We have all read in our "Vicar of Wakefield" the famous speech made
by the venerable and learned Ephraim Jenkinson to good Dr. Primrose:
"The cosmogony, or creation of the world, has puzzled philosophers in
all ages. Sanchoniathon, Manetho, Berosus, and Ocellus Lucanus have
all attempted it in vain," etc. But we hardly expected to have this
question of cosmogony reopened by an eminent scientist in an address
to the British Association. What "Sanchoniathon, Manetho, Berosus, and
Ocellus Lucanus have all attempted in vain" Professor Tyndall has not
only discussed before a body of men learned in the physical sciences,
but has done it in such a manner as to rouse two continents to a new
interest in the question. One party has immediately accused him of
irreligion and infidelity, while another has declared his statements
innocent if not virtuous. But the question which has been least debated
is, What has the professor really said? or, Has he said anything?
The celebrated sentence which has occasioned this excitement is as
follows:--
"Abandoning all disguise, the confession that I feel bound to make
before you is, that I prolong the vision backward across the boundary
of the experimental evidence, and discern in that matter which we in
our ignorance, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its
Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency
of every form and quality of life."
Does he, then, declare himself a materialist? A materialist is one
who asserts everything which exists to be matter, or an affection of
matter. What, then, is matter, and how is that to be defined? The
common definition of matter is, that which is perceived by the senses,
or the substance underlying sensible phenomena. By means of the senses
we perceive such qualities or phenomena as resistance, form, color,
perfume, sound. Whenever we observe these phenomena, whenever we see,
hear, taste, touch, or smell, we attribute the affections thus excited
to an external substance, which we call _matter_. But we are aware of
other phenomena which are _not_ perceived by the senses,--- such as
thought, love, and will. We are as certain of their existence as we
are of sensible phenomena. I am as sure of the reality of love as I am
of the whiteness of chalk. By a law of our mind, whenever we perceive
sensible phenomena, we necessarily attribute them to a substance
outside of ourselves, which we call matter. And by another law, or the
same law, whenever we perceive the phenomena of consciousness, we
necessarily attribute them to a substance which we call soul, mind, or
spirit. All that we know of matter, and all that we know of soul, is
their phenomena, and as these are entirely different, we are obliged
to assume that matter and mind are different. None of the qualities or
attributes of matter belong to mind, none of those of mind to matter.
Does Tyndall deny this distinction? Apparently not. He not only makes
Bishop Butler declare, with unanswerable power, that materialism can
never show any connection between molecular processes and the phenomena
of consciousness, but he distinctly iterates this in his own person
at the end of the address; asserting that there is no fusion possible
between the two classes of facts, those of sensation and those of
consciousness. Professor Tyndall, then, in the famous sentence above
quoted, does not declare himself a materialist in the only sense
in which the term has hitherto been used. He does not pretend that
sensation, thought, emotion, and will are reducible, in the last
analysis, to solidity, extension, divisibility, etc.; he positively and
absolutely denies this.
When Tyndall, therefore, asserts that he discerns in matter the
promise and potency of every form and quality of life, he uses the
word "matter" in a new sense. He does not mean by it the underlying
subject of sensible phenomena. It is not the matter which we see,
hear, touch, taste, and smell. What is it then? It is something beyond
the limits of observation and experiment; for he says that in order to
discover it we must "prolong the vision backward across the boundary
of the experimental evidence." In short, it is something which we know
nothing about. It is a conjecture, an opinion, a theoretical matter. In
another place he calls this imaginary substance "a cosmical life." This
something, which shall be the common basis of the phenomena of sense
and soul, not only is not known, but apparently is not knowable. For he
assures us that the very attempt to understand this cosmical life which
makes the connection between physical and mental phenomena, is "to soar
in a vacuum," or "to try to lift one's self by his own waistband."
Of course, then, the contents of the famous sentence are not _science_.
