[90] Hamilton's Discussions, vol. 1. Art. 1.

[91] Very few people have ever sate down and sturdily endeavoured to realize before their mind's eye, the distinct idea of any other mind separate from themselves and independently subsistent. A short trial will shew the difficulty, perhaps impossibility of the proposed realization.

Any one who tries and fails, may be glad to learn that eminent metaphysicians have retreated in despair from the task of justifying, by argument, our belief in any minds other than our own. To common sense, it may seem a natural inquiry whether this metaphysical failure holds morally, in foro conscientiÆ, as a valid excuse for most men's neglect of other men's rights and interests? If not, it would appear that morality is a more delicate test of certainty, than some sorts of metaphysics.

[t] For the information of some readers, and the entertainment of others, a few of the less popularized theories respecting Self-ness or Personal Identity are thrown into Additional Note A.

[u] Nothing is more common in conversation than for a talker to affirm that such and such a position must be untrue "because it is inconceivable." The assertor ought in return to be asked one or two questions, e.g., "Do you mean inconceivable to yourself or to the generality of Mankind?" If the latter, "Is the contradictory also inconceivable?" Again, "Do you mean by the word inconceivable, unthinkable or unimaginable?" Few people clearly consider this last distinction. Further, "If unthinkable, is it absolutely so, or only very difficult to think?" And it seems likewise important to deliberate whether any position ought to be pronounced absolutely unthinkable, unless the human mind lies under a stern necessity of thinking and accepting its contradictory.

[92] "Conceivable" and other like expressions are always relative to conceiving minds; and what appears either conceivable or inconceivable to one mind, may be the contrary to another. A painter not only conceives,—but draws a Centaur, and places him feeding on a wide plain or sloping hill side. But, can the Physiologist conceive such a monstrosity? The solution is easy; the painter thinks of his figure, the physiologist of the structure; and this example furnishes a good caution as to the use of similar words.

From words we may pass to ideas. Take any conception involving the condition of Time or Space,—(those two optical tubes of our mind's perceiving eye),—and place it before the understanding; first as a Finite and next as an Infinite. The result is a conflict of arguments, ending in a contradiction of all possibility that either way the conception can be true. Any one moderately acquainted with Kant's best-known work, is aware that, by thus treating the world's existence, he raises overwhelming difficulties against its being either limited or unlimited in extent;—eternal or having a commencement in duration;—(p. 338. Ed. Rosenkranz) yet, the world does exist in fact. Kant goes on to subject other cosmological ideas to the same enigmatical reasoning, with the same consequences.

Some readers of purely modern science, may illustrate this question of the "conceivable" by what has been written on that extraordinary riddle, the "four dimensions of space." They will see opinions pro and con in an article by Professor Sylvester in Nature vol. 1. A note (p. 238) contains one conclusion of the Professor's, interesting as his answer to a question asked by us a few paragraphs back. He says, "If an Aristotle, or Descartes, or Kant assures me that he recognises God in the conscience, I accuse my own blindness if I fail to see with him.... I acknowledge two separate sources of authority,—the collective sense of mankind, and the illumination of privileged intellects." Plato then may have really seen more than Lucretius—Coleridge more than Comte or LittrÉ.

[v] The advantages and defects of the optical structure of our human eyes have been carefully estimated by Helmholtz. He has also discussed the difficulties attending eyesight considered as a sensation and perception. Extracts from his clear yet popular Lectures are given in Additional Note B.

[93] Proceedings of the Royal Institution. V. 456.

[94] All theories of light require these immense numbers. Sir J. Herschel says there is no "mode of conceiving the subject which does not call upon us to admit the exertion of mechanical forces which may well be termed infinite." The numeration in the text is a rough and ready shape of statement at once intelligible. But it is interesting to view the subject more exactly.—Light travels in one second 192,000 miles. Each mile contains 63,360 inches, and in each inch are 39,000 waves of red light, calculated at their mean length. Now, multiply these three sets of figures together, and we get a rate of 474,439,680,000,000 red waves per second. The mean length of a violet wave is the 1/57500th part of an inch; and by a like multiplication we find a product of 699,494,400,000,000 of violet light-strokes thrown upon the retina in each second. The phrase "millions of millions" is used in the text, because few people realize the idea of any arithmetical whole beyond a million.

[95] "What we hear" writes Professor Max MÜller "when listening to a chorus or a symphony is a commotion of elastic air, of which the wildest sea would give a very inadequate image. The lowest tone which the ear perceives is due to about 30 vibrations in one second, the highest to about 4,000. Consider then what happens in a Presto when thousands of voices and instruments are simultaneously producing waves of air, each wave crossing the other, not only like the surface waves of the water, but like spherical bodies, and, as it would seem, without any perceptible disturbance; consider that each tone is accompanied by secondary tones, that each instrument has its peculiar timbre, due to secondary vibrations; and, lastly, let us remember that all this cross-fire of waves, all this whirlpool of sound, is moderated by laws which determine what we call harmony, and by certain traditions or habits which determine what we call melody—both these elements being absent in the songs of birds—that all this must be reflected like a microscopic photograph on the two small organs of hearing, and there excite not only perception, but perception followed by a new feeling even more mysterious, which we call either pleasure or pain; and it will be clear that we are surrounded on all sides by miracles transcending all we are accustomed to call miraculous, and yet disclosing to the genius of an Euler or a Newton laws which admit of the most minute mathematical determination." Science of Language, Second Series, p. 115.

[96] There is a much more scientific mode of trying this experiment. A description of the instrument (Kaleidophone), and cuts of the figures produced, may be seen in Tyndall on Sound, pp. 132. seq.

[97] There is reason for believing that a large proportion of animal eyes see much as ours do when in a normal state. Colour blindness is frequent in Man and occurs between red and green, yet a bull distinguishes the two like a healthy, human being. He is allured by the sight of a green field, and lashes himself into fury when a red rag is waved before him.

The eyes of insects are very far removed in structure from ours. A butterfly's compound eye contains 17,000 tubes, that of the Mordella beetle 25,000. Their perception of colours appears vivid and distinct. They resemble birds, reptiles, and other creatures in choosing for their lairs and resting-places objects coloured like themselves. It is not difficult to mount one of these compound eyes, so as to look through it by aid of a lens placed in focus. Leeuwenhoeck looked through the eye of a dragon fly (made up of 12,544 tubes), "and viewed the steeple of a church which was 299 feet high, and 750 feet from the place where he stood. He could plainly see the steeple, though not apparently larger than the point of a fine needle. He also viewed a house in the same manner, and could discern the front, distinguish the doors and windows, and perceive whether they were open or shut." See Insect Miscellanies, p. 129.

[98] Two points connected with colour admit of being easily experimented on, and deserve from their interest to be made the subjects of repeated observations.

The first has relation to the question of primary colours;—are they alike in man and in all the lower animals?—In birds and reptiles there are anatomical reasons for believing the primaries to be red, yellow, and blue. But are they the same in our race?—may they not more probably be red, green, and violet? In this case yellow is the transition from red to green, blue from green to violet. As colour blindness consists in an insensibility to red, and as the outer circle of the field of vision is feeble in its reds, the number of experiments which might be suggested is evidently considerable.

Let a person place two threads respectively red and green near the bridge of the nose, so as to be seen by the inner angle of the pupil only. If dexterously moved, both seem green;—if not, both will in time become black. Where the want of sensitive appreciation of red is great, the same result follows in every part of the field of sight. Thus reverend gentlemen in former times have been induced to wear scarlet hose under the impression that they had put on black silk; and in these railroad days many persons find themselves unable to distinguish between the safety and the danger signal lights. It seems strange indeed that any scientific advisers of railway Boards should have recommended for use the two colours, above all others, most likely to get confounded.

The theory which supposes red, green, and violet to be Man's three primary colours is the hypothesis of our great countryman Dr. Thomas Young, and deserves much more consideration than was for a long time awarded it. If we may judge of his theory by his appreciation of pictures it must have been excellent;—the present writer saw with admiration in 1845 the grand series of Reynolds' portraits which Dr. Young had left behind him.

The second topic of interest is the inquiry into the number and tone of subjective colours. A perfect theory of colour ought, of course, to embrace all possible human sensations of the kind. Now many persons are able to see in dreams a rich amber light far softer and more pure than any tint ever beheld by the Eye. It generally appears to irradiate Space, and silvery figures, most often the celestial orbs, float within it. A still more beautiful production of reflex energy exerted after tranquil rest is the blending of delicate green with a hyacinthine hue quite strange to this world, and indescribably lovely in its tender shadings off. By means of this subjective activity the experiments of Goethe and J. MÜller may be varied almost ad libitum. The easiest plan is on first waking to keep the eyelids steadily closed, and watch for the unbidden rise of tints. Persons of strong pictorial and poetic powers can, after some practice, control their appearance and succession; and much diversity may be produced by slightly separating the fringe of eyelashes and looking between the loosely pressed fingers. The remarkable point in these and similar experiments seems to be that we are thus enabled to gaze upon beauties more marvellous than the outward eye ever beheld—yet we see them.

Another and a painful source of knowledge on this subject consists in registering the visual impressions of persons bodily or mentally diseased. The difference between these and the normal impressions of healthy people would seem to arise from reflex action, the disordered sensory or mind reacting upon the optic apparatus; or, as it may be said, the centre of our being is through these aberrations made manifest in its control of the circumference.

Now, it will be obvious to any reflective person how very important all information we can acquire respecting this central empire over the impressions of our sense-nerves may become when we try to estimate the conditions of human knowledge. If it be true that the Mind imposes laws of activity on the nervous system even when receiving impressions from it, then the necessity we are under of thinking in accordance with certain inly imposed laws receives a most striking illustration. And the inference from it carries an a fortiori probability since our thoughts lie nearer to our mental centre than any of our sense-impressions.

[99] Nerves of common feeling are acutely sensitive when divided, and the patient animal under a Majendie or a dentist utters a sharp shriek. The case is different with motor nerves, with those of the sympathetic system, and with (what is more to our purpose) nerves of sensation. It seems clear that mechanical injuries, or even touches, excite them in the direction of their own special functions. Auditory nerves feel a shock as a sound,—optic nerves receive it as a sudden and brilliant light. We are doubly assured from these effects of the true functions belonging to the several sets of nerves. Disease and injury are great discoverers of what ought to be healthy susceptibilities. In such cases, however, they prove also something more agreeable to think upon. They prove that suffering is confined within definite limits, and that economy of pain forms part of the universal design, for the sensitive animal as well as the sensitive man. If all our nerves shrank equally with equal tenderness, life would be a history of protracted agony. Yet one might have expected, prim facie, that a fibre which telegraphs shapes and colours with their blendings, would eloquently tell the story of its own occasional anguish. And our whole nervous framework might have been conceived as an instrument of torture. It has not been so constituted.

Per contra, the nerves of common feeling assert their own vocation.—"A brazen canstick turned" sets the teeth on edge, and troubles the skin with horripilation. Believers in ghosts—and also disbelievers—are aware that some sights

For extended information on this subject compare Additional Note C.

[100] Aristotle so described it before Mr. Bain and other modern writers, "t? ??? ??at?? ?st? ???a," De Anima II. 7. 1. As Kampe carefully observes, "so ist die Farbe (nicht die gefÄrbten KÖrper) das EigenthÜmliche des Gesichtssinns." See also his note, Erkenntnisstheorie des Aristoteles, p. 88.

[w] Compare Helmholtz on "The Sensation of Sight," Lectures, pp. 256, 7, and 259.

"We have already seen enough to answer the question whether it is possible to maintain the natural and innate conviction that the quality of our sensations, and especially our sensations of sight, give us a true impression of corresponding qualities in the outer world. It is clear that they do not. The question was really decided by Johannes MÜller's deduction from well ascertained facts of the law of specific nervous energy. Whether the rays of the sun appear to us as colour, or as warmth, does not at all depend upon their own properties, but simply upon whether they excite the fibres of the optic nerve, or those of the skin. Pressure upon the eyeball, a feeble current of electricity passed through it, a narcotic drug carried to the retina by the blood, are capable of exciting the sensation of light just as well as the sunbeams. The most complete difference offered by our several sensations, that namely between those of sight, of hearing, of taste, of smell, and of touch—this deepest of all distinctions, so deep that it is impossible to draw any comparison of likeness, or unlikeness, between the sensations of colour and of musical tones—does not, as we now see, at all depend upon the nature of the external object, but solely upon the central connections of the nerves which are affected.... But not only uneducated persons, who are accustomed to trust blindly to their senses, even the educated, who know that their senses may be deceived, are inclined to demur to so complete a want of any closer correspondence in kind between actual objects and the sensations they produce than the law I have just expounded. For instance, natural philosophers long hesitated to admit the identity of the rays of light and of heat, and exhausted all possible means of escaping a conclusion which seemed to contradict the evidence of their senses.

"Another example is that of Goethe, as I have endeavoured to show elsewhere. He was led to contradict Newton's theory of colours, because he could not persuade himself that white, which appears to our sensation as the purest manifestation of the brightest light, could be composed of darker colours. It was Newton's discovery of the composition of light that was the first germ of the modern doctrine of the true functions of the senses; and in the writings of his contemporary, Locke, were correctly laid down the most important principles on which the right interpretation of sensible qualities depends. But, however clearly we may feel that here lies the difficulty for a large number of people, I have never found the opposite conviction of certainty derived from the senses so distinctly expressed that it is possible to lay hold of the point of error: and the reason seems to me to lie in the fact that beneath the popular notions on the subject lie other and more fundamentally erroneous conceptions."

[101] Is there, asks Idealistic Scepticism, any outside world at all?

We have all of us always believed in the veritable existence of this outside world from our childhood. So have we believed always in our own real and continued personal existence. The unyielding objectivities concerning which our senses inform us—the identical Self which receives their information—are entities no man ordinarily thinks of calling in question.

Let any one sit down and try to imagine himself a human animal let loose upon life without a firm belief in either of these two primary convictions. What could life be to him? to his descendants? to the world of men if similarly unbelieving? Yet what are the conditions or evidences of veracity upon which his and his fellows' present convictions must necessarily repose? Can he and others help believing them true? and why?—This "why" is a safe answer to the most plausible as well as the most refined objection against such primary beliefs as those premised by Natural Theology.

[102] Cheselden's case is reported in the Philosophical Transactions for 1728, and also in his Anatomy. Respecting the point above quoted he is confirmed by Mr. Nunneley, "On the Organs of Vision," 1858.

[103] See Dr. Carpenter's Principles of Human Physiology. Ed. 7. p. 713. § 635.

[x] The following quaint apology for our senses at the expense of our understanding may be new to the majority of my readers:—

"We have seen two notorious instances of sensitive deception, which justifie the charge of Petron. Arbiter.

And yet to speak properly, and to do our senses right, simply they are not deceived, but only administer an occasion to our forward understandings to deceive themselves: and so though they are some way accessory to our delusion; yet the more principal faculties are the Capital offenders. Thus if the Senses represent the Earth as fixt and immoveable; they give us the truth of their Sentiments: To sense it is so, and it would be deceit to present it otherwise. For (as we have shewn) though it do move in itself; it rests to us, who are carry'd with it.... But if hence our Understandings falsely deduct, that there is the same quality in the external impressor; 'tis, it is criminal, our sense is innocent. When the Ear tingles, we really hear a sound: If we judge it without us, it's the fallacy of our Judgments. The apparitions of our frighted Phancies are real sensibles: But if we translate them without the compass of our Brains, and apprehend them as external objects; it's the unwary rashness of our Understanding deludes us. And if our disaffected Palates resent nought but bitterness from our choicest viands, we truly tast the unpleasing quality, though falsely conceive it in that, which is no more then the occasion of its production. If any find fault with the novelty of the notion; the learned St. Austin stands ready to confute the charge: and they who revere Antiquity, will derive satisfaction from so venerable a suffrage. He tells us, Si quis remum frangi in aqu opinatur, et, cum aufertur,integrari; non malum habet internuncium, sed malus est Judex. And onward to this purpose, The sense could not otherwise perceive it in the water, neither ought it: For since the Water is one thing, and the Air another; 'tis requisite and necessary, that the sense should be as different as the medium: Wherefore the Eye sees aright; if there be a mistake, 'tis the Judgement's the Deceiver. Elsewhere he saith, that our Eyes misinform us not, but faithfully transmit their resentment to the mind. And against the Scepticks, That it's a piece of injustice to complain of our senses, and to exact from them an account, which is beyond the sphear of their notice: and resolutely determines, Quicquid possunt videre oculi, verum vident. So that what we have said of the senses deceptions, is rigidly to be charg'd only on our careless Understandings, misleading us through the ill management of sensible informations." Glanvill, Vanity of Dogmatizing. Chap. x. First Ed. p. 91, seq.

