by the compression occasioned by a diminution of temperature from the surrounding earth into the water. (Had he said it was due to the relative temperature of the surrounding air^ he would have given the explanation of modern science,) He knew water could exist as an invisible vapour, and that constant exhalations arose from the sea, and that in consequence of these exhalations the sea does not increase in quantity by the constant influx of rivers and rain, a balance being thus preserved (lib. v, 381-394). Air he held to be a tangible and material substance, because of its violence in storms (i, 2T2), and because it offers resistance to falling bodies (ii, 230) and is a receptacle or medium for conveying sounds and odours (iv, -561-219). He notices the attraction of iron by the magnet, and supposed that from the magnet, as from all other bodies, minute and specific particles are con- tinually emanating, and these emanations dissipated the air from the space inter- mediate between the magnet and the iron. As an illustration he instances the experiment of a chain of iron rings, and as a reason says, "a partial vacuum being thus formed the ring is impelled by the air on the other side of it, and adheres bv an invisible bond of union, and so in succession all the other rings are impelled, the adhesion being similar to that of glue to wood, mortar to stone, and dye to wool " (1706-108%). He had no belief in the gods, and writes of believers : **They saw the skies in constant order run, The varied seasons and the circling sun. Apparent rule, with unapparent cause, And thus they sought in gods the source of laws." — v. 1 182. ^ Simple elements, or elementary bodies are those substances wbich science has failed to decompose. 11 l62 Chemical Proportion, n g I' only one combination of two bodies can be obtained, it must be presumed to be a binary one, unless a cause to the contrary is shown. Atoms of oxygen and hydrogen were suggested by him 2S units because both are found in water. According to the theory all composite forms consist of atoms in distinctly definite proportions. This generally is true, but to completely prove an hypothesis it should agree in each minute particular. This, the new system of chemistry, by almost infi- nitesimal divisions attempts to do, by making a molecule consist of one, two, or more, or even a hundred particles termed atoms. However great the merit of Dalton's theory, it was not until WoUaston published his memoirs on acids and the synoptic scale of chemical equivalents that the theory was adopted ( 1 8 1 4) . Berzelius (1808), in consequence of Richter's work, entered upon the investi- gation. Guy Lussac discovered important laws relative to gaseous bodies, as did also Avogadro, Charles, Marriotte and others. Prout (1815) observed the atomic weights of bodies to be the atomic weights of hydrogen by a whole number. Thomson adopted Prout's views, and added, if we except a few compounds into which a single or odd atom of hydrogen enters, the weights are all multiples of 0*25 or of two atoms of hydrogen. The experiments of Berzelius, con- firmed as they had been by the researches of Turner, threw doubts on the general propositions of Prout. Faraday proved by experiment that for a definite quantity of electricity an equally definite or constant quantity of water or other matter is decomposed, and that the electricity evolved by the decomposition of certain quan- tities of matter are alike. According to him the equivalent weights of bodies are simply those qualities of them which con- tain certain quantities of electricity, or adopting the atomic phrase- ology, the atoms of bodies which are equivalents to each other in their ordinary chemical character have equal quantities of electricity asso- ciated with them. Physicists are not agreed on the atomic theory or its nomenclature. Dalton, Thomson, Henry, and Berzelius, adopted the atom, Wollaston and Turner equivalents, Humphrey Davy, Faraday, and Brande proportion or proportional. There are substances which, although composed of " the same elements and have the same chemical formula, the same vapour density, and specific gravity," yet present essentially different characteristics, termed isomeric bodies. They usually consist of few chemical elements. Carbon is usually, it may be said, always present, the other components being nitrogen, or oxygen, or hy- drogen ; some one or more of them are in ultimate and intricate mixture with carbon, the number of atoms united in a single molecule of the substance sometimes exceeding 100 (Cooke), Inconclusiveness of the Atomic Hypothesis. 1 6 j " Leaving out of view the large mass of water which organized matter contains they consist almost exclusively of carbonaceous compounds." A great characteristic of carbon, on which the com- plexity and variety of its compounds depend, is the power its par- ticles display of combining among themselves to an extent which may be considered as almost infinite (ib). The discovery of the existence of these isomeric compounds is due to the inferences^ drawn by an anonymous writer from some experiments Henry made on the compounds of carbon and hydrogen. " To simplify is the true essence of philosophical explanation. Matter pur- sued into its last haunts no longer presents itself as one undivided stuff which can be treated as a continuous substratum, absorbent of all number and dis- tinction, but as an infinite of discrete atoms, each of which might be although the rest were gone,'" implying that they are separable and comparable members of a genus. '* The atomic doctrine, when pushed into a theory oi organization extravagantly vitiates the first conditions of philosophical hypo- thesis" {Correlation of Forces).^ The doctrine of definite proportion which led to the modern atomic theory presents difficulties when extended to all chemical combinations. In substances whose mutual chemical attraction are very feeble the relation fades away, and is sought to be recovered by applying separate and arbitrary multiples to different constituents." " Thus, 27 parts by weight of iron would combine with 12 parts by weight of oxygen, and also 27 parts of iron will combine with io| of oxygen. If we retain the unit of iron we must subdivide the unit of oxygen, and if we retain the unit of oxygen we must subdivide the unit of iron, or subdivide both by a new divisor." " What, then, becomes of the notion of the atom, or molecule, physically divided ?" " Numerous other substances fall under a similar category." " Taking albumen, composed of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulphur, the difficulty is much greater j the case may be extreme, but such cases test the hypothesis" {ib.) The compounds of carbon hydrogen, &c., are the ingredients of the protoplasm. Cooke says, the chemist can collect them, manipulate, re-form, and trans-form them, but " has never suc- ceeded in forming a single organic cell, and the whole process of its growth and development is entirely beyond the range of his knowledge '* [New Chem.). Still the wild dream is indulged in ; for continuing he observes, he has " every reason to expect that in no distant future the chemist will be able to prepare in his laboratory both the material of which the cell is fashioned and 1 Grove says, *• chemical aflfinity, or the force by which dissimilar bodies tend to unite and form compounds is a word ill chosen.*' Further, " tbat chemical action may be regarded (vaguely, perhaps) as molecular attraction, or motion. Speaking of the explosion of guupowder, be says, " It may be a question whether it is not rather a liberation of other forces existing in a static state of equilibrium, having been brought into such a state by previous chemical action, but at all events through the medium of electricity chemical affinity may be directly and quantitatively diverted into other modes of force" {Correlation 0/ Forces). f\ f m 1^4 Molecular Theory. if II the various products with which it becomes filled during life " There must be something in the construction of matter, or in the forces which act on it, to account for the per saltum manner in which chemical com- binations take place, but the idea of atoms does not seem to account for it." ** I cannot accept as an argument in favour of the atomic theory those com- binations made to support it by an arbitrary notation." The conclusion of the paper on Chemical Affinity is as follows : — The licence taken " in theoretical groupings deduced from this doctrine may produce confusion rather than simplicity, and are to the student an embarrassment rather than an assistance" (Grove.) Cooke, speaking of the new chemical formula, says : Our deductions are the expressions of theoretical conceptions, which we ** cannot for a moment believe were realized in nature in the concrete forms our diagrams embody." *' Theories are the only lights with which we can penetrate the obscurity of the unknown, and they are to be valued just so far as they illuminate our path. This ability to lead investigation is the only true test of any theory." The modern theory of molecular chemistry is the outgrowth of new discoveries. Although " the cause which determines the growth of organized beings is still a perfect mystery, we now know the materials of which they consist are subject to the same laws as mineral matter, and the complexity may be traced to the peculiar qualities of carbon." Molecules are still in the region of hypothesis. Though they and atoms are busily introduced into every scientific treatise, little is known of what they really are. Clerk Maxwell says, "a mole- cule in hydrogen gas is identical with an atom" (how widely the ** new chemists " differ in their idea of a molecule is illustrated in every step of their theory), although indestructible, it is not a hard rigid body capable of internal movement, and " when excited emits rays the wave-lengths of which are the measure of the time of the vibration of the molecule.'* The objection to all molecular theories hitherto propounded is that none have presented a mathematical solution. The first may be stated to be attraction and repulsion. When the former preponderates the body is a solid ; when both are equal, i,e, in equilibrium, it is a fluid ; when the latter is in excess, gas results. This is Boscovitch's theory, the force foci presented in the guise of molecules. To the idea embodied by Boscovitch Faraday inclined. The second is that the atoms of matter are mutually attracted by a law analogous to gravitation, but surrounded by an atmosphere repulsive one of the other, in the same manner as are the particles of elastic fluids (in other words, polarization). From this theory it is said some mathe- matical deductions may be drawn in the shape of equations of equilibrium and of progressive and rotary motion, but from whence, by this theory is to result liquefaction and crystallization, is not shown. " Navier and Poisson, in their theories, show Berkeley, 165 what latitudes may be indulged in.'* The third theory is the supposition of forces sufficiently powerful to prevent the impene- tration of solids by solids, but which are yet sufficiently strong to prevent their cohesion being destroyed without the application of great force, and yet are insensible to bodies at a minute distance from them. This theory also presents data for mathematical analysis of some sort, but the difficulty is relative to the definite integrals. These theories jointly point to force foci and polariza- tion. All we arrive at in the shape of a definition is the old theory of Democritus and Epicurus, that indivisible particles in their agglomerations builded the Universe, The conclusion of the theories of these philosophers is the peroration adopted by Clerk Maxwell, at Bradford, which excited such an ethical glow in the mind of a popular lecturer. There is no severance in principle, matter is created or uncreated ; if uncreated, it exists by its own energy, and all things and thoughts are of it, and is the Primal^ Uncreated cause. Matter is defined to be an inert mass composed of parts and moved by forces. Where in all this are we to find the motor fact ? What becomes of the philosophical axiom that " likes produce likes V A dilemma is presented only to be solved by Hume's doctrine of probabilities. To say there is no such thing as matter, originating from the supposed teaching of Berkeley excites a general sneer. Did he so teach ? Where, in his theory, is such teaching to be found ? His whole hypothesis is based on the notion of phenomenal objects existing in the mind — ideas. The theory is that matter has no existence, except as it is perceived by each particular mind ; but he maintains it always exists in the conscious mind of God. Hume asserts Berkeley's arguments (though otherwise in- tended) are in reality merely sceptical, for they admit of na answer, and produce no conviction" (Essays^ vol. ii, p. 224). Fraser (Berkeley's editor) says, " The present existence of some- thing implies the internal existence of mind. If something must exist eternally, being as such involves mind. Berkeley's Natural Theology is grounded on the very existence of sensible things, apart from all marks of design." " His whole argument respecting God is an a priori assumption.'^ His theory of vision is accepted by science, but was denied by Petersfield, who contended the distance of visual objects depends not on custom and experience, but on original connate and immutable law, to which mind has been subjected from the time it first entered into our bodies. The power to judge distances is an educated quality. Helm- holtz holds this theory, but Tyndall holds an opposite m^^^ based on facts supplied by Lady Annerly in her observations on newly i66 Right Use of Language. i hatched chickens.i CondiUac suggests we gradually learn to hear, see, smell, taste, and touch. Erasmus Darwm was of the same opinion. The senses may be perfected by a reasoned com- parison, but the potence appears to be mnate. Ma branches proposition, that a man blind from birth ceasing to be blmd could not distinguish between a cube and a sphere, shows only that par- ticular conditions, i.e, ideas of things, are acquired by experience, and that the senses are the avenues by which experiences are realized. Berkeley's theories : Liffht, heat, colour, figures, cold, extension, are so many notions, sensations, ideas! or expressions on the senses, and cannot be divided even in thought. When the scent of a rose is suggested the rose is suggested, because it is impossible to conceive in thought any object distinct from the perception ot it. If they be not perceived, or do not exist in my mmd, or in that ot another created spirit, they have no existence, or they subsist in the mind of some eternal spirit. Matter is only the unknown support ot unknovvn qualities. 73 I I i I , is disclosed, is the scientific contention of the time. If matter be that which Tyndall affirms it to be, in it we behold the creative principle, and the interval of time between now and that of Lucretius is swept away. If this position be but assumption and anarchism, matter then becomes the objective form of a sub- jective idea. The address delivered at Belfast (1874) may be said to be the initiation of the scientific materialism of the day. The utter- ances of convictions, though not in consonance with those of other men,who shall condemn ? A man should stand or fall by his own avowal, but when others are used as cloaks for the opinions of an author, when works are misquoted, or misconstrued, sug- gesting views which their authors neither professed nor possessed ; though the argument presented be powerfully handled, however subtly the conclusion may be presented, doubt is awakened, and that doubt induces examination, and when the subject is divorced from subtleties and imageries the fact appears, either deformed and distorted, or shining in the simplicity of its truth, and by its own energy enforces conviction. An acquaintance with the works of Giordano Bruno and Gassendi would never brand them as mate- rialists ; nor from their works could it be conceived that either Goethe or Carlyle " rejected the conception of the relation of nature to its author."^ A comment rather than a criticism on parts of the address is here attempted. The contemplation of nature discloses that every physical fact displays energy and contrivance, hence an intelligence linked with a power sufficing to consummate all phenomena. When Huxley asserts that '' mind is the only certainty^'' and Tyndall discerns in matter " the promise and potency of every form and quality of life (Times rep.), we have a conflict of opinion. John of Erigena, with whom Bruno concurred, said all things were created by intelligence, and to intelligence all things will return (vide Draper, Con. of Set.), Materialists do not distinguish that mind and matter are distinct in principle ; that a vase and its contents are not the same; that the vase can have one origination, its contents another, and yet be presented as a single object; hence arises the indiscriminating rubbish almost invariably found in materialistic treatises. When the material idea is reduced to a syllogism, we see the outcome. Matter, an inert mass, is affirmed by materialists to be indestruc- tible and eternal. 1 The copy of the Belfast address quoted is that of the 7th thousand (Longmans, 1874) ; the references to pages are bracketed thus (o). From matter proceeds all " forms and qualities of life." ^ Ergo, " brute matter'^ (Hume)— pronounced by physicists to be inert — is the creative principle. Notwithstanding this induction, we are compelled to conclude that the technics of nature are something more than material accidents. It may be said this is a reductio ad ahsurdam ; precisely so; but not the less it remains the logic of the premiss. We see surrounding us everywhere the technics of man in con- trast with the technics of nature, and although as far removed as the finite from the infinite, both are the technics of intelligence as containing purpose and design. ' Varied are the opinions pronounced on the address. The unthinking hail it as a searching analysis of science. I have heard it stigmatized as "the froth on the tub," and as "an ill-digested sensationalism.'' If science be, as Huxley says, " trained co?nmon sense^'' many of the conclusions are illogical and unsound. To my mind it is what a law-pleader would term a negative pregnant ; negative indeed, for it is pregnant with nothmg, an idle and at the same time a mischievous dream founded on crude hypotheses and ending in illusions. ' The atomic theory is dwelt upon. Lucretius is made to say, " Nature pursues her course in accordance with everlasting laws' the gods never interfering. ''i Giordano Bruno is thus cited : ' J ^truck with the problem of the generation and maintenance of organisms and duly pondenng it, he came to the conclusion that nature in her produc' tions does not imitate the technics of man j her process is one of unravelling; and unfolding. The infinity of forms under which matter appears were not imposed upon it by an external artificer; by its own intrinsic force and virtue It brings these forms forth. Matter is not the mere naked empty capacity which philosophers have pictured her to be, but the universal mother who brings forth all things as the fruit of her own womb" (10). After a diligent search I fail to find that Giordano Bruno (1600 A.D.) entertained the views imputed in the text. By Draper (The Conflict between Science and Religion) Bruno is cited in a directly opposite view.^ 1 "Finally, we are all sprung from celestial seed j the father of all is the same ether from which, when the beautiftil Earth has received the liquid drops of moistutte, she being impregnated, produces the rich crops and joyous groves and the racesof man j produces all the tribes of beasts, since she supplies them with food by means of which they all support their bodies j on which account she has justly obtained the name of mother. That which first also arose from the earth, and that which was sent down from the regions of the sky the regions again receive when carried back."— Lucretius (book ii, 098-1000) Uide note 3, p. 159). ^ In his E'vening Conversations, he says, " We must believe that the universe IS infinite, and that it is filled with self-luminous and opaque bodies, many of John Scot us {Eri^end). 175 In Tennemann's History of Philosophy, hy Morel, there is a notice of Bruno confirming Draper.^ Uberweg {History of Phlo- sophy) has also a notice.' them inhabited ; that there is nothing above and around us but space and the tZ His meditations on these subjects had brought h,m to the cone us.on That the v^^ws of Averroes were not far from truth, that there .s an mtellect wh ch anTmates the universe, and of this intellect the v.s.ble world ,s only an Tm^at'on or manifestation originated and sustained by force derived from .t Td were that force withdrawn all things would disappear ; th>s ever-present ^d Xpewading intellect is God, who lives in all things, even such as seem Tot to Uve ; that everything is ready to become organized to btn-st mto l.te God is therefore the one sole cause ot'all things, the all in all (tonf. Sa. and *'(■'" cid! the first principle, is that which all things are, or may be. He is one but in Him all essences are comprehended. He .s the substance a so o aU thing' at the same time their cause (Final, Formal, Creative). Eternal w thout limh of duration {natura naturam). As the first effic.ent cause. He is X the Cine and Universal reason which has manifested .tsel m the term and fashbn of the Universe. He is the soul of the Un verse which permeates Tthines and bestows upon them their forms and attributes. The end con- remnlatfd bv this great cause is the perfection of all things, which consists in h"rea devTlopment of the various modifications of which the different parts of mat er Ire Fusceptible. To be, to will, to have the power, and to produce a eTdentical with the great universal principle. The Divinity, as the first and V ta eners^, has revelled himself from all eternity m an infinite variety of rr^uc"iom, yet continues always the same. Infinite, Inimeasurable Immove- able and UnLproachable by any similitude. He is in all things and all things ?n Him because by Him and in Him all things act and have their increase. He pervades the smallest portions of the Universe, as well as the infinite fxpame ; He influences every atom of it, as well as the whole. It follows ,St all things are animated, all things are good, because all things proceeded from good" (Tennemann's Hist. Phil., Morel, pp. 166-7). ,, '^Th7 wo Id in its external nature, as containing the development of all thin 6 If an ill-natured critic desired to comment on the writings of Professor Tyndall in the latter part of the above paragraph, he could not, with some additions, find words more aptly to hit his salient points, both as a writer and as a lecturer. If we may judge by later .'productions, e.g, his contention with Dr. Bastian on the germ theory [XlXth Century, 1878)— he appears to exact the greatest courtesy towards himself, but exercises none towards. thcKe who presume to differ with him. What Martineau meets with Bastian and others have met with. Leibnitz and Carlyle: are more gentle in their canons of criticism.