CONDITIONS OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE.

"The words which the great German poet put into the mouth of Mephistopheles when describing himself to Faust, afford perhaps the most concise and forcible statement of what we may call the anti-scientific spirit:—

The true spirit of science is certainly affirmative, not negative; for, as I mentioned just now, its history teaches us that the development of our knowledge usually takes place through two or more simultaneous ideas of the same phenomenon, quite different from one another, both of which ultimately prove to be parts of some more general truth; so that a confident belief in one of those ideas does not involve or justify a denial of the others."—Address of the President of the British Association, 1873-4. p. 13.

"Philosophy is but wise and disciplined thought upon the subjects on which all men think. The minds of men, left to their own natural working, will never cease to think on these things; and if Philosophy should cease to attempt to think wisely on them, she abandons her position as a guide. She has been to blame for the carelessness of her procedure, for the overweeningness of her pretensions. But the remedy is soberness, not scepticism. Is it, after all, an evil, that in some directions we fail to attain certainty by mere thinking?... As in nature, the picture you see is not broad light and dark, but a thousand tender tones and hues melting into each other, and vibrating together between the light and dark: so is the mind of man." Archbishop of York—on The limits of Philosophical Inquiry, pp. 25-26.

"To the knowledge of the most contemptible effect in nature, 'tis necessary to know the whole Syntax of Causes, and their particular circumstances, and modes of action. Nay, we know nothing, till we know ourselves, which are the summary of all the world without us, and the Index of the Creation." Glanvill, Vanity of Dogmatizing, Chap. xxii. Ed. 1. p. 217.

"'To the eye of vulgar Logic,' says he, 'what is man? An omnivorous Biped that wears Clothes. To the eye of Pure Reason what is he? A soul, a Spirit, and divine Apparition. Round his mysterious Me, there lies, under all those wool-rags, a Garment of Flesh (or of Senses), contextured in the Loom of Heaven; whereby he is revealed to his like, and dwells with them in UNION and DIVISION; and sees and fashions for himself a Universe, with azure Starry Spaces, and long Thousands of Years. Deep-hidden is he under that strange Garment; amid Sounds and Colours and Forms, as it were, swathed in, and inextricably over-shrouded: yet it is skywoven, and worthy of a God. Stands he not thereby in the centre of Immensities, in the conflux of Eternities? He feels; power has been given him to Know, to Believe; nay does not the spirit of Love, free in its celestial primeval brightness, even here, though but for moments, look through? Well said Saint Chrysostom, with his lips of gold, "the true Shekinah is Man:" where else is the God's-Presence manifested not to our eyes only, but to our hearts, as in our fellow man?'"—Sartor Resartus, Chap. x. Pure Reason.

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SYNOPSIS OF CHAPTER III.

This Chapter may be characterized as a parallel between the difficulties alleged to be fatal against Theism, and the difficulties attaching to very various departments of human knowledge, embracing its most necessary and its most certainly accepted kinds. From this parallel the conclusion becomes evident, that whoever accepts one set of truths cannot be debarred by these or similar difficulties from accepting the higher truth likewise. That such an acceptance is natural and valid appears further evident from the fact that a knowledge of God belongs to the class of Practical beliefs, and is enforced by the same reasonable necessity. This topic forms the transition to Chapter IV. on "Our Reasonable Beliefs."

The same inferences are also stated in a destructive form, e.g., Should a thinker choose to deny the possibility of Theism, he ought (if consistent) to deny all those truths which stand or fall by a parallel set of reasonings. But by doing this he lands himself in a state of doubt, so extreme and thorough, that the whole Universe becomes a rayless blank.

A corollary is added on Materialism.

Analysis—Man the interpreter of Nature. Nature gives by answering our interrogations; these must depend on our powers of assimilating knowledge. Some questions inevitable, e.g., What are the first grounds of Truth?

Has Man any faculty of apprehending the Infinite? Can we know our own Personality or that of others?—or any Thing in itself? Inference against Scepticism based on human ignorance.

Fallacy of the Unthinkable or Inconceivable. Ideas of Self and not-Self, inexplicable, yet undoubted. From things as they are, let us turn to things as they appear. How do we perceive, hear, see?

Perception as an instrument of Intelligence, inscrutable. We acknowledge the insoluble mystery but accept the fact.

Marvels of eyesight, and their problems. How much and what do we see? Comparison with Sound;—Form, Colour, Tone. Evidence on which we receive sense impressions. Comparison between healthy and diseased sensations,—between our organs of sense and those of animals. We soon arrive at a twilight territory of knowledge and can explain no more.

Imperfections in our powers of Verification. How great is the subjective Element in our perceptions? Idealism,—most difficult to answer when most extreme. Philosophic denial of all proof of external things as distinguished from Mind (e.g., by Mill). Fact-knowledge, and absurdities involved in the ordinary method of defining and alleging Facts. Polar tendencies of Phenomenalism which take the shapes of Idealism and Positivism, resulting in Nihilism or Indifferentism. The end of these things! Mr. Herbert Spencer on Theology, compared with Mr. Huxley, and criticized by Mr. J. Martineau, who denies that the Unknowable can be any object of religious feeling,—a protest strongly maintained by Mr. J. S. Mill.

The difficulties attending every kind of knowledge paralleled with the difficulties alleged against Theism. If the Inexplicable be also the Unknowable, there is an end to all knowledge. We cannot predicate veracity of our human Mind, we cannot even know that we know anything. Mr. J. S. Mill accepts Mind as an inexplicable Fact underlying all other Facts and Beliefs. We must accept ultimate Truths.

Transition to Chapter IV. on the affirmative evidence for our Reasonable Beliefs.

Corollary on Materialism. Far more difficult than its antithesis. Conclusion to be drawn from these difficulties.

Additional Notes and Illustrations.

A.—Account of some theories respecting our Personal Identity.

B.—Helmholtz, Popular Lectures on Recent Progress of the Theory of Vision.

C.—Helmholtz on Specialties of Sensibility.

D.—Popular account of Pure Idealism with critical remarks.

E.—On the Relations of Fact and Theory.

F.—On the "Unknowable."

G.—Mr. J. S. Mill as an Independent Moralist.

Additions to Corollary.

Note H.—Archebiosis, or Spontaneous Generation. I.—On Materialism.

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CHAPTER III.

CONDITIONS OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE.

Is the great Book of Nature—the world we live in—a closed or open book to Man? On this question all have thought often,—and many have written much,—students—men of science—religious teachers—poets, and philosophers.

We ask this question of ourselves variously circumstanced, and under various impulses. We ask it if, like Æschylus' watchman, we contemplate

Or when we sail upon a sea made solemn by its vastness, dying in far distance, with no boundary except itself, as each swelling wave rises against the sky. We ask it, on some stately mountain top looking down over light and shadow,—over the rest and the motion of the landscape. More earnestly still, perhaps, while from the depth of a twilight valley we admire the sunset lingering upon inapproachable alpine snows;—rosy heights unveiling their loveliness, yet soon to be hidden till the Light of this lower world shall shine afresh amongst their clefts and pinnacles.

And who is not in earnest, as sunset and sunrise remind him how the majestic clock of Time moves on? Yonder glorious luminary has warmed with form and life countless organisms, scattered over mountain summits, in ocean depths, through wild savannahs and forests;—organisms throughout regions of earth, water, air, so remote and inaccessible that their wonderful excellence of beauty has never been beheld by Man's perishable eye. Knowing, as we cannot but know, how soon our own eyelids must close beneath the sun, we yearn within our soul, longing for a truer insight into the great Universe above and beyond us; and for a firmer feeling that we ourselves are an imperishable part of it. Somewhere in this Universe, must surely be contained things brighter and better than those we now possess. Else, why is it clothed so lavishly with half-revealed charms, adapted to touch our most delicate sympathies, to win us from our worse selves, and allure us on like willing captives to its loveliness? Awakened in our senses, awakened in our souls, we desire to know, to feel, and to attain;—these three impulses become our fixed and enduring aspirations.

But, how? We all remember that Undine sought a soul and found a sorrow;—a sorrow the more intolerable, because through its burden she first realized her hard-earned dower of coveted immortality. Yet, as she truly says, every creature cannot but strive after that which is naturally higher than itself.

One secret of progress we soon discover. What Nature can give us depends on what she can tell us. And here is a prevailing motive for the endeavour to unclose fair Nature's book.

Another step in thought is early taken in our day, though the civilized world was slow in reaching it. We soon perceive that Nature's answers must catch their tone and compass from our interrogations. In numerous sciences, this axiom carries the whole theory and practice of experiment;—that grand distinction between Bacon's inductive process, and the induction of the ancient world. In other walks of inquiry, intellectual and moral, the same truth has grown up and blossomed with a ruling idea of the crucial or prerogative question: slow in being framed, and difficult often in the asking, but, when asked, certain to elicit a reply.

A third postulate is also quickly apparent. Our inquiries must be subject, for utility's sake, to our power of assimilating knowledge. And thus our faculty for asking questions is governed by our faculties for apprehending answers.

The last and paramount requirement is forced upon us. Beyond and over all, comes the pressure of our own need and private anxiety. There are many truths which we discern afar off, like features of a smiling land of promise; and, knowing that they must become one day the heritage of mankind, we tend towards them without haste, yet without forgetfulness, and in this temper of mind wait contentedly. But, there are some truths for which we cannot afford to wait. They concern our destinies too closely; they are too near our hearts; too influential on our lives and happiness.

The old question asked in the youth of human philosophy, is the one we all begin by asking in our first confidence and eagerness of pursuit. Ask it in what words we may, it always comes to much the same thing; and if we could answer it, we should answer all questions in one. For, though we clothe our query with various shapes, and seldom put it in the form following, its true meaning is, "what are the realities of the Universe, and what the essential ground of all we see and think?"

It is always worth a thinker's while to look this human problem more than once in the face. Suppose a faculty[88] for such insight granted, it must be different in kind, rather than degree, from our logic of ordinary life. It cannot proceed discursively, abstracting, generalizing, connecting, deducing. It must know—or look at its object directly, just as genius knows, images and conveys to other minds, not through a train of explanatory definition, but by kindling within them a spark of its own light. If there be such a faculty, it will work, (as Aristotle[89] says of the Supreme Intellect,) by what seems to us most like an act of touch; a figure half-shadowed out when we say we grasp or apprehend a truth; and much as St. Paul speaks, in bidding men to seek and feel after and find the Lord.

We are not all conscious of such a faculty. But if dim to some, is it certainly dim to all? Did Plato see farther than Herschel could when he burst the barriers of the sky? Did Schelling at any time behold what Hamilton pronounced invisible?[90]

Or again, if not actually ours now,—if those who have asserted it have spoken in error,—is there a hope that in the Future of Man individual or collective, he will ever grow up to it? The thought is not unknown to physicists as well as moralists. In both camps hopeful minds have conceived the possibility. And, then Mankind will look the secret of the Universe face to face.

Meanwhile, thinking men have laid siege to the absolute Truth by aid of such powers as they commonly call into action. For centuries past, the nature of things in themselves,—and along with (or perhaps above) all other natures, the "Self" within every man has been among the most fascinating of objects pursued by human thought. Yet, how far do we really know the life throbbing in every pulse? Can we tell the secret of our own individuality? We feel it every day;—it endues us with a separate existence, distinctly several, and apart from others, and so intensely vivid to ourselves, that we seem in our own eyes like small centres of the Universe, with men and women,—nay, worlds and stars,—revolving round us.[91] Yet, strange to say, our bodies are at all times undergoing change, sufficient in a few years to eliminate their present frame, and remould a future compound of gradually assimilated elements. And it seems stranger still, that while the law of Change rules supreme in these fabrics,—(built to be continually dissolved and continually built again),—each rude mark and scar maintains its place; no old wound forgets to ache; no cicatrice even, nor superficial blemish, dies quite away. We are always changing, always being transformed; yet, to each of our bodies continues its one individual configuration; within each of our minds its self-collection, its memories, its expectations, and its individual consciousness.[t]

Weighing these inconsistencies together, shall we say that, in any proper sense, we know our own selves? And, if not, can we expect truly to know the self of anything? May we not travel further, and inquire whether we can conceive a self-ness of any kind,—whether the very idea is not to us absolutely inconceivable? And, when this question is answered as it must be answered, need we feel surprised if we fall short of conceiving the self-subsistent God? At what value, therefore, shall we rate sceptical arguments drawn from our failure; and resting on the fallacious consequence, that the inconceivable (or unthinkable as some prefer to call it) is likewise the impossible?[u]

That a fallacy really lurks beneath these words,—that the contrary is true, we know as a matter of fact.[92] We entertain really no doubt whatever of our own continued sameness, and individual existence. We are quite sure that our self-ness has, gone on throughout the years of our natural life. How it first became clear to our inward sense, is a point confessedly disputable. Some suppose that it existed as a principle of consciousness,—a kind of primordial instinct in our minds. Others—that our internal impressions, one and all, formed a panoramic scene; impressions from without and impressions from within evenly painted on the retina of the mental eye. Time and comparison were needful to give us the true distinction. Those who think thus usually take another step; and add that resistance to our self-ness first informs us of its being. There is resistance to a muscular sense, somewhat akin to touch, but specialized to feel the kind of impact given by things impenetrable. There is also a resistance which thwarts our desires, endeavours, and determinations. Be this as it may, we never doubt our own identity of being; we never doubt the other-ness and outer-ness of beings like ourselves, and of objects beyond number. Yet, that which makes ourselves and them, what we and they are,—our self-ness and their self-ness—raises a question we cannot answer; here is, we feel, a something which overpasses our means of investigation. Men, however, do not stay to discuss such questions, or to test the origin and limits of intellectual conceptions before accepting the fact. They do not even ask whether Philosophical victory sits on the banner of Idealism, pure or constructive; Realism materialistic or natural;—or whether it crowns any other imaginable variety of cosmological theorem. We are perfectly sure of our facts; and no array of possible difficulties whatsoever can prevail to shake our assurance.

Let us leave for the present, in its native shadows, the central point of our own self; the original centre of our earliest apparent universe. Yet, if we cannot know this first growing-point of our individual life, it may be useful to inquire what can we know about it? can we learn, for example, how that inner vitality, once begun, is maintained and fed?—By a process of receiving into itself, (we are told), the aliment which flows through our senses. We are also told, (as appeared in the last chapter), how very requisite is a knowledge of natural processes. Let us, then, look at this process of sense-alimentation, narrowing the problem as much as possible. We have already cut off one end of it—the germ-point of the self-stimulated; and will now cut off another piece—the assimilation of mental ideas when elaborated. We simply ask how does this food from without, get into us? The widest avenue of entrance is proverbially our sense of eyesight. Its information, (as people in general agree, from Horace down to Mr. Mill), being gathered through many definite impressions, and received from all distances, is at once the most significant, and the most commanding. The first step is clear. We see by impinging rays of light,—movements in a luminiferous ether, making images on the sensitive network of the eye; a circumstance ascertained by the same sense of sight which receives the image. From this delicate surface, begins a second series of movements;—they take place this time in an organized nerve-material, and are carried, like telegraph-currents, to the Sensory. Arrived there, we may next suppose that they excite some new motions, or corpuscular changes. Do we know—can we know any more? Is the grammar or dictionary written which translates them into the language of the mind; or teaches us how we have, since our infancy, worked a perpetual miracle of speech respecting each of them? The eye, as an optical instrument,[v] is a marvel of science displayed; the eye as an instrument of intelligence, especially of human intelligence, is a marvel of inscrutable mystery.

The mysteries of every-day life are the last things dreamed of in every-day philosophy. When we wake up to their existence, it is astonishing to find how continually, without being able to explain things, we can feel, and know them;—know them that is in the sense of acting intelligently (without theorizing) upon them.

The example we have taken, teaches us several good and important lessons. There is in it much we can understand; much that we cannot understand; and a twilight territory between the intelligible and the non-intelligible. All three are, of course, mixed together when we speak of sight,—in itself, a matter of every-day experience. So far as the mechanical construction of an optical chamber goes, everything seems obvious. We can, likewise, perceive how well contrived is the apparatus for washing and wiping the outside transparent surface. Also, the value of its arched hedge against irritants dropping upon the eyeball from above; and of the arrangements for altering both axis and focus instantaneously. But what does this instrument enable us to see? Not the rays of light themselves,—only objects which they illuminate. The space traversed by rays from all suns and all stars, remains itself unseen. The ether which fills space is invisible,—yet its motions make the light of the world.[93] Then, too, the nervous screen on which these ray movements are received, is not sensitive to all transmitted undulations. Red excites the optic nerve by striking it with four hundred and seventy-four millions of millions of wave-impacts in a single second. Violet strikes it in the same time with six hundred and ninety-nine millions of millions of impulses.[94] These two colours are the extremes of the light octave. In an octave of sound, the highest note vibrates twice as quickly as the lowest. So too, the shortest wave of violet is half the length of the longest red wave, and its motion is twice as rapid. But the curious point is that the human ear receives eleven octaves in the scale of sound;[95]—the human eye has a range over only one octave in the scale of light.

Our remarks have carried us over the borders of the twilight territory,—a circumstance we may ascertain by putting into words what we think we know, and our reasons for thinking that we know it. If the eye be in focus, (but not otherwise), a line of light—that is to say moving imponderable matter of extreme tenuity—so passes through its transparent liquids as to strike a sensitive spot, and there produce what is called an image. We apprehend in our minds this image-producing function as a relation between light and the effect realized. A relation definite and exact,—in scientific language a "constant"; which we can formulate into optical laws, and thus express with useful nicety. Taking advantage of the laws thus obtained, and employing that light-power which everywhere blesses our world, we reproduce the like, image upon a screen. Its likeness we gather from comparison, by looking into an eye from without. Both images, thus seen by us, are in point of fact similar sensations.

A philosophic reader may at once perceive what the Idealist will infer respecting this act of comparison. Neither image—on retina or on screen—exists apart from the eye. So far as we know, if there were no eyes there would be no images; and some writers (e.g., Schleiden) have positively affirmed that without eyes all would be, not only to us, but in itself, darkness;—the world absolutely void of Light. But the truth may be summed in a sentence. Light is not for the eye in the same sense that the eye is for light. Light is for other things besides. It exerts its activity on life, animal and vegetable;—on inorganic substances;—and in other ways likewise.—Going no further than our screen, we can so manage matters as to engrave and otherwise fix the image thrown upon it;—in other words our moving line of imponderable matter will produce further effects, chemical and mechanical, visible and palpable.

Proceeding to a cross-examination of the knowledge with which we have credited ourselves, our next business is to try whether we can verify the objectivity of our optical image. Now it impresses sight in two respects,—as superficial form—and as colour. The family of forms is, we are aware widely connected. Sound evokes them. Draw a violin bow across a string stretched over finely silted sand, and the different notes will be correlated by a diversity of shapes,[96] into which the sand will arrange itself. Therefore, we ought to find means of verifying Form without much difficulty. Indeed we do so every day satisfactorily; our hands are perpetually demonstrating the general accuracy of our eyes, and even those delicate instruments our finger-ends, do not always add much to the information sight has given us.

