depends on the preëxistence of certain compounds, namely, carbonic acid,
water, and ammonia. Withdraw any one of these three from the world and
all vital phenomena 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 proportion 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 the 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 degrees
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 phenomena, 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
preëxisting 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 preëxisting living
matter is something quite unintelligible; but does any body 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 phenomena 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 endeavored 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 phenomena. 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 an 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 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 doctrine 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 characterizes 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 Comptism 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 tells 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.”
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 ear-shot 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
vigor of thought and the exquisite clearness of the 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 honor 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 necessitarianism. 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 the 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
phenomenon 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 endeavored, 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 coëxtensive 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 phenomena. 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 phenomenon? Simply, that, in all human
experience, stones have fallen to the ground under these conditions;
that we have not the smallest reason for believing that any stone so
circumstanced will not fall to the ground, and that we have, on the
contrary, every reason to believe that it will so fall. It is very
convenient to indicate that all the conditions of belief have been
fulfilled in this case, by calling the statement that unsupported stones
will fall to the ground, “a law of nature.” But when, as commonly
happens, we change will into must, we introduce an idea of necessity
which most assuredly does not lie in the observed facts, and has no
warranty that I can discover elsewhere. For my part, I utterly repudiate
and anathematize the intruder. Fact, I know; and Law I know; but what is
this Necessity, save an empty shadow of my own mind’s throwing? But, if
it is certain that we can have no knowledge of the nature of either
matter or spirit, and that the notion of necessity is something
illegitimately thrust into the perfectly legitimate conception of law,
the materialistic position that there is nothing in the world but
matter, force, and necessity, is as utterly devoid of justification as
the most baseless of theological dogmas.
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 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.”
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 phenomena of matter
in terms of spirit, or the phenomena 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
phenomena 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 phenomena 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 paralyze the
energies and destroy the beauty of a life.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_THE CORRELATION OF VITAL AND PHYSICAL FORCES._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE CORRELATION
OF
VITAL AND PHYSICAL FORCES.
In the Syracusan Poecile, says Alexander von Humboldt in his beautiful
little allegory of the Rhodian Genius, hung a painting, which, for full
a century, had continued to attract the attention of every visitor. In
the foreground of this picture a numerous company of youths and maidens
of earthly and sensuous appearance gazed fixedly upon a haloed Genius
who hovered in their midst. A butterfly rested upon his shoulder, and he
held in his hand a flaming torch. His every lineament bespoke a
celestial origin. The attempts to solve the enigma of this
painting—whose origin even was unknown—though numerous, were all in
vain, when one day a ship arriving from Rhodes, laden with works of art,
brought another picture, at once recognized as its companion. As before,
the Genius stood in the center, but the butterfly had disappeared, and
the torch was reversed and extinguished. The youths and maidens were no
longer sad and submissive, their mutual embraces announcing their entire
emancipation from restraint. Still unable to solve the riddle, Dionysius
sent the pictures to the Pythagorean sage, Epicharmus. After gazing upon
them long and earnestly, he said: Sixty years long have I pondered on
the internal springs of nature, and on the differences inherent in
matter; but it is only this day that the Rhodian Genius has taught me to
see clearly that which before I had only conjectured. In inanimate
nature, everything seeks its like. Everything, as soon as formed,
hastens to enter into new combinations, and nought save the disjoining
art of man can present in a separate state ingredients which ye would
vainly seek in the interior of the earth or in the moving oceans of air
and water. Different, however, is the blending of the same substances in
animal and vegetable bodies. Here vital force imperatively asserts its
rights, and heedless of the affinity and antagonism of the atoms, unites
substances which in inanimate nature ever flee from each other, and
separates that which is incessantly striving to unite. Recognize,
therefore, in the Rhodian Genius, in the expression of his youthful
vigor, in the butterfly on his shoulder, in the commanding glance of his
eye, the symbol of vital force as it animates every germ of organic
creation. The earthly elements at his feet are striving to gratify their
own desires and to mingle with one another. Imperiously the Genius
threatens them with upraised and high-flaming torch, and compels them
regardless of their ancient rights, to obey his laws. Look now on the
new work of art; turn from life to death. The butterfly has soared
upward, the extinguished torch is reversed, and the head of the youth is
drooping; the spirit has fled to other spheres, and the vital force is
extinct. Now the youths and maidens join their hands in joyous accord.