^ The verses of Goethe's cited but imply he sees God \vt » Leibnitz says, " When I err in my opinion of men, I prefer to err on the side^ of chari y, and so, as regards their writings, I seek there what is worthy of praise rather than of blame, for there are few books, or persons, whence I may not in. some form draw wisdom and instruction." Carlyle says, ** We are firm believers in the maxim that for all right judgment of any man or thing, it is useful, nay essential, to see bis good qualities before, pronouncing on his bad {Essay, Goethe). 184 Huxley^ s Idea of Butler. nature (24). Carlyle was an admirer of the Fragments of Novalis^ would he to whom the idea of God was " repugnant" be so ? (The whole of them are ideal abstractions, vide Essays^ Novalis.) A broad, manly, and healthy tone, is traceable throughout the essays, and hence it is inconceivable that any one who had read them could have framed the imputation. They may be occasionally rugged, but they contain the teachings of a true thinker. Bishop Butler is parodied in a dialogue wherein the ideas are solely those of the speaker^ {no one who was ac- quainted with " the Analogy'' could mistake them). Had he lived in this day his readiness, reason, and thoroughness, would have dispelled the mists of materialism which cloud the scientific teachings of the time (Huxley). With the geologist and palae- ontologist he would have read " the riddle of the rocks," and with Darwin have seen the acts of a Creator in the works of creation, and would have shown its '^ technics'" were those of intelligence, although he might have been puzzled what to make of the " Ink of History.'' Darwin modelled a science from old world thoughts, aided by great and laborious researches. His observa- tions and inductions have given a new dressing to kosmic ideas \ or, as Max Miiller says, " it is a new category, a new engine of thought, and if naturalists are proud to affix their names to new species they discover, Mr. Darwin may be prouder, for his name will remain affixed to a new idea, a new genus of thought'' {Sci. Lan.) Darwin does not escape : *' Diminishing gradually the number of progenitors Mr. Dar>vin comes at length to one primordial form . . He quotes with satisfaction the words of a celebrated author and divine, who had gradually learned to see it isjust as noble a conception of the Deity to believe he created a few individual forms capable of development into other needful forms, as to believe he required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the action of his laws. What Mr. Darwin thinks of this view of the introduction of life I do not know."" In his work. The Origin of Species^ he states his idea.- The Professor continues : * It is evident the professor thinks highly of his material theory of mmd, (31). He says, '* I can imagine the bishop thoughtful after hearing this argu- ment." An acquaintance with the text of the <* Analogy " would suggest the answer, corpus sanum, mens sana^ which liberally interpreted might mean water cannot flow in broken conduits. 2 " Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied with the view that each species has been independently created. Tb my mind it accords better with what we know of the lawos impressed on matter by the Creator^ that the production and extinction and present inhabitants of tbe world should have been due to secondary causes like those determining the birth and death of the individual." " Judging from the past we may safely infer that not one livine species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity." " As iivmg species Anthro'pomorphism, 185 *' The anthropomorphism, which it seemed his object was to set aside, is as firmly associated with a few forms as the creation of a multitude. We need clearness and thoroughness here " (54). Clearness, certainly ; for when an accusation is made of '' anthropomorphism," whether of " few forms" or of " many,'' what are we to understand ? That these forms were all made in the likeness of God, for such is the meaning the word finds in Webster. There are but two views of nature, twist and turn them as we may. Spontaneity, this is denied ; or a Projector, as an intelligent designer ; for this we must look elsewhere than in matter. We are asked : " Divorced from matter, where is life to be found ?" The answer is obvious. Life, as we know it — nowhere. But it does not follow, because our reasoning powers cannot pierce the arcanum of cause, that there is nothing but that we perceive ! That life and matter are conjoined is true, but every thinking mind will demur when told." " Every meal we eat and every cup we drink illustrates the mysterious control of mind by matter'' (54).^ If Lucretius, in respect of the atomic theory of Democritus and Epicurus, cut the knot of the ideal atoms " by causing the atoms to move together by a kind of volition," it was that he saw from a fortuitous movement it was impossible the phenomena of nature could ensue. If there be volition, there is an addition to matter — a something infusing energies ; but if matter, " by its own intrinsic force,'' can generate will, it is that something of which there is no beyond.^ If matter be that which it is affirmed to be, vain are all teach- ings. All is the spontaneity of inaction. The great science of Harvey as to the circulation of the blood ;^ of Gilbert, that all living forms are the lineal descendants of those which lived before the Cambrian epoch, we may feel certain that the ordinary succession by genera- tion has never once been broken, and that no cataclysms have desolated the whole world." ** Thus from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object we are capable of conceiving, the production of the higher animals directly follows. There is a grandeur in this " The existence of any being can only be proved by arguments from its cause or its effects, and these arguments are founded entirely on experience. . . . 'l'\^ only experience that teaches us the nature and bounds of cause and effect, and enables us to infer the existence of one object from that of another {In note, he says), •* That impious maxim of the ancient philosophy, ex nihiloy nihil fit y by which the creation of matter was excluded, ceases to be a maxim according to this philosophy" {Hume's Essai/s, vol. ii, p. 258). 2 A little philosophy makes men atheists; a great deal reconciles them to religion" (Bacon). ^ Although all knowledge reposes on sensation, yet the ground o^'ail knowledge is intellectual. In the verification by sensation, it is the intellect which doubts, criticises and judges. We continuously employ conception ih to number, liei ng, substance, cause, «tec., without being merely imaginative {vide St. John Mivart, Genesis of Limbs). Fichte of the Address — Fichte of Fact. 191 than the terrestrial life ? If such be the new conviction it should be avowed. If not, why was the alteration made ? There is but little satisfaction to be gleaned in the observation "that the materialism here professed may be vastly different from that you suppose." Anything may be when suppositions are indulged in. The proposition before an assembly representing the science of England should be this is^ and the this is should be sup- ported by observation and experiment, or Huxley's idea that *' science is trained common sense " vanishes in '^ scientific imagination." The mischief of the whole thing is that unscientific readers are led into an intricate maze of unconditioned thought, with no clue to guide them out of it. Saying that Mill " reduces external phenomena to possibilities of sensation," that Fichte, "having first by the inexorable logic of his understanding proved himself the mere link in the chain of external causation which holds so rigidly in nature, violently broke the chain by making nature and all that it inherits an apparition of his own mind " (57) [his formula was^ Ego^ sum Ego'] ; or by Herbert Spencer saying, " Our states of consciousness are mere symbols of an outside entity which pro- duces them and determines the order of their succession, but the real nature of which we can never know," are neither reasons nor answers. He (Tyndall) affirms, " We can trace the development of the nervous system and correlate with it the phenomena of sen- 1 Fichte, speaking of the poet, says : "There is a divine idea pervading the visible universe, which universe is, indeed, but a symbol and sensible maniresta- tion, having in itself no meaning, or even true existence, independent of it. To the mass of men this divine idea of the world lies hidden 5 yet to discern it, to seize it, and live wholly in it, is the condition of all genuine virtue, knowledge, freedom, and the end, therefore, of all spiritual effort in every age. Literary men are the appointed interpreters of this Divine idea — a perpetual priesthood, we might say, standing forth generation after generation as the dispensers and living types of God's everlasting wisdom, to show it in their writings and actions in such particular form as their own particular times require ; for each age, by the law of its nature, is different from every other age, and demands a different representation of the Divine idea, the essence of which is the same in all, so that the literary man of one century is only the mediation and inter- pretation applicable to the wants of another j but in every century every man who labours, be it in what province he may, to teach others, must first have possessed himself of the Divine idea, or at the least be, with his whole heart and whole soul, striving after it." Carlyle says : " We state Fichte, as he is known and admitted by men or all parties among the Germans, when we say that so robust an intellect, a soul so calm, so lofty, so massive and immovable, has not mingled in philosophical discussion since the time of Luther. We figure his motionless look had he heard this charge of mysticism ! for the man rises before us amid contradiction and debate like a granite mountain amid clouds and wind" {Carlyte's Essays, vol. i, p. 94). 192 The Pronoun Tou, sation and thought."^ The nerves are the conductors by which the expressions of sensation and thought are conveyed. This was the opinion of Bell and is that of Carpenter, and, as far as I can gather, of all other reasoning physiologists, but how are the nerves correlated ? We might as well say the river is correlated with its channel, or the sea with its basin. We hear also " that there are such things woven into the texture of man as awe, reverence, and wonder " (60). We are lost in conjecture. What are we to understand ? The texture of man consists of organic compounds. We have words without meaning, for the assump- tion then would be that " matter'' has conceptions of Deity. " There is also that deep set feeling which since the earliest dawn of history, and probably for ages prior to all history, incorporated itself into the religions of the world. You who have escaped from these religions into the high and dry light of the intellect may deride them, but in doing so^o« deride accidents of form merely and fail to touch the immovable basis of the religious sentiment in the nature of man. To yield to this sentiment reasonable satisfaction is the problem of problems at the present hour" (60). If mind be a material consequent whence is "the religious sentiment ? " Perhaps a more extraordinary use of the pronoun you was was never made. Were his intelligent listeners materialists and he alone free from its taint? Are we to conclude that he only possessed the religious sentiment (elsewhere called an emotion) ?3 but which with his hearers had perished in " the high and dry light of the intellect ? " Courtesy should have suggested the pronoun we. Religion, whether it intrudes into " the region of objective knowledge'' or not, is "capable" of something more than " poetry and emotion,'' however they may add " to the inward completeness and dignity of man." If man, intellect, and organism, be mere matter from whence is this dignity derived .?3 The rock would have the same exaltation. When » If each animal function, even reproduction, can be explained, a.s Lankester and others assert, by physico-chemical means, why also is it not explained how inoriranic substances obtain their various structures and powers ? Milne Edwards, on this point, says, "These arose de leur co-ordination sous l' empire d'une force puis- sante commune^ d'ltn plan prtcon<;u, d'une force pre-existante.'' ^ If the idea of the professor be that reUgion is an emotion, and the idea of God a feeling, we can expect no sufficing notice of such a being. In the controversy with Martmeau, speaking of ihe power manifested in the universe he (Tyndall) says, " I dare not, save poetically, use the pronoun He regarding it. I dare not calt It a mind and refuse to call it a cause" (introduc. 2nd part, Frag Set.) We have then, but an imaginative phantom exisUng apart from an ideal, if it'be not conl sidered as a person, a cause, or mind, or being. There is no such rairueness of expression when matter is spoken of. . ]J}^^ grentest part of mankind are naturally apt to be affirmative and dogmatical m their opm.ons; and whilst they see objects only on one side, and have no idea. 01 any counterbalancing arguments, they throw themselves precipitantly into the Authority. 193 the mind is saturated by a particular idea it is like looking mto a concave mirror of unequal densities, which distorts every object It reflects. It is like a man facing the west, he goes on tor ever and ever, and never reaches the east ; face about and the problem is solved. If matter be both cause and efFect, subject and object, why was man made intelligent ? In such category culture would be a meaningless absurdity, the religious senti- ment would be rightly termed an emotion, God a non-entity, aiid all our conceptions inexact speculations ending in annihila- tion, morality a mere fetter on opinion and the gratification of passion would take the place of mental abstraction ; thus, in intelli- gence and life there would be neither reality, object, nor purpose. Goethe has aptly said, " Every bird has its decoy and every man is misled in a way peculiar to himself,'^ The mythic New Zealander, the philosopher in the ages to come if he should meet with the address, in his astonishment would demand was it accepted by an association of science, com- prising the highest names of the day, as a summary of the philo- sophy of the time, as a logical deduction from the science of the 19th century .? If so, then the era to which Huxley and Haeckel both confidently look, when scientific thought is to reign supreme, will be indefinitely prolonged. Better theological dogma and its extreme definitions ; at least there is the gain of an acknowledged (however indeterminately formulated) God. Whatever may be the idohsm of the address, theology is an idealized idolism, whatever more it may be. In cultured minds the religious idea generally terminates in a God or cause ; an evidence, although negative, which must count for something in the cogni- tion of a reality, not of matter, but of the manifestation of a pnnciple, at once unifying and preserving— Matter is perceived. Mind thinks. ' So enslaved is the general mind by the authorities of the time that it IS assumed to be treason to doubt the dicta of the leaders of the day, talk what or how they may— absurdities become logic; sensationalisms, eloquence; fanaticism, patriotism; and PJ'^s^ u"'^ '"^^^ P^^^^>' ' ^^^ because at some time in their era, they have earned a name for some themes logically reasoned, for some experiments successfully conducted, for some political conduct ably directed, and for some poems admirable and artistic. Without bias I entered upon and so far have completed my task ; what I had to say it was necessary to say plainly, as I cannot but think the address is a pitfall fo r the u nwary, and a principles which they are inclined to ; nor have any indulgence for those who entertain opposite sentiments {^Hume^s Essays, vol. ii, p. 253) 13 194 The Birmingham Oration, The Known and the Unknown, 195 snare to the unthinking. If the no God hypothesis be truth, then I have contended against the truth. Liberty of discussion and the free expression of opinion is the privilege of the time: but it were well to listen to the warning of the great German philosopher and not permit liberty to generate license. The names of Bruno and Gassendi, who were no materialtsts^ are made the stalking horses of a materialistic propaganda. Equally unfor- tunate in selection were those of Goethe and Carlyle ; as well Servetus and Bishop Berkeley, Dean Stanley and Mr. Mar- tineau might have been chosen. The desire has been carefully to avoid wounding susceptibilities ; and although the speech may be plain, the critical canon of Leibnitz and Carlyle has been adopted rather than that so unflinchingly acted upon by the Pro- fessor in his comments on Martineau, Bastian, and others. By the principle pursued throughout the address, it could be shown from the Psalms " there is no God," by leaving out the trifling context, " The fool hath said in his heart.'' The Birmingham Oration. At Birmingham (1877) Tyndall delivered an oration, the key- note of which is that the Unknown should be interpreted by the Known. The difficulty meets us, what is the known and what is the unknown ? Every known contains the unknown ; where, then, are we to find the simple known ? The known is assumed to be the perceived. The unknown is an abstraction arising out of the known, or having an origin independent of the senses. Science is but a plausible explanation of the methods of nature based on infinitesimals, whilst philosophy is the science of principles, an outgrowth of mental conception improved by culture.^ We know matter as a vehicle for the presentation of eft'ects, and that all objective phenomena can be reduced to the gaseou's form, and thus become imperceptible to the senses. We do not know why this gaseous state should exist. We do not know the why of objective forms, or the ultimate processes of their amalgamation. We know that life is always ready to intrude, but we do not know in what the life consists. It is no explanation to say that life is perfectly presented in atmospheric 1 " Now-a-davs, in the most widely-read journals, (iaily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly, it is helus; preached that faith is a hallucination or an infantile disease, thai the day for relii^ion is over, that the gods have at last been lound out and exploded, and that, there being no knowledjre possible save what conies to us thiou^b the senses, we must be content with finite ihings, and strike out from the ^'^^"onary of the future such words as infinite, supernatural, divine" (Max MuUer, tt/th Hibherti Ltd.). [t,e, invisible) germs. It is as easy to conceive them imperfect,' and that these germs, if there be such things, are imperfect life vesicles which receive completion through substances not existing in their composition. Animals and plants attain to fruition by the contact of substances foreign to the individual, and also by a new admixture of substance. Life only appears when all conditions are satisfied. Thus an odour may contain parts of the protoplasmic substances, perfected when it impenetrates the secretions, changing their form, as animal heat changes the condition of the egg. As the known cannot interpret the known^ it then seems idle to insist on an interpretation of the unknown by the known. After a number of commonplace summaries, speaking of eva- poration, Tyndall says, " Up to the point where condensation begins, an amount of heat exactly equivalent to the molecular work of vaporization and the mechanical work of lifting the vapours to the mountain tops has disappeared from the universe.''^ What, then, becomes of the principle enunciated in the hypothesis of the conservation of energy? Wasted heat is a dogma of the Pro- fessor.2 There is no disappearance of heat from the universe if Joule has truly propounded his theory. The heat converted into work is stored in the work.^ to be reinduced as the work is undone ; in other words, the energy is always existing in quantity, but changed in its application. Presently we hear, " Every rain-drop which smites the mountain top produces its definite amount of heat \ every river in its course developes heat by the clash of its ' Dallinger and Dr}sdale*s examination of minute organic forms appears to have a bearing on this question. Speaking of the coalescence of two forms, they say the creature could only move in a straight line, and " comes in contact with a colony of the organism in a springing condition, attaches itself to one of them, which then soon unanchors, and both swim away. In the course of time their movements become sluggish, the *arcorfe of their bodies is palpably blending,^* changes then take place, and spores are exuded, " exquisitely minute, opaque, apparently round specks, were seen to develop into the adult form and size" (Paper read before the Royal Society, Life Hist, of a Minute Septic Organisnij vide Nat., vol. 18, p. 103). ' In the intangible and imponderable is found the real, because they are always subsisting and universal. A realm of life is found in the entrails of the fly ; the fly dies, but the world within does not die — the life of this microcosm is translated into spores, wlierefrom new energies arise, and a new life appears. When heat disappears it re-appears. What, then, is the meaning to be attached to such phrases as '* wasted heat'' and "degraded energy." If worlds fade or decay, in continuity is found their germ of rehabilitation. Nothing is known of worlds destroyed. If there were wasted heat there could be no continuity, and the universe would imperceptibly fade, unless it can be said heat interbreeds heat, hypotheses beget hypotheses, in the same way as magnitudes grow out of littles, magnitudes being but multiples of littles infinitely repeated. The physicist recording by analysis magnifies his littles, and in ** imagination** nnihxedAi and holds in his grasp the universe, and thereby sup- poses he annihilates the great beyond. In perception there is but instinctive c*p- titude ; in conception the reality of knowledge. 