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 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.
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 phenomenon is not the effect of a material
cause, anyone 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 in 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 Archaeus 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 coextensive 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 are 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 skeptic, 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 anyone else, has 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 skeptic. 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."
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 that 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 formulae and symbols.
But the man of science who, forgetting the limits of philosophical
inquiry, slides from these formulae 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.
JOHN TYNDALL
SCOPE AND LIMIT OF SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM
Partly through mathematical and partly through experimental research,
physical science has of late years assumed a momentous position in the
world. Both in a material and in an intellectual point of view it has
produced, and is designed to produce, immense changes--vast social
ameliorations, and vast alterations in the popular conception of the
origin, rule, and governance of natural things. By science, in the
physical world, miracles are wrought; while philosophy is forsaking its
ancient metaphysical channels and pursuing others which have been opened
or indicated by scientific research. This must become more and more the
case as philosophical writers become more deeply imbued with the methods
of science, better acquainted with the facts which scientific men have won
and with the great theories which they have elaborated.
If you look at the face of a watch, you see the hour- and minute-hands,
and possibly also a second-hand, moving over the graduated dial. Why do
these hands move, and why are their relative motions such as they are
observed to be? These questions cannot be answered without opening the
watch, mastering its various parts, and ascertaining their relationship to
each other. When this is done, we find that the observed motion of the
hands follows of necessity from the inner mechanism of the watch, when
acted upon by the force invested in the spring.
The motion of the hands may be called a phenomenon of art, but the case is
similar with the phenomena of nature. These also have their inner
mechanism and their store of force to set that mechanism going. The
ultimate problem of physical science is to reveal this mechanism, to
discern this store, and to show that, from the combined action of both,
the phenomena of which they constitute the basis must of necessity flow.
I thought that an attempt to give you even a brief and sketchy
illustration of the manner in which scientific thinkers regard this
problem would not be uninteresting to you on the present occasion; more
especially as it will give me occasion to say a word or two on the
tendencies and limits of modern science; to point out the region which men
of science claim as their own, and where it is mere waste of time to
oppose their advance; and also to define, if possible, the bourne between
this and that other region to which the questionings and yearnings of the
scientific intellect are directed in vain.
But here your tolerance will be needed. It was the American Emerson, I
think, who said that it is hardly possible to state any truth strongly
without apparent injustice to some other truth. Truth is often of a dual
character, taking the form of a magnet with two poles; and many of the
differences which agitate the thinking part of mankind are to be traced to
the exclusiveness with which partisan reasoners dwell upon one half of the
duality in forgetfulness of the other half. The proper course appears to
be to state both halves strongly, and allow each its fair share in the
formation of the resultant conviction. But this waiting for the statement
of the two sides of the question implies patience. It implies a resolution
to suppress indignation if the statement of the one half should clash with
our convictions, and to repress equally undue elation if the
half-statement should happen to chime in with our views. It implies a
determination to wait calmly for the statement of the whole, before we
pronounce judgment in the form of either acquiescence or dissent.
This premised and, I trust, accepted, let us enter upon our task. There
have been writers who affirmed that the pyramids of Egypt were the
productions of nature; and in his early youth Alexander von Humboldt wrote
a learned essay with the express object of refuting this notion. We now
regard the pyramids as the work of men's hands, aided probably by
machinery of which no record remains. We picture to ourselves the swarming
workers toiling at these vast erections, lifting the inert stones, and,
guided by the volition, the skill, and possibly at times by the whip, of
the architect, placing them in their proper positions. The blocks in this
case were moved and posited by a power external to themselves, and the
final form of the pyramid expresses the thought of its human builder.
Let us pass from this illustration of constructive power to another of a
different kind. When a solution of common salt is slowly evaporated, the
water which holds the salt in solution disappears, but the salt itself
remains behind. At a certain stage of concentration the salt can no longer
retain the liquid form: its particles, or molecules, as they are called,
begin to deposit themselves as minute solids, so minute, indeed, as to
defy all microscopic power. As evaporation continues, solidification goes
on, and we finally obtain, through the clustering together of innumerable
molecules, a finite crystalline mass of a definite form. What is this
form? It sometimes seems a mimicry of the architecture of Egypt. We have
little pyramids built by the salt, terrace above terrace from base to
apex, forming a series of steps resembling those up which the Egyptian
traveler is dragged by his guides. The human is as little disposed to look
unquestioning at these pyramidal salt-crystals as to look at the pyramids
of Egypt without inquiring whence they came. How, then, are those salt
pyramids built up?
Guided by analogy, you may, if you like, suppose that, swarming among the
constituent molecules of the salt, there is an invisible population,
controlled and coerced by some invisible master, and placing the atomic
blocks in their positions. This, however, is not the scientific idea, nor
do I think your good sense will accept it as a likely one. The scientific
idea is that the molecules act upon each other without the intervention of
slave labor; that they attract each other and repel each other at certain
definite points, or poles, and in certain definite directions; and that
the pyramidal form is the result of this play of attraction and repulsion.