The reader may like to consider how far Glanvill's apology for the senses is removed from the following propositions laid down by a recent writer just quoted who thus defends while he limits the veracity of sense-impressions:—

"What we directly apprehend," writes Professor Helmholtz, "is not the immediate action of the external exciting cause upon the ends of our nerves, but only the changed condition of the nervous fibres which we call the state of excitation or functional activity." And further on:—"The simple rule for all illusions of sight is this: we always believe that we see such objects as would, under conditions of normal vision, produce the retinal image of which we are actually conscious. If these images are such as could not be produced by any normal kind of observation, we judge of them according to their nearest resemblance; and in forming this judgment, we more easily neglect the parts of sensation which are imperfectly than those which are perfectly apprehended. When more than one interpretation is possible, we usually waver involuntarily between them; but it is possible to end this uncertainty by bringing the idea of any of the possible interpretations we choose as vividly as possible before the mind by a conscious effort of the will." Helmholtz on The Recent Progress of the Theory of Vision. pp. 230, 31 and p. 307.

[104] Two acute reasoners, who will be alternately acquitted of madness by contending schools of thought, have arrived at conclusions very favourable to the sanity of idealizing men. In his first lecture at the Royal Institution, Professor Masson spoke in the following terms of Hume and Fichte. "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."—Recent British Philosophy, p. 66. The reader will observe that to raise the question fully, we have spoken of the special form of Idealism to which Mr. Mill gives the first place in his description, (Examination of Hamilton's Philosophy, p. 8.) "According to one of the forms, the sensations which, in common parlance, we are said to receive from objects, are not only all that we can possibly know of the objects, but are all that we have any ground for believing to exist.——Those who hold this opinion are said to doubt or deny the existence of matter. They are sometimes called by the name Idealists, sometimes by that of Sceptics, according to the other opinions which they hold. They include the followers of Berkeley and those of Hume. Among recent thinkers, the acute and accomplished Professor Ferrier, though by a circuitous path, and expressing himself in a very different phraseology, seems to have arrived at essentially the same point of view. These philosophers maintain the Relativity of our knowledge in the most extreme form in which the doctrine can be understood, since they contend, not merely that all we can possibly know of anything is the manner in which it affects the human faculties, but that there is nothing else to be known; that affections of human or of some other minds are all that we can know to exist."

Mr. Mill's own position will be found in his 11th Chapter. After defining Matter to be a "Permanent Possibility of Sensation," (p. 227) and explaining his definition, he writes in a note (p. 232), the following decisive sentences: "My able American critic, Dr. H. B. Smith, contends through several pages that these facts afford no proofs that objects are external to us. I never pretended that they do. I am accounting for our conceiving, or representing to ourselves, the Permanent Possibilities as real objects external to us. I do not believe that the real externality to us of anything, except other minds, is capable of proof."

Mr. O'Hanlon's pamphlet entitled "A Criticism of John Stuart Mill's Pure Idealism; and an attempt to shew that, if logically carried out, it is Pure Nihilism," seems less known than it deserves to be. Mr. Mill noticed and answered it in his 3rd Edition—chiefly among the criticisms commencing p. 244.——Mr. O'Hanlon's early decease has given a painful interest to his promising labours. Some paragraphs from his now scarce pamphlet are placed at the end of Additional Note D, on "Pure Idealism."

[105] On Hamilton. p. 6. Mill is thus echoed from across the broad Atlantic;—"The profoundest question of philosophy turns on the relation of Thought to Being, Mind to Matter, Subject to Object, or (in empiricistic phrase) Organism to Environment. Is the Organism purely the product of the Environment? Then we have Empiricism, Sensationalism, Materialism, whose motto is that of Destutt-Tracy,—"Penser c'est sentir." Is the Environment the product of the Organism? Then we have Transcendentalism, Egoism, Idealism, whose motto is that of Berkeley,—"The esse of objects is percipi." F. E. Abbot, in The Index (American), for July 27, 1872.

[106] Lord Macaulay has some pertinent and characteristic remarks concerning this topic in his literary estimate of Dr. Johnson. "How it chanced that a man who reasoned on his premises so ably, should assume his premises so foolishly, is one of the great mysteries of human nature. The same inconsistency may be observed in the schoolmen of the middle ages. Those writers show so much acuteness and force of mind in arguing on their wretched data, that a modern reader is perpetually at a loss to comprehend how such minds came by such data. Not a flaw in the superstructure of the theory which they are rearing escapes their vigilance. Yet they are blind to the obvious unsoundness of the foundation. It is the same with some eminent lawyers. Their legal arguments are intellectual prodigies, abounding with the happiest analogies and the most refined distinctions. The principles of their arbitrary science being once admitted, the statute-book and the reports being once assumed as the foundations of reasoning, these men must be allowed to be perfect masters of logic. But if a question arises as to the postulates on which their whole system rests, if they are called upon to vindicate the fundamental maxims of that system which they have passed their lives in studying, these very men often talk the language of savages or of children." (Essays, Ed. 1852. p. 175.) As to the schoolmen, any one who wishes to form a fair idea of their acuteness with little trouble to himself, may consult the "Synopsis Distinctionum" of H. L. CastanÆus, a book found in most learned libraries.

[y] See Additional Note E.—The great interest of this subject for our purpose lies in the circumstance that the relation of Theory to Fact is in effect a question most closely akin to the one already mooted concerning the relation of our Sensations to our Perceptions (compare Additional Note B). These two questions are indeed so very similar as to be in the main identical. What we want to learn regarding both relations, is, first, the extent of the relativity to our human nature; in other words how much we have mentally put into our Theories and Sensations before we treat them as Facts and Perceptions. Secondly, what reason we have for believing any of our knowledge comprehended under either or both of these relativities (Perception and Fact) to be true beyond our human sphere; and, above all, whether we are able to assert, on good grounds, that such and such parts of either kind of our knowledge are absolutely and immutably true?—

If, for example, we ask—Is it thus true that there are real objects external to ourselves? "I do not believe," Mr. Mill has told us, "that the real externality to us of anything, except other minds, is capable of proof." And a few lines further, "The view I take of externality, in the sense in which I acknowledge it as real, could not be more accurately expressed than in Professor Fraser's words." These are "For ourselves 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." (On Hamilton. p. 232, note.) This explanation, Mill had just before observed, is an externality in the only sense we need care about; and it means in plain words, that we possess no absolutely true but only some utilitarian knowledge of the real existence of an outside world. We must, however, and do care infinitely more for another kind of answer to quite another kind of question. Is the antithesis between Right and Wrong,—the Moral Imperative "Do this and live, transgress and die,"—absolutely and immutably true? If not, who would calculate profit and loss as they are calculated in the Gospel; who would or could believe in a Righteous that is to say, a Real and True God?

Many minds, appalled by the vastness of these issues, and finding no satisfactory answer to questions of such infinite importance, have fallen back on the position of Dr. Newman in his Grammar of Assent. But the unsatisfactory characteristic attaching to this position, is that there seems to be no limit to such Assents, because there appears no Reasonable canon or maxim to explain, defend, and regulate them. To the far larger number of minds the problem states itself as a dilemma. There are exactly two alternatives open to Man. His choice lies between two contrasted positions—the most antagonistic conceivable, yet both resulting from one common supposed fact. Ignorance and impotence are the truest characters inscribed upon our Reason. Man must decide either for an unlimited Doubt such as that which Hume delineates, wide as the universal whole of our human Existence; or else yield the kind of Assent to which Dr. Newman invites as being the sole secure refuge for any soul driven by despair into a recoil from utter absence of belief and hope—the want of everything to trust and love. Now, let it be observed that an assent transcending reasonable proof is, in effect, a confession that Reason falls short of establishing those transcendental truths to which the mind has thus assented. And contrariwise, limitless Doubt making all else uncertain, affirms with unmistakeable decisiveness the impotence of human Reason.—"The observation of human blindness and weakness," says Hume, "is the result of all philosophy, and meets us at every turn, in spite of our endeavours to elude or avoid it." Hence, we see that Hume's conclusion is identical with that underlying a position directly antagonistic to his own, and in this respect les extrÊmes se touchent.

It follows, then, with equal clearness, that any Dilemma which restricts human choice to the two alternatives above stated, rests upon a denial that Man's Reason can guide Mankind to truth—(and by consequence that he can ever feel after and find his God);—whilst, conversely, this same denial, if posited as a basis of speculation, permits no human choice beyond the two horns of a Dilemma thus made necessarily imperative upon us all.

Neither alternative, however, can be accepted by the Natural Theologian, nor can he possibly receive any such Dilemma as founded in Truth or Reason. On the one hand the Superhuman, and Supernatural lie outside his science which has for its sphere Nature, including Man's Nature; and which steadily endeavours to attain the true interpretation and evidence yielded by both Natures, to a belief extending beyond their present territory and fluent conditions. On the other hand, his science becomes impossible if unlimited Doubt is the sole dreary prospect open to the philosophic inquirer. And with his science all other sciences must perish. Doubt saps the foundations of them all; common-sense facts, scientific theories, and practical every-day beliefs, are all impartially shewn to be baseless. So far as our realities are concerned

Science is therefore an alien from Man's world; the soul an outcast amid her own:—

"Not for this," says the same reflective poet—

Let it be observed in conclusion, that the mode in which common-sense people are accustomed to treat the primary tenets of most sciences, and the validity of their own ordinary beliefs, may be placed in curious contrast with their attitude towards the proofs of Natural Theology. In the former case, acceptance is easy and wholesale; in the latter, every mind seems to bristle with objections. Now there are evidently thousands who must surrender their judgments to the demands of a present and pressing utility, and must take upon trust a multitude of maxims which they can never hope to investigate. The difficulties necessarily involved in each and all of these easy acceptations thus remain unsuspected, and cannot therefore be placed side by side with the difficulties of Theism.

But, next arises a serious question. How far can a similar facility of wholesale acceptance and a similar absence of comparison with deeper truths, be considered a philosophic or even a fair procedure in the case of men and women who think themselves into Atheism?

[z] Neither can it be too often repeated that practical truth involves an enormous amount of speculative difficulty, and is received as the daily basis of human action in the face of doubts, which speculatively considered are absolutely insoluble. There is (as will appear in Chapter IV.) reason to extend this remark beyond what is commonly called practical truth far into the realm of speculative knowledge, or to speak more exactly, of all knowledge whatsoever. Suppose, for instance, the continuity of our inward power of receiving sense-impressions, of knowing, and reasoning; (our personal Identity) is a groundless belief;—Suppose too that our sense-impressions are reflections from self-created shadows and not from objective realities;—where can any knowledge be truly subsistent save in that place of exile now generally termed "the Unknowable"? Compare Additional Notes A and B appended to this present Chapter.

[107] La Philosophie en France. IX. p. 66.

[108] First Principles, p. 108.

[109] Lay Sermon delivered on Sunday, Jan. 7, 1866; in the collected vol. pp. 19, 20.

[110] Essays I. p. 190.

[111] Ibid. p. 211.

[aa] Mr. Herbert Spencer has been freely criticized by Americans, in part as not being sufficiently thorough—in part as being untrue to his own position. A few quotations will be found in Additional Note F, on "The Unknowable."

[ab] The paragraph, taken in its entireness, is pervaded with the vivid sense of a Moral Law which can neither change nor perish—a Law at once human and Divine. This strong protest is both in thought and expression a complete contrast to the ordinary tone of Mr. Mill's disquisitions, attempered as they generally are between benevolence and expediency. Instead of pondering the Utilities of a race which, comparatively speaking, began to exist yesterday, it appeals with decisive sternness, once and for ever, to the Immutable and the Absolute. It reminds one of a torch-bearing Prometheus pitted against the selfish despot of a new and morally enfeebled Olympus. See Additional Note G.

[112] This sentence contains two propositions; the question of speculative perplexity has been treated in this Chapter—that of reasonable necessity is reserved for our next.

[113] On Hamilton, p. 242.

[114] Mill on Hamilton, p. 232, note.

[115] Ibid. p. 233, note.

[116] Ibid. p. 227.

[117] British Association Report, 1870. lxxvii. lxxxiv.

[119] Lay Sermons, p. 160.

[120] And of more than one as we shall see hereafter. Its point will be best understood upon a perusal of Additional Notes F and I.

[121] All these quotations will be found between pp. 332 and 360 of the Treatise. Ed. 1817.

[122] Compare Mr. Green's Introduction to Hume's Treatise on Human Nature, Vol. I., pp. 263, seq., where he discusses the bearing of this subject upon Hume's doctrine of Cause and Effect.

[123] He sums up in the words of Goethe, thus given in the translation of his lectures from which we have quoted—

[124] "All the different sorts of rays which I have mentioned produce one effect in common. They raise the temperature of the objects on which they fall, and accordingly are all felt by our skin as rays of heat." (p. 237.)

[125] The former of these two latter quotations has been cited already in a foot-note on p. 164 ante. It is repeated here for the sake of bringing together Masson's classification of Fichte, first as "Pure Idealist," and secondly as "Nihilist." Mr. O'Hanlon's criticism of Mill reaches exactly the same goal as regards that subtle controversialist. His position is that Mill's Pure Idealism when analysed, turns out to be Pure Nihilism.

[126] Compare Note B preceding.

[127] In the pamphlet referred to p. 165 ante, note. The quotations in our text commence on its 5th page. The subject will be most easily comprehended after a reperusal of the argument of Chap. III. pp. 164-172 inclusive.

[128] On p. 14 the ingenious writer adds a further argument based on Mill's admissions. "If the fire apart from my consciousness be some positive condition or conditions of warmth and light, if the corn be some positive condition or conditions of food, my thesis is made out, and your Pure Idealism falls to the ground. If, on the other hand, 'the fire' be nothing positive apart from my consciousness, then, since it is nothing at all when so apart, you can have no right to speak of 'modifications' taking place in it, whether we are asleep or awake, present or absent."

[129] It is worth observing how truly our Bishop anticipated the vulgar objection against his theory. Towards the end of his Dialogues Hylas (who clings to the olden elemental nature) speaks thus: "To say, There is no Matter in the World, is still shocking to me. Whereas to say—There is no Matter, if by that Term be meant an unthinking Substance existing without the Mind; but if by Matter is meant some sensible Thing, whose Existence consists in being perceived, then there is Matter:—this Distinction gives it quite another Turn; and Men will come into your Notions with small Difficulty, when they are proposed in that manner." Lord Byron condescended to repeat the "coxcombs' grin"—

[130] Read for example the following eloquent passages from Berkeley's "Three Dialogues." Philonous, who represents Berkeley himself, says: "To me it is evident, for the Reasons you allow of, that sensible Things cannot exist otherwise than in a Mind or Spirit. Whence I conclude, not that they have no real Existence, but that seeing they depend not on my Thought, and have an Existence distinct from being perceived by me, there must be some other Mind wherein they exist. As sure, therefore, as the sensible World really exists, so sure is there an infinite omnipresent Spirit who contains and supports it.

"Hylas. What! This is no more than I and all Christians hold; nay, and all others too who believe there is a God, and that he knows and comprehends all Things.

"Phil. Ay, but here lies the Difference. Men commonly believe that all Things are known or perceived by God, because they believed the Being of a God, whereas I, on the other side, immediately and necessarily conclude the Being of a God, because all sensible Things must be perceived by Him.

"Hylas. But so long as we all believe the same thing, what matter is it how we come by that Belief?

"Phil. But neither do we agree in the same Opinion. For Philosophers, tho' they acknowledge all corporeal Beings to be perceived by God, yet they attribute to them an absolute Subsistence distinct from their being perceived by any Mind whatever, which I do not. Besides, is there no Difference between saying, There is a God, therefore he perceives all Things: and saying, Sensible Things do really exist: and if they really exist, they are necessarily perceived by an infinite Mind: therefore there is an infinite Mind, or God? This furnishes you with a direct and immediate Demonstration, from a most evident Principle, of the Being of a God....

Hylas. It cannot be denied, there is something highly serviceable to Religion in what you advance. But do you not think it looks very like a Notion entertained by some eminent Moderns, of seeing all things in God?

Phil. I would gladly know that Opinion; pray explain it to me.

Hylas. They conceive that the Soul, being immaterial, is incapable of being united with material Things, so as to perceive them in themselves, but that she perceives them by her Union with the Substance of God, which being spiritual, is therefore purely intelligible, or capable of being the immediate Object of a Spirit's Thought. Besides, the Divine Essence contains in it Perfections correspondent to each created Being; and which are, for that Reason, proper to exhibit or represent them to the Mind.

Phil. I do not understand how our Ideas, which are Things altogether passive and inert, can be the Essence, or any Part (or like any Part) of the Essence or Substance of God, who is an impassive, indivisible, purely active Being. Many more Difficulties and Objections there are, which occur at first View against this Hypothesis, but I shall only add, that it is liable to all the Absurdities of the common Hypotheses in making a created World exist otherwise than in the Mind of a Spirit. Beside all which it has this peculiar to itself; that it makes that material World serve to no Purpose. And if it pass for a good Argument against other Hypotheses in the Sciences, that they suppose Nature or the Divine Wisdom to make something in vain, or do that by tedious round-about Methods, which might have been performed in a much more easy and compendious way, what shall we think of that Hypothesis which supposes the whole World made in vain?

Hylas. But what say you, are not you too of Opinion that we see all Things in God? If I mistake not, what you advance comes near it.