Earthly matter again resumes its rights. Released from all bonds, they
impetuously follow their natural instincts, and the day of his death is
to them a day of nuptials.[1]
The view here put by Humboldt into the mouth of Epicharmus may be taken
as a fair representation of the current opinion of all ages concerning
vital force. To-day, as truly as seventy-five years ago when Humboldt
wrote, the mysterious and awful phenomena of life are commonly
attributed to some controlling agent residing in the organism—to some
independent presiding deity, holding it in absolute subjection. Such a
notion it was which prompted Heraclitus to talk of a universal fire, Van
Helmont to propose his Archæus, Hofmann his vital fluid, Hunter his
_materia vitæ diffusa_, and Humboldt his vital force.[2] All these names
assume the existence of a material or immaterial something, more or less
separable from the material body, and more or less identical with the
mind or soul, which is the cause of the phenomena of living beings. But
as science moved irresistibly onward, and it became evident that the
forces of inorganic nature were neither deities nor imponderable fluids,
separable from matter, but were simple affections of it, analogy
demanded a like concession in behalf of vital force.[3] From the notion
that the effects of heat were due to an imponderable fluid called
caloric, discovery passed to the conviction that heat was but a motion
of material particles, and hence inseparable from matter. To a like
assumption concerning vitality it was now but a step. The more advanced
thinkers in science of to-day, therefore, look upon the life of the
living form as inseparable from its substance, and believe that the
former is purely phenomenal, and only a manifestation of the latter.
Denying the existence of a special vital force as such, they retain the
term only to express the sum of the phenomena of living beings.
In calling your attention this evening to the Correlation of the
Physical and the Vital Forces, I have a twofold object in view. On the
one hand, I would seek to interest you in a comparatively recent
discovery of Science, and one which is destined to play a most important
part in promoting man’s welfare; and on the other I would inquire what
part our own country has had in these discoveries.
In the first place, then, let us consider what the evidences are that
vital and physical forces are correlated. Let us inquire how far
inorganic and organic forces may be considered mutually convertible, and
hence, in so far, mutually identical. This may best be done by
considering, first, what is to be understood by correlation: and second,
how far are the physical forces themselves correlated to each other.
At the outset of our discussion, we are met by an unfortunate ambiguity
of language. The word Force, as commonly used, has three distinct
meanings; in the first place, it is used to express the cause of motion,
as when we speak of the force of gunpowder; it is also used to indicate
motion itself, as when we refer to the force of a moving cannon-ball;
and lastly it is employed to express the effect of motion, as when we
speak of the blow which the moving body gives.[4] Because of this
confusion, it has been found convenient to adopt Rankine’s
suggestion,[5] and to substitute the word ‘energy’ therefor. And
precisely as all force upon the earth’s surface—using the term force in
its widest sense—may be divided into attraction and motion, so all
energy is divided into potential and actual energy, synonymous with
those terms. It is the chemical attraction of the atoms, or their
potential energy, which makes gunpowder so powerful; it is the
attraction or potential energy of gravitation which gives the power to a
raised weight. If now, the impediments be removed, the power just now
latent becomes active, attraction is converted into motion, potential
into actual energy, and the desired effect is accomplished. The energy
of gunpowder or of a raised weight is potential, is capable of acting;
that of exploding gunpowder or of a falling weight is actual energy or
motion. By applying a match to the gunpowder, by cutting the string
which sustains the weight, we convert potential into actual energy. By
potential energy, therefore, is meant attraction; and by actual energy,
motion. It is in the latter sense that we shall use the word force in
this lecture; and we shall speak of the forces of heat, light,
electricity and mechanical motion, and of the attractions of
gravitation, cohesion, chemism.