It is not the great scientist, the profound observer of nature, the
distinguished experimentalist, who speaks to us in that sentence, but
one who is theorizing, as we all have a right to theorize. We also,
if we choose, may imagine some "cosmical life" behind both matter and
soul, as the common origin of both, and call this life _spirit_. We
shall then be thinking of exactly the same substance that Tyndall is
thinking of, only we give it another name. He has merely given another
name to the great Being behind all the phenomena of body and soul, out
of which or whom all proceed. But to give another name to a fact is
not to tell us anything more about it. All meaning having evaporated
from the word "matter," the sentence loses its whole significance, and
it appears that the alarming declaration asserts nothing at all! In
"abandoning all disguise" Tyndall has run little risk, for our analysis
shows that he has not asserted anything except, perhaps, this, that
there is, in his judgment, some unknown common basis in which matter
and mind both inhere. This assertion is not alarming nor dangerous, for
it is only what has always been believed.
As there is no materialism, in any known sense of that term, in the
doctrine of this address, so likewise there is no atheism. In fact, in
this same sentence Tyndall speaks of the "creator" of what he likes
to call "matter" or "cosmical life." He objects strongly to a creator
who works mechanically, and he seems to reprove Darwin for admitting
an original or primordial form, created at first by the Deity. "The
anthropomorphism, which it seemed the object of Mr. Darwin to set
aside, is as firmly associated with the creation of a few forms as with
the creation of a multitude." In another passage he says: "Is there not
a temptation to close to some extent with Lucretius, when he affirms
that nature is seen to do all things spontaneously of herself without
the meddling of the gods?". But this last sentence shows a singular
vacillation in so clear a thinker as Tyndall. How can one close "to
some extent" with such a statement as that of Lucretius? Either the
gods meddle, or they do not meddle. They can hardly be considered as
meddling "to some extent." In still another passage he contrasts the
doctrine of evolution with the usual doctrine of creation, rejecting
the last in favor of the other, because creation makes of God "an
artificer, fashioned after the human model, and acting by broken
efforts, as man is seen to act."
All these expressions are somewhat vague, implying, as it seems, a
certain obscurity in Tyndall's own thought. But it is not atheism.
His "cosmical life" probably is exactly what Cudworth means by
"plastic life." It is well known that Cudworth, whose great work
is a confutation of all atheism, himself admits what he calls "a
plastic nature" in the universe as a subordinate instrument of divine
Providence. Just as Tyndall objects to regarding the Deity as "an
artificer," Cudworth objects to the "mechanic theists," who make the
Deity act directly upon matter from without, by separate efforts,
instead of pouring a creative and arranging life into nature. We can
easily see that Cudworth, like Tyndall, would object to Darwin's one or
two "primordial germs." His "plastic nature" is working everywhere and
always, though under a divine guidance. It is "a life," and therefore
incorporeal. It is an unconscious life, which acts, not knowingly,
but fatally. Man, according to Cudworth, partakes of this life from
the life of the universe, just as he partakes of heat and cold from
the heat and cold of the universe. Thus Cudworth, believing in some
such "cosmical life" as Tyndall imagines, conceives it as being itself
the organ and instrument of the Deity. Tyndall, therefore, though
less clear in his statements than Cudworth, is not logically involved
in atheism by those statements, unless we implicate in the same
condemnation the writer whose vast work constitutes the fullest arsenal
of weapons against all the forms of atheism.
Unfortunately, however, Tyndall does not come to any clearness on
this point, which in one possessing such a lucidity of intellect must
be occasioned by his leaving his own domain of science and venturing
into this metaphysical world, with which he is not so familiar.