Phil. I entirely agree with what the Holy Scripture saith, That in God we live, and move, and have our Being. But that we see Things in his Essence after the manner above set forth, I am far from believing. Take here in brief my Meaning. It is evident that the Things I perceive are my own Ideas, and that no Idea can exist, unless it be in a Mind. Nor is it less plain that these Ideas or Things by me perceived, either themselves or their Archetypes exist independently of my Mind, since I know myself not to be their Author, it being out of my Power to determine at Pleasure what particular Ideas I shall be affected with upon opening my Eyes or Ears. They must therefore exist in some other Mind, whose Will it is they should be exhibited to me. The Things, I say, immediately perceived, are Ideas or Sensations, call them which you will. But how can any Idea or Sensation exist in, or be produced by, anything but a Mind or Spirit? This, indeed, is inconceivable: and to assert that which is inconceivable, is to talk Nonsense: Is it not?.

Hylas. Without doubt.

Phil. But on the other hand, it is very conceivable that they should exist in, and be produced by, a Spirit; since this is no more than I daily experience in myself, inasmuch as I perceive numberless Ideas; and by an Act of my Will can form a great Variety of them, and raise them up in my Imagination: Tho' it must be confessed, these Creatures of the Fancy are not altogether so distinct, so strong, vivid, and permanent, as those perceived by my Senses, which latter are called Real Things. From all which I conclude, there is a Mind which affects me every Moment with all the sensible Impressions I perceive. And from the Variety, Order, and Manner of these, I conclude the Author of them to be wise, powerful, and good, beyond comprehension. Mark it well, I do not say, I see Things by perceiving that which represents them in the intelligible Substance of God. This I do not understand; but I say, The Things by me perceived are known by the Understanding, and produced by the Will, of an infinite Spirit. And is not all this most plain and evident? Is there any more in it, than what a little Observation of our own Minds, and that which passes in them not only enables us to conceive, but also obliges us to acknowledge?"

Numberless charming quotations might be added from the "Principles" as well as the Dialogues, but those already given may suffice, and they have been chosen now because not very commonly quoted.

[131] Hegel EncyklopÄdie T. i. S. 95. (Werke VI. 189.) The quotation above is from Mr. Wallace's translation p. 153. Compare his Index.

[132] In the just published Edition of Hume's Treatise on Human Nature, I. p. 140. We must all regret the loss of Dean Mansel's ultimate thoughts on "The real error of Berkeley's Idealism." Letters &c. p. 391. But more than a dozen years earlier, he wrote, (Prolegomena Logica, Chap. V.) "The fault of Berkeley did not consist in doubting the existence of matter, but in asserting its non-existence." How far Mansel himself went in the direction of this same doubt may be judged from the following passage, which occurs in the Prolegomena one page before. "Beyond the range of conscious beings, we can have only a negative idea of substance. The name is applied in relation to certain collections of sensible phenomena, natural or artificial, connected with each other in various ways; by locomotion, by vegetation, by contributing to a common end, by certain positions in space. But here we have no positive notion of substance distinct from phenomena. I do not attribute to the billiard ball a consciousness of its own figure, colour, and motion; but, in denying consciousness, I deny the only form in which unity and substance have been presented to me. I have therefore no data for thinking one way or the other on the question. Some kind of unity between the several phenomena may exist, or it may not; but if it does exist, it exists in a manner of which I can form no conception; and if it does not exist, my faculties do not enable me to detect its absence." In other words (as Mr. O'Hanlon might have phrased it) "My friend Smith is I know a person,—therefore a substance. But Smith's hat and coat, being unconscious, lack the only forms in which unity and substance have been presented to me. Smith's coat is blue, its fabric woollen; his hat black, and of silken texture;—there may or may not be unities in which these phenomena of colour and structural appearance cohere; my faculties do not, however, enable me to decide whether hat and coat are or are not positively substantial unifications.

It would appear from all this, that hats and coats and other familiar so-called substances, are as little essentially known to us as that vast territory of supernatural Being which has been named the "Unknowable."

[133] From Mr. Wallace's translation of Hegel's Logik, pp. 65, 8, and 9. As the translator preserves the numbering of the Sections, reference is easy to the original German. Hegel adds a remark well worthy of attention:—"The scepticism of Hume, by whom this observation was chiefly made, should be clearly marked off from Greek scepticism. Hume founds his remarks on the truth of the empirical element, on feeling and sensation, and proceeds to attack universal truths and laws, because they do not derive their authority from sense-perception. So far was ancient scepticism from making feeling and sensation a canon of truth, that it turned against the deliverances of sense first of all."—Ibid. p. 69.

[134] Pp. 234-341. The preface to this volume is dated February 1874.

[135] Martineau's conception discussed by Spencer is hampered by a theory of Matter difficult per se.

[136] See back pp. 76-8 and 107 (end of note) and connect with these passages the oft-repeated Wordsworthian maxim:—

"We murder to dissect."

[137] See our Chapter VI. On Causation.

[138] The paragraph cited in the text of Chapter III. concludes with these words:—"I will call no being good, who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow-creatures; and if such a being can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go."

Now, no man can sit down and calculate himself into Mr. Mill's conviction thus enounced; neither could any cool process of argument have ever kindled such a flame. A sternness of purpose like his must be either the skeleton-armour covering the thoughtless boy in Tennyson's Gareth and Lynette, or it is the reflection of a light intuitively flashed through the soul—the echo of a chord struck upon the writer's very heart-strings. Such and so deep, beyond doubt, was the ingenuous feeling of Mr. Mill.

[139] La Science au point de Vue Philosophique, pp. 539-542.

[140] Psychological Inquiries, second part, pp. 195-197.

[141] Address (Presidential) to British Association at Liverpool, 1870, p. 15.

[142] Loc. cit. pp. 199-200.

[143] Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, January, 1873, p. 74.

[144] Loc. cit. p. 64.

[145] Loc. cit. pp. 69-70.

[146] Loc. cit. pp. 16-17.

[147] This quotation is from his Matter and Force, Chapter XIX. BÜchner is never tired of emphasizing the Materialism of thought. In an address prefixed to his tenth Edition, speaking of the hypothesis of Mind acting on Brain he calls it "the tragi-comic pianoforte theory," and regrets that there should be so many "human pianofortes out of tune in the world." BÜchner's own Materialism is outspoken, as may be judged from the following propositions:—

1. Spirit without Body is unimaginable.

2. The Soul brings with it "no innate intuitions"; and

3. It is not an ens per se, but a product of external influences.

4. There is no individual immortality nor personal continuance after death.

5. The Soul's knowledge relates only to earthly things.

6. It becomes a person by being opposed to earthly individualities.

7. (Adopted from C. Vogt) "The soul ... is a product of the development of the brain; just as muscular activity is a product of muscular development, and secretion a product of glandular development. So soon as the substances composing the brain are aggregated in a similar form, will they exhibit the same functions.... Mental activity changes with the periods of life, and ceases altogether at death."

BÜchner's writings are sufficiently known in this country. In America they are food for the million.

Proposition No. 6 is particularly noticeable because it re-echoes the fallacy of Locke (see page 182-3 ante) on personal identity. By opposition to earthly individualities we do not "become" persons, but the sense of antagonism between ourselves and other externalities (both men and things), sharpens every day our belief in our own personality, and furnishes its daily verification.

The grossness of this writer's Materialism does not hinder him from using the word "soul" on almost every page; and in one of his more recent publications he is candid enough to acknowledge that this old-fashioned entity is not yet quite improved off the face of the Earth. He says:—"Just the properties of the human mind and the impossibility of explaining them, were from the most ancient times one of the main supports of spiritualism and theological systems. True, their explanation is still wanting." BÜchner, of course, looks for the speedy elimination of "Soul" proper, on exactly the same grounds which underlie his own whole system. Mental activity and Brain go together (he argues), as Force and Matter go together. It may be answered, that every practical reasoner knows the danger of arguing from concomitancies, however well-established, to Causality; and the risk is evidently much increased when a like argument is used to Identity. Besides, if Mental activity is resolvable into Brain, why should not Matter be likewise resolved into Force? Thus the whole Universe, inanimate and animated, material and psychical, becomes Force. The chain would run in this manner: Mind = Brain = Matter = Force. But how are we to know that Force must be all of one kind and description? Or, again, why may not the concomitancies be rather resolved some other way;—e.g., Matter (including Brain) = Force = Mind? Thus Materialism might slide into Idealism, Pantheism, or even Theism; since in some shape or other Mind would form and sustain the Universe. Our last citation of BÜchner is taken from a New York Edition of his Materialism, p. 19.

[148] In other words, that kind of law which pervades the lowest sphere of Nature is conceived as dominant over the highest also. The whole Universe is submitted to its iron rule. There is of Man's Mind as well as of the flagstone with which he paves his streets, one account, one law, one science, one philosophy; nay, strangely enough, as we shall see further on, one religion! The law of stocks and stones is supreme, it rules alike Man's present and his future, and ought to be the sole object of his veneration.

Positivism, as is well known, makes many sciences and classifies them by an ascending scale of Laws. "La Philosophie Positive," writes LittrÉ (Paroles, p. 10) ... "apercevant que, suivant la vraie conception, oÙ la matiÈre n'est pas sÉparable de ses propriÉtÉs, le mot de matÉrialisme n'avait plus d'emploi philosophique qu'en histoire, elle l'a renouvelÉ, et s'en est servie pour caractÉriser l'intrusion de la mÉthode de toute science infÉrieure dans la science supÉrieure."

If LittrÉ had said, "the intrusion of the lowest into the highest," he would have rightly characterized the systems we are describing.

Von Feuchtersleben puts the practical state of the question thus:—"All we can say is, that an intellectual world reveals itself to us, by the law of the true, the good, and the beautiful, and that a physical world manifests itself by those laws which act in space and time. What lies beyond these laws, as it were the substance of both worlds, we know not; we only call that of the physical world, matter or body in the abstract, that of the super-physical, we call spirit (Geist), and must never forget that hereby we have only pronounced an abstraction.

"But now we ask further, wherein does this higher law manifest itself to us, as the physical law does in the material world? Nowhere but in man, and in him only through the medium of his cultivated and refined reason. What we feel, what we remember, nay, the very inmost sensations of our individual existence, may be referred to the world which surrounds us. Thought alone, exalted to the highest degree shows us another world. We are ourselves therefore not spirit, but we watch, as it were, what we call by that name, and which manifests itself to us only by its laws. (Est Deus in nobis.) Man, therefore, should be the link which connects the two worlds; and this is the problem, this is the enigma, which can never be solved." He adds in a note: "Materialism, that is, the view which will not allow the separation of the intellectual principle from the corporeal, but looks upon the former as a higher power of the latter, not only explains nothing, but makes the enigma still more obscure. Medical Psychology, Ed. Sydenham, pp. 15-16.

[149] Compare footnote (c) pp. 56-7 ante. This whole theory is dreamlike,—a sort of romance or revel of a half-metaphysical, half-materializing imagination. The following rather long extract from Haeckel's book will shew the hypothesis on its most poetical side. But alas for its prose, and its plain practical application! "It is indeed," he writes, "not difficult to arrive through an unprejudiced consideration of facts, at a clear conviction that Theism, which has its origin in Mythology, and which, under the name of "Pure Monotheism," rules the civilized peoples of modern day, and plays even now so conspicuous a part in organic Morphology as the Myth of Creation, is in fact not Monotheism but Amphitheism. This predominant religion was Monotheism only so long as all Natural Phenomena were, without any exception, taken to be the direct result of the personal divine government of the world,—only so long as all inorganic or organic Phenomena—from the blowing of the wind and the rolling of the thunder, to the light of the sun and the course of the stars; from the flowery fragrance of plants and the wing of the bird, to the Mind-formation of Man and the development-history of peoples;—were direct actions of a monarchical, personal Creator. But when modern Natural Science demonstrated that the whole realm of inorganic Nature was governed by fixed, unvarying laws of Nature; when Physics and Chemistry reduced Abiology to mathematical formulÆ, then the half of his realm was wrested from the personal Creator, and there remained to him organic Nature alone, and even the half of this was next set free by recent Physiology, so that organic Morphology alone remained subject to the personal, arbitrary government of the mediatised ruler of the world. Thus, out of the earlier Monotheism grew up that full-blown Amphitheism which at present rules the modern Cosmology of civilized peoples; and which appears in Science as the thoroughly perverted Dualism against which we have contended most determinedly in our General Morphology. For, what else is this Dualism but the battle between two Gods of fundamentally distinct natures? On the one hand, we see in the realm of Abiology, dominated by Mechanism, the exclusive sovereignty of unvarying and necessary Nature-laws, of the ??a???, which at all times and in all places constantly remains one and the same.

"On the other hand, in the realm of Biology (which is still governed by Teleology), and especially in the realm of organic Morphology, we see the ridiculous arbitrary government of a personal and thoroughly humanlike Creator, who vainly wearies himself with endeavouring to create a 'perfect' Organism, and constantly rejects the earlier creations of a 'former age,' in that he is continually setting up new and improved editions in their places. We have already shewn, in our sixth chapter, why we must entirely reject this pitiful idea of a personal Creator (Vol. I. p. 173). It is in fact a degradation of the pure God-Idea. Most men picture to themselves this 'beloved God' as being thoroughly humanlike: he is in their eyes an architect, who is engaged in carrying on the construction of the world according to some previously rejected plan; but who never gets done with it, because during the process of completion, he is always hitting on new and better ideas; he is a Stage-manager, who directs the earth like a great puppet-play, and generally knows how to handle with tolerable skill the numerous threads by which he manages the hearts of men: he is a half-deprived king who only rules over the inorganic realm conditionally, and according to firmly fixed laws; rules on the other hand over the organic realm absolutely as patriarchal land-father, who in this domain allows himself to be led into a daily alteration of his world-plan by the wishes and prayers of his own children, among whom the most perfect Vertebrates are those principally favoured.

"Let us turn away from this unworthy Anthropomorphism of modern Dogmatics, which degrade God himself into an aerial Vertebrate, and let us look on the contrary at the infinitely higher God-Idea to which Monism conducts us; in that it demonstrates the Unity of God in the whole of Nature, and abolishes the antithesis of an organic and inorganic God which sows the germ of a death-agony in the heart of that predominating Amphitheism. Our Cosmology knows only One Sole God, and this Almighty God rules the whole of Nature without exception. We contemplate his operation in all phenomena of every description. To it the whole inorganic material world is subject, and so too the whole world of organization. If each body in vacuo falls fifteen feet in the first second; if three atoms of Oxygen to one of Sulphur always produce Sulphuric Acid; if the angle which one columnar surface of rock crystal makes with the neighbouring one is always 120°; then, these phenomena are the immediate operations of God, equally with the blossoms of plants, the movements of animals, the thoughts of Mankind. We all exist by 'God's grace'; the stone as well as the water, the Radiolarian as well as the pine tree, the gorilla as much as the Emperor of China.

"This Cosmology which contemplates God's spirit and power in all natural phenomena is alone worthy of His all-comprehensive greatness; only when we refer all forces and all phenomena of movement, all forms and properties of matter, to God, as the Author of all things, do we attain to that human intuition of God, and veneration of God, which really befits his immeasurable greatness. For 'in Him we live and move and have our being.' Thus the philosophy of Nature becomes in fact Theology. The worship of Nature becomes that true worship of God of which GÖethe says:—'Certainly there is no more beautiful veneration of God, than that which arises from communion with Nature in our own breasts.'

"God is Almighty; he is the sole Author, the prime Cause of all things; that is, in other words, God is the Universal Causal Law. God is absolutely perfect; he can never act otherwise than perfectly rightly, therefore he can never act arbitrarily or freely; that is to say, God is Necessity. God is the sum of all forces; so also, therefore, of all Matter. Every conception of God, which separates him from Matter, opposes to him a sum of forces which are not of divine Nature; every such conception leads to Amphitheism, consequently to Polytheism.

"Since Monism demonstrates the Unity of the whole of Nature, it proves, likewise, that only One God exists, and that this God manifests himself in the collective phenomena of Nature. Since Monism grounds the collective phenomena of organic and inorganic Nature on the Universal Causal Law, and displays them as the effects of 'active causes,' it shews at the same time, that God is the necessary Cause of all things and is the Law itself. Since Monism acknowledges no other beside the divine Forces in Nature, since it recognizes all laws of Nature as divine, it raises itself to the greatest and most elevated conception of which man, as the most perfect of all animals, is capable, to the conception of the Unity of God and Nature.

Haeckel's Generelle Morphologie der Organismen. Vol. II. Book viii. Chap. 30.

No one who reads the latter part of this quotation will doubt that Haeckel is a refined, or, in other words, a metaphysical Materialist. That he has produced an effect in materializing circles is evident; witness the following passages from BÜchner "the crass." "To any one who does not stubbornly and obstinately cling to old prejudices, this new Cosmology which has superseded the dualism of former systems of philosophy and thought, must appear as clear, simple, free of dualism, easily intelligible and perfectly satisfactory. On account of this very antagonism to the dualistic character of the speculative philosophy of the past, I should like best to designate the philosophy of Materialism as monistic philosophy, or philosophy of unity; and the cosmology founded upon it as monism, in accordance with the suggestion of Professor Haeckel.... Since the indestructibility of matter, as previously described, has found its necessary complement in the indestructibility of force; and since the separation of force and matter has been recognized as a mere abstraction and existing only in our thoughts: it is really impossible to speak any longer of Materialism as a system which derives everything from matter only. Otherwise we might just as well speak of Dynamism, that is of a system that derives everything from force (dynamis). But in reality both are identical and inseparable; and therefore a philosophy built upon those ideas cannot be better designated than as monistic, or a philosophy of unity." (Materialism, ut supra p. 24.) This last phrase is more metaphysical than BÜchner's wont; but S. T. Coleridge, if alive, would tell him that what the world really wants, is a "Philosophy of Multeity in Unity." To annihilate the Manifold is to destroy our sole knowledge of the One.

[150] It was previously intimated that the idealizing philosopher often escapes ethical censure more easily than he deserves. Idealism may, or may not, be a bar to irreligious materialism. For example:—"The materialism of Strauss was not inconsistent with an idealism of the Hegelian type; for, as he showed in his last work, the question between logically consistent idealists and materialists who carry out their principles is, at its roots, one of names and terms rather than of antagonistic principles." Pall Mall Gazette for Feb. 11, 1874. The Idealism referred to, is that which identifies pure Being with Impersonal Thought. Now Berkeley's idealism culminated with the Divine Personality, through whose omnipresence and spiritual subsistence those properties or modes of existence, called material, are realized to us, who, together with all the world, exist in and by Him. Yet, as far as Berkeley's argument rests upon the common ground of idealistic reasoning, it is approachable by the Atheist or the Sceptic. Of Hobbes a reviewer has lately remarked: "He clearly demonstrated that the secondary qualities of body are purely subjective, and his language is almost strong enough to lead us to believe that he would have gone a long way with Berkeley. For he claims to have proved that 'as in vision, so also in conceptions that arise from the other senses, the subject of their inherence is not the object but the sentient.'" Westminster Review, April, 1874, p. 387.

The truth from which so many theories, physical and metaphysical, branch out, is thus clearly stated by Professor Huxley. "All the phenomena of nature are, in their ultimate analysis, known to us only as facts of consciousness." "On Descartes," Lay Sermons, p. 374. This statement is an incontrovertible proposition; and may help in persuading us to believe our own souls. At all events, we plainly see that the sum total of our human knowledge is potentially contained in their evidence.

[151] A mongrel Word-book would be a valuable addition to popular science. How many metaphysicians proper, or how many skilled students of Natural Science, can explain that novel compound "Psychoplasm"? The Westminster Review is not lost in admiration for either this new coinage, or another specimen from the same mint,—"Metempirics." (See No. for July, 1874.) The Fortnightly is more congratulatory.

[152] Ravaisson, the great philosophical critic of France, considers Biology among the sciences directly antagonistic to Materialism. He classifies the tendencies of scientific studies thus. There are, he says, "Deux directions opposÉes auxquelles nous inclinent les deux ordres differents de connaissances:—la direction qui aboutit au Materialisme, et c'est celle dans laquelle nous engagent les mathÉmatiques et la physique, et la direction qui mÈne au spiritualisme, et c'est celle oÙ acheminent la biologie et surtout les sciences morales et esthÉtiques." (La Philosophie en France, p. 98.) His description of a certain degree of progress in the mind of Comte illustrates this same idea:—"Il comprit, en prÉsence de la vie, que ce n'Était pas assez, comme il avait pu le croire dans la sphÈre des choses mÉcaniques et physiques, de considÉrer des phÉnomÈnes À la suite ou À cÔtÉ les uns des autres, mais que, de plus, que surtout il fallait prendre en considÉration l'ordre et l'ensemble.

"En prÉsence des Êtres organisÉs, on s'aperÇoit, disait-il, que le dÉtail des phÉnomÈnes, quelque explication plus ou moins suffisante qu'on en donne, n'est ni le tout ni mÊme le principal; que le principal, et l'on pourrait presque dire le tout, c'est l'ensemble dans l'espace, le progrÈs dans le temps, et qu'expliquer un Être vivant, ce serait montrer la raison de cet ensemble et de ce progrÈs, qui est la vie mÊme....

"Dans les sciences des choses inorganiques, disait-il encore, on procÈde par dÉduction des dÉtails au tout; dans les sciences des Êtres organisÉs, c'est de l'ensemble que se tire par dÉduction, la vraie connaissance des parties.

"De plus, d'accord maintenant avec Platon, Aristote, Leibniz, il dÉclarait que l'ensemble Étant le rÉsultat et l'expression d'une certaine unitÉ, À laquelle tout concourt et se co-ordonne et qui est le but oÙ tout marche, c'est dans cette unitÉ, c'est dans le but, c'est dans la fin ou cause finale qu'est le secret de l'organisme.

"Le 16 Juillet 1843, Écrivant À M. Stuart Mill, il exprimait l'opinion que, si ce savant ne le suivait pas dans les voies plus larges oÙ dorÉnavant il allait marchait, c'est que, trÈs-versÉ dans les Études mathÉmatiques et physiques, il n'Était pas assez familier avec les phÉnomÈnes de la vie. Plus avancÉ dans la science biologique, M. Mill aurait mieux compris comment il faut, outre le dÉtail des faits, quelque chose qui les domine, qui les combine et les co-ordonne." (Ibid. p. 75, seq.)

[153] These pages are inappropriate to that wide and momentous controversy:—Has each Science a Method of its own?—and by consequence its own terminology? That such a question remains to be debated, is a clear proof that most of our philosophizing is yet tentative; and has not passed over the critical "first stage."

[ac] "In vain," says Hume's Cleanthes, "In vain would the sceptic make a distinction between science and common life, or between one science and another. The arguments, employed in all, if just, are of a similar nature, and contain the same force and evidence. Or if there be any difference among them, the advantage lies entirely on the side of theology and natural religion."—Dialogues, etc., Part I. sub. fin.

And our ultimate appeal—as for example concerning the subject next discussed in this chapter—is, he observes, to an instinctive operation of the mind which obliges us to accept and act upon what we cannot explain. Writing in his own person, Mr. Hume observes, "As nature has taught us the use of our limbs, without giving us the knowledge of the muscles and nerves by which they are actuated, so has she implanted in us an instinct, which carries forward the thought in a correspondent course to that which she has established among external objects; though we are ignorant of those powers and forces on which this regular course and succession of objects totally depends."—Inquiry concerning the Human Understanding. Section V., end. Compare footnote [d]. to this chapter, p. 269 post.

[ad] The word Belief has been used in a variety of senses by modern writers of differing views from Jacobi to Sir. W. Hamilton, from Dr. Newman to Mr. Herbert Spencer.

"This word," Mr. Spencer says, "is habitually applied to dicta of consciousness for which no proof can be assigned: both those which are unprovable because they underlie all proof, and those which are unprovable because of the absence of evidence." And again; "we commonly say we 'believe' a thing for which we can assign some preponderating evidence, or concerning which we have received some indefinable impression.... And it is the peculiarity of these beliefs, as contrasted with cognitions, that their connexions with antecedent states of consciousness may be easily severed, instead of being difficult to sever. But unhappily, the word 'belief' is also applied to each of those temporarily or permanently indissoluble connexions in consciousness, for the acceptance of which the only warrant is that it cannot be got rid of.... Thus the two opposite poles of knowledge go under the same name; and by the reverse connotations of this name, as used for the most coherent and least coherent relations of thought, profound misconceptions have been generated."

Mr. Spencer made these remarks at separate intervals of time, and has repeated them in 1874 (Essays, III. 259-60). It would therefore appear that he thinks little has recently been done to discriminate the significations of so ambiguous a term.

This chapter endeavours to investigate a small number of the genus "Beliefs" to which the differentia "Of Reason" has been added by way of distinction. It also attempts to offer a contribution towards the useful work of explaining their specific validity, and if its argument be correct, they constitute a very important definable species of the Genus, carrying with them a persuasion pre-eminently their own.

On his page 260, last referred to, Mr. Spencer remarks,—"that the belief which the moral and religious feelings are said to yield of a personal God, is not one of the beliefs which are unprovable because they underlie all proof"—and adds that works on Natural Theology treat that Belief as inferential.

The view taken of this moral and religious belief in the present Essay, is that it is in its own nature both primary and inferential. The former of these aspects is the one now under discussion.

[155] Mr. Fowler, in the little volume just referred to, describes another "Theory of the Origin of Universal Beliefs," as follows:—"It would admit that all beliefs alike are ultimately derived from experience, and still it would freely adopt the language that there are some beliefs which are 'native to the human mind.' The word 'experience' as ordinarily employed by psychologists, includes not only the experience of the individual, but the recorded experience of mankind. On the theory, however, of which we are now speaking, it has a still more extended meaning; it includes experience, or to speak more strictly, a peculiar facility for forming certain experiences, transmitted by hereditary descent from generation to generation. While some ideas occur only to particular individuals, at particular times, there are others which, from the frequency and constancy with which they are obtruded upon men's minds at all times and under all circumstances, become, after an accumulated experience of many generations, connatural, as it were, to the human mind. We assume them, often unconsciously, in our special perceptions, and when the propositions, which embody them, are propounded to us, we find it impossible, on reflection, to doubt their truth. It is by personal experience of external objects and their relations that each man recognises them, but the tendency to recognise them is transmitted, like the physical or mental peculiarities of race, from preceding generations, and is anterior to any special experience whatever on the part of the individual. This theory, to which much of modern speculation appears to be converging, is advocated with great ability in the works of Mr. Herbert Spencer." Inductive Logic, p. 31.

This account of our Belief in the Inductive Principle agrees, in effect, with the opinion of those who hold that our acceptance of its truth resembles our acceptance of Mathematical Truths in two very important respects: (1) Its Certitude. To use Dr. Whewell's words; "We are as certain of it as of the truths of arithmetic and geometry. We cannot doubt that it must apply to all events past and future, in every part of the universe, just as truly as to those occurrences which we have ourselves observed. What causes produce what effects;—what is the cause of any particular event;—what will be the effect of any peculiar process;—these are points on which experience may enlighten us. Observation and experience may be requisite, to enable us to judge respecting such matters. But that every event has some cause, Experience cannot prove any more than she can disprove. She can add nothing to the evidence of the truth, however often she may exemplify it. This doctrine, then, cannot have been acquired by her teaching," Whewell's Hist. of Scientific Ideas, B. III. Cap. ii.

(2) In the fact of its being intuitive; that is, as Mr. Fowler says, "connatural," or "native to the human mind."

Whether we can trace the process through which it became one of the mental possessions characteristic of Mankind is a further question, and a very curious one. The subjects of improvement by education, and of the transmission of improvements thus acquired among men and the lower animals, belong in part to our next Chapter;—they are, of course, deeply interesting to every philanthropist, every promoter of true progress and wholesome civilization.

[156] Galen remarks upon the immediate activity of animal instinct prior to example or habituation. Most Naturalists know his experiment of hatching three different sorts of eggs together. He was much struck to see the young aquatic bird, reptile, and eaglet, betake themselves at once, each to his vocation. Some persons referred these instincts to the influence of organs fitted for definite uses, yet, observes Galen, the young calf will butt before he has got horns. A good deal might be added to Galen's rejoinder. Animals seem often to work without fitness of organization,—or one might almost say in defiance of their organs. "There is nothing," says Sir C. Bell, "in the configuration of the black bear, particularly adapted for his catching fish; yet he will sit, on his hinder extremities, by the side of a stream, morning or evening, on the watch, like a practised fisher, and so perfectly motionless as to deceive the eye of the Indian, who mistakes him for the burnt trunk of a tree; when he sees his opportunity favourable, he will thrust out his fore-paw, and seize a fish with incredible celerity. The exterior organ is not, in this instance, the cause of the habit or of the propensity; and if we thus see the instinct bestowed without the appropriate organ, may we not the more readily believe, in other examples, when the two are conjoined, that the habit exists with the instrument, although not through it?" (Bridgewater Treatise, Chap. x. p. 250.)—In Captain Cook's third voyage there is another anecdote of bears equally curious. "The wild deer (barein) are far too swift for those lumbering sportsmen; so the bear perceives them at a distance by the scent; and, as they herd in low grounds, when he approaches them, he gets upon the adjoining eminence, from whence he rolls down pieces of rock; nor does he quit his ambush, and pursue, until he finds that some have been maimed." (Vol. 3, p. 306.)

In such cases as these, there is a manifest want of correspondence between animal organisms and animal instincts, which many naturalists consider essentially interdependent. Yet on their mutual action and reaction some have founded a theory of evolution.

[157] "We have in the Veda the invocation Dyaus pÍtar, the Greek ?e? pate?, the Latin Jupiter; and that means in all the three languages what it meant before these three languages were torn asunder—it means Heaven-Father. These two words are not mere words; they are to my mind the oldest poem, the oldest prayer of mankind, or at least of that pure branch of it to which we belong—and I am as firmly convinced that this prayer was uttered, that this name was given to the unknown God before Sanskrit was Sanskrit, and Greek was Greek, as when I see the Lord's Prayer in the languages of Polynesia and Melanesia, I feel certain that it was first uttered in the language of Jerusalem." Professor Max MÜller's Science of Religion. New Ed. p. 172.

[158] This then would seem to be an instance of wide spread "moral regression."

[ae] Our deep-rooted tendency to trust human testimony may yield a very curious example of the difficulties presented by the whole class of pre-rational beliefs. Mr. J. Mill in accordance with his system of foregone Associations "resolves" this case as follows (Analysis I. p. 385-6): "Belief in testimony is but a case of the anticipation of the future from the past; and belief in the uniformity of the laws of nature is but another name for the same thing.... The testimony uniformly calls up the idea of the reality of the event, so closely, that I cannot disjoin them. But the idea, irresistibly forced upon me, of a real event, is Belief."

On this explanation Mr. Bain remarks, "The belief in Testimony is derived from the primary credulity of the mind, in certain instances left intact under the wear and tear of adverse experience. Hardly any fact of the human mind is better attested than the primitive disposition to receive all testimony with unflinching credence. It never occurs to the child to question any statement made to it, until some positive force on the side of scepticism has been developed. Gradually we find that certain testimonies are inconsistent with fact; we have, therefore, to go through a long education in discriminating the good testimonies from the bad. To the one class, we adhere with the primitive force of conviction that in the other class has been shaken and worn away by the shocks of repeated contradictions."

It seems quite possible that our "primary credulity" may be one example of a wider spread feeling of reliance engendered in part by affection and dependence. Its force varies considerably in various minds. Women whose lives have been happy and free from disappointment retain much of this primary intuitive belief to the end of their days. Among men, the trust in Testimony becomes controlled by their power of balancing probabilities; a faculty in which the very credulous and also the very sceptical are often observed to be deficient. The disappointed of both sexes proverbially incline to Scepticism.

[159] Metaph. I. 44.

[160] Acts xvii. 27, 28. Romans i. 32; ii. 14 seq.

[161] Most persons have read with delight the observations on Insect Architecture from Huber downwards. Birds are generally well watched and well reported. Many Naturalists have written on these subjects, from a hope of creating in the minds of men some softer interest for their humble companions. Mr. Jesse naÏvely prefaces a collection of anecdotes, by saying that, of all the nations in Europe, our own countrymen are perhaps the least inclined to treat the brute creation with tenderness.

Wilson long ago observed that the nest building of birds was not always the same in the same species. The older birds built the better nests.

M. Pouchet of Rouen proved that when the new streets of that city were erected, the window-swallows altered their nests and substantially improved them. A short account of his observations will be found in Wallace's Contributions, 228 A. Mr. Wallace adds several instances of bad nest building, especially by pigeons, rooks, and window-swallows, a circumstance also noticed by White of Selborne.

Amongst the most remarkable bird-families with special ideas of construction, are the mound-builders, and bower birds of Australia, described by Mr. Gould. The former hatch their eggs in hillocks contrived to retain during the night, amid their warm vegetable linings, the solar heat of each successive day. The nests of one family are about a yard high and three wide. In another family, mounds of five yards in height and twelve in girth seem not uncommon; and the circumference of one mound in particular measured full fifty yards. These larger mounds are the work of many birds, through many years, and their firm sides are covered by ancient forest growth.

The bower birds construct over-arching alleys of curved branches, decorated with pretty grasses, gay feathers, shells and bones, particularly near the entrances. These bowers seem to be used as meeting and recreation places for both sexes. They vary to some extent amongst the different species of this singular tribe.

There can be no doubt of the power of adaptation among animals;—and those who study them most are least surprised at its extent. Horses will learn to go up and down stairs, cats to undo door latches; and one pony mentioned by Jesse used to unfasten the stable door, open and rob the corn chest. Still more curious, is the American bird called neuntÖdter, which catches grasshoppers and spears them upon twigs, not for the shamble-purposes of the butcher bird, but simply as baits to catch and eat the smaller birds attracted by the spoil.

Schleiden (Plant 232), tells a most singular story of a Kangaroo who tried to drown his pursuer, and shewed considerable craft in the way he set about the drowning. After knocking the hunter backwards into a pond, the "old man" (Australian for Kangaroo) kept pushing the poor fellow's head under water every time he raised it up. If Kangaroo had never drowned a human being before, he must have proceeded by analogy, and argued, as some Naturalists do, from the brute to the man. A dog, mentioned by Jesse, endeavoured to save his drowning master's life by the reverse process to Kangaroo's, and would not let the beloved head disappear under water for many a wintry hour after life had been extinguished. (Country Life, p. 119.)

A person reflecting on these and similar facts, does not feel much surprised at Aristotle's appreciation of animal intelligence, (e. g., HistoriÆ viii. 1, 2,) "[Greek: hÔs gar en anthrÔpÔ technÊ kai sophia kai synesis, houtÔs eniois tÔn zÔÔn esti tis hetera toiautÊ physikÊ dynamis.]" The animal power of adaptation, travelling beyond the routine of instinctive action, probably struck the philosopher very strongly.

[162] These barricades are curiously galleried and casemated, like the defences of a fortress. The best account of them is given by the accurate and interesting Huber.

[163] In Aristotle's Introduction to Physical Science, he remarks that Sense grasps at Wholes, so that in a certain way, the general may seem to take precedence with us of the particular. Language is a proof of this—Children's talk is apt to run in concretes;—every man or woman is a father or mother to them. See Phys. Ausc. I. 1, with Pacius' note. The old commentator unties a knot which some moderns appear to have tied fast again.

>Addition. Aristotle's illustration, it is alleged (e. g. by Dr. Whewell), goes in the wrong direction; fathers and mothers are less comprehensive terms than men and women; the truth seems to be that children fail to perceive the differences between parents and other human beings;—therefore they call men and women, parents. Pacius says:—"Nunc igitur totum esse nobis notius, probat À signo, id est, argumento sumto ab infantibus, qui initiÒ non distinguunt patrem ab aliis viris, nec matrem ab aliis mulieribus: postea verÒ distinguunt: nempe, quia ab initio habuerunt cognitionem magis confusam, neque cognoverunt proprietates parentis, sed tantum eum noverunt sub ratione universali, quatenus est homo, ideoque non potuerunt eum ab aliis hominibus sejungere. Postea verÒ progredientes ad cognitionem magis particularem, possunt patrem ab aliis discernere." Ed. 1608, p. 346.

[af] It is quite conceivable that the presence of Reason may from its first dawn, give rise to a very wide difference between the highest animal instincts, and the lowest instinctive impulses of Man. The discussion would be far too extensive for these pages; but it is obvious that such a difference might clearly account for much that is obscure in the twilight territory of Mind.

Hume, however, appears to have thought otherwise, as may be perceived in the Conclusion of his Reason of Animals. From his mention of "experimental reasoning" and the instances adduced, he would seem to attribute our Inductive process to a simple instinct. He writes thus:—"Though animals learn many parts of their knowledge from observation, there are also many parts of it which they derive from the original hand of Nature, which much exceed the share of capacity they possess on ordinary occasions, and in which they improve little or nothing, by the longest practice and experience. These we denominate Instincts, and are so apt to admire as something very extraordinary and inexplicable by all the disquisitions of human understanding. But our wonder will perhaps cease or diminish when we consider that the experimental reasoning itself, which we possess in common with beasts, and on which the whole conduct of life depends, is nothing but a species of instinct or mechanical power, that acts in us unknown to ourselves, and in its chief operations is not directed by any such relations or comparison of ideas as are the proper objects of our intellectual faculties. Though the instinct be different, yet still it is an instinct, which teaches a man to avoid the fire, as much as that which teaches a bird, with such exactness, the art of incubation, and the whole economy and order of its nursery." Compare foot-note (a) to this chapter, p. 255 ante.

[ag] "Wisdom is Alchemy. Else it could not be Wisdom. This is its unfailing characteristic, that it 'finds good in everything,' that it renders all things more precious. In this respect also does it renew the spirit of childhood within us: while foolishness hardens our hearts and narrows our thoughts, it makes us feel a childlike curiosity and a childlike interest about all things. When our view is confined to ourselves, nothing is of value, except what ministers in one way or other to our own personal gratification: but in proportion as it widens, our sympathies increase and multiply: and when we have learnt to look on all things as God's works, then, as His works, they are all endeared to us.

"Hence nothing can be further from true wisdom, than the mask of it assumed by men of the world, who affect a cold indifference about whatever does not belong to their own immediate circle of interests or pleasures." Guesses at Truth, 2nd Ed. 2nd Series, p. 200.

[164] "Try to conceive a man without the ideas of God, eternity, freedom, will, absolute truth, of the good, the true, the beautiful, the infinite. An animal endowed with a memory of appearances and of facts might remain. But the man will have vanished, and you have instead a creature, more subtle than any beast of the field, but likewise cursed above every beast of the field; upon the belly must it go, and dust must it eat all the days of its life. But I recal myself from a train of thoughts little likely to find favour in this age of sense and selfishness." Coleridge, Church and State. Note p. 50, Ed. 1839.

[165] Some people we may remark are unable to see any difference between sentiments and sentimentalities.

[166] It was by a reverse procedure that Kant shewed his greatness. He kept the two fields of thought apart, and applied to each a criticism unsparing, but appropriate. Nothing could be more decisive than the result, though darkened in some degree by the critic's peculiar technicalities. Moral truth was placed upon the most sublime of elevations. Speculative reason could never rise beyond the limits of conditioned truth; any attempt to extend its sphere issued in antinomy or blank negation. It left the human mind apparently oscillating between Idealism and limited Insight. But to this must be added a most important point too commonly forgotten. Though Speculative reason does not demonstrably prove, it renders conceivable by us those highest of all Ideas which our Practical reason shews to be necessarily and unquestionably certain for every one
of us. Moral Truth thus opens to Man's eye a clear vista into the Timeless
and the Absolute, to an immortal life beyond the grave, and to God the Sovereign both of Nature and of Man. It tells us the secret of true Causation, and with it of all that is most worth living for, the intrinsically greatest and Best of Humanity. And it binds every human being, as by golden links, to that ever present Divine throne, the shrine and oracle set up within his own breast. We ought always to remember that upon those grand truths which if practically certain cannot be ultimately false, Kant staked his all. They were the crown alike of his labours and his life.

Addition.—By these remarks the present writer does not intend subscribing to all the Kantian conclusions respecting pure Speculative Reason, much less to those that have been asserted by many of Kant's disciples. Difference of opinion on such conclusions cannot, however, effect an honest appreciation of the clear and elevated principles maintained by Kant on the subject of independent Morality, as contradistinguished from the scheme which used to be termed Selfish, but is now commonly called Utilitarian.—See pp. 93-6 ante.

[ah] "Thousands of years it may be before Homer and the Veda ... Dyaus did not mean the blue sky, nor was it simply the sky personified; it was meant for something else.... We shall have to learn the same lesson again and again in the Science of Religion, viz. that the place whereon we stand is holy ground. Thousands of years have passed since the Aryan nations separated to travel to the North and the South, the West and the East: they have each formed their languages, they have each founded empires and philosophies, they have each built temples and razed them to the ground; they have all grown older, and it may be wiser and better; but when they search for a name for what is most exalted and yet most dear to every one of us, when they wish to express both awe and love, the infinite and the finite, they can but do what their old fathers did when gazing up to the eternal sky, and feeling the presence of a Being as far as far and as near as near can be: they can but combine the self-same words, and utter once more the primeval Aryan prayer, Heaven-Father, in that form which will endure for ever, 'Our Father which art in Heaven.'"—Max MÜller, Lectures on the Science of Religion, pp. 171-2, 3.

[167] Compare the Indian phrase "the magical illusions of reality, the so-called MÂy of creation." Max MÜller's Sanskrit Literature, p. 19. Also Ritter's Gesch. der Philosophie, I. 101 seq., and the account in both of the philosophy of Quietism. The attractive side of it is given by Max MÜller, pp. 18, 19, and 29. The National results are elegantly painted, pp. 30, 31. He concludes: "It might therefore be justly said that India has no place in the political history of the world.... India has moved in such
a small and degraded circle of political existence that it remained almost
invisible to the eyes of other nations."

Few feelings are more deeply rooted, as in our individual, so in our collective human nature, than this same conclusion. Quietism culminates when Action appears useless because of a conceived Necessity or Unreality of Nature:—"Life is but a Dream—Let all sit still and fold their hands to slumber."

[168] Speculatively considered, what can the weapon commonly called argument do against Idealism? Both sides allow that man can neither cause nor annihilate sensible impressions. But they are supposably ideal phrases of susceptibility, which may be explained in more ways than one. On the inability of most men—(particularly Scotchmen,) to comprehend Berkeley's position, see Fraser's Ed., IV. 366, 7, 8, note. It gave rise to notably absurd rejoinders: "With the witty Voltaire ten thousand cannon balls, and ten thousand dead men, were ten thousand ideas, according to Berkeley. There is as much subtlety of thought, and more humour, in the Irish story of Berkeley's visit to Swift on a rainy day, when, by the Dean's orders, he was left to stand before the unopened door, because, if his philosophy was true, he could as easily enter with the door shut as open."

[169] "We cannot possibly identify the perception of expanded colour, which is all that originally constitutes seeing, with the perception of felt resistance, which is all that originally constitutes touching. Coloured extension is antithetical to felt extension. In fact, we do not see, we never saw, and we never can see the orange of mere touch; we do not touch, we never touched, and we never can touch the orange of mere sight." Ibid. p. 394.

[170]

[171] "What are the core and essence of this hypothesis? Strip it naked and you stand face to face with the notion that not alone the more ignoble forms of animalcular or animal life, not alone the nobler forms of the horse and lion, not alone the exquisite and wonderful mechanism of the human body, but that the human mind itself—emotion, intellect, will, and all their phenomena—were once latent in a fiery cloud. Surely the mere statement of such a notion is more than a refutation." Tyndall, Fragments of Science, p. 163.

[172] Mr. Mill speaks thus of the Design argument. "It is the best; and besides, it is by far the most persuasive. It would be difficult to find a stronger argument in favour of Theism, than that the eye must have been made by one who sees, and the ear by one who hears." Mill On Hamilton, p. 551.

[173] So in Thomson's Hymn:—

[ai] "The idea of God, beyond all question or comparison, is the one great seminal principle; inasmuch as it combines and comprehends all the faculties of our nature, converging in it as their common centre; brings the reason to sanction the aspirations of the imagination; impregnates law with the vitality and attractiveness of the affections; and establishes the natural legitimate subordination of the body to the will, and of both to the vis logica or reason, by involving the necessary and entire dependence of the created on the creator." Guesses at Truth. 1st Ed., pp. 122, 3.

[aj] Perhaps every cynic delighting in those records should be asked to define what he means by Savagery. Of savages there are evidently many sorts, e. g.:—

(1) The children of our race;—a condition not beautiful, yet not without hope.

(2) Semi-civilized tribes, generally addicted to "fire-water" and other vices of civilization, without possession of its better things.

(3) Barbarian princedoms, grown decrepit by reason of wars, caste domination, or a sensual and effete culture.

(4) There are also a few wholly uncultured folk, who are more of gentlemen and ladies than our highly civilized peoples;—more truthful, honourable, and courteous;—while,

(5) Not a few are savages indeed!

These strictures serve as a reminder to add that by Theism is here intended the belief in a Supreme Being, the Father of Spirits, to Whom we shall give solemn account. But it is not meant to include some civilized superstitions, by means of which many men degrade and torment their fellows. Of such men we say, They too are savages indeed!

[174] Reid's Works, p. 751.

[175] Reid's Works, p. 743.

[176] Metaph. II. p. 530.

[177] The Friend, vol iii. p. 214. Ed. 1844.

[ak] The portrait of a lonely thinker searching out God has been painted in lively colours, as follows:—"O my friend, you would do me most grievous wrong, if you thought my heart empty of those feelings which make man the standing miracle of Nature. If your child fell into the river, would you stop to tell or think how you loved it, how dear and winsome and precious it was to you, how blank your home and bruised your heart would be without it? Or would you plunge into the stream in utter recklessness of your life, bear it swiftly out of the devouring flood, and then in silence strain the rescued little one to your bosom? Characters differ. It is mine to act, as well as to feel. What, do you imagine, prompts a thinker to give his days and nights to the rescue of man's faith in God, his heart-trust and moral inspiration and spiritual joy, when all these are put in jeopardy by the increase of a knowledge that is but half comprehended, even by those who in their own special lines are nobly increasing it? What lies back of the intense activity of his brain, as he toils over problems that wring the beads from his brow, gives up to the lonely pursuit of truth the hours that might be fertile of the prizes clutched after by the crowd, and turns his back on prizes that even he holds dear? What but a mighty hunger for God can explain this weary, unending search for Him? What else can explain the unthanked effort to make plain a path to Him that no man wants to travel?" American Index, Jan. 15, 1874.

[178] Butler's Sermons, p. 184 seq.

[179] The Soul, her Sorrows and her Aspirations, pp. 103, 104.

[180] Nov. Org. II. 4, last paragraph. "For a true and perfect rule of operation then the direction will be that it be certain, free, and disposing or leading to action. And this is the same thing with the discovery of the true Form. For the Form of a nature is such, that given the Form the nature infallibly follows. Therefore it is always present when the nature is present, and universally implies it, and is constantly inherent in it. Again, the Form is such, that if it be taken away the nature infallibly vanishes. Therefore it is always absent when the nature is absent, and implies its absence, and inheres in nothing else."

[181] Sentence following immediately in N. O. II. 4. "Lastly, the true Form is such that it deduces the given nature from some source of being which is inherent in more natures, and which is better known in the natural order of things than the Form itself. For a true and perfect axiom of knowledge then the direction and precept will be, that another nature be discovered which is convertible with the given nature, and yet is a limitation of a more general nature, as of a true and real genus. Now these two directions, the one active the other contemplative, are one and the same thing; and what in operation is most useful, that in knowledge is most true." Ellis and Spedding, Vol. IV. pp. 121, 2.

[182] Savery was celebrated by Dr. Darwin as the man, who,—

Savery's patent (the first granted for a steam engine), is dated 1698. Papin suggested in 1695 a partial vacuum under a piston for raising water, so as to make the pressure of the air the moving power. Most people are aware of the effect upon invention produced by the great mining interest,—the necessity of pumping out underground adits, water logged, and therefore inaccessible.

[183] At the end of his Lectures on the Steam Engine.

Hulls' was the first attempt to convert the reciprocating movement of the piston-rod into rotation; and it does not rival the crank in simplicity. But there is a contrivance for equalizing the first irregular motion by weights, which possesses real beauty, and has the further advantage of readily increasing or diminishing the velocity of the wheels. The wheels themselves are fixed at some little distance astern of his boat which he intends to be used for towing ships. They are thus (as Professor Rigaud observes) nearer "to what may be considered as the centre of the compound body, which they were the means of propelling."

Such was the earliest patent; but proposals for the same object had been made still earlier. Papin submitted one to the Royal Society in 1708, comprehending a "boat to be rowed with oars moved with heat," and engines capable of throwing bullets and raising water. Sir Isaac Newton reported on the invention and recommended experiments, but the Society could not or would not grant a sum not exceeding £15 for the purpose. Again, the Acta Eruditorum for 1690, preserves a previous proposal made by Papin, accounts of which will be found in Farey's Treatise on the Steam Engine, and Professor Rigaud's Early Proposals for Steam Navigation. In the latter publication (a paper read to the Ashmolean Society) is also contained (pp. 11-14) a summary of the most wonderful among all records relating to this subject;—the trial of Blasco de Garay's steam-boat at Barcelona under Charles V. "The experiment was made the 17th June 1543 on board a vessel called the Trinidad, of 200 barrels burden, which had lately arrived with wheat from Colibre. The vessel was seen at a given moment to move forward and turn about at pleasure, without sail, or oar, or human agency, and without any visible mechanism except a huge boiler of hot water, and a complicated combination of wheels and paddles." The entire or partial credibility of this record has been often argued pro and con. Professor Rigaud thinks it "not impossible that even a magnificent invention, like this, may have sunk into oblivion." Perhaps not, considering that the Spain of Cervantes is the Spain of Southey, and Mr. Borrow. A clock may stand still, but a nation which does so is retrograde.

[184] The Chinese seeing our steam-ships at Chusan (in the war of 1841, 2), made paddlewheel vessels driven by men inside their hulls. Ignorant of steam-power, they achieved an engine without its principle. So too Prince Rupert gave a rotary motion to oars by horse-power, producing a greater velocity than sixteen watermen could impart to the Royal barge.

[185] See second note on this chapter.

[186] Darwin's Descent of Man, I. p. 179. Mr. Darwin adds in a note that "Sir C. Lyell had already (Principles of Geology, 1868. II. 489) called attention, in a striking passage, to the evil influence of the Holy Inquisition, in having lowered, through selection, the general standard of intelligence in Europe."

