plant, I lay under contribution for protoplasm, and the fact speaks
volumes for the general identity of that substance in all living beings.
I share this catholicity of assimilation with other animals, all of
which, so far as we know, could thrive equally well on the protoplasm of
any of their fellows, or of any plant; but here the assimilative powers
of the animal world cease. A solution of smelling-salts in water, with
an infinitesimal proportion of some other saline matters, contains all
the elementary bodies which enter into the composition of protoplasm;
but, as I need hardly say, a hogshead of that fluid would not keep a
hungry man from starving, nor would it save any animal whatever from a
like fate. An animal cannot make protoplasm, but must take it ready-made
from some other animal, or some plant--the animal's highest feat of
constructive chemistry being to convert dead protoplasm into that living
matter of life which is appropriate to itself.
Therefore, in seeking for the origin of protoplasm, we must eventually
turn to the vegetable world. The fluid containing carbonic acid, water,
and ammonia, which offers such a Barmecide feast to the animal, is a
table richly spread to multitudes of plants; and, with a due supply of
only such materials, many a plant will not only maintain itself in
vigour, but grow and multiply, until it has increased a million-fold, or
a million million-fold, the quantity of protoplasm which it originally
possessed; in this way building up the matter of life, to an indefinite
extent, from the common matter of the universe.
Thus, the animal can only raise the complex substance of dead
protoplasm to the higher power, as one may say, of living protoplasm;
while the plant can raise the less complex substances--carbonic acid,
water, and ammonia--to the same stage of living protoplasm, if not to
the same level. But the plant also has its limitations. Some of the
fungi, for example, appear to need higher compounds to start with; and
no known plant can live upon the uncompounded elements of protoplasm. A
plant supplied with pure carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen,
phosphorus, sulphur, and the like, would as infallibly die as the animal
in his bath of smelling-salts, though it would be surrounded by all the
constituents of protoplasm. Nor, indeed, need the process of
simplification of vegetable food be carried so far as this, in order to
arrive at the limit of the plant's thaumaturgy. Let water, carbonic
acid, and all the other needful constituents be supplied with ammonia,
and an ordinary plant will still be unable to manufacture protoplasm.
Thus the matter of life, so far as we know it (and we have no right to
speculate on any other), breaks up, in consequence of that continual
death which is the condition of its manifesting vitality, into carbonic
acid, water, and ammonia, which certainly possess no properties but
those of ordinary matter. And out of these same forms of ordinary
matter, and from none which are simpler, the vegetable world builds up
all the protoplasm which keeps the animal world a going. Plants are the
accumulators of the power which animals distribute and disperse.
But it will be observed, that the existence of the matter of life
depends on the pre-existence of certain compounds; namely, carbonic
acid, water, and ammonia. Withdraw any one of these three from the
world and all vital phænomena come to an end. They are related to the
protoplasm of the plant, as the protoplasm of the plant is to that of
the animal. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen are all lifeless
bodies. Of these, carbon and oxygen unite, in certain proportions and
under certain conditions, to give rise to carbonic acid; hydrogen and
oxygen produce water; nitrogen and hydrogen give rise to ammonia. These
new compounds like the elementary bodies of which they are composed, are
lifeless. But when they are brought together, under certain conditions
they give rise to the still more complex body, protoplasm, and this
protoplasm exhibits the phenomena of life.
I see no break in this series of steps in molecular complication, and I
am unable to understand why the language which is applicable to any one
term of the series may not be used to any of the others. We think fit to
call different kinds of matter carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen,
and to speak of the various powers and activities of these substances as
the properties of the matter of which they are composed.
When hydrogen and oxygen are mixed in a certain proportion, and an
electric spark is passed through them, they disappear, and a quantity of
water, equal in weight to the sum of their weights, appears in their
place. There is not the slightest parity between the passive and active
powers of the water and those of the oxygen and hydrogen which have
given rise to it. At 32° Fahrenheit, and far below that temperature,
oxygen and hydrogen are elastic gaseous bodies, whose particles tend to
rush away from one another with great force. Water, at the same
temperature, is a strong though brittle solid, whose particles tend to
cohere into definite geometrical shapes, and sometimes build up frosty
imitations of the most complex forms of vegetable foliage.
Nevertheless we call these, and many other strange phænomena, the
properties of the water, and we do not hesitate to believe that, in some
way or another, they result from the properties of the component
elements of the water. We do not assume that a something called
"aquosity" entered into and took possession of the oxide of hydrogen as
soon as it was formed, and then guided the aqueous particles to their
places in the facets of the crystal, or amongst the leaflets of the
hoar-frost. On the contrary, we live in the hope and in the faith that,
by the advance of molecular physics, we shall by and by be able to see
our way as clearly from the constituents of water to the properties of
water, as we are now able to deduce the operations of a watch from the
form of its parts and the manner in which they are put together.