196 The Sun the Source of Energy. cataracts and the friction of its bed/' Whence was this heat ? Is it not that heat which had disappeared from the universe ? (the work giving back the energy stored in the vapour !) As to the sun hypothesis of Mayer, Helmholtz, and Tyndall ; the sun may be the storehouse of heat,i if it be heat, // is not heat as science defines heat : the rule of the inverse square interposes its fiat. If the sun acts on the earth and the other orbs of his system, it is by virtue of a principle of which the correlated forces are conditions.^ All change is the transmutation of energies, because such is the method of nature. Nature is prodigal of power, but sparing of substance ; there is no room for waste. Truly it is written that knowledge is surrounded by a boundary which m.arks its limit, but the material hypotheses have shrunk far from this limit. We have the catastrophism of language when we are told the saying of Mayer, " that the nerves pull the trigger, but the gunpowder they ignite is stored in the muscles." The chemistry and mechanics displayed in nature may be freely admitted, as they show the vastness of the intelligence of the inducing cause. After more elementary science, to introduce Lange's story of a merchant convulsed into action by a telegram,*^ &c., Tyndall says : " This complex mass of action, emotional, intellectual, and mechanical, is evoked by the impact upon the retina of the infinitesimal waves of light coming from a few pencil marks on a bit of paper. We have, as Lange says, terror, hope, sensation, calculation, possible ruin, and victory compressed into a moment.'' After an observation on nervous action, and saying the impulse arose from " the centre of the nervous system," he asks, but *' how did it originate there ?" " This is the critical question. The aim and effort of science is to explain the unknown in the terms of the known." Spencer, " the apostle of the human understanding" {Belfast Add.)^ S2iys {First Principles^ p. 37), "We cannot think at all ' No particle of vapour was formed and lifted without being paid for in the currency of solar heat ; no particle returns as water to the sea without the exact quantitative restitution of heat (Binning/mm Lecture), 2 The experiments of A. N. Mayer with the floating magnet**, and the remarks by C. N. Pierce on their action (vide Nature, vol. xviii) if pursued and examined in relation to the planetary spheres, together with observations on the rule of the inverse square as to distances, probably would be shown that which is the true applica- tion of the energy of the sun, and how this energy is transposed as correlated force by the economy of nature. 3 As a surface presentment this is all plausible. The exciting fact was the idea presented in the letter, which, when received in the mind, affected the mind. The same result would have been brought about by any other mode, or by viva voce speech. How can it be said " the terror, &c. &c., was evoked by impact on the retina of infinitesimal waves of light," &c. may be. Whatever answer may be given for any material or objective consequent has equal force when applied to vital and mental facts. In all cases the motor power is an imponderable something, be it force or be it intelligence, and in all cases the ultimate motor fact is hidden, or at least science has not dis- covered it. We are surrounded by positive facts which by the finite mind are indefinitely conceived. The effort to make the indefinite definite is the basis of the material hypothesis. The idea of Epicurus as to the fact of cohesion, is scientifically ex- pressed in Faraday's idea of a single force, so definitely proved by Grove in his daguerreotype illustration [supra n. 2, p. 9). There is no more mystery in the connection between mind and matter than there is between force and matter. The most insignificant production of earth is as much a mystery as an idea, all await solution. We know facts as effects, but we do not know the ultimate cause of these effects. The phantom which the lecturer has set himself to combat arises from his own assumption that the molecular action of the brain is the cause of consciousness and intellect. The arrangement of the amorphous substance consti- tuting the brain is probably so purposed as to act as a mirror for the impression of symbols, sensation and intelligence being the inducers of the molecular changes which receive their interpreta- tion by the action of intelligence. Thus they are the actuals^ not the casuals, as it must be clear to the commonest intelligence that a thing cannot move without an antecedent motor, ii we do not really know what matter is, it cannot be expected we should explain what mind and sensation are, or the interconnection of the organism and the intelligence. Practically matter is an exist- ing fact, so is sensation, so also intelligence, and so freedom of will. Probably between the genesis of man and his ultimate, as elsewhere reasoned, free will is man's fact. Over his ultimate he has no more control than he had over his genesis — aeteris paribus we are bound to conclude the end of all men is the same, the difference being in the intervals of its consummation. Assuming there is a life beyond this life [vide supra^ p. 147), it is a continuing existence, a probation where the spiritual entity, be it what it may, receives its final finish through unlimited culture. The capacity or potence of man is " the capability of culture ." It is also clear, unless the Ego cognizes in its individual consciousness an objective fact, to the Ego it has no existence, summing Berkeley's idea — very much that of the Fichte of history — that objective existence is only cognizable by its existence in the consciousness of the Ego^ or of other Egos^ or in a consciousness which comprises all Egos and all objectivity. Excepting an allusion to Fichte, interpreted in a manner peculiar to the lecturer, we have, in con- clusion, commonplaces and assumptions. Fichte has been before interpreted by Carlyle. Construing Fichte by the light of Uberbweg, instead of the maniac he is inferred to be, we find a man of powerful intellect and genius, one who did not dwell in assumptions and material hypotheses, but who was able to present a reasoned conclusion for the opinions he entertained. The office of wisdom is not alone to present the whys^ but the reason for the whys^ so far as our finite capacities permit. It is quite possible to ask questions which no science can solve ; but it is not philosophical to assume, because the question cannot be answered, that the unknown has a material basis, that subjectivity is non-existing as a principle, and that objectivity is alone the moulder and worker-out of our facts. The imperceptible becomes the objective by the action of the unperceived e. g. water is composed of two imperceptible gases thrust into combination by the action of an imperceptible force. If this occurs in that with which all are familiar, can we deny that intelligence has within itself a similar power ? The gases, by- chemical affinities and by man's intelligence, are converted to his purposes, if man in his finite aptitude, can seize and control them, what then are we to conceive of infinitude which not only controls but creates and fashions ? Is it because a few isolations in nature- are mastered that the assumption is to be made that all which is be- yond scientific and physical analysis or the anticipations of physical science, are merely emanations from matter ? We may dream our dream. We know the viewless can become the objective. We know amalgamated poisons become innocuous substances and life-sup- porters, but we do not know the why of the fact^ we know that such is the working economy of nature. We know sensation can excite intellect, we know both exist, and that in their amalgamatioa 202 The Eternities. Eternity. 203 we have man, but we know nothing of the chain-links which bind the mind and the organism. We know the organism is resolvable into gases, but we do not know how these gases become objective. We know there are animate forms, but we do not know the cause of their animation. We know there are forces, but we do not know the whence of them. If then, these things which are known cannot be interpreted by the known, is the unknown to be denied because the known cannot comprehend it^ when even the known cannot itself be comprehended. The comment is addressed rather to the substance of the lecture than to the words, for which see Times^ report. Whatever the origin of matter, whether it be as Kant suggests, the objective presentment of a thought, or whether as the physicists assert, matter eternally existing, is a serious and diffi- cult problem ; a wide gulf stretching between the definitions. Both to our comprehensions appear to be existing principles. There is the subjective and the objective, can both be eternal ? The solution of the problem then becomes a question of probabilities. Science determines there are sixty-five elemental substances. In the practical acceptation of the word there is but one eternity ; to which of these elements is the priority to be awarded ? We cannot suppose a synchronous rush of the whole into existence unless we suppose all are the incidents of a primary. Supposing it were so, the data would still be insufficient ; the forces must have places, without them the gaseous elements would have lain in strata, there would have been neither cohesion nor combi- nation. All we know of phenomena expresses their homogeneity, hence we admit there can be but one eternal cause — or matter — as the governing principle. The choice is thus limited to matter, or spirit, i.e. intelligence. U matter be this principle or cause, intellect and force are but its emanations. If intelligence be the cause there is the difficulty of presenting it objectively. We have seen the imperceptible, becomes the objective by a process imperceptible. The gases have existed since the world was ; yet little more than one hundred years have elapsed since Priestley discovered oxygen. Intelligence was the worker by which the substance was assured. This enforces the conviction that the intelligence which directed the processes or method of nature is at the least as boundless as her phenomena ; thus the imponderable, the intangible, and the unperceived constitute our realities, because they are always subsisting and are universal. No science has practically denionstrated the origin of Intelligence, we only know through its subjecting energy, that it exists. The organised is not eternal or is eternal only in its vitality •, so worlds may fade and be rehabilitated. Synthesis dealing with the perfected magnitude sees but littles infinitely repeated. Analysis finds the littles, and the magnitude falls when the mass is disintegrated into the littles. The philosopher sees in his magnitude its qualities and quan- tities. The physicist finds the quantities but the qualities evade him. The philosopher sees in the cause the effect. The physicist finds an endless succession of effects which he pronounces to be " a precession of causes,'^ a finity in succession to a finity, which he deems to be the finality, hence the dogma of the eternity of matter. In perception there is no infinite. By conception, in the unseen is found Infinitude, infinitely prolonged ; can we not say this is Eternity ? Besides matter and mind there is heat and its conditions, undulations, or vibrations ? An undulation assumes the shaking of a something through the material of which the undulation must proceed ;^ this is force action. Can force claim the eternal honour ? Without heat there were no force — force is said to en- gender heat : let us consider. Is it possible force can engender that without which it never could have existed ? Heat condi- tioned is heat, light, electricity, &c. (in correlation), and these conditions become the sensible facts of the principle. Science shows light is resolvable into qualities, heat rays, light rays, and chemical rays, i.e. the calorific, luminiferous, and actinic. If light has weight it has substance. If the ether presents resist- ance it has substance. It does not follow because the ether presents resistance there is no rehabilitating power in nature as maintaining and sustaining ; the friction is the expression of work by which the energy is stored. It is impossible to suppose the possibility that the agencies instituted to carry on the work should wreck the universe. This would be indeed reducing the technics of infini- tude to the technics of the finite. The technics of man cannot constitute an eternity. The technics of Infinity constitute Eter- nity in their purposeness. Heat is said to have no weight yet it is a measurable quantity. If it be an undulation in particles, of what particles ? " The clash of the molecules " displays motion ; motion is heat whether as an undulation, or as a principle. Endless difficulties are presented : 1 " The idea of a resisting medium in space astronomers consider to be confirmed by the motions of Euke's comet, which cannot be explained without such a hypo- thesis. Besides, a residual phenomenon, as J. Herschel expresses it, ''adds con- sistence to the theory ; " from this cause, it is said, Euke's comet loses less than ^th of its velocity in thirty-three years (ten revolutions). If a resisting medium be existing the movements of the solar system cannot go on for ever. The moment such a fluid is ascertained to exist the eternity of the movements of the planets becomes as impossible as perpetual motion on the earth." (Whewell, B. T,, p. 200.) 204 The Rival Claims. Heat an Unchanging Principle. 205 a force as resulting from heat is the initial fact, from which motion follows, but it cannot be said motion engendered that which pro- duced it. Heat may be called the function of nature, in which sense it would precede all structure, however incorporated in Nature. Phenomena thus would be an ingeneration of heat, as the nieans by which the subjective could be objectively shown'. Without heat there would be no-thing, no-thing we know as phenomena. We cannot say phenomena generate that by which they exist ; it would be like saying the young of creatures generated their mother. The first existing, persisting and universal principle we arrive at in phenomena is heat, by its modification we have gas, liquid,and solid, latent or sensible (static or dynamic) heat exists m all things, its presence is everywhere. Without heat there were no life, without life there were no consciousness, without con- sciousness there were neither substance nor intellect for man as he is constituted. Can we then say that heat is the first principle, and that from it all things came ? It cannot be demonstrated that heat generates anything, although we know nothing can be generated without heat. We cannot suppose it generated intel- lect, for intellect, as far as we know, exists without heat, and by Its interaction on the particles of the conducting medium makes apparent the principle heat. Intellect is as imponderable, imper- ceptible, and impalpable as heat. Tyndall says: "When we ponder it is the brain that thinks." Is it not rather the imponder- able principle which stirs within us which thinks, and whose movements become what we term consciousness, thus linking the perceived with the unperceived. Unless we are to suppose this brain-matter is self-active, there must be a mover, and what is that ? Thought is a constituent principle, or effect of intellect, It follows that if molecular action originates thought it originates mtellect ! The brain is composed of organic substances and pul- sates with the organism ; traced backwards we find the substances of which it is composed are floating mists, but never without heat. Heat and cold, we are taught, are relative conditions of the same fact. We have the flaming hydrogen of the sun's envelope, and we have the cold of space through which the heat given off by the burning hydrogen radiates, without influencing it and yet after its passage on striking an object the radiation from the sur- face becomes sensible as heat, and by a subsequent act (radiation from the work) the atmosphere is warmed. Given the condition and qualities, the facts of heat are always the same.i There is a regulating principle j but if heat be the » When all the relations of the sun and the planets are considered, and system* connecting systems and cycles of suns, and the passage of the gun's beat througb eternal something, by what is it regulated ? To regulate requires intelligent action. This brings us to demand. What is intel- ligence ? The material presentment has been examined, and has proved fallacious as an eternal principle. From matter we get inertia. A molecule to move requires a mover ; thus an ante- cedent to its existing self. Intellect is that which guides, governs, invents, controls, and directs. Heat and matter constitute an organised form ; with vitality (another principle), the form is animate and conscious; with mind, intelligent. We then arrive at heat, life, consciousness, and mind, four imperceptible, imponderable, intangible, universal some- things, and we have substance through which their actions are manifested. We then also arrive at an existing living intellect, con- scious, as manifested by acts of will. Where is our beyond ? A set of syllogisms would prove the logical certainty of the position, a set of x's and y's the mathematical certainty, but neither would be a positively demonstrated proof of the problem — we have a probable possible, but no tangible fact. We then fall back on the original proposition (c. 4, p. 109) of this work, viz. perception, which k^nows material phenomena, and conception, which knows intelligent abstraction. Without heat nothing exists, without intelligence there is no control. Can we not say that heat generates all things of perception ; that conception makes manifest intellect which controls and interprets perceptive effects ? Intelligence {sui generis) is uninfluenced by heat, but heat becomes manifest through its action. We can then say intelligence by its action generates heat. And what is gene- ration ? — in what does it consist ? Minute particles consolidated on themselves (centres of heat, or force — heat foci, force foci), closed circles, the unclosing or closing of which is the deve- lopment of force ; a lap, an overlap, or an underlap ; a lap or light band closing on another, darkness ensues ; undulations closing on undulations, no sound is heard. Thus, we may say, the ether of space and the atmosphere, neither of which are heated thereby, as an hypothesis it might be suggested that the so-called heat of the sun exists in its magnetic phase, as being more in consonance with known or supposed facts. If heat be the primordial substance, then, all things being composed of it, the magnetism of particle on particle would be established, the magnetic power of the Sun would influence the magnetic particles of the Earth, and so substance would react on substance, and by this influence the air and all we know as substance would be acted upon, and we could say that motion results from the inherent mag- netism of substance acting on substance. Undulations and the static and dynamic powers of beat would receive an explanation more in consonance with observed facts than that of the radiations of heat from a distance of 92,000,000 of miles, and vibrations numbered by millions of millions acting on the eye in a second of time. In this view all heavenly bodies would be magnets, and resulting motions magnetic influences due to sun energy, not to sun heat, unless by correlation. ,1 2o6 The Fact of God. intellect generates heat; heat force, or motion; force compels phenomena. We then have phenomena as a consolidated objec- tive effect, and conscious intellect. Thus intellect as a principle becomes manifested as intellect a condition. Objective phenomena then become but the reflection of intelligent thought. We began with the principle intellect, vi^e end with conditional intellect, and when the conditional slides back into the principle the cycle is complete. Think it as we may, be overcome as we may by expressions of sublimity, whether excited by the contemplation of terrestrial phenomena with all its grandeur of change, or whether we direct our gaze on the stellar phenomena — those glistening points — suns and worlds, we arrive at conscious in- tellect enthroned in the midst, crowning with an ever presence the conceptive energy, through and out of which all terrestrial and celestial wonders have become manifested. By the facts of our reflective reason we discern this, and when we extend our thought to the grand continuity, a for ever continuing intelligent consciousness, the confession is forced from us that this is God,i the Intelligent principle, the Intelligible fact of all things ; the Cause, the Controller, the Substance, the Principle and Essence of things as we know them or can think them. CHAP. III. Heat — Heat a Principle Conditioned. By the material hypothesis matter in its atoms is indestruc- tible and eternal, and Earth, " the great mother" from whose womb all things are said to proceed, in generating herself gene- rates all else. What is the fact ? Earth is an aggregation of particles derived from her environment, cohering through the life energy inherent in them, and may be likened to a germ presenting form and diversity, to us an immensity, and yet but a particle in a universe of particles. The principles which govern her infinitesimal units, govern her. She exists in her particles, impulsed by imponderable principles, beyond which there is direction and control, as exhibited in the purposeness of order, a homogeneous conglomerate of life units. Earth is the matrix, the great reservoir, a passive receptacle wherein all substances are condensed, the life-bearer, the bed of generation, not the gene- » The word God in the Saxon finds its synonym in that of f^ood. In every other languuj^e the expression is of a Lord or ruler. In Jehovah the signification i3 somewhat extended, but never reaches the Saxon conception as a spiritual ideal. In the mystical Eloihim there may be i?uch an expression. The Scientist and the Charlatan. 207 rator. When we are told principles are material emanations, and that mtelligence is dependent on molecular motion, we analyze our facts, and find but the fallible in the finite. Our teachers as Newton expressed of himself,! are like boys searching the shores of an unfathomable ocean, their findings infinitesimals, waifs which have broken loose, abounding in the wide-spread immen- sity before them. The facts they have collected may be classi- fied as practical results, but their predicated history may be utterly false, mere hypothetical assumptions, which, as Kekule truly says, '' are gradually raised into articles of faith, and those who sin against them are persecuted" {vide note 4, p. 1). To pro- pound a new deduction from a principle, or to attack a deduction presumed to be established, excites a dogmatic resistance. Locke wittily defined the position.^ Yet we are said to live in an era of scientific liberty, but it is a liberty, so far as our pro- fessors are concerned, which must run in a given groove. There is no finality in science; at its best it is but^'a postulate of probabilities. The hostility of the Church to the extension of knowledge arose from the fear of innovation, and was but an acknowledgment of the weakness of her position. We have, in another form, the perpetuation of this dogmatism ; it is that which makes science so thorny a road to the neophyte. If we look into its annals, lengthy indeed is its list of martyrs. We have Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, Democritus, Epicurus, Galileo, Harvey, Peysonnell and Buckland, and others. The theories they propounded were met by persecution, by derision, or contempt and yet their hypotheses are established as scientific results. Elliotson and Reichenbach, men of ability, propounded theories which may become high philosophies in the science to come. Gall and Spurzheim showed a constructive theory of mind. Were these men charlatans ? Yes ! as all men are who reprove the ages by presenting systems in advance of established crudities. In this day Crookes investigated an important, although tabooed subject, and for courageously announcing his conclusions, derived » Newton, in the preface to the Frincipia, says : " The whole difficulty of philo- sophy seems to me to lie in investic^ating the forces of nature from the phenomena of motion. Many- things lead me to suspect that everything depends upon certain lorces, m virtue of which the particles of bodies, through forces not yet understood, are either impelled together so as to cohere in regular figures, or are repelled and recede Irom one another." f^"cu auu '' He asks, " Who will be prevailed with to disrobe himself at once of all bis old opmions and pretences to knowledge and learning which with hard study he hath been all bus time labouring for and turning himself out stark naked in quest afresh of new notions ? All the arguments which can be raised will be as little able to prevail as the wind did with the traveller to part with his cloak, which he held only the 2o8 Fundamental Principle, from observation and experiment, he was met, not by disproof, but by invective and abuse, because his announcement dis- appointed the preconceived ideas of our savans. Few^ men can afford to be original or to express ignorance. Newton, Leibnitz, La Place, Du Bois Reymond, and Virchow, above the pettiness of their times, admitted the insignificance of " the known to the sum of the unknown." Helmholtz, with a true scientific acumen, says : "All that science can achieve is the understanding of an action of natural and moral forces, and each student must be content to rejoice in new discoveries as new victories of mind over reluctant matter." The propounders of theories which admit of a materialistic construction are hailed as instructors, whilst those who present such as might elevate science are innovators and charlatans. The effort now-a-days is made to eradicate the idea of God as a Creator or as a Provident and Intelligent being. On being probed, this hostility is found in an antagonism directed against systems of theologies, because theologians repressed free thought in Kosmic ideas. Liberty gained can only be preserved by its judicious exercise ; when it degenerates, as in the rebound it too frequently does, into licence, we clank the same fetters. Men in all ages are much the same ; they clamour for their fetish, and get it, newly named, newly dressed, and newly ceremonialized. The men of these days deny that principle of being which the ancients sym- bolized and respected, and are not so lucky as the Alexandrians, who found their ideal in the mother of a God, but the God, as Creator, offered by the savans, is a mass of moulded matter.^ In the sea of materialism, where every floating speck assumes gigantic proportions, there are many divers, although but few secure the pearl. A handful of slime is hailed as the nucleus of a microcosm to come, and as a solution of the mystery of the Kosmos. This mysterious stuff turns out to be " a vehicle all strewn with the maddest Waterloo crackers, exploding distractively and destructively wheresoever the mystified passenger stands or sits" [Carlyle). When we uplift the curtain of sense, that veil of mystery, and look into its beyond, we find everywhere a fundamental principle working and unifying, which leads to the conception of a material ultimate intelligently directed, substance correlated with sub- stance and force with force.^ John Scotus would have said, " It ^ Hume says, '* It is remarkable that men have a natural tendency to rise from idolatry to theism and from theism to idolatry" {Nat. Hist. Rel.y p. 54). " The imponderability of heat is shown in the test of heating a pound of mercury and a pound of water in opposite balances to the same degree of temperature, and Heat a Solvent, Heat a Condenser. 209 was the auspices of the reinstitution of things'' and the return to a primordial conservatism. We search the facts of sense and might live in sense, but, with intelligence as an interpreter through the symbolical we reach the real. Tertullian wisely said, "Time is the ally of truth, and wise men believe nothing but what is certain.'' If the certain, i.e. the unchanging and universal is only to be accepted, in matter we cannot find it. In conscious intelligence we have this certainty— it leaps the gulf and satisfies the human understanding in its demand for con- tinuity. To demand the proof of a fact present in the minds of all men, is only to dull its appreciation by an " iridescent cloud of words" which they are incompetent to satisfy. Consciousness may be synchronous with continuity, but certainly is not a consequent of molecular displacement. Heat exists in all ob- jects and forms, whether they be gaseous, liquid, or solid, and yet it has no solid consistency. The limestone rock (as lime) in parting with its heat falls at our feet an impalpable dust, and by an admixture with water again becomes a rock. The iron by the agency of heat will flow in a stream, or become clothed with the im- penetrability of the diamond. Nature has her depository of stores but the artificer is always among them— the unit of heat, the power whether it be reduced or increased the substances remain in equipoise, although thirty times the heat will enter or leave the water than it would the mercury. More delicate tests present the same facts, as a sunbeam falling on a delicate balance produces no depressing effect on the scale. Hence it is said heat has no forward motor inertia or momentum. Rumford made water boil by the friction of a blunt borer rubbing against a mass of metal immersed in water. Davy melted ice, by the friction of two portions, in a temperature of 32° F. Proofs of the materiality of heat are adduced ; it is radiated through the most perfect vacuum obtainable more readily than through air, the radiation being in all directions and without impe- diment from crossing rays; on the condensation of a mass heat becomes immediately sensible, as if then squeezed out, as in hammering cold iron, and in mixing bodies which occupy less space when chemically united. These instances appear to prove that whatever heat be, it is something specific. The ignition of gunpowder presents such facts; if it were only the motion of the mass, whence comes the great expan- sion? If the power be in the particle, it is a something specific and a substance, although imponderable. Some suppose *' that the phenomena of heat are produced by an exceedingly subtle fluid pervading the whole universe, softening or melting or gasifying bodies," and by its properties seeking the " widest and most equable ditJusion." Its quantity may be measured, and its qualities inferred. Heat a wire. It IS lengthened ; heat water in a full vessel, it flows over; all substances, with few exceptions, gain bulk in proportion to the increase of temperature. Handle ice with one hand, and then thrust it into cold spring water, and the water feels absolutely warm ; take the other hand from heated water, and put it in the same spring water, and the sensation is that of a chilling cold. This experiment shows the heat is a specific something which specifically acts upon sensation. Thus it would seem that both heat and sensation have positive and negative qualities. Throughout pheno- mena we have the same relativeness— heat and cold, the ponderable and im- ponderable—force and inertia, the pot?itive and negative, the static and dynamic. Ibe whole exemplifies the process of the finite and in results has relation to animal organization, H 2IO Assumptions as Givens, The Fiery Nucleus, 211 of life is always present, always accomplishing results, now consoli- dating masses, now shrinking into itself, and withdrawmg its cohesive powers spreads the rocks abroad as dust, the sport ot every passina; wind. , ,, The pertinacity with which scientists endeavour to solve all the infinitesimal facts by a given, shows the insufficiency ot their reliance upon perceptive results. These givens and logic, what sins they cover, easily expressed and obstinately insisted upon. Given A generates B, the union of A and B the other letters ot the alphabet, Z as the final sensuous perception, expresses a phenomenon of the universe. Each letter is related to the other and all to each, A is the expression of itself, and therefore Intellect, equal in quantity and quality to the whole. Thus given A is ' intellect and B heat ; then B expresses the phenomenon of the universe, as derived from A and concentrated in Z. Arranged in the mathematical formula, we have as grand an exposition ot the universe, subjectively and objectively, as the disquisitions of a celebrated mathematician, who expresses as definite masses ot matter that which is viewless and weightless, at the least to man ! Yet science is " observation and experiment " interpreted by trained common sense ! " The French dictum is, the scientific theory cannot be considered complete until it is so clear that it can be explained to the first man you meet m the street. But all is quite in accord with the hypotheses of science which call the active and working principles of nature, because imponderable and unperceived, molecular vibrations, which can attain to an importance only through the forces which excite them ' If undulations be the all where are we to seek the Kosmic unity ? It is like the minute philosopher who con- sulting his microscope finds stupendous energies stored in a drop of water, and then conceives gigantic organisms reflected in minimums, hundreds of which would find a field of exercise on the head of a pin. A glance into the laboratories of Physicist and Chemist fills us with wonder, because there we find simula- tions of the methods of nature, which after all, present but a feeble reflex of that greater laboratory the universe, where Intelligence, with a power equal to compass every result, presides, i *» Mathematics can tell us nothing beyond the problems she specifically under- takes, she will carr)- them to their limit and there she stops ; upon ^*^ g^^^tjeg.on beyond she is imperturbedly silent" (Spottiswoode). bhe cannot tell whether matter be continuous or discrete in its structure, nor of its origin, nor of i^ crea- tion, nor of its annihilation, nor whether there be limits or not m time and space. ^* Conterminous with space and coeval in time is the kingdom of mathematics , withTnthi. range her domain is supreme" (.6). -She does not . contr.bu e dements of fact; . . but she sifts and regulates them and proclaims the law « to which they must conform if those elements are to issue in precise results [tb). We have the machinist and manipulator with whom gravitation is but the adjusting balance, and all the intricacies of phenomena but the offshoots of thought. Thus nature in the unison harmony is enthroned in divinity, of which the universe is the embodiment, finding a reality in the illimitable ALL—that which was and that which is— the sole Eternity, Intelligence. We are conscious of our own being, and by sensory perception are instructed in a world of facts, but withal there is an inner cry of where is reality ? Every where there is mystery, this mystery every mind tries to solve but never arrives at a solution ; with a thousand instructors we meet only sophisms, we have the expres- sion of a symbol but never the thing itself. What we groan under is not the tyranny of thought but the dogmatism of assumptions. Matter we are sometimes told rnay be an outgrowth of spirit, but what is spirit ? If it be not the thinking fact of our own exist- ence man has from all time wasted his moments in chase of a will o' the wisp. We glean our own shallows, catch minnows and proclaim them to be trout. In the view of the science of the time matter and secondary causes are the sole objects of contemplation, as though the pre- sentments of the one and the successions of the other were not effects originating from a primordial impulse. The very admis- sion of such a possibility as a secondary cause, by implication, confesses a first cause as an antecedent fact.^ " Matter at rest would never by itself cease to be at rest,^' how then is the hypothesis of Tyndall to be verified (vide Belfast Address) ? Science traces matter backwards until a kosmical in- candescent vapour is arrived at, and we are gravely told " not alone the mechanism of the human body but that of the human mind itself— emotion, intellect, will, and all their phenomena — were once latent in a fiery cloud'' (Tyndail).^ This, to use the words of Carlyle, is " diluted insanity." Science has found some > " Knowledge is distinct from opinion, from feeling, and from all other modes of subjective impression, still the limits of knowledge are at all times expanding and the boundaries of the known and the unknown are never rigid or permanently fixed. That which in time past or present has belonged to one category, may in the future belong to the other. Our ignorance consists partly in the ignorance of actual facts and partly also in ignorance of the possible range of ascertainable fact. If we could lay down beforehand precise limits of possible knowledge, the problem of physical science would already be half solved. But the question to which the scientific explorer has often to address himself is not merely whether he is able to »«)lve this or that problem but whether he can so far unravel the tangled threads of the matter with which he has to deal as to weave them into a definite problem at all" (Spottiswoode, Dub.y J 8 78). ^ " I have always kept apart the speculative and the proved. Before Virchow bad laid down his canons I had reduced them to practice ! " (Tyndall, XIX Cent., 1878, p. 507). 212 Germ Multiplication. of the methods of nature ; and as though the findings of science were the all of nature ; by a perversion of reason the method is oronounced to be the cause. , . , • ^f ^ The truest idea of matter is attained m the expression of force > Force in its static state becomes objective, as solids, fluids and gases, resolvable each into the other ; thus atoms or molecules arl redly the ultimate particles of energy which when Educed into the possible minimum, are resolved into the pnmoidial, becoming imponderable and imperceptible, and after undergoing the same rounds of energy again become objective. In such a vkwwe find a consistent method in nature. The tendency to inertia is the expression of thfe static state of J^"' ^^^e s*^^^ enerev required to originate motion is required to arrtst it, and force and motion become heat. Probably it never will be known how matter was initiated or what is its ultimate structure ; therefore hypothesis is reared against hypothesis i according to Hume's postdate the most probable hypothesis should be accepted. All the facts of nature tend to an assurance that matter, m the objective form, is the effect of a principle yet undetermined by science, through which forces are disphycd-thc yhst^c substance which nature first created and then moulded to its purposes ; the same amount of force is found to affect the same amount of r^^tter ■ can we say force is the incident of matter ? if not, does .t not fo[bw that matter is the incident of force ? The only evidence we acquire of the continual existence or eternity of matter is by The continual amount of force displayed. « When we weigh matter our evidence is the force of attraction, again our evidence ™f force is the matter it acts upon." We cannot conceive "a force without an antecedent force." Grove says he cannot con- ceive the opposite " without calling for the interposition of creative power any more than (he) I can conceive the sudden appearance of a mass of matter come from nowhere and formed from . Forces change the natu.e of sub.t«nces. The correlate of the force which Force> Change n ^^^ .^^^ ^^^ _^,,^yj^^^ ^^^,,1 foE ira;;e:r!Tlnd 're°;,Lr,n,. tojhe ine.,.ne„ced appear, like the passage °^%r;h:,"le„:i"e^: ^;^!S,::''Z^-^^ «- n,o,i„„ a„d resistance to r£ Hc:r.i:'S-ci:^^^^^^^^ reaouears as heat both in the earth and in the meteor, and par tin the change o^ the eaX ifosftion onsequent on ito increase of gravity, gtatitalion being . mode of force probabridentical with that of pressure, or motion, ..e. we.ght (». Newton, after speaking of the change of water into vapour, says, *' And among such various and strange transmutations why may not nature change bodies into light and light into bodies ?" 2 Maxwell (Heat). "The idea of temperature is the property of a body con- sidered with reference to the power of heating other bodies, and the idea of heat as a measurable quantity which may be transferred from hotter to colder bodies." 3 Max Miiller says, '* Till lately caloric was a term in constant use, and it was supposed to express some real matter. . . That idea is now exploded, and heat is understood to be the result of molecular and etherial vibration. All matter is now supposed to be immersed in a highly elastic medium and that medium has received the name of Ether. No doubt this is a great advance; yet what is this Ether, which everybody now speaks of as a substance? heat, light, electricit}', sound, being only so many different modifications of it. Ether is a myth, a quality changed purposes nature is the best thermometer. Heat may not be a substance but it acts as one. Heat apparently is in opposition to gravitation, but gravitation is probably a correlated force, if so the opposition is only apparent. Tyndall, with his expressive genius, seeks its correlation as his originating thought, as from men and their vv^ritings he had learned " that the notion of gravity being an outstanding force, entirely incontrovertible, u^as pre- valent among them" (1875, Constitution of Heat),^ Grove, in the modest expression of his facts, says, " Gravitation being but a subjective idea its relations to other modes of force seems to me identical with that of pressure or motion. Thus, when arrested motion produces heat, it matters not whether the motion has been produced by a falling body, i.e. by gravitation, or a body projected by an explosion, &c., the heat will be the same, provided the mass and the velocity at the time of the arrest be the same. In no other sense can I conceive a relation between gravitation and the other forces'' (Cor. For.^ p. 321, ed. 1862).- The simplicity of description has scant place in modern science. The o-eneral idea of the law of fluids is of a pressure equal in all into a substance, an abstraction, useful no doubt for the purposes of physical specu- lation, but intended rather to mark the present horizon of our knowledp^e, than to represent anything which we can grasp, either with our senses, or our reason. As long aa it is used \\\ that sense, as an Algebraic X, as an unknown quantity, it can do no harm, as little as to speak of the dawn us Erinys, or of Heaven as Zeus. The mischief begins when language forgets itself, and when we mistake the word for the thing, the quality for the substance, the nomen for the numen " (Sc. Lan.f V. i, p. 663, 7th ed.). * The law of gravity as applied to the sun is that the attraction varies inversely as the square of the distance, i.e. decreases as the square increases. Distances being as 1,2, 3, the power is as 1, 4, 9, so increasing in a geometrical ratio. KepTer's law of mutual aitrartion was precedent to the discovery of the theory of gravitation, but is really an incident of it. Simply stated, " every particle of matter in the universe attracts every other in accordance with the law of the inverse square of the distance." Newton suggests on the hypothesis of an elastic medium in space, increasing in elasticity as we proceed from dense bodies outward*, that this " causes the gravity of such dense bodies towards each other — every body endeavouring to go from the denser parts of the medium to the rarer" (Newton's queries). Le Sage's idea, as illustrated by Prevost, was, all space is occupied by currents of matter, moving perpetually in straight lines in all directions with vast velocities, penetrating all bodies. When two bodies are near each other they inter- cept the current which would flow in the intermediate space if they were not there, and thus receire a tendency towards each other from the pressure of the currents on their farther sides. It was supposed the line of the moon's apsides (/. e. her greatest and least distances from earth) moved with twice the velocity which gravitation would induce, and thus was subversive of the theory. The idea arose from an error in the calculation. Buffon asserted that force could only vary in accordance with the law of the inverse square. Gravity is a quality, an emanation, and emanations all obey this law. This position was attacked by Clair>ault (vide controversy^ Whewell, J3.7'., p. 228). Herschel has shown that double stars which revolve around each other in ellipses obey the law of the inverse square. » Mesotti had before mathematically treated the identity of gravity with cohesive 4iltraction Properties of Heat, 217 directions. Maxwell tells us " that a fluid is a body the con- tiguous parts of which act on one another with a pressure which is perpendicular to the interface which separates the parts,'' and we have an isosceles triangle to prove his description. Heat, or whatever else it may be, in its vibrating fact, becomes diffused by conduction, radiation, and convection. " Substances which admit of the radiation of heat through them without becom- ing hot . . are . . Diathermanous ; those which do not admit the passage of heat through them without becoming hot are Atherma- nous." The radiation of heat is called thermal, to distinguish it from the conduction of electricity and the radiation of light. Heat travels in rays like those of light. When the radiation is stopped a body becomes heated, when it becomes luminous the rays are scat- tered on the surface. As a general rule bodies expand when heated ; iodide of silver is an exception (Fizeau). When they become cool they contract; water, bismuth, and a few other substances are ex- ceptions. Maxwell says physicists do not assent to the proposition that the heat communicated to ice is still in existence as heat.