When the Royal Society was founded, the Fellows set {22} to work to prove
all things, that they might hold fast that which was good. They bent
themselves to the question whether sprats were young herrings. They made a
circle of the powder of a unicorn's horn, and set a spider in the middle of
it; "but it immediately ran out." They tried several times, and the spider
"once made some stay in the powder." They inquired into Kenelm Digby's
sympathetic powder. "Magnetic cures being discoursed of, Sir Gilbert Talbot
promised to communicate what he knew of sympathetical cures; and those
members who had any of the powder of sympathy, were desired to bring some
of it at the next meeting."
June 21, 1661, certain gentlemen were appointed "curators of the proposal
of tormenting a man with the sympathetic powder"; I cannot find any record
of the result. And so they went on until the time of Sir John Hill's
satire, in 1751. This once well-known work is, in my judgment, the greatest
compliment the Royal Society ever received. It brought forward a number of
what are now feeble and childish researches in the Philosophical
Transactions. It showed that the inquirers had actually been inquiring; and
that they did not pronounce decision about "natural _knowledge_" by help of
"_natural_ knowledge." But for this, Hill would neither have known what to
assail, nor how. Matters are now entirely changed. The scientific bodies
are far too well established to risk themselves. _Ibit qui zonam perdidit:_
"Let him take castles who has ne'er a groat."
These great institutions are now without any collective purpose, except
that of promoting individual energy; they print for their contributors, and
guard themselves by a general declaration that they will not be answerable
for the things they print. Of course they will not put forward anything for
everybody; but a writer of a certain reputation, or matter of a certain
look of plausibility and safety, {23} will find admission. This is as it
should be; the pasturer of flocks and herds and the hunters of wild beasts
are two very different bodies, with very different policies. The scientific
academies are what a spiritualist might call "publishing mediums," and
_their_ spirits fall occasionally into writing which looks as if minds in
the higher state were not always impervious to nonsense.
The following joke is attributed to Sir John Hill. I cannot honestly say I
believe it; but it shows that his contemporaries did not believe he had no
humor. Good stories are always in some sort of keeping with the characters
on which they are fastened. Sir John Hill contrived a communication to the
Royal Society from Portsmouth, to the effect that a sailor had broken his
leg in a fall from the mast-head; that bandages and a plentiful application
of tarwater had made him, in three days, able to use his leg as well as
ever. While this communication was under grave discussion--it must be
remembered that many then thought tarwater had extraordinary remedial
properties--the joker contrived that a second letter should be delivered,
which stated that the writer had forgotten, in his previous communication,
to mention that the leg was a wooden leg! Horace Walpole told this story, I
suppose for the first time; he is good authority for the fact of
circulation, but for nothing more.
Sir John Hill's book is droll and cutting satire. Dr. Maty, (Sec. Royal
Society) wrote thus of it in the _Journal Britannique_ (Feb. 1751), of
which he was editor:
"Il est facheux que cet ingenieux Naturaliste, qui nous a deja donne et qui
nous prepare encore des ouvrages plus utiles, emploie a cette odieuse tache
une plume qu'il trempe dans le fiel et dans l'absinthe. Il est vrai que
plusieurs de ses remarques sont fondees, et qu'a l'erreur qu'il indique, il
joint en meme tems la correction. Mais il n'est pas toujours equitable, et
ne manque jamais d'insulter. Que peut {24} apres tout prouver son livre, si
ce n'est que la quarante-cinquieme partie d'un tres-ample et tres-utile
Recueil n'est pas exempte d'erreurs? Devoit-il confondre avec des Ecrivains
superficiels, dont la Liberte du Corps ne permet pas de restreindre la
fertilite, cette foule de savans du Premier ordre, dont les Ecrits ont orne
et ornent encore les Transactions? A-t-il oublie qu'on y a vu frequemment
les noms des Boyle, des Newton, des Halley, des De Moivres, des Hans
Sloane, etc.? Et qu'on y trouve encore ceux des Ward, des Bradley, des
Graham, des Ellicot, des Watson, et d'un Auteur que Mr. Hill prefere a tous
les autres, je veux dire de Mr. Hill lui-meme?"[7]
This was the only answer; but it was no answer at all. Hill's object was to
expose the absurdities; he therefore collected the absurdities. I feel sure
that Hill was a benefactor of the Royal Society; and much more than he
would have been if he had softened their errors and enhanced their praises.