[al] The term "relativity" is employed here on account of its breadth and comprehensiveness, and because it does not imply the adoption of some special hypothesis as to the essence of things or formative principles themselves;—such theorizing being no necessary condition of the present line of thought.

Let it be observed, however, that any law of the natural world by virtue of which, the apprehended relativity becomes operative, must be conceived as in its own nature genetic or causative, in order to explain Production. What is here meant may easily be understood by a few common-sense reflections.

The word "Law" is one of the most ambiguous expressions possible. Perhaps its most familiar use is in statistical science, where it usually means the result gained from averages. For example, birth-rates, death-rates, and rates of exchange are spoken of as laws of increase, of mortality, and of the money market. Sometimes nothing but the generalized fact is signified; sometimes it is intended to imply that these formulÆ govern, or ought to govern social questions, or problems of political economy.

In like manner, when a law is the verbal embodiment of any principle, it may be considered as a perfectly abstract proposition; or else as a governing rule or maxim, under which definite and actual cases can be brought. The principles of arithmetic or geometry are laws to which every practical question involving number or measurement must be submitted. The laws of thought govern our reasonings, or at least they ought to do so.

Another way of looking at Law is to consider it in its commonest origin—i.e., as the expression of a law-maker's will. But when a writer on Natural Theology speaks of the laws of the physical world, and then adds that "law implies a lawgiver," he either supposes himself to have demonstrated the applicability of this maxim in relation to his own science;—or if not he is simply assuming the whole question at issue. [Compare Additional Note B, to Chapter II. p. 98, seq.]

The remaining most usual employment of the word, is to designate a Force, some actual moving power tending to realize itself in some way, working out a function either for good or evil, developing the secret of its own existence by the effects which it produces.

Take an example from real life. A medical man coming to a certain rural district, observed its high death-rate, traced it to the very great prevalence of small-pox in the place, and formulated a law embodying the results of several years averages which appeared sufficiently surprising. A further acquaintance with the habits of the neighbourhood disclosed the fact that inoculation was continually practised, and as continually kept secret on account of the penalties attached to it. The inquirer took advantage of the opportunity afforded by a custom he could not control to investigate its consequences. A few years later, he arrived at exact conclusions determining the law of activity exerted by the virus, under certain conditions. In other words, he found the genetic law of its operation.

Now, if the death-rate,—a piece of statistical law,—be contrasted with this last named law of virus-growth, the difference between these two formulÆ is at once obvious. Without any scientific discussion or refining, we grasp a broad common-sense distinction, which is all that seems needed here. For our purpose, it would be useless to inquire whether the law of virus-growth may be resolved into laws higher and far more recondite still. An inventor seizing the useful law he wants, will not stop to ask any such questions; he will apply his power and realize the function he has in view at the moment.

Another common-sense instance is to think of the properties of any familiar substance; the acridity of an alkali, for instance; its power of effervescing with acids, and neutralizing them; its behaviour as a reagent in a variety of ways, long to enumerate, but practically useful. When we have described all these properties, have we defined the whole substance? In other words, is the alkali anything more than a bundle of properties momentarily known to us? Undoubtedly there is one point more to be noticed; its principle of permanence, until brought under new conditions which dissolve its unity, and destroy the inter-coherence of its properties. Now whatever maintains this unity is the law of its substance. There are laws of nature under which both it and countless other substances are formed, continue, and are dissolved, making way for unending series of fresh combinations. And this mode of apprehending the unities we call substances, raises the self-same idea of genetic law which has been under consideration. If we are asked whether we can explain such laws further, we usually reply by saying "these are the forces of the natural world." Their correlations and modifications rule the kingdom of nature, and the great globe itself;—nay, they wield the empire of the Universe!

Such laws, such forces, have engrossed the attention of physical philosophers from the rude beginnings of inquiry. They have led to speculations of all kinds;—the best known of which is the distinction between Form and Matter in existing objects;—a distinction in common use amongst persons who but dimly guess at the past issues which it raises. Nothing, however, can be said on such a topic here, except by way of reference to the philosophic system of Francis Bacon. [Compare p. 92 ante, and the Synopsis prefixed to this chapter.]

[187] It is worth observation how often the abstract entity—(the principle of the whole realization)—is forgotten even by scientific persons. Forgotten, we say, since surely forgetfulness is the true origin of many futile attempts at explaining away essential principles. The following very curious case in point is narrated by S. T. Coleridge:—"There is still preserved in the Royal Observatory at Richmond the model of a bridge, constructed by the late justly celebrated Mr. Atwood (at that time, however, in the decline of life), in the confidence that he had explained the wonderful properties of the arch as resulting from the compound action of simple wedges, or of the rectilinear solids of which the material arch was composed; and of which supposed discovery his model was to exhibit ocular proof. Accordingly, he took a sufficient number of wedges of brass highly polished. Arranging these at first on a skeleton arch of wood, he then removed this scaffolding or support; and the bridge not only stood firm, without any cement between the squares, but he could take away any given portion of them, as a third or a half, and appending a correspondent weight, at either side, the remaining part stood as before. Our venerable sovereign, who is known to have had a particular interest and pleasure in all works and discoveries of mechanic science or ingenuity, looked at it for awhile stedfastly, and, as his manner was, with quick and broken expressions of praise and courteous approbation, in the form of answers to his own questions. At length turning to the constructor, he said, 'But Mr. Atwood, you have presumed the figure. You have put the arch first in this wooden skeleton. Can you build a bridge of the same wedges in any other figure? A straight bridge, or with two lines touching at the apex? If not, is it not evident that the bits of brass derive their continuance in the present position from the property of the arch, and not the arch from the property of the wedge?' The objection was fatal, the justice of the remark not to be resisted."—(The Friend. Vol. III., pp. 176, 7.)

Addition. Of "those abstract entities absolute in truth," Bacon writes (Nov. Org. II. 9), "Let the investigation of Forms, which are (in the eye of reason at least, and in their essential law) eternal and immutable, constitute Metaphysics:" and again (Ibid. 15), "To God, truly, the Giver and Architect of Forms, and it may be to the angels and higher intelligences, it belongs to have an affirmative knowledge of forms immediately, and from the first contemplation. But this assuredly is more than man can do, to whom it is granted only to proceed at first by negatives, and at last to end in affirmatives, after exclusion has been exhausted." And of their utility, as applied truths, he says (Ibid. 2), "Though in nature nothing really exists beside individual bodies, performing pure individual acts according to a fixed law, yet in philosophy this very law, and the investigation, discovery, and explanation of it, is the foundation as well of knowledge as of operation. And it is this law, with its clauses, that I mean when I speak of Forms; a name which I the rather adopt because it has grown into use and become familiar."

And these passages are in perfect harmony with Bacon's precept "that Physic should handle that which supposeth in Nature only a being and moving (and natural necessity), and Metaphysic should handle that which supposeth further in nature a reason, understanding, and platform (ideam)." (Advancement. II. E. and S. p. 353.) The reader will also perceive how natural it was for Bacon to place mathematical science "as a branch of metaphysic; for the subject of it being Quantity; not Quantity indefinite, which is but a relative and belongeth to philosophia prima (as hath been said,) but Quantity determined or proportionable; it appeareth to be one of the Essential Forms of things; as that that is causative in nature of a number of effects; ... and it is true also that of all other forms (as we understand forms) it is the most abstracted and separable from matter, and therefore most proper to metaphysic; which hath likewise been the cause why it hath been better laboured and enquired than any of the other forms, which are more immersed into matter. For it being the nature of the mind of man (to the extreme prejudice of knowledge) to delight in the spacious liberty of generalities, as in a champion region, and not in the inclosures of particularity; the mathematics of all other knowledge were the goodliest fields to satisfy that appetite." (Ibid. p. 359.) Compare this Essay, p. 91 ante, together with foot-note.

[an] "Observe," writes the late Sir B. Brodie, "observe the effect which the general diffusion of knowledge produces on society at large; how it draws the different classes of it into more free communication with each other; how its tendency is to make the laws more impartial, bring even the most despotic governments under the influence of public opinion, and show them that they have no real security except in the good will of the people. Knowledge goes hand-in-hand with civilization. It is necessary to the giving full effect to the precepts of the Christian faith. It was from the want of it that Galileo was tortured by the Inquisition, that Servetus was burned by Calvin, that the Huguenots were persecuted and slaughtered by Louis XIV., and that in numerous other instances one sect of Christians has conceived it to be their duty to exterminate another. It is a misapplication of the term civilization to apply it to any form of society in which ignorance is the rule and knowledge the exception. If a Being of superior intelligence were to look down from some higher sphere on our doings here on the earth, is it to be supposed that he would regard the Duke of Buckingham, dancing at the French Court, and scattering the pearls with which his dress was ornamented, on the floor, as being really superior to an Australian savage; or that he would see in the foreign Prince, who at a later period exhibited himself at another Court with his boots glittering with diamonds, any better emblem of civilization than in the negro chief, who gratifies his vanity by strutting about in the cast-off uniform of a general officer?" Psychological Inquiries. Part II., pp. 14, 15.

[188] "A few phrases of Aristotle," says Dr. Brown, (Works I. p. 341,) "are perhaps even at this moment exercising no small sway on the very minds which smile at them with scorn." Mr. Carlyle asks, "Do not Books still accomplish miracles, as Runes were fabled to do?... Consider whether any Rune, in the wildest imagination of Mythologist, ever did such wonders as, on the actual firm Earth, some Books have done." Heroes, p. 252.

[189] No writer has ever dwelt more on this truth than Coleridge, and no writer ever had a stronger reason for dwelling upon it. Perhaps the ordinary public has seldom been more unjust than in its estimate of Coleridge's addiction to opium. The occasion of his first use of it was a venial error, his servitude was heavy, and the account of his sufferings and struggles most deeply affecting. Then, his final victory (respecting which so little is generally said) was a very noble moral achievement.

[ao] Men have aimed at accomplishing their purpose partly by training animals, and partly by breeding through select specimens of each race. The two principles thus relied on are habit and heredity. Respecting the latter of these a note of considerable length had been intended in this place. But the reader interested in the general question can learn sufficient details in Dr. Carpenter's Mental Physiology together with the authorities therein referred to by him.

The following instances adduced by Mr. Wallace to show how improvement through heredity is visibly limited are very remarkable. "In the matter of speed, a limit of a definite kind as regards land animals does exist in nature. All the swiftest animals—deer, antelopes, hares, foxes, lions, leopards, horses, zebras, and many others—have reached very nearly the same degree of speed. Although the swiftest of each must have been for ages preserved, and the slowest must have perished, we have no reason to believe there is any advance of speed. The possible limit under existing conditions, and perhaps under possible terrestrial conditions, has been long ago reached." He immediately proceeds to place in contrast with these, some examples where progress is not thus barred. "In cases, however, where this limit had not been so nearly reached as in the horse, we have been enabled to make a more marked advance and to produce a greater difference of form. The wild dog is an animal that hunts much in company, and trusts more to endurance than to speed. Man has produced the greyhound, which differs much more from the wolf or the dingo than the racer does from the wild Arabian. Domestic dogs, again, have varied more in size and in form than the whole family of CanidÆ in a state of Nature. No wild dog, fox, or wolf, is either so small as some of the smallest terriers and spaniels, or so large as the largest varieties of hound or Newfoundland dog. And, certainly, no two wild animals of the family differ so widely in form and proportions as the Chinese pug and the Italian greyhound, or the bulldog and the common greyhound. The known range of variation is, therefore, more than enough for the derivation of all the forms of Dogs, Wolves, and Foxes from a common ancestor." Wallace. Natural Selection, pp. 292, 3.

Dr. Prichard's accounts of similar variations in his Natural History of Man and other ethnological works are particularly interesting.

Habit is a topic more germane to the subject of self-training, and is therefore examined at some length in our text.

It seems natural that the empire of both Habit and Heredity should be strongest over the purely automatous, and the instinctive or semi-instinctive actions of mankind. Witness the effect of Caste institutions, Guilds, and family vocations. Regular occupation struck a certain visitor to this world as producing a like result:—

[ap] "They that deny a God destroy man's nobility; for certainly man is of kin to the beast by his body; and, if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature. It destroys likewise magnanimity, and the raising of human nature; for take an example of a dog, and mark what a generosity and courage he will put on when he finds himself maintained by a man, who to him is instead of a God, or 'melior natura'; which courage is manifestly such as that creature, without that confidence of a better nature than his own, could never attain. So man, when he resteth and assureth himself upon divine protection and favour, gathereth a force and faith, which human nature in itself could not obtain'; therefore, as atheism is in all respects hateful, so in this, that it depriveth human nature of the means to exalt itself above human frailty." Bacon. Essay on Atheism, p. 56.

[aq] The difference between brute and Man appeared so vast to Bacon that, following Telesius in this as in some other respects, he adopted as a doctrine the duality of the human soul. He maintains it at length in the De Augmentis iv. 3, a chapter which begins thus:—"Let us now proceed to the doctrine which concerns the Human Soul, from the treasures whereof all other doctrines are derived. The parts thereof are two; the one treats of the rational soul, which is divine; the other of the irrational, which is common with brutes.... Now this soul (as it exists in man) is only the instrument of the rational soul, and has its origin like that of the brutes in the dust of the earth.... For there are many and great excellencies of the human soul above the souls of brutes, manifest even to those who philosophise according to the sense. Now wherever the mark of so many and great excellencies is found, there also a specific difference ought to be constituted; and therefore I do not much like the confused and promiscuous manner in which philosophers have handled the functions of the soul; as if the human soul differed from the spirit of brutes in degree rather than in kind; as the sun differs from the stars, or gold from metals."

[190] We have it on Coleridge's authority that "Lord Erskine, speaking of animals, hesitating to call them brutes, hit upon that happy phrase—'the mute creation.'" Would this were true! exclaims some invalid, nervously agonized by cats and dogs, cocks and hens, and listening with horror to their various cries and noises. But strictly speaking Lord Erskine was right,—for the animal world is mute as far as real language is concerned. Compare Max MÜller on the "Bow-wow Theory." Lectures on Language, Series I. Lecture ix.

[191] The Poet's thought, not more imaginative than true, should be kept in mind when estimating the difference between gregariousness and society. If the latter be held a development of the former, it must have been transformed in the progress of its descent. Where affinities are really traceable between the human and the unreasoning world, they may perhaps be referred with greater probability to a common ancestry than to a lineal pedigree. And the more remote the alleged origin, the less unlikely it may appear.

[192] "Sir Humphrey Davy, when a boy, was placed under a schoolmaster who neglected his duties, and adverting to this subject in a letter addressed to his mother after he was settled in London, he says, 'I consider it as fortunate that I was left much to myself as a child, and put on no particular plan of study, and that I enjoyed much idleness at Mr. Coryton's school. I, perhaps, owe to these circumstances the little talents I have, and their peculiar application. What I am I made myself. I say this without vanity, and in pure simplicity of heart.'" Brodie's Psychological Inquiries, I. 29.

"The regular course of studies, the years of academical and professional education, have not yielded me better facts than some idle books under the bench at the Latin School. What we do not call education is more precious than that which we call so. We form no guess, at the time of receiving a thought, of its comparative value. And education often wastes its efforts in attempts to thwart and balk this natural magnetism, which is sure to select what belongs to it." Emerson. Spiritual Laws.

[ar] "We can command Nature only by obeying her; nor can Art avail anything except as Nature's handmaiden. We can affect the conditions under which Nature works; but things artificial as well as things natural are in reality produced Not by Art but Nature. Our power is merely based upon our knowledge of the procedure which Nature follows. She is never really thwarted or controlled by our operations, though she may be induced to depart from her usual course, and under new and artificial conditions to produce new phenomena and new substances.

"Natural philosophy, considered from this point of view, is therefore only an answer to the question, How does Nature work in the production of phenomena?" R. L. Ellis. Preface to Bacon's Philosophical Works, Vol. I. p. 59.

[as] "The philosopher, not less than the poet, postpones the apparent order and relations of things to the empire of thought. 'The problem of philosophy,' according to Plato, 'is, for all that exists conditionally, to find a ground unconditioned and absolute.' It proceeds on the faith that a law determines all phenomena, which being known, the phenomena can be predicted. That law, when in the mind, is an idea. Its beauty is infinite. The true philosopher and the true poet are one, and a beauty, which is truth, and a truth, which is beauty, is the aim of both. Is not the charm of one of Plato's or Aristotle's definitions, strictly like that of the Antigone of Sophocles? It is, in both cases, that a spiritual life has been imparted to nature; that the solid seeming block of matter has been pervaded and dissolved by a thought; that this feeble human being has penetrated the vast masses of nature with an informing soul, and recognized itself in their harmony, that is, seized their law. In physics, when this is attained, the memory disburthens itself of its cumbrous catalogues of particulars, and carries centuries of observation in a single formula." Emerson. Idealism.

"He who studies the concrete and neglects the abstract cannot be called an interpreter of nature. Such was Bacon's judgment." Robert Leslie Ellis, in Bacon's Works, Vol. I. p. 26.