His acquaintance with the history of these studies seems not to be
extensive. For example, he attributes to Herbert Spencer, as if he were
the discoverer, what both Hobbes and Descartes had already stated,
that there is no necessary resemblance between our sensations and the
external objects from which they are derived. In regard to a belief in
God, he tells us that in his weaker moments he loses it, or that it
becomes clouded and dim, but that when he is at his best he accepts it
most fully. This belief, therefore, is not with Tyndall a matter of
conviction, founded on reason, but a question of moods. No wonder,
then, that he relegates religion to the region of sentiment, and
declares that it has nothing to do with knowledge. It must not touch
any question of cosmogony, or, if it does, must "submit to the control
of science" in that field. But what has science to do with cosmogony?
Science rests on observation of facts; but our professor tells us
that he obtains his great cosmological idea of "a cosmical life" by
prolonging his vision backward "across the boundary of the experimental
evidence." Such science as this, which is based on no experience, and
is incapable of verification, has hardly the right to warn religious
belief away from any field.
Tyndall seems a little astray in making creation and evolution
contradictory and incompatible. Evolution, he tells us, is the
manifestation of a power wholly inscrutable to the intellect of man. We
know that God is,--that is, we know it in our better moods,--but _what_
God is, we cannot ever know. At all events we must not consider him as
a Creator. "Two courses," says Tyndall, "and only two, are possible.
Either let us open our doors freely to the conception of creative acts,
or, abandoning them, let us radically change our notions of matter."
His objections to the idea of a Creator appear to be (1) that it is
"derived, not from the study of Nature, but from the observation of
men;" and (2) that it represents the Deity "as an artificer, fashioned
after a human model, and acting by broken efforts as man is seen to
act."
Are these objections sound? When we study man, are we not then also
studying Nature? Is not man himself the highest manifestation of
Nature? If so, and if we see the quality of any power best in its
highest and fullest operations, we can study the nature of God best
by looking into our own. We should, in fact, know very little of
Nature if we did not look within as well as without. Tyndall justly
demands unlimited freedom of investigation in the pursuit of science.
But whence came this very idea of freedom except from the human mind?
Nothing in the external world is free; all is fatal. Such ideas as
cause, force, substance, law, unity, ideality, are not observed in
the outward world--they are given by the activity of the mind itself.
Subtract these from our thought, and we should know very little of
Nature or its origin.
No doubt the idea of a Creator, and of one perfect in wisdom, power,
and goodness, is derived by man from his own mind. But it is not
necessary that such a Creator should be an "artificer," or proceed by
"broken efforts." He may act by evolution, or processes of development.
He may create perpetually, by a life flowing from himself into all
things. He may create the universe anew at every moment--not as a
man lights a torch with a match and then goes away, but as the sun
creates his image in the water by a perpetual process. Thus God may be
regarded as _creating_ each animal and each plant, while he maintains
the mysterious force of development by which it grows from its egg or
its seed. The essential idea of creation is an infinite cause, acting
according to a perfect intelligence, for a perfect good. There is
nothing, necessarily, of an artificer or of broken efforts in this. It
is the very idea of divine creation given in the New Testament. "From
whom, and through whom, and to whom, are all things." "In him, we live,
and move, and have our being." The theist may well accept the view
given by Goethe, in his little poem, "Gott, Gemüth, und Welt."
"What kind of God would He be who only pushes the universe from
without?
Who lets the All of Things run round and round on his finger?
It becomes him far better to move the universe from within,
To take Nature up into Himself, to let Himself down into Nature,
So that whatever lives, and moves, and has its being in Him
Never loses His power, never misses His spirit."
Such a conception of God, as a perpetual Creator, is essential to the
intellectual rest of the human mind, and it is painful to see the
irresolution of Professor Tyndall in regard to it. "Clear and confident
as Jove" in the domain which is his own, where his masterly powers of
observation, discrimination, and judgment leave him without a peer, he
seems shorn of his strength on entering this field of metaphysics.