Is the case in any way changed when carbonic acid, water, and ammonia
disappear, and in their place, under the influence of pre-existing
living protoplasm, an equivalent weight of the matter of life makes its
appearance?
It is true that there is no sort of parity between the properties of the
components and the properties of the resultant, but neither was there in
the case of the water. It is also true that what I have spoken of as the
influence of pre-existing living matter is something quite
unintelligible; but does anybody quite comprehend the _modus operandi_
of an electric spark, which traverses a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen?
What justification is there, then, for the assumption of the existence
in the living matter of a something which has no representative, or
correlative, in the not living matter which gave rise to it? What better
philosophical status has "vitality" than "aquosity"? And why should
"vitality" hope for a better fate than the other "itys" which have
disappeared since Martinus Scriblerus accounted for the operation of the
meat-jack by its inherent "meat roasting quality," and scorned the
"materialism" of those who explained the turning of the spit by a
certain mechanism worked by the draught of the chimney?
If scientific language is to possess a definite and constant
signification whenever it is employed, it seems to me that we are
logically bound to apply to the protoplasm, or physical basis of life,
the same conceptions as those which are held to be legitimate elsewhere.
If the phænomena exhibited by water are its properties, so are those
presented by protoplasm, living or dead, its properties.
If the properties of water may be properly said to result from the
nature and disposition of its component molecules, I can find no
intelligible ground for refusing to say that the properties of
protoplasm result from the nature and disposition of its molecules.
But I bid you beware that, in accepting these conclusions, you are
placing your feet on the first rung of a ladder which, in most people's
estimation, is the reverse of Jacob's, and leads to the antipodes of
heaven. It may seem a small thing to admit that the dull vital actions
of a fungus, or a foraminifer, are the properties of their protoplasm,
and are the direct results of the nature of the matter of which they
are composed. But if, as I have endeavoured to prove to you, their
protoplasm is essentially identical with, and most readily converted
into, that of any animal, I can discover no logical halting-place
between the admission that such is the case, and the further concession
that all vital action may, with equal propriety, be said to be the
result of the molecular forces of the protoplasm which displays it. And
if so, it must be true, in the same sense and to the same extent, that
the thoughts to which I am now giving utterance, and your thoughts
regarding them, are the expression of molecular changes in that matter
of life which is the source of our other vital phænomena.
Past experience leads me to be tolerably certain that, when the
propositions I have just placed before you are accessible to public
comment and criticism, they will be condemned by many zealous persons,
and perhaps by some few of the wise and thoughtful. I should not wonder
if "gross and brutal materialism" were the mildest phrase applied to
them in certain quarters. And, most undoubtedly, the terms of the
propositions are distinctly materialistic. Nevertheless two things are
certain: the one, that I hold the statements to be substantially true;
the other, that I, individually, am no materialist, but, on the
contrary, believe materialism to involve grave philosophical error.
This union of materialistic terminology with the repudiation of
materialistic philosophy, I share with some of the most thoughtful men
with whom I am acquainted. And, when I first undertook to deliver the
present discourse, it appeared to me to be a fitting opportunity to
explain how such a union is not only consistent with, but necessitated
by, sound logic. I purposed to lead you through the territory of vital
phenomena to the materialistic slough in which you find yourselves now
plunged, and then to point out to you the sole path by which, in my
judgment, extrication is possible.
An occurrence of which I was unaware until my arrival here last night,
renders this line of argument singularly opportune. I found in your
papers the eloquent address "On the Limits of Philosophical Inquiry,"
which a distinguished prelate of the English Church delivered before the
members of the Philosophical Institution on the previous day. My
argument, also, turns upon this very point of the limits of
philosophical inquiry; and I cannot bring out my own views better than
by contrasting them with those so plainly, and, in the main, fairly,
stated by the Archbishop of York.
But I may be permitted to make a preliminary comment upon an occurrence
that greatly astonished me. Applying the name of "the New Philosophy" to
that estimate of the limits of philosophical inquiry which I, in common
with many other men of science, hold to be just, the Archbishop opens
his address by identifying this "New Philosophy" with the Positive
Philosophy of M. Comte (of whom he speaks as its "founder"); and then
proceeds to attack that philosopher and his doctrines vigorously.
Now, so far as I am concerned, the most reverend prelate might
dialectically hew M. Comte in pieces, as a modern Agag, and I should not
attempt to stay his hand. In so far as my study of what specially
characterises the Positive Philosophy has led me, I find therein little
or nothing of any scientific value, and a great deal which is as
thoroughly antagonistic to the very essence of science as anything in
ultramontane Catholicism. In fact, M. Comte's philosophy in practice
might be compendiously described as Catholicism _minus_ Christianity.