^ The term latent heat is that form of heat communicated to a substance with- out raising the temperature.-^ The term has a scientific acknow- ledgment in the phrase " the latent heat of fusion.'^ Miiller, of Berlin, demonstrated that steam at an ordinary pressure being sent into a solution of salt (chloride of sodium, on which it has no chemical action) , the temperature is always higher — one-third {Nat.^ V. 16, p. 72). Grove says latent heat is a mere mental conception, and ought only to be received on the ground of absolute necessity.^ ' Black's discovery of t/te latent lieat of liquefaction and of vaporisation, i.e. the latent heat of liquids and of vapours, was made whilst a professor in Cjlasgow. These discoveries and his researches into the differences of mild and caustic alkalis were the foundations of his fame. Dewar {Dissociation of modern ideas of chemical action) y says, "Black may be regarded as the father of modern chemistry. He availed himself of the queries of Sir Isaac Newton, who, although he published nothing directly on chemical science, nevertheless in those queries expressed chemical opinions. Black's great discoveries were connected with the transforma- tion of bodies when they either liquefied or became gaseous, and with the great doctrine of latent heat. * The consequences of the property of latent heat are important. " Each part in succession must have a proper degree of heat applied to it. If it were other- wise thaw and evaporation would be instantaneous; at the first touch of warmth, all the snow which lies on the roofs of our houses would descend like a water spout into the streets ; all that which rests on the ground would rush like an inun- dation into the water courses. The hut of the Esquimaux would vanish like a house in a pantomime ; the icy floor of the river would be gone without giving any warning to the skater or the traveller ; and when in heating our water we reached the boiling point, the whole fluid would flash into steam, and dissipate itself in the atmosphere or jsettle in dew on the neighbouring objects" (Whewell, B. T., p. 92). 3 Wafer at 172° mixed with an equal weight of ice 32°, the whole will be reduced to 3^°; " the ice changing its condition from the solid to the liquid state abstracts from the liquid as much heat as it requires to change it into a liquid state, which is rendered 2l8 Heat and Work. I t / He seems to be of opinion that the abstracted heat is used in work. This phenomenon " has generally been considered as strongly in favour of that view, which regards heat as a principle, or matter, or ... . as a substantive entity, and not as a motion or affection of ordinary matter.'' Heat produces a repulsive action between masses.^ If, as Grove and Clausius say, the heat is expended in the work, whence is the re-energy ? The squeezing and refrigerating processes used in rendering oxygen, nitrogen, and air liquid,^ show work, but not that the heat was expended ; for immediately the tension was loosed the substances resumed their former volumes. If the heat had been converted into work it was reconverted into heat. If viewed in the light of the correlation of forces, it is a persisting fact, used and re-used^ and yet existing,^ Science says, " Heat is a form of energy, because it may be generated by work." This is something like saying it is present and not present. If there were not heat innate there would be no work to display it as an effect. Heat is the fact of motion, and light a force, but whatever the force exhibited it is due to calorific action ; light is said to have weight {2000 ibs. to the square mile). The same chain of reasoning would show heat to have weight, through pressure caused by expansion. If gas acts as a spring, it does so through the energy of heat. There are continually new theories and views in relation to energy, all of which appear identical with Helmholtz's theory of the conservation of force. In the ultimate idea motion is the effect of friction, and can only be excited by the presence of heat, and, however brief the interval, it must exist between the antecedent and the effect. When a mechanical latent or remains associated with itself so lonp as it remains liquid, but of which heat no evidence can be atlbrded by any microscopic test" {Cor. of Phy. Forces, p. 49). 1 Fresnel's and Baden Powell's experiments showed that 1st, mobile bodies heated in an exhausted receiver sensibly repelled each other ; 2nd, Newton's rings change their breadth and position when the glasses between which they appear are heated and that the glasses rei)elled each other. Clausius says, •• latent heat is not only as its name imports hidden from our perceptions, but has actually no existence,'' it has been converted into work. Yet in another place he says it is the vis viva of molecular motions. '^ At the beginning of the century it was regarded as proved that air was a sub- stance which differed from a fluid in having stored in it in some way a certain quantity of heat. In 1805 Dalton stated he had no doubt that the permanent gases were liquefiable bodies. Twenty years were required before Faraday liquefied any gas. It is commonly supposed that a fluid and a fluid only boiled. Dewar, in an experiment, showed that ice in ether presents the fact as shown by the continual process of ebullition, though the temperature of the block of ice was below that of the polar regions. 3 Black showed the quantity of heat to raise a temperature depends not only on the mass but on the quality of the mass. Irvine called it capacity for heat, Gadolin si>ecific heat. Capacity is the number of units of heat which raises th& temperature of a body 1*^ Fahr. Kinetic and Potential Energy, 219 mixture, gunpowder, and a coil of steel, are enclosed in a cylinder and fired by electricity, the steel is fused and twisted, and re- sembles the skeleton of some meteoric iron (ATi?^, vol. 15, p. 561). The motion is due not to the electricity, it could be arranged to pass through the powder without igniting it, but to the spark which excited the motion and fused the material. In all problems of force heat is a resulting fact ; surely we should say the latent became sensible, or rather the static became the dynamic fact.^ ^ If heat be energy expressed as work, and the amount of heat in the world is always the same, how can there be '^ wasted heat" or " degraded energy ?" Practically (notwithstanding the necessities of physics) there appears to be no distinction between potential and kinetic energy. Shot is propelled, and reaches an elevation, the energy is exhausted or counteracted by the friction of its passage (/. e. its virork) ; this is called kinetic. The shot suspended in air is motionless, by attraction it falls from its elevation and reaches the earth with the velocity of its propulsion ; this is potential energy (as Helni- holtz says), expressed in the rebound of a bent spring. Heat is both a principle and conditioned, and these conditions, as ex- pressed in the correlation of forces, are its innate facts. If there be an innate principle in mind, as now admitted, there probably is in physical facts. Nature is always awaiting her opportunity, or, as Goethe says, " knows no pause in unceasing movement and production, and has attached a curse to standing still." It is the fitness which makes all things consistent. A change in the principle of heat would throw the world of phenomena into con- fusion or cause its disruption. The slightest change in the constituents of the atmosphere would render it unfit to support life, as we know it. Not a star comes to its appointed place at the calculated time but proves the exactness of law. If there be a common principle in the organic, surely there is the same in the inorganic. The rule once displayed in pheno- mena is always continuing, the variations are but resulting con- ditions. We assume there is a time intervening in the results of motion. May it not be that this intervening time has relations only with our perceptions, and that results ensue without distinc- tions of time? In principle it is so; but we reckon by the relations of effects. Chop a thing as we may, the poles are always 1 That Helmboltz calls the sum of tensions, Thomson calls statical energy, Rankin potential energy. Maxwell says this is a felicitous term. Tyndall seems ta consider "specific heat'' and *' capacity for heat" in effect the same, for he says, ** Without harm we may continue to use the terms now we know the true nature of the actions covered by them " {Heat, 145). Young used the term energy ta express the quantity of work. Joule has shown that energy is convertible. 220 Fact and Theory. I existing. This shows polarization is an innate principle^ not a mere consequence of shifting particles, but incident in the thing. All bodies consist of minute parts. ^ Whether as molecules or heat foci, if the latter it would be innately constituted as the unit of force, or of life, or of construction. " The heat accomplishes what may be termed interior work; it performs work within the body heated by forcing its particles to take up new positions" (Tyndall, Heat)?" In science the distinction between fact and theory is con- tinually intruding. Grand generalisations are not to be esteemed as final results, but only as the highest exposition which induc- tion, aided by facts of observation and experiment, has arrived at.^ Science is the knowledge of the development and ampli- ^ Grove says he does not use the word molecules in the sense of the atomist, or insist that matter consists of indivisible particles or atoms, but '* as contradistinguish- ing the action of indefinitely minute physical elements of matter from that of masses having a sensible magnitude, in the same way as lines or points may be used in an abstract sense " ( Cor. Phy. Forces). 2 Heat is not the clash of the winds; it is not the quivering of the flame, nor the rising of the theonretric column, nor the ebullition of water, nor the motion which animates steam when it rushes from the boiier in which it has been com- pressed. All these are mechanical motions, into which motions of heat may be converted, but heat itself is molecular motion, it is an oscillation of ultimate particles" (Tyndall). Maxwell says, *' All bodies consist of a finite number of small particles called molecules, each of which consists of a definite quantity of matter, the same for the same substance, and its mode of combination the same. It may consist of several distinct portions held together by chemical bonds, and may be set into any kind of relative motion, and so long as they do not sever it is a molecule, all molecules are in a state of continual action, but the hotter the body, the more violent their agitation. In solids they never get beyond a very small distance from their original position. In fluids there are no limits to the excursions of the molecules, they traverse but a small distance before their path is disturbed by an encounter with other mole- cules and then they are pushed into new regions. The actual phenomena of diffusion both in liquids and gases furnish the strongest evidence that these bodies consist of molecules in a state of continual agitation." (VVhat cause is there for this agitation but heat :) In continuation, he says, *' the action between them gpes on for a finite time, during which the centres of the molecules first approach each other and then separate." This he calls " the free path o! the molecule," What is all this but saying that the force overcomes the inertiji, and that the weight and the inertia act together, and that the new motion is due to the elasticity of the masses, an inter- action of force in force, or, as he phrases it, "in an encounter between two mole- cules we know that since the force of the impact acts between the two bodies, the motion of the centre of gravity of the two molecules remains the same after the encounter as it was before. We also know by the principle of the conservation of energy that the velocity of each molecule relatively to the centre of gravity remains the same in magnitude and only changes in direction" (Maxwell, Theory of Heat). 3 Oersted said, " The laws of nature are the thoughts of God." The solution of any natural law is rethinking the primaeval thought. Plato said, "Nature was but the art of God ; His artificial machinery." §ocrates said, ** Let it suffice you to see these works : adore the gods for these and think by them they show themselves to us ; you cannot behold their form" (Xenophon). Although there are no writings of Pythagoras extant, from those of his disciples we learn, that upon bis 7 he Indebtedness of Science. Ill fication of littles. All the ages have been rife with theories ; they slumber as indistinct hypotheses, and suddenly assume the pro- portions of digested facts, but do not assume this position * until opinion is ripe for their reception. Thus astronomy, if history is to be credited, made great strides in the early eras of the world. At a time when Europe had not emerged from barbarism ; and even when civilization had made immense strides, astronomy was the merest surmise ; yet in these ages the sun disappeared beneath the line of the circle (horizon), and created no remark. The earth was a flat plane to which the sun, in a circling flight, paid his daily adoration ; the stars were fixtures in a moving mirror of glass. ^ The initiations of discovery are the stepstones of knowledge. These initiations, when based on true principles, are zealously tested, and it is indeed rare that the conclusions drawn remain a mere dream. Schelling says, " Philosophy advances not so much by the answers given to different problems as by stating new problems and by asking new questions." Tait thinks no theory should be formed unless it is based on experiment. Huxley, in his observa- tions on "paper philosophy," seems to have the same idea, yet science is indebted to many a haphazard suggestion. Even the settled convictions of science, derived from a long series of observations, are sometimes overthrown by an accidental disco- very. When all is said for science which can be said, it is but the finite perception of an infinite plan. Theories formed by reasonings without experiment have led to the establishment of law ; as Helmholtz's " conservation of force,^' which he worked out in ignorance of Joule's theory. The Kosrnic hypotheses of Kant and Laplace are also in example.- Hippocrates said, " It appears to me that what we call the principles of heat are im- system of the heavens astronomy is founded, a revival after two thousand years of oblivion. He was the first who used the word kosmos (ornament and order) to express the order which reigns in the universe and the world (Philolaus Biickh). Galileo,. Leonardo da Vinci, Hook, and C.issini suggested the law of gravitation before Newton had published his Principia (vide Lucretius^ part 2, c. 1.), and no doubt even if Newton had not lived, the period being ripe, the law of gravitation would have been discovered before the conclusion of his century. The merit of the dis- covery is not the less his due, although it may be said that but for Galileo and Kepler he had never mastered his problem ; after all it hung on the question of the true measurement of a meridian. ^ Pascal said of space *' that its centre is everywhere and its circumference no where." This may be said of the universe. Pythagoras assumed the earth was a sphere floating in space. Thales calculated eclipses. * Nebular hypotkesis. The sun revolved on his axis surrounded by an atmosphere which by heat was extended far beyond the orbits of the planets, they having as yet no existence. Contraction occurred through cooling, the rapidity of the rotary motion increased, and an exterior zone of vapour or ring became detached by centri- fugal force, this breaking, coalesced into a mass and revolved around the sun and retain- Heat an Undulation ? 223 I mortal. It knows all, sees all, hears all, perceives all both in the past, the present, and the future. At the time when all was in confusion the greater part of this principle rose to the circum- ference of the universe. It is this the ancients have called the ether." In its nakedness we have the modern theory of undula- tion as wave vibration. The old view of science looked on heat as an imponderable substance, indestructible, unchangeable in quantity, and an essential and fundamental principle of matter, and when it dis- appeared it was said to be latent. It is found in all conditions of substance, in chemical processes in constant quantity, and that whether the combustion be slow or rapid. The French physicists demonstrated heat to be a substance constant in quan- tity ; its relation to mechanical work had not been estimated. It can be produced by the friction of solids, or liquids, by the com- pression of gases, and by the impact of imperfect elastic bodies, but the friction and the impact of inelastic bodies are said to be ** processes in which mechanical work is destroyed." Joule measured the amount of work destroyed by friction, determined the quantity of heat produced, and established a definite relation between the two, known to physicists as the unit of heat. He inferred, "unless there could be always found the same amount of heat from the same amount of work, whatever were the bodies made to rub against each other, it would be in vain to seek for such a thing as the conservation of energy." "If work and heat be equivalents, in any sense you must always get the same amount of heat from the same amount of work," whatever the engine employed. He proved that the equivalents exist, and fixed 772 foot pounds as a unit of heat, i.e. one pound of water, falling 772 feet, finds its equivalent in a degree of Fahrenheit. Colding held, " Force is imperishable and immortal," and " when it seems to vanish it undergoes a transformation, and reappears in a new form, but of the original amount, as an active force." ing its form presented a ring as that of Saturn. Portions of the sun's atmosphere detaching at successive distances formed phmets in a state of vapour, each having motion, a planet would be produced having satellites and rings, partaking of the original rotation of the sun, necessarily the motion of the rotation of the planets would be in the same direction. This idea La Place proposed as a conjecture. The Kosmic theorj' of Kant, worked out independently, is similar. Whewell aA's, *' How came the sun with his atmosphere, materials, motions, constitutions and consequences ? How came the parent vapour to be capable of cohesion, separation, contraction, solidification ? How came the laws of its motion, attraction, repulsion, condensa- tion, to be so fixed as to lead to a harmonious and beautiful system ?" and, he con- tinues, "how, amongst many more things, came that previous state to exist? We get from luminosity to luminosity, tenuity to tenuity, at length, as La Place says. We arrive at a nebulosity so diffuse that its existence could be scarcely suspected " (Whewell, B T., pp. 181, 187). Carnot ( 1 824) believed heat to be material, and suggested a perfectly reversible engine in which the heat expended in work should revert back to heat. His idea of the indestructibility of heat was contro- verted by Thomson, but ingeniously proved by Clerk Maxwell. Helmholtz says Carnot hit upon the true theory ; his law was' *' only when heat passes from a warmer to a colder body, and even then, only partially, can it be converted into mechanical work. Mayer, Colding, and Joule, laid hold of the same thought."^ " Gas allowed to expand with a moderate velocity becomes cooled, and this work is said to be performed at the expense of heat, but if allowed to come into an exhausted receiver does not cool • if individual parts become cooled.^ others become warm^ the temperature becomes equalised, and is the same as it was before the expansion of the gas," It is obvious, the expansion taking place in air, that the heat of the gas passes into surrounding objects. When it takes place in a vacuum there are no absorbing particles, and the heat is preserved, i,e, remains uniform. The example shows that by the mere expansion none of the heat is lost. Helmholtz says ^^ These facts no longer permit us to regard heat as a substance^ for its quantity is not unchangeable ; it can be produced anew from its vis viva of the ?notion destroyed. It can be destroyed and then pro- duces motion. We must rather conclude that heat is itself a motion — an internal invisible motion of the smallest elementary par- ticles of matter'' It appears to me the conclusion arrived at by Helmholtz is exactly opposite to that which should be drawn from his argument, which proves, not that heat is a mere motion or vibration, but an actual and subsisting principle. It shows not that the quantity is changeable, but that it is always the same! Motion may cease and be reproduced from the vis viva of the motion destroyed. What is this but the condensation of heat a retirement into its ultimate particle : if it be not always existing from whence is it reproduced? Motion may cease and be reproduced, showing the quality is always continuing. This motion is not a reaction of itself, but the result of heat in its condition latent or sensible. Admitting heat to be " an 1 Boscovitch maintained the ultimate elements of matter are indivisible points without extension, surrounded by spheres of force alternating in respect of distance • the sphere nearest the points is one of repulsion, the intensity increasing as the point is approached, beyond the point of repulsion it slides into attraction. There is a sphere in which the influence exists and is energised, a sphere of repulsion affain follows, and so on until a perceptible distance is reached in which gravitation alone prevails. If a body be so constituted with attraction in the ascendant it will be a solid If the points are repellant it will be gaseous, but if neither attraction nor reBulsion are in the ascendent, it will be liquid. In all bodies there are modifications, change one sphere of attraction for another, although a solid is still the result, it will be a new body, even if there be no chemical change. The diflBcultj of the system is the indivisible point without extension. 