While, then, the blocks of Egypt were laid down by a power external to
themselves, these molecular blocks of salt are self-posited, being fixed
in their places by the forces with which they act upon each other.
I take common salt as an illustration because it is so familiar to us all;
but any other crystalline substance would answer my purpose equally well.
Everywhere, in fact, throughout inorganic nature, we have this formative
power, as Fichte would call it--this structural energy ready to come into
play and build the ultimate particles of matter into definite shapes. The
ice of our winters and of our polar regions is its handiwork, and so
equally are the quartz, feldspar, and mica of our rocks. Our chalk-beds
are for the most part composed of minute shells, which are almost the
product of structural energy; but behind the shell, as a whole, lies a
more remote and subtle formative act. These shells are built up of little
crystals of calc-spar, and to form these crystals the structural force had
to deal with the intangible molecules of carbonate of lime. This tendency
on the part of matter to organize itself, to grow into shape, to assume
definite forms in obedience to the definite action of force, is, as I have
said, all-pervading. It is in the ground on which you tread, in the water
you drink, in the air you breathe. Incipient life, as it were, manifests
itself throughout the whole of what we call inorganic nature.
The forms of the minerals resulting from this play of polar forces are
various, and exhibit different degrees of complexity. Men of science avail
themselves of all possible means of exploring their molecular
architecture. For this purpose they employ in turn, as agents of
exploration, light, heat, magnetism, electricity, and sound. Polarized
light is especially useful and powerful here. A beam of such light, when
sent in among the molecules of a crystal, is acted on by them, and from
this action we infer with more or less of clearness the manner in which
the molecules are arranged. That differences, for example, exist between
the inner structure of rock salt and crystallized sugar or sugar-candy, is
thus strikingly revealed. These differences may be made to display
themselves in chromatic phenomena of great splendor, the play of molecular
force being so regulated as to remove some of the colored constituents of
white light, and to leave others with increased intensity behind.
And now let us pass from what we are accustomed to regard as a dead
mineral to a living grain of corn. When _it_ is examined by polarized
light, chromatic phenomena similar to those noticed in crystals are
observed. And why? Because the architecture of the grain resembles the
architecture of the crystal. In the grain also the molecules are set in
definite positions, and in accordance with their arrangement they act upon
the light. But what has built together the molecules of the corn? I have
already said regarding crystalline architecture that you may, if you
please, consider the atoms and molecules to be placed in position by a
power external to themselves. The same hypothesis is open to you now. But
if, in the case of crystals, you have rejected this notion of an external
architect, I think you are bound to reject it now, and to conclude that
the molecules of the corn are self-posited by the forces with which they
act upon each other. It would be poor philosophy to invoke an external
agent in the one case and reject it in the other.
Instead of cutting our grain of corn into slices and subjecting it to the
action of polarized light, let us place it in the earth and subject it to
a certain degree of warmth. In other words, let the molecules, both of the
corn and of the surrounding earth, be kept in that state of agitation
which we call warmth. Under these circumstances, the grain and the
substances which surround it interact, and a definite molecular
architecture is the result. A bud is formed; this bud reaches the surface,
where it is exposed to the sun's rays, which are also to be regarded as a
kind of vibratory motion. And as the motion of common heat, with which the
grain and the substances surrounding it were first endowed, enabled the
grain and these substances to exercise their attractions and repulsions,
and thus to coalesce in definite forms, so the specific motion of the
sun's rays now enables the green bud to feed upon the carbonic acid and
the aqueous vapor of the air. The bud appropriates those constituents of
both for which it has an elective attraction, and permits the other
constituent to resume its place in the air. Thus the architecture is
carried on. Forces are active at the root, forces are active in the blade,
the matter of the earth and the matter of the atmosphere are drawn toward
both, and the plant augments in size. We have in succession the bud, the
stalk, the ear, the full corn in the ear; the cycle of molecular action
being completed by the production of grains similar to that with which the
process began.
Now there is nothing in this process which necessarily eludes the
conceptive or imagining power of the purely human mind. An intellect the
same in kind as our own would, if only sufficiently expanded, be able to
follow the whole process from beginning to end. It would see every
molecule placed in its position by the specific attractions and repulsions
exerted between it and other molecules, the whole process and its
consummation being an instance of the play of molecular force. Given the
grain and its environment, the purely human intellect might, if
sufficiently expanded, trace out _a priori_ every step of the process of
growth, and by the application of purely mechanical principles demonstrate
that the cycle must end, as it is seen to end, in the reproduction of
forms like that with which it began. A similar necessity rules here to
that which rules the planets in their circuits round the sun.