No reviewer will object to me that I have omitted Young, Laplace, etc. But
then my book has a true title. Hill should not have called his a review of
the "Works."
It was charged against Sir John Hill that he had tried to become a Fellow
of the Royal Society and had failed. This he denied, and challenged the
production of the certificate which a candidate always sends in, and which
is preserved. {25} But perhaps he could not get so far as a
certificate--that is, could not find any one to recommend him; he was a
likely man to be in such a predicament. As I have myself run foul of the
Society on some little points, I conceive it possible that I may fall under
a like suspicion. Whether I could have been a Fellow, I cannot know; as the
gentleman said who was asked if he could play the violin, I never tried. I
have always had a high opinion of the Society upon its whole history. A
person used to historical inquiry learns to look at wholes; the
Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the College of Physicians, etc. are
taken in all their duration. But those who are not historians--I mean not
possessed of the habit of history--hold a mass of opinions about current
things which lead them into all kinds of confusion when they try to look
back. Not to give an instance which will offend any set of existing
men--this merely because I can do without it--let us take the country at
large. Magna Charta for ever! glorious safeguard of our liberties! _Nullus
liber homo capiatur aut imprisonetur ... aut aliquo modo destruatur, nisi
per judicium parium_ ....[8] _Liber homo: frank home_; a capital thing for
him--but how about the _villeins_? Oh, there are none _now_! But there
were. Who cares for villains, or barbarians, or helots? And so England, and
Athens, and Sparta, were free States; all the freemen in them were free.
Long after Magna Charta, villains were sold with their "chattels and
offspring," named in that order. Long after Magna Charta, it was law that
"Le Seigniour poit rob, naufrer, et chastiser son villein a son volunt,
salve que il ne poit luy maim."[9]
The Royal Society was founded as a co-operative body, and co-operation was
its purpose. The early charters, etc. do not contain a trace of the
intention to create a _scientific distinction_, a kind of Legion of Honor.
It is clear that the {26} qualification was ability and willingness to do
good work for the promotion of natural knowledge, no matter in how many
persons, nor of what position in society. Charles II gave a smart rebuke
for exclusiveness, as elsewhere mentioned. In time arose, almost of course,
the idea of distinction attaching to the title; and when I first began to
know the Society, it was in this state. Gentlemen of good social position
were freely elected if they were really educated men; but the moment a
claimant was announced as resting on his science, there was a disposition
to inquire whether he was scientific enough. The maxim of the poet was
adopted; and the Fellows were practically divided into _Drink-deeps_ and
_Taste-nots_.
I was, in early life, much repelled by the tone taken by the Fellows of the
Society with respect to their very mixed body. A man high in science--some
thirty-seven years ago (about 1830)--gave me some encouragement, as he
thought. "We shall have you a Fellow of the Royal Society in time," said
he. Umph! thought I: for I had that day heard of some recent elections, the
united science of which would not have demonstrated I. 1, nor explained the
action of a pump. Truly an elevation to look up at! It came, further, to my
knowledge that the Royal Society--if I might judge by the claims made by
very influential Fellows--considered itself as entitled to the best of
everything: second-best being left for the newer bodies. A secretary, in
returning thanks for the Royal at an anniversary of the Astronomical, gave
rather a lecture to the company on the positive duty of all present to send
the very best to the old body, and the absolute right of the old body to
expect it. An old friend of mine, on a similar occasion, stated as a fact
that the thing was always done, as well as that it ought to be done.
Of late years this pretension has been made by a President of the Society.
In 1855, Lord Rosse presented a confidential memorandum to the Council on
the expediency of enlarging their number. He says, "In a Council so small
it {27} is impossible to secure a satisfactory representation of the
leading scientific Societies, and it is scarcely to be expected that, under
such circumstances, they will continue to publish inferior papers while
they send the best to our _Transactions_."