But what has Comtism to do with the "New Philosophy," as the Archbishop
defines it in the following passage?
"Let me briefly remind you of the leading principles of this new
philosophy.
"All knowledge is experience of facts acquired by the senses. The
traditions of older philosophies have obscured our experience by
mixing with it much that the senses cannot observe, and until these
additions are discarded our knowledge is impure. Thus metaphysics
tell us that one fact which we observe is a cause, and another is
the effect of that cause; but upon a rigid analysis, we find that
our senses observe nothing of cause or effect: they observe, first,
that one fact succeeds another, and, after some opportunity, that
this fact has never failed to follow--that for cause and effect we
should substitute invariable succession. An older philosophy
teaches us to define an object by distinguishing its essential from
its accidental qualities: but experience knows nothing of essential
and accidental; she sees only that certain marks attach to an
object, and, after many observations, that some of them attach
invariably, whilst others may at times be absent.... As all
knowledge is relative, the notion of anything being necessary must
be banished with other traditions."[11]
There is much here that expresses the spirit of the "New Philosophy," if
by that term be meant the spirit of modern science; but I cannot but
marvel that the assembled wisdom and learning of Edinburgh should have
uttered no sign of dissent, when Comte was declared to be the founder of
these doctrines. No one will accuse Scotchmen of habitually forgetting
their great countrymen; but it was enough to make David Hume turn in
his grave, that here, almost within earshot of his house, an instructed
audience should have listened, without a murmur, while his most
characteristic doctrines were attributed to a French writer of fifty
years later date, in whose dreary and verbose pages we miss alike the
vigour of thought and the exquisite clearness of style of the man whom I
make bold to term the most acute thinker of the eighteenth century--even
though that century produced Kant.
But I did not come to Scotland to vindicate the honour of one of the
greatest men she has ever produced. My business is to point out to you
that the only way of escape out of the crass materialism in which we
just now landed, is the adoption and strict working-out of the very
principles which the Archbishop holds up to reprobation.
Let us suppose that knowledge is absolute, and not relative, and
therefore, that our conception of matter represents that which it really
is. Let us suppose, further, that we do know more of cause and effect
than a certain definite order of succession among facts, and that we
have a knowledge of the necessity of that succession--and hence, of
necessary laws--and I, for my part, do not see what escape there is from
utter materialism and necessarianism. For it is obvious that our
knowledge of what we call the material world, is, to begin with, at
least as certain and definite as that of the spiritual world, and that
our acquaintance with law is of as old a date as our knowledge of
spontaneity. Further, I take it to be demonstrable that it is utterly
impossible to prove that anything whatever may not be the effect of a
material and necessary cause, and that human logic is equally
incompetent to prove that any act is really spontaneous. A really
spontaneous act is one which, by the assumption, has no cause; and the
attempt to prove such a negative as this is, on the face of the matter,
absurd. And while it is thus a philosophical impossibility to
demonstrate that any given phænomenon is not the effect of a material
cause, any one who is acquainted with the history of science will admit,
that its progress has, in all ages, meant, and now, more than ever,
means, the extension of the province of what we call matter and
causation, and the concomitant gradual banishment from all regions of
human thought of what we call spirit and spontaneity.
I have endeavoured, in the first part of this discourse, to give you a
conception of the direction towards which modern physiology is tending;
and I ask you, what is the difference between the conception of life as
the product of a certain disposition of material molecules, and the old
notion of an Archæus governing and directing blind matter within each
living body, except this--that here, as elsewhere, matter and law have
devoured spirit and spontaneity? And as surely as every future grows out
of past and present, so will the physiology of the future gradually
extend the realm of matter and law until it is co-extensive with
knowledge, with feeling, and with action.
The consciousness of this great truth weighs like a nightmare, I
believe, upon many of the best minds of these days. They watch what they
conceive to be the progress of materialism, in such fear and powerless
anger as a savage feels, when, during an eclipse, the great shadow
creeps over the face of the sun. The advancing tide of matter threatens
to drown their souls; the tightening grasp of law impedes their freedom;
they are alarmed lest man's moral nature be debased by the increase of
his wisdom.
If the "New Philosophy" be worthy of the reprobation with which it is
visited, I confess their fears seem to me, to be well founded. While, on
the contrary, could David Hume be consulted, I think he would smile at
their perplexities, and chide them for doing even as the heathen, and
falling down in terror before the hideous idols their own hands have
raised.
For, after all, what do we know of this terrible "matter," except as a
name for the unknown and hypothetical cause of states of our own
consciousness? And what do we know of that "spirit" over whose
threatened extinction by matter a great lamentation is arising, like
that which was heard at the death of Pan, except that it is also a name
for an unknown and hypothetical cause, or condition, of states of
consciousness? In other words, matter and spirit are but names for the
imaginary substrata of groups of natural phænomena.