But about colour? Distinct colour-waves have (as we said before) distinct velocities, and are therefore objectively distinguished even in the inorganic universe. They also act differently upon the growth of animals and plants,—and other distinctions might be added. The sensation is, however, our point,—the special thing called colour both by careful speakers and in child parlance,—what do we really know about this? Little indeed except as an impression received by sight. The man born in complete blindness taking a piece of red cloth to examine, described the fabric minutely; but, when asked if he could say anything about its redness, likened that "hue angry and brave" to the sound of a trumpet. A simile most conclusive,—suggested probably by his having often heard of certain "scarlet-coated gentry";—and proving beyond doubt that colour is non-existent in the sensory of a person affected from birth by a deep-seated lesion. To one less thoroughly blind, spectra are possible, and red light may be produced under pressure. It thus appears, that colour must be perceived by a nervous substratum, called the rod and cone layer; and hence we explain our power of distinctly seeing the blood-vessels of the retina lying immediately before that structure.[97]

These curiosities, of vision shew that our powers of verifying shape are superior to our powers of verifying colour;[98] add, too, that the latter sensation, (as an idealist might maintain,) is known to be sometimes unreal, since it occurs without a coloured object. We can produce it, for instance, by gazing at the sun—a phenomenon mentioned by Aristotle. But then, this ideal sense-affection ranges with a variety of others, which taken together constitute a very much wider law. Not to mention many superinduced mental states, we see light under the influence of a touch or blow,—of electricity,—of chemicals, such as narcotic medicines, which attack the nervous system. We hear sound under like appliances stimulating the auditory nerve. And the whole of these affections are to be explained by another Aristotelian doctrine, extended and pushed to its consequences. Special senses have their own proper faculties, and when called into action each exerts its power within its special province. Had Aristotle dissected out nerve-fibres, he might have discovered the larger empire of specialty now known to our anatomists.[99]

Idealism easily widens its doubt, to correspond with the dimensions of the wider nervous law. Does not an aptitude for special impressions, so stringently determined as to translate the antecedent "blow" into the consequent, "light" or "sound," disqualify our senses for giving evidence respecting supposed facts of the outer world? As for the "distinctive impressibility of the eye," as Mr. Bain[100] describes colour, it need not be held real except for our own sensorium,[w] and if colour be a questionable reality, other alleged realities become questionable too. The world we live in, may be a totally different world from what we are taught, generation after generation, to believe it. Who can lay down the limits of what our minds create for themselves outside us?[101] The mental disease of the madman causes his eye to see that which is not. Guilt and sickness fill bedchambers with unreal spectres. Putting disease aside, and taking the case of healthy eye and healthy mind, it is confessedly difficult to define the exact province of each. A boy couched by Cheselden[102] saw all things in one plane; there was no perspective, and objects in the room seemed to touch his eyeballs. The mind creates perspective, how much then may it not create? The mind also refuses to surrender its own associations at the bidding of optical laws. Mr, Wheatstone's ingenious instrument called the Pseudoscope, brings into play laws which reverse the impressions of solidity and hollowness. A person looking through it steadily at the face of a statue sees a hollow mask. The convexity of feature is gone, and a concave set of features (representing the bust reversed) is perceived in its stead. But, let the same person gaze through his pseudoscope ever so long at the face of a human being, and he will look for a like reversal in vain. The flesh and blood features refuse to change;—in other words, the mind refuses to yield its long-accustomed impression.[103] If these things and others like them are fairly considered, what becomes of our readings in the unclosed book of Nature? The nature we see is our own thought reflected back again. Nature's answers take not only tone and compass, but meaning and utterance from our own interrogations. We think that we are assimilating knowledge, when we are actually engaged in manufacturing aliments to suit our own intellectual digestions. The most inward of all things,—our essential self,—at once retired into shadow when we pursued it; and now, in trying to show how self is fed by substance from without, we have learned to suspect that all its food is unsubstantial.[x]

We may henceforth consider ourselves face to face with Sphinx; and it is well to take the true measure of her lineaments. If the above reasoning be sound, to know, is to make a mirror and reflect ourselves back from it. To verify, is to put ourselves in new postures before our infallible mirror. Each fresh item of induction, is a freshly reflected phantom. At all events, the contrary position will never be established. Ignorant as we are, respecting the true centre of our mental firmament, we must necessarily be always more ignorant respecting all possibilities which seemingly outlie its glowing horizon. No one who rationally weighs the worth of a fact, or who decomposes it into its elementary constituents, will ever be absurd enough to imagine that he can disprove the ideal theory by proving the truth of its opposite.

The strongest strain of Idealism comes upon the last sentence. Some years ago, English philosophers had agreed in the conclusion that all debates must for the future be settled by an appeal to facts. Could there be a more happily chosen ground for arbitration?—or one better suited to the calibre of everybody concerning whose business-like reflections we might say, with King Henry,—

Some inquiring spirits preferred "law," but then they agreed with all others, (except transcendentalists,) that a law to be valid must also be a fact.

A belief in this settlement still pervades most non-philosophic circles. A fact is now-a-days an infallible remedy for the disturbed mind; just as once

A mind too disturbed to abstain from logical litigation when this receipt is administered, must certainly be afflicted with monomania. Nobody, of course, (whether Idealist or Transcendentalist,) need feel much aggrieved by being called mad. At some time or other, it is the common lot of all, from a murderer proud of being caught red-handed in our day, to a Jewish Pharisee and the son of a Pharisee, long ago departed to his rest. Besides, some madnesses are so fortunate as to justify themselves, an event now happening to Idealists.[104] In Germany, France and England, the persuasion gains ground that no tasks are so difficult as first to define, and secondly to establish a fact.

Now the task of a Natural Theologian, is to establish, (if he can), the greatest and most solemn of all facts. In order to do his work honestly, he must ascertain as far as possible the conditions of proof, the ground on which fact-knowledge reposes. And it will be admitted that the problem of evidence raised by Idealism, is difficult, crucial, and underlies all other problems. "The most fundamental questions in philosophy," says Mr. Mill, "are those which seek to determine what we are able to know of external objects, and by what evidence we know it."[105]

This field of inquiry is therefore of the most supreme interest to us. Idealism possesses an additional attraction for any one who argues under a belief in the final victory of truth. Both sides of the argument may be placed in high relief, without incurring the imputation of bad faith, or worse morality; and thus Idealism furnishes what used to be sought for during the days of tournaments,—a strictly neutral, ground.

In this ordeal let no one think a single effort directed

Reasoners on "hard texts" seldom commit any error between premises and conclusion;—granted the former, the other will surely follow. Most oversights occur—or are slipped in—over the first postulates.[106] These generally appear very simple and very true, and pass unquestioned. Yet, no primary truth can ever be very simple to man, else why so many conscientious doubters?

What indeed can seem more simply true than the admission of a fact? Yet facts are often inspissated theories, while many theories are merely explained facts. One of the greatest authorities on Inductive Philosophy writes thus (Whewell's Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences. Ed. 2. Vol. I. p. 45)—"We are often told that such a thing is a Fact; A Fact and not a Theory, with all the emphasis which, in speaking or writing, tone or italics or capitals can give. We see from what has been said, that when this is urged, before we can estimate the truth, or the value of the assertion, we must ask to whom is it a Fact? what habits of thought, what previous information, what Ideas does it imply, to conceive the Fact as a Fact? Does not the apprehension of the Fact imply assumptions which may with equal justice be called Theory and which are perhaps false Theory? in which case, the Fact is no Fact. Did not the ancients assert it as a Fact, that the earth stood still, and the stars moved? and can any Fact have stronger apparent evidence to justify persons in asserting it emphatically than this had?"

The generality of English jurymen might be expected to give an affirmative verdict. For have they not seen with their own eyes the Sun rise up in the East, ascend to the top of the sky, and go down in the West? And is not seeing, believing?

The question, what elements are required to yield the product of trustworthy perception, phenomenon, or fact, is investigated by Dr. Whewell through several pages preceding the one from which we have quoted. After discussing it at length, he writes (p. 42): "And thus, we have an intelligible distinction of Fact and Theory, if we consider Theory as a conscious, and Fact as an unconscious inference, from the phenomena which are presented to our senses."

The subject is in itself so singularly interesting that a few more extracts are added in our Additional Notes.[y] Let the reader, while perusing them, remember that Idealism once so sovereign in its empire, is only the other pole of a line of thought which just now happens to be in the ascendant. Both poles strongly resemble half-truths. And what is more delusive in evidence than a half-truth, or more perilously sophisticating to the mind of him who utters it?

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The thorough-paced Idealist deals with the presentations of his inner consciousness, precisely as the Positivist deals with the presentations of his outer senses. They are his phenomena, his facts. Beyond the circumstances of their inward occurrence and succession he knows and can know nothing. You may arrange them into series of antecedents and consequents,—and then the observation becomes a law,—a law of association, uniform order, or necessary connection: whichever you may choose to call it. In one respect, he has an advantage over the Positivist. No thinker equidistant from both, is likely to deny that primary facts are for every man, the phenomena most immediately apparent to his own consciousness.

Amongst ordinary men, however, the reasoning Idealist seldom appears; the Idealist in feeling and temper is by no means rare. A man weary and worn by sorrow or old age, thinks and speaks of his life as very like a dream. And numbers who have exhausted the strength of self-controlling will, loiter along their way, regardless whether a moving panorama on each hand is or is not, an unreality. Like travel-tired travellers down the Danube, or the Rhine, they interweave scenes bright and dark, as they float by, in one endless train of dimly felt reverie.

The same characteristic holds good in regard to many a Positivist. Very few people have ever examined those iron wheels, on which the conclusions of Positively-inclined writers seem to run so rapidly. They may be flawed—they may be true—hardly any one has thought of sounding them. But common life has its Positivism, as well as its Chemistry; and the Positivism of common life is everywhere. It saves labour,—you may take facts as you find them. It troubles no one,—a Pyrrhonic posture is the easiest of attitudes. It frees busy people from moral anxieties, ideal terrors, the shadows of futurity. In short, to men of the world it is neither more nor less than Indifferentism.

The comparison between these two Nihilistic tendencies might be pushed farther, but it has been carried far enough for our purpose. Both sorts, when viewed as principles of practical life, coincide in yielding the conclusion we now wish to deduce. It is folly to be deterred from the pursuit of ultimate truth, by any amount of speculative difficulty whatsoever. And the reason is plain. Practical truths—the beliefs which affect our hearts and lives—are always ultimate truths. To give them up, is to give up our highest and best,—perhaps our all. It is worse than useless to quail before intellectual obstacles. The Difficult soon begins to appear the Impossible.

And soon the result ensues, which might naturally be expected. Is it possible to imagine any discouragement heavier, than the feeling that we can effect little to acquire a knowledge of truth, goodness, and God;—a feeling, that do what we will, all we want most—all that is truly Divine—must remain to us a darkness or a dream? Let any man think in his heart, that what ought to rule his life, and raise him higher than his lower self, is a secret unknowable, and he loses the fear of doing wrong;—for how can he help it?—and the hope of a brighter and better future;—for how shall he attain it? Then, he sits down to wrap himself in cynical self-sufficingness. Inevitable ignorance is soon developed into intellectual Pessimism. The death of hope and fear, makes the man himself a moral Pessimist. Our conscience, sympathy, devotion, happiness in higher and in lower things alike,—if unstirred by vivid emotions—must become dull and blunted. Next follows

a state of suspended animation, broken only by fierce stimulants—the galvanisms of, our lower life. These are succeeded, in due course, by spasmodic susceptibilities, which demand at no distant day the anodyne and the narcotic. And—

Therefore we repeat it,—and it cannot too often or too earnestly be repeated,—let no man excuse himself from the pursuit of practical truth[z] by any amount of speculative difficulty whatsoever. It would be a false optimism to say there is no difficulty in thinking truly;—to represent its difficulties as trifles;—or to forget the painful fact that they beset our age of cold erudite criticism, like pitfalls in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. But, must not all things really great and good be toilsome to men who are neither very good nor very great? And have we not, every one of us, who tries to be good, our proper fields of hard yet repaying work? The bee gathers honey where one idle schoolboy sees only thorns and briers—and where another sucks poison.

In our days, Doubt is thorough. So thorough, that it soon ceases to be doubt, and the mind passes quickly from its dim twilight to a rayless blank. Mr. Herbert Spencer puts the case of Theology as follows (First Principles p. 43): "Criticising the essential conceptions involved in the different orders of beliefs, we find no one of them to be logically defensible. Passing over the consideration of credibility, and confining ourselves to that of conceivability, we see that Atheism, Pantheism, and Theism, when rigorously analysed, severally prove to be absolutely unthinkable." These three conceptions the writer does in fact analyse after his own fashion,—briefly first, pp. 30-36,—and further on argues the whole question in extenso. The result, of course, is that all three "beliefs" must finally be abandoned. What then becomes of the Absolute ground, or First Cause of all things? Spencer is too clear-sighted not to acknowledge that there must in reason be a First, and an Absolute. "M. Herbert Spencer," says Ravaisson,[107] "en proclamant la grande maxime que nous ne connaissons rien que de relatif, a fait cependant une rÉserve importante. L'idÉe mÊme du relatif, remarque-t-il, ne saurait se comprendre sans celle À laquelle elle est opposÉe. Et nous concevons, en effet, au delÀ de toutes les relations de phÉnomÈnes, l'absolu: c'est ce quelque chose qui est placÉ au delÀ de toute science, et qui est l'objet de la religion; quelque chose seulement de mystÉrieux, d'obscur, sur quoi on ne peut avoir, selon M. Spencer, aucune lumiÈre." The last negative clause is amply justified on p. 113 of "First Principles." "By continually seeking to know, and being continually thrown back with a deepened conviction of the impossibility of knowing, we may keep alive the consciousness that it is alike our highest wisdom and our highest duty to regard that through which all things exist as The Unknowable." And this closing word becomes with Spencer, the constant name of a Power, the consciousness, of which is "manifested to us through all phenomena."[108]

Such a position, maintained by such a writer, has of course met with ample consideration. Mr. Huxley appears to have arrived at a somewhat similar conclusion. Of Religion he says,[109] "Arising, like all other kinds of knowledge, out of the action and interaction of man's mind, with that which is not man's mind, it has taken the intellectual coverings of Fetishism or Polytheism; of Theism or Atheism; of Superstition or Rationalism. With these, and their relative merits and demerits, I have nothing to do; but this it is needful for my purpose to say, that if the religion of the present differs from that of the past, it is because the theology of the present has become more scientific than that of the past; because it has not only renounced idols of wood and idols of stone, but begins to see the necessity of breaking in pieces the idols built up of books and traditions and fine-spun ecclesiastical cobwebs, and of cherishing the noblest and most human of man's emotions, by worship 'for the most part of the silent sort' at the altar of the Unknown and Unknowable."

Concerning this general idea (or negation of Idea) Mr. J. Martineau has made antagonistic observations, by way of criticism on Mr. Spencer's book. "To say," he writes,[110] "that the First Cause is wholly removed from our apprehension is not simply a disclaimer of faculty on our part; it is a charge of inability against the First Cause too.... And in the very act of declaring the First Cause incognizable, you do not permit it to remain unknown. For that only is unknown, of which you can neither affirm nor deny any predicate; here you deny the power of self-disclosure to the 'Absolute,' of which therefore something is known;—viz., that nothing can be known," And again with much force,[111] "You cannot constitute a religion out of mystery alone, any more than out of knowledge alone; nor can you measure the relation of doctrines to humility and piety by the mere amount of conscious darkness which they leave. All worship, being directed to what is above us and transcends our comprehension, stands in presence of a mystery. But not all that stands before a mystery is worship."[aa]

Mr. Mill (doing battle with another antagonist) denies every attribute claiming faith and worship, to the idea of a morally Unknowable God. The passage occurs in his Examination of Hamilton, pp. 123-4. "If, instead of the 'glad tidings' that there exists a Being in whom all the excellences which the highest human mind can conceive, exist in a degree inconceivable to us, I am informed that the world is ruled by a being whose attributes are infinite, but what they are we cannot learn, nor what are the principles of his government, except that 'the highest human morality which we are capable of conceiving' does not sanction them; convince me of it, and I will bear my fate as I may. But when I am told that I must believe this, and at the same time call this being by the names which express and affirm the highest human morality, I say in plain terms that I will not. Whatever power such a being may have over me, there is one thing which he shall not do: he shall not compel me to worship him."[ab]

Now, suppose that instead of siding on this occasion with Mill and Martineau, we were to accept the alternative offered by Spencer and Huxley. Would this surrender of Natural Theology—or rather of all Theology—necessitate in reason any other vast surrender also? We have already answered in the affirmative. The surrender would penetrate every field of knowledge and of thought. We have already shewn this. For, the thread binding the present section into a connected whole runs thus: Survey the conditions of interrogating, first, nature; secondly, our own highest nature; next, our senses; finally, our consciousness; and add to them the enormous difficulties which attend every step taken in compliance with those indispensable conditions. Indispensable, that is, to our knowing anything, of any sort, in any way whatsoever. You have, then, no right to isolate Theism. It is false logic, to speak of the intellectual difficulties attaching to our apprehension of the Deity, as if they were substantial objections. In this respect, Theism stands within the same category of speculative perplexity, and reasonable necessity, as do other supreme truths.[112]

Put the case to the judgment of Reason, once for all. If we agreed to accept Herbert Spencer's position, we should consent to deny that anything can be known of an Absolute. And the denial would proceed upon this maxim:—"whatsoever is inexplicable is also unknowable." Consider, now, what other ultimate truths would fall into the same tomb-like Category. We must silence all human utterance respecting all first grounds;—our own individuality;—and every object of reason which becomes inconceivable, when we attempt to define it by the processes of ordinary logic. All utterance respecting our own senses and sensations;—our own existence, as beings distinct from a world of beings and things really existing outside us.

In fine, we could never know that we know either anything or nothing; for, we should have silenced the deepest of all utterances,—the one upon which all truth and reason depend. We should have relegated our Mind along with our God, to the same abysmal gulf of the Unknowable. Henceforth, we could predicate of Mind nothing essential to purposes of knowledge,—and least of all essentials,—Veracity.

Mr. Mill closes his laborious endeavours to explain our natural belief in Mind as follows: "The truth is, that we are here face to face with that final inexplicability, at which, as Sir W. Hamilton observes, we inevitably arrive when we reach ultimate facts; and in general, one mode of stating it only appears more incomprehensible than another, because the whole of human language is accommodated to the one, and is so incongruous with the other, that it cannot be expressed in any terms which do not deny its truth. The real stumbling-block is perhaps not in any theory of the fact, but in the fact itself. The true incomprehensibility perhaps is, that something which has ceased, or is not yet in existence, can still be in a manner, present: that a series of feelings, the infinitely greater part of which is past or future, can be gathered up, as it were, into a single present conception, accompanied by a belief of reality. I think, by far the wisest thing we can do, is to accept the inexplicable fact, without any theory of how it takes place; and when we are obliged to speak of it in terms which assume a theory, to use them with a reservation as to their meaning."[113] Two pages further he ingenuously adds: "I do not profess to have adequately accounted for the belief in Mind." In other words, the perplexities remain on Mill's system as they do on all systems. But the Belief and the Fact remain likewise.

It is the same with our belief of other ultimate facts. We live an individual life,—we know not what. We see and perceive,—we know not how. Yet such are the facts, and we thoroughly believe and act upon them.

The pivot on which these and similar beliefs turn is a subject of the greatest interest and importance. On this same pivot turns our primary affirmative Argument for Natural Theism. To establish it will be the purpose of the next Chapter, and a succession of affirmative arguments, separate but convergent, will occupy the remainder of this Essay.

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Corollary:—If any reader of these pages has felt the fascination of some one among the many materializing hypotheses now in vogue, let him remember that, in fair debate, Materialism can never have the slightest chance against Idealism.

All materializing theories labour under an enormous weight of unverified postulates. They set out from neither the most natural, nor yet the surest, sources of our knowledge. Naturally, we start from self-ness, and learn to put outer things and beings in opposition to our own primary self-consciousness.

In after life, when we ask why we are sure of any kind of knowledge; the primary truths upon which all our reasonings proceed, are always the presentations of our own mind.