And, again, with all the Societies represented on the Council, "even if
every Science had its Society, and if they published everything,
withholding their best papers [i.e., from the Royal Society], which they
would not be likely to do, still there would remain to the Royal Society
...." Lord Rosse seems to imagine that the minor Societies themselves
transfer their best papers to the Royal Society; that if, for instance, the
Astronomical Society were to receive from A.B. a paper of unusual merit,
the Society would transfer it to the Royal Society. This is quite wrong:
any preference of the Royal to another Society is the work of the
contributor himself. But it shows how well hafted is the Royal Society's
claim, that a President should acquire the notion that it is acknowledged
and acted upon by the other Societies, in their joint and corporate
capacities. To the pretension thus made I never could give any sympathy.
When I first heard Mr. Christie, Sec. R. S., set it forth at the
anniversary dinner of the Astronomical Society, I remembered the Baron in
Walter Scott:
"Of Gilbert the Galliard a heriot he sought,
Saying, Give thy best steed as a vassal ought."
And I remembered the answer:
"Lord and Earl though thou be, I trow
I can rein Buck's-foot better than thou."
Fully conceding that the Royal Society is entitled to preeminent rank and
all the respect due to age and services, I could not, nor can I now, see
any more obligation in a contributor to send his best to that Society than
he can make out to be due to himself. This pretension, in my mind, was
hooked on, by my historical mode of viewing things already mentioned, to my
knowledge of the fact that the Royal {28} Society--the chief fault,
perhaps, lying with its President, Sir Joseph Banks--had sternly set itself
against the formation of other societies; the Geological and Astronomical,
for instance, though it must be added that the chief rebels came out of the
Society itself. And so a certain not very defined dislike was generated in
my mind--an anti-aristocratic affair--to the body which seemed to me a
little too uplifted. This would, I daresay, have worn off; but a more
formidable objection arose. My views of physical science gradually arranged
themselves into a form which would have rendered F.R.S., as attached to my
name, a false representation symbol. The Royal Society is the great
fortress of general physics: and in the philosophy of our day, as to
general physics, there is something which makes the banner of the R.S. one
under which I cannot march. Everybody who saw the three letters after my
name would infer certain things as to my mode of thought which would not be
true inference. It would take much space to explain this in full. I may
hereafter, perhaps, write a budget of collected results of the _a priori
philosophy_, the nibbling at the small end of omniscience, and the effect
it has had on common life, from the family parlor to the jury-box, from the
girls'-school to the vestry-meeting. There are in the Society those who
would, were there no others, prevent my criticism, be its conclusions true
or false, from having any basis; but they are in the minority.
There is no objection to be made to the principles of philosophy in vogue
at the Society, when they are stated as principles; but there is an
omniscience in daily practice which the principles repudiate. In like
manner, the most retaliatory Christians have a perfect form of round words
about behavior to those who injure them; none of them are as candid as a
little boy I knew, who, to his mother's admonition, You should love your
enemies, answered--Catch me at it!
Years ago, a change took place which would alone have {29} put a sufficient
difficulty in the way. The co-operative body got tired of getting funds
from and lending name to persons who had little or no science, and wanted
F.R.S. to be in every case a Fellow Really Scientific. Accordingly, the
number of yearly elections was limited to fifteen recommended by the
Council, unless the general body should choose to elect more; which it does
not do. The election is now a competitive examination: it is no longer--Are
you able and willing to promote natural knowledge; it is--Are you one of
the upper fifteen of those who make such claim. In the list of
candidates--a list rapidly growing in number--each year shows from thirty
to forty of those whom Newton and Boyle would have gladly welcomed as
fellow-laborers. And though the rejected of one year may be the accepted of
the next--or of the next but one, or but two, if self-respect will permit
the candidate to hang on--yet the time is clearly coming when many of those
who ought to be welcomed will be excluded for life, or else shelved at
last, when past work, with a scientific peerage. Coupled with this attempt
to create a kind of order of knighthood is an absurdity so glaring that it
should always be kept before the general eye. This distinction, this mark
set by science upon successful investigation, is of necessity a
class-distinction. Rowan Hamilton, one of the greatest names of our day in
mathematical science, never could attach F.R.S. to his name--_he could not
afford it_. There is a condition precedent--Four Red Sovereigns. It is four
pounds a year, or--to those who have contributed to the Transactions--forty
pounds down. This is as it should be: the Society must be supported. But it
is not as it should be that a kind of title of honor should be forged, that
a body should take upon itself to confer distinctions _for science_, when
it is in the background--and kept there when the distinction is
trumpeted--that the wearer is a man who can spare four pounds a year. I am
well aware that in England a person who is not gifted either by nature or
art, with this amount of money power, {30} is, with the mass, a very
second-rate sort of Newton, whatever he may be in the field of
investigation. Even men of science, so called, have this feeling. I know
that the _scientific advisers_ of the Admiralty, who, years ago, received
100 pounds a year each for his trouble, were sneered at by a wealthy
pretender as "fellows to whom a hundred a year is an object." Dr. Thomas
Young was one of them. To a bookish man--I mean a man who can manage to
collect books--there is no tax. To myself, for example, 40 pounds worth of
books deducted from my shelves, and the life-use of the Society's splendid
library instead, would have been a capital exchange. But there may be, and
are, men who want books, and cannot pay the Society's price. The Council
would be very liberal in allowing books to be consulted. I have no doubt
that if a known investigator were to call and ask to look at certain books,
the Assistant-Secretary would forthwith seat him with the books before him,
absence of F.R.S. not in any wise withstanding. But this is not like having
the right to consult any book on any day, and to take it away, if farther
wanted.
So much for the Royal Society as concerns myself. I must add that there is
not a spark of party feeling against those who wilfully remain outside. The
better minds of course know better; and the smaller _savants_ look
complacently on the idea of an outer world which makes _elite_ of them. I
have done such a thing as serve on a committee of the Society, and report
on a paper: they had the sense to ask, and I had the sense to see that none
of my opinions were compromised by compliance. And I will be of any use
which does not involve the status of _homo trium literarum_; as I have
elsewhere explained, I would gladly be _Fautor Realis Scientiae_, but I
would not be taken for _Falsae Rationis Sacerdos_.
Nothing worse will ever happen to me than the smile which individuals
bestow on a man who does not _groove_. Wisdom, like religion, belongs to
majorities; who can {31} wonder that it should be so thought, when it is so
clearly pictured in the New Testament from one end to the other?
The counterpart of _paradox_, the isolated opinion of one or of few, is the
general opinion held by all the rest; and the counterpart of false and
absurd paradox is what is called the "vulgar error," the _pseudodox_. There
is one great work on this last subject, the _Pseudodoxia Epidemica_ of Sir
Thomas Browne, the famous author of the _Religio Medici_; it usually goes
by the name of Browne "On Vulgar Errors" (1st ed. 1646; 6th, 1672). A
careful analysis of this work would show that vulgar errors are frequently
opposed by scientific errors; but good sense is always good sense, and
Browne's book has a vast quantity of it.
As an example of bad philosophy brought against bad observation. The
Amphisbaena serpent was supposed to have two heads, one at each end; partly
from its shape, partly because it runs backwards as well as forwards. On
this Sir Thomas Browne makes the following remarks:
"And were there any such species or natural kind of animal, it would be
hard to make good those six positions of body which, according to the three
dimensions, are ascribed unto every Animal; that is, _infra_, _supra_,
_ante_, _retro_, _dextrosum_, _sinistrosum_: for if (as it is determined)
that be the anterior and upper part wherein the senses are placed, and that
the posterior and lower part which is opposite thereunto, there is no
inferior or former part in this Animal; for the senses, being placed at
both extreams, doth make both ends anterior, which is impossible; the terms
being Relative, which mutually subsist, and are not without each other. And
therefore this duplicity was ill contrived to place one head at both
extreams, and had been more tolerable to have settled three or four at one.
And therefore also Poets have been more reasonable than Philosophers, and
_Geryon_ or _Cerberus_ less monstrous than _Amphisbaena_." {32}
There may be paradox upon paradox: and there is a good instance in the
eighth century in the case of Virgil, an Irishman, Bishop of Salzburg and
afterwards Saint, and his quarrels with Boniface, an Englishman, Archbishop
of Mentz, also afterwards Saint. All we know about the matter is, that
there exists a letter of 748 from Pope Zachary, citing Virgil--then, it
seems, at most a simple priest, though the Pope was not sure even of
that--to Rome to answer the charge of maintaining that there is another
world (_mundus_) under our earth (_terra_), with another sun and another
moon. Nothing more is known: the letter contains threats in the event of
the charge being true; and there history drops the matter. Since Virgil was
afterwards a Bishop and a Saint, we may fairly conclude that he died in the
full flower of his orthodox reputation. It has been supposed--and it seems
probable--that Virgil maintained that the earth is peopled all the way
round, so that under some spots there are antipodes; that his
contemporaries, with very dim ideas about the roundness of the earth, and
most of them with none at all, interpreted him as putting another earth
under ours--turned the other way, probably, like the second piece of
bread-and-butter in a sandwich, with a sun and moon of its own. In the
eighth century this would infallibly have led to an underground Gospel, an
underground Pope, and an underground Avignon for him to live in. When, in
later times, the idea of inhabitants for the planets was started, it was
immediately asked whether they had sinned, whether Jesus Christ died for
_them_, whether their wine and their water could be lawfully used in the
sacraments, etc.
On so small a basis as the above has been constructed a companion case to
the persecution of Galileo. On one side the positive assertion, with
indignant comment, that Virgil was deposed for antipodal heresy, on the
other, serious attempts at justification, palliation, or mystification.
Some writers say that Virgil was found guilty; others that he gave
satisfactory explanation, and became very good friends with {33} Boniface:
for all which see Bayle. Some have maintained that the antipodist was a
different person from the canonized bishop: there is a second Virgil, made
to order. When your shoes pinch, and will not stretch, always throw them
away and get another pair: the same with your facts. Baronius was not up to
the plan of a substitute: his commentator Pagi (probably writing about
1690) argues for it in a manner which I think Baronius would not have
approved. This Virgil was perhaps a slippery fellow. The Pope says he hears
that Virgil pretended licence from him to claim one of some new bishoprics:
this he declares is totally false. It is part of the argument that such a
man as this could not have been created a Bishop and a Saint: on this point
there will be opinions and opinions.[10]
Lactantius, four centuries before, had laughed at the antipodes in a manner
which seems to be ridicule thrown on the idea of the earth's roundness.
Ptolemy, without reference to the antipodes, describes the extent of the
inhabited part of the globe in a way which shows that he could have had no
objection to men turned opposite ways. Probably, in the eighth century, the
roundness of the earth was matter of thought only to astronomers. It should
always be remembered, especially by those who affirm persecution of a true
opinion, that but for our knowing from Lactantius that the antipodal notion
had been matter of assertion and denial among theologians, we could never
have had any great confidence in Virgil really having maintained the simple
theory of the existence of antipodes. And even now we are not entitled to
affirm it as having historical proof: the evidence {34} goes to Virgil
having been charged with very absurd notions, which it seems more likely
than not were the absurd constructions which ignorant contemporaries put
upon sensible opinions of his.