"If a man's knowledge be confined to the efficient and material causes (which are unstable causes, and merely vehicles, or causes which convey the form in certain cases) he may arrive at new discoveries in reference to substances in some degree similar to one another, and selected beforehand; but he does not touch the deeper boundaries of things. But whosoever is acquainted with Forms, embraces the unity of nature in substances the most unlike; and is able therefore to detect and bring to light things never yet done, and such as neither the vicissitudes of nature, nor industry in experimenting, nor accident itself, would ever have brought into act, and which would never have occurred to the thought of man. From the discovery of Forms therefore results truth in speculation and freedom in operation."—Bacon. Novum Organon, Book II. Aph. III.

[at] The problem awaiting the philosophic physicist runs as follows:—

It remains to be seen how closely and with what degree of distinctness, science can approximate these impalpable forces governing the natural world, to the forces we are accustomed to call immaterial, because they become known to us by the activities of Thought and Will.

This problem—the incorporeity of Matter, or a near approach to it—has been a favourite subject of speculation in all ages. The curious reader may track it from the pre-and post-Christian Greeks through Arabian and Jewish philosophies to the Schoolmen (who borrowed from Jews unknowingly) and so transmitted it down like an heirloom to our own later controversialists. The subject has been treated on Metaphysical grounds, for Religious interests, or as a weapon keen edged in demolishing antagonistic cosmologies. But it has not often been entertained for purely scientific reasons, and as one of those so-called "useless questions" which always turn out most prolific seminal principles, fertile in explaining nature and throwing out branches in numerous unforeseen directions.

It was thus however and with no side views that the illustrious Faraday looked at this subject. With what effect may be best learned by putting together two separate accounts of his reasoning.

In 1844, Dr. Bence Jones informs us Faraday (then in his 53rd year) indulged in "A speculation respecting that view of the nature of matter which considers its ultimate atoms as centres of force, and not as so many little bodies surrounded by forces.... The particle, indeed, is supposed to exist only by these forces, and where they are it is."

This speculation did in fact give a tone to that memorable season—now thirty years ago.

Dr. Tyndall says:—"On Friday, January 19, 1844, he opened the weekly evening meetings of the Royal Institution by a discourse entitled 'A speculation touching Electric Conduction and the nature of Matter.' In this discourse he not only attempts the overthrow of Dalton's Theory of Atoms, but also the subversion of all ordinary scientific ideas regarding the nature and relations of Matter and Force. He objected to the use of the term atom:—'I have not yet found a mind,' he says, 'that did habitually separate it from its accompanying temptations; and there can be no doubt that the words definite proportions, equivalent, primes, etc., which did and do fully express all the facts of what is usually called the atomic theory in chemistry, were dismissed because they were not expressive enough, and did not say all that was in the mind of him who used the word atom in their stead,'" (Faraday as a Discoverer, pp. 119-20.)

And again:—"With his usual courage and sincerity he pushes his view to its utmost consequences. 'This view of the constitution of matter,' he continues, 'would seem to involve necessarily the conclusion that matter fills all space, or at least all space to which gravitation extends; for gravitation is a property of matter dependent on a certain force, and it is this force which constitutes the matter. In that view matter is not merely mutually penetrable; but each atom extends, so to say, throughout the whole of the solar system, yet always retaining its own centre of force.'" Faraday "compares the interpenetration of two atoms to the coalescence of two distinct waves, which though for a moment blended to a single mass, preserve their individuality, and afterwards separate." (Ibid. pp. 123-4 and note.)

The subject did not easily lose its hold on the philosopher's mind. "At the Institution," writes Dr. Bence Jones, "he gave eight lectures after Easter on the phenomena and philosophy of heat. He ended this course thus:—'We know nothing about matter but its forces—nothing in the creation but the effect of these forces; further our sensations and perceptions are not fitted to carry us; all the rest, which we may conceive we know, is only imagination.' He gave two Friday discourses: the first on the nature of matter, the other on recent improvements in the silvering of mirrors.

"His notes of the first lecture begin thus:—'Speculations dangerous temptations; generally avoid them; but a time to speculate as well as to refrain, all depends upon the temper of the mind. I was led to consider the nature of space in relation to electric conduction, and so of matter, i.e. whether continuous or consisting of particles with intervening space, according to its supposed constitution. Consider this point, remarking the assumptions everywhere.

"'Chemical considerations abundant, but almost all assumption. Easy to speak of atomic proportions, multiple proportions, isomeric and isomorphic phenomena and compound bases; and to account for effects we have only to hang on to assumed atoms the properties or arrangement of properties assumed to be sufficient for the purpose. But the fundamental and main facts are expressed by the term definite proportion,—the rest, including the atomic notion, is assumption.

"'The view that physical chemistry necessarily takes of atoms is now very large and complicated; first many elementary atoms—next compound and complicated atoms. System within system, like the starry heavens, may be right—but may be all wrong. Thus see how little of general theory of matter is known as fact, and how much is assumption.

"'Final brooding impression, that particles are only centres of force; that the force or forces constitute the matter; that therefore there is no space between the particles distinct from the particles of matter; that they touch each other just as much in gases as in liquids or solids; and that they are materially penetrable, probably even to their very centres. That, for instance, water is not two particles of oxygen side by side, but two spheres of power mutually penetrated, and the centres even coinciding.'" Bence Jones—Life of Faraday, Vol. II., pp. 177-78.

These views (best known as Boscovich's theory), though not generally held in scientific circles, are favoured by Bacon's most able commentator, Robert Leslie Ellis, and are pronounced by Professor Huxley a "tenable hypothesis." Mr. Spencer poises the balance as follows:—"Though the combining weights of the respective elements are termed by chemists their 'equivalents,' for the purpose of avoiding a questionable assumption, we are unable to think of the combination of such definite weights, without supposing it to take place between definite numbers of definite particles. And thus it would appear that the Newtonian view is at any rate preferable to that of Boscovich. A disciple of Boscovich, however, may reply that his master's theory is involved in that of Newton; and cannot indeed be escaped. 'What,' he may ask, 'is it that holds together the parts of these ultimate atoms?' 'A cohesive force,' his opponent must answer. 'And what,' he may continue, 'is it that holds together the parts of any fragments, into which, by sufficient force, an ultimate atom might be broken?' Again the answer must be—a cohesive force. 'And what,' he may still ask, 'if the ultimate atom were, as we can imagine it to be, reduced to parts as small in proportion to it, as it is in proportion to a tangible mass of matter—what must give each part the ability to sustain itself, and to occupy space?' Still there is no answer but—a cohesive force. Carry the process in thought as far as we may, until the extension of the parts is less than can be imagined, we still cannot escape the admission of forces by which the extension is upheld; and we can find no limit until we arrive at the conception of centres of force without any extension." First Principles, p. 54.

It is evident that Faraday was able to think in a manner which has been often declared impossible. Mr. Spencer's statement of the counter case is alone sufficient to prove that the inquiry is sure to be recurrent. We may add with Dr. Tyndall that facts alone cannot satisfy the mind, and that when a law is established, the question "why" is inevitable. Compare foot-note p. 324 post.

[193] A familiar instance of one among these abstract entities may convey to some readers a clearer idea of their nature than many careful explanations. Three balks of timber are lying in our road,—one, a very large and heavy monster, directly across it. Desirous of driving by, and being without adequate help to remove an obstacle beyond our strength, we call to mind the following definition. "The lever is an inflexible bar, capable of free motion about a fixed axis, called the fulcrum." (Newth. Natural Philosophy, p. 33.) Acting upon this idea, we place one balk we can manage to move, upon a second which happens to lie conveniently, and so roll away the third heavy monster. This done, we replace No. 1 peaceably beside No. 2, and wend on our way rejoicing. Now the lever, as defined by Newth, existed ideally in our mind, and we realised and used it. Our lever and fulcrum are still lying on the road, though they are lever and fulcrum no longer. The leverage was an applied mental Form, but we no longer want the Form to be operative,—and along with it the Force has disappeared.

[au] Our knowledge of Matter and of Motion;—our knowledge of their continuance while our forms and other forms are undergoing change;—all we most certainly know of the material world, resolves itself into our knowledge of Force. Thus far Mr. Herbert Spencer is with us, as may be seen from the following paragraphs from his First Principles. "By the indestructibility of Matter, we really mean the indestructibility of the force with which Matter affects us. As we become conscious of Matter only through that resistance which it opposes to our muscular energy, so do we become conscious of the permanence of Matter only through the permanence of this resistance; as either immediately or mediately proved to us. And this truth is made manifest not only by analysis of the À posteriori cognition, but equally so by analysis of the À priori one. For that which we cannot conceive to be diminished by the continued compression of Matter, is not its occupancy of space, but its ability to resist." (p. 179.) "It remains to be pointed out that the continuity of Motion, as well as the indestructibility of Matter, is really known to us in terms of force. That a certain manifestation of force remains for ever undiminished, is the ultimate content of the thought; whether reached À posteriori or À priori." (p. 182.) And again (pp. 191-2). "What, in these two foregoing chapters, was proved true of Matter and Motion, is, À fortiori, true of the Force out of which our conceptions of Matter and Motion are built. Indeed, as we saw, that which is indestructible in matter and motion, is the force they present. And, as we here see, the truth that Force is indestructible, is the obverse of the truth that the Unknown Cause of the changes going on in consciousness is indestructible. So that the persistence of consciousness, constitutes at once our immediate experience of the persistence of Force, and imposes on us the necessity we are under of asserting its persistence.... Consciousness without this or that particular form is possible; but consciousness without contents is impossible."

We are also quite at one with Mr. Herbert Spencer as regards an assertion made in his Principles of Psychology (I. 161,) and repeated, to shew how anti-materialistic he is, in his last book. (Essays, III., p. 250.) "Of the two it seems easier to translate so-called Matter into so-called Spirit, than to translate so-called Spirit into so-called Matter, which latter is, indeed, wholly impossible."

But though it is true, as he adds, that "no translation can carry us beyond our symbols," it is no less true that we are impelled to inquire into that which underlies them. Mr. Spencer says further (Psychology I. 162,) "The conditioned form under which Being is presented in the Subject, cannot, any more than the conditioned form under which Being is presented in the Object, be the Unconditioned Being common to the two." In this negation we are less at one with him, for, as we firmly believe, in that conditioned sphere we call our own subjective nature there is a Reality presented to our consciousness by every act of Volition which brings us far nearer than any objective or outside form of existence can bring us to that Unconditioned Being which is common to the two, and infinitely superior to them both.

[194] Spirit of Inductive Philosophy, p. 165.

[195] Ibid. pp. 169-170. "In the confined and literal notions, often ignorantly entertained, of the sciences of observation, our conclusions might be supposed restricted to the field of mere sensible experience; and in this sense we should fall short of any worthy apprehension of the Supreme Intelligence. But the truly inductive philosopher extends his contemplation to intellectual conceptions of a higher class, pointing to order and uniformity as constant and universal as the extent of nature itself in space and in time; and in the same proportion he recognises harmony and arrangement invested with the attributes of universality and eternity, and thus derives his loftier ideas of the Divine perfections."

[196] See Ravaisson (La Philosophie en France, p. 82,) for an account of Comte's position in this particular. He characterizes it thus: "Du positivisme physique superficiel il est arrivÉ au positivisme moral."

[av] Or else as some may prefer to state it, Mind is the intelligible law. In other words, Law is the manifestation and energizing of the Mind in Nature, and we recognize mind in the energy of Law. Canon Mozley spoke as follows in 1872. "There is a great deal said now about Mind in Nature, and scientific men talk enthusiastically about Mind; the old notion of chance is obsolete, and in spite of the strength of a materialist school, there is a tendency to a consensus of scientific men that there is Mind in the universe. Would any one in any public meeting of scientific men dare to stand up and deny that there was Mind in Nature? It would be thought monstrous. It would be set down as the revival of an old stupidity. It is the only form in which they find they can speak of nature which at all ennobles it or which satisfies their own idea of the sublimity of nature." The Principle of Causation considered in opposition to Atheistic Theories, p. 41.

The learned writer goes on to connect this admitted idea of Mind with the collateral idea of Design. And this is a most natural sequence of thought. But, for reasons already mentioned, the main argument of this chapter pursues another track. Mind in Nature being directly intuited, (to use an expressive Kantian phrase) we supplement the evidence thus given by a cross-examination of facts for the purpose of eliciting an account of what manner of Intelligence this Mind in Nature must be.

[aw] "It is true," says Canon Mozley, "that matter has lately been set before us as claiming more vicinity to mind than it has been usual to assign it; and a scientific man, of the highest genius, has regretted that 'mind and matter have ever been presented to us in the rudest contrast—the one as all noble, the other as all vile.' ... Hobbes, in the 17th century, anticipated this claim, and laid down 'that all matter as matter is endued not only with figure and a capacity of motion, but also with an actual sense and perception, and wants only the organs and memory of animals to express its sensations,'" On Causation, as before, p. 38.

The doctrine of an inferior and irrational, or as some phrase it "a blind intelligence" is the topic next discussed with some fulness in our text.

This "blind intelligence" makes Nature, so to speak, "the instinct of the Universe." Thence it is "no long step" to a belief that the world is a living creature, neither are there wanting modern accounts of the principle of Vitality, and its powers of assimilation,—equally applicable to the accretive growth of a crystal.

The renovators of philosophy were (as Mr. Leslie Ellis remarks) strongly inclined to this belief, its typical teacher being Campanella. Leibniz points out with his usual energy its affinity with the Scholastic doctrine of "substantial forms"—(a very different theory from Bacon's) "formas quasdam substantiales ejusmodi sibi imaginatus videtur, quÆ per se sint causa motus in corporibus, quemadmodum Scholastici capiunt;" and proceeds to say, "ita reditur ad tot deunculos, quot formas substantiales, et Gentilem prope polytheismum.... Quum tamen revera in natura nulla sit sapientia, nullus appetitus, ordo vero pulcher ex eo oriatur, quia est horologium Dei." Leibnitii Opera Philosophica, Ed. Erdmann, pp. 52-3.

[197] "Easiest" is here and elsewhere used to mean that which accounts in the most natural and perfect manner alike for a single fact and for the complex whole of facts presented to us. Such an "easiest account" is the law of Gravitation—it is at once the simplest and the most complete.

[198] Fragments of Science, p. 88.

[199] Struck it so truly that (to borrow Mr. Huxley's expression) a sufficient Intelligence might have predicted the Universe. But what an infinitude of knowledge would this "sufficiency" seem to presuppose!

[ax] Taking an optical structure of the Eye as a test example, the chances of its Evolution per accidens have been calculated by an eminent mathematician. His results may be seen in the Additional Note appended to this Chapter. They are extracted from the Hulsean Lectures for 1867.

[ay] For example:—No one holds the doctrine of Natural Selection more firmly than Mr. Wallace;—he is, in fact, known to have anticipated the Darwinian theory of Evolution. But he also holds that Natural Selection cannot account for certain of the physical peculiarities of Man; much less for his consciousness, his language, his moral sense, or his Volition.

Mr. Wallace maintains likewise that

(1) Atoms are centres of Force.

(2) Force is known to us as Will.

(3) The Will that governs the world is the Will of higher intelligences or of one supreme Intelligence.

He quotes, as representing his own thought, the following lines from an American poetess:—

To the above-mentioned points Mr. Wallace adds a spiritualistic belief in many sublime intelligences intermediate between the Deity and the Universe. Compare Natural Selection, Ed. 2. Essay X. with Notes.

[az] That the perception of fitness, even when of the most exalted kind, does not to some thinkers carry with it a perception of Design, is plainly manifest from the ensuing paragraph:—

"The absurdity of the À posteriori argument for a God consists in the assumption that what we call order, harmony, and adaptation are evidence of design, when it is evident that, whether there be a God or not, order, harmony, and adaptation must have existed from eternity, and are not therefore necessary proof of a designing cause." (American Index, Jan. 11, 1873.)

It is to be hoped that the writer of this rather strong statement had insight enough to perceive that these eternal harmonizers of the whole Universe do, in fact, constitute a self-existent Mind.

[ba] With perfect fairness, Professor Huxley admits the force of this distinction. In a paragraph quoted p. 133, he wrote thus:—"It is necessary to remember that there is a wider Teleology, which is not touched by the doctrine of Evolution, but is actually based upon the fundamental proposition of Evolution. That proposition is, that the whole world, living and not living, is the result of the mutual interaction, according to definite laws, of the forces possessed by the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed. If this be true, it is no less certain that the existing world lay, potentially, in the cosmic vapour; and that a sufficient intelligence could, from a knowledge of the properties of the molecules of that vapour, have predicted, say the state of the Fauna of Britain in 1869, with as much certainty as one can say what will happen to the vapour of the breath in a cold winter's day."