If we proceed to analyse accepted relativities, we soon perceive that Mind enters into our facts, and also into our sense-presentations. In particular, an examination of the noblest of all senses—the sense of sight—will convince any careful analyst that such is undeniably the case. The reader may recal Mr. Mill's words,[114]—"I do not believe that the real externality to us of anything, except other minds, is capable of proof." "For ourselves," says Professor Fraser, "we can conceive only—(1) An externality to our present and transient experience in our own possible experience past and future, and (2) An externality to our own conscious experience, in the contemporaneous, as well as in the past or future experience of other minds"[115] In this view Mr. Mill (who quotes Fraser), entirely acquiesces, and in this same spirit he writes, "Matter may be defined, a Permanent Possibility of Sensation;"[116]—and adds that he can accept no other definition.

Whether the reader can or cannot define Matter otherwise; he will, at all events, perceive that the Materialist assumes as his primary postulate, that which is by no means the primary fact accepted by Mankind. He starts with taking Matter for granted;—but, if he inquires, he will discover that Matter is known to him in the second place only; he really first knew Mind. When he questions sensation, or consciousness, he questions Mind; and, throughout his whole life, theoretical as well as practical, Mind is nearer to him, and more strongly evidenced, than any other "Possibility" whatsoever.

Such, then, is the first heavy burden of unauthorized postulation, which the Materialist's theory binds upon him. But, in the task of postulating without authority from Nature, it seems impossible to stop short. Mind, being an absolute necessity, must be got in some way—(from Matter of course)—evolved, correlated, secreted. No account is given how Matter could have been thus transformed and glorified. Yet, in default of such account, it is impossible to divine why that primary postulate ever existed at all.

The highest attenuation of Matter can no more help to explain Life or Mind, than to say that brain, (deprived of its vitality,) is composed of cerebrin, lecythin, and cholesterin, explains its sensibility, and other vital and intellectual endowments. And we encounter the same unbridged gulf at every turn of the materialistic hypothesis. There is a wide gap between the inorganic world and all organisms, vegetable or animal. We are, however, told that when certain inorganic elements are combined, under certain conditions, they form protoplasm,—a substance manifesting phenomena of vitality. The elements are known,—the conditions are unknown,—and until protoplasm has been produced by a chemical experimenter, instead of within a living laboratory, we may safely believe that the unknown conditions form the essential cause of the production. And we are given to understand by Professor Huxley,[117] that on this subject speculation has been premature.

The gap between Body and Mind is wider still. Body has its known properties,—measurable figure, weight, and other like specialties. Mind has its properties also,—such as intelligence, emotion, reason, will. Thinking has never been shown to be a property of Body; nor have weight and measure been applied to Mind. The laws of each differ as decisively as their properties. Body obeys gravitation, cohesion, and chemical affinity. Mind has its laws of reasoning, mathematically, logically, analogically. Now, what resemblance is here visible?[118] Body cannot compel Will,—but is moved by it; and there is no more verisimilitude known to us of Body to Will, than there exists between the noble thought of a high-souled Man and the paving-stone he walks upon. The foregoing is, as every honest materialist will acknowledge, but a slight specimen of the many difficulties of Materialism. So little does any materializing process of "resolution" really resolve anything, that any—even the most plausible—can only be pronounced an abortive attempt to bring something near and familiar to us, out of something unknowably remote.

The materialist's allegation is generally, that he wishes to accept as little as possible. But the accusation of the natural Theologian against Materialism, is that it accepts far too much. Mind being a necessary and indispensable fact, the one fact underlying all other facts,—whoever is bent on simplifying his beliefs, had better begin by believing in his own Soul. And if further bent on viewing all things as "resolvable," his surest wisdom will be to resolve Matter into Mind. It is really the easier alternative, and has a double merit,—it starts from the best-known fact, and it satisfies his desire for "simplification."

At all events, the consequences resulting from Materialism, are too serious to permit a disregard of Probability. We must, surely, find and follow the very best guide we can:—

Mr. Huxley,[119] who sees advantages (simplicity and unification) in employing a materialistic terminology, adds the very striking caution—"But the man of science, who, forgetting the limits of philosophical inquiry, slides from these" (materialistic) "formulÆ and symbols into what is commonly understood by materialism, seems to me to place himself on a level with the mathematician, who should mistake the x's and y's, with which he works his problems, for real entities—and with this further disadvantage, as compared with the mathematician, that the blunders of the latter are of no practical consequence, while the errors of systematic materialism may paralyse the energies and destroy the beauty of a life."

The words italicized are remarkable. The materializing faÇons de parler do not embody a knowledge of "real entities" after all. And such is the language of one[120] who stands in the foremost rank of European Biologists.

ADDITIONAL NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER III.

A.—ACCOUNT OF SOME THEORIES RESPECTING OUR PERSONAL IDENTITY.

In a sentence worthy of the pen of Glanvill or of Sir T. Browne, Locke remarked "The Ideas, as well as Children of our Youth, often die before us: And our Minds represent to us those Tombs, to which we are approaching; where, though the Brass and Marble remain, yet the Inscriptions are effaced by Time, and the Imagery moulders away. The Pictures drawn in our Minds, are laid in fading Colours, and if not sometimes refreshed, vanish and disappear." On Retention, B. II., chap. x. 5.

This truly human feeling did not hinder Locke from writing (chap, xxvii.) on the subject of Self-ness in a manner which appeared to imply that Consciousness, or Consciousness plus Memory "made" Personal Identity;—or to use Reid's words "whatever hath the consciousness of present and past actions, is the same person to whom they belong."

Bishop Butler's strictures on the topic are known to most students: but, as Sir William Hamilton observes (Foot-note on Reid, pp. 350, 351), "Long before Butler, to whom the merit is usually ascribed, Locke's doctrine of Personal Identity had been attacked and refuted. This was done even by his earliest critic, John Sergeant, whose words, as he is an author wholly unknown to all historians of philosophy, and his works of the rarest, I shall quote. He thus argues:—'The former distinction forelaid, he (Locke) proceeds to make personal identity in man to consist in the consciousness that we are the same thinking thing in different times and places. He proves it, because consciousness is inseparable from thinking, and, as it seems to him, essential to it.... But, to speak to the point: Consciousness of any action or other accident we have now, or have had, is nothing but our knowledge that it belonged to us; and, since we both agree that we have no innate knowledges, it follows, that all, both actual and habitual knowledges, which we have, are acquired or accidental to the subject or knower. Wherefore, the man, or that thing which is to be the knower, must have had individuality or personality, from other principles, antecedently to this knowledge, called consciousness: and, consequently, he will retain his identity, or continue the same man, or (which is equivalent) the same person, as long as he has those individuating principles.... It being then most evident, that a man must be the same, ere he can know or be conscious that he is the same, all his laborious descants and extravagant consequences which are built upon this supposition, that consciousness individuates the person, can need no farther refutation.'

"The same objection was also made by Leibnitz in his strictures on Locke's Essay....

"For the best criticism of Locke's doctrine of Personal Identity, I may, however, refer the reader to M. Cousin's 'Cours de Philosophie.'"

One of Locke's arguments is worthy of attention from its oddity. He says (chap. xxvii. 20), "But if it be possible for the same Man to have distinct incommunicable Consciousnesses at different Times, it is past doubt the same Man would at different Times make different Persons; which, we see, is the Sense of Mankind in the solemnest Declaration of their Opinions, Human Laws not punishing the Mad Man for the Sober Man's Actions, nor the Sober Man for what the Mad Man did, thereby making them two Persons; which is somewhat explained by our Way of speaking in English, when we say, such a one is not himself, or is besides himself; in which Phrases it is insinuated, as if those who now, or at least, first used them, thought that Self was changed, the self same Person was no longer in that Man."

It appears strange that so acute a writer should not have perceived the true consequences to be deduced from his observation. We never really treat a man who goes mad as becoming another personage. But if he has lost his self-control from causes by himself uncontrollable, we do not punish his criminalities, and we do divest him of his social powers; he can neither vote for Parliament, bequeath property, nor do many other acts, during the period of his affliction. But we use all means for his cure, and rejoice at his return to health and society. If a man "beside himself" were "a different person," then "tipsy he" would certainly not be "ipse he."—Yet the father of ethical science decided that the criminal drunkard deserves double meed of punishment.

To Locke's theory of Personal Identity Hamilton dedicates one more note. He gives (Reid, p. 353), an extract from Lord Kames (Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion), who pronounces his own opinion and appends some unpublished remarks of Dr. Reid. "Mr. Locke, writing on personal identity, has fallen short of his usual accuracy. He inadvertently jumbles together the identity that is nature's work, with our knowledge of it. Nay, he expresses himself sometimes as if identity had no other foundation than that knowledge. I am favoured by Dr. Reid with the following thoughts on personal identity:—

"'All men agree that personality is indivisible; a part of a person is an absurdity. A man who loses his estate, his health, an arm, or a leg, continues still to be the same person. My personal identity, therefore, is the continued existence of that indivisible thing which I call myself. I am not thought; I am not action; I am not feeling; but I think, and act, and feel. Thoughts, actions, feelings, change every moment; but self, to which they belong, is permanent. If it be asked how I know that it is permanent, the answer is, that I know it from memory. Everything I remember to have seen, or heard, or done, or suffered, convinces me that I existed at the time remembered. But, though it is from memory that I have the knowledge of my personal identity, yet personal identity must exist in nature, independent of memory; otherwise, I should only be the same person as far as my memory serves me; and what would become of my existence during the intervals wherein my memory has failed me? My remembrance of any of my actions does not make me to be the person who did the action, but only makes me know that I was the person who did it. And yet it was Mr. Locke's opinion, that my remembrance of an action is what makes me to be the person who did it; a pregnant instance that even men of the greatest genius may sometimes fall into an absurdity. Is it not an obvious corollary, from Mr. Locke's opinion, that he never was born? He could not remember his birth; and, therefore, was not the person born at such a place and at such a time.'"

When we come to Hume, the case is considerably altered. He opens the question after his own manner by asking how the fact commonly stated can be; and using the difficulty of explaining this "how" as a sufficient objection against the fact asserted. "There are some philosophers," he writes (Treatise, B. I., Part iv., Sect. 6), "who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our self; that we feel its existence and its continuance in existence; and are certain, beyond the evidence of a demonstration, both of its perfect identity and simplicity....

"Unluckily all these positive assertions are contrary to that very experience, which is pleaded for them, nor have we any idea of self, after the manner it is here explained. For from what impression could this idea he derived?... If any impression gives rise to the idea of self, that impression must continue invariably the same, through the whole course of our lives; since self is supposed to exist after that manner. But there is no impression constant and invariable. Pain and pleasure, grief and joy, passions and sensations succeed each other, and never all exist at the same time. It cannot therefore be from any of these impressions, or from any other, that the idea of self is derived; and consequently there is no such idea.... For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.... The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations. There is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different; whatever natural propension we may have to imagine that simplicity and identity. The comparison of the theatre must not mislead us. They are the successive perceptions only, that constitute the mind; nor have we the most distant notion of the place, where these scenes are represented, or of the materials, of which it is composed."

It is curious that Hume wishing to represent Mind as a melting mist of successive perceptions, should be driven into the use of a word which implied a something continuing and permanent as affording the stage on which all passing scenes called "impressions" are enacted.

Hume next discusses the laws of association; and then proceeds (same Section sub fin.) "As memory alone acquaints us with the continuance and extent of this succession of perceptions, 'tis to be considered, upon that account chiefly, as the source of personal identity. Had we no memory, we never should have any notion of causation, nor consequently of that chain of causes and effects, which constitute our self or person. But having once acquired this notion of causation from the memory, we can extend the same chain of causes, and consequently the identity of our persons beyond our memory, and can comprehend times, and circumstances, and actions, which we have entirely forgot, but suppose in general to have existed. For how few of our past actions are there, of which we have any memory? Who can tell me, for instance, what were his thoughts and actions on the first of January, 1715, the eleventh of March, 1719, and the third of August, 1733? Or will he affirm, because he has entirely forgot the incidents of these days, that the present self is not the same person with the self of that time; and by that means overturn all the most established notions of personal identity? In this view therefore memory does not so much produce as discover personal identity, by shewing us the relation of cause and effect among our different perceptions. 'Twill be incumbent on those who affirm that memory produces entirely our personal identity, to give a reason why we can thus extend our identity beyond our memory.

"The whole of this doctrine leads us to a conclusion, which is of great importance in the present affair, viz., that all the nice and subtile questions concerning personal identity can never possibly be decided, and are to be regarded rather as grammatical than as philosophical difficulties. Identity depends on the relations of ideas; and these relations produce identity, by means of that easy transition they occasion. But as the relations, and the easiness of the transition may diminish by insensible degrees, we have no just standard by which we can decide any dispute concerning the time, when they acquire or lose a title to the name of identity. All the disputes concerning the identity of connected objects are merely verbal, except so far as the relation of parts gives rise to some fiction or imaginary principle of union, as we have already observed."

If any one feels dissatisfied with these conclusions our author is ready with his apology—"The intense view of these manifold contradictions and imperfections in human reason has so wrought upon me, and heated my brain, that I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another. Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? Whose favour shall I court, and whose anger must I dread? What beings surround me? and on whom have I any influence, or who have any influence on me? I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, environed with the deepest darkness, and utterly deprived of the use of every member and faculty.

"Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of back-gammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours' amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther." (Part iv., Section 7.)

Is not this good-humoured? Is it not a piece of pleasant bantering, to be equalled only by certain French philosophers? The real conclusion, however, winds up his First Book and runs as follows:—"A true sceptic will be diffident of his philosophical doubts, as well as of his philosophical conviction; and will never refuse any innocent satisfaction, which offers itself, upon account of either of them.

"Nor is it only proper we should in general indulge our inclination in the most elaborate philosophical researches, notwithstanding our sceptical principles, but also that we should yield (sic) to that propensity, which inclines us to be positive and certain in particular points, according to the light, in which we survey them in any particular instant. 'Tis easier to forbear all examination and inquiry, than to check ourselves in so natural a propensity, and guard against that assurance, which always arises from an exact and full survey of an object. On such an occasion we are apt not only to forget our scepticism, but even our modesty too; and make use of such terms as these, 'tis evident, 'tis certain, 'tis undeniable; which a due deference to the public ought, perhaps, to prevent. I may have fallen into this fault after the example of others; but I here enter a caveat against any objections, which may be offered on that head; and declare that such expressions were extorted from me by the present view of the object, and imply no dogmatical spirit, nor conceited idea of my own judgment, which are sentiments that I am sensible can become nobody, and a sceptic still less than any other.[121]

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It is obvious to remark that no amount of easiness would maintain most minds in this balanced position of the pleasant know-nothing man. The general tendency would be to acknowledge the negative side alone. And it would be well if an absence of serious convictions, seriously asserted, and acted on, did not gradually weaken the sense of Responsibility by making Truth appear indifferent because unattainable.

We, however, are just now more concerned with two other equally obvious comments. One, that Hume appears to take for granted the point at issue. Suppose it for argument's sake to be true that impressions and ideas (as described by him) make up our whole ordinary consciousness; does this shew that no latent power or entity exists by which we become conscious of those passing trains? When impressed by colours, are we conscious of an optic nerve, retina, crystalline lens and other instrumental powers of vision? Can we, if we try, perceive by sense the nerve-currents brainwards, or the sensory which receives and compares them? In both cases (eye and inward eye) pathology affords an evidence of consciousness which happy health refuses us. The brainsick sense sees colours and phantoms which are not—the disordered mind dwells on impressions and ideas absolutely unreal, and acts on them as stern realities. And thus our own purely subjective states reveal to us our own subjectivity. 'Tis so in fevers, in lunacies, in vices—'tis so to the drowning or the desperate man. These mournful changes which pass over ourselves issue from an interior activity of self-ness and form one of its commonest verifications.

This first comment admits of extension. If we endeavour to introduce experiment (as well as experience) into Mental Science, must we not ask a previous question:—Shall this or that experiment be tried? In other words, by what inner law shall we shape our inquiries so as to gain useful facts for our intended induction?—Nay, we may further ask: What inner Being is to settle the questions, criticize them, and judge the final issue? And if we seem to see our way on these topics, we may feel pretty sure that whenever our psychology comes to practical trial, we proceed as being sure of a Self, more or less self-conscious of Self, and are quite confident that its self-ness will continue during the whole time of our investigations.

Our second comment may be simply summed, but the consideration given to it ought to be minute and careful. Suppose instead of successive perceptions, impressions, or ideas, we substitute a succession of phenomena, and then apply to them Hume's line of thought, we have an acute statement of the modern teachings which relegate the noblest part of our Nature, our reasonings and our beliefs to the territory of the Unknowable. In a word, all knowledge thus seems to be gained by "looking on," none by "looking in." Truth within ourselves especially if it manifests a Truth above ourselves is made to appear hopeless. And so far does the process of Elimination extend, that principles involved even in our "looking on" must not be drawn out of their latency, for fear they should become accepted parts of knowledge. Let any thinker repeat with this substitution the Personal Identity argument in his own mind, and he will soon see what a shadow is cast over an infinitely wider world of thought.[122]

The same process of repetition ought in fairness to produce another effect. Are not these philosophic argutiÆ, these Pyrrhonic subtilties closely akin to the difficulties raised against all first principles; and more particularly all Theistic principles? But does anybody on their account doubt his own Self-ness or Identity? Or does any one refuse to act on the supposition of other-ness, and outer-ness, or ignore his world of fellow-men and hard objectivities which press upon him from every side? Why then should anybody ignore on their account the great First-Cause?

In the text of Chapter III. the elements of our reasonable belief in our own Personal self-ness and sameness have been shortly mentioned;—of such work-day belief, that is to say, as suffices for actual life, and gains from it, and throughout it, a perpetual verification. If any one wishes to go deeper than this, he must inquire upon what evidence first principles are accepted by reasoning men; what difficulties attach to such principles; and under what conditions these difficulties are held to be nugatory. This inquiry is troublesome but promises real satisfaction. We have not, therefore, declined it, as may be seen in the ensuing Chapter. One fact is manifest beforehand—that whatever evidence is presupposed valid by those first principles of every-day knowledge, may be safely presupposed, accepted, and reasoned upon, in the ground-work of Natural Theology.

It was Hume's object to push his scepticism to its most extreme verge. Thus pushed, it "so wrought upon" him that he was "ready to reject all belief and reasoning" till a return to every-day life made his speculations appear in his own eyes "cold and strained and ridiculous." What then was the inference Hume himself intended? Which was really groundless—every-day belief or scepticism? Will his useful dilemma induce the reader to receive Kant's excuse for the celebrated doubter, when he bids us let the man alone because he is but trying the strength of human reason? At all events, Hume's way of stating his case seems to justify the old remark, that, while Superstition is refuted by Reason, Nature itself refutes the Sceptic.

B.—EXTRACTS FROM POPULAR LECTURES, BY PROFESSOR HELMHOLTZ, ON THE RECENT PROGRESS OF THE THEORY OF VISION.

"If now we compare the eye with other optical instruments, we observe the advantage it has over them in its very large field of vision. This for each eye separately is 160° (nearly two right angles) laterally, and 120° vertically, and for both together somewhat more than two right angles from right to left. The field of view of instruments made by art is usually very small, and becomes smaller with the increased size of the image.

"But we must also admit, that we are accustomed to expect in these instruments complete precision of the image in its entire extent, while it is only necessary for the image on the retina to be exact over a very small surface, namely, that of the yellow spot. The diameter of the central pit corresponds in the field of vision to an angular magnitude which can be covered by the nail of one's forefinger when the hand is stretched out as far as possible. In this small part of the field our power of vision is so accurate that it can distinguish the distance between two points, of only one minute angular magnitude, i.e. a distance equal to the sixtieth part of the diameter of the finger-nail. This distance corresponds to the width of one of the cones of the retina. All the other parts of the retinal image are seen imperfectly, and the more so the nearer to the limit of the retina they fall. So that the image which we receive by the eye is like a picture, minutely and elaborately finished in the centre, but only roughly sketched in at the borders. But although at each instant we only see a very small part of the field of vision accurately, we see this in combination with what surrounds it, and enough of this outer and larger part of the field, to notice any striking object, and particularly any change that takes place in it. All of this is unattainable in a telescope.