One curious part of this discussion is that neither side has allowed Pope
Zachary to produce evidence to character. He shall have been an Urban, say
the astronomers; an Urban he ought to have been, say the theologians. What
sort of man was Zachary? He was eminently sensible and conciliatory; he
contrived to make northern barbarians hear reason in a way which puts him
high among that section of the early popes who had the knack of managing
uneducated swordsmen. He kept the peace in Italy to an extent which
historians mention with admiration. Even Bale, that Maharajah of
pope-haters, allows himself to quote in favor of Zachary, that "multa
Papalem dignitatem decentia, eademque praeclara (scilicet) opera
confecit."[11] And this, though so willing to find fault that, speaking of
Zachary putting a little geographical description of the earth on the
portico of the Lateran Church, he insinuates that it was intended to affirm
that the Pope was lord of the whole. Nor can he say how long Zachary held
the see, except by announcing his death in 752, "cum decem annis
pestilentiae sedi praefuisset."[12]
There was another quarrel between Virgil and Boniface which is an
illustration. An ignorant priest had baptized "in nomine Patri_a_, et
Fili_a_ et Spiritu_a_ Sancta." Boniface declared the rite null and void:
Virgil maintained the contrary; and Zachary decided in favor of Virgil, on
the ground that the absurd form was only ignorance of Latin, and not
heresy. It is hard to believe that this man deposed a priest for asserting
the whole globe to be inhabited. To me the little information that we have
seems {35} to indicate--but not with certainty--that Virgil maintained the
antipodes: that his ignorant contemporaries travestied his theory into that
of an underground cosmos; that the Pope cited him to Rome to explain his
system, which, as reported, looked like what all would then have affirmed
to be heresy; that he gave satisfactory explanations, and was dismissed
with honor. It may be that the educated Greek monk, Zachary, knew his
Ptolemy well enough to guess what the asserted heretic would say; we have
seen that he seems to have patronized geography. The _description_ of the
earth, according to historians, was a _map_; this Pope may have been more
ready than another to prick up his ears at any rumor of geographical
heresy, from hope of information. And Virgil, who may have entered the
sacred presence as frightened as Jacquard, when Napoleon I sent for him and
said, with a stern voice and threatening gesture, "You are the man who can
tie a knot in a stretched string," may have departed as well pleased as
Jacquard with the riband and pension which the interview was worth to him.
A word more about Baronius. If he had been pope, as he would have been but
for the opposition of the Spaniards, and if he had lived ten years longer
than he did, and if Clavius, who would have been his astronomical adviser,
had lived five years longer than he did, it is probable, nay almost
certain, that the great exhibition, the proceeding against Galileo, would
not have furnished a joke against theology in all time to come. For
Baronius was sensible and witty enough to say that in the Scriptures the
Holy Spirit intended to teach how to go to Heaven, not how Heaven goes; and
Clavius, in his last years, confessed that the whole system of the heavens
had broken down, and must be mended.
The manner in which the Galileo case, a reality, and the Virgil case, a
fiction, have been hawked against the Roman see are enough to show that the
Pope and his adherents have not cared much about physical philosophy. In
truth, orthodoxy has always had other fish to fry. Physics, which {36} in
modern times has almost usurped the name _philosophy_, in England at least,
has felt a little disposed to clothe herself with all the honors of
persecution which belong to the real owner of the name. But the bishops,
etc. of the Middle Ages knew that the contest between nominalism and
realism, for instance, had a hundred times more bearing upon orthodoxy than
anything in astronomy, etc. A wrong notion about _substance_ might play the
mischief with _transubstantiation_.
The question of the earth's motion was the single point in which orthodoxy
came into real contact with science. Many students of physics were
suspected of magic, many of atheism: but, stupid as the mistake may have
been, it was _bona fide_ the magic or the atheism, not the physics, which
was assailed. In the astronomical case it was the very doctrine, as a
doctrine, independently of consequences, which was the _corpus delicti_:
and this because it contradicted the Bible. And so it did; for the
stability of the earth is as clearly assumed from one end of the Old
Testament to the other as the solidity of iron. Those who take the Bible to
be _totidem verbis_ dictated by the God of Truth can refuse to believe it;
and they make strange reasons. They undertake, _a priori_, to settle Divine
intentions. The Holy Spirit did not _mean_ to teach natural philosophy:
this they know beforehand; or else they infer it from finding that the
earth does move, and the Bible says it does not. Of course, ignorance
apart, every word is truth, or the writer did not mean truth. But this puts
the whole book on its trial: for we never can find out what the writer
meant, until we otherwise find out what is true. Those who like may, of
course, declare for an inspiration over which they are to be viceroys; but
common sense will either accept verbal meaning or deny verbal inspiration.
* * * * *
{37}