It is curious to compare Mr. Huxley's dictum on the Eye (cited p. 133) with a passage before part-quoted from Mr. Newman. "In saying that lungs were intended to breathe, and eyes to see, we imply an argument from Fitness to Design, which carries conviction to the overwhelming majority of cultivated as well as uncultivated minds. Yet, in calling it an argument, we may seem to appeal to the logical faculty; and this would be an error. No syllogism is pretended, that proves a lung to have been made to breathe; but we see it by what some call Common-Sense, and some Intuition. If such a fact stood alone in the universe, and no other existences spoke of Design, it would probably remain a mere enigma to us; but when the whole human world is pervaded by similar instances, not to see a Universal Mind in nature appears almost a brutal insensibility; and if any one intelligently professes Atheism, the more acute he is, the more distinctly we perceive that he is deficient in the Religious Faculty. Just as, if he had no sense of Beauty in anything, we should not imagine that we could impart it by argument, so neither here.... No stress whatever needs here to be laid upon minute anatomy, as, for instance, of the eye: it signifies not, whether we do or do not understand its optical structure as a matter of science. If it had no optical structure at all, if it differed in no respect (that we could discover) from a piece of marble, except that it sees, this would not impair the reasons for believing that it is meant to see." The Soul, pp. 32-3.

This extract from Mr. Newman raises the question—Is an eminent Biologist any better judge on the subject of Design, than any other eminent thinker? Clearly he is a judge of Fitness, but that fact is admitted on all sides;—the eyes of animals are practically fit for seeing with, and, what is more, they are fitted to the special fields of vision useful to their several owners. The first question is, Does the fact of seeing or the fitness to see raise a moral certainty or very strong probability of Design? And should a Biologist rejoin that there exists another account of organic facts and fitnesses probable and adequate; next comes the further inquiry, which is the most probable, the most adequate, in a word the easiest? In this connection it must likewise be asked with some urgency, what non-Biological reasons there are for preferring Design? Whether for instance any good reasons may be found for believing that there is somewhere subsisting in and over the Natural world an Intelligence of such order as to be capable of arranging fitness with a view to the harmony and general co-operation of natural Forces?

The attempt has been made to shew cause on this side in the present Chapter. Of course, the case for Design must be rendered unanswerable if a certitude of Reason, either speculative or practical, or a very strong conclusion of moral argument, or a probability outweighing all other probabilities, shall in any way be shewn for accepting the still nobler belief in a self-existent Will and Personality. Now this latter idea is the subject of our two closing Chapters, and is contemplated on grounds with which the Biologist or Physicist, qu Biologist or Physicist has no very special concern.

It seems plain, however, that when a great Biologist is pre-eminently a philosophic thinker (as an author like Mr. Huxley must be acknowledged by competent judges)—then he possesses a strong vantage ground, and vast opportunities either for good or for evil. And these last six words remind us to add with Mr. Newman that after all subjective conditions must not be forgotten.

Would not a man without sense of the Beautiful be "colour-blind" to many among the harmonies of Nature? And is there not something in the "Religious insight" Mr. Newman speaks of which seems nothing less than a gift of vision and faculty divine? Man thus endowed may be in the highest sense Nature's interpreter, when he sees in her moving mirror the reflected lineaments of his own and Nature's God. To such a mind no idea can be more sublimely magnificent than the philosophic Teleology which Mr. Huxley bases on Evolution; it seems to compress into one the Past, the Present, and the Future; and to follow with winged thought that glance of an omniscient Creator which tongues of men and angels must for ever fail to describe.

We ought to add that the principle of Evolution has been defined in more than one way. Some definitions would exclude the wide Teleologic view. What is here meant might (to borrow Mr. Spencer's remark) be more justly characterized as "Involution."

[201] It is a curious problem to put testimony in the scale against alleged necessities, regarding the course of Nature. A certain Eastern prince had never seen ice—and obstinately rejected the idea of its possible existence. Was he wise or unwise in his disbelief? Wise, if we make the rule of actual experience our canon;—unwise if we admit the rule of modification by unseen possibilities; and still more, if we allow that a small amount of affirmative testimony ought in reason to outweigh a large amount of negative presupposition, or difficulty. A curious instance of this last rule is the natural history of the duck-billed platypus (the ornithorynchus), rightly called "paradoxus." The contradictory appearance of its organs created a world of scepticism, when its history was first reported to Naturalists. It was a question of improbability versus testimony;—and, to use the established phrase, "every school boy" now knows that Testimony was right. Compare Note (c) p. 264, ante.

[bb] How Bacon can have been pictured by his admirers as neither ideal, nor metaphysical, seems to be one of those unintelligible mysteries of idolatry which idol-worshippers cannot themselves explain. How impossible it is on such a supposition to reconcile Bacon with himself will appear evident to any informed reader of Mr. Ellis's Preface to the Philosophical Works.

Bacon's tribute to Plato was just, as well as discriminating, and to our purpose is most appropriate. He says (De Augmentis, III. 4) "For Metaphysic, I have already assigned to it the inquiry of Formal and Final Causes; which assignation, as far as it relates to Forms, may seem nugatory; because of a received and inveterate opinion that the Essential Forms or true differences of things cannot by any human diligence be found out; an opinion which in the meantime implies and admits that the invention of Forms is of all parts of knowledge the worthiest to be sought, if it be possible to be found. And as for the possibility of finding it, they are ill discoverers who think there is no land where they can see nothing but sea. But it is manifest that Plato, a man of sublime wit (and one that surveyed all things as from a lofty cliff), did in his doctrine concerning Ideas descry that Forms were the true object of knowledge; howsoever he lost the fruit of this most true opinion by considering and trying to apprehend Forms as absolutely abstracted from matter." This last path we have endeavoured to avoid; and have ourselves elected to follow the Baconian precept, and to treat the Law or Form of Production not logically, but as seen in operation, and existent in rerum naturÂ; not in ordine ad hominem but in ordine ad Universum.

What Bacon himself expected from the investigation, he states plainly enough in continuation. "If we fix our eyes diligently seriously and sincerely upon action and use, it will not be difficult to discern and understand what those Forms are the knowledge whereof may wonderfully enrich and benefit the condition of men.... This part of Metaphysic I find deficient; whereat I marvel not, because I hold it not possible that the Forms of things can be invented by that course of invention hitherto used; the root of the evil, as of all others, being this: that men have used to sever and withdraw their thoughts too soon and too far from experience and particulars, and have given themselves wholly up to their own meditation and arguments.

"But the use of this part of Metaphysic, which I reckon amongst the deficient, is of the rest the most excellent in two respects; the one, because it is the duty and virtue of all knowledge to abridge the circuits and long ways of experience (as much as truth will permit), and to remedy the ancient complaint that 'life is short and art is long.' ... For God is holy in the multitude of his works, holy in the order or connexion of them, and holy in the union of them. And therefore the speculation was excellent in Parmenides and Plato (although in them it was but a bare speculation), 'that all things by a certain scale ascend to unity.'" (Ibid. Ellis and Spedding, IV. 360-362.)

[bc] The Hulsean Lecturer before alluded to states this point with most distinct emphasis. Speaking of the Eye as an optical instrument, he says, "Here are four conditions of things each utterly independent of the others, viz. the nerve, then its non-reflecting coating, then a transparent medium investing it, then a most remarkable ether surrounding the whole, the concurrence of all four being essential to the production of vision, nevertheless we are to believe that all these adjustments and adaptations are accidentally made, retained and handed down by inheritance. If there be not evidence here of the selecting, arranging, controlling power of mind, will, forethought, contrivance, then I feel that I have no evidence for the existence of the individuality of my own being." Analogies, etc., p. 124.

[202] There is perhaps no familiar tribe in which the wonders of this mechanical arrangement, can be more easily studied than in the venerable family of owls.

[203] The stalk-eyed Crustacea are known to most readers through the fascinating volume of Mr. Bell.

[204] De Anima, III. 1, 4. Hist. Animal., I. 9, IV. 8. The structural eye is reduced to an ocellus.

[205] M. Le Court: see Geoffrey St. Hilaire, Cours d'Histoire Naturelle, des MammifÈres.

[206] One is glad of this result for Shakespeare's sake, as well as Aristotle's; though a Warwickshire man might have been expected to know the exact truth so far as his county is concerned; which Shakespeare did not:—

[207] The Proteus Anguinus has been rendered illustrious by Sir H. Davy's Consolations in Travel. Since his time, living specimens have been kept in England.

[208] The English reader will be charmed with the account of him in Bell's British Quadrupeds.

[209] "In the organ of hearing in man we have first of all the external orifice of the ear, which is closed at the bottom by the circular tympanic membrane. Behind that membrane is the cavity called the drum of the ear, this cavity being separated from the space between it and the brain by a bony partition, in which there are two orifices, the one round and the other oval. These orifices are also closed by fine membranes. Across the cavity of the drum stretches a series of four little bones: the first, called the hammer, is attached to the tympanic membrane; the second, called the anvil, is connected by a joint with the hammer; a third little round bone connects the anvil with the stirrup bone, which has its oval base planted against the membrane of the oval orifice above referred to. The base of the stirrup bone abuts against this membrane, almost covering it, and leaving but a narrow rim of the membrane surrounding the bone. Behind the bony partition, and between it and the brain, we have the extraordinary organ called the labyrinth, which is filled with water, and over the lining membrane of which, the terminal fibres of the auditory nerve are distributed. When the tympanic membrane receives a shock, that shock is transmitted through the series of bones above referred to, and is concentrated on the membrane against which the base of the stirrup bone is planted. That membrane transfers the shock to the water of the labyrinth, which, in its turn, transfers it to the nerves.

"The transmission, however, is not direct. At a certain place within the labyrinth exceedingly fine elastic bristles, terminating in sharp points, grow up between the terminal nerve fibres. These bristles, discovered by Max Schultze, are eminently calculated to sympathise with those vibrations of the water which correspond to their proper periods. Thrown thus into vibration, the bristles stir the nerve fibres which lie between their roots, and excite audition. At another place in the labyrinth we have little crystalline particles called otolithes—the HÖrsteine of the Germans—embedded among the nervous filaments, and which, when they vibrate, exert an intermittent pressure upon the adjacent nerve fibres, thus exciting audition. The otolithes probably subserve a different purpose from that fulfilled by the bristles of Schultze. They are fitted, by their weight, to accept and prolong the vibrations of evanescent sounds, which might otherwise escape attention. The bristles of Schultze, on the contrary, because of their extreme lightness, would instantly yield up an evanescent motion, while they are eminently fitted for the transmission of continuous vibrations. Finally, there is in the labyrinth a wonderful organ, discovered by the Marchese Corti, which is to all appearance a musical instrument, with its chords so stretched as to accept vibrations of different periods, and transmit them to the nerve filaments which traverse the organ. Within the ears of men, and without their knowledge or contrivance, this lute of 3,000 strings has existed for ages, accepting the music of the outer world, and rendering it fit for reception by the brain. Each musical tremor which falls upon this organ selects from its tensioned fibres the one appropriate to its own pitch, and throws that fibre into unisonant vibration. And thus, no matter how complicated the motion of the external air may be, those microscopic strings can analyse it and reveal the constituents of which it is composed." Tyndall. On Sound, pp. 323-4 and 5. We may add that the "fine elastic bristles," mentioned by Dr. Tyndall, are known to be prolongations of the free ends of the epithelial cells. The other ends of these cells—(i.e. the deep or attached ends) are delicately ramified, and are said to be in connection with slender nerve-fibrils.

[210] E.g., Coleridge. "I have at this moment before me, in the flowery meadow, on which my eye is now reposing, one of its most soothing chapters, in which there is no lamenting word, no one character of guilt or anguish. For never can I look and meditate on the vegetable creation without a feeling similar to that with which we gaze at a beautiful infant that has fed itself asleep at its mother's bosom, and smiles in its strange dream of obscure yet happy sensations. The same tender and genial pleasure takes possession of me, and this pleasure is checked and drawn inward by the like aching melancholy, by the same whispered remonstrance, and made restless by a similar impulse of aspiration. It seems as if the soul said to herself: From this state hast thou fallen! Such shouldst thou still become, thyself all permeable to a holier power! thyself at once hidden and glorified by its own transparency, as the accidental and dividuous in this quiet and harmonious object is subjected to the life and light of nature; to that life and light of nature, I say, which shines in every plant and flower, even as the transmitted power, love and wisdom of God over all fills, and shines through, nature! But what the plant is, by an act not its own and unconsciously—that must thou make thyself to become—must by prayer and by a watchful and unresisting spirit, join at least with the preventive and assisting grace to make thyself, in that light of conscience which inflameth not, and with that knowledge which puffeth not up!" Statesman's Manual. Appendix B. pp. 267, 8. Ed. 1839.

[211] Tyndall's Earlier Thoughts; in his Essays, p. 72. Dr. Tyndall is never weary of repeating this useful truth, and we may honour him for so doing. The following references are to his last very popular work, and in each place the same thought will be found differently expressed according to the difference of subject-matter. Fragments of Science, pp. 93, 105, 121, 163, 442.

[212] George Stephenson used to watch the speed of his locomotive, and pleasantly remark that he was utilizing the solar heat of the great coal-period. The words were his own. The idea was Herschel's.

[213] "Time is no agent, as some people appear to think it, that it should accomplish anything of itself. Looking at a heap of stones for a thousand years, will do no more toward making a house of them, than looking at it for one moment. The cause is obvious. Time, when applied to works of any kind, being only a succession of relevant acts, each furthering the work to be accomplished, it is clear that even an infinite succession of irrelevant, and consequently useless acts, would no more achieve or forward the completion of it, than an infinite number of jumps in the same place would advance one toward a journey's end; for there is a motion without progress, in time as well as space; where that has often remained stationary which appeared to us, in leaving it behind, to have receded."—Guesses at Truth. First Ed., pp. 61-2.

[214] Fragments of Science, p. 442. The passage has been referred to before—and its pith alone is given here—i.e. the central sentence.

[215] Astronomy, Chapter viii. init., note p. 264. Ed. 1850.

[216] Page 178, seq.

[bd] Compare our summary of Powell's argument on this point, pp. 173-4 ante. "We see the necessity of a Moral cause as distinguished from a physical antecedent, when we survey Nature. But Nature does not contain the idea in an explicit shape. She only necessitates its acceptance."

[217] Having before quoted at some length from this distinguished Professor, it seems needless to add anything here, except that the same sentiments will be found reasserted in his later works.—See Spirit of Inductive Philosophy, pp. 152-3, and 175-9; and compare Chapter II. ante, Additional notes D and E, pp. 103-107, where these passages are in part quoted and commented on.

[218] Of course, if any man pronounces anything absolutely unknowable, he says virtually, "my knowledge equals the sum total of all knowledge."

[219] Every one who writes this word, must feel tempted to ask why such a condition attaches to any truth. This Essay avoids metaphysical inquiries; we must, therefore, rest content with having plainly shewn that it does attach to the most certain and necessary of all truths.

[be] The reader may be pleased to recal Professor Huxley's two necessary beliefs—necessary, that is, for making the world we live in less miserable and less ignorant. First, that the Order of Nature is practically ascertainable. Secondly, that our Volition counts for something as a condition in the course of Events. (Lay Sermons, p. 159,—already quoted pp. 247 and 8 ante.)

Evidently, to count for anything, Volition must produce effects; that is, cause certain changes in the natural order of things. This principle, therefore, is clearly asserted by the Professor,—and its consequences follow by logical necessity, as here deduced.

Mr. Huxley's idea of the Order of Nature is also coincident with the view of it taken in this Chapter.

The present writer is glad to mark these undesigned coincidences of thought. "Lay Sermons" had not reached him when this Essay was sent to the Oxford Registrar. Neither had he seen the Professor's Article in the Fortnightly Review.

Addition.—The doctrine in most complete antagonism with Mr. Huxley's position is described as follows by Dr. Carpenter:—

"The most thorough-going expression of this doctrine will be found in the 'Letters of the Laws of Man's Nature and Development,' by Henry G. Atkinson and Harriet Martineau. A few extracts will suffice to show the character of this system of Philosophy. 'Instinct, passion, thought, etc., are effects of organized substances.' 'All causes are material causes.' 'In material conditions I find the origin of all religions, all philosophies, all opinions, all virtues, all "spiritual conditions and influences," in the same manner that I find the origin of all diseases and of all insanities in material conditions and causes.' 'I am what I am; a creature of necessity; I claim neither merit nor demerit.' 'I feel that I am as completely the result of my nature, and impelled to do what I do, as the needle to point to the north, or the puppet to move according as the string is pulled.' 'I cannot alter my will, or be other than what I am, and cannot deserve either reward or punishment.'" Carpenter. Mental Physiology, p. 4.

[220] Horace would have felt himself bewildered by some modern Philosophies. He says:—

[221] Every reader of Ben Jonson must recal the Alchemical process of "Exaltation":—

But who would wish the congelation of our Moral sense? If indeed it could possibly survive the rest of the process.

Reading these lines, can any one wonder at the celebrated chemical analysis of bygone days, which ended in discovering an undetermined residuum of dirt?

[222] Compare Job iv. 13, seq.

[223] De Corona. Sect. 274. The translation in the text is Lord Brougham's, and his note on this passage is worth perusal. Trans. p. 185.