"But if the objects are too small, we cannot discern them at all with the greater part of the retina.

the 'ethereal minstrel' is lost until we can bring her image to a focus upon the central pit of our retina. Then only are we able to see her.

"To look at anything means to place the eye in such a position that the image of the object falls on the small region of perfectly clear vision. This we may call direct vision, applying the term indirect to that exercised with the lateral parts of the retina—indeed with all except the yellow spot.

"The defects which result from the inexactness of vision and the smaller number of cones in the greater part of the retina are compensated by the rapidity with which we can turn the eye to one point after another of the field of vision, and it is this rapidity of movement which really constitutes the chief advantage of the eye over other optical instruments....

"A great part of the importance of the eye as an organ of expression depends on the same fact; for the movements of the eyeball—its glances—are among the most direct signs of the movement of the attention, of the movements of the mind, of the person who is looking at us." Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects, pp. 212-214.

The great German next proceeds to catalogue some principal defects of the Eye. 1. Chromatic aberration connected with 2. spherical aberration and defective centering of the cornea and lens, together producing the imperfection known as astigmatism, and 3. irregular radiation round the images of illuminated points. "Now," adds Helmholtz, "it is not too much to say that if an optician wanted to sell me an instrument which had all these defects, I should think myself quite justified in blaming his carelessness in the strongest terms, and giving him back his instrument. Of course, I shall not do this with my eyes, and shall be only too glad to keep them as long as I can—defects and all. Still, the fact that, however bad they may be, I can get no others, does not at all diminish their defects, so long as I maintain the narrow but indisputable position of a critic on purely optical grounds." (p. 219.)

He then goes on to other faults. 4. Defective transparency. 5. Floating corpuscules (MuscÆ Volitantes). 6. The "blind spot" with other gaps in the field of vision. "So much," he concludes, "for the physical properties of the Eye. If I am asked why I have spent so much time in explaining its imperfection to my readers, I answer, as I said at first, that I have not done so in order to depreciate the performances of this wonderful organ, or to diminish our admiration of its construction. It was my object to make the reader understand, at the first step of our inquiry, that it is not any mechanical perfection of the organs of our senses which secures for us such wonderfully true and exact impressions of the outer world. The next section of this inquiry will introduce much bolder and more paradoxical conclusions than any I have yet stated. We have now seen that the eye in itself is not by any means so complete an optical instrument as it first appears: its extraordinary value depends upon the way in which we use it: its perfection is practical, not absolute.... Wherever we scrutinise the construction of physiological organs, we find the same character of practical adaptation to the wants of the organism; although, perhaps, there is no instance which we can follow out so minutely as that of the eye.

"For the eye has every possible defect that can be found in an optical instrument, and even some which are peculiar to itself; but they are all so counteracted, that the inexactness of the image which results from their presence very little exceeds, under ordinary conditions of illumination, the limits which are set to the delicacy of sensation by the dimensions of the retinal cones....

"The adaptation of the eye to its function is, therefore, most complete, and is seen in the very limits which are set to its defects. Here the result which may be reached by innumerable generations working under the Darwinian law of inheritance, coincides with what the wisest Wisdom may have devised beforehand. A sensible man will not cut firewood with a razor, and so we may assume that each step in the elaboration of the eye must have made the organ more vulnerable and more slow in its development. We must also bear in mind that soft, watery animal textures must always be unfavourable and difficult material for an instrument of the mind....

"But, apparently, we are not yet come much nearer to understanding sight. We have only made one step: we have learnt how the optical arrangement of the eye renders it possible to separate the rays of light which come in from all parts of the field of vision, and to bring together again all those that have proceeded from a single point, so that they may produce their effect upon a single fibre of the optic nerve.

"Let us see, therefore, how much we know of the sensations of the eye, and how far this will bring us towards the solution of the problem." P. 226, seq.

From the Professor's mention of "much bolder and more paradoxical conclusions," the final result of his next inquiry may be anticipated. Sensation is so far from making evident the truth of our visual knowledge that it increases our perplexities tenfold. "The inaccuracies," he tells us, "and imperfections of the eye as an optical instrument, and those which belong to the image on the retina, now appear insignificant in comparison with the incongruities which we have met with in the field of sensation. One might almost believe that Nature had here contradicted herself on purpose, in order to destroy any dream of a pre-existing harmony between the outer and the inner world.

"And what progress have we made in our task of explaining Sight? It might seem that we are farther off than ever; the riddle only more complicated, and less hope than ever of finding out the answer. The reader may perhaps feel inclined to reproach Science with only knowing how to break up with fruitless criticism the fair world presented to us by our senses, in order to annihilate the fragments." (p. 269.)

How triumphant does Idealism now appear! How little trustworthy that boasted sense of which mankind have constantly said, "seeing is believing," although an apostle and philosophers innumerable have put the two in opposition!

Perhaps, however, instead of leading to a "triumph of Idealism," the paradoxes and incongruities—in a word, the vast accumulation of the Unknowable—belonging to eyesight considered as a Sensation, must be allowed to land us on the shore of a far-stretching Scepticism illimitable to the mind's eye. And this seems to be the eminent writer's own final opinion.[123] So, too, it will always appear when the case is fairly argued out; and that for the reasons adduced in our text. The course of argument there pursued was adopted before the Professor's book came to hand; but we have now added some extracts from his pages in the shape of footnotes, and have given references to other interesting topics touched upon by him.

For our purpose, however, it is necessary in some degree to disregard the variety of those topics, and fix our attention upon the conclusive issue. It is plain, that respecting our senses, as well as our other primary sources of information, the limits of what we can completely explain are very narrow. Yet each for himself and all of us for our race must needs every day accept and act upon this limited and imperfect kind of knowledge about what most essentially concerns our actions as well as our speculations.

Several strong examples of such incompleteness are given by Helmholtz in his scientific inquiry into the rationale of the visual sense-impressions. We observe, for instance, in his chapter on Sensation (p. 236 seq.) that all light-waves are the same in kind of movement, but differ in size as widely as the ripples on a sea-beach (round which happy children play) differ from the vast Atlantic ship-engulfing billows sixty or a hundred feet apart. All these undulations are similar in respect of reflection, refraction, interference, diffraction, and polarisation, as well as in their production of heat.[124] Now, it is the interpretation of such movements into its own language by which our eye gives us the sensation of colour. Yet this power of interpretation is curiously limited—it does not appreciate the gentler ripples of the light-waves—it does not reach to their mightier undulations. Consequently, there may be tender colour-delicacies adorning the Universe, completely incognisable by us, and there may be also glows and intensities of light-beams magnificently resplendent, and unspeakably grand in tone, of which we can through our visual apparatus form no possible conception. Thus, our eye translates some waves into a language which we call colour, but its scholarship is limited. A certain number of signs it catches and interprets, the rest lie altogether outside its ken. The Sun's softer light-harmonies, and his most awful emanations of beauty remain equally unknown.

And another limitation has been imposed upon our optical apparatus. For a perception of heating powers belonging to colour-waves the eye refers us to the skin;—and as to their chemical powers we are only just now discovering the instruments fitted for their true appreciation.

Skilful, too, and yet at the same time very skill-less, is the divination into sunlight given us by our human eyes;—sunlight, that is to say, as a general resultant in its whiteness. For, if our eyes, keen and susceptible to us perfect clearness, attempt to analyze white light into its factors and elements, their resolving faculty manifests still more blank inabilities. And they fail also in examining certain colours:—

"The most striking difference," writes Helmholtz, "between the mixture of pigments and that of coloured light is, that while painters make green by mixing blue and yellow pigments, the union of blue and yellow rays of light, produces white.... In general, then, light, which consists of undulations of different wave-lengths, produces different impressions upon our eye, namely, those of different colours. But the number of hues which we can recognise is much smaller than that of the various possible combinations of rays with different wave-lengths which external objects can convey to our eyes. The retina cannot distinguish between the white which is produced by the union of scarlet and bluish-green light, and that which is composed of yellowish-green and violet, or of yellow and ultramarine blue, or of red, green, and violet, or of all the colours of the spectrum united. All these combinations appear identically as white; and yet, from a physical point of view, they are very different. In fact, the only resemblance between the several combinations just mentioned is, that they are indistinguishable to the human eye. For instance, a surface illuminated with red and bluish-green light would come out black in a photograph; while another lighted with yellowish-green and violet would appear very bright, although both surfaces alike seem to the eye to be simply white. Again, if we successively illuminate coloured objects with white beams of light of various composition, they will appear differently coloured. And whenever we decompose two such beams by a prism, or look at them through a coloured glass, the difference between them at once becomes evident.

"Other colours, also, especially when they are not strongly pronounced, may, like pure white light, be composed of very different mixtures, and yet appear indistinguishable to the eye, while in every other property, physical or chemical, they are entirely distinct." (pp. 239-241.)

We may speak of visual Sensation, then, as a limited power of translating light. And what relation does visual Perception bear to this Power? Probably the simplest way of expressing it, is to say that it is neither more nor less than the translation of a translation. The mind thus construes to itself what the visual sense is every moment busied with expressing in its own special language—the interpretation of movement, into colour, light and shadow. And from these data—these colours, lights and shadows, the mind draws its own inferences.

Now these inferences thus drawn from preceding Sense inferences,—limited in range, as we have seen, and defective in analytic power;—these inferences, such as they are, constitute the boasted certainty of eyesight; and of all things apprehended by its means,—all

It needs but a statement of the mode in which our final mind-interpretations are constructed,—of these translated translations,—obscure in grammar and imperfect in vocabulary—to prove how very difficult is the position of the Realist. In view of this Empire of the Unknowable proclaimed by Science over the surest of our perceiving powers, the firmest foundations of our experimental knowledge, Helmholtz suggests that his reader "may feel determined to stick fast to the 'sound common sense' of mankind, and believe his own senses more than physiology." (p. 270.)

And such, no doubt, is the conclusion of the matter to the greater part of mankind. But we will in the first place prefer hearing the last word of the physiologist. From page 270 to page 313 of his work, he argues out the great question of how we perceive under the full impression of its vast importance to psychology, metaphysics, and the first principles upon which all science and all reasonings repose. "We have," he says (p. 281), "already learned enough to see that the questions which have here to be decided are of fundamental importance, not only for the physiology of sight, but for a correct understanding of the true nature and limits of human knowledge generally."

The Physiologist's last word is this—Sense impressions are signs, the meaning of which we learn inductively by a process of self education. "Illusions obviously depend upon mental processes which may be described as false inductions.... There appears to me to be in reality only a superficial difference between the 'conclusions' of logicians and those inductive conclusions of which we recognise the result in the conceptions we gain of the outer world through our sensations. The difference chiefly depends upon the former conclusions being capable of expression in words, while the latter are not; because, instead of words, they only deal with sensations and the memory of sensations. Indeed, it is just the impossibility of describing sensations, whether actual or remembered, in words, which makes it so difficult to discuss this department of psychology at all." (pp. 307, 8.) And again (p. 314), "There is a most striking analogy between the entire range of processes which we have been discussing, and another System of Signs, which is not given by nature but arbitrarily chosen, and which must undoubtedly be learned before it is understood. I mean the words of our mother tongue.

"Learning how to speak is obviously a much more difficult task than acquiring a foreign language in after-life. First, the child has to guess that the sounds it hears are intended to be signs at all; next, the meaning of each separate sound must be found out, by the same kind of induction as the meaning of the sensations of sight or touch; and yet we see children by the end of their first year already understanding certain words and phrases, even if they are not yet able to repeat them. We may sometimes observe the same in dogs.

"Now this connection between Names and Objects, which demonstrably must be learnt, becomes just as firm and indestructible as that between Sensations and the Objects which produce them. We cannot help thinking of the usual signification of a word, even when it is used exceptionally in some other sense; we cannot help feeling the mental emotions which a fictitious narrative calls forth, even when we know that it is not true; just in the same way as we cannot get rid of the normal signification of the sensations produced by any illusion of the senses, even when we know that they are not real.

"There is one other point of comparison which is worth notice. The elementary signs of language are only twenty-six letters, and yet what wonderfully varied meanings can we express and communicate by their combination! Consider, in comparison with this, the enormous number of elementary signs with which the machinery of sight is provided. We may take the number of fibres in the optic nerves as two hundred and fifty thousand. Each of these is capable of innumerable different degrees of sensation of one, two, or three primary colours. It follows that it is possible to construct an immeasurably greater number of combinations here than with the few letters which build up our words. Nor must we forget the extremely rapid changes of which the images of sight are capable. No wonder, then, if our senses speak to us in language which can express far more delicate distinctions and richer varieties than can be conveyed by words."

Finally (pp. 315, 16), "The correspondence, therefore, between the external world and the Perceptions of Sight rests, either in whole or in part, upon the same foundation as all our knowledge of the actual world,—on experience, and on constant verification of its accuracy by experiments which we perform with every movement of our body. It follows, of course, that we are only warranted in accepting the reality of this correspondence so far as these means of verification extend, which is really as far as for practical purposes we need.

"Beyond these limits, as, for example, in the region of Qualities, we are in some instances able to prove conclusively that there is no correspondence at all between sensations and their objects.

"Only the relations of time, of space, of equality, and those which are derived from them, of number, size, regularity of co-existence and of sequence—'mathematical relations' in short, are common to the outer and the inner world, and here we may indeed look for a complete correspondence between our conceptions and the objects which excite them.

"But it seems to me that we should not quarrel with the bounty of nature because the greatness, and also the emptiness, of these abstract relations have been concealed from us by the manifold brilliance of a system of signs; since thus they can be the more easily surveyed and used for practical ends, while yet traces enough remain visible to guide the philosophical spirit aright, in its search after the meaning of sensible Images and Signs."

Let therefore this account of visual Perception be accepted by us, as it will probably be by three-fourths of scientific men throughout Europe. And, next, let us ask, as every real thinker will proceed to ask, on what grounds of certitude rests our assurance as regards the daily and hourly information received through this avenue of perception, reasoned and acted upon with unswerving confidence by us all?

For an examination of the ground principle of Induction, the reader must be referred to our next chapter. But it is at once clear that no human experience can possess the attribute of universality, otherwise it would cease to be human. We have then in this present appeal to the veracity of Experience, no absolute knowledge to deal with, only knowledge as relative to mankind. Nay, we must go a little further still in our limitation, and say to the generality of mankind. For our eyes do not all see perfectly alike—a North-American Indian sees what a Cockney cannot discover; the trained eye discerns differently from the untrained. On the differences of power in eye and ear rest the differences in many kinds of theorising—amongst which art-perceptions yield an obvious and familiar set of examples. And if we try for a more precise estimate of the value of our limited human relativity, and proceed by way of comparison between our own diverse endowments, who shall venture to say that the eye of our body interpreted by our understanding, tells our inmost self more truly than the eye of our human soul, informing us directly of the facts of its intuitive vision? So far as our actual means of valuing these two modes of beholding can go, there is no knowledge so perfect as the product of pure intuition, the glorious fabric of Mathematical Science. And to pure Science it matters not whether the requisite Schematism is drawn upon a sheet of white paper or on the clear tablet of the imagining faculty of a philosopher. The purely inward view is in truth generally the farthest reaching, and the most unclouded. When, therefore, it is, and has been for centuries, apparent to the inmost eye of the generality of our race that there really exists a spiritual world within themselves—above them, and in the far distant future beyond us all, permanent while we change, and the evidence of our own ultimate permanency,—such knowledge may undeniably be human, the very flower and distinction of our human nature; and it may on that account be received by us as true.

If, again, our ordinary human soul is so far a Christian as to exclaim with Tertullian, "O good God," by what logical process shall we confute its utterance, while we maintain the utterance of our commonest sense-perceptions?

That we all see in frames, that we all think in frames, no rational thinker or perceiver will deny. If, however, any of us chooses to be an Idealist or Nihilist, let him at least be consistent;—if he will assert the necessity of Doubt, let him maintain its empire by doubting his own assertion. But let no man think that Doubt leads him any whither except to an abnegation of thought, a mistrust alike of Sense and Soul, and an abdication of every human prerogative:—

So sang the witty rhymer, but we may add in prose that Doubt if thoroughly real, invariably commits suicide, and becomes first doubtful, after that, a non-entity at last.

C.—HELMHOLTZ ON SPECIALTIES OF SENSIBILITY.

The following passages from this interesting writer will be found in his Chapter "on the Sensations of Sight," between pp. 232 and 236. They will, it is hoped, be thoroughly intelligible if read in connection with the part of our last Chapter (pp. 158, 9) where a reference to this note was made.

"The nerve-fibres have been often compared with telegraphic wires traversing a country, and the comparison is well fitted to illustrate this striking and important peculiarity of their mode of action. In the network of telegraphs we find everywhere the same copper or iron wires carrying the same kind of movement, a stream of electricity, but producing the most different results in the various stations according to the auxiliary apparatus with which they are connected. At one station the effect is the ringing of a bell, at another a signal is moved, and at a third a recording instrument is set to work.... Nerve-fibres and telegraphic wires are equally striking examples to illustrate the doctrine that the same causes may, under different conditions, produce different results.... As motor nerves, when irritated, produce movement, because they are connected with muscles, and glandular nerves secretion, because they lead to glands, so do sensitive nerves, when they are irritated, produce sensation, because they are connected with sensitive organs.... Whether by the irritation of a nerve we produce a muscular movement, a secretion or a sensation depends upon whether we are handling a motor, a glandular, or a sensitive nerve, and not at all upon what means of irritation we may use. It may be an electrical shock, or tearing the nerve, or cutting it through, or moistening it with a solution of salt, or touching it with a hot wire. In the same way (and this great step in advance was due to Johannes MÜller) the kind of sensation which will ensue when we irritate a sensitive nerve, whether an impression of light, or of sound, or of feeling, or of smell, or of taste, will be produced, depends entirely upon which sense the excited nerve subserves, and not at all upon the method of excitation we adopt.

"Let us now apply this to the optic nerve, which is the object of our present enquiry. In the first place, we know that no kind of action upon any part of the body except the eye and the nerve which belongs to it, can ever produce the sensation of light. The stories of somnambulists, which are the only arguments that can be adduced against this belief, we may be allowed to disbelieve. But, on the other hand, it is not light alone which can produce the sensation of light upon the eye, but also any other power which can excite the optic nerve. If the weakest electrical currents are passed through the eye they produce flashes of light. A blow, or even a slight pressure made upon the side of the eyeball with the finger, makes an impression of light in the darkest room, and, under favourable circumstances, this may become intense. In these cases it is important to remember that there is no objective light produced in the retina, as some of the older physiologists assumed, for the sensation of light may be so strong that a second observer could not fail to see through the pupil the illumination of the retina which would follow, if the sensation were really produced by an actual development of light within the eye. But nothing of the sort has ever been seen. Pressure or the electric current excites the optic nerve, and therefore, according to MÜller's law, a sensation of light results, but under these circumstances, at least, there is not the smallest spark of actual light.

"In the same way, increased pressure of blood, its abnormal constitution in fevers, or its contamination with intoxicating or narcotic drugs, can produce sensations of light to which no actual light corresponds. Even in cases in which an eye is entirely lost by accident or by an operation, the irritation of the stump of the optic nerve while it is healing is capable of producing similar subjective effects. It follows from these facts that the peculiarity in kind which distinguishes the sensation of light from all others, does not depend upon any peculiar qualities of light itself. Every action which is capable of exciting the optic nerve is capable of producing the impression of light; and the purely subjective sensation thus produced is so precisely similar to that caused by external light, that persons unacquainted with these phenomena readily suppose that the rays they see are real objective beams.

"Thus we see that external light produces no other effects in the optic nerve than other agents of an entirely different nature. In one respect only does light differ from the other causes which are capable of exciting this nerve: namely, that the retina, being placed at the back of the firm globe of the eye, and further protected by the bony orbit, is almost entirely withdrawn from other exciting agents, and is thus only exceptionally affected by them, while it is continually receiving the rays of light which stream in upon it through the transparent media of the eye.

"On the other hand, the optic nerve, by reason of the peculiar structures in connection with the ends of its fibres, the rods and cones of the retina, is incomparably more sensitive to rays of light than any other nervous apparatus of the body, since the rest can only be affected by rays which are concentrated enough to produce noticeable elevation of temperature.

"This explains why the sensations of the optic nerve are for us the ordinary sensible sign of the presence of light in the field of vision, and why we always connect the sensation of light with light itself, even where they are really unconnected. But we must never forget that a survey of all the facts in their natural connection puts it beyond doubt that external light is only one of the exciting causes capable of bringing the optic nerve into functional activity, and therefore that there is no exclusive relation between the sensation of light and light itself."

Some of the quotations just made direct attention to illusions of Sight which (as we have seen in our last note) Helmholtz elsewhere calls "false inductions." Now one curious fact relative to these impressions is that in many instances the objective consequent is due to a subjective antecedent. Some readers may like to peruse a short account of five variously caused sight-illusions taken from an Oration on Positivism delivered by the present writer at St. George's Hall in May 1871. The particulars here given of the fifth illusion should be compared with the foot-note on page 158 ante.

"I will mention five instances in which people believe they see something, and do not see it; in other words, the objective antecedent is wanting, and the impression is produced partly by the sensory apparatus, partly by the mind itself. As I describe these instances one by one, let my hearers ask themselves, How does this illusion come about? Is it produced by our optic instrument or by our mental activity?

"First, then, Take a lighted stick, and whirl it rapidly round and round. You believe you see a circle of sparks—in reality it is no more than a simple train, and on a like illusion the Catherine-wheel is constructed. Again, put yourself in the hands of an optically inclined friend, and let him operate upon you thus. He shall place a cardboard down the middle axis of your face, quite close against your nose—one side of his board, say the right, coloured a brilliant red, the left a vivid green. After an instant or two let him suddenly substitute another board, white on both sides. Do my young friends guess what will follow? Your right eye will see green, your left red—the reverse of what they saw before; yet neither will see correctly, for both eyes are looking at uncoloured surfaces.

"Thirdly, Watch the full moon rising—how large and round she looks, resting as it were upon that eastern hill, and seen amidst the tops of its forest trees! How much larger and broader than when she hangs aloft in upper sky! Has every one here learned the true reason why? If not, look at her through a slit in a card, and her diameter will be the same.

"Fourthly, A schoolboy is crossing his bedroom in the deep dark night, anxiously hoping that his head may not come into collision with the bed-post. Though carefully and successfully avoiding it, he imagines of a sudden that the blow is imminent. Quick as thought he stops to save his head, and, behold, the room is as quickly filled with sparks or flames of fire. Another moment, and all becomes dark once more. I have heard many a schoolboy exclaim over this phenomenon, but never knew one who could explain it. Finally, did you ever, on opening your eyes in a morning, close them quickly again, and keep them shut, directing them as if to look straight forwards? Most persons of active nervous power, after a few trials—say a dozen, or a score—are surprised to see colours appear and flit before the sight. Some years ago, Germany's greatest poet tried, at the suggestion of her greatest physiologist, a series of experiments on these coloured images. He found that by an effort of will he could cause them to come and go, govern their movement, march, and succession. And this took place under no conditions of impaired sensation, nor any hallucination of a diseased mind. A thoroughly healthy will succeeded in impressing itself upon physical instruments, controlling their law, and creating at its own pleasure an unfailingly bright phantasmagoria.

"Some here may, others may not, have apprehended the distinctions between our five cases. The first two are due to the sensory apparatus, its optical laws of continued impression and complementary colour. In the latter three, mind intervenes. The enlarged size of the moon occurs through rapid comparison, the fiery lights in a dark room through instinctive apprehension, both influences of mind on the sensory system. The fifth and most interesting of all is no bad example of interference between moral and material law. The will truly causative (you may remark) overrules the natural process of physical impression, alters it, and creates a designed effect. I wish I could induce my young friends to devise a number of experiments on similar mixed cases, and, having tried them, to dissect out their real laws. These sharpenings of the critical faculty are exceedingly useful—they cultivate clearness; and most people know that two-thirds among our mistakes in life are caused by confusion of thought.

"Besides all other uses, such lessons teach at once the necessity, as we said before, of observing your own observations. And as, first, the real witness of every observation is our mind; every fact which comes through our bodily senses being to us a mental impression, it seems but common sense to hear above all things what mind has to say for and about itself. Then, secondly, where would be the benefit derived from our observations, if we could not reason upon them, or could place no confidence in our own reasonings? Yet the art of reasoning is so purely a mental process, that it can be represented by symbols as abstract and free from material meaning as if they were bare algebraic signs. Thirdly, in the most accurate of sciences mind extends our knowledge far beyond the circle of observation, and gives us axiomatic assurance of its own accuracy. Who ever saw, or ever can see, all straight lines in all conceivable positions, yet who doubts that throughout the whole universe no two straight lines ever did inclose or can inclose a space? And, fourthly, can it be a matter of indifference to any of us what evidence the mind offers concerning its own moral nature, and what is the value of that evidence, and the laws deducible therefrom? How true it thus appears that 'know thyself' lies at the root of all knowledge, and that the man who receives no witness from within can know nothing as he ought to know it!"

D.—POPULAR ACCOUNT OF PURE IDEALISM WITH CRITICAL REMARKS.

"A classification of systems of philosophy according to the cosmological conceptions governing them has actually been made. It is founded on a consideration of the differences among philosophers as to what that totality of existence is which is to be accepted as really vouched for by Mind. All agree, as we have said, that Mind is the sole voucher for anything; but philosophers are divisible into schools according to the various views they have taken of the constitution of that phenomenal Universe, that Cosmos, that total round of things, of which we have a recurring assurance in every act of perception, and which is orbed forth more or less fully for each man in his wider contemplations.

"The popular or habitual conception of mankind in general is that there are two distinct worlds mixed up in the phenomenal Cosmos—a world of Mind, consisting of multitudes of individual minds, and a world of Matter, consisting of all the extended immensity and variety of material objects. Neither of these worlds is thought of as begotten of the other, but each of them as existing independently in its own proper nature and within its own definite bounds, though they traffic with each other at present. Sweep away all existing minds, and the deserted Earth would continue to spin round all the same, still whirling its rocks, trees, clouds, and all the rest of its material pomp and garniture, alternately in the sunshine and in the depths of the starry stillness. Though no eye should behold, and no ear should hear, there would be evenings of silver moonlight on the ocean-marge, and the waves would roar as they broke and retired. On the other hand, suppose the entire fabric of the material Universe abolished and dissolved, and the dishoused population of spirits would still somehow survive in the imaginable vacancy. If this second notion is not so easy or common as the first, it still virtually belongs to the popular conception of the contents or constitution of the Cosmos. The conception is that of a Natural Dualism, or of the contact in every act of perception of two distinct spheres, one an internal perceiving mind, and the other an external world composed of the actual and identical objects which this mind perceives.

"On the first exercise of philosophic thought, however, this conception is blurred. An immense quantity of what we all instinctively think of as really existing out of ourselves turns out, on investigation, not to exist at all as we fancy it existing, but to consist only of affections of the perceiving mind. The redness of the rose is not a real external thing, immutably the same in itself; it is only a certain peculiar action on my physiology which the presence of an external cause or object seems to determine. Were my physiology different, the action would be different, though the cause or object remained the same. Indeed, there are persons in whom the presence of a rose occasions no sensation of redness such as is known to me, but a much vaguer sensation, not distinguishable from what I should at once distinguish as greenness. And, as colour is thus at once detected as no external independently-existing reality, but only a recurring physiological affection of myself and other sentient beings like myself, so with a thousand other things which, by habit or instinct, I suppose as externally and independently existing. When I imagine the depopulated Earth still wheeling its inanimate rotundity through the daily sunshine and the nocturnal shadow, or one of its bays still resonant in moonlit evenings with the roar of the breaking waves, it is because, in spite of myself, I intrude into the fancy the supposition of a listening ear, and a beholding eye analogous to my own. It is only by a strong effort that I can realize that a great deal at least of what I thus think of as the goings-on of things by themselves is not and cannot be their goings-on by themselves, but consists at the utmost of effects interbred between them and a particular sentiency in the midst of them. But the effort may be made; and, when it is made repeatedly, in a great many directions, and with reference to a great many of the so-called properties of matter, the inevitable result for the philosophic mind is that the popularly-imagined substance of a real external world finds itself eaten away or corroded, at least to a certain depth. So far philosophers are agreed. It is when they proceed to consider to what depth the popularly-imagined substance of the real external world is thus eaten away, or accounted for, that they begin to differ.

"Some philosophers, departing as little as may be from the popular judgment, suppose that, however much of the apparent external world may be resolved into affections of the subjective sentiency, there still remains an objective residue of such primary qualities as extension, figure, divisibility, mobility, etc., belonging to external matter itself, and by the direct and immediate cognizance of which the mind is brought face to face with external substance, and knows something of its real goings-on. Philosophers of this school are known generally as Realists. More numerous, however, are those who, not allowing an objective and independent reality even to the so-called primary qualities of matter, but believing them as well as colour, odour, or savour, to be only affections of the sentiency, deny that the mind is in any sense brought face to face with real external things such as they seem in the act of perception. To thinkers of this school there has been given the general name of Idealists. This broad distinction of Philosophers cosmologically into Realists and Idealists is so far convenient enough. Cosmologically, or in respect of this present Universe of ours, with its dualism of Mind and Matter, every man must declare himself either a Realist or an Idealist, if he understands the meanings attached to these terms. The distinction has reference solely to his notion of the so-called external or material world in its relations to the perceiving mind. If he abides, though only in part, by the popular conception, and regards the material world as a substantial reality independent of the perceiving mind, and which the mind, according to its powers, presses against and directly apprehends in every act of perception, then he is a Realist. If, on the other hand, he cannot see that there need be asserted any external material world with such characters as we attribute to it, but supposes that our unanimous agreement in the imagination of such an external world is merely a habit of our own sentiency, projecting its own ideas or affections outwards, and giving them a body, then he is an Idealist." Masson, "Recent British Philosophy," pp. 58-64. Again p. 69, seq., "There is the system of Constructive Idealism. It may be so called to distinguish it from the more developed and extreme Idealism presently to be spoken of. According to this system, we do not perceive the real external world immediately, but only mediately—that is, the objects which we take as the things actually perceived are not the real objects at all, but only vicarious assurances, representatives, or nuntii of real unknown objects. The hills, the rocks, the trees, the stars, all the choir of heaven and earth, are not, in any of their qualities, primary, secondary, or whatever we choose to call them, the actual existences out of us, but only the addresses of a 'something' to our physiology, or eductions by our physiology out of a 'something.' They are all Thoughts or Ideas, with only this peculiarity involved in them, that they will not rest in themselves, but compel a reference to objects out of self, with which, by some arrangement or other, they stand in relation. Difficult as this system may be to understand, and violently as it wrenches the popular common sense, it is yet the system into which the great majority of philosophers in all ages and countries hitherto are seen, more or less distinctly, to have been carried by their speculations. While the Natural Realists among philosophers have been very few, and even these have been Realists in a sense unintelligible to the popular mind, quite a host of philosophers have been Constructive Idealists. These might be farther subdivided according to particular variations in the form of their Idealism. Thus, there have been many Constructive Idealists who have regarded the objects rising to the mind in external perception, and taken to be representative of real unknown objects, as something more than modifications of the mind itself—as having their origin without. Among these have been reckoned Malebranche, Berkeley, Clarke, Sir Isaac Newton, Tucker, and possibly Locke. But there have been other Constructive Idealists, who have supposed the objects rising in the mind in external perception to be only modifications of the mind itself, but yet, by some arrangement, vicarious of real unknown objects, and intimating their existence. Among such have been reckoned Descartes, Leibnitz, Condillac, Kant, and most Platonists. The general name 'Idealists' it will be seen properly enough includes both the classes as distinct from the Natural Realists, inasmuch as both classes hold that what the mind is directly cognizant of in external perception is only ideas. But, inasmuch as these ideas are held by both classes, though under divers hypotheses, to refer to real existences beyond themselves, and distinct from the perceiving mind, the thinkers in question may also properly enough be called Realists or Dualists, though not 'Natural' Realists or Dualists. They occupy a midway place between the Natural Realists and the philosophers next to be mentioned.

"There is the system of Pure Idealism, which abolishes matter as a distinct or independent existence in any sense, and resolves it completely into mind. Though this system is named in the scheme, for the sake of symmetry, and as the exact antithesis to Materialism, it is difficult to cite representatives that could be certainly discriminated from the merely Constructive Idealists just mentioned on the one hand, and from the school of philosophers next following on the other. Fichte is, perhaps, the purest example." Ibid. pp. 69-72.

For perfect clearness we must put together two other passages from Professor Masson's interesting volume:—

"There is the system of Nihilism, or, as it may be better called, Non-Substantialism. According to this system, the PhÆnomenal Cosmos, whether regarded as consisting of two parallel successions of phÆnomena (Mind and Matter), or of only one (Mind or Matter), resolves itself, on analysis, into an absolute Nothingness,—mere appearances with no credible substratum of Reality; a play of phantasms in a void. If there have been no positive or dogmatic Nihilists, yet both Hume for one purpose, and Fichte for another, have propounded Nihilism as the ultimate issue of all reasoning that does not start with some À priori postulate." Masson, "Recent British Philosophy," p. 66.... If any one could assert "There is no Absolute," surely it might be the Nihilist, who has analysed away both Matter and Thought, and attenuated the Cosmos into vapour and non-significance. Yet, from the abyss of a speculatively reasoned Nihilism more void than Hume's, Fichte returned, by a convulsive act of soul,—which he termed faith—an intense, a burning, a blazing Ontologist. Ibid. p. 81."[125]

This is certainly an eloquent account of philosophic Idealism as it may in its various phases be represented to the world of general readers. It turns, as every such speculation must turn, on the great principle, that our Sensations are so many series of signs and symbols.[126] They may be preordained, and our apprehension of them innate;—they may be arbitrary, and their interpretation the work of man's intelligence. To decide this question, is to decide something as to the extent of their relativity; but will any one pronounce their information absolutely true?

At this point occurs a wide divergence between two great schools of Idealism—the Psychological, and the Theological thinkers. These schools inosculate in respect of some of their arguments, and of their objections against ordinary modes of thought. They disagree, however, in their aims—the ports at which they land themselves and their disciples.

Psychological Idealism is best known to most readers through Mr. J. S. Mill. The Theological view, so far as this country goes, seems to have made scant progress beyond Berkeley and a few of his clever followers. For ordinary Englishmen, a reference to continental writers on this question seems useless;—Theology being discussed by them in so ab extr a manner as to put them out of court with even the most metaphysical of our theologians.

Regarding the subject in a psychological light, Mr. O'Hanlon made the following common-sense remarks amongst others of a more abstract nature:[127]—

"To come now to Mr. Mill's Idealism. He, as all the world of thinkers knows, following the steps of Berkeley and Hume, claims, by means of his power of analysis, and by the aid of the formidable psychological instrument furnished him by the doctrine of the Association of Ideas, to have got rid of all other existences save and except states of consciousness, actual and possible.... I propose to try and answer his arguments" (i.e. within certain expressed limitations)—

"Let A = all my sensations.

" B = the group of sensations and of permanent possibilities of sensation I call my body.

" C = the group of permanent possibilities of sensation I call my friend Smith.

"Now I find B always related to A in a very peculiar manner. B has in perpetual conjunction with it a long series of manifold states of consciousness, A. C resembles B in very many particulars, but it is not so related to A. I hence conclude, if I follow Mr. Mill, that C is so related to some other A, that is, to some other consciousness. In drawing this conclusion, in extending to C, which so closely resembles B, my experience of B, I, according to Mr. Mill, do but extend the principles of inductive evidence, which experience shews hold good of my states of consciousness, to a sphere without my consciousness."

The italicized words sound simple enough to the ordinary reader, but argument upon them involves (as Mr. O'Hanlon observes) two serious postulates. "(a) That there is a sphere beyond my consciousness; the very thing to be proved, (b) That the laws, which obtain in my consciousness, also obtain in the sphere beyond it." But;—

"'Such an inference'" he goes on to quote from Mill "'would only be warrantable if we could know À priori that we must have been created capable of conceiving whatever is capable of existing: that the universe of thought and that of reality, the microcosm and the macrocosm (as they once were called) must have been framed in complete correspondence with one another. That this is really the case has been laid down expressly by some systems of philosophy, by implication in more, and is the foundation (among others) of the systems of Schelling and Hegel; but an assumption more destitute of evidence could scarcely be made, nor can one easily imagine any evidence that could prove it unless it were revealed from above.'" Mill on Hamilton, chap. VI. p. 65.

The reader will probably see at once where the abstract difficulty lies, and how it runs up into the higher metaphysics.

Now, as Mr. O'Hanlon puts the case, taking all this for granted;

"A boy cuts his finger and screams.... Yet if I was not by, the boy, the knife, the blood, the scream, would only exist potentially."

Or on the other hand if I sacrifice consistency and substitute 'actually' for 'potentially,' "I thereby reject the validity of the Psychological method" which asserts "that the belief in an external cause of our sensations" is not original but "generated 'so early as to have become inseparable from our consciousness before the time at which memory commences.' ... Nevertheless, it afterwards admits that the belief in the case of persons, has an external cause. Hereby the method commits suicide, falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus."

Finally, he remarks, "the psychological method professes very little regard for our natural beliefs. Now I can, by a vigorous effort, regard matter as mere states or possible states of my consciousness (at least I can do so for the moment), but I can also look on other persons in the same light. Why should one natural belief be treated more tenderly than another?... In short, if I refuse to postulate a non ego, and if I hold that, supposing the states of consciousness I call the ego can be shewn capable of producing the notion of the non ego, then they did produce it, and if I hold that they can be shewn to be so capable, such a theory is equally applicable to external consciousnesses as to external matter. In both cases, I cannot get out of the sphere of my own feelings; there may be something beyond or there may not, but if there is, it is at all events incognisable by me, and to all intents and purposes I am alone in the universe."[128]

In drift and true meaning Bishop Berkeley's Idealism differed toto cÆlo from Mill's, as well as from Hume's idealistic Scepticism. His belief in a world outside us all was as firm as that of the firmest Realist, and by a world outside us he meant a world which neither we nor our conceptions can alter. His reasoning was also of the most common-sense description. Sensation is (as before said) a sign between us and things outside. But the sign tells us nothing of any substratum on which the things signified depend for their sign-giving powers. Matter (as commonly understood[129]) is a figment devised by certain philosophers;—the true subsistence of the outward world is in and for mind, and apart from thought it does not subsist at all. But my mind, nay the human mind, is limited. There is One whose thoughts are not as our thoughts;—in Him the world subsists, and in Him we also have our Being continually. The world is what it is to us, in and through Him, and it appeals not to our so-called material frames but to our minds.

Berkeley's argument was simply this. Take away gross matter—and the world is still perfectly Real. It is real because God is real. Real for us, real in Him; and by this we know His Reality.[130]

By comparing this phase of Idealism with the modern doctrine of what is called the "Conditioned," its Theological interest becomes still more obvious. Suppose we naturally know only what is conditioned (i.e. dependent on some Absolute reality to us unknown), what ought, asks Dr. Mansel, to be the inference? The right inference is that the Divine Absolute did not leave our world in ignorance, but did really reveal Himself to Man.