And what is the dire necessity and "iron" law under which men groan?
Truly, most gratuitously invented bugbears. I suppose if there be an
"iron" law, it is that of gravitation; and if there be a physical
necessity, it is that a stone, unsupported, must fall to the ground. But
what is all we really know and can know about the latter phænomenon?
Simply, that, in all human experience, stones have fallen to the ground
under these conditions; that we have not the smallest reason for
believing that any stone so circumstanced will not fall to the ground;
and that we have, on the contrary, every reason to believe that it will
so fall. It is very convenient to indicate that all the conditions of
belief have been fulfilled in this case, by calling the statement that
unsupported stones will fall to the ground, "a law of nature." But when,
as commonly happens, we change _will_ into _must_, we introduce an idea
of necessity which most assuredly does not lie in the observed facts,
and has no warranty that I can discover elsewhere. For my part, I
utterly repudiate and anathematize the intruder. Fact I know; and Law I
know; but what is this Necessity, save an empty shadow of my own mind's
throwing?
But, if it is certain that we can have no knowledge of the nature of
either matter or spirit, and that the notion of necessity is something
illegitimately thrust into the perfectly legitimate conception of law,
the materialistic position that there is nothing in the world but
matter, force, and necessity, is as utterly devoid of justification as
the most baseless of theological dogmas. The fundamental doctrines of
materialism, like those of spiritualism, and most other "isms," lie
outside "the limits of philosophical inquiry," and David Hume's great
service to humanity is his irrefragable demonstration of what these
limits are. Hume called himself a sceptic, and therefore others cannot
be blamed if they apply the same title to him; but that does not alter
the fact that the name, with its existing implications, does him gross
injustice.
If a man asks me what the politics of the inhabitants of the moon are,
and I reply that I do not know; that neither I, nor any one else, have
any means of knowing; and that, under these circumstances, I decline to
trouble myself about the subject at all, I do not think he has any
right to call me a sceptic. On the contrary, in replying thus, I
conceive that I am simply honest and truthful, and show a proper regard
for the economy of time. So Hume's strong and subtle intellect takes up
a great many problems about which we are naturally curious, and shows us
that they are essentially questions of lunar politics, in their essence
incapable of being answered, and therefore not worth the attention of
men who have work to do in the world. And he thus ends one of his
essays:--
"If we take in hand any volume of Divinity, or school metaphysics,
for instance, let us ask, _Does it contain any abstract reasoning
concerning quantity or number_? No. _Does it contain any
experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence_?
No. Commit it then to the flames; for it can contain nothing but
sophistry and illusion."[12]
Permit me to enforce this most wise advice. Why trouble ourselves about
matters of which, however important they may be, we do know nothing, and
can know nothing? We live in a world which is full of misery and
ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make
the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat
less ignorant than it was before he entered it. To do this effectually
it is necessary to be fully possessed of only two beliefs: the first,
that the order of nature is ascertainable by our faculties to an extent
which is practically unlimited; the second, that our volition counts for
something as a condition of the course of events.
Each of these beliefs can be verified experimentally, as often as we
like to try. Each, therefore, stands upon the strongest foundation upon
which any belief can rest, and forms one of our highest truths. If we
find that the ascertainment of the order of nature is facilitated by
using one terminology, or one set of symbols, rather than another, it is
our clear duty to use the former; and no harm can accrue, so long as we
bear in mind, that we are dealing merely with terms and symbols.
In itself it is of little moment whether we express the phænomena of
matter in terms of spirit; or the phænomena of spirit, in terms of
matter: matter may be regarded as a form of thought, thought may be
regarded as a property of matter--each statement has a certain relative
truth. But with a view to the progress of science, the materialistic
terminology is in every way to be preferred. For it connects thought
with the other phænomena of the universe, and suggests inquiry into the
nature of those physical conditions, or concomitants of thought, which
are more or less accessible to us, and a knowledge of which may, in
future, help us to exercise the same kind of control over the world of
thought, as we already possess in respect of the material world;
whereas, the alternative, or spiritualistic, terminology is utterly
barren, and leads to nothing but obscurity and confusion of ideas.
Thus there can be little doubt, that the further science advances, the
more extensively and consistently will all the phænomena of nature be
represented by materialistic formulæ and symbols.
But the man of science, who, forgetting the limits of philosophical
inquiry, slides from these formulæ and symbols into what is commonly
understood by materialism, seems to me to place himself on a level with
the mathematician, who should mistake the _x_'s and _y_'s, with which he
works his problems, for real entities--and with this further
disadvantage, as compared with the mathematician, that the blunders of
the latter are of no practical consequence, while the errors of
systematic materialism may paralyse the energies and destroy the beauty
of a life.
FOOTNOTES: