considered essential to it. In our day the Antipodes are accepted;
the fixity of the earth is given up; the period of Creation and the
reputed age of the world are alike dissipated; Evolution is looked
upon without terror; and other changes have occurred in the same
direction too numerous to be dwelt upon here. In fact, from the
earliest times to the present, religion has been undergoing a process
of purification, freeing itself slowly and painfully from the physical
errors which the active but uninformed intellect mingled with the
aspirations of the soul. Some of us think that a final act of
purification is needed, while others oppose this notion with the
confidence and the warmth of ancient times. The bone of contention at
present is _the physical value of prayer_. It is not my wish to excite
surprise, much less to draw forth protest, by the employment of this
phrase. I would simply ask any intelligent person to look the problem
honestly in the face, and then to say whether, in the estimation of
the great body of those who sincerely resort to it, prayer does not,
at all events upon special occasions, invoke a Power which checks and
augments the descent of rain, which changes the force and direction of
winds, which affects the growth of corn and the health of men and
cattle a Power, in short, which, when appealed to under pressing
circumstances, produces the precise effects caused by physical energy
in the ordinary course of things. To any person who deals sincerely
with the subject, and refuses to blur his moral vision by intellectual
subtleties, this, I think, will appear a true statement of the case.
It is under this aspect alone that the scientific student, so far as I
represent him, has any wish to meddle with prayer. Forced upon his
attention as a form of physical energy, or as the equivalent of such
energy, he claims the right of subjecting it to those methods of
examination from which all our present knowledge of the physical
universe is derived. And if his researches lead him to a conclusion
adverse to its claims--if his enquiries rivet him still closer to the
philosophy implied in the words, 'He maketh His sun to shine on the
evil and on the good, and sendeth rain upon the just and upon the
unjust'--he contends only for the displacement of prayer, not for its
extinction. He simply says, physical nature is not its legitimate
domain.
This conclusion, moreover, must be based on pure physical evidence,
and not on any inherent, unreasonableness in the act of prayer. The
theory that the system of nature is under the control of a Being who
changes phenomena in compliance with the prayers of men, is, in my
opinion, a perfectly legitimate one. It may of course be rendered
futile by being associated `with conceptions which contradict it; but
such conceptions form no necessary part of the theory. It is a matter
of experience that an earthly father, who is at the same time both
wise and tender, listens to the requests of his children, and, if they
do not ask amiss, takes pleasure in granting their requests. We know
also that this compliance extends to the alteration, within certain
limits, of the current of events on earth. With this suggestion
offered by experience, it is no departure from scientific method to
place behind natural phenomena a Universal Father, who, in answer to
the prayers of His children, alters the currents of those phenomena.
Thus far Theology and Science go hand in hand. The conception of an
aether, for example, trembling with the waves of light, is suggested
by the ordinary phenomena of wave-motion in water and in air; and in
like manner the conception of personal volition in nature is suggested
by the ordinary action of man upon earth. I therefore urge no
_impossibilities_, though I am constantly charged with doing so. I do
not even urge inconsistency, but, on the contrary, frankly admit that
the theologian has as good a right to place his conception at the root
of phenomena as I have to place mine.
But without _verification_ a theoretic conception is a mere figment of
the intellect, and I am sorry to find us parting company at this
point. The region of theory, both in science and theology, lies
behind the world of the senses, but the verification of theory occurs
in the sensible world. To check the theory we have simply to compare
the deductions from it with the facts of observation. If the
deductions be in accordance with the facts, we accept the theory: if
in opposition, the theory is given up. A single experiment is
frequently devised, by which the theory must stand or fall. Of this
character was the determination of the velocity of light in liquids,
as a crucial test of the Emission Theory. According to it, light
travelled faster in water than in air; according to the Undulatory
Theory, it travelled faster in air than in water. An experiment
suggested by Arago, and executed by Fizeau and Foucault, was
conclusive against Newton's theory.
But while science cheerfully submits to this ordeal, it seems
impossible to devise a mode of verification of their theories which
does not rouse resentment in theological minds. Is it that, while the
pleasure of the scientific man culminates in the demonstrated harmony
between theory and fact, the highest pleasure of the religious man has
been already tasted in the very act of praying, prior to verification,
any further effort in this direction being a mere disturbance of his
peace? Or is it that we have before us a residue of that mysticism of
the middle ages, so admirably described by Whewell--that 'practice of
referring things and events not to clear and distinct notions, not to
general rules capable of direct verification, but to notions vague,
distant, and vast, which we cannot bring into contact with facts; as
when we connect natural events with moral and historic causes.'
'Thus,' he continues, 'the character of mysticism is that it refers
particulars, not to generalisations, homogeneous and immediate, but to
such as are heterogeneous and remote; to which we must add, that the
process of this reference is not a calm act of the intellect, but is
accompanied with a glow of enthusiastic feeling.'
Every feature here depicted, and some more questionable ones, have
shown themselves of late; most conspicuously, I regret to say, in the
leaders' of a weekly journal of considerable influence, and one, on
many grounds, entitled to the respect of thoughtful men. In the
correspondence, however, published by the same journal, are to be
found two or three letters well calculated to correct the temporary
flightiness of the journal itself.
It is not my habit of mind to think otherwise than solemnly of the
feeling which prompts prayer. It is a power which I should like to
see guided, not extinguished--devoted to practicable objects instead
of wasted upon air. In some form or other, not yet evident, it may,
as alleged, be necessary to man's highest culture. Certain it is
that, while I rank many persons who resort to prayer low in the scale
of being--natural foolishness, bigotry, and intolerance being in their
case intensified by the notion that they have access to the ear of
God--I regard others who employ it, as forming part of the very cream
of the earth. The faith that adds to the folly and ferocity of the
one is turned to enduring sweetness, holiness, abounding charity, and
self-sacrifice by the other. Religion, in fact, varies with the
nature upon which it falls. Often unreasonable, if not contemptible,
prayer, in its purer forms, hints at disciplines which few of us can
neglect without moral loss. But no good can come of giving it a
delusive value, by claiming for it a power in physical nature. It may
strengthen the heart to meet life's losses, and thus indirectly
promote physical well-being, as the digging of Aesop's orchard brought
a treasure of fertility greater than the golden treasure sought. Such
indirect issues we all admit; but it would be simply dishonest to
affirm that it is such issues that are always in view. Here, for the
present, I must end. I ask no space to reply to those railers who
make such free use of the terms insolence, outrage, profanity, and
blasphemy. They obviously lack the sobriety of mind necessary to give
accuracy to their statements, or to render their charges worthy of
serious refutation.
********************
IV. VITALITY.
THE origin, growth, and energies of living things are subjects which
have always engaged the attention of thinking men. To account for
them it was usual to assume a special agent, free to a great extent
from the limitations observed among the powers of inorganic nature.
This agent was called _vital force_; and, under its influence, plants
and animals were supposed to collect their materials and to assume
determinate forms. Within the last few years, however, our ideas of
vital processes have undergone profound modifications; and the
interest, and even disquietude, which the change has excited are amply
evidenced by the discussions and protests which are now common,
regarding the phenomena of vitality. In tracing these phenomena
through all their modifications, the most advanced philosophers of the
present day declare that they ultimately arrive at a single source of
power, from which all vital energy is derived; and the disquieting
circumstance is that this source is not the direct fiat of a
supernatural agent, but a reservoir of what, if we do not accept the
creed of Zoroaster, must be regarded as inorganic force. In short, it
is considered as proved that all the energy which we derive from
plants and animals is drawn from the sun.
A few years ago, when the sun was affirmed to be the source of life,
nine out of ten of those who are alarmed by the form which this
assertion has latterly assumed would have assented, in a general way,
to its correctness. Their assent, however, was more poetic than
scientific, and they were by no means prepared to see a rigid
mechanical signification attached to their words. This, however, is
the peculiarity of modern conclusions: that there is no creative
energy whatever in the vegetable or animal organism, but that all the
power which we obtain from the muscles of man and animals, as much as
that which we develop by the combustion of wood or coal, has been
produced at the sun's expense. The sun is so much the colder that we
may have our fires; he is also so much the colder that we may have our
horse-racing and Alpine climbing. It is, for example, certain that
the sun has been chilled to an extent capable of being accurately
expressed in numbers, in order to furnish the power which lifted this
year a certain number of tourists from the vale of Chamouni to the
summit of Mont Blanc.
To most minds, however, the energy of light and heat presents itself
as a thing totally distinct from ordinary mechanical energy. Either
of them can nevertheless be derived from the other. Wood can be
raised by friction to the temperature of ignition; while by properly
striking a piece of iron a skilful blacksmith can cause it to glow.
Thus, by the rude agency of his hammer, he generates light and heat.
This action, if carried far enough, would produce the light and heat
of the sun. In fact, the sun's light and heat have actually been
referred to the fall of meteoric matter upon his surface; and whether
the sun is thus supported or not, it is perfectly certain that he
might be thus supported. Whether, moreover, the whilom molten
condition of our planet was, as supposed by eminent men, due to the
collision of cosmic masses or not, it is perfectly certain that the
molten condition might be thus brought about.
If, then, solar light and heat can be produced by the impact of dead
matter, and if from the light and heat thus produced we can derive the
energies which we have been accustomed to call _vital_, it indubitably
follows that vital energy may have a proximately mechanical origin.
In what sense, then, is the sun to be regarded as the origin of the
energy derivable from plants and animals? Let us try to give an
intelligible answer to this question. Water may be raised from the
sea-level to a high elevation, and then permitted to descend. In
descending it may be made to assume various forms--to fall in
cascades, to spurt in fountains, to boil in eddies, or to flow
tranquilly along a uniform bed. It may, moreover, be caused to set
complex machinery in motion, to turn millstones, throw shuttles, work
saws and hammers, and drive piles. But every form of power here
indicated would be derived from the original power expended in raising
the water to the height from which it fell. There is no energy
_generated_ by the machinery: the work performed by the water in
descending is merely the parcelling out and distribution of the work
expended in raising it. In precisely this sense is all the energy of
plants and animals the parcelling out and distribution of a power
originally exerted by the sun. In the case of the water, the source
of the power consists in the forcible separation of a quantity of the
liquid from a low level of the earth's surface, and its elevation to a
higher position, the power thus expended being returned by the water
in its descent. In the case of vital phenomena, the source of power
consists in the forcible separation of the atoms of compound
substances by the sun. We name the force which draws the water
earthward 'gravity,' and that which draws atoms together 'chemical
affinity'; but these different names must not mislead us regarding the
qualitative identity of the two forces. They are both _attractions_;
and, to the intellect, the falling of carbon atoms against oxygen
atoms is not more difficult of conception than the falling of water to
the earth.
The building up of the vegetable, then, is effected by the sun,
through the reduction of chemical compounds. The phenomena of animal
life are more or less complicated reversals of these processes of
reduction. We eat the vegetable, and we breathe the oxygen of the
air; and in our bodies the oxygen, which had been lifted from the
carbon and hydrogen by the action of the sun, again falls towards
them, producing animal heat and developing animal forms. Through the
most complicated phenomena of vitality this law runs: the vegetable
is produced while a weight rises, the animal is produced while a
weight falls. But the question is not exhausted here. The water
employed in our first illustration generates all the motion displayed
in its descent, but the _form_ of the motion depends on the character of
the machinery interposed in the path of the water. In a similar way,
the primary action of the sun's rays is qualified by the atoms and
molecules among which their energy is distributed. Molecular forces
determine the form which the solar energy will assume. In the
separation of the carbon and oxygen this energy may be so conditioned
as to result in one case in the formation of a cabbage, and in another
case in the formation of an oak. So also, as regards the reunion of
the carbon and the oxygen, the molecular machinery through which the
combining energy acts may, in one case, weave the texture of a frog,
while in another it may weave the texture of a man.
The matter of the animal body is that of inorganic nature. There is
no substance in the animal tissues which is not primarily derived from
the rocks, the water, and the air. Are the forces of organic matter,
then, different in kind from those of inorganic matter? The
philosophy of the present day negatives the question. It is the
compounding, in the organic world, of forces belonging equally to the
inorganic, that constitutes the mystery and the miracle of vitality.
Every portion of every animal body may be reduced to purely inorganic
matter. A perfect reversal of this process of reduction would carry
us from the inorganic to the organic; and such a reversal is at least
conceivable. The tendency, indeed, of modern science is to break down
the wall of partition between organic and inorganic, and to reduce
both to the operation of forces which are the same in kind, but which
are differently compounded.
Consider the question of personal identity, in relation to that of
molecular form. Thirty-four years ago, Mayer of Heilbronn, with that
power of genius which breathes large meanings into scanty facts,
pointed out that the blood was 6 the oil of the lamp of life,' the
combustion of which sustains muscular action. The muscles are the
machinery by which the dynamic power of the blood is brought into
play. Thus the blood is consumed. But the whole body, though more
slowly than the blood, wastes also, so that after a certain number of
years it is entirely renewed. How is the sense of personal identity
maintained across this flight of molecules? To man, as we know him,
matter is necessary to consciousness; but the matter of any period may
be all changed, while consciousness exhibits no solution of
continuity. Like changing sentinels, the oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon
that depart, seem to whisper their secret to their comrades that
arrive, and thus, while the Non-ego shifts, the Ego remains the same.
Constancy of form in the grouping of the molecules, and not constancy
of the molecules themselves, is the correlative of this constancy of
perception. Life is a wave which in no two consecutive moments of its
existence is composed of the same particles.
Supposing, then, the molecules of the human body, instead of replacing
others, and thus renewing a pre-existing form, to be gathered first
hand from nature and put together in the same relative positions as
those which they occupy in the body. Supposing them to have the
selfsame forces and distribution of forces, the selfsame motions and
distribution of motions--would this organised concourse of molecules
stand before us as a sentient thinking being? There seems no valid
reason to believe that it would not. Or, supposing a planet carved
from the sun, set spinning round an axis, and revolving round the sun
at a distance from him equal to that of our earth, would one of the
consequences of its refrigeration be the development of organic forms?
I lean to the affirmative. _Structural_ forces are certainly in the
mass, whether or not those forces reach to the extent of forming a
plant or an animal. In an amorphous drop of water lie latent all the
marvels of crystalline force; and who will set limits to the possible
play of molecules in a cooling planet? If these statements startle,
it is because matter has been defined and maligned by philosophers and
theologians, who were equally unaware that it is, at bottom,
essentially mystical and transcendental.
Questions such as these derive their present interest in great part
from their audacity, which is sure, in due time, to disappear. And
the sooner the public dread is abolished with reference to such
questions the better for the cause of truth. As regards knowledge,
physical science is polar. In one sense it knows, or is destined to
know, everything. In another sense it knows nothing. Science
understands much of this intermediate phase of things that we call
nature, of which it is the product; but science knows nothing of the
origin or destiny of nature. Who or what made the sun, and gave his
rays their alleged power? Who or what made and bestowed upon the
ultimate particles of matter their wondrous power of varied
interaction? Science does not know: the mystery, though pushed back,
remains unaltered. To many of us who feel that there are more things
in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the present philosophy of
science, but who have been also taught, by baffled efforts, how vain
is the attempt to grapple with the Inscrutable, the ultimate frame of
mind is that of Goethe:
Who dares to name His name,
Or belief in Him proclaim,
Veiled in mystery as He is, the All-enfolder?
Gleams across the mind His light,
Feels the lifted soul His might,
Dare it then deny His reign, the All-upholder?
********************
As I rode through the Schwarzwald, I said to myself: That little fire
which glows star-like across the dark-growing moor, where the sooty
smith bends over his anvil, and thou hopest to replace thy lost
horse-shoe,--is it a detached, separated speck, cut off from the whole
Universe; or indissolubly joined to the whole? Thou fool, that
smithy-fire was primarily kindled at the Sun; is fed by air that
circulates from before Noah's Deluge, from beyond the Dogstar;
therein, with Iron Force, and Coal Force, and the far stranger Force
of Man, are cunning affinities and battles and victories of Force
brought about; it is a little ganglion, or nervous centre, in the
great vital system of Immensity. Call it, if thou wilt, an
unconscious Altar, kindled on the bosom of the All... Detached,
separated! I say there is no such separation: nothing hitherto was
ever stranded, cast aside; but all, were it only a withered leaf,
works together with all; is borne forward on the bottomless, shoreless
flood of action, and lives through perpetual metamorphoses.--CARLYLE.
*****
V. MATTER AND FORCE.
[Footnote: A Lecture delivered to the working men of Dundee, September
5, 1867, with additions.]
It is the custom of the Professors in the Royal School of Mines in
London to give courses of evening lectures every year to working men.
The lecture-room holds 600 people; and tickets to this amount are
disposed of as quickly as they can be handed to those who apply for
them. So desirous are the working men of London to attend these
lectures, that the persons who fail to obtain tickets always bear a
large proportion to those who succeed. Indeed, if the lecture-room
could hold 2,000 instead of 600, I do not doubt that every one of its
benches would be occupied on these occasions. It is, moreover, worthy
of remark that the lectures are but rarely of a character which could
help the working man in his daily pursuits. The information acquired
is hardly ever of a nature which admits of being turned into money. It
is, therefore, a pure desire for knowledge, as a thing good in itself,
and without regard to its practical application, which animates the
hearers of these lectures.
It is also my privilege to lecture to another audience in London,
composed in part of the aristocracy of rank, while the audience just
referred to is composed wholly of the aristocracy of labour. As
regards attention and courtesy to the lecturer, neither of these
audiences has anything to learn of the other; neither can claim
superiority over the other. It would not, perhaps, be quite correct
to take those persons who flock to the School of Mines as average
samples of their class; they are probably picked men--the aristocracy
of labour, as I have just called them. At all events, their conduct
demonstrates that the essential qualities of what we in England
understand by a gentleman are confined to no class; and they have
often raised in my mind the wish that the gentlemen of all classes,
artisans as well as lords, could, by some process of selection, be
sifted from the general mass of the community, and caused to know each
other better.
When pressed some months ago by the Council of the British Association
to give an evening lecture to the working men of Dundee, my experience
of the working men of London naturally rose to my mind; and, though
heavily weighted with other duties, I could not bring myself to
decline the request of the Council. Hitherto, the evening discourses
of the Association have been delivered before its members and
associates alone. But after the meeting at Nottingham, last year,
where the working men, at their own request, were addressed by our
late President, Mr. Grove, and by my excellent friend, Professor
Huxley, the idea arose of incorporating with all subsequent meetings
of the Association an address to the working men of the town in which
the meeting is held. A resolution to that effect was sent to the
Committee of Recommendations; the Committee supported the resolution;
the Council of the Association ratified the decision of the Committee;
and here I am to carry out to the best of my ability their united
wishes.
*****