The fate of arguments framed in special interests, however noble those interests may be, is usually the same. Some clever antagonist allows their destructive force, but refuses their affirmative conclusions. Berkeley's denial of the unknown substratum called matter was approved by sceptics, who scoffed at his unknown God. His idealism was pronounced unanswerable, his divinity needed no answer. Therefore, the Reason remained without satisfaction of any kind, "Most of the writings" says Hume "of that very ingenious author form the best lessons of scepticism which are to be found either among the ancient or modern philosophers, Bayle not excepted. He professes, however, in his title-page (and undoubtedly with great truth,) to have composed his book against the sceptics as well as against the atheists and freethinkers. But that all his arguments, though otherwise intended, are, in reality, merely sceptical, appears from this, that they admit of no answer, and produce no conviction." (Inquiry concerning the Human Understanding. Section XII.) And be it remarked that this final clause forms a skilled definition of Scepticism—its essential notion—given by an expert. Dean Mansel himself who left at his death an unfinished article upon Berkeley, suffered under a charge of promoting what he desired to discourage. So dangerous is it to deal with wide questions by narrowing their sweep to a point; yet on the other hand how few students are prepared to read and think widely?

Shall we attribute to a growing width of Thought, the increased breadth of view under which Idealism has of late years been represented? The German Philosopher, with whom Schwegler closes his philosophic history writes "This ideality or non-substantiality of the finite is the chief maxim of philosophy; and for that reason every true philosophy is idealistic" (Idealismus).[131] In England Mr. Green of Balliol signalises Berkeley's "true proposition—there is nothing real apart from thought—" and carefully distinguishes it from the one so often substituted for it—the fatal flaw of the Berkeleian argument.[132] Another influential thinker, Mr. Herbert Spencer,—who, like Professor Huxley, uses materialistic symbols treating them as symbols only,—has been for some time labouring after a "reconciliation of Realism and Idealism," which again is considered by an able critic, Mr. Henry Sidgwick, "an impossible compromise."—Mr. Spencer's answer to Mr. Sidgwick, on this particular point, will be found in his recently published volume of "Essays" (III. 282 seq.). A very instructive sentence occurs on p. 290. "Should it be said that this regarding of everything constituting experience and thought as symbolic, has a very shadowy aspect; I reply that these which I speak of as symbols, are real relatively to our consciousness; and are symbolic only in their relation to the Ultimate Reality."

So much then for a question which in a variety of shapes has exercised the human intellect throughout countless generations, and in all countries from India to the United States. It has also pervaded all spheres of Thought from physical science, (on which compare further, Additional Note I., and our next chapter), to the great philosophico-theological domain as we have already seen in certain specimens of Western thought. It would be easy to illustrate its empire far more extensively from those wonderful Eastern systems brought home to English readers thirty-six years ago by the translation of Ritters' Ancient Philosophy, but very imperfectly comprehended even now, notwithstanding the agreeable reception which Professor Max MÜller has provided for them. To his writings we will gladly refer the curious student.

E.—ON THE RELATIONS OF FACT AND THEORY.

"The distinction between Theory (that is, true Theory) and Fact is this: that in Theory the Ideas are considered as distinct from the Facts: in Facts, though Ideas may be involved, they are not, in our apprehension, separated from the sensations. In a Fact, the Ideas are applied so readily and familiarly, and incorporated with the sensations so entirely, that we do not see them, we see through them. A person who carefully notes the motion of a star all night, sees the circle which it describes as he sees the star, though the circle is, in fact a result of his own Ideas. A person who has in his mind the measures of different lines and countries on the earth's surface, and who can put them together into one conception, finds that they can make no figure but a globular one: to him, the earth's globular form is a Fact, as much as the square form of his chamber. A person to whom the grounds of believing the earth to travel round the sun are as familiar as the grounds for believing the movements of the mail coaches in this country, looks upon the former event as a Fact, just as he looks upon the latter events as Facts. And a person who, knowing the Fact of the earth's annual motion, refers it distinctly to its mechanical cause, conceives the sun's attraction as a Fact, just as he conceives as a Fact, the action of the wind which turns the sails of a mill. He cannot see the force in either case; he supplies it out of his own Ideas. And thus, a true Theory is a Fact; a Fact is a familiar Theory. That which is a Fact under one aspect, is a Theory under another. The most recondite Theories when firmly established are Facts; the simplest Facts involve something of the nature of Theory. Theory and Fact correspond, in a certain degree, with Ideas and Sensations, as to the nature of their opposition. But the Facts are Facts, so far as the Ideas have been combined with the Sensations and absorbed in them: the Theories are Theories, so far as the Ideas are kept distinct from the Sensations, and so far as it is considered still a question whether those can be made to agree with these.

"We may, as I have said, illustrate this matter by considering man as interpreting the phenomena which he sees. He often interprets without being aware that he does so. Thus when we see the needle move towards the magnet, we assert that the magnet exercises an attractive force on the needle. But it is only by an interpretative act of our own minds that we ascribe this motion to attraction. That, in this case, a force is exerted—something of the nature of the pull which we could apply by our own volition—is our interpretation of the phenomena; although we may be conscious of the act of interpretation, and may then regard the attraction as a Fact.

"Nor is it in such cases only that we interpret phenomena in our own way, without being conscious of what we do. We see a tree at a distance, and judge it to be a chestnut or a lime; yet this is only an inference from the colour or form of the mass according to preconceived classifications of our own. Our lives are full of such unconscious interpretations. The farmer recognizes a good or a bad soil; the artist a picture of a favourite master; the geologist a rock of a known locality, as we recognize the faces and voices of our friends; that is, by judgments formed on what we see and hear; but judgments in which we do not analyze the steps, or distinguish the inference from the appearance. And in these mixtures of observation and inference, we speak of the judgment thus formed, as a Fact directly observed.

"Even in the case in which our perceptions appear to be most direct, and least to involve any interpretations of our own,—in the simple process of seeing,—who does not know how much we, by an act of the mind, add to that which our senses receive? Does any one fancy that he sees a solid cube? It is easy to show that the solidity of the figure, the relative position of its faces and edges to each other, are inferences of the spectator; no more conveyed to his conviction by the eye alone, than they would be if he were looking at a painted representation of a cube. The scene of nature is a picture without depth of substance, no less than the scene of art; and in the one case as in the other, it is the mind which, by an act of its own, discovers that colour and shape denote distance and solidity. Most men are unconscious of this perpetual habit of reading the language of the external world, and translating as they read. The draughtsman, indeed, is compelled, for his purposes, to return back in thought from the solid bodies which he has inferred, to the shapes of surface which he really sees. He knows that there is a mask of theory over the whole face of nature, if it be theory to infer more than we see. But other men, unaware of this masquerade, hold it to be a fact that they see cubes and spheres, spacious apartments and winding avenues. And these things are facts to them, because they are unconscious of the mental operation by which they have penetrated nature's disguise.

"And thus, we still have an intelligible distinction of Fact and Theory, if we consider Theory as a conscious, and Fact as an unconscious inference, from the phenomena which are presented to our senses."—Whewell, Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, B. I. Chap. ii. Sect. 10.

F.—ON THE "UNKNOWABLE."

If the word which heads this note could be accepted in the sense understood by Mr. Spencer's American critic, as a truthful and in all respects complete description of the First Ground of all things, there must of course be an end of all Theology, natural, and supernatural; Theism, Pantheism, and Atheism, would together become what Comte thought them,—equally unfounded, equally unmeaning, and therefore equally to be opposed, condemned, and ostracized. Between Humanity and all that is Superhuman the gulf would appear hopelessly impassable.

"To be consistent," says the Editor of the American Index, "Empiricism must utterly sink the soul in its material surroundings...." Mr. Spencer makes his election in Empiricism, but shrinks from the acceptance of its necessary implications, and thereby forfeits his title to rank among the great leaders of philosophy. Teaching that every faculty of the mind is the effect of impressions made by the Environment upon the Organism, he should also teach that the mind is nothing distinct from the organism, and that the mind's faculties will perish at the disintegration of the organism; that, as fire is a mere phenomenon of chemical combination, ceasing with it, so life is a mere phenomenon of organic "re-arrangement of parts," and will cease when the Dissolution which is the converse and sequel of Evolution has become complete; and that the "theory of a 'soul' is as completely exploded as the theory of 'phlogiston.'"

Such is the opinion of an unsympathising reviewer, who calls himself a Positivist of the latest development. He despises Comte, praises Hamilton, and preaches the truth of Dualism. "If," he writes, "physical science sneeringly objects that mental science proceeds on a sheer assumption of mind, the retort is crushing and cogent that physical science proceeds on the sheer assumption of matter. Who ever yet demonstrated the existence of either?... Only by admitting what can neither be demonstrated without a begging of the question, nor doubted without a reductio ad absurdam of all intelligence,—namely, the natural veracity of the intuitive and cognitive powers,—is a truly positive science possible." From this dualistic Positivism he predicts the rise of a new Theology. "We believe that Theism must be re-theologized on the basis of pure Positivism, as the absolute condition of its future growth." From the same point of view, Mr. Spencer's "reconciliation of Science and Religion" is "pretended"; and his "philosophy is chiefly valuable as indicating the rapid spread of the true spirit of Positivism," but, "like Comtism, it possesses little or no value as an exposition of Positivism in the highest departments of science."

This censure of Spencer was combated in a subsequent number of the Index, by a writer signing himself "Evolutionist." The Editor prints his letter, and replies to it briefly:—"1. The 'unknowable' must be an absolute blank to every intelligence. It surely cannot be held legitimate to make any predicate of it whatever, as Mr. Spencer himself admits. Yet he does make predicates of it which are 'derived from our own natures' and thus violates his own principle. 'Omnipresence' is simply presence throughout all space; and what do we know of 'presence' at all but by our own experience? Mr. Spencer does the very thing he forbids us to do, in making this predication.

"2. The difference between him and us is briefly this. He denies that we know anything of Force; we affirm that we know it just so far as it perceptibly acts. The Cause of Nature we maintain to be known in its effects. Hence Force is not to us the 'Unknowable,' but is rather the 'God of Science,' known just so far as Nature is known."

Here follow some stringent criticisms of the distinction between phenomena and noumena accepted by Mill as well as Spencer, which we pass over as being somewhat unintelligible without a longer discussion than can here be given to them.

On the subject of our first quotation—Empiricism—many readers may like to peruse the opinion of a writer far removed from Mr. Abbott in philosophy. The following is Hegel's dictum:—

"In Empiricism lies the great principle that whatever is true must be in the actual world and present to sensation.... Touching this principle it has been justly observed that, in what we call Experience, as distinct from the individual sensation of individual facts, there are two elements. First, there is the infinitely complex matter, which so far as itself is concerned is individualised: secondly, there is the form, as seen in the characteristics of universality and necessity. Empiricism no doubt can point to many, almost innumerable, similar perceptions: but, after all, no multitude, however great, can be the same thing as universality. Similarly, Empiricism reaches so far as the perception of changes in succession and of objects in juxtaposition or co-existence; but it presents no necessary connexion. If sensation, therefore, is to maintain its claim to be the sole basis of what men hold for truth, universality and necessity can have no right to exist: they become an accident of our minds, a mere custom, the content of which might be otherwise constituted than it is.

"It is an important corollary of this theory, that in the empirical mode of treatment the truths and rules of justice and morality, as well as the body of religion, are exhibited as the work of chance, and stripped of their objective character and inner truth."[133]

Considering how far Hegel confirms the American Positivist's opinion respecting the inevitable conclusions of consistent Empiricism, Mr. Spencer may with reason be congratulated on his very happy inconsistency.

The subject of quotation No. 2—Spencer's position in regard of the Unknowable—contains a censure which unites in alliance many widely differing authorities on this side the Atlantic. Some of these assail it from an extremely hostile point of view; but the criticism of others is conceived in a half-friendly, half-indifferent spirit. Mr. Spencer has very lately published a third volume of "Essays," and devotes Articles X. and XI. to his reviewers.[134] It need hardly be said that these pages will repay perusal. We shall here venture on giving a brief account of his defence as it presents itself to our own understanding.

The most salient difference between him and his critics generally, seems to lie in this circumstance;—they begin by taking the word "Unknowable" in its strict (i.e. its proper) signification. Hence they appear to assume that by "Absolute" he means—or ought to mean even when seeming to say the contrary—"absolutely abstract." Now of a mere, that is, a pure and complete abstraction, nothing can be predicated, because the idea is perfectly empty. It is in fact a Nothingness.

But suppose we say of this Absolute, (as Spencer does), it exists;—we have predicated something already;—something which destroys its complete emptiness. And again, if we are asked or, (what is better), ask ourselves how we know that an Absolute does exist, and proceed to reply, as Spencer himself replies, because it must exist; we shall have made respecting our Absolute this highest of all possible predications. It is not only Being, but necessary Being, or, in other words, it is a Self-Existent. Still more, since it is so in contradistinction from the universe of relativities, it is The Self-Existent, a totally different idea from that which the American editor dissects.

But now comes the question, who or what is answerable for the Reviewer's misconception,—Spencer or his critics? Is it the poverty of language, or the law of controversial sequency,—a law under which every thought arises as antagonistic to some other thought, and afterwards, when arisen and firmly established so as to become the subject of analysis, is found to yield more than was at first conceived. Then, of course, another antithesis arises respecting it, and we have to decide how much and what is truly meant, a question which often comes before us in this shape:—Is our thought merely the not so and so, or is it a real substantive idea? In the former case it is one-sided and negative; in the latter it is many-sided and affirmative.

At the first blush, it seems natural to blame Mr. Herbert Spencer. Every one must feel astonished to find how much he himself knows of the Unknowable. The following sentences, however, contain a good account of one amongst his principal explanations of this apparent incongruity. Speaking of Mr. Martineau's conception of the Creator,[135] he writes (Essays, Vol. III. p. 299):—

"Finding, as just shewn, that it leaves the essential mystery unsolved; I do not see that it has an advantage over the doctrine of the Unknowable in its unqualified shape. There cannot, I think, be more than temporary rest in a proximate solution which takes for its basis the ultimately insoluble. Just as thought cannot be prevented from passing beyond Appearance, and trying to conceive the Cause behind; so, following out the interpretation Mr. Martineau offers, thought cannot be prevented from asking what Cause it is which restricts the Cause he assigns. And if we must admit that the question under this eventual form cannot be answered, may we not as well confess that the question under its immediate form cannot be answered? Is it not better candidly to acknowledge the incompetence of our intelligence, rather than to persist in calling that an explanation which does but disguise the inexplicable? Whatever answer each may give to this question, he cannot rightly blame those who, finding in themselves an indestructible consciousness of an ultimate Cause, whence proceed alike what we call the Material Universe and what we call Mind, refrain from affirming anything respecting it; because they find it as inscrutable in nature, as it is inconceivable in extent and duration."

There will be to many people much force in this plea for leaving inscrutables amidst their primary obscurities. But it is open to a rejoinder suggested by Mr. Spencer himself,—you cannot prevent the Mind from inquiring; and, in point of fact, Spencer in person leads the way. He places before us the ultimate idea of a self-existent First Cause. Now surely he might reflect that such an Idea not only permits but invites analysis;—it is no empty abstraction, but a substantive thought and a full one. But he bars analysis to his own satisfaction, by saying that the Idea is in its own Nature inscrutable. Respecting this position two questions arise. First, if inscrutable as to its ultimate nature—its highest essence, and deepest thought,—is it so in its attributes? Next, if Spencer's special walk in philosophy ends with the bare positing of this Idea, must all Philosophy do the same? Suppose the Physicist says—"Here I learn to know the Fact of a self-existent universal First Cause," may not the investigator of our Practical human Reason try to discover whether an Ethical view ought or ought not to be taken of this Self-Existent? To answer "No," is either to make physical philosophy the sole philosophy; or it is to dismember and disjoint the universal Body of Truth into departmental carcase-fragments;—a process which never can begin till all Life has been effectually crushed out of the Whole.[136] For every one who takes wide views of Philosophy;—for every inquirer into First Principles;—above all, if Mr. Spencer will permit us to say so, for every EncyclopÆdic writer like himself, a question must arise the answer to which it is incumbent on all and each to ascertain, "Can we have any conscious idea whatever of a First Cause without including that very fact of Personality from which Spencer appears to shrink?" Nay we may rather put the point thus: "Is not our idea and definition of Causality derived from Personal existence, and apart from this source of derivation, does not the derived idea perish?"—If so, to speak of a non-personal First Cause both of the outside world and of mind itself is to use words to which no thinker can consciously attach any real meaning. There must, says Mr. Spencer, be Power behind Appearance;—in other words, Phenomena imply a Cause behind them,—but to add that this Power or Cause is conceivably impersonal, seems nothing better than to imagine (HibernicÈ) at the beginning of the phenomenal chain, a prior phenomenon which in its own nature and ex vi verborum cannot account for a Beginning[137] at all;—cannot, to use Mr. Spencer's expression, be "ultimate"; and, in short, requires to be accounted for, itself.

The truth is, that such ideas as First, Ultimate, Power accounting for appearance, or Cause underlying phenomena, cannot be spoken of as altogether Unknowable; because they imply and contain within themselves certain knowable and strongly defined characteristics. Pressed by his critics, Mr. Spencer becomes painfully aware of this truth; and is fearful of being driven by logic and philosophical consistency to plead guilty of believing in a Personal Author of the Universe, and of making Theism the ultimate word of Science. We see on pp. 292 and 302 of Vol. III. how he manifests a preference for the phrase non-relative, vice Absolute; meaning thereby (if he means anything new) to replace an affirmative idea by a negational abstract, empty enough to land him at once in American Positivism. For, if the non-relative means more than to say that he is unable to predicate relativity of the whole Universe of things—if it means more than an avowal of Positivist ignorance—it really does mean a true Absolute after all; and very few students of Mr. Spencer will doubt that in the sense of an Absolute (not necessarily Hegelian), this ground idea of his must be accepted.

As courteous antagonists, we will endeavour to abstain from joining with Mr. Sidgwick in the severest censure which has yet befallen Mr. Spencer,—the imputation of a "mazy inconsistency," a "fundamental incoherence," and an "inability to harmonize different lines of thought." We rather wish to congratulate him on presenting such an appearance before the eye of a critic so accomplished, and so equitable; it is a sign that we have not as yet heard Mr. Spencer's final utterance. He is, we are quite sure, divided by a wide tract of thought from the American Positivists;—but we are not sure that he may not ultimately be found amid the ranks of Scientific Theists. This at the present moment appears the most natural development of the thoughts maintained in his recently published volume. That the nature of God, considered as the "ultimate cause of what we call the material universe and what we call mind," is to us at present inscrutable;—that clouds and darkness are round about Him;—that His ways are not as our ways, nor His thoughts as our thoughts, no meditative Theist will deny. But, though the Heavens are higher than the Earth, though beatified spirits worship in humble adoration of the Incomprehensible, yet the measureless distance does not hinder us from knowing Him as a Spirit, and therefore as a Person; nor yet from confidently affirming that Righteousness and Judgment are the habitation of His throne.

G.—MR. J. S. MILL AS AN INDEPENDENT MORALIST.

Few passages of Mr. Mill's writings are better worth reading than pages 123, 4, of his "Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy." In these pages the eminent writer asserts his own strong moral sentiments, and throws to the winds that inconsistent Utilitarianism with which he had trained his mind to associate them. He will worship no Unknowable Being whose supreme moral nature does not affirm our human morality. "Why is this?" an opponent might fairly ask; "is it not useful so to do? is not such worship conducive to that noblest final end, the interest of mankind?" By saying "No" you affirm two things: one, the dissociation of Religion from Utility; a second, the indivisible association of Religion with absolute Morality.