224 The Argument, Heat more than a Vihrative. Heat the Unit of Life. 225 I internal invisible motion of the smallest elemental particles of matter," this goes far to prove that heat and matter are the same, that matter is a condensation of heat exhibited m he smallest elementary particles, and that the motion within the particles is due to the action of the primordial unit. T he frin- chle heat, appears to be inherent, as shown by its action in a vacuum, its conditional fact alone varying; at all events this proves permanence as to quality. If then, there be permanence of Quality; there would be permanence as to quantity, and in heat we most probably have, so far as matter is concerned, the ultimate fact of the facts} , ^ , , j i .• Kronicr, Clausius, and Maxwell have developed the undulation hypothesis. " What appeared to the earlier physicists to be the constant quantity of heat,"- is nothing more than the whole motive power of the motion of heat, which remains constant so long as it is not transformed into other forms of work, or results afresh from them'' (Helmholtz). When we reflect that the power of •the particles is the power of the mass, and that gases are really solids in expansion, it seems difficult to understand how there can be any distinction between the action of particles, whether in gas or in a solid. The real distinction being that the interstices Ire laraer in gases than in solids, and thus the action may be more readily'^remarked. The constitution of the thing being the same, that which is true of a gas is true of a solid, conditions alone are chancred. If, as Helmholtz says, "the heat passes into the smallest particles,- and if it be " nothing more than the whole motive power of the motion of heat, the conclusion must be that heat is both existing and persisting,/'.^, innate, ^«^//;^/ /« thn unit of force we have the primordial unit of matter,' We have the 1 "Enerirv of position" and ''energy of motion" are transformations of heat. -Actual e^yy is exemplified in the .1. vivaoi moving bod,es-.n heat electric currents. &cf potential energy in a bent spring or in a body suspended a g.vea dUtance above the earth and acted on by gravity" (Helmholtz) ThToresent explanation of science is that heat is not a substance but an undu- bars - -Thus in collision and friction, according to the manner of viewing he sub ect the motion of the mass of the body, apparently lost, is converted into the subject, tuemou" ^^ptides of the body; and conversely, when the mechanical ?o? L i"%ene':te^bTie a't^^^^^^^^ motion of the ultimate particles is converted into the lorceisgeneraie > > ^^.^ internal motion *' can only be ":^"e"d with anr^Ve otprol^^^ in the case of gases ; their particles probably cros^ each other in rectilinear paths in all directions, striking against another pLrUcleror against the sides of\he vessel, they are reflected in another d.rec- ''""{n'L 18th century the word -loric was used and it cameV^^^^^^^ mPTPlv heat but heat as an indestructible, imponderable fluid. And at lengtn 10 Sv^ the recognised existence of something material, though probably of a more imply Uie y^^osn' discovered gases " (Max MiiUer. Set. of Lang), '"5'Th'vieVr^^^^^^^^^ ideaShat elemental substances are facts Statements of the old and the new theories. The old idea was that heat was an imponderable substance called caloric ; the new- idea is that it is an undulation, or, as it has been expressed * " a molecular and ethereal vibration," not a substance at all. For practical purposes it may be necessary to make the distinction (even then the treatment is as of an existing thing), but when we pass the facts in review and inquire. What "is heat f we conclude it to be a principle in nature, varied as conditions require varia- tion, and most probably the relativeness of each of them to the other has significance in the sensible or latent fact. It is perti- nent that no two sums of heat can he added to make a sum of the several quantities,^ e,g, two bodies ; temperature — one of 100°, the other of 40° combined present a temperature of 120°, not 1^0% or take 60° and 40°, the result is 50°, not 100°. Substances combine in proportions by affinities. A ray of light will obliterate a ray of light, sound will obliterate sound, the powers of electricity may be added to electricity and increase the intensity j it is not so with heat \ we have but an equalization. A power, whatever it may be called, that is always present and always adjusting itself, must be considered inherent, a principle, if it 'be not the ultimate prin- ciple, both of matter and force. No touch but indicates its presence whether of the most gentle character, or whether of a force bearing all before it. All we know of forces are modifications of heat ; all that science really knows of heat is its effects. We may speak dogmatically, and assign to it different names ; whether it presents itself as a vibration, or as a real substance, it is a per- sistence ; it is locked up in the ice, and rampant in combustion ; not a wind blows, not a natural phenomenon occurs, but we can trace it to heat. If, instead of the atom, or the molecule, or the smallest elementary particles of Thomson or of Helmholtz, we suppose the unit of heat is the unit of vitality,^ force points closed or unclosed, miniature vortices, that the power is within the particle, and that both quantity and quality are merely its develop- rnents — this would at the least bring us nearer to the comprehen- sion of ultimates. Heat is talked of as a measure of work — beautiful, ingenious, and painstaking are the various theories — and although the fact heat, is exemplified in work, it shows, (life- like) a principle which is for ever waiting to make its hidden resources apparent.^ of one substance differentiated ; hence would arise a correlation in character similar to that of the forces. Eventually it may be found that substance is but the objec- tive presentment of the forces. > Thomson's theory of pressure applied to ice and the consequent liquefaction of part of it. Bertholet's investigation on the nature of ozone (condensed oxygen) shows " it is a body in which heat is absorbed in its formation. Its activity in com- 226 Heat the Primordial of Terrestrial Forms, Joule and Mayer. 227 On collating the old and the new theories of heat, they do not appear to be so diametrically opposed as they are assumed to be. The old calorific idea presents the principle, the new idea shows the working effect, which really is but the difference between specific and latent heat, or the dynamic and static. So far as material facts are concerned a heat hypothesis would more fully and more sensibly account for phenomena than the matter hypothesis. The latter could not exist without the former, and the former would present difficulties unless it can be shown that heat in some form becomes solidified. By the action of heat, we know all solids can be rendered imperceptible. Reasoning inversely, do we arrive at the idea that the primordial unit of terrestrial things is that of heat ? Huggins' spectroscopic olefiant gas lines of the comet may show the initiatory process of heat consolidation. The proposition that heat is the primordial ultimate out 0/ which matter arose^ worked out in a series of syllogisms^ presents an a priori logical proofs [if it does no more). Wherever terrestrial phenomena are presented, heat is pre- sented, latent, or sensible. All matters of perception can be resolved into, or be determined by heat. Therefore heat is a principle (or the unit) of all terrestrial phenomena. Intelligence is not a terrestrial phenomena (immaterial). Intelligence cannot be resolved into, or be determined by heat. Therefore intelligence is independent of heat. That which generates a principle is its antecedent. Intelligence generates heat,by which all things else are generated .1 Therefore, as from intelligence heat is generated, intelligence is the first principle. The conclusions of the syllogisms complete the problem : Heat is a principle, or the unit, of all terrestrial phenomena. Intelligence is independent of heat. Therefore, as from intelligence heat can be generated, intelli- gence is the first principle. The mode of expressing the scientific idea of heat confounds the thing with the form in which it is expressed. Davy said, bination is probably due to the heat being set free" {Nat., v, 16, p. 71). Mailer's (of Berlin) experiment of forcing chloride of sodium into steam is also in point. ' Intelligence generates heat by inducing the molecular changes of the brain substances by its impulsion. If it be insisted on that the brain matter generate* intelligence all argument must cease. All is matter^ or no matter. So advanced is thoughty the mystery of the world is little more than the mystery of a cooked dumpling, yet inquisitive minds will inquire by what means the apples got in {\\Avr Sartor Resarttts). "The immediate cause of heat is motion.'' Tyndall considers " heat as a mode of motion ;" Seguin, that " the amount of work done by an expanded heated body is the equivalent of the heat it loses;'' Mayer, "the amount of heat produced in compressing a gas, or any other body, is the equivalent of the work spent in compressing it,-'' Helmholtz, "the law asserts that the quan- ' tity of force which can be brought into action in the whole of nature is unchangeable." Mayer showed his fact by the recupe- rative power of the vital function. Joule and Colding consider that when force appears to vanish it undergoes transformations, again to reappear as active energies. Tait says Scguin's calculations are wrong on one side of truth, and Mayer's on the other, but Mayer's substance (air) has been proved by Joule to be capable of giving an exact result. Seeuin has the credit "of seeing that if heat be not matter some of it must disappear in the working," that Mayer has undeservedly the credit of discovering the dynamic theory of heat and of the con- servation of energy, and that too little credit has been given to Joule. Joule and Mayer appear simultaneously and independently to have thought out the principle of the conservation of energy ; Helmholtz and Tyndall give the priority of the discovery to Mayer ; Tait considers Joule to be entitled to the honour.^ It will be gathered that in the view of science heat is but the undulations or vibrations of particles of matter, heat being thus regarded as an incident instead of the substance. Many talented men hesitate to accept this dictum, even whilst admitting there are difficulties of explanation, unless the hypothesis be used. In 1839-1811 Dr. Joule described in a publication electro.magnetic engines. In 1840 he announced as a law '* that the effects of equal quantities of transmitted electricity are proportioned to the resistance overcome by the current." Whatever was the shape, thickness, and character of the metal, it was proportioned to the square of the quantity of transmitted electricity. In 1843 he read a paper wherein he said, '• The mechanical power in turning an electrical machine is converted iato heat evolved by the passage of the currents of induction through its coils, and on the other hand that the motive power of the electro-magnetic engine is obtained at the expense ol the heat due to the chemical reaction of the battery which worked it." In 1840 Dr. Mayer, in Java, observed that venous blood had a singularly- bright colour, and concluded it was due to the temperature, less oxidation being required in tropical than in temperate latitudes. He held that in all cases in perfect combustion fuel yields an equal amount of heat; hence that the living organism was incapable of generating heat out of nothing, but yet is capable of generating heat outside itself, therefore the heat generated within and without the body is to be regarded as •* the true calorific effect " of matter oxidized in the body, and must stand in fixed relation to the work done. If this were not so the oxidation would vary ; hence " a fixed relation exists between heat and work," and *' is a postulate ol the physiological theory of combustion." In 1842 he published his iheory in Uehig's Jnna/en. If these theories be identical in principle, then Dr. Joule appears to have the priority, but if only his 1843 publication is to be taken into account. Dr. Mayer. 228 Difficulties of the Undulatory Theory. A plate of glass presents no inequality of surface which can be probed by any point, however minute, yet light will pass through its mass. Light is said to be waves transmitted through the ether. Cooke {New Chemistry) says he does not agree with those who consider the wave theory of light as established, yet admits its value as explaining unknown phenomena. And remarks : " The theory requires a combination of qualities in the ether of space which I find it difficult to believe are actually realised— for instance, the rapidity with which the wave motion is transmitted depends— other things being equal— on the elasticity of the medium. Assuming the two media have the same density, then the elasticity is proportioned to the squares of the velocities with which the wave travels/' *' Sound travels about ii,ooo feet in a second, light 192,000 miles, about a million times greater. If the density of the ether be as great as that of the atmosphere (one third of a grain to a cubic inch), its elasticity, or resisting power, would be a million million times that of the air, and the pressure, instead of being 1 5 lbs. to the square inch, as of the atmosphere, would represent that of a cubic mile of granite rock." " This," he says, *' is an absurdity, for it is assumed that the ether pervades the densest solids, as water does a sponge, and could not be confined." *'The ether is a medium so thin that the earth in the motions of its orbit suffers imperceptible retardation ;' yet it is endowed with an elasticity proportioned to its density a million times greater than that of the air" {ib.). If the ether is governed by the law of fluids the pressure would be equal every way, and would only be controlled by itself. Where are the enormous rending forces, as stated by physicists, to come from, if thev be not contained in their foci f — forces sufficient to penetrate the pores of iron and the harder platinum, the sullen lead and crystalline surfaces of glass. Whether there be waves of ether or not, there is in light something which has definite dimensions. It " is difficult to think clearly on the subject without the wave theory, and though it may be a phantom of our scientific dreaming, these magnitudes must be dimensions of something.'' White light is produced by all the rays of colour acting synchronously on the eye, the number of waves in an inch and oscillations in a second have their count in numbers which no perceptive power can comprehend.^ 1 La Place calculated that each day measured by the stars is so precisely of the same length that it is impossible that a diflerence of the yi^ of a second should have been attained from the earliest ages to the present time, because in the rotation of the earth on its axis there is nothing which operates to retard its speed " she spin- ning sleeps,'' whatever may be the fact as to the orbital motion. =^ How large heat units, force units, or light units are (if there be such things), no one knows. Only on the hypothesis of the wave theory of light can any proportion for colour waves be assumed. We are told it is a simple calculation a mere question of aritimietic. The velocity of light is 192,000 miles in a second, 12, 165, 1 20,000 inches, 39,000 waves of red light make ui> an inch. Multiply the number of inches by the waves of vibration we have 474,439,680,000,000. These waves enter the eye in a single second of time. The violet has still a greater number of waves, taking 57,500 to fill an inch. The other colours of the [spectrum rise Severance of White Light, 229 Each of the seven colours in the white light is represented by five ranges of figures, and they result from the assumptions of that which constitutes the sum of " eternal matter." Substitute the ultimate particle of heat, as the unit of life, and these difficulties vanish. In the ether probably resides the force by which the light rays may be split and conditioned. Nature exists in an eternal change, decay, and recuperation, and is not the mere play-ground of the molecules but is heat, in its phase of force interlacing thing with thing. The law of the magnitudes is the law of the littles. Microscopic shells have built mountains, and we see all the formula of life where a drop of water constitutes a world. Art has its* triumph even in littles. Nobert, the German optician, has ruled 224,000 lines in the space of an inch, " and regularly makes plates with bands from 11,000 to 112,000 lines in an inch," for microscopic tests.^ The lines have been photo- graphed, and when magnified and reflected on the screen " the lines are distinctly visible'' (Cooke). These ruled bands gave the means by which the waves of light were measured. In astronomical calculations the light is assumed to pass through space with the calculated velocity. On entering the prism the rays are dismem- bered, and the components assume different velocities. " If the materials of the glass were perfectly homogeneous throughout it is im- possible to conceive, on the wave theory of light, . . how a mere difference in the size of the luminous rays should determine this unequal velocity, with the accompanying difference of refrangibility."' " Some think there is not an abso- lute continuity in its matter (glass), but that there are interstices so small that it requires the tenuity of a ray of light to pierce them." We make our conceptions the measure of the resources of nature. If we suppose the substances of the glass to be banded forces, the light also being force, and that the impact splits the white light into its component forces, it is easy to imagine that the conflict of the units of force causes the phenomena. That there are distinct forces in light is shown by the possibility of splitting it into colours, these colours representing particular conditions. The unequal velocities show the disparity of the gradually in pitch from red to violet {Tyndall on H^ai.) Averages may be assumed^ but averages, in our ignorance of the working facts ot nature, may be utterly untrue. The number of waves are calculations in averages. Tyndall derived his idea by observing tints of colour scattered laterally when they clustered in the forms of actinic clouds. 1 F. W. Potter, of Hill Street, Finsbury : — In the notice in the Ttynes of the Tin Plate and Wire Workers' Exhibition at the Crystal Palace he makes mention of a piece of wire gauze exhibited which contains 8,100 holes in one square inch. la the same case is exhibited another roll of gauze with 14,400 holes per square inch, a piece of which 16 inches square contains 3,686,400 holes, or more than the population of London. 230 Infinitesimal Realities, forces in action in the inability they exhibit to overcome equally the resistance. The ether is probably an homogeneous substance through which the light passes, as through a compact substance.^ Those who are curious as to the estimate of numbers in relation to forces will be thoroughly gratified by consulting Cooke's New Chemistry (pp. 24-32), where he comments upon these minute enormities of the wave theory. He says that to every square inch of surface we have the pressure of a cubic mile of granite. If the molecule- is a real existence this weight is also. If that we term matter is the objective presentment of heat, or force, a simple unlap would solve the whole question. Beginning with a given ^ all things are possible of proof. Cooke says the molecule is no longer a metaphysical abstraction, but a reality, and the idea of infinite hardness, absolute rigidity, and other incredible assump- tions, is no longer connected with them. " The Nezv Chemist's molecules are definite masses of matter, exceedingly small, but still not immeasurable ; they are points of application to which he traces the action of the forces with which he has to deal.^' The molecules are to the physicists real magnitudes, "which on the one side are no further removed from our ordinary experience than are the magnitudes of astronomers on the other." We now arrive at a definite something (vide Thomsons Calculation^ p. 39, note i). *«An object having a diameter of an 80,000th of an inch is perhaps the smallest of which the microscope could give any well-defined representation ; and it is improbable that one of the 120,000th of an inch could be singly discerned with the highest powers at our command" {Spottiswoode). To insist upon the existence of matter per se in the face of such calculations is a solemn absur- dity ; perception could not reach, nor could conception realize them. The atom is not to be confounded with the molecule. "To the physicist the molecule is a definite unit, to the chemist the atom stands in the place of the molecule." "To 1 Castile soap, glycerine, and water will form into n soap bubble of the utmost tenuity, on which prismatic colours will occur in bands which reflected through a mono- chromatic light and passed through a lens on to a screen well illustrates TyndalPs theory. He says, " Whenever the ditference of path brings the crests of the waves of one set of waves over the troughs of the second set we obtain this wonderful result — that the union of two beams of light produces darkness," i.e. when the hollow of the curve of a wave is filled by that of another wave the undulation is blotted out or ■obliterated. Helmholtz sa>s it is the same with the wave of sound. ' Avogadro's law declares all gases contain, under like conditions of temperature iind pressure, the same number of molecules in the same volume, and if we rely upon the calculations of Thomson, "the number is one hundred thousand million, million millions,'' "or the formula lO''^ to a cubic inch." Barometer 30 inches, thermometer 32° F., i.e. when in the condition of perlect gas. Yet, " in the state of l)erfect gas it is assumed the molecules are so widely separated that they exert no action on each other." Effect of the UndulatoryTheory . 231 me .... they are just as much real magnitudes as the planets ; or, to use the words of Thomson, pieces of measur- able dimensions, with shape, motion, and law of action, intelli- gible subjects of scientific investigation" (Cooke). The unit of life and the molecule may be identical for the purposes of scientific investigation, but no hypothesis can make them other than they are.^ If the savans have truly reported, their facts exist amid a tumult of forces. These crushing weights are everywhere balanced, and from the uproar and war of the molecules uniform order results. Faraday showed when the ether was subjected to magnetic action, on passing through it a copper plate, " it was like cutting cheese, although there was nothing visible."^ Tyndall says, " The ambiguity of the word force has for a long time been creeping on us.^' To convert water into steam, the force required is equivalent to 822,600 foot pounds, i.e, a power which would raise a mass four tons in weight to the height of 100 feet. Whence comes this force ? If effected by heat the force resides in the heat as an integral part of the mass. The force thus becomes the energy of the thing itself — latent energy excited to sensibility — thus the expansion of its unit would account for the pheno- menon.^ Heat is condensed as vapour by the combination of oxygen and hydrogen particles — oxygen from the air, hydrogen * According to Cooke, if the undulatory theory be more than an hypothesis, we have enormity of weight. On the molecular theory we have the substantial things of the world reduced to nothing ; and yet these nothings, according to the material hypotheses, are the generators of all we know, think, or feel. A proper outcome tor an absurdity is to breed an absurdity. A ray of light travelling 192,000 miles in a second, a swiftness of motion which would encircle the earth upwards of 7125 times, has to cleave its wa} through the ether and to overcome a continually recur- ring resistance of myriads of millions of tons. Such are the exigencies due to the exactness of science in the relativeness of things. * In modern physics space is regarded not as a vacuum in which bodies are placed, but rather as a plenum in which matter is co-extensive; replace matter by heat as the universal principle, and how many difficulties are smoothed away? 3 In the force of steam, viewing the minute globules as a collection of voltaic cells whose collective energies display these amazing powers, a possible solution may be gained. It has been shown an electric flame can be evolved in steam in its rush through an aperture. This goes far to lead to the conclusion that the force is innate in the microscopic globules. The theory of correlation shows force in principle is individualized, transmuted through its conditions. De la Rue's battery of 10,000 cells almost allbrds the evidence that a voltaic discharge, apparently continuous, may be an intermittent phenomenon. The telephone has shown that sound is an electrical manifestation, or acts electrically, whilst the microphone shows that its intensity is due to intermittent currents. Carrying these principles into the workings of nature, all thit)gs appear to be derivable from heat through the intermittent action of its conditions. Intermittent, because it is the unity of minute particles which swell into uncontrollable power. The uniformity of nature results from an infinite com- plexity, underlying which is an infinite diversity, the resultant of agglomerated littles; but there is no evidence, when intervals and areas are indefinitely diminished, to show this fact, however applicable it may be to definite intervals and definite areas. 232 Vitality. from the flame — and from this combustion, from this interaction of the various gaseous substances is consummated all combinations resulting in solids. The hydrogen, is it a constituent of the flames and of the unseen combustions, or has it its base in carbon ? We inhale oxygen and nitrogen (air). The oxygen deposits the nitrogen and unites with the carbon of the organism, and is expired as a new combination (bioxide of carbon). Is it not possible the carbon is a resultant of heat, everywhere present and everywhere producing ? This heated carbon, what is it ? A residuum, an unused energy, or the reversion to a primordial, again to be used, again to be re-formed ? Carbon in combination with oxygen is exhaled by creatures and plants — matter united in chemical afliinity. The flaky soot (carbon), it meets us every- where. We assume that we have facts, have we the real facts F The riddle we have to solve is that ultimate reality out of which all fads have evolved. Life and Matter, 23J CHAP. IV. Vitality. — Causation. — Cell Theory.— Spontaneity. Vitality eludes analysis. The electrician can disperse the diamond j the chemist can resolve the calc spar into its com- ponents, lime and carbonic acid ; but no effort can recon- struct it, the vital cohesion passed in the disintegration. Ana- lysis has probed the protoplasm, proving it to be composed of the same elements as water, air, and carbon. Protoplasm is proto- genous ; " protein has never been determined with exactness," albumen being the nearest approach to it. Generally, the pro- toplasm is aflFected by electricity, and is liable to coagulation at between 40° and 50° C. What is life ? — molecular action with endless transmigrations and permutations, only differing from the inorganic in the disposition of the particles ! If vitality be but an emanation from matter, to be again resolved into matter, when will its work be done ? Huxley says, " All work implies waste, and results directly or indirectly in the waste of the pro- toplasm.'^ Yet science regards matter as a wasteless thing, or *'the conservation of matter has no meaning.'' He continues: '' this waste of the protoplasm is repaired by nutriment ; whatever is consumed, be it animal, fish, fowl, or vegetable, the protoplasm is consumed with it'* (L^v Ser^, Given the protoplasm to be the engine of vitality, it does not prove it to be vitality. If the protoplasm were vitality, and had been consumed or wasted, the principle had disappeared before it, as nutriment came into action. Nutriment sustains, but vitality is the worker. Surely, originating and sustaining are not the same ? Is there waste ? The inorganic becomes the organic by the interfusion of vitality. Particles are used and exuded, inert sub- stances revivified, become active agents, and so it is through the untiring rushings of the never-ceasing vortex. A force is disbanded to be again rendered active. Dead particles, where are they ? Nature is but a continuous cycle of changes. The inorganic becomes the organic, now inert, now active, everywhere vital energy, sensible or latent.^ *' The existence of the matter of life depends on the pre- existence of certain compounds." What is this pre-existence but an aggregating of particles for the display of life ? It is quite true that if any of the ingredients in which life appears were withdrawn, " that all vital phenomena would come to an end,'' but it does not prove that these things generate the life. None of the ingredients in their pure state could sustain life. In water fish live; disintegrate the water, in neither of the gases could they breathe. It is the same with air. Death, or change, means ox- idation, is this rest V" " The complexity of the composition of the bioplasm or protoplasm is the cause of the deleterious action resulting from light. It appears to take effect on the hydrogen and not on the carbon particle" (fiownes and Blunt). If water be but a bioxide of hydrogen this result is to be expected, but it does not militate against vitality being a principle independent ot the ingredient, although it may prove that the methods by which nature works are antagonistic individually, but sustaining when collectively aggregated, an undue preponderance of one element being detrimental to the exhibition of other elements or lead to their obliteration. The rule and method in all * When it is affirmed there is no such state as death, the general idea of the term is excluded. The common idea of the change termed death is the conclusion of life, as an existing conclusive fact. Scientifically there is no death, because science shows death is but the stutic state of the dynamical. By the recuperative powers of nature all living things are tending to death, i.e. to the static or latent state, and all dead things are tending to life, i.e. to the active or dynamic state. ^ The experiments of Downes and Blunt go far to prove That the influence of light results in the gradual oxidation of the bioplasm ; light acting on the common forms of bacteria prevents their development, has more influence and is more rapid than- upon 7nyceliul fungiy which have a tendency to appear *• on cultivation fluids." The action appears to attain its maximum in the waves of the greatest refrangibility. It is demonstrable in yellow light, but sinks to a minimum in the red end of the spectrum. M. Chataling found a number "of organic bodies*' oxidised under tha influence of light. 234 Matter and Spirit, the variations of nature appear to be decay and recuperation, i.e. change. What is the insisted upon "-^ potence of matter^' pronounced to be "the hypothetical states of our own consciousness'' but the capability of being moulded into form ? There is neither indivi- dualism nor persistence in it. Potence means power, but of what ? When we read of the facts of phenomena as exhibited by nature we find a plastic material with no creative power, a passive accepta- tion of form infinitely diversified hy active forces^ the units, through the activity of which animation ensues. Thus life becomes con- solidated through heat. Phenomena then are due to vitality, not created by the substance in which they appear, but hy gathering and agglomerating the environments and by amalga?nating and presenting them in new forms vitality creates them, as the polype creates the rock through its living energy, and the mollusks and crustacae renew a crushed shell or form anew a rent-away limb. '^ Eternal matter," " impossibility of spirit on the face of matter,^' and other olla podrida^ we meet with. Have either been defined ? Tyndall has attempted a definition of matter. Accept it cadit quastio. It is the same in the attempted definitions of spirit. Why is this ? Because the reasonings are only in percep- tion. Even Kant only idealizes ; his ultimate conception is a perceptive formula. Nature in her phenomena is pronounced to be the tentative exegesis of a finite conception. But what is her fact ? Infinitely diversified presentments directed to a purpose. The revelation of an infinite conception embodied in fnatter and symbolized in perception. The creating energy and its resultant life^ as an ulti- mate., is spirit^ in its mundane aspect, conception^ the tzuo so intimately blended in man^ that when we perceive the one in our inner energy we conceive the other. When matter passes from perception where is its continuity ? Not in the thing which, even if it be the symbol of a some-thing, we know nothing of it. It has faded from our purview as though it had never been perceived. Conception displays the true continuity as spirit. We perceive it in the vital fact of cohesion ; we conceive it in the consciousness of thought. The material continuity is always continuing (in rehabilitation), not as mass added to mass, but in its primordial initiation. Mind is the aggregation of itself on itself, not merely in its own fact but by the collected facts of all other individualisms,^ and so long as * Romanes classifies ideas as concrete and abstract, a concrete idea beincf the memorj' of a perception, an abstract idea the mentjil abstraction of qualities which a whole group of objects may agree in possessing. Abstract ideas are, he states, divided Into simple and complex (the simple as tliat of foo(.l), being performed without lan- guage, I.e. by '* the logic of the feelings,'' whilst the complex can only be formed by the help of words, and are thus comprised in " the logic of signs ;" and after explainiog JJnembodied Intelligence. ns the vital continuity of the material organism is intact the mind is exhibited as an effect ; when the organism fades from it, i.e. when its vital cohesion severs, if there be continuity it is a continuity of mind, as intelligence or spirit. The mind exists, and by development it passes to a state beyond, and if the development hypothesis be truth it becomes spirit as spirit — intelligence unem- bodied. The idea of embodiment is a finite conception. We know mind only as embodied, and therefore conceive spirit as embodied. Intelligence is embodied thought, itself unembodied. Where in its passage from mind to mind is its embodiment? Thought, as a persistent unembodied fact, has reality in our con- ception. By a parity of reasoning we arrive at the conceptive possibility of an unembodied intelligence, and also at a vital continuity in an unembodied substance, principle, essence, or spirit, whatever the phrase ? This unembodied intelligence is the conscious fact of intellectual existence.^ and thus becomes an all- absorbing consciousness. When we speak of an uncaused cause we speak of spontaneity, an inbreeding in itself in relation to an antecedent impulse. If the unit of life be the real atom, then we have matter aggregating to itself that in which life exists, not as a fact of matter or of substances, as we know them, but of vitality ; and in accumulated vitalities, the association of ideas, he holds that the fundamental principle of mental action is merely an obverse expression of the most fundamental principle of nervous action, i.e. of reflex action. He says, "It maybe taken lor granted that a series of nervous discharges taking place through the same group of nervous arcs will always be attended with the occurrence of the same series of ideas; and it may be further granted that the previous passage of a series of nervous discharges through any group of nervous arcs, by making the route more permeable, will have the etlect of making subsequent discbarges pursue the same course when started from the same origin. And, if these two propositions be granted, it follows that the tendency of ideas to recur in the same order as that in which they have previously occurred is merely a psychological expression of the physiological fact, that lines of reflex discharge become more and more permeable by use. But all reflex action, even in the brain is not accompanied by ideation. It is only cerebral discharges which have occurred comparatively seldom, and the passage of which is therefore comparatively slow, that are thus accompanied. Habitual actions become automatic or are performed with- out thought. And this latter fact is important, because it serves to explain the origin of numberless animal instincts as cases of 'lapsed intelligence.'" After many observations and instinctive illustrations, he assumes that animal intelligence, so far as it goes, is identical with human intelligence, the only difference between the two being that animal intelligence is unable to elaborate that class of abstract ideas the formation of which depends on the faculty of speech ( B. A., Dublin, 1878). The sum of the whole is a material hypothesis of mind. His illustration of the pike is very apposite. *' The pike requires three months to learn the position of a sheet of glass in its tank, and when once the association is established it is never again dis- established, even though the sheet of glass be taken away.*' This is the pertinent presentment of all who reason in their perceptions. They perceive matter, and ■can only think matter. Thus intelligence is reduced to the mere expression of nervous irritation. (Something like this Erasmus Darwin said a hundred years ago, pluSf intelligence as spirit and a God). 236 Unembodied Intelligence, by development, we arrive at nature as a phenomenon.i In attempt- ing the same mode of reasoning in relation to the uncaused cause we are at fault. We can reason on the familiar facts of perception, but when we come to the facts of intelligence, the faculty of reasoning on them leaves us ; we know intelligence as an effect — we know it as contradistinguished from that we term matter. When the facts of life are mastered, the mysterious workings which underlie our facts evade us, as though it were impressed on the face of nature that there are no laws or facts resulting from law which do not stretch further than the human intellect can penetrate ; we only arrive at objectivity and subjectivity.^ The metamorphoses of the invertebrata in their general features were known to the ancients. Modern observation discloses that creatures arrive at maturity distinct in sex and perfected in their form, undergoing in life no further change. From their eggs come creatures differing in generic form, possessing no sexual organs, and yet when at maturity producing a progeny which, after arriving at a certain progress in development, will revert to the original type. The Acalepte^ or Medusa, a free swimming creature, the eggs produce ciliated infusoria, which when ma- tured in their organic character, become fixed and immovable, assuming a polypiform appearance, and produce by gemmation a fresh progeny of free-swimming creatures, individualized in sex, never fixed, and after a series of changes assume the original type, that of Medusa, In Zoophytes^ in the bell-shaped polype, or Cam- panularja^ similar changes occur ; also among the Entoxoa and the Distoma^ parasites found in the liver of fresh-water snails ; this second generation has been classed as Ecarta^ the form being distinct 3 the Ecaria again enter into the organs of the snail, and 1 Galen says, *• In vegetables there is a peculiar power of sensation, by whicb» although incapable of sight, «fec., they can distinguish between those particles of matter which nourish them and those that will not, attracting the one and repelling the other." With modifications, we have Bechaf s doctrine of organic sensibility. 2 We have perceptive facts, and a conceptive idealization of the chain of facts. The authors of the Bridgewater Treatises fail to show objectively the causal fact. They showed that intelligent design underlies the methods of nature, and that beneath ever}- eftect there was an antecedent ettect, which traced back to a single initiation they unhesitatingly termed God ; if it be not that which every thinking mind accept* as God, what then shall we call it? " Man the object is separated by an impassable gulf from man the subject, and there is no motor energy to carry it without logical rupture from one to the other" (Tyndall). Man the object is organized man, man the subject mental man ; and if, as Helmholtz says, "the muscles at work"** must obey the nerves which bring their orders from the brain," it would follow that both the natural and logical dis- ruption would occur if the subjective had not the cotitrol of the objective. The brain being the centre of nervous action, there needs ** no swing of the ideal" to help u* *' to arrive at the naked truth more rapidly than by the direct processes of the understanding," intelligence being the subjective fact of man. Organic Facts, 237 assume the perfect form of Distomis. With the Salpa (mollusks) an alternating solitary and social generation is always recurring. The Aphides (plant-lice) present a curious generative fact. In winter the parents, after depositing their eggs, die ; the young, when hatched, are all wingless, and all females, ten or eleven generations follow, all females, and all become mothers of fresh broods. In the autumn males are born ; these impregnate the last generation, which become oviparous, and lay the fecun- dated eggs, and the same round of vitalization occurs. Wallace {Theory of Nat. Selec.) instances butterflies where the difi^erent sexes have different colours. The males are always white, the females yellow, red, or black ; the males, whatever the colour or the mother, are invariably white, the females the colour of the mother. The same peculiarity has been observed with some ants and beetles. This, in a degree, shows how species could merge into classes, and makes intelligent the observation that "one existing animal has not been immediately derived from another existing animal, but all are descendants of common ancestors," developed in different directions, " differing from the parents, but in essential characters intermediate."^ Tyndall says, if we examine the materials of the earth's crust we find them for the most part composed of substances " whose ' atoms have already closed in chemical union, whose mutual attractions are satisfied. . . . Granite consists of silicon, oxygen, potassium, calcium, and aluminum, the atoms of which met long ago in chemical combination, and are therefore dead^' {Force and Matter^ F. S.).^ So would argue Democritus and Lucretius. Dead ! In the kingdom of nature, where do we find the dead ? " Look nature through, 'tis revolution all j all change ; no death." —Nig/it Thoughts. Life, if it be the universal fact ot the Kosmos, the distinction between a living universe and a living monad is then but one of degree. Raine says it is difficult to watch the building up of a crystal, owing to its rapidity of growth ; the formation in viscid 1 •* However great may have been the intellectual triumphs of the nineteenth century, we can hardly think so highly of its achievements as to imagine that in less than twenty years we have passed from complete ignorance to almost perfect know- ledge on two such vast and complex subjects as the origin of species and the antiquity of man" (Wallace). ^ Reyer, Vienna, (" Eruptions and Volcanoes"), comes'to the conclusion that a highly heated magma within the earth's crust by infiltration has become charged •with liquid and gaseous materials, rejecting the principle of German petrographers €is untenable. He insists that portions of the same magma under different physical conditions assume a granitic, porphyritic, or a vitreous structure, and shows grounds for the inference that masses of granitic structure are being formed at the present day {vide Nature, vol. xviii p. 91). 238 Life a Conditioned Spontaneity, solutions was much more slow, and in important modifications they were "obviously comparable" with the growth of organisms. There is first a faint nebulosity at the line of the union of the solutions, in which, after a time, sperules are seen ; later, dumb- bell like bodies, showing that the growth of crystals and of animated things is essentially similar in kind. Graham held the slow growth of organisms was in accordance with colloidal chancres. If in crystalization there be a similarity to organized forms, how can we deny the same principle of action to amor- phous bodies ? The plasma speck is an amorphous substance. Thus the same law modified by conditions appears to be that of the inorganic and the organic. If full force be given to the theory of evolution,^ we have commencements continually pro- longed in ever-varying formations. Vitality, an engine of the Cause ; the cause of its fact is to be sought in an underlying intellio-ence embodied in form.- This intelligence, although denied, is the "beneficence" and providence of the cause. There are no accidents in natural changes, for the intelligence by which nature is formulated is present in every change. Every effect has its due sequence. Nature has no waste : everywhere there is a simul- taneity of apposite tendencies. That termed waste everywhere carries with it the conditions of repair, or change; the dead refuse becomes the living substance, and the purposeness of its present- ment is pursued through endless variations ; the refuse of an or- ganism, or of a force is the life-combination of another organism, or in amalgamation as another force, the rule of order is universal, therefore always recurring.