The great treasure-house of nature is open to all, and the
only fee demanded for inspection is attention.--Detrosibr.
Observation** of nature is the only source of truth. Discursive
observation is the art of noticing circumstances evident to the senses.
Men who do this intentionally and carefully, with a view of acquiring
a knowledge of phenomena and their causes, are distinguished for their
varied knowledge and often for their great discoveries. Shakspere must
have owed the varied facts interwoven into his delineations of human
character to this source. The clever personations of Garrick were
suggested by his curious observations of men and manners. Sir Walter
Scott is known to have been a careful observer. It is said, 'no
expression escaped him if it bore on the illustration of character.'
** The term observation is used here in the sense in which
it is commonly understood, signifying cognisance in general.
It includes whatever information we acquire by the meant of
consciousness, or experience, or through the agency of the
senses.
Claude Lorraine, with a passionate sympathy for the beautiful, sate in
the fields from sun-rise to dewy eve, watching, catching, and saturating
his very soul, as it were, with all the evanescent beauties of a
summer's day, as they chased each other over the face of the fair scene;
fixing on canvass, taking captive and imprisoning in our cabinets, the
wanton daughters of nature, that before his time never were caught, but
flitted before the fascinated eye only long enough to make the heart
afterwards feel more achingly the void of their vanishing. And the
artist who has done all this, do we not justly call him an _imaginative_
painter, to distinguish him from those meaner geniuses who were, in
painting, very like Crabbe in poetry, merely faithful delineators of
the vulgarer objects of social life, bunches of carrots, drunken boors,
chamber maids and chimney corners.
'Has the reader ever seen Mr. Macready in the character of Macbeth? If
he have, he can never forget the stupefied murderer withdrawing from the
chamber in which he has just done the dread act, with fascinated gaze
retreatingly regarding his royal victim, and awaking with a guilty start
as he runs unconsciously against his hard-souled partner in guilt, who
in vain tries to infuse into the weaker spirit of her paralysed husband
her own metaphysical superiority. In this scene we know that Mr.
Macready's acting was perfect, for the pressure at our heart, the
suspension of our breathing, and the creeping of our hair, made us
_feel_ that it was so. We see him now, as stealthily he places his foot
over the threshold of the chamber of death to re-appear on the stage;
the intensely staring eye, that cannot remove from what 'tis horror to
look upon; the awfully natural absorption of his soul by that "sorry
sight," which one little minute has brought about; his starting and
awaking from his entranced state, as he runs against his wife in his
retreat, and his full passionate burst of blended remorse, terror, and
superstition, as refusing counsel, regardless of remonstrance, heedless
of probable detection, he pours forth his "brain-sickly" convictions, of
having in one little moment cut the cable that had held him to the rest
of the great human family. All this we can see in our mind's eye, for
the actor gave us a picture of passion that time can never obliterate.
But how would it have been with a cloddish unimaginative fellow,
whom nature never intended should understand Shakspere? Would he not,
conscious that he was among shoals and quicksands of feelings, too nice
for his appreciation, seek to tear over all by a tempest of rant, which
would be a more ruthless murder on Shakspere than Macbeth's on the king?
And why should we be delighted with Mr. Macready's delineation, and
disgusted with the ranter? Simply because the former has _observed_,
treasured up, and felt every genuine exhibition of human feeling that
came in his way, and applied it appropriately to all the situations to
which it was related in nature. A single instance will make this clear.
Mr. Kean one night, in the concluding part of the combat scene of
Richard III., when supposed to be wounded to the death, before falling,
steadily regarded his foe, and painfully raising his right arm in act
to strike, the relaxed and dying limb, unable to second the spirit, fell
heavily and harmlessly to his side, indicating merely the fierce bravery
of the usurper living in all its strength, when the body which it would
move, was all but a senseless clod. Pit, gallery, and boxes arose with
an enthusiasm beyond description, and by their repeated plaudits bore
testimony the intense naturalness of the struggle. The actor being
afterwards complimented upon the _hit_, said, that he had taken the
action from Jack Painter, the prize-fighter, when the latter was beaten
in some one of his contests, and it immediately struck the tragedian
that the very same thing would come in beautifully in the dying scene
of Richard III. What was this, if not imagination? Kean saw Painter's
action to be the natural effects of undying valour in vain endeavouring
to contend against overwhelming power. Remembering and associating it
with his previous conception of the character of Richard III., the
actor saw it could be most strikingly incorporated with that picture of
passion the usurper's death should present to our view. Seeing this, he
combined it with his previous delineation, and thereby did precisely
the same thing as the poet in using a fine simile, or the painter in
introducing sun-light over a part of his picture. It was a portion
of nature carried away by the actor to be reproduced on a future and
fitting occasion.'*
The beginning of all knowledge is observation. It has been shown by Mr.
Mill that 'axioms,' which lie at the foundation of all reasoning and all
science, 'are experimental truths--generalisations _from observation_.
The proposition that Two straight lines cannot inclose a space--or, in
other words, Two straight lines which have once met do not meet again,
but continue to diverge--is an induction from the _evidence of our
senses._'** 'Axioms are but a class of inductions from _experience_: the
simplest and easiest cases of generalisation,' from the facts furnished
to, us by our senses or by our internal consciousness.'***
Autobiography, or the metaphysical revelation of a man to himself, is
a source of valuable psychological and moral truths. From this centre
frequently radiate new lights upon human nature. But this is resolvable
into a species of mental observation. It is self-inspection.
We have lately been told that 'Poetry is called upon to work in
the _discovery_ of truth. The imagination has always been the great
discovering power. Discoveries are the poetry of science. The case is
rare indeed in which, by merely advancing step by step in the exercise
of the logical faculty, any new truth has been arrived at. Logic comes
afterwards, to verify that which imagination sees with its far-darting
glance.'****
* Phrenology Tested, by A. M., of the Middle Temple, pp.
143-5.
** Logic, vol 1, p. 305.
*** Idem, pp. 328-9.
**** W. J. Fox's Lectures to the Working Classes: Genius and
Poetry of Campbell, p.;5.
This seems to call upon us to recognise the imagination as fresh source
of truth. But the definition of imagination, as given by Emerson,
reveals to us its origin in observation;--'The imagination may be
defined to be the use which reason makes of the material world.
Shakspere's imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to
hand, to embody any capricious shade of thought that is uppermost in his
mind.' Hence, though we agree with Gilfillan that imagination is thought
on fire, we must confess that the ignition is material.
We will, however, hear a poet's defence of his fraternity:--'Poets are
vulgarly considered deficient in the reasoning faculty; whereas no man
was ever a great poet without having it in excess, and after a century
or two, men become convinced of it. They jump the middle terms of their
syllogisms, it is true, and assume premises to which the world has not
yet arrived; but time stamps their deductions as invincible.'*
Imagination is based on observation, and bears the same relation to the
'material world' that the magician bears to the appliances of his art.
Imagination is the dexterous and astonishing use of realities. It is
a species of mental experiment, whereby, without permission of the
line-and-rule men, we join strange things together, and to the surprise
of every body, the junction is a happy one. 'Angelo's greatness lay in
searching for untried existence.'** But observation primarily suggests
the combination. If, as in the case of Angelo, imagination essays the
highest flights of genius, and goes in search of untried existence, it
is not existence out of nature, but founded upon nature--its success is
a revelation of some hidden reality.
* Lowell's Conversations on the Old Poets.
** J. T. Seymour; Oracle of Reason.
Some of the most praised conceptions of Shakspere have been traced by
critics to the tritest observation. Instance Hamlet's remark:--
There's a divinity doth shape our ends,
Bough-hew them as we will.
Critics tell us, that Shakspere here fell into the conventional cant
of a mechanic making skewers. But it is no detraction to cull the best
phrases from the most common sources. Knight remarks:--'Philosophy, as
profound as it is beautiful! says the uninitiated reader of Shakspere.
But he that is endued with the wisdom of the commentators, will learn
how easy it is to mistake for philosophy and poetry what really only
proceeded from the very vulgar recollection of an ignorant mind. Dr.
Farmer informs me, says Steevens, that these words are merely technical.
A woodman, butcher, and dealer in skewers, lately observed to him, that
his nephew (an idle lad), could only assist in making them; he could
rough-hew them, but I was obliged to shape their ends. To shape the ends
of wood skewers, i. e., to point them, requires a degree of skill: any
one can rough-hew them. Whoever recollects the profession of Shakspere's
father, will admit that his son might be no stranger to such terms. I
have frequently seen packages of wool pinned up with skewers.'* To admit
the likelihood of all this, notwithstanding Mr. Knight's jeer at the
'wisdom of the commentators,' is rather to exalt than degrade the genius
of Shakspere, who could derive exalted figures from humble sources.
The 'Athenaeum,' far more wisely than Mr. Knight, in this instance,
observes:--'This is the test of a truly great man; that his thoughts
should be _things_, and become things in instantaneous act, and not for
a moment mere speculations and abstractions.'
As the theories of the schoolmen subside, and men no longer ignore
nature, it will become recognised as the source rather than the tool
of intellect. We shall have less occasion to contend that all lofty and
sublime ideas derive their value and beauty from their coherence with
the instincts of sensation, 'Poetry, we grant, creates a world of its
own; but it creates it out of _existing_ materials.' 'Imagination' may
be but 'thought on fire,' but the spark, which ignites it, is material.
Is there any other distinction between the nights of the rhapsodist
and those of genius, than that genius _illumines_ reality and rhapsody
_obscures_ it? 'We know of no great generalisation that has ever been
made by a man unacquainted with the details on which it rests.'
Experiment is invented observation. It is putting into operation certain
supposed causes in order to observe their effects. An experiment may
be defined as an observation, which we are at some trouble to make.
Experiment is usually set down as being a process of discovering truth
different from observation. It is evidently included under observation,
and there is no practical advantage in separating it. Discursive,
general, ordinary, or common observation is the observation of the
phenomena we _find_. Experiment is observation of the phenomena we
_bring together_. Experimental observation has been the great agent
of modern discovery. Newton ranked it as the most valuable knowledge.
Whatever is not founded on phenomena is hypothesis, and has no place in
experimental philosophy. It is the principal source of accurate
facts. When Jenner first communicated to John Hunter, what he thought
respecting the prevention of small pox--'Don't think, but try; be
patient, be accurate,' was Hunter's characteristic reply. Locke
remarks--'While the philosophy of Aristotle prevailed in the schools,
which dealt often in words without meaning, the knowledge of nature was
at a stand; men argued concerning things of which they had no idea;
in this enlightened age, we keep to trial and experiment, as the only
certain foundation of philosophy.'
* Philosophy and Religion of Shakspere, pp. 173-4
** No 946. p. 1103.
*** Athenaeum, No. 946, p. 1191.
Hypothesis may be noticed here as being a species of _embryo_
experiment. Hypothesis is guessing at the truth. It is a conjecture or
supposition relating to the cause of an effect. It imagines that where
certain conditions exist, the desired result will ensue. But all
these conjectures must be founded on observation. For, in the wildest
conjecture, unless made by a madman, there is some reason. Hypothesis is
incipient truth founded on a few facts which make it probable, but not
on sufficient to make it certain. Hypothesis does not directly discover
truth, but it is a guide to experiment, which does. The hypotheses of
Columbus respecting an unknown continent, did not of itself discover
America--but it directed the experiment of his voyage there, which did.
To hypothesise alone is the error of the visionary and the dreamer.
Practical wisdom, as far as possible, tests hypothesis by experiment.
Sir C. Bell conjectured that the nervous fluid of the human body
was analogous to galvanic fluid, and then, by experiments on various
animals, he endeavoured to test his hypothesis. However, great
thinkers arise who are best employed in contriving plans for others to
execute--in telling others what they are to do. Great poets belong
to this class. They are often incapable of the concentrated labour of
furnishing proofs of their hypothesis. Gladly should we recognise the
mission of such men. They work for humanity by thinking for humanity.
'All who think,' says Lytton, 'are co-operative with all who work.'
Labour supplies our wants, thought teaches us dominion over nature.
Labour is but the means of subsistence, it is thought that makes it the
source of wealth by multiplying its powers.
To the value of hypothesis Mr. Mill bears this testimony, that by
suggesting observations and experiments, it puts us upon the road
to, independent evidence, if it be really attainable, and till it be
attained, the hypothesis ought not to count for more than a suspicion.
The function of hypothesis is one which must be reckoned absolutely
indispensable in science. Without such assumption, science would not
have attained its present state. Nearly everything which is now theory
was once hypothesis.*
* Logic, Vol. II, p. 18.
Induction is systematic observation of a given class of phenomena.
It consists in bringing together a variety of facts and instances,
carefully and patiently viewing them in all possible lights to
discover from a comparison of the whole what, if any, new principle is
elicitable. Induction is an experiment with a number of facts, to see
if any general result can be arrived at. Thus observation is of three
kinds--discursive, experimental, and inductive. For brevity of speech,
we use respectively the terms observation, experiment, and induction,
as the names of the three recognised modes of investigation. But it
facilitates a clear view of this subject, to note that experiment and
induction are but phases of observation--and that observation is the
great source of the discovery of truth.
Discursive observation and experiment are the sources of facts or
particular truths. Nature, poetically says Dr. Reid, is put to the
question by a thousand observations and experiments, and forced to
confess her secrets. Out of these secrets induction gathers its general
truths, which become the premises of argument. Facts, like stones, are
of little service while scattered--it is in the edifice raised by them
that their value is apparent. They have been compared to blocks, upon
_one_ of which, if a person stand, he has but a partially increased
view; but when many are piled up, a person from their summit commands
the prospect round. Particular truth seldom proves anything but itself.
Argument is proving something else, and we have seen that that which is
proved must be _contained_ in something which proves it. In other words,
an argument is an assertion or denial of something substantiated by
other things--by facts.
Gall _observed_ the peculiar formation of a certain head, but the one
fact proved nothing, except that the head had a certain form. It was
a barren observation, except that it suggested to his imagination
the hypothesis that the peculiar form of the head might be caused by
peculiarity of mind. This set him upon the experiment of observing
the habits and dispositions of the individual in order to test his
hypothesis. But the one fact of finding a peculiarity proved nothing new
of any value. The two facts, though incident, were hardly convincing.
They proved only that a peculiar head was accompanied in one case by
peculiar habits--but whether one was the cause of the other, or whether
the phenomena were in any way connected, still remained unknown. When,
however, Gall, Spurzheim, and others, had travelled through Europe,
making observations and experiments, and at last putting all the facts
and instances together, and carefully and patiently viewing them in all
possible lights, and finding that they shadowed forth that the brain was
the organ, the map and measure of intelligence, they inducted a general
truth, which enters the lists of argument and takes its place as an
addition to our metaphysical and moral treasures.
Mr. Macaulay, who, perhaps, might be accused of underrating both Bacon
and Induction, with a view of exalting Aristotle, remarks that 'The
vulgar notion about Bacon we take to be this, that he invented a new
method of arriving at truth, which method is called induction, and that
he detected some fallacy in the syllogistic reasoning which had been in
vogue before his time. This notion is about as well founded as that of
the people who, in the middle ages, imagined that Virgil was a great
conjurer. Many who are far too well informed to talk such extravagant
nonsense, entertain what we think incorrect notions as to what Bacon
really effected in this matter. The inductive method has been practised
ever since the beginning of the world by every human being. It is
constantly practised by the most ignorant clown, by the most thoughtless
schoolboy, by the very child at the breast. That method leads the clown
to the conclusion, that if he sows barley he shall not reap wheat. By
that method, the schoolboy learns that a cloudy day is the best for
catching trout. The very infant we imagine is led by induction to expect
milk from his mother or nurse, and none from his father. Not only is it
not true that Bacon invented the inductive method, but it is not true
that he was the first person who correctly analysed that method and
explained its uses. Aristotle had long before pointed out the absurdity
of supposing that syllogistic reasoning could ever conduct men to the
discovery of any new principle, had shown that such discoveries must be
made by induction and by induction alone, and had given the history of
the inductive process concisely, indeed, but with great perspicuity and
precision. We are not inclined to ascribe much practical value to that
analysis of the Inductive method which Bacon has given in the second
book of the Novum Organon. It is, indeed, an elaborate and correct
analysis. But it is an analysis of that which we are all doing from
morning to night, and which we continue to do even in our dream.'*
* Macaulay's Hist Essays, vol. 3, p. 407.
It is not 'some fallacy in the syllogistic reasoning' which Bacon is
supposed to have detected, it is rather the partial protection against
error afforded by syllogisms, which he exposed and provided against,
for which he is estimated. Certainly Aristotle must have had a very
different opinion of the value of inductive philosophy from that
entertained by Bacon, or he would have indoctrinated his disciples with
it. Few will doubt that had Bacon's Novum Organon appeared in the place
of Aristotle's logic, and Aristotle's work in the place of Bacon's,
that the advancement of learning in the world would now be in a very
different state. Could Bacon have arrested the attention of the
ancient sages with his methods of discovering new principles, ancient
philosophy, instead of being a treadmill, would have been a path, and we
should not have had a contempt for all learning which was useful. When
Posidonius said that we owed to philosophy the principles of the
arch and the introduction of metals. We should not have had Seneca
repudiating such insulting compliments, nor Archimedes considering that
geometry was degraded by being employed in anything useful.
But these observations of Macaulay have the merit of showing us
that induction has its foundation in nature, and afford a further
confirmation of our views, that observation is the source of our
knowledge, and that it is the province of logic to teach us to
systematise our thoughts. Observation, experiment, hypothesis and
induction, are but different names for the operation--varying in degree,
in method, in expedient, and elaboration--whereby we discover truth.