Some antagonists may consider the first of these two propositions inadmissible, the second objectionable, or at all events, exceedingly doubtful. Every one who maintains that Natural Theology has, in addition to its other elements, a firm and moral ground, will accept with ready assent the second proposition, and will say that the truth or falsehood of the first depends on the meaning attached to an ambiguous word. We are equally sure that "Godliness is profitable for all things," and that "Honesty is the best policy." But then we are quite sure also, that the final cause of Godliness is not profit, nor its essential nature a love of gain; and that policy is not a true description of honesty, nor the being politic the true and proper aim of the honest man. And Mr. Mill, when his moral sentiments asserted themselves, felt these certainties as elements of his inner life. Rather than worship a Being whose unknown moral attributes fell beneath, not the dictates of Utility, but the purest instincts of his own inmost morality, Mr. Mill goes on to declare that he is willing to suffer the horrors of Eternal death.[138] Hell is better than a violation of his own moral nature. Can this be a declaration deduced from the supreme law of Interest,—is it not rather a foundation maxim of independent morality? Violate such foundation maxims, says the independent moralist, and you need not even speak of "Going to hell," hell will come to you. Sooner or later you will find its undying torments within you.

In an article on the death of Mr. Mill, the Pall Mall Gazette expresses its perception of his leading inconsistency as follows:—

"It is impossible to read Mr. Mill's works with any attention, and in particular to look with intelligence on the later part of his career, without seeing that by temperament he was essentially religious, but that as far as positive doctrine went his mind was an absolute blank. We believe that it was this sharp contrast between theory and feeling which drove him into the schemes for the improvement of the world which have been exposed to so many, and, in some respects, to such well-founded objections. Having to love something, and being, as it were, chained down by his own logic to this world and this life, past, present, and future, he struggled to make a sort of religion out of man as he might come to be after centuries or millenniums. Humanity, progress, a realization of all the ideals at which his theories pointed—these were his divinities, for he was a man who could not do without some divinity, and he could find no other. We do not think that his life or his thoughts were triumphant. If he had consistently followed out his own views, if he had carried out his Benthamism with perfect consistency, the result would have been too hard, too grim, too dismal for his eager and sensitive heart. Hence came the faltering, the inconsistency, the romance of his later days. It is a spectacle which may well humble every one who looks on it with intelligence and sympathy. From us, at least, it shall never draw one word of sarcasm, or one thought which is not full of deep respect, regret, and pity. He bore a burden common to many. If he bent under it, it was not because his strength was less, but because his sensibility was greater. When he died one of the tenderest and most passionate hearts that ever set to work an intellect of iron was laid to rest. May he rest in peace, and find, if it be possible, that his knowledge was less complete than he perhaps supposed, and that there was more to be known than was acknowledged in his philosophy." (Pall Mall Gazette, Saturday, May, 10, 1873.)

A little earlier in the same article we find another paragraph worthy of careful consideration:—"No succession of writers ever exercised greater power over the fortunes of this nation, we might say of any nation, than Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Bentham, and Mr. Mill. What may be described as the theory of modern life has been thought out by them, and translated into its practical equivalents with a persistency, a precision, a degree of method and calmness unequalled in the history of thought. We do not say that their results are complete, but we do say that their teaching has been successful to an unexampled degree; and that, however unpopular it may be with ardent and enthusiastic persons, it is impossible to believe that it could have done what it has done without possessing a very strong hold on human nature."

Viewing this extract by the light of the one before cited, we cannot help asking what side of human nature is it to which the Benthamite doctrines attach themselves? Shall we not regret that the hard, the grim, and the dismal, should characterize our 19th century philosophy? Philosophy that is falsely so called; for the true is "not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose."

The text of this Essay and its earlier notes were completed while Mr. Mill was in the ripeness of his powers, and when the present writer never expected to outlive him. Death softens our view of one who has passed away—the bygone life becomes like a moonlighted landscape—asperities hidden in shadow, and a soft radiance poured over each grander eminence. So may it be felt by the critic of every great departed! If, indeed, it prove otherwise with Mr. Mill, the preventing cause will probably be found in certain pages of his published "Autobiography."

H.—ARCHEBIOSIS, OR SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.

The origin of Life is a question that naturally excites much interest, and consequently has been much discussed. It is obviously a problem that presents difficulties of no ordinary kind, and therefore it is by no means astonishing that many theories have been started and statements made which have in turn been quickly contradicted.

It is now known that the whole cycle of phenomena—collectively denoted by the term "Life,"—is manifested by a substance possessing definite physical and chemical properties, and by no other. This substance constitutes the entire organism of the lower forms of life, whether animal or vegetable, and also of the higher in their earliest stage, while from it by various metamorphoses are developed the different histological elements composing the complex tissues of higher animals and plants. Its name Protoplasm is in consequence exceedingly apt, when properly understood.

As to the origin of Protoplasm (or apparent Life) it is clear from a little consideration that two questions may be asked: first, how did Protoplasm arise? and secondly, when once this substance had come into being are we to suppose that from that time to this all Protoplasm has been derived by unbroken descent from the first Protoplasm, or does fresh Protoplasm even now arise in the same way as did the first?—in other words, does the transition from the inorganic to the organic, from what has never lived to what is living, still take place as it must have taken place at some period or another?

To neither of these questions can Physical Science return a perfectly certain and definite answer. And it must be confessed that as far as our knowledge of Nature goes, those have the best of it who maintain first, that all existing Protoplasm implies pre-existing Protoplasm; secondly, that as to the method, the conditions of the real origin of Protoplasm nothing whatsoever is known; and thirdly, that, notwithstanding all assertions and experiments to the contrary, the origin of living things from dead and decaying organic matter (i.e., matter that has lived), or from inorganic matter under given conditions (spontaneous generation, generatio Æquivoca, archebiosis) has never been proved and demonstrated in such a manner as to allow us no room for hesitation, no place for doubt.

The difficulties and dangers besetting this thorny and much-vexed subject will be better understood if we institute a short examination into the history and present condition of the doctrine of Spontaneous Generation.

It is certain from the results of astronomical and geological investigation, that at an exceedingly remote epoch, estimated by untold millions of years, the earth's surface was absolutely unfitted for the presence of life; nay, more, that even the laws of chemical combination were suspended, and in abeyance. After the glowing spheroid cooled down, and various chemical compounds were formed, life as a matter of fact made its appearance on the earth. Throughout the inorganic world the continuity is unbroken—the present is truly the child of the past. But in the organic world it is not so. Whether life arose in the natural course of universal law, or how it did arise, we cannot tell, scientifically, that is to say; no assertion, one way or the other, admits either of proof or disproof. There are absolutely no data to proceed upon. The very first organic remains discovered belong to a comparatively high type. It is as though in a garden every plant and bush burst at once into full flower, and never showed the flower in the bud.

These points are very well put in a passage of LittrÉ:[139] "Jusqu'À ce moment, nous avons cheminÉ de phÉnomÈnes en phÉnomÈnes qui se passaient tous sous le rÉgime des lois chimiques et physiques. Leur succession ne prÉsentait aucune solution de continuitÉ; les degrÉs tenaient l'un À l'autre; et c'est cette dÉduction qui satisfait l'esprit humain, et qu'il nomme explication. Une fois que l'on reconnait une dissÉmination premiÈre, dans l'espace, d'une matiÈre douÉe de gravitation et de mouvement, tout en ignorant absolument d'oÙ vient cette matiÈre and d'oÙ procÈdent son mouvement et sa dissÉmination, le reste s'ensuit. Des amas qu'on appelle soleils se forment par condensation; cette condensation dÉveloppe une immense chaleur; le refroidissement graduel sÉpare les amas primordiaux en amas secondaires et plus petits qui se meuvent comme lui, se refroidissent comme lui, et reprÉsentent nos planÈtes, nos satellites, et en particulier notre terre. On a l'univers, on passe au monde, et du monde au globe terrestre.

"Mais lÀ, sur le monde terrestre, un hiatus se prÉsente. Un phÉnomÈne nouveau, une force nouvelle apparaÎt, et la vie se dÉveloppe en vÉgÉtalitÉ et animalitÉ. Ce phÉnomÈne nouveau, cette force nouvelle, cette vie ne succÈdent point par une action continue aux actions continues dont le soleil et la terre sont le thÉÂtre; du moins, en l'État actuel de nos connaissances, la continuitÉ nous Échappe. On conÇoit, grÂce À des faits expÉrimentaux recueillis de toutes parts et transformÉs en lois, comment notre globe se refroidit, comment, en se refroidissant, il prend sa forme, comment l'atmosphÈre, les continents, la mer se constituent; mais on ne conÇoit plus comment la vie y parait À un moment donnÉ. Et ce fut bien À un moment donnÉ: pendant des millions de siÈcles, la terre, vu son incandescence, fut impropre À toute vie. Quand la tempÉrature y eut baissÉ au degrÉ compatible avec les existences vivantes, ces existences se montrÈrent; mais comment? par quel procÉdÉ?

"Il ne faut pourtant pas faire valoir outre mesure cette discontinuitÉ. Une discontinuitÉ, autre que celle qui appartient À l'apparition de la vie, est survenue dans le cours du dÉveloppement de la terre. Quand les particules qui la composent, Étaient animÉes d'une immense chaleur, une dissociation complÈte y rÉgnait; elles n'obÉissaient qu'aux lois du mouvement, de la gravitation, de la chaleur et de la lumiÈre; les lois chimiques, c'est-À-dire de combinaison et de dÉcombinaison, n'y Étaient qu'À l'État virtuel. Elles passÈrent À l'État effectif, dÈs que l'abaissement de la tempÉrature le permit. Je sais bien qu'une diffÉrence considÉrable existe entre ces deux discontinuitÉs: en effet, depuis lors, il a toujours ÉtÉ possible de reproduire À volontÉ les faits chimiques; et, toutes les fois que nous en avons besoin, nous rÉpÉtons le phÉnomÈne d'origine qui se produisit dans les combinaisons et dÉcombinaisons. Pour la vie, c'est autre chose; elle a ÉtÉ une fois Émise, et, depuis le phÉnomÈne d'origine, elle ne se propage que par gÉnÉration. Un Être vivant est necessaire pour produire un Être vivant; et, ni par les procÉdÉs de la nature, ni par ceux de la science, ce qui se fit au moment crÉateur ne se refait. MalgrÉ cette considÉrable diffÉrence, il demeure que la terre a possÉdÉ des forces virtuelles qui sont entrÉes en action, quand les conditions gÉnÉrales, se modifiant graduellement, l'ont permis."

A little further on he continues:—"Au point de vue d'origine, on abandonnera la question comme toutes les questions qui impliquent une cause premiÈre. La philosophie positive s'exprime lÀ-dessus comme elle s'exprime touchant toutes les choses hyperphysiques, c'est-À-dire placÉes au delÀ de l'expÉrience. Quand elle entend les matÉrialistes prononcer que la vie est le rÉsultat des forces physiques et chimiques dont on connaÎt l'action, elle refuse d'accepter une solution qui dÉpasse les prÉmisses. Mais elle n'Écarte pas la solution matÉrialiste au profit de la solution thÉologique; l'intervention d'un Dieu crÉateur est Également invÉrifiable par l'expÉrience, et, partant, atteinte de la mÊme fin de non-recevoir. Maintenant, si on demande À la philosophie positive quelle est, À elle, sa solution entre la gÉnÉration matÉrialiste et la crÉation surnaturelle, elle rÉpond qu'elle n'a aucune solution À proposer, que rien ne peut la forcer À croire ce qui n'est pas dÉmontrÉ, et qu'elle accepte, avec autant de fermetÉ que d'humilitÉ, une ignorance invincible sur tout ce qui est indemontrable."

In the first passage certain salient points are strikingly brought out, above all the vast difference between the worlds organic and inorganic; but, next, how much soever a Positivist may be pleased to believe only that which admits of phenomenal verification, it is not every one, especially if given to thought, who would willingly endorse the second paragraph. If we know only what we can verify, many beliefs must needs be abandoned, and amongst them some which have received the almost universal assent of mankind. Knowledge (in the sense of verifiable knowledge) and Belief may appear two widely different things; but it should never be forgotten that we often accept the one as surely as the other.

The ancients held that living things arose from the earth at any time, engendered by the warmth of the sun and moisture. Absurd as it may seem, the belief that blue-bottle flies, etc., were a natural result of the decay of meat and other organic matter obtained credence even in comparatively modern times. Redi, an eminent Italian, first demonstrated experimentally the falsehood of this doctrine, and for some time the hypothesis of spontaneous generation appeared to have received a death-blow. And by degrees the conviction that every living thing proceeded from a germ gained strength, and was confirmed by the rapidly extending use of the microscope. Yet in the eighteenth century certain experiments of Needham seemed to establish the fact that in boiled infusions where presumably all germs were destroyed, small Infusoria made their appearance even when means were taken to exclude the entrance of fresh germs. Buffon lent the authority of his great name. These experiments were repeated by the AbbÉ Spallanzani, who showed by more careful methods the fallacy of the conclusions drawn. A passage in Sir B. Brodie[140] which alludes to these facts may be worth quoting:—

"Crites. Then am I to understand that you would reject altogether the hypothesis of equivocal generation, which supposes that under certain circumstances, even at the present time, particles of inorganic matter are brought together, and so united as to become endowed with organization and life?

"Eubulus. The question is one of great interest, and I will refer you to Ergates for an answer, knowing at the same time pretty well what that answer will be.

"Ergates. Of course Crites refers to the production of those minute creatures, known by the name of Infusoria, in the experiments of Walter Needham, and some others.

"It is true that in these experiments certain vegetable and animal infusions, after no very long period of time, when examined by the microscope, are found to contain a multitude of minute creatures, of various forms, exhibiting signs of spontaneous motion, and multiplying their species in the usual manner. Some of these are even of a complicated structure, much beyond what might, À priori, be expected as the result of the first attempt of inorganic matter to enter into the realms of organic life. The subject has been so frequently discussed, that I need not trouble you with the details of the arguments which have led the most eminent naturalists to believe that these creatures are not really spontaneously engendered, but that they are derived from minute ova which are present in the air, and which, when placed under circumstances favourable to their development, burst into life: in the same way as the egg undergoes those changes which convert its contents into a bird, when placed under the influence of the animal heat of the parent. But even if this view of the matter be not correct, the case is not really altered; for, after all, the Infusoria are never detected except in vegetable and animal infusions, which necessarily presuppose the existence of organic life."

But it is one thing to demolish the theory and statements of an antagonist, and another to erect a structure in their place. However completely Spallanzani had demonstrated the faults and untrustworthiness of Needham's results, he had not established the opposite doctrine, and to many it seemed that the very conditions under which his experimentation was conducted, were sufficient to prevent the development of life. But the work begun by Schulze and Schwann and ended by Pasteur apparently has supplied what was wanting in Spallanzani's researches. The evidence is thus admirably summed by Professor Huxley:[141]—

"It is demonstrable, that a fluid eminently fit for the development of the lowest forms of life, but which contains neither germs, nor any protein compound, gives rise to living things in great abundance, if it is exposed to ordinary air; while no such development takes place, if the air with which it is in contact is mechanically freed from the solid particles, which ordinarily float in it and which maybe made visible by appropriate means.

"It is demonstrable, that the great majority of these particles are destructible by heat, and that some of them are germs, or living particles, capable of giving rise to the same forms of life as those which appear when the fluid is exposed to unpurified air.

"It is demonstrable, that inoculation of the experimental fluid with a drop of liquid known to contain living particles, gives rise to the same phenomena as exposure to unpurified air.

"And it is further certain that these living particles are so minute that the assumption of their suspension in ordinary air presents not the slightest difficulty. On the contrary, considering their lightness and the wide diffusion of the organisms which produce them, it is impossible to conceive that they should not be suspended in the atmosphere in myriads."

The experimental means by which these facts are proved may be briefly stated:—

I. The air contains solid particles. Professor Tyndall has shown, as all who have read "Dust and Disease" know to their own discomfort, that the purest common air, when submitted to a beam of electric light, renders the track of that beam visible. Ergo, it must contain solid particles capable of scattering light.

II. These particles are mostly destructible by heat, or may be mechanically strained off. He has shown this by the fact that common air which has passed through a red-hot tube, or through a filter of cotton-wool, will no longer render the track of the electric beam visible.

III. Many of these particles are germs. Schulze and Schwann proved that when air is passed through red-hot tubes, then through a fluid which is capable of affording a nidus to the germs, if present, no development of life takes place. Similarly Schroeder established the same fact by using a strainer of cotton-wool. Further, Pasteur gave an additional proof by microscopical examination, as well as by a direct experiment. He passed air through gun-cotton, dissolved this in ether; and in the collodion germs were clearly recognizable. Also he plunged a piece of cotton-wool through which air had been strained into an experimental fluid. This fluid soon swarmed with forms of life.

IV. The experimental fluid may be inoculated by simple exposure to air as well as by any fluids known to contain living forms; e.g., if the fluid be placed in an open vessel, living forms soon make their appearance. Yet supposing the aperture of the vessel, instead of pointing vertically upwards, be turned obliquely or downwards, the fluid will remain clear for an indefinite time. Similarly a drop of an infusion containing living forms added to the experimental fluid soon causes it to swarm with life. The forms that appear are the same in either case.

V. The experimental fluid cannot give rise itself to these forms. It is known as Pasteur's solution, and consists of water, ammonium, tartrate, sugar, and yeast ash. Hence there is no organic matter in it. If proper care be taken, it may be kept for an indefinite time.

VI. The germs are so minute that in many cases, even when known to be present, they are scarcely visible to the highest microscopic powers. They must be universally diffused, as any organic infusion left exposed soon swarms with the forms to which they give rise.

Such an array of facts, proved experimentally over and over again, must convince the most tenacious sceptic, and he may feel inclined to agree with the opinion expressed in the following passage from Sir B. Brodie:[142]—

"Crites. Then, if I understand you rightly, you have arrived at these conclusions. First, that there was a time when this earth was not in a fit state for the maintenance of either animal or vegetable life. Secondly, that in its present condition there is no evidence of any law being in operation which would account for any living beings being called into existence except as the offspring of other living beings which previously existed; and that from these premises we cannot fail to arrive at this further conclusion, that the first introduction of life on earth must have been by some special act of the creative power, of which we have no experience at present.

"Eubulus. I suspect that this, really and truly, is all we actually know on the subject."

Notwithstanding this apparently irresistible amount of evidence, the question of abiogenesis has recently been revived by Dr. C. Bastian in a well-known book, "The Beginnings of Life." Dr. Bastian believes that he has demonstrated the origin of living organisms from organic infusions as well as from solutions of salts containing no organic matter: nay, even more wonderful facts than these which it is unnecessary to specify. His experiments are so numerous, his assertions and figures so clear and definite, and his reputation for previous good scientific work once so high, that the book has caused no small stir and discussion. Could Dr. Bastian's facts be only established, they would inevitably revolutionize the whole science of Biology.

However, the same fate which has overtaken his predecessors has befallen Dr. Bastian himself. A nearly universal verdict of "Not proven" has been returned: and not only is the accuracy of his experimentation denied, but even worse accusations have been brought. To enter into details of his experiments would require too much space, but it may not be uninteresting to detail some of the peculiarities and difficulties which attend on the investigation of such a subject as Spontaneous Generation.

At the very threshold of the inquiry stands a grand difficulty. Strange as it may seem, it is nevertheless true, that notwithstanding the many years, the immense labour bestowed by illustrious men on this subject, next to nothing is known of the relations existing between the lowest forms of life, animal or vegetable (especially the latter), as well as their germs, and varying physical and chemical conditions. Heat, light, cold and darkness, alkalies and acids with other chemical compounds, one would imagine to be not without their influence. Yet what this influence may be in a given case, none can tell. Enough is known in the way of a few detached facts to make it certain that these agents have very decided effects. It might be thought that any one who wished to attack the problem of Spontaneous Generation anew would first try to obtain some connected knowledge on this point. Indeed, until it has been cleared up somewhat, it is not very evident what good Experimentation on Heterogenesis can do. It is much as if a chemist were to throw a handful of stuff (what he knew not) into a crucible, and then expect a valuable result. It can scarcely be doubted that many of these lower organisms live and grow under conditions which À priori might seem incompatible with vitality.

It is clear also that the work of one experimenter ought to be such as may admit of repetition by another with the same result. Now no one who attempts the study of this subject of Spontaneous Generation, can fail to be struck with the immense mass of conflicting evidence. Some mischievous spirit appears to have purposely thrown confusion over the whole. Facts are alternately stated and denied. It is very hard to be sure of the right road, even for an experienced person.

Another point relates to the value of the evidence when obtained. It can scarcely be doubted that out of a given number of experiments undertaken to establish a case of Heterogenesis or Archebiosis, great value should be attached to the negative evidence afforded by those that disprove the supposed fact. A little consideration will show the reason. The precautions to be taken against the intrusion of germs are innumerable: a slight exposure to the air, accidental contact of an unheated rod or tube, or neglect of some other particulars may inoculate the experimental fluid. Hence even with care the chances are many in favour of some such accidental intrusion, and great caution should always be exercised before an affirmative result can be regarded as firmly established.

And further there is the experimentalist himself to be taken into account. The task requires an intimate knowledge of many minute organisms, and the different forms they assume; an acquaintance, wide and accurate, with various experimental methods; a clear view of the end and the various precautions required to attain that end; a mind ready to contrive, prone to doubt and to hesitate, rather than to be convinced. Men vary much in the amount of what is scientifically termed their personal equation, and one difficulty in accepting the results of a piece of work is the danger of misplaced confidence.

As was said before, Dr. Bastian's attempt to demonstrate the reality of Spontaneous Generation has been a failure. His experiments have been repeated, and failed to give the like results in the hands of competent men. Witness the following quotation from a careful review of his book in the Microscopical Journal.[143] It relates to the now celebrated cheese and turnip solution.

"Nevertheless in consequence of the interest which Dr. Bastian's work has excited, we have made the experiment (and that repeatedly) as directed by him. This is not the occasion on which to give the details of the experiments in question. It will, however, perhaps add some value to the remarks which it has been our duty to make when we state that, carefully following Dr. Bastian's directions, using at the same time great care as to cleanliness and due boiling, we have obtained results which in every single instance, out of more than forty tubes closed on four separate occasions, simply contradict Dr. Bastian. We believe, then, that Dr. Bastian's last dogma in archebiosis,—his belief in turnip solution with a fragment of cheese—must be placed in the same category as his colloidal urea, his spontaneously generated bog-moss, his fungi born in crystals, his unmistakable processes of heterogenesis, and his 'watching' and 'experimentation' in general."

The reviewer proceeds to question whether Dr. Bastian has even the knowledge requisite for so delicate an investigation. It would be supposed that he was intimately acquainted with various microscopical structures; but we read,[144] "Professor Huxley gives a contribution towards the determination of the personal value in Dr. Bastian's researches. 'He (Dr. Bastian) will recollect that he wrote to me asking permission to bring for my examination certain preparations of organic structures, which he declared he had clear and positive evidence to prove to have been developed in his closed and digested tubes. Dr. Bastian will remember that when the first of these wonderful specimens was put under my microscope I told him at once that it was nothing but a fragment of the leaf of the common bog-moss (Sphagnum), and he will recollect that I had to fetch Schacht's book "Die Pflanzenzelle" and show him a figure which fitted very well with what we had under the microscope before I could get him to listen to my suggestion, and that only actual comparison with Sphagnum, after he had left my house, forced him to admit the astounding blunder which he had made.'

"Of these three pieces of evidence, the last is the most important, for, whilst it places us on our guard with regard to Dr. Bastian's accuracy generally, it at the same time furnishes a key to the explanation of a number of his experiments in which, according to that precipitate discoverer, 'organisms' were found on opening tubes containing infusions which had been boiled and sealed hermetically."

How then are we to sum up the case? for or against Dr. Bastian? Can any thoughtful person admit the conclusions of one apparently so unfit for his task? The best answer is in the words of his Reviewer.[145]

"Briefly it is to be said that the chapters in this book on heterogenesis, contain a reckless attempt to revolutionize biological doctrine without a single demonstration of fact to justify it, even if it be admitted that the observations and drawings cited are accurate. Revolution in science as in politics can only be justified by success—a wanton attempt in either sphere must deserve the severest condemnation. Dr. Bastian by his exhibition of himself in dealing with heterogenesis writes himself down as incapable—as inadmissible in the character of a witness in a scientific investigation. The Sphagnum delusion is now explained, for it becomes evident that we have to deal with an individual with whom such delusions are no rare exceptions.

"We should indeed be sorry to believe that Dr. Bastian is himself aware of the injury which he is doing to the cause of science, by promulgating these rash assertions as to the beginnings and changes of living things; we altogether decline to entertain the notion that he is himself conscious of the baselessness and flimsy character of his startling discoveries, and is nevertheless willing at the expense of injury to the cause of intellectual progress, to obtain for himself a temporary notoriety. On the contrary, we believe that he is under the influence of a delusion, similar to those which from time to time obtain notoriety in the case of 'spiritualists,' 'circle-squarers,' and such victims of belief in the marvellous. The origin and mode of growth of such delusions form a very interesting psychological study, and it is only when we have obtained a proper conception of Dr. Bastian as an abnormal psychological phenomenon that we can hope rightly to appreciate the whole of the statements made in his book.

"Delusion and self-deception are much commoner than the world is generally accustomed to consider them. In a very well-known and often quoted remark we have a recognition of the wide-spread occurrence of delusions and an attempt to explain their origin; the saying to which we allude is, 'The wish was father to the thought.' There cannot be the least doubt that men are unconsciously hindered or misdirected in their estimate of fact by previously formed desires. Such a desire acts on the mind like the suggestion of the mesmerist to an individual who has allowed himself to be brought into the hypnotic condition. In this way many misconceptions and strange contradictions of testimony are to be explained."

The importance of the subject is sufficient apology for so long a quotation. But our quotations allow us to draw one conclusion; that so far as Spontaneous Generation is concerned human knowledge is exactly in statu quo. Up to this time there is no evidence, worth consideration, that establishes a single good case of heterogenesis; nay, rather all evidence points to the conclusion that Protoplasm is invariably derived from pre-existing Protoplasm, at least under existing conditions. Then too there is no fact known which enables us to say how Protoplasm arose in the first instance. On this point we are in the darkness of complete scientific ignorance. The whole discussion may be well closed by a striking passage from Professor Huxley's before quoted address.[146]

"But though I cannot express this conviction of mine too strongly, I must carefully guard myself against the supposition that I intend to suggest that no such thing as abiogenesis ever has taken place in the past, or ever will take place in the future. With organic chemistry, molecular physics, and physiology yet in their infancy, and every day making prodigious strides, I think it would be the height of presumption for any man to say that the conditions under which matter assumes the properties we call 'vital' may not, some day, be artificially brought together. All I feel justified in affirming is, that I see no reason for believing that the feat has been performed yet.

"And, looking back through the prodigious vista of the past, I find no record of the commencement of life, and therefore I am devoid of any means of forming a definite conclusion as to the conditions of its appearance. Belief, in the scientific sense of the word, is a serious matter, and needs strong foundations. To say, therefore, in the admitted absence of evidence, that I have any belief as to the mode in which the existing forms of life have originated, would be using words in a wrong sense. But expectation is permissible where belief is not; and if it were given me to look beyond the abyss of geologically recorded time to the still more remote period when the earth was passing through physical and chemical conditions, which it can no more see again than a man can recal his infancy, I should expect to be a witness of the evolution of living protoplasm from not living matter. I should expect to see it appear under forms of great simplicity, endowed, like existing Fungi, with the power of determining the formation of new protoplasm from such matters as ammonium carbonates, oxalates and tartrates, alkaline and earthy phosphates, and water, without the aid of light. That is the expectation to which analogical reasoning leads me; but I beg you once more to recollect that I have no right to call my opinion anything but an act of philosophical faith."

Obviously, as Professor Huxley points out, between philosophical faith and philosophical knowledge there is a chasm to be bridged over. But should the hypothesis ever be verified, it would make no difference to the reasonings of the Natural Theologian—since the concurrence of conditions necessary for the production of the phÆnomenon would manifestly ensue upon some definite though recondite law, at present beyond our ken.

I.—ON MATERIALISM.

The ambiguities attaching to this term were mentioned in a foot-note on our very first page. Since that note was written, the tendency of scientific men has been to increase the number of hypotheses respecting the nature and laws of the material world, and by consequence to multiply the shades of signification conveyed by the word Materialism.

So long as such distinctions are confined to the territory of pure science, whether that of the Physicist or of the Biologist, they do not in themselves affect the religious (or ethico-religious) position of any thinker; and need not, therefore, occasion any trouble to the Natural Theologian. But it is worth while to observe how rashly, on account of some such scientific discussion, a writer is said to be a Materialist or no Materialist, by persons who (understanding little or nothing of science themselves) drag the unhappy author outside the pale of his own domain, and affix to him some religious or irreligious epithet which he has neither desired nor deserved.

The philosophic idealist often escapes; he is pronounced "no Materialist," because he doubts the substantive existence of Matter, yet he may and often does hold that the ideal thing he calls his soul, has a life inextricably bound up with that other ideal thing he calls his body, and must perish with it, never to live again.

We may add the useful remark that so far as Ethico-religious Materialism is concerned it is much more easily tested by the Doctrine of Soul than the Doctrine of Body. For example, consistent Materializers will always maintain that the reasoning human soul differs from the animal soul of brutes, not in quality, but in quantity. Dr. L. BÜchner (sometimes called a "crass Materialist") makes this assertion repeatedly, and explains it by adding—"Man has no absolute advantage above the animal; his mental superiority being merely relative. There is not one intellectual faculty which belongs to man exclusively; his superiority is merely the result of the greater intensity, and the proper combination, of his capacities. The enlarged human faculties are, as we have already seen, the natural and necessary result of the higher and more perfect development of his material organ of thought."[147]

Turning to a more refined species of Materialism, we find a similar value always placed on the dogma that whatever differences exist between man and brute, they amount to a distinction not of kind, but only of degree. The consequences hence deduced are of the very greatest importance, and they run much as follows. No one will venture to assert that the power of what has been hastily called Volition is, or can be, an endowment of mere animal nature. We do not lay upon the tiger (as we do popularly lay upon the tyrant) a moral responsibility on account of his savage appetites. Their indulgence does not flow from any reasoning faculty of Will. His cruelty is the movement of automatic instincts, governed by laws like those which rule over the inanimate world; more complicated probably, but no-ways different in their essence. The fall of a stone, and the spring of a tiger, are both consequences of determining laws inherent in their several modes of existence, and moving both as machinery is moved by a steam engine. Now, a difference in degree only, argues no difference in those essential laws which rule equally the greater and the less. The giant and the dwarf are alike subject to the same laws of body and mind; and man is (as we have seen) but a mentally taller brute. The tyrant, therefore, resembles the tiger; the human animal is moved as the other animals are moved, and, like them, is subject to the determining law, just as the lifeless world is so subjected. In plain words, then, this human machine is moved like other machines. What we call Reason, spontaneity, volition, are, when analysed, no exceptions to the law-governed mechanism of the world we live in. Our motives make us, not we our motives. The faculty we exercise under the name of Choice, is really neither more nor less than a determined, unalterable, impulsion; the result of a mechanical law. And this law has formed and now constitutes the Universe.[148]

Refined Materialism proceeds to ask in the next place, what more do we know of Matter than its rigid undeviating reign of Law?—The great Globe itself obeys the same Laws as the falling stone: they pervade and direct the mechanism of the starry heavens. Life does not exempt either vegetable or animal from the same rule of law. We have just seen that Mankind is not so made to differ, as to permit a plea of exemption from the same empire. Ascend from Protoplasm to the highest human intelligence,—one heritage devolves through brute to man. The same mechanical law accounts for the "Psychogeny" of both. Mechanical Law, in its ramifications, is (as has been said) all we really know of Matter. It now turns out that all Mind has been developed by this same ever-ramifying law; may be analyzed back into its elements; is most truly expressed by its symbols; and can never be exempted from its determinations. Mind, therefore, and Matter are resolvable into this sole unity—the Law of ultimate mechanical movement and impulsion.

We have called this system a refined Materialism; but another name for one of its most influential shapes has appeared and made considerable progress, particularly on the continent of Europe. This name is Monism; and is intended to declare that every other belief must be at best a Dualism.[149]

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What then is the true human meaning of this Monistic creed? Our souls (if we have souls), possess the image, not of Absolute Being and Personality, but of abstract Fate, and rayless, eyeless Necessity. We live machines; those supposed moralities we commonly miscall our Volitions, spring out from beneath the moving wheels. We die, as machines go to pieces when the wheels get out of gear; and no other account need be asked of the broken clock-work. Here lies a man, close beside him moulders a dog. They are now what they always were,—copartners in the same inexorable destiny.

Inexorable:—yes; for, standing beside these two graves, we see where our higher Philosophy and our religious hopes alike lie buried. What is Mechanical Law to us? The antithesis of Providence; therefore, with the edict which proclaims its sway, all our prayers are ended. And what is Man, compared with the equal dog who bears him company? One event befals them both; yet we may ask whether before or after that one event, Man has or can have any preeminence above the beast? Let him be spoken of as statesman, warrior, orator, poet, painter, sculptor, musician; none of these epithets convey any truth. He may possibly be a speaking, striking, weaving, drawing, colouring, sound-producing machine. But the Designer of the Universe and the human artist have disappeared together. What we took for the author of immortal works, an original genius, an inspired hero of his kind, "a man and a leader of men," was a piece of wheel-work driven by unalterable law. There was the same "must be" to him as to his dog. There never was and never could have been, nor yet ever will be any essential difference; two spirits are gone downwards to the earth.

Man has not even the sad preeminence of Sin. Where can he find or make room for wrong-doing, when impelling Mechanism determines all? And where Sin is not, Repentance cannot come.

Hope is shut out along with Remorse and its unmeaning pains. Man has no ladder of ascent left him; and why should he wish to climb? If there were such a ladder as Jacob dreamed, its base must rest on lifeless Law, and at its summit there would only be this same Law, enthroned and Deified.

Thus, when the primÆval Nebula arose in Space (how or why it arose is not told us), its vapoury Law contained all that is, and all that can be:—Plato and Shakespeare, Moses and St. John glimmered in its tremulous twilight. Worlds inanimate and animate scintillated from its fires. What we call Heaven and Earth are its dumb children, its law-determined Evolutions. Thou and I, O reader, have harboured strange fancies;—let them go;—we are but parts of the Whole; and the Whole is a mechanical Unity. Now that we find ourselves disabused and illuminated, our great difficulty may perhaps be to fall down, Strauss-like, and worship this Universum. Can such worship, or such an object of worship, bless and satisfy our high aspiring race? Eyes that have watched for Righteousness, hearts that have yearned after it, let the answer come from you! In this answer lives or dies the twofold belief of the Natural Theologian, the twofold hope resulting to Mankind. The belief, that is to say, in a personal Immortality, the belief in a personal God.

It may now seem plain that the readiest test of moral or religious Materialism is its doctrine, not of Body but of Soul. There is no charm in such a word as Matter to differentiate the character of a philosophy. Looking at the material world, any thinker may be a Natural Realist or a Pure Idealist; yet being either or neither, he may materialize, or the reverse, so far as Morals and Religion are concerned. The simple question ought rather to be; Is man mechanically governed by the Law which rules the world of Abiology (the lifeless inorganic world), or is he, can he become, a Law unto himself?[150]

It would be unfair to omit impressing upon the reader's mind that physical science per se is by no means answerable for ethico-religious Materialism. As a question of fact, it does not seem established that students of Nature, whether physicists or biologists, have, as such, been the chief offenders. On the contrary, for every single instance of the kind, it seems quite probable that at least two metaphysical writers might be found guilty. Obviously, some such large proportion may reasonably be expected, when we consider that Determinism, (the word Mill and others prefer to Necessity), is a theory involving a certain kind of metaphysics.

But the really largest crop of materializers arises from a Debateable Land. There is a hybrid class of "thinkers," concerning whom the best physical-science authorities allege that "such nebulous rascals are mere metaphysicians," while metaphysical speculators, pure and simple, feel quite sure that "though under a cloud, the gentlemen must be Physicists."[151]

So far as Biology[152] is concerned, let the reader compare Mr. Herbert Spencer's latest utterances already referred to, (in Essays, Vol. III. sub. fin., especially pp. 249-50), with the following passages from Mr. Huxley. "I suppose if there be an 'iron' law, it is that of gravitation; and if there be a physical necessity, it is that a stone, unsupported, must fall to the ground. But what is all we really know and can know about the latter phenomenon? Simply, that, in all human experience, stones have fallen to the ground under these conditions; that we have not the smallest reason for believing that any stone so circumstanced will not fall to the ground; and that we have, on the contrary, every reason to believe that it will so fall. It is very convenient to indicate that all the conditions of belief have been fulfilled in this case, by calling the statement that unsupported stones will fall to the ground, 'a law of nature.' But when, as commonly happens, we change will into must, we introduce an idea of necessity which most assuredly does not lie in the observed facts, and has no warranty that I can discover elsewhere. For my part, I utterly repudiate and anathematize the intruder. Fact I know; and Law I know; but what is this Necessity, save an empty shadow of my own mind's throwing? But if it is certain that we can have no knowledge of the nature of either matter or spirit, and that the notion of necessity is something illegitimately thrust into the perfectly legitimate conception of law, the materialistic position that there is nothing in the world but matter, force, and necessity, is as utterly devoid of justification as the most baseless of theological dogmas." ("On the Physical Basis of Life," Lay Sermons, pp. 157-8.)

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And again (pp. 159-60):—

"We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered it. To do this effectually it is necessary to be fully possessed of only two beliefs: the first, that the order of nature is ascertainable by our faculties to an extent which is practically unlimited; the second, that our volition counts for something as a condition of the course of events.

"Each of these beliefs can be verified experimentally, as often as we like to try. Each, therefore, stands upon the strongest foundation upon which any belief can rest, and forms one of our highest truths. If we find that the ascertainment of the order of nature is facilitated by using one terminology, or one set of symbols, rather than another, it is our clear duty to use the former; and no harm can accrue, so long as we bear in mind, that we are dealing merely with terms and symbols."

Symbols, are to the true philosopher like old-fashioned copper "tokens," privately impressed with letters and devices, but lacking the Royal image and superscription. They are, as Spencer and Huxley agree, "unknown quantities;"—relativities not entities. They are employable enough where they suit,[153] provided Mr. Huxley's caveat (p. 161) is steadily kept in mind. "The errors of systematic materialism may paralyze the energies and destroy the beauty of a life."

The reader may be pleased to put the subject of Materialism before himself in a compendious shape as follows:—If the question asked be, "What is Matter?" the answer appears little likely to be of moment to morals or Natural Theology, except so far as human ignorance is made a plea for Scepticism. But, if it is inquired, "whether the Mechanical Laws of Matter are the laws of Universal Nature, including human nature? the issue becomes most momentous. The reply made, answers another question of the deepest interest:—"Are there any conditions under which a Science of Natural Theology is possible?" If Mechanism be the law of the Universe, Natural Theology is plainly impossible.

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