^^ Any theory of life however it arises — whether it be a conse- \ Systems of arranc^ements have lost much of their importance in consequence of Darwin's theory. The idea of a gradual growth and progressive development breaks the artificial barriers imposed, as species, genera, &c., raised around groups, which, after all, are only attempts to express shades of difference existing among creatures. Formerly they were of importance to naturalists. It also increases the interest con- tained in relationship y using the word in a real, not in a metaphorical sense. 2 The rule of nature is, that all things should subsist on other things, whether the organization be a crystal or a man. If the crystal had consciousness of feeling it would give expression to it, and inquire why it should be disintegrated that the ova may be developed ? The same plaint might be made by the organizing (gases) sub- stances ; were not nature a compendious whole all would be confusion, but as it is^ the organic bursts into life, and life flows in strata. * The stomata (breathing pores) in the leaves of plants are connected with the fibres by which the carbonic acid in the sap is secreted, and which is purified by the oxygen, the life of the plant. In plant life there is an analogy to the respiratory animal facts — in the Dionea muacepula a juice analogous to gastric juice is secreted, by which it macerates insects and raw meat. Voltaic action will deposit metals in solution (electrotypmg) ; one metal will be dropped and another gathered up, showing a power of selection. If inanimate matter possesses thi» power, can it be denied to animate substances? Call it actinic or chemical actioft after all, probably it is but a name for the magnetic action of the sun. Intelligence the Creative Power, 23^ quence of matter, of germs, or other modes of action — must find its results in a conditioned spontaneity, and thus is resolved into a spontaneity of the cause, or into a direct act of creation ; there is no room for evasion. We may talk of methods and modes for ever, and show how this results and that ; but when all is^ said we only disclose animated substances as vehicles through which the vital principle achieves its object. If it be said that the evolution of life is the inevitable result of the law of matter, it is a spontaneity of the law, hence the spontaneity of the antecedent of the law. We may then say that the spontaneous origination of life is the direct consequence of the intelligence which underlies nature, a link in purpose constituting a bond of continuity never severed. To declare vitality to be a direct act of creation would involve confusion ; as it is impossible to suppose, considering the relations a Creator must have with the Universe, that he directly interposed the life in each variation ; but when life is viewed as a link in the chain of effects, the result of the cause, however pressing in its importance the admission may be, we fall back on a Spon- taneity as the resulting facts of conditions expressed as phenomena. We have many hypotheses of the advent of life on the earthy but all appear to be built on the evasion of the ultimate, or are equivoques. If there be an intelligence underlying the facts of phenomena we can only conceive life to be the predetermined act of that intelligence, and so necessarily important a link in the sequence, that if animation did not arise. Nature would not be. If it be denied that there is an intelligence underlying nature, or a cause, or a God, it is an absurdity to talk of Law. Life, then, v^ere an idle dream, a fortuitous accident, and if it be comprised in itself there can be no wonder there is a disease Peschel calls " weariness of life," for life then would be but a succession of changes, without object, without purpose, unless it be of suffering, or, as Bain says, pleasure in the distance or pain in the distance." Of what distance ? Given all the facts physiologists have found in the human organism, we have a machine with perfect conduction, and in its largest consideration, an engine or machine for the display of effects; it is animated, and has reasoning powers. Engines are constructed by art which have motion, a recurring memory, and voice, all resulting from external action, force, and electricity, but it is not supposed the engine creates the motion, the memory, or the voice. In these we have an exemplification of method, not of Creation. Methods by which all the facts of life are wrought may be simulated by human ingenuity. The present advanced stage of mechanical and scientific knowledge might lead to the expecta- tion that an automaton could be built which could move and talk 240 A Possible Automaton. in a given direction, recording facts exceeding that of the human organism, inasmuch as the voice could be heard miles off, with a memory unfailing. We should have a simulation of human power beyond the capacity of humanity, but it would possess a iinity dependent on its materials and its machinery. One de- rangement, whether by wear or accident, and the automaton is rumed. it may be answered that the living machine is dependent on the perfection of its organization for the maintenance of its action. The important distinction is, that its waste is repaired by an internal action, in, but not of, the machine, and the sounds uttered are the resultants of a will, which can alter and direct them. The machine memory (phonograph) expresses the sounds directly impressed. In both examples we have an antecedent— in the one life and intellect, in the other intellectual manipulation— in both an idea objectively presented. If it be admitted that in both cases intellect is the antecedent, then in neither case are the mechanics the creating fact. The mode or method of action is distinct from the initiating impulsion. Mechanical methods may proceed in successions, as in a series of wheels interacting on each other, thus becoming a united whole. In the workina; of the machine we see the method of the action, but if the impellmg force were hidden or undiscoverable, we should talk of self-action, and say each wheel was the factor of the subsequent wheels ; a' cog placed in one of the wheels, and the motion is gone, unless the motor power could clear the obstruction. Should we say that the machine created the motion ? or, should we say that the motion was the method of an action not disclosed ? The materials con- stituting the machine have no part in the method of its display; they are but the necessary complements to produce the effect* When the subject of analysis is the living machine, investigators assert the vehicles of action are the factors not alone of the motions discoverable, but also of the hidden motor energies by which the method or modes of action were instituted and continued, and more, they contend that the materials— inorganic elements— them- selves in their ultimates, lifeless, formless, imperceptible, create the impulsions by which they are agglomerated, manifested, and directed. This arises because the physicist observes the perfect machine, which moves, speaks, and directs its own actions, and because the physiologist and anatomist cannot discover the origin- ating motor forces (vitality and mind). The machine'' is moved and directed by unseen energies, and because they are in the machine, they are declared to be of the machine, /. e. the results of its components.^ 1 Lewes says ( Life and Mind), " The true notion of causality is, viz. the precession T/ie Kinship of Life and Mind, 241 Mind cannot be said to be a vital manifestation, because we hnd perfect life existing without mentality ; but no where do we hnd mind, nor any consciousness of fact, without a manifestation ot lite. Consciousness is both a life fact and a mental fact The organism can be presented in its perfected arrangement of parts and the life not be in it ; yet if the life was the creature of the organism, so long as it remained intact in form, life would be apparent. When the life has faded from the organism, the or- ganism is dissolved into its original inorganic elements. Such evidence should outweigh all suggestive ?natcrialistic subtleties "The inseparable kinship of mental and vital phenomena" may be con- ceded, for kinship has its application in a common basis, which we hnd in intelligent design 3 m^ and mind thus become kin facts to perpetuate a purpose. When it is said the vitality of the monad and of the man is the same, the statement has reference to the distinctive fact of origin • the vitality of the monad and man can only be the same when we let^'drop all concrete differences;" the first may feel it feeds xh^ latter feeds, feels, and thinks. Life in its origin is com- prised in its fact, however differentiated, it may be a specialitv but not the less is it the fact of its own speciality. We can speak ot the life of the plant organism, the animal organism, the human orgamsm, and the world organism, m virtue of the life speciality ; the vital principle is the same in each, differing only in its mani- festations. The life or vitality discloses the mode, but not the tactor of the mode. In the delineation of a mode we may have a succession of effects proceeding from a primordial cause. It is true an effect inducing an effect is the mediate cause of that effect but how a succession of effects can be " a procession of causes" is not clear. Can we assume effects to be mediate causes ? the product of a single cause, the cause being merged in successive effects .? If so, the cause would be obliterated in the effect 1 his IS not consistent with what science discloses of phenomena. An effect may be obliterated, but the cause is always substituting other effects for those obliterated or changed. If we are to be frightened by it being slid to think or reason in a common sense mode is to " vitiate scientific canons," few men would think or reason at all. The finite in its fallibility discovers defects, seeing disorder where order alone reigns; in the comprehen- siveness of nature differences fade into homogeneity and its resulting Z\! . T ?*••, J" ^'tality and sensibility we are made aware that the cause* opera ion "^^,«"f '^^^tb« '"-^'^ine ; that the organic effect is the organic cause f^ 16 i I I 242 Universal Vitality, order. Scientific canons are a series of givens, /. e. authoritative dogmas, but givens are always open to question. To question a theological given, in the scientific idea, is right ; but to question a scientific given is a heresy not to be forgiven, as Dr. Crookes ex- perienced. To whatever cause specialists may assign the present- ments of the Kosmos, when all is said which can be said, it is found to be intelligence embodied, and thus made objective. If we understand that every particle of substance is capable of becoming a life bearer, then the origin of life would be divested of its mystery. Vitality in a latent or active form would be present everywhere, and when conditions were suitable the life would appear. The whole difficulty arises from the denial of the spontaneity of life. Were it possible to penetrate to demonstra- tion the hidden facts of nature, it probably would be found that there are no particles of the globe, from the core to the circum- ference, but were primordially consolidated through vital energy, and that this vital energy was first displayed by the infusorial "jelly blobs,'' these being but agglomerated gases. To talk of matter as being a special combination is to create difficulty, but if all matter be organized by the vital principle, we have a present and universal potence, and it is easy to conceive^ a spon- taneous bursting into life. As '' nature makes no leaps,'' it would follow that the primordial presentment of life is always recurring, the latent or static energy^ or potence always working for its active state. In the crystal we have the working life energy pre- senting forms r if in alum the crushed form can be repaired by an immersion in the mother lye (Paget), it is probable all crystals can be similarly repaired. Art can make a machine, art can disintegrate an organism, but art cannot restore it, nor can it make a vital organism. Art's work, like nature's work, is an accumulative progression. The simple stringing a bow for the propulsion of an arrow was probably preceded by the throwing stick, and that by the sling, and it by the propulsion of a stone from the hand— all art works, and all accumulative. There is no need to flee to mysteries or to the spiritual to find out modes or methods ; it is their motor fact which defies scrutiny. The motor fact had an antecedent, and for this antecedent direction we fall back on intellect. 1 «* Statical energy id another term for latent force " (Wm. Thomson). 2 Pliicker has shown that crystaUine bodies take a position to the lines of ningnetic force dependent upon their optical axis {i.e. the direction where they do not doubly refract light and point diamagnetically to the lines of magnetic force), or axis ol symmetry ; and when there is more than one optic axis, the resultant ol these axes points diamagnetically (i.e. transversely), in some cases very markedly. He says cyanite arranges itself so definitely to the terrestrial magnetism that it might be used as a compass needle {Correl. Forces^ p. 231). Harvey and Spontaneity, 243 Is there more assumption in the vitalist assuming that life is a principle unallied to matter, using it alone as the vehicle for its display, than in the materialist assuming that life is the product of matter ? Observation shows that certain conditions are necessary in material combinations before the life is exhibited, and although the ingredients are traceable to the inorganic, yet the combination is unlike that we familiarly know as matter. The organics may be mixed and manipulated without an organism resulting, because the proper mechanical and chemical admixture is never attained. Forces act on matter without being of it. Yet we never find matter without heat, or an organism without the static or dynamic \\^^, All perceptive things have the potence to become : by the power of opposites,' by the conflict of the forces, we have pheno- mena. Nature working by mechanics and chemistry is a pro- ducer and reducer. There is more evidence that life and mind are unallied with matter than that they are the products of matter. When Harvey propounded his axiom, " omnevivum ex ovo,''^ he saw that the spontaneity of life was in the spore or germ, and fell back on the ultimate cause. When the axiom was changed to " omne vivum ex vivo^' then were pictured matured organisms as known by observation. Harvey dived into the far away past. In the beginning was the '-'' omne vivu??i ex ovo^' an always continuing, a spontaneity always resulting, for all life is from the egg or spore. From the homogeneity of resulting facts it is probable elemental substances subsist in one primordial principle, which through con- densations and changes, more or less heat, or more or less motion, electrical, magnetic, and light actions j the variations of change would induce all the diversities we know. Heat becomes work, and work becomes heat, &c., in the mechanism of nature ; but artVails to devise that reversible machine which reinstitutes the changes. What are affinities but life facts ? Lead will absorb sulphur when iron is not present, but when the iron is present it will absorb its portion of sulphur, leaving the residue to the lead. It is the same with animal tissues j try mechanical or electrical stimuli on an epithelial cell, and no ciliary motion is excited ; but add a minute quantity of soda or potash to the water in vvhich the celF floats, and the cilia are excited (Virchow). This shows that in > Joule proved that heat is converted into work, and that the unexpended heat is economised by the environments. In the phonograph we have sound converted into work, dotting and marking a plate, which work is again convertible into sound, conversion and reconversion is the secret of nature. ^ The pri/«on//Mm vegetale ; this was *' egg-like," not because of its form, but because it has the constitution and nature of one. That this primordium omforme must spring from a living parent is nowhere expressed by Harvey; and all he says in the Exercxtattones de Oeneratioyie leaves the impression that he believed in spon- taneous or equivocal generation {Critiques and Addresses, p. 220). 244 Vitality and Mechanics. Comparative Anatomy. 245 affinities, although chemistry claims them, there is something more than chemical action. Capillary action is something of the same character ; all loose particles of cotton must be removed from the web, in order to prevent the dyes running (Madden). Inertia is a force in nature, although negative in character ; for that which would cause a conflagration (unless instant in effect) may be innocuously transacted in the presence of the most ex- plosive compounds, because the inertia of the environments is not overcome. From the same cause, when dynamite is exploded the rock beneath is shattered, because the inertia of the air resists the impulsion, and acts, like a released spring, on every inch of the surface of the gaseous exhalation of the exploded compound. In the living organism there may combine the crystalline life depo- sition on surfaces and the action from the centre. In organized forms we have the double action as the result of the vital principle. The laws of physics present the method of nature only. The movement of a limb is a fact of dynamics, and the change of a tissue may be chemically brought about by the decomposition ot a carbonate. An electrical phenomenon may be observed in a muscle;^ but all this only proves the rigidncss of the law of force, nature working by means. The distinction between the physical and vital movement is, that the first is without (outside) the body moved, the latter within the body ; but even supposing that all actions of the body are purely physical, the institution of direction shows they were the results of an intelligence acting on the mass, transfused within the mass, but not of the mass, because the agglomerating fact must be the antecedent of the agglomeration. If we liken the contractility of a muscle to the mechanics of a pulley, then, as Lewes remarks, " the movements of a pulley do not depend on contractility and sensibility." Further, he says there is *' a misconception of this mecha- nism, as if the dependent actions were of the nature of machines — that is to say, as if organized mechanisms were strictly comparable with machines con- structed of inorganic parts,'' and " in the elaborate parallels between steam engines and animal organisms . . . there is a complete obliteration of all that speciality (which) distinguishes vital activity." In organisms each part evolves from pre-existing parts: — in the machine the arrangement is of non-related parts J in the organism a string could not be substituted for a tendon ; in the machine the pulley of the lever may be replaced by a cord or a chain, so in the whole there may be a substitution of wood for metal, or metal for wood. In the machine there "is a connexus of the parts," in the organism '* there is a ^ Matteucci (Royal Society, 1850) showed when a current ol' positive electri- city traversies a portion of the muscle of a living animal in the same direction a* that in wl\ich the nerves ramify (from the brain to the extremities), a muscular con- fraction is produced in the limb, showing the nerve of motion is atlected ; but if th* action be reversed (that is, towards the nenous centres) sense of pain is exhibited ihowing in this case the nerve of sensation is aftected. connexus and a consensus." In the machine there is no self assimilation, in the organism there is. Papillon demonstrates that animals fed with food having in it no phosphate of lime, but containing magnesia, strontia, or alumina, make bones of them, but that there is no such substitution in other parts of the organism, as in a muscle, nerve, or gland (vide Phys. Bos. of Mind). Vital action is the existing fact of the organism, not the mode of its existence; the mode may be purely physical. Vitality has grades ; we find it in the jelly speck, we find it in man ; the dis- tinction is found in the organic development, in the same way as sounds are modified in percussion or wind instruments, drums, fiddles, trumpets, or pipes. The explosion of a pinch has not the effect of the explosion of a ton of gunpowder, yet we have the action of the same principle. The life may throb in the jelly speck, but in the leviathan it is a mighty force. The wind sighs in the zephyr, but in the tornado it crushes all in its line of march. Between analysis and synthesis the distinction is wide, yet both result in knowledge. By analysis we find the parts of the machine, but nowhere the motor. In synthesis we do not see the parts, but we do the motor fact, and by divining its principle know the general plan of the construction — the units, their unity, the cause of action, each must be considered, and to each must be assigned its relative place. There is an emphasis in the fact that a Cuvicr,^ an Owen, or a Huxley, by being possessed of the tooth or the bone of a creature, could predicate the form and build, not merely a hypothetical skeleton, but the resemblance of an actual life.- Life is the consequence of a principle^ which by inbreeding on itself reproduces its kind with a power of variation.^ centralizing in itself • Jeflerson found a fossil bone which he assumed to belong to an extinct verte- brate. He called it the Mcgalotiixy a huge carnivorous animal — a lion of the size of an ox, and fitted to cope with the Mastodon. This bone came under the scrutiny of Cuvier. He found a spine in the nodule of the articuiatinfi' surface of the last hone. This allbrded the key to the solution of the problem. On tracing the curve he showed that the claw must have been of such a length, that it could never have been contracted so as to preserve an acute ftnd sharp point, it never conld have been raised vertically so as to have permitted the creature to put its foot to the ground without blunting the instrument. These facts did not agree with the construction of the foot bones of the tribe Felis (lions), but agreed with those of another order, that of Paressenx (sloths) and he came to the conclusion that the lion of the American President, was an animal that scratched the ground and fed on roots (vide Bell, B. T.y p. 97, et, seq.) 2 A principal guide are the processes of bone to which the muscles are attached. So unerring is the law of nature, that a comparative anatomist builds again the figure and assigns it to the order, genera, or species to which it belonged. Whether web-iooted or adapted for speed, grasping, tearing, burrowing, flying,