He has warned theology not to trespass on the grounds of science; or,
if she enters them, to submit to science as her superior. Theology
has been in the habit of treating science in the same supercilious
way; telling her that she was an intruder if she ventured to discuss
questions of psychology or religion. This is equally unwise on either
part. Theologians should be glad when men of science become seriously
interested in these great questions of the Whence and the Whither. The
address of Professor Tyndall is excellent in its intention as well as
in its candid and manly treatment of the subject. Its indecision and
indistinctness are probably due to his having accepted too implicitly
the guidance of Spencer, thus assuming that religious truth is
unknowable, that creation is impossible, and that only phenomena can
become objects of knowledge. "Insoluble mystery" is therefore his final
answer to the questions he has himself raised.
Goethe is wiser when he follows the Apostle Paul, and regards the
Deity as "the fullness which filleth all in all." There is no unity
to thought, and no hope for scientific progress, more than for moral
culture, unless we see intelligence at the centre, intelligence on the
circumference of being. To place an impenetrable darkness instead of
an unclouded light on the throne of the universe, is to throw a shadow
over the Creation.
We say that there is no unity in thought without this conviction. The
only real unity we know in the world is our own. All we see around
us, including our own body, is divisible, subject to alteration and
change. Only the ego, or soul, is conscious of a perfect unity in a
perpetual identity. Unless we can attribute to the source of all being
a similar personal unity, there can be no coherence to science, but it
must forever remain fragmentary and divided. This is what we mean by
asserting the personality of Deity. This idea reaches what Lord Bacon
calls "the vertical point of natural philosophy" or "the summary law of
Nature," and constitutes, as he declares, "the union of all things in a
perpetual and uniform law."
And unless we can recognize in the ultimate fountain of being an
intelligent purpose, the meaning of the universe departs. Without
intelligence in the cause there is none in the effect. Then the world
has no meaning, life no aim. The universe comes out of darkness, and is
plunging into darkness again.
Take away from the domain of knowledge the idea of a creating and
presiding intelligence, and there remains no motive for science itself.
Professor Tyndall is sagacious enough to see and candid enough to admit
that "without moral force to whip it into action the achievements of
the intellect would be poor indeed," and that "science itself not
unfrequently derives motive power from ultra-scientific sources." Faith
in God, as an intelligent creator and ruler of the world, has awakened
enthusiasm for scientific investigation among both the Aryan and the
Semitic races.
The purest and highest form of monotheism is that of Christianity; and
in Christendom has science made its largest progress. Not by martyrs
for science, but by martyrs for religion, has the human mind been
emancipated. Mr. Tyndall says of scientific freedom, "We fought and won
our battle even in the middle ages." But the heroes of intellectual
liberty have been the heroes of faith. Hundreds of thousands have died
for a religious creed; but how many have died for a scientific theory?
Luther went to Worms, and maintained his opinions there in defiance
of the anathemas of the church and the ban of the empire, but Galileo
denied his most cherished convictions on his knees. Galileo was as
noble a character as Luther; but science does not create the texture
of soul which makes so many martyrs in all the religious sects of
Christendom. Let the doctrine of cosmical force supplant our faith in
the Almighty, and in a few hundred years science would probably fade
out of the world from pure inanition. The world would probably not care
enough for _anything_ to care for science. The light of eternity must
fall on this our human and earthly life, to arouse the soul to a living
and permanent interest even in things seen and temporal.
Professor Tyndall says: "Whether the views of Lucretius, Darwin, and
Spencer are right or wrong, we claim the freedom to discuss them. The
ground which they cover is scientific ground."
It is not only a right, but a duty to examine these theories, since
they are held seriously and urged earnestly by able men. But we must
doubt whether they ought to claim the authority of science. They are
proposed by scientific men, and they refer to scientific subjects. But
these theories, in their present development, belong to metaphysics
rather than to science. Science consists, first, of observation of
facts; secondly, of laws inferred from those facts; and thirdly, of
a verification of those laws by new observation and experiment. That
which cannot be verified is no part of science; astronomy is a science,
since every eclipse and occultation verifies its laws; geology is a
science, since every new observation of the strata and their contents
accords with the established part of the system; chemistry is a
science for the same reason. But Darwin's theory of the transformation
of species by natural selection is as yet unverified. "There is no
evidence of a direct descent of earlier from later species in the
geological succession of animals." So says Agassiz, and on this point
his testimony can hardly be impeached. Professor W. Thompson, another
good geological authority, says: "In successive geological formations,
although new species are constantly appearing, and there is abundant
evidence of progressive change, no single case has yet been observed
of one species passing through a series of inappreciable modifications
into another." Neither has any such change taken place within historic
times, for the animals and plants found in the tombs of Egypt are
"identical, in all respects," says M. Quatrefages, "with those now
existing." He adds the opinion, after a very careful and candid
examination of the hypothesis of Darwin, that "the theory and the
facts do not agree." Not being verified, then, this theory is not yet
science, but an unverified mental hypothesis, that is, metaphysics.
It is important that this should be distinctly said, for when men
eminent in science propound new theories, these theories themselves are
apt to be regarded as science, and those who oppose them are accused
of being opposed to science. This is the tendency which Professor
Tyndall has so justly described in this very address: "When the human
mind has achieved greatness and given evidence of power in any domain,
there is a tendency to credit it with similar power in any other
domain." Because Tyndall is great in experimental science, many are
apt to accept his cosmological conclusions. Because he is a great
observer in natural history, his metaphysical theories are supposed
to be supported by observation, and to rest on experience. Professor
Tyndall's own address terminates, not in science, but nescience. It
treats of a realm of atoms and molecules whose existence science has
never demonstrated, and attributes to them potencies which science has
never verified. It is a system, not made necessary by the stringent
constraint of facts, but avowedly constructed in order to avoid the
belief in an intelligent Creator, and a universe marked by the presence
of design. His theory, he admits, no less than that of Darwin, was not
constructed in the pure interests of truth for its own sake. There was
another purpose in both,--to get rid of a theology of final causes, of
a theology which conceives of God as a human artificer. He wished to
exclude religion from the field of cosmogony, and forbid it to intrude
on the region of knowledge. Theologians have often been reproached
for studying "with a purpose," but it seems that this is a frailty
belonging not to theologians only, but to all human beings who care a
good deal for what they believe.
Professor Tyndall accepts religious faith as an important element of
human nature, but considers it as confined to the sentiments, and
as not based in knowledge. He doubtless comes to this conclusion
from following too implicitly the traditions of modern English
psychology. These assume that knowledge comes only from without,
through the senses, and never from within, through intuition. This
prepossession, singularly English and insular, is thus stated by John
Stuart Mill in his article on Coleridge. "Sensation, and the mind's
consciousness of its own acts, are not only the exclusive sources,
but the sole materials of our knowledge. There is no knowledge _a
priori_; no truths cognizable by the mind's inward light, and grounded
on intuitive evidence." These views have been developed in England by
the two Mills, Herbert Spencer, Bain, and others, who have made great
efforts to show how sensations may be transformed into thoughts; how
association of ideas may have developed instincts; how hereditary
impressions, repeated for a million years, may at last have taken on
the aspect of necessary truths. In short, they have laid out great
labor and ingenuity in proving that a sensation may, very gradually, be
transformed into a thought.
But all this labor is probably a waste of time and of intellectual
power. The attempt at turning sensation into thought only results in
turning thought into sensation. It is an error that we only know what
we perceive through the senses, or transform by the action of the
mind. It is not true that we only know that of which we can form a
sensible image. We know the existence of the soul as certainly as that
of the body. We know the infinite and the eternal as well as we know
the finite and temporal. We know substance, cause, immortal beauty,
absolute truth, as surely as the flitting phenomena which pass within
the sphere of sensational experience. These convictions belong, not to
the sphere of sentiment and emotion, but to that of knowledge. It is
because they show us realities and not imaginations, that they nerve
the soul to such vast efforts in the sphere of morals, literature, and
religion.
The arguments against the independent existence of the soul which
Tyndall puts into the mouth of his Lucretian disciple are not difficult
to answer. "You can form no picture of the soul," he says. No; and
neither can we form a mental picture of love or hate, of right and
wrong, or even of bodily pain and pleasure. "If localized in the body,
the soul must have form." Must a pain, localized in the finger, have
form? "When a leg is amputated, in which part does the soul reside?"
We answer, that the soul resides in the body, with reduced power. Its
instrument is less perfect than before--like a telescope which has
lost a lens. "If consciousness is an essential attribute of the soul,
where is the soul when consciousness ceases by the depression of the
brain?" Is there any difficulty, we reply, in supposing that the soul
may pass sometimes into a state of torpor, when its instrument is
injured? A soul may sleep, and so be unconscious, without being dead.
"The diseased brain may produce immorality: can the reason control it?
If not, what is the use of the reason?" To this we answer that the
soul may lose its power with a diseased body; but when furnished with
another and better body, it will regain it. "If you regard the body
only as an instrument, you will neglect to take care of it." Does the
astronomer neglect to take care of his telescope?
These answers to the Lucretian may be far from complete; but they are
at least as good as the objections. The soul, no doubt, depends on the
body, and cannot do its work well when the body is out of order; but
does that prove it to be the _result_ of the body? If so, the same
argument would prove the carpenter to be the result of his box of
tools, and the organist to be the result of his organ. The organist
draws sweet music from his instrument. But as his organ grows old,
or is injured by the weather, or the pipes crack, and the pedals get
out of order, the music becomes more and more imperfect. At last the
instrument is wholly ruined, and the music wholly ceases. Is, then,
the organist dead, or was he only the result of the organ? "Without
phosphorus, no thought," say the materialists. True. So, "without the
organ, no music." Just as in addition to the musical instrument we need
a performer, so in addition to the brain we need a soul.
There are two worlds of knowledge,--the outward world, which is
perceived through the senses, and which belongs to physical science,
and the inward world, perceived by the nobler reason, and from which
a celestial light streams in, irradiating the mind through all its
powers. Religion and science are not opposed, though different; their
spheres are different, though not to be divided. Each is supreme in
its own region, but each needs the help of the other in order to do
its own work well. Professor Tyndall claims freedom of discussion and
inquiry for himself and his scientific brethren, and says he will
oppose to the death any limitation of this liberty. He need not be
anxious on this point. Religious faith has already fought this battle,
and won for science as well as for itself perfect liberty of thought.
The Protestant churches may say, "With a great sum obtained we this
freedom." By the lives of its confessors and the blood of its martyrs
has it secured for all men to-day equal rights of thought and speech.
What neither Copernicus, Kepler, nor Galileo could do was accomplished
by the courage of Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, and Oliver
Cromwell.
And now the freedom they obtained by such sacrifices we inherit and
enjoy: "We are free-born." We may be thankful that in most countries
to-day no repression nor dictation prevents any man from expressing
his inmost thought. We are glad that the most rabid unbelief and
extreme denial can be spoken calmly in the open day. This is one great
discovery of modern times, that errors lose half their influence when
openly uttered. We owe this discovery to the Reformation. The reformers
made possible a toleration much larger than their own; unwittingly,
while seeking freedom for their own thoughts, they won the same
freedom for others, who went farther than they. They builded better
than they knew.
* * * * *
Professor Tyndall's address is tranquil yet earnest, modest, and manly.
But its best result is, that it shows us the impotence of the method
of sensation to explain the mystery of the universe. It has shown us
clearly the limitations of "the understanding judging by sense"--shown
that it sees our world clearly, but is blind to the other. It can tell
every blade of grass, and name every mineral; but it stands helpless
and hopeless before the problem of being. Science and religion may each
say with the apostle, "We know in part and prophesy in part." Together
and united, they may one day see and know the whole.