Nature is the treasure-house of truth, and the sole fee of appropriation
is attention.
Much discussion has taken place upon the nature of necessary truths.
Mr. Mill, however, after an elaborate analysis of Dr. Whewell's theory,
pronounces that 'nothing is necessary except the connection between a
conclusion and the premises.' A necessary truth is commonly defined as a
proposition, the negation of which is not only false, but inconceivable.
Mr. Mill contests this doctrine in words embodying suggestions of great
value.
'Now I cannot but wonder that so much stress should be laid upon the
circumstance of inconceivableness, when there is such ample experience
to show that our capacity or incapacity of conceiving a thing has very
little to do with a possibility of the thing in itself; but is in truth
very much an affair of accident, and depends upon the past history and
habits of our own minds. There is no more generally acknowledged fact
in human nature, than the extreme difficulty at first felt in conceiving
anything as possible, which is in contradiction to long established and
familiar experience; or even to old and familiar habits of thought. And
this difficulty is a necessary result of the fundamental laws of the
human mind. When we have often seen and thought of two things together,
and have never in any one instance either seen or thought of them
separately, there is by the primary law of association an increasing
difficulty, which in the end becomes insuperable, of conceiving the two
things apart. This is most of all conspicuous in uneducated persons, who
are in general utterly unable to separate any two ideas which have once
become firmly associated in their minds; and if persons of cultivated
intellect have any advantage on the point, it is only because, having
seen and heard and read more, and been more accustomed to exercise their
imagination, they have experienced their sensations and thoughts in
more varied combinations, and have been prevented from forming these
inseparable associations. But this advantage has necessarily its limits.
The man of the most practised intellect is not exempt from the universal
laws of our conceptive faculty. If daily habit presents to him for a
long period two facts in combination, and if he is not led during that
period either by accident or intention to think of them apart, he will
in time become incapable of doing so even by the strongest effort; and
the supposition that the two facts can be separated in nature, will
at last present itself to his mind with all the characters of an
inconceivable phenomenon. There are remarkable instances of this in
the history of science: instances, in which the wisest men rejected
as impossible, because inconceivable, things which their posterity, by
earlier practice and longer perseverance in the attempt, found it quite
easy to conceive, and which everybody knows to be true. 'If, then, it be
so natural to the human mind, even in its highest state of culture, to
be incapable of conceiving, and on that ground to believe impossible,
what is afterwards not only found to be conceivable but proved to be
true; what wonder if in cases where the association is still older, more
confirmed, and more familiar, and in which nothing ever occurs to shake
our conviction, or even suggest to us any conception at variance
with the association, the acquired incapacity should continue, and be
mistaken for a natural incapacity? It is true our experience of the
varieties in nature enables us, within certain limits, to conceive other
varieties analogous to them. We can conceive the sun or moon falling;
for although we never saw them fall, nor ever perhaps, imagined
them falling, we have seen so many other things fall, that we have
innumerable familiar analogies to assist the conception; which after
all, we should probably have some difficulty in framing, were we not
well accustomed to see the sun and moon move, (or appear to move,)
so that we are only called upon to conceive a slight change in the
direction of motion, a circumstance familiar to our experience. But when
experience affords no model on which to shape the new conception, how is
it possible for us to form it? How, for example, can we imagine an end
to space or time? We never saw any object without something beyond
it, nor experienced any feeling without something following it. When,
therefore, we attempt to conceive the last point of space, we have
the idea irresistibly raised of other points beyond it. When we try
to imagine the last instant of time, we cannot help conceiving another
instant after it Nor is there any necessity to assume, as is done by a
modern school of metaphysicians, a peculiar fundamental law of the mind
to account for the feeling of infinity inherent in our conceptions of
space and time; that apparent infinity is sufficiently accounted for by
simpler and universally acknowledged laws.'*
* Mill's Logic, vol. 1, pp. 313-17.
Thus we stand on the verge of boundless possibility. What truths may yet
be discovered in that great and untrodden field, which lies without our
experience, no man can tell. All we have yet brought between assertion
and proof, is all we have yet conquered, is all that we as yet know,
is all that we can yet rely upon. The search after the untried is the
highest and apparently the inherent aspiration of roan. The revelation
of new worlds continually rewards his noble ambition. At once arrested
and allured by the magnificence of nature--we wonder, we work, we wait.